Evergreen student claims she was silenced for being white
An Evergreen State College student says classmates refused to let her participate in a meeting with administrators earlier this year because she is white.
Mackenzie Kyger first made the claim at a recent meeting of the school’s Board of Trustees, a portion of which was dedicated to public comments regarding the student protests that shook the campus in response to a professor’s criticism of the school’s decision to ask white students and faculty to leave campus for a day of diversity programming.
[RELATED: Weinstein paints dismal picture of Evergreen State protests]
During the meeting, Kyger criticized Evergreen’s “lack of viewpoint diversity,” claiming that she tried to attend “several meetings” to express her views on the situation, but was “told several times that I’m not allowed to speak because I’m white.”
Kyger recently elaborated on her remarks in an interview with Benjamin Boyce, an Evergreen State alum who has been “investigating the far-left ideological framework promulgated by [his] alma mater,” according to his website.
During the interview, she recounted an experience she had while trying to attend a meeting that some students had with the school’s president, George Bridges, on the 4th floor of the school’s library.
[RELATED: VIDEO: Evergreen protesters hold admins hostage over demands]
“Immediately when I got off the elevator I was told that I couldn’t go into the room because I was white,” Kyger stated, adding that she subsequently ignored another person telling her she “couldn’t go in without a police escort.”
Eventually, she said, “I was told that I was allowed to go in, but I couldn’t speak; I couldn’t express my concerns; I couldn’t ask any questions because I’m white. And I had to stand in the back.”
Upon entering the meeting room, Kyger said she was “disgusted” by the scene that greeted her, saying, “people were standing on chairs, yelling at George, screaming profanities at him,” all while faculty members stood against a wall behind her “cheering on” the rambunctious students.
[RELATED: Evergreen State faculty publicly praise student thuggery]
“I’m all for actual social justice. I just…I don’t think what the people at Evergreen are asking for is social justice,” Kyger told Boyce. “Focusing on the color of someone’s skin or treating them differently based on their skin color, which is what they’re asking for…That, to me, is racism.”
She also complained that she has been “completely ignored” by administrators throughout the ordeal, saying that despite sending at least three emails to Bridges and two to the Board of Trustees, the only response she received was an email encouraging her to file a “Bias Related Incident Report” if she was offended by being told she could not speak because she is white.
“I’ve been trying to get these people’s attention since this all started and I’ve been completely ignored, and then they give me three minutes to say everything I’ve been trying to say the last five weeks,” Kyger said, referring to the fact that each speaker at the Board meeting only had three minutes to speak.
[RELATED: Lawmakers propose defunding Evergreen State after protests]
Even threatening to withdraw from the school entirely failed to elicit concern from the administration, she added, saying she received a perfunctory response from the Admissions Office that did not even address her concerns.
“I sent an email to the Admissions because I wanted to transfer and I was telling them how, like, upset I was with what’s happening and that’s why I wanted to transfer…hoping they would be somewhat concerned that I was leaving because of this, and instead they were just like ‘We’ll send you your money,’” she recalled, explaining that she had already paid tuition for the following semester.
“I think Evergreen needs to actually teach people how to behave in the real world and actually make a difference in the real world…and you don’t do that with violence,” Kyger concluded.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @spaduhhh
