Hello. I am the creative director of the CPJ, co-coordinator to the hard-working and fast-moving Sako Chapman.
Where do I even begin?
This issue of the CPJ is being assembled and laid-out in the second week of the spring quarter. The workload seemed to overwhelm me before it began. As some of you know, there was a student forum on April 10th where members of Evergreen leadership made themselves available for students to ask the questions they have been holding onto for a while. Why a public forum? Accountability. A few of us have had small group meetings with Dexter Gordon over the course of last quarter, and conversations with him and John Carmichael at their Wednesday open hours in the CAB. Those meetings and conversations were important and necessary, but they were private, just a start. As you will read in my article on page 4 covering the event, there were aspirational statements made of how to better engage students in the process/function of Evergreen as an institution. Making these statements publicly, and cementing their place in the history of Evergreen in the pages of the CPJ, will hopefully hold leadership accountable. Accountable to the spirit of the Evergreen State College.
Remember, we didn’t come here because we wanted an experience like UW. I wanted an educational experience that treated me as a collaborator in learning, not just a recipient. An experience that valued interdisciplinary studies. To the credit of the teaching staff here at Evergreen, my education has been mostly that experience. The faculty that I’ve had the great privilege to work with have given me an experience that I do believe is incredibly valuable, and I believe I am a better person for it. But their support ends at academics. As for the rest of a college experience, housing, facilities, food, resource offices, and student employment, these areas are where it is the institution’s responsibility to uphold the Evergreen promise of collaboration and progressive thinking. This, in its nature, requires a pro-active model of operation. Yes, the stakes are high. That is the job. These are people’s lives, their quality of life.
I wanted to pursue higher education at Evergreen. That meant leaving my hometown, my family, my entire support system. Leaving the beautiful landscape that I call home, leaving behind all my favorite things because I wanted to better myself and take all of my newfound knowledge back to my community.
Of course we are going to have expectations of how things run and what conditions our housing is in. When students come to Evergreen they have to make it their home, they have to create new communities, new support systems, find new things to love, this is how we survive. Students who take 16 credits a quarter, have a part time job, and are in student governance positions are doing 52 hour weeks. That is all before you account for the time to feed yourself, meal plan, exercise, bathe, travel from task to task, and schedule in moments of rest. It is exhausting.
In February I started having dreams about the institution. Before I would even fall asleep I would lie in the dark, begging myself to become too tired to think. My head was full of college bureaucracy bullshit. The mis-steps by the college, the moves made by staffers, the underhanded comments, I began to question my perception of reality.
Dear Admin, do you think I want to criticize you? Do you think I want to spend my time tracking movements, attending meetings, and constantly taking in information? Not at all. When I came to this college I became a part of something bigger than myself, when I started working at the paper that became even more true. Evergreen is a home to many and I want to do right by them. The issues of this institution lay heavy on my chest, I feel it in my ability to breathe air. It is my dread, I recognize this dread and keep pushing forward because to stop everything and say I can’t handle it would be to go against the spirit of the education that I have fought so hard to receive.
What students need at this time is to feel heard and seen. More than that, the students need to see proactive engagement from administration, and to be brought in as collaborators. Think about everything they have been through. Covid went through their communities, changing them forever. The politicians that mainstream media accuse of being leftist, liberal, commies are actually money-hungry centrists at best, leaving little hope for the working class, communities of color, communities in poverty, and reproductive rights. On our campus specifically, they have seen the arts get less and less support. They have seen their classmate die. And they have to watch a genocide unfold over the internet, while our government doesn’t just sit by but participates in it through the aid and weapons sent to Israel. Every single student who makes it to class, does their work, and keeps going despite all of this, is accomplishing something great. I keep going for them. Let’s keep going for each other.
Sincerely,
Grace Selvig
