For many years at Evergreen State, minority students and faculty members have observed a Day of Absence in which they met off campus to discuss campus issues and how to make the college more supportive of all students. Later a Day of Presence reunites various campus groups. While some have objected to the way the Day of Absence worked previously, it was the 2017 version that brought scrutiny on campus and national attention.
Last year, organizers said that on the Day of Absence, they wanted white people to stay off campus.
Bret Weinstein, a biology professor, posted a message on a campus email list in which he objected to the proposal to ask white people to avoid campus.
"There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and underappreciated roles (the theme of the Douglas Turner Ward play
Day of Absence, as well as the recent Women's Day walkout), and a group encouraging another group to go away," Weinstein wrote. "The first is a forceful call to consciousness, which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself."
Weinstein went on to say he would be on campus on the Day of Absence and would encourage a similar stance by white people being asked to stay away. People should "put phenotype aside," he said. "On a college campus, one's right to speak -- or to be -- must never be based on skin color."
That email was widely shared, promoting
threats against Weinstein and calls from student activists for Weinstein to be fired.
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