A police car remains flipped over and destroyed behind the Evergreen State College gym this morning. It is a silent reminder of an infamous Valentine's night. It is important that we try and make some sense of what happened and why. What made hundreds of students surrounding a cop car start chanting for the release of a black man in the back of the vehicle? What made the chanting and blockading become pepper-spray and broken bottles?

The majority won’t look very far for the answers to these questions. Most administrators, faculty, staff, students, media and police will take certain stances that are predictable and simple. Their reactions will be based in stereotypes. Unless we reject these answers as insufficient, valuable understanding will be lost.

A better understanding of why students sat covering their swollen eyes unable to breath and cops were forced into retreating away from a myriad of thrown projectiles can be discovered in a historical context. Olympia passed a law that effectively banishes the homeless from downtown. Police downtown increase their arrests and harassment for frivolous crimes like jay walking. Evergreeners were maliciously brutalized at the Port of Olympia protests by cops earlier this winter. All these are local issues that make this campus upset.

On a larger level students are fed up with a war in Iraq led by a president they hate. This causes a legitimate sense of powerlessness over their government. Issues like global warming and a rapidly recessing economy portend towards hopelessness about their future. These, along with mounting school loans, are common worries of college students everywhere in America. Here at Evergreen these troubles have started to lead towards action.