The Thurston County Auditor has begun to mail ballots to registered voters in our county. Unfortunately it appears that today some students have also received address verification notices in the place of their ballots. What does this mean? Ballots for an unknown number of students and residents in our area are not being delivered and instead will be retained by the auditor until address confirmation is received. Essentially, voter rolls are being purged at the last minute, leaving very little time for voters to provide the requested verification.

If you have received a letter from the County Auditor or the Secretary of State that indicates your ballot will not be mailed on time, please respond to the verification request as soon as possible. Additionally, I ask that you please take the time to reply here so that we can begin to assess the scope of this problem. One step you can take includes filing a report with the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington State by calling (206) 624-2180 during business hours.

Additional points of contact include:

Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed: (360) 902-4151 http://www.secstate.wa.gov/office/ Thurston County Auditor Kim Wyman: (360) 786-5408

The Olympian Reporters:

Rolf Boone 360-754-5403 rboone@theolympian.com

Venice Buhain 360-754-5445 vbuhain@theolympian.com

Matt Batcheldor 360-704-6869 mbatcheldor@theolympian.com

Brad Shannon 360-753-1688 bshannon@theolympian.com

I took these photos of the Mud Bay race in 2008. I just now posting this, now after many months. forgive me Mud Bay Race

Some of you may have remembered last spring when the Evergreen Nightline began running. It ran on Fridays and Saturdays between midnight and 3AM, and on Sundays between 9PM and midnight.

During the 11-week pilot period, the Nightline carried over 3600 people, for an average of about 38 riders an hour. The ridership was excellent, and the usage was consistently high. On several occasions, the Nightline was almost at full capacity.

This Fall the Nightline will begin again under contract with Intercity Transit and Evergreen. Several changes are being considered, including the changing of route times and the route itself. These are a breakdown of service changes that are proposed based on input from students at Evergreen:

 Revised Route

• Condense downtown service (loop back into downtown at Plum Street instead of Puget Street)
• Serve both the Dorm Loop and Red Square.

• Leave TESC Campus at 12:00M, 12:30AM, and 1:30AM
Changed from existing: 12M, 1AM, 2AM


• Leave Downtown at 12:00M, 1:00AM, and 2:00AM
Changed from existing: 12:30AM, 1:30AM, 2:30AM

Possibility to add a 2:30AM departure from campus, and a 3AM departure from downtown.

How important is late-night bus service to you, and what do you think would increase efficiency and use?

Almost 30 years since a tight-knit band of crazed alumni began the tradition of Evergreen Graduation Festivals, first at Mud Bay, and later in the legendary Meadow in the middle of Evergreen's forested campus, we come forward with a new twist on something that many feel was already adequately twisted to begin with: The first Virtual Meadow.

On Saturday, June 14th (after Evergreen's Super Saturday), we will bring together those legendary psychonauts, Heliotroupe, with up-and-comers and all-around swell fellows, High Ceiling, for a night of festive frivolity. To top it all off, we're going to throw in the mind-bending moves of the Troupe O-Wa belly dancers, beautiful processional decorations, throbbing multimedia mindscapes, and much too much more.

We'll have a beer garden for the over-21 crowd, staffed by volunteers from Media Island, the nonprofit whose social justice mission will benefit from every drop of frothy suds you swill.

In further solidarity, you will have opportunities to toss those evil Federal Reserve notes that are sullying your pockets into the Mushroom Richard Commemorative Inferno of Love, the proceeds of which will go to farm relief efforts from last winter's terrible floods.

The all-ages event begins at 7pm on Saturday, June 14th, in the Eagles Ballroom, 805 E. 4th, in downtown Olympia. And it's only $5. Better yet, it's completely FREE for 2008 Evergreen graduates!

Why free for them? Well, partly because they're cute as buttons and awfully fun to have around, but they're broke. Mostly though, because some of us alumni want to honor Evergreen's graduates and, in some little way, give our thanks to that amazing center of learning and weirdness. We can't begin to express how much we owe to Evergreen, how important it is to who we are today and to the quality of community we live in now, and how proud we are to be Greeners!

Please forward far and wide. And feel free to respond at maslauskas84@gmail.com. -Brendan Maslauskas Dunn

Student Power and the Sit-in at Evergreen

May 30th marked the 10th day of the sit-in of Evergreen State College administrator Art Costantino's hallway. Students are demanding the immediate reinstatement of Olympia SDS and have recently added the additional demands that Kelly Beckham, an SDSer be offered her job back as well as compensation for time lost, and a change in the process by which student groups lose their RSO (Registered Student Organization) status that is determined by those most affected, the students and members of > these organizations.

The banning of SDS as a student group is an indication of the current political climate at The Evergreen State College, one that has been increasingly suppressing student dissent, which includes the aiding of law enforcement agents in the arresting of students, the handing over of student records to law enforcement agencies, punishing students for their political beliefs and activities. This includes the firing of Kelly Beckham and the firing of students who were allegedly involved in the events of February 14th, but who have not been convicted or even charged as well as the selective enforcement of a "concert moratorium. The Evergreen State College is also on a path of becoming increasingly more mainstream which is pushing the college in a direction contrary to its original mission statement. The students sitting-in want to see an end to all of this.

Goal is to eventually gather most everything on OlyBlog concerning The Evergreen State College here in one place.

For more follow tags such as Evergreen, also run searches on terms such as TESC, The Evergreen State College, and Evergreen.

Civil Rights Leader, Leading Theorist of Nonviolent Activism to Speak at 7 p.m. on May 5 at Olympia’s Temple Beth Hatfiloh

(Olympia, Wash.) Civil rights leader and colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. James M. Lawson will be speaking at 7 p.m. on Monday, May 5 at Temple Beth Hatfiloh, 201 8th Ave SE in Olympia. Rev. Lawson will talk about building a community that both values activism – to promote better quality of life and greater equity among citizens – and ensures civility and respect for the rights of all. The event is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the City of Olympia, The Evergreen State College, The Hispanic Women’s Network, Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation, Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, participating members of Olympia Port Militarization Resistance, The Port of Olympia, Unity in the Community, and Veterans for Peace. For directions to the temple, visit www.bethhatfiloh.org/directions.html

Lawson is a leading figure in the civil rights movement. On the eve of his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called Lawson "the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world."

Today the Evergreen Police Services Community Review Board, which is made up of students, staff, and faculty at Evergreen released its report on the incident on Feb 14.

It is attached in PDF format on this thread.

Basically, these were the major findings of the Board:

• that the Evergreen police followed protocol, but the officer should have attempted to leave sooner and park her vehicle so it could have a quicker exit route, and
  
• the initial arrest was justified and was not based on racial profiling, given the evidence and witness statements the officer gathered at the scene, and that the officer went beyond what was necessary to attempt to gather more statements, even when the crowd was growing more hostile
  
• their should not have been only one officer on campus, and back-up should have been called sooner
  
• that event staff were not trained and/or did not follow protocol, an
  
• their was little to no communication prior to the event, between the police on campus and the event staff/student activities people responsible for planning the event
  
  

It should be noted that this report is only for the campus police, and the scope can not include Olympia police actions.