Whitman will play host this spring to the fifty-first annual meeting of the Heidegger Circle, a nationwide group of philosophy scholars with an interest in the work of early nineteenth century philosopher Martin Heidegger. Organized by philosophy professor and prominent Heidegger scholar Julia Ireland,  the conference will involve speeches and papers by prominent Heidegger scholars from around the globe.

The conference is scheduled for April 13-15 of next year, and will take place largely at the Marcus Whitman Hotel at the corner of Rose Street and Third Avenue North. It is entitled “Art, Landscape, Technology,” a title which Ireland says is derived from some lesser-known portions of Heidegger’s work.

“In (Heidegger’s most famous work) Being and Time, Heidegger was interested in resurrecting the question ‘what is the meaning of being?’ But he’s one of those thinkers who is constantly reinventing what philosophy is about,” Ireland said. “He’s very deeply engaged in readings of poetry. The landscape part is conceptions of nature—that nature is not something that’s abstract, it’s always situated according to place, in a home, or even in a homeland. And then … the concern with technology—he was prescient in the critique of technology, and I think he’s read that way,” Ireland said.

The conference is preceded by a series of events organized by Philosophy students Nolan Bishop, a junior, Gillian Gray and Jack Lassiter, both seniors. These events, Ireland says, are intended to help bridge the gap between the visiting scholars and Heidegger enthusiasts and the campus at large.

“Because Whitman is not a university with a philosophy graduate program, it was really important to me to try to integrate it with stuff that is part of the Whitman curriculum,” Ireland said of the conference. “In bringing the conference here, it was really important to me to take the theme of the conference and to try and say ‘Can I build some campus programming to kind of prepare and expose students to things that they might encounter at the conference, at a much higher level?’”

At each, the students and Ireland work to recruit professors across the disciplines to discuss Heidegger’s relationship with those disciplines. Bishop coordinated one such event at the German house on October 20, featuring Ireland and Environmental Humanities and German professor Emily Jones. Gray is scheduling another one for late November entitled “Art, Sculpture, Space,” which Bishop says could correspond with Encounters students’ examination of “Carnival,” the multicolored statue that stands between Boyer Avenue and Douglas Hall. That pairing is still in the works, he said.

“The schedule of events is still a little flexible right now,” Bishop said. “I think we haven’t pinned down exactly when everything’s going to happen, but we’re trying to draw in as much of the school as we can across the various disciplines.”

Ireland also hopes to make the conference a hotspot for philosophy-related networking. Twelve Whitman alumni with PhDs in philosophy have been invited back to campus for the proceedings, and with anywhere between 50 and 65 philosophy scholars convening in Walla Walla, students interested in the discipline. Gray, Bishop, and Lassiter in particular will have plenty of opportunities to hear about the places philosophy could take them.

“From the perspective of someone who’s helping to run the event logistically, it will be such a great experience to talk with professors from all over the country,” Gray said. “It’ll be a great opportunity to talk with people who I wouldn’t normally have access to speak with, especially since I’m going into grad school.”

ASWC hosted its first-ever College Governance Forum last Thursday, where President Kathy Murray, Chair of the Board of Trustees Brad McMurchie and Faculty Chair Melissa Clearfield took student questions in a town-hall format in the Reid Coffeehouse.

Clearfield, Murray and McMurchie took questions about Whitman College’s discount rate, divestment, food service, tenure and other topics from students. They also spent time detailing the college’s structures of governance, especially the separation of powers created by the college’s constitution.

“What we’re really talking about here is the concept of shared governance,” Murray said at the meeting. “And that’s distinct to higher education, in that…on a college campus, different parts of the governance structure have responsibility for different decisions.”

The forum was proposed by ASWC president Arthur Shemitz, who included open forums with administrators and trustees as part of his platform for the presidency last spring. Shemitz contacted McMurchie, Clearfield and Murray over the summer to propose the forum, and was granted permission to use the town hall meeting as a platform for it by ASWC club director Grace Little and vice president Dana Casterella.

The forum lasted from 6 to 6:55 p.m. in an effort to avoid conflicting with a lecture by Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King at 7 p.m. Shemitz said that while the short time frame constricted questions, this didn’t stop some students from asking them.

“Because of the limited amount of time, we ended with a lot of questions that people still wanted to ask, but didn’t have time for,” Shemitz said. “And I was glad to see that a lot of people went up to the administrators afterward and asked them those questions, and I hope that they’ll feel empowered to ask them over email, or when they run [into] to them on campus.”

McMurchie and Murray will also be holding open office hours together in the near future to allow students to voice their concerns, in addition to the office hours Murray holds weekly.

In McMurchie’s view, the forum and transparency efforts like it, including his planned office hours, are good for the Board’s relationship with students.

“In my time on the Board, which has been almost 10 years, I’ve seen an increased effort to find opportunities for engagement like this,” McMurchie said. “I think there’s a fair amount of mystery about who the board members are and what they do, and any way we can eliminate that mystery and put a face to the policies, I think, would be good.”

Murray adds that events like this help her shape her vision for the college.

“Everything I hear [from students] helps me sort of adjust my priorities, or maybe pushes one closer to the top in a given moment,” she said.

As of yet, there are no plans to make the forum a recurring event. Such a decision would rest on next year’s ASWC leadership. Shemitz is hopeful that those future leaders would make such an effort.

“I think that it was a really great success,” he said. “I’d love to see it continue.”

With a little over a month before Election Day, Whitman students are shaping their voting plans. On the Whitman campus, student political groups are turning away from the contentious presidential election and toward other forms of organizing, including promotion of down-ticket candidates, registering fellow students to vote and promoting discussion of political life beyond the ballot box.

The Whitman Socialists, formerly the Whitman Socialist Front, have looked away from the presidential election and toward the local ones. Sophomore Bryn Louise, the president of the Socialists, says that the club is focusing primarily on socialist philosophy and discourses rather than electoral politics, which they do not believe are an effective way to create change.

“Once we orient ourselves in our philosophy more, we might bring up the election, but I’m very critical of both Trump and Hillary,” Louise said.

The Socialists will, however, host county commissioner candidate Randal Son next week Son is a union member, Whitman alum, Walla Walla resident and supported Bernie Sanders during the primaries, making him a popular choice among the Socialists. Louise said that focusing on local issues like these more effectively achieves the goals of the Socialists.

“We’re not trying to start a revolution,” they said. “We’re just trying to make gains for people here in Walla Walla.”

The College Republicans, led by president Groover Snell and vice president Garrett Atkinson, both seniors, are also avoiding too much involvement in the presidential election. Apart from a showing of the documentary Clinton Cash, which discusses the Clinton family’s business affairs in a skeptical light, the group has largely stepped back from the election.

“I think, in this election cycle it’s a lot of voting against a candidate, and I do think there are a fair amount of people who will not be voting for Hillary Clinton,” Atkinson said. “Whether that means they don’t vote, they vote for Gary Johnson, or they vote for Donald Trump, that’s kind of up to them. But… as a club, we don’t have a position.”

Like the socialists, the College Republicans are focused more on philosophy than on electoral politics. The club, Snell and Atkinson say, is more focused on providing space for discussion that falls outside of Whitman’s usually left-leaning paradigm.

“We feel like there’s a really kind of dominant narrative on campus, and we’d like to present a little bit of the other side. And it doesn’t mean you have to agree,” Atkinson said. “If you hear certain ideas over and over from lots of different sources, I think eventually you’ll become a little bit biased. And that’s why I think our club’s a really good outlet for people who want to hear a little bit of a different perspective from the one you hear over and over again.”

While as Republicans, Snell and Atkinson are distinctly in the minority at Whitman, there is no political group targeting centrist Democrats active on campus currently. The Young Democrats briefly had a presence on the Whitman campus, but they have been inactive so far after founders Mateo Seger and James Lavery graduated last year. While plenty of Whitman students support the Democratic Party, including Hillary Clinton, there’s no formal organization supporting her on campus.

Contributed by Olivia Barry
Senior Olivia Barry and family meet presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Instead, some students have struck out on their own to support candidates. Senior Olivia Barry volunteered for the Clinton campaign this summer at an event held by family friends. While there, she met the candidate and former Secretary of State, Senator and First Lady. Now, she’s looking for opportunities to support the campaign while still attending to her responsibilities at school.

“I really wish to get involved. I think that there’s a lot that we can do, especially as students,” Barry said. “I think that we’re at a really big tipping point in our country, when we have the opportunity to effect change—as a millennial generation, as young people who are really informed, as people who can really shift the balance of power in the U.S.”

In addition, a small group of student volunteers, not affiliated with any particular organization, are endeavoring to register students to vote in Walla Walla, whatever their political orientation. The group, coordinated by senior Maia Watkins, will be setting up shop on weekdays in Reid Campus Center, Jewett Hall and Prentiss Hall until the Oct. 10 voter registration deadline.

“It’s not a particular group, it’s definitely not affiliated with anything partisan or issue-based. It’s really just about… getting out the vote,” said senior AnnaMarie McCorvie, who volunteered with the group on Monday. “And specifically trying to help people understand the benefits of voting in Walla Walla. With the national election, people are really interested in keeping their affiliation in states that may have more of a stake in the presidency than Washington does.”

Photo by Keifer Nace

Godwin Wang has replaced Nick Hochfeld as a senior senator on ASWC.  Wang, who garnered two write-in votes in last spring’s election, was offered the position following Hochfeld’s resignation at the beginning of the semester.

Hochfeld’s departure left ASWC with a tight schedule for replacing him as the fourth senior senator.  ASWC Oversight Chair senior Jon Miranda, in accordance with the senate’s bylaws, asked fifth-place candidate Duy Tran to take the place, but Tran declined.  Wang, the sixth-place candidate, accepted the position in time to attend the first senate meeting on Oct. 4.  He has also filled Hochfeld’s position on the Student Affairs Committee.

“Right now I’m just … [getting] some ideas for … initiatives, and discovering potential improvements around the campus,” Wang said of his work on the Senate and committee.  “I’m still on the stage of gathering ideas, so right now I don’t have any specific aims or goals.  I think I will figure it out very soon.”

As a fail-safe should both Wang and Tran refuse the position, ASWC announced in early September that they would open petitions for seniors interested in the position.  After three weeks, no candidates surfaced, despite heavy marketing via e-mail.  Fortunately, Wang’s agreement to take on the position rendered the petitions irrelevant.

“We wanted to install a senior senator as quickly as possible, and having to miss the fewest number of senates possible.  In this case we were very lucky, because we were able to have Godwin attend the very first senate meeting,” Miranda said.  “That’s why we wanted to open the election as soon as possible as well, because the election process for ASWC is … [a] four week process.”

While unconventional, Wang’s election has precedents.  As recently as 2014, senior Jack Percival took on the role of ASWC Vice-President after the elected VP resigned.  Percival had taken second place in the election with 66 votes despite never announcing his candidacy.  Miranda expressed his satisfaction that all bylaws had been followed.

“I think Godwin’s a great guy.  I’ve known him for several years, and I have no doubt that he’ll be a great senior senator,” he said.  “So I definitely have zero reservations about him being in the position.  There’s four duly-elected senators, and so I’m pleased.”

Wang says he had never given much thought to joining ASWC prior to the recent proceedings.  While he’s still getting into the swing of working on ASWC, he shares Miranda’s optimism.

“I had some experience in high school as part of the student government.  So I think that this position is actually very interesting,” Wang said.  “There was an opportunity, so I thought, ‘why not?’”

As a Chinese international student, Wang hopes that his work on ASWC will galvanize other international students to follow his lead.

“I think this opportunity for me is also a good opportunity for all international students to participate more in the school’s activities [and] affairs,” Wang said.  “So I think it’s a rewarding experience, and that’s why I decided to accept the position.”

Sophomore ASWC senator and Nominations Chair AnnaMarie McCorvie also expressed the belief that Wang brings something new to the table.

“It’s really hard to find seniors who have never been on ASWC before and that are fully capable … but he’s really great.  He asks really great questions.” McCorvie said.  “I think that it’s going to be great to have a kind of non-ASWC voice.  You know, sometimes the senior delegation is full of ‘ASWC people;’ people who are entrenched in it. I think it’s going to be nice.”

Wang’s two electoral supporters, seniors Ryan Wallis and Mateo Seger, expressed extreme confidence in Wang’s ability to govern.

“I really hope that everyone realizes Godwin’s true potential and true worth, and they just make [Godwin] decide everything.  It really would be in the interest of everybody if Godwin were just in charge,” Seger said.  “Sometimes we may not understand everything Godwin does, but Godwin works in mysterious ways.”

Whitman held a special orientation for first-generation and working class (FGWC) students on the week of July 11-15.  Thirty-two first-year FGWC students were given a week on campus to take sample classes from Whitman professors and gain an understanding of the on-campus resources available to students.  

The idea of a special FGWC orientation first came into prominence last year.  The idea had several proponents within FGWC club, and concrete action toward creating the event began after a series of meetings between club members, administrators, and trustee Brad McMurchie.  

“There was a greater motivation to pursue it after the article that came out last fall,” said FGWC club advisor and Associate Professor of Chemistry Allison Calhoun, referring to a New York Times economic diversity ranking published last September that placed Whitman at the bottom of their list of top colleges. “[The article] brought to the forefront the impact [economic inequality] had on students on campus overall.”  

The administration took care to include FGWC students in the process of planning the event.

“It began with [Associate Dean of Students] Juli Dunn and I interviewing some junior and senior FGWC students in December, and talking to them about what they’d like to see: ideas we had, ideas they had,” said Director of Orientation Barbara Maxwell.  “And then we came back in January, and we did three additional focus groups of first-year first-generation students, to see if first-year students had a different opinion on what they would have liked to have seen as compared to the juniors and seniors.”  

Incoming FGCW Freshmen

Maxwell and Dunn drafted a schedule, which they asked Miriam Zuniga, then the president of FGWC club, to show to the group for suggestions.  After a few tweaks, including the addition of a library tour and a mock Encounters-like class, the program was submitted to the Trustees for funding approval at their May meeting.  

Maxwell and Dunn made a point of avoiding overlap between the special orientation and the larger first-year orientation, in order to maintain the excitement around orientation.  The July dates were chosen in order to avoid interfering with Scrambles, SCORES, and fall athletics.

“It became really clear to us that if we did an orientation right before the fall orientation, we’d take those experiences away from them,” said Maxwell.  “It was the only thing we could think of that allowed us to do what we wanted to do and still give them the opportunity to come back and participate in the same kinds of things that other students were participating in.”  

Director of Student Success and Disability Support Services Rebecca Frost has begun research on the program, using exit surveys and following up with participants in order to appraise the efficacy of the orientation. In the meantime, several participants seem optimistic about the orientation’s effects.  

“At the time it was really long and exhausting, going to every single building and meeting all of the faculty and all of the resource departments,” said first-year Daphne Gallegos, a participant. “But now, actually being here, I feel like I have a little bit of a leg up from the rest of my friends that didn’t partake in the orientation because I’m already familiar with a lot of the resources on campus, and I know who to go to for whatever I need.  I know…where the offices are, and I’m really hyper-aware of the fact that there’s a lot of support here.”  

First-year Donovan Olsen also took part in the orientation, and particularly enjoyed the informal introduction to Whitman’s FGWC community which it provided.  

“All of the structured things that we did were really helpful, but then there were all these times when it was a bunch of people hanging out, and just talking and getting to know each other,” Olsen said. “I think that was my favorite part, was getting to meet people who I had a lot of things in common with.”  

While complaints were few, the schedule was densely packed, and long weekend hours raised some issues.  Maxwell and Calhoun hope to see this change with any future iterations of the orientation.  

“With so much going on, I think the students were exhausted, I think the student leaders were exhausted, and certainly everyone who was involved in the programming was exhausted,” Calhoun said.  “I think an extra day would give a little bit more flexibility to experience… being on campus without always [having] something to do.”  

Junior Anna Zheng was one of several students, mostly FGWC, who helped facilitate the orientation. Zheng hopes that some of the new students she worked with will take up that mantle in the future. She and other organizers expressed their desire to see the program become a permanent fixture.  

“I think that the orientation itself was such a good step,” Zheng said.  “I remember being a first-generation freshman and being like ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’  So just seeing that happen within the few months that it took to plan was really nice.”

This year’s commencement address will be delivered by Rob Manning, ’80. Manning, who grew up in Whidbey Island, Wash, majored in physics while at Whitman and is now a major player in NASA’s Mars missions and the chief engineer for the Curiosity Mars rover.

President George Bridges asked Manning to speak at commencement late in February of this year. He cites Manning’s enthusiasm and high energy as a major factor in his selection.

“As an alum, he was absolutely enthusiastic about giving a commencement talk,” said Bridges. “He is a highly energetic person who has made huge contributions to all of the Mars explorations and just seems like a person who would be a very energetic speaker.”

Manning describes himself as “kind of an oddball speaker,” and it shows. He has unbridled enthusiasm for his work, and it shows when he discusses Curiosity.

“Curiosity is somewhere between a close friend of mine and HAL-9000,” said Manning. “She was a really grumpy teenager.”

At the time of writing, Manning was unsure of his plans for the speech.

“I have a long list of ideas that I’ve written down in my notes.  My trouble is … making up my mind,” he said.

While the process of preparing a speech is stressful, Manning has a sense of humor about it.

“These are short talks. They’re only 15 or 18 minutes long … How much damage can you do in fifteen 15, really?” Manning cracked. “The best thing about is that if I don’t do well, they just won’t invite me back.”

Manning is excited to return to Walla Walla, especially since his wife and daughter, who have never been here, will be accompanying him.

“I hope that they’ll enjoy it; I think they will,” said Manning. “Whitman was a wonderful experience, especially the people. The students were really great.”

Manning’s schedule is keeping him extremely busy. After the speech, Manning will fly to Hawaii for a test of one of his new projects, the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator, a device intended to decelerate spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere.

“It’s a really fun project.  It’s perfect for 12-year-old boys like me because it involves rockets and explosives and parachutes and fabric and things that go bang,” Manning joked.

For these same reasons, Bridges is optimistic about Manning’s speech.

“I just think Rob will be terrific,” said Bridges. “If you haven’t seen him on Nova, take a look; that will give you an idea of the kind of energy he has. This guy loves space.”

Whitman’s Now Is the Time fundraising campaign will come to a close on June 30.  The eight-year campaign has already exceeded its goal of raising 150 million dollars, and its organizers hope to garner more donations for the college in the time before the campaign ends.

The Now Is the Time campaign began in the 2007–2008 academic year with the goal of raising money for three purposes: improving the college’s academic resources and programs, increasing the amount of money going toward scholarships and preparing for the uncertainties of the future by growing the college’s unrestricted endowment.  Through a combination of money pledged, donated up front and left to the college as a part of donors’ estates, the campaign has garnered over 157 million dollars, a number that may increase over the next two months.

“People respond to a deadline … and our deadline is June 30,” said Trustee and campaign chair John Stanton. “We’re able to talk to people and say, ‘We’ve got a hard-stop deadline at the end of the fiscal year. If you’d like to have your gift have an impact on the college beginning next year, we really need to get the conversation completed.’”

Academic improvement, for which the campaign hoped to raise 75 million dollars, had garnered 76.5 million dollars by the end of March. This category covers the establishment of 26 tenure-track positions as well as increasing funds for internships and student-professor research, among other things. The construction of the Fouts Center for the Visual Arts and Glover Alston Center as well as the renovation of Harper Joy Theatre also fall under this umbrella.

52.2 million dollars has also already been committed to the second prong of the Now Is the Time campaign: scholarship funding. This total, also from the end of March, surpassed the goal of 50 million dollars, and much of this funding is already in use.

“Those gifts have enabled hundreds of students … to be able to attend the college and be able to continue in college,” said Stanton. “I think it’s just extraordinary that we’ve been able to, through the collective work of so many people, make a difference [with] 70 new scholarship programs [in] the last seven years.”

Finally, the financial strength component was at the end of March just shy of its 25 million dollar goal at 24.3 million dollars. This consists primarily of donations to the unrestricted endowment, which intended to pay the college’s operating costs as well as any other suitable purpose.

“The income from that unrestricted endowment can be used to meet college priorities as they emerge, evolve, change over time,” said Vice President for Development and College Relations John Bogley.

An additional four million dollars has been committed to the college but not yet targeted at any particular portion of the campaign.

On Monday, President George Bridges, along with Stanton, Bogley and Board of Trustees chair Brad McMurchie, hit the road to discuss the campaign on a tour that serves both to wrap up the campaign and as a farewell tour for Bridges.

“We will do some farewell receptions for President Bridges, but we’ll also talk about the success of the campaign, and our message will be ‘there’s still time to be a part of Now is the Time,’” said Bogley. “So I imagine that by June 30, we will have raised more than the 158 million we have committed to the campaign right now.”

While Bogley says that it’s “likely” that a similar campaign will begin at some point during Kathleen Murray’s tenure as president, there are no plans to begin one in the near future.

“Nothing’s sure until it really comes to pass,” said Bogley. “So we will use this interim period to continue to do what needs to be done to advance Whitman across the board.”

In the meantime, all involved are proud of the successes of Now Is the Time.  In an email, Bridges summed it up with a look at the campaign’s beginnings.

“There was a point…  just as we were about to launch the campaign when the Great Recession struck our country. At the time I seriously questioned whether we could or would achieve the very ambitious goal of raising 150 million dollars.” said Bridges in an email. “I am amazed by and immensely grateful for the many donors whose generous giving enabled us to exceed the goal. And I feel honored just to have played a part in this noble and exciting effort to advance Whitman. In one’s career, an experience as successful as this is exceptionally rare, particularly given the economic realities our country and our individual alumni and friends faced.”

Maxey Auditorium played host to a community-led meeting on the Hanford Nuclear Site on Wednesday, April 29. Organized by a collection of advocacy groups involved in the cleanup at Hanford, the event, along with several similar events across the Pacific Northwest, served as a substitute for the Department of Energy’s annual State of the Site meeting, which the department does not plan to hold this year.

The event began with a series of five-minute presentations by representatives of the nonprofits Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Hanford Challenge, Heart of America Northwest and Columbia Riverkeeper, as well as the EPA and Washington Department of Ecology. Afterward, all the presenters took questions as a panel.

The Department of Energy’s meetings, which usually take place in major cities such as Richland, Seattle and Portland, were forgone this year in favor of invitation-only meetings. As such, the groups involved in this meeting, entitled “Hanford: Our Nuclear Neighbor,” made a point to bring the meetings to less central locations across the state, including Spokane and Vancouver. This, according to the organizers, was intended to help democratize the meetings.

“Usually the State of the Site meetings are set up by the Department of Energy, and they kind of have control over the way that they happen,” said Danny Noonan, project manager for the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, an anti-nuclear group. “There’s a little bit of room for citizen involvement, but this is the first time that these meetings have been set up by citizen groups.”

The Hanford site, once home to a plutonium finishing plant, now holds over 56 million gallons of nuclear waste and other dangerous chemicals in subterranean tanks. Several of these tanks are now damaged, leading activists and other interested parties to pursue new storage methods. Budgetary constraints have delayed the Department of Energy’s current objective for the site, which involves blending the waste into glass blocks in order to make it more stable. Meanwhile, those involved with the Hanford site have been looking for intermediary steps to contain waste as well as trying to promote worker safety after discovering that workers at the site were frequently exposed to harmful vapors from the tanks.

By virtue of the long half-life of radioactive nuclear waste, the meeting focused heavily on the future and particularly on recruiting a new generation of advocates. One presentation, by Department of Ecology Communications Manager Dieter Bohrmann, gave attendees “10 reasons YOU should get involved with Hanford,” and during the event organizers passed out a survey asking, among other things, how best to communicate with respondents about the site.

“If you look around that table, you can see that it’s an aging group,” said Peggy Maze-Johnson, project manager at Heart of America Northwest. “And I think that we need to have more young people sitting around that table, because as we age and leave this planet, there’s going to be a lot still left for the people who are young now to take over.”

Junior Morrow Toomey, who attended the event as part of Professor of Anthropology Jason Pribilsky’s class entitled Anthropologies of Cancer, appreciated the event’s democratic nature.

“It was really nice to hear from community members and people who really knew what they were talking about in terms of the environment,” said Toomey. “Some really interesting ideas were put out there about what we could possibly do to speed up cleanup or maybe make it less expensive.”

Alissa Cordner, Professor of Sociology, introduces the speakers. Photo by Marra Clay.

Over the past several years, the widespread use of surveillance technology has become commonplace both as a tool for law enforcement and for private use.  According to the Walla Walla Police Department and Whitman Security, though, Whitman students and their Walla Wallan neighbors are not under as close of scrutiny as they might think.

On the hyper-local level, Whitman students can rest assured that they are not being watched on campus, according to Whitman Director of Security Matt Stroe.

Though a few cameras are noticeable in campus buildings, including in the Maxey Hall Computer Lab, Stroe says that they aren’t used by Whitman Security, and he offered no comment on their purpose.

“There is no surveillance on campus,” said Stroe. “Cameras are not used for surveillance purposes.”

When asked about whether student swipe activity is tracked — logging what buildings students go into and when — Stroe also said that students are not monitored. Whitman College Technology Services (WCTS) technically oversees swipe records, but Stroe says that data is only tracked when access to a building is denied (i.e., a student trying to enter a building that’s closed).

“They don’t go through and look to see who’s going where,” he said. “The record keeps track of who is denied access [to a building].”

Security cameras are visible around campus, including this one in Reid’s Cafe 66. Photo by Anna Dawson.

The WWPD uses some methods of surveillance but few of the most controversial tools available to law enforcement.  Stingrays are phone-surveillance devices that imitate cell phone towers, gathering data from phones that connect to them. They have recently come under public scrutiny, and the Washington state legislature has passed a law that would require search warrants for their use. While Stingrays have played parts in several high-profile cases in Washington and nationally in the last few months, they have never been used in any case tried in Walla Walla County, according to WWPD Public Information Officer Tim Bennett. The police department has not contracted with any larger national investigative organization, such as the FBI, to install them.

“We do have dealings with federal agencies that include the FBI, the Secret Service and the DEA, but to the best of my knowledge, we’ve never been approached about them wanting to use that kind of technology here,” said Bennett.  “Which doesn’t mean they haven’t done it without our knowledge, but I don’t think that’s the case.”

The WWPD also does not use wiretaps or similar methods of phone surveillance. The fullest extent of their dealings in phone surveillance, Bennett said, is requesting records from phone companies to “ping” the locations of suspects or missing persons. This process, however, requires approval from a judge.

Other high-profile surveillance methods are absent from Walla Walla. License plate readers, now commonplace in larger cities, use high-speed cameras to keep records of passing cars and alert officers when they find a license plate associated with a wanted person or a suspended or revoked license. While Bennett expressed that a license plate reader would be valuable to the police force, obtaining one is not a high priority.

“I haven’t heard any discussion about getting a license plate reader,” said Bennett. ”I think it would be a great tool for us, but it’s also a very expensive tool.”

Among one of the most common forms of surveillance the department has access to is one that practically anyone can use: Facebook and Twitter. Several cases in the past few years have involved evidence gathered from suspects’ social media postings.

“Some of our guys that are social-media savvy will go out and search, looking for evidence of a crime or locations of suspects.  That’s one of the things that helps us, is a lot of these people who are out committing crimes like to talk about it on social media,” said Bennett.

Like all the methods the department uses to solve crimes, however, this measure is typically targeted at specific individuals rather than the public at large.

“It’s a good tool to help us solve crimes,” said Bennett.  “Are we out there looking for information on random people in the public?  No.  We have far too heavy of a caseload to be doing that.”

Members of GlobeMed performed the original production Burma Voices on Friday, April 10. The event consisted of a series of monologues about the country’s long period of rule by a military junta, based on the testimonies of Burmese people. Though military rule ended in 2011, it has led to an unstable state under which many of the country’s various ethnic groups are still subjected to persecution and ethnic cleansing. Burma Voices sought to raise money for the Burma Humanitarian Mission, a non-profit partnered with GlobeMed that works to provide medical care and education in the country and to raise awareness of the nation’s ongoing political strife.

Colleen Bell ’14 delivers a monologue. Photo by Halley McCormick.

GlobeMed has an ongoing fundraising partnership with the Burma Humanitarian Mission, and members take trips to neighboring Thailand annually to work in refugee camps near the two nations’ shared border.  This event both grew out of that partnership and worked to fulfill it.

Directed by senior GlobeMed member Tory Davidson, the monologues were adapted from a book of testimonials on the military regime that a group of GlobeMed members had brought home from a trip to Thailand. The book was written in 2008 and 2009, but according to GlobeMed member sophomore Haley Case, many of the brutal tactics of the old regime remain in the small Southeast Asian state, which is now known as Myanmar.

“[The monologues] are a little more historical, but … the legacy of the regime carries forward strongly to today,” said Case. “So even though there was a regime shift … it’s definitely still an issue.”

The monologues included speeches from political and cultural leaders like Zarganar, a popular Burmese comedian embodied in GlobeMed’s production by junior Arty Kraisitudomsook, and U Win Htein, a high-profile member of an opposition party known as the National League for Democracy who was imprisoned by the junta following his election to the Burmese parliament in 1990, played by first-year Jessie Friedman. It also featured perspectives from ordinary Burmese people who fell afoul of the regime, either because of their involvement in anti-regime activism or simply by bad luck.

“We’re putting on this event … to showcase the stories of people from Burma — political refugees, peace activists, mainly people who are really promoting democracy — to amplify their voices and bring another perspective to campus, which is kind of why GlobeMed exists,” said Case. “We exist to support these people.”

After the monologues, attendees were treated to traditional Burmese food and asked to consider writing letters to their representatives requesting action to aid the people of Burma/Myanmar. First-year Robby Boyer, who signed one such letter, found the presentation informative but said he wished it had covered more recent events.

“I really hadn’t heard anything about the situation in Burma. I knew that historically there were things terrible happening, but I didn’t know about what was happening today,” said Boyer. “It’s only a little bit about what’s going on … I’d like to know more.”