The day the Cooper Point Journal almost brought down Evergreen

Judging by the provocative headline, one could imagine some deep-rooted CxPJ animus lurking behind this tale—but it isn’t so. True, the headline is an overstatement. But had the story occurred in our little publication’s lifetime, we would have steadfastly stood by our Cooper Point Journal compatriots, for once. The cast of characters in this true story includes the CPJ, one ass-kicking feminist, a “pornography-peddling” state legislator, Bart Simpson, and—yes, somewhere down the line—Evergreen’s Labor Center.
The year was 1995, and this was what happened:

Olympia resident Nomy Lamm had just been featured in Ms. magazine for the first time. Lamm was gaining national recognition as a prominent feminist activist and artist. Meanwhile, as an Evergreen student, Lamm wrote a regular column for the Cooper Point Journal, called “Revolution, Baby.”

Her column was marked by an exclusive use of the lower-case and a smattering of esoteric sesquipedalianisms, such as “fucking” and “asshole.”

One of Lamm’s pieces, printed in the Feb. 9, 1995 CPJ, became the rallying cry for a freshman state legislator from Ferndale, Washington.
That February, Republican state representative Gene Goldsmith sent a letter, along with a copy of Lamm’s Feb. 9 article, to the House Higher Education Committee, on which he served. Goldsmith’s letter excoriated Lamm’s article, labeled Evergreen an “aberration of education,” and called for the college to be defunded or closed. “If not us, who?” his letter posited. “[I]f not now, when?”
The letter also entreated, “[T]o the two gentle ladies of the committee, please accept my apologies for the assault on your sensibilities of the article I have placed before you.”

Although we could not ascertain whether the two gentle ladies of the committee were indeed shocked, another male colleague did impart his distress. Rep. Jerry Blanton (R–Edmonds) noted that Lamm’s article was “filled with vulgar words....I think I’m a worldly person, and I [was] somewhat offended by it.”

The article had applied the expletive “fuck” in its variants six times and “asshole” once.

In an interview with the CPJ, Goldsmith referred to Lamm’s article as “that…thing with all the four-letter words….That’s not what journalism is about.”

Then–Evergreen president Jane Jervis responded to Goldsmith by defending Lamm’s writing style, evoking the constitutional freedom of expression and freedom of the press, and noted that contrary to his belief, the CPJ was not funded by taxpayer dollars.
Undeterred, Goldsmith threatened to drop in on Evergreen unannounced. “We’re going to find out if it’s as bad as what I think.” Accompanied by three other Republican lawmakers, he made his surprise visit on March 8, 1995. When the delegation visited “A” dorm, Goldsmith complained that he smelled marijuana, caught two women kissing (that is, each other!), and found some students watching The Simpsons on TV.

Following his visit, Goldsmith declared that there were two sides to Evergreen. “One is an outstanding liberal-arts college.” But the other side, Goldsmith said, “should not exist. Feminism, drug-related things....Everything that’s wrong is out there.” The Republican solution to this abomination soon followed.

On March 20, 1995, House Republican lawmakers proposed a new budget for the state’s public colleges. Four-year colleges would have a tuition increase of 5% for each of the two subsequent years, except for Evergreen, which was singled out for a 28% in-state tuition hike, as well as a 19% budget cut from the state. The gop proposal also sought to cut particular campus-based services, singling out the Evergreen Center for Educational Improvement and, surprise, the Labor Center.

The ranking Democrat in the Higher Education Committee, Ken Jacobsen (D–Seattle), charged that the proposal “limits academic freedom” and called it “a case of massive political influence in higher education.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Goldsmith stated that some of his constitutents would “pat me on the back and say, ‘Go get ’em—close ’em.’ ’’
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Times criticized the budget proposal in editorials titled “Evergreen Under Siege” and “Evergreen Deserves Better.” Both editorials recognized the political nature of the proposal and cited Rep. Goldsmith’s recent attacks against Evergreen. Both also cited the previous year, when Evergreen was criticized for hosting the Northwest International Lesbian–Gay Film Festival.

In the previous year, countering then-Gov. Mike Lowry’s support of the film festival, Rep. Steve Fuhrman (R–Kettle Falls) stated, “I don’t believe our state college, capital city or state as a whole is well served by this official endorsement of a radical lifestyle that the vast majority of Washington residents oppose.”

That’s right—in 1995, the problem with Evergreen was Nomy Lamm and The Simpsons. In 1994, the Evergreen problem was film shorts such as Bill & Ted’s Homosexual Adventure (a music video by Pansy Division) and A Good Dyke Gone Mad. Thus, in 1994, unidentified legislators subjected the campus to an investigation on possible state funding of homosexual shenanigans. The Lesbian–Gay Film Festival was scrutinized, as was the Evergreen Queer Alliance. Even kaos was forced to declare whether it had any “dedicated programming for homosexual issues/features/articles.”

The cumulative response to this unchecked Greener depravity was the 1995 House budget proposal. But why target the Labor Center for the campus’s supposed moral failings? Two Seattle Times articles at the time attributed it to the obvious: Republican antipathy towards organized labor.

Fortunately, by the time the budget was finalized on May 23, 1995, the Republicans relented. An average tuition increase of 4% for the next two years was implemented for all four-year state institutions. Evergreen received a 2.4% budget cut instead of 19%. Both the Labor Center and the Evergreen Center for Educational Improvement were saved.

By then, Rep. Goldsmith had moved on to attacking Western Washington University, doing so by circulating a sketch of a Penthouse magazine photo from wwu’s student newspaper on the House floor. The tactic backfired with his colleagues.

The following year, Goldsmith lost re-election. The year after that, Nomy Lamm was awarded Ms. magazine’s “Woman of the Year.” However, if you think everything ended happily, we must resituate you to the present. This Ghost of Evergreen Past serves only to remind us of the ongoing necessity to educate, agitate, and organize.