‘Blackface’ incident ignites campus
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · 4 Comments
by Sophie Johnson
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
Walking into the Survivor-themed greek party, Sigma Chi juniors Brice Crayne and Bryan Ponti could never have imagined the kind of reaction their costumes would ultimately get. They said later that they just wanted to stand out: and with their faces and bodies painted entirely black with orange markings, they certainly did. It didn’t strike them that their body paint would eventually move the entire campus to a standstill.
Senior Natalie Knott was browsing the Internet in the library when she came across photographs of Crayne and Ponti from the party. Feeling a gut reaction, Knott showed the pictures to a few friends who didn’t see much controversy.
“I had to leave the library because I was really angry but I couldn’t figure out why because nobody was seeing what I saw,” Knott said. She drew connections to racist archetypes, specifically the blackface minstrel shows popular in the early 1900s. After speaking for hours about the issue with friends in her apartment complex, Knott decided she should bring her concerns to a faculty member.
The next day, Knott consulted with Politics Professor Bruce Magnusson, who told her that she should show the photographs to the dean. After conferencing with student life committee chair Clare Carson for an hour, Knott decided to post her thoughts to the student listserv, at Carson’s suggestion.
The response was immediate. Feedback poured in over the listserv from minority students who felt offended, white students who felt attacked and a slew of others whose feelings fell somewhere in the middle.
A day later, the story carried over to the faculty, and Crayne and Ponti were called into President George Bridges’ office to talk about the incident. Several professors stopped their classes to discuss race issues that many students and faculty alike felt had been unaddressed for too long on campus. Jean Carwile Masteller, an English professor on the steering committee of Whitman’s new race and ethnic studies major wrote in an e-mail, “We do have a ‘teachable moment’ and we realize that.”
Early reactions
The responses that resulted from Knott’s initial e-mail ranged from passively curious to incensed. At first, the bulk of responses were from those who felt insulted by Knott’s assertions.
“I think the majority of the student body that I have encountered has been defensive and angry, and there are those who have been really unable to be self-reflective,” said Knott, “Right now the tendency seems to be for people to say, ‘Oh, we’ve had enough. It’s done, it’s over, let’s just get over it,’ and I think that’s the wrong attitude to have.”
Whitman’s Sigma Chi president senior James Hovard was one of the first people that took issue with Knott’s e-mail. Hovard heard about the e-mail from a friend, and he produced a reply that same night.
“I was a little shocked and surprised because I was at that party and the thought of Brice and Byan dressing up in blackface never crossed my mind. I know that they wore black paint, but I never thought of it as a racial issue,” Hovard said. His main complaint, though, was that Knott did not talk directly to Crayne or Ponti personally before sending out the listserv e-mail. “I felt like they were being called racists. That wasn’t her intent,—she was trying to say that their actions were racist, not that they were racist—but I felt that they were being portrayed as racists … and I felt like that was unfair,” Hovard said.
Neither Crayne nor Ponti responded to the listserv e-mail, but both were personally affected by the incident.
“I had to set up a punching bag in my room I was so mad,” said Crayne: “I felt like someone had passed judgment on me; someone had called me something I definitely am not, and that’s a racist.”
Ponti felt similarly attacked. “The individual who pointed out everything that was wrong with the pictures did not contact either me or my good friend as to our intentions, they simply wrote their e-mail in the heat of the moment and we were caught completely off guard,” he said.
To Knott and many others, though, it was not a personal issue.
“It’s not about me. It’s about this problem. We have as a society an inability to openly and honestly talk about race,” said Knott.
Senior Paul DiRado, who actively participated in the listserv debate shared Knott’s view. “The point isn’t what anyone intended to do, it’s what happened. Historically, the use of face painting has been a way of oppressing African-Americans. The issue is that the recreation of that is inherently, at the very least, thoughtless. It is the thoughtlessness that is the real problem,” he said.
A campus divided?
After days of listserv debates, meetings, and conversations in and out of classes, some began to fear that the issue was effectively splitting the campus in half.
Senior Clark Blumenstein stepped into the listserv debate over his concern that some students refused to budge in their opinions. “People don’t entertain the other side whatsoever. They kind of do a five-paragraph, single-thesis essay…. I just see it as a very destructive thing. People should be pushing for a mutual understanding or a friendship out of an argument,” said Blumenstein.
Hovard agrees. “I think tempers flared and people just sort of started beating up on each other. I mean, to this day, no one has come up to Bryan and Brice specifically to have a discussion with them,” he said.
Many cite the method of debate—e-mail listserv—as a source of much of the divisiveness.
“If listserv debates continue to be the only mode of communicating, these problems will only get worse and overshadow the fact that we all want a more unified and respectful campus to come from this,” said sophomore Morgan Bach in an e-mail. She argued that the passive nature of listserv e-mails allows people to be more vicious than they might be in person, and no actual confrontation or change can take place.
Although the incident may have initially divided students, history professor and director of race and ethnic studies department Nina Lerman hopes that it will actually bring the Whitman community closer together: “I think that on the whole, Whitman students are really interested in creating a community that is a single Whitman community,” said Lerman, who has been impressed not only by efforts made by intercultural groups but also those made by student organizations such as the IHC and ASWC to address the issue. “I actually feel optimistic that it’s not a long-term division,” she said.
History lessons
Knott claimed that Crayne and Ponti adorned what was essentially “blackface” make-up, which has started a controversy all its own. The partygoers’ inattentiveness to possible racial undertones sparked a question of whether the majority of Whitman students really know the history of race relations in America at all.
Blackface surfaced in America in 1789 when a white comedic actor brought it to some prominence by portraying a drunken black man while wearing shoe polish on his face. Its popularity was significantly heightened in 1828 with the birth of the song “Jump Jim Crow” and accompanying dance, which became a prevalent addition to minstrel shows of the time. The blackface actor typically portrayed a lazy, nervous, sexually-perverted black character. They almost exclusively adopted one of the many stereotypes that were heavily perpetuated at the time: the submissive “Tom,” the bafoonish “Coon,” the brassy and fat “Mammy” or the nefarious “Black Brute,” among others. Blackface and minstrel shows were popular until at least the 1950s when they began to fade with the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement.
“To be honest, before this party, I didn’t know the history of blackface. I knew it happened, but I didn’t know much of the context, so I didn’t see how offensive it could be,” said Hovard. He wasn’t alone: Many listserv e-mails began to include Web sites with extensive history of blackface and other racial archetypes in the United States.
Lerman sees the problem running even deeper. “It’s been labeled blackface … but it actually seems to be more about a jungle, savage, primitive stereotype.” Although this issue is just as race-based, Lerman said, it is not the same. “It’s clear that there’s a large portion of the student body that really doesn’t have a good sense of history,” she said.
Looking forward
For the past week, faculty have been meeting exhaustively to discuss what steps should be taken next. In conjunction with campus student leaders, professors and administrators brainstormed possible programs that might benefit the campus and give the incident a positive outcome.
“The whole blackface incident exposed larger issues that are often unaddressed on campus in day-to-day interactions,” said senior Thomas Miller, who has attended faculty-student meetings. “I’m hoping that we can create programs that can facilitate truly meaningful discussions that can reach a significant portion of the campus so that we can actually start beginning to question general assumptions that people are living their everyday lives by,” said Miller. “It’s not really going to happen overnight, but this is the beginning.”
Lerman also sees the incident as a possibility. “I’m really glad that there is a cause for conversation and that we have a chance to really work on our ongoing programming and not just a one-time thing. I think something like a teach-in is great for starters, but it’s not the end of the story,” said Lerman.
Though the opportunity has unquestionably presented itself, some still feel the administration has handled the issue poorly.
“One of the goals as administrators in this type of situation is to remain objective and look out for the interest of students on both sides of the incident. This was the not the case at all,” said Ponti. Although Ponti was grateful for support from his professors, he felt victimized by way the administration initially dealt with the situation. “I welcome anybody and everybody who would like to talk to me about this because I would much rather talk to you than have you think I am racist or ignorant,” he said.
Knott just hopes the conversation continues. “We’re supposed to be asking questions. It’s safe here. How are we supposed to uphold democratic traditions if we can’t uphold discussions at school?” she said.
President Bridges alongside faculty has planned a three-part program to deal with race issues at Whitman. On Sunday, Oct. 28, there will be a town hall meeting from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Cordiner Hall for community members to discuss their feelings, ideas and questions about the blackface incident and its underlying implications about race on campus. On Thursday, Nov. 9, a campus-wide symposium held by community leaders and faculty will take place from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. The symposium will explore the history of blackface and minstrelsy, race and ethnic implications in educational institutions, and the American history of racism, said Bridges. Finally, Bridges will be meeting with a working group of students and faculty throughout the year to discuss upcoming speakers, films and events that will speak to these issues.
“The students were unanimous (and passionate) in their desire to participate in the solutions and in working with faculty and staff in creating events and activities that Whitman will sponsor for the rest of the academic year,” said Bridges in an e-mail.
Although there was initially no apology from Crayne or Ponti, each has since issued a separate apology toward anyone who was offended by their costumes.
Ponti, like many, sees this as a window of opportunity. “Although the campus is taking action to create a better understanding on campus, it is up to each one of us to individually make a difference. If we all can come together and make a collective effort toward this goal of racial and cultural awareness, I think we will see a much brighter and happier future at this college,” he said.
Crayne, who admitted that he has suffered from intense sadness and anger since the incident, said quite simply, “I just wanted to say that if I offended anybody with my actions that night, I am truly sorry.”
QUESTIONS?
Both Brice & Brian requested that their phone numbers be included.
Brice Crayne: 360-430-2201
Bryan Ponti: 509-301-6625
‘Choice’ lecture imparts lessons on indecision
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · 2 Comments
by Lizzie Norgard
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
Everyone believes that freedom is a good thing. Professor of Social Theory Barry Schwartz, of Swarthmore College, while delivering a lecture on Oct.17 regarding his recent book “The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less,” did not deny this truism. He did, however, propose a more critical theory for how having a plethora of choices affects the human psyche.
Schwartz began by dissecting the general belief about freedom in affluent Western societies. He called this belief “the official syllogism,” and said that it “is so deeply imbedded in our understanding of how the world works and how people work that it rarely even comes to the level of conscious awareness.”
The official syllogism runs as follows: The highest good in society is freedom, and the more freedom one has in how they live their life, the better their overall welfare. Freedom means having the ability to choose. If more freedom means improved welfare, and more choice means more freedom, then more choice means improved welfare. Thus affluent Western societies believe that the more choices they have, the happier they will be.
Schwartz laid out three problems with the official syllogism and the resulting explosion of choices. “The first effect that it has, paradoxically enough, is that instead of liberating people it paralyzes them,” he said. Schwartz told a story about a psychological experiment conducted in a grocery store in Palo Alto, in which two tables were set up on different days offering jam to sample and buy. One table displayed twenty-four flavors of jam, and the other displayed six. More people went to the table with twenty-four jams and sampled the flavors, but one tenth as many people bought jam. Schwartz concluded that fewer people bought jam when they had more options because they were paralyzed by them—it wasn’t worth the effort of deliberation.
The second problem with having too many options, according to Schwartz, is that when there are lots of options to choose from “the quality of your decision will be impaired.” Schwartz gave the example of speed dating, a match-making event in which singles have 3-8 minute conversations round-robin style with multiple people. Schwartz said, “when you confront people with a lot of options they adopt strategies that simplify the task to manageable proportions, and choosing on the basis of the simplest criteria may or may not be the same as choosing on the basis of the criteria that are most important.” In the match-making example, people often choose partners based on simple and obvious criteria (such as looks), which sometimes leads to regrettable decisions.
Schwartz then posed a third problem, which he considered the most significant: even if you manage to make a choice, and manage to choose well, you may still be dissatisfied with your decision. In theory, people should be happy with decisions they have freely made, but, as Schwartz said, “too many options undermines the satisfaction that people get, even from a good decision.”
He explained this dissatisfaction by describing two distinct aims that people have when making decisions, which he called “maximizing” and “satisficing” (a term he borrowed from psychologist Herbert Simon). One who “maximizes” seeks to choose the best possible thing among the available options and therefore deliberates between all of them. A “satisficer” chooses the first option that meets their predetermined standards, without necessarily considering every possibility.
Schwartz cited a scale on which “maximizing” and “satisficing” traits were measured in people looking for jobs. Schwartz said that those who scored high on the “maximizer” scale “considered more jobs, wanted more options, spent a lot more time looking around at what other people were doing…and got jobs that paid them $7,000 a year more [than satisficers], starting salary.” While maximizers did better, “they were also more pessimistic, anxious, stressed, worried, tired, overwhelmed, regretful and disappointed than satisficers,” said Schwartz. Schwartz concluded that “maximizing is not a recipe for satisfaction with decisions,” regardless of how objectively good the decisions are.
When confronted with a lot of options, people who want to make the best possible choice often dwell on missed opportunities, doubting the decisions they do make. Schwartz said, “It is impossible for people to maintain modest expectations in the face of an indefinitely large set of options.”
On an individual level, Schwartz offered three solutions to the phenomena of indecision and dissatisfaction: Maximize less and satisfice more, take advice from friends, while focusing more on the positive results of your decisions and less on what is disappointing. He also emphasized the importance of close relationships with people for human happiness, and pointed out that relationships are fulfilling despite and even due to the fact that they constrain us.
Junior Rand Biersdorff, who attended the lecture, said in an e-mail, “I found the lecture absolutely riveting. Dr. Schwartz applied terminology and psychological theory to a phenomenon we all recognize intuitively but haven’t synthesized on a conscious level: the paralysis and malcontented-ness one feels when inundated with millions of options.” She also said she “appreciated [Schwartz’s] pragmatic solutions.”
Voting does not imply democracy in Iraq, says professor Schmitz
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Christina Russell
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
What many Americans remember as our country’s biggest mistake, national authority on U.S. foreign policy and Whitman Professor David Schmitz claims is unfolding before us once again. In a lecture titled “Iraq and the Unlearned Lessons from the Vietnam War” on Wednesday, Oct. 18, Schmitz presented his theory that many of the mistakes we are witnessing in the current administration’s handlings of U.S. invasion of Iraq are analogous to the arguably irreparable damage to civilians, soldiers and American patriotism that came as a result of the Vietnam War.
Schmitz is the author of a plethora of books and scholarly articles that include “The United States and Right–Wing Dictatorships, 1965-1989” and “Politics, War and Public Opinion.” He is currently on sabbatical from teaching at Whitman.
Schmitz explained that inherent in the Bush Administration is sense of denial over the outcome of Vietnam. There is a belief that failure in the Vietnam crisis arose because America neglected to stay the course. “There is a certainty that the war was necessary,” said Schmitz. “Doesn’t everyone want freedom? Democracy?” These are the questions the Bush Administration are asking about Iraq, questions that were central in the Johnson and Nixon Administrations during the Vietnam War. In both cases, there is a desire to build nations in America’s image. Schmitz argued that there are discrepancies between what the Bush Administration holds to be true and the reality of those same values. Schmitz used the example of establishing a democratic society and then defining its stability by proving that its citizens are voting. “The Soviet Union used to hold elections all the time. Elections don’t mean anything by themselves,” Schmitz said.
Schmitz agreed with Colin Powell’s opinion that an administration must have clear goals and a defined exit strategy in order to be involved in a military operation of Iraq’s caliber. According to the Powell Doctrine, which Schmitz holds to be true, no force, no matter how great, could have changed the outcome of Vietnam; it was not a winnable conflict given the circumstances. Primary, this is because the government that the United States was fighting against lacked legitimacy. Iraq, Schmitz asserted, is un-winnable for this same reason.
Schmitz offered statistics in his lecture to further draw a parallel between the two conflicts. In Vietnam, enemy troops controlled 85 percent of the conflict, with the United States finding themselves in control only 15 percent of the time. Similarly, in Iraq, insurgent troops have controlled 82 percent of combat. In both cases, a war of attrition has been fought, Schmitz explained. In Iraq, the United States army can stay as long as they want—they are being depleted little by little so that losing will equate to them tiring of the engagement and going home. “These are not winnable wars for the superpowers,” said Schmitz. “At some point the U.S. has to face the hard reality that only the Iraqis will control the war.” Schmitz was clear in specifying that he is not a pacifist. “I support the war in Afghanistan. I wish that the United States government was using their energy in that conflict.”
Perhaps not shockingly, another corollary between Vietnam and Iraq is the number of innocent civilians that have lost their lives while wars are fought on their home soil. In Vietnam, two million Vietnamese died; in Iraq, 650,000 have perished thus far. Said Schmitz, “We have a certain vision of omnipotence. We’ve got to start asking a different series of questions.”
Schmitz believes that the domestic ‘War On Terror’ campaign is what enables the administration to garner continued support for Iraq. “It has kept the war from completely spinning out of control,” said Schmitz. Schmitz’s critique of the Bush Doctrine, the force driving contemporary decision-making on Iraq, is that it “is in tatters.” In response to a question from an audience member inquiring what hope there is that the Bush Doctrine will fundamentally change, Schmitz’s said, “I think [the administration] ha[s] run up against their limits.”
Student response on Schmitz’s analysis was positive. “I thought the speech was very informative,” said sophomore Jesus Vasquez. First-year Jane Lutken found the lecture to be “very insightful, particularly the Bush Administration’s reasons for invading Iraq and how they were similar to reasons for invading Vietnam.” First-year Kelli Kuhlman said, “I like how he just stepped back and presented the facts.”
Speaker re-evaluates sex, gender
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Andrea Miller
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
“Music to my ears,” is what Professor Robert Tobin of the Gender Studies department and the Foreign Languages and Literatures department said of Rebecca Young’s union of the humanities and natural science in her approach to the study of gender.
Professor Tobin introduced Young, an assistant professor in Women’s Studies at Barnard College in New York City, and her lecture, entitled “Sex, Hormones, and Hardwiring: Rethinking the Theory of Brain Organization,” to a packed house on Oct. 17. Professor Tobin explained that the humanities have been dismissive of natural science in gender studies. He explained this was problematic because in the humanities, “bodies matter,” but they do not acknowledge scientific findings about the body.
Young explained to the audience common cultural definitions of sex and gender. Most conceive of sex as the biological designation of male or female. Gender is thought of as the relationships men or women have with others; it is more of a “self-conception.” According to Young, in the last 15 years, the distinction between sex and gender has been breaking down. Young said that everyone “feels comfortable with them,” referring to the terms male and female, but in fact, “there are a lot of different uses” of the terms.
Young cautioned the audience of “stories” about gender that society receives from scientists. Tales of children resisting attempts to be made gender neutral, an underlying maleness or femaleness or fundamental differences in interests between men and women permeate society. For years, stories of girls naming toys conceivably given to boys, “Daddy Truck” or “Baby Truck” and boys with ruined penises raised as girls have been used to support theories that the brains of men and women are inherently different from each other. Young aims to prove that “difference” is no longer a “dirty word” through her studies of Brain Organization Theory.
According to Young, brains are not “blue and pink,” and neither are hormones; there is no discrepancy between a male and female brain or male and female hormones. Hormone exposure early in brain development “locks-in” the hormone behavior exhibited later in life. Young said that the brain can be thought of as another sexual organ that enables bodily structures to be used properly.
Young’s studies in Brain Organization Theory are compromised by the inevitable variances in sexual and reproductive behavior; in regards to accuracy of behavioral studies, Young said “a lot of things overlap.” The confounded nature of these variances hinders more scientific advancement in gender studies. Young said, “until we get rid of the story, we are not got to get anywhere in science.”
ACLU president gives William Douglas lecture
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Andrea Miller
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
In an address fit for the lecture series’ namesake, William O. Douglas, Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, brought the Maxey Auditorium audience to its feet with her concerns for the discrepancies between the Constitution and the Bush administration.
Strossen is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, is a professor of law at New York Law School and has served as the president of the ACLU since 1991. She has twice been named by the “National Law Journal” as one of the “100 Most Influential Lawyers in America,” and “Vanity Fair Magazine” has called her one of “America’s 200 Most Influential Women.” In his introduction to the lecture, Timothy Kaufman-Osborn, Dean of Faculty and acclaimed professor of Politics at Whitman, insisted there was “no one who better represents the spirit of William O. Douglas” than Strossen.
William O. Douglas was the touchstone of Strossen’s lecture “Abuse of Power: The Assault on Civil Liberties after 9/11.” Justice Douglas, and his predecessor Justice Louis D. Brandeis, were both known for being “dissenters,” particularly towards violations of civil liberties in their time of office—Brandeis during World War I and the Red Scare, and Douglas during McCarthyism. Justice Douglas’s involvement in the preservation of civil liberties served as the main themes for the lecture. Firstly, according to Strossen, Douglas insisted that “scapegoating freedom” would not resolve possible dangers, and secondly, “abuses of power” would not protect the nation.
Strossen cautioned the audience about the government’s “demand for insatiable powers.” Soon after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush authorized an NSA program that monitored millions of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails. The Bush administration pushed legislation of the program through Congress, but in August it was thrown out under a ruling saying it violated the First and Fourth Amendments and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Supreme Court, which Strossen described as comprised mostly of conservatives notable for having “rebuffed the administration,” said that a “state of war is not a blank check for the President to compromise the rights of the citizens.”
Counter-intelligence experts who have worked with the FBI have come out against NSA spying and privacy violations. Because so many people are infringed upon, there is a very large a mount of information to sort through—too large of an amount. It is difficult to “hone in on” relevant problems. The FBI has described recent efforts as “huge [wastes] of time and resources.”
Last week, President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, which suspends the right to habeas corpus and ignores Geneva Conventions, among other things. In the past, only in cases of rebellion or when public safety requires it could habeas corpus be ignored. President Bush has been pushing for the new Act without respect to habeas corpus and its regulations.
In order for citizens and their rights to prevail, Strossen asserts that Congress must not assent to “one omnipotent executive.” Strossen’s last thought was that the “9/11 cannot be the day liberty perished in this country.”
Humans vs. Zombies game comes to an end
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Carl Brodersen
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
It’s likely that at some point last week you spotted furtive-looking Whitman students running from building to building like scared bunnies, getting tackled near a door by someone who proceeds to mime eating their intestines.
For almost 10 days, 212 Whitman students participated in the first ever Human vs. Zombies all-campus game. Originally planned as a community-building event for North Hall, the game was expanded to include the whole campus with the help of David Jones, founder of the Whitties.net website which kept track of human kills and time remaining.
Academic buildings, the library, bedrooms and bathrooms were, for unfortunate logistical reasons, off-limits for killing. When in a vulnerable location, humans could defend themselves with Nerf weapons and balled-up socks, which would incapacitate a zombie for 15 minutes. The zombies had only force of numbers and an inherent steely-eyed bloodlust to rely on. If all the humans were consumed, the zombies would win. But if just one human could survive until all the zombies had succumbed to starvation, then humanity would triumph. This is exactly what happened this Saturday.
That afternoon, Curt Bowen and Carl Brodersen, the last surviving human beings on the planet, emerged fragrant and unshaven after marathon stays in their weekend strongholds. Moments earlier, at 3:35 p.m., the last surviving zombie, Michael McKenzie, unable to find human blood for nourishment and not permitted by the rules to cannibalize his fellow undead (he undoubtedly thought of it), succumbed to starvation 48 hours after his last kill, the zombie threat dying with him.
When asked by the Pio about what allowed them to prevail, the survivors attributed their success to three factors: stunning good-looks, a policy of non-confrontation and the help and support of their friends who made sure they were well-supplied with Cheese-its.
Asked how they hoped to repopulate the world, the pair looked a bit morose. “At one point we were thinking of sacrificing Carl to ensure a human victory,” they said, “In the end we decided not to and it worked out anyway.” If only one had survived, though, that would have solved the problem of who now has to get the sex change and the extra-strength In Vitro. “Now we have to flip a coin.”
Parents flock to Family Weekend
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
Families regroup on campus to take in Adam Lau, Core classes
by Marcus Koontz
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
Whitman’s Family Weekend is one of the few times during the year when the families of Whitman students get to experience Walla Walla. “Downtown is busier than I’ve seen it in a long time,” said Matt Andring, class of 2006. Andring works at two downtown businesses: Bright’s Candies and Book and Game. “At Bright’s it’s insane, people at the line were six deep,” said Andring. “It was nice to meet my housemates’ parents, though.”
“[Whitman’s] Family Weekend greatly increases business,” said Book and Game employee Nathan. “It also increases our influence from the world at large; we get to see what people outside Walla Walla are interested in.”
Dianne, another employer at Book and Game, said, “Family Weekend also enhances the atmosphere downtown.” She described a kind of buzz that develops about the streets.
Some downtown businesses are having a hard time keeping up with the influx of people. “Merchants closed three hours early and sold out,” said Nathan. A sign outside Merchants read “Closed, closed and closed,” and the employees inside were busy moving things around the kitchen amid an empty café.
Krista, owner of Liberty, said, “It wasn’t as busy as I thought it would be.” She continued, “I used to work at Merchants and I remember always trying to be sick on Family Weekend because it was so busy.”
Business was especially good at the local coffee houses. “Friday was crazy, I was sweating profusely. It was so busy I had to take my shirt off,” said Carlie, a barista at Coffee Perk. “We made amazing tips, though.”
From receptions to musical performances to theater sports and dining hall meals, families of Whitman students had a lot of activities from which to choose during Family Weekend. Parents and siblings of students could see a show of the heavens in the planetarium, go to a talent show in celebration of the United Nations, or attend a mini-lecture presented by one of our distinguished faculty members.
Mr. Braus, father of sophomore Mike Braus, said, “I think it’s good to come and visit my son.” When asked what he liked about the visit so far, Braus said, “This is a beautiful place and the core discussion was good.”
Sandy and Steve Laney came to visit their daughter Jill. “We love [Family Weekend], and this is our second time coming to it,” said Mrs. Laney. “We attended the study abroad presentations, the internship event and one of the mini lectures. They were very articulate, personable presentations.” When asked about hotel rooms, Mr. Laney said, “We had trouble finding a hotel room last year, but not this year.”
Waiting outside of Chism Hall for Adam Lau’s senior voice recital to start, Paul Goldenberg, father of Jonathan Goldenberg, said, “I’m having a wonderful time. I’m getting to meet my kid again.” Jonathan said that “the placement of concerts, I feel, is really nice … It’s nice just having something to do with dad here.” Mr. Goldenberg was impressed with the Theater Sports group: “Theater Sports was terrific; I’ve seen professional troupes that weren’t as good.”
Happy Halloween!
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
Be Scary. Be Safe.
Jack o’ Lantern
“My insides are burning… and it’s not because of the candle, it’s because of the syphilis.”
Black Cat
“I don’t hiss to be bad luck. I hiss because my genitalia hurts so much.”
Phantom of the Opera
“I still have phantom pains from my one night with my angel of music… she was dirty.”
Werewolf
“Hi! My name is Jared Wilson and I’m a victim of the STI wereism due to unprotected sex with a werewolf. Since then I’ve dedicated my life to informing everyone of the dangers of unsafe sex, because I’m not the only one with an STI. So remember that if you’re going out this halloween, be safe. Here are a few words from my friends to help you understand the gravity of the situation.”
Spider
“I’ve lost the ability to spin a web because of the chlamydia side effects.”
Tombstone
“It’s hard to rest in peace when you know a condom could have prevented the gonnorhea.”
Jason (of Halloween fame)
“I wear this mask to hide my cold sores. Also I have anal warts.”
XC runs hard in Spokane, beats Whitworth in 8,000m
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Caitlin Tortorici
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
On Saturday, Oct. 21, Whitman and Whitworth Colleges competed in the Bigfoot Open in Spokane.
In the men’s 8,000-meter race, Whitman beat Whitworth by a single point, placing third in the team scoring with 98 points and outscoring Whitworth for the first time in several years.
Of the 84 runners in the men’s race, Whitman junior Brian Woods and senior Sam Clark proved Whitman’s top runners, finishing in 11th (27: 08) and 12th (27: 13), respectively.
Senior Sam Johnson (21st, 27:37), sophomore Nick Littman (30th, 28:07) and first-year Matt Kelly (33rd, 28:17) rounded out Whitman’s top five.
Whitman’s second five were Adam Kopet (42nd, 28:54), Curtis Reid (45th, 29:03), Tim Marrinan (49th, 29:10), Eli Asch (53rd, 29:26) and Nick Johnson (60th, 29:58). Robert Marcotte was 69th in 31:09 and Travis Meyers 71st in 31:20.
The Whitman women’s team lost to Whitworth by a single point in the 5,000-meter race.
Of 86 runners, six Missionaries finished in under 20 minutes: First-year runner Sara McCune placed fourth (18:52), first-year Yasmeen Colis placed ninth (19:00) and first-year Michela Cocorran finished 12th (19:06).
Junior Lisa Taylor placed 20th (19:29), and first-years Lizzie Littlewood and Amy Champman finished in 31st (19:51), and 34th (19:56), respectively.
First-year runner Heather O’Moore narrowly missed being the seventh under 20 minutes, finishing in 36th place in 20:11.
Other Whitman runners included Emma Catmur (43rd, 20:27), Alex Pogue (47th, 20:44), Emily Rodriguez (52nd, 20:58), Lindsay Records (57th, 21:04), Rand Biersdorf (61st, 21:48), Andrea Kunz (62nd, 21:53), Betsy Schroeder (66th, 22:18), Lauren Imbrock (75th, 23:27), Rachel Stein (76th, 23:36), Rachel Patterson (78th, 24:00), Allie Freed (80th, 24:40) and Fiona Taggart (80th, 24:40).
Lewis-Clark State College won the women’s race with 39 points. Spokane finished after Whitman and Whitworth with 72 points, followed by Clark Community College with 116 points and Skagit Valley Community College with 190 points.
The Community Colleges of Spokane won the men’s race with 25 points. Lewis-Clark State College was second with 61 points. A club team and four college squads completed the men’s field after Whitman and Whitworth. Lewis-Clark State’s Calin Hantau won the men’s race with a time of 26:02.
New pool a hit with swim team
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Andrea Miller
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
Full of STL (Swim Team Love, for those not in the know), the Whitman College Swim Team inaugurated the new Harvey Pool with a first-year performance of a Disney medley, including tunes from “Aladdin” and “The Lion King,” and a strong showing from all classes against the alumni team.
When asked about the competition, Rhea Edelman said,“Did you see the alumni cheating?”
The inauguration of the pool during Family Weekend on Oct. 21 was its first formal competition although Coach Jennifer Blomme said it was “certainly a competition, but I don’t know about the formal.”
Thus, Edelman’s comment about the cheating: Alums used fins and were able to use multiple swimmers against just one Whitman swimmer.
The women’s team has four new first-year additions, and the men’s team has six first-year additions. The first-years kindly entertained eager friends, family and students in Harvey’s raised seating with song and dance to the sounds of Ludacris and Disney show tunes.
Senior Danielle Alvarado found the performance to be a “thrilling piece of theatrics.”
Of the new swimmers themselves, Alvarado said, “We couldn’t have asked for a more excellent group. They work hard, support each other on and off the deck, and are generous with their swipes into food service.”
Of the new pool, junior captain Erin Pettersen said it is “so fun” and “has a positive impact on the team in practice and competition.”
Alum Keith Jarrett says that the Whitman swim team is “very lucky to have such a great facility to compete in—I was proud to abandon everything I stand for and blatantly cheat in the new pool today.”
The team is looking forward to the Whitman community coming out to show some STL.
Whitman four-day trip spawns long-term agenda for immigration curriculum
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
Student trip helps ‘put a human face on abstract questions’ about immigration issues
by Andrea Miller
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
Though many complain about the lack of “real world” relevance of a liberal arts education, one group of students has gone to great lengths to see, experience and change what they have learned in their Whitman studies.
During the four-day vacation, 20 students traveled all over Eastern Washington and Oregon to study the Immigration Debate. Senior Laura Hanson, one of the coordinators of “The Border in Our Backyard: The Immigration Debate in Eastern Washington,” emphasized the word ‘debate’ because the group met with government officials, activists supportive of immigration and anti-immigration fundamentalists.
The trip was planned as a result of reflections of students who had traveled to Sonora, Mexico to study immigration. Border trip and alternative four-day trip attendee junior Griff Lambert said the experience was a “very good follow-up [to Mexico]” because it provided such a “good understanding of things happening in Washington.”
In Yakima, Wash., the group stopped at the American Legion to meet with members of Grassroots on Fire, a group “decided to mobilize and take action regarding the utter failure of [its] government and elected officials who have refused to control the invasion of foreign nationals who have entered [its] country illegally.”
Grassroots on Fire supports California’s Proposition 187 and the aim to restrict public resources to United States citizens only. At the time of the students’ visit, activists were protesting the group outside the American Legion. For Hanson, the juxtaposition of the Grassroots on Fire and its protestors was very lasting, and one of the more important moments of the trip. Lambert cites the group’s emphasis on “fact” as one of the more frustrating elements of the trip because the situation is made all the more “difficult in looking towards the future for change.”
Trip-goers plan to extend their experiences out to the Whitman community. The group is planning a trip for students to Broetje Orchards.
Furthermore, a new class is being designed that aims to bridge the “academic with real world experiences.” The class would be comprised of readings and discussions, as well as internships to get the students into the community and experiencing the issue firsthand.
Students are also working on collaborating with community groups from Walla Walla Community College and Walla Walla College. According to Hanson, the projects in Mexico, Washington and at Whitman all help to “put a human face on abstract questions.”
Applying in their language
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sarah McCarthy
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
Almost all good experiences I have had, almost all friendships I have made, almost every single piece of my life has been set in motion by me sitting and staring at a blank computer screen with that infernal first question: Why do you want to be a member of ____? Always that question, or perhaps its equally pernicious twin: What do you feel you would bring to _____?
The answers are, of course, always impossibly simple. If it’s a job, the answer is “Because I like money” and if it’s an unpaid internship thing it’s “Because I like experience.” These answers are too blunt for the delicate application reader, though, and thus the answer always must be a deftly woven combination of the words “opportunity,” “exciting,” “important” and “environment.” These words served me well, both explaining why I wanted to work at Ben & Jerry’s (it had an exciting environment) and at an evil corporate law firm (it was an important opportunity).
Sometimes the application delves deeper, asking particularly nosy questions like “What do you consider to be your strengths? Your weaknesses?” My strengths, my real strengths are things like committing other people’s conversations to memory, being able to live off Top Ramen, singing high notes, and declining Latin nouns. The application, however, is uninterested in my practical strengths, and instead I am always surprised to find myself using words like “attitude,” “work-ethic,” “willingness” and “people-person” to describe myself. In writing about my strengths I probably reveal my most important one: my ability to write things that actually mean absolutely nothing at all.
Things I am bad at, likewise, include but are not limited to: eating neatly, taking naps, being un-awkward, taking criticism, staying on course in driving video games, waiting for my turn in Scrabble, tearing my eyes away from Us weekly, and winning Ironman triathlons. My weaknesses on the application, however, state that I sometimes “have a little bit of difficulty adjusting to new situations” (the understatement of both the last millennium and the one to come) and that “sometimes I get nervous around people I do not know.” I have to be sure not to reveal that human beings scare me too much, for if that were the case my assertion that I am a “people-person” would start to look mighty suspicious.
The last question though is probably always my favorite one: “Is there anything else that you’d like us to know about you?” This question always brings out the cliché poet in me. “I wish you to know that I am a child of the stars and that I am like an ever-changing river” or “I wish you to know that I am large, that I contain multitudes, that I am like the night sky” always seems like they might be at least a little more exciting than a simple “no.” Alternatively, would they like to know that I have recently developed a penchant for looking at topographical maps of Iceland? Would they be curious to know that I used to have five imaginary friends, three of whom were named Emma? How about the fact that in third grade I sold the most Sally Foster gift wrap of anyone in my class? Though I think that they actually might appreciate a childhood anecdote, I just mess around with the previously acceptable word until I have something in the vein of “Just that I am so excited for this opportunity!” It is, after all, the application way. Were you to write something entirely honest and concrete on an application, it would probably spontaneously combust.
Perhaps some day, I will have my life put into place enough that I won’t have to apply anymore. That day, however, like the day that I am really forever done with homework, seems like the far off shadow of a forgotten dream. And so I may mock the inherent silliness of it, but I’ll keep filling them out and including that self-addressed stamped envelope. I really wouldn’t want to miss an exciting opportunity.
Ballot-ready with Nov. 7 around the corner
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
This week we outline WA State’s initiatives so you can make informed decisions
In only a couple weeks, Washington State voters will head to the polls to fill their ballots out. Are you ‘ballot-ready’?
Aside from electing local, state and national officials, Washington residents will be asked to vote yes or no on four initiatives this November. These issues are often overlooked in voter preparation, but the outcome of such initiatives can affect you in a more personal way than an elected representative.
This week we have outlined the basic description of each initiative along with some arguments for and against their passing. Save these descriptions for use at the ballots.
Initiative 920 Estate Tax
Initiative 920 would repeal Washington’s state laws imposing tax, now committed to the education legacy trust fund, on transfers of estates of the dead to their heirs. This measure would take away $184.5 million in taxes over the next two years. The estate tax is dedicated to funding public schools. Estates in Washington valued at more than $2 million currently pay a graduated rate ranging from 10 percent to 19 percent on the estate assets above the $2 million threshold. The value of property used primarily for farming can be deducted from the taxable estate.
Those in support of Initiative 920 say that young people are the ones that are saddled with this tax because they pay the tax when aging family members leave them property. A statement for the initiative reads, “Young people may think they will never face death taxes, but when a family member dies and a business or property must be sold in order for the government to take its cut, they realize what an unfair tax it is…. Death should not be a taxable event.”
Those against I-920 say that it would gut a vital source of dedicated funding for education by repealing Washington’s estate tax. The statement against says, “The estate tax affects less than 1 percent of Washington’s families, applying only to estates worth more than $2 million for individuals and $4 million for couples. In fact, taxes are only charged on amounts above those thresholds. If a couple’s estate is worth $4,050,000, taxes are only 10 percent of $50,000. Family farms are totally exempted, so farmers can freely pass their property on to their children.”
Initiative 933 Gov. Regulation of Private Property
Initiative 933 would require the government to compensate land owners when government regulation damages the use or value of private property, would forbid regulations that prohibit existing legal uses of private property and would provide exceptions or payments. Initiative 933 is estimated to cost state agencies $2 billion to $2.18 billion over the next six years for compensation to property owners and administration of the measure. In the same time period, the Initiative is estimated to cost cities $3.8 billion to $5.3 billion, based upon number of land-use actions since 1996, and is estimated to cost counties $1.49 billion to $1.51 billion. Costs are derived from the requirement that, with specific exceptions, state agencies and local governments must pay compensation when taking actions that prohibit or restrict the use of real and certain personal property.
Those in favor of Initiative 933 say that government has an obligation to be fair to land owners and that too often government is unfair and passes legislation that damages landowners’ use of their own property. The statement for the Initiative reads, “In the past 10 years, excessive government regulations have violated our rights and made it difficult for farmers and other property owners to use their property in reasonable ways. For most of us, our homes are our greatest investment. Government should not be able to change the rules and strip us of the use or value of our private property. I-933 protects our jobs, our economy and our retirement plans that depend on reasonable use of private property.”
Those against I-933 say that it is a deceptive initiative with many loopholes that tricks taxpayers into paying billions to land owners over perceived damage to land. The statement against says, “Here is an example of how the loopholes work. If laws prevent a property owner from expanding a strip mall in a neighborhood or building a subdivision on farmland, I-933 would force the community into a no-win choice-either waive the law or have taxpayers pay the property owner for not being able to build.”
Initiative 937 Energy Resoure and Electric Utilities
Initiative 937 would require electric utilities with 25,000 or more customers to meet targets for energy conservation and use of renewable energy resources including energy credits or pay penalties. The initiative requires the 17 largest electric utilities in Washington, which include both public and private entities, to make 15 percent of their power supply generated from renewable resources by 2020. The utilities must also set and meet energy conservation targets starting in 2010. Those for I-937 say that the initiative provides a cleaner, more affordable energy future.
The statement for the initiative says, “I-937 gives us cheaper, renewable alternatives like wind and solar. According to Puget Sound Energy, just two Washington wind farms are projected to save consumers $170 million. Renewable energy strengthens family farms by paying up to $5,000 per year per wind turbine. I-937 also saves money by requiring utilities to offer energy efficiency programs, like cash rebates for energy efficient appliances, home weatherization, and lighting, heating and cooling systems for businesses.”
Those against I-937 say that I-937 will increase electric rates and utility taxes for homes and businesses. The statement against says, “Alternative energy projects are being built now, but when required by law energy will be more costly for everyone. The non-partisan Washington Research Council estimates that I-937 will cost at least $185 million per year and could cost twice that much. Vote no on higher energy costs. I-937 does not treat low-cost hydropower as “renewable energy” while other states do. I-937 will cause low-cost hydropower to be sold to California while local utilities buy higher cost alternative energy for our homes and businesses.”
House Joint Resolution 4223 Exemption from Property Tax
The legislature has proposed a constitutional amendment on increasing an exemption from the personal property tax. This amendment would authorize the legislature to increase the personal property tax exemption for taxable personal property owned by each “head of a family” from $3,000 to $15,000.
The statement for the amendment reads, “Small businesses are the heart of Washington’s economy. Yet, the local businesses that provide good jobs for our families and communities often struggle to stay afloat. This proposed constitutional amendment-HJR 4223-will help local businesses grow and succeed. Currently, businesses must pay a personal property tax on their assets. The first $3,000 of their assets are exempt from the tax. HJR 4223 would raise the exemption allowed under the State Constitution to $15,000. Increasing the exemption will help businesses throughout Washington. Startup businesses, in-home businesses and businesses updating old equipment, such as computers or machinery, will benefit from this change.
There was no statement against the amendment, and it passed unanimously in the house and senate of Washington State.
Grapevine philosophy
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
Tagging the ‘good life’ of the French with American social graffiti, a good dose of deviance
by Emma Wood
FRANCE
I’ve long had a bone to pick with those women with baby strollers, the steamroller type who walk two abreast and render entire sidewalks useless—but my grumblings came to a crashing climax yesterday morning. 10:13 a.m.: I’m late for my lit class, bike in hand but no time to use it; she in the queue with her stroller. The tram that arrives has little room left for humans, not to speak of us wheeled delinquents—and in a moment of divine cosmic alignment, we enter the tram side-by-side just as the doors slither in to prepare for take-off and crunch—bike and baby embrace.
I hadn’t yet known what it’s like to get yelled at by an angry French mother: “Vous etes maman, eh? Qu’est-ce que vous pensez, bebe ou velo?”
She doesn’t know Sam Johnson.
Now, you’ve gotta be part native for that. I am now a full-fledged social deviant, like those Nantais teenagers who stick traffic cones on General Mellinet’s upturned sword.
My little host siblings, too, know how to relish those moments of deviance. Tuesday evening, the children (plus Emma) have been shooed out of the kitchen to make way for un “diner” chez les de l’Espinays. As the grownups downstairs dine on olives and chevre, we’re dancing in my room to the Greatest Hits of Wynne and Sylvia’s KWCW. Satisfaction Hour, spring 2006. (Little can they imagine the midnight dance parties those beats have known at the upstairs office in Reid; as they raid my closet for all things frilly and shiny, I tell them we’re exactly like real American college students.)
Last weekend we made a four-in-a-row tour of the chateaux of the Loire, and there I found that same kindred wildness in the forests and grapevines of the castle grounds. I listened tranquilly to the first guided tour: how such-and-such rich but plain-faced woman funded the castles construction to the liking of her husband’s mistress, how kings used to use an extra chair to catch ink droppings from their plumes.
Two tours down, I ducked out on the next, hunted grapes in the garden and napped beneath a trellis. I wandered, belly full of grapes, and found myself suddenly in Tom Davis mode. Tom Davis wouldn’t be eating grapes here. He’d be thinking about the wild intricacy of those masses of vines, the vitality of that smooth, three-tiered fountain, the visual joke of bulbous hedges with spindly bottoms, and the interplay of freedom and borders in those decorative plots of kale and chard. (Yes, kale and chard—wouldn’t you guess—the Europeans make art with their plants; the Americans eat them.)
It’s the same interplay of deviance and structure we’re talking about in my musical analysis class: the rubato and syncopation that slowly crept into flawless, symmetric Gregorian chants in the 16th century; in the same evolution, architectural curves that came to soften angular Gothic peaks. So I’m playing a bit, within the structure. Evening baguette counts (on last night’s tram: three) and deviant bicycles—a daily dose of social graffiti.
Weighing in on the future: Where exactly is home?
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sophie Johnson
CHICAGO
For John Denver, it’s “the place I belong”; for Her Space Holiday, it’s “where you hang yourself”; and for Simon and Garfunkel, it’s “where my thoughts escaping, … where my music’s playing, … where my love lies waiting silently for me.” What is it that allures us so much about the definition of “home”?
My boyfriend Grant came to visit me in Chicago over four-day weekend. We hit the vegan diners, walked along the lake, stared up at the skyscrapers and rode “the el” to exhaustion. It was a great weekend, complete with late-night Pad Thai and frequent voyages to the local hookah bar; it was really hard to see him go.
After I dropped Grant off at the airport on Tuesday, I felt myself getting homesick for the first time since I got to Chicago. I missed Portland, my parents, my dog Foofie, driving my car and even Walla Walla. With my heart in so many places, how could I begin to explain where my home was?
We grapple with this question at this junction in our lives more than ever. For college students, home isn’t always where we live. I’ll spend the semester in Chicago, spring in Walla Walla, the summer in Georgia, but I’ll still be going “home” to Portland from time to time to visit my family. Where do I belong?
I have been in Chicago now for seven months, and I have to be honest with you: I have planned my future Chicago life brick-by-brick. That’s right: I’m going to get married here, have adorable children who go to school in Hyde Park (where R. Kelly graduated, a fact which was integral in my decision regarding my future children’s schooling) and work for some kind of liberal magazine with an emphasis on race relations. I’m going to take my future children (tentatively named Emerson and Eliot after my two favorite writers) to art classes at the Art Institute, walk my future dog (tentatively a playful rescue mutt with a heart murmur) along the trails on the lake and keep my future apartment (tentatively and miraculously big enough to comfortably house four people) smelling like spiced apple cider. It’s going to be quite the life.
Simultaneously, I can imagine no better city than Portland. Let’s face it: Portlanders are pretty weird (read: downright eccentric). Everyone’s always riding their bicycles everywhere and turning out for gigantic protests and stuff. People buy hemp purses and eat vegan food and everyone seems pretty happy. Plus, it’s just so green there. The world’s biggest and smallest parks within city limits reside in Portland, and it is the city with the most coffee shops and porn stores per capita in the United States. Furthermore, it’s the place where I grew up, and on Sunday nights there’s a house on Burlingame Avenue where a rather unwieldy family (read: mine) eats more pasta than you may have thought was humanly possible.
And then there’s Whitman: a community of thoughtful, outgoing people with curiosities and imaginations that stretch to epic proportions. When I was a prospective student at Whitman, I asked a current student what her least favorite thing about it was. Her response, of course, was, “It sucks that you ever have to leave.” There’s always a concert to go to, a play to attend, a forum to participate in, a club to organize. And that library! I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve spent stretched out between bookshelves just lost in volumes of poetry and prose. There is simply nothing better in the universe. Oh, and let me just say what we’ve all been thinking: Ducks are fucking rad.
So which one is home? Some will say that home is where you are most comfortable in your own skin. Others will tell you that home is with the people you love. Neither of these definitions is wrong, nor is either entirely right.
Maya Angelou wrote, “I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” I share that sentiment. Admittedly, there are places where I have never felt less at home (Southern California offers a perfect example), but I’ll strive to find home in every place. It’s just another impossible dream but a lovely thought, nevertheless.
When I asked Grant about the “home” dilemma over the phone, he told me what I must have known all along: There simply is no definition. The solution is in the puzzle. We must continue asking, searching and constantly examining our surroundings. In this search, we will always find new and different answers, and in so doing, new and different definitions of ourselves.
Blackface: A Whitman issue, not a greek one
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Ajay Abraham
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
As many of you already know, there has been a recent vitriolic, personalized and aggressive debate over the students’ listserv. The instigation for this debate was a party where the theme was “Survivor” and a few Whitman students showed up in “blackface.” This act, of course, is highly offensive and displays an intense and troubling ignorance on the part of those students. However, the debate itself—whether waged on the listserv, in faculty meetings or in conversations with students—has proven itself to be more troubling and more offensive than the incident ever was.
Now, my intention is not to weigh in on the “blackface” debate but rather a very sad result of it. As much as I had hoped that we could find a more common ground and not revert to old, ridiculous divisions, some of the groups in our community have felt it necessary to try to frame the issue as a greek problem. This, unfortunately, did not come only from select anti-greek independents but was even brought up as discussion among other groups within the Whitman community. This is supremely frustrating on multiple levels. So I feel it is necessary, as an independent of color that has numerous close friends in the greek system, to speak to why that kind of discussion is harmful to our cause.
It is true that the particular incident occurred at a greek function, but by no means can the “blackface” issue be pigeonholed into just that particular party. If it were simply a matter of that party, the issue would be simple. However, it was the offensive and ignorant things said in the ensuing debate over the students’ listserv that is particularly disquieting. And some of the worst things were said by greeks and independents alike. Ignorance, it seems, has little to do with affiliation.
Any kind of attempt to move this to an indictment on the greek system would be moving away from the actual problems that have been raised in the last few weeks. When looking at this incident and its response, one cannot view it as something wrong in the greek system and hope to accomplish any kind of progress. Rather, it is a Whitman problem. To say that it was greek students, instead of Whitman students, is to marginalize the problem to a small part of the much larger section of the campus community that needs to be reached here.
We are actually quite lucky to have a greek system like the one we do on our campus. Unlike several other colleges and universities, our fraternities and sororities have a far less pervasive and negative presence. Rather, their members are actively encouraged to make a positive impact on their community. Some of the most engaged, intelligent, and caring individuals on campus made the choice to become part of a fraternity or sorority. At every level of ASWC leadership, there are several members of the greek organizations—including three on the Executive Council. There is no other type of group on campus that so actively fosters academic excellence, going as far as to have GPA requirements for continued participation. And there is only one institution on campus that is involved in more community service than the greek organizations: the Center for Community Service, and specifically the Whitman Mentors—which, in itself, is largely comprised by greeks.
True to form, the greek organizations on campus have begun to actually lead the charge for fostering change in the aftermath of this issue. At a recent meeting of student leaders called by President Bridges to discuss our campus-wide response to the issue, the fraternities and sororities were extremely well represented. The leaders of the greek system have taken several steps within and outside their respective organizations to respond to the issue, because they fundamentally believe that the “blackface” issue does fly in the face of their guiding principles. They recognize that their organizations have played a role in this problem, but also know that by no means can they be made into the scapegoats.
In the end, the Whitman community as a whole needs to commit to working on how to create an open, inviting, and informed campus. Many students, faculty, and staff have joined the ranks of those dedicated to seeing the development of just such a community. This is not the time for old divisions, but rather for new connections. Whitman must heal from this, and we must do it together. Our greek system has made a promise to be a part of that change. The question in my mind is whether or not the rest of our community will follow suit.
Racism’s impact on diversity
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Marcus Koontz
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
Two white Whitman students painted themselves black from the waist up recently. They wanted to look like aboriginals for a party. It was supposed to be a joke, but one student didn’t find it so funny. Her name is Natalie Knott and she sent an e-mail out to the listserv on Oct. 17 explaining why she didn’t find it funny.
As of this writing, there are about 30 e-mails bouncing around the listserv with “An Open Letter” in the title (the original title of Knott’s e-mail), as well as many others with different titles responding to that e-mail and subsequent responses to responses. After the debate gained significant steam, and President Bridges became aware of it, he too wrote a response.
The responses to the original e-mail have varied. Some students have attacked Knott, claiming in essence that because there was no intent to harm on the part of the students involved, there should be no harm taken. Some others have claimed that because the acts were protected under free speech we should drop the whole issue and go about our lives. One student even claimed that because Knott was Cuban—she said she is not—she had no right to be offended.
Some minorities have responded to Knott’s e-mail with support, and others have responded to their arguments: some with reasoned and thought-out points of view, and others have scoured their Facebook accounts and found quotes that they used to flip the race card around and call those people racist.
The main story seems to be that the actual discussion that Knott started has degenerated—mostly, not fully—into a free-for-all for those with strong views about what racism is and or isn’t, whether minorities are oversensitive about acts that are construed wrongly as racism, whether race is used as a trump card and how whites are everyday a larger target of reverse racism.
Knott’s point in her e-mail, if I read it correctly, was that two students did something offensive and racist—whether intentional or not—and the response she received from some Whitman students was a rationalization of the behavior rather then a critical analysis of it. Opening the dialogue with the community was a thoughtful act on her part because she has opened herself up to attacks and criticism. The stasis or fulcrum of her argument is that there is mindset of rationalization present in the supposedly liberal community at Whitman.
From my experience most white people do not want to have a discussion on racism. E-mails on the listserv show that most responses glided right over the issue: They attacked Knott or her defenders directly, they argued about whether the incident was really about Whitman or the society, they argued that the incident was free speech and insignificant, they argued about whether historical significance mattered in this context, and they even got off track and argued about the offensive significance of the swastika.
Racism exists. It is still here, today, even at Whitman. I wonder how many of you would deny it. Or rather how many of you would admit it but admit no culpability for yourself. You might say to yourself, “I’ve never done anything racist, I’ve never made a racist joke, I’ve never treated anyone differently because of their race and I’ve definitely not benefited from racism.” I doubt that most of those statements are true for you; heck, I know that I’ve violated all of them. The question is, can you own up to violating any of them? It is the denial of making decisions based on race that is most hurtful because then you are destined to repeat your behavior.
As an aside, I want to throw my racial background at you, for those of you who believe one needs to be black to have any authority on this issue (I’m not one of you). I am interracial, that is, black and white. I know that sounds like a paradox, or maybe a Michael Jackson song, but it suits me just fine. I am what some call “mulatto”—though I consider that an offensive term because it came from the word mule, which describes a half horse half donkey, and because it was a common name for the house slaves on plantations—and I am a person that lives in a racial purgatory. Blacks have told me that I’m too white, and whites have said the opposite. I have felt racism from both blacks and whites. Now that I have satisfied some people’s racial qualifications for talking about race I’ll get back to the issue.
Two paragraphs ago I talked about how most of you probably feel that you have not benefited from racism and I want to dispute that thought. Newton’s third law states that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” If that law holds true between people than every time a black slave was forced to build a house or a road or to farm food for free, you benefited and us blacks were harmed. My argument sounds tenuous and a little far-fetched, but let me paint the picture for you.
Every white person whose house was built for free, or whose son was sent to college because of slave profits, or whose land was farmed by slaves benefited enormously. Every successive generation benefited through a trickle-down effect. A white immigrant could move to the United States and never be directly involved with slavery. But because of this whole systemic oppression of blacks—slavery and the subsequent years of racism—and the enormous wealth that slaves earned for their owners, those immigrants would have more opportunities that were not available to blacks and could create wealth from the ancestors of slave owners. Those who claim self-reliance are making dubious claims, because a tremendous amount of the wealth in which the United States now basks was made possible by the working and whipping of black slaves.
The sheer disparity of blacks to their white counterparts displays that the wealth that many of my ancestors slaved over is still working for whites. If we were truly on even ground, and race really had no significance—as it should be, because it is a social construct—then the percentage of senators or congressmen that are black, or the percentage of Fortune 500 CEOs that are black or even the percentage of college professors that are black would be close to the same percentage of the total population that is black.
Ultimately I don’t have any answers to our arduous situation. I just have questions. They are important questions though. We should all be asking them. I’m a catch-22 myself. One of my grandfathers hated black people—he was white. Some of my ancestors owned some of my other ancestors. I ask questions about those things all the time. They are hard questions. But we should not be afraid to ask the hard questions. They are the only ones worth asking.
Last year, before I came to Whitman, I had a conversation with a group of white Whitman students. I asked them about their thoughts on why there were not many black people that went to Whitman. They said it was because black students visited Whitman and saw so few other black students. They thought that the visiting students wanted to go somewhere else “a little less white.” I say that maybe they decided not to come here because some people here think that it’s really funny when two white kids paint themselves black.
Finding religion in everyday life
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Valerie Lopez
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
“So why don’t you go to church anymore?”
Growing up in a culture that deeply values religion, I know, just know, that I’m bound to be questioned regarding my lack of church-attendance. I can just foresee the expression on my interrogator’s face; one that clearly spells out, “Oh, she’s another lost cause.” I just cringe at the thought.
It is completely unjust to simplify and reduce my reasons to a teenage rebelling tendency manifesting itself through a disaffiliation with a Church. I have a very strong feeling that almost every Whitman student could eloquently present their own soliloquies to such a charged question—I don’t mean to precipitate any arguments of the extremist sort—I merely intend to explain myself.
As I have personally experienced, when religion is integrated into a culture, it inevitably becomes part of an individual’s identity. This integration occurs rather insidiously—and that’s not necessarily bad at all—just like quoting “Zoolander” can become part of an individual’s idiosyncratic habits. Nevertheless, I was born into such a culture and grew up in an environment where everyone was Catholic, and therefore so was I. However, as I grew older, my affiliations with a religion were consistently challenged by the depth of my own religiosity. As I discovered, though I regularly attended masses and all that, I wasn’t necessarily a religious person, regardless of my belief in a higher being.
Later on, education became my catalyst; I decided to disaffiliate myself from a religion because I acquired a better understanding of myself and the world around me. Not that education itself leads religious believers astray, but it challenged my own preconceived ideas and inevitably led me to come up with my own “working conclusions.”
My disaffiliation stemmed from several reasons, one of them being that religion to me became a political party. Politics is a perpetual series of frustrations and disappointments; why must religion become one? The homilies became a medium for asinine political propaganda and church attendees encouraged the voting support of certain candidates. I couldn’t justifiably affiliate myself with something I didn’t agree with.
If I were to allow being Catholic as part of my personal identity, then I must do so wholeheartedly; I couldn’t just give a blind eye to certain facets of the Church I didn’t like. More importantly, religion has ultimately failed in providing its primal purpose. The spiritual satisfaction was gone. Religion no longer transcended my daily life, and if that is lost, there’s no use in attending mass on Sundays, except to keep appearances. And I’m not one for performance.
Yet, with all of that said, my belief in a higher being has never wavered. Although we as a campus proclaim to be liberal and open-minded (and to a great degree, I believe we are), “God” here is such a taboo because “God” is invariably associated with a religion. Ironically for me, education has enriched my spirituality far greater than I anticipated. In fact, I feel as if I have a stronger relationship with a higher being because of what I’ve been reading and what I have experienced. When I read poems and literature, I get not just a spiritual satisfaction, but even a spiritual elevation. I always feel like I’m tapping into a universal dialogue, or rather a polylogue, one that is transcendent and far bigger than I am.
I find a “God” in TS Eliot, in Nietzsche (I know), in Howard Zinn, in carbon compounds, in ATP synthase. I find a “God” in friendships, in relationships, in family-ships. I’ve learned the utter necessity of compassion for others not through the Beatitudes, but through “Beloved”’s Sethe.
In other words, I’ve found a different mode of spirituality, one that is not dissonant from other facets of my personal identity. It is not tainted with political agendas or another individual’s interpretation of “The Word,” because it is my spirituality, my own unadulterated interpretation.
I didn’t realize the potential oppression present in a necessity to be part of an established religion until I wasn’t in one. It’s liberating—isn’t that what religion is supposed to be anyway? Well I obviously can’t know everything. I do know this however—Robert Frost was right: “and yet for all this help of head and brain / how happily instinctive we remain / our best guide upward further to the light / passionate preference such as love at sight.”
Degreenulation: The darker side of privatization
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Ari van Schilfgaarde
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
Sometimes in the debate over environmental improvement, we get so caught up in the details of the problems and theoretical problems with improving the environment that actual benefits to environmental conservation go unnoticed. One such example is the energy industry.
As a youngster, I remember the debates about the deregulation of the energy industry. The theoretical arguments were the same that we hear all the time: that government “intrusion” in pricing creates vast inefficiencies, that all the red tape surrounding the energy industry was creating a drag on the economy. My personal favorite is still that only by freeing benevolent industry from the shackles of regulation could we provide a sufficient supply to provide for a growing population.
Texas, following California’s lead, deregulated its energy industry on January 2002. In 2005, four investment banks (Texas Pacific Group, Blackstone Group KKR, and Hellman & Friedman) sold their Texas shares in several power plants for a 640 percent gain. The Texas regulatory agency is demanding that customers pay, on average, $4.75 monthly for 14 years to pay for the construction of the privately held plants. The utility company is suing to extract even higher payments from the customers.
Goldman Sachs, the New York investment powerhouse, bought power plants in deregulated Ohio and Pennsylvania in 1998, and sold them three years later for a billion dollar profit. Baltimore Gas and Electric, after it became a private company, sold the 12 power plants that it owned to an unregulated subsidiary. It then bought the power that they generated back from the utility—and went crying to the Maryland government to increase rates by 72 percent.
Robert McCullough, a consultant to the utility energy, scoffs at the actions of the new company. He is quoted in the New York Times as saying, “The same electricity is generated by the same plants, owned by the same owners, sold to the same customers, simply at a vastly higher price.”
Some states, including Arizona, Missouri, and Texas have, under public and corporate pressure, brought the power producers back into the public fold where the drive to raise rates to appease shareholders is not so strong.
Really, though, one cannot expect much different from an industry with few substitutes, few players, and dramatically high costs of entry. Another fact is the rise in energy prices from oil and natural gas (which is up about 150 percent since 2002). This has put a serious damper in the likelihood of new plants being profitable without some concessions from consumers.
In order to avoid the capriciousness of the utility markets, to dramatically cut down on cost, and to reduce the need for building new plants, the end consumer is still the best bet. Every unit of power that you consume at your home, whether to run your electric stove or power your iPod, means that about 10 units will be produced at the coal burning power plant down the street. Between ramping up the voltage to deliver it to the next state over, and then ramping it down to get it to your house without lighting a fire, to bringing the voltage down to iPod levels takes energy, and lots of it.
There’s not only a moral satisfaction in sticking it to the utility companies, there’s pecuniary rewards. This is where the environmental movement comes in. Rather than focus on how wonderful the idea of saving the planet is, wouldn’t you rather learn how you can save money, and in the process reduce the need for power plants that line the pockets of industry? The environmental movement has done a damned good job of appealing to human nature and moral sentiments, but it’s time appeal to the bill payer. Want to see your electricity bills go down 20 percent? Turn down the thermostat, unplug the TV, be careful about how much electricity your dryer uses.
These are small things, but they are everyday decisions, and they save us money, and hopefully teach the utilities what we really want: a comfortable life, not an over-the-top electricity bill.
‘The Prestige’ delivers on promise
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Josh Boris
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
As the magician’s manager Cutter (Michael Caine) lays out in the opening of the film “The Prestige,” there are three steps to a successful magic trick: the pledge, the turn and the prestige. For example, the pledge is showing the dove, and the turn involves making the dove disappear. However, the truly great magic tricks rely on the prestige, the act of making the dove reappear.
On a similar note, an old theater and Hollywood maxim (often attributed to Chekhov) states that if you show a gun in the first act, it must go off by the last. In director Christopher Nolan’s newest offering, the prestige delivers its promise.
The proverbial gun involves two rival magicians in turn-of-the-century Britain, Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Borden (Christian Bale). The film begins with Angier performing the finale of his magic show to a packed theater. A large contraption is unveiled, and as it begins to spurt blue lightning from a tower into a large container, Angier steps in and subsequently disappears. A simple trap door opens in the floor and Angier falls into a tank of water that immediately latches shut. As Angier thrashes wildly inside the locked container, Borden stands by and watches his opponent drown. Borden is arrested for the murder of Angier and sentenced to death.
The rest of the film chronicles the steps that led to the death of Angier. Through an ingenious, albeit sometimes confusing, portrayal of three time lines (the present where Borden is in jail, the middle through Angier’s journal read by Borden, and the early days from Angier reading Borden’s journal in the Angier journal flashback), we see the rise of each magician and their brewing deadly rivalry.
When Angier’s wife dies in a trick gone awry because of a mistake by Borden, he vows revenge. What ensues is a battle of one-up-manship as each man tries to discover the other’s secrets and destroy his reputation at the risk of sanity and personal relationships. This leads Angier on a wild quest to Colorado in search of Nikola Tesla (yes, the famous inventor, played by an almost unrecognizable David Bowie) to develop a teleportation machine to trump Borden’s enigmatic trick “The Transported Man.”
Like Nolan’s “Memento,” the audience is constantly left questioning what is real and what is merely a trick. The movie swings back and forth between banal, simplistic answers to its questions, and complex, fascinating ones. At one point Borden explains that saying the secret to a magic trick kills the wonder and betrays its status as the ordinary dressed up in deception, and the audience constantly wonders if the film is just the ordinary made up to look extraordinary, or whether something odd, something magical is truly happening. While some questions are answered, Nolan leaves some open-ended. Even after the film was over I had a long conversation over the several twist points and their ramifications.
As anyone who’s seen “Memento” and the bigger budget “Batman Begins” can attest, Nolan is excellent in creating mood. The sets are exquisitely designed and the piece perfectly captures the era and exudes a dark mentality, as technology begins to rise rapidly and the possibilities seem endless (whether for good or for evil). Jackman and Bale, two of the more underrated actors of our time, work off each other excellently as the two sides of the same coin, the aristocratic achiever and the street kid striving to amaze. Though the ending might be somewhat predictable, the piece is still enthralling and holds enough little surprises and intricacies that it’s still highly rewarding to watch it unfold.
After several disappointing weeks at the movies, it seems we’re finally returning to Oscar territory. When Nolan starts his magic trick he shows us the gun; by the end, the film goes out with a bang.
Clint Eastwood directs feature film
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Erin Salvi
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers” cannot be considered much more than a very mediocre war movie. Sure, it has all the makings of a typical war film. There are the harrowing battle scenes, the all-too-eager soldiers who don’t know what they’re getting themselves into, the graphic violence, the haunting flashbacks, the sobbing mothers and sweethearts back home, and even the ambiguous heroes. Yet, somehow, the film doesn’t take these ingredients and mix them up into something greater. Eastwood fails to discover the larger meaning of war and heroism that the film seems to promise in the beginning.
The premise for the film has a lot of potential. In 1945, the U.S. fought a gruesome battle against Japan on the island of Iwo Jima. After many long days of fighting, six men climb to the top of a hill and raise a flag, not so much as a sign of victory but as a sign of hope. However, someone takes a picture as they do this, and when it is sent back to the states and printed on the front page of the “New York Times,” the nation sees it as a sign of certain victory. The soldiers in the picture are immediately credited as heroes, and the three who are still alive are sent home. The nation becomes obsessed with the picture, so the government asks them to go on a tour in order to raise some much-needed money for the war. Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) is more than willing to go on tour and increase his already extensive fame, but John “Doc” Bradley (Ryan Phillipe) and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) are hesitant about claiming hero status simply for putting up a flag, when so many of their friends died while performing real acts of heroism at Iwo Jima.
Eastwood has proved himself as an excellent director in the past, so he, of course, does not make the film a disaster. The battle scenes are absolutely fantastic. Eastwood builds tension perfectly as the U.S. soldiers approach the seemingly empty island, and expertly displays the dizzying confusion of combat. The technical elements of the movie are polished, and Eastwood draws moving performances out of many of the actors, especially Beach.
The movie is, nevertheless, flawed. This may be due in part to co-screenwriter Paul Haggis’s penchant for melodrama. Remember “Crash?” That film was much more stable than “Flags of Our Fathers,” but the melodrama throughout the film was almost too much to bear at times, as it is in this story. The film can’t decide whether it wants to look at the wider group of soldiers who fought at Iwo Jima, or if it wants to focus in on the three living “heroes,” and how the photograph affects their lives. As a result, you never quite feel as if you get to know the characters as well as you want to, and, in the end, their stories simply do not have the powerful effect that Eastwood is apparently trying to create.
I wish that Eastwood and Haggis had delved further into the problematic ways by which heroism is constructed, and avoided a corny ending that essentially tells the audience that “we are all heroes.” Great war movies avoid such melodrama, and are able to capture the great futility that comes with war as well as the perseverance of hope in spite of seeming futility.
Chicago-based band comes to Whitman
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Caitlin Tortorici
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
At first mention, Chin Up Chin Up may sound like a “we know what our name means, but you never will” band. However, history and Whitties agree that the Chicago-based indie-pop group has lived up to its title.
Chin Up Chin Up was formed in 2001 by guitarists Jeremy Bolen and Nathan Snydacker, and soon expanded to include percussionist Chris Dye and bassist Chris Saathoff. The band released a self-titled EP in January of 2002.
Keyboardist Greg Sharp hopped on the bandwagon in Chin Up Chin Up’s extensive tour, which involved several performances with groups such as the Appleseed Cast, the American Analog Set and Broken Social Scene.
In 2004, the band faced a tragic loss hours after mixing the demos for their debut album, “We Should Have Never Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers.” On Valentine’s Day, following their first full-length show at the Empty Bottle in Chicago, bassist Chris Saathoff was struck by an SUV outside the venue. Saathoff managed to push his girlfriend to safety, but was dragged several feet by the vehicle. The driver was never found and the band took a break from music for months thereafter.
At the request of Saathoff’s parents, the band reunited later that year, and pieced together the record’s final songs, working to keep Saathoff’s bass lines intact. Narrator bassist Jesse Wohgin joined the band full time.
With new bassist on board, the band released a title album in 2005, and on Oct. 10, 2006, Suicide Squeeze Records released the band’s latest album, “This Harness Can’t Ride Anything.”
Junior Keith Cushner booked Chin Up Chin Up through Suicide Squeeze Records, where he interned this past summer.
“I talked to my bosses about trying to set up a show at Whitman on their next U.S. tour, and two weeks later I received an e-mail from their booking agent/frontman Jeremy Bolen and it turned out they had the 19th of October off and wanted to fill the date,” said Cushner.
Whitman proved the perfect detour between Boise and Seattle. With the financial aid of Coffeehouse Manager Toby Kahn and Public Events Chair Stefan Ducich, Chin Up Chin Up was bound for Walla Walla.
The band proved quite a success.
“According to many members of the band, it was their best college show of the year,” said Cushner. “It was one of the most energetic Whitman crowds I have ever seen, and it was great because they are a band that I really love and they deserved the crowd that they got.”
Other audience members shared Cushner’s enthusiasm. “There were quite a few people down dancing, especially for a Thursday night. They had some really relaxing, good technical music,” said sophomore Jesse Maxwell, who had happened to wander into the concert while going for a meal in Reid.
Sophomore Jens-Eric Lund-Snee was equally pleased. “They had a really great sound, and the guys were really goofy and cool,” he said.
Sophomore and Chicago native Sarah Stellberg was thrilled to experience a piece of her homeland in Walla Walla. “They were fantastic. They represented Chicago well,” said Stellberg.
The band played two sets of roughly 45 minutes each—by far the longest show of their tour.
‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ opens on the mainstage
October 26, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sarah McCarthy
WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER
“Arsenic and Old Lace” sounds as if it should be a drama. The play revolves around Mortimer Brewster (played by first-year Spencer Meeks), a drama critic who, in the span of a few hours, discovers that nothing about his family is remotely what he thought.
Brewster’s two aunts murder men with arsenic-laced wine, his younger brother is certain that he’s President Theodore Roosevelt, and his older brother Jonathan is an escaped homicidal convict who has yet to dispose of his most recent victim. But just as the play about a little girl and her imaginary friends was in no way a comedy, “Arsenic” is nothing but light and downright goofy all the way through.
First-year Lisa Mattson gives the play’s most outstanding performance as Abby Brewster, one of the two murdering aunts. Mattson’s performance is both funny and consistent—she never slips out of her slightly British sounding “old woman” voice or moves in anything less than a bouncing trot.
Evan Cartwright, as the lovably deranged brother who is certain that he’s Teddy Roosevelt, also gives an excellent performance and gives the stage some much-needed energy, as does Andrew Hill as Jonathan’s dopey sidekick, Dr. Einstein. Both Roman Goerss and Sam Horwith play the smaller parts of a play-writing policeman and a conservative and clueless minister equally well.
The play as a whole, however, first performed in 1941, is one very rooted in its time and never quite comes together in this production. Inconsistent, unidentifiable accents run rampant throughout, and its jokes often fall flat. It is, for example, full of references to the fact that actor Boris Karloff played Jonathan in the original production, and the self-referential jokes about how Jonathan’s plastic surgery made him have “a striking resemblance to Boris Karloff” would be quite amusing if Karloff had come to Harper Joy.
Quite frankly, though, most college students aren’t aware of the reference, and Riley Clubb, who plays Jonathan in this production, bears a striking resemblance to no one except for Riley Clubb, in spite of his garish dark make-up.
The play is, in total, not particularly considerate of its audience—from its immensely long length of nearly two hours forty minutes to the booming organ music that it plays all throughout its two intermissions, this is a Whitman play that isn’t interested in re-inventing the play for a new audience—it’s going to simply re-enact the traditional version.
It’s not quite consistently funny enough to ride on its laughs alone and thus falls into the unfortunate category of “cute” a little too frequently. The play, though, does have its moments, and, if anything, has given some talented first-years a chance to shine.
News Bits
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Alex Henke
ACLU lecture deemed too conservative for friendly Whitman turnout
Nadine Strossen, the president of the ACLU, is predicted to deal with a string of heckles and boos during her guest lecture due to her authoritarian standpoint relative to the Whitman average. Due to the sacred unspoken ASWC liberal bylaws hidden in one of the library’s copies of the Mininecronomicon (Cthulhu For Kids), no Pioneer article may express further details of an event or politician of such conservative bias. In other news, fnord.
New Red product lines help fight AIDS in Africa, consumers predicted to reject ugly color
Market research predicts that the new Red product lines which help fund AIDS medicine in Africa will fall flat due to its ugly color. “I’d totally love to help the poor starving people or something,” said preteen shopping princess Ebenezer Scrooge, “but that red Nano is so lame. And the ‘I’m a dirty slut’ t-shirt only comes in pink.” The risen corpse of Senator Joe McCarthy (R-No sense of decency) also had suspicions surrounding the color of the AIDS-fighting products, stating, “There’s a reason they’re using red iPods for this scheme—the corporations involved are all Communist, plotting to take down our glorious capitalist society!” McCarthy was unavailable for further comment, citing a need to feed on human flesh within the next 48 hours to avoid starvation.
FAMILY WEEKEND PAGE or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Pay the College $40,000 a Year
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
Whitman’s departments: an examination for the parents
Editors Note: We all know Whitman is a wonderful place. However, this weekend you are going to be spoonfed a lot bullshit. Excuse us, bullpoop. We here at the Back Page have compiled a list of lesser known facts about the departments and majors at the college that the administration doesn’t want you to know. Just call us Deep Throat.
-Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology: This major does not actually exist. If your child tells you that he/she is a BBMB major it is only because he/she is worried you won’t continue to pay for his/her Theatre degree.
-Classics: The Classics department has gotten lax about its definition of what is considered “classic.” The department now focuses on Greek texts, Latin texts, and the inaugural season of Saturday Night Live starring John Belushi. Classic.
-English: We’re all so impressed you’re studying your first language.
-German: Congratulate any German majors you see. They just annexed the Polish department.
-History: Congratulate any History majors you see. They just analyzed how the German department annexed the Polish department.
-Philosophy: Congratulate any Philosophy majors you see and give them a few dollars. They are going to be poor.
-Politics: Classes include “How to tap phonelines,” “How to seduce underage pages with Instant Messenger” and “Resignation Techniques.”
-Psychology: Every male psychology major graduates with an Oedipal Complex. Thanksgiving will probably be awkward.
-Religion: With the incredibly large amount of religions out there it’s hard to have unified opinions. There is only one thing that pretty much all Religion majors can agree on: Tom Cruise is crazy.
-Rhetoric and Film Studies: If you’re wondering why these two areas are combined into one department, the faculty will be happy to give you a beautiful, impassioned argument. Then they’ll make you watch Blade Runner.
-Spanish: TACOS!
-Theatre: This major does not actually exist. If your child tells you that he/she is a Theatre major it is only because he/she is a BBMB major and are worried you won’t respect his/her lack of creativity.
Events Calender
Friday
12- 4 p.m.— Arrival. Make sure to sign in and get your tickets to T-Sports, Arsenic and Old Lace and a weekend of lies.
11 p.m.—Beta function. Theme- CEOs and office hos. Parents not invited.
Saturday
12-1 p.m.—Lunch. Find out where your $40,000 goes… sandwiches.
3-5 p.m.—Professor lectures! Come hear the lectures your student sleeps through!
9-11 p.m.—Speakeasy at Cordiner Hall. Performers include Sirens of Swank, Schwa, the Testostertones and Moby.
Sunday
11 a.m.-1 p.m.—Take your kid out to breakfast and nurse his/her hangover
School of the Americas: time to protest
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · 1 Comment
by Danielle Alvarado
The weekend before Thanksgiving will mark the 16th year human rights activists have converged at Fort Benning in opposition to the continued operation of the Army’s School of the Americas.
In 1996 the Pentagon released the school’s training manuals, which included torture techniques and encouraged interrogators to ‘get creative’ with documents like the Geneva Convention. Now, as the United States’ commitment to human rights is again being called into question, the Pentagon should do itself a favor and close the school.
If you’re looking for some reassurance that the reports of torture in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay are aberrations to U.S. military protocol, take a trip to Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia. There you’ll find Maryknoll priest Roy Bourgeois who will have no problem rattling off the names of a few other aberrations. Roberto D’Aubuisson, the head of El Salvador’s Death Squad who ordered the Archbishop Oscar Romero’s assassination; former dictator of Panama Manuel Noreiga; the soldiers who abducted, raped, and dismembered four nuns in 1980; and former Argentine military junta leader Leopoldo Galtierri.
The U.S. Army trained all these ‘bad apples,’ some of the most heinous abusers of human rights in the region, at the School of the Americas. Established in Panama in 1946, it relocated to Fort Benning after being called the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.”
In 1992, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld received a confidential memo listing two dozen ‘improper’ passages in the SOA training manuals. When the Pentagon was forced to release the manuals in September 1996, it confirmed the claims of SOA opponents: atrocities committed by SOA graduates against their countrymen were the result of their Fort Benning training, not in spite of it.
The manuals were filled with tactics which violated basic human rights: arrest of a detainee’s family members, ‘truth serum’ injection, strategies for keeping a detainee alive during torture, and the use of extortion, coercion, and ‘neutralization.’
In the decade since the manuals were released the Pentagon has done nothing to investigate abuses committed by its former students as a result of its training. Instead, they have focused their efforts on a public relations campaign to diffuse support for the growing grassroots movement to close the school.
In 2001 the name was changed to the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation and an oversight board that reports only to Rumsfeld was established. Unfortunately for SOA/WHINSEC supporters, it did not take long for their graduates to make the news after the name change. In 2002 two graduates lead a failed coup attempt in Venezuela; in 2005 the Colombian Army 17th Brigade, whose commander is an SOA/WHINSEC alumnus, massacred eight members of a peace community.
As they have done every year for the past two decades, the school’s opponents will gather at the gates of Fort Benning this November to both protest its continued operation and to hold a vigil for the victims of its graduates. SOA Watch, founded in 1990 to work year round to close the school, convened an estimated 19,000 people last year.
The vigil will culminate in the deliberate crossing onto the base by individuals who know that such an action will bring a minimum three-month sentence in a federal penitentiary. Two hundred and eleven prisoners of conscience have served nearly a cumulative century in jail terms; they include Fr. Louis Vitale, 73, Georgetown student Donte Smith, and Salem, Oregon native Chani Geigler.
The list of reasons why the school should be closed is no short one. As countries join Venezuela, Argentina, and Uruguay and refuse to let their military receive U.S. training, the school’s purported region-wide influence fades.
At a time when U.S. soldiers lack critical funding, it becomes harder to justify the continued fiscal support of a program that only serves foreign personnel. And continuing to operate a facility proven to have taught torture methods does not exactly make the case that we do not support such tactics today.
Ironically, it is its relevance that is the most compelling reason for its closure. The SOA/WHINSEC is not at all an outdated relic of the Cold War; in fact, it is exactly the type of institution that our foreign policy depends on today. The current administration maintains the worldview, leadership, and willingness to look the other way when it comes to human rights embodied by the SOA.
Even if we believe that the abuses of the SOA/WHINSEC are the exceptions and not the rule, it remains difficult to understand why the Army continues to use a facility popularly recognized throughout Latin America as a training camp for dictators and murderers—indeed, for terrorists.
If the United States is sincere in its commitment to the spread of democracy, justice, and cooperation among nations, it can no longer afford to associate with institutions like the SOA/WHINSEC. To suspend operations and permit an independent investigation would be an important first step.
‘Bend’ backwards to preserve Walla Walla
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Ari van Schilfgaarde
“Don’t Bend Walla Walla”; the bumper stickers are everywhere and the talk in coffee shops and bars always comes down to the same topic—Walla Walla has been discovered. Discovered by upper-middle-class suburbanites looking to sell their expensive house in Seattle or the Bay Area and move to the country where land is cheap, wine is plentiful and the amenities are coming quickly.
This is true all over the West. As more people begin to retire with enough money to choose where they want to live, and as technology allows people to telecommute, the need to live in Pittsburgh or Indianapolis, or even Palo Alto, diminishes. People discover hamlets in the rural West and set out to make them suburban utopias.
To those of us already here this has some interesting connotations: I know Walla Walla as it was, and I rather liked it. I’m all for pastry, but the fact that I can’t get Ethiopian food or sushi are prices we must pay for wheat fields and long bike rides without semis roaring by.
See Bend. The little town has tripled in population in the last 10 years to 70,000. Last year they gave out 1,949 new home permits, and more than 6,000 residential permits. That number is set to increase this year. Robert Mathias, Bend’s building department supervisor, was quoted as saying, “We estimate that there’s a new family moving in every hour and a half.”
Until last year, this booming city had no bus system, although this year seven bus lines are operating from downtown to the booming periphery, the new OSU Cascades campus and the three high schools.
With the skyrocketing population, downtown is sure to make money, and amenities are sure to come—Deschutes Brewery is always delicious, but what about the local character of the town? The very reason that people began this inverse exodus was they wanted a place where their kids could ride their bicycles to school, where traffic was negligible and it was safe to go jogging at night. And we’ve not even discussed the environmental and wildlife degradation of a plethora of new roads, new sewers and new water connections.
Today, in a constant hurry of concrete trucks and golf courses popping up like mushrooms, Bend is becoming a caricature of itself. The sort of place that people move to only to find that the traffic and pollution they thought that they had successfully avoided has followed them into the rural environs.
The problem with a utopia for baby boomers is that utopia literally means “nowhere” both in Greek and in practice. Living a life with tremendous natural amenities inherently means that some of the advantages of living in a big city are diminished. Things like museums, art galleries, sushi restaurants and luxury shopping enclaves thrive in places where a large amounts of disposable income arise. That implicitly means industry and services, and congestion.
Walla Walla is facing a choice now. We currently have a good thing going; people want to move here, and there is a limited housing stock. We cannot keep people from coming here, but we can make the newly rich pay their dues back to society. If you want to move to Walla Walla and take part in our bicycle trails, fish in the headwaters of the Umatilla or the Impaqua, hike in the Blues or the Wallowas, or raise alpacas, be prepared to pay for schools and mental health services.
Why not stagger the incentive structures (read: tax structures) to reflect what economists call the willingness to pay curves? By allowing only those retirees who really love Walla Walla to come here we simultaneously build a community of people who really want to be here and provide for those who are not protected by the labor market.
“Don’t Bend Walla Walla” doesn’t mean don’t let our home grow—instead, it’s a call to create a community that has roots here and understands that coming here brings with it the responsibility to make it a better place. We don’t need more anonymous subdivisions—we need groups like Walla Walla 2020 and the Watershed Council. Let’s keep Walla Walla as a place that people want to move to, not another Bend, Oregon or Fort Collins, Colorado or Bozeman, Montana.
Meet the candidates: 2006 potential State Representatives for State Legislature
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Christina Russell
A primary reason for apathy among voters is that they aren’t informed about the candidates running and what issues they represent. Don’t catch yourself turning a blind eye to your civic duty on the basis that you aren’t in the know. Here is your opportunity to brush up on the politicians competing for positions in the 16th legislative district. Who knows? Maybe you will slip some of these details into conversation with your parents next Saturday during Family Weekend, assuring them that college is more than extra-large waffles in the dining hall or avoiding zombies and is actually paying off.
District 16, Position 1
Maureen Walsh (R)
Maureen Walsh is the incumbent candidate looking to continue representing the 16th legislative district on the Republican ticket. Walsh is a small business owner from College Place. She has three children and a late husband. Walsh graduated from the University of Cincinnati, where she earned an Associate Degree in Commercial Art. Walsh was the legislative assistant to the former 16th district representative Dave Mastin. She held this position for 12 years. Other community involvement includes the Rotary, Walla Walla Chamber of Commerce and Walla Walla Downtown Foundation. Politically, Walsh prioritizes agriculture/water issues, the protection of senior or otherwise vulnerable citizens, the preservation of jobs and education. She hopes that the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) will be perceived as an agency that can be utilized by families and “not feared by them” (www.walshforstaterep.com).
George Fearing (D)
George Fearing is representing the Democratic ticket in a race against incumbent Maureen Walsh. He grew up in College Place and graduated from Walla Walla College with a Business degree before earning a law degree at the University of Washington. Fearing has been working and volunteering in the 16th district for 25 years. He is currently committed to his local church as a state committeeman for the Washington State Democratic Central Committee and as a trustee of the Interfaith Religious Liberty Foundation. If elected, Fearing is interested in expanding health care coverage, improving public education by offering competitive salaries to current and future educators, discouraging corrupt campaign politics by accepting contributions solely from individual contributors and protecting and supporting local farmers and small business owners. Fearing is looking to infuse fair and independent thinking in Washington politics, values he believes are absent in many of the current politicians (www.georgefearing.com).
District 16, Position 2
Bill Grant (D)
Bill Grant is running as the incumbent for position two in the 16th legislative district. He has served for 10 years as a Democrat for this district. His family has lived and farmed in the area since 1858, making him a fourth generation family farmer. Grant and his wife Nancy have four grown children. Grant was elected in 1986. Throughout his time as a representative Grant has advocated local farmers rights, small businesses and education. He also believes in bolstering community development and tourism and in supporting the local wine industry. His community involvement includes Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, Washington Association of Wheat Growers, Walla Walla Rotary Club and Walla Walla Historical Auto Club. Grant is a former member of the Walla Walla Community College Board of Trustees (www.votebillgrant.com).
Kevin Young (R)
Kevin Young in running against Bill Grant as his Republican challenger. Young was born in the agricultural community of Dayton, Washington. He graduated from Dayton High School in 1982 before going to work on his family’s farm. He is married with three children. Young lives with them on a farm between Walla Walla and the Tri-Cities. He is involved as a Precinct Committee Officer for the Frenchtown Precinct and an active member of the Republican Party. Politically, he values morality and a strong work ethic. He believes in a small government in which there is more fiscal responsibility. He supports both small and large businesses and is experienced with business (www.votekevinyoung.com).
Correspondence from Chicago
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sophie Johnson – Chicago, Illinois
As much as I try, I simply can’t get behind cockroaches.
I take that back. I haven’t technically dealt with cockroaches, according to the (useless) exterminator who visited my apartment three weeks ago; I have been dealing with American waterbugs. In my opinion, American waterbugs are, in fact, worse than cockroaches for two reasons: first, I’m convinced that they are bigger than cockroaches (research would refute me here, but I refuse to believe that any insect could possibly get larger than these things that crawl around my apartment); second, cockroaches don’t make me wish I were dead. At least, not as of yet.
The first waterbug in our Hyde Park apartment was discovered approximately four weeks ago by my roommate Juell. Juell screamed like she was having her feet cut off.
“What the hell?” I asked her.
“There is a mother-fucking roach behind my mother-fucking bed.” I looked behind the bed, but there was nothing to be found. “That fucker was fast!” I was convinced she probably imagined it. Nevertheless, Juell insisted on sleeping on the living room couch until the cockroach was uncovered and annihilated.
That lasted a few days—until Glendon (another apartment-mate) discovered a cockroach scuttling along the kitchen sink. Then reports started to come in from everyone in the apartment of roaches crawling out from under dirty dishes, the recycling bins, the fireplace. I saw my first one in the bathroom right as I was turning on the shower. Now, I barely let my own boyfriend see me naked; what right did this cockroach think it had to stare at me in my birthday suit like that? These fuckers had to go.
Easier said than done. We called the exterminator—a man with a ratty ponytail and a plumber’s crack who smelled like compost and pepperoni-flavored Combos. He put some red gel in all the sinks and swore that would stop the problem.
It didn’t. A week later, I found no fewer than four of the “waterbugs” upside-down (but alive) in the kitchen. I begged Glendon to step on them, which he was glad to do because he’s a boy and boys like making living things crunch.
Before I go further, there are a few things about cockroaches (closely related to waterbugs) that you should know. First of all, they are meant to live in tropical and subtropical climates, which Chicago in October certainly is not. They do not like the cold, which Chicago in October very much is. Their solution, then, is to find their way into Chicago apartments to get out of the cold and infest our places of living. I guess that’s resourceful of them, but annoying.
Second, it is important for us to recognize that cockroaches do not usually die on their backs in the wild. They are just not used to living on slippery floors, so they fall and cannot right themselves without debris around to grab hold of using their legs. And then they starve. And die.
These are important lessons for us to learn because they teach us irrefutably that cockroaches did not evolve to live in a place like Chicago. I simply cannot understand how they got here, or why. My mom says it’s because long ago people used to keep them as pets, but that got a little out of control, and now they’re running rampant in big cities. If this is true (and it seems unlikely), I must raise the question: WHY? Why on earth would you ever want to keep one of these repugnant, evolutionarily useless creatures in captivity? What could you ever hope to gain from such an action?
Now, I’m a Unitarian Universalist vegan. I am an example of nature’s most spineless, vulnerable, and blubbery. I’m the kind of person who is always saying shit like “Love everyone and everything. Give peace a chance. Hate is not the answer. Try to see things from someone else’s perspective.” If there were anyone in the world to find something good about cockroaches, it would be me. I can find the good in most naturally occurring things: spiders, rats, worms, even the neglected and reviled maggot.
But not cockroaches. Seriously. They’re too robust for their own good. It’s dangerous. They are almost certainly going to take over the world someday in the near future, and I’m going to say, “I told you so.”
It’s about time we voted these mother-fuckers off this island called Earth once and for all. And we should start the cockroach genocide in Chicago. I am not interested in watching another cockroach, waterbug, or any other creepy, reddish, antennae-bearing insect make a home in my apartment ever again. It has far outrun its novelty. The roach has got to go.
Correspondence from France
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Emma Wood – France
Yesterday I ate a whole baguette in something less than 10 minutes. Not only was it whole, but warm, and made from the soft part inside the wheat kernel that’s really nothing but sugar. This I learned from the boulanger who gave us Americans a behind-the-scenes tour of his shop; the place where briosch and baguettes are born. He rolled soft white dough as potters roll clay, telling us how he’d gotten up at 2:30 that morning, just like every morning; telling us four hours of sleep suffice because he’s never known anything different. “Been like that since my internship days,” he said.
I’m living amongst people who know their crafts well. In the evenings when I return home from la Fac, I pass a shoe repair shop where a man sits, one pair of black pumps in hand and 60 on the shelves behind him; a poissonerie where they’re dumping out ice bins that keep the scallops cold all day; a fromagerie lined with bricks of soft chevre. Everyone knows exactly where he fits into the scene.
I’m still wanting things the Whitman way—a little bit of everything, more the supermarket lifestyle than specialty shop. A little bit of salad bar, a little bit of soft serve. A little frat party with my activism, philosophy with my tea. I’m the girl who wants a taste of everything, who sits in French restaurants and orders mint ice cream and green salad with a cup of chocolat chaud. “Anything else, miss?” the waiters tease me.
And oh, there are so many flavors to taste, food-wise and otherwise. I wanted to run away with the skydiving crew I met at a tour of Mont Saint Michel. Last Saturday, it wasn’t skydivers but break dancers, a group who camp out with a boom box by the public library, dancing like human dreidels. (The spin on their heads with no hands! How?!) All these people have found their niches. Even that group of regulars at the Pourquoi Pas? Café. (It’s my running goal to choose a neighborhood bar and become a regular too!)
My prof at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts brought a show-and-tell art book last class: a collection of mini photos of people and the patterns they make from afar. Perfectly, yet obliviously, people arrange themselves in beautiful clusters.
I forget when I want to join every club that to each still shot there’s a rhythm, a history—that is to say, tandem jumps and weekends of training before that glorious jump through the clouds and daily beer tab at the Pourquoi Pas.
I haven’t become a skydiver or a break dancer, and I haven’t joined the circus (I leave that to Sebastion Grubb), but I’m finding my patterns: my euro-a-day flan, and that evening walk by the man in his shoe repair shop.
Correspondence from Spain
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sally Sorte – Spain
As I drank my Colombian coffee stirred into leche semidesnatada (one percent), I opened the kitchen window and peered out at the courtyard over which my apartment building hangs its laundry. How are we going to dry our laundry on rainy days, or when the temperature falls below zero? I’m not really worried, as Spaniards have been getting dry clothes for years now somehow. Big, splattery raindrops slap down into collecting pools on the black tar below. Boasting their surface tension, drops precariously cling to the clothes lines, looking like strings of twinkle lights draped between windows. The second real rain in Spain and it makes me so happy!
On the metro there are no longer bare, sandaled toes to avoid, but wet umbrellas held at people’s sides instead. And coughs, warm jets of germy air bursting through the finger slats held over mouths. As I walk out the subway tunnel the black, tiled floor is slick on the left, where people are coming in, and dusty and dry on the right. I ascended the slippery steps of the metro exit and accepted a newspaper from one of the boys handing out the stacks of morning papers from free, small name editions—in case the pleasant splattering turns into a downpour and I need more shelter than my cotton sweatshirt hood can provide.
How will the rain affect the homeless? For some it simply means a change of wares as they sell “paraguas” (which means umbrella but literally translates to ‘for water’) on the street, catering to the seasonal market. For others I suppose the weather will spur inner-city migration to warmer, dryer doorways and temporarily abandoned construction scaffolding.
I turn the corner onto Calle Prim, twenty meters from my school, three rainy blocks away from the line four metro exit. I can hear a jaunty accordion from across the street in the tree-lined Paseo de Recoletos. Homeless musicians, paid on an instrument case by case basis, play the soundtrack of the city.
Yours from Madrid
Letters to the Editor – Where’s Quarterlife?
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
It is well into October and much to my surprise there is still not a hard copy of the first quarterlife publication. Trying to start a new club that has ambitious goals (like publishing three magazines per semester that include all sorts of writing from the Whitman community) presents hoops that few circus tigers would jump through. The latest obstacle was a last minute phone call from our publisher in town saying they would not print the magazine because they did not agree with the content (“I guess Whitman is too liberal for me”). I respect their views and their right as a private company to accept or reject any order but it is unfortunate that they effectively censor us for the time being.
We are searching for new publishers and hopefully we will get the first issue out before the Nov. 3 deadline for submissions for the next issue (we are only doing two issues this semester). This is not a letter of blame targeted at anyone for the delay of the quarterlife magazine; it is merely an explanation to students about what is happening with a portion of their ASWC money and an update on a much anticipated new publication for the college. Hopefully we can get a website up soon and hardcopies of the magazine for everyone to enjoy and see what we are all about.
-Drew Arnold
‘Politics’ with a purpose
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Katie Collier
Reading over last week’s editorial disparaging the “Democratic bias” of the Politics page, I was initially offended by Marcus Koontz’s objections to the Oct. 5 spread on how those in the Whitman community are involved in the November elections. Upon deeper reflection, however, I began to feel that his concerns with the lack of conservative voice granted me the opportunity to clarify the valuable purpose of the Politics page. I also want to encourage Koontz and others to add their diverse voices to it through their active political involvement.
The “Politics” page was inspired by a need for a rhetorical space for activists on campus and in this community. Contrary to the popular gripes about the apathy of Whitman students, I have observed an impressive amount of activism in my time here, ranging from the renewable energy campaign, to a Martin Luther King, Jr. march, to efforts to increase awareness of events in Sudan.
The misconceptions that Whitman students are all talk and no action, then, must come from a lack of advertising and dialogue about such activism. In this light, the Politics page is not designed to promote a particular partisan politics but rather to encourage discourse about activism, spread news about opportunities to be involved and allow passionate students to editorialize their opinions on local and international political issues.
The issue of the Pioneer that Koontz took offense to showcased three members of the Whitman community who have invested exceptional amounts of energy in the November elections this year. These are a faculty member running for a local office, a father of three Whitman students running for Congress and a current student who is actually managing the campaign of a potential state representative.
While it happens that two of these individuals are affiliated with the Democratic Party, the point was not to promote that Part, but to celebrate the political involvement and passion in our community. This goal was clearly presented in an introduction at the top of the page. The limited ideological information presented in these articles was to clarify each individual’s motivation for involvement.
I would have loved to balance this page with articles about Whitman community members who were Republican candidates for national offices or managing Libertarian campaigns, but I have not been made aware of such involvement. The lack of Republican (and Libertarian) presence in the Oct. 5 issue might be a reflection of campus activists—or non-activists—rather than a reflection of my own biases.
That said, I know that students and faculty of non-Democrat preferences exist on this campus. I invite them to take issue with this disparity of representation by becoming more visibly involved in local or national politics and by taking advantage of the rhetorical space the Politics page provides for everyone.
This apparent “bias” should not be a consistent problem, as most articles on this page highlight nonpartisan activism and political issues. Perhaps readers will notice the equal space given to Democrat and Republican platforms in this week’s issue—a spread with the goal of educating young voters rather than encouraging and celebrating involvement in an election year that is crucial to Democrats and Republicans alike.
In conclusion, I commend Mr. Koontz for feeling impassioned enough about his own political ideology to take issue with the liberal tendencies of this campus. I hope that he has served to invigorate campus activism of all kinds and to encourage Republicans, Libertarians, Greens and anyone else to become active voices on this page. The Politics page is a space for everyone.
Local elections: Not much choice
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Andrea Miller
When Walla Walla voters enter the poll booths in the coming county elections, they will not be burdened with the choice of numerous candidates.
Only one name will be listed on the ballots in upcoming area elections for positions such as auditor, clerk, prosecuting attorney, sheriff and assessor. Bob Biles, candidate for county commissioner, cites numerous reasons for this trend in local politics. He said that, for the most part, “people just don’t want to do it.” Biles said that once the position is filled, the incumbent has a great advantage in future elections. For example, if a sheriff’s deputy were to run against the sheriff and lose, the deputy would lose his job. Similarly, the incumbent has a certain amount of knowledge and information ascertained from already holding the position that helps his credibility in the election.
Biles also said that when voters enter the polls in elections like these, they vote for either the Democrat or the Republican ticket, as opposed to voting for the candidates and their platforms. According to Biles, partisanship should not be the concern when choosing candidates for positions like the County Coroner. In Walla Walla and the whole of eastern Washington, most voters and candidates are Republicans. As such, it is tough for Democrats like Biles to succeed in the elections. He said that many possible candidates assume that “it’s not worth it” for them to run and lose because of their partisanship. Biles says that he knows of at least two Democrats currently holding office in the county who run under the Republican ticket in order to get a win at the polls.
The Cascade Mountains do more than divide just the geology and geography of the state. What Biles referred to as the “Cascade Curtain” separates the very Democrat-influenced western half from the very Republican-influenced eastern half of Washington. Local politics in those areas, according to Biles, are 180° from Walla Walla. Whereas Walla Walla has only a handful of Democrats, the number of Republicans holding office in western Washington is quite sparse. These geographical and political trends make it hard for any members of the underdog party to find success in local elections.
Biles acknowledged that being listed as a Democrat on the ballot will hinder his chances in the election, but he felt that it was his “civic duty” to run. In a time when the growth management of Walla Walla county needs to be restructured, Biles thinks the current commission is headed in a “bad direction,” and taking the risk of running against the incumbent is the first step he can take in making a change.
Savoring life one word at a time
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sarah McCarthy
“Take time to savor each moment,” “Cosmo” (or “Ladies Home Journal,” or “O,” or “Shape,” or “Better Homes and Gardens,” or “Women’s Weekly,” or “Marie Clare”) tells me. “That way, you’ll get more out of every day.” They tell me to eat slowly and chew my food (by savoring, I will eat less), to take time out of my busy schedule to watch a sunset (this will help me decrease stress), and, were I to be having sex, to take everything almost painfully sloooowly (it will be better that way). They tell me to take bubble baths, to go on walks. They tell me to breathe deeply.
I want to obey them. After a slow moving checkout line during which I have read “5 Ways to Make Each Day Count” (or 7 Ways to Get the Most out of Your Time, or, perhaps, 6 Ways to Make Every Moment Last), I’ll try it out. I go home and become inspired to cook. I will eat low-fat fish with omega-3 acids that will nurture every organ in me. I will eat a healthful but delicious salad of only the freshest vegetables. The meal will leave me satisfied but (as such articles always emphasize), NOT FULL. Most importantly, I will chew the fish slowly. I will get every bit of juice out of it. I will enjoy the fish juice and hold it in my mouth and name its many flavors. I will eat the fish so slowly that, in fact, it will be breakfast time before I’m even halfway through.
The plan disintegrates somewhere around the time when I realize that I don’t have any fish that’s not in stick form and the only lettuce is growing mold at the bottom of the vegetable bin. As a backup, I boil plain penne pasta—and don’t savor it at all. I feel put upon to have to drain the water and do a lot of sampling directly from the pot, even when I know that it’s not near done. It’s even worse if I happen to be actually in a nice restaurant. Everything from the low mood lighting to the waiter’s “And how are we this evening?” tells me to relax, to take it easy, to let everything I want be taken care of. Such a situation makes me exceedingly nervous. I get jittery and jumpy. I think very hard about how I’m not supposed to fill up on bread. I then grant myself permission to eat five pieces, reasoning that it’s not really “filling up,” per se, and that I ought to take advantage of the free things in life. If the food takes a long time, I decide that it will never come, ever, and so I eat more bread.
I am also a bad sunset watcher. Some people can, without a hint of pretentiousness, sit and gaze at the sun go down and have all sorts of beautiful poetic thoughts. My thoughts: Isn’t there something I ought to be doing? Some people can walk step by step, so slowly through a museum. Some people can stare at a painting for fifteen minutes and not know that they’re doing it. No matter how slow I try to go through museums, there’s always someone several paces behind me, showing me up, looking much more closely, demonstrating that they’re far more cultured than I. I theoretically like museums. I like sunsets, in actuality. But trying to enjoy them, trying to look deep within them long and hard does nothing but make me self-conscious of looking deep within them long and hard.
The problem that stands between me and the artificial way of savoring is a self-consciousness. Once you’re conscious of yourself trying to make things last, you aren’t really focused on anything but yourself. There might be a sunset there but you aren’t really seeing it if you’re forcing your eyes to look and keep looking.
Writing, then, is how I savor. Somehow, the only way I can seem to slow myself down is to make myself into creator since creation is, by its nature, slow. In writing, I am not artificially trying to slow myself down, saying to myself “Hold on, there, why don’t you weigh every option you have for this word—is that really what you want to say?” That’s what happens anyway. I write painfully slowly—so much more slowly than any of my peers who have cast me in their eyes as a “writer type” even believe. I write, word by word, so slowly that if I’m listening to music whole songs will go by with no background sound of my fingers tapping any keys.
Getting a case of the Sundays
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Valerie Lopez
I always used to dread the advent of a Sunday, probably even more so than the nightmare of a Monday.
After an immensely onerous week, there’s nothing more therapeutic than looking forward to a weekend of a. explosive debauchery, b. 100 years of slumber-itude, C-movie marathons and defghijklmnopqrstuv’s of anything non-school related. Friday and Saturday nights are when you get to recuperate, by whatever means possible, from how the school week has screwed you up.
And then Sunday comes, and you have to return to reality. Panic and regret set in when you realize you haven’t done anything productive after a night of [insert personal activity] and suddenly you have to face an insurmountable load of work. And it’s not only the burden of homework that makes a Sunday, as Billie Holiday calls it, “gloomy.” It’s no fun when you wake up with a terrible hangover from a night of explosive debauchery. Nor is it any fun when you are forced to confront the awkward consequences of the decisions you’ve made the night before. Example: Wonder why that strange-looking fellow in the dining hall looks at you as if he’s seen you naked? He probably has. Perhaps streaking across Ankeny while screeching “Total Eclipse of the Heart” wasn’t the best decision after all. Such a scenario is just one of the many awkward consequences from impulsive, though not necessarily drunken decisions (after all, an admirable 38 percent of Whitties have zero drinks on a typical Friday or Saturday night).
Now that I’ve enumerated several reasons why Sunday isn’t so lovely, let me say why it is. Allow me to preface this by saying that the opinions expressed here are strictly mine and that if you have comments and suggestions, please submit them directly to the Opinion editor before contacting anyone else.
Although I’m going to sound like a corny advertisement for Folgers, there’s definitely a certain charm in waking up early on a Sunday morning and having a decent cup of coffee while reflecting on the events of the week. For one, you can definitely recount the ridiculous events of the night before and laugh about what you or other people did. Example event 1: bad bad bad pickup lines guys have said, such as “wanna get out of here and read my poems?” and “it’s just your sweat and mine, fits like a glove.” Example event 2: hmm, those banana leaves…enough said.
On a more serious note, Sunday is a weekly chance you get to fix your life again. No matter how hard the week weathers you, Sunday is when you know you’re going to be okay because you’ve just survived hell. Sunday to me is like what DNA ligase is to Okazaki fragments: It can piece you back together when you’ve become emotionally fragmented from stupid life drama. You get to drink your coffee and read the Sunday New York Times or PerezHilton.com…or both. It’s when you have to do you laundry and you clean up your place, or any other physical manifestations of fixing your life.
There’s a sense of comfort in slipping back into habitude. Plus, you get to recharge for a day before diving into the stressful cycle of the week. It’s no coincidence that God rested on the seventh day. He decided to bum around and read the New York Times (how else did he discover Adam’s apple adventures?). Sunday is when you can be lazy for a while until you are compelled by the necessity to do work.
I really don’t mean to glorify Sunday into a pedestal at all. If that’s how I came across, I apologize. I’m just trying to point out that Sundays aren’t as bad as most of us make it out to be. Because, even after suffering a week of papers, tests, bad breakups, horrid experiences, failures in general, great disappointments and such, I know I’m just going to be fine. It’s a Sunday, and I’m alive.
Volleyball trumps Linfield, Willamette
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Marcus Koontz
Of the two games the Whitman women’s volleyball team played this weekend, both were spectacular wins.
The first win was over Willamette University on Friday, Oct. 13 and the second was over Linfield College on Saturday, Oct. 14.
On Friday, Oct. 13, Whitman battled with Willamette University at home, and Whitman won three matches to Willamette’s one.
Though the Missionaries dropped their first match to Willamette, they had three amazing match victories to pull out the win in the fourth match.
The scores for the matches were 25-30, 30-16, 30-23 and 30-24.
Whitman’s head coach Dean Snider said, “This is the first time we’ve ever had two middles lead us in kills; both Rosa and Emily were dominant tonight.”
The game on Saturday, Oct. 14 was won relatively easily for the women’s volleyball team.
“From start to finish, that’s the highest level of play we’ve had in a match this season,” Snider said. “That is a very good team we beat in three games, and they played well tonight.”
Whitman won three straight matches against Linfield in order to pull out the win, 30-28, 30-23 and 30-28.
Before their match last weekend, Linfield College had only lost one match, to Pacific University.
Last year, Linfield College placed 15th in the 2005 final national rankings for division III women’s volleyball.
This year, Linfield as been placed in the top 25 division III women’s volleyball teams in the nation.
This win is a huge accomplishment for the missionaries.
For their next game the team will travel on Friday, Oct. 20 to George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon.
After that, the missionaries will head up to Portland, Oregon on Saturday, Oct. 21 for a game against Lewis & Clark College.
Feature Film ‘Man of the Year’ lacks bite
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Josh Boris
Why are we in such a rut again? After emerging from the whiz-bang of summer blockbusters I want to be thought-provokingly entertained again, but that just ain’t going to happen.
With the exception of “The Departed,” the movie offerings in the last several weeks look more like the post-Oscars season drivel we have to sit through when the studios dump all the movies they know are shit. If things don’t change soon I’m going to angrily threaten to send strongly-worded letters of my disapproval to the movie studios and then promptly forget to do it.
“Man of the Year,” written and directed by Barry Levinson, is yet another ho-hum movie in a long line of yawners. When political comedian (think Jon Stewart, but not funny) Tom Dobbs (Robin Williams) decides to run for president on a whim, he’s surprised at the amount of support he receives. When election day rolls around, everyone is amazed to find that Dobbs not only has a strong showing, but actually wins the presidency, despite being on only half the ballots. However, there’s obviously a catch. It seems that computer programmer Eleanor Green (Laura Linney), who helped design the electronic voting booths for computer company Delacroy, has found a glitch in the voting system. Dobbs is not actually the president elect. When confronted with this news, Dobbs has an identity crisis and must decide whether he can ethically continue to be the president elect. Of course, while all of this is happening the goons hired by evil Delacroy lawyer Alan Stewart (Jeff Goldblum) are trying to silence Green so as to not jeopardize future commercial contracts.
Look at that plot. There’s a little bit of everything there, and much of it is firmly grounded in current events. With so many people sporting “Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert ‘08” t-shirts, what would happen if a political comedian actually ran for office? With so many fears of ballot fraud and concerns over paper trails, what if the new electronic voting system does lead to the wrong candidate being elected? And, of course, who isn’t concerned with evil corporations controlling American politics? With a film so contemporary and cutting edge, how could it possibly go wrong? Here’s how: Don’t make it funny or scary, just middle of the road, and take out all of its teeth so it’s not at all biting.
It’s sad, because Levinson has had some cutting political commentary in his earlier films. “Wag the Dog” and “Good Morning Vietnam” both attacked the political system and are oft-cited successful films. Unfortunately, it appears that Levinson has been toned down, and is unsure even of the type of film he’s making.
“Man of the Year” violently shifts between straight comedy, biting, dark, political satire, romantic comedy and political thriller, and sometimes tries to mix the genres together. Even when he is solidly exploring one of the genres, Levinson often falls short. For a political comedian, Dobbs is more like Leno than Stewart and his humor is rarely politically topical but more often focused on misogynistic or racist humor (and not even funny offensive humor to boot). No one is nearly as outrageous as they should be, and it looks like they took what could have been a brilliant satire on the American political system and made it a poor PG-13 movie.
As usual, what it comes down to is the promise and delivery. While “Man of the Year” offers a good premise and seems like it might offer a good political commentary, it takes little risks and decides to wrap everything up in a nice little bow rather than provide an actual satirical jab at the American political system. I said it was beating a dead horse last week, but I really think that people should just ignore other movies out and just see “The Departed.”
Bob Dylan releases new album ‘Modern Times’
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Erin Salvi
Apparently, Bob Dylan can do no wrong. With 42 albums under his belt, at 65 years old, one might think that he would have run out of good material by now. Not so. With his most recent concoction, “Modern Times,” Dylan has cranked out yet another masterpiece.
But it seems that Robert Allen Zimmerman was born with the sole purpose of making music. On the road since the late ‘80s, with no permanent place to call home, Dylan would probably keel over and die if he ever tried to retire. He is less a creator of music than a vessel through which music can express itself. As Joan Baez wrote of him in “Diamonds and Rust,” Dylan “burst on the scene, already a legend.” With 1962 album, “Bob Dylan,” he instantly became the voice of a generation.
He solidified his place in the world of music with such albums as “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” “Bringing it All Back Home,” “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Blonde on Blonde.” Dylan lost a number of fans when he became a born-again Christian in the late ’70s and has barely produced any new music in over a decade, relying heavily on his old classics. With “Modern Times,” however, Dylan is back in his prime.
Glancing at the track list, “Modern Times” may seem a bit short, with only 10 songs, but one must remember that these are Dylan-length songs, meaning they are at least five minutes each; the longest runs for nearly nine minutes. The songs are a little bit country, a little bit blues, a little rock and a little folk, but they’re all classically Dylan. Many of them actually sound like they could fit right in on albums such as “Bringing it All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited.” The two that particularly stand out are “Spirit on the Water,” a love song that could easily stand next to “Just Like a Woman,” “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” and “Workingman’s Blues #2.”
Dylan’s voice sounds much clearer than it has in recent years. A friend of mine attended a Dylan concert a few years back and said that he was barely understandable, mumbling his way through songs to which he had forgotten half of the lyrics. The voice on this album sounds more like the original Dylan, rather than the stammering, drug-ravaged musician my friend saw perform.
Dylan, however, is not trying to recreate his music of the ‘60s. He has moved forward, as the title of the album clearly demonstrates. In “Spirit on the Water” he sings, “I can’t go to Paradise no more, I killed a man back there.” He is not attempting to return to the past, he has just rediscovered and reinvented the poetic sound that made him famous. The music is relaxed, unforced and controlled, just as Dylan seems to be at this point in his epic career. So don’t think twice about buying this album, it’s more than alright.
Arts and Crafts Series holds monthly workshop
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Andrea Miller
Usually, the content of a book outshines the physical book itself, but to bookmaking artists, that content might be just a finishing detail.
Seanacey Pierce, the director of the Whitman College Arts and Crafts Series and a senior Religion major at Whitman, organized and led a bookmaking workshop on Oct. 14. On the agenda for the afternoon: two books, one with a hand sewn binding, and one with a Japanese style binding.
A handful of students and one professor began with the former, putting holes in a few sheets of paper folded in half, called signatures. Participants then sewed each signature together. Pierce explained that though not all hardback books are hand sewn like this, many are made by machines that follow the process used by the participants. Glue is spread over the binding and covered with a thin Japanese paper, so that the soft cover will hold better when applied.
Participants were also able to make a book with a Japanese style binding. Unlike with the previous book, participants were given a stack of papers upon which they had to drill a series of holes. They then followed the pattern of those holes with stitching. Except for the time taken to cut and prepare the paper, that particular style of binding took less than ten minutes to construct.
A number of the participants expressed a desire to enroll in the book arts class offered at Whitman. In the meantime, one participant was excited about the new world of cost-effective gift giving that book making opens—by the end of the workshop she had Christmas taken care of for her mother.
Pierce began bookmaking at Whitman in the book arts class, and said that now she is “pretty obsessed with books.” This past summer she traveled to Japan with a group of Whitman students to study papermaking and bookmaking. She has made it through the first round of the application for the Watson Fellowship, which she wants to use to travel the globe studying and making books.
Each month, the Arts and Crafts Series will hold a different workshop. The next installment in the series will be a workshop for Halloween costume making. Pierce encourages anyone with ideas for future workshops for the Series to contact her at pierces2@whitman.edu.
Prospective students get small taste of Whitman
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Caitlin Tortorici
Another successful Visitors’ Day came and went on Friday, Oct. 13. As early as 7:45 a.m., parents and prospective students arrived at Whitman prepared to seize the action-packed day organized by the Office of Admissions.
Visitors enjoyed a complimentary continental breakfast at Reid before moving next door to the Young Ballroom to hear about the “Whitman Experience” from the pros: President George Bridges and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid J. Antonio Cabasco.
From 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., prospective students had the opportunity to attend classes listed in their registration packets.
But that was only one glimpse into the Whitman world. The day’s intricate schedule provided students and parents with a great number of opportunities to learn about the Whitman Experience, in and out of the classroom.
Beginning at 9 a.m., Associate Professor of Chemistry Frank Dunnivant provided an overview of the Whitman curriculum and the General Studies program.
Afterwards, Assistant Director of Financial Aid Services Marilyn Ponti discussed the financial aid application and awarding process at Whitman in Kimball Theatre.
At 11 a.m., those curious about the brains behind Whitman’s Admissions decisions attended “Meet The Dean,” hosted by Cabasco to discuss the application and administration process. Those more curious about dorm life assembled in the Jewett main lounge for a taste of residence hall experience.
Come lunchtime, prospective students and parents ate for free at any one of the dining halls, getting an apt taste of Bon Appetit as well as dining hall schedules.
At 1 p.m., visitors had the option of attending a student panel or a discussion on Whitman Athletics at Sherwood.
An hour later, visitors interested in pre-professional programs, cooperatives and combined majors attended discussions in Olin and the Hall of Science. There, faculty members and current students discussed Whitman’s special programs in Asian studies, computer science, dentistry, education, engineering, environmental studies, law, medicine and veterinary medicine.
At this time, visitors also had the option of discussing Whitman’s international off-campus study programs with Director of International Programs Susan Holme-Brick or taking a tour of Whitman’s 11 interest houses by the RAs of the interest house community.
At 3 p.m, visitors could choose to attend an Outdoor Program slide show or take a tour of the Harper Joy Theatre with HJT director and Chair of the Theatre Department Thomas Hines.
Of course, it’s never over until the fat lady sings—or in this case, Whitman’s three a capella groups: the Sirens of Swank, Schwa, and the Testostertones. Visitors got a taste of the Whitman music scene as well as complimentary refreshments.
The visitors seemed to enjoy themselves. Seattle natives Chris Hansman and mother Lori commended the Whitman Administration on a pleasant and highly informative day.
“This visitors’ day is way better than the other schools I visited, because you actually get to go to classes,” said Hansman. The high school senior visited Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Occidental and Vassar earlier this year.
His mother was equally impressed. “It’s so great that you get to attend all these small discussions,” she said. “The professors all seem very charismatic.”
Issaquah native Matthew Jacquette enjoyed the closing activity most. “I liked listening to the Sirens of Swank, the Testostertones and Schwa,” said Jaquette, Testostertones CD in hand. Jaquette plans on majoring in music.
Prospective student Evan Steiner of Tigard, Oregon seemed most impressed with Whitman’s green and sunny environment. “The weather is great. The campus is really beautiful,” said Steiner.
Los Angeles native and senior at Crossroads School Jersey Kauffman thoroughly enjoyed his Whitman experience. “I can’t believe people in Los Angeles don’t know about this place. It’s such an amazing school.” Kauffman plans on educating the masses when he returns home.
Rollefson discusses Jordanian archaeology
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Andrea Miller
It bodes well for any lecture when the Dean of Faculty, Patrick Keefe, turns around in his seat to say of lecturer Dr. Gary Rollefson, “You wouldn’t believe what a scholar Gary is.…”
In his lecture in Kimball on Oct. 12, “Safe Haven for Shepherds: Neolithic/Chalcolithic Desert Sanctuaries in Southern Jordan,” Whitman anthropology professor Dr. Gary Rollefson discussed some of his studies and findings in Jordan from over the past five years.
For example, discoveries of stone arrangements suggest that structures were erected at places where the shepherds regularly gathered for water as offerings of thanks to deities for the arrival of the rainy season.
Ten thousand years ago, as the human relationship to the environment changed with the development of agriculture, farms, and villages, humans began competing for farmland. While villages had the benefit of irrigation, shepherds were compelled to follow their sheep and goats around the extremely dry desert, which comprises about 85 percent of Jordan. Relief from the dry heat came during the rainy months between November and March.
Areas including Bayir, the Negev Sinai Deserts, and Qulban Beni Murra, where shepherds are believed to have roamed with their flocks, are home to large, man-made rock arrangements. The Suwan Chain in Bayir is constructed of large, heavy slabs of flint, arranged in clusters that stretch for a quarter of a mile. The flint had to have been dragged from a nearby arroyo to the top of a plateau.
In the Negev and Sinai deserts, collections were found of smaller stones flanking a larger, central stone. In Qulban Beni Murra, two lines of stone can be seen from a great distance. Closer inspection shows 75 “tombs.” These are probably not actual tombs, given that excavation has found no evidence of bones but, instead, what are thought to be “give-backs” to the spirits. Wadi Rum, an area referred to as the “Holy Valley,” is home to what Rollefson described as an “imposing series of red sandstone.” Stones are arranged in a rectilinear formation, with one standing rock in the center. In all, 201 of these rectangular setups have been found.
Based on the impact left on the environment, it has been determined that these sites were visited on a regular basis. Rollefson theorizes that they were the sites of permanent water or pools where water consistently accumulated, and when the shepherds gathered there, they established the formations to thank the deities for helping them to survive another year. The variety of different formations found is indicative of the various tribes that occupied the area.
Rollefson will be returning to his studies of the shepherds of Jordan in the summer of 2007. Next summer, he anticipates excavating some sites at Wadi Rum. Perry Scholarships have allowed him to bring five students in the past, and he hopes to have at least one Whittie join him this time.
Gas station authentic Indian food popular with students, professors
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Lizzie Norgard
For a gas station deli, the Exxon on Main Street offers some uncommon and remarkably popular fare.
Long lines form at the Exxon every Wednesday and Friday at lunchtime when Neera Kaur, who with her husband Bali Singh owns and operates the Exxon station, cooks authentic Indian food and serves it in the station’s deli. She varies the selection every week, usually offering one vegetarian and one meat item served with basmati rice. She also prepares masala tea and samosa pastries every day.
Kaur and Singh moved from California to Walla Walla after buying the Exxon station nine months ago. Encouraged by Whitman politics professor Shampa Biswas, Kaur began serving her samosas in the deli. She soon decided to broaden the selection to a full lunch menu and has been serving weekly lunches ever since.
Originally from India, Kaur uses a combination of recipes she invented herself as well as recipes she learned in Home Science classes in India. She says that cooking has always been her hobby, though she has not operated a restaurant or worked as a cook before. Kaur buys some of the spices she uses, such as red chili, fennel, coriander, and alwain seeds, on trips to Seattle. She is very particular about her recipes, and said that they are “always spicy.” She said that some Indian restaurants use too much cream in their recipes, which moderates the spiciness and changes the flavor of the dish. Spice is part of what gives many Indian recipes their distinctive flavors, and regarding the spiciness of her own recipes Kaur said, “I won’t change it.”
Whitman chemistry professor Frank Dunnivant, who eats Indian food at the Exxon every week, described it as “wonderfully spicy.” When asked about his favorite dish, he said he likes “anything they make.”
Chemistry professor Tommaso Vannelli said that the Indian food is “a good break from pizza and tacos.” Dunnivant and Vannelli both said that the food compares well to Indian food they have had at restaurants.
The Exxon station also has a small selection of Indian spices for sale, including seeds, boxed curries and assorted pickles.
Kaur has not considered opening a restaurant. However, she said she may start a full lunch buffet at the Exxon, which would be open every day, if her customers express enough interest.
Students, Bon Appetit tackle food theft at Reid
October 19, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Caitlin Tortorici
“I think it’s retarded that people try to steal food from Reid. Everyone who works here is getting pretty sick and tired of it. I feel like it’s gotten worse in recent weeks, and we’re beginning to crack down more,” said a Reid Café employee.
The first sign of such cracking down appeared Saturday, Oct. 14, on the café’s checkout counter. A note stated, “Please pay when you get your food. Thank you.”
But who is actually stealing? No one seems to want to admit it directly.
“One of my friends came up to me and admitted that she stole a parfait, but she only stole it because it was so ridiculously expensive,” said one student.
Several Whitties have expressed similar discontent at the increased prices of items at the Reid Café.
“My Naked juice cost me $3.99. I feel thoroughly ripped off,” said first-year Sarah Trowbridge.
“I’m pretty skeptical of the ‘market-price’ salmon,” said sophomore Megan Duffy. “You don’t realize it’s well over 10 bucks until you pay for it.”
“I just don’t know what makes the parfaits so expensive,” said sophomore Kayla Cooper. “I know yogurt and blueberries aren’t expensive—and lord knows granola isn’t; we’re in granola central.”
Sophomore Elliot Okantey attributes rumored theft to this raise in prices. “In my training as an economist, I have been taught that inflation is simply a reality we must deal with. This is why I can excuse the hike in prices. However, they failed to increase our flex dollars to account for inflation also,” he said. “My flex dollars are buying less than they did last year, and will buy less next year than they buy today. It’s unfortunate because I know many students prefer to eat at Reid.”
Why do students prefer Reid to the dining halls?
“I like the food at Reid better just because it’s prepared individually and there’s a decent array of options. At Prentiss or Jewett you don’t necessarily know what you’re getting on any given day,” said sophomore Wes Price, a server in the Prentiss dining hall.
Sophomore Kellie Wutzke seconds Price’s emotion. “I live for the chili and the Taste of Asia,” she said.
But food isn’t all that keeps this girl-on-the-go flexing her swipe-card. “The cooks are half the reason I go to Reid,” said Wutzke. “They write on my pizza box and they know to make me tea before I even get to the café. They’d probably hug you if they weren’t busy working.”
An off-campus employee who often works evening shifts, Wutzke depends on Reid for her 8 p.m. dinners. “I can buy a meal whenever I want and I can get homework done while I eat. The dining halls are always too loud and over-crowded to get anything done,” said Wutzke. But Wutzke frets as much as any Reid fan that her flexing days are numbered. “I’m running out of money really quickly. It’s frustrating that they hype up flex because it’s tax-free; the taxes seem to already be included in the food.”
Wutzke is generally dissatisfied with the school’s meal plan options. “Meal plans in general seem like an unfair value, just because if I’m going to spend $2,500 on a meal plan, I’d rather just have $2,500 in flex, and that’s not an option, and that’s frustrating to me because that’s a fifth of my loan that I had to take out for school.”
Other students expressed similar dissatisfaction. “They need to have a meal plan that gives you less meals and more flex,” said sophomore Jesse Phillips.
Sophomore Amy Strauss agrees. “There’s just way too much money going to dining hall food,” said Strauss. “I can see why people would steal. The school is getting so much money from our meal plans anyway.”
Roger Edens, manager of Bon Appetit, addressed the consequences of stealing from the Reid Café or the dining halls. “While I am not aware of any students being expelled from Whitman for stealing from the café or the dining halls alone, I do know that this kind of behavior has in fact figured into the consequences the Dean of Students has doled out,” said Edens. “Usually, stealing from the dining halls or the café is only one small part of the behavior that the Whitman community finds objectionable. The victim of this kind of theft is not Bon Appetit but rather the Whitman community. Privileges are taken away, prices rise at rates higher than inflation, policies changed, et cetera.”
Senior Lillian Peterson agrees that nothing positive will come of stealing from Reid. “If people steal, Bon Appetit will only continue to raise their prices,” said Peterson.
Students have come up with ideas to improve the meal plan, such as including a plan with fewer dining hall meals and more flex dollars, or a plan that allows students to use the same account for the dining halls and the Reid café.
Sophomore Rafael Klein offers another possible solution. “Stores around town should let us use our swipe cards to purchase food. Students would go into town more, and the Walla Walla economy would probably improve,” said Klein.
No comments have yet been made by Bon Appetit managers regarding these suggestions.
I-937: Chance to prove priorities
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Christina Russell
At some point in our youth we learned about our Founding Forefathers, the Pilgrims, that there were originally 13 colonies and a man named John Winthrop, who talked about his city on a hill. It wasn’t until freshman orientation day this past August, when I was arriving by car to Walla Walla, that I fully reckoned with Winthrop’s poorly spelled manuscript, written those many years ago in 1630.
There they were, populating the hillside, white shafts of hope, emanating clean, fossil-fuel free power for the state of Washington. In effect, their own city, a beacon for the environmental values of which I, as a microcosm of the Washington State citizenry at large, am desirous to uphold.
With an election coming up, the multitude of opinions of Walla Walla’s windmills, some of which quite possibly aren’t as laden in American History jargon as mine, have given rise to a state-wide initiative, I-937, on the importance of investing in the proliferation of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.
As it states, I-937 strives to “guarantee that by 2020, 15 percent of the electricity from Washington’s largest utilities comes from plentiful and home-grown renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, and help homeowners and businesses save on energy bills by assuring that we get all the cost-saving energy efficiency available in this state” (yeson937.org).
Why is it important to invest in renewable energy? With the recent growth of Washington’s population and businesses, our utilities need energy. Unfortunately, because there are no regulations, this energy has been demanded in the form of coal and other fossil fuels, which pose a serious threat to the health and environmental standards in our state.
Fossil fuels affect the air and land and disrupt the climate by producing an excess amount of carbon dioxide emissions. Because fossil fuels are only available in certain locations globally, this form of energy also forces Washington to be dependent on the oft-unpredictable fluctuation in prices that has been most recently spotlighted by the cut in oil production by OPEC. Pollutants from power plants generate toxins that poison the throats of citizens, increasing the likelihood of asthma and even lung cancer.
These problems can be prevented, but only if we demonstrate that energy efficiency and cleanliness is a priority on the ballot.
What is so fortunate about I-937 is that it actually helps generate jobs in the process of preserving our environment. Farmers that host wind projects can earn up to $5,000 per turbine, money that in the recent fuel shortage can help preserve and support family farming.
Even if you are not directly involved in the farming industry, implementing alternative energy projects will require the help of citizens involved in engineering, construction and building design; subsequently, this initiative will produce jobs that are otherwise uncalled for in a state that currently relies on foreign oil for a majority of energy needs.
15 percent by 2020, it’s a start. Ideally, voting yes on this initiative will demonstrate to our representatives that we value the environment in which we live.
Students of the Whitman Community, I challenge you to ask yourselves, if 15 percent of the electricity from Washington’s largest utilities will come from renewable energy sources in 2020, what can it be in our lifetime? Who knows, if John Winthrop had the resources, maybe he would have thrown in a couple wind turbines himself.
For more information visit www.energysecuritynow.org on the web.
California gambles
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Ari van Schilfgaarde
All this semester, I’ve hammered on the idea of collaborative conservation as the best way to approach environmental problems. Last week I showed how collaboration becomes collusion. Here is another example where collaboration isn’t fast enough and unilateral action by one actor is setting a national precedent. California is betting that as the 800 pound gorilla in the Western electricity grid, what it says, goes.
In September, California told all the suppliers that ship power from coal and natural gas into the state that their power wasn’t wanted unless it was produced at facilities that had been produced in the most environmentally sustainable way possible.
It gets better, California is now demanding that your cell phone charger, VCR, TV and even your computer monitor stop sucking power when they’re off. This might be as much as 10 percent of the total energy use in the state, but it comes from small incremental sources, and replacing all the cell phone charger technology comes at a huge cost.
It’s a lot of people—38 million to be exact—that are now demanding cleaner technologies coming into their home state. California has long been the best conservationist in the country—real energy use has stayed flat since 1970, while incomes are up at least 50% percent. The California Air Resources Board is the envy of airheads around the country. But the question at stake is has this greenhouse gamble gone too far or not far enough?
The strategy, according to the President of the Public Utilities Commission Michael Peevey, is to deal with greenhouse gases “across the board.”
So, the Golden State has begun regulating tailpipe emissions of CO2 from larger cars. And this time other states are following suit. Industry is fighting back; it’s sued to dismiss the case and is hoping that by tying it up in court for year, it can avoid the most onerous of the provisions.
California, though, is undeterred. It’s decided that it has an example to set as the single largest state. It has what economists dismally refer to as “market power”; when combined with a social conscience, it makes for a powerful combination. While this is not collaboration in the sense that two opposing parties have come to the negotiating table, and certainly not collusion, it may be the best news coming out of the West in a long time. Let’s hope that California can retain her resolve until even Texas catches up.
Students must reject indefinite detention
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Thomas Miller
In a speech on Sept. 6, President Bush unintentionally reminded us what conditions gave rise to torture in Abu Ghraib and other prisons. He argued that an “alternative set of procedures” used to interrogate suspected terrorists who “stopped talking” in secret CIA prisons has saved this country from terrorist attacks and urged Congress to support this policy.
Two weeks ago, the U.S. was in the midst of arguably the most controversial debate since the detention of Japanese-Americans during WWII. The result reveals a truly frightening lack of checks, balance, or commitment to basic American principles.
Both houses of Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and ceded to the majority of the President’s positions on how to deal with anyone deemed to be a suspected terrorist. The McCain-Warner-Graham “rebellion” was meaningless—a self-serving attempt to retain individual dignity. Several aspects of the bill are worth mentioning.
First, Congress suspended the right to habeas corpus—the means by which individuals can challenge the legality of their detention—of anyone deemed to be an “unlawful enemy combatant,” a legal definition Bush manufactured without check in the wake of 9/11.
Who are “enemy combatants”? A recent MSNBC article reported that 14,000 individuals are in detention in various locations around the world. Only a handful have been charged with any crime and can be held indefinitely.
Second, Congress expanded the definition of “unlawful enemy combatant,” to include anyone who has “materially supported hostilities against the U.S.,” and anyone who “has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.” With a Secretary like Rumsfeld, who needs to question indefinite detention?
This is no small ordeal. The founders wrote in Article I of the U.S. Constitution, “The Privilege of the Right of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Unless 9/11 set us into a perpetual state of rebellion or invasion, the suspension of habeas corpus is, at least for American citizens, unconstitutional.
Third, the Act leaves interpretation of the Geneva Conventions’ Article 3—banning “outrages on human dignity” and other things such as torture—to the President. This is disconcerting, to say the least. Bush recently stated that Article 3 was too vague and should not apply at all.
Fourth, the Act strips the judiciary of jurisdiction to hear cases on Geneva Convention grounds—a basic check on Executive authority.
Last, Congress conflated 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq and terrorism generally. Administration lawyers justified the suspension of the Geneva Conventions after 9/11 only for “non-state actors” (al Qaeda) and the “failed state” of Afghanistan. Even those conclusions are questionable, but now Congress has transplanted these policies to include basically anyone the Administration chooses to name an “unlawful enemy combatant” in any context. U.S. citizens are not exempt.
What to do now? What happens when our government fails? Outrage certainly is warranted. One of my hopes is that ASWC can become an activist voice for students more generally, especially in collaboration with other student organizations. For example, what would it mean for 50 colleges to issue a coordinated statement in opposition to, or in support of, a political issue? Students can again become a voice for change.
For this reason, I introduced a resolution to ASWC to express strong condemnation of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 based on many of the concerns above. We will vote on the Resolution on Sunday, and I encourage you to contact your Senators with your thoughts. If passed, I will invite the faculty to pass a similar resolution and solicit other student governments to join us.
Certainly terrorism raises important and troubling questions that must be taken seriously. However, I believe we can address these questions without sacrificing our nation’s fundamental principles. Congress’ Act reflects our government’s continuing willingness to throw all rules by the wayside, consolidate power, and suppress democratic checks. With the mid-term elections on the horizon, I hope we can regain dignity on the international stage by reaffirming our country’s commitment to human rights—our most effective foreign policy tool.
Students must reject indefinite detention
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Thomas Miller
In a speech on Sept. 6, President Bush unintentionally reminded us what conditions gave rise to torture in Abu Ghraib and other prisons. He argued that an “alternative set of procedures” used to interrogate suspected terrorists who “stopped talking” in secret CIA prisons has saved this country from terrorist attacks and urged Congress to support this policy.
Two weeks ago, the U.S. was in the midst of arguably the most controversial debate since the detention of Japanese-Americans during WWII. The result reveals a truly frightening lack of checks, balance, or commitment to basic American principles.
Both houses of Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and ceded to the majority of the President’s positions on how to deal with anyone deemed to be a suspected terrorist. The McCain-Warner-Graham “rebellion” was meaningless—a self-serving attempt to retain individual dignity. Several aspects of the bill are worth mentioning.
First, Congress suspended the right to habeas corpus—the means by which individuals can challenge the legality of their detention—of anyone deemed to be an “unlawful enemy combatant,” a legal definition Bush manufactured without check in the wake of 9/11.
Who are “enemy combatants”? A recent MSNBC article reported that 14,000 individuals are in detention in various locations around the world. Only a handful have been charged with any crime and can be held indefinitely.
Second, Congress expanded the definition of “unlawful enemy combatant,” to include anyone who has “materially supported hostilities against the U.S.,” and anyone who “has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.” With a Secretary like Rumsfeld, who needs to question indefinite detention?
This is no small ordeal. The founders wrote in Article I of the U.S. Constitution, “The Privilege of the Right of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Unless 9/11 set us into a perpetual state of rebellion or invasion, the suspension of habeas corpus is, at least for American citizens, unconstitutional.
Third, the Act leaves interpretation of the Geneva Conventions’ Article 3—banning “outrages on human dignity” and other things such as torture—to the President. This is disconcerting, to say the least. Bush recently stated that Article 3 was too vague and should not apply at all.
Fourth, the Act strips the judiciary of jurisdiction to hear cases on Geneva Convention grounds—a basic check on Executive authority.
Last, Congress conflated 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq and terrorism generally. Administration lawyers justified the suspension of the Geneva Conventions after 9/11 only for “non-state actors” (al Qaeda) and the “failed state” of Afghanistan. Even those conclusions are questionable, but now Congress has transplanted these policies to include basically anyone the Administration chooses to name an “unlawful enemy combatant” in any context. U.S. citizens are not exempt.
What to do now? What happens when our government fails? Outrage certainly is warranted. One of my hopes is that ASWC can become an activist voice for students more generally, especially in collaboration with other student organizations. For example, what would it mean for 50 colleges to issue a coordinated statement in opposition to, or in support of, a political issue? Students can again become a voice for change.
For this reason, I introduced a resolution to ASWC to express strong condemnation of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 based on many of the concerns above. We will vote on the Resolution on Sunday, and I encourage you to contact your Senators with your thoughts. If passed, I will invite the faculty to pass a similar resolution and solicit other student governments to join us.
Certainly terrorism raises important and troubling questions that must be taken seriously. However, I believe we can address these questions without sacrificing our nation’s fundamental principles. Congress’ Act reflects our government’s continuing willingness to throw all rules by the wayside, consolidate power, and suppress democratic checks. With the mid-term elections on the horizon, I hope we can regain dignity on the international stage by reaffirming our country’s commitment to human rights—our most effective foreign policy tool.
News Bits
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Alex Henke
Supreme Court says ‘no’ to sex toys hearing, ‘Thomas has talked enough about them’
The Supreme Court refused to hear a case involving the Texas ban of the promotion of sex toys in the shape of sexual organs on Monday, stating that they’d heard enough about sex toys from Justice Thomas. “Fuck sex toys,” said foot-in-mouth specialist and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. “Clarence won’t shut the fuck up about them already. He keeps blabbing on about them, and Mark Foley, and various unsuspecting people…” Justice Thomas responded to the no hearing decision, stating “Shit, I don’t gots no bitches in Texas anyway. They’re a bit too much, so to speak—when
I cop a feel I can’t tell if it’s the goods or the rolls.”
Bobby Brown defends child support delinquency, claims most of USA also wants to cut and run
Wanted criminal and idiot-celebrity-I’m-too-lazy-to-ignore Bobby Brown defended his absence of child support payments by citing a growing portion of the nation’s criticism to the Iraq war. “I mean, shit, it’s totally the same,” said Mr. Brown while lightly batting his nose. “I made a dumb ass decision, and America made a dumb ass decision. I want to cut and run, and, according to the President, so does America. By calling me a criminal, you’re calling America a criminal. And as far as I know, only Hugo Chavez has that right.” Mr. Brown, also enduring a highly public divorce with Whitney Houston, also stated that it’s not right, but it’s okay. He’s going to make it anyway.
Harry Potter #1 book on America’s ban list, #2 is Child Pornography Book
J.K. Rowling surpassed the rest of the controversial competition and became the #1 book on America’s ban list. While meager free speech provisions in an obscure American law document protect Rowling’s work for the time being, many other books that have gathered less attention may still be at risk. Child Pornography Book, a picture book ‘for both children and adults,’ was predicted to hold its position at #1 on the ban list until it actually was banned, with Assassinate Bush Terrorist Bomb Airplane Jihad and The Art of Rectal Prolapse predicted to round out the top 3. Rowling’s popular tales of sorcery
and schoolwork, however, were decidedly less popular than the other books combined. A ban is predicted to follow the event that the entire nation becomes the state of Idaho.
Volleyball loses to Pacific U.
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Christina Russell
Whitman volleyball lost to Oregon’s Pacific University last Friday night in a close competition, one of the few home matches of what has been a travel-intensive season for these athletes.
Last season, Whitman went 1-1 with Pacific University, with each team claiming a win on their opponent’s home court.
However, nine years prior to this, Whitman surfaced, in 17 out of 20 games between the two schools, as winners.
Missionaries lost 23-25 in their first round and lost again in their second match 25-30.
After a quick team meeting, the girls arrived back on the court for a spectacular and triumphant third round, a win for the Missionaries 30-25.
“They really stepped it up,” said freshman volleyball-enthusiast Natalie Popovich, of Whitman’s performance in match three. “They really put up a valiant effort.”
They held on for the fourth round, but it wasn’t enough. Pacific University pulled ahead in the end and took the win in the 5th match.
Senior Kate Borsato, sophomore Rosa Brey and senior Emily Seider are leading the Missionaries this year as team captains.
In stats, Emily Seider is also surfacing as a winner, with a hitting average of .330, which is the top hitting average for the Northwest Conference.
After this match, Whitman will be entering the second half of the Northwest Conference season with a 4-5 record.
Including this loss, the team has lost the last three Northwest Conference games, all of which were played on the road.
Fortunately for the girls, this game against Pacific University marked only the first of six Northwest Conference games on home turf.
So bundle up in Whittie spirit, grab all your friends, and settle in to the Sherwood bleachers at 7 p.m. on Friday, October 13th and again at 7 p.m. on Saturday, October 14th. This weekend the missionaries will be playing the Wilamette Pirates with a 0-6 record and the Linfield Wildcats with a 7-1 record.
The girls encourage everyone to come enjoy the match and help cheer them on.
Soccer suffers another loss
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Caitlin Tortorici
After three overtime ties, the Whitman women’s soccer team lost by a single point to the Whitworth Pirates in the Northwest Women’s Conference on Saturday, Oct. 7 at the Whitman Athletic Fields.
It looked like the home team had an early lead in the bag when Missionary forward Sammie Arthur bounced a shot on goal from the far right side.
Whitworth keeper Leah Motz had no chance of making the save, but a Pirate defender cleared Arthur’s shot.
After twenty-five minutes of back-and-forth, a Whitman defender’s slide tackle missed the ball and knocked down an offender, granting Pirate player Jael Hagerott a penalty kick. Hagerott scored her team’s winning point—her fourth goal of the season.
Whitman nearly evened the score in the second half when first-year midfielder Corina Gabbert nudged an uncontested header just wide of the near post.
Despite the loss, the Whitman team put on a stellar performance against the second-ranked team in the NWC.
While Whitworth out-shot Whitman 13-6, the Pirates put only three shots on goal, just one more than the Missionaries. Junior Kristen Berndt took four shots, one of them on goal.
The Pirates maintained their grip on second place in the conference, upping their record to 6-1-1. The missionaries are currently 1-3-3.
What’s in a name?
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Emma Wood – France
I had just settled in with tea and a book when my host father came into the kitchen, pulled up a stool and began to pluck the feathers one by one from his freshly shot partridge. “Don’t worry, it’s under the table,” he said, and I nonchalantly nodded—inwardly squirming at every mysterious crackle.
He’s the type of man who’s always occupied with his children, his news or his mirror and necktie, so with the pretext of reading I began to grill him. “Where did you meet Beatrice? Did you grow up together in Nantes?” In snooping through the family photos, I had come across a wedding photo (in which they couldn’t have been much out of high school) in an ancient-looking tiny stone church. The church at “Les Lucs sur Boulougne” (just outside Nantes) is the same where their daughter Alexia will be married next June. “People don’t often move far from where they grow up,” he explained. “When we talk about ‘birthcity,’ we say ‘berceau.’”—which means, in English, ‘crib.’ Poetic, isn’t it? He didn’t see it.
What poets, what pragmatists these people are! I never much liked geography, geology, or anything that involved memorizing lists of names with no immediate application (What 12-year-old needs to know the capital city of Ghana?). But now, as I travel, I begin to see how vital these names are; not just names of places, but names for rocks and restaurants. I see now why Hashimoto is obsessed with names, and why my crazy geology housemates always talk about scarps. Nantes, Saint Malo, Mont Saint Michel, la Place Mellinet, Place Canclaux, and my favourite: Rue des Trois Croissants! People care about their places, enough to give a name to every last scrap of dirt. You never know what one little name will open up in conversation. Even “France” unlocked mysterious pieces of history in people I thought I knew well. “My daughter’s in France.” “I lived in Paris when my husband worked for the military.” “I worked in the south of France as a nanny, just out of high school.”
The BFG collected dreams; I am collecting names to bottle up and bring back to the states. Names of cities, creperies—names to give reference points for all the stories I’ll want to tell. But I don’t want to be that type of tourist who lives with the perpetual thought of her post-trip PowerPoint presentation.
Names of places mean little unless they’re places lived-in and well-loved: Good old General Mellinet who points, with his dagger fiercely in hand, in the direction of my house. Le Cigale, the plush restaurant where I huddle over five-euro hot chocolate on rainy afternoons. Oh, I want to see everything! But countries come best in small bites.
My country ‘tis of thee: sweet land of liberty
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sophie Johnson – Chicago, Illinois
You might get the wrong impression if you walked by Margie Sadinsky’s house. The 60-something-year-old woman casts her strictly-Democrat ballot in every election, is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and makes the best organic apple crisp in the universe. Her modest blue house, though, has a rather defining characteristic: a giant American flag is displayed just above the mailbox.
If you ask Margie why she so prominently exhibits this nationalistic symbol, she’ll answer without hesitation: “Patriotism is not another word for Republican.” How often we forget that the two are not synonymous.
It’s taken me many angst-ridden teenage years to realize that this is a great country. After the 2000 presidential election, I joked with my friends that I was going to move to Canada as soon as I was old enough; upon the painfully similar election results four years later, I seriously contemplated relocating to the north. In Canada, I figured, I wouldn’t have to worry about hanging chads or corrupt congressmen. Everything would be maple leaves and venison and re-runs of “Degrassi.” Canadian life was clearly where it was at.
And maybe I was right. But what I failed to realize then was that we cannot define this country by its administration. I understand that it is difficult to separate a nation from its government, and ours is not always a government to be proud of. Many liberals agree that even the most Democratic presidents in history were vastly conservative in their politics.
This, after all, is a country that has a bad reputation for good reasons, especially today. Since the war in Iraq, there have been more than 2,900 American soldier casualties and between 50,000 and 150,000 Iraqi and Afghan causalities. Despite the Geneva Convention edicts, the United States has gained the status of a country that has no qualms with utilizing torture procedures on war prisoners. It is no wonder international criticism of this country is at an all-time high.
There has not been a day since the United States bombed Baghdad in 2003 that I haven’t believed that this war was ludicrous, counterproductive, and launched for more-than-questionable reasons. The Bush administration, like many past U.S. administrations, commits acts of terror in order to get richer and more powerful. In my mind, the evidence to support this notion is practically irrefutable. Still, I love this country and I am proud to be a part of it.
In a CNN debate with Bill Bennett in 2002, Noam Chomsky said, “I choose to live in what I think is the greatest country in the world, which is committing horrendous terrorist acts and should stop.” Here was one of the biggest and most outspoken critics of United States policy asserting that the same country he vocally rebukes is in fact the greatest in the world.
And in so many ways it is. We are a country that is framed around rebellion, after all—we came into our own after 13 colonies, sick of British governance, fought and won a war in order to gain independence in 1776. Although the United States we know today was built on the backs of slaves and indentured servants, although our history is stained with the blood of millions of unfairly oppressed people, that original rebellion has carried itself through generations and generations, and it still thrives.
This is a country made of people, not of policies. The typical American is a rebel, a radical, a revolutionary. We are the heirs of immigrants who escaped tyranny for a better life, or the slaves that survived unfathomable hardships. We are the heirs of the brave.
Last week, Ebonee Stevenson, a college student and activist, gathered together with two dozen other angry women and stormed Chicago’s City Hall during a City Council meeting. They came demanding answers: Why was their neighborhood—a historically African-American community south of Hyde Park—being gentrified? Where were the displaced working poor going to? How was the city going to help its citizens when it came to matters like this?
“It was so cool,” Ebonee told me, “all those angry people determined to make those aldermen listen.”
Of course, the group didn’t find exact answers to their difficult questions. What they found, though, was a sense of connection and the freedom to fight for what they believed in. These people—not the aldermen, not the mayor, not Condoleeza Rice or George W. Bush—are the people that make up the United States of America.
The fighters will not always win. It is easy to become discouraged when the newspapers are racked with death tolls and political sex scandals. But despite all that, the rebellion continues. It’s written into our history: If something is wrong, it is the people that will not rest until it is made right.
This is my country. I sing the National Anthem, and I salute the flag. But more than that, I band together with the people to fight mercilessly for what I believe in. I do it because it is right; I do it because I can.
Experiencing Ben Harper, Madrid-Style
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sally Sorte – Spain
“Yesterday seems like a life ago,” because I went to a concert. This was no black tie, knee-length skirt affair; this was Ben Harper. Silly, that I’m a fellow West Coaster and flew across nine time zones to see him. This warranted some dirty looks from A-haters, but I told them to “¡Vete a freír espárragos!” (Go fry some asparagus!)—the Spanish equivalent of “Shove that where the sun don’t shine.” Well, más o menos, they’ll probably both cause discoloration.
After enacting certain scenes of “Alice and Wonderland” at a friend’s “piso” and deciding that the cheeseburger in the microwave should probably not be making “fuegos artificiales,” we were prepared to take on the Harper.
“Does anyone know how to get there?” Apt question.
A few phone calls later, and after a beer can was pried out of my friend’s grasp “de aceite” (drinking on the “calles” is illegal in Madrid), we were stumbling onto the line four metro. School girls on their way home sat on the floor, legs splayed, in their uniform plaid skirts. My guy friends were practically creaming their coffee as a 14-year-old showed off the “cigarillos” she had purchased.
Complaining about the stairs, a friend from Pomona remarked, “Look how socialist this is that we have to go down before we can go up.”
We entered the labyrinth, and without Daedalus to instruct us, we opted for a Spanish security guard. We lined up because our group had seats on a few different “plantas.” I began people-watching like it was an intramural sport, and I was on my way towards a blue shirt when the security guard reached for my ticket. He looked me up and down, smiled (I think he liked my red, yellow and green ensemble), and pointed for me to follow a group of people headed at an acute angle for some double doors. I obediently followed, expecting one of the backs in front of me to belong to one of my friends. I quickened my pace and my hopes were dashed; negatory.
“Will I even recognize Ben Harper when I find him?” I wondered. “I don’t know what he looks like. Oh well, love is blind.”
Feeling lost, I asked a cleaning person where I should go (this strategy works on the streets), but apparently this “limpiadora” was better versed in the bathroom so that’s where I found myself. I “stalled” and then departed to show my ticket to another security guard. After consulting his crony he pointed me farther downward. I felt more oriented when I eventually found myself at the bar (familiar territory nowadays), but still no concert. I looked for a sufficiently metro European, there was, por supuesto, an ample supply of gel-haired men and I chose the one wearing a Lockhart shade of persimmon.
He was the ace to my face card because he spoke English. The mystery was that the floor/seat number had either not been printed, or had been ripped off of my ticket upon entrance. Forgoing the necessary conversation that would earn me a $15 drink, I proceeded to two more security guards and showed them my ticket.
Laughing, one showed the ripped off corner to his buddy (an “Engraved Invitation?”), and then ushered me through the door onto the floor. After weaving my way through the crowd to the stage I realized I wasn’t going to find my friends. I looked behind me, I’d forgotten to trail a back-tracking thread like Theseus, yet without a Minotaur in sight I may as well stay and enjoy the show.
It was time to make friends. I spotted two blondes and began edging toward them, but once I got a view of their “adult shop” outfits I turned around, skating across the beer-glazed floor on my platform flip-flops like Pippi Longstocking on her scrub brushes, only less effective. “Pippilotta, delicatessa, windowshade, mackrelmint, efraim’s …”
A tall guy was waving his hand and I charged like a toro to red. “Hey, I saw you waving your hand and thought you were my friend,” lie. Lie. Myth? “But since you’re not,” truth, “can you tell me where to go?” Rhetorical question. After he unsuccessfully looked for my floor/seat number like all of his more qualified predecessors, he introduced me to his gang of friends, all guys, all Catalonians. I switched to Spanish and was warmly welcomed; Spanish hospitality.
The “Ojos de Brujo” opening finished and plumes of smoke began to issue upwards from the crowd during the stage change, like hydrothermal vents. One of my new friends took a packet of white powder and stirred it into a cup of clear liquid. The clear liquid was probably water, but I’m betting the white substance was less benign. I declined the imminent offer, “take care of your body like you care for your soul,” and focused onstage.
A raging concert and multiple encores ensued. Ben laid his guitar flat on his lap and playing it like a Harp(er)sichord and then used his teeth! At one point, Ben came up behind his drummer and played over the top of his Rastafari dreadlocks, reminding me of that camp skit where one person encircles their arm around the other, creating the effect of a human tyrannosaurus rex, and uses their arms to blindly brush the other person’s teeth and apply lipstick to the other person’s mouth.
The rest is a blur. Yeah we’re “One dimensional fool[s] in a three dimensional world,” but “What good is a cynic with no better plan?” “I believe in a better way,” we aren’t innocent criminals unless we do it, “With our own, with our own two hands.”
From a broad
Existence at Whitman as a game of dice, for better or worse
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sarah McCarthy
There are few things worse than not wanting to be grateful when you know that you ought to be. Without exception, we, at Whitman, ought to be.
We go to a nice school with green lawns and waddling ducks. We don’t have to put quarters in the laundry machines. We can request a mix of Alfredo sauce and pesto for our Fire and Spice dishes. We live, in short, in comfort; we live well. Everyone knows this, objectively, but being told that you should be grateful doesn’t help much of anything.
It is easy to feel otherwise, particularly if it is 4 a.m. and your computer has decided it would rather not have a working hard drive anymore. It is easy to feel otherwise when you have far too much to do, when you are forced to go pinging, when you feel betrayed by a friend, when the library has run out of study rooms and the printers have run out of ink.
It is easy to feel anything but grateful, sometimes, because even though we may be lucky in a larger sense, that doesn’t make the smaller miseries any better.
I was not in a grateful mood on a spring night my freshman year. I would characterize myself that night as in more of a go-out-to-the-wheatfields-and-scream-numerous-piercing-screams-and curse-and-literally-beat-the-ground-with-my-fists kind of mood instead. Unfortunately, though I was in the wheat fields, I was engaged in the more socially-acceptable activity of half-listening to a conversation between a few of my dorm mates. There are few places better for talking than the wheat fields on a dark night. The only light is a faint glow coming from the prison, the sky is large, the wheat makes a slightly creepy rustling sound, and even though nothing exciting is likely to happen, there seems a possibility that something awe-inspiring will.
The conversation that I was half-listening to was centered primarily on zombies—most notably how one would deal with a zombie attack, particularly if said zombie were to turn YOU into a zombie as well.
I started really listening, though, when the conversation turned from zombies to the slightly larger question of existence—of exactly what the probability was that all of us would exist, be going to the same school, and know each other within that school. The probability, we determined, was of course almost infinitely tiny—far, far tinier than winning every lottery for the rest of your life. The probability, Brian Cutter suggested, was that of rolling two billion threes, all in a row.
“What if that’s how it works?” he suggested, “That there are dice up in the sky, and before you get to exist you have to roll two billion of the same number.”
Oh, it sounds a little silly—it doesn’t sound like a deep philosophy that can change a person’s life. I won’t claim otherwise—it is silly, it is not likely to be true, and it has not markedly changed my life in any way. But think about just for a moment. You, in whatever amorphous pre-existing state that you want to imagine yourself in with a small red Yahtzee-like dice cup, rolling over and over. “Come on, three,” I imagine myself saying. “Just a few million more.” I imagine other pre-extent beings around me, throwing down dice in disgust when, they keep rolling the wrong number or, worse, when after a good streak of several hundred, they roll a one when they needed a four. I imagine a pre-existence party with lots of dancing and wine when I, at last, make my two billionth two.
I know not everyone can always feel this way, but I know that even on my very worst scream-in-the-wheatfield nights I am pretty glad to be here. Here as in Whitman, where I have indeed learned and grown and changed and done every other darn thing that liberal arts colleges assure you that you will do. Here as in Walla Walla.
Walla Walla has taken some getting use to, but it has so many delights: the Sew and Vac and Spa, a store that combines quilts, vacuums, and hot tubs in one handy location, the Sub Shop on Boyer which appears to have exactly one operating hour a week, and Mr. Ed’s, the restaurant down Isaacs that has a real live Elvis impersonator. I am pleased to be here, as in the Northwestern corner of the United States. And here, most importantly, on Earth at all. Of course, it doesn’t change anything, really—there are still going to be miserable nights, tragedies, days when maybe you’re wishing you hadn’t picked such a cooperative piece of die. There will still be, in short, a lot of bad luck. Your computer will eat your thesis and smack its lips greedily. You will run out of flex dollars. Someone you love will die. Facebook will introduce News Feed.
When those happen to me I still, of course, pout and groan and have a desire to run out and beat my fists upon the wheat field ground. I still curse my bad luck—I am no paradigm of virtue. But I do sometimes manage to stop and wonder, how much good luck can I ask for? I already rolled two billion threes.
Politics Page conundrum: When did ‘Politics’ become ‘Democratics’?
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Marcus Koontz
Yesterday as I sat down to peruse the Pioneer I turned to page 12, the politics page. I read the Bill Grant article. It was well written and informative. Then as I read on, first the Bob Biles story and then the piece on Goldwater, I noticed a disturbing pattern. I searched for a section title, fearing I was in the wrong section. It said “Politics,” not “Democratics,” which seemed misleading.
I had the impression that it was unprofessional to completely eschew any semblance of balance. I thought that it was the opinion section that was supposed to make opinions known. Maybe I was just wrong. Or maybe there is something interesting going on here.
I almost hate to be the one beating the drum of the “media is biased” line. I will be the first one to admit that there could be one or two legitimate reasons behind the choice of stories. After all, the stories do all have the common theme of being immediately connected to Whitman itself in one way or another. But why did the editor decide to put all of those stories together at once? Why was the politics page prefaced with the push “get involved in this year’s critical elections”? In law cases all it takes for judges to recuse themselves is the appearance of bias. This section not only has the appearance of bias but smells strongly of it.
The makeup of U.S. politics is split relatively evenly between Democrats and Republicans, with a few stragglers in there (like my party, Libertarians). Even if I were to grant that Whitman is dissimilar to the U.S. and skewed to the left, I would argue that there are still quite a few of us in the minority that should be taken into account. Variety in the choices of stories that are chosen would be appreciated and may even enlighten or give new perspectives to those who are American Liberals.
Even if for the sake of argument I said that everyone that goes to Whitman is liberal, my argument would still hold up. Why would we give people only information about candidates they are already likely to vote for? It would be like singing “Amazing Grace” to a gospel choir. Nobody is improved by that kind of affirmation. So the argument for that stance goes something like this: “I know that you believe what they believe, and that even if you didn’t, you wouldn’t vote for that ‘dirty Republican’ anyway, so even though the vote is a shoo-in, I’m going to tell you what you already believe anyway, just for affirmation.”
Vigorous debate and competition of ideas are what our country is founded on. So if you find yourself leaning liberal, you might consider being more liberal on hearing ideas and political stances that differ from your own. There are no negatives to this approach. If your ideas and politics are truly strong in merit, then hearing another’s ideas will only give you a chance to sharpen your ideas and find the weaknesses in theirs. Conversely, what if your ideas are flawed? How will you ever know if you have your head in the sand if you refuse to listen to and consider someone else’s view? Diversity should not only exist as a buzzword for skin color and sex. It should exist for ideas and political thought. What would the world look like if we all thought the same? What if we were without opportunities to learn from someone else’s differing view?
‘The Departed’ dazzles audiences
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Josh Boris
Go see this movie. Plain and simple: Just do it.
Martin Scorcese has been an excellent contributor to the film industry for over 30 years. While his last several films (“Gangs of New York” and “The Aviator”) were met with pretty good reviews, they were a departure from his earlier films expounding fast talking gangsters and criminal delinquency. The “Departed” is a return to form, and you could say Scorcese has found his home again, although in Boston rather than his trademark New York.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon lead a star-studded cast as two young police recruits who take drastic turns in their career path. Colin Sullivan (Damon) is a bright, talented detective who quickly rises through the ranks to become head of the Special Investigations unit. However, there’s one catch: He’s been groomed from a young age to join the police department as the special informant for crime boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson).
Meanwhile, Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) turns to the police force to try to escape the criminal past of his relatives. He is immediately placed in jail in order to establish himself as a felon so that he can infiltrate Costello’s criminal organization. As the rat in Costello’s organization tries to gather evidence to take him down, the mole in the police department feeds Costello information so that he’s one step ahead of the police. When Costigan realizes there’s a mole and Sullivan realizes there’s a rat, it becomes a race to expose the other before each is found out.
Seriously, this movie does everything right. Like “Goodfellas” it has that entertaining mix of ridiculous violence and offbeat humor (as a warning, if violence and racist and sexist humor aren’t your thing, that could be a problem). Alec Baldwin as an arrogant police chief and Mark Wahlberg as a caustic detective are superbly hilarious in their straight talking indifference to political correctness and other people’s feelings. Scorcese is excellent at tightening the screws bit by bit to ratchet up the tension slowly throughout the movie; I was so engaged that this two and a half hour long movie never dragged or seemed overly long. While the film works well overall, it’s the little details that make the picture, from the tension-filled use of cell phones to the subtle reminders of the intertwined destinies of Sullivan and Costigan.
Usually I take this space to write about what I didn’t like about the movie, but I enjoyed this movie so much that I’m just going to skip that step entirely.
Bottom line is, as the Oscar contenders begin to appear en masse, this is the first that I will guarantee will win at least one, if not several. If this movie doesn’t win any Oscars, I’ll eat this review. Not to beat a dead horse, but if you’re a film fan at all you should see this movie. It is totally amazing.
Cinema Art Series brings award-winning Danish film ‘Brothers’ to campus
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Caitlin Tortorici
The 2006 Cinema Art Series, which commenced in mid-September with the nationally-renowned Chinese film “2046” (Sept. 15 and 17) and “The Beat My Heart Skipped” (Sept. 22 and 24). It continued Sept. 29 and Oct. 1 with “Brothers,” the award-winning Danish film written and directed by Suzanne Bier.
Principle cast members of “Brothers” include Ulrich Thomsen, Connie Nielson and Nikolaj Lie Kaas. The plot of “Brothers” somewhat resembles that of “Pearl Harbor.” Michael (Thomsen) has a successful military career, a beautiful wife (Neilson) and two daughters. His younger brother Jannik has little direction and often clashes with the law.
After being sent to Afghanistan on a U.N. mission, Michael goes missing in action before he is presumed dead. In the meantime, Jannik proves himself capable of taking responsibility for his brother’s family, and inevitably develops a more-than-platonic relationship with Michael’s wife, Sarah. After suffering months of trauma in an Afghani prison, Michael returns home for a less-than-peachy reunion.
“Brothers” gained international recognition in 2004 and 2005 with eight awards. Among thse were the Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award for World Cinema and the Indianapolis Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize. It received a total of 20 nominations.
Director Suzanne Bier’s other award-winning features include “Freud Leaving Home” (1990), “Family Matters” (1993), “Like it Never Was Before” (1995), “Credo” (1997), and “The One and Only” (1999). “The One and Only” won a host of Danish Film Academy and Danish Film Critics’ awards.
The Cinema Art Series, organized by Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Film Studies Robert Sickles, features half a dozen films from around the world. All showings are held at 7:30 p.m. in Hunter Conservatory.
The next featured film, “Crimson Gold,” will be shown on Oct. 13 and 15. Directed by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, “Crimson Gold” was forbidden by the Islamic government of Iran. It received international recognition at the Cannes, Chicago, Tbilisi and Valladolid film festivals in 2003 and 2004.
Other upcoming films include the German “The Edukators” (Nov. 3 and 5), and “The Agronomist” (Nov. 10 and 12).
‘Science’ is a whimsical trip into world of dreams
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Erin Salvi
Michel Gondry, director of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” brings us yet another visually and psychologically dazzling film with “The Science of Sleep.”
Like “Eternal Sunshine,” “The Science of Sleep” explores complex issues of the mind. This time, though, Gondry deals with what influences our dreams, how much control we have over them, and how much they end up controlling us.
I can’t quite imagine this film having been created by anyone but Gondry, as so much of the film is dependent on the visual world of magical realism that he so masterfully composes.
The film focuses on Stephane (Gael García Bernal), a shy, inventive young man. Stephane moves to Paris because his mother has promised to get him a job as a creative artist for a calendar-making firm.
On his first day of work, however, Stephane discovers that the only opportunity he’ll have for creativity in his new job will be in finding innovative ways to avoid going to work.
After coming to terms with the fact that his mother lured him to Paris with a devastatingly boring job so that he would be close to her, Stephane begins to concentrate his energy on his enchanting neighbor, who happens to be named Stephanie.
Stephane and Stephanie seem to hit it off at first, but Stephane’s tendency to let his dream-life interfere with his waking hours begins to negatively affect their relationship.
Gondry gets a little lost in his storytelling, but it hardly matters because visually, this film is mesmerizing. Gondry creates a stark contrast between the bland atmosphere of the office where Stephane works and the world he enters when he falls asleep. This world includes everything from a talk-show-style television program starring Stephane, cities constructed from cardboard toilet-paper rolls, and oceans made of cellophane.
Gondry so draws his audience into the world he has formed that Stephane’s confusion between dreams and the real world transfers over to the audience—sometimes it is difficult to tell if what you are watching is a dream or if it is reality. But this is all intentional, all a part of Gondry’s adept command of his craft.
In addition to the stunning visual elements of the film, Bernal’s performance is captivating. As Stephane switches back and forth from fantasy to reality, Bernal is both whimsical and bashful, confident and vulnerable, love-struck and love-phobic—always with a quiet but electric energy pouring forth from his core.
The ease with which Bernal slips into his character perfectly allows Gondry to explore his central question: if our dreams can provide us with happier, more fulfilling lives, is it a problem if we wish to reside in them all the time?
Maybe, Gondry says. However, he seems to suggest that if two people can together recreate the ecstasy of a dream-life within their reality, it will result in the ideal, euphoric life to which we all aspire. But Gondry shows us that this is no easy feat; “The Science of Sleep” demonstrates that the science of life is a nearly impossible formula to master, but it is this “nearly” that leaves us with hope, if not certainty.
Here’s hoping someone will bring this movie to Walla Walla, because it is fantastic.
New Stevens exhibit features readable art
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Lizzie Norgard
For those who attended the Stevens Gallery opening last Tuesday, a game of “tell-a-picture” awakened the spirit of the art now on display.
Tell-a-picture is an amusing game which involves alternately writing sentences describing pictures and drawing pictures based on sentences composed by other members of the group.
It introduced the theme of “readable art”—art that incorporates text into its composition. The readable art in the Stevens Gallery is a combination of open submissions from the campus and work from the World Literature 120 class: Myth, Folktale and Children’s Literature.
The use of text in the submissions varies widely in its form and meaning. Many pieces in the exhibit are complete stories, usually containing pictures and sometimes bound as books.
The pieces from World Literature 120 are designed as children’s books and tell original children’s stories, complete with binding and pictures. Several submissions from Book Arts classes are also on display.
There are other pieces telling stories as well, though they are not in the form of bound books. Still others use words without arranging sentences or a coherent narrative.
First-year Alex Kerr’s children’s book, entitled “Billy is Brave,” is displayed with the World Literature 120 pieces.
“My favorite books as a kid were the ones where the hero won by being clever or the stars aligned somehow to provide him with exactly what he needed,” Kerr said in an e-mail.
“I was trying to make a story where Billy brought all these random items prepared for one thing—each with a given purpose—and they all ended up being used for another.”
Describing some of his design strategies, Kerr said, “Ms. Wei-Peng taught us a lot about emphasis of the character’s location on the page.
“I wanted to keep Billy small but in the center so that he looked weak but significant. Also, all the motion heads to the right and on to the next page, which we were taught indicates progression towards adventure.”
The curators of the Stevens Gallery, junior Margot Wielgus and senior Shelby Blessing, said that they developed the idea for the readable art exhibit when the professor of World Literature 120 asked to have her students’ work on children’s literature put on display.
They agreed and called for open submissions from the campus via the student list serve for any kind of readable art.
As they generally do, the curators put everything they received on display.
Peace Corps visits students
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Andrea Miller
Life is calling, how far will you go?
So says the lead-in of the video shown at the Peace Corps information session held on Oct. 4. The Peace Corps presentation aimed to sell students on the great opportunities the Corps could provide after the liberal arts experience. For a minimum of 27 months, Peace Corps volunteers live, work and help in one of more than 75 countries around the world.
Tom Langehaug, a representative from the Seattle office, worked as a small business volunteer in Panama. After three months of training and living with a host family, Tom was assigned to an impoverished community of about 2,000 people. The first six months of his stay included some of the hardest times of his life, in part because he realized his Spanish speaking abilities were limited. Langehaug stayed in Panama for three years working with businesses and in education before returning to work with the Peace Corps in Seattle.
Those interested in joining the Peace Corps should expect the application process to take anywhere from ten months to a year. After submitting the initial applications, applicants receive an interview with Peace Corps staff. When nominated, applicants are given a date of departure and put up for medical, legal, and suitability review. The Peace Corps then offers the applicant an invitation to serve as a volunteer.
Volunteers work in one of 25 programs, ranging from education, health and HIV/AIDS to agriculture, the environment, and information technology. Volunteers receive extensive language, cultural and technical training before beginning work with their communities. For more information on the Peace Corps and applying the Peace Corps, check out www.peacecorps.gov.
5K ‘Crush’ helps Whitman Cycling Team
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Christina Russell
The second annual Walla Walla Crush 5K Run and Walk went off without a sprain last Saturday. Runners from all walks of life arrived at 9 a.m. at the vineyards of Pepper Bridge and Northstar Wineries, to pay heed to the great tradition of running and to support Whitman’s very own Cycling Club, who has hosted the event two years and running.
This year Whitman’s Brian Woods and Sam Clarke lead the run representing “Bacchus,” the Greek god of wine. They dressed in elaborate togas and laurel leaf headbands and still managed to claim the title as co-champions of the race.
Participants in the event included Whitman’s Cross Country team, many of whom arrived dressed in costume. There were running pumpkins, a Pokémon and one man that looked ready for work in a suit and tie.
No fewer than six Whitties claimed top times: Sam Clarke and Maria Corcoran clocked in as the fastest in the 21-and-over age group, while Brian Woods and Abby Higgins won 20-and-under and Patrick Moore and Rebecca Jensen won for ages 21-29.
In addition to traditional race categories, the Crush also featured a “chariot” race, which was brought back this year by popular demand, for mothers and fathers pushing strollers.
Post-race food, provided by Huckleberry’s and Merchants included a plethora of Cliff and Luna Bars and sausage egg wraps.
Joanne Schmitz, who volunteered her time alongside the Whitman Cycling Club, made this event possible.
There were 68 prizes made available to winners in a multitude of age groups and capacities, including wine, goblets, various merchandise and gift cards. The fastest male and female in the 21-and-over categories received commemorative Riedel carafes and the under-21 men and women won Brooks running shoes. First-year cyclist Kendi Thomas said, “It was fulfilling to be able to connect with Walla Walla citizens in this capacity.”
Whitman fined for farm mishap
October 12, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sarah McCarthy
Everyone makes mistakes—though everyone doesn’t have to pay $100,922.26 for making one. This is, however, what Whitman College had to pay back to the Farm Service Agency, due to a miscommunication regarding its use of one of the farms it owns in Umatilla County.
Whitman owns 15 farms in Southeastern Washington and Northeastern Oregon. The farms both provide an extra source of income for the college and employment for local farmers.
Whitman had enrolled a number of the acres in the Conservation Reserve Program. The program, which is a part of the Farm Service Agency and the Department of Agriculture, gives a monetary reward to farmers who leave their farmland fallow and harvest no crops for profit. The goal of the Conservation Reserve Program, as they state on their website is “to encourage farmers to convert highly erodible cropland or other environmentally sensitive acreage to vegetative cover, such as tame or native grasses, wildlife plantings, trees, filterstrips, or riparian buffers.” Peter Harvey, the Whitman treasurer, explained that “the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is designed to encourage farmers to restore poor farming land to its native grasses and plantings.” Land with native grasses rather than crops helps prevent soil erosion and reduces sedimentation in surrounding streams and lakes.
The communication mishap occurred because Whitman believed it was acceptable to lease out land that they had enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program. Whitman Farm Committee representative Fred Kimball reportedly said that the tenant must pay a cash lease for his part of the college’s acreage. The arrangement was not put in writing, and other members of the Farm Committee were allegedly unaware of the change. With the income from the tenant, the total amount that Whitman received from its land exceeded the maximum limit allowed by the CRP.
In a ten-page decision, the Farm Service Agency determined that Whitman violated the payment limitation provisions of the Conservation Reserve Program. The provisions dictate that an owner can receive no more than $50,000 per year for land enrolled in the CRP. Due to the violation, Whitman had to refund the monetary rewards of the past two years plus interest that it had received from the Farm State Agency. The money was paid from the income that the college receives from its other farms, and will not affect Whitman’s ability to operate as it always has.
“We take great pride in the part we play in agriculture in Eastern Washington. It’s an important part of our financing,’’ said President George Bridges. “At the same time we realize the college made a mistake.”
Whitman Farm Committee member and trustee Jim Hayner said, “It is the policy of Whitman College to abide by and adhere to all government farm program rules.”
To avoid problems with its farmland in the future, Whitman is looking into a variety of solutions to improve communication and ensure that all provisions of its contracts are understood. The Whitman Farm Committee, which consists of both Whitman staff and local farmers, will undergo more extensive training. The college is also looking to hire a consultant whom they can look to for advice about these matters.
“Whitman’s farm program has grown in size over many years and with the added complexity of federal regulations governing farm programs we are examining new approaches to managing the farms,” said George Bridges in an e-mail interview. “We want to ensure that the mistake we made does not happen again.”
XC’s ‘best team’ in four years has strong start
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Gayle Chung
“This is the best team we’ve had in the last four years…and possibly beyond that,” said Adam Kopet, one of the two captains for the men’s cross country team.
The team returned on Sept. 30 from the Charles Bowles Invitational, bringing back promising results for both the men’s and women’s teams.
First-year runner Yasmeen Colis placed 44 in the women’s 5,000 meters out of 298 women who ran. Colis finished 18:58.75, while Sara McCune, also a first-year, was close behind, placing 47 in 19:01.65.
“We have a lot of people who graduated last year. But despite the inexperience of our collegiate running, the women are doing phenomenally well,” said Kopet.
In a written response, senior Sam Clark, the other captain for the men’s team, agreed. “The new women runners are the best collection of talent we’ve had,” Clark said.
The women’s team as a whole has been running well. Of the 11 women who ran in the Charles Bowles Invitational, nine ran personal best times.
The men have also been doing well in the invitational. “Our incoming freshmen males are putting together the fastest races we’ve seen from first-years in all my time at Whitman,” said Clark.
In the men’s 8,000 meters, Clark placed 69th with a time of 26:04.35. Junior teammate Brian Woods came close behind, finishing 71 with a time of 26:04.85 among the 305 runners who ran at the invitational.
So far this season, the team has run four meets, including the home invitational on Sept. 2. The team has two more weeks until the Bigfoot Open on Oct. 14 at Spokane Falls Community College. Two weeks after that, the team will be going to the NCAA D-III West Regionals in Prado, California.
“For the conference, it’s hard to predict out completely what’s going to happen,” said Kopet, when asked his thoughts on how cross country might finish the season. “We’ve been holding people out. Though our women are in fourth or fifth place, and our men are in fifth or sixth place in the conference.”
Soccer faces formidable UPS
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Andrea Miller
On a perfect, 80-degree Saturday afternoon, the Whitman women’s soccer team made it on the scoreboard with 31 seconds left in regulation play to tie up the game against the University of Puget Sound Loggers.
Whitman women’s soccer coach Scott Shields said he and the team “knew it was going to be hard going in” because UPS is nationally ranked.
Neither team scored in the first half, but with 14 minutes left in the game, UPS got one past Whitman goalkeeper Erica Goad. With less than 35 seconds on the clock, sophomore Kristen Mittelsteadt passed the ball to first-year Corina Gabbert, who knocked the ball into the net, evening out the score.
Two overtimes later, neither team had scored, and the game ended in a 1-1 tie.
Coach Shields said that the defenders, seniors Erin Frame and Lindsay Wymer, “did a fantastic job in back.” He also noted the good performance and hard work of the forwards, junior Kristen Berndt and senior Sammy Arthur, and the goalkeeper, sophomore Erica Goad. Shields said that the game was “one of the best [they’ve] put together so far.”
The Whitman men’s soccer team lost their game1-0 against UPS.
The UPS Loggers remain undefeated this season.
The Loggers made nine shots during the game, eight of which were saved by Whitman goalkeeper sophomore Brett Axlerod, while the Missionaries were only able to make two attempts with no goals.
Whitman lead in foul calls 21-6. Also, referees administered yellow cards to five members of the Whitman team, most of them given out in the last few minutes of the game.
Much of the Whitman crowd and the UPS crowd disapproved of referees’ decisions throughout the game, and expressed disagreement with the calls.
Potential congressman has Whitman legacy and farmer friendly platfrom
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Christina Russell
Peter Goldmark is looking to claim representation of Washington’s Fifth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives to contest the traditionally Republican-voting pattern on a Democratic ticket.
Washington’s Fifth encompasses the Eastern Washington counties of Okanogan, Ferry, Stevens, Pend Oreille, Lincoln, Spokane, Adams, Whitman, Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin. This district—which is also home to Whitman College—has been represented by Republican Cathy McMorris since 2005.
Anyone who has frequented the wheat fields to watch a sunset can testify to the fact that this area is predominantly farming country, which typically votes Republican. Goldmark, however, is offering a perhaps unique, Democratic solution to the economic distress farmers and ranchers like himself are facing in the Fifth District.
According to his campaign biography, Peter is a well-educated candidate. After graduating from Okanogan High School in 1967 he attended Haverford College for Undergraduate School before he went on to the University of California at Berkeley in 1971, where he earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology.
From Berkeley he returned to the east, and at Harvard University he participated in a postdoctoral fellowship in neurobiology.
Goldmark was married in 1972 and raised a family of five in Okanogan with his late wife Georgia, who died of cancer in 2003. He has put three of his children through Whitman College; Jay Goldmark is the most recent alumnus, who graduated in 2006.
While Goldmark has served in multiple capacities on public service issues involving agriculture, science and education, he is at a disadvantage to the incumbent Cathy McMorris in that McMorris has 10 years of legislative experience and is representing the more dominant Republican platform.
What is unique about Goldmark’s campaign this fall is that while farmers and ranchers in the Fifth District have in the past sided with Republicans, traditional solutions to prevalent agriculture problems have not proven successful.
In an interview with “The Inlander,” a liberal Spokane publication, Goldmark claimed that he is looking to deliver aid to his fellow ranching community in order to solve economical problems that have surfaced in the face of rising energy prices in a market in which prices have not fluctuated in generations.
Regarding the war in Iraq, Goldmark said that it appears to be “adventuring for oil,” which is why part of his platform is supporting alternative energy sources that he calls “National Security Corps.”
He wants to encourage farmers to utilize biofuels and resources like canola, switchgrass and mustard. “Imagine the good to our communities,” Goldmark said to “The Inlander,” “to grow, process, refine and burn our own domestic fuel supply.”
Plants to Politics
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Lizzie Norgard
When it comes to public participation in politics, Walla Walla County Commissioner candidate Bob Biles believes there is a dire need for change.
Bob Biles is the Democratic candidate for Walla Walla County Commissioner #3. This is a position that includes administrative, legislative and quasi-judicial responsibilities. Besides balancing budgets for all the offices of the county government, the county commissioner also makes judgments on public land-use issues and can introduce changes to the county code.
According to Biles, the county commissioner is also the face of the county government for the public. This responsibility entails constant dialogue with the people to involve them in the political process.
Biles finds the low turnout at the polls in local government elections “frustrating and disheartening.” He said, “I think that the primary issue—and it’s not just with the county commission, it’s with government in general—is that people have lost faith in their elected officials. They don’t trust them, and as a result of that, people don’t participate in government.”
Biles affirmed that there are not many candidates to choose from in county elections. “The coroner, the prosecuting attorney, the sheriff, the assessor, the auditor, the treasurer are all elected officials, but there was nobody challenging any of them,” he said.
“I was the only challenger to challenge the county commissioner. I did that because I’m a patriot. I’m not kidding—if you don’t participate, if you don’t give people a choice, then if things are going badly and there’s no one to evaluate those elected officials, they just get a free pass.” Biles said that one of the reasons he is running for county commissioner is to reinvigorate public interest in voting.
In terms of how he would address public issues, Biles said, “What [I] would really hope for is that people will be given the opportunity to express where they want to see their government go, and then [I] become the vehicle to put those desires into public policy.” The issues Biles envisions becoming most important for Walla Walla County fall under three main headings: energy transformation, environmental restoration and economic development.
Biles sees a need to reduce the cost of shipping food into Walla Walla County, both by transitioning to cheaper, more efficient biofuels and reducing the distance food is shipped. Biles advocates a transition to biofuels on the national level and wants to develop the resources Walla Walla could contribute. He cited farmland, wind turbines and graduates from local colleges as vital assets for energy transformation.
Biles also wants to integrate educated people from Whitman, Walla Walla College and Walla Walla Community College into a more skilled workforce. “You have engineers and businesspeople at Walla Walla College, science people here at Whitman and technical skills people at the Community College, and what we’re missing is the job source to bring those people together,” he said.
Working with the presidents of the colleges and other economic development officials, Biles would promote businesses involved in energy transformation and environmental restoration that would also create family wage incomes. He said that the service sector and tourist industry jobs that now dominate Walla Walla often do not pay enough for families to support themselves.
Biles has worked for Whitman as a Landscape Maintenance Specialist for the last 11 years and has been a member of the Whitman Budget Advisory Committee. He is also on the Walla Walla City Planning Commission, and he operates a stand at the Farmer’s Market selling flowers and vegetables from his farm. Read more about Bob Biles and his campaign at http://www.bobbiles.com.
Whittie manages hot Bill Grant campaign
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Christina Russell
Keagan Buchanon, a senior politics major at Whitman, is proof that Whitties don’t have to travel to a major metropolis in order to gain the work experience they desire for their prospective careers. Buchanon has spent the past four months serving as Democrat Bill Grant’s campaign manager for the upcoming election in November, an invaluable experience that is serving as a foundation for the future he hopes to pursue in campaign politics.
Buchanon was proactive in his pursuit of a job in campaign politics. He contacted the House Democratic Campaign committee last Spring, saying that he was interested in living in Walla Walla over the summer if there was a candidate in the area on the democratic ticket looking for assistance.
At first, he was recommended to the Coordinated Campaign, a group that works primarily with Maria Cantwell’s campaign. Buchanon was fortunate to be contacted by Grant, who accommodated his wish to run the campaign but still be a student.
Where did Buchanon receive training to manage a campaign? He didn’t. “I don’t have any experience,” he said.
“I still marvel at the fact that this is my job,” said Buchanon, who compensates for what he lacks in the way of experience with a genuine enthusiasm for his position. “It is really surprising that my only experience is watching West Wing. I [also] read the news constantly; I love political gossip. I read all the blogs I can, right and left.”
Buchanon spent the summer developing Grant’s webpage, composing and distributing upwards of 7,000 fundraising letters (“I had labels all over my room,” he said) and coordinating work with media consultants out of Olympia.
Buchanon mentioned that outside of gaining experience campaigning, he has enjoyed “being here over the summer, getting outside of Whitman, really investing myself in the community.” Buchanon frequents community events with Grant, where he meets local democrats. “It has opened my eyes to the fact that [outside of Whitman] there are actually people here.”
In the past, Grant has relied mainly on his wife Nancy for campaigning assistance. However, this year, when it became apparent that he would have a serious opponent, Kevin Young, to defeat, Grant decided to hire Buchanon to “help do a more expansive campaign.”
Grant has served 10 terms as a representative for Washington’s sixteenth legislative district. He is unique in that he is one of few Democrats who has held a dominant presence in Eastern Washington. Grant graduated from Whitman College in 1959, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Physical Education.
A fourth generation wheat farmer, Grant has fostered strong ties with the local farming community, a crucial connection for Washington Democrats to preserve, as Democrats have historically failed to capture this demographic. In the primary elections last month, 38 percent of voters registered as Democrats, three percent more than is typical for this area.
Buchanon explained that because it is not likely that the House Republicans are going to retake the majority in Washington State, they are looking to eliminate a “trophy head” Democrat.
That Grant has been in office for 20 years and represents a minority political party east of the mountains makes him an ideal candidate for the Republican State Party to try and take out. Buchanon is waiting to see whether Republicans will be investing funds in Young’s campaign for this purpose. “His job and my job is to make sure we retain those Republican votes,” said Buchanon.
Students interested in volunteering for the November election should contact the local Democrats office in Walla Walla at 120 E. Birch Street, Suite #4, or by telephone at (509) 529-5273.
Buchanon also encouraged students to contact him. He leaves every Saturday from the Reid Campus Center at 11 a.m. to distribute literature about Bill Grant to the community.
“It is really hard to get Whitman students to do anything,” said Buchanon, “just because everyone is so busy.”
Closer to the election, Buchanon will be leading Get Out The Vote efforts, which Buchanon said “is really fun to do. It is when everything starts to come together.”
Correspondence from Spain
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sally Sorte – Spain
Summer tan just starting to fade, I headed to Almuñecar in southern Spain for the weekend. With coconut huts, palm trees, Mediterranean Sea, el sol, and yes, topless tanners, it was a popular destination even after the seasonal Madrileños returned to the city for work.
The beach in front of our hotel lacked sand, so everything was sold on the rocks. South African vendors walked from lounge chair to beach umbrella singing out, “Ho-la, ho-la!” trying to sell bootlegged CDs and DVDs, fake Loui Vuitton wallets, fake Gucci sunglasses, and other black market items.
I was almost tempted to buy a counterfeit purse because it was so aesthetically do-able, but my West Coast ethics held me back. Apparently, though, counterfeit is too legit to quit. Last year the World Customs Organization estimated the counterfeiting business to be worth $500 billion, or seven percent of world trade. Other estimates are as high as 10 percent.
Even if you are someone who refuses to fake it, how much of the music on your iPod did you actually pay for? The Internet breeds stolen property like lemmings, with over 90 million illegal music files out there and no population-controlling cliff in sight. Doesn’t it suck that the music we steal is the music we like? Such disrespect, Aretha’d make you leave the (network) key. I know, it’s just a number in a computer; so is your bank account.
Faking it isn’t restricted to the pharmaceutical drugs in your junkmail or Rolexxx or Hermes Birkin handbags in “Sex and the City”; industrial parts are counterfeited as well. It’s estimated that there is at least one “suspect unapproved part” in every airplane. The Federal Aviation Administration blamed 174 air accidents on counterfeit parts between May 1973 and April 1996. While I can handle brand image torro caca, counterfeit engines and tail assemblies are obscene. If I have to forego safety testing I at least want airlines to start serving food again.
The counterfeit industry goes way back. In 27 B.C., the wine stopper of an Italian wine merchant was faked in order to dupe Romans into drinking cheap French wine. The fake wine stopper’s only difference was that the writing on it was illegible. Of course, after a few bottles of wine, what isn’t?
Nowadays the counterfeit industry fosters corruption, undermines legitimate manufacturers, skews economic development, and increases child labor and crime. All of this is very difficult to combat due to globalized intermediaries, overlapping authorities, and gaps between public and private sectors.
Italy and France have taken a hard-line stance on the counterfeit issue. In Italy you can be slapped with a fine of over $12,000 if the plainclothes police catch you purchasing a fake. Venice even started an ad campaign called “BAD BAG” to warn bargain-hunting tourists. France increased their fines for wearing or buying fakes to triple the retail price of the real thing and confiscated 5.6 million counterfeit articles last year.
Of course, until China, which is home to two-thirds of counterfeit production, does more than make weak public pronouncements in lieu of hosting the 2008 Olympics, nothing will change very much. 10 pecent of the medicines in your cabinet will be fake, as well as 33 percent of your CDs. Even so, try to connect your purchases with the child labor and inset corruption that it took to produce them.
So when the vendors came by my lounge chair on the beach I let them “Ho-la” right on by. Then I went over to watch the man fashioning a “que guay” castle with intricate turrets and flying buttresses out of sand driven over from another beach. The castle was a date-able height and that night he lit it up with candles, scratching “más mañana” into the sand. Authenticity; I tossed a few euros into his bucket.
—From abroad.
—In case you Sparknoted “The Odyssey” and want to read more, check out Tim Phillips’ “Knockoff.”
Correspondence from Chicago
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sophie Johnson – Chicago, Illinois
You’re a racist.
I’m not saying this to attack you. I understand that you’re a liberal, that you recycle, that you vote in every election. I even know that you don’t judge people based on their skin color, religion, or sexual orientation. Still, I think it’s best that we get this out in the open: You are a racist.
I suggest it because I’m not sure that in this day and age in America any of us can really be anything but racists. If you had said something like that to me a year ago, I’d have scoffed at you. I’d have argued that race issues were largely on the decline and that we needed to concentrate our political efforts on international policy. In Chicago, though, my perspective has shifted.
I came to this city hoping to benefit from its diversity, from its progressiveness and integration. But while the city is one of the most diverse in the world, it is also one of the most segregated.
“You could pass out in one neighborhood and wake up in another and you would know exactly where you were based entirely on the demographic of people around you.” That was the response I got when I mentioned to a friend my interest in Chicago’s racial integration. Her statement was largely true. There are 25 official neighborhoods in the city of Chicago. They are built around outdated racial and economical attitudes that keep the whites among the whites and the blacks among the blacks; the rich among the rich and the poor among the poor.
I spent an afternoon in South Chicago last week to work in a community garden—the largest area of green space for miles in all directions. South Chicago is notoriously poverty-stricken and almost entirely African-American. The area is right between gang lines, and the children playing in the street had to go in before it was dark because it would be too dangerous for them otherwise. This is a place where you can’t get fresh produce or health foods because they are too expensive; where kids don’t go to school on Halloween because walking alone in the street reads like a death wish. Most of Chicago’s working poor live in neighborhoods like this; white people simply don’t go down there.
How can neighborhoods like this still exist? How is it that the poverty line and the race line are still so synonymous in a city like Chicago?
There are entire books that attempt to tackle this question, and people who spend their entire lives trying to remedy the situation. It is multi-faceted and deeply rooted in our history—the history that is largely unwritten or ignored (Thomas Jefferson, for example, argued that Native Americans had to be pursued “to extermination”; even Aristotle wrote in his “Politic,” that “It is clear that just as some of us are by nature free, so others are by nature slaves, and for these latter the condition of slavery is both beneficial and just”). Attempting to understand how racism as an institution permeated this country would be an impossible subject for an editorial.
The question, then, becomes one concerning current racial attitudes that continue to manifest themselves in all of us. It is an uncomfortable topic, I’ll admit. We pay attention to race whether or not we wish to admit it, and this often affects the way we interact with people. As a white person, I don’t want to hear about it or talk about it. I’d rather just let it be.
What we, as whites, really don’t like to admit is that we continue to benefit largely from racial policies that we would rather believe are over and done with. In fact, one of the greatest factors in the prolongation of racism is our refusal to admit to our white privileges.
In Race Scholar Peggy McIntosh’s essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack,” she lists 50 privileges we have—but often don’t think about—because we are white. Among them are being able to shop in a store without being followed or harassed, seeing our race well-represented on the cover of every newspaper, and buying Band-Aids that will always be the same color as our skin.
Think back to your high school “Global Studies” course. What do you remember? Chances are, you’ll remember the Renaissance artists, the Vikings, the Spanish Inquisition, and maybe the War of 1812. Look at your Core syllabus. Except for the requisite Toni Morrison novel, the required reading for your entire college career is manipulated by writers of European descent.
These are the benefits that come with the color of your skin.
It shouldn’t be like that. When you hear the words “welfare mother” you shouldn’t automatically picture a twenty-something uneducated black woman; nor should you immediately picture a middle-aged white man in a suit when you hear “corporate executive.” These, however, are the stereotypes that still exist in staggering numbers.
I am begging you to pay attention to it, to talk about it, to acknowledge it. Ask President Bridges why we don’t have an African-American Studies program at Whitman. Read the statistics, buy the books. Be aware of your white privilege and the way it affects your every move. And for the love of God, get pissed off.
This is not the way this country should be, and we can’t simply blame the current administration. A problem like this too easily gets swept under the rug, and wrongfully so. There is more to do. The cause didn’t die with Martin Luther King, Jr., as so many of us thought; it was not over with the Million Man March. Racism is still a thriving institution in this country, and its termination is long overdue.
Letters to the Editor – Tabling your enthusiasm
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
I don’t know what the layout of your mall back home is, but maybe you’ve seen this—big aisles with store fronts on either side, and in the middle of the aisle, a row of carts selling hair extenders, massage devices, perfume, sunglasses and the like. The employees of these carts work on commission and they are not afraid to yell at you and tell you what you need. Some are more agile and cat-like as they weave in and out of crowds stopping people, spraying them, attaching things to them, man-handling them, and trying to sell at all costs.
Trying to check your mail in Reid between noon and 1 p.m. feels the same, except the people who are halting your progress aren’t gruff strangers who you can blow off and not feel bad about. They are fellow students, maybe even friends, and they are every bit as pushy as mall salesmen.
It’s great that you want to give up your lunch break to sell something you care about, but perhaps you could make yourself a little less obtrusive. Calling out to people, for instance, is not necessary. If I am interested in your table, I will approach you. If your offering is more complicated than t-shirts, feel free to explain yourself to those who stop and act interested. Give your pitch, but resist the urge to engage people in debate. Nobody should have to defend their choice not to sign up for your list serv, register to vote, climb your rock wall, or join you and your dog hitch-hiking across country fighting injustice. “No thanks” should be enough to end any discussion. Even if you’re pedaling moral high ground, you are still just a pushy salesman.
-Alex Falcone
The greener side of the legal system
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Ari van Schilfgaarde
Last week I got derailed by $3 billion, but I want to get back to the idea of collaboration and incentives to act productively.
If we as a community are better off because of your actions, you’ve acted productively. Collaboration as a means of productivity happens in a specific “box” of criteria which leave everybody feeling better off and with the same or better result as if a dictator had demanded a set of policies.
So, when natural resources are protected, or when a process is more efficient, or when you have access to information that you need to make you happier, these are all socially productive actions. For the sake of this argument, natural resource protection will form the basis of productive action, but it is easy to extrapolate to other situations.
The problem is that collaboration doesn’t work quite so well when the rules are fuzzy or when the parties who have disagreements aren’t able to talk. Take for example the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River in my home state of Colorado.
The Gunnison River is one of the steepest and most rugged gorges in the world. As well as being part of a unique ecosystem providing fishing and world-class boating, the river carries a lot of water by Western standards. By the time it flows into the Colorado at Grand Junction, it’s about the same size as the major artery of the West. All this water can go and “fund” development along the Front Range; it can feed many acres of forage for cattle and irrigate the San Luis Valley. But, in doing so, it virtually guarantees that the trout fishery will be floating toward extinction, and that many of the flood flows, the very things that carved the gorge to begin with, will be sent to Denver.
The State of Colorado and the National Park Service collaborated and came up with a plan that allowed for only a minimum flow through the Black Canyon, which is nothing to be sneered at, but they also agreed that it would be appropriate to cut off all the floods and send them through the concrete tunnel to grow the lawns of Denver.
The two concerned parties agreed in cordial meetings to cut off the hydrograph although the canyon has the right by Western water law to more. So, collaboration between two colluding parties left the environment worse off, and the public about to lose a major natural scenic beauty and a unique ecosystem.
Environmentalists sued. Claiming that—convincingly, it turned out—protection of an ecosystem means leaving natural processes intact, they managed to turn a cordial, banal agreement contentious. Is this a violation of the previous principle of mutual collaboration leading to beneficial examples? I think it is clear that in decisions such as this one, collaboration can be better described as collusion.
The lawsuit, although acrimonious, allowed the parties the process and the time to have a conversation in public with an impartial arbiter. In this case the “box” of regulations allowed for the full airing of grievances and a science-based decision to come to the fore.
This gets back to the same argument that I’ve been promoting all along. Getting to a solution to a problem requires information and process. I would argue that the lawsuit against the National Park Service was in fact a collaborative process, but the framework in which it had to work was the framework of the courts rather than the rotary conference room.
So, although the court settled the argument, and although it took attorneys, the fact is that a unique ecosystem in Colorado is protected and remains so at the request of the community. This is a distinctly democratic process, and because it takes place in a public context, and information is distributed to all the interested players, it is valid to applaud the collaborative process that led to the protection of a unique national resource.
While court decisions are often a measure of last resort, we often forget that they allow us to define which values are essential, and which ones society will protect. For that reason it is often useful to turn to this third leg of government when other resources are ineffective. That’s what it’s there for.
Magic everywhere
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Emma Wood – Nates, France
A good friend just wrote me that, to him, I’m living a fairytale here in Nantes, far away in the land of castles. In truth, it’s no more magical than Pioneer Park at dusk, a walk to Bright’s for peppermint sticks, or romping with glowsticks in the wheat fields. The magic of any place is its people and what they choose to do with it. I remember with what awe I listened to a friend just returned from a summer with Bolivian orphans. In my own travels, I find that no matter how far, how exotic, a place itself becomes normal, eventually; its people give it spice.
How, you ask, do these Nantais use their city? They use every inch of it. They cram restaurant patios onto the sidewalks, chairs rubbing arms with passersby, dogs and bicycles dodging the platforms. The busses ride up onto the sidewalks (I’m constantly scared for my cello and life); it really is straight out of Amelie, apartments wedged together, windows at every angle, and geranium boxes cascading down into private courtyards. It’s true that this backdrop of great stone buildings and balconies gives the place a certain grandeur that can’t but be present in the customs of its people. There’s a lingering sense of propriety, patriarchal residue.
They mark the commencement of wine season with downtown celebrations, toasts made by old men in lavish robes (a scene not unlike our own Commencement) and volunteers running around with baskets giving out grapes to cute children. Do the people of Nantes notice the magic of their city? Of course not. They’re waiting for trams, texting friends, consulting a stylist in one of a hundred tiny coiffeur shops, or buying fresh pears at the fruitier’s.
The city’s not always crusty and proper. At night, the café tables are swept inside, and the streets are cleared for the disco crowd; Centre-Ville throbs with techno beats from the early 1990s. The “boites de nuit”—literal translation: night boxes!—fill with 20-something-year-olds, French, German, Italian, and always the five or six token Americans from my program; everyone smoking and dancing and downing drinks so strong I nearly gag. The French prefer their coffee black and their liquor unadorned.
I’m the American flailing her arms in the discotheques, wearing bright turquoise in a sea of black pea coats. I am the girl smiling on subways at the subtleties in people’s faces, the mixtures of confidence and curiosity one needs no language to communicate. I’m getting used to the cobblestones, but people are enigmatic.
Microhard: The useless features of Word
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sarah McCarthy
My thesaurus makes me laugh. Or rather, as it would have me say, it makes me “double up.” It starts out well enough—the first suggestion my built-in Microsoft Word thesaurus makes is usually a word that one might reasonably substitute.
From there, however, it gets a little more dicey, until the last suggestion is a word not even really related to the word in question—not even a distant cousin. Replacing your intended words with these last words will, almost without fail, make a nearly unreadable sentence. Thus, when bored (world-weary) by writing (putting pen to paper, carving) an essay (treatise), I can always (for ever and a day) turn to the thesaurus (word book) for help (good thing).
Truly, an absurdist drama could be constructed around its synonyms. Has anyone ever once said the word “annoying” when what he really meant was “spiky?” Or, a personal favorite, have you ever said that you were having “chicken” for dinner when what you really meant was that you were going to eat a “cock-a-doodle-do?” Why, I wonder, when it suggests those words does it not throw in, for example, wood-burning stove, watermelon, full-service gas station?
The thesaurus’ main goal, it would seem, particularly with adjectives, is to be a boundary-breaker—to push the description you desired further than you thought you could. I cannot call the idea that for any given word there are 200 others that mean the exact same thing merely “inaccurate.” It must be all wet, careless, counterfactual, defective, discrepant, doesn’t wash, fallacious. While I’m comfortable saying that, for its entertainment value, I “like” the thesaurus, I feel a little more wary saying that I “cotton to” or “dote on” it. Likewise, while I’ll happily say that the thesaurus is “fun” I’m not sure I want to go as far as it wants me to and call it as “a barrel of monkeys.”
The “Auto-Summarize” feature of Microsoft Word will likewise make you say things that you didn’t intend, though its uselessness far outstrips that of the thesaurus. The only feature of “Auto Summarize,” it would seem, would be to remind us that really, we needn’t be at all frightened of artificial intelligence.
Auto Summary claims that it “has examined the document and picked out sentences most relevant to the main theme.” It offers to either highlight those sentences or, more amusingly, “compose an executive abstract” for you at the top of the document. I decided to test it and gave it the sentences: I love cheese so much. Sometimes, though, I eat too much cheese. Then, I hate cheese.” From these it composed a declarative executive abstract that reads simply “I hate cheese.” I would sooner say “help” when I meant to say “good thing” than use the Auto Summarize feature.
Spell check, while by far the most useful feature of Microsoft Word, makes some amusing blunders. My grandparents live on “Peter Couts Drive,” though my spellchecker is so confident that what I meant was “Peter Coitus Drive” that it will change it automatically. It is well documented that you can write all sorts of wrong words that spell check will never get, and in their efforts to prove this, people who fancy themselves impossibly original and clever have written poems with titles like “Owed to a Spell Chequer.” The point of these poems is, of course, that you really ought to proofread, since spell check can’t catch it all—though, probably to the poet’s chagrin, my spell check does not recognize “Chequer” and suggests that I probably meant “Chaucer” instead.
Grammar check, though, is a pernicious device that is quick to scold me for writing “Me and Sarah goes to the store” but happy to edit it to “Sarah and me goes to the store,” a sentence that remains grammatically incorrect. Grammar check’s one real value is its “readability statistic” box, which, if you so choose, will tell you your ease-of-reading-statistic and what grade level your document aims for. This column received a 52.0 percent “reading ease” score and a 10.4 for grade level, which I presume means that it is optimally read by someone four-tenths done with tenth grade. My “I like cheese” document, I’m proud to say, was deemed 100% readable and appropriate for grades K and up, much better than the last sentence of “Ulysses” which received an un-impressive zero and was deemed appropriate for no grades at all.
What amazes me most is the amount of effort that went in to creating all of these features. Someone, or a team of people, worked very hard to create a grammar check that does not know grammar. Someone put a lot of effort into coming up with all those “similes” for the thesaurus, though why that is is a mystery or, as I perhaps should say, a Chinese puzzle, a cryptogram, a knotty question. Perhaps the function of all these features is to remind us daily of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Really, the only response we can have to the absurdities of Microsoft Word is to settle a pillow by our heads and say wearily, “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.”
Aim low and never be disappointed again
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Valerie Lopez
Great expectations almost always lead to great disappointments.
I realize that this ubiquitous problem renders everything I’m about to say almost cliché, but I can’t help reiterating the perpetual disappointments produced by great expectations into the universal dialogue of bitching. My personal great disappointments vary from trivial things, such as sandwiches, to more significant spheres of my life.
Case in point number one: Like many others, I have been unfortunate enough as to suffer the great sadism of the science department via eight o’clock classes. An eight o’clock class, coupled with the maniacal sprinklers mocking students on a cold morning, severely accentuates the strife of a Monday. On days like these, I try to anticipate the small things that will redeem. Always, I eagerly await for the clock to strike 12, so I can be united with the glory of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. After tolerating a ridiculously long line of equally eager students, my idealized sandwich of scrumptioulicious cheesy glory lies before me. However, the real, material version is flaccidly soaked with butter grease and rubbery cheese. And then Monday goes completely rancid once more.
Case in point number two: On the occasions that my friends and I encounter a ridiculously good looking fellow around we always seem to formulate great expectations of these individuals based on assumptions. Clearly, this is a red-flag for imminent disappointment, but we just can’t break free. For example, my friends and I have verily appreciated the aesthetics of an endearing McGoofy individual, only to discover that, in reality, his more accurate description should be McSlutty. Or when we encounter a very well-kept character (a.k.a. Gucci Boy) only to find out that the song “You’re So Vain” was especially made for him. I fully acknowledge that the culpability completely lies in us: we base our expectations on fallacious and superficial assumptions, and therefore are led into serious disappointments when we discover that our idealizations are incongruent to reality.
I could supplement these cases in point all day, discussing relationships, school, politics, but all share the all-encompassing question: Why is it that, after experiencing perpetual disappointments from great expectations, we continue to expect great things? I realize that there exists a psychological explanation based on actual research studies that elucidates this phenomenon, but for now we’ll leave that to the scientific wits.
Based on the first case in point, when days are stark and we feel like Eeyore, we attempt to alleviate our situations by hoping that there are better things to come. Therefore, I personally tend to idealize specific objects (such as the blameless inanimate sandwiches) or events in order to feel better, but am then sobered by reality later on. Self-revelation tells me that my great expectations are incongruent to reality simply because I can’t predict what reality is, or will be. Therefore, when my imagination has free reign in regards to hoping and idealizing, I’m likely to be disappointed.
Yet, sometimes, the extraordinary does happen, on the event that things far exceed our expectations, even the great ones. Therefore, it is comforting to know that perpetual disappointment isn’t necessarily perpetual and absolute. Perhaps one day when we least expect it, the grilled cheese will be good, or a charming prince will come, minus the McSluttiness.
I can’t propose any official solutions guaranteeing preventative measures for great disappointments; like I said, I’m merely contributing to the universal dialogue of bitching. But being open to spontaneity, at least for me, alleviates the burden of disappointments. And, while it is emotionally beneficial to be cautious with great expectations, we can’t expect to be disappointed all the time either. Which is kind of nice.
Interestingly enough, underpinning all great expectations is hope. When the world becomes banal, it is the hope for extraordinary things that gets me through, and maybe I speak for most of us. No matter how frequent the disappointments, I still await for the extraordinary, and perhaps this may just be my one great expectation I won’t be disappointed by.
‘Scoundrels’ doesn’t even try to be good
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Josh Boris
Let’s be honest; the new movie offerings are paltry at best. There’s so much crap out there that I had to decide between seeing “The Guardian” (in which they actually allow Kevin Costner to star in a movie revolving around water again), “Open Season” (the 52nd talking animal movie to come out this year), or “School for Scoundrels.” I felt in the mood to desperately search for laughs, so “School for Scoundrels” won out.
I cringed when I bought the ticket, I cringed when the movie started, and I may have vomited a little bit in my mouth when the movie ended.
The movie stars John Heder (yes, Napoleon Dynamite) as, surprise surprise, a panic-attack-ridden loser meter maid named Roger. Roger has trouble in all aspects of life, so he enrolls in a super secret class to build him into a real man taught by the badass Dr. P (so cool his last name is only one letter) played by, surprise surprise, Billy Bob Thornton.
When Roger begins to build confidence and asks out his hot next-door neighbor, Dr. P decides he’s gotten too cocky and needs to steal the girl to bring Roger down a notch.
What ensues is a battle royale over Amanda (Jacinda Barrett) in which each tries to ruin the other’s reputation and win the girl.
It appears as if little to no effort actually went into making this movie. Take a clichéd, cookie cutter script, insert some “wild” physical comedy and some familiar faces, and voíla, you have a shitty movie.
They didn’t even try. Every role is typecast; the badass is played by a badass, the bitch is played by a bitch and the band of losers is played by such tried and true movie losers as that nerdy guy from High Fidelity (Todd Louiso), SNL alum Horatio Sanz, and Napoleon Dynamite.
By the way, whoever told John Heder he can play a part that isn’t Napoleon Dynamite should be shot.
This movie really should have taken more chances and been rated ‘R.’ Much of the film just seems too tame for the subject matter. The class is supposed to build weaklings into lying, conniving, adulterous men, but it just makes them into slightly more assholish losers.
When Dr. P and Roger go all out to ruin each other, they take such passive-aggressive routes as hitting each other with tennis balls, towing a car, and sending a letter to Roger’s male superior that gets him fired for sexual harassment.
For a film about men who are supposed to become lions on the prowl, the stunts make them look like house cats.
Obviously the actors play their parts the way they’re supposed to, but there’s no energy or charisma.
The only truly good performances are presented by Sarah Silverman and David Cross, and their scenes total about 10 minutes of the entire movie.
However, I shouldn’t jump to blame the actors so quickly when the script is such a bland, plothole-ridden mess.
Honestly, the movie was already derailed for me in the first 15 minutes because, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how the poor loser meter maid who can never make decisions managed to wrangle up $5,000 to attend a class he barely even knows about.
In more capable hands, with a better script and some different actors, this movie might have been good. Oh, the ifs of Hollywood. Save your money and wait for Scorcese’s new film “The Departed” next week.
Fridays at Four showcases female singers
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Andrea Miller
Students and members of the Walla Walla community alike gathered in Kimball Theater to hear the product of months of practice and hard work of four Whitman musicians.
At the Sept. 29 Fridays at Four concert, “Four Sopranos and a Piano,” Whitman music majors sophomore Rebecca Friedman, junior Sarah McCarthy, senior Shanna Cole and senior Jamie Lilly performed pieces they each worked on over the summer while studying with Whitman music instructor Laural Miller-Klein in Seattle. Those attending were entertained with songs sung in English, French and German. The pieces were selected from artists including John Duke, Franz Schubert, Claude Debussy and Samuel Barber.
Friedman performed a set of songs, “A Piper,” “The Bird” and “Loveliest of Trees” by John Duke. Friedman said that she learned “The Bird” first, and “liked it so much that [she] asked [her] voice teacher for more pieces by the same composer.” Friedman said that “O, Quand je dors,” by Franz Liszt, is currently her favorite song. She heard it sung elsewhere and “fell in love with it” because “it’s so intense.” Friedman says all of her pieces were fun to sing because “they’re all just happy and beautiful and about celebrating the best things in life—nature, music, love … all the best things there are.”
McCarthy sang two pieces by Gabriel Fauré and one by Franz Schubert. McCarthy’s instructor selected some of the pieces at the end of last semester and she performed the ones she worked on the most during the summer. McCarthy said “Clair de Lune,” by Fauré, was her favorite because the “music is freakishly beautiful.”
Cole sang three songs by three different composers, Claude Debussy, Franz Schubert and Aaron Copland. She said it was easier to learn the French song, “Mandoline,” by Debussy, and the German song, “Nacht and Träume” by Schubert, because the accompaniment to the English piece, “Going to Heaven!” by Aaron Copland, was “very weird.” The morning of the performance, Cole was unsure that she would be able to sing. She had been sick all week, but fortunately she and her instructor felt confident that she would be able to perform that morning.
Lilly has been working on her pieces since June. She performed four songs, “Nocture,” “A Nun Takes the Veil,” “Secrets of the Old” and “Sure on this Shining Night,” all by Samuel Barber. Senior music major Adam Lau singled out Lilly’s last piece as one that he “really loved.”
Concert-goer and Whitman student Kodi Parsons said all the performers were “lovely singers” with “beautiful tone quality.” Fellow student Kari Berkas agreed, and added that the singers all had “good stage presence.” Berkas articulated the uniqueness of a performance such as this because it is “not as often that you get to hear solos and hear all the work they personally put in.”
Clever lyrics spice up Coffeehouse
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Gayle Chung
On stage, Bryan Redick improvised a jam on his violin with a frayed bow while Jesse Maxwell sang with a strong, reverberating voice about his love for a girl and fettuccini.
Some may remember Maxwell during last year’s talent show when he shared with Whitman College how he “likes fettuccini” and “likes it a lot.”
Some may also have been fortunate enough to hear Redick’s gift at the violin. Since last year, Maxwell and Redick have jammed together and have grown into two gifted musicians.
During their performance on Sept. 29 in Reid, Nicole Beier, one of the Coffeehouse’s many audience members, said with a smile, “They’re very talented.”
Maxwell and Redick started out the night with some well-known soft rock hits such as “She Will Be Loved” by Maroon 5 and “Dizzy Up the Girl” by the Goo Goo Dolls.
After warming up the audience with these familiar songs, Redick dazzled the audience with fast paced solos on his violin. Maxwell later shares with the audience some classics like “American Pie” but with a slight twist.
After singing the second verse of this well-known hit by Don McLean, Maxwell began adding some of his own original lines about Jedi Knights and broken “battle droids.”
“I like how they’re playing popular songs,” said Dean Peterson, “but taking their own personal spin on them.”
The array of songs they chose to sing at Coffeehouse truly fit the quality of Maxwell’s strong, smooth singing voice and at the same time allowed Redick’s musically creative side to shine through. Alissa Lasron-Xu also saw the duo’s individual talents and said, “[The music] suits their style. I like how they pulled from new songs and classics. The violin solos were really energetic.”
Yet, the night did not end there. Maxwell and Redick then asked guest Larry Lier, a local musician from Walla Walla, to jam with them on stage with harmonica.
Soon, a “battle of the instruments” ensued. All three performers rocked out on their own instruments and ultimately ending with Redick and Lier volleying their own sounds of pure rock.
Surprisingly, Maxwell taught himself how to play the guitar (and over the last spring break, the ukulele) and has been going strong for four years.
One can only imagine how far Maxwell will go with his musical talents in the future. Redick, on the other hand, has unsurprisingly played the violin since, as Maxwell put it, “forever.”
It is nonetheless impressive how talented Redick is. After all, not only can he play the violin very well, but he can also jam with a recorder and a saxophone.
Towards the end of the performance, the musical duo invited two more guests onto the stage to play drums and bass.
The night ended with the collection of an electric violin, guitar, bass and drums rocking out to the Puddle of Mudd song, “She Hates Me.”
Second season of ‘Mars’ delivers – Second season of ‘Mars’ delivers
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Erin Salvi
There is no rest for the weary. With the mystery of her best friend’s murder finally resolved at the end of Season One, Veronica Mars should be able to move on with her life and live like a normal teenager again, right? In another city, at another school, in another life, perhaps.
But this is Neptune, California, where nothing stays calm for too long.
Plus, it’s pretty difficult to stay away from the action when you’re the daughter of a private investigator who lets you solve mysteries with him.
Season Two of “Veronica Mars,” which was just released in August, is filled with anything but calm.
Solving crimes does seem to be Veronica’s destiny, for in the very first episode of Season Two a doozy of a mystery comes her way.
A bus full of students from Neptune High goes careening off the edge of a cliff, killing almost every single passenger.
It is a bus that Veronica herself should have been on. A number of Neptune’s wealthiest students also should have been on the bus; only the students who couldn’t afford another ride were the ones sent to their deaths, which makes Veronica think that this “bus accident” was no mistake. After all, nothing happens by pure chance in Neptune.
The class struggle is actually one of the biggest issues that “Veronica Mars” explores, making it much more than just a show about a teenage detective.
Of course, no one in the show is really poor, as the writers make Veronica out to be; it’s just that not everyone is a billionaire.
Veronica actually lives a pretty comfortable life, with a nice apartment and plenty of clothes, but in comparison to most of the kids at her school, who live in mansions and drive Porsches, I guess her life might seem a little lacking.
No one actually wants to watch a television show where people really and truly have to struggle to make ends meet, so instead of clashing the rich and the poor, the show pits the middle-class against the upper-class.
There is actually very little about this show that is realistic. High school was certainly not like this for me.
A new mystery didn’t pop up every week for someone to solve, and I’m pretty sure that not one single person I knew was wrapped up in some nefarious scheme or other.
Yet it is this very lack of anything close to the life you know that makes this show great. Screw reality television and its “authenticity.” I want real drama, and “Veronica Mars” delivers.
The writers do a fantastic job of giving away just enough information so you can understand what is going on, but the plot is never so obvious that you will figure it out on your own.
No, that’s what Veronica is there for, and you will want to stick with her all the way. Kristen Bell is just as feisty, witty, charming and intelligent as she was in Season One, and she carries the show quite well.
So go out and rent it, buy it, borrow it from your friend (the one who somehow owns every single episode of every single show ever filmed) and watch it.
Just be prepared to get less schoolwork done, because the greatest and worst thing about mystery shows are that they always leave you with a cliffhanger, forever wanting more.
ASWC welcomes first-year senators
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Andrea Miller
The voiceless president (for he was sick and unable to speak), the Executive Council and the Senate warmly welcomed the newly elected first-year senators to ASWC.
Hiring Chair Laura Hanson said the first-year class “raised the bar this year,” in reference to the 207 students who turned out to vote. Those elected were Allison Armstrong, Seth Bergeson, David Changa-Moon and Brian Mendiola.
The first task of these senators was to preference one of four committees in which all senators participate. Each committee chair, with the exception of Policy Chair Jeff Wilson, who was not present, gave a briefing on the objectives and responsibilities of their committees.
Armstrong and Bergeson will be joining Chair Aisha Fukushima on the Programming Committee, Changa-Moon will be joining Chair Ajay Abraham on the Finance Committee, and Mendiola will be joining Jeff Wilson on the Policy Committee.
Also discussed in the forum were the concerns the Business Office is having with contracts involving paid compensation for members of ASWC, KWCW and the Pioneer.
The Business Office is worried that the volunteer participation too much resembles a student job for which the student must legally be paid minimum wage and is thus in violation of Washington Department of Labor and Industries regulations.
Many solutions are being discussed, though nothing has been decided upon that will provide participants with legally adequate compensation.
Photographer shares work with students
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sarah Golden
On Sept. 27, nationally recognized photographer Kay Chernush spoke to a group of Whitties about her work of the past few years.
In her 25 years of experience, Chernush has shot features for many magazines and has traveled the world taking photographs. Lately she has spent time trying to portray the very real and sensitive subject of human trafficking and child labor.
A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and recipient of a Fulbright grant to India, Chernush became hooked on photography during an assignment for the Peace Corps in the Sahel region of Africa. There she taught herself photography, which she describes as “a process of learning how to see.”
Chernush brought her vision to the Whitman campus as she showed her work. Her non-traditional style of photography exposes something that is often thought to portray more than a scene, but the feeling behind it.
“She was obviously incredibly creative,” said senior Carly Lane Rue, who attended a student luncheon with Chernush on Sept. 28. “She is an artist breaking down conception of what portraits should look like.”
This photo series, which Chernush took in India, Thailand, Italy and Hong Kong in 2005, was commissioned by the U.S. State Department and is used to educate people on the ramifications of human trafficking.
“Something had an idea that kept coming up,” said Rue. “She said that honesty has less to do with visual accuracy, but rather conveying as much as possible through artistic intention. Her pictures were full of multidimensional vibrance and sometimes they were even manipulations to capture something larger.”
Whitman Direct Action reaches out to global community with biodiesel project
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Gayle Chung
Whether or not their actions are well-known, Whitman Direct Action (WDA) is a campus group to remember.
Last summer they built a house in Nicaragua. This summer they went to Central America to foster sustainable community development by hosting biodiesel conferences, workshops and forums and helping establish biodiesel cooperatives and communities. Although the leaders of the project, Joseph Bornstein and Curt Bowen, are from Whitman, the “WDA Crew” was also comprised of students from Stanford University and Claremont McKenna (both of which gave their students grants for the project, while Whitman actively prevented access to grant money given to the students).
But what is biodiesel? “Biodiesel is a fuel produced from new or waste vegetable oil or animal lard and can be run in any diesel engine. In a process called transesterification, these oils are mixed with a base catalyst and an alcohol. The resulting chemical reaction leaves biodiesel and the byproduct glycerol, which can be refined to make a myriad of useful products,” said WDA member Hugo Vargas.
One of the more interesting facts about this project is that the WDA Crew actually drove a 1996 school bus running on biodiesel from Walla Walla all the way through Central America. The biodiesel was either produced in their biodiesel shack in the garage of Whitman alumnus Michael Kirk or donated by Seattle Biodiesel.
After three weeks spent developing technology and working with NGOs and communities in Guatemala, the WDA Crew stopped in Santa Barbara, Honduras to host their first international biodiesel conference at Sustainable Harvest International’s (SHI) demo farm.
“The goal of our biodiesel conferences was to bring the right people together and give them some helpful, synergistic tools. We hoped that by uniting microfinance organizations, NGOs, community leaders, farmers, and students, we could help form a movement to open up new ways for people to live while establishing a vibrant and growing community,” said Bowen. Bornstein said, “Our conferences covered everything from the mechanics of biodiesel processor fabrication to biodiesel’s chemistry. Then we opened up space for people to share ideas and begin planning future biodiesel collaborations.”
After their first conference, WDA member Brook Golling gave a powerful speech arguing that big changes are possible. At the end of his speech, the crowd gave him a standing ovation, and a few attendees jumped up with vigor and gave speeches of their own, calling for unity to end economic imperialism and use biodiesel as means towards social independence.
In addition to hosting the conference in Honduras, WDA also wrote a book. It is over 120 pages long and covers everything needed to understand biodiesel chemistry and mechanics. After Bornstein and Bowen finished writing the book in English, Vargas and Annelle Mendez began the tedious task of translating. “Our biodiesel book represents the best gift I think we gave. Soon it will be on the Internet, and it’s being printed by Nicaragua’s NGO, Servicio de Información Mesoamericana sobre Agricultura Sostenible (SIMAS). Ultimately, the book is a foundation. We hope our conference attendees will experiment, learn more and expand upon it,” said Bornstein.
The second conference was held in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua. Mendez said, “Although both conferences were very similar, one major difference of the Managua conference was that during the forum the attendees decided to have a second workshop where they made biodiesel without our help. They shouted, ‘We can do it without the gringos,’ and then everybody laughed. They apparently hosted it on the nineteenth of August and made biodiesel together.” “That was one of our biggest hopes coming true,” said Bowen, “that through our project we would teach others to be teachers and givers. It means we left our gift in good hands.”
After the conferences, WDA’s work was not over. They went on to found two different biodiesel cooperatives and helped to lay the groundwork for an EcoVillage prototype in Honduras. Bornstein said, “The biodiesel cooperative with SHI works with 70 small family farms in rural Honduras. Each family is planting 1.6 acres of jatropha, which is a very ecologically friendly and oil rich plant. Come harvest season, SHI will produce biodiesel from the jatropha oil using the processor and solar oven we built and gave them. The farmers will be able to use oil from their own crops to fuel their farm equipment and vehicles, sell it as a finished good, and eventually use generators to become electricity independent.”
Finishing each other’s, words Bornstein and Bowen said together, “This project took a tremendous amount of sacrifice to accomplish. And it made us realize our own personal strength. It made us realize that we can overcome fear and apathy. We all have incredible power, but we often find ourselves too afraid to test ourselves and see what we can really do.”
Peer Listeners foster community dialogue
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Joseph Farnes
What issues does the campus face? What do we need to talk about?
Students who have been here a year or longer have probably heard of the Peer Listeners. They probably thought about us as those caring individuals who hold office hours for those who want to talk about difficulties or issues they face.
Yes, we do those things. Our advisors in the counseling office here help train us and give us insight into how to listen well. And we do take our responsibilities on campus seriously.
But Peer Listening really needs to be more than one-on-one listening. Listening is a process in the community, too. Sharing experiences and ideas encourages a community to work together to understand what it means to be a person, to be one among many.
That is why, this year, Peer Listeners would like to foster campus conversation about personal issues which we never talk about. For example, what are the pressures of being a Whitman student? What about the pressures of just being a person? How does the pressure to be all you can be make you feel? Do we want to be perfect (intellectually, socially, physically)? How do we deal with these pressures?
We hope to publish articles that will get Whitman both thinking about issues and also talking about them. We talk about politics, the state of the world’s environment, and economic and social injustices. All of these are very important and form the backbone of Whitman’s consciousness. But we also need to talk about us.
We Peer Listeners want to get Whitman to start talking … and listening.
Forsberg talks about life abroad, self-knowledge
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Caitlin Tortorici
On Sept. 28, the Alumni Career Series presented “Careers in International Affairs After Whitman,” with 1986 Whitman graduate Aaron Forsberg.
After completing a history major at Whitman, Forsberg went on to earn a Ph.D. on the subject at the University of Texas, Austin, in 1992. In 2000, he completed his most famous writing on U.S.-Eastern relations entitled “America and the Japanese Miracle.”
Prior to joining the Foreign Service in 2001, Forsberg worked as a translator at the Tokyo office of White and Case LLP and as a lecturer in history in Japan through the University of Maryland system. He has previously served at U.S. embassies in Qatar and Thailand. Presently, he works in Washington, D.C., as a desk officer fat the Department of State for Indonesia and East Timor.
In his lecture, Forsberg stressed the importance of knowing oneself when striving toward a career in foreign affairs. This is crucial in determining desired amounts of overseas travel (if any), freedom within organizations, and lengths of time serving within certain areas, given the spoken languages and governments of those areas.
Forsberg also explained how his college-honed skills helped him in his line of work. He credited Whitman with providing him the ability to write quickly and succinctly and for equipping him with a broad knowledge of the U.S. and the world.
Wage issues plague ASWC
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Sarah McCarthy
Students working for ASWC in paid positions may see a change in that system soon.
“The presumption is this—that if you’re paying them anything you’re paying them minimum wage,” said Walter Froese, Whitman College controller. Due to this presumption and its legal implications, ASWC may have to significantly change how it compensates students for their work in future semesters.
Currently, students who work for ASWC, including all nominated officials, the Pioneer staff and employees of KWCW, are paid by stipends, the amounts of which are determined by the responsibilities of their particular job.
The trouble? Most, if not all, of these stipends would fall below the Washington state minimum wage requirement ($7.63/hour) if students were actually paid that much for every hour they work.
When this discrepancy was brought to the business office’s attention, Froese consulted an attorney to see whether or not it was acceptable to continue to pay students in stipend amounts. The attorney advised him that while it might be appropriate to have a few of the top elected officials within ASWC, it would not work to have every employee paid in this way.
“If an auditor came in and we claimed that everyone was a nominated official, it would just look like we were skirting the minimum wage requirement. We don’t want to do that. Any business done under ASWC is under Whitman’s tax ID number. Whitman is responsible if there’s a problem.”
In short, while it may be okay to say that certain ASWC officials are like a board of directors and don’t need to be paid by the hour, it is a violation to pay every single employee this way.
Ajay Abraham, the financial chair of ASWC, has been working with the business office to come up with solutions to the problem. Simply increasing the pay wages enough so that the salaries are in compliance with minimum wage requirements would be an extremely difficult thing to do this year since, Abraham explained, ASWC has already drawn up its budget for the year and has not accounted for that extra money. The Pioneer especially has a large staff of writers and editors, and to pay them all minimum wage would exponentially increase the Pioneer’s use of the ASWC’s newspaper budget. In this case, there would not be money left over to even print the paper.
While there is a possibility of paying the elected officials stipends and the others by the hour, that too is problematic. “From an ASWC perspective, the issue is that we view elected positions as on par with many positions that we don’t elect,” said Abraham. Thus, it would become difficult to draw a clear line between who was in enough of a leadership position to be paid by stipend and who was not.
Though ASWC positions will continue to be paid by a stipend this semester, several ideas have been discussed for how it might change next semester and in following years.
“Simply having people opt out of the minimum wage requirement isn’t an option,” Froese said. “Imagine the pressure that employees could put on their workers to just ‘opt out’ if it was legal to do so.” If no ASWC positions received money, this likewise would be in compliance with standards, since they would then be explicitly volunteer positions.
Another more difficult option is to put a cap on the number of hours ASWC employees could work and pay them for that number of hours. There was agreement at a Pioneer staff meeting, however, that “there would be about two pages of a paper” if that was put into practice. Some other possibilities were discussed, including perhaps making the Pioneer a credit class, paying on a by-the-story basis and giving students financial aid rather than a paycheck. None of these options have been finalized as the perfect option for years to come.
There has been a specific ruling from the courts about the pay wages of people like RAs and SAs, thus taking them outside the minimum wage requirement. It is far less clear, however, for college newspapers and other student positions. As Froese said, “It isn’t clear. There just isn’t a bright line standard yet.”
Museum of Unnatural History offers unusual view of the world
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Lizzie Norgard
With titles like “Conundrum Giving an Enigma to a Perplexed Ambiguity” and “I Can’t Make up my Mind; Undecided; Rare Ambivalence; Heteroclite,” Gerry Matthews’ art works prod the viewer’s own imagination.
Matthews’ meticulously-crafted three-dimensional “assemblage” art, on display at the Black Door Gallery (a.k.a. Museum of Unnatural History) on Main Street, assails the viewer with surreal, grotesque and sometimes macabre images. His pieces bluntly comment on social institutions and themes such as religion, government, the military, prostitution, and the human body. Matthews said, “[my art] represents my skewed sense of humor about life in general—political and religious and social attitudes. I like making fun of it.” He said that his pieces can be academically termed “Outsider Art.”
Many of Matthews’ pieces are quite playful, especially those which use toys as their main medium. One of his pieces, entitled “The Last of the Great Superpowers,” is constructed from a motorized Erector set and portrays the American “empire” as a carnivalesque machine. The piece also features dozens of toy monkeys with cymbals and fezzes. As in several other pieces, the monkeys in “The Last of the Great Superpowers” symbolize George W. Bush and his staff, but aside from their symbolic meaning Matthews also enjoys the monkey image for its own sake. “Having a lot of toy monkeys is very funny to me,” he said.
Despite the overall funniness of his pieces, Matthews has a few serious ones. One piece entitled “Bluebird of Happiness” expresses Matthews’ response to a lynching that occurred in Waco, Texas, the city in which he was born. Some of Matthews’ work also portrays prostitutes, who he perceives and depicts as “sad.”
Matthews incorporates countless media into his pieces, including paper cut-outs for collages, papier maché, clay, wax, wood, plaster, dolls, skulls and masks. Matthews accumulates materials from junk shops and antique stores, the country store near the airport, the Internet and through gifts from friends. He said he never throws anything away.
Matthews has been inspired by such artistic movements as Surrealism, Dadaism and Absurdism. Books on Joseph Cornell, Hans Bellmer, Manray and Marcel Duchamp sit next to him in the gallery. Matthews has also lived with and around artists all his life, including Minimalist painter Ellsworth Kelly and pop artist Robert Indiana. Before he moved to Walla Walla with his wife in 1989, Matthews was an actor in New York City and a television writer in Los Angeles. In New York he appeared in night clubs, on Broadway, on live television and in TV commercials from 1953 to 1984. Matthews says in his bio that the artistic constructions he has been doing for the past 6 years provide “an outlet and satisfaction [he] often felt as an actor.”
When asked how he came up with the name “Museum of Unnatural History” for his gallery, Matthews said that when he lived across the street from the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, one of his eccentric acquaintances suggested a need for a Museum of Unnatural History that would feature people like himself. “I liked the campy idea,” he said.
Disclaimer
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
Disclaimer:
The contents of this page are entirely fictitious and intended for humorous effect. The resemblance of any actual person, living or dead, is entirely incidental and not meant to hurt or offend any person, place or thing.
Disclaimer 2:
The above disclaimer is entirely real (except for the concept of offending places and things) and necessary for us at the Back Page to not get sued or accused of libel/slander. You will see a disclaimer from now on for every Back Page.
Disclaimer 3:
Seriously, here’s why we have to do this. A few alumni complained upon reading the first issue of the Pioneer this semester. They were confused and thought that George Bridges wrote the “Message to the First-Years” printed on the Back Page. Due to the frequent references to Harry Potter, his claim that he hoards cookies, his insistence that Four-West hold free and democratic elections and that it was published on what has been understood for years as the humor page, we assumed that people would understand that it was a joke. We assumed wrong. The article in question is published this week with corrections immediately to your right.
Disclaimer 4:
As recent Beta Pledges, Dru and Stephen know the consequences of taking a joke too far. Upon considering the claims made against us we agree that we have gone too far and are clearly in need of censorship. We whole-heartedly accept the accusations.
Disclaimer 5:
No. We don’t accept the accusations. In fact, we don’t think that they go far enough. What we wrote was for all intents and purposes outright propaganda, not simply slander. We are so sorry for our actions and will no longer serve the student body as weekly satirists of Whitman College events. Instead we will be fearful obedient servants of the money-making operations of the college. The Back Page will no longer be humor-based, but rather will only have pictures of cute puppies and kitties (and we will make sure that the animals sign release forms).
First issue article, with corrections
October 5, 2006 by Unknown Author · Leave a Comment
by Not George Bridges
Dear First Years et al,
First off, I just wanna say: TWO-WESSSSSSSTTTTT!!! (read: D-Section) By now all you Two-Westers have probably figured out that you’re in that section for a reason. All your application essays pointed to one undeniable fact. You are all insanely badass. (George Bridges did not write this, sorry 2-West.)
On another note, you returning students may not know that there is a change in Jewett’s fourth floor (read: Iraq). Due to an excessive amount of RAs (read: WMDs) they have added another section. In addition to Four-East and Four-West there is a new section called Far-West. This makes the former Four-West the middle east. We support a free and democratic Four-West. If elections are not held in forty days, you will be bombed. (George Bridges did not actually write any of this, sorry Iraq.)
On a lighter note, there have been some serious changes here at Whitman. (This is true. But George Bridges did not say this.)
- A lot of people think that the new fitness center will make the campus fitter. But we know you’re just going to the gym to watch the Food Network on the treadmill. Keep chasing that chocolate cake. Fatty. (This clearly stems from Dru and Stephen’s personal issues and is not meant in any way to affect the student body or alumni. Also, George Bridges did not write this.)
- Because the new health center is in the old Japanese Interest House all of your health and wellness needs will be solved with a traditional kimono, samurai short sort and the insistence that you perform Hari-Kari. (First off, we want to apologize to Japan. Despite the fact that George Bridges has an extensive knowledge of Japanese customs (he actually doesn’t, sorry for lying) he did not write this.)
- You may notice the lack of Pat Keef around campus. Well we are pleased to inform you that we have a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Timothy Kaufman-Osborn will be taking his place. We look forward to his hilarious misadventures and his untimely death. (Blatantly untrue.)
- As always, stay out of the forbidden forest and avoid the whomping shitberry tree. (Again, not true. We don’t know what we were thinking.)
- If you have any idea who “RAB” is write to me at president@whitman.edu. God! I can’t wait for book seven. (This is just outright propaganda!)
That’s it. Enjoy the year. -GB (George Bridges did not write this. He does not want you to enjoy the year. Humor writing is so hard. We’re going back to poo jokes. (As long as our fecal matter signs a consent form.))
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