Stupid Greeners

[gillianren]

"Greeners" is the nickname for students at my beloved alma mater, The Evergreen State College. Our mascot--adopted when it was thought we'd never have sports teams--is the geoduck; you can imagine, I think, why we don't call ourselves that.

There was a Dead Presidents concert on campus on Valentine's Day. Some guy got arrested for assault; the Dead Presidents actively encouraged the people at the concert, who didn't need much encouragement, to go and prevent the (lone, female) cop from arresting the guy. She has been charged by the people there with racism for arresting a black guy; he has been charged with assault, and he's known to have started several fights and to have been smoking weed at the concert.

They're calling it a riot. I have a hard time with that, because, well, I lived in LA in '92. However, a police car did get overturned in the course of events, and the police did use pepper spray on the crowd, and the crowd was surrounding the police cars and preventing the policewoman from exercising her duty.

The thing that really, really bothers me is that these idiots give everyone there a bad name. There's footage of it up on YouTube now, too. If these people turned half their drive into productive protest, they'd like the world they live in a heck of a lot better. But no, they'd rather blame the police for everything that goes wrong in their sheltered little lives.

The other thing that really, really bothers me is that people here are willing to let those idiots give every other Greener a bad name. There are some 4000 students at Evergreen. There were some 200 people at the concert. Some 100 of those weren't even Evergreen students. But yeah, it's those "stupid pot-smoking protestors" again. There are literally thousands of people living in our area who've gotten Evergreen degrees over the years and live nice, quiet, productive lives, working to make our area and our country better--or teaching, or doing any number of other jobs in the area. Outside Washington, Evergreen is quite respected. Inside the area, all they think of is those idiots, and the other idiots who block the street every May Day.

I've never smoked pot in my life. I wouldn't've been at that concert, because I don't like the Dead Presidents, but even if I had, I wouldn't've been one of the people pressing against the police car and pounding on it. I think the May Day "protests" are stupid and pointless, and they should definitely give a march plan to emergency services first. I think giant puppets hardly ever consitute successful political protest. I think working in the system accomplishes more than calling cops "pigs" does. And yet I went to Evergreen, so I'm just another stupid Greener.

[bazbear]

Stupid asses are stupid asses; marijuana, whiskey, beer, wine, too much coffee. Don't blame it on the drugs, blame it on the users (and frankly I have a hard time believing the weed smokers were the catalyst, well not unless they were double dipping with alcohol). Trouble makers will be trouble makers.

[Ginnie]

bazbear said:

Stupid asses are stupid asses; marijuana, whiskey, beer, wine, too much coffee. Don't blame it on the drugs, blame it on the users (and frankly I have a hard time believing the weed smokers were the catalyst, well not unless they were double dipping with alcohol). Trouble makers will be trouble makers.

I've never seen anyone on pot get in a fight in my life. Never.
Must be double dipping indeed!

I remember trying to get a relative who was quite drunk and rowdy to smoke pot to calm him down. Worked every time we managed it.
;D

[The Supreme Canuck]

Gillian: Welcome to my world.

I understand exactly how you feel. The idiots at my school even flipped a car, too. We're still hearing about it two years down the line, despite the fact that many of the people there were not from Queen's. But that doesn't matter, we're all hooligans now.

More recently, the university has been accused of having a "culture of whiteness" (whatever that means). Two posters near the campus were vandalized with white supremacist slogans. Immediately the students were blamed. Turns out it was a mentally ill non-student who had done it. No apology was forthcoming. I'm to blame because I'm a white male anglo student, apparently.

I'm a little frustrated by it.

[gillianren]

Guys--if you haven't seen people on pot get into a fight, you haven't been to Evergreen. I promise. Alcohol is a Tool of the Man. Pot is the drug God intended you to use. (There are T-shirts and bumper stickers that say, "Man made booze. God made pot.") There are, indeed, fights between surly stoned people. This guy may well have been drinking as well; I can't say. But the pot culture is so much bigger than the drinking culture at Evergreen that there are more than a few incidents known to be caused by stoners who weren't drinking.

Granted, I'm touchy on the subject of any drugs, because I work way, way too hard to gain control of my mind to understand voluntarily losing it. Still, I promise you that I am not the one tarring all Greeners as being stoners and blaming the whole situation on it. I think it has much more to do with the fact that there are a lot of people enamoured of radicalism without really thinking about the possible consequences. I like the cops. Especially the Evergreen cops; I know several of them personally, and they're generally nice, mellow people. Some Greeners refer to "the police state," but the fact that the SWAT team that got called in was letting them, well, film the SWAT team that got called in argues against that. What's more, you essentially have to puke on the cop's shoes to get busted for underaged drinking on campus.

I got one of the best, most economical educations in the country. In-state tuition is about $1500 to $2000 a quarter, last I knew. The student-teacher ratio is one of the lowest in the country. When I was there, a substantial majority (I've got figures written down somewhere, but I'm not sure where) of all Greeners were returning students. That means that they're over the age of about 25 in most cases; I knew many people with kids in elementary school who'd come back to college to try to better themselves. That's the Evergreen majority. It's just not the Evergreen image.

I needed to vent about this, and I think I still do. Thanks to anyone willing to listen, and yeah, TSC, that sounds like our situation, too. For what it's worth, I don't think you're The Man.

[The Supreme Canuck]

gillianren said:

There are, indeed, fights between surly stoned people. This guy may well have been drinking as well; I can't say. But the pot culture is so much bigger than the drinking culture at Evergreen that there are more than a few incidents known to be caused by stoners who weren't drinking.

Yep. I've seen it, too. When you start messing around with people's brains, odd behaviour is going to happen.

I think it has much more to do with the fact that there are a lot of people enamoured of radicalism without really thinking about the possible consequences.

Gillian, I'm beginning to think that we were separated at birth.

I understand perfectly. Students making noise and protesting irrelevant, trivial things for the sake of protesting, not for the sake of making things better. It irritates me to no end.

Thanks to anyone willing to listen, and yeah, TSC, that sounds like our situation, too. For what it's worth, I don't think you're The Man.

Aw. But from the way they describe it, The Man has so much fun! Really, though, I don't have an answer for you. It'll blow over, I'm sure, and maybe the troublemakers will learn something from the bad press.

[Ginnie]

Guys--if you haven't seen people on pot get into a fight, you haven't been to Evergreen
If this is the case, then they really are asinine, unless they're smoking low grade Mexican...if I remember right. ;D
I haven't smoked pot in twenty years or so, so I forget a bit.

[scooter]

So long as society tolerates jerks like these, and there is no social stigma against anti-social behavior (you know, like elephants have), it will continue. Marijuana...alcohol...no excuse.

[gillianren]

No, it isn't an excuse, Scooter, and I'm certainly not trying to claim it is. However, there are people in the wider community here who either do or consider it one of the major symptoms of the problem.

TSC, hon, I'm enough older than you--in that, you know, I'm more than an hour older than you!--that it seems unlikely. (Actually, I just looked at your profile; I'm about eleven years older than you.) Other than that, yes. Quite right.

The thing is, one of Ted Bundy's victims was picked up on our campus. She was on her way from the dorms to upper campus to go watch a jazz concert, and she never got there. Her name was Donna Gail Manson; all her parents got to bury of her was a few bones that had been scattered on a mountain. And those police that so many of the Evergreen Trustafarians and hippycrites curse caught Ted Bundy (three times, all told!), and he never snatched another Donna Gail Manson. There are these tall, blue posts all over campus with lights on top and callboxes to campus police on them, and you can summon the cops from one, or even just call them, and they will escort you anywhere on campus, or even into some of the off-campus housing, if you're not feeling safe. The woman who arrested the guy, if she's the cop I'm thinking of, is kind of a jerk, but speculation among those acquainted with actual campus cops is that she's trying to be as tough as the male cops. However, I have been acquainted with perhaps half-a-dozen campus cops personally, and most of them are really nice.

Actually, when I was still a student, I had a short-lived (from February of my senior year to graduation) column in the school paper, and one of my first columns, if not my absolute first, was titled, "Why You Are Not Living in a Police State."