We have followed as the administration and faculty at The Evergreen State College have undermined their institution through national controversies and a failure to defend academic values. This would lead to a sharp drop in applications. Under deterred by the costs to their institution, the faculty seems intent on confirming the worst stereotypes of their school. The latest is a resolution that the faculty has proposed to ban the word “covenant” from official documents. The faculty drafters insist that the term reflects “cultural genocide” and will ban its use despite most people who fail to see the common term in the same way.
The motion below states “[T]the word ‘covenant’ represents for many members of the Evergreen community the efforts at cultural genocide of Native Nations through the federal Indian boarding school system” and “needlessly using a word that institutionalizes the devastating colonization of Native Peoples.” Instead the faculty wants to require the use of the term “community agreement.”
Putting aside the continuing harm done by the Evergreen faculty to their own school which has seen huge drops in admission and layoffs, the basis for the resolution works too hard to find a reason for outrage against this noun. Covenant has conventional, religious, and legal uses as an agreement or contract based on an exchange of promises. It can be used to signify a moral covenant with God or a covenant tied to property. The word has been used at the college to reflect an agreement among students and the college for example. The school defines the term on its website:
“‘COVENANT’ (an agreement, a coming-together) Covenants at Evergreen serve as learning agreements between faculty and students in lieu of conventional grading arrangements. Covenants spell out program policies and expectations for earning credit. Good faith compliance with this covenant is an academic requirement.”
The effort to assign this one meaning is contrived and artificial. The effort to ban the use of a noun like covenant reflects an increasingly common desire by some to control the speech and even words of others.
benjaminǝɔʎoq@BenjaminABoyce
The @EvergreenStCol faculty, faced with plummeting enrollment and successive layoffs, have rallied their collective energies to… banish a word because it reminds someone, somewhere, of cultural genocide.
And on his YouTube page Monday, Boyce dissected the resolution phrase by phrase, calling the proposed motion “virtue signaling” and pointing out the term that faculty should be referencing regarding historic Native American alliances is actually “Covenant Chain.”
i find the recasting of the word covenant as thought provoking actually and maybe they have a point. A lot of Christians aren’t deeply aquainted with the history of Israel, at least its Biblical history, which in these respects I generally do not doubt to be true accounts of war.
I suggest that folks study the books of the Old Testament and read about how the Israelites slaughtered the men women and children of Amalek, Jerhico, et al. and think about that deeply. I think this quote is from Joshua. It describes the complete extermination of a couple different cities, just two among many:
“So not a man was left in Ai or Bethel who had not gone out after Israel, and they left the city unguarded and pursued Israel.
v. 22, The others came out from the city to encounter them, so that they were trapped in the midst of Israel, some on this side and some on that side: and they slew them until no one was left of those who survived or escaped.
v. 24, Now when Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the field in the wilderness where they pursued them, and all of them were fallen by the edge of the sword until they were destroyed, then all Israel returned to Ai and struck it with the edge of the sword.”
it is called “the ban” and you can read a Christian apology about it here
https://www.xenos.org/essays/ban
I prefer to believe at this juncture in my life it was simply a race war and the winners blessed themselves as all winners always do.
the main lesson in any historical lesson to be taken from genocide is:
DONT LET IT HAPPEN TO YOU
“I suggest that folks study the books of the Old Testament….”
Especially if they like bad fiction and hold primitive beliefs about the nature of reality.
i find primitive beliefs interesting. as well as mythology. there is no doubt in my mind that a lot of it is mythic, but a lot of it is well grounded history. there seems little doubt the hebrews took land in canaan from others by conquest.
also, covenant is a specific word that has a lot of religious connotations and I am just shedding light on some of them with which the average Christian may not be familiar.
Your comment makes no sense at all. How does it relate to the banning of the word covenant? It doesn’t.
Horuss – it makes as much sense as banning the word itself. 😉
the college people are the ones who connected covenant to a supposed genocide. not me. but i just gave some feedback.
it seems silly perhaps but i was simply illuminating how the OT covenant beteween the Hebrews and Yahweh entailed them exterminating various cites in Canaan “man woman child, by the edge of the sword”
and pointing to the apologetics that discuss the topic
It’s offered for the purpose of showing that some nutty leftist propositions which sound like deconstructionist nonsense, well, they may be nutty and they may be deconstructions, but they are not wholly arbitrary
sometimes it helps to understand other people’s frame of mind
Evergreen is just an extremist Left madrassa. Obviously “covenant” is not genocidal.
As for the Native Americans, stronger tribes displaced weaker ones, either forcing them to move, wiping out entire tribes, or enslaving captives, including sexual slaves. Some tribes took scalps, and the fiercest ones would torture their victims for hours.
Native Americans have wonderful attributes to their cultural and oral history. I love a great deal about Native American folklore, fiber arts, and their culture. I do not sugar coat them any more than I would any other culture. You cannot pretend that any people on Earth behaved the way someone in San Francisco does today.
Europeans were the stronger tribe. Native Americans had fought over territory for many years. The only reason why there were tribes living in harsh deserts and scrubland, with greatly shortened lifespans and worn teeth, was because they were pushed out of better land by stronger tribes.
The way the tribes were treated was terrible by today’s standards. There is also zero way that America would remain relatively empty, with all that lush arable land, game, space, with relatively few hunter gathers, and a few farming cultures, when the rest of the globe was over populated and people starved because they had no land to grow food. If not Spain, then Portugal, the Dutch, English, Arabs…you name it, the stronger tribe would have moved in just as stronger tribes moved around in the US. If the game got scarce, tribes didn’t genteelly starve so as not to be rude to their neighbors. Territory borders only held when there were sufficient resources. There were no intergenerational land ownership rights in their culture. No one deeded their sons their tribal land. The land was held or it was lost. Period. Case in point are the Sacred Black Hills, which have actually changed hands multiple times as stronger tribes conquered and drove out previous tribes over and over again. The Lakota only had it for around 100 years after taking it from the Cheyenne. If the Lakota succeed in seizing Mount Rushmore, then by their own logic, they must immediately vacate it and return it to the Cheyenne, who then must figure out whom they took it from. Apparently, we have to unwind all property rights until we figure out where the dependents of the Clovis Indians are. That would send the Mexicans back to Spain. Sould the Aztecs descendants renew human sacrifice and start erecting pillars of the skulls of murdered men, women, and children?
One of the (many) mistakes that we made with the Native Americans was to keep them separate in perpetual Reservation Plantations, in which the people might eat, but they will never thrive. The tribes who assimilated, and don’t belong to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, thrive and prosper. They have a high median earnings. The ones who depended upon the government, like Socialism, are in ubiquitous poverty and alcoholism. The Reservations ruined Native Americans. They should have been absorbed into our population like regular citizens just like any other nationality, without being treated like perpetual children that require our government to administer. The Reservation doesn’t allow individual tribal members to own their own land. They are just sprawling Projects. Honestly, why does anyone want Socialism in America? We can all see what a terrible job the government does taking care of people.
i have no problem seeing the conquest of North America as a race war. I think it was and I agree on leftists on that point.
I just don’t feel guilty about it. Don’t plan on giving it back either…. but then again, the Leftists don’t plan on giving it back either! Just running their mouths off
Meanwhile i am a welcome guest at the local Indian casino and let bygones be bygones, a good customer, even if I only play the minimum. LOL
Since this is a go nowhere about less than nothing ( each time it turns out the participants are a single digit group of the entire school student body) and finding no other appropriate title that isn’t closed.
mag
HOORAY THE STOCK MARKET IS ON MY SIDE FOR A CHANGE!!!
My automatic sell orders worked … barely and now my automatic buy orders have kicked in…. all of them. Which is of course what is happening across the entire market but notice
Still four or five thousand above the previous administration. reflecting actual value parameters
Reflects the fear of the new congress repealing the tax cuts, then raising taxes
Reflects the fear of the new congress and their leaders (in the House) yen for more war.
Reflect their lack of leadership with no leaders in sight that are not using most of the GOP platform both in their campaigns and their current goals
Reflects the likelihood of that same group splitting off and forming their own party
Which———————–
will make them a vote magnet for like minded former democrats who don’t want to be socialists
will immediately kick pelosi or whomever out of the speakers office by making them a minority party
will immediately reverse the fears of the crumb snatchers screwing things up again
and put the breakaway party in a good postiion to deal with the majority party and cut off the remnants of the far left.
That would be the Constitutional Democrats as they are sometimes called. A classic attack plan for someone like Ghenghis Lamb.
Besides why not. There isn’t a thing the left can do witihout permission of the senate and the president anyway. At present their skimpy lead is an ilusion of power and they still have no plan except same old same old
BUT the market is finally working to the advantage of the educated while the Ocasios who skipped Econ 101 are left doubling down with no chips in sight.
4. Appoint a trusteeship responsible to the governor to set up committees of retired faculty from around the country. Their job will be to hire a turnkey faculty. Of the regular faculty positions you have just north of 300 FTE to distribute. Debar from consideration anyone who ever taught there before.
a. 1.5% to teaching certificate programs for aspirant academic high school teachers. Offer provisional and post-baccalaureate certificates.
b. 15% to a mandatory core curriculum. This would be a 30-credit program completed in the first year by all undergraduates. About 1/2 the credit-hours would be allocated to history surveys, about 30% to philosophy (logic, epistemology, and aesthetics), and about 20% to statistics and research methods.
c. In re the departmental faculty, the subdistribution should be as follows:
i. 33% to the psychology and biology faculties, which would be organized into 2-6 departments. If you decide to have an omnibus department for each, it must be segmented.
ii. Political science (7.5%), English (7%); speech communication and rhetoric, sociology, history, economics (5-6% each); computer science (5%); music, studio art, theatre and dance, film (4-5% each); mathematics (3.5%), chemistry (2-3%); anthropology, Spanish, and philosophy (1-2% each). Each would be organized into one department. The Departments of political science, sociology, and history would be subdivided into segments. The Departments of English and economics might have a dedicated segment appended to its general faculty.
5. Require by statute that the instructional program of the school have the foregoing properties, and grant the school no franchise to offer vocational subjects bar teaching certificates or to offer academic and artistic subjects beyond those listed (unless they be specified subsets of those listed). Require that the core curriculum be mandatory for all those who’ve enrolled and take precisely one form as specified. Also by statute: limit the franchise to teach sociology to quantitative methods; limit the franchise to teach anthropology to palaeo and physical anthropology.
6. Require that all graduates complete 120 credits, complete 42 credits in their major, complete 24 credits in their subdepartmental concentration if they’re studying in a segmented department, and completes the whole core curriculum. AP credits could apply against the global requirement of 120 credits, but not contra the core curriculum or the requirements for your major. Limit subdepartmental majors to the departments of biology, psychology, political science, history, economics, and English. Define the school year by statute as running from August 21/27 to December 22 and from January 2/8 to April 21/27, w/ only brief 3 day breaks. Lease the campus to camps and conferences in the summer months.
7. Have a writing center, a mathematics center, and a faculty development center staffed by tutors drawn from the ranks of high school teachers and professional editors. The 2d of these will be crucial in assisting laggards to get up to speed in tackling the statistics courses required.
8. Limit the athletic program to a gym and club sports.
9. Leaving aside your quasi faculty (lab instructors, tutors, workshop instructors &c), have three ranks of faculty: instructor, lecturer, and professor differentiated by the length of their contracts not their salary. A ‘visiting lecturer’ or a ‘visiting professor’ would be an instructor who has achieved a certain rank elsewhere. Limit the number of p/t faculty to one per segment in segmented departments, and one per department in unsegmented departments. Limit continuous tenure to full professors. Ration the number of full professorships, debar granting them to anyone under 45 or with fewer than 12 years of service, and make it a general practice to not award such to anyone under 55. Make retirement mandatory for faculty who have made 35 f/t year’s worth of contributions into TIAA-CREF, who are eligible for full Social Security, and who are eligible for Medicare. Limit teaching by emeriti to exigent circumstances. Grant a market increment to faculty teaching in select departments (chemistry, economics &c).
10. Place the package under the supervision of a foundational board of trustees appointed by the governor with the advice and consent of the legislature. Over a period of 60 years, gradually replace appointed slots with trustees elected in a postal ballot by alumni registered to vote in Washington state. Require, by law, that the board retain its own staff. Require, by law, that the college President be drawn from outside the ranks of academe.
“Debar from consideration anyone who ever taught there before.”
I hope you would not include Bret Weinstein in that pronouncement.
very interesting suggestions! thank you
3. Invite the following quondam employees of Evergreen State College to take up positions at Olympia State College:
a. Hourly staff
b. Salaried staff from the following subdivisions of the institution:
It’s time for the Washington State legislature to fix this problem.
1. Dissolve Evergreen State College as a corporation; dismiss all employees thereof.
2. Incorporate a new institution, Olympia State College. Invest it with the plant and equipment of Evergreen State College.
Apparently they have finally run out of things to complain about. I could suggest, though, that they complain about not getting an education and about getting branded as lunatics. Who would be foolish enough to hire one of the crazies graduating from this zoo?
😆
I wonder how high up on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs you have to be to worry about the word, “covenant”??? Or maybe, just how high?
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky – I think you are just high, because you cannot be self-actualized. Self-actualized people would not worry about the use of the word covenant.
Stupid is “in.”
Too much time, short on common sense.
Send your kid to college! In a handbasket.
Pandora has a box. However, those at universities cannot address a box or a weenie. No name, no blame, no pen no friend, go to jail when stale.
mespo – I would ban the American public education system since it has done such a piss poor job of educating anyone. Let the students hire their tutors as needed. A good tutor will make good money, supply and demand.
Second.
I am sure the word the was used in those covenants with the Indians. Did anyone think to ban that? Imagine all the forests that would be spared.
For the record, Evergeen is officially nuts!!!!
Here is the list of four-year institutions in Washington State ranked by student debt default rate.
Institution Public/Private Default Rate
Pinchot University Private 0
Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences Private 0
Whitman College Private 0.41
Bastyr University Private 1.05
Gonzaga University Private 1.13
Seattle University Private 1.72
University of Puget Sound Private 1.82
Whitworth University Private 1.88
Western Washington University Public 2.12
Seattle School of theology and Psychology Private 2.13
University of Washington – Seattle Public 2.56
Seattle Pacific University Private 2.59
Cornish College of the Arts Private 3.28
Washington State University Public 3.33
Pacific Lutheran University Private 3.43
Walla Walla University Private 4.27
Saint Martin’s University Private 4.29
City University of Seattle Private 4.33
Eastern Washington University Public 4.99
Northwest University Private 5.04
Central Washington University Public 5.99
Faith Evangelical College & Seminary Private 7.69
Evergreen State College Public 8.59
Heritage University Private 12.44
Source: https://studentloans.net/default-rates/
Quibble, quibble, quibble.
What a lot of Tribble.
Quibble, quibble, bo bibble….
Bananna fanna fo fibble…
Fee fi moe mibble…
QUIBBLE!
It is a profound credit to Turley that he expresses his outrage about the current, epic, growing, and unaccountable academic horror of turning Orwell’s “1984” nightmares into on-campus reality. The fact that taxpayers fund this insanity should be criminal but unfortunately isn’t, or if it is, prosecutors don’t care.
Conversely I don’t get why Turley ignores and apparently blesses Canada, Germany, and over a dozen other EU nations who imprison persons for having the wrong thoughts, for denying the Western definition of the Judaic “holocaust.”
What you can not criticize is your god.
Letter of Marque of the Covenant
The only utility and service provided the state by Evergreen is that it serves as a magnet to attract useless academics and unemployable students away from legitimate colleges, thereby preventing the latter from having to suffer these fools within their midst–a corrupting and distracting influence they are! Otherwise the entity is a complete waste of tax dollars and undeserving of any recognition as an institution of college instruction.
My recommendation for any prospective employers of these students is that for any graduating within the last five years who submit resumes, their application is best thrown in the trash. You thereby inoculate yourself against a great many potential problems by not hiring these graduates. Those who are of an earlier graduating class should be afforded consideration on a case-by-case basis. New ones, don’t even waste your time. Another applicant will follow soon enough.
covenant. Literally, a contract. In the Bible (see also Bible), an agreement between God and his people, in which God makes promises to his people and, usually, requires certain conduct from them. In the Old Testament, God made agreements with Noah, Abraham, and Moses.
Leave it to the left wing facist three percenters of Evergreen to resurrect the soviet union in their safe spot. That’s what federal funding get;s us. Uneducated but more red than pink.
Covenant in secular terms is Constitution in political a social contract or compact between 100 percent of the nation states recognizing all of them as equals and through the res publica system all the citizens (not people not persons but citizens)
But in regards to my other comment on the stock market politics work in much the same way. If only the left steam media could figure out their definitions are immaterial to reality and objectivism works again.
Speaking of which we are well into the second century of manned flight so…
“Orville we solved up and down but that british guy beat us in power source and was really first.”
“No problem Wilbur we now know how to solve left and right. At last word that guy is trying to make the plane body fly without wings or tails.”
“Yes thank you and remember objectively speaking is it useful now ?
No. But iit isn’t useless we’re missing some obvious modifiction. Let’s see isn’t wing warping next on the list?”
“You know in some future century that Brits idea will work if the body is shaped like a wing is now. but the control surfaces that is th problem.”
“Right Wright the human can only react so fast no matter how good the control sufaces.”
“We need someone super smart with lightning reflexes….”
and that a mere 100 or so years ago…never forget nothing is useless it just needs some added components.
And funding…
yes and funding what we need is a good stock market