From the conservative website Campus Reform comes a memo sent to the faculty and staff of The Evergreen State College (TESC) on Tuesday. It’s from John Carmichael, Chief of Staff and Secretary of the Board of Trustees in the Office of TESC’s president. In case you can’t read it, it shows the result of the continually declining acceptance and lower enrollment at TESC which, I think, is the direct result of the Authoritarian Left taking over the place, with the resulting fracas, departure of Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, and negative national publicity. Parents, even progressive ones, don’t want their kids going to a place peopled with thuggish, authoritarian students, faculty who are but overgrown children, and a President (George Bridges) without a backbone.
To summarize, TESC are cutting 24 faculty lines, partly by not renewing the contracts of adjuncts (aka wage slaves). They’re also eliminating 19 staff positions that are currently vacant. Further, they won’t be able to support college theater, library and media support will be reduced, and they can’t do in-house equipment repair of computers and AV equipment. They also won’t be able to fill vacant custodial positions, which will further begrime the campus.
It’s a pity that marginal schools like TESC (it has a 95% acceptance rate) have to learn lessons the hard way, but schools like Yale, Harvard, and Middlebury College don’t suffer, for their reputation and lower acceptance rates guarantees that they’re not suffering like TESC. But believe me, I won’t be sad to see TESC go down the tubes. They’re getting what they deserve.
Typo in post title: “Evergeen” (sic).
Perhaps PCC(E) was subconsciously considering the decrease in green cash flow in TESC’s coffers.
I think the end of TESC is nigh. I agree with you that they are getting what they deserve. But even for established universities like Harvard, Yale and Middlebury College I believe this is a cautionary tale.
Personally I would be sad if TESC went completely down the tubes. I prefer the world to have a diversity of possible educational models. And TESC is certainly diverse – in some good ways, and others possibly not. So if you want to live and study in an authoritarian leftist institution, then having a few places like TESC to choose from, would be helpful. See how it works out for you. And it may minimize the AL presence everywhere else.
I guess you’d be sorry to see Bob Jones University go down the drain then? Same argument.
I am happy to see schools that do not educate fail. There are a lot of good, diverse small schools out there; we don’t need to protect a bad one in the name of diversity.
Open ’em all, and let the marketplace sort ’em out. (Not exactly “caedite eos; novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius,” but what the hell.) 🙂
“I am happy to see schools that do not educate fail.”
I myself do not have much sympathy for students who fail because they are not consistently and sufficiently inclined to discipline themselves to submit to the occasional intellectual heavy lifting required for learning and succeeding in college. Some of them don’t know why they are there in the first place. They can’t blame anyone else for that. (I am indicting myself with these comments.)
For Evergreen to have morphed from a college
with students free to choose any course of study deemed pertinent by them, not a university dictated regimented syllabus, into what it has become is very sad. There were people who didn’t approve of the way Evergreen used to be but, I think what it has become is worse. I can’t cry over what’s happening to them except for the harm to individuals who are losing jobs.
That is the part that is especially sad to me. The staff and part-time lecturers who are now out of work. I know that life, and I can tell you that a large % will have spouses who also work in the area and so they can’t easily pick up and leave for greener pastures. This really sucks for them.
Carthago delenda est!
Doesn’t hurt to have tens of billions of dollars in the endowment kick, either.
They seem far too humor-impaired to start making jokes about “nevergreen”
To stop this death spiral, the Board of Trustees of TESC needs to fire its spineless President and bring in a new President and administrative team that will stop pandering to the Authoritarian left. The new administration then needs to commit to hiring faculty dedicated to instilling knowledge, not ideology. It can make a good start by rehiring Weinstein and Heying.
I won’t hold my breath.
They won;t do that, because groups of baseball-bat wielding mobs would start turning up.
That’s how out-of-control the situation got.
Oh dear. Too bad, Evergreen.
Do you know there are certain “skeptics”, such as swivel-eyed New Racist loon Peter “Humanisticus” Ferguson, who insist the Evergreen incident was all a “hoax”?
Some of these rfegressives are in such denial, and they are in control of whole departments and colleges. Hence, the complete denial and doubling-down of the faculty at Evergreen.
Silly sods.
Just desserts now being served in the student union dining hall.
I’m reminded that a few weeks ago the NY Times used the locution “just deserts,” and defended its use, opposing reader responses claiming that it should be “just desserts.”
Per the Times, I guess that it is “just (a food) desert(s) in the student union dining hall, eh?
The market has decided.
My first awareness of Evergreen was through the work of one of their biology professors who was one of the first to recognize the significance of efforts to understand the history of bacteriophage therapy in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. I thought that was some really cool scholarship. It’s just so sad to see that place decline this way.