What do you do when your university isn’t made for you?
That’s not to say that any are- but Evergreen is a school that, to many of us, seemed to be an answer to our prayers. Most I’ve spoken to who came to Evergreen came not out of great want or big dreams but out of struggle. Struggle with traditional schooling. Struggle with money. If you ask people here, “where else did you apply besides Evergreen?”, the reply will often be nowhere. For many of us this was our last shot- what a disappointing last shot it has turned out to be.
This school was not made for us. The marketing and tours (though by no fault of the student guides, certainly) and any other materials made for public consumption will tell you that it is, that the education here is collaborative and the campus friendly. All you have to do is take a look around to see that this is not true. The architecture aesthetically and physically repels you, asks you to stay inside and not look at it for too long. The food does not nourish you and the student store prices are akin to those in rural Alaska. The previously diverse course catalog is slowly diminishing as the TESC Foundation capitulates Evergreen into a jovially environmentalist, veteran-first school. And the people- well. The people are the best and worst part.
As the Disorientation Manual has come together, I have begun to notice a throughline emerge between almost all of the articles. That throughline is a request- no, a pleading- for students to have some sense of urgency in fixing the mess we are in and have been in for decades now. From disabled students it is a request for infrastructure to become accessible to them and for fraternity to be built between students, the type of fraternity that has been keeping them alive longer than any ADA requirements. From students of color it is a request for a recontextualization of racial politics from one of tacit allyship to one of class consciousness. From student workers it is a request for the autonomy we need to better the conditions of ourselves and the population we serve, and some fucking respect from our bosses for the blood, sweat and tears we put into this campus. From LGBT students it is a request to move past the petty bourgeois identity politics that dominate not only this campus but the rest of the homosexual and transsexual world, as they serve to halt the work of liberating ourselves from our legislative and medical oppression. From Palestinian, anti-Zionist, and Jewish students, of course, it is a request for the fight for Palestinian liberation and an end to war to continue waging at Evergreen until we succeed in withdrawing the funds our school sends to or receives from Israel. There are many more requests for internal and external change; on the behalf of undocumented students, fat students, student athletes, students with substance abuse disorders… But as it stands, all of these cries exist on their own separate pages. And we can cry out for help all we want- but, again, the message of the Disorientation Manual 2024-2025 seems to be that we cannot do it alone, and we cannot do it without some sort of new structure, because Lord knows the ones we’ve tried before hasn’t worked. It didn’t work when SOFA tried kicking prison food companies off campus in the naughties, it didn’t work in 2017, and it has the potential not to work now unless something changes.
So, we know we want it now- but what exactly do we want?
- We want an end to Evergreen’s so-called Administration and for the reconstitution of the board of trustees into a democratically elected student-worker-teacher council.
- We want power and self-determination for Tacoma Campus; for Tacoma to decide the complete functioning of their institution, facilities and academics, and be resourced proportionally to and unique from Olympia campus.
- We want control of our own labor from bosses and the Washington state bourgeois-settler government; to organize the unorganized; have work guaranteed to students and alumni; and a campus-wide workers’ council to represent and coordinate all labor at the college.
- We want no unpaid or uncompensated labor to exist on campus whether that be productive, unproductive, social, or academic.
- We want academics under student and teacher control and for the provost to be democratically elected, accountable to recall elections, by teachers, students, and campus workers.
- We want the cancellation of Greener Foundations and for it to be replaced by Disorientation, facilitated by a community of students, campus workers, and alumni, in order to provide a people’s history of Evergreen.
- We want an end to landlordism at the college; the abolition of rent; for guaranteed housing for students, teachers, and campus workers; and for campus housing and facilities to be under student-worker control.
- We want the abolition of Evergreen Police Services and surveillance and a prohibition on police entering student housing and campus grounds.
- We want campus food, housing, laundry, parking, childcare, and medical to be free to all students, teachers, and campus workers.
- We want comprehensive healthcare for students, teachers, and campus workers and for it to include primary care, EMT’s, immunizations, labwork, radiology, physical therapy, dental, women’s health, gender affirming care, a pharmacy, and naturopathic options.
These are, of course, long term goals, and ones that work to guide the uncountable smaller actions that build to their realization. But none of those actions can be taken without clear benchmarks like these in mind that will tell us when we are succeeding at rebuilding this campus in our image, and not that of those who currently set our curriculum, our rent, our menus and the limits of our self-determination.
Evergreen is an island of misfit toys; people who are used to being beaten down and isolated and discarded. Some of you came out of that simply wanting to be left well enough alone- but the rest of us are angry. The rest of us are hungry. The rest of us know that we deserve better, and our friends working on campus deserve better, and our professors who pour their hearts and souls into the classes advertised as an answer to the monotony of academia (the space for which grows ever-smaller as Evergreen digs deeper into its rebrand) deserve better. WE ALL DESERVE BETTER. We deserve to feel safe and served by this school, and we deserve it NOW. We deserve it DECISIVELY. And we deserve to be the ones working for it. Not asking admin to take care of it for us- not asking shareholders or some larger entity who we can scream at like so many stars in the sky above the soccer field to save us- but asking each other to stand in solidarity and begin the work and demand compliance. Not tomorrow, but today.
So get involved on campus. Whether it’s joining GSU, attending information sessions and town halls or getting an internship or campus job, really try to get to know Evergreen. Join a club. Make yourself an asset to your peers. Learn things that will be useful when the time comes.
Much of the information you hopefully have (or will) read in this year’s DisO could only be recorded because of the involvement of the writers on campus in our workplaces and student organizations, and that can only continue through students exactly like YOU. Use what you have learned between those pages to decide for yourself: how do I think Evergreen could serve me better, and what form could that betterment take?
Administration doesn’t care about you.
The TESC Foundation doesn’t care about you.
The cops definitely don’t care about you.
But I care about you.
The students who contributed to the Disorientation Manual care about you.
Those who take on the herculean task of making an American university serve its students and workers care about you.
All we ask in exchange for that care is your consideration of how to return the favor.
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, when?”
- Rabbi Hillel
| Pick up a copy of the 2024-2025 Disorientation Manual anywhere students can be found. |
