King (Err… Regent) Coal

A sign that nobody likes doing the wrong thing every sin­gle time, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Regent Craig Cole (a much-ref­er­enced-to coin­ci­den­tal last name)wrote an op-ed pub­lished in the Belling­ham Her­ald advo­cat­ing for increased fund­ing of our high­er edu­ca­tion sys­tem. Craig Cole is also the Pres­i­dent of Brown & Cole, Inc. and the spokesman for SSA Marine (aka that com­pa­ny try­ing to clog up our trans­porta­tion, ruin our health, and destroy our envi­ron­ment) for the Gate­way Pacif­ic Ter­mi­nal at Cher­ry Point (oth­er­wise known as the Cher­ry Point Coal ter­mi­nal, or the project that would do ear­li­er stat­ed bad things).

I per­son­al­ly have seen Regent Cole speak in his role as con­sul­tant for the coal ter­mi­nal at West­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. Speak­ing on a pan­el geared towards edu­cat­ing stu­dents about the coal ter­mi­nal, he implied that the let­ter signed by a coali­tion of health pro­fes­sion­als in What­com Coun­ty called What­com Docs talk­ing about the dan­ger­ous health effects posed by increased coal traf­fic was moti­vat­ed by these doc­tors’ inter­est in the val­ue of prop­er­ty they held along the rail lines, caus­ing the leader of What­com Docs to storm out in emo­tion­al protest. This impli­ca­tion brought sec­tions of the audi­ence to boo at Cole, and increased the ten­sion at an already con­tro­ver­sial event.

Iron­i­cal­ly, some of the biggest oppo­si­tion for the coal ter­mi­nal has come from stu­dents attend­ing our insti­tu­tions of high­er edu­ca­tion (those places demo­nized for being a breed­ing ground for lib­er­als and crit­i­cal thought). As the say­ing goes, though, one mustn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. As some­one who works for increased fund­ing and a real com­mit­ment from our state to pro­vid­ing access and qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion to our stu­dents, the pub­lic sup­port is much appre­ci­at­ed, but what may be laud­able on one count must be metered by the actions Regent Cole has tak­en in his oth­er work, includ­ing advo­cat­ing for a project which is anath­e­ma to a com­mu­ni­ty phi­los­o­phy of envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship and protection. 

In a way, this is very sim­i­lar to this year’s elec­tion, where rich fam­i­lies would donate to both cam­paigns to to legal­ize the free­dom to mar­ry and to begin pri­va­tiz­ing our edu­ca­tion sys­tem. While they should cer­tain­ly be laud­ed for their sup­port of Ref­er­en­dum 74, that sup­port must be viewed in con­junc­tion with their sup­port of an ini­tia­tive which reduces our strong pub­lic com­mit­ment to edu­ca­tion and only pro­vides illu­sions of improvement.

Cole’s state­ment must be looked in the same light. We must praise those wor­thy of it and decry those that aren’t. How­ev­er, his involve­ment with the coal ter­mi­nal taints his op-ed on high­er edu­ca­tion, con­sid­er­ing that if suc­cess­ful in build­ing the ter­mi­nal, the health effects on the com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing stu­dents, would work against stu­dent suc­cess.

Cool Cole, we get it, you sup­port high­er edu­ca­tion. I’m not sure any­body will pub­licly say they aren’t. You’re even in sup­port of real fund­ing for our uni­ver­si­ties, which can’t be said of many deci­sion mak­ers. But you’re also in sup­port of a project which would dam­age the water, the air, and the trans­porta­tion sys­tems in our com­mu­ni­ties. And that’s a problem.