Dive Brief:
- As student protests rage on at Evergreen State College over what some students are perceiving as a hostile racial environment, the college faces another threat: proposed legislation to cut state funding for the school, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
- Classes were canceled for a third weekday in a row on Monday in response to threats received by local law enforcement, including one that a man was coming to the campus armed.
- At the same time, student groups are petitioning their legislators to maintain funding for the school, defending its importance to the overall landscape.
Dive Insight:
As race relations are continually testy throughout the country, college campuses will likely continue to struggle with incidents on campus. Individual acts, like nooses on campus or other acts of vandalism, should be swiftly condemned to make it clear the campus climate is not one which is tolerant of such behavior. But it gets stickier when the controversies are over the mistreatment of black students by police officers, as was alleged at Evergreen State. Claims of discrimination by campus police have become so prevalent that the Association for Public and Land-grant Universities is encouraging its more than 200 member institutions to outfit campus police officers with body cameras.
The controversy at Evergreen also continues to underscore a lesson learned by college presidents throughout the country: Despite the transition of the role college presidents are meant to play, it is detrimental to their tenure if financial and operational responsibilities are taking them too far from campus and student life. Evergreen students accused President George Bridges of not listening to concerns, and eventually offered him a list of their demands for immediate change. College presidents should try to be enough of a presence in student’s life so that it never reaches such a stage.