For most Whitman students, interactions with legal authorities are virtually non-existent. However, when police interact with students, they usually only see the underbelly of campus activity.

Though last year they dazzled the crowd singing Lady Gaga and the year before belted a Sara Bareilles medley in their bright blue gowns, this year the Independent Women will be absent from the 87th annual Choral Contest.

Though the Independent Women’s choral group has even won out against the Greek groups they compete against in past years, the group will not be appearing in the contest due to the fact that nobody stepped up to form the group this year before the deadline. This differs from their competitors, for whom the event is institutionalized.

“With the Greek groups they have people who are theoretically organizing it, but with independent groups it falls into whoever’s hands, and nobody spearheaded it this year,” said Zoe Ingerson, the independent senior who is organizing Schwa’s performance at the event this Friday, April 26. “The people who spearheaded it last year graduated.”

Forming an independent group takes some effort and much vision. Senior Hari Raghavan was a founding member of Choral Contest competitor the Gospel Choir and reflected on its beginnings.

“The choir was the brainchild of [alumnae] Daria Reaven and Jo French, two friends of mine who graduated in 2012,” he said.

The dynamic duo saw a niche that needed to be filled in campus music, and with their combined musical ability invited anyone who wanted to join.

“Daria was the singer between the two, and Jo played the piano, and they conceived of it in order to offer others like them who loved music and who hadn’t an outlet for it the chance to be involved,” said Raghavan.

The aim of the group wasn’t initially to take on the choral contest, but as the opportunity arose, the group took it. This might have changed the tone of the group, but its central focus still remained.

“In some ways, it became a bit more serious, but we also knew we didn’t have much of a chance compared to other groups who entered,”  said Raghavan. “Its aim had always been to encourage people to sing, especially people who didn’t much think of themselves as musicians.”

The group remains a staple even though founding members like Raghavan no longer are part of the group or run the show. Keeping the Gospel Choir alive, though, is made easier due to the tangible promise of soulful music. This is something difficult for a group such as Independent Women.

“Gospel Choir really has a unifying theme that people can congregate around. We just don’t have any outlet for gospel music,” said Ingerson. “Indie Women, because they only have that one performance, there is less cohesion because they are only gearing toward one event.”

The senior women of Whitman’s Chorale group usually spearhead the event, but Ingerson points out that most of these women happen to be Greek this year. With no clear direction from above, as one could find in a Greek group, the group simply didn’t happen.

“There’s the expectation—if Phi [Delta Theta] didn’t perform, people would be like, ‘Guys, where were you, why didn’t you perform at Choral Contest?’” said Ingerson. “But with Indie Women, that structure doesn’t exist. You can’t really go up to anybody and ask them what happened because there’s nobody responsible.”

While she herself is an independent woman who would otherwise be capable to lead the group this year, Ingerson’s commitment lies with Schwa.

“I realized after the fact when someone talked to me and asked why I hadn’t organized for Independent Women, but I have my own group to organize for.”

For those who participated with the group in years past, the lack of this musical outlet comes as a surprise and a disappointment. In 2011 and despite her perceived musical inability, senior Hannah Siano decided to join the group under the leadership of alumna McKenna Milici ’11.

“It was great that the group was led by a super empowering girl-power awesome singer like McKenna,” Siano said.

Siano fondly remembers the fun of getting to know other independent women filled with traditions and such, never having done similar bonding activities in a women’s fraternity.

“They handed out bracelets, and had all these traditions we did, and it was a really great set-up,” she said. “It was great meeting random, independent people whom I wouldn’t have encountered before, and they were really open to anyone of any training level—and we sounded incredible.”

And, ultimately, she had been looking forward to this year’s performance.

“Singing with [the Independent Women] was going to be a highlight of my semester,” she said. “But then my friend told me that it wasn’t happening this year, and that made me sad.”

Senior Taylor White, who was part of the 2012 Independent Women, joined in on the group after being inspired to try the year before and seeing emails advertising the group.

“They just sent an email out to multiple listservs. I had watched them sing the Sara Bareilles ‘King of Anything’ medley and was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that would be so much fun,’ so then I did it the next year.”

She waited for those emails to come back, but when they did not show up she looked into different options.

“I wanted to do it again, and I was waiting for the emails,” she said. “But then I saw that the Frisbee team was going to sing, and decided to do that instead.”

Without the Independent Women performing this year, Siano fears that the traditions and fun she had will not be revived in years to come.

“I’m afraid that [the senior class] would be the only one that would remember it being awesome,” she said.

Ingerson, on the other hand, remains confident that the Independent Women will again take the Chorale Contest stage at the very next opportunity.

“It’s not a group that’s died out by any means,” said Ingerson. “It’s definitely going to come back next year.”

A closer look at the 87th annual Choral Contest.

Encounters has grown from obscurity into its own niche forum in just over a year of existence. As the administrator graduates, we look back at what brought us to this point, as well as what lies in the future of the website.

After spending last semester repairing his car, Steven Klutho ‘13 and his ‘74-ish Volkswagen Beetle are now taking to the streets and driving around town. After driving his orange automobile to the library, he gave The Pioneer the grand tour of his car—new engine and all.

Car Soundbites:

Steven Klutho ‘13 and his ‘74-ish Volkswagen Beetle. Photos by Faith Bernstein.

“Albert Schueller, the math professor and my adviser, inspired me to get a bug because he got one a couple of summers ago with his daughter and they converted it into an electric car. So I was like, ‘Whoa, that’s awesome,’ that it would be really cool to do.”

“I found it on Craigslist from a guy out in Kennewick, so I drove out there, test drove it, then bought it. Then 15 miles outside of Kennewick, it broke down catastrophically. Irreparable engine damage, smoking on the highway: It was a big mess. I had owned it for all of ten minutes, then it was already broken to the point where I couldn’t drive it anymore. But I thought, maybe this is a good thing, now I’ll have to learn how to fix it.”

“The engine is actually in the back. It’s an upgrade, it’s got dual carburetors, that’s not stock.  It’s a little bigger than a stock engine, and has a little bit more kick to it.”

“The odometer on these models only goes to 100,000 miles, and then goes back to zero again, and this odometer is broken, and stuck at 90-thousand-something. I have no idea how many times that’s turned over—it could have 90,000 miles, or it could have 390,000 miles. I have no idea. Through putzing around and going to get groceries, I’d say I’ve only put 50 miles on the car since fixing it up.”

“The most we’ve ever had in here is four [people], to go to Big Cheese customer appreciation day. That was the big event.”

“I’m a big fan of the orange color. That’s the first thing I want to do when I get home is to take it to a body shop, work out the dents and give it a nice new paint job.”

~~~

Zack Strater ‘14 took The Pioneer for a spin through the wheat fields in his snazzy Volkswagen Cabria. (We promise, this isn’t product placement for Volkswagen.) He then took a moment to chat about his ride in the beautiful sunset.

Car Soundbites:

Zack Strater ‘14 and his Volkswagen Cabria

“It used to be my dad’s car for about eight years, and then he had his little midlife crisis thing and got a smaller, sportier-looking car. This was around the time I was 16 and started driving and no one was using this car, so I decided to learn stick and drove the car, and it gradually became my own after time.”

“Its name is Herb. It’s kind of an old car now, and I wanted an old guy name and Herb seemed pretty good … I think if Herb was a person he would be much different [from how] I am, but I think we work well together.”

“Well, when I first started driving, I didn’t realize that it’s very important when the car is parked to keep it in gear. Once I forgot to leave the car in gear and just put the parking brake on and at some point in the night it rolled, and then rolled into our other car. It turned out that my car was fine, not even any bumper damage, but it destroyed the axel on the other car. That was pretty funny! Well, not for my parents, but for me. I was learning.”

“[I use the car] mostly so I can go home to Portland and back during breaks, but it’s really nice being able to go to the grocery store when I need to, and I really like being able to drive out into the wheatfields for the sunset.”

“I drove it this winter in some icy snow conditions with chains and it was good. Mostly because it’s a little brick.”

In the new title-taking wave that is sweeping campus campaigns and organizations, there is a new player that hopes to re-imagine itself in a way that another campaign has already imagined itself: the Green Dot Program.

Sexual Misconduct Coordinator Barbarella Mixwell announced on Tuesday, March 26 that the Green Dot Program would no longer be called as such at the start of the 2013-2014 academic year. Instead, it will adopt the name of the campaign to promote civil rights education in local elementary schools: Whitman Teaches the Movement.

“Instead of having the ambiguous title of ‘Green Dot,’ which takes a lengthy explanation of why green dots have anything to do with sexual misconduct, we’re going for something more visceral entirely,” said Mixwell. “Under the new banner of ‘Whitman Teaches the Movement,’ we want to promote safe sex by making sure people know how the sex ‘moves’ actually work.”

Over spring break, a joint effort was made by members of the Pioneer‘s Sexual Misconduct Article Writing Squad (which actually just means Rachel Alexander) and Mixwell to produce a 120-student survey that was totally representative of the views and ideas of the entire student body. The results were staggering: Instead of pointing toward sexual malignancy, it mostly hinted at complete sexual ignorance.

“Wait, the clitoris is a sex thing?” said one junior male in response to one of the survey questions. “I was convinced that it was just one of the characters from that one Shakespeare play. Or maybe that was Cleopatra. I can’t remember.”

Another student’s views on sex and women seemed entirely founded on male comedy routines and YouTube videos.

“I like women. I like the concept of a woman. I like to take that concept and reduce it to an object. I like to take those objects and put ‘em in my videos and have them shake they jiggly bits so they looks like hoes,” said one male first-year who was clearly quoting the satirical rap song “Fuck Shit Stack” by comedian-musician Reggie Watts with utmost seriousness.

This trend seems to take root mostly on the male end of campus. The women in the survey seemed to have it all mostly together, except for things they probably just didn’t want to know about balls.

“I mean, I don’t want to know why they’re just so shrivelly and hairy and sometimes lopsided and sweaty and gross. I don’t think that’s a crime,” said one sophomore female in the survey. This sentiment was echoed 27 times.

In this new “Whitman Teaches the Movement” campaign, Mixwell plans on combatting the sexual ignorance that leads to sexual misconduct by using the awe-inspiring power of metaphor.

“Imagine a baby who has one of those toys where certain shaped blocks go into certain slots,” said Mixwell. “The stupid, uninformed baby will try to put the triangle block into the square slot, and no matter how hard it tries it just isn’t going to work as the baby planned.”

This contrasts with the figure she called the “smart baby.”

“The smart baby will take the care and finesse of taking the crescent block and gently and slowly pushing it into the correct crescent-shaped slot, which is rewarding for everyone.”

When asked why she chose babies, Mixwell tied the metaphor back to the image of movement.

“Babies spend two years trying to master basic human locomotion. I want to inspire students to take the same amount of time and effort to learning a completely different movement: the movements of romance and sexual intercourse,” she said.

She then began personifying the blocks and slots as males and females through the symbolism of penes (yes, folks, that’s the proper Latin plural form of penis) and vaginas.

“When a man tries too hard to put his block into a woman’s slot, the result is aggressive behavior of the man on a quest to fulfill his sexual desires. Even if it is the wrong slot, he can keep forcing the block, which can leave the slot and woman feeling hurt, or even worse, broken and scarred for life.”

And then Mixwell drove the nail in the coffin as she finished off the lecture with a clear message of shame.

“I mean, come on. If a 15-month-old baby can figure this shit out, why can’t a group of college students? Get your shit together. You’re at Whitman fucking College,” she said.

Senior sociology major Catherine Mattress, who has spent her final year at Whitman studying the efficacies of different approaches to college sex education and sexual conduct programs, backs this measure for change wholeheartedly.

“I think the time is right for change, and we need to take the imagery back to its core: the ‘movement’ itself,” she said.

Mattress, whose last name partly inspired her work on sexual conduct, especially agreed with the apt baby and block-slot metaphor, which she believes drunk college students can relate to.

“Babies and drunk college students are a lot alike: They babble a lot, they stumble when they try to walk, they make weird gyrating motions and they puke all over themselves,” she said. “Hopefully, the baby will be something that drunk students can truly relate to instead of colored dots on a map.”

The general public seems to be behind the sea-change that will go into full force this fall. Especially closeted virgins.

“I could stand to learn about how the movement of sex works with this new program,” said now-uncloseted virgin senior Buster Hyman. “That way down the road I won’t attempt to drunkenly have my way with a woman because of my own sexual insecurities which are rooted in my lack of knowledge and experience.”

Still, there will be great lament over the loss of the Green Dot Program, but mostly because now there won’t be any more context to green dot and red dot jokes in male first-year sections.

“It would always be funny when one guy would jokingly grope another guy’s pecs and someone in the room would be like ‘red dot!’” said senior math major Mike Hawk. “Those were good times. Without those jokes, though, I might not have even remembered the [Green Dot Program] at all.”

If first-year sex jokes are the legacy of the Green Dot Program, then maybe the name change is the right thing to do. Even if it was stolen, it was stolen for the sake of safe sex.

*** “Whitman Teaches the Movement” was unavailable for comment, because they are very busy assessing their options as to what name they are going to filch from another campaign.

That’s So Ten Years Ago

Remember “Survivor”? When Arnold Schwarzenegger became governator of California? Limp Bizkit? “Bad Boys II”? If you laughed or cringed at any of those, imagine what you’ll be laughing at 10 years from today; imagine the things that were so cool and trendy today that will make you smack your forehead in regret in the future. If you’re having trouble with your imagination today, we’ve got you covered. Here’s what you’ll be regretting 10 years from now.

Mannerisms

• 

  Troy Warwick ’16 YOLO’s it up in the silent room at Penrose Library. Blaring music, no pants…how much more could he be living?

  “YOLO”: Assuming you live long enough while shouting this motto, you’ll find that YOLO only lived once (or rather, lived only once). Heck, Drake will probably be back in Canada for the free healthcare after overdosing at his re-re-Bar Mitzvah, and Zac Efron will have had his tattoo laser-removed. We can’t say that we’ll be disappointed that this phase died out along with its obligatory “hang loose” hand motion that accompanies it. In fact, the phrase will gloriously win a Darwin Award.

• 

  Whitties Lillian Bailey ’13 and Corinne Pingul ’14 put the phrase into action.

  Reciting “Call Me Maybe” lyrics: We know you have it. That secret urge. That urge, when someone starts saying, “Call Me,” to finish it with a “Maybe.” In the future, people won’t soften their commands with cushion words like “maybe.” Everything will be direct and to the point. That, and we’ll probably have completely forgotten about Carly Rae Jepsen.

• 

  SWAG. Brenna Bailey ’16 emboidies the meaning, reppin’ some Minnesota gear.

  “Swag”: We may be guilty of using #swag from time to time—or all the time—as a substitute for the word “cool,” but a word that formally means “a suspended wreath, garland, or drapery” should never stay longer than its welcome. And its welcome is very close to ending. Like the hashtags before it, #swag needs to #go.

Fashion

• 

  A Whitman yoga class models the trending stretchy pant.

  Yoga pants: Yes, they’re form-fitting. Yes, they’re comfortable. But so was every new fashion ever. Eventually it will go out of style to look like you just walked out of your yoga class, or maybe Lululemon will get even more expensive than it is already. Whatever the cause, there will be fewer yoga pants and more of some other active-lifestyle-wear. Also, there will be less cameltoe.

• 

  Whitties Allison Eggert ’16, Eloise Willemsen ’16, and Louise Karneus ’16 model their grandma outfits.

  Dressing like a grandma: We blame Zooey Deschanel. She’s just so perfect and quirky and adorkably fashionable that it spun out of control and now we all dress like grandmas. Perhaps this is part of an age-old cycle that won’t run its full course until grandma dress-alikes become grandmas themselves. Or it’ll just go out of style in the next 10 years.

• Skinny jeans: The breakdown of traditional gender norms will continue to happen until gender actually turns into a spectrum. But God, the skinny jeans have to go. There are better ways to be a more sensitive male figure in our brave new world than walking around in jeans with inseams smaller than a child’s neck. We’ll learn that soon enough.

Pop Culture

• #hashtags: While it’s been amusing while it lasted, we can’t imagine this trend lasting more than five years. The hashtag will go back to being just a plain, ordinary, useless pound sign. We predict that it will fade proportionately with Justin Bieber’s innocence. Let’s just face it, everything wrong with pop culture is Justin Bieber’s fault. ***poundsignseeyawouldn’twanttobeya

• TLC: TLC as the “The Learning Channel” went out of vogue years ago, but could there be hope that it will return to its content namesake in 2023? If the ratings for “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” and “Long Island Medium” have anything to do with it, then no, no it won’t. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if they come up with even crazier fringes of society to highlight.

• All things Kardashian: Kris Jenner and her motley krew of K-named family members/kash kows have infekted our TVs and entertainment magazines since 2006. If there is a higher being, we hope that he or she will be kind enough to make them quietly go away faster than Kim kan get a divorce from Kris Humphries. Which, kome to think of the pace of that partikular endeavor, might happen in about 10 years’ time.

Technology

• Auto-tune: While this trend created the ability to make anyone sound remotely all right at singing (see: Rebecca Black), auto-tune will most likely die out and be replaced by people who can actually sing. Singers who can actually sing, like Adele, seem to be all the rage now (see: all of her Grammy trophies). Auto-tune will soon be as distant a memory as dancing to dubstep in the TKE basement.

• Televisions: Who in our lifetimes has ever said that televisions are the future? Probably only television salesmen. While TV shows are becoming increasingly digital, the only thing that stands in the way of a purely digital computerized television experience is how advertising would work. TV probably wouldn’t even exist without advertisements—just think about that the next time you see a Billy Mays knockoff ad.

• 

  DVD’s… pretty soon they’ll be looking as clunky as the old VHS’s.

• DVDs: With Netflix Instant Watch, Hulu and all different manners of streaming stealing the spotlight, the Digital Versatile Disc is becoming less and less versatile. Why bother with hard copies anymore? Everything is going to the cloud, man. That crazy nebulous cloud where all of our movies will come from for the rest of forever.

Politics

• Hating on women: While hating on women should have gone out of style around the same time it became unfashionable to not give women the vote, it is our hope that the anti-women comments of the Todd Akins, Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world will be pushed out of the political arena. If the national backlash against Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment is representative of how this country is moving, feelings like theirs will be a distant memory in 10 years’ time.

• Hating on gay people: Like hating on women, this trend seems to be on its way out. And similar to our feelings about hating on women, we’ve been over this trend for years. This trend can let the door hit it on the way out.

• Hating on underprivileged people, period: ‘Nuff said.

The internet is integral to our college experience, but how much is too much? Whitman students are finding that lines that must be drawn before computer and internet use becomes an addiction.

When junior Jamie Edison first came to Whitman, he had a certain preconceived idea of how college relationships worked.

Both his parents had met and hit it off in college, and so did his grandparents—at Whitman, no less. There seemed to be a big difference between his expectations of Whitman and reality.

“All of the married figures in my life met in college,” said Edison. “I guess I see the stereotypical Whitman student not finding a marriage partner at Whitman, but going on and getting married after school.”

Whitman might not feel like a school where finding a soulmate is as common as the urban legends would have students believe. Usually Whitman students see the neighboring Walla Walla University as a school where students more commonly get married before graduating.

Walla Walla University is the other private hub of tertiary education, located just a few miles away in College Place with an enrollment very close to Whitman’s, coming at 1,602 students.

The biggest distinction that is often drawn is that Walla Walla University is tied to Seventh Day Adventist religion in its roots, student body and policies. The most notorious of these is the drinking policy.

“At the University, we actually have a policy on drinking—we sign a piece of paper that says that we will not drink alcohol, and if anyone is caught drinking, that is grounds for getting kicked out,” said Alyssa Seibold, a Walla Walla University junior.

Seibold notes that while spirituality guides the social scene at the University, not everyone fits the quiet student stereotype that Whitman students might assume.

“There are people that party, and people that have chosen not to,” she said.

As for marriage, Seibold has no illusions that for many students, she jokes, Walla Walla University’s initials (WWU) can stand for “Western Wedding University.”

“A lot of people come here and they try to get married. Because of the community that we are in, I feel like people can find someone they are compatible with because we all come from similar backgrounds,” she said.

Walla Walla Academy is one of these backgrounds, as College Place’s private Seventh Day Adventist Church.  Community member Kaitlynn Vickroy went there for high school and graduated in 2006. Though she herself did not, many people from her high school matriculated to Walla Walla University.

“Because it’s so close, if you went through the private school, a lot of your friends ended up going there,” she said. “A good 50 percent end up going to the University; it’s an easy transition.”

According to Vickroy, the religion’s and community’s emphasis on group social activity provide a great chance for people to meet and get to know each other before making things more serious.

“We’ll have vespers where we’ll meet on Friday nights. We’ll come together and you sing and you worship and you have a little talk and then you break off, and sometimes you’ll go over to somebody’s house for game night,” she said. “As far as relationships go, it’s always encouraged through being friends first, and then interest sparks from there.”

Despite this reputation, many Walla Walla University students might start their relationships in college, but will wait until after graduating to actually get married.

“This isn’t back in the day Walla Walla University. Nowadays, people are focusing on their careers first and foremost and then getting married after they’ve graduated and found a stable job,” said Seibold.

While it might be easy to lump all Walla Walla University students or Seventh Day Adventists into one category, even on the topic of marriage people differ. Even though both of Vickroy’s sisters married when they were 20 years old, Vickroy has not followed that same path herself.

“There is no time limit for when you have to get married. You’re always encouraged to wait,” she said. “But when you get married, you get married, for better or for worse.”

While Edison might see the Whitman dating scene as bleak, Vickroy believes that the lack of dating scene isn’t necessarily a Whitman affliction but something more problematic with our generation.

“I feel like that sort of behavior in our generation is absent,” she said. “If you just go on a casual date, like going to coffee, it’s not a date. It’s hanging out.”

While the dating scene might seem absent, that doesn’t mean people aren’t tying the knot at Whitman. There is a handful of students who are married or are engaged to be married among Whitman’s ranks.

Alecia Kaer ’14 and fiancé Matthew Lindsay are all smiles as they discuss the final wedding invites for their upcoming spring wedding in their home state, Alaska. Photos by Susie Krikava.

Junior Alecia Kaer is slated to marry her fiancé Matt Lindsay this coming spring break in their home state of Alaska. When they hit it off, marriage was always in the question.

“We basically decided that if getting married wasn’t going to be an option, we wouldn’t be dating,” said Kaer. “We decided to make love a choice, not just a feeling.”

Lindsay added that though it might sound strange, it made the commitment and connection stronger. Both had had enough with relationships where people’s hearts weren’t completely there, so they took this relationship quite seriously.

“You’re pretty much like, ‘will you marry me, but in the future.’ But just by doing it that way, it definitely just helps keep things going in that direction,” said Lindsay.

Kaer and Lindsay’s wedding invitations.

When asked about how people react to her upcoming wedding, Kaer isn’t all that ostentatious about the whole thing.

“I don’t usually go out and straight up tell people; I usually wait to see if they see my ring on my hand,” said Kaer. “This doesn’t happen very often, because people wear rings on their ring finger all the time.”

There is a little bit of disbelief when they realize that Kaer is in fact getting married.

“When they do find out, they are like, ‘What? Really?’ and then their first response is always ‘Is it a Whitman student?’”

Lindsay is not a Whitman student; he is on a fire crew in Alaska and doesn’t get much time off. In explaining all of this, Kaer doesn’t feel so much like she is judged for her unusual decision, but anxiety does set in.

“I don’t think I feel judged, but I do feel self-conscious,” she said. “That feeling of ‘if I can’t figure out how to tackle my homework, how can I figure out how to get married?’”

Even though each school has its own norm, when it comes to finding a soulmate, it seems to be an individual-by-individual incidence. Whether lovers meet at church, in class or in the workplace years later, when it happens, it just feels right.

“When I met Matt, I just kind of knew,” said Kaer.

Illustration by Brayton

When senior Nick Marquiss sat down at his first Encounters class, he found himself sitting across the table from the same professor who taught his father decades before.

This situation may seem strange, but not with the kind of legacy representation found at Whitman. The Office of Admission defines a legacy student as a student who has a sibling, parent or grandparent who has attended the College. In a typical class, 10 percent of students fit the legacy bill, and another five percent have extended family who have attended Whitman.

In this particular case, Marquiss found himself with the same core curriculum professor as his father, Professor Emeritus of Physics Craig Gunsul.

“I didn’t think about it too much. Gunsul recognized my last name, which was good [of] him, but what struck me most was that, wow, Gunsul is really old.”

He takes it in stride, but Marquiss’ mother, father and grandfather all attended Whitman, a fact which he believes played strongly into his decision to apply to Whitman.

“Growing up, I was totally brainwashed into joining the Whitman fold. I always knew what the liberal arts was about, and I was always pretty into it. I only visited once, just to check out the campus.”

Sophomore Chelan Pauly found herself in a similar situation: Both of her parents attended Whitman. She grew up hearing stories about the fun and shenanigans both of her parents had during their time at Whitman, and even came down to visit.

“We took a family vacation to come visit Bob Carson and Dr. Ball in seventh grade,” she said. “We got to play with rocks in the Geology Department, Bob Carson gave us retro geology sweatshirts and we went on a tour—we had prospie folders as seventh graders.”

Despite the good memories and the fun stories, the fact that her parents had gone to Whitman was almost a complete turn-off.

“Originally my intention was to definitely not go to Whitman because they had gone here. When I applied, it was like, ‘Oh, my parents had a great time at Whitman, so I should apply just in case.’”

The idea of attending Whitman grew over time, and was bolstered by more than just her parents.

“I had a lot of older friends who went here—a lot of older role models,” she said.

When it came time for herself and her twin sister, Skye Pauly, to apply, the prospect came up that they could possibly go to the same school as each other.

“We were applying at the same time, and we both applied to a ton of different schools, and it was kind of a non-issue,” she said. “We could both go to the same school if we really liked it, or we could both go to different schools. But I think I decided first.”

Marquiss found himself in a similar position as Pauly when applying to schools; he didn’t want to set himself too strongly on Whitman, despite his parents’ love for the college.

“I was never really encouraged [to go here]. It was more like, ‘Whitman is a cool place, you should check it out,’” he said. “My sister even went to [University of Washington]. I didn’t want to constrain myself to just Whitman … what if I changed my mind and decided to go to UW or Colorado College?”

The idea tied to the legacy label is that there is some sort of preferential treatment in the admissions office when these direct relatives of Whitman alumni apply. Marquiss believes he earned his way in, but remains open to the idea that his legacy status had some sway in his admission to Whitman.

“I had a decent GPA and my SATs weren’t too great … but I don’t know what everyone else’s backgrounds were,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.”

When the Office of Admission looks at applications, the main goal is to search out a well-rounded mix of individuals, but there are a certain number of “plus” factors that can place qualified students over the edge and into the pool of admitted students. Legacy is one of these, among other “plus” factors are exceptional talent in athletics or the arts, diversity and noteworthy involvement in other fields.

“These ‘plus’ factors can help differentiate a student among other applicants and are considered only after a student has been determined to be qualified, if not highly qualified, for admission to Whitman,” said Tony Cabasco, dean of admission and financial aid,  in an email.

A strong factor in the importance of legacy status comes from the fact that the College maintains a positive working relationship with alumni, and by extension their children and grandchildren.

“It speaks highly of the Whitman experience that many family members end up graduating from Whitman (sometimes over several generations),” said Cabasco in an email.

Additionally, they are one part of a whole, well-rounded Whitman graduating class, and one that has proven their worth over time through hard work and academic success.

“Students who come from Whitman families generally understand and value a Whitman education and end up being very good fits to Whitman,” said Cabasco in an email. “In previous studies that have been conducted, we’ve found that legacy students have had slightly higher graduation rates.”

Despite the positive impact being a legacy can have on an application to Whitman, Pauly is dubious to the degree that her legacy status alone helped her out.

“I don’t recall ever filling out any paperwork saying that my parents are alumni,” she said. “It might have helped.”

For Marquiss, having family history rooted in Whitman has added a little extra weight to his college experience, but his induction into his family’s “Whitman fold” has been anything but a negative experience.

“Sometimes, I kind of think of it as stunting my own experience, remembering that, ‘oh, my mom and dad have already done this, and my grandpa has done this,’” he said. “But it really has strengthened our connection to each other.”