Security measures enforced: Prentiss thefts latest in string of crimes

Residence Life and campus security are taking steps to combat further crime as Saturday’s thefts in Prentiss Hall became the latest in a line of incidents to strike campus in the past two weeks.  According to Associate Dean of Students Nancy Tavelli, all student residences will now remain locked at all times.  This new system will most likely stay in effect until January, at which point the security situation will be reassessed.

“I think locking the doors is not a bad idea, especially with Thanksgiving coming up,” said Tavelli.  “But it doesn’t mean that people aren’t going to come into these halls, or that the incident in Prentiss couldn’t have happened.”

Late Saturday morning, a man whom witnesses described as six feet, four inches and African American entered Prentiss Hall and stole several items from open rooms, including one laptop that was later recovered by security.  On at least two different occasions, he encountered residents who were inside their rooms when he entered.  While the intruder claimed to be another resident’s guest, several students became suspicious and called security.

“The only part that scared me is that I had a full conversation with him, and I was suspicious a little bit, but I also let him stay in there and I had no idea even though he was 30 years old and I’d never seen him before,” said sophomore Maddie Adams.  We’re just so trusting here.  That shook me up a little bit.”

After sweeping the building for the intruder, security identified him leaving with two stolen backpacks. He was also carrying a recycling bin, which he dropped as security pursued him.  Although the suspect got away, a resident’s laptop was discovered at the bottom of the recycling bin.

“I was upset when I first heard my computer was stolen but my main reaction was that I was glad that no one was hurt,” said sophomore Laura Lindeman, whose laptop was temporarily taken from her room but restored to her soon after.  “I felt security was really fast about getting my computer back and I hope that they are taking measures now to make the campus safe again, not just for our belongings but more for the students in general.”

In addition to the interest house community (IHC), which has been officially locked down since last week’s theft at the Writing House, Prentiss and Anderson began locking all outside doors during the day on Saturday evening.  Residence Life made the decision on Tuesday to lock down all student residences, so that only residents are able to enter the buildings.

“Jewett and Lyman are a little more complicated because of dining halls,” Tavelli said.  “So we had to meet with Bon Appétit to ask them to help out security in the halls by asking them to lock and unlock doors to the halls so students can enter the dining halls.

Students wishing to visit friends in other residence halls during the day can call ahead to be let in, just as they would at night before the lockdown, Tavelli explained.

However, just because exterior doors will be locked does not mean students should neglect to lock their room doors.

“It does not mean that somebody couldn’t prop the doors or just walk in behind someone, which is what happens in the library and other places, or just be a… person they think might be a Whitman student that walks in the door with them,” said Tavelli.  “We don’t want people to have a false sense of security.”

Of the thefts that have happened so far, Tavelli pointed out, not one has been from a locked room or house.

“It’s got to be a partnership between what residence life does, what the college does and what the students do,” said Dean of Students Chuck Cleveland.  “We’ve always been an open campus, and students have a real sense of being safe here.  It’s a rural area, but the fact is crime takes place here, too.  So we’ve got to get that message out.”

According to Adams, the recent crime wave has made an impact on her behavior.

“I walk with my friends to the gym now and everybody locks their doors,” she said, adding that she is happy that the residence halls are also being locked.

“We’ve also asked the staff on duty in each of the halls to make frequent patrols and check for doors being propped open,” said Cleveland.  “They do that anyway, but we asked them to take greater care.”
Director of Security Terry Thompson acknowledged the severity of the situation.

“It’s like the perfect storm,” he said.  “Suddenly all the crooks in town showed up on campus to steal.”

In light of recent criminal activities, Thompson has been in frequent contact with the Walla Walla Police Department. Police have also been patrolling the campus over the past few days.

“It’s a small community and people feel safe here,” said Thompson.  “But the reality is there’s a lot of criminals in Walla Walla.”

Thompson, Cleveland, and Tavelli all expressed hope that the request for an additional security guard on campus, originally filed last year with the intention of enabling two officers to be on duty more of the time, will be met during this budget cycle.

Thompson said that student security employees are now taking on more tasks in the office or are out locking building doors so that the guards can spend more time patrolling campus.

Despite these adjustments, security still relies primarily on students to alert them of potential threats.

“We would certainly welcome more calls from students saying ‘something odd is going on, could you check it out?’  I’d rather have that then get a call later saying ‘someone was in the building and stole my laptop,’” said Thompson.

“Generally crime is the heaviest at the beginning of the year, when the new students are arriving.  There’s a lot of confusion of campus, nobody know exactly who anybody is.  They [intruders] can come onto campus and wonder around fairly freely,” said Thompson.

For the students who have already lost possessions, Thompson said the police are investigating.  Although police do not yet know who stole the items from Prentiss on Saturday, the young man arrested on Ankeny in connection with thefts in Lyman is still being detained.

“They anticipate some more arrests and hopefully the recovery of some more property,” Thompson said.
On Saturday, police served a search warrant on the house of a person of interest in the Writing House theft.  One item that may have belonged to the victim was recovered and sent to a lab for fingerprinting. 

Other electronics found in the suspect’s home led police to suspect that he may be trafficking stolen goods or trading them for drugs, Thompson said.  No arrest has yet been made.

Tavelli characterized the thefts in Prentiss as more brazen than the kinds of crimes residence life and security are used to addressing, but noted that instances of elevated crime have occurred before, and tend to come in waves.

“I can remember several years ago someone knocking on doors selling perfume, and stealing things if there was no one there.  So it’s not a totally new problem this year, it just seems that there’s been more in a concentrated period of time.”

English department fights cancer with fundraising

When English Professor Jean Carwile Masteller was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year, she witnessed firsthand the overwhelming quantity of financial, medical and educational resources needed to combat the disease. Now, by pioneering creative fundraising projects, a number of students are joining their professor in an effort to help make these resources available for everyone.

This past October, which was coincidentally Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Carwile Masteller sent an e-mail to students and faculty members in her department inviting them to help finance cancer treatments and accommodations for people in the community who may not be able to afford them.

“I invite (even challenge) you to join me this month in a community service project,” said Carwile Masteller in her e-mail. “I’m fortunate. I have a job, insurance, and good friends around me who offer lots of support.  Others in our larger community are not so lucky.  Even some with jobs don’t have sufficient insurance or don’t have the means to cover the costs of treatments.”

Participants’ community service projects will support two funds at the Providence St. Mary Medical Center in Downtown Walla Walla. The Lifesaver Fund finances mammograms for women who cannot otherwise pay for the lifesaving procedure. The St. Mary Regional Cancer Center’s Special Needs Fund provides a variety of services to patients in need, including assistance in paying for treatments, gas, accommodations, and other resources.

“All of the funds will help those in our own community and region served by the Cancer Center and the Breast Center,” said Carwile Masteller. “The recipients of the Special Needs Funds are not just breast cancer patients, but any cancer patient at the Cancer Center who has special needs.”

In typical Whitman style, Carwile Masteller’s mind never drifted far from coursework as she sought to initiate the community service project. “I can tie all this to literature by reminding those of you who have studied Ben Franklin’s Autobiography that the young Ben Franklin joined with his friends to form a junto to foster community improvements.  Then each member of the junto went out and formed another junto with other friends to promote improvements, and on and on.”

As a member of Franklin’s junto would have done, senior English major Valerie Lopez resolved to participate in Carwile Masteller’s challenge as soon as it was announced. For her fundraising project, Lopez decided to work as a representative for a branch of Avon Cosmetics, selling products from the company’s youth makeup line. She receives a 40 percent commission on every sale, which she donates directly to the
Special Needs Funds at St. Mary Regional Cancer Center in downtown Walla Walla. Lopez only started selling last week, and hopes to continue to do so in the future; she made over $300 on her first sale alone.

“I was actually in high school when I encountered this specific idea of products for a branch company,” said Lopez. “Buying makeup doesn’t have to be a guilty pleasure at all because you’re contributing to something that is worthwhile and also fun for yourself. This project is something I’ve never done before. It’s stressful and time-consuming, but it’s definitely a self-affirming project to do. I’m happy that I’ve done it.”

In collaboration with Studio Art Professor Mare Blocker, senior Mary-Eileen Gallagher is hosting “The Holiday Pink Boutique,” an arts-and-crafts fair that will raise funds for St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center’s Lifesaver Breast Cancer Screening Fund and the Cancer Special Needs Fund. The sale will begin Dec. 6 at 3 p.m. in the Breezeway gallery in Olin Hall, and will launch in conjunction with the reception of Sheenhan Gallery’s

“Juried Student Art Exhibition.” Lasting from Dec. 6-19th, the sale will feature arts and crafts created and donated by students, faculty, staff and community members.

Carwile Masteller hopes that Lopez’s and Gallagher’s projects will inspire others to follow in their footsteps.

“I’m hoping that other events in the works will occur in the spring as students, not just in the English department, continue to develop projects,” she said. “As I fight my own battle with breast cancer, it means a lot to me to be able to help others in their fight.  I’m touched that students are joining me in the fight.”

French House’s “A Night in Morocco” under scrutiny

Last week, the French House discovered the difficulty of representing a culture unfamiliar to most of Whitman.  They put out fliers and advertisements for an educational event: A Night in Morocco.  It was held Saturday, Nov. 15th. The night’s purpose was to educate Whitman students on Moroccan culture.  One of the fliers advertising for the event contained images of Middle Eastern women belly dancing and a camel in the desert. On the surface, this may not seem objectionable but Professor of history Elyse Semerdjian noticed the imagery on the flyer and raised her concerns to the house and the IHC community about the Orientalist overtones of the flyer.

Cultural theorist Edward Said defines Orientalism in his landmark book “Orientalism” as a Western tradition of depicting the Eastern cultures in a way that cooperated with western colonialism and oppression.  For Said, discourse, what people talk about and how they talk about them, shapes the real world and how governments and people interact. So, western discourses on the East that inevitably portrayed the East as something to be controlled, enlightened and ruled had a direct link to practices of Western colonialism.

Said’s argument has influenced generations of political theorists, philosophers, literary critics among other academic fields. He argues that the West has historically depicted Middle Eastern cultures and peoples including those in North Africa, as silent, passive, unenlightened.  That depiction by Western scholars under the guise of objective scholarship allegedly justified and retrenched the discourses and practices of imperialism.

Of course, the students living in the French House had no such intentions in mind when they planned the Moroccan event.  In the past, the French House has put on events depicting primarily culture in France, such as last semester’s event Cafe Coffee Night depicting Parisian cafes.

“What the house wanted to do was branch out because there are so many francophone countries.  It’s not just France even though this is the French house.  We narrowed it down to Morocco which is in Northern Africa and we thought it’d be a cool way to bring out diversity, but it came out wrong obviously as far as our advertising,” said junior Amelia Singer, the RA of the French House.

Professor Semerdjian was primarily concerned with the Orientalist imagery, of belly dancers and camels on the fliers.

“The flyer contained some of the most common tropes (stereotypes) of Orientalism: Camel on desolate desert sands and a group of belly dancers invoking a harem fantasy with the observer viewing the women from their voluptuous backsides.  In the context of the Maison [French House], Orientalism was to be used to entertain and culturally enlighten the audience by putting Morocco on spectacle and that was exactly what the great imperial powers did, was put the colonized on display to be observed and watched, just like the come “watch the belly dancing” advertised on the fliers invited us all to watch,” wrote Semerdjian in an e-mail.

By using common images of the Middle East and North Africa that have historically been created through unequal relations of power between the West and the East, the house, according to Semerdjian was inadvertently reproducing racist and imperialist imagery.

“I had a Moroccan French teacher all through high school and there was a Moroccan restaurant who had belly dancing every night.  She would take her students [there] all the time, and she obviously didn’t find it very offensive at all.  Maybe she wasn’t the norm,” said sophomore Jordan Estes.

At the event last Saturday, there was no belly dancing, and the students in the French House did not even intend to have women belly dance at the event.

“We talked about belly dancing because we had seen it in some of our research but we didn’t actually want to perform the belly dancing because that’s not what belly dancing is about.  I mean belly dancing started out for pregnant mothers.  We thought it was something inherent to [Moroccan] culture.  A lot of the times, it’s done for tourism and not actually part of their culture,” said Singer.

There was some miscommunication within the students of the French House and that’s how the flyer advertising belly dancing came to be distributed.

“What was a mistake was we didn’t talk to any Moroccan people.  We did some research, but not so much, we could have done better,” said Florian Deredec, the French native speaker in the house. Clearly, this controversy raises questions about what diversity at Whitman means and how can one expose Whitman students to other cultures in a non-offensive way.

Core discussed at ASWC Town Hall

The Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC) held the first ever Town Hall meeting on Monday for club representatives and ASWC officers to together to discuss the contentious subject of Core’s future.

The Town Hall meeting serves the purpose of the former House of Clubs, to let club representatives have a say in student policy matters that affect them or those they represent. There will be one Town Hall meeting each semester.

Roman Goerss, ASWC vice president and chairman of student affairs, moderated the meeting and Will Canine, general studies committee member, introduced ‘what should be the future of core?’ to the packed conference room.

Canine detailed the Core curriculum’s 18-year history and its most recent events, which include the omission of the word “Western” from the course description and the rejection by the staff of returning Core to a pod-based program. A pod-based program would entail that the Core curriculum to be split into several unique pods (e.g. science-, politics-, classics-oriented classes), from which incoming students would be able to chose, and teach texts based on its particular emphasis.

The bulk of the discussion centered around three frameworks under which the Core curriculum could be taught.

The first would entail that the Core curriculum retain the majority of its texts, whichever ones the committee decides they should be, and that it provide leeway for teachers to choose several texts of their own accord.

The second would entail an infusion of Critical and Alternative Voices, the optional third semester of the Core curriculum, texts along with traditional Core texts, as to provide a variety of texts not limited to traditional Western thought.

The third would entail a lecture-seminar series that would include, hypothetically, one mass lecture given by a Whitman professor who specializes in the week’s text followed by two small group meetings with professors to further discuss the text.

The meeting was not conclusive and anyone who wishes to have any input or is interested in the subject may contact Canine at caninewc@whitman.edu.

Students deliberate which semester to study abroad

What is an activity in which approximately 50% of Whitman students participate? No, it’s nothing illegal: it’s study abroad.

Compared to other schools, Whitman may not have a high student population or the same number of options for classes, but its study abroad program boasts 39 affiliated programs in 24 different countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Oceania.  There are also programs for students who wish to stay stateside, such as domestic programs in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and the Semester in the West environmental studies program.

But the main questions remain, what are the study abroad trends?-As students are looking ahead at study abroad programs and trying to decide which semester to go, there are many factors to keep in mind. When are your friends going? Are there classes offered at Whitman that semester that you want to take?

In a study abroad survey conducted this past week, it was found that the majority of Whitman students plan to study abroad in the spring, the most common reason being that certain classes are offered in the fall that they cannot miss. Some of the other reasons chosen were because the majority of people’s friends are planning on going then, and also for the option of traveling during the summer. “Studying abroad in the fall would have been nice, but to go abroad in the spring offers more of an opportunity to travel once the actual program is over,” said sophomore Kristine Unkrich, “Since I’m going to France, I can then travel to places like Spain and see my friends who are also planning to travel afterwards.”

The main reason some students want to study abroad in the fall is so that they can have a transition period between junior and senior year. The other reasons stated were because of class offerings, and to be able to attend the graduation ceremony.

“For me, most of it was about tennis and not missing the season,” said junior David Deming, who is studying abroad in London for the fall semester. “If I had studied abroad in the spring, not only would I miss the tennis season; I would also not see most of my friends for the entire junior year.”

The biggest draw to studying abroad, as found from the survey, is that students want to experience living in a different area apart from where they have grown up. “Studying abroad in a different country, taking classes in a different system and setting, immersing yourself in a new culture and discovering things about myself are definitely some of the [reasons],” said junior Neda Ansaari who is studying abroad in Vienna for the fall semester.

Similarly, students who opt for a stateside experience are also enjoying the change of scene: “I’m a politics and environmental studies major and I wanted to go to our capital for the elections,” said junior Lisa Curtis, who is studying in Washington D.C. for the fall semester. “It is nice to get out of small-town Eastern Washington for a bit and see the craziness of the other Washington.”

So whether it be an interest in seeing different sights or wanting to learn another language, the consensus is that study abroad is a great experience for all. “The only cons would be homesickness, culture shock and longer time periods of transition,” said Ansaari, “It just all depends on how well prepared you are in terms of handling the stress. But overall studying abroad is absolutely awesome.”

Students face frustration over registration decisions

Registration may be over, but last week’s frenzy continues to be a source of frustration for many staff and students. To some extent this stress is unavoidable, but the staff attempts to make the challenging process less stressful. If students take advantage of their resources, registration can be an easier process.

Advisors are a primary resource for students during registration, and contact between student and advisor is required for a reason, said Ron Urban from the Registrar’s Office. As a whole the system works to get students out in four years. At Whitman, the success rate for on-time graduation is 92-93%.
“Advisors are good for formal and informal information. They can tell you what they know about teachers that you are thinking of taking classes from. They help put color to the black and white structure of the manual,” said Urban.
Ideally, students take advantage of the requirement for clearance, and use the opportunity to their benefit. Failing to contact advisors causes unnecessary frustration.
“Students who don’t get around to talking to their advisers until the last minute are
very frustrating,” said Andrea Dobson, head of the science department.
In these situations, both advisor and student are forced to operate under stressful time constraints.
When advisors fail to give clearance before a student’s registration time, the Registrar’s Office has a group of “super advisors” who can clear students in times of need.
In an attempt to decrease anxiety, registration changes can be made until the end of the semester, rather than having everything finalized on the day of registration. In the past, the college has operated by arena registration, which sent students around to different tables to interact with the teachers whose classes they would take. This was given up because online registration is more convenient for making later changes.
While seniors have the most to worry about in terms of getting all distributions done in time, first years are most inconvenienced when it comes to registration times.
Urban said, “Securing a favorable registration time is a critical part of registration. Times are assigned randomly every semester, so that no one is knowingly excluded or advantaged. We try to make sure people are not disadvantaged more than two semesters in a row. We want to be fair.”
The specific courses and teachers that students want are limited, and first years have a harder time getting into the classes that they want. The best way to get into desired classes is to be prepared and know what you want to take.
“I was really frustrated because I want to be sociology major, but I couldn’t take Intro to Sociology because I didn’t have an early enough time slot to get it. There are people in that class who don’t want to be sociology majors, but got in because they had a better time slot,” said first-year Alyssa Breetwor.
Finding classes at desirable times is also difficult. According to Urban, no other classes can be scheduled at the same time as Core and the time periods of 10, 11 and one are by far the most popular.
“The process of registration is a lot more complex now. It’s amazing it all works, there are so many places it could break down. It’s stressful for everyone and we are all happy when it’s over,” said Urban.

Mr. Whitman winner reflects

The winner of Mr. Whitman 2008 raised $4450 in less than two months, breaking the previous fundraising record by four-fold. Senior Kaston Griffin, the representative for the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, worked tirelessly to benefit the Lake Nkuruba Orphanage Project in Western Uganda. The most amazing part of Griffin’s accomplishment? The average donation size was $8.

“The key is just to mobilize as many people as possible,” Griffin said.

Griffin started his fundraising efforts by looking to corporations. He solicited donations from businesses in Vancouver, B.C., Chase, B.C., San Francisco, Seattle and Walla Walla.

The current economic recession made fundraising difficult, though. Griffin estimates that only one of every thirty businesses that he met with donated to the cause.

“The challenge became, in a time when everyone is poorer than they were before, how do you get them to give money?” he explained.

Griffin used Barack Obama’s fundraising technique of obtaining lots of small donations from a wide spread of people.

“One of the things I did is ask every one of my friends to give me $5,” said Griffin. “I used every single demographic I could think of: businesses, friends, my parents, myself, my friends’ parents, the fraternity,” he explained.

The actual male beauty pageant part of Mr. Whitman was secondary to Griffin’s fundraising efforts.

“I started fundraising the minute I found out that I was nominated,” Griffin said. On the other hand, Griffin didn’t start preparing for the actual competition until the week before. He was too busy working nine hours a day fundraising to focus on a swimwear competition.

Despite his last-minute pageant preparations, Griffin managed to pull off a great performance.

“I basically designed my talents so that each one would be unexpected, ” he explained.

For the formal wear and question and answer portion of the show, Griffin ran onstage as an “alcoholic carnival magician.” The rest of the contestants dressed formally—Griffin definitely stood out. Later in the show, for the swimwear event, Griffin revealed another side of himself. He performed a sultry strip tease, stripping off his military outfit until he was left wearing only what he described as “a far too small bikini bottom.”

Griffin’s talent section also included an onstage costume change. He started off as a hunchback, singing The Backstreet Boys’ classic “Show me the Meaning of Being Lonely.” With the help of a crew of surgeons, he was transformed into Lenny Kravitz. He proceeded to dazzle the audience with the Lenny Kravitz’s hit, “American Woman.”

Griffin admits that at first, he found the opportunity to become Mr. Whitman 2008 tantalizing.

Within days, though, the project took on a deeper purpose.

“First and foremost this was for the orphans,” he said. “Just because we’re in an economic depression and we’re not as well off as before, it doesn’t mean that the kids need our help any less,” he explained.

The Mr. Whitman competition allowed Phi Delta Theta an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to community service.

“$4450 is a huge deal. That’s half of what the orphanage needs to run for an entire year. So because of the work that Phi Delta Theta did, not just me, children don’t have to choose between medical coverage and education,” Griffin explained.

Griffin enjoyed winning the competition, but his fundraising success was the best part.

“It was fun to be crowned Mr. Whitman, but from the beginning I’ve been pretty aware that this competition isn’t about me,” said Griffin.

“After someone is named Mr. Whitman and people leave the auditorium, the haze clears and essentially it’s just a bundle of cash that we’re giving to people that are going to use it well and for really good reasons,” said Griffin. “So there’s no need to promote myself as a winner because the only real winners in this situation are the orphans.”

Although Mr. Whitman may be about fundraising, Griffin especially enjoyed one part of the evening unrelated to the orphanage: the applause that followed his victory. After he was announced winner, Griffin danced around the stage, celebrating.

“They couldn’t put the sash on me or give me the flowers. They had to wait until I finished dancing.  I just wanted to see how long people would applaud,” he admitted with a grin.

Student trains search and rescue dog

“Please don’t pet my dog” read the printouts taped all over the Baker Fergeson Fitness Center.

Sadie, the dog in question, wont’t bite anyone’s hand off, rather you might want to be extra nice to her because some day, she might just save your life.

The seven month-old bloodhound and her owner sophomore Chris Barton are training as search and rescue volunteers.

“Tonight I was officially inducted into the [search and rescue] group for the county,” said Barton who had just returned from a Walla Walla County Search and Rescue meeting.

After a little more paperwork (Barton’s responsibility) and a couple extra field scent-tracking tests (Sadie’s job) both dog and college student will, according to Barton, be official search and rescue volunteers for the state.

While Barton has always had dogs at home and loved the backcountry, his desire to do search and rescue stems from something more.

“February of my senior year my best friend passed away in an avalanche and that was the thing that jumpstarted me into wanting to do search and rescue and help out with that kind of stuff,” said Barton.

“For the most part this is what I want to do. I want to work as a park ranger or a full time rescuer… I never want to wear a suit or have to work in a cubicle,” said Barton.

This past summer, Barton went out and bought Sadie. Over the summer, Barton and Sadie put in over 250 hours of work.  They read books and watched instructional movies, but mostly they hiked around and smelled stuff.

“From the camp [the dogs] catch the scent then follow their path,” said Barton.  To simulate the tracking of a lost victim, Barton would send someone on a loop through the woods then send Sadie, on a long leash and harness after the scent.

“Right now she is able to do a trail that is over 24 hours old and approx two and a half to three miles long,” said Barton.

With some 230 million olfactory cells, 40 times as many as humans, bloodhounds are coveted by search and rescue, police and detectives for their incredible tracking abilities.  Bloodhounds have been known to follow a scent trail for over 130 miles.

“Bloodhounds are extremely stubborn dogs. For the most part when they get a job they’re going to do it till they die, for better or worse.  It can make her hard to train, but her motivation is fine,” said Barton.

Aside from the money Barton has poured into her, he has also devoted countless hours to Sadie’s training.  It all adds up: four or five miles of walking each day, plane tickets between Massachusetts and Walla Walla (although hopefully Sadie will be officially certified in time for winter break so she can fly back for free in Barton’s seat) and hours of training in the woods and crowded places like the gym.

“Hopefully someday she’ll find some people and make it all worthwhile,” said Barton.

“Those seven hours when my friend was missing, not knowing if he was dead or alive—that’s the worst feeling,” said Barton.  “Just giving closure to a family, being able to help out someone who’s lost…it’s more reimbursement than I could ever ask for.”

This Week in ASWC

Winterim sign ups will be the week of December 2nd in Reid during lunch. Also: Look out for a forthcoming Programming Survey—give input on what events you want to see next semester!

A Town Hall was held Monday evening on the topic of Core. Students suggested remedies for Core, which in its current form lacks faculty support. The meeting was attended by over 40 students and moderated by Student Affairs Vice President Roman Goerss. Will Canine will bring students’ grievances and suggestions to the Core Curriculum Committee, which he sits on.

The Senate met last Sunday. Business included final adoption of revised by-laws and a report on recent activity in the Board of Trustees. By-laws will be on web site shortly.

IMPORTANT: The Finance Committee has recently finalized criteria for the Savings Fund. This $40,000 award is open to all students and organizations and intended to foster student initiative in its myriad of forms that positively impact the environment of Whitman College and the surrounding community.  Project proposals will be evaluated by the following criteria:
1) Feasibility of project (timeline, costs, human investment)
2) History of group
3) Scope/Impact of Project
4) Legacy of Project (Long-term Impact)
5) Effects beyond campus
6) Civic Engagement and Responsibility
7) Spending is within the bylaws

Some examples of possible projects include endeavors that promote environmental sustainability, environmental and social justice, personal development, or art in any of its various manifestations. Email aswc_finance@whitman.edu for more information. Publicity efforts are under way.

This Week in Greek

Delta Gamma: Last Saturday the DGs raked leaves for approximately 15 houses, then had a chapter-wide bowling outing before hosting their fall formal at the Underground. Furthermore, the chapter would like to welcome their new officers and are excited for Sharon Kaufman-Osborne’s talk on relationships, scheduled for Dec. 2, with the TKEs.

Kappa Alpha Theta: The Thetas had a productive leaf raking session with the increasingly hirsute Phis on Saturday and a sisterhood dinner that evening. Furthermore, the chapter is in the process of transitioning officers.

Kappa Kappa Gamma: Mr. Whitman was an unprecedented success, raising over $21,000. Thanks to all the contestants for their hard work as well as to everyone who contributed. Lastly, congratulations to the chapter’s new officer corps.

Beta Theta Pi: Last week the house hosted Foreign Language and Literatures Professor Nohemy Solorzano-Thompson who lectured on gender. Furthermore, the Betas – never ones to rush into anything – are conducting a two-week test run for Beta Buddies. Lastly, the Betas are really enjoying smoking cigarettes outside the library late at night. According to one member, “People seemed to have really taken to it. I guess faux-hipster is like, I dunno, the new hipster. I mean fuck.”

Phi Delta Theta: Last week the Phis had a great scholarship talk regarding economic crises, and really enjoyed leaf raking with the Thetas. Furthermore, the house had an open chapter for pledges, the theme: “Having Money, Buying Friends: A Conversation in Social Practicalities.”

Sigma Chi: Following the indisputably raucous success of their incredibly premature Christmas party, the Sigs hosted an equally preemptive Thanksgiving Dinner on Wednesday. Also, and not surprisingly, the house is really really excited about break.

Tau Kappa Epsilon: Last weekend the TKEs held officer elections, as well as volunteered with Habitat for Humanity. Furthermore, in the coming weeks the house is looking forward to being shirtless around each other, smirking, and most likely watching season three of Entourage in its entirety.

Whitties spend break on campus

Thanksgiving is known as the time when families come together, but for some Whitman students, especially out-of-state and international students, going home is oftentimes not the most cost efficient option.

Although flying home for Thanksgiving may be preferable, plane tickets are expensive, especially for only a week-long trip.  For some students, staying on campus over Thanksgiving break saves money that can go toward returning home over winter break, which is about a month long. Also popular for students otherwise remaining on campus are short trips to more local cities, like Seattle.

“Over the break I plan to go to Seattle with a couple of the other people I know will be staying. We may stay in Seattle for a couple of days,” said first-year Aaron Aguilar, who is staying on campus.

Some international students, like first-year Michail Georgiev and sophomore Elena Zheglova from Bulgaria, will also be heading to Seattle over the break.

Since the campus doesn’t close over Thanksgiving break as it does during Winter Break, there needs to be at least one person on staff in each residence hall. For this reason, many of the Resident Directors end up staying for Thanksgiving.

“Each staff decides as a group who will be on duty and there is about 10 days so there are lots of days to split up…The campus is basically closed Thursday through Sunday.  There is no meal service after Wednesday evening,” said Nancy Tavelli, director of Residence Life and Housing.

The campus tends to be pretty quiet over the break, but students often do get together and plan activities or meals together. The halls and houses are locked for the entire week.

Some Resident Assistants, as well as most of the Resident Directors also have to stay on campus to split who will be on duty over the week long break.

“Due to travel complications, and a lot of homework, I decided to stay over Thanksgiving instead of being on duty during 4-day,” said junior RA Stazh Zamkinos.  “Being on duty consists of making sure the building is secure, as well as coordinating programs for students like movie nights and making sure that policy isn’t being broken. I also want to coordinate a cook-off in Anderson, depending on how many people are still here.”

Some faculty members also open up their homes over Thanksgiving break. It’s a time to get work done and relax.

Even though other countries might not celebrate Thanksgiving, at least Thanksgiving is a week-long break for students, allowing them to prepare for finals and other big projects if not spend time with family and friends back home.

Recycling: Help the economy, environment

Recycling has gotten a dirty rap as of late.  And it’s not just greedy, anti-environmentalist aluminum and timber executives trying to make a buck and screw over the environment while they’re at it.

Environmentalists, politicians, climate change activists and the E.P.A. have all begun to question the merits of recycling.

And it’s true—recycling isn’t perfect. Most of the current curbside recycling systems in place lose money, and many, even after the profits from recycled products, still end up more expensive than if the mass had just been sent to a landfill.  And it’s also true that the huge, idling recycling trucks and the hundreds of miles the tons of recyclables are shipped to be processed (Walla Walla sends most of its recyclables to Portland) leaves behind a sizable carbon footprint.  But is recycling really garbage?

Not in the least.

Recycling programs were not set up with the intention of being profitable.  Just like trash collection, street cleaning and public parks aren’t intended to be profitable.  Recycling is a public service.

Frustrated city officials and environmentalists feel that energy and fossil fuels devoted to recycling could be saved by simply cutting recycling programs.  In our climate change-obsessed culture, this viewpoint fails to take into account the benefits of recycling outside of the climate change bubble.

Recycling reduces the need for further mining, refining, processing and packaging.   It cuts down our reliance on foreign resources.  It makes us think about the objects we use and where they go.  It decreases the need for landfills and the subsequent methane production associated with landfills.

Recycling can be both environmentally and economically beneficial.  Recycling is the right thing to do.
Recycling also has inherent ethical value.  While many recycling programs remain dysfunctional, this does not mean recycling is inherently bad or that recycling programs should be cut.  Recycling teaches the value of limiting consumption and forces people to take responsibility for what they use.

Recycling also can be economically beneficial.  According to E.P.A. Director of Solid Waste Michael Shapiro, recycling programs cost between $50 and $150 per ton while trash programs cost between $70 and $200 per ton.  While there’s room for improvement, the argument that money spent on recycling is wasted has little merit.

The demand for post-consumer paper and aluminum has risen over the past decade and will only continue to do so as resources become scarcer and education about responsible natural resource allocation increases.  As popularity for recycled goods increases, so too will recycling become more economically viable.

Critics of recycling look at a troubled system and believe recycling should be aborted in the name of greater economic and environmental good.  While this questioning of the status quo is indeed valuable, it should result in an improved and reformed recycling system, not a complete abandonment of recycling.

We need to tackle the problems of excess in everything from packaging to consumer mentality. We need to look at ways we can expand recycling beyond just paper and cans to cars and clothes. We need to invest in programs like Germany’s Green Dot program, which makes producers responsible for the recyclability of their product and packaging.  We need to cut subsidies to extractors so that using post-consumer materials will be economically beneficial.  We need to encourage more recycling so that expensive recycling plants will be better utilized and require less transportation.

Recycling provides us with the opportunity for a limitless future, and we should embrace it as the present instead of delegating it to the past.

Recycling: Ultimately wasteful

In 1996, John Tierney wrote in the New York Times Magazine, “Americans have embraced recycling as a transcendental experience, an act of moral redemption. We’re not just reusing our garbage; we’re performing a rite of atonement for the sin of excess.”

This is the article that Bob Biles, who works for Whitman’s physical plant as a landscape specialist, said started him down the road toward questioning the value of recycling.

“What confounds me the most is not really knowing what the impact of our recycling is on the greater environment, and if it’s really a positive impact or not,” Biles said. “You have to ask yourself, do we save more energy by recycling, or are we actually using more energy?”

Good question. Apart from the familiar feel-good effect that comes with recycling, how much do Whitman students actually know about the inner workings of the recycling industry, an industry that has grown since the 1970s from grassroots to global enterprise? Apart from being expensive (up to four or five times more expensive than traditional waste removal, according to Biles), processing recycled materials often entails shipping it thousands of miles away, sometimes even to other continents.

“There’s no way…to know where all of this is going,” a news anchor revealed in a recent episode of CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “The recycling industry is exploding and, as it turns out, some so-called recyclers are shipping the waste overseas.”

Think about it: If our recycled items have the potential to start out in Walla Walla and end up in rural China, for instance, how much energy is being to used in the process of transportation alone?  Bring in labor conditions in developing nations, and recycling starts to take on darker undertones.  Sure, recycling may seem like the right thing to do 100 percent of the time—but is it?

“Most people think, ‘Oh, I put my newspaper in the little bin,’ or ‘I put my soda bottle in the little bin, I’ve recycled, I’ve done my part to make the world a better place.’ And that’s where their thought process ends,” Biles said.  “They don’t go on to think, ‘Well, now what happens to that? Where does it go and how much energy is spent in the process to turn that into something else, and what impact does it have on the greater environment?’ None of that is thought about.”

Even if recycling certain materials like aluminum sometimes has a positive environmental effect, how much fiscal sense does it really make to recycle—as Whitman currently does—over 300,000 pounds of refuse per year?  According to Biles, not much, especially in a small community like Walla Walla.

“The students have a lot of ideology about what would be best in a perfect world, but in the real world where we work with dollars and cents and time and labor, it’s just more efficient to throw it away sometimes, and cheaper,” Biles said.

Because Walla Walla is geographically isolated, Biles added, our recycled products must travel approximately 300 miles to reach the markets where they are generally consolidated. Regular trash, on the other hand (and Whitman produces about 1 million pounds of it annually) can be processed locally in environmentally-safe landfills.

Recycling may be a quick and easy way to feel like you’re making a difference, but take a look at the big picture—are you?

Students transfer out of Whitman, remain attached

As the fall semester draws to a close, familiar faces will no longer be seen on campus come next semester. These are the faces of the students who make the decision to transfer out of Whitman.
The college tracks the number of students who transfer through its retention rates. These rates are measurements of the percentage of students from a given matriculation year who are still actively enrolled at the college.
“Retention rates at Whitman have increased over the last twenty years, and recently have held steady between 93 percent and 95 percent for first year retention and between 88 percent and 90 percent for second year retention,” said Director of Institutional Research Neal Christopherson.
Whitman currently has the highest retention rate among colleges in the Pacific Northwest, and its retention rate is comparable to competitor schools such as Colorado College, Occidental College, Grinnell College and the Claremont colleges.
Nevertheless, every semester, there are students who grapple with the difficult decision of deciding whether or not to continue their studies at Whitman.
According to Dean of Students Chuck Cleveland, who often meets with students contemplating this decision, there are a multitude of reasons why students decide to leave Whitman.
Based on Cleveland’s experience, the most common reason why students transfer out of Whitman is because another school offers a program of study that is more aligned with their interests. He notes that these programs of study typically lend themselves toward a more practical application of some sort.
Jerica Johnson, a current sophomore at the University of Utah, left Whitman for this reason.
“I decided to transfer because the University of Utah has more programs geared toward science and medicine, and that is something that I plan on going into,” she said in an email.
Cleveland also comes across a number of students who leave Whitman because they want to experience a different college setting. These students may attend a larger school or a school in another geographic location.
Arnuad Sillis, a sophomore at Occidental College, transferred out of Whitman for this reason. “I wanted to be in a bigger city where there were more off-campus opportunities,” he said. “I love Oxy and life in Los Angeles however I have no hard feelings towards Whitman and plan on driving up to visit my friends there after finals here at Oxy.”
“I love Walla Walla, but there was just so little that appealed to me there and while Whitman worked very hard to entertain everybody in the bubble, I just personally need to be able to get off campus and have a city with which to interact,” said Nathan Eberhart, a sophomore at Colorado College.
He also transferred to Colorado College because its Romance Language department and block plan were more appealing to his interests and learning style.
Students also leave for financial reasons or because they want to be closer to home and friends and family.
From Cleveland’s experience, a large number of students who leave to experience another college setting or program of study surprisingly end up returning to Whitman to complete their undergraduate education.
“There are pros and cons to every school,” said Cleveland. “I don’t think that there is anything wrong with taking a semester or two away from Whitman because sometimes in order to validate that you made the right decision to come to Whitman you have to leave and then come back.”
When students meet with Cleveland to discuss transferring, he always encourages them to take a leave of absence rather than withdrawing from the college.
“Even if they’re absolutely certain that they’re not going to come back, I always try to talk them into taking a leave of absence. It’s surprising to me how many students, who think that they are never going to come back, actually do return to Whitman,” said Cleveland.
“If they take a leave of absence, the door is always open for them to return,” he said. “Their financial aid is restored and they don’t have to go through a modified re-application process – they can simply come back.”
Johnson, however, who is on a leave of absence, has no plans to return to Whitman. “I am extremely happy with my decision. I miss my good friends at Whitman, but the University of Utah is a much better school for me. I like being in a city and being able to see my family,” she said.
“I definitely plan to stay [at Colorado College], but an important part of the confidence behind that statement comes from knowing that I have the unending support of my Whitman friends who steadfastly remain my friends despite the distance and time that separate us,” said Eberhart.

How to turn household trash into recycled crafts

Soda Can Candle Votive

Supplies: soda can, scissors, knife

1. Using the tip of the knife, poke a hold under the seam of the can. Using the scissors, cut off the top of the can.

2. Cut the can into 16 even strips. Bend the strips out.

3. Weave the strips together. To do this, fold each strip over the strip to its right.

4. Pull the strips until they are tight and press the creases down. Cut off the excess strips.

Recycled Notebook

Supplies: cardboard, sheets of paper, scissors, hole punch, book rings, pencil

1. Trace two sheets of paper onto the cardboard.

2. Cut out the two pieces of cardboard. These will be the front and back covers of the notebook.

3. Hole-punch the pieces of cardboard and the paper.

4. Attach everything together with the book rings.

Compiled by Molly Smith with the help of Nat Clarke, ’11, member of Whitman Campus Greens

New planes for airport

When planning your trip home for Thanksgiving, flying out of Walla Walla now may require you to set your alarm clock a few minutes earlier than usual.

On Oct. 27, Horizon Airlines updated their planes flying into Walla Walla Regional Airport from the 37-seat Q200 plane to a 76-seat Q400 twin-engine turboprop.

The new aircraft burns 30% less fuel than the smaller jets and emits 30% less carbon into the atmosphere.

Because of the increase of passengers, guests will need to arrive earlier than previous occasions.

“Earlier just means an hour early like any other airport,” Nancy Tavelli, Associate Dean of Campus Life, said.

According to the newsletter, “The Fountain”, “The Company has not added staff to process travelers or to handle baggage. This means that more time will be needed to get planes loaded for departure.”

Some smaller planes also stop in Pendleton before Walla Walla, but this does not pose any major inconvenience.
Besides these few minor setbacks, the new aircrafts will be more functional, green, and efficient in the long run.

The bigger planes may also travel faster to the destination than the smaller aircrafts.

Instead of two flights, three flights arrive daily, so students now have more options when to fly into Seattle.

In January, the airline might also couple Walla Walla with yet another city, but they are staying where they are for now.

Other than that, the Walla Walla Regional Airport still operates under normal airport procedures, and no major changes in students’ schedules are needed.

Faculty, students spread awareness of dam’s effects

Over the past year, a group of Whitman students and faculty have been conducting research surrounding the Karuk people, an American Indian tribe located in northern California. The group has examined different influences of modern infrastructure on the tribe’s traditional ways of life. Of particular importance are the Klamath dams, which pose detrimental social, economic, spiritual and health concerns to the Karuk people. 

On Thursday, Nov. 13, the Bush administration joined Oregon, California and PacifiCorp, a major power-generating company, to endorse the removal of the four aging hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River by 2020.

This year, six Whitman students spent their summers researching at the Klamath Field Institute, a collaborative effort resulting from the work of sociology and environmental studies Professor Kari Norgaard and cultural biologist and tribal fisherman Ron Reed.  The institute aims to get students involved in different aspects of the issues the tribe is facing. One of the six students, senior Carolina Van Horn, researched the effects of federal and state policies and practices on the ability of Karuk people to meet their nutritional needs in a way that is culturally appropriate, healthy and conducive to community self-reliance.

“This project is important to me because it gives a voice to a group of people who have been systematically disadvantaged since white people arrived on their land.  The Karuk were among the wealthiest people in California when they were first contacted.  Now they are amongst the poorest in the state.  This is not by change; this is because of the systematic destruction of their culture and way of life.  We have an obligation to change this, and my project is just a small part of that,” said Van Horn.

Once the second largest acclaimed salmon producing ever in the United States, the Klamath River has seen a drastic decline in salmon stock in the last decade, due to the emergence of hydroelectric dams.

“The Klamath dams have prevented salmon and other riverine species from accessing important habitat.  The dams keep water from flowing naturally and prevent natural flood events, which help maintain the river structure for the benefit of various plants and animals,” said Van Horn.

Consequentially, fishing has been banned in the Klamath, except for a small ceremonial site called Ishi Pishi Falls. This has proved to have detrimental effects on the Karuk tribe, since their heavy reliance on salmon as a source of nutrition has been forced to end. Now, the tribe has no other choice but to rely on the Federal Commodity Program for food.

“Commodity foods are often high in fat, starch and sugar, which has lead to serious health problems in the tribe, such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension,” said senior Julia Nelson, another of the six Whitman researchers, who did her study on how local foods may benefit the tribe.

Not only does the loss of salmon pose serious health problems to the Karuk, but it also implements spiritual and cultural concerns for their tribe.

“The Karuk people view the salmon as ‘relations’ to which they have an obligation and who have a place in their heart like a child or a close relative. Because Karuk culture and spirituality are intimately related and center around managing and using resources, not having salmon and other species is detrimental to the traditional Karuk way of life,” said Van Horn.

Since Bush signed an agreement Thursday,  Nov. 13, proposing the removal of the dams by 2020, it looks as though all the hard work performed at the Klamath Field Institute will pay off. According to the New York Times, the provisional agreement will open more than 300 miles of the Klamath.

Furthermore, “if the dams are removed it will set a huge precedent and bring a sense of empowerment to the Karuk people. It’s not simply an environmental issue, it’s a issue compounded by racism, inequality, bureaucracy and corporate greed,” said Nelson.

A tangy Thanksgiving Day treat

Plop! It slops out of the can like Jell-O or canned dog food and holds its corrugated, cylindrical shape in the bowl.  You have to mash it down with a spoon to tame it and make it appear appetizing.  Soon your family will be gathered around a table, spooning dollops of the maroon substance onto steaming white meat.  We are all familiar with the canned cranberry sauce that accompanies thanksgiving dinner.  It’s a once-a-year kinda thing.

A few years back, I boasted to a friend that my family makes its own cranberry sauce and asked if she had ever had the condiment not from the canned-food aisle.  She responded no and seemed skeptical, yet intrigued.  So we cooked up a batch.  Even before it cooled, she was eating it by the spoonful.

Don’t believe me? Try it yourself this Thanksgiving.  Make extra though, because you’re going to want to have this stuff around to slather onto turkey sandwiches for the next couple of weeks.  Although, if you’re anything like me, the turkey is really just an excuse to load up on cranberry sauce.

Thanksgiving Cranberry Sauce
Adapted from Craig Claiborne’s “New York Times Cook Book”

1 pound cranberries, picked over and washed
2 cups sugar
½ cup water
3 teaspoon grated orange rind
½ cup orange juice
½ cup blanched almonds, slivered (optional)

Combine all the ingredients (except the almonds if you’re going to add them) in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and cook over medium-high, stirring regularly, until the substance boils for a while and the cranberries pop open, about 10 minutes.

Remove from heat and skim the foam from the surface.  Let the sauce cool and thicken, adding almonds if you wish.

Store cranberry sauce in the refrigerator, where it will keep for weeks.

Jeans, jeans the musical fruit

by Sally and Sallie

Did anyone see the Gucci fall/winter collection? It looked like the love child of Captain Jack Sparrow and Mary Kate Olsen. For the most part, Whitman seems to have avoided the most offshoots of the bohemian chic fad, with mixed results. We’ve been denied the opportunity to bitch about a bunch of Olsenites, but honestly, we’d prefer you even tried. We’re stuck in a wheel-rut between balls-to-the-wall granola and sorority girls that think they fell out of a fucking teen movie. Both call for a time machine set to 1992. Bridges should work on that.

In other news, Sally and Sallie (us) are your new saviors. We’re blowing this shit up. You have no idea how much we know about fashion. And style. And Gossip. We’re going to turn this column into the Star Magazine of Whitman College. Hold on to your asses, ass holders.

This being our very first installment, we’d like to set the tone: incisive, demeaning criticism of everything that you wear, all the boys and girls you date, the fat TKE (or DG) you made out with last weekend, and the shitty cocktails you drink in the Jewett lounge.

So, to kick us off, congratulations. You, like so many other twenty-something-year-olds, have a pair of Rock and Republics and parents who are not on welfare. Speaking of welfare, dressing like you’re poor as fuck is not stylish. There’s a difference between shopping for flannel at the thrift store because you’re skinny and take your nose “skiing” all the time, and looking like that homeless guy Sallie spit on that one time in Brooklyn (OMGZ!). Not that we’re knocking flannel across the board, but Thrift-Land is best for accessorizing. Know when to stop. Back to your boot-cut R&Rs. We have several problems with them.

Buy the right size. Girls, when your jeans are two sizes too small and the pockets bend, fold under and go “snap” every time you take a step, we cry for you at night. Sizing up can actually make you look slimmer, so shed some of your checkout-line pride and admit you’re a size bigger. Guys, you have the opposite problem. When you buy a pair of Calvin Kleins and think you’re the shit, you shouldn’t be able to fit your fist in between you and the waistband. That doesn’t mean you have to wear skinny jeans and scarves, but you’ve got to find a happy medium between those JNCOs you wore in eighth grade and your sister’s leather hot pants you used to wear as a joke. Levi 511s haven’t been skinny since 2003. Let your balls drop and get over it.

Unfortunately, we don’t have time to finish talking about your denim this week, so we’ll try to throw in thoughts throughout the next few issues. Also, look forward to a break-down of Halloween Hook-Ups, and a scathing look at Whitman’s Hipsterati, including a countdown of the Hipster Top 15.

See you at the Leonetti release, bitches.

New Classics: Striking first blood with ‘Rambow’

“Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” director Garth Jennings’ “Son of Rambow” breathes life into late 1980’s England. The film follows Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), an 11-year-old boy fascinated with the world around him. Will’s a cartoonist, and his drawings come to life in ways very similar to those of Gael Garcia Bernal’s character in Michel Gondry’s “The Science of Sleep”. The film experiments a little bit with animation, and I wish it devoted just a little more screen-time to bringing Will’s absurd drawings to reality, since these provide the most visually-pleasing shots of the film.

Will’s life is filled with fantasy largely because of his family’s strict religious beliefs: no music, no movies and no TV. Luckily, Will’s exodus from his strict culture-free diet comes in the form of Lee Carter (Will Poulter), a 12-year-old troublemaker with the dream of winning a BBC film contest. He bullies and takes advantage of Will’s naivety at the beginning, and cajoles him into becoming a stunt man for his secret film. But the true magic of the film comes when Will watches a pirated version of “First Blood” at Lee’s house, and his first view of cinema seemingly explodes his imagination until he can’t help but live the life of an infamous warrior—Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo. Together, Will and Lee embark upon a journey to make an epic movie called “Son of Rambow.”

The film is as much a fantasy as any other genre. Director Jennings chooses to make Will and Lee’s campus absurd and far-fetched, making the scenes of the playground a microcosm of real life, filled with nightclubs and several pop-culture cliques up the ying-yang. A group of trendy French exchange students also descend upon the school and completely revamp the playground atmosphere. One such new-wave hipster student, Didier (Jules Sitruk), takes charge of not only every girl’s heart and every boy’s personality, but also Lee’s film. With him involved, the whole school wants to be a part of the film.

It is noteworthy that the two main actors do a phenomenal job with their characters. Especially Will Poulter—I could not picture any other kid playing Lee.  The other actors are well-cast as well, and help carry the fantastical story with authentic and believable performances of far-fetched characters.

“Rambow” is an offbeat tale of growing up. It is not a coming-of-age film, as the characters never really grow up, which is perfectly fine since this is a story about the beauty and innocence of childhood.

Using the framework of a film within a film, we remember the days when we could be out for 10 hours playing a pretend battle in the backyard with all our friends. Yes, the characters end up fighting some crisis and doubting each other’s friendship, but it’s all in a days work for kids: their lives move on with ease.

The film meddles with the line between fantasy and reality, which allowed the scenes to become all the more tangible for me.

What makes the film unique is the multitude of exaggerated stereotypes and off-the-wall characters, but it also tries to give a bit of commentary on various religious restrictions and family interactions.

At its core, though, the most enjoyable and rewarding parts come from a few dreamlike sequences and absurd humor.

It’s nothing mind-blowing; just a simple, good-hearted story about two kids embarking upon a humble journey to filmdom and friendship.

Mr. West can lock it down

Kanye West has never really shied away from showering himself with praise. He once called himself “the number one human being in music,” and recently dubbed himself as “the voice of this generation.” Humble as always, Mr. West.

However, he does introduce an innovative sound that has proven to be a big hit worldwide. His latest single, “Love Lockdown,” is new for pop music and new for West, whose past hits have showcased collaborations with other major artists to basic mainstream appeal. But “Love Lockdown,” a leak off his new album “808s and Heartbreak,” is different for West.

It had a unique sound that I’ve personally never heard before, especially from West. The song starts off with a basic beat and West’s vocoderized vocal, which seems to be a very popular tool to make songs these days sound more unique and futuristic. It’s a synthesized system that makes sound come off as robotic (Styx’s Mr. Roboto, anyone?). “Love Lockdown” never breaks from the vocoder, giving the West’s voice a Daft Punk-edge. A progressive combination of piano, hand-clapping and jungle-like drum beats slowly emerge into the chorus.

The drum beats stand out in this single and are apparently expected to be the theme of West’s next album, set to be released on Nov. 24. In a recent interview with MTV, producer Mike Dean mentioned that this latest LP would, in fact, have more drums and more singing, moving away from the typical hip-hop beats we’re all so used to hearing. Bold, yes. But appealing to the typical, hip-hop beat-loving masses? From what I’ve seen and experienced at some clubs and dance parties, yes.

It’s got an attractive build-up into the chorus, whose primitive-sounding beats and easy-to-sing lyrics could cause us to bust out into full-on boogie mode, like us crazy kids often do. “Love Lockdown” is strange, but a breakthrough for the singer nonetheless. So go ahead, Mr. West. Give yourself that oh-so-humble pat on the back.

Mr. Bond needs a hug

In 2006’s reboot of the 007 franchise, “Casino Royale,” James Bond (Daniel Craig) dealt with the cold detachment from human contact that came with the job .  In the sequel “Quantum of Solace,” Bond now has to deal with his trauma using a bit of anger management – and by that, I mean shooting people and blowing everything up.

The stony and impersonal 007 isn’t necessarily new for the series, but in this film, Bond is so consumed by vengeance toward Quantum, the criminal organization that blackmailed Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) into working for them, that his Hulk-like tendencies tend to get the best of him.  It seems now that Bond has a little case of the butterfingers, “accidentally” killing henchmen who need to be brought in for MI6 questioning.   “Casino” was certainly a dark affair, but director Marc Forster (“The Kite Runner,” “Stranger Than Fiction”) and company push the boundaries in “Quantum” so much that I had to wonder how this managed to slip by with a PG-13 rating.

As the first official sequel in the series, “Quantum” picks up directly after the ending of “Casino,” with Bond taking Mr. White (Jesper Christiansen) for a ride in the trunk of his Aston Martin while a slew of henchmen pursue them from behind.  White is taken in for interrogation by M (Judi Dench) and subsequently escapes from captivity, leading Bond on the hunt once again as he travels—La Paz!  Port-au-Prince! Bregenz!—the world.  Along the way, Bond butts heads with Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), a snake-oil salesman under the guise of a do-gooder corporate environmentalist.  In keeping with the series revamped focus to be as Bourne-like as possible, Greene’s nefarious plan is more in line with Bush than it is with Blofeld: He plans on staging a coup in order to gain control of Bolivia’s water supply.

It’s a tangled web of plotlines, and the problem is that screenwriters Paul Haggis, Neil Purvis and Robert Wade aren’t able to flesh them out within the film’s 105 minute runtime (making this the shortest Bond flick yet).  The film feels more like an extended edition of “Casino Royale” than it does a sequel.  Quantum’s role is never fully explained outside of the fact that they’re a group of powerful people who meddle with government affairs in the shadows.  There’s a small, small part about Bond going rogue that never feels convincing.  And while Olga Kurylenko’s Camille, a Russian-Bolivian femme fatale with a few scars of her own, is a great analog for Bond’s feelings of revenge, she doesn’t leave an impression by the film’s end. 

“Quantum” definitely feels like it’s been edited down so that there’s more time to get to the whiz-bang spectacle of the action sequences.

Speaking of those sequences: They’re beautifully shot, but I’m not so sure that Forster is confident with directing action.

Some of them—like a dogfight over the South American desert—are beautifully realized, while others tend to suffer the wrath of the shaky-cam (note to filmmakers everywhere: only Paul Greengrass can do this effectively, so stop trying to copy him).

But you know what?  “Quantum of Solace” still holds its own despite being inferior to “Casino Royale,” and it’s mostly due to Daniel Craig’s interpretation of Bond.  The pain of losing Vesper quietly takes its toll on him, shown when Bond snatches a photo of her from a dossier when M briefly looks away.  He can’t break down, and so he soldiers on.

Aside from bringing to the series a cold physicality, Craig as Bond is able to give the simplistic elements of 007 a little more meat.

Exploring the psychology of anti-heroes isn’t new – this year, it was “The Dark Knight” – but it’s a testament to Craig’s acting skill when he can shift from grizzled cold-blooded killer to dry-witted ladies’ man without telegraphing it.

It’s a lean film that’s more about Bond’s personal quest to reconnect with someone lost (and himself) than it is to uncover global conspiracies.

Friedman’s ‘Shovel’ fails to dig deep with characters

A “near miss” is the best description for Carl Friedman’s “The Shovel and the Loom.” While there is merit in her ideas, the characters and story lines within her novel, as well as her writing style, don’t help her cause.

The initial problem with Friedman’s book is that I simply did not care.

There wasn’t anything to draw me in, and nothing that made me want to turn the pages. The story doesn’t really begin until a fair way into this short novel, which doesn’t bode well for finishing it. The novel follows Chaya, a philosophy student and daughter of Holocaust survivors in Antwerp. She becomes the nanny for a Chasidic family in the Jewish quarter, and as a non-believer, she has a few problems to face. That said, none of them are all that interesting or thought-provoking. Her struggles are not enticing or alluring.

This problem can best be linked back to the fact that the characters are annoying or, at best, underdeveloped. As a first-person narrative, Chaya’s descriptions of her own life are unrealistic. It is unlikely that anyone in real life would write or speak as she does about the place they live or the people they know.

The only other characters we meet are Mr. Apfelschnitt, Chaya’s parent’s neighbor, and the Kalman children, most notably Simcha. If nothing else, these characters have the most stereotypical and trite names possible for this story. Simcha, a four-year-old, is mildly endearing with his formulaic pants-wetting, yet this is not enough to draw in a reader.

Additionally, the dialogue leaves something to be desired. Each conversation is the same, beginning with a brief exchange of greetings followed by an oddly impassioned monologue.

These speeches always seem unwarranted and random. They may make more sense if the characters were developed enough to have an inkling of their motivations, but since that is not the case, these monologues are simply annoying.

After the monologues, there is an awkward set of farewell greetings, resulting in more confusion on the part of the reader than he or she previously felt.

The only dialogue that saved it all from the gutter was the way Chaya talks to Simcha. She explains things to the toddler as a young woman would. Her answers to him are appropriate and engaging, adding an aspect of realism to a story that is simply hard to believe.

It isn’t awful, but it certainly isn’t good. With so many books in the world that do have engaging characters and magnetic plot lines, I’d say skip it.

Childhood memories baked into the ‘Perfect Pie’

Most everyone has that one childhood friend that suddenly disappeared from their life—perhaps they moved away or just drifted apart. But the memory of that friend always haunts them—so what happens when that friend reappears in their life?

In the Canadian play “Perfect Pie,” two friends—Patsy and Francesca—reconnect after 30 years, reliving their deepest and darkest secrets of the past and present.  The play, which performed from Wednesday, Nov. 12 to Sunday, Nov. 16, stars seniors Laura Gibson and Megan Duffy as Patsy and Francesca, respectively.  Their younger counterparts are played by first-year Trisha Way as young Marie and sophomore Monica Finney as young Patsy.

Chosen by theater major Mark Kennedy for his senior project, Judith Thompson’s “Perfect Pie” is the story of two women who grow up together in a small town in Canada. Marie is best friends with Patsy, until one day something terrible happens after a school dance.  Patsy ends up in a coma, and when she wakes up, Marie is gone.

The play starts 30 years after Marie leaves, as the two women reconnect in one afternoon. Flashbacks of their childhood are woven in and out of the play to reveal significant plot points relating to the characters.

“Hardly clean, empty, or unimplicating, ‘Perfect Pie’ shocks you with direct contact; the play doesn’t shy away from the uncomfortable, the unclean, or the unbridled feelings that these two women experience in re-living and re-creating their past and present,” wrote Kennedy in his Director’s Note.

He couldn’t have put it any better. “Perfect Pie” is explicit and direct in its language and disturbing content—but it ends up being more of a catharsis for Marie and Patsy, as well as the audience, to express emotions that we might not know we have.

Though the script tends to be overly wordy, the earnest, real emotions expressed by the actresses (all of whom are superb) override any doubts about the script. Since the cast is so small, the actresses really have the freedom to bring these characters to life.

“I loved creating Patsy: her accent, her mannerisms, her resilience and sense of humor, even her seizures,” said Gibson.  “The hardest parts in the beginning (seizure, train crash, etc.) ended up being the most rewarding parts by the end.”

“I wanted a play that was relatively small in terms of cast size and particularly heavy on female roles, because I knew that it would be more manageable for a student director here to work with a few people and to cast better talent because of a wider talent pool,” said Kennedy. 

The strength of the all-female cast lies in their ability to confront the disturbing emotions and content that come out during the play, and the lighting in particular, which has to convey a sense of the past (a lightning storm among other things), helps to set the tone.

The beauty of this production is the many different interpretations. Is the play about two friends reconnecting, or is it really a search for identity?

“I find the search for ecstasy to be an incredibly important theme for both Patsy and Francesca, this need to get out of yourself, to combine with something else, someone else. There’s a lot going on with identity, with the repressive and violent parts of society, with how people change and why people change. You can really take your pick,” said Kennedy.

“Perfect Pie” played at Harper Joy Theater from Nov. 12 to Nov. 16. 

Catch my disease: A closer look at health and illness on campus

Tissues are everywhere. Students are coughing and sneezing. It’s cold season again, and college campuses are the perfect place for germs to thrive.

Winter is the time of year when tissues and thermometers sit within close reach and students
are cooped up inside. Last Thursday and Saturday, the health center was completely full of sick students seeking a solution.

“We get a bunch of students from all over bringing things in. With the closeness that comes from shaking hands and staying indoors during the change of season, it is typical for these things to flourish. Everyone has a different immunity,” said Dr. Ben Rodriguez.  According to statistics from October, 383 first-years, 308 sophomores, 196 juniors and 218 seniors visited the health center. These numbers are consistent with numbers from past years.

Those students who live in residence halls are in close contact with each other and therefore are prone to disease. According to Ellen Collette, director of the health center, the majority of these cases are respiratory infections, such as viral bronchitis, viral sinusitis, strep throat and mononucleosis.

The typical cold lasts between seven days and three weeks, so sometimes students come in with the same cold more than once.  Viruses are the most common for patients of the health center. Students typically come in to the health center expecting an antibiotic that will make them feel better, but antibiotics do not treat viruses.

“Students don’t want to hear it, but we can’t keep handing out antibiotics all the time,” said Collette. “Much of the time we can tell students what’s going on, give them support and clear them from class, but we usually only give out antibiotics when they have a bacterial
infection.”

Taking antibiotics when the infection is not bacterial can cause side effects such as diarrhea, headaches, rashes, vomiting and weakening of the immune system. There are a lot of home remedies that can
help cold symptoms that are not bacterial infections. To treat a sore throat, gargle warm salt water. For a stuffy nose, use saline solution. For a fever, take a sponge bath.  Drinking water also helps alleviate many
symptoms, as does rest.

“Go to sleep,” said Collette. “When students are sleep deprived, their immune systems goes
kaput. Eat healthy food, go to sleep on time.  Students still have to do the common sense stuff that gets set aside sometimes when students are trying to have an academic and social life.”

When a student is sick, following illness etiquette will help prevent the sickness from spreading. The resident halls are incubators for viruses, and when you are sick it is common courtesy to try to avoid giving it to others.

“If you’re coughing really bad, don’t sit next to people. Don’t share beverages. If you have a fever, don’t go to class. If you’re coughing a lot, come to the health center. We will always help students. If students are careful, they’re not necessarily going to get everyone sick,” said Collette. As a general rule, Collette says that if a fever is at 100 degrees, then the student is contagious.  When one is sick, their immune system kicks
up their metabolism. However, fevers are not the only way to establish sickness.

At the beginning of the year, the health center hands out thermometers to all first-years to help students gauge their health.  Nonethe- less, if a student doesn’t feel like they can get up in the morning, they should come to the health center.

“It’s really stressful being sick right now, instead of concentrating on school. I’m constantly distracted,” said first-year Geni Venable.  Holiday season is also really bad for sickness.  Influenza starts in the eastern United States around the holidays because it gets colder earlier.

During winter break, the number of people traveling equalizes the illness and spreads it over the states.  Collette encouraged students who have not yet received flu shots to get them now. Influenza can last all the way through April, but once the weather starts warming up people don’t get the common cold as often.  Before this relieving time of year when the warm weather comes back, being in class is sometimes more difficult for students who get sick.

The sick policy for professors is different for each. Some are more lenient than others.

“I expect you to come to every class unless you are ill or participating in an authorized
Whitman activity. If you are on a team or will be away from campus on particular days, please
inform me during the first week of the semester.  If you do miss class for any reason, you are still
responsible for the material covered while you are absent. Please be sure to get the notes from
a classmate,” said Professor of English Theresa DiPasquale. “I enforce this policy by requiring students who miss class due to illness to report to the Health Center, which then issues an email confirming their situation.”

“I think we always do our best to accommodate students who are sick or otherwise unable to attend class or meet deadlines,” said Professor and Chair of Religion Department Jon Walters.

Is Water Liquid Gold?

GUEST COLUMN

by Paige Devlin

When was the last time you bought bottled water? Did you think that consuming that refreshing drink would have impacts on the environment, and maybe even your health? Why do many consumers still pay for this beverage when you can get it simply by turning on the faucet?

Conserving water is an issue that is discussed in regard to excess water used for household uses such as laundry, bathing, dishes and lawn maintenance. It has also become a topic for farmers because of the many different possibilities for irrigation. However, bottled water has its toll as well and has many added affects other than water waste. It creates pollution; from production, exhaust from trucks, and waste.

The selling of bottled water is harmful in many ways. First, bottled water adds results in increased carbon dioxide emissions. The production of the plastic for bottled water used 17 million barrels of oil last year alone. That is enough energy to fuel 1 million cars for a year. Also, the fuel required for transporting bottled water is immense, adding to the overall carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

Secondly, bottled water decreases the political will to publicly fund water systems.

A third impact is waste. The plastic bottles must go somewhere after the consumer drinks them. In some states, where there is compensation for recycling, return levels are high: four out of every five bottles are recycled.

In Michigan where this system exists, the consumer receives ten cents back for each bottle recycled. As of 2005, the return rate was 95 percent in such states.

That is drastically different compared to the overall recycling rate of the country. Currently, only 20 percent of bottles are recycled nationwide. That means that eight out of every ten bottles that Americans consume ends up as trash in landfills. This translates to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste generated from bottled water each year. Enough waste is produced from other food and drink products that we consume. It is not necessary to add to this amount by buying a product that is 1,000 to 10,000 times cheaper when taken from the faucet.

What has drawn people away from tap water and towards bottled water? The advertisements
show bottled water to be better than tap water, pristine and clean. However, not all corporations are required to list their source of water or even the quality of the water. This could allow for bacteria and other contaminants to enter the water that is bottled up and sold.

In contrast, public water systems are required to disclose this information, enforcing much stricter regulations on water purity. Corporations have done a good job in convincing consumers otherwise. Corporations are flooded with the revenue made from bottled water, while attention is directed away from publicly funded water systems.

Towns need to maintain the funding for public water, to keep citizen’s water supply adequate in terms of amount and quality. If less political attention is given to the quality of town water and more is given towards beverage corporations the shift towards bottled water will increase. If this happens, the future of drinking water could be costly.

Luckily, steps have been taken to curb this unnecessary consumption. Already, there are organizations promoting tap water use and the elimination of bottled water. One such organization is Corporate Accountability International, a non-profit that has a series of projects all aimed at reducing corporate
abuse. A current program is titled “Think Outside the Bottle” which promotes the switch from bottled water to tap through gaining awareness through cities, public officials, schools, groups and restaurants.

Walla Walla has a great water system in place. The water comes from Mill Creek and is collected and purified at the Water treatment plant.

From there it is delivered to you. I had the privilege to visit the site and see the amount of work they do to deliver clean drinking water to Walla Walla residents. The plant is open 24-7 and water is continuously regulated and tested. They even generate electricity through water power.

We need to take advantage of this system, and keep municipal water running smoothly. So stop buying plastic bottled water, and if you don’t own one, buy a reusable water bottle, or reuse the plastic one you already have. Whether you wish to save on cash or save the environment, opting for non-bottled water is a good place to start.

Environmentalism misses the point

Living at Whitman has been a struggle for me so far because I don’t recycle, and that seems to be the only thing people get a hard-on for around here. At times, the ethical silence generated by the galaxy of bio-tourist eco-do-gooders that surround me is deafening. There’s this bullshit idea floating around that if we aren’t “part of the solution” than we’re “part of the problem,” but I hope that no one who says that really believes it. The promotion of “sustainability” and the idea of studying the environment as a science just reproduces the attitudes and technologies that have been responsible for the destruction of non-human others and the colonial development attitude to begin with.

Conservation is the idea that we can encircle nature and “know” nature, and then reassemble its resources to most efficiently meet our needs (one of which, in this case, is the preservation of “nature”s most “pristine” form). The creation of an attitude of “environmentalism” in the United States (and now elsewhere) is just another way for individuals’ behaviors to be regulated and controlled with no definitive ends. Modern technological thought and global surveillance systems cast the whole globe under a single regime of production and consumption. Sustainability doesn’t challenge the systems that are “destroying” the environment; it is another attempt to “perfect” its consumption.

This way of viewing life turns the whole world into a massive spreadsheet. The goal of environmentalism in this context is to police the global carrying capacity and to enable the regulation of peoples’ lives in ways that were previously unimagined. When people think that their consumption is “sustainable” or “green” then they feel entitled to consume more.

The idea of “sustainability” itself legitimizes our lifestyles as somehow worthy of sustaining. The politico-economic system of the United States shouldn’t be sustained. It is an apparatus that exports violence and attempts to obliterate alterity in its project of making all values and objects commensurable within a Cartesian field. This codifies Western forms of knowledge and scientific relationships to the world as the only “ecologically responsible” way to live.

If this is the case, then our goal must be to export our technological systems and development
ideology to ensure that the rest of the world can “develop sustainably” so they can one day reach the implicit goal of being “just like us,” save for some minor cultural tweaks. Predictably, in this worldview the United States must serve as the “leader” of the world in promoting sustainability and it’s a “travesty” that other nations could be doing more. It is the (to borrow from Timothy Luke) green man’s burden to put the entirety of “nature” into a series of massive ecomutual funds.

This techno-econo-cultural apparatus creates a focus on “threats” to the environment that are infinitely more powerful and close to home than terrorism or communism ever were (“OMFG global warming will kill everyone!!!”).

Our response, concurrently, must be far more sweeping. Every area and aspect of life must be examined and made “ecologically efficient and sustainable.” It is, furthermore, a heteronormative space implying that procreation and the prolonging of life are our ultimate goal, delegitimizing queer temporalities and modes of being. Science in general takes itself seriously to the point of allowing things like racism and heteronormativity to become invisible. Environmental sciences in particular elevate a privileged, white-supremacist, euro-centric perspective to the place of “rational” knowledge about the world. Phooey.

The Cave: Spreading the Wealth: Examining Obama’s take on the ‘S’ word

Remember the tense final weeks of the presidential election? During the final stretch, John McCain’s most vocal criticism of Barack Obama was that the Illinois senator’s tax plan intended to “spread the wealth around.” Across the country, voters recoiled in horror upon hearing these words, for as McCain made blatantly clear, redistributive wealth policies are “one of the tenets of socialism.”

The ‘S’ word! Mothers baking apple pies and fathers grilling 4 of July hot dogs run to their bomb shelters as this ugly word rears its head. Obama already “pall[s] around with terrorists” according to Sarah Palin, and “harbor[s] un-American views,” according to Michele Bachman; now with his redistributive tax policies, the grisly specter of the soviet hammer and sickle looms forebodingly over the white house.

Yet, like all political doublespeak, McCain and the Republican Party’s attack on redistributive wealth policies have a major flaw. The Marxist scholar G.A. Cohen writes that capitalist society only sees one side of the story regarding the freedom that accompanies ownership of private property. Sure, ownership of land grants the owner the freedom to use the land as he wishes, but it “no less necessarily withdraws liberty
from those who do not own it.” Private property has a flipside; it is actually a distribution of freedom and unfreedom.
Similarly, when McCain attacked Obama for wanting to “spread the wealth around,” he evidently only saw one side of the story. The average American voter usually associates the phrase, “redistribution of wealth” with social-welfarist Robin Hood tax policies.

But taking wealth from the rich and giving to the poor is not the only way to redistribute wealth; Government policies that concentrate wealth in limited hands are also redistributive. With the Bush mantra, “privatize and deregulate, baby”, the last eight years of Republican dominance in government have led to some of the largest redistributions of wealth in history.

Let’s start where all things seem to start: the Iraq war. This past summer, the Congressional
Budget Office estimated that since 2003, the US government has spent $100 billion on funding the 180,000 privately contracted personnel in Iraq. Private contract employees now outnumber US troops in Iraq. One out of five dollars spent on the war go to funding these companies. Forty cents out of every tax dollar winds up in the pockets of corporate contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp, and Kellogg Brown & Root. The privatization of military operations in Iraq is not the invisible hand of the free market, nor is it trickle down economics—these contracts represent the deliberate aggrandizement of private companies by the US government with your tax dollars. What is the difference between these contracts and programs such as welfare? In both cases, the government is “spreading the wealth around”—the only question
is to how many hands is the wealth spread?

Now consider the recent crisis on Wall Street. Of the original five largest Wall Street companies—Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs—only the latter two remain. Bank of America has taken over mortgage lender Countrywide and Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan bought brokerage firm Bear Stearns as well as Washington Mutual and UK’s Barclays acquired the bulk of Lehman
Bros.

The fact of the matter is that now, very few companies own an untold quantity of financial assets; the wealth of Wall Street has become grotesquely concentrated. In response, Congress passed a $700 billion bail out plan in October to purchase bad mortgage-backed assets, and inject capital into credit markets and banks. What is this bailout plan, backed by citizens’ tax dollars, if not a redistributive wealth policy—if not the government directly intervening to “spread the wealth around” in an economy of immensely
concentrated asset ownership? If Republicans like John McCain are against redistributive wealth policies, why did his party cooperate in the legislation the bail out plan?

Evidently, Republicans are not against “spreading the wealth around,” since the policies they promote are heavily redistributive. The fact that Republicans such as Representative Paul Broun still criticize Obama for his redistributive wealth policies reveals a gross inconsistency in the party’s ideological foundations. If these next years are truly the Republican Party’s journey through the wilderness, they must acknowledge that they cannot validly reject Obama’s statement that health care is a “right for every American” while supporting other interventionist government policies.

U.N. must act in Congo

The Congo’s civil war nightmares of the past are coming back to haunt it. A current crisis that has been brewing– or, more appropriately, is always brewing – since roughly 2004, erupted at the end of last month in the eastern Congolese city of Goma between the political limbs of the ever-at-odds Tutsi and Hutu regional ethnic groups.

The violent Tutsi-Hutu divide was present well throughout the Congo’s colonial period under Belgian rule and persists today as peace treaties and ceasefires seem to go out the window not long after they are reached. Indeed, October’s flare-up is owed to the collapse of a United Nations-brokered peace deal between Laurent Nkunda’s rebels and the Congolese government of Joseph Kabila merely a week before the hostilities.

Roughly 250,000 displaced people later – bringing the total since 2002 to 2 million – an all out war between the rebels, who only total some 8,000 strong, and the government forces, who total upwards of 20,000, seems almost inevitable.

Three variables – Angola, Rwanda and the U.N. – will determine whether a war materializes.  History apparently repeats itself often. Angola, summoned by the Kabila government, sent in troops to Goma in an effort to support the government’s effort in warding off Nkuda’s rebels. The same occurred in 1998 when Angola sent forces in to aid the government against a Tutsi coalition (including Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda).

Angola’s intervention was as crucial then as it will be now.

Rwanda is the big question mark. Though it is obvious that Rwanda allies itself with Nkunda’s rebels, it is hard to tell whether he will intervene this time, as he has during both of the previous Congolese wars that began as civil wars but became Central African wars.

Though their ties with Rwanda have progressively gotten worse lately, Europe has the tools necessary to barter for peace with its Central African counterparts.

A French plane carrying former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down, killing all its passengers, in 1994 as it approached the capital city of Kigali. The French and Rwandan’s have since disputed incessantly over whom is to blame for the crash. Last week, Rose Kabuye, senior aide to Rwandan president and Tutsi rebel supporter Paul Kagame, was arrested under a French warrant on charges related to the ’94 crash.

Because of the arrest, it now seems almost certain that Kagame will strongly support rebel movement with not only armament, but combatants.

It would be prudent for the French to come to an agreement with the Rwandan president and rebel leader which would see the former drop the charges and release Ms. Kabuye and the rebels agree to move out of Goma and reach the peace agreement that almost transpired in October (technically, a cease-fire was agreed to in early November, but that alone should not be anyone’s goal). The E.U. has some leverage over the future of this conflict; they would be wise to use it.

Finally, the United Nations Security Council must act. So far it has done just enough. They have sent an envoy, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, and humanitarian aid – 50,000 people’s worth of humanitarian aid. But as of the writing of this article, they have yet to send in the extra 3,000 troops – which may be far too little – needed and they have yet to put any sort of pressure on either the government or the rebels to come to some sort of an agreement.

It is not entirely the U.N.’s fault that international pressure has not been put on both sides. Only if the African Union (or many African leaders), the United States and China, who has recently become a major regional investor, join forces with the U.N., will any sort of talks, let alone deals, take place. In the meantime, the Security Council must push more peacekeepers into the region before the cease-fire cracks at its fragile seams once again.

The world promised the Congolese people that a conflict like the 1994 Rwandan
Genocide, whose profundity was aptly captured cinematographically in the 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda,” would not happen again on its watch. I hope we have not forgotten this promise.

Hearty winter veggies

Winter root vegetables aren’t much to look at. They aren’t the most inspiring of foods. Parsnips resemble large, pale carrots; rutabagas are a long bulbous root with a purple top and creamy white bottom; turnips look like rutabagas but have a thinner skin and are rounder. These hearty vegetables are an affordable, tasty way to eat food that’s produced in this region at this time of year. Root vegetables are best roasted in the oven because they hold their shape and their sweet flavors come out as they caramelize while roasting which brings out their sweet flavors. This is an easy dish to make and you’ll be surprised by how tasty these vegetables are together.

Roasted winter root vegetables
Adapted from recipe by George Erdosh

2 pounds assorted root vegetables (choose at least six from: turnips, rutabagas,
beets, parsnips, yams, potatoes and carrots)
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and cut into eighths
8 cloves garlic, unpeeled
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons fresh or 1 tablespoon dry rosemary, chopped

Preheat oven to 450°F. Scrub vegetables and cut into chunks or rounds. Cut fast-cooking vegetables, such as sweet potatoes, into larger chunks. Cut parsnips, turnips and rutabaga into medium- size chunks, and cut slow-cooking vegetables, such as carrots, beets and potatoes, into smaller chunks. Toss the vegetables, onion and garlic with oil in a baking dish. Sprinkle with salt. Cover baking dish with tinfoil. Roast vegetables for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. Remove tin foil and add freshly ground pepper and rosemary. Continue roasting, uncovered, for another 15 to 20 minutes, or until vegetables are nicely browned and are soft when pierced with a fork.

Employee of the week: Ryan ‘the pizza man’ Piekos

Have you dreamt of being a chef since childhood?

No, not really. I’ve always loved to cook. You know, (gesturing to self) obviously. When I was five years old, I was pushing up a stepladder next to my grandma at the stove and
cooking with her. I never knew I would pursue this later in life. I am half Mexican, so I grew
up learning to do all that first-hand. Getting my hands dirty, you know. Cooking is something that I can slip into easily. I love to cook, I feel I’m good at it. I don’t have too many complaints, you know.

What is the funniest thing you see students do while you work?

People tend to take the display plates. I’ve always warned them, you know, don’t take these plates—they will kill you. They’ve been there all day and probably aren’t real healthy
for you. It’s kind of mean, I guess, to think of it as funny. But when you warn ‘em and they
still do it, it’s like, “Hello?”

What is so fantastic about working at Whitman, as opposed to the restaurants you used to cook for?

The interactions! Most places you’re in the back, but we have an open kitchen, so we’re right there in front of you guys preparing your food. At other places you’re behind closed doors and you don’t see anybody. Working with just one other person can get old quick. Most of the students that I talk with are just really down to earth. They are just really open and I love to talk. In fact, I get in trouble for talking. I think that overall most of my students really like to be asked how their day is and how things are going, you know. When it’s finals, I can see when they walk in that it’s finals week because they all have this glazedover look. To give them a little distraction or encouragement goes a long way.

Which dish would even Bobby Flay be scared to challenge you to making?

Probably my barbecue chicken. I mean, when I barbecue, I don’t mess around. I’ve got chicken, steak, pork; I’ve got this monster grill at home. I like to entertain, I like to cook for a lot of people. I don’t like to cook for myself or me and my wife. We have five kids in the house right now, so when I throw stuff on the grill, it’s a pretty good variety so everybody can have a little bit of everything. I would have to say my barbecue.

What did you do before coming to Whitman?

I worked in nursing homes taking care of the elderly. When I was 28, I had a heart attack, and they said the job was too stressful. I am also a foster parent. I do that all year round. I started here in February 2005. Actually, most of my wife’s family works here. I heard of a job opening and I applied for it and slowly moved up from there. I started out just doing the floors and special cleaning and became a dishwasher, cook and now night supervisor.

Billy Boal Baggin’s sweet skate trick: LadyKiller

Hey Muska, oh, what was that? You can tailflip-lipslide? Well guess who nollie-treflip-5-0-manual-backside-nosegrind-heelflipped Wa High last weekend? Billy did. What up? It’s Billy, coming back at you with a fistful of the dopest tricks you can’t even do on THPS.

Last week me and my krew took you to the Cordiner Four for the Skeetzel. I hear that one sucker amongst you attempted and failed, shattering your elbow and something pubic. Sucks. Earlier this week the krew made do with some donuts and blunts and headed over to the CC for some shit. I popped a front salad-back salad-front blunt down the south side rail. That’s Chocolate, baby. Check Greco out in B-3 for a glimpse of what your boy is all about.

Oh, speaking of, I was plopping with this lady friend of mine a few days back and she asked why a nollie is called a nollie. What. The. Fuck. You. Just. Say. Hell no. Shit’s bunk. Also, one of you bros sent me an IM this past week. I thought we talked about that. Don’t do that. That’s what we talked about. I finally got my hands on the Lakai vid- I just about came into my pants when I saw Koston’s 50-50- heelflip-crooked-manual-no-lie-crookedbackside hardflip. DAMN. Almost. I fucking did skeet my jeans on that backside 360-manual down the Rozy Banks in 411 #52. SHIT.

Now let’s get down to tax and wax. Last week (BBBSSS#1) I told you I was going to take you to the Sig’s side lawn for some flatland junk. Really? I was joking. If you want to see that, go watch Lipinski in Lalique SP ’07. (Her triple-flips blew my ex, Sarah, out of the water (and my life)). Really, we’re going Penrose (SS#1) for both the 6 and the ramp –Alt-titled 6Clix/6-Sixty-Six/3-6-stair-Mafia and, respectively, TrampRamp/Domeslide (blowing your mind!!)/MannyMania. From the Beta Basement, go south onto campus and look west. DONE. This week’s trick is called the LadyKiller. To do it, push once and roll towards the rail, facing the rail and looking at the rail, snap- pop up and stick your deck on the brass and don’t look back. DONE. The LadyKiller – you just killed a lady. Now, the ramp. To do this, just push and head towards the ramp and then go down the ramp. DONE. And now you’re a dick-trolling baby because that wasn’t actually a trick. It was joke.

‘Titanic’ still sinks, stinks

Our wonderful Penrose is unfortunately endowed with many, many awful movies. Luckily, however, its selection is not mired by ‘Scary Movie’ by-products and ‘Dude, Where’s My Car?’ tangents. But it is mired by a slew of cinematic overrated exaggerations that somehow managed to make the Academy melt come Oscar time, the worst of which is the 1997 undeserving James Cameron blockbuster, “Titanic.”

The input: $200 million. The output: poor acting and an unrealistic drama, laced with predictability throughout. Today, somehow, it remains the highest grossing film in the world at $1.8 billion.

For those lucky souls out there who have yet to see this modern-day cliché, “Titanic”
is the story, told anecdotally at the age of nearly 101, of upper-class Southampton girl Rose Calvert and lower-class voyeur-cum-painter Jack Dawson aboard the “unsinkable” RMS Titanic, the largest passenger ship in the world at the time.

Their first ‘hello,’ like their last ‘goodbye,’ is purely absurd. Jack finds Rose at the heart of a suicide attempt. It is not clear to the audience at this point whether Rose’s self-destruction is caused by some sort of love-gone-awry situation or a serious mental illness. Nevertheless, he pulls her chestnuts out of the fire and they almost instantly develop a friendship, love-triangle with her fiancé and foreshadow an already-predictable tragic-love ending.

An oak panel of the ship manages to sever the relationship between Jack and Rose. Rose stays afloat as Jack heroically lets go and sinks into the freezing Atlantic abyss. ‘He saved her by sacrificing his life… Aww, how sweet’ is the automatic gut response to an ending that yearned for a realistic yet interesting twist, a Romeo-and-Juliet-esque parallel death or merely any interesting deviant from the rest of this 3 and a half hour-old monotonous, uninspiring
crock pot of a movie.

Agreeable critics point to the movie’s accurate depiction of class struggle on board the ship between first-class deck and the third-class deck. Seriously? If class struggle is what you’re after, look no further than “Crash,” “The Bicycle Thief” or “Tsotsi.” Jack may have been a poor painter at the beginning of the century, but he was not impeded by the overwhelming cultural forces of racism, poverty or slum-life, respectively.

Other agreeable critics point to a depth of romantic narrative comparable to “Gone With the Wind.” I have not yet seen the 1939 ‘classic,’ perhaps because of its 238 minute running time or my hostility toward ‘golden age’ Hollywood films [Ed. - Well, Becquer, you better get on that.], but if it is truly as good as they say, I doubt it follows an unimaginative plot of “Titanic” proportions: girl about to marry rich snob; girl meets less-rich, funny nice-guy; girl falls in love with nice-guy, creating tension between nice-guy and snob; nice-guy somehow (usually tragically) gets girl in the end. C’mon, even “Atonement” and “The Notebook” were more gripping than that.

If anything is worth complimenting, it should be the movie’s cutting-edge graphics
(bear in mind it was made in 1997). But you shouldn’t ever watch a movie for its aesthetic value.

If you have 3 hours and a half to kill and yearn for some fictitious 1912 background noise, then check out “Titanic.” Or if you feel like re-watching the first-ever PG-13 movie you saw in, say, in third grade, then check out “Titanic.” But if not, don’t bother;
you didn’t miss anything.

Canadian Highway drives diversity in plays, music

Renowned and well-respected Canadian author Tomson Highway came to lecture about Canadian First Nations mythology on Wednesday, Nov. 5, and brought his Cree Cabaret to Kimball Theater on Thursday, Nov. 6.

This lecture and Cree Cabaret isn’t Tomson Highway’s first connection with Whitman:
his novel “Kiss of the Fur Queen” was taught in English Professor Sharon Alker’s Canadian literature class.

“I’ve never seen a class so engaged; there was such vibrant debate, and it was so emotionally compelling. Highway is able to deal with shameful issues in Canada’s past, like reservation schools, domestic abuse and the marginalization of the First Nations, and can still be funny and hopeful. His work also helps us deal with prejudice, and makes us face it and deal with it through mythology. It’s really useful for the United States to see how we might use those ideas to help Americans,” said Alker.

After considering other Canadian artists, the Canadian Association decided to bring Tomson Highway as a unique voice on diversity. He participated in a number of events on campus as well, including visiting the Umatilla Indian Reservation and various classes including French 305.

Highway also writes musical plays, and his Cree Cabaret will soon be touring Europe.
For the performance on Thursday, they performed 14 songs from his plays. Singer Patricia Cano and sophomore saxophonist Brian Barton will be performing as well.

“It was actually Tomson Highway who proposed the cabaret performance. We invited
him as a speaker, not knowing that he routinely performs in this format. A saxophonist was needed—Highway regularly works with Patricia Cano but relies on local talent for the saxophone part,” said French Professor Jack Iverson, who is involved with the Canadian Association as well.

“[Iverson] told me a little bit about Tomson and what a great opportunity it would be to play with him. Even though I still didn’t know much about him or the music, I was very excited about the opportunity to play his music and learn from it to help myself grow as a musician,” said Barton.

About four years ago, the Canadian Society at Whitman was established, due to a visit from the Canadian consulate encouraging scholarly interest about Canada.

“The Canadian government offered some small grants Whitman might apply for to help them to [establish the society],” said Alker.

Several professors and staff members are Canadian, along with a number of Whitman students. They, along with professors and staff members who are interested in Canadian issues, help promote Canadian studies and look at how Canadian ideas and culture might combine with the United States.

“Canada has an ongoing interest not only in its own cultural diversity, but also with global studies as a whole, and its art and culture reflects this. Our group wanted to show the United States what Canadian culture is, and show how Canada deals with diversity,” said Alker.

Since Whitman places great emphasis on the importance of diversity, Highway’s
visit will bring in interesting Canadian perspectives, especially because Highway’s first language is Cree, one of the many languages spoken by the native people in Canada.

“First Nations is the collective name for the native people of Canada,” said Alker. “Tomson Highway is a very well-known and respected writer who’s won numerous literary awards and also the Order of Canada, which is the highest award given to Canadian citizens. It is awarded to Canadians of outstanding merit.”

Whitman dance department still finding its footing

Native American tribes have a saying: “Only in dance does the body and spirit connect.” The dance program at Whitman has provided many students the opportunity to discover this connection, while at the same time participating in a fun activity.

Eight years ago, the Whitman dance studio was built with the help and support of Tom and Tanye Cronin. Since then, the program has grown much stronger along with student
involvement.

Both Idalee Hutson-Fish and Vicki Lloid, the adjunct instructors in the department, have been dancing the majority of their lives.

They have decided to continue their involvement in the craft by teaching students in ballet and modern dance at beginning, intermediate and advanced
levels.

“I love working with Whitman students. They are brilliant and love to learn. It is a rewarding and stimulating teaching process,” said ballet instructor Hutson-Fish.

“I needed to dance, and teaching seemed like a good way to do it,” said modern dance instructor Lloid.

Currently, Lloid is preparing a piece for the winter performance on Thursday and Friday, Dec. 4 and 5.

“This group has been great. I am able to work with them interactively. A lot of what’s going on is their input. We’ve been able to figure it out together. Some of the students have very little dance experience and some have been dancing for a long time,” said Lloid. “They’re all terrific
performers.”

The production, titled “TREE-SPEAK”, is based on a painting by Josie Gray and titled by Tess Gallagher.

Choreographing dances provides a creative outlet for Lloid, who said that she loves working with poems and stories. She related dance choreography to writing short stories in their similar thought-process and design.

Students who dance at Whitman do so because they love it. The dance program does not offer a major or minor for the time being because neither Hutson-Fish nor Lloid can teach educational courses, so students participate for the opportunity of something fun to do.

“Dance is a wonderful mode of physical expression for all of the joyful sensations I feel inside my body. It has helped me develop my natural talent for pelvic thrusting,” said senior James Most.

Most took his first dance class when he came to Whitman because he thought it sounded like fun. He plans to continue dancing every day, just for the enjoyment of the art.
Next semester, a visiting professor will teach two courses on dance similar to what would be required for a dance major or minor. In order for the program to have major or minor status, the college has to find a full-time professor. The idea is both exciting and scary for those involved in dance.

“Right now students participate for the love of the art. It’s a different feeling than having to take a class because it’s required for a major. The dance program has been referred to as a dangling appendage, so maybe it could become a foot. This might change what we already have, but at the same time it is part of the natural process of improving the dance department” said Hutson-Fish.

For the time being the dance program continues to be open to all students who want to try dancing and discover the relief that student first-year Rhya Millici loves about dance.

“Dancing is amazing. I haven’t met a person who has been negatively affected from dance. It releases happy things in my brain,” said Millici.

Students who dance at Whitman don’t dance to become professional, but for the satisfaction that they get out of the activity.

“I dance out of my own enjoyment and fulfillment,” said senior Kelli Kuhlman. “Dance offers balance in my life. Its hard work at times, but I get a lot out of it.”

“I’m happiest when I’m moving. Dance is dynamic and about constant creation. Becoming more integrated in my body helps me lead a healthier life,” said senior Kate Greenberg.

“Dancing really is from the inside out. You walk back into the rigorous academic world feeling refreshed,” said Hutson-Fish.

Senior Ozzie Angel has been involved in primarily female-dominated activities, such as gymnastics, cheerleading and dancing for most of his life.

When he first came to Whitman, he had to adjust to the number of males in the dance program.
Angel is in the process of starting an all-male dance team to encourage more participation in dance by the other sex, as well as choreographing dances for performances.

“I love seeing dancers improve and raise the standards. By demanding so much, it eliminates the thoughts of ‘I’m horrible at this.’ I love seeing dancers improve: from struggling with their bodies and the motion to successfully executing the choreography. When I finally see it all come together it has a mystical component,” said Angel. “But what I love the most is learning from them.”

Bright future ahead for Portland’s Starfucker

It was hard to live near Portland and not be excited for Starfucker’s debut. The band self-released a fine EP in 2007, and they played a ton of shows in and around the city to enthusiastic reviews from everyone I knew who had seen them.

More importantly, the teaser single released this summer, featuring “Pop Song” and a cover of Madonna’s “Burnin’ Up,” merited heavy rotation. Sole studio member Josh Hodges essentially filters synth-heavy, electronics-driven pop music through the homespun DIY aesthetic that has come to define Portland bands in the mid-to-late 2000s to remarkable effect.

Though “Starfucker” doesn’t completely meet very high expectations, it is frequently much more engaging than it initially lets on.

The most immediate winners here are early single “German Love” and the recently-released
“Pop Song.” “Love” is, at its core, only a few lines—“German love, I will give it to you” and “She won’t have a thing to do with me”—but as they repeat themselves, something
emerges. Driven by a fairly straightforward chord progression on an acoustic guitar
and buried beneath a bouncy synth line, Hodges’ vocal loops into a round before giving
way to just that guitar, holding the whole thing together to stunning effect.

“Pop Song,” on the other hand, is buzzy, gorgeous and undeniably catchy. Like its title implies, the song builds around a fairly straightforward verse-chorus-verse structure, and while the production is certainly dense, the blown-out sounding organs, buzzy synths and compressed drums give way to pure pop in the best possible way. As a track, its only real flaw is the fact that it makes one want to hear more songs like it, and those aren’t easy to come by—even on the same record.

That said, the rest of the album is at least decent. “Florida” anchors Hodges’ quiet vocals
atop a pronounced bass line and handclap- heavy percussion and works quite well. “Rawnald Gregory Erickson The Second” works, for the most part, for the same reasons “German Love” does. It’s straightforward, but utilizes a similar set of acoustic-electric tricks and a hushed vocal performance well. “U Ba Khin” sounds like a slowed down take on Of Montreal’s weirdo indie funk, and “Isabella of Castille” is a positively dreamy high note to go out on.

If “Starfucker” has problems, they’re in the fact that three of its tracks—nearly a third of the album, including “German Love”—was released a year ago on that first EP, reducing the record to only about 25 minutes of new material. While the EP was a limited release and didn’t see legitimate distribution outside of Portland, it’s hard not to be a little disappointed
by the brevity of “Starfucker.”

In addition, several tracks, all under two minutes, feel more like sketches or interludes
than they do songs: “Myke Pytson” and “laadeedaa” both introduce neat ideas, then are suddenly over without providing resolution. “Miss You” seems to only exist to bridge “Pop Song” and “Isabella.”

Despite this, “Starfucker” is frequently engaging. The album reveals Hodges as a talented
producer and often strong songwriter, and hints at enormous potential for Starfucker,
either as Hodges or with live band members Ryan Bjornstad and Shawn Glassford, to focus their talents and deliver an incredible follow-up.

Senior art majors panhandle for funding N.Y.C. trip

While most of Whitman adds a few extra hours to their library routine to accommodate the pre-Thanksgiving rush, senior art majors are getting ready for the annual trip to New York City. Unfortunately, preparing for New York involves more than hunting down hip shoes: the fourteen senior art majors also have to come up with over $500 each to help cover trip expenses.

“They just got a new $15 million art building. Clearly there’s money to support the arts at Whitman. People just aren’t trying hard enough for this,” said senior art major Meghan Urback.

The trip has been going on for around ten years and is considered a selling point of the studio
art major. “Students who have attended have said that it was one of the most important aspects of their art education at Whitman,” wrote art department chair Charles Timm-Ballard in an e-mail to the senior art majors.

“The things that students see, hear, and experience in New York change the way that they understand art and the world,” said Timm-Ballard in the same e-mail.

Yet despite the importance of the trip, only $3600 of the students’ costs are paid for. The other $8,758 was left to the art majors to come up with on their own.

Until this year, the trip was required. After students raised concerns that a required, academic
trip that involves missing a week of classes was not fully funded the department’s response
was to make the trip officially not required.

“They’ve officially made the trip no longer required, but it makes no sense since in their words it’s a “fundamental capstone” of the art major experience at Whitman,” said Urback. “[The trip] is part of senior seminar and there are assignments based off of it for the class.”

Senior art majors Urback, Brett Muckler and Rachel Stein petitioned ASWC and were able to secure another $100 per student.

However ASWC made it clear that while they wanted to help the students out, it wasn’t ASWC’s
role to fund a trip that should be covered by the art department. Other attempts to secure funding from the president’s office, the Dean of Students, the Dean of Faculty and the art department were unsuccessful.

“Every year it’s a problem, but nobody really knows about it. So when they do find out about it senior year, it’s too late for anything to be done about it so nothing ever gets done,” said Urback.

In the 2001-02 school year a $5,200 annual fund was set up for the trip. The two faculty who accompany the trip receive $1600 of this money to help defray their costs. The rest goes to students, but was never intended to cover the entire cost of the trip. In more recent years the cost of air travel, lodging, food and museums has risen as have the number of studio art majors, spreading the money thinner.

According to Timm-Ballard, he has made several unsuccessful attempts to request more money for the trip from the budget committee.

Art majors expressed confusion that this fundamental academic trip is less than half funded despite extensive effort on the part of several students while many other trips receive perks such as $75 per person, per day for food, and non-required conferences all over the country are easily funded.

“It discourages against people who financially afford to do this,” said Urback. While all students
are going on this year’s trip, coming up with the funds for the trip was not easy for more than a few students.

Efforts are being made to inform next year’s senior art majors about the costs and bureaucracy
of the trip so they have more time to come up with the money for the trip.

“The money either needs to come from the department or they need to set up a realistic fund for the trip,” said Urback. “The whole thing is just so uncharacteristic; it just doesn’t make sense with the spirit of Whitman.”

Crime wave hits campus, puts students on edge

A recent spike in criminal activities on campus has heightened security concerns at student residences and prompted Dean of Students Chuck Cleveland to issue a campus safety alert. Reported incidents include the assault and attempted robbery of a first-year student on Ankeny Field early Saturday morning, as well as thefts at Café 41 in the library, Lyman Hall, Jewett Hall, and the Interest House Community (IHC).  In the face of increased security threats, the administration is urging students to be vigilant both in matters of personal safety and the protection of personal belongings.

“It is important for the campus as a whole to be aware,” said Cleveland in the e-mail alert released to the student body on Tuesday.  Students should travel in groups at night or call campus security for an escort, he said, and report any suspicious persons.

CAMPUS THEFTS

Items most frequently targeted in the recent outbreak of thefts are blackberrys, cell phones, and laptops.  Students should immediately report missing possessions to campus security or the police.

“I want to encourage all Whitman community members to lock all doors when leaving an unattended room or office,” Cleveland wrote.  “Please do not leave valuable items laying in vulnerable locations.”

IHC Resident Director Patrick Herman echoed these sentiments in a warning sent out Wednesday evening to residents of the interest houses, in the immediate wake of a theft at the Writing House that resulted in the loss of a resident’s laptop.

“Security and the Walla Walla Police have been actively investigating these thefts, and apprehended one suspect in the Ankeny incident,” he said, referring to the assault .   “But we all need to be aware, keep our eyes open and our valuables safe.”

Beginning Wednesday, the IHC has instituted a system of 24-hour lockdown on all houses to combat the security threat.

According to the Walla Walla police officer that responded to the theft at the Writing House on Wednesday, the campus has seen a definite upsurge in criminal activity in recent weeks, particularly thefts at student residents.  The officer emphasized keeping all entrances locked at all times and the porch lights on, as intruders are likely to target a house more than once if their first attempt is successful.

The Writing House is not the first IHC residence in which items have been reported stolen since the start of the school year. Thefts occurred at the Community Service House in October.  A warning was also issued to the Whitman community after a student living in a rented house on Merriam Street encountered an intruder on Friday, Nov. 7.

When asked if campus security was equipped to handle this increase in crime, Bryant Stringham, part time Whitman security officer and patrolman for the city of Walla Walla insisted that the best way to reduce risk to people and property is for students to take logical precautions.

“The knee-jerk reaction is to say ‘Oh, security needs to beef up,’ but that won’t do any good if people won’t take responsibility for themselves and their belongings,” he said.

INTRUDERS IN JEWETT

Campus security and the Residence Life staff of Jewett Hall responded to an incident involving two intruders on Saturday that culminated in one arrest.  The intruders, whom witnesses described as high school age Caucasian males, were intercepted in the Jewett lounge by senior Mike Minckler, the Resident Assistant of 2-West.

“I received complaints in my section that some strange, random guys were in the lounge,” Minckler said.  “I asked them if they lived in Jewett and they replied, ‘yeah, we do.’  I said I didn’t think so, and asked them to leave.”

Minckler said he called security when the two continued to behave suspiciously as he escorted them from the building.  A security officer, as well as Jewett Resident Director Jon Lundak, had already appeared on the scene in response to multiple residents’ claims that they recognized the two intruders as the same young men involved in the Halloween thefts in Lyman.  Security stopped the suspects on Ankeny, near Olin Hall.

“Jon and myself decided to go check up with security, because we realized this situation deserved a lot of attention,” Minckler said.  “As myself, Jon, and a Lyman resident were headed over to check the situation out, the two young men started running eastbound on Ankeny back towards Jewett.”

Lundak and Minckler then decided to assist security by intercepting the fleeing suspects as they ran, which enabled the security officer to tackle and contain one of the young men.  Minckler pursued the other through the construction site and across Ankeny, however the suspect was quite fast.

“He must have had quite a bit of adrenaline rushing in him,” Minckler said.

Police responded to the call and apprehended the remaining suspect, who was identified as a student at De Sales High School with possible gang affiliations.

ASSAULT ON ANKENY

When sophomore Johnny Zimmerman first spotted two figures approaching him on Ankeny Field around 1:15 a.m. on Saturday, he assumed they were fellow Whitman students coming back from a party.  Zimmerman had been visiting friends in North Hall and was returning to his room in Douglas Hall when he encountered the two men, one who was later described in Cleveland’s campus alert as Caucasian, 5”10 and stocky, the other Latino and slightly shorter, with a leaner build.

Zimmerman said the Caucasian figure, who initially approached Zimmerman asking him if he’d seen his dog, “smelled like alcohol and weed.”

“I would definitely say he was under the influence,” Zimmerman said.

The man continued to pursue Zimmerman across the field, demanding to know if he was carrying a weapon and then asking if Zimmerman wanted to fight him.

“It kind of came as a shock,” said Zimmerman of the incident.  “Especially on Ankeny.  That’s why I didn’t even try to avoid them when I was walking past them on the field.  Because I didn’t even think about there being a problem here.”

As Zimmerman continued moving in the direction of Jewett Hall, hoping to encounter fellow students and an open door, his pursuers threatened him and insisted that he stop walking away.  However, Zimmerman said the would-be muggers lost interest as he drew closer to Jewett and then met up with a group of Whitman students.  He called campus security on his cell phone at about 1:30 a.m. from behind Jewett to notify them of the situation.

Meanwhile, first-year Sam Alden was accosted by the same two men as he made his way from Lyman to the Library, at about 1:45 a.m.

After posing the same odd question about a lost dog, one of the men “continued walking past the point where it was obvious he should have stopped,” said Alden.

The men proceeded to assault Alden after he attempted to run for the library.  Although one of the attackers reached for Alden’s wallet, he threw it down again after discovering that it contained no cash.

When security arrived on Ankeny, responding to the call made by Zimmerman, the two attackers fled, leaving the injured Alden on the ground.

“I yelled at the security officers, ‘hey, I just got mugged!’ and they said ‘we know’ and came over,” said Alden.  “It was a police officer and one of the security guys.  They asked me questions about how they were dressed and what had happened, and they took my information.”

Although Alden was advised to seek help from the health center or counseling center if he saw fit, security did not escort Alden home after the incident occurred.  Zimmerman, too, noted that the security officer on the phone did not offer to escort him home.

“We have no way of knowing if they [students] want an escort,” said Stringham, when asked why the offer was not extended after the assault.  “If he [Alden] didn’t get one it’s because he didn’t ask for one.”

Senior Roman Goerss, ASWC Vice President and Chairman of Student Affairs, spoke to Alden about security’s response, and later presented concerns to Associate Dean of Students Barbara Maxwell.

He expressed appreciation the college cares about its students, and that such discussions of concerns and suggested changes can be made.

Goerss’ suggested improvements for campus include ensuring that the blue emergency phones on campus function properly and that the warning e-mail system addresses incidents promptly, even if they occur on weekends.

“It’s at a point where we need this community to do something,” Goerss said.

Mr. Whitman proceeds to benefit orphans

Outside of Mr. Whitman, there are few events where you can watch a singer in a thong perform on-stage or fraternity members enact a Super Smash Brothers game.  Its equally rare to see Cordiner spilling over with students eager to shell out $5 for an obscure charity.

Kappa Kappa Gamma’s annual philanthropy event turns the typical, banal beauty pageant on its head.  One representative from each fraternity and four Indies vie for the crown of MR. Whitman.  It continues to be one of the most popular events on campus, drawing phenomenal crowds anxious to watch their peers embarrass themselves for a  good cause.

Though it is clearly raucous entertainment Mr. Whitman is most importantly, a philanthropic event.  This year, the Lake Nkuruba Orphanage Project is the beneficiary of the pageant.

Headed by Pastor John Bosco in Western Uganda, the Lake Nkuruba Orphanage Project currently houses 156 AIDS orphans.  The Pastor and his wife opened their own home to the orphans, and as the number of children grew, the couple bought two minibus taxis and one broken down car for the orphans to sleep in.

The lake Nkuruba Orphangae Project provides education and medical care to the children.  But as Kappa philanthropy chair, Maryn Juergens explained, the project does not have enough money to cover the expenses of both.  In this case, education is obviously neglected in favor of health.

Through Mr. Whitman, the Kappas strive to raise $15,000.   If this goal were reached, it would cover the education for all 156 kids for two years.  But as Juergens explained, the flagging economy may make it difficult to obtain that goal.
As Phi contestant Kaston Griffin enumerated, the only setback in his experience is “that we’re in a recession and with many businesses going out of business, it’s hard to separate people from their money.”

But Kaston has chosen to reach outside the campus for monetary support, beseeching family friends from Seattle, Walla Walla, and San Francisco for their support.

Ned Schaumberg, the TKE representative, echoed Kaston’s laments and approaches to fund-raising.  In light of the economic downfall, Ned has reached outside the pockets of Whitman students in search of a wider community of support.

“I sent a bunch of letters to family and friends around the country. People from my church back home have responded the most favorably.  Many of them have been to Africa and seen the conditions, so they are more willing to donate money.
Quite frankly, I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of positive support I have received,” said Ned in an e-mail.

The economic setbacks also inspired the Kappa’s creativity in raising money for the charity.  For the first time, the Kappa’s tabled during Family Weekend and raised $500.  This year the Kappas are also raffling tickets for $1 to win a coffee date with a Mr. Whitman contestant.  The buyer chooses their man.

According to Juergens, the only person who knows the boys’ talents, questions, and swimwear, the show promises to be one of staggering proportions.

“It’s really hard knowing all the secrets and not telling anyone… I laugh out loud at their ideas, the boys are so creative.. I can’t wait for everyone to see their talents… I’m excited to see it all come together.”

Mr. Whitman is staged at the Cordiner stage at 7 p.m. this Friday, Nov. 15.  Tickets are $5 in advance and $8 at the door.  All proceeds go toward the Lake Nkuruba Orphanage Project.

Student life archives lacking for past 30 years

One would be hard pressed to find a current Whitman student thinking about their future 25th college reunion. But as the Alumni Association discovered this past summer, if the Whitman College archives continue to be short on materials about student life over the past decades, future alumni events will prove more difficult to plan and will be far less enjoyable for all parties involved.

Junior history major Liam Nance spent her summer working in the archives as a student intern and research assistant, and she was crucial in making this discovery.

Nance worked closely with the Alumni Association and much of her summer work centered on surveying and organizing the materials in the archives so that they would be ready for use for future oral and written history projects.

To date, only two volumes of Whitman’s history have been written. Written by former Whitman professor G. Thomas Edwards, they cover the years from the college’s establishment in 1859 up to 1975. The second and most recent volume, Tradition in Turbulent Age: Whitman College 1925-1975, was published in 2001.

Nance’s work revealed that of the materials dating from 1975 to the present, little information exists about student and campus life.

“Given that the college no longer has a yearbook, there’s really no systematic way that the college preserves documents, especially those regarding student life,” said Nance. “For example, the files on the greek groups for these years are almost empty. There are no minutes from the Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC) meetings since the early 1970s.”

Unlike other academic institutions, Whitman has no policy regarding what types of documents must be regularly submitted to the archives.

“What would be ideal would be to have regular deposits of materials such as minute books,” said Whitman Archivist and Special Collections Librarian Michael Paulus.

This is currently done with the college’s institutional and official records. Important minutes are printed and the copies are submitted to the archives for preservation, thus securing them for future use in case the originals are damaged or lost.

“Something similar could be done with records of student groups,” said Paulus. Such a system would guarantee that future members of these organizations as well as historians would have access to these materials.

The Alumni Association, under the leadership of Associate Director of Alumni Nancy Mitchell, is currently looking for other avenues of increasing student submissions to the archives. One such avenue that Mitchell has suggested is working with ASWC to encourage student clubs and organizations to regularly submit their minutes, newsletters, composites, and other materials to the archives. The Alumni Association is currently working with ASWC and President Elliott Okantey to discuss such an idea.

Nance echoed the benefit of Mitchell’s proposal. “All clubs on campus are supposedly required to submit their minutes to ASWC. It would be so easy for ASWC to take these minutes, make copies of them and submit them to the archives,” she said. “Then the archives would have this great documentation of student life.”

“In addition to that, college sports and intramural teams and the greek groups can easily submit pictures from their events,” Nance said.

The Alumni Association strongly encourages members of the Whitman community to begin submitting their materials to the archives on a more regular basis.

“Documenting student life is so important because it is constantly changing,” said Mitchell.

“When it comes time to write the next history of the college, which will cover your college years, we want the researcher to have adequate information to work with. Also, when you come back for your reunion (yes, that will happen some day!) there will be materials we can use to enhance your reunion experience,” Mitchell said in an email.

She kissed a girl?! She liked it?!

Let’s talk for a moment about girls kissing girls. More specifically, let’s talk about former Christian-singer-turned-pop-maven Katy Perry kissing girls. Because her incredibly popular single “I Kissed a Girl” leads us to believe that this is an activity she enjoys doing. It leads us to believe that mainstream pop music has finally (finally, finally) made some room for the LGBTQ crowd.

It lies.

I know the song has been out forever now, but this has got to be said. I know you’ve probably seen the YouTube clip of Perry jumping into a cake at the Latin VMA’s and then falling on her ass at least four times, and it probably made your heart a little softer for her. Stop that right now.

Perry’s song operates on the same tired exoticization of lesbianism that Girls Gone Wild does: Gay people: bad. Women making out: HOT. The understanding is that the girls that make out for a camera are not actually gay and thus pose no moral dilemma for the people who like to watch them. They will run back to their boyfriends when they’re done playing around. Consider the following lines from the song which exemplify this point perfectly:

“I kissed a girl, and I liked it
Hope my boyfriend don’t mind it
I kissed a girl, just to try it”

Experimenting with sexuality is a perfectly natural thing to do. Spending time questioning one’s romantic attractions and what they’re based on is a key part of sexual maturity. What Perry freely admits to doing in this song, however, is not natural. She is narrating a night when she drank too much, kissed a girl because she was feeling cocky and wanted the conquest, and went back to her boyfriend afterward.

Another telling lyric:
“I got so brave, drink in hand
Lost my discretion
(…)
It’s not what good girls do
Not how they should behave”

The narrator of Perry’s song is obviously aware she’s being watched. The male gaze is upon her, she knows her boyfriend knows she’s kissing girls, and she’s going to scamper back and tell him about it when it’s over and the “experimental game” she’s conducted has ended. There is nothing liberating about women who manipulate each other and mask their sexual feelings in order to put on a better show. From the vantage point of her safe, compulsory heterosexual relationship, the narrator is free to note the “soft skin so touchable” of her fellow females. We all know “it don’t mean [she’s] in love tonight,” after all.

And what would have happened if a man sang this song about kissing other men? First of all, the connotations of “I Kissed a Boy” are slightly more insidious than Perry’s version.  “Girl” could mean teenagers or fun-loving young adults, due to our sexist habit of pushing women back into adolescence whenever possible. “Boy” sounds more like kissing someone 12 and under. But assuming we all understand that the man singer is not breaking the law in the title of his song, we still would never sing along to this in our cars. Radios wouldn’t touch it. The artist may start receiving death threats in the mail. So it’s refreshing to hear a #1 single on the radio about gay women. It would just help if the women in the song still wanted to kiss each other when they hadn’t been drinking heavily.

Male homosexuality, on the other hand, is not something with which to experiment, according to what we hear in Top 40 radio and see in popular TV shows. Men that kiss men, even “just to try it,” are gay. No questions. No turning back. And it seems they’ve got no business flaunting it on American radio stations.

Seattle’s fantastic alternative newspaper, The Stranger, published a piece about the backwards feminism being broadcast by Katy Perry and Sarah Palin alike. The article contains this gem of a quote, describing Palin but equally applicable to Perry:

“What Palin so seductively represents… is a form of feminine power that is utterly digestible to those who have no intellectual or political use for actual women. It’s like some dystopian future… feminism without any feminists.”

The one step forward, two steps back result of Perry’s ridiculously popular song is no different. She touts a lesbianism without lesbians.

“I Kissed a Girl” is a catchy piece of music that’s fun to sing along to. It’s almost got a really great thing going, talking about branching away from the heterosexual whitewash of popular music. But ultimately the hope for progress represented in the song is proven false. When songs like this (and politicians like Palin) get mislabeled as the cream of the progressive thinking crop, blazing trails for woman-kind, we’re in even more trouble than we were before they arrived.

Prospective students taste college life on Fall Visitors’ Day

On select days every fall, the pace quickens at Whitman College when prospective students, accompanied by their families, swarm campus, searching for a new place to call home.

On November 7, a scheduled Fall Visitors’ Day, prospective students got a sense of the academic life and learned about the co-curricular programs available at Whitman. Prospective students are encouraged to attend Fall Visitors’ Days in
order to assess whether Whitman College is the right fit for them.

According to Admission’s officer Devin Yamanaka, “activities [on Fall Visitors’ Day] include but are not limited to class visits, presentations on ResLife and Study Abroad, campus tours, lunch in the dining halls and a current student panel.”
Prospective students are encouraged to attend and contribute to the discussions in Antiquity and Modernity – a unique trademark of Whitman College. They also can choose to sit in on other classes that are of interest to them.

“Fall Visitors’ Day gave me a realistic glimpse into the atmosphere on campus. I was able to interact with Whitman students and professors – it was such a great experience that really influenced my decision to come here,” said first-year Monica Paulson, who visited campus as a prospective student prior to attending Whitman.

Many prospective students find that their experience on campus greatly influences their attitude toward Whitman College as Web sites and campus review journals cannot provide the same kind of inside look into student life.

“I really enjoyed visiting campus and interacting with Whitman students. I like the energy on campus and that I was able to live here for a day – like a college student,” said prospective student Richael Best, a current student at University High School in San Francisco.

Fall Visitors’ Days provide a structured experience for prospective students, for they are encouraged to attend classes and special forums established for this specific purpose. In order to acquaint themselves with Whitman College, many choose to go on campus tours that provide insight into the campus and its history.

As a member of the Admissions Team, or the A-Team, tour guide Thanh Vo has acquired much of her knowledge about Whitman by addressing the questions of prospective students and their parents.

“I have not only learned more about my school on the surface (by means of what buildings offer what and such) but I have learned valuable information about its inner workings as well,” she said in an e-mail.

While leading tours, Vo has observed that, more often than not, “prospective students are the ones who accompany their parents. Parents generally ask more questions than the students. The best questions come from the parents because they care about the well being of their child so they are more concerned about all the aspects of college.”

Parents are understandably concerned for their children, for the process of selecting a school marks the advent of a new chapter in their lives — the college experience. Although parents may ask the most questions, students still express interest in academics, social life, the quality of dining hall food, varsity and intramural teams and outdoor opportunities.

“I have found that most students are interested in the types and forms of recreation on campus because they are concerned about Whitman’s remote location,” remarked Vo.

Over the years, Whitman College has attracted students of a certain caliber.

“Whitman has always been a self-selective and self-sustaining community because of our location, size, passionate student body, and rigorous academics. Students who visit Whitman are often focused on finding a school with these attributes.  These characteristics have persisted throughout generations of Whitman students,” said Yamanaka.
When the activities on Fall Visitors’ Day come to a close, prospective students are better equipped to make that crucial college decision — whether Whitman is the right fit for them.

“Now I feel more prepared to make my decision. My campus visit was a great experience,” said Best. “I got a real taste of Whitman life.”

Model UN club gains momentum, recognition

Getting involved in the international community seems like a difficult task for students living hours away from even the nearest big U.S. city. But this fall, dozens of Whitman students are connecting to the world scene by participating in the College’s newly formed Model United Nations Club.

The goal of Model United Nations is to simulate the General Assembly and each of the U.N.’s other multilateral bodies, helping students gain an in-depth understanding of current issues faced by U.N. member states.  In multiple conferences throughout the year, student delegates are challenged to step into ambassadorial roles and negotiate the difficult world of international politics by making speeches, debating issues with allies and opponents and cooperating to resolve conflicts between world nations.

A previous Model United Nations Club existed on Whitman’s campus a number of years ago, but the group died out after the founders graduated. Sensing a revived interest in the organization, sophomore Derek Thurber filled out the paperwork last year to reform the club, which officially launched in October. Now Secretary-general of the club, Thurber holds meetings every Wednesday night at 7 p.m. in Reid.

“I sensed there was a lot of interest in [Model United Nations] at Whitman from talking to people,” said Thurber. “I wanted it to be a place for international discussion and for people on campus to get to see more of international events.”

Last weekend, Whitman’s Model United Nations club attended its first conference since its inception. During a three-day conference held at the University of Washington, six Whitman students represented the interests of Germany and Bosnia and Herzegovina, discussing everything from human rights and the environment to national security and economic development.

First-year Kie Watanabe earned the “Outstanding Delegate” award for her work representing Germany on the Human Rights Council, an honor bestowed to only one person in the group of over 20 delegates.

In preparation for the conference, Whitman’s student delegates spent numerable hours researching their countries’ history, geography, culture and economy; they meticulously reviewed voting records, speeches and embassy statements in order to accurately voice their countries’ opinions on key issues.

According to Thurber, this painstaking learning process is one of the most challenging aspects of the club because it requires participants to suspend their natural beliefs and world views.

“One of the most challenging things about participating in these conferences is stepping outside of your normal perspective,” said Thurber. “It’s one of the most rewarding things about going to these conferences. When you’re researching, you form your own opinions about how things should be, especially when looking at countries that are radically different from the U.S. Sometimes you have to go against some of your most basic tenets of life in order to represent countries accurately.”

Next Spring the club will attend another conference in San Francisco, and Thurber hopes that it will able to add more and more events to its roster every year. Sponsored in part by the Associated Students of Whitman College, the club is holding a fundraiser Sunday, Feb. 8 to cover travel expenses. The event, which will take on the form of an international banquet, will also feature a prominent speaker from the international community.

“I like being able to feel like I’ve given something back to Whitman,” said Thurber. “It’s really rewarding to plan this big event that we’re hosting for the whole campus that will bring in a pretty prominent speaker. The club is about becoming more a part of the Whitman community and making sure that everybody appreciates how Whitman is involved in the international community as well.”

The women’s tennis team usually has about 10 fans. When we played the nationally ranked UC Santa Cruz team at Whitman, the Santa Cruz fans out numbered the Whitman fans. Distance from Santa Cruz to Bratton
Tennis Center: 826 miles. Distance from Jewett to Bratton Tennis Center: about 826 feet.
As varsity athletics improve at Whitman due to better facilities, recruiting and funding the reality remains that their success depends on the greater student body. Sports, especially volleyball, soccer and basketball are here to give them student respite from academics and college life. It is the fans more than the athletes who are supposed to reap the benefits of one more Friday or Saturday night activity. Athletics are something to unite a school. If students do not enjoy coming to games and matches, then athletics will continue to divide rather than unite the school.

I knew there would not be tons of raving tennis junkies when I came to Whitman.  I like that here tennis is something that I do and not what I am. I like the opportunities I have to talk about Descartes, Environmental policy and microbes more than I would enjoy cheering fans. I love tennis enough to not need fans… a lot of fans at least. But I understood the choice I made when I came to Whitman.
I do not think Whitman students understand what they are missing. Compare Whitman with Gonzaga University that has a basketball team that routinely performed well at the NCAA tournament for the last six years. The energy at games is unearthly. What could be any old university has become a place well known for its invigorated atmosphere that may centered around basketball but has spreads into other fields.  Applications are up and the school is expanding.
There have been tastes of what athletics could be at Whitman. At the men’s soccer game against top ranked Whitworth, the Whitman crowds were hardly deterred by the rain. Rumors of a pregame keg and a chance at the NCAA National tournament brought 500 fans out. Cold and wet, I still stayed through the two overtimes because the intensity of the screaming and yelling is something that cannot be found very often in Walla Walla.

But even the next weekend the game attendance went back down to 200. In general Whitman students are not interested in being varsity athletic fans.
But what changed for that one soccer game? Do games need to be better publicized?  Do we need cheerleaders (I hope not) or maybe a pep band (there is one in the works right now) or a fan club? Does the Whitman Missionary mascot alienate people? Or is it not used to its full potential? The favorite question for female athletes to ask is “Do people not come to my games because I am a woman?”
The concern the college now faces as it attempts to revitalize its traditionally unsuccessful athletic program is who is responsible for addressing these questions? At a larger university school life often already centers on athletics. At Whitman we have to start from scratch. Much of the responsibility falls on student athletes to get people to games, matches and events. Many student athletes resent how this added responsibility conflicts with their commitment to training, practice and competition.
But if these questions continue to go unresolved and games continue to go unattended, then the question changes to if athletics really have a place at Whitman. I hope so. Being a fan is the most socially acceptable place I can be loud, crazy and obnoxious. But Whitman has a long way to go before it can say that athletics are worth their while at Whitman. Until then I will continue playing tennis and thanking the few fans I have.

The Second Coming? Don’t Count On It

GUEST COLUMN: William Lawrence ‘12

Hundreds of Whitman students poured into the streets of Walla Walla on November 4th to celebrate the election of Barack Obama. CNN reported on a similar scene with George Washington University and Georgetown students outside the White House and friends of mine related similar stories from across the nation. Millions of American youth rejoiced that, for once, they actually made a difference for the future of our country. The election of Obama is a historic achievement as it proves Americans are ready to fundamentally reconstruct the way they think about the executive office.

Unfortunately, I fear the massive public adoration of the President-Elect carries a misplaced faith in his ability – and willingness – to enact the broad liberal changes many would like to see.

If the campaign marathon has revealed anything about our next president, it has shown his malleability. Throughout this election cycle, his views on many topics – offshore drilling, campaign financing, and others – have evolved to suit his campaign. In a way, this pattern fits with his message of bipartisanship and consensus-building. I expect Obama will continue to lean toward the center as president, both to foster
cooperation with Republicans in Congress and to retain moderates for his re-election campaign. President Obama will likely not enact radically liberal reforms in the next four years, although he has the votes in Congress to do so.

Unfortunately, many Obama-philes have inflated expectations for the President-Elect’s ability to turn things around. Joe Biden tried to dissolve false hopes recently when he told a crowd to “stick with” Obama when things aren’t going well. Senator Obama himself worried before the election about the astronomic expectations for his presidency.

Well, Obama won, and expectations expressed during the celebration can officially be classified as “unrealistic.” I don’t have room for all the hyperbolic exclamations overheard during the march on Main Street, but one in particular, which I heard uttered with no hint of irony, sums up the attitude:
“Obama is Jesus!” Such a comparison speaks wonders to Obama’s rhetoric and unifying ability, but it also sets a dangerous standard.

Coming out of this long campaign, I have one question: What happens when “Jesus” falters? How will the liberal youth, who mobilized so wonderfully in this campaign, respond when their ambitious agenda of social liberation is not fully pursued? How will minorities respond when they still find themselves poor and marginalized, even with one of their own in the White House? I fear a backlash may ensue among the youth and minorities of America. These groups may lose faith and decide that political participation does not matter when the Savior fails to deliver them to the Promised Land.

It is undisputed that America has taken a tremendous step forward. However, many of the gains made are quite tenuous, contingent on public faith in a single man. Barack Obama faces more pressure to succeed than any incoming president in memory; the possible ramifications of failure could largely undo many gains made in this election. Citizens, especially the newly empowered youth and minority populations, must keep realistic goals for the next four years. If the President-Elect continues to be held to Messianic expectations, he will surely fail to meet them, and 2008 may be remembered as the year that Americans experimented with true democracy, only to decide it wasn’t worth the disappointment.

Mr. Whitman proceeds to benefit orphans

Outside of Mr. Whitman, there are few events where you can watch a singer in a thong perform on-stage or fraternity members enact a Super Smash Brothers game.  Its equally rare to see Cordiner spilling over with students eager to shell out $5 for an obscure charity.

Kappa Kappa Gamma’s annual philanthropy event turns the typical, banal beauty pageant on its head.  One representative from each fraternity and four Indies vie for the crown of MR. Whitman.  It continues to be one of the most popular events on campus, drawing phenomenal crowds anxious to watch their peers embarrass themselves for a  good cause.

Though it is clearly raucous entertainment Mr. Whitman is most importantly, a philanthropic event.  This year, the Lake Nkuruba Orphanage Project is the beneficiary of the pageant.

Headed by Pastor John Bosco in Western Uganda, the Lake Nkuruba Orphanage Project currently houses 156 AIDS orphans.  The Pastor and his wife opened their own home to the orphans, and as the number of children grew, the couple bought two minibus taxis and one broken down car for the orphans to sleep in.

The lake Nkuruba Orphangae Project provides education and medical care to the children.  But as Kappa philanthropy chair, Maryn Juergens explained, the project does not have enough money to cover the expenses of both.  In this case, education is obviously neglected in favor of health.

Through Mr. Whitman, the Kappas strive to raise $15,000.   If this goal were reached, it would cover the education for all 156 kids for two years.  But as Juergens explained, the flagging economy may make it difficult to obtain that goal.
As Phi contestant Kaston Griffin enumerated, the only setback in his experience is “that we’re in a recession and with many businesses going out of business, it’s hard to separate people from their money.”

But Kaston has chosen to reach outside the campus for monetary support, beseeching family friends from Seattle, Walla Walla, and San Francisco for their support.

Ned Schaumberg, the TKE representative, echoed Kaston’s laments and approaches to fund-raising.  In light of the economic downfall, Ned has reached outside the pockets of Whitman students in search of a wider community of support.

“I sent a bunch of letters to family and friends around the country. People from my church back home have responded the most favorably.  Many of them have been to Africa and seen the conditions, so they are more willing to donate money. 

“Quite frankly, I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of positive support I have received,” said Ned in an e-mail.

The economic setbacks also inspired the Kappa’s creativity in raising money for the charity.  For the first time, the Kappa’s tabled during Family Weekend and raised $500. This year the Kappas are also raffling tickets for $1 to win a coffee date with a Mr. Whitman contestant. The buyer chooses their man.

According to Juergens, the only person who knows the boys’ talents, questions, and swimwear, the show promises to be one of staggering proportions.

“It’s really hard knowing all the secrets and not telling anyone… I laugh out loud at their ideas, the boys are so creative.. I can’t wait for everyone to see their talents… I’m excited to see it all come together.”

Mr. Whitman is staged at the Cordiner stage at 7 p.m. this Friday, Nov. 15.  Tickets are $5 in advance and $8 at the door.  All proceeds go toward the Lake Nkuruba Orphanage Project.

This Week in ASWC

APPLY FOR SWEET, PAID POSITIONS ON CAMPUS! Applications are now available for Public Speakers Director, Public Events Director, Films Director and Pioneer Editor-in-Chief.  Applications are available online at: http://www.whitman.edu/content/aswc/committees/nominations/applications
Look out for emails with more information. Applications are due THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13th at midnight. Please direct questions to Nominations Chair Julia Nelson at nelsonjm@whitman.edu.

The next Senate meeting is this Sunday in RCC G02 at 7:00 p.m. All students are welcome to attend.

Come to the RCC Ballroom tonight (Thursday) at 7:00 p.m. to watch comedian Eliot Chang perform. Co-hosted by Asian Cultural Awareness and ASWC Programming.

Greeks consider fourth sorority

A long time ago, in a world not unlike our own, Whitman campus boasted four sororities instead of three. Now, Whitman College’s greek life is considering reinstalling a fourth sorority to the current triumvirate.

The fourth sorority was called TriDelta, also known as Delta Delta Delta, but the chapter was closed in May 2005 due to low membership. The chapter had been struggling with membership issues for at least twenty years. The talk regarding a potential re-instatement is, at this point, only preliminary and it is uncertain whether the chosen sorority will, again, be TriDelta.

Interest in sororities has increased over the past few years with the most recent pledge classes of 2011 and 2012 numbering in the mid to high-twenties whereas the earlier pledge classes were in the lower twenties. Panhellenic Council, the organization that oversees the sororities, grows more concerned about the larger sizes and how it may affect members’ abilities to get to know one another. Barbara Maxwell, Associate Dean of Students, is also heavily involved in this concern and has been mulling over the issue for about a year now.

“Currently the three sororities on campus are very large and at some point, the quality of the experience is diminished,” said Maxwell.

If Whitman College decides to add another sorority, there are further measures that must be taken in terms of the logistics. The National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), the governing organization for the 26 NPC sororities, has very specific and tedious requirements on the procedure for adding another group to an already existing sorority system.

Whitman College’s Panhellenic Council is mandated to consult the administration regarding this issue, and if the administration passes this proposal, the Panhellenic will need to vote to open the campus for expansion.
Panhellenic is directed to support and assist the ‘colony’, the term used for a new chapter, until it is completed. In terms of gaining members, promotion plays a large part in the process. Fliers, talks, and posters are crucial in spreading the word and soliciting interest. The other sororities are also to give the colony a list of unaffiliated women who registered for sorority recruitment, but didn’t pledge, so that the colony can contact them.

“I think we already have a pretty big greek system relative to the size of the school,” said sophomore Jojo Roberts. “I would worry that the other sororities would have trouble recruiting as many people if there was another sorority to compete with, but I don’t think that it would affect me personally.”

The presidents of the sororities are rather pleased with the idea.

“All three of the sororities on campus are already so packed, we barely fit in our chapter rooms,” said junior Jacqueline Kamm, president of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. “Having a fourth sorority would provide another option for women interested in going through recruitment and would make sorority life at Whitman even stronger.”

As of now, the addition of a new sorority is an objective that the council set for itself during the January 2007 Greek Leaders Training meeting. The next Greek Leaders Training meeting is coming up on January 2009, and so a decision may be made. It will be interesting to see what is in store for the sorority life on Whitman campus.

This Week in Greek

Delta Gamma: The DGs are finishing their slating process, and results will be posted on Sunday. Furthermore, this Saturday will be, in the words of one prominent member, “Delta-Gamtastic.” The ladies are leaf raking in the morning, throwing rocks at their chapter bowling retreat in the afternoon, then hosting their fall winter formal at the Underground that night.

Kappa Kappa Gamma: Mr. Whitman is on Friday, and tickets will be sold at the door for $8. Lastly, on Tuesday the chapter had a workshop on women’s sexuality with Sharon Kaufman-Osborne.

Kappa Alpha Theta: On Saturday the chapter has a sisterhood Thanksgiving dessert, as well as leaf-raking philanthropy event with the Phis, planned. This past weekend Biology Professor Kate Jackson presented to the chapter about snakes and her adventures in the Congo.

Phi Delta Theta: This week the Phis have a scholarship talk with History Professor David Schmitz on previous economic crises. This Saturday the chapter has its chaplain’s retreat, which will include leaf raking in the morning (with, gasp, the Thetas!!) and a candle pass in the afternoon. Elections are next Thursday, and its been reported that a holographic will.i.am will be present.

Beta Theta Pi: The Betas are outdoing themselves academically, hosting not one but TWO scholarship talks in the coming week. Beta President David Ogle states reassuring, “Don’t worry, we’re just being hella ironic. Honestly, no one saw this coming.” Two members who studied in Ecuador this past summer will present on their experience, and Foreign Languages and Literatures Professor Nohemy Solorzano-Thompson will discuss gender.

Sigma Chi: On Saturday the Sigma Chi pledge class has a philanthropy event with Habitat for Humanity, followed by a pledge father/pledge son retreat in the afternoon.

Tau Kappa Epsilon: On Tuesday Geology Professor Pat Spencer presented to the chapter on alcohol and alcoholism. Furthermore, this Saturday the house is volunteering with Habitat for Humanity and holding elections. The TKE Thanksgiving Dinner, open to all members of the community, is scheduled for Wednesday Nov. 19th.

Environmentalism influences Gregoire’s win

That environmental policy is a partisan matter seemed pretty obvious to me. Most people who I’ve talked to also feel this way; the general consensus seems to be that Republicans are less concerned about the protection of the environment than Democrats.

It seemed to be a given throughout this grueling, recently concluded presidential election cycle that the Democrat, Barack Obama, was clearly the favored candidate for environmental groups, while McCain, the Republican, lacked green credentials.

Actually, back in 2003, McCain worked with Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman (who ran as VP-candidate to Al Gore in 2000) on a bill to impose limits on greenhouse gas emissions. But this kind of work obviously ran contrary to mainstream Republican thought.

In a two-hour speech responding to the bill, Republican Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma said, “With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.”

Shortly thereafter, Dr. Roger A. Pielke, the director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, commented, “On the climate issue, we appear to be on the brink of having Republican science and Democrat science.”

Where is all of this division coming from? It wasn’t that long ago that Republican and Democratic views on global warming were about the same. According to a recent poll by the Gallup Web site, an almost equal percentage of Republicans and Democrats thought global warming had already begun in 1998.

But the poll also shows that over the last ten years, the gap between Republican and Democratic thought on the matter has dramatically increased. Oddly (but not that oddly), the percentage of Republicans who think global warming is real has not only fallen behind that of Democrats, but it has actually decreased over the last 10 years, as some of the most significant research on the matter has emerged. Just as the problem has become more and more evident, the GOP has become eager to ignore it.

The recent Washington state gubernatorial race, in which Republican Dino Rossi challenged Democrat Christine Gregoire, vividly illustrated this trend toward partisanship in environmental matters. The extremely close race was a replay of the 2004 election, in which Rossi also challenged the incumbent Gregoire.

Washington’s environment certainly dodged a bullet when Gregoire edged out Rossi, who is not sure humans are the cause of global warming. Rossi’s shaky environmental plan consisted primarily of working to reduce traffic congestion, which he believes would lower carbon emissions.

This plan is deceptive, and wouldn’t have really done any good. A recent Seattle Times article pointed out many of its flaws, most notably that “the report his campaign referred to [in making this case] talks about reducing carbon monoxide, which doesn’t contribute nearly as much to global warming as carbon dioxide.”

Rossi’s efforts to reduce traffic congestion might have been helpful to commuters, but it’s really a stretch to say that they’d have reduced carbon emissions substantially—especially taking into consideration that bigger and wider roads would also mean more cars driving on them. If Rossi were to make traffic better, more people would drive, and carbon emissions would actually increase.

It’s no surprise that during both the 2004 and 2008 elections, environmental groups have been much more aligned with Gregoire than Rossi. Many who can see through his newly purchased Hybrid SUV agree that Rossi’s proposed policies don’t really address key issues like climate change.

So, while it’s great for the environment that we elected Gregoire, we have yet to solve the problems with partisanship that plague environmental politics. Concern for the environment, like a host of other issues, is something that really should not be divided down party lines.

Obama rally prompts undue introspection

It seems as if the choice of Senator Obama to become the next President of the United States has aroused more controversy than I expected on our quite liberal campus. Actually, it hasn’t been the choice itself that is the subject of much questioning, but rather, it’s been the reaction of the student body to this momentous election that’s been under the microscope. Questions arise: did Whitman act in a sober, dignified enough manner?  Were we too partisan? And does this only magnify our reputation as an arrogant, leftist hotbed in an otherwise conservative town?

Firstly, I should say immediately that I do NOT believe the election celebrations were done out of any sense of malice, either consciously or unconsciously. I don’t believe that the supporters of the march/rally intended
to march through the community in order to insult the electoral prowess of the Greater Walla Walla area. I don’t believe that it was an overt attempt to dampen the spirits of whoever may have voted for John McCain, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader or any of the other candidates who ran for office.

Now, whether it did have this effect or not is highly debatable. According to a news article in the Pio, for example, there was at least one McCain supporter in the crowd (ok – admittedly, way outnumbered, but still), and, from conversations I had (in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll admit I took part in the march and rallies), I know there were also a few community members that joined in, as well as a few that looked on in support. As we marched, I was personally brimming with joy, and also hoped that community members WOULD join in. I hoped that anyone who may have been in or around the coffee shops, that anyone who may have lived nearby, who was interested, would come and voice their support with us. Unfortunately, without any direct and clear advertising (indeed, according to those who organized the event, it seemed like it was a spur of the moment idea), to an outside community observer, it must have seemed an exclusive, ivory tower event limited only to Whitman students.

Regarding partisanship, I believe that it may have been planned as a polypartisan approach to the election, but ended up as a purely Obama/pro-Democrat rally (this is only my belief, as I did not exclusively ask the organizers about this topic). That being said, I believe there were 3 main, very practical reasons to march downtown. First, we needed to stop by the Democratic HQ, which is located downtown. Second, downtown
is well lit, as opposed to the campus, which is largely dark at night. Third, plazas and city centers are where it’s at in terms of our romanticized ideals of revolution and change. Have you ever heard of a revolution
occurring in the suburbs? Of course not. Though downtowns have become outdated in terms of being massive population centers, they still function as focal points of immense social interaction – that’s why we marched to the plaza downtown, under the large American flag – it would have happened regardless of the campus’ location, even if we were in Olympia, or Seattle.

In short, I believe the celebration was deserved, just and wasn’t intended to harm relations between the campus and community members. But, it’s entirely possible that due to a lack of foresight, we may have done damage nonetheless. Regardless, I do agree that this victory means absolutely nothing if it is not followed up with action on the part of those who so vigorously believe in this spirit of change. If those of us who celebrated this victory fall back on our laurels, then it means that all that was fought for would have been in vain. The article I am responding to said, “politics should be about discussion, understanding and dialogue.”
I couldn’t agree more – in the spirit of this (especially if you believe that we’re entering a new age of poltics), then we must move forward, and make sure this administration works for everyone. On a local level, we must take a more active interest in our community, and combat the image of being a mass of apathetic transplanted liberals. If you believe in change, then this is a step that must truly be taken.

Is our notion of government ill?

We can all be glad to live beyond the days when healthcare meant a timely sacrifice on the alter of Health or a bloodletting to balance the bodily humors. My hope is that perhaps this time next year we’ll finally have a president that will fulfill every Americans’ right to adequate healthcare.

During the presidential election, Barack Obama promised to extend healthcare to millions of uninsured Americans. But presidential elections are full of promises and plans—and, far too often, leave these unfulfilled. One still stinging reminder is the George W. Bush of 2000, who, as his term ends, is saddled with  the weighty responsibility of having lead America through one of its most divisive periods.

Like the politicians of this most recent race, he claimed during his campaign to support education, healthcare and the middle class. He was against “rising wealth [divides] and advancing armies,” and he claimed that the foundation of his administration would be to “address some of society’s deepest problems one person at a time, by encouraging and empowering the good hearts and good works of the American people.”

I have a theory. I believe that the entirety of a politician’s actions in office can be understood and anticipated on just one ground: their conception of the role of government. George Bush said that “[The role of government] is to put conservative values and conservative ideas into the thick of the fight for justice and opportunity. … Government cannot do this work. … government can [only] take the side of these groups, helping the helper, encouraging the inspired.”

In other words, George Bush never thought that government was what was going to support education, healthcare and the middle class, nor oppose wealth divides and armies. He thought that all government could do was stir up zealots and aid those already fortunate enough to be able to aid themselves. Bush never thought that government could or should solve these problems, and so no one should be surprised that Bush bungled two wars, education and healthcare reform, and the rapidly collapsing economy.

Having seen firsthand the results of such a disastrous conception of government, I am hopeful—and what a concept that has been throughout this election season—that Barack Obama has actually offered a solution
to this problem of government. He says, “government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education;
keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.”

I have to say, it is refreshing to hear a politician speak a wholesome truth. A government that doesn’t govern is no government at all, and the best chance for extending healthcare in this country is to directly help the people that lack the ability to help themselves. I sincerely hope that Barack Obama has the courage and dedication to follow through with his campaign promises—it just might return the United States of America to health.

Environmental Education for Kids running strong

Whether you are considering a career as a teacher or simply love kids and the environment, Environmental Education for Kids (EEK) is an ideal way to help educate local children.
EEK, a subdivision of the Campus Greens, began around 10 years ago, when Kryie Thompson ’00 founded the club.
“It began because Thompson felt there was a need to offer students the chance to learn about environmental issues,” Amy Molitor, Academic Assistant for environmental studies, said, “This group took interested Whitman students into the classroom and made the kids look at the world a little differently and learn facts on our local resources. Thompson collected students and took them to classrooms. There was a lot of energy at first, and now with Julia Lakes, it’s picked back up again.”
Julia Lakes, a senior environmental humanities major, has been a member of the club since she was a first-year, and is now the president.
Like many who belong to this club, she simply loves teaching kids about the environment and making a difference.
Others, however, join the club because they are considering a career a teacher.
Junior Katie Hallett, a biology-environmental studies major, is trying to learn what it would be like to be an educator.
“I think it would be great to get the word out there about the environment, especially to younger kids, and I think it’s great to be a leader,” Hallett said.
“Most students either want to teach or just love working with kids, and most have experience with kids,” Molitor said, “This is a good way to test if you want to be a teacher.”
Most students teach at the elementary school, but the club is considering of opening up to a high school.
There are many different opportunities to teach the students. With the new Campfire USA program, Whitman students can teach children after school with more active and hands-on activities.
“It’s pretty relaxed—you can go in and play games and give a little lesson on the environment,” Hallett said.
“It’s good now to have an afternoon time, but normally we would just go into classrooms and educate students on the environment,” Lakes said, “It’s hard to believe how much the kids already know, but making things hands-on makes it easier for them, even though you don’t need to water it down that much.”
“The kids know a surprising amount about photosynthesis and the environment in general,” Hallett said, “People underestimate how much kids can understand.”
There are also bilingual classrooms where students that speak Spanish can utilize their skills. Students can also go the juvenile justice center and teach environmental lessons.
“The difficulty there is kids can change from week to week, but this can also be very rewarding,” Molitor said.
Like other students, Lakes and Hallett both completed their internships through EEK. This is one way for environmental studies majors to complete the internship requirement.
“One or two people intern per semester and take on a leadership role in the club,” Lakes said.
“The internships are mostly associated with getting into the classroom for an hour and preparing for three hours,” Molitor said, “Much of the energy is into developing the plan.”
At the end of the internship, each student summarizes what the experience was like through a log that they fill out each week.
As for the future of the club, things definitely seem like they are heading in a positive direction.
“We are definitely seeing more people this year,” Lakes said, “It’s an exciting time for environmental education as a whole. I want to change the way our country is headed, and I believe the way is through our youth.”

Through Their Eyes: Pre-game superstitions

From a lucky pair of shorts to a special personalized warm-up routine, every athlete has his or her own unique behaviors. For some, these superstitions are so crucial to their routine that it could cause them to perform horribly if one was forgotten.

Do these superstitions really have an effect on how the athlete is going to play? Why would wearing a certain pair of shorts be any different from another? Does brushing your teeth between every inning, like former Mets pitcher Turk Wendell, make you throw better?

“One of the things humans can do well is recognize patterns,” said Associate Professor of psychology Walter Herbranson. “If you do something one game and you happen to do well that day, you are more likely to keep doing that one thing in the future.”

So if an athlete notices that he seems to play better when he is wearing a certain shirt, he is going to continue to wear that shirt because it will hopefully keep him playing well. The specific shirt might not have anything to do with how the athlete plays, but he is not about to risk not wearing it.

These superstitions are mostly about feeling “right” when an athlete is getting ready to play. This is especially true for sophomore tennis player Chris Bailey, who, when getting ready for a match, does everything from putting on his shoes and socks to stepping on and off stairs with his right foot first. It is so habitual that it would feel wrong if he were to do it any other way.

All sports garner this response, too.

“Every time I step up onto the blocks before a race I pause and tap the top of the block twice with both of my hands. If I don’t do it, things just feel weird,” said first-year swimmer Chris Bendix.

However, these superstitions are also performing a duty. By having a set schedule, albeit sometimes an eccentric one, it is much easier for athletes to return to the same level of focus that they need in order to play their best.

“These different warm-up routines perform a relaxation function before a big game,” said Herbranson. “It brings the athlete back to an optimal level of arousal or readiness.”

Having a set pre-game or warm-up ritual can make it much easier for athletes to discard all thoughts except those they need in order to play their sport. In essence, having a routine trains the brain into automatically readying itself for a game or match when the right combination of actions is followed. In effect, it is not necessarily the superstition itself that is helping the athlete, but the routine that the superstition is a part of.

Really, though, it comes down to individual tastes. For some, the whole idea of a superstition is distasteful.

“As a college athlete and coach, I have always tried to reject the notion of superstitious behaviors, as I think they amount to relinquishing individual control. Call me a control freak, but I would prefer to believe I am in control of my own destiny,” said Athletic Director Dean Snider.

That being said, there have been countless superstitions cooked up by every generation of athletes, and they will likely be a part of athletics for the next several generations as well.

Role models

Billy: Found drunk in front of a Hooters restaurant, golfer John Daly was arrested on Sunday, Oct. 26, the Associated Press reported. That same day, the AP also reported that eight NFL players had failed drug tests. Many of us have used drugs. Many of us have been drunk, been to Hooters and been drunk at Hooters. However, the public especially scrutinizes the irresponsible choices of professional athletes, partly because many people look up to athletes as role models.

A person’s decision to idolize an athlete is just that—an individual choice. An athlete’s job is to compete and excel in his or her sport. People look up to athletes because the public puts athletes on a pedestal above the rest of society. Yet because athletes are glorified figures, the public assumes a right to dictate their choices. The public does not have the right to assign social responsibility to a people in order for those people to satisfy someone else’s view of them.

Andy: I actually think athletes should be role models. Almost everybody is a role model to somebody else, and, without delving too much into Jacques Lacan’s theory of the gaze, the public eye mutes all our behavior in some way or another, athletes included. However, Billy, you said that society puts athletes on a pedestal, but I would argue that today’s athletes are more often pulled down into more dangerous groups or events than they ever were before. Athletes increasingly brawl, get drunk and sometimes even fire guns. Is it really that much to ask them to stop doing that, not just for their fans, but for themselves?

Athletes aren’t the only public figures we ask to be role models either. Any public official is put on your “pedestal,” yet you don’t see McCain or Obama drunk at Hooters, and they’re under a lot more scrutiny than John Daly. However, athletic role models are unique in what they can do for a community. Just look at the Portland Blazers over the last ten years. Before 2004, they were a disgrace to Portland, with a new arrest seemingly every week. They became one of the worst teams in the league, nobody watched their games and nobody even wanted to own the Rose Garden. Now, they are continually getting better, tickets are nearly impossible to get and you see Greg Oden, Brandon Roy and Lamarcus Aldridge at charity events all over town. Athletic role models like the current Blazers also inspire our kids to be physically active, which is something we should treasure. If we suddenly permitted “Jail Blazer” behavior because we thought it was unfair to expect athletes not to shoot up strip clubs, then nobody would watch sports anymore and our kids would suffer.

Billy: Poor behavior of athletes would indeed be bad for sports. But the question is not about the welfare of the industry in which the athletes work. The question is about the athletes as individuals.

A public office requires good behavior because elected officials work for the people. Their only job is to represent the people, including the voters who opposed them. In contrast, an agreement to play sports does not oblige athletes to represent a city’s people. It is heart-warming that many athletes do feel a special connection to the city they play in, but we fabricate the notion that they are public servants simply because we are attracted to what they do.

Because athletes are citizens just like everyone else, they do not and should not have license to ignore laws. Yet for that same reason, the public cannot hold them to higher standards.

Andy: I do think that being a role model is part of the job, though. Keep in mind that the athletes do not employ themselves, but are rather the faces of entire organizations. When teams sign players to contracts, those players are obligated to present themselves in a professional way. If players begin to act like the “Jail Blazers,” then they are losing their employers money and they will lose their jobs. In that way, being a role model, or at least performing to a code of behavior, is part of the athlete’s job, and considering that these organizations spend millions of dollars on these players, I don’t think behaving properly off the court is too much to ask.

The fans will always have a choice of whether they want to idolize a player or not, but the athletes will always be tied to contractual agreements to behave. The reason I mentioned the elected officials before is because, as you said, they work for the people and the same is true in sports. Fans might not directly vote for the players who get to play, but their response in ticket sales is what ultimately determines which athletes organizations will favor with playing time and big salaries.

Cross Country hosts conference meet

Before last weekend, it had been nine years since Whitman hosted the Northwest Conference Cross Country Meet. However, last weekend, Whitman opened its fields once again to the northwest teams.

First-year Kirsten Ballinger and juniors Sara McCune and Yasmeen Colis made sure they took advantage of the familiar course. All three finished among the top 15 runners and will be named to the All-Conference team. In doing so, they led the women’s cross-country team to a second-place tie at the Northwest Conference Cross Country Meet on Saturday, Nov. 1. It was the team’s highest finish in over five years.

Ballinger finished sixth for Whitman in the women’s race, high enough to earn her first team all-conference honors.

“I was hoping to stay with the front pack, and then have a kick at the end. I think it went pretty well,” said Ballinger.

Willamette won the women’s race with Maddie Coffman and Jena Winger finishing 1-2 for the Wildcats.

Francis Reynolds, a junior at UPS, was the conference champion for the men, running the 8K race in 24:35.24, but UPS finished seventh in the team score, with Whitworth edging out Willamette for its first conference title in over 20 years.

“I felt pretty good about the race,” said Reynolds. “I paced out pretty relaxed and then knew I had to make a move.”

Reynolds pulled away from the pack almost immediately and lengthened his lead throughout the race. Last year he placed 88th at nationals and hopes to improve upon that this year.

“I’m trying to get All-American [Honors], which means I have to be in the top 35 at nationals. Right now, I’m going to focus on my next two weeks of training before regionals,” he said.

Matt Kelly was the first finisher for Whitman on the men’s side. He placed 24th with a time of 26:25.85, followed by sophomore Sam Hennessey and senior Nick Litman. Overall, the men finished seventh, a standing they would like to improve upon.

“It did not go as well as it could have,” said Kelly. “It really could have been a better day.”

Still, junior Curtis Reid had a positive outlook on the race.

“I think the team did well. The front guys did not have the best race, but we all ran closer together, which meant one guy could catch up to his teammate and encourage him before tagging up to the next guy,” he said.

“All season, we’ve been running progressively harder courses, but my times have stayed the same. It was nice to finally get a better time,” said sophomore John Callow.

Next, both teams will travel to Willamette to compete at the regional meet. Regionals are where teams can qualify for the national meet, which will take place at Hanover College in Indiana. The women are especially excited about their potential. In the last coaches’ poll, they were ranked 33rd in the nation.

“We’ve built our foundation and are really excited to see how we can spring forward at regionals and hopefully nationals,” said McCune.

The top two teams at regionals go on to nationals and, according to McCune, the third-place team has a good chance at a wildcard.

Whatever their times, the team runs with approval.

“I love this team, and anything they do is okay with me,” said sophomore Joe Wheeler.

English major, sports minor?

Each semester, the department of sports studies, recreation, and athletics (SSRA) offers several lecture courses on athletics. The courses study “theory, methods and philosophy of physical education,” according to the college’s 2008-2009 catalog.

“Sports studies is a general term used to describe studies about sports, whether they be cultural studies, whether they be physical studies, such as kinesiology, biomechanics and physiology or whether they be social studies, looking into the sociology of sport,” said Athletic Director and SSRA chair Dean Snider.

This upcoming spring semester, students can register for classes from Intercollegiate Sport Management to Coaching Baseball. Most classes are worth two to three academic credits.

The department also currently offers an SSRA minor for those interested in careers in athletics. Snider estimates that eight to 10 students plan to graduate with the minor this school year. The minor requires 16 credits, including a first aid class, senior seminar and a physical education practicum.

In the practicum, students reflect on practical experiences outside the classroom, such as internships or coaching positions.

“We’ve had several former athletes who were sports studies minors and were also pre-med students. Some of them have gone into medical programs and specializations that have connections to sports—orthopedics, physical therapy—so a sports studies minor in conjunction with something like pre-med gets people directed into those specialties within the field,” Snider said.

While the program may continue varsity athletes’ involvement in sports, it also introduces opportunities in sports for non-athletes.

“We have a great number of student trainers who are interested in the sports medicine side [and] want to work in the field of training or be involved in sports in some way, shape or form, but are not varsity athletes. One of the options for them is athletic training,” said Snider. “That’s the case also for some others who may not be varsity athletes but want to keep their connection to sports by helping their community, such coaching their kids.”

What Bitch?, TKE football champs

The spread offense may be in fashion now, but a consistent running game and strong defense is all What Bitch? needed to beat Delta Gamma 6-0 for its third consecutive women’s intramural football championship on Sunday, Nov. 2. Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE) defeated Sigma Chi 20-7 for the men’s title earlier in the day.

What Bitch?, a group of seniors, has remained together since the women played their first season as first-years.

“We are very dedicated and organized. We practice three times a week, starting in pre-season,” said What Bitch?’s Sara Laymoun.

Delta Gamma threatened to tie the game with under a minute left and the ball deep in What Bitch? territory. But the What Bitch? defense held, as it did for the whole game.

“The defense stepped up when [Delta Gamma] got close to the end zone, and shut down their offense,” said What Bitch?’s Katie Baxter.
The TKEs also relied on a strong defense to complete their perfect 8-0 record.

“Our defense didn’t let them complete any deep passes. Every time they tried to throw it deep, we knocked it down. We let them move down the field, but didn’t give up any big plays,” said TKE quarterback senior Chris Faidley.

Faidley emphasized the team’s positive attitude in its championship run.

“If you get scored on, you can’t dwell on it. You got to think about the next play and be looking forward. [The undefeated record] started with being positive with each other, letting everybody play and find out what positions they are best at,” Faidley said.

The TKEs had few chances to be negative, as they held Sigma Chi scoreless until inside the two-minute warning.

“It was a great game. The TKEs played really hard, as they usually do. We could have executed better, and the TKEs know how to compensate for that,” said Sigma Chi senior John Nelson.

Whitties celebrate historic election

Barack Obama won the United States’ presidency in a feat that will massively reshape the political landscape and impact race relations for generations to come.

Crossing the campus Tuesday night, joyous shouts and car honking could be heard as Whitman erupted in jubilation.

Viewing parties, both spontaneous and planned, assembled in private houses, residence halls and the Reid Campus Center in order to watch the results stream in.

“I have to say this is the best day of my life. I’ve never felt more patriotic in my life – not on 9/11, not on 9/12 – this is it, far and away,” said first-year Brady Klopfer, after watching Obama’s acceptance speech in Reid.

Similar sentiments were shared by many students, including junior Clara van Eck.

“I am so happy. I am so incredibly happy. Winning Virginia is huge. This means that we’re re-taking the South, and that means there’ll be a lot more Democratic presidents. This is the beginning of the end for the Republican party stronghold in the South.”

About an hour after Presidential-Elect Obama delivered his victory speech, hundreds of Whitman students peaceably assembled in front of Memorial Building to celebrate the historic victory.

A march followed, occupying the full width of Boyer and Main Streets, making a pit stop at the local Democratic headquarters, before ending at the plaza of Main St. and 1st Ave.

There, gathered under a star-studded sky and banner, students engaged in shouts of “Yes we can,” and immersed themselves in a rhetorical frenzy.

After heading back to the campus, the rally headed to the library, where hundreds of students crowded around the entrance, waving banners and spontaneously bursting into the national anthem.

The overwhelming size and energy of the crowd was effectively summed up by senior Julia Leavitt, sharing a thought many expressed throughout the night.

“This is definitely the biggest thing I’ve ever seen at Whitman — even bigger than Beer Mile.”

The event was chiefly organized by a triumvirate of juniors: Amy Chapman, Sam Chasan and Seth Bergeson. These students felt that something truly did change that Tuesday night.

“This victory has restored my faith in humanity, and this march has restored my faith in the Whitman campus,” Chapman said.

Yet, the organizers were also quick to point out that this victory meant a beginning, and not an end, to change.

“Like Obama said, we have many challenges ahead of us. It’s up to us to support him and his administration in the next four years, and possibly next 8 years,” mentioned Bergeson.
Chasan concurred.

“If we really want to see change in America, we need to keep up the energy and passion embodied in tonight’s march, and remain active in the political process. If Obama’s victory has taught us anything, it’s the idea of “Yes we can” – the idea that hard work and devotion to a cause can actually achieve something, and to see that culminate in his victory and this march is very inspiring.”

Likewise, other students worried that Obama’s overwhelming pledges, coupled with a decrease in activism, could cause widespread disillusionment with the fledging administration.

“The young people who voted Tuesday are the electorate of 20 years from now – if they stay engaged, it’ll be a huge shift in the electoral landscape.  Yet, if it turns out that Obama isn’t the messiah, they’ll become disenchanted,” said junior Jackson Cahn.

Others, on the opposite end of the political spectrum, believe that this flagging support in the future could allow for a Republican re-take of Congress in the 2010 midterm elections.

“We’re already laying the groundwork for Republican victories in 2 years – we’ve got to keep looking forward – I hope to see a little bit more red the next time around,” said a McCain voter, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of upsetting Obama supporters.

Yet, as McCain himself has advocated, this supporter gave their measured support for progress and unity in the nation.

“I look forward to seeing what happens to the nation, and hope for the best. I wish no ill upon anybody in an Obama White House and hope that they have some success.”

Regardless of political affiliation, one cannot deny the historic nature of this election. Students all across the campus are truly excited to be active in these interesting, changing political times.

“I feel that in the Bush administration I had no voice, but, I really feel that Obama will listen to me, and listen to everybody,” Chapman stated.

“I’m excited for a new era of American politics – politics that I’ve never experienced before.”

Election results rally generation

The election of Barack Obama on Tuesday night was historic.  So was what we witnessed on this campus.  It was a celebration of the kind of passion I’ve always romantically associated with my parents’ generation. The students of the 1960s marched against the war in Vietnam and burnt their bras for women’s liberation, sang songs and hosted be-ins and got high to Joan Baez, under a banner of an idealism we look back on today as well-intentioned but a little naïve, more the mass recycling of Beatles lyrics (all you need is love when you give peace a chance) than the actual youth movement that it was.

Many of us, the students of 2008, have grown up with the notion that the modern world is a complex and dangerous place embedded in our collective psyches.  Our generation is not defined by its opposition to one war, but rather by its abstract disapproval of many.  We’ll be 1,000,000 Strong against violence, global poverty, and biting the fork when you eat, but we won’t do anything real to enact change.  In directing all of our focus toward midterms and history papers, we miss out on history in the making.

The outpouring of emotion evidenced by throngs of students who marched into downtown Walla Walla and back again on Tuesday night challenged that image of ourselves.  That coming together of individuals for a common purpose, and the electricity and disarming sense of community that arose from it, shattered, if only for one night, the thick layer of complacency and political correctness that muffles self-expression on this campus.  In the most elevated sense, the rally symbolized a revitalization of the student voice not only at Whitman, but nationwide, as youth voters turned out in unprecedented numbers to vote overwhelmingly, 2:1 for the now president elect.  We as college students chose to believe in Obama’s message of change at a time when it is desperately needed, and he won with our votes.

My dilemma, then, as a participant, as a Democratic voter, which now extends to the writing of this piece, was how to reconcile both my inherent bias and my two competing impulses “on the ground.”  I first wanted to document what was going on around me, to interview and record and contact Campus Conservatives for a counterview, in some ways to isolate myself from my peers and that shared sense of euphoria for the noble cause of journalism.  Yet as the crowd swelled and the buoyant, almost dreamlike quality of our nighttime celebration continued, I experienced an overwhelming desire to let myself be swept up the spirit of what felt – absurdly, I admit – like my own miniature March on Washington.  Did I want to look back on Nov. 4, 2008, and imagine my arms upraised, or extended sideways with a tape recorder in hand?  I chose the former, and so am writing this, my first ever Pioneer editorial, not as a report by an aspiring journalist, but as a personal reflection by a participant in what felt to me like a transformative Whitman experience.

I’m aware, of course, that one impromptu display of political enthusiasm doesn’t constitute some fundamental, overnight shift toward more activism on campus.  It doesn’t erase party lines or help us better understand the economic crisis, nor does it feed the hungry or suggest a solution to global climate change.  Even the term rally must be loosely defined here in order to properly apply to a gathering like Tuesday’s, which raised no real community awareness, circulated no petitions, made no demands, and had no stated purpose except to simply come together in celebration of what’s possible.  There I go being biased again.

What the rally did do, aside from generating shouts and cheers that could be heard across campus, was break down barriers.  Cliques dissolved and revelers embraced, linked arms, and called after each other; and despite the size of the crowd you could always spot that same friend a few rows behind or ahead of you.  The positive energy felt was so powerful that, as one McCain voter in the crowd testified to me, it didn’t even matter if you voted for Obama or not.  What mattered was that this was our moment, and not just any other night of the week; history had been decided, and we were doing everything we could to celebrate our future.  As the crowd marched from the Memorial Building, converged onto Main Street, and later crammed into the foyer at Penrose Library, we were all driven by the sheer, singular exhilaration at being part of something as elementally ours as this presidential election.

Registrar: PDF option a ‘blemish’ on transcript

With the semester halfway over, students have a fairly good idea of what to expect on their report cards. For students anticipating less-than-ideal results in a particular course, Nov. 7 is the deadline to request a PDF grade.

It is no surprise that Whitman’s rigorous academic standards permeate into their pass-fail policy. Unlike other campuses, which mark a simple P for pass or F for fail, Whitman transcripts record a D+ or D-. By opting for the PDF grade, a student can only pass with a C- or above.

A PDF does provide some attractive benefits: students can channel more focus into other graded classes and enjoy a PDF class for its own sake. Also, credits can still be earned while GPA is not compromised, so students have extra protection in areas they are uncomfortable academically.

“It means that I’m forgoing the stress that goes along with getting a C in a class,” said senior Anna Clark, after choosing to PDF Calculus this semester.

Many students find the freedom of designating a challenging course as PDF-graded benefit enough to risk the transcript implications.

“It can’t look too good,” said Registrar Ron Urban.

“It’s like having a blemish on your face when you’re going to a high school prom. The grad school will look at that and put your application towards the bottom of the stack. If you have a limited number of them, one or two, that will probably not represent the end of the world, but it’ll disadvantage you to students with a similar academic record who didn’t take the PDF. It cannot help you if it looks like you’re trying to avoid something. Some will convert them to C-s and recalculate your GPA according to that, which is really unfair.”

Although a student can have up to 40 percent of their credits designated as PDF, the college encourages students to opt for regularly graded courses.

“A typical transcript has no Ps. I’d be guessing far less than a fraction of 1 percent of the total grades. Again, the college is really drawing away from it,” said Urban. “The trend is clear to me that we’re moving increasingly away from the PDF. We’ve been whittling away at the areas it applies in for years. You can’t satisfy a distribution with a PDF. There are a lot of majors that don’t allow you to take PDF once you declare a major. I advise students to read their department’s policy on PDF. There’s a lot of misinformation there.”

Urban sees two categories of students actively pursuing the PDF option.

“The first is students who may not be strong in an area but want to explore without risking damage to their GPA,” said Urban. “Let’s say I’m a poet but curious about a nuclear physics class but I’m really out of my element. I’ll have it graded PDF to preserve my GPA.”

“The second category is a student that uses a PDF very shrewdly. If you get a B+ instead of an A – a perfectly acceptable grade – the PDF protects your high GPA,” added Urban.

Students who do choose the PDF option are not required to report the status to their instructor. Their assignments are graded regularly and the professor still submits a grade to the registrar’s office. The conversion happens privately in the Registrar’s office.

Another important consideration for the student considering requesting a PDF grade is its permanence. Once submitted, a student cannot simply withdraw their request. If a student realizes the possibility of making an A in a course after filing for PDF, the P will still be present on their transcript, which some graduate schools recalculate as a C-.

“There is something that startles us in the office,” said Urban.

“We find it amazing that such a comparatively high percentage of students requested a PDF in a class that they earned an A.”

For Clark, the PDF option is simply practical.

“I am PDF’ing because I know that I won’t get better than a C in this class, no matter how many hours I study a day,” said Clark.

The impact on graduate school applications was certainly a factor in her decision, but did not outweigh the stress relief.

“I don’t think it will have much of an impact, because it is only one class. Also, because I’m looking to go into ecology, and most people say that statistics is way more useful than calculus anyway.”

The deadline for filing for a PDF is Nov. 7.

High school debaters occupy campus

High school debaters swarmed Reid Campus Center during Halloween weekend.  The debaters came to Whitman for the Whitman High School Speech and Debate tournament, which is one of the largest in the Northwest.

“This is the 36th year of the tournament. Remy Wilcox, former director of the program, began the tournament in 1973. Most of the schools attending have been to Whitman before but we have a few new schools,” said Professor Jim Hanson, who’s also the director of Forensics.

Featuring over four types of debates, nine speaking debates and a student congress, both high school and Whitman debaters will get a chance to work on their debate skills, whether it be judging or participating.

“Whitman debaters will judge them, providing feedback on how to improve their speeches and debating,” said Hanson.

Whitman debaters will benefit in a variety of ways. The tournament acts as a fund raiser for the debate program so Whitman debaters can travel to college tournaments.

“The high school tournament provides a huge portion of our team funding. I think judging helps newer college debaters get some perspective on macro-level strategic decision-making,” said junior Lewis Silver, who also helped judge.

Students will get to see old high school coaches or friends, and the tournament often attracts good debaters who, in most cases, end up coming to Whitman. It also enhances the reputation of Whitman and the debate program.

Usually, the tournament is not over Halloween weekend.

“The high school presence doesn’t really bother me, but it would have been nice to get to relax and be social. The tournament is kind of a full-time job for three days,” said Silver.

“It is unfortunate that we are on this weekend. The tournament is supposed to be next week but there was a scheduling snafu. I hope there won’t be disruptions,” said Hanson.

“I was in a debate class last year and it got me started in debate. I’m a senior, so I’ve been doing speech, that requires less preparation. Impromptu – they give you a topic, 6 minutes to prepare and talk. I won an award for second place,” said senior Chloe Kinsey.

Most of the debates were held in buildings on campus like Olin and the Hall of Science.

“We were in the big auditorium last year but it was nice to be in a classroom,” said junior Ellen Hess. “There was a lot more room this year, which was a nice change.”

Though the debaters were here over Halloween weekend, the stress level was still very high, leaving less time
to celebrate Halloween.

“One morning we had to wake up at 5:50, and the last debate ended at 10:45. We ended up going to bed at midnight,” said junior Marina Johnson. “We were going to go trick-or-treating but we went to sleep instead.”

“We liked Whitman a lot – the food was good (with lots of options for vegetarians), the campus was pretty and there was a really natural, chill vibe on the campus,” said Hess.

Students may have been able to tell the debaters apart from regular Whitman students, considering the debaters were dressed formally.

“A lot of debaters wore business attire, heels, and ties. They also had the huge tubs with evidence and research…There are Idaho judges so they are a little more conservative, so we had to dress up,” said Johnson.
Whitman students could tell the debaters apart by their attire, but for the most part, students didn’t seem to be bothered by the debaters – unless they were at Reid.”

“It didn’t really affect my Halloween but it was kind of annoying because the debaters didn’t know how the system worked, especially at Reid when ordering food. They didn’t know what the numbers were or just kind of hovered near the Grill,” said freshman Carolyn Hart.

Though the debaters didn’t quite know the system, they weren’t much of a nuisance to regular Whitman students, and debaters both high school and college benefitted.

“It didn’t bother me that they were here over Halloween but I didn’t really see them outside of judging and at Reid Campus Center,” said freshman Maggie Massey who was hired as a coach for Ferris High School.

Wine auction funds local S.O.S clinic

The Sigma Chi fraternity held its silent wine auction on Saturday, Oct. 25, raising $2,716.50 for the S.O.S. clinic in College Place. Despite low attendance by community members and advertising concerns, the event was considered a success by the fraternity.

The event was held from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. in room 110 of Reid Campus Center. The auction coincided with parents weekend activities, drawing over 200 parents, faculty and community members.

“It was our goal to motivate the parents and wine community to give back to other, less fortunate, members of society,” said Sigma Chi president, senior Andrew Knox. “I think we accomplished this goal, but there is definitely a lot of room for improvement.”

One of the ways the fraternity is hoping to improve the event next year is by advertising earlier. This year, they were late in receiving a state permit allowing them to hold the auction, forcing them to delay spending money on advertising in case the event never happened.

Sophomore Kiet Vo, who organized the event with fellow Sigma Chi member, senior Reese Ishmael, said that he even had to petition the mayor’s office in order to speed the approval process along. Once the event was approved, an advertisement was placed in the Union-Bulletin. But judging by the poor attendance of the local community, the advertising was not all that effective.

“Most of the people who attended were parents that were here for parents weekend,” said Vo. “We would really like more students and members of the community to attend.”

Despite these setbacks, the event was a success said Vo. Most of the local wineries were eager to donate for such
a worthy cause. The SOS clinic has a reputation for providing free, top-notch care to needy families in Walla Walla and College Place. Some of the wineries have employees that frequent the clinic, said Vo.

ASWC solicits student input

The Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC) Finance Committee, which manages “over $900,000 in student assets,” began an awareness campaign to stimulate student involvement in student government finances last Thursday as they placed cardstock fliers containing Committee information and contacts in student mailboxes.

“We’re trying to let people know that we exist,” David Changa-Moon, ASWC Finance Committee Chair, said.

“We have resources on campus that we want to make available to the students and we also want to give them more information about the student government… and what services it can provide for them.”

Letting students know that they can voice their opinion regarding ASWC’s allocation of funds is the first of several steps the ASWC Finance Committee is taking to bridge an apparent communications gap between the student body and its representative government.

“This was the first step, we just wanted to get information out there,” Changa-Moon said. “Every week before our meetings we send out an e-mail to the student listserv that states the agenda items that we will be discussing at that meeting so that people can look at them, peruse them, and say ‘O.K., this might be something that I’m interested in,’”

Until recently, however, few students have attended the Finance Committee meetings.

“Typically, there is not a whole lot of [student] involvement,” Changa-Moon said. “I know there are two students who [attend meetings] and have said that they are interested. Since the fliers came out it looks like there may be a couple more spots of interest and maybe when the tabletoppers go out there may be even more interest.”

Interest may also grow as a result of the topics that will be covered by the Finance Committee in the next several months. There is a proposal on the ASWC Senate floor which suggests that the $44,299 ASWC Savings Fund be “split in two,” according to a memorandum issued by the Finance Committee.

A small portion of that money ($4,299) will be “transferred to the Travel and Student Development fund” in
order “to further fund this active and diminishing source of money for students,” according to the memorandum.

The remaining $40,000, as suggested by the Committee, should “be treated as a general fund for student initiatives,” according to the memorandum.

“If the fund was to be created, I’m partial to having open meetings,” Changa-Moon said. “We’d consider proposals. Any student at large that wants to come can listen in and weigh in, if they want. We will most likely hold special sessions of the Finance Committee, depending on the volume of requests we receive from
students that want to sit in [on the meetings].”

Changa-Moon says that nearly every aspect of ASWC finances is talked about at Committee meetings and nearly all are open to the public. The only closed session of the Finance Committee will be when it “goes through budgeting in April,” which is when it “reviews every single request from the 70-plus line items that it has,” said Changa-Moon.

The ASWC Finance Committee meets every Thursday at 4 p.m. in room 110 or 207 of the Reid Campus Center and e-mails concerning the Committee can be sent to aswc_finance@whitman.edu.

Clocks to run via satellite control

According to Whitman clocks, it sometimes takes people five minutes to walk up a single flight of stairs. Due to the unreliablity of the clocks, they are being transferred to a more consistent satellite system.

The dependability of the clocks affects the timing of the way people go about their day. In October, the Olin clocks got completely off time due to a wire that connects to the central Olin clock being disrupted by the Sherwood construction.

“While a professor is used to seeing a few tumbleweeds roll throughclasses right before break, I had never experienced anything quite this severe.  At 2:30 (actual time), not a single person from a 20 person class had showed up.  Three students straggled in over the next 5 minutes, each looking at the clock and figuring they had
more time before class started, when I had to explain that no, in fact, the start time for class had passed.  In all, eight students attended that lecture (in fairness, many of those that were missing had attended an earlier session of the same class). Attendance is usually perfect on those late Friday afternoons….must have something to do with the weekly quiz,” Balof said.

In order to help with these mix-ups the maintenance workers for the academic buildings are working on taking the clocks off the ground work system, and putting them onto the satellite system.

While newer buildings are being originally set up to run by the satellite system, older buildings are run by the ground system, which operates in accordance with a radio wave that travels along the surface of the earth.  On the other hand, satellite clocks use satellites in space in order to receive signals.

“We’re trying to get it narrowed down to one type of clock,” said maintenance worker Ken Kern, “But it’s an expensive process so we’re doing them in stages.”

At this point all of Maxey and half of Olin has been switched to satellite, but the complete switch takes time because the maintenance crew is replacing clocks as they go out, instead of all at once.

Frolf remains popular while lacking key targets

Climbing on rooftops, jumping into ponds and dodging oncoming traffic in pursuit of wayward Frisbees, Frolfers are used to taking on a challenge. This fall, Whitman’s dedicated crowd of Frisbee Golf players must overcome yet another obstacle as construction on Sherwood continues to interfere with the layout of the Frolf course on campus.

Though Frolfers have been known to play by their own rules, most players at Whitman compete on a 17-target course that incorporates a number of campus landmarks and buildings. Starting at Jewett Hall, the course sweeps through the amphitheater and Narnia before making its way to the tennis courts and across Lakum Duckum. From the front lawn of the Baker Faculty Center, the course swings around Douglas and over to Sherwood Center, where it swoops down to the Harper Joy fountain before curving around the Science Building and across the library. Past the fish statue, players must make a final show of strength by hurling their discs over Ankeny and back to the final destination of Jewett.

To the frustration of many, making the circuitous route around campus is more aggravating now that construction on Sherwood has eliminated three of the course’s most exciting targets. Now that the athletic center is off-limits, Frolfers are compelled to circumnavigate the facility by relocating affected parts of the course to the Harper Joy parking lot, necessarily eliminating the challenging Frisbee traps occasioned by Sherwood’s tight corners, multiple stairways and split floor levels.

The event of construction on Sherwood is not the first time Frolf players have had to modify the course. Last winter, violent windstorms ravaged Whitman’s campus, damaging key targets such as the “fork tree” on the Baker Faculty Center lawn and the beloved “paper clip” statue formerly situated behind the banana tree. In response, resourceful Frolfers were able to preserve the integrity of the course by displacing the ruined targets to nearby objects—a task not so easily achieved in the midst of large-scale construction.

Overall, the construction has had little impact on students’ Frolf activity. For some, the injury to the course has compromised much of the fun of the sport.

“Why play now? Construction ruined three of the best holes, which is why I don’t play as much as I used to,” one Frolfer said.

As evidenced by the still-perceptible scraping of Frisbees along dorm buildings, however, Frolf is not in danger of dying out any time soon.

Employees of the week: Shirley Harper, Julie Shuster

The Pioneer recently sat down with mother-daughter team Shirley Harper and Julie Shuster, who work as custodians for Whitman. Shirley, who currently works in Prentiss Hall, has been working at Whitman for 16 years, and was the first full-time, year-round custodian at Whitman. This month will mark Julie’s third year at Whitman. Julie works in the Interest Houses and Tamarac.

Pioneer: Tell me about yourselves.
Julie: I’m pretty much a family person. Me and my husband and son do outdoors stuff. I’m very outgoing, and I guess you’d qualify me as bubbly. I am an avid, avid reader. A very big animal lover. I cry when the animal dies in the movie, and not the people.
Shirley: Julie and I are a lot alike. I love animals, my family and my grandchildren. I love walking and being outside.
J: And we love chocolate.
S: And I love chickens.

P: What brought you to Whitman?
S: I was working in retail, and I needed a change. I had been a cook before and there was an opening in the Prentiss dining room. At that time, Whitman still had food services. So I applied and got the job. But I was only working 32 hours a week and I wanted something full-time. The following summer there was an opening, and I decided to go full-time custodial. I’ve been here ever since.
J: I was a preschool teacher for 10 years and the preschool that I was in was closing at the time. They needed someone at Whitman to fill in for someone who was no longer here. My husband and I made this decision that we needed a change—and I needed a change—
S: And I told her to apply.
J: —So I applied for the temporary position. The permanent position came open in May and I got that job. I still miss preschool though.
S: The students are just bigger here, Julie.

P: How is working together?
J: We have a lot of fun. We both have such different personalities that we mesh really well together.
S: Julie’s quite bubbly.
J: And she’s more reserved. I’m a little more straightforward and out there than Mom is.
S: I think I actually kind of help Julie out. I hope I do.
J: No. Well, actually she’s a real good source of information.

P: What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen at Whitman so far?
J: I don’t know if I can repeat a couple of ’em. A couple of them have just been bad.
S: I’ve had birds in the interest houses, in the old Japanese house. The best thing was in the summertime once, we found baby kittens.
J: One time we were pulling out a stove, and a mouse came out, and Andrea [a coworker] about jumped out of her skin.

P: What do you like about working at Whitman?
J: The students. Interacting with everybody.
S: I love being here with the students because my children are grown, so it’s fun to be here. I like what we do for the residents. I believe in really helping others and I think that’s what we’re really all about.
J: We have a good time.
S: We love working here.
J: Our nickname is fruits and nuts.
S: I wouldn’t want to be anyplace else.

Magnificent Musings: greek fashions

by Marty Skeels

The seasons are in flux. Yesterday I spied a weeping child searching for the sun—“when will it return?” he bleats, like a Portsmouth lamb. I kneel in the faded turf, wipe my brow with silk (Harrods £35) and tap him on the shoulder with my cane. “It is gone,” I whisper, “never to return.” His trembling voice is barely audible over the falling leaves, our tears—“who did this?” There is no answer… or is there? “Let me tell you a story, boy, about change, about brotherhood and sisterhood, about fashion…”

“Look upon BETA. See the summer innocence of plaid t-shirts, rugged jeans (Emile Hirsch, Into the Wild). Yet the witches of Cannabis and Keystone seduced them—their apparel is a now metaphor for the unending feedback of blissful, filthy, despair in which they slumber. The winter will only heighten the closeted, stale warmth in which bacteria and Beta thrive. Beware their ultra-realistic Earth tones, unspeakable stains and indefinable odors. But we shall always love them for misguided bravery, youth prematurely cut short and cuddle-ability.

“The SIG. In summer we knowingly deceived ourselves, desperately hoping these shirtless men-children to be the energetic cast of a low budget film adaptation—The Rodfather or Assablanca. Too late came the horrifying realization that their irrational anger towards the Shirt was but the precursor to a full crusade, a Jihad, against all ‘real’ clothing. In these cold days they grudgingly don blood-stained sweaters and worship the wife-beater in the dark recesses of their cult-manor, biding their time until darkness when the steal forth to rob Lyman of its girl-folk.

“My gentle THETA. In the golden summer age you frolicked in clothes that both fit and mildly pleased the eye. Alas, that which sustained you, the naïve hope of sex, has faded; once again, fate dashes your tender dreams against the cruel rocks of reality. Now, with your sweatpants and overlarge sweaters… but I cannot go on, it is too painful to describe.

“Lost KAPPA/DG. Applying eyeliner for Geology class, 7-Jeans with elastic waistbands, knowing seven words of Arabic. They have everything, yet they possess nothing. In the drowsy evenings of the summer, content to lie upon silk couches in their Prentiss opium dens, they regaled each other with stories of bold purchases from Anthropologie and dangerous forays made into “totally awesome” Buffalo Exchange warehouses where, their breath catching and heart racing, they fearfully dabble in the fierce, heavy musk of the proletariat. They are irrecoverable. Only the mythical ‘Tokyo Treatment’ might cure them of their nameless disease, but for every mind the experience frees five are broken beyond repair. The odds are tempting.

“Beware the TKE. Five-day old beard, clothes exclusively from Goodwill or J-Crew, wearing a TKE shirt, his hubris will destroy us all. If you fuck him he will try to get you to play Mario Kart with him, and vice versa. His whispered lies are coated in the finest sugars and most expensive silk. He says he will protect us… at what price?

“PHI. Weak and doughy, the exceptional breeding bull proves the rule. The South Korean gaming parlor of an Oakland Chinatown, their heavy investment in Japanese sex-paraphernalia precludes any expenditure on clothes besides Cheeto stained bibs and maternity wear. We pray that the early onset of this harsh winter does not force their premature slaughter. They must feed Jewett for six weeks, or all is lost.”

Recycle that jack-o-lantern into pie

It’s been a week since Halloween, and pumpkins still sit on porch stoops, soggy and slumped over. When I was growing up, my sister and I used to have competitions to see whose jack-o-lantern would stay intact the longest; they’d usually make it at least through Thanksgiving. We loved to kick the molding pumpkins around and marvel at the blue and purple webs of mold that formed within the triangle eyes. Nowadays I look at pumpkins and think of their food counterparts—the pie pumpkins that can be baked into sweet scrumptious chunks of golden fleshy goodness.

A baked pumpkin tastes nothing like Libby’s canned pumpkin you pick up in the store. Roasted pumpkin takes on a much sweeter, stronger flavor and adds a nice texture to any baked pumpkin dessert. Pie pumpkins are smaller, denser, and a deeper orange than your classic jack-o-lantern pumpkin. If you can’t find one in the grocery store, you can substitute another type of winter squash (butternut is an excellent substitute) or sweet potatoes. Below is a recipe for spiced pumpkin bread with home-roasted pumpkin, but you can also use your roasted pumpkin for pumpkin pie, pumpkin curry, pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin soup or really anything else. If you have extra pumpkin you’re not ready to use soon, simply put it in a Tupperware and freeze for later use.

Roasted Pumpkin Puree
1 3-lb. pie pumpkin
tinfoil

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Carefully cut the pumpkin into six big wedges and cut out the stem. Scoop out the seeds and pulp (you can rinse the seeds off and toast them if you like). Arrange wedges in a baking dish and pour at least 1/2 inch of water into the dish. Cover with tinfoil so that the pumpkin will steam and cook quicker, and then bake until tender throughout, about 40 minutes. When tender, remove from oven and scoop the flesh out of the skins. Puree the pumpkin with a hand blender or by mashing well by hand with a potato masher or fork.

Spiced Pumpkin Bread
1 2/3 cups flour (you can use a mixture of white and whole wheat flours and up to 1/2 cup wheat germ)
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon each cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil
1/3 cup water
1 cup pureed pumpkin

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Measure dry ingredients (all ingredients up to the eggs) into a bowl and stir to combine. In a large bowl, combine wet ingredients (eggs through pumpkin) and stir. Fold dry ingredients into wet, stirring until just combined. Pour into a greased loaf pan or prepared muffin tins. Bread will take about 60 minutes to bake and muffins will take about 20-30. To test for doneness, insert a toothpick into the center of the bread. If it comes out dry, the bread is done.

Variations: Mix up to 1/2 cup chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans) or raisins into the prepared batter. Or cut up crystallized candied ginger into small chunks and add up to 1/4 cup of that into the batter.

Ph.D’s by day, rockin’ guitar heroes by night

Students may know Keith Farrington in the classroom, but the sociology professor is known for his participation in several bands on and off of campus.

Farrington has been a member of the community band Vintage for three years.

He is also in two campus bands that mostly consist of faculty members: Loss of Faculties and Orange Fight.

“I played really seriously in New England when I was in Maine, at Bates College, and in graduate school at the University of New Hampshire and I played in what I think were a couple of really good sixties blues rock bands,” said Farrington.

“When I went to Graduate School I put my bass guitar away.  It was literally 23 years between when I put it away and took it out again. I started building a career in graduate school and then teaching at Whitman.  You don’t have a whole lot of extra time as a young professor,” said Farrington.

Farrington was reintroduced to playing music when, in 1993, he agreed to play in a fund-raiser for what was then his children’s day care Kid’s Place.

“[Organizers] tried to get people like me, you know professors that maybe had some kind of musical talent, to come out and play and so the fact that I hadn’t played for 23 years was immaterial,” said Farrington.

“I decided to come out and give it a try. I was horrible and I didn’t even think like a bass player anymore [...] but there’s just something about having that instrument in my hands again and having my students and other people out there,” he said.

Vintage is not as well-known on campus, playing the occasional Coffee House.

However, Loss of Faculties is known for playing various campus events such as the Cakes for Casa fund-raiser hosted by Kappa Alpha Theta.
Faculties contains Whitman professors Matthew Prull, Paul Apostolidis, and John Cotts, as well as members Neil Christopherson and Whitman alumnus Norrie Gregoire.

“Loss of Faculties has a very small repertoire because we’re obviously faculty members first and family members second so there is really not much time […] to put into our music,” said Farrington.

“We have a very long list of songs that we want to work on, but not very many songs that we’ve learned well enough to play out.  Hopefully we will play those 10 or 12 songs well, because that’s all we’ve got.  And when you only play once or twice a year its not like everybody remembers the songs,” he said.

Orange Fight, another band that Farrington participates in, is the brainchild of Loss of Faculties member Christopherson.

“Orange Fight has only played two short shows so far.  This summer we played 3 songs at the Walla Walla Battle of the Bands, and then about a month ago, we were the house band for the Instant Play Festival.  We played a 30-minute set prior to the show in addition to short musical breaks between plays,” wrote Christopherson in an e-mail.

The band’s name is far different from the school-themed names of Loss of Faculties or another band, Piled High and Deep (P.H.D).

“My brother makes a home-brew that he calls Orange Fight, and I stole the name from him.  The label has a soldier throwing an orange instead of a grenade, which I liked.  We grew up in Redlands, California, which is an old citrus-growing town,” wrote Christopherson.

Christopherson names his main musical influence as Bob Dylan.

“My music library has a lot of classic rock as well as what could be called alternative, although I’m not really sure what that means anymore,” said Christopherson.

CAB entertains students, struggles with declining membership

Campus Activities Board (CAB), the student organization that puts on events like the Cobweb Carnival, the bi-annual Drive-In Movie and Casino Night, has been struggling recently to attract new members and retain old ones while at the same time serve the student body.

Putting on an event like the Cobweb Carnival requires many hours of preparation, numerous committees, meetings, volunteers, shopping, set-up time and clean-up time. Yet the organization, which in the past has had 20 to 25 active members, now has only 15 members who regularly show up.

According to CAB co-chair junior Kali Stoehr, despite low meeting attendance, the CAB listserv has more than 90 recipients.

The CAB Web site defines the organization as “a committee of volunteer students that sponsor a variety of entertainment programs for the campus.” Its mission statement clarifies that it seeks to put on “successful events [that] bring the Whitman community together through alternative social activities not centered around alcohol.”

CAB’s most recent event, the Halloween-themed Cobweb Carnival, has traditionally been a dance held in the Reid Basement, called the Cobweb Ball.

“Unfortunately, we had scheduling conflicts with the Ball this year due to the high school debate tournament, and had to come up with some creative alternatives,” said Stoehr.

It’s not only unforeseen conflicts like this that have been hindering CAB this year; According to Stoehr, CAB’s core group is composed of mostly upperclassmen, and the organization hasn’t recruited many first-years.

“We have a really great group of seniors this year that make up about half of active CAB,” she said. “So we are a little worried about the future of CAB even this year, when senior theses and exams start taking up their time.”

“All of the events planned by CAB are student engineered. Fewer members means fewer minds off which to bounce ideas, as well as a smaller pool of man-power,” said Katie Phelps, one of this core group of seniors.

“It becomes difficult with less members to do big events, just because set-up and take-down take so much longer,” said Stoehr. “It’s also the creativity factor: we like to have new and exciting ideas to work on, and having more people—especially new people—definitely helps the dynamic.”

CAB is open to new members at any time, and anyone can attend their weekly meetings on Wednesdays at noon in Reid G02, or request to be added to the listserv.

Despite the troubles with attracting and retaining members, CAB remains optimistic about future events.

“This group of students is enthusiastic about providing fun, creative activities for Whitman students and has pursued that goal at full-speed this semester,” said Assistant Director of student activities and CAB advisor Leann White. “There are a number of activities left before winter break, and they have already begun planning events for the spring term.”

Stoehr also looks at the situation optimistically.

“We haven’t seen [the member shortage] affect the quality of our events yet, but I am trying to be aware of when our members are getting tired… I can’t ask them to just keep going without some rest,” she said. “We always strive for the highest quality of events, and I hope that never goes down.”

The New Classics: 007 bakes a gritty ‘Layer Cake’

I know everyone is beyond psyched for “007: Quantum of Solace” to be released on Friday, Nov. 14, and there’s an amazing way to prepare for it by seeing the infamous new James Bond, Daniel Craig, in his original bad-ass role in “Layer Cake.” Although Craig came to most of the world’s attention with his standout performance in the UK television series “Our Friends in the North,” it’s “Layer Cake” that really showcases why he’s the Bond of our generation.

“Cake” follows modern-day cocaine dealers on the mean streets of London in the vein of popular British gangster films like “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” (“Cake” director Matthew Vaughn was a producer for both films). “Cake,” however, is immediately different upon its long and epic introduction.  Craig’s character isn’t a common criminal, but a businessman, playing the games of life and planning for early retirement from the enterprise. It’s a much more enjoyable film that works better than Guy Ritchie’s gangster epics because it doesn’t try so hard to be witty and fill itself with sharp, quick dialogue.

The plot, though it has its rapid twists and turns, is very simplistic. It’s about a man that works for a boss who double-crosses him. Many different gangs go head to head, fist to fist, and he simply tries to get through the rough patches with as few bruises as possible and still wind up victorious in the end. Perhaps it doesn’t help that he ends up killing his own boss quite early in the film, but something has to ignite the conflict, right?

It’s an exciting plot that never drifts away from the main story and leaves you on the edge of your seat for the whole two-hour length.

Even without the brilliant performances, the amazing stylistic cinematography filled me with awe.  Director Vaughn squeezes sweeping shots of epic proportions onto the screen.

In the introduction, you’ll immediately appreciate the thorough long shot through a modern-day drug store where all of the generic brands suddenly morph into different narcotics. Magnificent aerial shots and intense angles allow London to be filmed beautifully, rather than the dark dreary place we normally see in movies. The editing is plenty, but it’s smooth, simple and flawless.

So, too, is the whole movie. Every single role, down to the bum on the street corner with no lines, is perfectly cast. It is impossible to not get deeply involved in the main character’s dilemma, and indeed, I ended up legitimately hating the characters that stood in his way. The Duke (Jamie Forman) is one of those loud, boisterous and annoying drug dealers who thinks he’s untouchable. He and his bloody cousin, Sidney, help take their characters’ utterly irritating annoyance off the screen and onto the nerves of the audience.

Arguably one of the richest performances is by Michael Gambon, who you all know as Dumbledore in “Harry Potter.” He plays Eddie Temple, the man on top who will not be messed with. His wonderfully deep voice as he delivers a tirade on the facts of life at the end still resonates in my mind.

Finally, Daniel Craig delivers one fierce performance as the main character of the film with no name.

Every single time he’s on screen, he emits one of the most intense auras I’ve ever felt. Just like Marlon Brando or Angelina Jolie, he brings a dangerous sexual aspect to the screen that almost no other actors can work. He’s tender—we know he’s affected by all the crap that gets thrown his way, but he tries to hide any effects it should have on the untouchable man. Brilliance and depth are the only words that somewhat justify his complex performance.

The plot twists may leave you confused at times, but will come together and make sense at the end. The perfect combination of characters and conflicts meld together to knock your socks off and put you on the edge of the couch, nearly falling off. As the drug lord Eddie Temple says to the novice, “Welcome to the Layer Cake, son.”

Learn to travel the world by ‘Learning to Breathe’

You can travel all over the world, but the greatest journey you will every take will be inside yourself. The autobiographical book “Learning to Breathe” is an inspiring story of injury and recovery by renowned photojournalist Alison Wright.

Since she was in her early twenties, Wright has devoted her life to traveling the world, experiencing and documenting endangered cultures. 
Barely ever seeing her apartment in San Francisco, she journeyed all around the world with her camera, living a daring life of constant adventure until a nearly-fatal accident changed her forever.  One day, while traveling through Southeast Asia, her bus was hit by a logging truck. Wright broke her ribs and back.  Her arms were severely lacerated, her lungs collapsed and the rest of her internal organs were ripped apart.  Stranded on a remote mountain road in Laos, she did not receive any real medical care for 14 hours.

Once back in the United States, Wright endured several months of painful surgeries and various forms of physical therapy to repair her damaged body.  All her doctors agreed that she should not have survived.  Now, slowly and agonizingly working her way back to health, she is left to discover why she lived.

Wright opens her soul in this book, which chronicles both her breathtaking and heartbreaking experiences before, during and after the accident that nearly killed her.  Looking back on the life she had and wondering if she can ever have it back, she discovers wisdom deeply entrenched in Buddhist beliefs that can inspire us all in times of struggle.

Only through the trying experiences in our lives do we learn what living is.  Wright’s physical and spiritual journey leads her to a realization of the interconnection between human beings.  After a several year recovery process, Wright returns to Laos to thank the people that saved her life: the young man who sewed her arm up with needle and thread to keep her from bleeding to death, the doctor that literally held her heart in his hands and the many other friends and monks who prayed for months for her recovery.

This story is a testament to the strength and endurance of the human body and, more importantly, the spirit.  No matter how we live our lives or what we believe in, we can take peace from stories like this one: stories that inspire us to learn, to be strong, to hope and always to love.

All that jazz and more

From the practice and rehearsal rooms of the Hall of Music to the stage of Chism Hall, members of the Whitman jazz ensembles are prepared to share with students, staff and the community their passion through the improvised world of jazz music.

Through the eyes of a jazz musician, performances are no different than ensemble practices, apart from the presence of an audience. Whitman musicians take advantage of these performance opportunities to display their skills as a soloist and as an important component of a larger ensemble.

“A performance simply allows us to share the great music we make with others,” said sophomore Ross Eustis, a trumpet player in Jazz Ensemble I.

As the drummer of Jazz Ensemble I, senior Jack Mountjoy also regards a performance “as a great culmination of everything the band has been working on for the past few weeks.”

A substantial part of all jazz performances are solos, which enable individual ensemble members to demonstrate their capabilities as a musician while jazzing up the performance with complicated rhythms and harmonious chord progressions.

“[Solos] are somewhat nerve-racking, especially as the drummer,” said Mountjoy.

Contrary to popular belief, solos are not predetermined by the musician.

“The largest misconception people have about soloing is that it is preconceived or memorized. This is rarely or never the case. When a jazz artist solos, it is improvisation—spontaneous, in the moment, intrinsically creative,” said Eustis.

Soloists are initially directed by chord recommendations, but what follows is an orchestrated presentation of unbridled imagination: chaotic, but at the same time, musically appealing.

“Improvising is almost an out-of-body experience. It is the perfect combination of the left and right side of the brain [...] a combination between mathematics and emotion or creativity,” said Eustis, a frequent soloist.

While individual members set the standards for class expectations and performances, Director of Jazz Studies Dave Glenn conducts the ensembles, shaping and working out the rough patches.

“What I love about Dave is that he is not just a professor—he is a jazz musician and has been for most of his life,” said junior Kevin McCoy, a saxophone player in Jazz Ensemble I.

From his former years as a jazz musician in New York City, Glenn’s experiences have led him to be a revered mentor and teacher to the students of the jazz ensembles.

“Dave really knows how to direct a jazz band, thanks to his years of experience playing in and directing professional bands. Whitman is really lucky to have him,” said Mountjoy.

Initially inspired by Miles Davis, Glenn describes his induction to the world of jazz as an “epiphany.”

Glenn’s father, a jazz musician, was also a source of inspiration.

Glenn’s passion for jazz music derives from a cultivated reverence for the world of music, fond childhood memories and an appreciation for the freedom of expression one encounters through such an artistic venue.

“Jazz is one of the greatest contributions that this country has given to the world of music [...] one in which you use every aspect of the human intellect,” said Glenn.

While the jazz ensemble members genuinely regard practice as a time to relax and play a little jazz music, Glenn has high expectations of his students.

“I treat them like professionals and expect them to have their parts down,” said Glenn.

He adds that “the individual members have their own expectations of themselves.”

“The ensembles are prepared,” Glenn said confidently. “There are a few spots of concern, but Whitman students always come through at the last minute—it’s one of those things that drive me crazy.”

Ms. Spears is back. Again. (This time with a vengeance)

It’s Britney, bitch.

After a year or so of more publicized ups and downs than any celebrity today, Britney Spears’ latest comeback makes it look like all those rehab stints and custody battles never happened. She doesn’t skip a beat with her latest single “Womanizer”, a techno-y and clubbish cut off her latest album “Circus”, in which America’s sweetheart tells her man that he’s nothing but a pitiful chump with a wandering eye.

It sounds like a blend of last year’s album “Blackout”, in which the number one hit “Gimme More” was showcased, combined with the girl-power message most female artists try to convey through their music. Not one to shy away from sexual sounds in order to get a point across, Britney includes her typical “ooh’s“ and “aah’s” that would make any womanizer melt.

If you think this sounds good, check out the video. It starts off with the singer showing off her newly-toned body—all of it, one so much like her “Toxic” days. Ms. Spears switches alter-egos throughout the video as she toys with the sexual desires of her “superstar” boyfriend. One of my residents couldn’t help but notice the excessive amount of hair-flips the pop star exhausts as if she were a hood-riding hottie from a 1980s White Snake video.

Finally, it wouldn’t be a Britney video if there wasn’t some sort of quasi-orgy going on near the end. For someone who is trying to put down her boyfriend, I didn’t really notice her girl-power techniques in the song or video. Then again, substantive messages aren’t really the point with her songs anyway.

So even if you’re not a fan, as long as you’re familiar with her sound, you’ll know that “Womanizer” is really nothing new for her.

But the song definitely has a bumping beat with a chorus that will be stuck in your head for the rest of the day. It has become part of the workout playlist that I listen to at the gym because it has the adrenaline-ride feel so typical of pop songs these days.

In sum, it sounds like Britney, it feels like Britney, but in order to know that it’s really her, Chris Crocker would have to post up a YouTube remake of his idol’s latest hit.  Let the next chapter of the pop diva’s everlasting career begin, because at this point, there’s no stopping her.

The Cave: In defense of Core: First-year class not as problematic as some say

Core’s embattled history has weathered numerous criticisms. The most frequent and vocal of these criticisms is that teaching only the canon of Western tradition enforces and legitimizes the dominant powers that suppress and oppress other world-views. These critics propose that Whitman restructure Core curriculum to incorporate competing, non-Western views.

In my opinion, this suggestion is quite problematic, since it doesn’t acknowledge that in order to criticize the Western tradition legitimately, one must first understand its canon, giving it a generous reading. One year to study the millennia of thought incorporated into Western tradition is already egregiously insufficient; to suggest that in that one year, the curriculum should expand to include non-Western texts which challenge the Western tradition risks spreading the curriculum too thin—it risks teaching neither tradition well, and instead, not teaching anything!

Let’s delve into the matter and examine some flawed assumptions in Core’s criticisms. Foremost is the mistaken assumption that the Western “tradition” is a unified stream of thought when in fact, Core texts are rent with discord about the most profound ideas. Anyone who wishes to see the fundamental disunity of the Western “tradition” need look no further that the Core curriculum itself—there is not one thing that the Ancient and Modern agree on either internally or with each other. If Core includes texts irreconcilable with each other, it is hard to conclude that it indoctrinates the student to a given world-view; if anything, this discord teaches us to regard the all views as mere opinions.

Looking outside of the Core curriculum to examine the Western tradition as a whole, we will undoubtedly notice that its biggest critics are thinkers working within it. Consider the most recent criticism of Core, in which Janyk holds that the texts of the Western canon are tools through which the West broadcasts it values—values of domination and suppression of non-whites, non-westerners and non-men. Interestingly, much of this criticism derives from Post-modern thinkers such as Foucault and Derrida; they were some of the harshest critics of the Western tradition, were they not also writers within this tradition?

Furthermore, Janyk refers to the author Paolo Friere to claim that Core represents an oppressive model of teaching. In the “banking” model, the teacher owns knowledge and the student is an empty receptacle to be filled. This relationship assumes that the student is neither a conscious being nor an active creator of reality. The result is the dehumanization of the student; the student is alienated from her humanity—from her reality, creativity, and autonomy. Friere was a Marxist educational theorist, and it’s not hard to detect Marx’s theory of the estrangement of labor in Friere’s work. From which tradition of thought did Marx write? Is Marx not included in Core? One cannot dismiss Core as the legitimizer of Western dominance and oppressioN when it includes both the West’s greatest admirers as well as some of its most vehement detractors.

I do not wish to give the impression that the criticism of Core is unfounded; students and professors agree that it is profoundly flawed. So, what can we do to address it? In my opinion, Core should be even more daring, but also self-conscious. It should admit that the “canon” of the “Western Tradition” is, love it or hate it, extremely important—it courses through the veins of much of the culture of much of the world. Therefore, it should aim to teach it well, which means (gasp) actually teaching it as the canon of the dominant Western Tradition.

However, in doing so, it should also aim to question the idea of a “canon”, and the notion of the “Western Tradition”. In the words of Drury, it should consciously profess that it is neither a sacred “fount of wisdom to be disseminated with uncritical reverence… [nor] a pernicious quest for domination.” It should admit that everything included in the canon, including the notion of a canon, is loaded with historical baggage that often engenders oppression, dominance and inequality. Perhaps it should reserve time to discuss these Marxist and Postmodern critiques, asking how these texts create a specific worldview and who that leaves out.

Core should know very well what it aims to teach, and it should not aim to teach everything. If core were completely restructured to include The Western canon, the baggage it carries, all its critics, Western and non-Western, as well as all its socio-political implications, it will end up teaching nothing! Janyk is correct that Core has a responsibility to admit the politicization of its text, and the questions of justice it provokes. But we cannot forget that Core is most importantly about exposing students to some of the most interesting and influential political, philosophical, historical, and literary ideas, dilemmas and innovations in history—to demand that Core focus only on social justice and the global power structure is to ask for an ice cube from an iceberg.

This Week in Greek

Delta Gamma: The ladies of Delta Gamma are in the process of slating for officers, and next year’s executive board will be announced soon. Last week’s scholarship luncheon went well, and the chapter was very pleased with the high attendance.  On Nov. 15 the chapter has a retreat as well as leaf raking. Lastly, DG FOOTBALL KFA 4EVER.

Kappa Alpha Theta: The Thetas had a productive lunch with their faculty advisor this week. Also, the chapter had an alumni presentation on Sunday related to information accessibility and library sciences. Lastly, the chapter is in the process of slating; positions will be announced Nov. 13.

Kappa Kappa Gamma: Tabling for Mr. Whitman started today in Reid, tickets are $5 now and $8 at door. The Kappa’s winter formal is Friday at the Underground. On Sunday, Economics Professor Jan Crouter will present to the chapter on investing and managing finances.

Beta Theta Pi: The Betas held an election event where they projected CNN onto a big screen and then sat around and watched it.

Phi Delta Theta: The Phis have their scholarship banquet on Nov. 14, at which History Professor David Schmitz will talk about past economic crises. Furthermore, rumor has it that “No Shave November” is in full swing.

Sigma Chi: The Sigs are in the process of planning their next annual philanthropy event, in this case a canned food drive.

Tau Kappa Epsilon: On Nov. 11 Geology Professor Pat Spencer will give a talk on alcoholism. The chapter is also looking forward to its Thanksgiving Dinner on Nov. 19 and an upcoming project with Habitat for Humanity.

Residence life must amend contracts, apologize

With R.A. hunting season having just taken a month-long hiatus (the search finished a few weeks ago and selections will be announced right before Thanksgiving break), now is a great time to talk about the problems that have arisen for student Residence Life staff members. While I am not a Residence Life staff member, I pursued a story in September (it was not published) that will shed light and open discussion on a necessary issue of which all students should be aware.

On Sept. 2, an S.A. for 2-West (Jewett), turned 21 years old. That night, while away from residents and with friends in Douglas Hall, he decided to drink. Since he had rarely drunk before, the S.A. was not conscious of his alcohol tolerance and blacked-out after several drinks. His condition worsened throughout the night until he was taken to the hospital by his friends, where he suffered a coma for several hours. He was released two days later on Sept. 4 and returned to school.

Meanwhile, the administration became aware of the situation. Chuck Cleveland, Dean of Students, convened a group of several administrators to discuss the ramifications of his actions. After hours of dialogue, the group concluded that he breached his S.A. contract and, thus, should be fired from his position.

The group said that the S.A. failed to “serve as a positive role model in both personal and academic life,” and thus failed to comply with a ‘Responsibilities’ clause in his Residence Life contract. The problem lies not in the vagueness inherent in the term “positive role model,” but in the direct, inseparable connection between “personal and academic life.”
By hastily making this very poor decision, the administration has effectively blurred the line – at least for Student Academic Advisors – between the professional and personal aspects of student Residence Life staff member.

When this distinction is so clearly and purposefully blurred, it leaves employees powerless over the way they conduct their lives. Their life consequently becomes their profession at the expense of their family, friends and significant others.

There is no job that I know of in which the line between personal and professional is so needlessly tied together. Even when people work for, quite literally, weeks at a time, they are compensated with weeks of breaks. In Alaska, my home state, many families have someone working on ‘the Slope,’ as they call it, in two week intervals: two weeks on, two weeks off. When they are on the Alaska North Slope, typically working on an oil-related enterprise, they must act professionally 100 percent of the time. But the professionalism ends once they return home.

Moreover, the administration failed to adhere to its own rules regarding anonymity. According to residents of 2-West, they did not know that anything had happened to the S.A. until Cleveland and several others conducted a meeting regarding his firing in response to a letter from a resident, with the support of his section, asking why his S.A. was fired and if their petition would reinstate him. Whether the meeting was conducted amicably or not, the rules of anonymity regarding alcohol, which states that “confidentiality must be maintained by everyone involved in the process, whether staff, faculty or students,” were broken. If the administration believes in this policy, they should have either ignored the student’s request or, more appropriately, given the staff member a second chance.

Whitman prides itself on recognizing that second chances should be afforded to students after they mess up. In this situation, the S.A. was given no second chance. The group that spoke to the 2-West residents said they fired the S.A. so that he could take some time to reorganize his life. His life, however, never interfered with his work. The S.A. was legally drinking with his friends in no sight of any of his residents. Thus, he should not have been required to uphold the “positive role model” clause while pursuing personal interests in his personal life. The administration gave the S.A. no chance to demonstrate that the two were incompatible. Had they more clearly defined when personal life begins and professional life ends for Residence Life staff, the administration would have not had to make a haphazard decision on whether to terminate the S.A.

The decision has been viewed negatively from the several Residence Life staff members with whom I’ve spoken. It has kindled disapproval, anger and, more importantly, distrust. After making such a rash decision, the administration is repudiating one of its biggest policy selling points: encouraging students to come to them when they are having problems. Students now are less likely to go to the administration when they are in need out of the fear of being punished for their transgressions. They are setting the wrong precedent if their goal is to cultivate a balanced relationship between themselves and the student body. This precedent – one void of second chances, anonymity and delineated boundaries – can be easily interpreted as a hegemonic assertion of administrative power instead of a more appropriate communal dialogue between the administration and the student body. While this may not be their intent, I hope the administration realizes how effortlessly their decision to fire the S.A. can be viewed as such.

Regardless of whether the administration believes its decision was correct, it should do the following in order to regain the student trust they have so carelessly taken for granted:

1. It should revise the Residence Life staff contract so that the difference between personal and professional life is clearly defined. Residence Life members should not be required to adhere to the administration’s redundantly ambiguous term “positive role model” while in their personal life. The administration has the right to regulate student activities on campus – and perhaps they should have thought of this before the situation arose – but they have no right to regulate all of students’ personal lives unless they directly affect their well-being on campus. If this clause is not changed, it is likely that this issue will come up again at the expense of a student’s job, scholarship or enrollment at this school.

2. It should apologize to the Residence Life staff members for the unnecessary trouble this situation has caused them. The administration’s key to regaining the trust of the student body is through the student intermediaries they employ. They should work to not only regain this trust, but also to ensure that it endures. Merely revamping the Residence Life contracts, however, will not work. Mending the torn relationship between the administration and the student body will require the administration to be more transparent with its actions – raising tuition costs, considering student opinion when hiring professors and being straight with students when students believe they have made an error, just to name a few – and will require the student body to listen, discuss and become actively involved in what is happening at the administrative level.
It’s better to solve this problem sooner than later. Let’s start talking.

This op-ed is neither endorsed by nor was written at the request of the aforementioned S.A. Permission, however, was granted by the S.A. for its publication.

Walla Walla draws in road biking tourism

Walla Walla draws numerous tourists to its rolling wheat fields and quaint downtown every year. While most come to sample the popular wine, many wine connoisseurs also visit to bike the level terrain, roadways and trails throughout the city.

“There is great riding for all levels,” said Steve Rapp, owner of Allegro Cyclery, said. “You can be in the middle of downtown and then in the middle of a country road five minutes later.”

Paved trails run throughout the city, such as Roots Park near College Place and the Mill Creek Bike Trail. Walla Walla’s residential streets offer a relaxing ride, and the wheat fields and Blue Mountains await the more experienced.

“Some of my favorite rides are longer,” said Rapp. “There is a ride that comes down on Touchet River Road that I love, and another ride on the Oregon side about 80 miles that rides down into Tollgate. Almost every ride has its beauty.”

“I love going up to Harris Park because you get to see the terrain change a little bit,” said Rebecca Jensen, a Whitman alum, Walla Walla resident and cycling enthusiast. “You go from the rolling wheat fields into the trees, and it’s a nice gradual climb.”

“We have some of the best roads for road riding,” said Greg Knowles, the co-owner and president of the Bicycle Barn. “You can go on lots of loops and only see a few cars. We have rides out of the shop during the season and sell about 800 bikes a year.”

Many locals love to take advantage of these numerous bicycle routes, and will often stop by Allegro Cyclery to buy parts or find out what kind of cycling events are occurring in the community.

“We also get a lot of Whitman and Walla Walla University parents that want to either rent a bike for themselves or buy a bike for their college student,” Rapp said. “We also just started renting bikes. In the last six months, we’ve rented 66 bikes, and more people would rent if they knew about it, so the market is definitely out there.”

Since Walla Walla is near the Lewis and Clark trail, many people come through the town.  A strong percentage of people who come into Allegro Cyclery are wine tourists that also stop in to ask for suggestions to wineries.

“We have many cyclers come to Walla Walla who are into wine tasting,” said McKee, the Wheatland Wheelers president.

Many tourists will also travel from far distances to participate in a few races that occur during the year. The biggest race is the Tour of Walla Walla, a three-day race in April that attracts riders from six different states, two Canadian provinces and other countries.

“We had a member from Japan before, and we’re lucky enough to attract a lot of different people. It’s a big event that is well known, attracting close to 500 racers plus their entourages,” Rapp said.

“Because of this huge event, wine tasting and cycling are starting to come together in Walla Walla,” Jensen said. “Even if you’re not a racer, having an event of that caliber speaks to what kind of town this is. It’s been exciting to see that grow and have the city of Walla Walla get behind that event.”

On a much more minor scale, the Cycle Cross Races in mid-October attract riders from eastern Washington, Idaho and a few from Oregon. The race is either a short track in a park or on a closed course setting with varying terrain and obstacles to encourage people to get off their bike and back on again.

Another race is the Grande Fondo, a charity ride that occurs in the fall and is growing by the year. The Wheatland Wheelers hosts the Ann Weatherhill Classic in early summer, named after a cyclist who was killed by a motorist, so the race helps inform the motorists that they should share the road with the cyclists.
When these events are not occurring, there are also a few clubs that meet regularly to enjoy the sport of cycling.

The Wheatland Wheelers is a local club composed of about 100 to 117 members and a racing team of about 15 racers, four of them women.

“We are very active in the community as far as education goes,” said McKee. “We help with bike education at schools and rodeos and hold a few different classes on how motorists should treat bikes on the road.”

The Wheatland Wheelers’ shop trades, sells and buys bicycle gear, and there are group rides that go out nearly every day from March to October. These rides can either be short and brisk or long—up to 35 miles.

However, one should not be intimidated by their large group or their long rides.

“You don’t have to be experienced to join the club, but we are growing in numbers,” said McKee. “The biking community as a whole has really exploded over the last two years because of rising gas prices.”

“I really see potential for growth, especially after being on the Whitman cycling team and seeing it grow from 12 to 40 racers during the four years I was a member,” said Jensen of the biking community.

If the Wheatland Wheelers are still too intense for a beginner, there is a more informal cycling group that meets every Saturday and does not require membership.

“They are called both the Rose Garden Group, after the place they meet in Pioneer Park, and the Hailstoners because they got caught in a hailstone during a ride one time,” said Rapp.

For elderly residents, the Pedal Pushers, a group of women all 70 or older, meets regularly for bike rides around the community.

At the Community Center for Youth, Jensen runs a junior cycling team, and she also helps with a five-week course called Bike Repair, where students learn bike mechanics and can eventually fix up bikes to keep.

“The fact that we have a junior cycling team here really speaks of how many people are interested in cycling in the community,” Jensen said.

This summer, Jensen also hosted Bike Thyme, which were relaxed rides with no spandex allowed.

“People would ride whatever speed they wanted and we never went longer than eight miles,” Jensen said.

“Destinations were local farms and the like. I was consciously trying to start a new culture in Walla Walla that wasn’t just lawyers with expensive rides. This tends to be the trend nationwide, so I’ve been trying to push people’s understandings of what bicycles are made to do.”

Whether one wants to bike 35 miles through the Blue Mountains or simply pedal down Rose Street, there is a group for everyone here in the valley.

“The clubs here can range from people are showing off on their bikes to just riding lazily around the neighborhood streets,” said Jensen.

“There are a certain core group of people who are fanatics, like myself, and people who go out regularly, and then a lot of sporadic riders who just enjoy riding,” said Rapp. “Whether you are a racer wanting a hilly or a flat ride or you just want to do some sightseeing, there is something for everybody.”

The Skinny on Body Image

From Barbies to models on the front of dozens of magazines and TV ads, society has given people an idealized image and further encouraged them to work towards that ideal image. Like most general assertions, this one has not come without consequences.

Societal pressures and expectations that have been internalized are only one of the causes of eating disorders that Tracee Anderson from the counseling center mentions. She also includes difficulties with emotional regulation and expression, underdeveloped or poorly integrated sense of ‘self,’ family problems, a co-morbid diagnosis with depression or other psychiatric problems and stress management.

Whatever the cause, eating disorders are usually a way for people to gain greater control over their lives when they feel like they are slipping away. The problem with body image is that it is not only relevant in the ‘awkward’ ages of puberty, but also follows people through their entire lives. Eating disorders and their causes do not disappear over time and are not something that can be outgrown.

“Body image issues usually start at a very young age. For example, 42 percent of first- to third-graders want to be thinner, 78 percent of 18-year-olds are unhappy with their bodies and the number one wish of females aged 11 to 17 is to lose weight,” said Anderson.

In the college-age group specifically, eating disorders affect about 7 million women and 1 million men. Approximately 19 percent of college students suffer from some form of bulimia, 10 percent have some form of anorexia, and 50 percent of people who have been anorexic develop bulimia or bulimic patterns, according to Anderson.

The influence of culture has a very high impact on how people feel about themselves. This relationship between culture and individualism is tightly bound to the point that individuals define themselves by society’s standards. Obsession with fitting the societal mold causes people to be increasingly body conscious.

“Too frequently in our culture,” said Anderson, “personal value becomes dependent on external, socially constructed variables that really have nothing to do with one’s worth. Many people have become body image junkies that are amputated from their most intimate senses by being over-worked and over-stressed and over-focused on carving, re-shaping, or re-molding their bodies’ natural shapes so that they are better fit to what culture has led them to believe is valuable.”

Within the college population, Anderson orders eating disorders by their prevalence: dysfunctional eating and/or exercise patterns, bulimia and anorexia.  She says that body image issues are more common in college than actual ‘clinical’ eating disorders.

Anderson mentions some of the physical outcomes of eating disorders. Anorexia specifically can cause amenorrhea (loss of menstrual cycle which can lead to loss of fertility and other hormonal problems), brittle hair, hypotension (low blood pressure), hypothermia, dependent edema (abnormal accumulation of fluid in cells), metabolic changes which can lead to cardiac problems (electrolyte imbalances, protein deficiencies, mineral and fluid imbalances), gastrointestinal problems, possible liver and kidney damage, possible internal bleeding and infection.

Bulemia can lead to electrolyte imbalances, menstrual irregularities, digestive and gastro-intestinal problems (ulcers, esophogitis), swelling of the lateral section of the cheek (inflammation of glands due to gastric content), impaired metabolism, low blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, puffy eyes, swollen glands, dizziness, anemia and malnourishment.

On a social and psychological level, according to Anderson, eating disorders cause a preoccupation with food, eating, calories, and/or exercise with an inability to “let go” of those thoughts, self-induced pressure to succeed or be perfect, social and personal inflexibility, irritability, social withdrawal, self-hatred and self-denegation, increased risk of substance abuse and the lack of ability to articulate and express feelings.

Along the lines of these psychological effects, Anderson says that it is very common for people with eating disorders or body image issues to also suffer from sub-clinical depression or anxiety.

“Many times a student will come in for counseling with depression or anxiety as their primary diagnosis but eating or body image issues are a big part of that clinical picture,” said Anderson.

Despite all of the negative affects of eating disorders, people still frequently maintain an obsession over perfecting their bodies.

“Rigid standards for beauty (and thus self-worth) keep people from giving energy to the things that really matter in life, like – love, sharing experiences, creativity, connection, etcetera. It’s like the body has become a battleground that is being exploited and ruthlessly polluted through self-criticism and negative judgment about all the things that aren’t good or right about our size, looks or shape,” said Anderson.

Awareness of this problem is beneficial on multiple fronts. Though eating disorders are not easily overcome, there are people willing to help those who suffer. Friends, family, housemates and teammates are a few sources of support, and clinical help is quite frequently effective.

“Treatment for eating or body image issues, depression and anxiety works. For example, the success rate for treatment of depression is 80 percent; for anxiety, 80 to 90 percent and for clinical eating disorders, 60 percent.  Twenty percent recover partially and 20 percent have chronic eating disorders,” said Anderson.

Other than the occasional TV or magazine campaign that addresses the issue, there is not a lot done on a cultural level to change the way that society affects its people.

“Culture is created and maintained by people. This is good and bad news. The bad news is that it is an example of how all of us, at some level, perpetuate some pretty twisted ideas about the importance and relevance of socially constructed beauty ideals. The good news is this gives us all the power to change the cultural standards by refusing to buy into or participate in the perpetuation of these ideals,” Anderson said.

High School Stories

No, this article will not be a rip-roaring tell all of my awkward, comedic antics while at high school.  But, assuming you were around campus the last weekend, you likely ran into a few of those awkward, confused, very small, debaters.  The scary thing (and of course, something that most Whitties would never own up to) is that looking at some of these debaters is like looking into a window into the past.  At one point, we were all that age – hard to acknowledge, I know.

Yes, these debaters can be a pest while here – let’s examine the disturbances.  They usually park for a long time in most residence hall lounges, with their accompanying bins, coaches, and fast food.  They (sometimes) make a lot of noise, tending to sprawl out, acting as if the place is theirs, almost instinctively acting out of the need to claim their territory against the much more aggressive Lyman male.  They take up academic rooms!  For instance, in the music buildings, they just happen to take up the best practice rooms, leaving all us musicians with the second-rate pianos.  And, of course, let’s not forget about Reid.  The once hallowed, sacred ground for Whitman socializing instantaneously transforms into the nerve center of operations for many a coach and debater – indeed, for a second, a Whittie can feel almost like a second-class citizen.

But, seriously, is it really that bad?  This is really the only major tournament/competition to take place at Whitman – aside from college visitors days, this debate tournament is the only major event to impede on our otherwise uninhibited enjoyment of the Whitman bubble.  One weekend a year.  It’s not really that much, when you think about it.  I mean, this year, the weekend just happened to fall on Halloween, but, that was just a bad coincidence more than anything else.  At first, it’s quite easy to gripe about, but, upon reflection, it really doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal.

Also, a key thing to remember is that we were all once in this position before.  If you got admitted into Whitman, chances are that you had a fairly strong background in extra-curricular activities during high school.  Whether your game was sports, musical ensembles, academic decathlon, debate, science bowl, or whatever, it’s highly likely that you participated in some major tournament/competition on another high school or college campus.  You probably sprawled out, put your stuff here or there, and before you knew it, your school’s contingent had a sizable space cut out for itself.  It happens.  Maybe it is or isn’t intentional, but, it happens.

In short, what can we do?  Is it really fair to chastise these high school debaters?  I mean, yes, these kids can be obnoxious at times by their mere presence, but, we were these kids a few years ago.  We used to be these snot-nosed, awkward dudes.  Some of us still are.  In the spirit of siblinghood (my non-gendered answer to ‘brotherhood’), let’s put these differences aside.  They may have stolen my favorite practice room, but, as the old phrase of wisdom goes, “it’s all good.”  To these debaters, I extend my own personal olive branch – you can borrow my practice room – just stay the hell out of my locker.

This Week in ASWC

The second ASWC Senate Session took place Sunday evening. The Senate discussed changes made to by-laws that would affect the duties and operations of ASWC officers and programs. Contentious topics included Town Hall attendance requirements for club representatives, whether ASWC officers may hold positions of club leadership, and clarification surrounding ASWC funding of clubs who host events where alcohol is served.  The next Senate session will be Sunday November 16 at 7 p.m. in RCC 207 and is open to the student body.

The Senate also discussed the criteria used for approving student requests of the nascent “Savings Fund.” The ASWC Finance Committee will be holding a forum on the matter TODAY, Nov. 6 during their weekly Thursday meeting, 4:00 p.m. in RCC 207. All students are welcome to attend.

APPLY FOR SWEET, PAID POSITIONS ON CAMPUS!
Applications are now available for Public Speakers Director, Public Events Director, Films Director (term: academic year ’09-’10) and Pioneer Editor-in-Chief (term: Spring ’09-Fall’09).  Applications are available online at: http://www.whitman.edu/content/aswc/committees/nominations/applications. Look out for emails with more information. Applications are due THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13th at MIDNIGHT. Please direct questions to Nominations Chair Julia Nelson at nelsonjm@whitman.edu.

This Week in ASWC

The second ASWC Senate Session took place Sunday evening. The Senate discussed changes made to by-laws that would affect the duties and operations of ASWC officers and programs. Contentious topics included Town Hall attendance requirements for club representatives, whether ASWC officers may hold positions of club leadership, and clarification surrounding ASWC funding of clubs who host events where alcohol is served.  The next Senate session will be Sunday November 16 at 7 p.m. in RCC 207 and is open to the student body.

The Senate also discussed the criteria used for approving student requests of the nascent “Savings Fund.” The ASWC Finance Committee will be holding a forum on the matter TODAY, Nov. 6 during their weekly Thursday meeting, 4:00 p.m. in RCC 207. All students are welcome to attend.

APPLY FOR SWEET, PAID POSITIONS ON CAMPUS!
Applications are now available for Public Speakers Director, Public Events Director, Films Director (term: academic year ’09-’10) and Pioneer Editor-in-Chief (term: Spring ’09-Fall’09).  Applications are available online at: http://www.whitman.edu/content/aswc/committees/nominations/applications. Look out for emails with more information. Applications are due THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13th at MIDNIGHT. Please direct questions to Nominations Chair Julia Nelson at nelsonjm@whitman.edu.

Pickens Plan promises clean energy through wind

Anyone who has watched TV in the past couple months has seen them: commercials starring an elderly gentleman with a Texas accent deploring our nation’s dependency on foreign oil. He claims we must look forward, throw off the yoke of oil and turn to wind and natural gas.

He may seem to be stating the obvious, but T. Boone Pickens’ self-named Pickens Plan carefully delineates the path toward alternative energy. No one of influence has purposed something more viable to wean America off our dependence on foreign oil.

Boone believes that “the United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind power.”

We must harness that power. Boone’s Pickens Plan begins with mass installations of “wind generation facilities” along the Great Plains. The energy generated would account for 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, leaving 20 percent of our natural gas unused.

Most of America’s electricity comes from natural gas. Through the Pickens Plan, natural gas would be used as our primary source of transportation fuel.

The Pickens Plan calls for the conversion of 2 million heavy trucks—almost all the big rigs in the country—to become natural gas effective. This would cut down on 1/4 of the nation’s oil.
Boone expects the effects of this energy transfer to immediately overwhelm the nation’s economy. He expects to decrease the dependence on foreign oil by 1/3 in 10 years, bringing our $700 billion per year addiction down to a more manageable figure.

Tenacious, crusading and ambitious, T. Boone Pickens—the 11th-hour angel of alternative energy—is an oil man. An entrepreneur and once owner of the largest independent oil company in America, Boone currently stands as the founder and chairman of BP Capital Management, “one of the nation’s most successful energy-oriented investment funds.”

Boone amassed staggering wealth and experience through the oil business, but lately he has invested in more reformist interests. The most notable pursuit is Clean Energy, a group that promotes the use of natural gas as a cleaner alternative to oil and diesel in transportation.

Clean Energy would play a dominant role in the nation’s conversion to natural gas for transportation, clearly profiting Boone. Boone admits that the plan would benefit his interests, but he swears that he’s “rich enough” and his “standard of living is about as good as it can get.”

It’s true. Worth roughly $4 billion, Boone is one of the richest men in America, but he puts his money where his mouth is. Boone has spent $2 billion dollars—soon to be $10 billion—building a wind farm on his mammoth 68,000 acre ranch in Texas. He spent $58 million on commercials, interviews and internet advertisements to publicize the plan.

Likewise, Boone is realistic about the enormous costs of the Pickens Plan. In just the wind turbines alone, Boone estimates it would cost $1 trillion to harness the wind power, and $200 billion to distribute it to towns and cities.

The cost of converting 2 million big-rigs to natural gas is astounding. Service stations must re-vamp and install new pumps; cars would have to be converted or scrapped. However, Boone claims this is a “one-time cost,” and spending $700 billion a year overseas for oil is clearly an economic drain.

Weaning off foreign oil would serve as an economic boon for the United States. Money spent overseas would be re-circulated into the American economy. Jobs on wind farms and power plants would be a blessing in rural America, and at $1 per gallon for natural gas, driving would be cheap and the air would be clean.

“We can do so much at home with the money here, instead of letting it go out of the country,” Boone explained in a “60 Minutes” interview.

Boone urges the American consumer to support the Pickens Plan. He claims that without his plan, the country has only one option for energy: oil.

“There’s no option one, two, three.”

Boone is also open to alternative plans of action to move our country out of our oil addiction.

“If there’s a better one, get it out there and let’s talk about it.”

Bon Appetit feels budget cutbacks

When The Pioneer first reported on possible implications of the financial crisis on college spending, Whitman Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer Peter Harvey was hesitant to speculate too far into the future.

“We need to be patient and learn more about how significant this downturn is and how long it might last,” Harvey was quoted as saying in the Oct. 2 issue of The Pioneer.   “In the meantime, Whitman is in a strong position to face the challenges as we know them today.”

However, over the past four weeks the economy has shown no substantive signs of improvement, and its strain on Whitman’s finances has recently become clear in the cutting of funds for the college’s catering service, Bon Appétit.

“Peter called me about a week or ten days ago and let me know that the college was doing some cutting that would most likely affect Bon Appétit,” said Roger Edens, general manager of Bon Appétit food services at Whitman.

“I can’t offer much detail yet,” said Harvey in an e-mail.  “I have advised Bon Appétit that Whitman will be trying to reduce expenses this year in the face of current economic conditions.”

One of the services that will most likely be cut back is Bon Appétit catering for department meetings, receptions and other faculty and community events.

“We will likely reduce the amount of food we provide to various meetings on campus.  That will reduce revenue to Bon Appétit,” Harvey said.  “I don’t know what the reduction will be as we are just beginning to assess it.”
Edens stated that “overall, there is going to be a tightening” of the Bon Appétit budget, but said an exact figure of how much will be cut out has yet to be reached.

“I did throw out some numbers,” Edens said.  “But they were definitely pretty speculative.”  Adding, “All of these numbers are totally up in the air, and nothing is confirmed.”

Bon Appétit is an on-site catering company that contracts with the college to provide dining services to students and the Whitman community.  It also provides café and catering services to other colleges, corporations and venues nationwide.  Whitman does not dictate the annual budget for Bon Appétit, but because the potential cuts Harvey outlined would decrease profits for the company, Bon Appétit is considering ways to maintain the fiscal balance.

“We’re looking at a small decrease [in labor],” Edens said.  “I’m talking about five percent.”

Edens also described a process of “self-auditing” that he said will be taking place within the organization with the assistance of the company’s corporate office.  This internal evaluation would, according to Edens, help determine standards of service and maintain food quality.

“The dining hall service and quality of food should remain the same,” said Edens.

When asked if budget constraints would impact the overall dining hall experience, Edens replied, “I don’t think it’s going to be visible.”

Edens further specified that the anticipated five percent decrease in labor expenses would not affect student employees, whose wages are paid by the college, but would result in decreased hours for local workers.  According to
Edens, no layoffs are presently being considered.

In response to questions regarding whether or not the rumored anxiety of some Bon Appétit chefs is valid, Edens said, “If I were [in that position], I would be concerned.  There’s always that fear of the unknown and what’s going to happen.”

Students to celebrate, volunteer on Halloween

It’s that time of year again—the leaves have fallen, the pumpkins have been carved and candy has been bought in mass amounts.

This Halloween, the Whitman community has planned various events for students to join in the festivities. While some are old campus traditions, such as North Hall’s “Haunted Hospital,” other events will be brand-new this year, like the Campus Activities Board’s (CAB) “Cobweb Carnival.”

For a relaxed, low-key way to enjoy Halloween, consider attending the Cobweb Carnival. Instead of the annual Cobweb Ball, CAB is doing things a little bit differently this year.

“Unfortunately, all campus buildings are being used by debaters this year, so CAB is trying something new,” said senior CAB member Shayna Tivona.

Instead, they will be hosting the Cobweb Carnival. The event will include cookie decorating, pumpkin carving, listening to Halloween music, warm drinks and a raffle drawing.

“We are using tents and space heaters to keep students warm, so we hope they will stop by for some totally terrifying times,” said Tivona.

Drop by the Reid side lawn between 12 and 3 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 31, to join in the festivities.

For a festive community service option on Halloween, consider volunteering for the YMCA “Spooktacular.” The Spooktacular is a fun event for families in the Walla Walla community. Volunteers are encouraged to dress up and will help facilitate fun Halloween-themed activities with young children. Community Service Center intern Carole Wilson enjoys this event because it is a fun way to get off campus and do something good for the community.

“I love the Spooktacular because it is one of those times when it is socially acceptable to just be a kid, not a college student. It’s a great chance to interact with the Walla Walla community and spent time outside of our little Whitman bubble,” said Wilson, a senior.

One of Wilson’s favorite things about the event is the fabulous costumes it provokes.

“Once I saw a whole family dressed up as characters from Harry Potter, with their baby dressed as Dobby!” said Wilson.
Interested volunteers should contact the Community Service Center.

End Halloween with a terrifying twist by attending the Haunted Hospital. North Hall will be facilitating a spooky haunted house, complete with an artistic set and live actors. Head over to North Hall between 8 and 10:30 p.m. and prepare to be petrified. Rather scare others than be scared yourself? Think about volunteering to be an actor in the event. Interested actors should attend a planning meeting at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 30 or 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 31.

College given grant for solar panel project

A $51,750 grant from Pacific Power’s Blue Sky renewable energy program was awarded to Whitman recently to support the college’s proposed photo-voltaic solar array. The $180,000 project would place 20 solar panels above Jewett hall and be capable of supplying the college with 23 KW of electricity.

According to geology and environmental studies professor Bob Carson, the system would be capable of supplying about eight average American houses with electricity and would make a substantial dent in Whitman’s energy costs.

The college would save approximately $1600 per year at current electricity rates, according to Jed Schwendiman, associate to the president. However, factoring in a typical rate increase of about five percent every year, this investment could mean even bigger savings for the college in the future. Over the next five years, said Schwendiman, the college could expect to save around $18,000.

The system would also serve as an educational resource for Whitman students. The solar array would be linked to a monitoring station in the Hall of Science atrium next to the current weather, seismic and stream flow station. Students would be able to monitor the output of the system and track energy savings.

Jump-starting the campaign to bring the solar array to Whitman is the student organization, Campus Climate Challenge. Headed by co-presidents Bailey Arend and Gary Wang, the organization hopes to make the college carbon-neutral.

“Our goal is to make sure that there are no net carbon emissions from the college,” said Wang, “and to mobilize the surrounding community to take action on global warming. It’s a lofty goal but we’ve made substantial progress in the last few years.”

According to Wang, Campus Climate Challenge jumped on-board with the solar array project because it fit in with their goals for the college.

“The solar array project is important because it represents a tangible example of alternative energy for the college,” said Wang. “From a public relations standpoint, it proves that Whitman College is among the leaders regionally and nationally in terms of its commitment to environmental responsibility and sustainable development.”

In the past two years, the organization has raised over $28, 000 from parents and faculty through two letter-writing campaigns. Part of this money went to purchasing carbon off-sets in order to reduce the college’s carbon contribution; the other went towards funding the solar array.

Wang and Arend also helped Whitman write the grant application to the Pacific Power Blue Sky renewable energy program, resulting in the $51, 750 grant.

The Blue Sky program offered by Pacific Power allows consumers to use clean, wind energy instead of traditional energy off the grid. Energy from the Blue Sky program is more expensive than regular energy; however, Pacific Power invests this money in alternative energy projects around the area. This year, Pacific Power offered $100, 000 in grants to fund renewable energy projects in Washington state.

Whitman received a substantial portion of this grant money because of its commitment to alternative energy demonstrated by the proposed solar panel array. The photo-voltaic solar panels Whitman would be using convert sunlight into energy by freeing loose electrons from silicon atoms housed in the panels. These electrons flow from the solar cells to a load or battery, where the energy is stored. About 10-15 percent of the sunlight that strikes the solar panels is converted into energy.

The photo-voltaire solar array is currently scheduled to be put up this summer.

Fire prompts Clinton Court evacuation

All 90 Clinton Court residents, many of whom are Whitman students, were evacuated from their apartments at just past midnight Friday morning due to a fire that erupted in one of the basement apartments.

“I was sleeping in my bed and was woken up by the fire alarm,” said junior Elena Mitchel. “I grabbed some warm things and ran down the stairs. The entire building was filled with smoke and I almost ran into a giant fireman in the lobby.”

The Walla Walla Fire Dept. was called to 602 Boyer Ave. shortly before 12:15 a.m., a lead Fire Dept. investigator said.

By 1 a.m., the apartments had been properly evacuated and Fire Dept. firefighters were able to get in quickly to extinguish the fire

“We were lucky to get in there so early because the fire could have easily spread quickly [to the rest of the building],” the investigator  said.

The original call was regarding a smoke investigation, but firefighters quickly upgraded the call to a general fire alarm, according to a Fire Dept. press release.

Upon arrival, firefighters determined smoke was coming from the east side of the building’s main entrance, and were able to locate the fire in the building’s basement, according to the press release.

“A fire hose was run through the street to the fire-hydrant and apparently when it filled up, the pressure made it shoot out and knock over a big fireman,” Mitchel said.

Several of the evacuated students returned to campus while others stayed in the Odd Fellows Home, cafeteria for roughly an hour until the fire was put out and the building was cleared of smoke.

“I stood around for a while with my friends and made sure all my friends were out of the building,” Mitchel said. “Then we went to the library for a bit and then to the Odd Fellows center.”

The Fire Dept. estimates damages to be approximately $7,000.  The cause of the fire is still under investigation, according to the press release.

Whitman Direct Action fosters international aid programs

They’ve built houses in Nicaragua, worked on biodiesel projects in Central America and, most recently, raised money for clean water in India—the Whitman Direct Action group does not let one issue govern its charitable projects agenda.

The group, commonly known as the abbreviated WDA,  is a non-profit, student-led organization  devoted to promoting environmentally and economically sustainable communitie. Unlike other non-profit organizations, WDA does not have a definite agenda of goals they want to achieve, but instead takes on individual projects that address the needs of marginalized communities through research, critical dialog and collaborative action, said senior Tim Shadix, a member.
WDA hosted a silent auction to raise money for the Transnational Community Initiative,  which helps to establish a sustainable community development project in Mexico. The auction to support this goal of collaborating with immigrant communities in the Pacific Northwest region was held Friday, Oct. 24, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. in Reid Campus Center.

Founded in 2005, WDA began by building a house in Nicaragua.

“WDA originated from the desire by Joseph Bornstein ‘08 and his friends to build a house for a family Joseph knew in Nicaragua who were left destitute when the father of the household was killed in a fishing accident,” Shadix said.

“Following that experience, Joseph and other Whitman students decided to form an official organization and initiate the 2006 Central American Biodiesel Project.”

Currently, WDA consists of twelve students and a board of faculty advisors, which supports the group when necessary.

After the Build-a-House project, WDA ran the Central American Biodiesel Project in 2006. WDA hosted two international biodiesel conferences and co-founded biodiesel cooperatives and resource centers with companies throughout Honduras and Nicaragua to help marginalized societies expand and generate their own oil. Recently, WDA has begun the Sadhana Clean Water Project, an initiative to address the socio-political constraints to clean water access in rural India. More information on these projects can be accessed on the WDA Web site, whitmandirectaction.org.

On average, the budgets of these projects range from $12,000 to $15,000, which goes directly towards travel costs for the group members and the provision of materials and seed funds to help establish the project initiatives with the partners within the community, said Shadix. The past projects have completed their goals, but, as stated by Shadix, much more goes into these projects than many assume. A lot of the money also goes to other necessary steps taken by WDA.

“In the past projects, [extra necessary steps] have included building a house, building a biodiesel processor, creating biodiesel educational materials, hosting conferences, conducting comprehensive field studies and publishing research reports and books,” said Shadix.

Aside from giving Whitman a good reputation in different countries, WDA has also been an inspiration on Whitman campus. They have given presentations on their work, presented at the Undergraduate Conference, hosted a discussion on global citizenship at last year’s diversity symposium and held a number of fund raisers. Currently, the group is running an exhibit in the Stevens Gallery in Reid that features photography of their past international projects.

“The best parts about WDA are the relationships that you form within and outside of the organization, but also having built it from scratch,” said sophomore John Loranger, a WDA member.

WDA raised approximately $1150 from the silent auction, and the Whitman community can expect to see many more projects from this motivated group. Stay tuned.

Construction fever builds as projects progress

This school year is witnessing even more men in hard hats than usual, with the ongoing renovation of the Sherwood Center and now the Olin art wing.

Dan Park, Director of the Physical Plant, said that students should not expect any inconveniences during these renovations. In Olin, workers are asked to limit noisy activities, especially late at night or early in the morning.

“We ask them the same with Sherwood, and try to schedule demolition work during summer break,” said Park.

Park has been working at Whitman since 1982, and said that the college usually only undergoes one project per year.
The Sherwood Center, which was built in 1968, was built in a style known as “French brutalism.”

“It wasn’t pretty,” said Dean Snider, Associate Professor of Sport Studies. “Now it’s going to be pretty and functional.”

The project to renovate Sherwood began in April 2008 and costs about $15,500,000. Besides the need to improve its appearance, “it also did not meet the needs of the students,” said Park. “We had an inadequate pool and not enough multipurpose space. The whole building needed an overhaul,” he added.

The idea to make the new rock-climbing wall indoors also came directly from the students.

“They want to be able to use it over a great percentage of the year,” said Park.

The new wall will be 40 feet tall with plenty of climbing ropes, and there will also be a bouldering area outside with one large boulder for students to utilize.

There will be new dance rooms for tae kwon do, aerobics and many other activities.  New offices will also be added as well as a skylight that will light both upstairs and downstairs. Another new feature of the building is the Dartfish program, which offers training and self-evaluation to varsity athletes.

“It’s a digital editing program that can show plays to athletes,” said Snider. “It has great capabilities for both teaching skills and scouting other teams.”

The contractors are also adding some green elements to the building, such as a raingarden that will capture rainwater to irrigate the plants and manage the water system. They also recycled 100 percent of the concrete from the wall in one of the gyms and used it for the pool.

The new multipurpose gym will be available for basketball, volleyball and badminton and clubs and intramural sports can use it as well.

“There be a batting cage, where people can also hit golfballs into, and there will also be an indoor infield,” Snider said.

The outside of the building will consist of traditional brick, which would match the Baker Ferguson Fitness Center.

Currently, the workers are about to put the roof on the new gym, but the date of completion is not until the fall of 2009.

The renovation of the Olin art wing, which began on Wednesday, Oct. 15, is a result of the art department moving into the new art center.

“We didn’t need two art facilities, so the Olin art wing is being converted into classrooms and offices,” Park said.

This project is scheduled to be complete by April 2009.

Harper Joy Theatre may also undergo a complete overhaul, which would add another black box theatre, five more
offices and improve the ventilation system.

“Our current schedule calls for the work to begin in 2010. It is possible the start date may have to be postponed given the current economic conditions,” said Peter Harvey, Chief Financial Officer. “I am not certain when a decision will be made on the schedule. It will depend in large part on what happens with the economy going forward.”

Maxey Hall may also experience reconstruction, in which additional office and classroom space would be added.

“This idea is just being developed and considered, but there is no schedule yet,” said Park.

The brains and brawn behind these operations is the company of Opp and Seibold Construction.

Ken Seibold, the project superintendent who puts everything together, has worked on many projects around Whitman.

“The longest was the Baker Ferguson Fitness Center, but the Sherwood Center will soon be longer,” said Seibold.

Most of the construction workers are employees of this company, but there are also many subcontractors, like the electricians and plumbers.

Currently, there are seven people from Opp and Seibold and 38 workers in total at Sherwood. At Olin, there are five workers from Opp and Seibold and 10 total.

“These guys are just as flexible as anything,” said Snider. “I’m amazed at the work they do on these projects.”

Justice Dept. steps in after research by ‘06 alumnus

An attempt at political justice for Latinos has been effected in Sunnyside, Wash. after the publication of research by Whitman alumnus Ian Warner, ’06, caught the attention of the federal Justice Department.

The Sunnyside City Council has revamped its election system after the Justice Dept. informed the town’s City Council that its at-large voting system violated the Voting Rights Act.

The Justice Department’s inquiry and, by extension, the overhaul of its voting system has come at the hands of research conducted by Whitman alumnus Ian Warner, ’06.

His research, conducted while taking a seminar class from Dr. Paul Apostolidis, Associate Professor of Politics, showed that Latinos in Sunnyside, who comprise nearly three-fourths of the population, were disproportionately unrepresented on the City Council.
Warner concluded that the at-large voting system, one in which all residents can vote for all seven council positions, “produced racially polarized voting patterns that, in effect, kept Hispanics (who represent 73 percent of the city’s population) off the council,” reported Senior News Service Officer Lenel Parish earlier this year.
In response, the Yakima City Council has changed its at-large system to one in which only three of the seats will is at-large and the remaining four will represent specific geographic districts.
It still remains unclear, however, whether the proposed changes – part district and part at-large council seats instead of entirely district based elections – will effect the change desired by Justice Dept. or adhere to the Voting Rights Act.
Warner’s research was published in Whitman’s 2006 “State of the State for Washington Latinos,” an “account of social and political conditions for Latinos in Washington State,” according to the report. The report is available on Whitman’s website or at www.walatinos.org.

Whitman empowering youth in Sierra Leone

Youth Development Initiatives (YDI) has big plans for the future.  The group wants to continue their national development work in Sierra Leone while expanding their development model to address other nations.

Members of YDI outlined the group’s goals for the upcoming year and beyond at a Family Weekend presentation.
A completely student-run and student-funded organization, YDI is in its second year at Whitman. Founded by senior Musa Kpaka in July 2007, YDI has grown from a one-man show to an organization with a growing number of members.
YDI aims to empower young people to take an active role in national development by challenging them to design and implement small-scale community service projects that will improve the lives of those both in their community nationwide.

Kpaka’s inspiration for YDI came from a national empowerment conference he organized in the summer of 2007 for youth in his native country of Sierra Leone with a grant he was awarded from the Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects for Peace program.

Student attendees were encouraged to take an active role in community development and they learned the skills to develop and implement their own community service projects. They were challenged to create their own project proposals and the winning proposal received a grant of $500 to put their proposal into action.

Last year, YDI raised enough funds to send Kpaka, senior Carole Wilson and junior Claire Lueneburg to Sierra Leone this past summer to host a second youth empowerment workshop.

Wilson describes her experience as “absolutely phenomenal.”

“It put such a perspective on my Whitman education,” she said. “Volunteering abroad is a great chance to see why it’s important to be in school and why our education does matter. It’s sometimes easy to lose perspective of that when you’re here in Walla Walla.”

The three-day conference was held in Kpaka’s hometown of Bo, Sierra Leone and was attended by 104 high school students and 17 teachers from 17 schools. The conference emphasized the importance of teamwork and collaboration in community development and students networked with community partners and learned the skills of writing project proposals and applying for national and international grants. The students also set up community service clubs at their schools.

Similar to the previous conference, attendees created project proposals. Proposals included those for community beautification, waste removal, water sanitation, and gender sensitization.

YDI’s first goal for this year is to raise enough money to fund the five best projects from this summer’s conference. They hope to completely fund one project through Whitman’s annual Alternative Gifts Fair in November.

They are also raising money to send other YDI members back to Sierra Leone in the summer of 2009 to organize a third youth empowerment workshop, which for the first time will include homeless youths who are currently not in school in addition to high school students.

YDI’s ultimate goal is to pioneer and fund one youth-development project in each of the 14 districts in Sierra Leone. From there, they envision using their progressive, youth-centered style of development to assist other developing nations.

For those interested in becoming a member of YDI or making a donation, contact Musa Kpaka at kpakahm@whitman.edu.

This Week in Greek

Beta Theta Pi: The Beta house’s parent’s brunch went exceedingly well. Furthermore, the chapter had a good turnout for their pumpkin-carving event. Lastly, Beta buddies starts next week.

Phi Delta Theta: The Phi’s “No Shave November,” will begin on November 1st with the proceeds going to the Blue Mountain Human Society. Furthermore, the house will participate in the YMCA’s Spooktacular Halloween Carnival Friday night at 6. Lastly, the chapter’s parents’ brunch went well.

Sigma Chi: The Sig’s silent wine auction raised over $2500 for the Walla Walla S.O.S Clinic. Thank you so much to all the parents who contributed. Also, the chapter is doing the Spooktacular carnival on Friday.

Tau Kappa Epsilon: The TKE Thanksgiving dinner is scheduled for November 19th. Also, the chapter is looking forward to its upcoming scholarship event with English Professor Gaurav Majumdar, in which the house will screen clips “Apocalypse Now” to which Professor Majumdar will draw parallels with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Kappa Kappa Gamma: Kappas held their scholarship banquet on Wednesday. The chapter is similarly participating in the Spooktacular carnival, and tabling for Mr. Whitman begins on Monday.

Kappa Alpha Theta: The Thetas are also helping with the Spooktacular carnival and the parents’ open house went very well.

Delta Gamma: The DGs had a great parent’s open house. The chapter’s faculty and scholarship luncheon is next Wednesday, and Pete Reid will be speaking. Also, on Saturday the chapter made 13 quilts to benefit the Anchor School for Blind in Denver, Colorado.

Submitted by Chase Cooper, IFC President

This Week in ASWC

Sunday November 2 marks this year’s second Senate meeting. All students are welcome to attend the meeting, which will be held in RCC G02 at 7:00 p.m. Agenda items include the approval of bylaws, voting on fund requests by students over $500, a discussion of the purpose of the Savings Fund, and approval of newly appointed Oversight Committee members.

Reminder: Winterim applications due Monday outside the ASWC office, RCC 210. Pick up applications at the same location. Past programs have included overnight camping and biking trips, intensive day or multi-day workshops, and various skill building sessions ranging from ultimate Frisbee, to Chinese cooking, to henna tattoos.

The Nominations Committee is now soliciting applications for the following positions for the ‘09-’10 school year: ASWC Films Chair, ASWC Public Events Chair, ASWC Public Speakers Chair, Blue Moon Editor.  These positions are for next school year but will be hired this fall  so they can be trained during the Spring semester. Applications are due Thursday, November 13th at Midnight to the ASWC inbox. Applications are available online at: http://www.whitman.edu/content/aswc/committees/nominations/applications. Questions? Contact Julia Nelson at aswc_nominations@whitman.edu.

Submitted by Rand Biersdorff, Communications Director

Insects swarm campus, create community nuisance

The eleventh plague has not descended on campus, but students, staff, and professors alike agree:  we do have a bug problem.  Floating in rays of sunlight like specks of dust, swarming over grass and concrete, and particularly prevalent during the late afternoon hours are the winged source of campus-wide complaints.

“Lately, I have been closing my mouth and looking down… I found two gnats crushed into my eyelids,” said sophomore Jaspreet Gill.  “That was just too much.”

First-year Sam Alden also recalled his recent close encounter with the insects.

“I glanced up at the sky as I was walking in between classes and saw an enormous cloud of gnats circling the clock tower.  My first instinct, which I admit was completely divorced from rational thought, was that there was a plague of locusts,” he said.  “Even after I regained a logical frame of mind, the terror of my brush with biblical catastrophe stayed with me.”

Commonly referred to as gnats, multiple Whitman biology professors confirmed that the swarms are in fact aphids, and that their pesky presence on campus is an annual fall phenomenon primarily associated with breeding.

“What you are seeing in the October late afternoons around Ankeny field are dusky-winged ash aphids,” said Charles Drabek, Professor of Biology Emeritus.  “They are insects in the Order Homoptera, as are cicadas.”

Luckily for the close-mouthed victims of this year’s aphid attacks, their torment will be relatively short lived.

“Aphids are typically only active during the plant growing season, since they drink plant sap for food,” said Biology Professor Tim Parker.

Heidi Dobson, Professor of Biology and Whitman’s insect enthusiast, identified the aphid’s food source as the sap of poplar and cottonwood trees.  They insects also lay their eggs in the tree bark.

“Right now a new generation of winged insects is migrating to cottonwood trees,” said Dobson, adding, “The adult females produce live young asexually, building up the population as food is plentiful.”

These feeding, fornicating fiends are posing a particular inconvenience to joggers on campus.
“After two blocks we had squished gnats all over our legs and in our eyes.  The grossest was to find them on the neck,” said senior Rand Biersdorff, who also noted that she and her friends found “forward windmill” motions and “flailing appendages” to be the most effective defense mechanism against the insects.

“Once I finished my interval workout I thought it would be fun to run through the sprinklers that happened to be on,” said sophomore Geneva Faulkner.  “Bad plan.  The gnats are a nuisance normally, but were even worse on my run back to campus while wet.”

Certain members of the Whitman community are taking a more philosophical view of the insect dilemma.

“Since the swarms of gnats are likely to be ingested or inhaled, I see them symbolizing our need to occasionally close our mouths, slow down and appreciate the world around us, before the cold hits and we’re scurrying to get in warm buildings,” said Heidi Brigham, Music Listening Library Coordinator.  “If I didn’t look at them this way I’d just be annoyed.”

Biology Professor Daniel Vernon, Ph.D. offered a piece of professional advice on how to deal with the insect situation.

“Best thing to do is ride your bike around campus with your mouth open,” Vernon said.

“Enjoy them while they last!”

Students celebrate Campus Sustainability Day

Campus sustainability Coordinator Karlis Rokpelnis organized Whitman’s first Campus Sustainability Day last Wednesday, Oct. 22.  About 20 students, faculty and staff attended the events that day.  Nationwide however, colleges and universities have been holding Sustainability Day events for six years already.

“It’s about promoting sustainability as something that’s important overall but particularly at university campuses.  It’s where the young people are.  Every year they do a campus sustainability to draw attention to sustainability issues.  Several schools have sustainability fairs.  There are more than 300 schools this year doing it.  I’m trying to go for the same celebration thing,” Rokpelnis said.

So Whitman participated in a nationwide event with some history and past success at other campuses.  However, there were  live Web broadcasts of speeches and viewings that Whitman could not participate in because they started late on the East Coast, which means they would start when everyone is in class at Whitman.

There were several events on campus that day. First, there was open gardening at the Organic Garden; Professor of Geology Bob Carson gave a presentation to students and staff about living in an environmentally sustainable way; and Landscape Manager Gary Brown took students and staff on a tour of Whitman’s campus.  Culminating the event was a “shindig,” a term Rokpelnis used to describe the party at the Hunter Atrium.

“This is essentially a chance for people who don’t attend trees and landscaping meetings to hear about these things.  First and foremost [we need to] encourage more communication between the different people that do work on these things,” Rokpelnis said.

On the tour, Brown dismissed several rumors regarding Whitman’s trees.  For example, the banana tree located between the tennis courts and the library is not uprooted and taken inside the greenhouse during the winter.

“We actually just cut down the stalks and replant the tree every spring,” said Brown.
He also gave some sobering news regarding the Black Locust tree outside of Jewett and Lyman.

“The Black Locusts on campus will all be gone probably within three to five years,” said Brown.  These trees are too difficult to maintain.

Brown also revealed the faculty and administration’s role in saving several trees on campus.  The tree next to Reid Campus center that’s propped up by a metal bar was personally designated to be saved by President George Bridges.  Another such tree by the new Visual Arts building cost over $30,000 to save during the construction process.

With regard to sustainability, Brown also explained that it takes hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to maintain Ankeny field. Simply put, lawns are no longer sustainable.  They take a lot of man hours to maintain and require large amounts of water.  However, for aesthetic and admissions reasons, the landscape crew has to maintain the large number of lawns on Whitman’s campus.

After the tour, the 10 or so students, faculty and staff headed toward Hunter for a gathering of  sustainability-concerned individuals in the atrium for pumpkin pastries and punch.

Whitman recycling center now only for campus use

Until this year, the Whitman Recycling Center, located on Merriam Street, behind the Environmental Studies House (“the Outhouse”), served as a collection center for the city of Walla Walla. City residents were able to bring their recyclables to the center to be processed and then transported to the Walla Walla Recycling.

However, as the number of community members using the Recycling Center’s services increased, the college was forced to re-evaluate the Center’s role in the community.

“We have a limited sized facility and we’ve been generating about 350,000 pounds of material a year. About half of that comes from the outside community,” said Whitman Recycling Coordinator Bob Biles.

According to Biles, the Recycling Center became too much of an “eye-sore” for the surrounding residential community.

“Our options to rectify the situation were to increase the size of the facility, to hire more labor to handle the products faster, or to eliminate some of the facility’s users,” said Biles.

The college decided to go with the latter, and this fall, the Recycling Center officially closed to the Walla Walla public. Community residents have been directed to take their recyclables to the Walla Walla Recycling facility.

The Recycling Center is currently under remodel, and completion is expected for the end of the 2008 fall semester. New fencing, gates, and signage have been installed with the intention of making the facility more presentable to the neighboring residences.

Its hours have also changed. It is now open to all members of the Whitman community – students, staff, and faculty – from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. every Monday through Friday.