The Year From Hell Gets Worse.

The Council for Postsecondary Education's Evergreen Study released in Feb. 1979 spelled it out. The College had to change or it would die. The essay admission form, gone. The wild and unstructured curriculum, out the window. Competitive sports would be introduced in the 1979-80 year. The future shape of TESC was being decided by legislators and administrators who tweaked and pruned away aspects of the school that had bothered them for years. Dropping the "The" came up. A professional marketing firm was employed.

The students did not rise up in arms as one would've expected. About the only part of this whole change where we had any say was an election where a new school mascot could be chosen. The geoduck was graciously allowed to be listed on the ballot. The other choices were pretty boring as I recall, I think the Orca whale was one. Of course, we stayed loyal to the symbol that disturbed our detractors. But I think we were resigned to the reality of the situation.

But the faculty were not. They were having some very hard feelings about the CPE's mandate for making the school more mainstream. In one seminar, my teacher went on a rant about how rock stars like Bowie, Lennon, and Jagger were really corporate products. "Behind every one of those guys," he said, "is someone just like Dan Evans." He did not mean that as a compliment.

Shortly after the CPE study was published, Willi Unsoeld took a group of students on a climb to Rainier and died in an avalanche. A student named Janie Diepenbrock perished as well. And if that wasn't bad enough, a few days later a student was murdered in the backyard of her Westside house. The campus fell into a dark shock.

Willi was easily TESC's most charismatic ambassador in carrying the message of the experiment. When we attended his memorial in the Library lobby, we were saying goodbye to more than just a person.

Obviously the traditionalizing of TESC paid off, as enrollment improved and the College started showing up on various top ten lists. But there was something wonderful and eccentric and electric that was taken away as a result. The Evergreen that opened in the fall of 1979 would be a very different school.