Thread by @keikoinboston

1. @BenjaminABoyce has been prolific in documenting the aftermath of the 2016–2017 protests at his alma mater, The Evergreen State College, with his #ExposéEvergreen series, a play on the protesters’ hashtag, ExposeEvergreen.

https://twitter.com/BenjaminABoyce/status/1038496788116791296

@BenjaminABoyce 2. In his latest student interview he talks with Thomas Hadley about problems in the Fall 2018 Mediaworks program (what Evergreen calls classes), around which there had been social media drama that kicked off the massive May 2017 protests…
evergreen.edu/catalog/offeri…

@BenjaminABoyce 3. …during which students demanded the firings of several white staff & faculty among a long list of other demands.
archive.is/hWSor

@BenjaminABoyce 4. Professor Naima Lowe was supposed to co-teach Mediaworks but was on leave during the fall so Anne Fischel came out of retirement to fill in.

@BenjaminABoyce 5. In the interview Hadley talks about a professor being reduced to tears by students after they deemed a class exercise offensive.

Hadley later wrote a critical paper that resulted in his removal from the program by another professor, Anne Fischel.

@BenjaminABoyce 6. Hadley saw “cult-like implications” for the message the faculty were sending to students about there being no objective truth. Everything is supposedly fake fake news, they said.

@BenjaminABoyce 7. Fischel had co-authored two pieces with what I believe to be a fake news narrative around what happened during the protests in the final week of May 2017. She also individually wrote an op-ed. Hadley challenged Fischel’s narrative. Not sure which piece he is referring to.

@BenjaminABoyce 8.

8/11/17 - co-authored piece in HuffPost
huffingtonpost.com/entry/evergree…

10/9/17- co-authored piece in The Olympian, their local newspaper
theolympian.com/opinion/op-ed/…

10/9/17 - op-ed for the WSJ
archive.is/Tb2NW

@BenjaminABoyce 9. Hadley describing what he wrote @ 20:55.

@BenjaminABoyce 10. Hadley asked for a way to get alternate credit in the program so he wouldn’t have to attend because “I didn’t feel like they were teaching us anything about film—it was mostly sort of like political indoctrination.” @ 21:47

@BenjaminABoyce 11. Hadley described “the atmosphere of the class as becoming increasingly toxic.”

Given who was in the class (one of the main protest leaders and their friends), this seems unsurprising.

@BenjaminABoyce 12. @BenjaminABoyce has previously interviewed Kai-Avé Douvia, the mixed race student who kicked off controversy by satirizing a Facebook post from the protest leader who was enrolled in Mediaworks who wanted to make the class majority “brown/black”.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1008881121696845824

@BenjaminABoyce 13. Douvia has also written about the backlash to his Facebook post.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1008122308156850176

@BenjaminABoyce 14. One of Evergreen’s promises to its students is to teach them how to learn “across significant differences”. That was not evident during the protests and the stories that continue to come out of the college indicate that the culture hasn't changed since last spring.

@BenjaminABoyce 15. Of course this is just one student’s story from one program, but this is in line with what I hear from other Greeners.

@BenjaminABoyce 16. From the articles & social media posts I’ve read and stories I’ve heard privately it often seems like some (not all) of the faculty are not able to learn across significant differences, so I’m not sure how they can be expected to teach students to do so.

@BenjaminABoyce 17. If you somehow missed the Evergreen protests here’s a thread with links to some good coverage on the one year anniversary.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/999451899580567554

@BenjaminABoyce 18. If you are a college student in the US or know any, please consider helping out Evergreen faculty member, Mike Paros, with his study "Parenting and Political Views Among College Students”. Requires 10 mins participation from student & closest parent.

https://twitter.com/HdxAcademy/status/1039211314206392320

@BenjaminABoyce 19. I failed to point out that Mike was the only faculty member to support Bret publicly at the time of the protests, although @mzclergyletter followed soon after once he was no longer a member of the college’s administration.

https://twitter.com/PamelaParesky/status/1039293662449074176

@BenjaminABoyce @mzclergyletter 20. Mike’s previous writings on Evergreen here:

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1008127291963080704

@BenjaminABoyce @mzclergyletter 21. @mzclergyletter’s writings on Evergreen here:

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1004893905916186625

@BenjaminABoyce @mzclergyletter 22. Forgot to include this bit of info from Mike Paros’s Heterodox piece. He says incoming freshman class expected to be 300 — a 50% drop from 2 years ago.

Note that the fall quarter hasn’t started yet so no official enrollment numbers have been released.

@BenjaminABoyce @mzclergyletter 23. Also no word yet on how many Evergreen faculty/staff have been/will be laid off.
theolympian.com/news/local/edu…

@BenjaminABoyce @mzclergyletter 24. Just noticed that @HdxAcademy updated Mike Paros’ blog post with enrollment projection numbers sent to them by an Evergreen rep. Wanted to add this because I tweeted Mike’s estimated numbers earlier (see tweet #22).
heterodoxacademy.org/update-evergre…

@BenjaminABoyce @mzclergyletter @HdxAcademy 25. The blog post got picked up very quickly by right-leaning media and there’s been some massive churnalism around these numbers, which is a huge problem for Evergreen’s reputation. Might do a thread on this later showing the progression.

@BenjaminABoyce @mzclergyletter @HdxAcademy 26. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have included the numbers in this thread even though I did say that official numbers were not out yet. But I’ve decided not to delete tweet #22.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1039310830259585024