This week in greek…

Delta Gamma: The Whitman Delta Gamma chapter was just recognized by their nationals with the prestigious Patricia Patterson-Danielson Award, which places them in the running for ‘Chapter of the Year’ at the national level. Additionally, the DGs just chose a new faculty advisor, Professor Barry Balof. Furthermore, on Sunday the chapter successfully celebrated their Founder’s Day, which culminated with introduction of the Diana Palmer Scholarship for academic achievement in honor of their former chapter advisor.

Kappa Kappa Gamma: This past weekend the Kappas held their annual Dr. Seuss Day event in Reid Ballroom with over 300 people in attendance. After spring break the Kappas are looking forward to their scholarship banquet as well as participation in a Senior Prom at the Oddfellows home in collaboration with Phi Delta Theta.

Kappa Alpha Theta: The Thetas also had a very successful Founder’s Day celebration and recently had 12 members volunteer at the Fort Walla Walla wetlands restoration project. Lastly, the Thetas are similarly excited for their scholarship bake-off after spring break.

Tau Kappa Epsilon: The TKEs are very excited about their composting program and related collaboration with the Whitman organic garden. Furthermore, the TKEs have two scholarship events following spring break as well as their biannual Red Cross Blood Drive on April 6.

Phi Delta Theta: Last week the Phis had a very successful scholarship talk with sociology Professor Keith Farrington. The event was well attended by an assortment of Phis, other greeks and independents. After break the chapter will be hosting their scholarship banquet as well as a Battle of the Bands event on April 8 in RCC. Submissions for competition are due by March 28 and all the proceeds from the event will go to a local foundation.

Beta Theta Pi: This last Saturday the Betas hosted a canned food drive benefit concert which helped to collect over 400 cans of food. The event garnered a commendably diverse crowd of greeks and non-greeks, ranging between 150 and 200 people over the course of the night. Furthermore, the Betas won the inter-fraternity energy conservation competition through their utilization of mandatory black-outs. Lastly, the chapter held their faculty luncheon on Wednesday.

Sigma Chi: The Sigs would like to welcome their spring pledge class and wish them the best of luck throughout the pledge period.

-Chase Cooper

I heart Huckabee: A candidate to remember

Mike Huckabee. Inspirational. Evangelical Minister. Full of one-liners. His emergence as the last remaining Republican not named John McCain surprised everyone. Although winning the Iowa caucus didn’t catapult him to the Republican nomination, his candidacy makes this liberal columnist still proud of American politics.

His values and beliefs don’t reflect those of the majority of Americans, certainly not those of us at Whitman, but we should respect his candidacy even when it doesn’t make sense to continue it. McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, even told the press that Huckabee “would need to win 123 percent of remaining delegates” to clinch the nomination. Too bad Mike Huckabee says he “majored in miracles” instead of math. When asked about the futility of his campaign, Huckabee responded that Americans wanted an election, not a coronation. Essentially, Huckabee wants to and will continue to campaign until the Republican Convention this summer. He’s fearlessly determined.

Christian evangelicals occupy a tenuous place in American politics. Largely apolitical since the 1920s, they reemerged as political force after Roe v. Wade and rallied to the Republican Party. With leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, southern evangelicals voted pro-life, pro-prayer in schools and pro-Republican. However, their support hasn’t translated into concrete political gains. Aside from appointing judges who are more likely to be pro-corporate than pro-life, or promoting abstinence in foreign aid education programs, the Republican Party has not, in large, enacted the southern evangelical agenda. The Republican Party has consistently refused to act on the issues that are most important to its evangelical base.

President Bush pays lip service to the need to protect the so-called “culture of life” but after his re-election in 2004, the first issue he campaigned for was social security reform, not intelligent design and especially not banning abortion. Feeling used and betrayed by the Republican Party, evangelicals have begun to withdraw some of their fervent support.

Enter Mike Huckabee, the perfect Christian evangelical candidate. During debates, he’d quote scripture in his answers and during speeches he’d talk openly about the need for God to be infused into American life. While this is anathema to me, and to many Americans, it takes political guts to talk so openly about something so controversial.

Last December, before the Iowa caucus, Huckabee ran an ad with him in front of a Christmas tree telling Iowa voters to enjoy Christmas with their families. Although the ad seemed uncontroversial, the media quickly noticed a gigantic white outline of a cross behind Huckabee as he spoke during the ad. The media covered this for days, gaining Huckabee free air time and letting practically everyone know that he was a devoted evangelical.

Contrast this with Hillary Clinton’s ad in Iowa before Christmas: 30 seconds of Hillary Clinton labeling presents that represent issues such as healthcare. That ad tells us nothing about who Hillary is as a person, except that she wants universal healthcare. Huckabee told voters who he was, not what his issues checklist would be.

American presidential politics can be very depressing. There are establishment candidates such as Hillary Clinton and John McCain who run the campaign assuming they’ve already got the nomination locked up. Hillary’s about to lose for this arrogant assumption and McCain reinvented his whole campaign last summer to avoid dropping out of the race. Then, there are candidates who run as Washington outsiders but talk, act and look like Washington insiders. Here’s looking at you, Mitt. You too, Rudy. Then there are true Washington outsiders like Mike Huckabee, the openly devout Christian, and to a lesser extent Barack Obama.

Fortunately, Mike Huckabee will never be president and Barack Obama will. Unfortunately, America will forget Mike Huckabee after the primary campaign is officially over. We remember winners, not losers. Do the names Paul Tsongas, Gary Hart, Bill Bradley ring a bell?

I hope we remember Mike Huckabee. National Republican leaders have been pressuring him to drop out of the race and run for Arkansas’ senate against first term Democrat Mark Pryor. Polls show Huckabee is the only prospective Republican nominee to win that seat because he’s a former governor of the state.

Huckabee said no. He’d rather spend his time and money criss-crossing the country trailing John McCain on the roads and in the polls getting out his message.

While Mike Huckabee doesn’t believe in evolution, he does believe in authenticity and determination. Those are two values that candidates often sacrifice at the altar of polling and political gain. Huckabee knows he won’t win, but winning isn’t all that matters. What matters to Mike Huckabee is telling as many Americans what he believes and what needs to be done in America. We should respect and remember that.

Where have the boys gone? the video game culture at whitman

It has come to my attention that some boys are frequently preoccupied; they only show up to eat their daily meals and then mysteriously disappear. Their appearances are becoming barely more regular than the presence of a blue moon. The reason for this odd behavior is not a living, breathing organism with a pulse. No, instead the culprit is a massive pile of twisted and tangled cords belonging to Playstations, Xboxes, Nintendo 64s and their respective controllers.

Although video gaming seems rather foreign to a large proportion of the Whitman
community, I am pretty partial to the idea of sitting around multiple hours a day kicking it on Super Smash Bros. I remember when I used to think that video gaming was merely a silly pastime that people partook in. What I’ve realized recently, however, is that video gaming has become a form of lifestyle more than a routine activity.

What I’ve learned, thanks to the many years of living with my brother, is that there is even a language that gamers use. For example: pwn (pōn) v. pwn•ing, pwn•age, pwned to beat someone (very badly) Slang. n00b (nōōb) n. somebody who lacks experience or skill (often both) in a game. 1337 or leet (lět) adj. Used to describe a talented, very skilled player.

“N00bs will get pwned by 1337 gamers,” explained Matt Badura, a first-year and Jewett 3 East resident.

So the question I ask is this: To what extent are Whitties involved in playing video games and why?

Although Whitman, as a whole, is not as immersed in video game culture as I would have thought, there are still pockets on campus where video games are known to be played more frequently.

Take, for example, the people in the Marcus House who avidly play Guitar Hero (“on Hard/Expert level,” said Karl Wallulis, a sophomore Marcus House resident) and Super Smash Bros. Melee when they take breaks from their studies.

“In our section we have five consoles,” said Badura. “Nintendo 64, Xbox, Xbox 360, Playstation 2 and Game Cube. The most common games played in 3 East are Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart 64, Madden ’08 for Xbox 360 and Fifa ’07 for Xbox 360.”

Many Whitties claim that they play these games when they relax or feel stressed: “It’s an easy way to kick back, forget about the looming assignments due tomorrow and escape from some of the more pressing concerns of life,” said Badura.

In other words, it provides a fantastic form of procrastination.

“When it really comes down to it I would say pure enjoyment,” said first-year Johnny Zimmerman from Anderson C section. “I have definitely been playing less video games since I have come to college because there is a lot more to do here outside of gaming, but at the same time real life doesn’t offer some of the fantasy and amazement they offer.”

Another reason is the camaraderie that grows from multiple hours of gaming.

“It’s similar to a lot of other activities on campus,” said first-year Chris Hansman from Jewett 2 West. “In other activities like sports people bond with one another. Playing video games with others isn’t much different.”

“One could even argue that video gaming can allow for more social contact and conversation than sports because in sports you are often times too busy with physical exertion to pause and chat,” added Zimmerman.

There has been the production of more versatile games that are now available for the everyday consumer. There are consoles now like the Wii, which offers a wide variety of games, such as tennis and Mario. For a taste of music, there is Guitar Hero, which gives you the illusion that you are playing the guitar like a pro.

Then there are always the shooting games like Halo, and the classic Super Smash Bros., a game where you take on the character of one of a variety of creatures (a few examples being a pink puff ball named Kirby, an alien kid named Ness, or the big gorilla Donkey Kong), fight with one another, and see who can get the most kills and/or stay alive the longest. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s probably one of the best games around.

Needless to say, playing video games, even for me, is pretty much the most fun way to spend time, but it’s more of an indoor activity; it’s mainly useful during the times when it’s cold and the sky looks like a murky shade of grey. But it’s March already and soon the weather is going to become beautiful again and the sun will come out, people will be sunbathing on Ankeny and Frisbee golfers will be out in packs playing their games. We can only hope that the majority of the Playstation and Xbox fans will be enjoying the spring weather.

And if not, then I’m sure they’ll be pwning n00bs and enjoying themselves nonetheless.

Merger of Walla Walla, College Place would face challenges

Recent tensions between Walla Walla and College Place over development, staffing and water resources have some citizens looking for alternatives.

“Why don’t the two cities merge?” wrote user DannyD on the Union-Bulletin Web site. “[College Place] would get better fire protection and maybe the combined city services would save a ton of money from excess staff. Marketing ourselves as one entity would be far more valuable.”

The neighboring cities duplicate many services, including police and fire departments, school districts and water supplies. Many services are unbalanced; Walla Walla’s position on Mill Creek, for example, gives the city easier access to a renewable water resource.

“College Place is much less able to fund government services,” said City Manager Duane Cole.

When College Place officials recently moved forward in their plans for an independent water source, another user wrote on the Union-Bulletin Web site that “another great opportunity to consolidate local government services to reduce duplication of services and economies of scale [has been] squandered.”

“All things being equal, but they’re not, [a merger] seems to make sense,” said Barbara Clark of the Walla Walla City Council. “But there’s a lot of history and it would take a lot of negotiation. If we were just starting out from scratch and there were 40,000 people living in an area next to each other, it might obviously be one city.”

“The cities have distinct ideas, and appropriately so. They each have a long and proud separate identity,” said Amy Schwab, who recently worked with the city on a comprehensive plan. “Walla Walla has proceeded with its growth in a really different way. One is not better or worse than the other, but just different. There are huge barriers to merging the two cities and I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

These barriers involve not only an embedded history of separation but ensuring continued equality and fairness. “If consolidation were being considered, there would be a lot of issues that would need working out to make it fair so that service wouldn’t get reduced in one part in order to spread the money over a larger distance,” Clark said. “The cities have different levels of debt and obligations.”

“It would be a very complex process,” Cole said.

One option that has been considered is sales-tax sharing, in which cities determine a formula to split sales tax revenue, a main source of income for cities. This would hypothetically reduce tension between the cities over developments of sales tax generators like the Blue Mountain Mall or Wal-Mart.

Sales-tax sharing has proved effective in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota, but the Washington state government would have to pass a law allowing the plan.

“I’ve been talking about this system for 10 years,” Clark said. “It’s never gotten to be a high priority for legislators. I’m not sure what the issue is since the state would get the same amount that they always get.”
Clark and other council members have discussed sales-tax sharing with local and state legislators but have not been able to move forward.

Another option for Walla Walla and College Place can be found in the revised codes of Washington, which allow for consolidation in two conditions. The first would be to annex all or part of one city with mutual consent from both city governments, which Clark said is highly unlikely. The second provision would require 10 percent of each population to file a petition for consolidation, after which the movement would be put to popular vote.

“Ultimately, it ends up with the residents of both cities,” Clark said.
In the meantime, city officials remain in communication with one another.

“We do have competition, but it gets played up in the press more than the cooperative efforts,” Cole said.

“There is tension, but it’s more smoke than fire,” Schwab agreed. “Tension is natural and normal, as long as it’s kept friendly competition. We’re on two sides of a soon-to-be developed place. On a working level, the cities work well together.”

Clark said that Walla Walla and College Place are working together on the Valley Transit Board and various projects, like developing Myra Road and jointly training firefighters. “It’s not as if people aren’t talking or doing things together.”

Local artist captures community’s attention

“Butterflies are my favorite,” said local artist Virginia Peacock. “I like drawing animals best. Sometimes I do stars. But landscapes are good, too.”

Known around town as “the crayon artist,” Peacock, who is developmentally disabled, has become something of a local celebrity because of her vibrant works of art.

“I start with crayons, and then I paint over them. Sometimes I even use colored pencils or poster paint.”
The 48-year-old artist’s paintings are gaining in popularity as more and more local businesses are buying and displaying Virginia’s art, and their customers are taking notice of the brightly-colored drawings.

“Virginia came in here selling her paintings not long after we opened the store last April,” said Rare Finds owner Kris Reed. “I just fell in love with her work. People are so attracted to it, because it’s very innocent and very childlike, and yet there’s some very sophisticated artistic elements in it. They get really drawn to the work.”

Reed displays Peacock’s work on the walls of her artisan food store. “[Peacock] sells them to us for five dollars, and customers get intrigued. They want to buy them, so we sell them for five bucks—we’re not trying to make a profit off of it.  We’re just trying to get the word about Virginia and her artwork out there.”

By selling her own artwork, Peacock, who lives with her mother in Walla Walla, is working toward achieving her greatest goal: “I really want to become more independent,” said Peacock.

“We found out that Virginia had Down Syndrome when she was 6 years old,” said her mother, Rosemary.

Virginia attended special classes for students with developmental disabilities at both Jefferson Elementary School and Walla Walla High School, where she graduated in 1979. Since then, Virginia has worked a variety of jobs, ranging from janitorial work at Blue Mountain Industries to her current job at Goodwill, where she works four days a week.

Virginia also spends time at The Place, a center for developmentally disabled adults. “We do activities and play games. On Tuesdays, we go out to lunch and go bowling.”

Peacock also enjoys going to the public library, where she receives much of the inspiration for her artwork. “I go to the library, and I read books. I see the pictures of animals, and then I draw them.”

Peacock, who attends art class once a week, has always enjoyed drawing and painting, she said, “because it helps relax me. It makes me feel pleasant.” She cites her artistic influences as Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Michelangelo.

Craig Richards, owner of Walla Walla Clothing Co., has collected over 40 of Peacock’s brilliantly multicolored paintings.

“She asked if we were interested in buying any. I liked her, and I liked what she did, so we started buying them,” Roberts said.

When asked what draws him to Virginia’s work, Richards answered simply, “Virginia is the sweetest, nicest lady, and she works hard at what she does. She does such a wonderful job.”

Violence is transgendered

February was a terrible month for citizens of the U.S. and U.K. who identify as transgendered. In this, our shortest month, five people were murdered because of their non-conformist gender identity.

That’s a lie. MORE than five people were murdered, but five particularly outrageous cases received an eensy bit of media attention. I am using outrageous in its purest form. These cases give particular reason to be outraged.
Five might not seem like a lot.  Truthfully, it’s not a lot. But think of it this way. These five people, ranging in age from 10-25, were killed because of the circle they do or don’t fill in on the SATs.

You go to Whitman. Think of one thing you do that goes against the grain. Try to picture the grain—it might have been a couple years since you’ve seen it. But I promise you there is something. Some little thing about how you live your life, which is problematic to someone in the big wide world. Then imagine you’re sitting in your Core class and someone walks in with a gun. Someone you know. And they look at your face, and they know you, and they shoot you. Now you are dead and some of the people in your Core class are glad about this.

Remember, this is because you print double sided and you are REALLY bugging the loggers in central Oregon. Yes. Being transgendered and printing double-sided are comparable. Both are personal choices, and both make less than zero sense as reasons for someone to hurt you. And yet.

Cameron McWilliams, a 10-year-old from the U.K., hanged himself in his sister’s room on Feb. 4 after telling his mom that he wanted to be a girl. I count this in this list because this child (CHILD.) was so terrified of the violence others would want to enact on him, that he preferred  instead to turn on himself.

On Feb. 5, a transgender woman was shot in the head in an empty lot in Detroit. Throughout the investigation, she was referred to as an “unidentified and unknown age black male wearing women’s clothing.” Even the bullet in her head makes no difference in stemming the attacks on her body. She has died, and people who have no idea who she is continue to ignore her existence as a transgender woman. So I am acknowledging her, and asking you to do the same.

Acknowledge how even the police, in their quest to avenge the physical violence toward this woman, have committed their own.

Sanesha Stewart, a 25-year-old transgender woman in the Bronx, was murdered on Feb. 9 by Steve McMillan, who had known her for months but stabbed her to death upon realizing she was transgendered. I’m 21 years old. This woman was four years older than me when her life ended. I have, and she had, a lot more years than four worth of stuff to do. This is the part of the analogy where you are sitting in Core class, the last one before you head off to Mexico for Spring Break.

You have a ton to do, even in the next week, but then that person you know walks in holding a gun. You sort of thought you were friends. Things aren’t looking so friendly now. Because you voted Republican as a Whitman student, and she identified as a woman. Both of you went against the current, and there are people that want you dead for it.

On Feb. 12, Lawrence King, an eighth grader from Oxnard, Calif., was shot by his classmate, Brandon McInerny.  King, age 15, was openly gay and was considered to be effeminate, wearing gender-bending clothing, makeup, jewelry and shoes. So many Kings shot and killed for living, and by living, agitating. So little time. I wish nothing but ill upon those who supply bigoted 15-year-olds with guns. I do not, however, wish them dead. I was raised right. I’m not an idiot. Murderers are.

On Feb. 25, 17-year-old Simmie Williams was shot in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in an area frequented by transsexual prostitutes.  Simmie was wearing female clothing and may have been working as a prostitute.

So there are five beautiful human bodies, ripped apart by bullets. And bigger than that, by stupidity. In the last 21 days.

As I write this article, Word is underlining in red the word transgendered. It does not exist in the dictionary, which means it does not exist at all, according to the powers that be. Terrorism is alive and well, on the streets of Fort Lauderdale, the classrooms of Oxnard and in my little white MacBook. The question is what the War on Terror to end this violence will look like.

‘Definitely, Maybe’ an unexpected pleasure

With a tagline like “Three relationships. Three disasters. One last chance,” one might expect the fourth disaster that the wordsmith who composed that line forgot to mention will be the film itself. But as much as you can’t judge a book by its cover, you also shouldn’t judge a movie by its tagline. After all, practically the same tagline could apply to “Casablanca.”

That isn’t to say that “Definitely, Maybe” is a comparable film to “Casablanca”; these films don’t even exist on the same plane as one another, and to say such a thing would be heresy. The point is, “Definitely, Maybe” is not as bad as you might expect. It is written and directed by Adam Brooks, who also penned the screenplay for the charming film “French Kiss” back in 1995, and while it has certainly been churned out of the same romantic comedy machine as many other films of the same genre, Brooks’ machine at least has a different make and model.

Rather than the typical boy meets girl scenario, Brooks gives us a retrospective look at three failed relationships of one man. Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) is in the midst of a divorce when his 10-year-old daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin) asks him about how he met her mother in hopes that he will remember why he fell in love with her in the first place and decide to stay with her. Reluctant at first, Will decides to play along, but according to his own rules: he’ll tell her the story, but include two other girlfriends and change all the names so Maya will have to guess who her mother is.

It becomes a sort of mystery romance, where Maya and the audience play detective as Will relates the details of his relationships with these women. The suspects include Emily (Elizabeth Banks), Will’s college sweetheart; April (Isla Fisher), a free-spirited copygirl Will meets at his first job out of college and Summer (Rachel Weisz), an intelligent, aspiring journalist. His relationships with these women overlap and weave together, keeping you guessing at the identity of the woman he finally ended up marrying.

The most delightfully surprising aspect of this film is that it is genuinely funny. Brooks reaches for small, realistic moments of humor rather than over-the-top gags to get a laugh, which is highly effective. A lot of the comedy stems from the scenario of an adult telling stories of courtship to a child—Will frequently forgets to omit details about his former self such as smoking cigarettes or drinking his friends under the table, and Maya’s shocked reactions to her father’s “tawdry” past are amusing.

Reynolds and Breslin make a fantastic father-daughter team, and Reynolds is unexpectedly believable as a father, considering his previous acting gigs in films like “Van Wilder” and “Just Friends.” Breslin, who appears to be replacing Dakota Fanning as America’s Next Top Child Actor, does a lovely job with this role and often seems wise beyond her years.

Will’s love interests (Banks, Fisher, and Weisz) give strong, believable performances as well. Impressively, Reynolds manages to have chemistry with each of them, though they all portray very different, distinctive women. Realistically, any one of them could be Maya’s mother, so the mystery portion of the story works well for most of the film.

What is not realistic about the film, however, is that Brooks expects his audience to believe that a child as intelligent as Maya would not piece together bits of her mother’s past and figure out her identity from these. Would a 10-year-old really not know where her mother went to college, or her chosen profession?

Furthermore, Brooks includes an abysmal amount of references to the ‘90s, which are funny at times (Will works on a campaign for some guy named Bill Clinton, everybody walks around with enormous cell phones), but they can also grate a bit on the soul.

Still, the film is entertaining, with real humor and charming, likeable characters. There’s even a bit of a twist at the end, just in case you were sure you knew who Maya’s mother was going to be. It’s always so convenient for romantic comedies to end right when two people realize they are in love and before anything can go wrong, but at least Brooks admits that there are countless things that can go awry in a relationship even when you are in love with someone. Plus, despite being a little corny, it’s always nice to think that everybody definitely gets a second chance. Maybe.

Whitman skier, swimmer qualify for national championships

This week sophomore Devon Spika will compete in the Nordic Skiing NCAA National Championship in Bozeman, Mont.  She was one of two Whitman students to qualify in their sports, along with senior Erin Petterson for swimming.

Nordic Collegiate Nationals consists of a 5K skate ski that took place on Wednesday and a 15K Classic this tomorrow.  Whitman competes in NCAA Division I, which means that Spika will compete against scholarship athletes from Division I powerhouses such as the University of Colorado.

Whitman is the smallest college in the conference and the only Division III School to compete in the Western conference.

Qualification to the national championship is based on each skier’s best two races in both skate and classic.

“All the races are based on a point system.  The first person gets a certain number of points and the second person gets less points and so on,” said Spika. “The Western region takes 16 women and 18 men.”

Spika’s qualification was made even more difficult by the increasing caliber of athletes within Nordic skiing.

“I was 14th so right back on the edge.  I didn’t have a super good season,” said Spika.  “I found that last year racing I had a lot better results. I think that the level of competition has just increased this year.  We’ve gotten a lot of Europeans, and they are just really fast.”

Spika has had a challenging racing season.  “Some of my races I had trouble focusing, and that’s super important especially since most of our races are just five kilometers long so you have to be going as hard as you can the whole time, so if you aren’t focused or are having a bad day you can drop way back in the results,” she said.

Every year Spika, who has dual Canadian/U.S. citizenship and has lived in Denmark, puts in 500 hours of training.  She hopes that this will pay off in Nationals.

“I think top 15 in skate would be really neat.  Top 20 in classic.  I don’t know how the people in the other regions are.  It changes so much from year to year, and there definitely are some really strong skiers in the east.  But for sure if I go as hard as I can I can do it,” Spika said.

Petterson was the other winter athlete with an opportunity to compete at the national level in her sport.  She qualified in swimming. In the regional meet in Federal Way, Wash., Petterson finished second in the 200-yard butterfly and 100-yard butterfly races.  Her times give her a chance at competing in the NCAA Division III National Championship; however, they do not signify automatic qualification.   Her qualification depends on how other swimmers perform.

According to a Whitman press release, her times last year would have automatically qualified her for the NCAA championships, which will take place March 14 and 15 in Oxford, Ohio.

dear doctor danger: a dancing dilema

I like dancing to club and house/trance/techno music, but this weekend I’m going to this frat party and I just KNOW the only thing they’re going to play is hip hop. And not only do I not know how to dance to hip hop, but I don’t like it. The only thing girls are going to do there is shake their butts and grind with guys and I’m not into that…soo I don’t know what to do!  Does anyone know of anything I can do at a frat party instead of dancing?
—Scared to Shake

Scared,

Any fraternity worth its weight in salt will have a wide array of activities available at a typical social function.  Here are a few: “shotgunning” beers, boat races, flip-cup, Beirut, Kings, asshole, quarters, caps, ride the bus, and up the river/down the river.  If the frat is pretty classy, they might also have some mellower games, like beer chess, beerchesi, beergammon, beeropoly, chutes and beers or connect-four-beers.  I should warn you that there is a chance you will be going to a “dry” frat house.

This mythic and fantastical beast is a lot like any other frat you’ll wake up in at 2:15 in the afternoon wondering what day it is and where your left eyebrow went, with the notable exception that the men have all taken a pledge to keep the evil spectre of alcohol out of their house.  What this means for you is that you will have to look for the games I mentioned in a house nearby, or drink with friends before you go (this maneuver is commonly referred to as the “pre-funk”).

That said, I would really advise you to dance however the hell you want to.  You don’t even have to drink.  One day you’re going to grow up and get a Roth IRA, and when that day comes you’ll look back and take stock of your life.  If you don’t go to this party and have a good time, you’ll be depriving yourself of the vague, hazy memories that will become so important later, when your body has turned to mush and you don’t understand the garbage your kids listen to.

Hi this is because I loved a girl in the school and she refused me and because she loved a boy in school and she slept with him I did not care for that but even though knowing all this I loved her but she said we will be friends in the college I loved a girl she says that she loves me but my friends say that she doesn’t she is like a chameleon she changes her word now and then so what should I do I love her very much she to my friend that she feel afraid to propose me because if she does now and later with any one of us will change our mind then its a lose to us and we get the feeling that its all lost nor if she accepts now and if ur parents dont accept it then wat to do so she says to me once that she will make her parents to agree and the next time I ask her she says no I wont be able to do that so she says I want u to do a govt job I will look after u well and she says I am afraid I cant understand this I want to know whether she is playing with or she is afraid how to find out.
—Jittery in Lyman

Jittery,

Just because you have Meal Plan C does not mean that you need to buy more than one quad-shot chai charger in a day.

—if you have a question for Doctor Danger, address an e-mail to martins2@whitman.edu—

A necessary presidential library

President George W. Bush does not deserve a presidential library. But we should nevertheless give him one.

For the first time last Thursday, he spoke in some—but not much—detail about his plans for erecting a library at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas—Laura Bush’s alma mater—that would bear his name on its façade.

“We just announced the deal, and I, frankly, have been focused elsewhere, like on gasoline prices and, you know, my trip to Africa, and haven’t seen the fundraising strategy yet,” Bush said during a humdrum White House press conference we don’t even hear about on the six o’clock news anymore. Like I said, he didn’t give us much.

Though Bush does not, by any means, deserve to have his name attributed to a library that is paid for and maintained, in part, by our tax dollars, he owes the American people a degree of transparency that he did not provide during his presidency.

Unlike conventional municipal libraries, presidential libraries are repositories for all preserved presidential records of a particular president. And luckily for the American public, President Bush, according to the Presidential Records Act of 1978, must preserve and hand over all of his presidential documents at the end of his term for the public to openly view at their own leisure.

Ironically, in 2001, before his reckless abuse of executive power in getting us into the illegitimate foray that is the Iraq War, Bush issued an executive order to include in the Presidential Records Act the records of Vice Presidents. Thus, next year we will we get a 2-for-1 special on the disclosure of currently censured documents. Boy, doesn’t that just make you want to lick your attack-ready intellectual lips.

It is no secret that the Bush administration has been one of the most secretive administrations of the last 30 years. But what is a secret is why all the hijinks that have led to domestic eavesdropping and extraordinary rendition, among others, are being kept so tightly under wraps within the four walls of the White House.

Since the Reagan administration’s “when in doubt, classify” policy that led to the classification of roughly 15 million documents in 1985, only the Bush administration has come close to classifying that volume of documents. Not only did they come close, but in 2004 they matched and in 2006 they passed the 15 million mark and classified 20.6 million documents.

At the same time, they declassified only 37.6 million pages of documents. To provide some perspective, at the midpoint of the Clinton administration, some five million documents were classified and some 204 million pages of documents declassified. And the Clinton administration only briefly exceeded the 10-million-documents-classified mark during one year whereas the Bush administration has only not met the 10-million-documents-classified mark during one year.

Even his father came nowhere near to the degree of secrecy that he has. During Bush senior’s lone term, he classified an average of seven million documents per year and declassified an average of roughly 12 million pages of documents per year: a wholly appropriate amount by anyone’s standards, partisan or nonpartisan.

Come 2009, because of the predicted advent of a George W. Bush’s presidential library and the inauguration of a presidential administration that will probably churn out unclassified documents by the millions in order to reverse the over-classification trajectory we are on, we might find out why Bush was so secretive about what went on inside his White House.

There is but one problem, however, in the step between building a Bush Jr. Library and revealing the many secrets his documents have to offer. As opposed to all of the previously built presidential libraries leading back to Hoover’s, Bush’s library, so far as we know, will not be operated by the government-run National Archives and Records Administration but by a private consortium of investors unimaginatively called the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation. Thus, as S.M.U. correctly points out in a letter of concern, the library could either become “a neutral space for unbiased academic research conducted by scholars or a conservative think tank and policy institute that engages in legacy polishing and grooms young conservatives for public office.” We will see whether this becomes another of Bush’s many secrets.

We will probably unveil these secrets assuming that we do not pick John McCain in November, who along with Arlene Specter and Lindsay Graham passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006: one of the most devastating (and borderline unconstitutional) recent documents to undoing Bush’s over-classification mess. If he were to become president, we can only expect McCain to follow his authoritative martial psyche.

I hope that I’m wrong about McCain and that I’m right about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, should either of them enter the White House. But moreover, I hope that the American people understand that opposing the building of a library for one of our worst presidents in history may, in fact, do much, much more harm than good.

Crime report for the week of March 2

Former Valley Vision optometrist charged for indecent liberties former Valley Vision optometrist Kelly J. Cochrane, 50, faces criminal charges for allegedly sexually touching two of his female assistants. Cochrane was charged Monday by the Walla Walla County Superior Court with two counts of indecent liberties.

Cochrane, who lives in Kahlotus, allegedly placed his hands inside the women’s pants and fondled their breasts. According to the police report, one of the women, who assisted Cochrane at Valley Vision for seven years, said the abuse “began in earnest about two years ago for her.” The women filed the report last September when they discovered that Cochrane had victimized them both.

Cochrane will appear in court March 17 for the charges.

Walla Walla resident charged with murder for stabbing brother
A Walla Walla resident who allegedly stabbed his brother to death during a fight last month is being pleaded innocent Monday to a charge of second-degree murder.

Johnny Angel Leal, 27, of 162 Maple St., will appear in the Walla Walla County Superior Court on April 7-10.

Leal is accused of killing his brother, Pedro J. Ramirez, in the living room of their residence after 1 a.m. on Feb. 21. The official cause of death was a single stab wound to an artery below Ramirez’s clavicle bone.

Leal was allegedly pinned to the floor by Ramirez, who punched him unrelentingly. Leal told authorities that he stabbed his brother in self-defense; however, according to Prosecuting Attorney Jim Nagle, the defendant gave differing testimonies.

If Leal is convicted as charged he will serve the standard-range prison term of 11-19 1/2 years for his crime.

Walla Walla man convicted for possession of child pornography Michael N. Belford, 19, of 1414 Monroe St. was sentenced to 17 years in prison on Monday for the possession of child pornography on computer hard drives, which were found in his residence last year.

His 17 year sentence is twice as long as the longest typical standard-range prison term because, according to Walla Walla County Superior Court Judge Donald W. Schacht, Belford has been convicted of a total of 16 child pornography charges in three separate instances. “The public needs protection,” said Schacht.

According to Belford’s former foster mother, Lucy Linker, he had a “horrible” life, and suffers from a developmental disorder that enables him to function at an emotional level no greater than that of a 14 or 15-year-old.

Walla Walla police Detective Mike Boettcher said that the images are some of the most disturbing he has encountered.

“We don’t have answers in this world for a problem like this,” said Schacht.

Walla Walla man sentenced for marijuana Christopher Lee Corn, 23, who pleaded guilty to being in connection with what police have described as a “major marijuana-selling operation” at his residence, was sentenced on Monday to 60 serve 60 days in the Walla Walla County Jail.

Corn will be serving his term on the Department of Corrections work crew. Additionally, he was placed on a year of community custody and charged $3,237 in fines.

Corn was arrested with co-defendant Veronica Rosa Bentley, 29, on Jan. 24 after the Emergency Services Unit raided their home at 726 Ninth Ave. A gallon-sized bag of suspected marijuana as well as digital scales were allegedly found.

-Information with help from union-bulletin.com

Some want substance-free living

For the 2008-’09 housing selection, students will have the option of applying to live in a substance-free area of student housing.

The Residence Life and Housing office decided to offer a substance-free housing option after adequate student interest was shown. This option had been available in the past, however due to a lack of student interest, the option was discontinued.

“We asked a question about substance-free housing in the bi-annual alcohol survey and [the results showed] that students were interested, but they weren’t sure that they wanted to live there,” said Associate Dean of Students for Campus Life Nancy Tavelli.

Students who choose to live in the substance-free area will be required to sign a contract agreeing to neither use nor possess alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs or to abuse prescription drugs. If they are found to be in violation of this contract, they will be required to move into an open room in another residence hall.

“This is not something RAs will be enforcing.  It’s for a group of like-minded students who want to live together and support each other,” said Tavelli.
The location of this substance-free area will be determined based on the amount of student interest.

Student support for this housing option is mixed.

“I think that we should have substance-free housing as an option. It would make a lot of people more comfortable and it would put people together who have similar interests,” said sophomore Hailey Flanigan.

However, not all students share Flanigan’s views.

“Creating a special substance-free section seems like it would garner a lot of ridicule… I feel like people are easily able to avoid alcohol or drugs if they want to and Whitties totally respect those decisions made by their peers, so it seems silly to create a special section for people disinterested in substances,” said sophomore Kelsi Evans.

Although preliminary research showed that there was adequate interest in creating this living space, it remains to be seen whether or not that interest will carry over to student’s housing selections.

Applications are available in the Residence Life and Housing office and are due by March 25.

Matt and Charlie get wild on… Carlo Rossi ‘Blush’

“The flavor is like a romantic love story between fresh strawberries and sweet cherries. No wonder they call it blush. I’m getting red in the cheeks just thinking about it. Especially when I think about enjoying it with a warm quesadilla and my favorite senorita.”

- CarloRossi.com’s description of Carlo Rossi’s Blush Table Wine

Charlie and I want to meet the guy (definitely a guy) who writes the descriptions for the various varieties of Carlo Rossi wine. Charlie likes to think it’s Carlo himself. Matt thinks it’s some guy who came from an upper class background, went to the second best pre-school in northern Connecticut, graduated from Dartmouth and hung himself in a Van Uyes apartment in the summer of 2003, kicking out a pottery barn stool from beneath his feet (the suicide note: “There’s no quesadilla… no senorita… just Rossi blush whenever I close my eyes”).

Let’s just problematize this narrative that Carlo Rossi attempts to beer-bong into our hearts and minds. There has never (NEVER) been a “romantic love story” that involved four liters of a beverage that can only be described as “pain flavored kool-aid.”  That is excepting, of course, that oh-so-common Rom Com formula of “Charlie’s fist meets quarter-inch-thick glass, hilarity ensues.” And really—why a quesadilla?

Why? I guess it makes sense that, after drinking four liters of this shit, the only food you’ll be capable of making is something that involves putting cheese between two tortillas and sticking it in the microwave for a minute.

The idea of “blush wine” was invented in the ‘70s by Sutter Home (in California, not Mexico). A batch of white zinfandel went bad and became pinkish and sugary and Bob Trinchero—in a move of self-interested brilliance that would make Ayn Rand weep bitter tears of joy—simply sold it. Like the movie “Snakes On a Plane,” Blush became an unexpected hit (with douchebags), both in spite of and because of its awfulness. Carlo Rossi (who, Wikipedia indicates, is a person, and not a robot sent from the future to destroy us one flagon of rotten zinfandel at a time) appears to have stumbled upon the coup de genie that you can get away with selling shitty wine by calling it “table wine.”

Let’s work with that a little bit—the term “table wine.” What exactly does that mean? Isn’t most wine supposed to be drank at tables of one sort or another? Rossi is only a “table wine” if your table is the bathroom counter at the VFW hall where you have your AA meetings, or the space between the two front seats of the car you live in. Regardless of where your table is, if you buy some Rossi, everybody sitting at it is going to get bent like steel bars at Superman’s house.

Music to Drink Rossi with:
The Rossi Advertising Fantasy Version: Spanish guitar and a sexy Mexican dude telling you how pretty you look.

Reality: Police car sirens, the sound of your car’s engine turning over again and again without starting as you try to get out of your driveway before your meth-dealer “boyfriend” wakes up.

To Drink with Rossi:
The Rossi Advertising Fantasy Version: The semen of a sexy Spanish dude… or more Rossi.
Reality: Whatever is free/nearby.
To Eat With Rossi:
The Rossi Advertising Fantasy Version: Quesadillas, apparently.
Reality: Nothing. You’re not supposed to eat for like three hours before you get that surgery on your hand.

Activities:
The Rossi Advertising Fantasy Version: Casually telling jokes and enjoying some good-natured railery in front of a fireplace, knowing full well that it’s only a polite preamble to the Caligulaic, pan-sexual orgy that is to follow with some of your impossibly attractive friends.

Reality: Masturbating, knowing full well that it’s only a preamble to crying about your frighteningly low bank balance.

Consumeability Formula:

[ ( Drinkability out of Hundred / Price ) + ( (Alcohol Per Volume x Volume) / Price ) ] / Hours Hungover

So, filling in the numbers for Carlo Rossi Blush:

[ (45/$10.00) + ( (%9 x 4000 ml) / $10.00) ] / 3 Hours Hilariously Hungover = 121.5

(Holy Shit—we’re beginning to think there must be something deeply problematic about our formula.)

‘Non Shock-Jocks’ talk: A whole lotta basketball

ASCH:
Despite the fact that the barrelful of fun that is the NHL regular season is approaching its home stretch, we’re going to completely ignore it and talk about basketball this week: we’re gonna talk college basketball (is anyone’s bubble bursting?), we’re gonna talk pro basketball (what was the worst deadline deal?), and even the business of basketball (its business being, apparently, leaving Seattle).  B-Woods, we’ve got some options here: Where do you want to start?

WOODS:
This was perhaps the most exciting NBA trade deadline in recent years, but I’d like to start with the Seattle Sonics.  Commissioner David Stern has already called it “inevitable” that the Sonics will not be in Seattle in the next couple of years.  I have always been a Sonics fan; even when I would go to Vancouver Grizzlies games as a kid, I still considered the Sonics my team. Consequently, there are a number of emotions that get triggered when I think of the Sonics leaving.  Immediately I try to find someone to blame and find multiple possibilities, the first being former owner (and Starbucks CEO) Howard Shultz. Shultz sold the team to a skeezy businessman from Oklahoma City, Clay Bennett, whose only goal was to get the team out of Seattle and to OKC.  Of course, you can also put some blame on Bennet, who “promised” that his original intention was to keep the team in Seattle.  Then there’s current commissioner David Stern, who somehow allows a team with a consistent fan base, years of history, including an NBA finals appearance 12 years ago, and a general manager who is planning for a bright future surrounding soon-to-be rookie of the year Kevin Durant, to leave.  I just feel a little helpless about the whole situation, so let’s hear your bubble teams for college hoops.

ASCH:
I agree that the Supes packing up shop is a tragedy, and there is certainly enough blame to go around: Commissioner Stern and his buddy Bennett lied to us all, and Howard Schultz, a multi-billionaire, isn’t willing to swallow a few million for the hometown team. As a result, it looks like the Sonics will leave the 14th-largest media market in the U.S. for the 30-somethingth.
But, yeah, let’s talk bubble.  We’re both love discussing how deep the PAC-10 is this year and how many of its teams will go dancing: Stanford, UCLA and WSU are all no-doubt-about-it-write-that-check-and-cash-it-now-sure-thing tournament teams.  After that, though, there’s a pack of six pretty evenly-matched squads from which only two or three tournament teams will likely emerge.
Right now I’ve got USC and Arizona State as the fourth and fifth teams coming out of the PAC-10, and Arizona on the bubble as the potential sixth. UW, Oregon and Cal all look like they’re NIT bound (and maybe OSU could get a win against Reed College).  Is that how the PAC-10 looks to you?  And what do you think about two-time defending champ Florida’s chances of making it back to the Big Dance?

WOODS:
I pretty much agree with you on the PAC-10.  The top three teams are locks.  USC should be in on their strength of schedule (lost to Kansas by four and took Memphis to OT) along with a big win against UCLA.  Arizona State looked like they might be out of it after losing five conference games in a row, but bounced back and beat Stanford and have a quality non-conference win against Xavier, so I think they’re in.  For me, and this is where we differ, I see one more team getting in, in this case Arizona.  Arizona took Kansas to overtime and has quality wins against Texas A&M and Illinois, and I think the strength of the PAC-10 as a whole helps them earn a 10-12 seed in the dance.
As for the defending champs, barring a major upset victory against Tennessee on Wednesday, I don’t think they have the résumé to get in.  They played a pretty soft non-conference schedule, with no notable wins and not even any noteworthy losses, unless you count Ohio State, who the Gators lost to by 13.  Other intriguing bubble teams come from the Big East, which is always so tricky to figure out because it’s so big (16 teams?!).  They currently have five teams ranked in the top 25, which makes me think that at least one and maybe two more will get an invite simply from the strength of the conference.  It looks like Pittsburg should be the sixth team in, with a 21-8 record and wins against Georgetown and Duke.  Other than that, your guess is as good as mine, Eli.

ASCH:
The battle for the seventh (and maybe eighth?) tourney bid from the Big East behind Pitt is intense: West Virginia is 9-7 in league play with a big game against Pitt looming; Villanova has recent conference wins over UConn and WVU; and Syracuse has a win at ‘Nova and another over Georgetown—and one of these teams must be left out.
Changing gears one last time, though, I’m ready to call the Shaq deal a bust.  The Suns are 2-4 since the trade and Shaq doesn’t look like he’s integrated into the offense.  Do the Suns even get out of the first round in the West this year?
As a parting shot, congrats to Cornell for winning the Ivy league title and becoming the first team to clinch a spot in the tournament this year.

WOODS:
A ton of NBA teams made some big changes, here’s how I grade them:
Lakers: A+; Spurs: A; Mavericks: C+; Suns: C-; Cavs A-; Hawks B; Nets B+; Bulls C; Sonics B-; Grizzlies F; Heat A-.
And my parting shot goes to Whitman’s Ultimate Frisbee team, who got invited to the prestigious Stanford Invitational this weekend after an impressive performance in Las Vegas last month.  Congrats and good luck, Sweets!

New production celebrates V-Day

]“The Vagina Monologues” has traditionally been performed at Whitman in honor of V-Day, but this year senior Nicole Pexton wanted to try something different.

With the help of Feminists Advocating Change and Empowerment (FACE), VOX and the Women’s Resource Lounge (WRL), Pexton organized the performance of “A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer” in celebration of V-Day.

V-Day is a global movement to end violence against women and girls. Through V-Day campaigns, college campuses and community organizations across the nation and the world produce annual benefit performances of V-Day founder and playwright Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups in their own communities.

In 2006, “A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer,” a collection of monologues edited by Ensler, was commissioned as another performance option for V-Day.

“I was really excited about staging ‘A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer,’ especially since there was the potential for involving men,” said Pexton.
“These monologues have a more serious tone and they present a different message that is fresh and that represents many voices and perspectives.”

“‘The Vagina Monologues’ were relatively lighthearted and much more of their quality came from their humor. ‘A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer’ is a much more serious production,” said sophomore Anastasia “Stazh” Zaminkos who has experience acting in both productions. “My heart went out to the voices of these monologues in a far more serious and touching way than it did in ‘The Vagina Monologues,’ and I feel that this has been the reaction of the audience as well. A few audience members even cried out of compassion for these women (and man).”

The change in play, however, made it more difficult to produce “A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer.”

“There’s no real template for the show,” said Pexton. “‘The Vagina Monologues’ are very established and they lay out everything. There’s a lot more freedom in producing these monologues and there’s a lot more that has to be decided by the cast. The monologues come from a book of about 100 and we had to choose eight to 10 and decide the order of the show.”

Because the new production did not have as much name recognition as “The Vagina Monologues,” it was more difficult for the group to sell tickets.
“We made approximately $1,140 this year,” said Pexton. The proceeds from the shows will be donated to the Walla Walla YWCA, the Walla Walla Planned Parenthood and the V-Day organization.

Although the performances raised less money than last year, there were only two showings these year as opposed to last year’s three. “I’m very pleased with the amount we raised.  My goal was $1,000,” said Pexton.

It remains to be seen whether “A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer” will continue to be produced for Whitman’s celebration of V-Day.

“I think it might be a good idea to go back to ‘The Vagina Monologues’ [for next year] because people aren’t going to take it for granted anymore since it hasn’t happened this year. I think there will be more excitement for it. It might be a good thing to alternate between these two productions every year,” said Pexton.

“‘A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer’ was defiantly a worthy experiment even if it wasn’t as popular as ‘The Vagina Monologues,’” said Pexton. “I’m so glad that I tried this.”

green bits

+ March 03: Several restrictions on the Navy’s employment of mid-frequency sonars off the coast of California were upheld by a federal appeals court. This is significant because President Bush has attempted to exempt the Navy from environmental laws, but the appeals court agreed with an earlier ruling that questioned the constitutionality of Bush’s ruling.
source: Associated Press

+ February 29: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed that 42,753 square miles of the northern U.S. be given over as a wildlife reserve for the Canadian Minx, which would make the space 20 times larger than a similar proposal asked for in 2006. The Interior Department has not made a final decision, and will take public comment until April 28.
source: Environmental News Service

+ March 04: A conference took place this week of individuals and groups who are skeptical about global warming. Although videos and speeches were abundant, actual sciencentific fact was largely absent from the conference, according the New York Times.
source: grist.org

Ultimate Frisbee teams get competitive, stay relaxed

The slacker sport has brought their A game.

Founded on the principles of feel-good sportsmanship and summer afternoon fun, ultimate Frisbee has moved to the next level of competitiveness.

Whitman’s Frisbee teams have grown in both size and talent since ultimate first showed up on campus in the 1980s.  Especially for the men’s team, this year has seen the fruition of many years of hard work.

“We started out the fall season [which is co-ed] really well. We won a tournament over in the Tri-Cities called the Hanford Howl, which we’d never won before,” said senior Mike MacCully.

At the recent Trouble in Vegas ultimate tournament the men’s team took seventh out of over 100 teams and some of the best competition in collegiate ultimate.

“In Vegas we upset Oregon, and they’re always one of the best teams in the country.  Last year I think they finished fifth in the country,” said senior Jonathan Loeffler.

“It was one of the biggest upsets of the tournament,” said first-year Jeremy Norden.  “Because of our performance at Vegas it put us on the national scene,” said Norden.

“Given our results [at the Vegas tournament] we got invited to the Stanford Invite, which is the most prestigious tournament of the year.  We’re ranked ninth going in which pretty much means we’re in the top 10 in the country this year.  We’re pretty excited,” said Loeffler.  Only the top 16 teams in the country receive invitations to the Stanford Invitational.  This is the first trip to the Invitational for a Whitman ultimate team.

Just because of their recent success doesn’t mean the men’s ultimate team has left the relaxed spirit of the game.

“This year has probably been a bit more competitive for this team, but I think since we’re all Whitman students, I think we’re all pretty balanced and take a healthy and holistic approach to things,” said Loeffler.  “We still want to eliminate the win-at-all-costs attitude.”

“We were the only team that I knew of at the [Vegas] tournament who was camping…I think that’s pretty indicative of our style,” said Loeffler.  “Also, we were the only team in the top 16 championship bracket that we saw at the big party.  We’re all about maintaining a bit of the spirit of the sport in a competitive environment.”

The women’s team also prides themselves in staying true to the fun-loving heart of ultimate.

“[Ultimate Frisbee] is a relaxed mix of fun because there’s drinking and goings on, but there’s still that competitive edge.  We work hard, but we liven things up,” said sophomore Katie Rouse.

While the women’s team didn’t fare as well at the Trouble in Vegas tournament, going 2-7, they still found it to be a valuable experience.

“It was a little rough to have to practice in the snow and have to prepare for a tournament when it was so cold and you couldn’t really practice, but I think for the amount of work we put into those practices, we did really well at the tournament,” said senior Barbara Simeles.

“We obviously didn’t do well in standings, but I think everybody improved leaps and bounds.  And it was a good cultural experience examining the strip and Vegas in general,” said Rouse.

“Also, the fact that the boys are doing really well really pumps up the girls too,” said Simeles.

Indeed, both teams look forward to the sectional, regional and national tournaments ahead in the spring and, of course, Whitman’s OnionFest, which takes place the first weekend after spring break.

“[OnionFest] is just a really fun tournament,” said senior Erin Stuhlsatz.

“And it’s a club tournament instead of a college tournament, so you get that break in the middle of the season. You get all kinds of people, and it’s a dress up tournament, which is fun.  Plus it’s at Whitman,” said Simeles.

One of the most successful non-varsity sports at Whitman, ultimate Frisbee has added a lot to the college atmosphere.

“I think the simplicity of ultimate makes it really successful and it’s pretty easy to learn also,” said Rouse.

While all the members of the men’s team played varsity athletics in high school, both teams praised ultimate Frisbee for opening up new opportunities for them.

“Neither of us has ever played traditional sports,” said Stuhlsatz of herself and Simeles.  “But for Frisbee it’s pretty new for almost everybody.”

“One of the great things about Whitman and club sports in general is the opportunity to compete and be involved in something, while still finding balance in your life.  [Ultimate] definitely enriches Whitman and gives it a name,” said MacCully.

“College is a really good time to come out and try different things and in real life it’s hard to go out and have those opportunities,” said Stuhlsatz.

Community group seeks to revitalize local neighborhoods

Milenko Matanovic, a Seattle architect specializing in neighborhood revitalization, gestured to brightly colored drawings as the neighbors of Edith and Carrie street nodded their approval. It was the last day of a series of meetings organized by the Walla Walla grassroots organization Commitment to Community. The goal of the meetings was to plan a community center for the residents of the Edith-Carrie neighborhood.

Commitment to Community (C2C) was founded in March 2004 after Blue Mountain Action Council (BMAC) and the Donald and Virginia Sherwood Trust co-sponsored a community forum. The forum was designed to set in motion a community-wide effort to address problems endangering neighborhood stability. Housing and family issues were seen as the top challenges while strengthening neighborhoods, developing youth centers and focusing on deterioration were seen as the top three solutions. Commitment to Community formed as an organization to work on those solutions by revitalizing neighborhoods.

“Community to Community is a grassroots organization, working to help neighborhoods revitalize the way they live, it’s helping them help themselves in a way. We know that police officers can’t attend every situation, they can’t solve every problem but the neighborhood residents can. Given the right resources they can solve their own problems,” said C2C employee Federico Diaz.

C2C now has two full-time staff members, a part-time consultant and a shared staff member with the Walla Walla County Community Network. It is largely funded by the Sherwood Trust, the same trust that funded the Sherwood gymnasium at Whitman.

At the moment C2C is focusing on three neighborhoods hard-hit by crime and with eroding economic stability. The current neighborhoods are Jefferson Park, Washington Park and Edith-Carrie.

The meetings with Matanovic were part of an effort to revitalize the Edith-Carrie neighborhood by building them a new community center. Edith-Carrie is located east of 13th Avenue near the Washington State Penitentiary. C2C characterizes it as a “stereotypical neighborhood of low-income, high crime, disenfranchised and isolated residents,” according to their business plan.

The project goals were posted on the wall. The first goal is to develop designs that will improve the neighborhood. The designs were posted next to the goals, representing the desires of the neighbors. Drawn in different colored markers were pictures of an open green space with barbeques, intricately designed street lamps, walkways and a bus stop shelter.

The drawings were the culmination of a weekend’s worth of intensive meetings as well as a prior dinner meeting between Matanovic and the community. The second goal is build selected elements this spring when Matanovic returns.

“Next time he comes in May we’re actually going to start the project, start cutting the wood and laying down the concrete and all that,” said Diaz.

The last goals are to involve the community in all phases and create momentum. This is where the constant efforts of C2C staff members are needed. Diaz calls himself and fellow staff member Louis Gonazles “streetwalkers” as they are constantly walking the streets of the communities they work in. They go door to door, finding out what kinds of changes community members want to see in their community and then asking them to come to meetings to realize those changes.

“We’ve found out all that the [Edith-Carrie] neighborhood wants to see in [their new community center]. Now we’re seeing how we can get that all in there and make it happen,” said Diaz.

Animated life leads to success

“Of course I have a secret identity. I don’t know a single superhero without one. I mean, who wants the pressure of being super all the time?” said Mr. Incredible of Pixar’s hit animated film “The Incredibles.”

Dr. Aaron Lefohn, ’97, has lived the life of a superhero, accomplishing the extraordinary and learning from unforgettable experiences that started here at Whitman, but included stops in Western and Eastern Europe, Nepal, Smith Rocks, Utah, San Francisco, and finally Seattle. Sponsored by the Career Center, his lecture “Choosing Mentors: To Pixar & Beyond” last Thursday was the perfect example of an alum whose journey throughout the last several years were nothing short of incredible. Lefohn graduated with a bachelor’s in chemistry, earned a Ph.D. in computer science from UC Davis, taught skiing in the German and French alps and, not to mention, worked for Pixar, one of the most successful computer animation studios to date.

“It’s been a long path to get to Pixar,” said Lefohn. His achievements did not come without the help of some personal discoveries. Lefohn was heavily involved with the Outdoor Program while at Whitman and has continued to share his love for skiing and climbing with many others.

Leading up to spending years teaching skiing in the German and French Alps, as well as rock climbing all over the U.S. and Europe, Lefohn realized that being happy required following an non-traditional, unstructured path, even if it meant leaving school for a while.

“By the middle of my sophomore year, I was very frustrated with Whitman because I passionately wanted to pursue life as a ski instructor and rock climber rather than follow the ‘conveyor belt’ to a desk or lab job. Most professors and fellow students thought I was destined for failure, but I really didn’t care—the obvious and expected path was no longer of any interest to me,” said Lefohn, reflecting on the twists and curves of his path at the time.

Lefohn’s adventures led him to discover one of his true passions, inspiring students to pursue the unknown.

“I thought the best advice coming from his talk was to take chances and follow your heart, even if it left you empty-pocketed,” said freshman Brianna Jaro. In his talk, Lefohn credits his career success to following his passions, even when they led him away from profitable pursuits.

Although Lefohn went his own way before returning to school, he noted the importance of mentors and how their guidance and advice could lead a person to a new and exciting direction. He also warned of the damage that a selfish or vindictive mentor can inflict on someone’s career.

“My parents role modeled by living passionate lives,” said Lefohn who mentioned, among many of his mentors, Stephen Schvaneveldt. The former Whitman chemistry professor advised Lefohn to learn a computer programming language so that they could perform theoretical chemistry research together. It was then that he discovered his passion for computer science, which eventually led to significantly shifting his graduate school career from a Ph.D. program in chemistry to a Ph.D. in computer science. “Sometimes it is okay to quit…,” said Lefohn in reference to walking away from his Ph.D. in chemistry to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science after three years, two successful publications, and passing his Ph.D. oral qualifying exam, “as long as you are leaving a dead-end path and embarking on a new path that you know with your entire being will take you to where you want to go. All of the jobs I wanted required a Ph.D. in computer science, not chemistry. In retrospect, the decision was obvious.”

“Lefohn’s meandering career path was encouraging. His devotion to hard work allowed him to switch career paths and make up for lost ground in new fields, a skill I think Whitman can bring out in its graduates,” said sophomore Andrew Witherspoon.

After working as a researcher and graphics software engineer at Pixar for three years, Lefohn left Pixar in 2006 to work for Neoptica, a computer graphics startup company that was acquired by the Intel Corporation last fall. He is currently living in Seattle with his wife (former Whittie, Karen Gamache/Lefohn) and daughter, working as a senior graphics software architect for Intel to define the future of interactive graphics programming and learning to be a mentor for his daughter.

“I don’t have all the answers for you. All I can do is tell you my story about how I found a career that I absolutely love,” said Lefohn, “I was lucky enough to find a path that captured my heart. I have no idea what is next, but I’m having a great ride.”

Alternative sports gain popularity on college campuses

From prep school games to pure athletic pursuits to stadium-sized productions and now to alternative sports. The face of college sports is constantly changing, and the current shift toward alternative sports and activities is no exception.

It turns out you don’t have to be on the cross country team to be in good shape or on the basketball team to be a real athlete.

“I just like physical labor, and it’s kind of meditative in a way.  It’s a good release,” said first-year Shannon Flood, who participated in trail building this past summer.  Flood ran cross country, played softball and danced before coming to Whitman, but she now appreciates the repetitive nature of working in the organic garden.

“I just like doing independent things,” said Flood, who also noted she likes the total concentration necessary for manual labor and the way it works muscles she never knew she had before.

The trend away from traditional varsity sports and toward alternative forms of recreation began in the 1980s but has really come into fruition in the ‘90s and early part of the 21st century.

According to the National Sporting Goods Association, traditional sports began to decline in popularity starting in the mid-1990s.  Since then, alternative sports from yoga to snowboarding have exploded in popularity.

While institutions themselves aren’t usually at the forefront of the innovation, college students are often pioneers.  Whitman didn’t start an official snowboarding team until 2000, but many students had been boarding for years and even participated in the fledgling collegiate nationals before an actual team was started.

Now Whitman offers classes in everything from triathalon sports to modern dance to the extremely popular yoga and rock climbing.

The growth isn’t just at the college level.  First-year Jeremy Norden has seen a big increase in the popularity of ultimate Frisbee in even the past few years.

“In 2004 at high school level, there were six or seven states that had a state tournament, and my senior year, 16 or 17 states had a tournament,” said Norden.

Norden, who helped coach a junior high team for a while estimated the number of teams for that age group has tripled in the past few years in his native Seattle.

“I feel like alternative sports are a good way of getting out there,” said first-year Linnea Ruden.  Ruden played soccer and did gymnastics in high school but has shied away from traditional sports in college.

“Alternative sports can provide the same communal spirit as a team but without the same competitiveness.  It reaches gets more people involved or at least meets different needs.”

Young women’s basketball team ends ‘pretty good’ season

In the strong Northwest Conference, every night is a dogfight. The Whitman women’s basketball team came out battling from the very beginning, against their initial ranking as seventh place as much as against other teams. The strong but young squad proved they deserved recognition with their winning record and competition for the playoffs up until the very end.

“Overall, the season was pretty good. In the beginning, we weren’t ranked highly. We ended up beating the number one team and competing for third,” said first-year point guard Jenele Peterson. “But we can always improve.”

Peterson was one of seven players competing in their first year of college ball this season. The team’s youth was a big factor – with only three seniors and no juniors, the underclassmen really had to pull their own weight.

“Our freshman and sophomores stepped up this year. Our seniors were key, but they can’t do it all by themselves,” said coach Michelle Ferenz, who is in her seventh season coaching at Whitman.

“We were really balanced. Different people really stepped up at different times. Our strength was our balance – we were a hard team to guard,” said Ferenz.

The Missionaries certainly benefited from their three experienced seniors, guard Kristina Francis and forwards Emily Shubin and Kelsey Krumdieck. The three starters were not only valuable as players, but as leaders on and off the court to their younger teammates.

“We had really good team chemistry and got along really well with each other, which I think was really apparent both on and off the court. I would say that Janele and Michelle Krall stepped up a lot this season and played really well consistently. The majority of games, though, were really team efforts where many people contributed,” said senior forward Emily Shubin.

“We had some tough games. We lost a couple close games, games we shouldn’t have lost. Some of that is immaturity, learning that you have to be ready to step on the court to play every night. Given that it was such a young team, we did well. But there’s always room for improvement,” said Ferenz.

Prospects for the next few years look even more exciting. With no seniors, the team will be still be young but also have the opportunity to play together for two years without losing anyone.

“We’ll have a lot of time to play together and really take it to the next level,” said Peterson, who looks to start at point guard for the second year in a row.

“I’ve never had [the same group for two years] before,” said Ferenz. “It’s exciting, especially if we have a good recruiting year again, like this year.”

“We’ll need to fill the holes of Emily and Kelsey on the post. Also, a lot of it depends on how much we improve in the off-season,” she added. “When you’re a freshman or a sophomore, you can do a lot of good for yourself by getting in the weight room. It’ll be a key spring and summer for us in terms of improvement.”

Saying farewell to three important seniors, the core group of underclassmen is shooting for the top three with hard work and team effort in the off season.

Irrelevant laws and spending

I have a 14-year-old brother, and he likes to read books about the world’s dumbest criminals, or scariest haunted houses; non-narrative and pointless all. In fairness, I used to enjoy that type of thing—not the reading of it, but the ability to whip out random facts to impress and/or annoy the nearest adult. The only one I can remember now is this: in Oklahoma (or so I’d say), it is illegal for a babysitter to eat a cherry pie out of the refrigerator of the family for whom she’s babysitting.

I have not been able to confirm that this is, or ever was, an actual law, and I’m betting it wasn’t, but according to Dumblaws.com (classy, I know) here are some things that are illegal in Oklahoma: wearing boots in bed, confining fish in fishbowls on public buses, and whaling. You know what this says about Oklahomans? They are very imaginative. They are so imaginative that not only did they find ways to go whaling in a landlocked state, but they also dreamed up so much destruction due to this whaling that they would not stop until it was outlawed.

Fear not, our very own dear Washington state has its quirks, as well. Here, for instance, “the operation or maintenance of any X-ray, fluoroscopic, or other equipment or apparatus employing roentgen rays, in the fitting of shoes or other footwear or in the viewing of bones in the feet is prohibited” (RCW 70.98.170). This, at least, is a law truly for the public good. I can’t tell you how pesky it was batting off the shoe salesman constantly trying to X-ray my feet.

At least these laws, while, yes, symbolizing a dubitable use of time on the part of our state representatives, are relatively harmless. There is not to my knowledge a training school for footwear outlet X-ray inspectors. There is, however, a startling amount of pork barrel politics going on at both the state and federal level, resulting in millions of dollars being thrown at projects of questionable worth and relevance.

In 2002, Washington members of Congress snuck a provision into the 2003 Defense Appropriations bill requiring the U.S. Navy buy a ship it did not want from a Washington company for $4.5 million. That company, Guardian Marine International of Edmonds, later made significant campaign contributions to each of the members involved. Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) outlines many more items of spending; some have a much lower monetary value, some have one much higher.

Perhaps the most infamous case of pork barrel spending comes to us from Ted Stevens, Republican Senator from Alaska, whose “Bridge to Nowhere” project (so called by a Ketchikan resident) would have lent $398 million to build a bridge to connect Ketchikan to the Ketchikan International Airport on Gravina Island. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Senate wanted to take the funds from the Ketchikan bridge project and put them toward relief in New Orleans. Sen. Stevens remarked on the Senate floor that if the bill passed, he would be “a wounded bull on the floor of this Senate.” He continued to say that “this is not the Senate I’ve devoted 37 years to,” a Senate where one can “take all the money from one state to solve the problem of another.”

This, ultimately, is what irks me most about both silly laws and pork barrel spending: the perversion of priorities. It is not clear why it’s necessary to make whaling illegal in Oklahoma, and until a good reason becomes apparent, I wonder if legislators should be using their time on more important matters.

Bridges are important…but so are people experiencing the harrowing effects of a poorly handled natural disaster; once again, it seems we have trouble recognizing what issues deserve our time and what issues don’t. Worse, such misuse of time reflects the single-minded mentality that says only my personal issue, only my company, only my state matters. And when our associations become broader, that flamboyant individualism ends up affecting more than just ourselves, our companies, our states. It affects the theories we use when going to war, not as individuals, but as a country. It affects the pervasiveness of materialism in our society and, increasingly, in others.

When I was a child, I was constantly being told to be quiet by adults annoyed by my endless stream of random facts. They seemed pointless, irrelevant. It seems, now, that these adults should have paid more attention.

Real v. Ideal: The system and how Nader is a nutter

Whether we like it or not, there is no denying that we live in a two-party system. No, it was never intended to be this way. And no, it is not written down as such. But it evolved into what we have now.

Why? Well, my guess is that the Founding Fathers were so worried about too much regulation and control, so afraid of being no better than the British system which they had just rejected, that they gave too much freedom to the states and their own governments. After all, that’s why we have that little interim period in our nation’s history that nobody ever really talks about: the period of the Articles of Confederation. They didn’t work. That’s why we have a Constitution.

I know the libertarians, especially you Ron Paul kids, don’t agree, but sometimes the federal government needs to be able to do something. And Ron Paul wants a system (or lack thereof) close to the AoC, which is why he wouldn’t be an effective president. What would he be president of if he had his way? The only thing he’d be effective at is dismantling the government…

Sorry. I digress.

The Federalist Papers allude to the problem of a majority-take-all political system. Federalist Number Ten. If only we had listened to Madison’s warning and put some regulations and stipulations on political parties into the Constitution. Even back then, those men were brilliant enough to see that a plurality system, while in its ideal form is wonderful and gives everyone a voice, would be disastrous in terms of having multiple parties.

In the middle of the last century, Maurice Duverger published a series of papers pinning this gravitation towards a two-party system, and the concept is now named after him as “Duverger’s Law.” We see it played out here in the United States, and other countries experienced it. A “plural” system actually becomes a “dual” system. But the difference between those other countries and ours? They changed their election laws, and now they have more parties represented within their governments.

Yeah, yeah, small government is better, right? Look, there are all sorts of countries that have what we would call a “fairer” system specifically because they have regulations on how many representatives from their multiple parties can and cannot be allowed in their districts or houses or what-have-you.

Look at the U.K., the very empire T.J. and all of those guys rebelled against. Its “mixed-member system” enables Scotland, Ireland and Wales to have decent representation within Parliament. Canada has five provinces that are going for a proportionally representative system; New Zealand itself already has it. Germany, you go! Pretty much all of Europe, really, has some codified form of proportional or mixed representation, wherein it is on the books that different parties be represented. None of this Code of the Brethren, “guidelines” stuff.

Solid, systematic methods that work much better than ours.

I’m not saying I hate America or her system at all. And I’m not saying the Founding Fathers were stupid for not heeding the warnings in the Federalist Papers. George, T.J., Ben, James—they had a lot on their plate, for crying out loud. But I think we need to be realistic and admit when something isn’t working the way it’s supposed to.

I think both of our leading parties are full of crap when they say they want to give voices to the marginalized and go across the aisle. If they really felt that way, they’d make some changes to the laws that get people elected. But that would undermine their authority, so that just isn’t going to happen. The only way for more representation to happen, because of how the American system evolved, is to have the very electoral process itself changed.

Until then, nutters like Ralph Nader have no chance. And all they do is get in the way and make the already flawed system even more flawed. Remember the 2000 election? There are a lot of reasons Gore lost, but there is no denying that one was because he lost a chunk of votes to Nader. I’m not saying this as a bitter Democrat, but as an objective viewer of the situation. If those districts that went to Nader had gone anywhere else besides his direction, it would have been towards Gore; and then there would have been no way that even the Florida debacle could have denied Gore the election. Yes, in retrospect we realize Gore won the popular vote (although, do you realize Honest Abe didn’t?); but he could have won the Electoral College if Nader hadn’t been so stubborn (and I’m not saying Nader took EC votes, either—but again, some districts would have gone Blue without him in there, and that led to EC votes going to Bush).

I think Nader has issues. He swears he’s out for the good of the country, but if he really was, he’d campaign for the lesser of two evils. If he really cared about the U.S., he’d pick the candidate, Republican or Democrat, that he prefers and promote them with everything he has. But he’s too stubborn to admit that he has no shot and is just undermining the system. Because right or wrong, good or bad, that’s the system.

His ego needs to be put aside. I love the old Nader—I’m quite grateful for my seatbelts, for example. But he has tarnished his legacy and proven himself to be just an egomaniac that can’t bow out gracefully. He’s so wrapped up in his own little world that he fails to see the real world in which he lives.

(And honestly, how in touch with reality can a man his age that has never even had a wife, doesn’t own a car, and still has a butt-load of money be? How can he possibly relate to the majority of the “American public” he claims to be a champion for? My “champion” would at least be divorced; or if they weren’t heterosexual, then they would have had a long-term relationship at some point, since this country doesn’t universally allow gay marriage.)

Yes, in an ideal system, he’d be able to campaign and have a decent run for it and potentially even win. But that isn’t the system America has. We have a plural system, which amounts to a two-party system, which equals a marginalizing system.

Scholar lectures on Hollywood’s Latino labor

“The first time I became aware of Latino/a labor in American media was when I was in fourth grade,” began Doctor Mari Castañeda, associate professor of communications at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst at her lecture last Tuesday entitled “Waiting for their Close-up: The Political Economy of Latino/a Labor in Hollywood.”

Castañeda is a leading scholar in media studies and is also the upcoming chair of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS). As a child Castañeda worked as a live studio audience member and saw first-hand that although Mexican children could labor as audience members, their chances of working in the film industry as an adult were slim.

“They are the people that make Hollywood function in a lot of ways, whether it is making props or making sure that a show achieves its desired effect—whether it is actually funny, sad, or scary,” said first-year Prentiss resident Melissa Romero, “despite their pivotal role behind the scenes they are rarely given any on screen time.”

“Latinos have always had a tenuous and conflicting relationship with Hollywood,” said Castañeda.

Hollywood produces visions of culture and influences and promotes Latino/a stereotypes. The roles Latino/a actors and actresses are cast in play into and reinforce these stereotypes. There is a connection between representation and employment, and Latinos are underrepresented in the media sector despite the fact that they constitute a growing sector of the United States population.

Latinos currently constitute 15 percent of the country’s population, a percentage that is expected to increase to 26 by the year 2050. Yet they comprise only three percent of film character roles.

The increasing buying power of Hispanics, however, has led Hollywood to put greater focus on them as consumers and more television shows and movies are being created to cater to them. Yet, oftentimes, the writers of these shows are not diverse and, as a result, their portrayals of Latino/a culture and lifestyles are inaccurate.

Due to their tenuous relationship with Hollywood, Latino independent media organizations are working together to develop alternative stories about their lives, void of stereotypes and prejudices. There has also been a visible growth of Latino film festivals in the United States.

“This is their way of saying that if they will not represented and employed in Hollywood, then they’ll do it themselves,” said Castañeda.

When asked what they thought of the lecture, many students gave very positive feedback.

“I thought that the subject was interesting to start out with, but it was made so much more engaging due to the speaker’s enthusiasm for it. It was personal for her from the start,” said Rebecca Macfife, a first-year resident of Lyman.

“I also found it surprising that Latinas who can pass as white are fairly successful in their career.  Some such actresses are Cameron Diaz and Alexis Bledel,” added Romero.

“We wanted to invite a speaker that would address the realities for United States Latinos/as working in the U.S. entertainment industry, primarily in film and television in Hollywood,” said Assistant Professor of Foreign Languages & Languages/Spanish Nohemy Solórzano-Thompson. “By attending her talk, students will gain a critical perspective on the political economy and realities of U.S. Latinos/as working in Hollywood today.”

Bon Appetít employee charged with second degree murder

Johnny Angel Leal, 27, a former Bon Appetít employee and Walla Walla resident, was arraigned on second degree murder charges last Monday.
Leal allegedly stabbed his brother, Pedro J. Ramirez, 28, to death in the early hours of Feb. 21.

Leal pleaded not guilty to the charges; the court set a trial date of April 7.  If Leal is found guilty of these charges he will face a prison term of about 11 to 19 1/2 years.

According to a Union-Bulletin article printed on Feb. 22, in an interview with the police, Leal reportedly claimed that the brothers got into an argument that escalated into a fight in which he was pinned to the floor and being punched in the face by Ramirez.  Leal cited self defense as the reason for picking up a knife off a coffee table and stabbing Ramirez.

In the Union-Bulletin, County Coroner Frank Brown said that an autopsy of Ramirez’s body revealed the cause of death as a single stab wound to an artery below his clavicle bone.

In the same article, Prosecuting Attorney Jim Nagle said, “At this point, we believe the state can prove the absence of self-defense [due to conflicting statements].”  He also said that the officials have not yet declared the motive that sparked the argument.

In addition to Leal’s murder charge, he has a previous criminal record of burglary in 1999.

Given this record, Leal’s initial hiring is curious.

Bon Appetít’s media contact Haven Bourque said that Bon Appetít complies with all client policies in regards to background checks.

According to Administrative Services Director Cindy Waring, Whitman College requires background checks on staff members being hired to hold security, money-holding, residence halls, or nude art model positions.  Their background checks are done by an outside firm who verifies the social security number and addresses listed, as well as completing a three country criminal background check and nationwide sexual predator check.  Whitman is then issued a report listing any convictions on the individual’s record.

Waring said that a potential employee who had been convicted of burglary would have been red flagged during the hiring process.

“It’s pretty routine; I think most colleges do that,” said Waring.  “Since Virginia Tech and NIU [Northern Illinois University] I think they heightened awareness of safety on campus is leading us to the possibility of doing background checks on all employees.”

Regardless of the potential employee’s position, three references checks are completed for each staff member.

It is unclear what measures were taken in the hiring of Leal.

Washington is an “at will” employment state, which means that unless employees are hired under contract or within labor union guidelines, then they can be hired and fired at will, so long as it is not due to unlawful discrimination.

It is unknown under which of these instances Leal was hired.  However, since the murder charges were brought, Leal has been fired from his Bon Appetít position working in Prentiss dining hall.

Bon Appetít’s General Manager Rodger Edens refused to provide any reasons for the Leal’s firing.  All he shared was that “Mr. Leal has been terminated.”

Bourque refused to give any information regarding the firing of Leal, saying, “Bon Appetít doesn’t provide information about employment matters, as this information is confidential to the company.”

When asked, Bon Appetít employees also refused to answer any questions about Johnny Leal per order of the management.

In spite of the ambiguity regarding Leal’s employment with Bon Appetít, general sentiments of sympathy were shared by the company regarding the altercation between Leal and Ramirez.

Edens said, “Everyone I’ve talked to has been shocked and dismayed at the incident and feel[s] for all those whose lives have been impacted.”

Center for Visual Arts, Sherwood undergo renovations

The face of Whitman is undergoing some drastic changes.  Among the more noticeable renovations happening on campus, the Fouts Center for Visual Arts should be completed in time for the fall 2008 semester.  The 38,000 square foot building will include space for art exhibits, classrooms and studios for sculpturing, painting, digital photography, woodworking and outdoor kilns.

The Fouts Center should increase the number of art classes available to students.  It will provide art students with better resources and give them a state-of-the-art building.

“It’ll make art more exciting at the school,” said first-year Cecily Foo.  “It’s always exciting to do art with new supplies and quality resources.  You’re just more inspired.”

Olin, which currently houses art classes and exhibits, will also be undergoing renovations.  With the opening of Fouts, the space in Olin will be converted into new classrooms, which is also scheduled to be complete by the start of the fall 2008 semester.

Sherwood will also see some major renovations, and students are already starting to feel the impact.  Coaches in charge of Sherwood have sent out e-mails asking students to vacate their lockers and signs have been posted on some of the doors, warning students of the upcoming demolition of parts of Sherwood.

The smaller gym and the pool will be replaced with a second, full-sized gym, two dance/aerobic rooms will be added and the locker room space will also undergo renovations.  A foyer with a hall of fame, smart classrooms (equipped with computer media, laptop, projectors, and large screens) and a new indoor climbing wall will be added.

“I’m really trying hard to make sure the new climbing wall will be artistic as well as fully functional for recreational and educational purposes,” said geology Professor Kevin Pogue, who serves on the committee overseeing Sherwood’s renovations.

Some parts of the wall will be as high as 40 feet.  There will be sections for climbers of different skill levels, including boulder climbing and crack climbing.  It will be enclosed by a glass wall and will include a large overhang.

“The wall was designed by EntrePrise, and they’ve designed all the best climbing walls all over the country,” said Pogue.

“We’re very excited about the renovations,” said Athletic Director Dean Snider.  “It’s going to really meet a lot of the needs of athletic students and it will help recruit athletic students.”

The demolition phase will begin this spring, and the coaches are expected to relocate to a building behind Lyman on March 10.  All of Sherwood will close during the demolition phase except for the dance room in the basement and the racquetball courts.  The volleyball team will be moving their off-season practices to Walla Walla Community College after spring break and some of the IM teams will not be able to use the gym.

“There should be very minimal interruption with sports during this process.  There will be a few inconveniences, but they will be well worth it,” said Snider.

The Sherwood renovations should cost the school close to $500,000.  The projects on campus are funded by alumni gifts, the Life Cycle Committee, Parents Fund and the college’s endowment.

“There are a few other long-term projects on the way, but it might be too early to start talking about those,” said Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer Peter Harvey.

KC Masterpiece: finding Jesus unexpectedly

Dear Sweet Kaitlin,

This weekend I had a truly religious experience. If you have visited my top-secret sexy Italian online forum in the last 24 hours you may have read the explicit version of the second greatest story ever told, but in case you haven’t:

This weekend I found Jesus.

I’ll give you the TV-14 synopsis.

On Saturday night, little Oliver took my lady friends and I to a bar called Lochness, also known as the Saturday night breeding ground for Syracuse students. After some raspberry flavored vodka, I thought I spotted a Brit. And indeed, I did. His name was Ross. He was gloriously pasty and highly amused at the club’s riotous atmosphere.

And he had a friend named Jesus. Jesus had a blue, red and grey scarf and an appeal that was both Ferris Bueller and Beatle-esque. Before long, I learned that Jesus hailed from Spain and that he and his friends were passing through Florence on their way to Naples.

It goes without saying that I agreed to accompany Jesus and friends to their hostel when the bar closed, much to the disintegration of Oliver’s ego. My Satan, I hardly know what to say from here. Only that Jesus touched me. And according to Ross, who occupied the bed a few feet away, I’m a “filthy bitch.”
But, the next morning, in a very small shower, Jesus washed my sins away.

That night, things got a little Old Testament. After our dear friends had departed in order to arrive in Naples at their scheduled time, Jackie and Emma informed me of what had happened while I was out:

1. Oliver announced his plans to sleep in my bed but keep his pants on, so I wouldn’t “get any ideas” when I got home. (I never got home).

2. Jesus wasn’t as pure as his oral skills would have me believe. Nay, he hadn’t herpes, hepatitis, HIV, or any other liver or life-threatening disease, but something almost equally sleazy—a fiancé waiting for him in Naples.

I pray you’re well, my darling. It is worth repeating that I cannot wait to see you in May. All the love, kisses and light spankings in the world,

C

My darling,

I lie awake pining for you often. Whenever I watch Sex in the City or see someone flash another person completely inappropriately, I think of you.

Last week, I took my English orals. I decided to finally be a good student and starting preparing the Friday almost a week before, by which I mean I checked out some books and printed out the poem. I was very proud until, humming gently, I cleaned my room and discovered the orals schedule. Deciding to confirm what room they were in (I was such a good student, after all), I looked at the schedule happily, only to find that my orals were not next Thursday, as my brain somehow had led me to believe, but were, in fact, the very next day, less than 24 hours from where I stood in my room, humming gently and appreciating my work ethic. I am officially the worst student in the world (but hey, I fucking rocked them and only had one panic dream).

I am currently waiting for the final show of Major Barbara to be over. Apparently, in this show I am “a giant,” says one professor and “a little scary and demonic, actually,” says a fellow actor.

Last night was yet another cast party. They are never quite the same without your infamous underwear-and-lab-coat ensemble and your frankly terrifying dancing.

Everyone else is wonderful. Drunk people randomly show up at our house. We babysat two small dogs yesterday. In short, normality.

I must go now and attempt to plunder the remaining rice krispie treats. I love you dearly and miss you desperately.

Sparkles,

Kaitlin

Where the living is easy

Where you live is kind of a big deal. It may not seem that way to you freshmen who live in the land of equal housing (i.e. Jewett, Anderson, Lyman, Prentiss). When everyone’s rooms are exactly alike, there’s no strife—it’s like Residence Life’s version of communism.

But when you freshmen begin to search for a place to live next semester, you’ll find that there’s more to the process than a roommate questionnaire and a listing of preference.

Where you live next year (which really is a big deal) will be determined by lottery and class standing, so, if you do take this route, be sure to apply with those kids who are technically sophomores because they took a lot of A.P. classes and whatnot in high school.

The upper-class housing options may seem exciting compared to Jewett, but they quickly lose their luster.

When I went to investigate Douglas last year before picking a dorm, I asked people what they thought of it. One upper-classman living there at the time said, “It’s really a pretty depressing place to live.” I wouldn’t recommend it.
College House sounds alluring, with its flashy-sounding apartment style living. But cooking all your own meals gets old really quickly, as bad as Bon Appetít may be.

I don’t think I have to denounce every upper-class dorm before I make my point, so here it is: Most upper-class housing isn’t all it’s hyped as.

That said, there is an option that actually is what it’s hyped up to be. The Interest House Community (IHC) is, without question, the coolest on-campus housing situation.

First of all, when you live in the IHC, you get to live in a house. It seems like people are always complaining that Whitman requires you to live in those restrictive dorms for two years. They don’t. They require you to live on campus, which the IHC qualifies as.

And living in the IHC is actually better than living in a real house. Real houses sound cool, but when you play grown-up, you have to deal with grown-up responsibilities, which are just a huge hassle and no fun at all.

In the IHC, there is no lease or monthly rent—you just pay Whitman as if you were living in a dorm.  There are no utility costs or extra hidden fees. And the houses come furnished, with appliances, wireless Internet and cable.

And as if that weren’t already the best thing in the world, the IHC has a lot of money for putting on events, meaning residents can put on events that relate to their houses for free.

One aspect of the IHC that is always criticized is the so-called bins system. In case you didn’t get a chance to read the news story about it a few weeks ago, here’s how it works:

Interest Houses have house dinners four days per week. For these dinners, Bon Appetít brings each house (except for the Community Service house) two large, rectangular bins of food. Residents then eat together at home, instead of going to the dining hall.

Usual complaints are: The food gets cold on the way, there’s never enough and there’s not enough variety. To be honest, all of these are true sometimes, but it’s totally worth it to have dinner with your house.

House dinners are really a great experience that you don’t get anywhere else. It’s completely different from the dining hall.

Applications for the Interest House Community are coming out soon, and they’ll be due before spring break. Living there is such an awesome experience; you’d be stupid not to apply.

Alternative Sports Rundown

So Walla Walla probably isn’t at the top of the list outdoor Meccas made up of towns like Boulder, Hood River and Bozeman, but there are a surprising number of excellent ways to get outside that are just a quick drive away.

Mountain Biking

During the fall and spring months, the mountains surrounding Walla Walla offer some excellent cross country mountain biking possibilities. The Blue Mountains have amazing system of trails developed by ATVs and horseback riders that are perfect for ripping though on your bike. Check out Kevin Pougue’s guide (available in the bookstore or online) for specific ride descriptions. But, if you only have a couple hours, your best bet is to make break for Harris Park (30 minutes South of Walla Walla). Here you’ll find miles of single-track ranging from slightly techie to super flowy, with options for climbs that will make you cry for your mamma.

Skiing

Well, there’s always Bluewood. But if you are bored by its 1,125 feet of vertical, you are either going to need to saddle up for a bit of a drive or buy a beacon. The closest decent lift-served skiing is Mt. Hood Meadows. Meadows is only a bit more than three hours away. It has enough vertical to let you open up your speed and Heather Canyon’s terrain is steep enough to perk you up. Also in the three to four hour driving range are Alpental and White Pass. While Alpental can be overrun by crowds from Seattle, White Pass offers a good variety of terrain with minimal crowds. Of course you can always slap some skins on your skis and explore some of the backcountry around Bluewood (the terrain on the other side of the ropes is much better than inbounds, hint: park before Bluewood and look up). Or head over to Lake Joseph and take the tram up for a state-side La Grave (Google it and you’ll be itching to go there) experience in your backyard.

Rock Climbing

If you are part of the resident climber population, you can stop reading now. If you are new to the Whitman climbing world, ask someone at the wall if you can hitch a ride with them on the weekend. Chances are they’ll say okay and you’ll be off to either Spring Mountain or Frenchmann’s Coulee (aka Vantage). In either case you’re in for a treat. But, if you’ll a sport climber who is itching for something other than the usual spots and don’t want to drive quite as far as Smith, head north to Q’emlin Park, basically in Post Falls, for some high quality but little-known climbs.

Mountaineering

Okay, so there’s nothing in the Blues or Wallowas that is worth post-holing for hours on end or bushwacking for, but if you are willing to drive a few hours, all the sudden a world of moderate alpine possibilities opens up. Mt. Hood and Adams offer some great moderate alpine routes, while Mt. Rainier is a classic in anyone’s book. Perhaps you want something a little more technical, without the commitment of a volcano, then check out Chair Peak for some true Alps style, north-face climbing.

Kayaking

If you’re feeling too dry and are itching to paddle, then jump on I-84 and head to the White Salmon River. Jump off the interstate at Hood River and cross the Columbia and drive north on WA-141 to the put in at BZ corner. From here you’re in for about five miles of Class III culminating in Class IV-V as you drop 14 feet over Husam Falls.

Windsurfing and Kiteboarding

Surprisingly, Whitman does provide a home to more windsurfers, since we are only two and a half hours from Hood River, the North American capital for wind powered water sports. Though the learning curve is steep for windsurfing, once you feel the board plane under your feet, you’ll be hooked (believe me). And while I can’t personally speak for Kiteboarding, I can’t imagine that launching 30 feet into the air wouldn’t be fun.

Culture: implicit importance, explicit traditions

I am amazed by culture.  It stands among bread, agriculture, the wheel and tamed animals as one of the greatest of human achievements.  These seem like fairly dry reasons for loving culture: it looks good on the human resume; it’s a keystone for our ideas about history and science and art.  I think culture is great because somebody put a bracelet on  me.

My bracelet is decked out in the barber shop spectrum—red and white strands arranged in a double helix.  Tied in a knot.  At a glance, it’s pretty mundane, but the person who gave it to me said that I’m not allowed to take it off, even when I bathe, until the end of March, or when I see a flowering fruit tree.  It’s a Bulgarian custom.  Not being Bulgarian, I felt privileged to be admitted into some small part of that culture.

But isn’t it a great idea, though?  Celebrate springtime!  Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day; these holidays seem over-large, over commercialized, and in the case of Valentine’s Day, prejudiced against single people.  Remember grade school, when you couldn’t bring candy unless you brought it for the whole class?  It’s just like “Hug somebody of the same sex” day here at Whitman: we’re making up an excuse for everybody to feel loved, wanted or appreciated.  In some cases, awkwardly.

We’ve become experts at this.  Christmas has become so perfunctory that the gifts we really like are the ones we know the identities of before we open the wrapping paper.  The New York Stock Exchange uses the Christmas shopping season as a barometer for consumer confidence.  Is this still culture?

But when I was bedecked with string, I didn’t wonder how much my benefactor dropped for a hundred lengths of it.  When I was a little kid, Christmas was awesome because I was so small, the presents seemed so big and my parents seemed infinitely magnanimous.  Now that my age and economic status has changed, I look at the season differently, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some kid having the time of his life on the 25th.  That kid is celebrating the season with fresh eyes, just as I’m celebrating spring a little differently.

There’s still a grain of culture in Christmas, and Halloween, too: another kid is stuffing himself sick with Jolly Ranchers and miniature Snickers bars, and there’s nothing his mom can do to stop him.  But the bulk of culture’s power to reinvent the mundane—to make us see the world a little differently—is in the little things.  Take St. Patrick’s Day, when everyone, black or white, big or small, is Irish.  It almost sneaks up on you.  For anybody not wearing green, it did sneak up on them.

Fun culture doesn’t have to come from someplace else, though.  Most towns and cities have little festivals or fairs that break up the working year.  The Farmer’s Market is the obvious example.  There are a lot of people who support these kinds of cultural initiatives fervently, but what about the rest of us who happen across them by accident, or just make a point to show up for the fresh corn?

One of the things I’ve noticed, though, and object to, is the way I sometimes see people try to invent or establish culture.  I’ve mentioned “Hug someone of the same sex day” already, and it seems like a good place to begin a discussion of what I’ve come to see as the modern equivalent of so-called “Hallmark Holidays”: tiny observances that come to us through fliers that end up littering the bottom of the recycling bins by the post office, or through chain e-mails.  There is always some do-gooder who doesn’t understand why this is ridiculous, so I’ll explain it: you can’t make culture up.  The Farmer’s Market is a great forum for farmers to sell their goods, and towns love it.  Christmas is an agreed-upon time when people celebrate the birth of Jesus, regardless of whether or not they actually believe.  There’s even a reason for Halloween.  The point is, these observances have precedents, some of them going back thousands of years.

Culture doesn’t have didactic purpose.  Or, at least it shouldn’t—I’m wearing a string around my wrist because for somebody, handing out bracelets in the spirit of spring is implicit where they come from.  Culture is just that: it’s implicit.

We’ve become jaded about the holiday season.  Buying presents has become almost obligatory, but there are little joys that make us look forward to even the most perfunctory of holidays, and that’s what amazes me.

A bold proclaimation: Apple pie is the best

I am going to make a strong claim here: apple pie is superior to any other dessert.
Maybe that’s a bold thing to say.  Admittedly, it’s biased, but I have good, hard empirical evidence to support the claim. A memory counts as empirical evidence, right?

It was May 1 and I was 8. That part I remember clearly, because I was so confused. It went against every childhood milestone that I impatiently waited for when May arrived. It was supposed to be the month when the sun starts to timidly peek around the cloud walls of Seattle winter; the month when the shorts and swim suits and sandals come out of their starchy cardboard storage boxes in the basement, when they almost seem to stretch their arms and blink their sleepy eyes and demand a little summertime dirt to warm them up; the month when the blue forget-me-nots suddenly apparate out of the ground as if from a flick of Dumbledore’s wand. May. Of course. So who exactly allowed this snow on the ground?

Two inches of snow, to be exact. I remember wrinkling my eyebrows. It hadn’t snowed all year. All year 10-year-old sister Sarah and I had desperately waited for a snow day, for any kind of ice on the road, anything kind of winter-y weather conditions at all to cancel school. Now it was May, a Saturday in May nonetheless, and here pompous Snowy McSnowerson flings open the door and waltzes in. The nerve.

Sarah and I moped into the kitchen. “Well girls,” my mother said, tightening the knot on her green L.L Bean fleece bathrobe. “How about some apple pie?”
We had never made anything from scratch, let alone pie. Mom set to work after checking if the roads were clear enough and driving to buy a literal ton of apples. I remember the kitchen counter absolutely piled with Fiji and Golden Delicious and Macintosh apples, like a teeny pyramid. I stationed myself opposite Mom and Sarah, kneading dough and rolling it thin, while they massacred the poor apples into slivers at the cutting board.

I remember one distinct feeling: cozy. I felt warm and safe, surrounded by my beautiful mother and my partner-in-crime sister, while aromas of apples and sugar wafted around the room. It was a soft moment, all of us still in our flannel P.J.s, feeling deliciously quaint.

There was no fighting that afternoon. There was no stomping, no scraped knees, no bickering over “borrowed” clothes and who tinkled on the toilet because it wasn’t me, Mom make her go clean it up. There were no other houses. No world at all. Just us three, humming along to Crosby Stills and Nash in the kitchen, twirling in the cinnamon on the ground and in the air and in our hearts, criss-crossing strips of crust over our marinated masterpiece. Sarah and I each snuck a gooey slice of apple, and we all lowered the pie into the oven.

It spent an hour in the oven and was the best thing I had ever tasted. And now, every new apple pie I try has a dash of cinnamon and a hint of that memory. So I again make the big claim: apple pie superior to any other deserts because, arrest me on account of being a Hallmark card, but it’s just plain baked with love.

Obey your taste: Eat butter

You should be cooking with butter, drinking whole milk and ingesting real sugar.  Forget EVERYTHING the diet industry, our vain friends and some dieticians might have told you.  Eat food that tastes good.

If you are still reading you either agree or are furious.  Hopefully you are still listening.  It has always seemed curious to me that the rise of highly processed junk food and the rise of food labels, nutritionists and the diet industry are so closely connected.  It is obvious that Americans have to change the way they are eating with 16 percent of all children obese, our current national diet is obviously not creating healthy people.

Why, then, are we not looking to what we ate before the obesity crisis?  Why do we look to our current diet and just tweak it?  We still go to McDonald’s, but now we order salads.  We still drink Coca-Cola, but we just drink Diet Coke with some weird fake sugar.  We talk about foods like butter, sour cream, ice cream, sugar, cheese and even BREAD as if they are some dirty secret from our past.

The truth is, most so called “health” food will not change your weight at all, and may even cause you health problems, including gaining more weight.  Recent studies have shown that drinking diet sodas made with artificial sweeteners actually increases the risk of becoming overweight.  This is because when the body tastes something sweet it expects to get some calories.  Then when it doesn’t get any, it gets hungry and so you are more likely to go and get a snack, or another diet soda.

I think that similar things are likely to happen when people eat low-fat cheese, sour cream or yogurt.  These things are not supposed to be low-fat.  Something made with cream should be full of fat.  If it’s not, either it does not taste good or the companies use something else to make it taste like there is fat.  For yogurt this often means adding sugar, which can eventually get stored as fat anyway.  If your cheese does not taste as good as real cheese you might add something else to make it taste good, or you might just try adding more cheese and end up over eating.  Either way, why not just eat the good stuff the first time around?

Most people have already heard about the problems of trans-fats and the fact that margarines are hydrogenated oils, making them just as bad, if not worse for us, than the saturated fats found in butter.  Even if that were not the case, the diet industry has totally vilified fat in an unfair way.  Though an excess of body fat is obviously something that is harmful to our health, fats are also absolutely necessary in the functioning of our body.  Ever single cell is literally covered in lipid  molecules, basically fats.  Trying to take all the fats out of our diet is not only impossible, it isn’t particularly good for us either.

The whole point of this column is that you should eat good food.  You should eat food with all its fats, sugars and everything else right where it belongs, you just should not eat so much of it.  Don’t “super size” everything you eat; in fact; you should really be minimizing.  Eat good food, enjoy it and live a happy life.

book review: stealing budha’s dinner

Chances are, there has been a time in your life when you felt like you didn’t fit in; a time when it felt like everyone but you had a niche, a role, an identity. And, chances are, you felt like you were the only person feeling this way, but you weren’t. “Stealing Buddha’s Dinner” is this story.

Written by Bich Minh Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant, this memoir is a beautiful ode to identity, lack of identity and the ever possible chance that even when we’re home we may not belong. “Stealing Buddha’s Dinner” follows Nguyen and her family from Saigon in 1975 to greater Grand Rapids, Michigan and her struggle to find an identity amidst profound change.

Nguyen was determined to be American and strove to be like her peers. She loved food and longed to eat American foods, packaged and full of preservatives. Pringles, Toll House cookies, Steak ‘n Shake, Hamburger Helper. Instead she ate her Mexican stepmother’s sopa and arroz con pollo and her Vietnamese grandmother’s pho and cha gio.

The one thing she loved more than food was books. She immersed herself in stories, longing to find an identity within their pages. She tried to identify with characters as foreign to her as her neighbors; Laura Ingalls, Ramona Quimby, Elizabeth Bennet.

When this didn’t work, she tried to spend more time with her grandmother, meditating and connecting with her Buddhist heritage that was becoming itself increasingly foreign. It’s hard not to feel what she must have felt. I lament the sadness surrounding her, wishing it had been easier.

But even as she became more “American,” even as her Vietnamese past seemed further and further away, she still felt like an outsider. As an adult when she visited Vietnam, meeting her relatives and connecting with her homeland, she was still foreign. Her relatives proudly referred to her as American. She wasn’t at home in Vietnam; she wasn’t at home in America.

Although the chronology of this book is somewhat confusing, what matters isn’t age or date; it is the feelings Nguyen describes that we all share. This book is a tribute to feeling lost and evidence that it’s OK to feel that way. America is full of people who are nothing like one another, people from different states, countries, religious backgrounds and ethnicities. Let’s take comfort in being different, being outsiders, being lost, but being these things together.

netflix it: pride and prejudice

This should have been the first movie I ever wrote about. It’s that important to me that you watch it IMMEDIATELY. By that I mean, watch it the next time you have four free hours and a hankering for Jane Austen.
I am referring specifically to the BBC version of  “Pride and Prejudice,” starring Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. Accept no substitutes. This version is much longer than most, as it was first presented as miniseries. I promise you, every minute is worth it.
The plot of Austen’s most beloved novel follows the Bennett family, consisting of four daughters, a quiet father and a ridiculous mother prone to fainting spells and giggling. In typical Jane Austen fashion, all the girls are on the lookout for husbands in an era where love matches are just becoming acceptable. All, that is, except Lizzie.
Lizzie (Jennifer Ehle) is the Carrie Bradshaw of “Pride and Prejudice.” Everyone likes her the most, and she’s the character we want most to find true love and happiness. The problem, of course, is that she possesses a fair amount of the titular character traits, which get in the way of her potential interest for the seemingly unobtainable Mr. Darcy. No, I don’t remember his first name, and no, neither will you.
Jane Austen was the master of several things. Love stories, strong lady characters and fantastic dialogue that stays sharp more than a century later were her particular forte. She was at her best with “Pride and Prejudice.” There’s a reason this show is BBC’s best selling program of all time, and more people have probably seen it than have sung the British national anthem. It’s because “Pride and Prejudice” is almost flawless. Would be totally flawless, if Mr. Darcy as played by Mr. Firth, had had a penchant for nudism. But you can’t win ‘em all.