Other commenters are correct that Evergreen is quite a "hippy" and "alternative" college, but I believe the core reason this happened is Rachel Corrie.
Evergreen school administrators may have been more amenable to students' demands because of Rachel Corrie, who was a 23-year-old Evergreen student when she was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer while she and others sought to protect a Palestinian home from being demolished in the Gaza border town of Rafah
TESC has always been a pretty radical place, but you're not wrong that there's a bit of a legacy with Palestine there. (Source: am alumnus.)
Though the college more recently had a problem on campus with protesting that involved a professor being effectively chased off campus and the administration managing to both use the police and not use the police wrong.
They previously handled radical protests pretty well, but had lost their step after some key administrators retired. Seems they've found their way again.
It wasn't a criticism, it was a description. Evergreen is basically what happens when hippies find a way to give people a good college education.
I have a friend who went there.
Edit: Wikipedia should elucidate:
Evergreen is unique[46] in that undergraduate students select one 16-credit program for the entire quarter rather than multiple courses. Full-time programs will encompass a quarter's worth of work in everything related to that program concentration, by up to three professors. There are no majors; students have the freedom to choose what program to enroll in each quarter for the entire duration of their undergraduate education, and are not required to follow a specific set of programs. Evergreen is on the "quarter" system, with programs lasting one, two, or three quarters. Three-quarter programs are generally September through June.
At the end of the program, the professor writes a one-page report ("Evaluation") about the student's activity in the class rather than awarding a letter grade, and has an end-of-program evaluation conference with each student. The professor also determines how many credits should be awarded to the student, and students can lose credit.
That honestly seems like a pretty decent way to do college and better than my alma mater of Indiana University.
I was called granola once because I'm pretty hippie. I wear these rope sandals everywhere (they're so damn comfortable) and I dress in the most comfortable clothes I can find.