(I posted this on an Evergreen listserve first, so it is directed to the Evergreen community primarily. It is a soft cry for solidarity and to focus our attention on productive dialogue to prevent more violence between the students and police. Thanks for the responses to my previous posts, they have been thoughtful, I really like OLYBLOG.)

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Riot is over, we are all friends again. 

We’ve toned it down on the Dead Prez chatter. People have cooled, tamed their views or just plain moved on. Some serious progress has taken place going into the forum today at noon. Maybe we can hold this school together, reconcile our student differences, and come to terms with the police. I certainly hope so.

The criticism of our small centre of quirkiness and individuality has waned. The anti-Evergreeners, with their hateful comments in the Olympian, have grown bored of their taunting. The countless defenders of our community have mostly stayed with us through these patience-testing times. Soon people will be openly singing our praise again.

Evergreen has always had that sort of dynamic. To the outside world we are one group of people. They either can’t say enough good about us or they want to turn the place into a penal colony. No other college in this state has as strong of divisions in the opinions of the populace. Our student identity is set on weird apparently, and people dig it or they don’t.

I think this school is incredibly diverse. There are libertarians, communists, anarchists, feminists, physical scientists, social scientists, philosophers, poets, actors, dancers, artists and everything else that most colleges don’t support. Yet somehow they lump us all together as being Evergreeners.

I like our identity as Evergreeners. We are the alternative school. Here, anarchism, socialism and communism are subjects objectively studied rather than being dirty words. Here, men want to be feminists and females take power. Here, you can show pride for your sexual identity and the sexual identity of others. Here, democrats and republican are the minority and independents, greens and libertarians are the majority. Here, we think activism and volunteering is our duty instead of someone else’s responsibility. Here, we work hard to understand the point of view of others and we still get along with people we don’t agree with.

As this event becomes the past, let’s remember who we are as a community. Don’t hate on a particular set of students, imagining them to be violent hoodlums. Let’s make a special effort to be respectful of our excellent campus police. Let’s even come to terms with the Thurston County Police Department and call for a mutual end to the violence and destructive animosity. Looking out for one another’s rights and using dialog that unites us is the best way forward.