By Daniel
The South Sound General Education Union has a much broader vision for Evergreen than their recent demands for two new professors and a freeze on police services hires.
They want nothing more than to run the school itself.
“We’ll have something kind of like an assembly,” said self-described “rank-and-file member” Elizabeth Flynn. “Of course we’ll have our protocols in place. Maybe something similar to Robert’s Rules of Order.”
(GSU meetings currently follow Robert’s Rules, a 19th-century guidebook on parliamentary procedure.)
According to an Olympia International Workers of the World (IWW) newsletter, the group was founded last summer, “on the rooftop of a “leftist” shop called Kinoki in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.” Their first-draft “points of unity” included a desire that “schools be run democratically by the people who attend and work in them (students, faculty, and staff).”
Representatives from the union — who, like the broader IWW, have embraced the moniker ‘wobblies’ — met with admin at the end of last year, including Vice President for Finance and Operations John Carmichael. Admin argued that the union doesn’t represent the student body.
“We recognize the Geoduck Student Union as the clearinghouse for student voices on campus,” said Evergreen spokesperson Allison Anderson, after the wobblies launched a phone-in campaign.
The Olympia IWW criticized the administration’s response as an attempt to divert public attention. “They wish to co-opt the union into avenues they can more easily control such as the faculty union and the student union.”
Although students have the opportunity to vote on GSU referendums directly or elect representatives, the referendums themselves have no binding power on the college and must be ratified by the Board of Trustees before they become college policy. For example, in 2010 students voted for the college to boycott a slew of Israeli-aligned companies, which the board rejected. The resolution is still technically GSU policy.
However, as the wobbly press release argues, the Flaming Eggplant “was not won by the board of trustees decision to finally listen to one of the Geoduck Student Union’s toothless referendums, rather it was the organization of students providing, from the get go, an alternative food service from Aramark.” The Flaming Eggplant posted a picture of a wobbly flyer to their Instagram story on Jan. 16, prior to their Jan. 17 picket outside the library.
Similarly, Flynn said that “the equity room, for example, doesn’t exist because of the GSU, it exists because of a mass movement that happened in 2017.”
At their Jan. 17 picket union members and friends marched back and forth in front of the library, holding signs outlining their demands. The rally was more sparsely attended than their fall rally, which was the largest on-campus rally since the spring 2017 uprisings.
“The picket was organized to spread information about our demands and to demonstrate to the Evergreen administration that the working class on the Olympia campus, and in the community, are not happy with the current direction of the school,” stated the union. “We will continue action until the demands are met.”
“The GSU has no teeth,” said Flynn. “For now, we’ll continue doing actions to get our demands fulfilled.”
