When the story of the meltdown at Evergreen first broke, the video that got the most attention was the couple dozen students confronting Professor Bret Weinstein at his classroom and his thwarted efforts to have a real conversation with the students. But the insanity at Evergreen didn’t peak then. It actually continued to escalate at an afternoon meeting in the library which filmmaker Benjamin Boyce compares to a struggle session.
But before we dive into that, episode five of this series sets the stage by showing what was happening that afternoon on campus. Bret Weinstein explains why he decided to attend the meeting and his students describe being told that chairs and food were not for white people. In fact, they were told white people shouldn’t speak at the meeting. There’s also a subplot in this segment about a dog trapped in a car and campus police trying to find the owner by phone as the campus is heading toward a meltdown.
The fifth episode concludes with the opening of the library meeting where a student protester (Jamil) appeared to be setting the agenda and then introduced President George Bridges who is there to reassure the protesters he was willing to do whatever they asked of him. Boyce doesn’t show us all of Bridges’ speech, instead, he summarizes it based on a text document. Here’s episode five:
With all of the set up out of the way, Boyce dives into what he calls “the superior cringe.” It’s hard to argue with that assessment. Episode six is the unscripted part of the library meeting in which students hector Bridges and question why Bret Weinstein still has a job. Weinstein was accompanied to the meeting by some of his own students who wanted to support him, including some minority students who tried to make a case for letting him speak. But as you’ll see, anyone who didn’t agree with the intersectional mob was shouted down and ignored.
This episode also contains the moment when Bridges attempts to defend the school’s hiring record and students become irritated and tell him his hand motions are threatening to them. He’s literally told, “You gotta put your hands down.” Then a white student comes up to the podium to demonstrate the acceptable posture. Naturally, Bridges complies with these orders.
At this point, students notice that police chief Stacy Brown is in the room and she becomes the focus. She steps up to explain what happened (basically that she didn’t know what was happening at Weinstein’s classroom and was headed there to investigate when they encountered a large group of students). Brown’s explanation doesn’t help and she winds up being mocked and screamed at by protesters.
When the students turn on Bret Weinstein, President Bridges threatens to adjourn the meeting and that’s where the crowd seems to really become unhinged with lots of students shouting at Bridges, at Brown, or just in general.
Eventually, someone begins chanting “Bring Bret up” to get him to come to the podium. This apparently isn’t meant to give him a chance to defend himself though. When he does walk to the podium one of the protesters gets there first and tells the room, “If you have not seen the emails this man sent out, he loves attention. He loves to talk.” In other words, don’t give him a chance to speak for himself or he might confuse people with the facts. Instead, we get another student diatribe about whiteness.
Here’s episode six:
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