Evergreen president on riots: 'It's a real wake-up call'

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Evergreen president on riots: 'It's a real wake-up call'

Submitted by Jeff Brigham on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 10:37am.

The Olympian has an article in today’s edition:

Evergreen president on riots: 'It's a real wake-up call' Venice Buhain, The Olympian

Here are some quotes and excerpts from the article. My comments are in italics.

Evergreen President Les Purce says "It's a real wake-up call," and, "Perhaps what's worked for us in the past is what now needs to be reviewed." It’s a wake-up call??? Where has he been for the past few years?
“Purce said that as the campus gets larger and more prominent, events attract people regionally "that is not in tune with our culture." Well, that is so sweet! Actually, some of those “regional” people seem to have had the same culture of violence, arrogance, property destruction, and disrespect for fellow citizens. Apparently he has not noticed that some of his misfits have previously brought their culture off campus and performed their property destruction and havoc in Olympia and Tacoma. What’s different now is that some of their culture has been deposited on their own campus.
The article says that this event was hosted by an Evergreen student club, the “Hip Hop Congress” and that “The student club provided its own volunteer security.” OMG! Volunteer security? Well, we have seen how well that worked out!
"It's easy to get lulled in a place that is a calm, gentle place," Purce said.” It would be more accurate for him to say: “It’s easy to get lulled when the spoiled-brat segment of our population and certain egotistical, extremist professors only inflicted their arrogant actions on the communities and citizens off campus. I think it’s different now that they have done it here on our campus. I will really consider it serious if they come to my house and destroy my property and inflict their arrogant behavior on me!”
“Rozell Townsend, an Evergreen student and a member of Hip Hop Congress” says: "I think there could be stricter policies or more security presence," Yeah, you betcha! He also said "Evergreen showed a lot of love," I’m sure that the campus police officer felt the love! I suppose that if they had injured or killed that police officer ; that would have shown even greater love.

Jeff Brigham's blog
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big S on your chest

Submitted by chad360 on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 10:56am.

Wow, I sure hope you can show up and put words in my mouth when something like this happens to me or someone I know!

You are on a roll!

Keep going (all this great insight leaves me breathless at your superior intellect & moral authority).

I guess what we all need in Olympia (and the USA in general), is to straighten out all "the spoiled-brats" with some good old-fashioned second-guessing!

What is your size?

I just want to make sure that your outfit with the big S on the chest is clean and ready-to-go--

>smirk<

Nothing new here

Submitted by Guglielmo on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 10:57am.

But it really reminds me of my old Olympian Comments days. Thanks for the blast from the past and a good reminder of what we aren't.

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.! --John Maynard Keynes

Sorry, Guglielmo but I

Submitted by Jeff Brigham on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 1:13pm.

Sorry, Guglielmo but I consider my critique of the statements and comments made in the article to be appropriate. I posted it in my blog and not in comments of someone else. You may not like them, but those are my views of those statements. Yes, my post also shows my views of a certain segment of the Evergreen community and certain Evergreen “professors”. Those are my views and I definitely feel that there is a body of evidence to support those views.

Jeff Brigham

"America’s greatest chapter is still to be written, for the best is yet to come."

President Ronald Reagan

The thing of it is...

Submitted by Rick on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 1:28pm.

...that there's nothing in what you said that provides more information or helps us focus in on the issues. What I see in your comments is a lot of anger and hostility toward the college. Is that really going to change anything?

For example, Les noted that security was supposed to be provided by the student groups. This seems like a relevant issue to talk about and maybe ask some questions. Like, why didn't the student security deal with the altercation in the first place? Or, why didn't the campus police officer work with the student security? These seem rocks that haven't been turned over yet.

> It's OK to be nice. <
enpen's social contract

I believe that Mr. Purce

Submitted by Jeff Brigham on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 2:46pm.

Rick,

I believe that Mr. Purce has some serious problems with his comprehension of the situation and the problems for the college and surrounding communities that this segment of the Evergreen College is causing. Several of the statements in that article did not, in my view, acknowledge the seriousness of this situation. I believe that my comments have brought that out.

I am not hostile to the entire Evergreen College. I fully realize that many people go there to get and do accomplish an excellent education. I do not want the college to be closed down. But I, and a growing number of citizens are developing a rapidly shrinking tolerance for this kind of crap. And I am not speaking just of President Bush supporters either. I am speaking of many of our average citizens. They are fed up. Eventually this kind of trouble will start affecting the college and possible its ability to educate.

Mr. Purce and others at Evergreen need to take this situation much more seriously than they currently are and they need to take visible action to correct this situation. Statements of "a calm, gentle place", and "Evergreen showed a lot of love," do not cut it any longer.

Jeff Brigham

"America’s greatest chapter is still to be written, for the best is yet to come." President Ronald Reagan

Jeff,

Submitted by Guglielmo on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 3:24pm.

While I do not agree with you, I very much appreciate the tone of this comment (compared to your original post). My first comment here was a reaction to the tone of your post, not your opinion.

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.! --John Maynard Keynes

I also appreciate...

Submitted by Rick on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 4:12pm.

...the way you've communicated your perspective here. It seems like a good place from which to start a conversation that might result in some good ideas and suggestions.

Evergreen has a long history of conflict with the Olympia community. Perhaps you've lived her long enough to remember. It seemed more divided to me when my family moved here in '72, but we could compare notes. (We might want to bring stevenl in on this conversation as well.)

To my mind, the debacle the other night isn't necessarily part of a bigger pattern. I think alcohol and tempers probably account for trashing the cruiser.

With regard to the whole angry-young-(wo)man/anti-imperialist/"tear it down" attitude of the port protesters (exhibited more during the first protest than the last one), I've stated many times that I thought that that was a bad strategy that would only alienate the population of Thurston County. But, what Phan has often said, they are doing the best they know how to express something they feel deeply about. So, to me the question is, what can we do to help the situation?

What I come up with as an answer is that polarization doesn't seem productive. Trying to have real conversations does. That's why I started this blog, and it's why I'm glad that you're participating in the conversation. Keep talking with these folks, and maybe we'll get somewhere better together.

> It's OK to be nice. <
enpen's social contract

I formated your post.

Submitted by Rick on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 11:06am.

> It's OK to be nice. <
enpen's social contract

Thanks, Rick

Submitted by Jeff Brigham on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 1:04pm.

Thank you.
For my future reference and posting; What kind of technical or formatting problems did my post have? (So I won't repeat them.)
Does the use of different colors like I did present a technical problem? I have no problems with adjusting things like that in my postings.

Again, Thank you.

Jeff Brigham

"America’s greatest chapter is still to be written, for the best is yet to come." President Ronald Reagan

No problem.

Submitted by Rick on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 1:30pm.

We usually try to avoid colors because they make the blog too chaotic. I also try to keep everything on the blog in the same font so that it has some uniformity.

> It's OK to be nice. <
enpen's social contract

Since you are for open-mindedness Jeff, I wonder...

Submitted by The Original Yoda on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 1:29pm.

...what you think the term, "spoiled brats", really brings to a conversation?

But lets be equal about it,

Submitted by Ehver Green on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 2:01pm.

But lets be equal about it, shall we? Take Janet's comments for example. She's allowed to ramble on and resort to name-calling and Jeff gets called out?

Yoda, I used that adjective

Submitted by Jeff Brigham on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 2:24pm.

Yoda,

I used that adjective noun combination because it seems to best describe my views and opinion of that segment (not all) of the Evergreen State College community.

Jeff Brigham

"America’s greatest chapter is still to be written, for the best is yet to come." President Ronald Reagan

I think you just want to poop on everything!

Submitted by The Original Yoda on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 2:30pm.

...and it stinks.

There was an "ignore button" discussed earlier

Submitted by a.future.with.n... on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 1:49pm.

Do you think we could it on here. I'm tired of mister "God Bless Israeli Bulldozers" polluting our blog. Seriously, maybe we should just abandon ship and start a different blog and leave this one to sharks like tschida and JB.

I'm getting so tired of posts like this, lines in the sand and screaming matches. Every post Tschida makes gets me a little nervous. It's like talking to my dad during the more abusive parts of our relationship. Unreasonable, full of anger and slightly scary. And everything Jeff Brigham does makes me sick, both offline and on.

Olyblog used to be about discourse and debate. Just scroll back on the pages a few dozen times and it looks like a different Olyblog. If there's no function for actively ignoring these people so that they slink back to sondrak or the olympian or where ever they came from, i'm going to have to leave Olyblog. And I'm not the only one that feels that way. Many of my friends have just stopped reading because of posts like these.

It just has to stop. Please Rick, if there's got to be rules governing the blog than enforce them and do something about this. If not, give us the power to just filter this kind of stuff out, it's really ruining the blog.

Wait a minute

Submitted by DJW on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 2:00pm.

I'm not standing up for Mr. Brigham or anyone else, they don't need my support. But I don't think anything he has posted above is inappropriate. JB is very passionate about some of his topics, but no more passionate than others who want to impeach the current administration.

I left the Olympian and 'came over' to Olyblog due to exteme censorship issues and general in-fighting. I appreciate some of the comments from JB as they provoke some interesting statements. Just because we don't agree with his beliefs doesn't imply he shouldn't be allowed to post comments/blogs.

I'll come down off my pedestal.

Inappropriate, no

Submitted by a.future.with.n... on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 2:11pm.

But generally destructive, yes. I'm just tired of maybe what you could call the "net effect" of posts like these.

And begrudgingly I kind of DO want some censorship, even if it's just me censoring out what I don't want to see. I'm just so tired of it. Literally. I used to really enjoy reading and posting on Olyblog (I was a reader for about a year before I got an account). Now it just feels like a chore. By refusing to act in good faith as a community member, posters like JB erode the quality of the blog.

Thats just how I feel. I guess I don't require anyone to agree with me. Maybe I'm alone in feeling this way amongst other posting members, but I know Olyblog is losing readers over it and I just don't want to take it any more. I want an ignore button.

The ignore button is

Submitted by Ehver Green on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 2:16pm.

The ignore button is availble - it's the left-click on your mouse.

DJW, I echo your comment.

OlyBlog brings together...

Submitted by Rick on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 2:36pm.

...folks with pretty radically different perspectives -- that's kind of the beauty of the whole thing. But one thing that means is that bridging those differences is hard work. It tires me out a lot of the time. But, that doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile work.

You can, however, take a break. You don't have to be the one to make a counterpoint to something that someone else says. In fact, not responding may open an opportunity for someone else to jump in.

> It's OK to be nice. <
enpen's social contract

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