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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]