I wrote yesterday about the threat which shut down Evergreen State College Thursday. Classes did not resume Friday so the threat actually shut down the campus for two days. The Olympian obtained a copy of the call which led to the shutdown:

Caller: Yes, I’m on my way to Evergreen University now with a .44 Magnum. I am gonna execute as many people on that campus as I can get a hold of. You have that? What’s going on there? You communist, scumbag town. I’m going to murder as many people on that campus as I can. Just keep your, keep your eyes open, you scumbag.

Clearly, the caller presented himself as an armed and angry right-winger upset over the college’s progressive outlook. And it’s entirely possible that’s what he is. But it’s also entirely possible this is the kind of hoax hate crime we’ve seen many times in the last six months, i.e. the gay church organist who painted a swastika, a gay slur, and the phrase “Heil Trump” on his own church in order to “mobilize a movement.”

The College Fix reports that about 1/4 of Evergreen’s faculty has signed a letter expressing their desire to see Professor Bret Weinstein become the subject of a “disciplinary investigation”:

Demonstrate accountability by pursuing a disciplinary investigation against Bret Weinstein according to guidelines in the Social Contract and Faculty Handbook. Weinstein has endangered faculty, staff, and students, making them targets of white supremacist backlash by promulgating misinformation in public emails, on national television, in news outlets, and on social media.

Meanwhile, a Republican lawmaker in Washington is threatening to do the last thing any progressive institutions wants to have done to them: Cut off their government funding. From MyNorthwest:

“At the end of the day, we the Legislature and the people have to speak up and say, ‘We are not going to contribute our taxpayer dollars to a college that wants to re-institute a Jim Crow approach to education and segregation,” Representative Matt Manweller told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

Manweller — who teaches political science at Central Washington University — introduced a bill Thursday aimed at getting the state to ditch Evergreen. The bill, if passed, would phase out Evergreen over five years. After that, it would be a private college…

“Let’s take that money and give it to the UW engineering program, STEM programs, math, science,” he said. “Let’s go compete on the global market again with the Chinese, the Japanese, the Indians and bring America back to technological prominence. Let’s spend the money on a credible degree rather than a social justice, victimization, woe-is-me, I want reparations, pseudo-science they are teaching at Evergreen.”

Getting back to the threat which closed down the campus for two days, yesterday I warned against making assumptions about who might have made it. I still think that’s good advice until law enforcement is able to give us a name and some background to go with the voice. Again, I’m not saying this can’t be a simple case of someone getting worked up over something they heard or saw, but there have been too many hoaxes to ignore the possibility that the caller had another agenda. Whoever he is, he deserves to spend some time behind bars thinking about the myriad of ways in which his life is a failure.