On graduation day, 2024, the Evergreen State College awarded Jonathan Rodriguez a posthumous degree in computer science.
Members of Administration— the President, Vice President, Executive Leadership, Board of Trustees, Foundation Board of Governors, and Deans— stood still on the stage as scattered shouts of “Free Palestine” and “Long Live Jon” cut silence between program transitions. After a “holding of space,” the protests found themselves diffused by gentle acknowledgement and approved recognition.
For a brief minute, the JumboTrons flanking the clock tower began to play a slideshow. Images of Jon flit between memorial interviews with friends and family in a crisp montage compiled by his friend and fellow student. Jon’s smiling face on the basketball court of the Evergreen Garden Apartments. Him as a child raising a giant WWE belt above his head, tiny in comparison. His goofy dances and poses from campus apartment parties long past. Finally, in large white lettering: You Are Loved, You Are Missed.
Jonathan was the first of our graduating class to be awarded their bachelor’s, collected by his older sister. As she took the stage, we stood up from the ziptied folding chairs with our arms at our sides. Four years of renting, working, learning, and living at Evergreen to map exactly what systems in the college had led us to December all sat heavy in my throat. I wanted to make sure that she could see us standing with her, remembering those systems while condolences were strung by administrators. I wanted to make sure we remembered what had happened as the student whose life was stolen was named graduate by the same institution that killed him.
Loud cheering erupted from the stage and crowd. What tension had built was cut by the first clap, and undeserved relief flooded through the audience. The smiling deans grasped for a grieving sister’s palm as whistles and applause burst from all around me.
“Congratulations, Jonathan!”
The stage was cleared quickly afterwards, without missing a beat in the agenda. The Evergreen Singers began their a capella set– something light, jovial, celebratory. I played and replayed the image of Jon’s sister coming down the ramp, fists balled, eyes cast low. Heaving silently in the graduation seats, I cried for the first time in six, long, cold months.
• • • • • •
I am horrified to imagine someone who believes that the events of December 11th are in some way resolved; that the factors that killed one student in campus housing, sickened three, and nearly killed two others were isolated to the origin of the carbon monoxide poisoning. That it starts and ends with that night. Yes, the MODs have been closed indefinitely. Yes, a CO alarm will never be disregarded on campus again. And yes, Jonathan Rodriguez earned his degree from the Evergreen State College.
Yet the systemic conditions that led to Jon’s death still remain.
The investigation of December 11th that you will encounter here is not complete. But by virtue of centering the institutional patterns of Evergreen, it is the most complete one constructed so far.
The narrative must move beyond the invocation of “tragedy” that protects the College’s consumer reputation and its normal modes of operation and control. The narrative must be able to grasp the systemic context that extends far back into the past and will, without strategic intervention, propel far into its future.
This article is not about Jonathan, and it could never be. His memory and life belong to their family and friends– not to Evergreen and not to the circumstances of his death. This article attempts to provide an analysis and basis of knowledge to the collective about December 11th that can outline the necessity of future inquiry, organization, and action to combat the institution.
• • • The MODs • • •
The prefabricated modular housing units (MODs) opened with the dorms in Evergreen’s first year, 1971. Many speculate that they were temporary experiments to inform the future campus apartments. Like the rest of campus housing, the MODs were well known for breaking down and using outdated appliances. The MODs were slated to close for necessary repairs during the 23-24 school year. In Summer ‘24, the college realized that while recruitment efforts had finally brought enrollment up for the first time in 5 years, they would not have enough housing to secure incoming students and maximize student tenant profit. The Administrative decision was to delay repairs and keep the MODS open.
Seven of the nineteen MODs used propane to fuel its heating systems in Fall of 2024. Residents of the MOD living community had reported smells of propane since the beginning of the school year. A week prior to the incident, MOD #305 had its heating unit replaced by Olympia Sheet Metal after its residents had reported issues with their hot water to RAD Services. The tank’s exhaust was improperly attached by the contractors, causing over 4000 parts per million of carbon monoxide (CO) to leak into the utility room and over 1000ppm into the bedrooms over the course of the week. Exposure over 400ppm becomes life threatening after 2 hours.
• • • The Alarms • • •
Evergreen has contracted their alarm system with Convergint Technologies LLC since 2007. Convergint is one of many in a pattern of “low-bidding contractors” that Evergreen signs for campus upkeep. Sometimes evidenced visually like the peeling door paint on the apartments (just a year and a half old) and shoddy brick repairs on Red Square– a lower cost and convenience always takes priority over long term safety and quality for both administration and contractor. Since the system overhaul over the past four years, Convergint’s alarms have often randomly triggered in campus apartments, the dorms, and the SEM buildings. The lack of accuracy and frequency of the mistakes created the mentality in students, staff, facilities, and contractors that any time an alarm triggers on campus, it is false.
Alarms were sounding in MOD #305 as early as 5:41 AM on Dec.11 yet were treated as false signals. At no point in the day was the alarm considered to potentially be responding to danger, nor did the system directly alert any emergency service to an issue. The residents had to call Dispatch twice in order to have anyone respond to the alarms. They appeared as “supervisory” alerts, not as an activated smoke alarm, nor as a defined CO alert.
There had been several supervisory alerts that month between the MODs, requiring the attention of both RAD Maintenance and Convergint technicians. Whether those alarms were false or detecting a serious issue is currently unknown, but the system was reported by staff to go off often since their installation. It is standard procedure when a Convergint technician is scheduled to go on site or a testing period is active that Dispatch disregard the Fireworks panel until given the clear.
RAD Facilities pro-staff first arrived at the scene around 6:30 am to reset the alarm panel. After consulting Convergint over the phone, they were advised by the company to deal with the “faulty” alarms before a technician could inspect them at 6pm. The maintenance crew was instructed by pro-staff to remove the alarms and spray them with compressed air. Unable to be silenced, the alarms were completely removed and the residents were told it was safe to go inside.
Arriving late to their appointment, Convergint reinstalled the alarms with the on-duty student worker while not interacting with the occupants of the building. The technician did not bring a CO detector. It was only after inspecting the devices, finding no faults, reinstalling them and having them go off yet again was maintenance notified to evacuate the MOD. By then it was 8 pm, over 14 hours since the original alarm had gone off.
• • • RAD Services • • •
Residential and Dining Services is the workplace in charge of servicing lower campus: an incomprehensible stitching together of different student-workers, pro-staff, and outside contractors in an administrative move to be as cheap and as profitable as possible while making labor organizing difficult.
The entire functioning of lower campus relies on the size of workforce, availability, low hourly wages, and labor that the student worker program provides. Student workers land in two work bubbles: Housing (RA’s, Front Desk Workers) and Facilities (Custodial, Maintenance, Grounds, RMs).
Evergreen students have been engaged in the labor of campus housing since 1972 when a small student-worker program was created by the Director of Housing in hopes that students could play an active role in their living conditions and “foster a sense of responsibility and ownership.” Though it originated from this stated goal, student tenants and workers have never had direct control or leadership over housing and facilities.
Over the years RAD Services would expand alongside an increasing demand for student housing and administrative efforts to generate extra revenue security (summer conferences, EF language program). These expansions would leave students’ position duties in a constant state of flux, assigned to whatever functions or auxiliary projects profited the university. This would complement the periodic suppression of labor organizing efforts to create safer living and working conditions for students at Evergreen. Unlike the AFSCME-represented pro-staff and upper campus custodial and maintenance, student worker roles and responsibilities are not secured by contract.
The student workers of the responding maintenance team on Dec.11 were given unprofessional directives from their bosses, no training for emergency situations, and all the responsibility for them. RAD Housing and Facilities student workers are expected to overextend their positions to compensate for the failures of management. The living conditions of their peers and themselves are placed into the hands of student workers by an institution that has never cared for quality and safety beyond what standards they must meet to open a room. The last handbook provided to Residential Maintenance Technician (RM) student-workers was from 2017, rewritten following the RAFT strike and workplace restructure to crush student organizing. As a final line of preparation, the handbook reads: “No one will care about what you do, unless you fuck up…”
• • • The Police • • •
Evergreen’s Police Services exist to enforce administrative control over campus, to protect the College’s property and assets, and to contain any threats to their viability. The students are the greatest uncontrolled risk to campus operation. The students are the concentrated subjects of policing. As a means of compensating, the college’s overstaffed, over equipped, and overfunded cops have been gradually repositioned into the center of communications and operations on campus. Administration’s imposition of their Police Services into all corners of campus life and labor has fortified a system that is more about controlling and disciplining space than maintaining that space in service of the people who live and work there.
The RAD workplace has been structured to accommodate for Police Dispatch and Police Services interference. Multiple RA protests in the past (2017, 2019) have demanded that police are barred from joining in nightly rounds, a power they still possess. Custodial and front desk workers are frequently directed to divert their attention to “anti-law enforcement graffiti” clean-up over regular duties by police officers. Despite the existence of direct lines and after-hours numbers, student tenants are told that to get in contact with your RA, to call in a maintenance order, or if you get locked out of your dorm, you will need to speak to Police Services Dispatch before being transferred to a different line. RAD defers to Police Dispatch to communicate emergencies in housing, Dispatch defers to the Company Contractors to report if something is wrong, and the Company Contractors defer to RAD’s knowledge of their own facilities. This system of deference enacts an alienated management of lower campus, obliterating possibility for direct intervention without approval from off-site parties and the cops. Admin does not care if police management staggers the flow of information or prevents people from doing their job: it is secondary to justifying the resources allocated to its policing.
According to the dispatch log from the WA State Patrol Investigation and public records request, TESC patrol officers spent the whole of December 11th circling around campus noting “it’s still going,” in reference to the MODs. While sounding alarms were being attended to throughout the day, police attempted to interrupt RAD staff to paint over graffiti.
After being notified by the Convergint technician, the on-duty RM called Evergreen dispatch to inform of their intention to evacuate MOD #305 for a possible code 9S and CO leak. They radioed that the unit was unlocked, then again when they discovered two unresponsive students in a bedroom. The RM aired out the room and attempted to put them into the recovery position. Dispatch sent an officer to the unit, again emphasizing the possibility of a CO leak. In his incident report, the officer writes: “it should be noted that this is not normally a call that requires a law enforcement response.”
After having the RM assist him in moving the students, the officer attempted CPR and decided to go back to his car to return with Narcan. He had diagnosed a possible opioid overdose based on his training, despite the high-likelihood of a CO leak having been communicated multiple times. Twenty minutes later, emergency responders from McLane fire department arrived. They continued life support measures on the three students found in the MOD, but realized that Jonathan Rodriguez was dead on arrival. The officer was taken to the hospital to assess CO poisoning. The responding RM was not taken to the hospital.
• • • Community Response • • •
After the anti-racist protests and subsequent media blowout of 2017, enrollment at Evergreen stalled and began on a sailing decline. The COVID-19 pandemic tanked incoming freshman class sizes and general enrollment. Evergreen administration has responded by wildly chasing market trends, placing it into competition with academic programs that are already doing things better while allowing its current facilities and curriculum to decay. With no routine of observing the material experience of the college aside from surveilling threats, administration has demonstrated its priority of expansion and standardization in creation of a viable economic unit. They consolidate resources towards recruitment and public image as a speculative investment, fixated on growing enrollment numbers without improving or securing the aspects of Evergreen that attract students here in the first place.
December 13 would start an administrative campaign of damage control that the institution of Evergreen would continue to employ up to the graduation ceremony. A public announcement delivered in Red Square would turn antagonistic, when community members who were seeking explanation would find a recital of the previous day’s vague campus wide email accompanied by a call for a wall of silence around the issues of the school. The unrest would continue into the night with an explosion of campus graffiti.
In the following months, protest became a natural response to an institution that had murdered a student through systemic incompetence. Unrest emerged organically, building momentum from raw expression and gathering of grievances, but would struggle to collectively synthesize goals down the line or advance beyond anger at administration’s lack of response. Efforts to disrupt admissions and donor tours characterized the back half of the year, ranging from informational pamphlets to megaphone chanting. Months later, conceptualizing tactics and outcomes continued to be difficult as the protests had become synonymous with an expression of grief. Administration systemized its ability to receive these demonstrations of unbridled rage through a ritual of “holding space,” “listening”, and “acknowledgement”.
Admin would continue to defer to the arrival of a then upcoming WSP report. Students’ concerns and their request for open dialogue were redirected into an isolated inbox. Throughout winter, weekly community update emails were used as evidence of transparency; vaguely recapping adjustments to housing protocols and asserting that all dangerous issues had been resolved.
The wider campus’ outrage, heartbreak, and dread demanded answers and information from Administration. By the time Administration finally engaged in direct communication with students through conversations and public forums, a full academic quarter had passed. Dialogue with admin stopped being a futile effort when students recognized that discussions and advocacy is not profound systemic change. Their interactions with Admin only became useful when the students abandoned pretenses of having their voices heard, instead beginning to advance their own collaborative socio-economic understanding of College functions to be used in aiding future efforts.
The immediacy of Administration in engaging students in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment versus their year long avoidance after Dec.11 built off of each other, but also demonstrate that Evergreen will have no incentive to do more than acknowledge a protest unless there is leverage and an envisoning of what material victory will look like. Sacrificing independence and deferring to the institution to figure out how to generate and execute demands does not disrupt administrative control. Without assuring the potential for students, workers, and teachers to break from Admin and control the process themselves, efforts are doomed to be co-opted.
• • • Future Investigation • • •
the Washington State Patrol released their investigation and deemed the incident “tragic, but avoidable,” their findings did not deliver a sense of closure or urgency. The insufficient CO policies present at the college that WSP concluded would need amending only identified a surface-level issue in Evergreen’s operation, and not what it was symptomatic of.
It is clear that Administration will continue the unsustainable growth models, exploitative labor, austerity policies, and inflated police apparatus from which the deteriorating housing and workplace conditions that led to Jon’s death emerged from.
Policies and allocations of resources that address the particular failings of alarms and training prevent only the same sequence from happening in the same order without confronting the core issues at the heart of the institution. Evergreen will not organically reconfigure from its adamant path of expansion– it has already calculated and made the space for its own self-destruction. The systemic and administrative conditions that resulted in December 11th have not and will not be addressed without direct coordination by the students, workers, and teachers of the Evergreen State College.
The only option cannot be collective abandonment– these conditions exist everywhere. Here, and everywhere that it is found: these systems must be analyzed, organized against, and intervened. Administration’s mismanagement and estranged landlordship must be replaced by student-worker-tenant control over facilities, labor, and space.
————–
The school does not need to be destroyed for the crimes of its bureaucrats, bosses, and landlords, it has already calculated and made the space for its self-destruction. It is clear that Administration is readily willing to adhere to unsustainable growth models, deteriorating housing conditions, faulty alarm systems, exploitive labor conditions, impractical security measures, inefficient communications, and inflated police apparatuses.
The institution will not organically reconfigure from its adamant path of expansion at the expense of those who live and work there.
• • • • • •
This article was written from the compiled experiences and research of a former student journalist at the Evergreen State College. Sources include:
– Contents of the Washington State Patrol’s December 11th Investigation files, accessed through FOIA request
– Internal public records requests from the Evergreen State College:
evergreen.edu/publicrecords
– Reporting from the Cooper Point Journal by Hero Winsor:
cooperpointjournal.com
– Personal testimonies, accounts, and investigation gathered as former tenant, worker, researcher and community member
– Student work, newspapers and surveys in the Evergreen Archives.
collections.evergreen.edu/s/archives/item-set/11689
