Category: Evergreen State College (Page 1 of 2)

This is working out to be a part two to the post I put up last week about how we could’ve had a different history, college and town if Evergreen had been built closer to town.

Barring Dr. Emmett Brown, how can we try to solve the separation issue that impacts both Evergreen (as a mostly car based campus) and Olympia (a college town without a college in town).

I think the solution would be to cut down some trees! How very non-Evergreen, but they had to cut down trees in the first place, so why not just cut some more.

On the east side of campus, there is a large Douglas Fir woods. This property is totally owned by the college, is bound on the north by a fairly new residential development, on the south by Evergreen Parkway and on the west, by the non-teaching portion of campus (residential and recreation areas).

Another feature is the lack of wetlands in this portion of the campus:

 

@jeff_james is always on my back about Olympia. It isn’t a college town, he says. It doesn’t have the normal trappings of the Midwest college towns that he was used to. Somehow it always comes down to college bars, but I think that’s just what I remember.

Ken also points this out, that the relationship between Evergreen and Olympia is different:

Nicandri said there’s a lack of things for students to do on the
college campus, and its physical isolation causes even more problems.  
“There’s no place for a student to buy an aspirin or visit a laundromat
or buy other needed items without leaving the campus,” he said.

While touting the great academic component of the college, Nicandri
said its time to re-look at the campus and perhaps allow some commercial
activities.   This has to be coupled with renovating the existing dorms
and constructing additional housing facilities.

“Perhaps its time to talk about requiring students to live on campus,” he said.

Evergreen and Olympia are inseparable, but the reality of their actual physical distance (and irony that people need to be able to drive to campus) has some real impacts. If you are a student with a job or even a family life, its easier to live off campus than on. The cultural mix between the campus community and town is stilted.

Sure, people can point to things we have here (OFS, general art community) that we can credit to the college and its alumni. But, you’d have to admit that these institutions would be stronger and more diverse if the campus was closer (or actually in) town.

Which begs the question, how would the founders of the school, in 1968, found a place closer to Olympia? It isn’t like Evergreen is the University of Washington. The UW was founded in the 1800s, and the city and the school literally grew together over time. Now, the school is firmly integrated into the city’s geography, but it took decades for that to happen.

What choices did the school founders have in the 1960s to get closer. Turns out, they had at least one great choice, not far from the current campus.

The site where the Olympia Auto Mall, the South Puget Sound Community College and Mottman Industrial Park was nearly empty in the late 1960s (image from Earth Explorer):

Not only was the site empty (seemingly available) it was also connected to a portion of Olympia that was already developed, granted it was a sleepy residential neighborhood at the time. But, in the decade soon after the founding of Evergreen, the westside of Olympia exploded with commercial and residential growth.

Other parts of town I looked at included the general Southeast (less open space, more houses) and Northeast (same). But, I’m curious about other parts of town. Would it have been possible to do Evergreen NYU style? Build a handful of reasonable office buildings downtown? Maybe the emptying of downtown happened 10 years too late for that to work out, but it would’ve been interesting.

Anyway, food for thought.

Evergreen is looking for a new Geoduck logo. Nothing wrong with that, but what’s wrong with the great logo they’ve already used? And, from what I remember, its designed by Evergreen Grad and all around great Olympian Nikki McClure.

I remember talking to then athletic director Dave Weber when they (the athletic department) rolled out the new geoduck, which must have been maybe 10 years ago or so. He said it was drawn by McClure and that it would be a logo for the sports teams. I assume since then, its use has faded away, since its almost impossible to find online, especially on the Evergreen website.

Great logo though, they should really consider resurrecting it.

Well duh update: I couldn’t remember where I’d seen the logo recently, and it turns out it was on an Evergreen website, at the bookstore. They’re already using on hats!

Just curious, so from this list in the Olympian, I came up with this list from google:

Shyam Khanna
Evan A. Rohar
Gabrielle K. Sloane
James Steele
Luke E. Noble
Amanda N. Askea
Amory Ballantine
Holly A. Carter
Kimberly Chaplin
Jaime M. Crawford
Michelle Fleming
Daisy J. Montague
Emily A. Pieper
Katherine M. Waldeck
Shizuno M. Wynkoop

So, of the 57 people arrested (one person was nabbed twice), just over a quarter are Evergreen students. In terms of what this tells you, it depends on how you see Evergreen. Some folks are already assuming that the protests are a phenomena brought on by Evergreen, that if that school weren’t here, there would have been no protests.

That’s hard to say, given the protests in Tacoma and Aberdeen to similar shipments. While both of those communities have satellite Evergreen campuses, I doubt that’s what really got people riled up.

For me, this dispells the myth that this was a bunch of Evergreen students making trouble. The protests would have happened on their own, without Evergreen (like in Tacoma and Aberdeen). But, you can hardly expect college students attending what everyone knows is a very liberal school from standing on the sidelines for this one.

So, while even one person from the peace community saying (via email):

And, although for many of us tomorrow is a holiday from work, that is not the case for Evergreen students, who have to go to school. Evergreen students have been the primary presence at the port.

…we can know that it’s not exactly true. Sure, a lot of students came down, but a lot more non-students were there.

That last post reminded me of folks that really really don’t like Evergreen, like Hans Zeiger:

Legislators in Washington should offer two choices to Evergreen. Choice A: clean up your act and remain a state institution. Choice B: continue to exalt porn, piercing, and perversion—but lose the state funding status. If you ask me, I would prefer to see Evergreen privatized.

Some variation of the Evergreen story is going on at too many college and university campuses around the country. In a number of cases, taxpayers have been covering their tab without any compelling reason to do so for years. It’s time for citizens to demand a major revolution in higher education funding that does away with the use of taxpayer money for moral relativism in its most disgusting forms.

Of course Evergreen’s constant presence on best colleges lists and Zeiger’s alma mater’s lack of presence has more to do with the liberal media than anything else.