Decreasing consumption during holiday season

Between Thanksgiving and New Years Day, Americans produce 25% more waste than they do normally. This amounts to 25 million pounds of waste total during the holiday season.

Since we like to think of ourselves as environmentally conscientious here at Whitman, here are a few ways you might keep yourself from contributing to these numbers this year:

• Recycle wrapping paper: Many people assume that gift wrap paper isn’t recyclable because it often has a glossy finish, but with the exception of some foil and wax-coated papers, most gift wrap is recyclable.
• Find ways to creatively not use it: Consider simply using a bow to present your gift. Or make the wrapping part of the gift; for example, you might wrap a kitchen utensil in a new kitchen towel.
• Wrap in reused materials: Instead of buying a roll of gift paper, simply wrap your gifts in old paper shopping bags—go for that “brown paper packages tied up with string” look.
• Dispose of your Christmas tree properly: If you choose to keep a Christmas tree, there are a number of options you can consider when it’s time to get rid of it. Take it a local garden center to have it turned into chips or mulch. Or, better yet, get one with the roots bundled up, which can be planted when you’re done with it.
• Bring your own bags: When doing your holiday shopping, consider either bringing your own bag or reusing one. Instead of picking up a new bag at each store, consolidate all your items into one.
• Recycle your lights: Instead of throwing them away, you can recycle your old incandescent holiday lights for free at HolidayLEDs.com.
• Don’t use packing peanuts: Instead, use real popcorn. As long as you pop it without butter, it makes a perfectly suitable packing material, and once it’s served its purpose, you can have your recipient feed it to the birds.
• If you end up with them, recycle them: If you receive a parcel packed in Styrofoam peanuts, call up the Plastic Loosefill’s peanut hotline (1-800-828-2214)—they can give you the names of local businesses that reuse them.
• Give non-material gifts: Instead of giving your friends and family stuff, give them experiences. Cook them dinner, for example, or give them tickets to a play or a concert.
• Send your Christmas cards online: 123Greetings.com and many similar Web sites offer free online holiday cards.

Outdoor excursions part two: more winter fun

California: Yosemite

Admit it: as beautiful as Yosemite National Park is during the summer and spring seasons, it’s fun to see what it looks like when its snowed over.

Although Yosemite is most commonly known for its waterfalls, it also has valleys, meadows, ancient giant sequoias and a immense area of wildlife. During the winter, however, it is most commonly known for its Badger Pass Ski Area which has both downhill and cross-country skiing. Lift ticket rates range from $30 to $42 depending upon whether you’re an adult or child and whether you are going for a full day or half day. Contact information can be found at www.yosemitepark.com/badgerpass.aspx.

There does tend to be a relative fluctuation of temperature from very cold to sunny and chilly, so layering is recommended. However, the Glacier Point and Badger Pass Road are not plowed until mid December through early April, so the resort will not be accessible till then. It is advised to have tire chains, which are required on park roads.

As far as lodging goes, the city of Joshua Tree (such an amazing place that U2 named an album after it) has some great lodging for the holiday season. Guide services for rock climbing are also available and there is also great hiking available.

Colorado: Estes Park

Aside from the gorgeous scenery and historic significance of Estes Park, families should come here because Pope John Paul II and the Emperor of Japan thought it worth a visit. And they don’t even live in the United States.

Estes Park is surrounded by Rocky Mountain National Park and Roosevelt National Forest, so one can expect to see some wildlife, mountainous scenery and scenic drives. Downhill skiing, ice skating, sledding, hiking, cross-country skiing and wildlife watching are all activities available at Estes Park. An added bonus are the off season discounts available at the different varieties of lodging. The option of lodging there provides the opportunity to go skiing and rock climbing in Rocky Mountain National Park. It will be wise to stay away from areas where avalanches are a concern. To stay prepared, it is advised to either get a guide, not go to the potentially dangerous area, or learn protocol.

Maine: Appalachian Trail

If you want to take a classic hiking trip, the Appalachian Trail would be ideal. Hiking it would be feat: even though you’ll only hike (at most) a portion along two states, you can say you’ve hiked a trail that touches 14 states. If that’s not impressive I don’t know what is.

The Appalachian Trail in Maine spans approximately 281 miles, elevation ranging from 490—5,267 feet. The difficulty varies upon the different portions of the trail, but families can hike any portion during winter. The northern sections tend to be need snow gear and camping equipment, but the southern portions need only warm clothing and normal hiking attire. The entirety of the trail spreads several thousand miles, so trips can vary from a day hike to a week-long excursion.

New York: Adirondack Mountains

The Adirondack mountains is one of the oldest state parks in the country and was home to the 1932 and 1980 Olympics, both of which were held at Lake Placid. The word ‘vacation’ was also invented in the Adirondacks. In the early 1900s, people began realizing a correlation between the heat in the summertime and fevers so the upper-class decided to vacate the city for some fresher air. Hence the reason why we use the term ‘vacation’ unlike the Brits who say ‘holiday’.

Some activities available at the Adirondacks are downhill and cross-country skiing, ice skating, snow-shoeing and ice-climbing. Lodging is also available at the variety of options available and the Adirondack Mountain Club also provides lodging. The website has more information is necessary: www.visitadirondacks.com.

Arizona: Kofa National Wildlife Refuge

For families who do not prefer snowy holidays, there are some attractions in the heat of Arizona. Kofa National Wildlife Refuge is located in the desert of Southwest Arizona, marking a 25 by 40 mile area clear of roads and facilities. Ideal for photography, birding and desert hiking, the refuge’s most popular attraction is the Palm Canyon, appropriately named due to its existence as the last location where Arizona houses palm trees. If you are to go desert hiking, bring lots and lots of water.

Needless to say, the refuge is in a desert in Arizona, where temperatures can get up well into the hundreds in the summertime. The hiking trails are actually at a lower elevation, so they are located close to Yuma. Yuma and Ehrenberg are the best bets for finding lodging.

Whitman may see smart classrooms in the future

Class is about to start as a Whitman student walks in on the first day. The classroom looks new and fancy and when he sits down at his desk instead of finding some old wooden writing surface there is a laptop waiting for his personal use.

This dream of the future is now coming to reality in several classrooms across campus which were recently revamped to be “smart classrooms.” These fully smart classrooms are so far only installed in a few auditorium-sized classrooms like the Brattain Auditorium in the Science Building, but may start appearing in more places across campus in the next few years.

Walking into one of these classrooms appears no different than walking into just a normal, if somewhat fancy-looking and new, classroom. However at all of the desks there are several black rectangles with a sticker in the bottom left corner saying “push here.” Upon duly pushing upon said sticker the black rectangle opens up to reveal a fully functional, completely new Apple laptop.

These computer stations are positioned so that every two or three people can use a single laptop. As one of the more fancy attempts at modernizing classrooms and reducing our environmental footprint, these classrooms are among a wave of programs Whitman College is implementing to try and reduce its paper use by as much as possible. Among the other possible ways to reduce this pollution are putting quotas on free printing for students in the library.

Many professors have not yet figured out how to incorporate the laptops into the class. The Principles of Astronomy class has used the laptops several times, according to Professor Ulysses Sofia, but they have not been used more than a few times.

When using the laptops the screen that appears on the laptop simultaneously appears on a computer at the front of the classroom so that the professors can see what the computers are being used for.

For the professor’s sakes this cuts down on the misuse of the laptops during class time and insures that students are not just surfing the Internet while class is being taught.

The trend towards making classrooms more technological is a recent shift in many colleges and universities besides Whitman. In another few years it may become standard for classrooms to have laptops at the desks, but for now it is still a new phenomena.

What the laptops benefit in helping with class interactivity and reducing the need for paper, there are still problems with the implementation. It is very expensive to build and maintain these smart classrooms and the laptop “boxes” built into the tables are bulky, often getting in the way when the laptops are not being used.

Perhaps this new trend is the wave of the future, but for now adding laptops to the classrooms is a somewhat problematic, if snazzy, way to reduce our need for using large amounts of paper and to make classes more interactive.

Campus Climate Challenge raises funds for solar panel

After a successful first semester, with such triumphs as Power Vote and an Anderson blackout, the Campus Climate Challenge is ready to tackle solar panels on top of Jewett.

Because of Jewett’s very large flat roof, 130 solar panel “modules” will hopefully be installed on top of the freshman dorm. Each module is 1,984 square inches and produces about .08 watts of electricity, totaling 257,920 square inches of solar module. This would be enough energy to power the dorm during the summer when the college may hold conferences on campus.

The solar panels would also be used as an educational tool for the Whitman and Walla Walla communities. The project itself will offset power costs at the current per kWH rate of $.04, and will make the college eligible for tax incentives through Washington State’s Investment Cost Recovery Program.

“Over a period of five years, the college would see about $18,000 in savings,” Jed Schwendiman, associate to the president, said.

The college is working with Alpha Technology in Bellingham to design the actual system and keep the total costs as low as possible. A representative from Alpha has visited a couple times to make measurements and collect information.

“As far as I know,” said Gary Wang, sophomore co-president of CCC, “The solar panels would be hooked into Whitman’s energy grid.”

The 23kw solar panel array would cost between $170,000 to $180,000, each square inch costing about 70 cents, each square foot $100, and each square yard $900. However, the club is unsure of how much the college and student groups have raised so far this year.

“The college is always looking for ways to reduce costs without compromising the size and quality of the solar system,” said Wang.

The college has won a $51,750 grant from Pacific Power over the summer, which will be used to fund this project.

To raise more money, Campus Climate Challenge is currently doing a large fund-raising campaign. Students in the club have signed up for specific numbers of pre-written letters.

“We’re just talking to people and asking them if they want to send these letters to parents, relatives, or friends: anyone who would be interested in this project and perhaps contributing towards it,” Wang said.

Last year, Campus Climate Challenge collectively raised over $14,000, which is now being used for the solar panel project.

To expedite the fund-raising process, CCC has included the solar panel project as a gift option in the Alternative Gift Market that the Center of Community Service has sponsored. They are selling ten square inches of solar panel for $7.

Other groups and individuals are also involved with this collaborative project.

The Alternative Energy Student Fund Team put together a letter as part of their annual fund raising efforts, and the class of 1999 is raising funds for the solar project as part of their ten-year reunion gift.

“Professor Bob Carson has also written a letter to many of his former students to support the project,” Schwendiman said, “Some staff and faculty have made personal gifts to the project, and the Development Office is also working with individuals and applying for additional grants. All the funds being raised go into an account that will be used for the solar panel project.”

The club is aiming to finish fund-raising by the end of spring semester. Wang expects donations to come in as the semester progresses, but the letters will be going out this week and the next.

After the letters, the team hopes the construction will begin.

“We expect to have detailed installation plans from Alpha at the end of the semester or the first part of the next year,” said Schwendiman, “We hope to install the panels over the summer.”

Eighty-eight ways to say ‘mediocre’

If there’s anything impressive about The 88, a Los Angeles-based pop-rock band, it’s the fact that their third album—“Not Only…But Also”—was financed on the licensing of their music to film and TV. From “The OC” to the new (read: awful) “90210,” the band’s already made their name just being the background music for ‘tween soap operas. So, yes – kudos to The 88 for being proactive with their connections.

The music itself, though? Well…

Sporting production from Babyface and Matt Wallace, “Not Only” hits the door running with opener “Go Go Go.” Lead singerand guitarist Keith Slettedahl sings, “Well, I was stranded on the ocean/I was drowning there at best/So I came unto your desert” before belting out a string of go-go-go’s.

The same pleasantly-cheesy riffs continue on “Love You Anytime” and “Coming Home,” going back-and-forth with the ever-dependable motif of love peppered in The 88’s lyrics. The songs are infectious enough, devoid of the holier-than-thou pretentions of, say, The Killers. “Not Only” is a very safe and clean album so far, and the sub-60s beats and guitar twangs that populate each track don’t annoy too much.

However, after a few more tracks, buyer’s remorse sets in: The 88 don’t really seem to push themselves here. Comfortable, yes, but “Not Only” doesn’t try to expand itself either. What do you do when you run out of bouncy carefree tunes? Do a ballad of course! Except the ballads on this album, like “No One Here,” are out of date. The band doesn’t seem quite interested in fleshing them out either, and so the album almost implodes on itself by becoming generic. Thankfully, tunes “Sons and Daughters” and “Like You Do” (a song which sounds like a better version of Maroon 5’s “If I Never See Your Face Again”) prevent the album from its descent into sappiness.

Still, it’s hard to come away from “Not Only…But Also” with much of an impression, because it really is background music. You can put the CD in and bide your time twiddling your thumbs, and you’ll never notice the difference between the eleven tracks that make up the album since they all blend in together. The energy that starts the album off gradually peters out. Hopefully for their next album, The 88 will focus on branching out in their songwriting rather than going crazy with placements on “Gossip Girl.”

No ‘Shadow’ of a doubt

Harper Joy Theatre’s upcoming play “The Shadow” had its beginnings as a fairy tale written by Hans Christian Anderson in 1847.

Jewish author Yevgheny Shvarts, living in Soviet Russia, politicized the content of Anderson’s tale and turned it into a full length play in 1940. In a climate of political repression, Shvarts’ play balanced classic fairy tale elements with darker themes more appropriate to the times.

Sixty-eight years later, Harper Joy Theatre is producing this rarely performed play, in which a traveling scholar enters a fairy tale world and employs the help of his shadow to court a princess. The play builds tension by making the fairy-tale ending uncertain.

Despite coming from a very specific political context, the merits of the play make it applicable and worthwhile for a contemporary audience.

“Although the play was written in response to the rise of Stalin, like a fairy-tale, it speaks on an archetypical level,” explained Director Chris Petit via e-mail. “I find it entirely relevant to the world we live in.”

“It’s very clever . . . but it also has this darker, more political side,” said senior Rosie Brownlow, who plays the Doctor. “It’s all about staying in power and keeping the rich safe and the masses satiated.”

“[The script] was incredible, hilarious; it has a lot of depth” said sophomore Trevor Cushman, who plays the Shadow.

To serve the script, the cast needs to be extremely high energy.

“It moves at a crackling, zippy pace, because it has to,” said Brownlow.

To this end, Petit “definitely drives us [the cast] quite a bit,” said Cushman, who counted working with Petit as his primary reason for auditioning. “It’s an intense process with him . . . we all learn a lot, and I feel that the product in the end is quite incredible.”

The actors make their own choices, and Petit tells them what does and does not work.

“Theater is always a collaborative art, and all the participants from the actors to the designers to the stage crew bring their own unique talents to the process,” said Petit.

This process promises to deliver an interesting play.

“We’re not dealing with kitchen-sink realism,” said Brownlow. “It’s a very heightened, stylized kind of acting, so it’s been very cool to work on that.”

Cushman developed his role by relating it to real life.

“I just try to approach it as if the Shadow is just a normal human being, albeit he has this circumstance of being someone’s shadow.”

The actors try to create a framework of actions to work with, but this can only take them so far.

“At a certain point you really have to stop worrying so much about whether you’re getting it right and go with what feels authentic for you onstage,” said Cushman. “You always really want there to be an improvisational aspect so that it seems like life onstage.”

This connection to real life is perhaps what gives the play its power.

“We can laugh at how ridiculous it all seems, but then it dawns on us that this seemingly foreign and bizarre world is not really so different from our own,” explained Petit. “That for me is the highest purpose of theater.”

Tickets for “The Shadow” are currently on sale at the Harper Joy box office. The play opens today, Thursday, Dec. 11, and runs through Sunday, Dec. 14.

‘TREE-SPEAK’ burrows into different dance roots

The minutes after the last performance of Whitman Dance Theater’s “TREE-SPEAK” were over-the-top.

Dancers in fairy-like costumes and street clothes lavished one another with hugs.

A few proud parents showed up with the requisite bunches of flowers and friends snapped picture after picture of the dancers in their colorful clown-meets-prostitute stage make up.

The photos, flowers and hugs marked the end of close to three months of training by first-time dancers and old pros alike.

While the chaos following a show is nothing new, “TREE-SPEAK” marked a new arena in one aspect or another for most of the dancers.

The performance, which consisted of four separate dances, brought together a wealth of different forms of dance and different sorts of dancers in the last hurrah of the semester for Whitman Dance Theater.

“Dance-wise, it was the most comprehensive [performance] in terms of the types of dance,” said senior Kate Greenberg, who preformed in three of the four dances.

The second piece, “Dhoom,” a hip-hop dance choreographed by senior Ozzie Angel that boasted a cast of over 25 dancers, brought both first-time and experienced dancers to the stage.

It was the first time this group of hip-hop dancers had ever performed.

For first-year Brenton Weyi, a first-time performer, his path to the stage of Cordiner was completely by chance.

“I was walking down the street and Ozzie [Angel] said, ‘Be in my dance performance,’ so I just followed him to the dance studio,” said Weyi. “We [Weyi and friend Adam Bronstein] were hella reluctant at first.”

But after months of putting in close to eight hours of work per week, both Weyi and Bronstein, their faces glowing, said they hoped to continue dancing.

“If there’s another hip-hop one, I’d totally dance again,” said Bronstein, a first-year.

It wasn’t just the first-time dancers who enjoyed Tree Speak.

“It made me totally fall more in love with dance,” said sophomore Lauralee Woods, who also danced in “Dhoom.”

Whitman Dance Theater is not a class. The majority of the students, under the supervision of Vicki Lloid, do everything themselves without earning any credit.

Dancers noted that this student initiative-based atmosphere breeds both a tight-knit community and unique dancing.

“We really lucked out with a great group of people,” said junior Kelli Kuhlman.

“What was unique about this semester was we got to have a fair amount of improvisation,” said Greenberg. “Vicki laid out some of the framework, then we got to fill in the framework with our own moves, make it our own.”

Whether in dance, friends or getting to perform, people enjoyed the novelty of “Tree-Speak.”

“I put on make up for the first time yesterday,” said Weyi, smiling beneath his colorful eye shadow and rouge.

Hall Music: Best of 2008

Six records that I failed to cover in 500 words or less:

Beach House – Devotion (Carpark)

I didn’t much care for Beach House’s self-titled debut. I couldn’t find anything worth digging into in their songs, and I couldn’t find something that made them more compelling than oft-compared-to Mazzy Star and Galaxie 500. “Devotion,” however, won me over completely. Both Victoria Legrand’s organ and Alex Scally’s guitar work are vastly improved, and they’ve grown as songwriters, turning girl group music into ghostly dirges that sound as haunted as I never knew they always needed to be.

Why? – Alopecia (Anticon)

Yoni Wolf’s bad-year write-up as not-really-an-indie-rap record is brilliantly detailed, dark, dense and often quite funny, proving both his versatility as a writer and a singer. It’s arguably the best record to emerge from the often-difficult Anticon collective, if not the most pop-oriented. Self-filmed fake deaths, the sound of pocket change pulsing, hearts as big as Texas and whatever else rolled into sprawling autobiography as pop music never sounded quite like this.

Los Campesinos! – Hold On Now, Youngster…/We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (Wichita/Arts & Crafts)

This Welsh septet baffles me for several reasons, since by all logic I shouldn’t like them. Their records are mixed too loud, they write songs about being music nerds and their narratives are utterly angst-ridden. But it turns out that their songs are relentlessly catchy, so well-arranged and so consistently clever that both excellent records they released this year won me over completely. The growth they showed in the eight months they took to ready a follow-up is astounding, and their sound is so joyous that I couldn’t help but give in. When frontman Gareth shouts that “Four sweaty boys with guitars tell me nothing about my life!” on “Youngster”’s “And We Exhale and Roll Our Eyes In Unison,” I know exactly what he means, and I thank him for being part of the solution.

Okkervil River – The Stand Ins (Jagjaguwar)

What makes this companion to last year’s “The Stage Names” so fascinating is the fact that frontman Will Sheff transformed his conceptual second part of a double album into a rebuttal of everything that preceded it. “The Stage Names” presented the touring band’s world as one of conquests, albeit melancholic ones; “The Stand Ins” takes its characters and inverts them, revealing their hopes as foolish at best and self-destructive at worst. The biggest chorus is about the falseness of choruses, the narratives can’t end happily no matter what melody carries them and the guitar solos are utterly sincere. The skeleton grasping at the liquor bottle on the cover says everything else.

Max Tundra – Parallax Error Beheads You (Domino)

This is a polarizing record. Despite the fact that these are at heart songs about having friends and breaking up with girls, two things everyone loves songs about, Ben Jacobs’ pop music is absurd, hyperactive and something that one either falls for entirely or can’t stand. Chaotic yet undeniable melodies abound, often simultaneously and in rapid succession, and the record as a whole is either a brilliant, explosive parody of dance-pop or the best Dan Deacon songs I’ve ever heard. Absolutely essential.

Writers drop pencils, grab mics for Quarterlife

This year, instead of throwing their familiar release parties, Quarterlife is holding open mic nights to celebrate the issuing of their publication. 

Though the release parties were popular and widely successful, the Quarterlife staff decided to go in a different direction after Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC) changed the student group alcohol policy to discourage campus organizations from serving alcohol at group related functions. 

Instead of having a dry party, Quarterlife decided to try something completely new in hosting open mic events. The first event successfully took place on Friday, Dec. 5.

Sophomore Robin Lewis, member of the Quarterlife selection committee, planned and orchestrated the event. 

“We decided not to have a party again because we did not feel that we could attract a similar crowd without alcohol,” said Lewis.

The open mic event moved the focus of the Quarterlife celebrations away from the party atmosphere. 

Instead, the event gave writers the opportunity to orally express their work to an audience. Anastasia Zamkinos, the head of Quarterlife, was pleased with the success of the event. 

“The open mic was a way to yet again bring together the creative writing community at Whitman,” said Zamkinos. 

The open mic coordinators invited anyone to sign up ahead of time, while strongly encouraging authors published in the most recent Quarterlife to participate. The coordinators received an overwhelming number of responses, which reaffirmed the writing community’s enthusiasm for Quarterlife, but also limited the group in providing a creative, free-form forum. 

“It was kind of unfortunate that so many people signed up because the event turned out to be a little too organized,” said Lewis. 

Despite that, however, the event was successful in bringing together, encouraging and inspiring the Whitman writing community.

“There was someone sitting next to me who was actually so inspired by one of the readings that he took out a pencil and paper and scribbled down an idea; by the time the open mic segment of the event began, he had written a piece and decided to read it aloud to everyone,” said Zamkinos. 

That kind of inspiration and creativity is what Quarterlife seeks to promote with every theme, issue and event they bring to campus. 

Quarterlife uses theme-based writing to provide a starting point from which writers can expand. They strive to focus their publication toward the production side of creativity rather than the exhibition side.

“I think Quarterlife differs from other literary publications in that it is striving to be a little more informal and experimental. We are looking not just for traditional poetry or prose. If writers are inspired to submit haiku or limericks or letters or journalism, we are looking to get different forms of writing in our publication,” said Lewis.

All students are invited to be a part of Quarterlife by submitting to their publication, reading at future open mics, sending them ideas or applying to be on their staff next year. Interested students should contact Anastasia Zamkinos for more information.

A fence separates ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’

As I left the theater, I found myself incapable of controlling my emotions.  

Director Mark Herman’s “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” is a rough movie to watch: not rough in the sense that it shows graphic scenes or builds a vivid attachment to a suffering character, but rough in that it stirs up emotions that have been built up over the years

“Pajamas” is based on John Boyne’s bestselling novel of the same title.  The story follows young eight-year old Bruno (Asa Butterfield) in the middle of World War II.  Bruno lives comfortably in Berlin, but soon he moves with his parents into the countryside.  See, his father (David Thewlis) is a Nazi official and has just been promoted to a very important position that requires him to relocate to a region away from major civilization.

Their new industrial home is surrounded by high walls and guarded by Nazi soldiers who frequent the house for meetings with Bruno’s father.  Bruno is horribly bored, separated from much of society (a tutor comes to teach him and his sister, so no school either).  Out of his bedroom window, he notices a large farm about a mile away from the house and asks his mom (Vera Farminga) why all the strange farmers are wearing striped pajamas.  She skirts over the question, which of course provokes him to find out for himself.  He sneaks out of his house and runs to the farm to find that there’s an eight-year old boy in striped pajama, named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), behind the electric fence. The two become friends and visit as often as they can.  Bruno doesn’t understand exactly what’s going on and why this farm exists.  Shmuel knows it’s not a farm, but he really doesn’t understand anything either, besides the fact that he is there because he’s a Jew.  

The majority of the film is told purely from Bruno’s perspective.  We see the parents and their friends only acting as they would in front of a young child, and only get the boy’s view of the world.  This is why the film is so painful, as the audience is aware of the horror while the film keeps hiding it.  

Herman really does a beautiful job of keeping the story grounded in Bruno’s perspective, which brings about such interesting questions: What did the Nazis who worked at the concentration camps tell their children and family?  Bruno’s father says that the only thing Bruno has to know about his work is that he is doing it for the good of the country and to provide a better life for Bruno in the future.  This story humanizes those under the Nazi regime, especially Bruno’s mother, who shows a passive disapproval of what is going on. 

The film sticks to this very innocent point-of -view until the very end.  This is where the film distinguishes itself from being akin to a made-for-TV movie.  For the majority of the story, the film is lighthearted and simplistic.  The director changes, though, towards the end and switches the perspective from young Bruno to about young Bruno.  All of a sudden, we are thrown into an omniscient point-of-view, no longer protected by the eyes and mind of a young child.  

The reality of the Holocaust hits home.  How could human beings possibly do this to one another?  How can someone’s life be completely out of his or her own control and be subjected to such cruelty?  How easily could this have happened to me?  You don’t ask these questions until the very end of the movie, since you really have no reason to until the security blanket is taken away.  Everything we know about the Holocaust—the atrocious, despicable, inhuman events of which no words can capture the ugliness, rush to the front of your mind all at once without preparing you for it.  

Some noteworthy things are that the film is completely in English, with actors using British accents.  I found this bothersome for the first hour of the film, but it’s not nearly as distracting as having fake German accents speaking English words, like in “Schindler’s List.”  Still, I wish they chose an all-German cast and just had subtitles.  But it doesn’t matter, because after an hour, you let go of this distraction and are encapsulated by the story.  

It’s a very simple film that attacks the Holocaust very differently from any other film. Not everyone who left the theater was affected to the same degree as me.  Such is the beauty of film though: it’s personal.  

Employee of the week: Shaw ‘Shawnie’ Harris

How did you wind up working as a custodian for Whitman?

I was born here in Walla Walla, moved when I was 9, and proceeded to go to 12 different schools in the next five years all over California and Idaho. I went to a culinary arts school in Spokane and got an AA degree in Culinary Arts. I like cookin’ anything and everything.

I was working at Walla Walla Community College before I started working here. I worked for five years at Eastern Washington University. When I moved down here, I was looking for something similar. I love being around the kids – my kids. I always call them “my little sweetheart” and they say, “Oh, we’re all your little sweethearts.”

What do you love about working in Lyman?

I love all the students that come in this building. I learn almost every one of their names. I’m going on 500 names now! I make an effort and usually have them all down by winter break, although it’s a little more difficult now that we have another custodian.

I love working in Lyman because it’s a little bit smaller, plus it’s got all 4 years mixed all over the building. Also, it’s boys and girls, which makes it really nice for the freshmen, to have upperclassmen to turn to.

What is the craziest thing you’ve seen in the residence hall?

Well, on April Fools’ day a few years’ back, when I came in on Monday, the kids had taken one of the stalls apart upstairs and placed it in front of the RD’s apartment. Plus, they took the door handle to the D and E section so that nobody could get in or out. They’ve stacked furniture to the ceiling. There were two couches and two chairs missing – but I got ‘em back. I don’t know who took ‘em, I don’t care who took ‘em, but I got ‘em back.

What do you enjoy about being a part of the Walla Walla and Whitman community?

I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for those students who got left behind. I like going to all of the sporting events. I’m a club sports coach: a glorified chaperone. I have gone on trips with the Tae Kwon Do Club, gone to Lewiston with the triathletes, and to Spokane with the Hockey Team.

Some of the students here are in Theatre, so I go to some of the Theatre things when they’re acting in it. Dragfest is fun – I always show up for a half an hour to see how everybody looks.

I like talking to the kids and seeing how their vacations were and how they’re doing in classes. Being able to be around the kids 8 hours a day is great – I don’t think I could work the midnight shift over in the academic buildings.

Is there any interesting talents students don’t know you have?

I won a horseshoe competition once in California – I was the only girl that was playing. Nobody knows how to play horseshoes anymore, I don’t think. I played Powder-puff football in high school, and I was on the drill team. That was a long time ago, though. I still like to dance. I love seventies’ music, but I like country music. I like to do the country swing, too.

Beans make perfect meal in busy winter

It’s hard to find time to cook at this point in the semester.  Lunches and dinners become hastily assembled sandwiches, bowls of cereal or quesadillas.  We’re supposed to be gearing up for finals and when we’re not doing that we want to relax and not toil in the kitchen for hours.  Frankly, we are tired, trips to the grocery store have become more and more infrequent, and we are ready to go home to a full pantry and parents eager to feed us.  So, what to fill our bodies with for the next week?  

The answer is…beans!  Cooking up a big batch of dried beans is an easy, cheap and versatile way to provide yourself with food to eat for a good while.   Dried beans are significantly cheaper than their canned counterpart and you can cook them up so that you can throw them into whatever you’re making (or make them the centerpiece of your meals).  I suggest cooking a few cups of dried beans at a time so that you can keep a container of cooked beans in the fridge for everything from quesadillas to stews and soups to bean salads to inspire your meals for the next week or so.  Beans contain more protein than any other plant food and are also a good source of amino acids, especially if combined with a grain like rice or corn.

Select a variety

Get yourself some beans.  In Walla Walla, visit Andy’s or Super One to buy beans in bulk.  These beans are usually fresher than pre-packaged bags so they won’t take as long to cook and will have better texture.  Try black beans or pinto beans for your first time around because of their versatility.  Then experiment with other varieties like kidney, cannellini, fava or pink.

Clean, Rinse and Soak beans

The first step is soaking your beans.  Measure out two cups of beans, pull out any small rocks or discolored beans, and then rinse the beans in cold water.  Soak the beans overnight in a large bowl covered with at least six cups of cool water (you’ll be surprised how much water they can absorb).  Beans should soak anywhere from 4-24 hours so that they cook quickly and are easier to digest.  If you don’t have time, don’t fret, but know your beans will need to cook longer.  

Cook

Drain the soaking water, cover the beans with fresh water in a large pot and bring to a rolling boil for five minutes.  While the beans are boiling, cut up an onion or two and few cloves of garlic.  Remove any scum that has risen to the surface of the pot and turn the heat down to a simmer.  Add onions, garlic and any other aromatics to flavor your beans.  Aromatics include: bay leaves, dried chilies, sage, parsley, thyme, cilantro or rosemary. You can’t really go wrong here.  Cook the beans with the lid partially on until the beans are tender (about an hour).  Add hot water as needed so that the beans are constantly covered with liquid.  

Season and Store

When the beans are tender and creamy inside, add 1 teaspoon salt and other spices such as 1 teaspoon each cumin and chili powder.  Do not add the salt earlier because it will make the beans tough.  Keep cooking beans until they are soft, but not mushy.  When they are done let them cool in their broth and transfer them to a container.  Store in the fridge where beans will keep up to a week.   

Feast

Here are ways to incorporate beans into your every meal.  For breakfast try making huevos rancheros by heating up some black beans (without their liquid) and throwing melted cheese, a fried egg and salsa on top.   For other meals, make some of your beans into soup or chili by adding carrots, greens, celery, canned tomatoes and chili powder to the beans with their broth and cook until the vegetables are tender.  Eat tacos and burritos all the time, sautéing up an onion until soft and then adding pre-cooked beans.  Beef up your quesadillas with a splatter of beans.  You can even add rice and more water to your beans halfway through the cooking process and end up with a pot of mixed rice and beans.  The possibilities are endless; if you get tired of beans you’re not being creative enough.  Search online for bean stew or soup recipes if you need more direction.  Make yourself some beans and good luck with the rest of the semester.  

Memorial honors life of staff member Laura Ealy

Laura Ealy, a custodian in Maxey Hall with 18 years of service to the Whitman community, passed away suddenly on Nov. 25. The cause of her death is not known.

Laura’s vibrant personality and lively spirit will not be forgotten.

Friends and family members flooded Maxey Auditorium on Tuesday, Dec. 2, for a memorial service held in her honor. Reverend Adam Kirtley, the Stuart Coordinator of Religious and Spiritual Life at Whitman, officiated. Many of Laura’s friends introduced themselves as cousins or other relatives, demonstrating Laura’s unconditional love for others. Her immense impact on all of those with whom she interacted was apparent simply by surveying the scene at her memorial service.
Seattle Seahawks jerseys, sweatshirts, and hats replaced the typical funeral garb as the outfit of choice. Laura was an avid Seahawks fan, to the point of superstition. She always wore the same Seattle Seahawks jersey when cheering on the football team. In fact, she was buried in that jersey—and her Levis.

“Not just jeans—Levis. She was very particular,” said Laura’s close friend, Ginni Delavan.

Laura had recently begun playing football herself, through her fantasy football team Walla Blue. The fantasy football team became something of an obsession: Laura was competitive by nature.
The Walla Walla Women’s Invitational Pool League served as another outlet for her competitive tendencies. Her close friend Laura Webb guesses that she had been a member of the League for more than 15 years. At the time of her death, she was in her second year as League President.
Tracy Jones, a member of the Pool League, described Laura’s skill as a mediator.

“Oh boy, did she resolve some conflicts!” said Jones, emphasizing Laura’s diplomatic manner.

“She would stand up and say something when the rest of us couldn’t” commented Debbie Remillard, a fellow Pool League member.

Laura was born on Feb. 8, 1962 in Marengo, Iowa. She lived with her family in Iowa and then in Wisconsin before moving to Walla Walla in 1975. Walla Walla has been her home ever since.

She worked at Macy’s and then at D & K Cannery before arriving at Whitman in 1990. She started off working in Cordiner Hall and was later promoted to assistant custodial supervisor of Cordiner Hall.
Several years later, she gave up her post in Cordiner to work as a custodian in Maxey Hall. She made the switch so that she could work the day shift instead of the night shift—she wanted to be around people. Her daily shift in Maxey lasted from 4 A.M. until noon, giving her ample time to make friends.

“She was really happy in Maxey because she was around students and faculty. She felt appreciated,” explained Delavan.

Teresa Swiger, another member of the Pool League, agreed.

“Laura liked her job so much because she got to take care of people—she liked giving,” she said.
Lori Bettison-Varga, the Provost and Dean of Faculty at Whitman College, emphasized Laura’s dedication to Whitman and her immense pride in her work.

“This was more than just a job. Whitman was more than just a workplace: it was an integral part of her identity and life,” she explained.

Laura will be remembered for her outgoing personality, strong opinions and special quirks. Most importantly, though, she’ll be remembered for her generosity and the profound impact she had on everyone she met.

“She was one of those people that always wanted everything to be right: not just for one person, but for everybody,” explained Nina Hill, one of many that mourns Laura’s death but also celebrates her existence.

First-years, seniors most stressed Whitties

As all Whitman students know, “I’m so stressed out!” is one of the most overheard phrases on campus. When Whitman lost happiness points from the Princeton Review this past year—dropping from #1 to #17 on its annual list of Happiest Students—many speculated that Whitman students may be experiencing more stress, begging the question: Which students are the most stressed, and why? While all individual students feel stressed-out during their college years, Whitman counselors agree that collectively, first-years and seniors experience the most stress as they face difficult transitions into new stages of life.

“Stress is a term with broad scope and depth in the world of psychology and counseling,” said Tracee Anderson, a counselor at the Welty Center. “Stress manifests itself in the student population in many, many ways: depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance use, sleep disorders, somatization, disruptions in relationships, academic problems, risky behavior, deterioration of overall functioning, existential crises, etc.” Somatization is a psychological disorder that occurs when emotional stress causes a person to develop unexplained physical ailments.

The causes of stress are just as numerous as its manifestations; nervous tension can result from anything and everything. First-years and seniors, however, may feel stress most acutely because they are reacting to new and challenging situations: adapting to Whitman life or preparing to leave it behind. Like similar small liberal arts colleges, Whitman’s Counseling Center serves about 23% of the total student population each year, with first-years and senior students constituting a large percentage of this group.

“Experts say that not knowing what to expect from your environment causes anxiety,” said Assistant Dean of Students Clare Carlson. “Being a waiter in a restaurant is thought to be the most stressful job because it’s hard to predict whether the food you serve is going to be good and whether you will be praised or yelled at by your customers—in other words, they feel they have little control over how well they do. First-year students often feel this kind of anxiety because they are not sure what they can do to succeed. When they first get to Whitman, they are uncertain about what it takes to make friends or do well academically.”

Anderson agrees with Carlson that first-years make up one of the most stressed groups on campus.

“I believe that many first-year students come to college following a very busy and successful experience in high school. They arrive at Whitman and quickly learn that the load is frequently harder and busier than at home and they don’t necessarily have practice in the total independent management of their own lives.”

The pressure of the first year not only affects the students themselves; while first-years are facing exhausting new challenges and expectations, their Resident Assistants (RAs) are also feelings the stress.

“Most Whitman students are already overachievers, and I feel like most RAs are overachievers to the greatest degree,” said James Bevan-Lee, an RA in Lyman Hall. “When you’re an RA, you never really feel satisfied with how you’re doing as an RA because there is always something more you can do to improve the life of your residents and the section as a whole. Always knowing you can do something better is a difficult thing to get your head around.”

While the pressure of being an RA motivates Bevan-Lee, others feel paralyzed by stressful situations. According to Carlson, the key to coping with stress is to understand that stress is not a problem in itself, but a reaction to a problem.

“What I have noticed is that students handle stress in different ways—those that feel that they have some level of control or have options do better than those that feel their situation is hopeless no matter what they do. The secret to handling stress is in realizing that we have more control than we think. We may not be able to control the bad things that happen to us or those we care about, but we can control how we react to them.”

This advice is particularly relevant to seniors, who face a notoriously daunting workload as they race to complete credits, pass finals and score big on assessment tests.

“In talking to a lot of other seniors over the past couple months, most of us feel pretty similarly in that while we definitely feel some stress about the importance of the work we have to do, and how directly that work ties into graduating, the work itself doesn’t feel as daunting as we’ve made it out to be in our mind,” said one senior English major. “It’s hard to worry past a certain point when I know I can only study or write so much, and that thinking about it too much just exaggerates its importance in my mind. That said, I’m still nervous about doing well on all my senior stuff, and I’m going to study really hard in order to get good scores, but I’m doing it with the knowledge that it’s all still under my control.”

Hot Poop state’s oldest independent record shop

Thirty-five years ago, Jim McGuinn opened a record shop on Main Street with the goal of eventually starting a preschool. McGuinn, who has an associate degree in child development, never expected to continue in the record business for long, let alone become the owner of the oldest independent record shop in Washington.

With the striking title, Hot Poop, McGuinn’s shop immediately catches the attention of downtown Walla Walla’s visitors and passersby. Understandably, the name of his shop has generated recognition for McGuinn.

Contrary to popular belief, the shop was never called “Hot Shit.” McGuinn explained that the name Hot Poop is a pun on pop music, which is popular for a very short amount of time, but quickly loses its appeal, or “hotness,” and becomes hot poop. This explanation did not work on phone companies.

“The phone companies wouldn’t take the name ‘Hot Poop’ because it was offensive, so I told them to call the shop ‘Hot Poop Cultural Shop and Self-Help Therapy,’” said McGuinn.

Though the store is now listed in the phonebook as “Hot Poop Stereo and Video,” McGuinn justifies this title by explaining that he offers therapy through selling music and interaction that benefits both himself and the customers.

“I trade blues for blues. CDs and music make people feel better, and money in the till makes me feel better,” said McGuinn. “I treat people how I would want to be treated by giving them good advice and taking them out into the store to help them find the specific group or song that they are looking for. I really enjoy talking to customers about music. We see interest in a lot of different types of music.”

McGuinn offers a wide variety of music in his shop in order to meet the needs of an assortment of his customers’ interests. While he claims to have the best classical tunes in town, McGuinn does not boast that he knows everything there is to know about music.

“I like to think that I track popular music to a degree, but it changes a lot, so I probably don’t. I sell a lot but I don’t always know what it is,” said McGuinn.

As a “victim of packaging,” McGuinn expects to hear what is portrayed on the cover of CDs, and therefore skips over listening to a lot of music. However, he is continually surprised by the music that he is introduced to by his customers once he looks past the cover.

While running the store has mostly been a positive experience for McGuinn, there have been challenges. During his first month in operation, Hot Poop was robbed, which was not the greatest way to start off. McGuinn related his persistence despite setbacks to a grade school fight.

“In grade school, you get in a fight that you know you can’t win, but you stay in it in order to save face and show that you can do it,” said McGuinn. “I’m going to ride the pony until it goes down.”

At the moment, the pony seems to be standing pretty firm on his feet. While some customers look into the store and walk out, those who take the time to browse around are impressed by the shop’s welcoming atmosphere and edgy style. During the holiday season, McGuinn has more selection in his store so that customers can get what they’re looking for in time, whereas big corporations like Amazon and Wal-Mart do not offer the same convenience.

McGuinn’s ultimate goal is to continue providing for his customers as long as possible.

“At your ten-year reunion, I want you to be able to come back into the shop and find the music that you listened to in high school,” he said. “Being able to remember childhood is comforting. I keep an older selection so that people can come in and buy back their childhood in the form of music.”

Bon Appetit, Campus Greens decrease tray count

A month ago, the student run group Campus Greens’s Water Campaign approached Bon Appetit about moving toward permanent tray-less dining halls in order to promote sustainable environmental policies.

“Campus Greens approached us with their focus, back in mid October, and then Bon Appetit was predisposed to this anyways. We had tossed it around and talked about it a little bit,” said Roger Edens, the General Manager of Bon Appetit at Whitman.

“Bon Appetit was interested in going tray-less but they wanted to know if students would be behind it. I just went on to survey monkey and made a survey. There were 200 respondents total. We just asked what you think about it,” said Junior Tyler Harvey, a member of Campus Greens.

After the members of the Water Campaign collected the student data, they presented their results to Bon Appetit. In their survey, 183 or about 91.5 percent of students said that they would either support or strongly support the measure. Only 6.5 percent were opposed.

“We’re looking at the reduction of food waste and because food waste in a landfill produces methane gas and methane gas is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide, that’s Bon Appetit’s take,” emphasized Edens. Psychologically, larger trays have been shown to correlate with students taking more food than they can eat and consequently wasting it. In landfills, the methane gas emitted by rotting food has a greater capacity to trap energy from the sun in Earth’s atmosphere.

“At other accounts where they’ve actually measured the food before and after, they found an almost 30 percent reduction in food waste,” said Edens.

From Campus Greens’ perspective, the move toward fewer trays in dining halls has other important environmental and well as social benefits.

“We imagine it’ll save water, energy, detergent, and hopefully prevent food waste and maybe encourage good eating habits. People commented on how like having trays defined your place at the table and made it hard to bring in a community. People thought that it kind of disrupted social interaction. We decided that it would be best to keep a few trays around for students and people who felt that they absolutely needed them,” said Harvey. As for the trays that were removed, they will be donated once a place has been found.

For the future, Bon Appetit and Campus Greens’ Water Campaign both plan to pursue other ways of improving sustainability.

“Bon Appetit in general is looking for ways to reduce our carbon footprint. Something that’s coming is that we’re going to start reducing the number of pineapples and bananas we use,” said Edens.

Pineapples and bananas are foods that have high carbon footprints because they have to be imported from distant locations, which requires fossil fuel burning transportation.

The Water Campaign also plans to install more water saving aerators and shower heads as well as investigate the possibility of having food plants on campus.

Local execution drives WCLU debate over death penalty

This past Monday, Dec. 1, the Whitman Civil Liberties Union (WCLU) held an educational workshop on the death penalty. Entitled, “The Death Penalty A Constitutional Question,” the workshop featured three members of WCLU, junior Kelli Kuhlman, sophomore Mimi Psyno and first-year Ian Williams and their faculty advisor Professor of Politics and President of Washington State’s ACLU Timothy Kaufman-Osborn.

Originally, the Washington State Penitentiary was scheduled to execute Darold Stenson for the aggravated murder of his wife and business associate on Dec. 3, but the execution has been stayed pending various legal appeals.

“The two stays that were issued by courts, one involved a request for additional time in order to do some DNA testing, the other stay was granted by the court in order to conduct an inquiry into lethal injection…The Washington State Supreme Court refused to lift the stay that had been applied on the basis of a request for DNA stay. The Department of Corrections indicated it will not set a new execution date for at least 3 months,” said Osborn.

In the rest workshop, Professor Osborn and the WCLU members discussed the history of the death penalty in the U.S., in Washington State in particular, and constitutional problems with the death penalty.

Constitutional objections to the death penalty have taken two forms: objections over the method of execution and objections over the fairness of applying the death penalty. In most states, the default method for execution is lethal injection.

Professor Osborn began his remarks by recounting of his attendance at a riotous death penalty protest at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla in 1993 when hanging was the method of execution. There were two groups of people, some in favor and a much larger group in opposition to the death penalty. Since then, Washington’s adopted lethal injection in order to incite less divisive protests and gatherings.

Lethal injection, as a method of execution, has certain pharmacological problems. In most states, standard procedure calls for the injection of sodium thiopental (an anesthetic), pancuronium bromide (a chemical that paralyzes the body’s muscles) and potassium chloride( a chemical that induces a heart attack).

“Because of its role in securing the unconsciousness, guaranteeing a painless death, you’ve got to get that first chemical right,” emphasized Osborn.

Often, the medical staff that oversees the chemical injection may have little or no experience with such a procedure. There is a substantial risk that the victim will wake up in the middle of the execution, be unable to move any muscles and express the intense pain, but nonetheless must experience a heart attack.

“Should that occur, because pancuronium is a paralytic, the condemned will be unable to give voice to the intense burning sensation by the muscle cramping and the heart attack. The paralytic is employed to ensure that you’ve got a mute body that’s unable to give any expression to the pain that’s endured. In California, where about 26 executions have been conducted in the last 20 years, there’s good reason to believe that about half of them have gone awry in one way or another,” reiterated Osborn.

Osborn and other organizations such as the ACLU and Washington’s Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty view such a procedure as risk laden and a violation of the 6th amendment’s clause prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.

“As a punishment, death is qualitatively different than all other punishments. It’s different in its severity and irrevocability. As such, it should be reserved to the most heinous of the most heinous. If we find out that the worst of the worst are not executed then we’ve got a problem,” said Osborn.

In terms of the death penalty being applied fairly and without bias toward factors such as race and socioeconomic status, Osborn cited several Supreme Court cases, such as Georgia v. Furman, McCleskey v. Kemp and academic studies, including his own, that show how cases involving racial minorities, as victim or perpetrator, make one more likely to be subject to the death penalty.

One study, cited in McCleskey v. Kemp, examined homicide cases in Georgia and showed that controlling for various nonracial variables, the odds of being executed were over 4 times greater for defendants who killed whites than for defendants who killed blacks. Similarly, the odds of being executed were higher for black defendants than white ones. Professor Osborn’s own study indicated that in the 251 first-degree aggravated murder cases in Washington State from 1981 to 2003, the death penalty was imposed in 15 percent of cases with white victims but only 8 percent in cases with non-white victims. Thus, murdering a white person makes it 1.9 times more likely to receive the death penalty.

The workshop then featured a Q&A session where Osborn and other WCLU students took questions from the audience, some of whom came all the way from Richland to hear the talk.

“Hopefully the success of the talk last night will keep the WCLU in people’s minds and get them coming to more of our events,” WCLU President Kelli Kuhlman said. “We want to continue to follow the case of Darold Stenson as well as continue to discuss the struggle of the death penalty in light of the constitution.”

Next on WDA agenda: immigrants’ rights group

Last March, Whitman Direct Action sent three representatives to Sadhana, India as part of the Sadhana Clean Water Project. This November, WDA decided where their next project would take them – Mexico.

Rather than sunning on the beaches of Cancún, however, WDA will be researching and forging alliances between immigrants’ rights groups throughout the country.

The group chose Salem, Ore.-based CAUSA, an immigrant rights group, as their partnering non-governmental organization (NGO) in mid-November, after meeting with CAUSA representative Francisco Lopez. WDA plans to help CAUSA map and catalogue grass-roots immigrant rights organizations in Washington state, and later do the same in Mexico.

“We will basically be documenting the who, where, and what of [Washington immigrant-rights] groups…as well as finding out what they need to function more efficiently, and their relationship with their home communities,” said sophomore John Loranger.

According to Loranger, the ultimate goal of this project will be increased communication and coordinated action between the immigrant rights NGOs throughout Washington, Oregon, and Mexico. WDA will work toward uniting the groups by encouraging official alliances between groups with similar goals and mutually beneficial resources.

In seeking to serve the immigrant communities themselves, WDA is striving to put the emphasis on listening and responding to their stated needs.

“This work with CAUSA is reflective of WDA’s mission to work collaboratively by valuing the voices of those we seek to both help support and learn from. I believe this type of synergistic relationship is at the heart of much of what WDA strives to do,” senior WDA member Aisha Fukushima said.

CAUSA, which works primarily with Hispanics in Oregon and Washington, has been nationally recognized for its efforts. According to the group’s website, they have been instrumental in defeating a number of Oregon ballot measures that would have negatively impacted immigrants in the region.

CAUSA representatives began an e-mail correspondence with WDA earlier this semester and soon realized that the Whitman-based group could put forth the time and willpower necessary to undertake a coordination of NGOs in the region. According to Senior Tim Shadix, who traveled to Sadhana, India as part of the WDA initiative last year, CAUSA’s work also matches up well with the two of the primary goals of WDA, community-building and social justice.

“The project will address some of the challenges faced by immigrant communities that experience significant economic and social marginalization in both Mexico and the United States,” Shadix said.

“In this sense the project fits our goals perfectly by providing a new approach to an issue, focusing
on relationship building, and working with a community that faces significant marginalization.”

According to Shadix, WDA will soon look to take concrete steps toward mapping and contacting actual groups in Oregon, Washington, and, eventually, Mexico. WDA officials will meet with Lopez at the end of January to develop an action plan for the group, and Shadix predicts that the rest of the school year will be spent mapping out communications with the immigrant-rights groups.

“Establishing a clear picture of current conditions is the first step we must complete before we can begin to think about how to go about building and strengthening transnational networks,” Shadix said.

Despite having selected their primary project for the year only recently, WDA has been active throughout the school year. Over parent weekend (Oct. 24-26), The group raised more than $1,000 dollars at a silent auction of items donated by local businesses and students.

For Shadix, the opportunity to work with CAUSA represents a chance to improve inequalities that he sees in his own community.

“I believe that conditions faced by many immigrants in the U.S. represent a gross injustice,” he said.

“Given that these human rights abuses occur in the very communities where I have lived, and where I theoretically have the most agency, I personally feel a strong sense of obligation to do something about the problem.”

If you are interested in donating your time or funds to WDA, please contact Loranger at lorangjr@whitman.edu.

Food week wraps up with banquet, lively discussion

Politics class ‘Whitman in the Global Food System’ wrapped up two weeks of events with a Farm Forum on Tuesday, Nov. 18th. It was the last of a half dozen events that were planned to highlight the food issues that effect Whitman and the world.

Students split into groups with specific areas to research and then plan their projects. Events included a visit to a Whitman-owned farm, a pasta making workshop, a series of radio shows on the food crisis, and a banquet highlighting hunger issues.

At the Hunger Banquet, students were given an alternative identity when they entered the Reid Campus Ballroom. Based on their identities as various world citizens, participants were assigned a specific amount and type of food to eat.

“We want students to experience inequalities in the local food system as well as the world,” said sophomore Claire Noone, who organized the event along with first-year Hannah Joseph and sophomores Dana Bialeck, Naomi Gibbs and Molly Knell.

The event featured Pat King, director of local food bank the Pantry Shelf. King discussed the dynamics of hunger in the Walla Walla Valley and the complexities of running a food bank.

“Areas will find themselves inundated with pinto and black beans even though they have clients that do not like them or know what to do with them. Other populations like us want pinto and black beans badly but cannot manage to get them,” King said.

Professor Aaron Barbarow-Strain was impressed with the way the hunger project “connected students to a very scary and deepening crisis of food insecurity in the [Walla Walla] Valley.” Bobrow-Strain expressed pride over his students’ accomplishments.

“They really became experts in their topics and began to feel like they could reach out and engage with people in the larger community. Each group came up with a really ambitious project and, at some point in the semester, reached a scary crisis point where they just didn’t think they had the knowledge or ability to pull the project off, but they did,” said Bobrow-Strain in an e-mail.

Bobrow-Strain noted the intense dialogue about social and environmental concerns that happened between well-informed students and farmers.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a dialogue like that on the Whitman Campus – everyone got pushed out of their comfort zones a bit that night,” said Bobrow-Strain.

Sophomore Katie Fales, who also worked on the project, was upbeat about the discussion that took place.

“I was really surprised and pleased with our audience’s engagement. We weren’t anticipating an audience that would be that interested in the topic. Right after introducing our first speaker he asked for questions. And it immediately became a discussion based forum,” said Fales, who worked with fellow sophomores Ethan Mansfield, Anna Sky, Ryan Piela, Alex Kearns and first-year Jack MacNichol.
Fales’ group first became interested in holding a forum when they realized that their topic, the Farm Bill, was too big to handle alone.

“This bill was really way to big for us to tackle,” said Fales. “It has a 300 billion dollar budget for the next five years. It is 600 pages long. It affects not just farmers, but food aid programs, school lunches…just about everyone,” she said.

“We decided we should probably bring in some people who knew about this bill and who are affected directly by it and have studied it,” she added.

The forum consisted of representatives from the Farmers Market, local Farms and the Washington State Department of Health and Services.

This Week in ASWC

Sign up for Winterim workshops today and tomorrow in Reid!

What is Winterim? Winterim is a series of activities the first weekend of Spring Semester. These events are offered either free or at a nominal cost and are first come first serve.

The activities which you can sign up for include: SE Asian Cooking, Making Blankets for Community Service, Cross Country Skiing, Self Defense Workshop … and many other activities! Questions? Email Rachel Stein at steinrm@whitman.edu

The Savings Fund is officially available to student-initiated projects. This $40,000 award is open to all students and organizations and intends to foster myriad forms of student initiative that will positively impact Whitman College and the surrounding community.

Some examples of possible projects include endeavors that promote environmental sustainability, environmental and social justice, personal development, or art.

Due dates for project proposals over $2,000 are December 5, January 30, February 17, and March 30. Project proposals under $2,000 are accepted on a rolling basis.

For an application, please email aswc_finance@whitman.edu. Please submit all completed applications to inbox outside of ASWC office (Reid 210) or electronically to aswc_finance@whitman.edu.

This Week in Greek

Delta Gamma: On Tuesday Sharon Kaufman-Osborne spoke to the DGs and TKEs about relationships and group dynamics. Also, the chapter has begun fund-raising for Adopt-a-Family. Furthermore, the Winter Anchor Drive is this coming Friday and Saturday, and the chapter will conduct officer transitions Sunday morning.

Kappa Alpha Theta: On Saturday the Thetas have their chapter leadership retreat. Furthermore, the chapter is excited for their upcoming holiday sisterhood event.

Kappa Kappa Gamma: This Saturday the Kappas have officer training as well as Kappa Saturdays At The Library. Saturday evening the chapter plans to get coffee together and watch the Festival of Lights.

Beta Theta Pi: The Betas are excited for their upcoming Christmas Party. Who isn’t?

Phi Delta Theta: The Phis replaced all their windows with more energy efficient panes over break. Furthermore, this weekend the chapter has an executive retreat for officer elections.

Sigma Chi: The Sigs have officer elections this Sunday. Additionally, the chapter has begun raising money for Adopt-a-Family.

Tau Kappa Epsilon: The TKEs have two events with the Odd Fellows Home this weekend: a holiday dance on Friday and a Wii Sports tourney on Saturday.

Family excursions: Perfect for winter break

Oregon: Wallowas, northeast Oregon
A popular place for family backcountry skiing and snowshoeing, the Wallowas offer beautiful mountain scenery. For accommodations, the wing-ridge huts are considered an ideal place to lodge for day trips into the Wallowas. They contain two sleeping tents, a cook tent, sauna and latrine. It is advised to make reservations in advance, which require a 50 percent deposit. The prices range from $30 to $45 per night, per person, depending on the season. For more information, contact 800-646-9050 or info@wingski.com.

Idaho: Grand Targhee Resort
A great ski resort for the family with great snow and moderate terrain, the Grand Targhee Resort has a spa, fine dining, shopping and nightlife activities. Full-day lift tickets are $69 for adults ages 13 to 64 years old and $39 for juniors ages 6 to 12 years old. Half-day rates are approximately $10 less. Snow-tubing, snowshoeing and dinners in horse-drawn sleighs are also offered at the resort. The Targhee Lodge, which has 16 standard hotel rooms, offers amenities such as free high-speed wireless internet, outdoor heated pool and hot tub, indoor hot tub, fitness cabin, spa services and free equipment storage for skis and snowboards. Rates may be found on the Web site at www.grandtarghee.com.

Utah: Moab
Moab has some great mountain biking trails available ranging from Bar-M Loop, an eight-mile easy trail, to Killer B, a one-mile trail full of slickrock and cliff edges, so people with many different levels of biking experience can be satisfied. More information on mountain biking and other activities, such as cross-country skiing, sledding and snowmobiling, can be found at www.discovermoab.com.

Another activity available in the Moab area is canoeing. Tex’s Riverways, a professional canoe and kayak outfitting service, provides all you need for a self-guided tour down the Colorado and Green Rivers, which flow into the heart of Canyonlands National Park. The rates vary, since the cost is dependent upon the amount of rented equipment. Tex’s Riverways will drop you off at Ruby Ranch, south of the town of Green River, and pick you up about 100 miles downriver. They provide everything necessary for an enjoyable trip down the rivers. For more information, contact 1-435-259-5101.

Texas: Hueco Tanks State Historic Site
If you and your family want to climb some great rocks in the dead of winter in the sun, then this is the place to go. At Hueco Tanks State Historic Site, located 32 miles northeast of El Paso in El Paso County, you can see pictographs left by the prehistoric Jornada Mogollon culture and ‘huecos,’ which are natural rock basins that trapped rain water for thirsty travelers for over 1000 years. Other activities include picnicking, camping, hiking, rock climbing, birding, stargazing and guided tours. More information is available at www.tpwd.state.tx.us.

Washington: San Juan Islands, just off the coast of Anacortes, Wash.
There are a variety of activities available for every member of the family in the San Juans. The islands are considered ideal feeding grounds for large marine mammals, but they also boast a wide variety of bird species which change season to season. If you’re staying overnight, there are some great bed-and-breakfasts and campsites in the area. The little stores by the ferry dock are fun places to shop and browse.

Although they are most commonly a vacation spot during the summer, the San Juans have cheaper prices during the off-season, so visitors can still go whale watching and sea kayaking, but for a lower cost. Whale watching, a popular attraction to see the potentially endangered Orca whale, is scheduled on a contact basis, so those who wish to participate must contact Western Prince Whale and Wildlife Tours at 1-800-757-6722. Prices are $70 per adult and $50 per child ages 2 to 12. Group discounts are available.

Sea kayaking is another activity to do in the off-season. The bird life, seals and sea-lions are in abundance. With Discovery Sea Kayaks, the price is $90 per person for 4 to 4 ½ hours. Their shop is in downtown Friday Harbor on the top floor of the red building next to the ferry dock. For more information, contact 1-866-461-2559.

WCTS considering printing quotas

Approximately 650 Whitman students received an e-mail from Whitman College Technology Services (WCTS) in early November notifying them of their paper consumption.

“To raise awareness of paper consumption on campus, we are contacting everyone who exceeds the median amount of printing among students,” the e-mail read; it also included printing statistics collected by WCTS over the course of the fall 2008 semester.

There are 1305 students who are networked printer users, meaning that they log in and print from Whitman computers such as those in Penrose Library, Olin and Maxey Halls and the Science Building. The average number of pages printed per user is 270 and the median number is 183.

According to WCTS’ summary of user print consumption, 50 percent of students have printed between one and 250 pages, while 90 percent have printed between one and 600 pages.

WCTS began tracking student paper consumption this semester as part of an ongoing larger project, in conjunction with the Whitman Conservation Committee, to reduce campus paper use. WCTS and the Conservation Committee are currently discussing the idea of implementing a printing quota for students in the near future.

This proposal was unveiled to the Whitman Community at the Nov. 20, 2008 Conservation Committee Meeting.

The college purchased 880 cases of printer paper for the 2008-2009 academic year. At 5000 sheets a case, this amounts to a total of 4,400,000 sheets of paper, costing the college over $32,000 annually. Furthermore, given that the overall cost of printing also includes expenses for printer maintenance and toner cartridges, the cost of paper is only a fraction of the total expenditures.

The increase in the use of electronic and online resources has resulted in a slight decline in the demand for paper printouts; however, this reduction is nowhere close to what is needed to significantly conserve paper resources and printing expenditures.

The financial strain the college is currently facing under the economic recession, along with Whitman College President George Bridges’ subsequent request that all campus departments make a concerted effort to conserve both resources and savings, has created an added incentive for the implementation of a printing quota.

“The primary reason behind [the quota] is resource conservation, though there is potential for some cost savings as has been the case at other institutions that began charging for excessive printing,” said WCTS middleware analyst Mike Osterman in an e-mail.

The Olin Hall Math Lab, for example, which is managed by the Mathematics Department, has printing quotas for the students who use its services. Since the implementation of the quota, the lab has seen a reduction in paper printouts.

Under the proposed quota system, black-and-white printing would cost five cents a page and color printing 50 cents a page. According to Osterman, these costs take into account not only the cost of paper, but also those of printer maintenance and toner; thus they are reflective of the true approximate costs of printing.

If such a quota is implemented, students will receive a predetermined amount of printing credit on their student account each semester. As they release print jobs, the appropriate monetary amount will be deducted from their account. Students who exceed 90 percent of their printing credit will be sent a warning message, giving them the option to approve the addition of more credit to their account. At that point, they will only be charged for actual pages printed beyond the quota.

“If there is to be a quota, it will be determined based on usage statistics collected this semester,” said Osterman. “We will share and discuss the findings with the Conservation Committee and find a number that is reasonable for most students.”

According to junior Steve Shoemaker, the Outhouse Resident Assistant and a member of the Conservation Committee, everyone in attendance at the Conservation Committee meeting agreed that the college must undertake some effort to reduce paper consumption. However, he expressed his concerns over the proposed printing quota, especially on the affect it will have on students who are required to print off large amounts of readings for their classes.

“I think immediately charging students who go over a certain quota will only address one side of the problem,” Shoemaker said. “There needs to be a rethinking on both the part of the students and the faculty. Faculty members are the ones assigning and requiring that students bring their readings to class. Students are, for the most part, being conscious to print double-sided and to not bring more to class than they need. Students and faculty should both share the burden.”

The proposed quota is not a definite, and the logistics of such a quota are still in discussion by WCTS and the Conservation Committee. The Conservation Committee welcomes input from the Whitman Community and invites students, faculty and staff to attend one of their weekly meetings. Meetings are held every Thursday at noon in Maxey 142.

Eco-friendly gifts for all

It’s Christmas time again: time to find presents for every single person on your list. The stores are usually a madhouse, and often presents bought at major department stores won’t be as environmentally friendly, due to the excess plastic used in packaging. Here are a few eco-friendly alternatives to regular gifts like sweaters and scarves, which will also help you earn some good karma.

1. Alternative Gifts Market ($1-11, altgifts.com)

Shoppers can dedicate donations in the names of family or friends to help people from all over the world. With the purchase, the shopper receives an explanation of the cause they are donating to, along with a free holiday card they can give to the recipient. These will be on sale at Reid from noon to 1 p.m. from Monday, Dec. 1 to Friday, Dec. 5. For just a few dollars, these gifts give so much to the needy. For instance, just $3 provides clean water for one person for a whole year, and $11 provides for one wheel of a wheelchair in Ecuador. Why not give gifts that help save the world?

2. USBCELL rechargeable batteries (starting at $18, usbcell.com)

Instead of having to buy and dispose of AA batteries, USBCELL rechargeable batteries allow you to recharge one AA battery at a time by plugging it into a USB port. It’s simple, easy and cheap. They can be used over and over again in any device that uses AA batteries, from digital cameras to wireless keyboards or mice.

3. Elephant Poo Paper ($12, uncommongoods.com)

Indeed—the journal and note paper box are made out of 100 percent elephant poo. Elephant poo is full of short grained fibrous materials, which, when processed, can make excellent paper. The naturally dried poo is collected from parks and rinsed until only the fibrous materials from the elephant’s diet, like bamboo and grass, are left. The fibers are put into a giant pot of boiling water until they are clean, and additional fibers from trees are added to make the paper stronger.

4. Tactikka Plus LED Headlamp ($39.95, petzl.com)

This isn’t just any headlamp. Sure, most Whitties probably have a headlamp, but this one is different. It has four LED lights with different settings, as well as white and red-filtered light (so you don’t blind the person you’re talking to). It runs off three AAA batteries, but the best part is that those batteries last about 80 to 100 hours, so you won’t have to worry about carrying extra batteries.

5. Recycled Newspaper Tote ($52, uncommongoods.com)

Despite the price, this tote is made from all recycled newspapers—hence the warning on the site that says “Each is one-of-a-kind. Newspaper print can come from style, arts, travel or home sections. Sorry, no choice of print.” It’s soft, durable with water-resistant laminate and pretty stylish. Fireworks also sells similarly styled bags made of materials such as license plates and vinyl records.

While these gifts range from practical to pricy, all of them are eco-friendly. Gift-giving should be about what makes the recipient happy—but this year, take the environment into consideration as well.

Staff member of the week: Dawn Chlipala, RN

Most Whitman students have had at least one late night experience at the health center. The friendly face we see after 11:30 pm is that of Dawn Chlipala, an RN whose duties consist of caring for the sick, the hurt and the intoxicated (depending on the night). The Pioneer made a midnight trip over to the health center to talk to Chlipala, who has been working at Whitman for three years.

Pioneer: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Chlipala: I’ve been a nurse for almost four years. I’ve had several jobs since I’ve graduated trying to fit my family. My job here works well with my family, even if the late nights can be a little hard. I have another job I do during Winter break and the summers working with pediatric patients in their homes in the Tri-Cities

P: When and how did you become a nurse?
C: Well, I’ve always wanted to be a nurse since I was 17. I just love helping people and I like medicine, so it fit well. I did five years in the military as a Navy corpsman, which is kind of like a medic. I definitely knew medicine was for me. I took classes while I was active duty and once I got out I had a kid so I put it on break for a while. About seven years ago when we moved here to Walla Walla I found out they had the program at the community college and continued on from there.

P: In the navy, did you do a lot of traveling?
C: The navy is where I met my husband and we’ve been all over the world. I did a tour in Bosnia, a tour off the coast of Haiti, and when we got married my husband and I went to Iceland together. It was so great!

P: With cold and flu season in full swing, how busy are you getting here at the health center?
C: We’re really busy. In fact, the week before Thanksgiving we had almost every bed in here taken. We see it happen more during this season and times closer to finals.

P: Now, we know that late nights on the weekends can be a tough shift for any nurse. What’s some of the crazy things you’ve seen?
C: The intoxicated students that I see are always very interesting because they’re so different from when you see them sober. You never know what is going to happen when you have an intoxicated student here. Sometimes they’re giddy, sometimes they’re crying… so it’s very interesting. I’ve seen burns from people trying to make hot tea or coffee. I’ve had students in here that were scared because they were having chest pains or rapid heart beats. It turns out that they had too much caffeine and too many energy drinks all at the same time!

P: What’s your favorite part of the job?
C: Interacting with the students. Sometimes they just need a little TLC and I like that. I can give that, that’s easy for me. The Whitman students are wonderful so you can’t ask for a better job.

Making ‘watered-down’ chai spicy, sweet, delicious

I’ve never been to India and so I’ve never had authentic masala chai served on the street in tin cups. Nonetheless, I’ve gotten to know our watered-down American version of chai pretty well. Those of us that are connoisseurs of the milky, spiced beverage know how widely it can vary from overly sweet and thick to spicy and hot. This version is somewhere between the two with a good dose of spice and a little sweet honey comfort.

Headed to the library for a long night? Take a study break and make yourself some chai to bring with you. It’ll give you a caffeine boost and warm you up on one of these chilly, clear December nights.
This chai is made with ground spices, as they are easy to cook with and provide instant gratification. For a more robust chai, if you’ve got the time, try using whole spices. That means use chopped fresh ginger, cinnamon sticks and whole cardamom pods. If you go this route, you will need to cook the mixture for much longer so add the spices to the water at the start, simmer five minutes, remove the tea bags, add the milk and honey, taste and add ground spices if necessary and then strain out the spices before serving. A great place to buy spices in Walla Walla is Super One where you can buy bulk spices by the ounce for cheap in the Huckleberry’s section. Here you can fill up some little baggies of spices and throw them in some jars at home.

Masala Chai Tea
2 cups water
4 bags black tea (Darjeeling or a standard like English Breakfast or Lipton’s)
2 cups milk (regular or soy)
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

In a pot, heat water to boiling. Add tea bags. Reduce heat and simmer five minutes. Remove tea bags and stir in remaining ingredients. Heat until wisps of steam rise from the surface of the chai. Serve hot.
Store in a sealed container in the refrigerator and drink cold or reheat as desired.

The ‘Pontoon’ will not be sinking anytime soon

Imagine the collision of a funeral ceremony involving a crematory ash-filled bowling ball being dropped into a lake by a nude parasailer; a non-traditional wedding with enormous fiberglass ducks, a flaming hot air balloon, and a singing Elvis falling from the sky; and a sinking boat full of drunk Danish pastors.

Imagine all this (taking place in the devoutly Lutheran community of Lake Wobegon), and you will have an idea of Garrison Keillor’s “Pontoon,” a fabulous tale of loss, love and utter absurdity that will leave you in stitches.

Keillor is most well known for “A Prairie Home Companion,” his radio show on NPR, begun in 1974, which features his news reports from the imaginary town of Lake Wobegon. “Pontoon” encapsulates the brilliance, hilarity and quirkiness of Keillor’s anecdotes.

Though Keillor admits that much of the novel has been told before, there is plenty fresh storytelling to be had.

The novel traces the lives of several characters in Lake Wobegon following the death of Evelyn Peterson, an outrageous and life-loving woman who shakes the small town to its core (both in life and death) when her scandalous secrets are revealed.

After she is found dead in her bedroom, her semi-alcoholic daughter and sexually-confused grandson discover Evelyn’s secret love affair with a man they never met and must fight against the reservations of the town to carry out her last wishes: to be cremated, encased in the bowling ball her lover gave her and dropping into the lake.

Admittedly, some of the novel rings faintly of “The Notebook” with the sentimental story of lovers forced apart by the cruelty of the world and the dramatic discovery of that love in one’s last years. At times, Keillor seems to have difficulty narrating anything seriously emotional without sounding a bit cheesy, particularly with dialogue.

However, these moments are easily forgivable in light of Keillor’s remarkable witticism and delightfully original plotlines.

In “Pontoon,” Keillor proves once again that you don’t have to sacrifice intelligence in order to be hilarious. Whether or not you are familiar with his work, you will be very entertained by this book.

Too many sparkling vampires spoil this adaptation

A movie theatre pitch-black with a slightly red hue could not have been a better setting for the first cinematic installment of Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight,” the teenage vampire romance novel series that is au courant with still-teenage Harry-Potter-generation fans. Accordingly, it is wholly appropriate that the theatre’s acoustics were saturated with Ohhhhh’s (in reaction to Cedric Diggory-cum-Edward Cullen, actor Robert Pattinson) and Ahhhhh’s (in response to the only heated scene of the movie which lasts no more than ten seconds) coming from the same generation that thought the most intriguing part of the “Chamber of Secrets” was Ginny’s prepubescent crush on Harry.

Though many have come close (see “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “The Lord of the Rings” series), no movie has ever truly replicated its literary foundation; “Twilight” is no exception. While it’s a “carefully faithful adaptation,” according to New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, my significant other could not help but lean into my ear and whisper, ‘It’s not like that in the book’ every five minutes or so.

My verdict: movies should no longer claim to be “based on” novel X; rather, they should claim to be “inspired by” novel Y.

The movie has an uninspiring opening – except for the fallaciously interesting fact that it is set in Forks, Washington: Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) moves to the middle-of-nowhere town to be with her father. The introverted and clumsy Bella does not make many friends and feels at home when she is alone (O.K, so far, so good). In a matter of days she becomes everyone’s new favorite talking point and ends up with a lot of friends who gravitate toward her in an effort to make her feel welcome.

The first mystery becomes the nature of the Cullen family. They are pale, all hang out together and don’t socialize much (Oh, did I mention that they are all gorgeous?) After a few Google searches (yes, Google searches – I guess the cinematographers finally figured out that their faux pas Mac OS search engine wouldn’t pass anymore) she figures out that they are vampires. By that time, however, she is already emotionally-manacled to Cedric, I mean Edward (Robert Pattinson), the only single male Cullen left, who admits to being “over-protective” of her.

I am told that the movie does not do the book justice regarding Bella and Edward’s cloying relationship. Apparently this relationship is supposed to be the most sickeningly sappy, impossible-turned-possible, make-you-want-to-squeeze-Abigail-Breslin’s-cheeks cutest relationship ever. Instead, it came off as an inevitable, awkward and (fine, I’ll admit it) ‘hot’ fling that, because of its lack of plausible sentimentality, sometimes makes you wish the movie were rated R just to keep you interested.

This movie is aesthetically appealing not for its cinematic deftness, but for director Catherine Hardwicke’s penchant for capturing beautiful young actors and actresses in roles whose sole purpose is to accentuate their unique prettiness. Though they’ve had relative success in the past (Stewart was in the abysmal, yet critically acclaimed 2007 film “Into the Wild”, while Pattinson was Cedric Diggory in “Goblet of Fire”), “Twilight” is to them what “Bend it like Beckham” was for Keira Knightly and Parminder Nagra. We’ll see which one goes on to play superlative roles in movies like “Atonement” and which goes on to play pedestrian roles in shows like “E.R.” (Knightly did so much with so little potential and Nagra did so little with so much potential). But don’t get your hopes up just yet.

A ‘River’ runs through it

In the foreword to “Where the Great River Bends,” a new book about the natural history of the Wallula Gap, senior lecturer of environmental humanities Don Snow writes, “The West is so full of dramatic landscapes and massive vistas that we who live here often take them for granted.” Commuters travelling through the Wallula Gap—a large water gorge which runs south of the merging of the Walla Walla and Columbia rivers—often miss its natural beauty, according to Snow.

Instead of bringing people to the Gap (although a field-trip on Thursday, Nov. 20 to promote the book was organized), the army of authors and photographers behind “Where the Great River Bends” brought the Gap to people.

The book highlights the Wallula Gap through a variety of black-and-white and color photographs, covering everything from its formation to the impact of climate change and damming on the area. The book also pays special attention to the Twin Sisters, a leftover formation from the floods during the end of the last ice age.

Most of the impetus behind the book rested on the shoulders of Bob Carson, professor of geology and environmental studies at Whitman.

In 2003, Carson went on sabbatical and decided to write a book about the Wallula Gap because he found the area “so special and so unique in terms of its geology and biology”. As the bottleneck of the Missoula Floods going from Montana into the Pacific Ocean, Carson likes to take his geology and environmental studies majors on field-trips to the Gap to observe its “depositional features.” The small details of the area are often pointed out to students, such as the beaver dam that resides in Juniper Canyon.

Carson was not alone in the creation of the book. Carson asked Michael “Mike” Denny, a riparian habitat coordinator at the Walla Walla County Conservation District, to write about the biology of the Wallula Gap.

But it became apparent that more content was needed. There was more to tell about the Wallula Gap.
“I asked Mike Denny to write about the biology, but then we decided to write about the archaeology and history so we got three experts,” said Carson, “and I can guarantee you that the people that wrote the archaeology, history and biology sections are the experts.”

One of the historians was Lawrence “Larry” Dodd, a former Whitman College archivist (Dodd retired in 2003). Dodd, a native of the Walla Walla Valley, chuckled at the thought of being published in the book. “Well, I guess it feels kind of nice,” he said.

Dodd wrote the history on the Wallula Gap from the “turn-of-the-century” to the time the McNary Dam on the Columbia River was finished in 1954. He was assisted by retired Whitman history professor Tom Edwards, who contributed the nineteenth century history section of the Wallula Gap.

Other contributors included archaeologist Catherine Dickson, and photographers Kathryn “Kathy” Guizar, Paul and John Clement, Robert Stockton and Dianne Kornberg.

Aside from creating a communal narrative for the Wallula Gap, “Bends” also acts as a cautionary tale for the preservation of the area.

As outlined by Carson, some of the problems that the Gap faces today are global climate change, pollution, and the decline in fish populations. But he is particularly critical of a proposed coal-fired power plant, which would cause “pollution there and in the Walla Walla Valley,” and a proposed dam in the Juniper Canyon area, which would “ruin that little oasis in the desert there.”

Carson is especially focused on the Twin Sisters. Since the 1920s, the geological feature has been famous for its rock climbing; but in the spring of 2001, Walla Walla County commissioners banned the activity.

“I taught my kids to rock climb there,” said Carson in a speech made on Wednesday, Nov. 19 to the Blue Mountain Audubon Society. “We’ve done silly things like sleep on top of one of the Twin Sisters. The county commissioners in the early part of this decade banned rock climbing at Wallula despite the fact that the Army Corps of Engineers gave [approval to the activity] for the specific reason of nature study, bird-watching, recreation and rock climbing.”

It’s the memories of the Wallula Gap that make the area important to Carson and the other contributors of “Where the Great River Bends,” and the hope is that book will inspire those drivers who travel through will pull to the side of the road and give themselves a little taste of the Gap before moving on.

blue moon’s ‘Big Art’ larger than life despite its difficulties

When the coffee shop Verve closed earlier this year, Jenna Mukuno and Glory Bushey were afraid it might be the end of Big Art as they knew it.

Big Art, a three-year-old event that showcases student art and performances in the community, is hosted by the literary magazine blue moon. The past two years it has been held at Verve. But due to financial difficulties, Verve closed its doors in early October. blue moon co-editors Mukuno and Bushey, both sophomores, said they were afraid of what that meant for the magazine.

“The original purpose of Big Art was to try and incorporate Blue Moon into the Walla Walla community, more so than just the Whitman community,” Bushey said.

“Since Verve closed, we were really nervous that it’d have to take place on campus in Reid Coffeehouse. We wondered, ‘Well how are we supposed to get the community on campus?’ The whole point was that we move outside beyond campus,” Mukuno added.

Fortunately for the magazine, the restaurant Merchants offered up a space for the event, which took place Thursday, Nov. 20, from 7-9 p.m.

“We were really lucky to have Merchants be so cooperative. They just offered up a space to us without charge and were really accommodating,” Mukuno said.

Once the venue was decided, the event ran surprisingly smoothly, said the editors. The only problem was a microphone stand that did not fit the microphone—a problem solved by Mukuno’s offer to hold the microphone up for anyone who needed it.

Blue Moon’s editors and 21 staff members have been planning for this event since the beginning of the semester. The staff has spent the semester soliciting student artwork submissions, lining up musical and spoken word performances, getting artwork reproduced and advertising.

All in all, Mukuno and Bushey estimate between 10 and 15 non-staff students contributed to the event. The artists ranged in all class years and types of performances. Performances included poetry and fiction readings, slam poetry and instruments such as the piano, violin and guitar.

The art was displayed mainly on Merchants’ second floor and was available to sell to attendees. The average price for a piece of art was $30.

“Our first piece was sold before Big Art even opened by the owner of merchants, which is really cool that he’s that supportive of us,” Mukuno said.

Other attendees, who filtered in and out throughout the night, seemed equally excited.

“I loved it,” said first-year Paris White. “I thought it was really enjoyable.”

White wished, however, that she could have seen more artwork on display.

“I understand how something that large of a scale can be hard to pull together, but I felt like some parts weren’t well organized. I think it was made up for in the quality of the art and performances that were there,” she said.

The event is part of blue moon’s plan to be a presence throughout the school year.

“The goal is to try to create a year-long institution rather than just a one-time publication. We want blue moon to be something that students can identify at the beginning of the year and not just receive once in the mail. We wanted to stir up the art community and really be a culture throughout the year,” Bushey said.

Other parts of this goal include continuous advertising for the publication, which will come out in May.

“Each week we have a different group of people doing the ad campaigns [for blue moon]. A different group comes up with some crazy idea to do one week,” said staff member and sophomore Taylor Overturf, while manning a table at Big Art.

Some of the ideas are more effective than others, Overturf added.

“One week we had someone make a huge cake and ice it, and put it around campus,” she said. “I realized people don’t want to eat food that’s just been lying around. That’s something I realized from that experience.”

Auto-tune extravaganza

Despite his massive critical and commercial success, things have not gone well for Kanye West. Shortly after the release of last year’s celebratory “Graduation,” his mother died in much-publicized complications from plastic surgery. His engagement came to a sudden end, he was arrested on two separate occasions for attacking photographers and his “Glow in the Dark” tour ran into technical snags and mixed reviews, leading to a number of all-caps meltdowns on his frequently updated blog.
This album, then, is his bloodletting.

“808s and Heartbreak” has little to do with West’s last three albums, save for the fact that it is largely about him. It features few guests and almost no rapping. Instead, West’s vocals are exclusively sung through Auto-Tune, the pitch-correction process made famous through the chorus of Cher’s “Believe” and popularized recently through T-Pain and Lil Wayne’s hugely successful singles. Every track relies heavily on the Roland TR-808 drum machine, hence the title. His newfound austerity and shift in production style sees him yield moments both relentlessly catchy and bafflingly amateurish.

These songs are often overlong and repetitive, as West trades his often smart – or at least clever – lyricism for cringe-worthy crooning. Opener “Say You Will” carries its icy beat for six minutes; it’s hard not to sigh as he sings “when I grab your neck I touch your soul” over enormous strings. “Heartless” suffers from weak drum programming, as well as West’s accusations never getting beyond “why you got to be so Dr. Evil?” Worst of all is Lil Wayne’s guest spot on “See You In My Nightmares,” where, over a repetitive synth line he sings, “You think your shit don’t stink, but you’re Ms. P.U!” Given Wayne’s predisposition for stoned brilliance, I’m pretty sure he, let alone most third graders, could do better.

However, there are moments that work strikingly well. “Paranoid” is practically dance-pop by the album’s standards, a fantastic electro-tinged tell-off on which West at least sounds like he’s having fun. “Street Lights” is undeniably corny, as West laments that “life’s just not fair,” but basically works, melodramatic piano chords soundtracking a rare moment of near-optimism. “Coldest Winter” borrows substantially from Tears for Fears’ “Memories Fade,” but his goodbye to his mother, driven by aggressive toms on a big chorus, is surprisingly affecting.

Bonus track “Pinocchio Story” sees West’s freestyle turn into a rant which then turns into a six-minute soul-baring; to a cheering audience, he proceeds to blame himself for his mother’s death, lash out at photographers, and wish to “be a real boy.” He sounds destroyed, yet the audience is as enthusiastic as ever, heightening the album’s sense of total disconnect better than anything West could have written.

Only West, with his track record as producer and performer, could have gotten away with releasing this album as-is on a major label in 2008. It is utterly indulgent, made so overtly for himself and so unlikely to win him new fans that the only thing indicative of West’s desire for an audience at all is his repeated reworkings of its singles following their initial releases’ mixed responses.

For many reasons, some largely separate from its music, “808s and Heartbreak” is a fascinating, if uneven, listen, relentless in structure and difficult to take as a bitter whole.

Response to ‘Environmentalism misses the point’

Before Thanksgiving, the Pioneer published an Op-ed titled “Environmentalism misses the point” in which the author alleges that Whitman’s environmental movement is misguided. Yet, the reasons for the misguidance are not made very clear. Big words and outlandish claims have substituted themselves for logic and clarity it seems.

I’m here to try and respond to that author’s claims; however, I have four disclaimers. First, I do not have as big of a vocabulary as he does. Second, I am very biased since I have been personally active in the environmental movement at Whitman College for the past year and a half. Third, I probably do not understand all the isms, (ecofeminism, anthropocentrism, post-structuralism, queer theory-“ism”) as well as the author does (hopefully, for his sake). Fourth, the author’s writing style obscures his meaning rather than clarifies it, so if I have misunderstood what he said, I hope he will inform the Pioneer’s readers and me.

The author’s op-ed alleges that human beings view the environment as something to be used for our benefit. This reflects a view that human beings are not a part of the environment.  Rather we’re positioned above it. Hence, allegedly, when we try to promote sustainable development, we’re really saying that it is OK to pollute. It is OK to hurt animals, but just not enough to make them extinct. Human beings are allegedly very self-centered because we don’t treat animals and other forms of life the same as we treat each other. Hence, this attitude somehow reinforces the view that men are better to women, that being straight is better that being gay, that nature is just a tool to be used for consumption and that white people are better than non-white people.

Rather than respond point by point to the absurd and thinly justified claims, I will grant everything
the author says is right but still argue that none of what he says matters. Although, it would be good if the author explained to all of us how fund-raising for a 23kw solar panel system on Jewett inadvertently promotes homophobia, racism, patriarchy and all the other things wrong with the western metaphysics.

Now, is there any way for a human being—me, you, the author—to think of themselves in a non-anthropocentric (human centered) way? When I am presented with the Taste of Sicily, will I recoil at the sight of chicken or the sight of dead grain on a plate? I do not know the answers to these questions but suffice to say, the vast majority of humans are, by nature, consumers. Animals consume too, just we (humans with technology) are better at it than they are. We can manipulate language, use tools, etc. . . . Now, yes, it is possible for us to give up all of that to go back to the Stone Age and interact with nature in exactly the same way every other species does. Is that desirable? Is that, dare I say, natural? Is it “natural” for a species to willingly forgo its abilities and powers?

Setting those questions aside, I think and would hope the author and I both agree that climate change is real and poses a threat to humanity and the global ecosystem’s existence. There are two options:
Option A: use our technological know-how to be more efficient, use renewable energy (See: solar, wind and water), encourage but not enforce vegetarian options at dining halls, recycle our resources and combat poverty and climate change with a green jobs based economy.
Option B: whine with big words about how environmental science is racist, homophobic and harmful to nature.

So, I’d ask the author to tell the people of Bangladesh who live in an area extremely prone to flooding and are thus more susceptible to rising sea levels than we are, that the way to preserve their society and economy is to de-industrialize and stop using these gay-bashing, animal-hating, white-supremacist sciences. Perhaps the author thinks the concept of an economy based on goods and services is also homophobic, patriarchal and racist. Either way, I think the people of Bangladesh would laugh at the absurdity of option B.

While academic theorizing is important and interesting, as Marx said “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” I’d invite the author to come to Campus Climate Challenge’s next meeting Thursdays at noon in Reid 207 to discuss the point of environmentalism.

Obama policies pragmatic, geared toward long-term change

The race issue aside, political commentators were quick to point out something very important after Election Day – the election of Barack Obama means liberals are once again viable candidates for the highest executive office.

Change had been promised, and change is in the process of being delivered. Look no further than the President-Elect’s almost daily press conferences last week. But, after seeing some of his picks for cabinet positions, one must ask – is this just more of the same?

With advisors, aides and cabinet members coming from administrations ranging from the Carter era to the present, including such luminaries as Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton herself, many have started to doubt the President-Elect’s sincerity in his campaign promises. He has already mentioned he may not repeal the Bush tax cuts for high-income folks, and the retention of Robert Gates may be a signal that he is not willing to immediately alter the current Gates/Petreus strategy in Iraq. For some, the honeymoon may be already over.

Cynically, one could say that Obama has already started to abandon his own ship, bailing on some of his most ardent campaign pledges, such as promising swift change to the tax codes, to the handling of the war in Iraq, and most of all, to bringing a fresh approach to politics in Washington. With the inclusion of centrist and even right elements in his administration, he has arguably alienated a key part of his electoral base – the far left. His most ardent campaigners feel betrayed by the re-appointment of Gates, but even more so by the appointment of the foe they so vigorously campaigned against most of this past year: Hillary Clinton. Some feel that he’s already become a standard, run-of-the-mill politician.

Ever the optimist, I choose to take a different outlook on President-Elect Obama’s decisions. He’s being utterly pragmatic in an attempt to salvage the economy and nation in general.

He is doing exactly what he promised: bringing in different points of expertise into his administration, regardless of political orientation. In his own pragmatic way, he’s attempting to do what Roosevelt did decades ago – calming the public, and re-assuring them that strong leadership is at hand.

Reading both conservative and liberal blogs and news Web sites, it’s been interesting to see reaction to cabinet picks. The conservative reaction (of what I’ve read and seen) is generally something of relief that Obama isn’t appointing “uber”-liberals to his cabinet. Conversely, the liberal reaction is generally something of acceptance that the appointments made were out of necessity and in line with his promise of greater political representation in Washington.

As Obama said himself, when asked about some of his insider picks, “Understand where the vision for change comes from – first and foremost, it comes from me. That’s my job, is to provide a vision in terms of where we are going, and to make sure, then, that my team is implementing.”

Let’s be clear about this – Obama is a politician.

I have no doubt he will be a great politician and a great leader, but he is still a politician. He will make mistakes. He will make choices that will inevitably alienate certain American groups and sects. He looks up to those great Americans like Lincoln, FDR and Kennedy, who, yup, also made mistakes while in office.

Obama supporters need to know that they should be in this for the long haul. Change can’t come overnight, and it can’t come without the support of the people. Furthermore, we cannot be disheartened by a few offenses to our own personal values. We must follow the example of the President-Elect, to work together with all Americans, in order to continue the perfection of this union.

Who let the blogs out?

Recent strolls through the Olin computer lab and the cubbies in the back of Penrose Library revealed, among other things, one girl scrolling through Post Secret, one kid watching what looked like the new MacBook video, two people looking at various political commentary blogs, one person commenting on what looked like a friend’s study abroad blog and one student who quickly changed the screen at the sound of approaching footsteps, but not before the characteristic pink background and  flashing advertisements of Perez Hilton were spotted. Second only to people actually doing homework or checking their e-mail, a quick computer lab tour confirms that blogs have taken a front seat in the fight for college students’ attention.

With increasing popularity, blogs have come of age. The blog has moved out of the dark corners of adolescent angst-driven LiveJournal entries and moved into the mainstream media.

While the term ‘blog’ was coined less than 10 years ago, today there are well over 112 million blogs with sites like celebrity blog Perez Hilton receiving close to 20 million hits per month and some bloggers now possess Whitehouse press credentials. Blogs have revolutionized the ways college and non-college students communicate, consume media, experience education and, of course, procrastinate.

“In the old days, we used to sit down with a cup of coffee and a copy of The New York Times. But now you would go online and through your RSS feed listen to your ‘This American Life’ podcast, watch your Mark Bitman cooking show and read through all your blog posts from both private and public blog sources,” said former Whitman student Paul Carduner who now works as a software developer, describing his morning routine.

When they hear the word “blog,” many students said they still initially think of grainy webcam photos and characteristic whining about oppressive parents that defined the first wave of online diaries, but that they later realized they used blogs more than they initially thought.

“When I think about blogs I first think of the personal journal, but there’s definitely a lot more to it than that…my friend actually has a physics blog for one of her classes at UW,” said sophomore Lydia Ngai who has found herself using blogs to compare recipes, look at new industrial designs and follow the life of a Utah mom on the popular blog Dooce.

“I know a lot of people, myself included, check the personal blogs of friends who are abroad,” said sophomore Faith Tucker, echoing the sentiments of many students.

The specialized nature of blogs ensures that there is a blog that will appeal to each and every interest. Because blogs don’t have to worry about money or pandering to a broad audience, the format of the blog nurtures specificity.

“I know that many of my colleagues have a list of blogs that they check in their field,” said politics professor Susan Beechey.

“Blogs cater to a much smaller group of people so the quality of information [in top blogs] is much higher,” said Carduner.

As part of the software industry Carduner finds it necessary to get his technology news from blogs.

“You either read the blogs or, well…basically you just have to read the blogs. By the time a book comes out it’s already out of date.”

The instantaneous nature of blogs has helped them begin to chip away at the holds of traditional news media. As newspapers cut large chunks of their staffs, blogs and online news are being blamed for many of these ills.

“In college I’m just constantly busy. I could read a newspaper but it’s more convenient for me to just read in online and its more in line with my environmental ethic to keep another paper from being printed,” said senior Andrew Aviza who gets news from both traditional journalistic sources such as The New York Times Web site and also from blogs such as The Daily Kos.

Aviza, an experienced member of the blogging community who works as a blog contributor for climate change non-profit 1Sky, sees the blog as an important element of the new face of media, although not a substitute for traditional journalism.

“I think a lot of times people link journalism and blogging together when it’s not always a seamless link,” said Aviza. “Bloggers are writing out of a passion or a vested interest in something, whereas journalists are getting paid to write objectively.”

Many have lauded blogs for largely erasing the obstacles of money and connections necessary to get one’s voice heard. It was, after all, bloggers who led to the resignation of Senator Trent Lott after he made pro-segregation comments at a party, and it was bloggers that allowed many to see the attacks on the monks marching in Burma.

“Anyone, well, anyone with an Internet connection, can have a blog and have people read it. If you’re bad no one’s going to read it, but if you’re a good writer and you actually think about what you’re saying, people are going to hear what you have to say…It’s the democratization of news,” said Carduner.

Even though he continues to read several traditional news sources, Aviza sees blogs as a way to help keep in check many of the ills of the filtered mainstream media.

“We’re ending the strangles of the mainstream media one blog at a time,” said Aviza.

Beechey admits that she continues to have more respect for blogs as a news source, but that they must be taken with a grain of salt.

“You can’t just trust that there are some sensitive ethical standards behind blogs,” said Beechey.

“Blogs aren’t scholarly sources,” Beechey added, with traditional professor-ly caution.

While the number of blogs has mushroomed, more notably, the breadth of topics and effect of blogs has exploded. Far beyond an online diary, today many people satiate all their appetites with various blogs. One can get news from blogs such as Huffington Post, keep in contact with friends via personal blogs and micro-blogging on programs such as Twitter, follow and support important causes through sites like environmental blog Gristmill, research gadgets on gear blogs like Gizmodo.com and wile away the hours looking at coffee on napkin art and purple people eater mittens on Boingboing.com. And the seemingly infinite reach of the blogosphere has not left the education world untouched.

This fall, Beechey made a blog a mandatory part of participation for her class on the 2008 elections.

“The material for the class was developing as the class going,” said Beechey. “A blog seemed like an appropriate step.”

Through the blog, students have been able to link to relevant articles and videos, analyze various elements of the election and respond to one another’s thoughts and queries.

“Essentially, [the blog] was a place to continue the discussion from class,” said Beechey. Beechey also noted that the blog seemed especially pertinent given the increasing role bloggers have had on politics.

“Elections are one place you can really measure [the effect of blogs]. In 2000 there was very little effect, in 2004 there was a bit more and in 2008 there’s a lot going on. It’s almost inescapable,” said Beechey.

While Beechey admitted her first deviance into blogs for a class wasn’t perfect, the overall student feedback has been mostly positive.

“I think people are willing to say things in type that they wouldn’t have been willing to say in class. I know I’ve definitely gone on a few rants [on the blog] that I wouldn’t have probably said in class,” said Tucker.

But the spread of blog mania hasn’t always been productive. Tucker noted that the camp where she works recently ditched much of their old interface on their Web site and turned it into a blog.

“Now they have the exact same thing but it’s the Camp Hammer Blog so it’s cool and trendy,” said Tucker.

College trend towards need-based financial aid a good decision

The tides of college financial aid continue to flow away from need-based aid and toward merit-based aid. According to the recent study by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, from 1994 to 2007 merit-based aid jumped from 27 percent to 43 percent of all institutional financial aid awarded. Subsequently, need-based aid dropped from 66 percent of all aid to 49 percent in the same time period.

As merit-based aid is used to buy up top students while middle and low-income households struggle to get the aid they need, rankings-lust threatens to destroy the diversity colleges have worked so hard for over the past decades.

The desire for high rankings drove colleges to provide incentives (a.k.a merit-based aid) to attract the top students.

But while colleges flashed their billfolds for Johnny and Suzy Overachiever, students who didn’t stand out as much on paper were left to scramble for money as need-based aid comparatively
dried up in favor of merit-based aid.

Yet Whitman seems poised to buck the merit-based aid tide as murmurings of a switch toward solely need-based aid surface.

Whitman currently reserves about 30 percent of all aid for merit-based aid, already admirably
low for a school of its type. A complete shift away from merit-based aid, however, would mark a significant commitment to the diversity and overall student welfare we strive for.

Merit-based aid seems like a good idea in a lot of ways. It rewards those who have worked hard, and really stood out. It’s a little something extra for students who undoubtedly deserve it, and it often makes college that much more affordable for middle-class families.

But ultimately, merit-based aid helps the few who probably didn’t need help to begin with while hurting majority who truly need it.

It’s no secret that students from more financially secure households generally perform better in school. While it’s clearly not a student’s fault that they came from a good family and did well in school, merit-based aid simply continues the cycle of helping well-off kids through college while excluding those from poorer families.

Need-based aid takes into account the fact that not all students come in on an equal background
and seeks to level the playing field at least a little.

If Whitman were to shift its financial aid to solely need-based, it doesn’t mean that those of us who receive merit-based scholarships would be left high and dry. It would mean more money in the pool for need-based aid which would cover more people with need would be covered.

A need-based approach would allow the school to better achieve the diversity we strive for. African American, Latino and American Indian households all have lower incomes, higher high school dropout rates and lower academic performance than the national average, and all three ethnic groups are underrepresented in colleges. An increase in need-based aid would inherently benefit these disadvantaged groups, not to mention increase socio-economic diversity.

A departure from merit-based aid needn’t mean an end to all scholarships that recognize truly exceptional individuals. Awards like the Garret and Sherwood scholarships are separate funds and work hard to bring truly exemplary students to Whitman who can add exponentially to the school.

But when funds are used to ‘buy’ high-performing students we push the chance at a college education farther from the grasps of those who could benefit the most from it, and often had to work harder to get to that position in the first place. By using need-based aid to make college more affordable, we can let Whitman speak for itself instead of letting money do the talking.

It seems inherent in our mission to facilitate social development, leadership and intellectual
vitality that we should seek to undo some of the injustices in the world, and what better place to start than in our own financial aid system?

Letters to the Editor 12/4/08

Editor,

It’s impossible to be completely successful at not offending someonewhen discussing culture. I am personally sorry if what we did was misinterpreted as an attempt to fully represent Moroccan culture. I am also sorry if anyone was offended. The goal of our event was to give the student body a glimpse of Morocco, much like the Parisian Quarter Cafe gave students a tiny glimpse of the streets of Paris. And to respond directly to criticism that no one in the French House is Moroccan, Julien was the native speaker last semester and he was Canadian. Was the previous house therefore wrong since none of them were from Paris or even France?

Furthermore, we listened to Professor Semerdjian’s concerns. We had little time to change a lot of our simple event to conform to her wishes. Advertisements had already gone out, and even if we had personally went around to take each flyer down what would have been accomplished? Most of the student body had already seen them. We had spent over a month planning the event. Our house split into separate committees and each of us did separate tasks. Not all of us did research because not all of us were on the research committee, and our research team did speak with Moroccans. Those of us who were not part of the research team split into groups of advertising, food, and decorations. Our advertising committee branched out into separate forms of advertising such as flyers, emails, and posters.

The cafe night is traditionally designed for students to come over to the French House, have some food and something to drink, and enjoy conversation with other students and learn something new. We followed that format–each student who came got to enjoy one Moroccan dessert item, one Moroccan drink, friendly conversation, Moroccan decorations, and some information about Morocco on tables. Students could come and go as they pleased, and from what we gathered, the students enjoyed themselves just as they have in previous years. The separation of tasks caused some miscommunication which was our mistake. In spite of this mistake, the event went extremely well.

Patricia Xi ‘12

—

Editor,

Upon reading the first column by Sallie and Sally, “Fashion Reviewers,” we had difficulty determining if this was just a failed satire. In fact, we all wish that it were. If this is not the case, it was an insensitive and shallow attempt at looking at campus-wide fashion trends, and succeeded in nothing more than alienating not only the authors themselves, but also the idea of fashion critique as a legitimate form of artistic criticism.

To be frank, their ability to over-generalize Whitman students is not a special skill if its intent is not humor. Regardless of the subject that the Pioneer focuses on, it should involve intellectual analysis rather than personal rants. Sure, you have the right to exercise freedom of speech, but we hope that the Pio writers use that freedom responsibly instead of letting everybody know both their own social status and their assumptions about Whitman students. We are not in high school anymore; their opinions on our jean sizes are not, and should not be relevant.

A lot of people don’t “own a pair of Rock and Republic’s,” and there are students with parents who are on welfare. We wish that there were more thought put into a “fashion review.” We do not know everything there is about fashion criticism, but we understand that it should be constructive and analytical rather than destructive. If the writers’ goal was to alienate and ostracize their audience, well, congratulations. But if the goal was to offer a legitimate commentary on fashion at Whitman, the writers have a lot of work to do. This article belongs in the op-ed section if anything – give the title of “fashion reviewer” to someone else.

The writers’ choice to publish these thoughts anonymously makes it seem like this is the opinion of all Whitman students. You don’t speak for us, and we can confidently say that you don’t speak for the majority of Whitman students. So overall, we question why this piece was published at all, why it was taken out of private ranting and placed into a public forum. We think that this discredits the Pioneer as a newspaper and as a representation of Whitman students.

This article comes across at being a lame attempt of being Caitlin Tortorici (props, Caitlin – we actually find you entertaining). Please don’t write about “Halloween Hook-Ups.” We don’t care.

Later “bitches,”
The Fine Arts House

—

Editor,

I would like to thank you so much for your coverage of both the pre and post Mr. Whitman 2008 Male Beauty Pageant.

All eight of the boys, and all of us Kappas, put endless hours into both creating a wonderful show for the audience, as well as fundraising for the Lake Nkrumba Orphanage in Uganda.

I just wanted to publicly thank all eight of the boys for all of their hard work. All eight boys combined were fabulous to work with and their enthusiasm was contagious.

I also want to thank all of the Kappas and everyone on the Whitman campus who supported the cause through donations of both time and money. It was a true community feat that we were able to collectively raise over $21,000.

Thank you for your support, based on effort and dedication, all eight boys this year deserved to be crowned king!

Cheers,
Maryn Juergens ‘10

—

Editor,
Our imperialist foreign policy, the entrenched interests of the military-industrial complex, and our foreign aid programs, which essentially equate to a form of international welfare, have all contributed to the financial meltdown in the U.S.

Why has Barack Obama said almost nothing about embracing non-interventionism and preserving national sovereignty when these strategies could reduce our immense national debt?

But a safe pullout from Iraq and the Middle East is only half the battle. Maintaining military bases in Korea, Japan, Germany and many other countries serves only to perpetuate our collective ethnocentric western ideology, the establishment of a colonial empire, and American primacy in the international community. Might is not, and will never be, right.

What started with Polk (Mexican war), continued with T. Roosevelt (Philippines, Panama, etc.), and culminated with Reagan (too many to list) and Bush’s doctrine, must end with Obama. No empire has been able to maintain its holdings without eventual collapse. Our fate, I fear, will be no different.

Matt Sweeny ‘12

Response to French House criticism

GUEST COLUMN: Amelia Singer ‘10

This is the current RA of the French House. I am a Junior who has lived in the French House for almost a year and a half, a year of which I have been the RA. I am a double major in Sociology and Gender Studies, an Intercultural Club President, and have been the president of a diversity club since my freshman year here. I did a presentation at the symposium last year, and am consistently committed to bringing diversity awareness to this campus in all possible ways.

I would like to respond to some criticism that has been voiced against the French House’s recent event, “A Night in Morocco.” Each semester, the house puts on an event (formerly known as “Quarter Coffee Café”), in which we serve French food and drink to students, but also provide information about France. This time, the house decided to switch our focus to Morocco, a French-speaking country in northern Africa.

Professor Semerjdian expressed concerns with the fliers used to advertise the event, which showed belly dancers and sand, as she feared we were making a culture we are not a part of seem exotic and other by putting it on display. Although we did not plan on having belly dancing at the event, it was advertised, and there was a picture of belly dancing on these fliers.

These fliers were not “inadvertently reproducing racist and imperialist imagery” and it is presumptive and imaginative to say the belly dancers are “invoking a harem fantasy” with “the observer viewing the women from their voluptuous backsides” implying that there is a Westerner there to view something that is not a part of their culture and therefore less than it, making that “other” culture exotic.

When people think of the French House, they think of France. While there is nothing wrong with this, there are so many other countries, cultures and dialects that I feel are an important part of Francophone culture. Our previous events have been fun; we eat chocolate mousse and crepes, we learn about Paris, but what about Senegal, Belgium, Quebec, Mali, Morocco! Am I Moroccan?

No. Is anyone in my house Moroccan? No. Does that give me less of a right to represent that culture? It’s something I can’t answer. But I can tell you what we did. We talked to our Moroccan friends, we had a research team, we watched Moroccan films, read Moroccan books, listened to Moroccan music, found Moroccan decorations, made Moroccan food. We created a tasteful, enjoyable evening in which all profits go to charity as they do every semester. Most of all, students and professors at Whitman left this event having learned about a culture they might not otherwise have been exposed to, and they learned about it through multiple senses.

Last semester, our café night focused on the city of Paris, but no one in our house was French. Even our Native Speaker—a position usually filled by someone from France—was from Quebec. Can it then be argued that we were misrepresenting Parisian culture? If not, were we still misrepresenting it by showing the romanticized side of Paris, absent of homeless people, of burning cars in dangerous ghettos, of tensions with immigrants from Northern Africa, of religious persecution.

One person commented on the fliers that we used to advertise the event. One person, one day before the event, out of dozens of students, dozens of faculty who walked by them. Is this a tragedy on the part of Whitman’s educational system, or a miscommunication on what is appropriate? In either case, we didn’t have much time to respond to such criticism.

We never intended to have belly dancing at this event. We never intended to other-ize or orientalize a culture. Our goal was simply to draw light to the many Francophone cultures in Africa and around the world as part of the mission of Whitman to bring more diversity to this campus. We accomplished this.

As a diverse student at Whitman, I have been in a marginalized position before and have been frustrated when others could not see my view. I see the other side, understand it, and frankly have to disagree with it. I have a caring, intelligent house who worked hard to put this program on, despite the miscommunication with our advertising. If this event was a problem, then I have a problem with a lot of other events on Whitman’s campus.

What the administration may not recognize is that it is petty arguments such as this which make students frustrated with diversity programming, and lash out against it. Why do you think the Symposium was so poorly attended last year, and it will not happen this year? Because students are sick of being blamed for not being diverse enough, not being culturally sensitive enough, not being as aware as they should be. Diversity is supposed to be fun—what happened? Students became discouraged by the constant politics surrounding any event they wish to put on. I have my experiences, I have my opinion and I have made a positive impact on diversity on this campus, and I will continue to be an involved leader despite constant criticism.

Which is your favorite amendment?

It seems like it was just yesterday that John McCain and his supporters were calling President-Elect Barack Obama “not a real American” in a last ditch effort to defy increasingly telling poll numbers and clinch the presidency. I remember a certain “Daily Show” sketch from about this time that lampooned the GOP tendency to distinguish themselves from liberals in this way.

The sketch offered a quiz (like one that you’d find in a teenage girl magazine) that would determine with simple criteria whether one’s patriotism is “real” or not. One of the first questions asked was: “Is you favorite constitutional amendment the first, or the second?”

That John Stewart. He is pretty funny.

He implied that “real” Americans (read: “Republicans”) favor the second amendment—the freedom to bear arms—while “fake” Americans (you know who) favor the first.

While not many politicians in their right minds would openly challenge the validity of either of these freedoms, Stewart’s point really isn’t far from the truth. He hits upon an important way in which liberals and conservatives (generally) differ in their approaches to protecting the individual from the government.

How do conservatives protect themselves?

Guns. The idea is that if the people become oppressed by either their own government or an external force, they will have a way of defending themselves. If the commies invade overnight or if Obama really does hand the oval office over to his buddy bin Laden, then we’ll all be ready with our guns.

Gun ownership is, ideally, an effective check against the government. One argument against gun control on the Cato Institute’s Web site contends that “the gun control debate poses the basic question: Who is more trustworthy, the government or the people?” The answer that this question implies is correct, but what it overlooks is that there are other ways to protect the people from government.

How do liberals protect themselves? Speech. If Obama turns out to be a terrible president, as many second
amendment supporters are thinking, then we can nail him with our freedom of speech and press.

Guaranteeing the American people their right to broadcast their own ideas and criticisms is also an effective check against the government. In fact, this is much more effective than guns are. The pen is mightier than the gun.

When it really comes down to it, it’s important to have as many checks against government as possible. While it’s not that likely in our country, government has the potential to be incredibly oppressive. Look at China, Iran and so many other countries where it is a crime to speak against the government and to own a gun.

If we really have to pick either the first or the second amendment, as Stewart’s quiz asks us to, why don’t we consider this: Newspapers don’t cause more than 30,000 deaths per year in our country.