Illustration by Kelsey Lund and Julie Peterson

For many Whitman students looking for a relationship, or even just looking for a casual hook-up on a Friday night, Whitman’s small size can feel overwhelmingly claustrophobic. There are moments when it feels as if you know every face on campus, when you despair that none of them are viable dating options, and when even the girl who used to make eyes with you in the library is taken.

Fortunately, though, these moments usually pass. Even if there are only approximately 1,500 students on this campus, and even if the girl is the library is otherwise occupied, there is another girl in your economics class who is actually quite cute.

This isn’t always true for members of the queer community.

Queer individuals at Whitman make up a tiny, almost familial community within an already small student body, which often makes the challenge of on-campus dating exponentially more difficult.

Junior Phoebe Horvath discussed this size issue.

“I think it’s hard to have a dating culture here because the school is small. There are only a certain amount of students, and within that subset there are only a certain amount who identify with or are open to a non-straight relationship,” she said.

GLBTQ intern sophomore Evan Griffis spoke to the same frustrations, adding that the community atmosphere on campus discourages individuals from pursuing casual hook-ups.

“At bigger schools, I think it would be even more of a hook-up culture. But I think here, just because we do have a small community, it kind of forces a little bit of the anonymity away from that, and it kind of puts some pressure on actual long-term relationships. With that being said, I think the frustration is definitely from the [small size of the community].”

Because the queer community is so small, queer couples are often very visible for the rest of campus. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it does mean that entering into a relationship could be incredibly stressful for someone who has not yet come out of the closet.

Senior Kate Kight commented on her personal difficulties with this issue.

“If one partner doesn’t want to be out, there’s not a lot of hiding at Whitman. And [my girlfriend and I] got sick of trying to hide it, because it got in the way of the amount of time we could spend together,” she said. “I also think that it’s a myth that it’s easy to come out at Whitman … it’s a very personal issue, and you can have all the support and love in the world and it still can be utterly terrifying.”

GLBTQ intern junior Sean Mulloy also pointed out that how comfortable one feels about being out of the closet, and to whom they are ready to reveal that information, affects the relationship possibilities on campus.

“I think that there [are] folks that are interested in the queer community, but still don’t necessarily feel comfortable being out. I think it’s even harder for them, because they have to be out in order to date or hook up with someone,” said Mulloy.

Horvath spoke to this, emphasizing that this dynamic differs for men and women. From her experience, it’s more socially acceptable for women to leave their sexuality undefined, whereas for men, there is pressure to define themselves according to more rigid structures.

“I think a lot of people have come to terms with their sexuality being somewhere on that spectrum, and I think in general, women are a lot more comfortable with that idea … Most of the men who I know are out are out as either gay or bi. It’s more definite; you don’t see as much of the spectrum,” Horvath said.

Fortunately, the community has formed itself to deal with the issue of limited options. Most significantly, because the dating pool is so small, queer students at Whitman have encouraged developing friendships with off-campus queer communities.

Several students at Walla Walla University and Walla Walla Community College have turned to Whitman as a source of community because they feel that their colleges lack a clear support system for queer students.

WWCC sophomore Justin Hallowell spoke about why students at his school have made acquaintances within the Whitman queer community.

“As a school, Whitman is a lot more liberal, and so the students here are a lot more knowledgeable about issues. They tend to do things that are directly related to the population here, and they seem to actually make a difference,” Hallowell said. “Here there is a larger majority [of a gay population], so you aren’t quite as much of a minority. And again, it is a lot easier to be gay here [at Whitman] than it is to be gay [at WWCC].”

WWCC students attend parties like Queer Beverage and participate in GLBTQ group activities, which allows these students to experience the support of a larger community while simultaneously expanding the dating options for Whitman students. According to Mulloy, Whitman has come to be a refuge for some WWU and WWCC students who are willing to look off campus for support.

“This year we’ve been able to form much more intricate relationships with the other colleges’ communities. So like yesterday at Queer Beverage there were a lot of folks that came from Walla Walla University, and we have a few really good friends from [Walla Walla Community College],” said Mulloy.

In addition to encouraging more students to attend functions, queer students at Whitman have expanded their notion of what a relationship entails. Both Griffis and Horvath spoke to the opinion that the societal ideal of a monogamous, two-people-together-forever relationship can be quite stifling.

“A lot of times, people find alternate ways to define a relationship that works for them better. And that’s really worked for me, and I know that’s worked for other people on campus … It’s been kind of neat to figure out that there are other ways to be in a relationship besides two people together forever,” Horvath said.

Griffis conveyed the same sentiment, arguing against the assumption that a monogamous, traditional relationship between two people is best for everyone.

“There is kind of this other pressure for us to want to reject that notion, or reject the idea that we have to assimilate into that kind of relationship. So there’s also this kind of counter-pressure to rebel against that system, and kind of explore alternative relationship structures,” he said.

The final Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC) Town Hall of the year focused on three major subjects: the lifting of the international travel ban, addressing concerns regarding the ASWC budget and tackling the question of whether or not the yearbook should continue to be funded.

Town Hall. Photos by Brennan Johnson.

In addition to these central topics, students raised two new questions that may gain more attention in upcoming ASWC actions. Widespread concerns with off-campus housing were raised and the possibility of a Whitman-organized shuttle to the Walla Walla and Pasco airports was suggested.

ASWC President junior Kayvon Behroozian opened the Town Hall with the announcement that the ban on international travel had been lifted. Previously, the ban in place prevented any Whitman students from receiving ASWC funding for international travel or activities.

ASWC president Kayvon Behroozian.

“So international trips, ASWC can fund those now too. That’s really, really big, especially for clubs, especially for club sports and especially for individuals who want to go to conferences,” said Behroozian.

Now that the ban is lifted, Whitman students can pursue their studies internationally with Whitman funding. Students can receive grants for international internships, Canadian programs are treated the same as domestic programs and funding for international student research may be possible.

It was clear, however, that the most contentious topic of discussion was the fate of the Waiilatpu yearbook. ASWC senators anticipated this by splitting the Town Hall into small groups so senators could better hear students’ feelings about the yearbook.

The general sentiment around the tables was that there are currently two paths that ASWC could take. Either ASWC invests a significant amount of money in the yearbook, resulting in a larger staff and a more appealing final product, or it cuts funding completely. Many students expressed that there simply wasn’t a lot of interest in the product and that the publication as it is now simply isn’t representative of Whitman as a whole.

Sophomore Grant Rommel, current editor-in-chief of Waiilatpu, took the microphone to give an impassioned speech in response to these opinions.

“I really don’t think that the yearbook has been given enough of an opportunity to build a strong foundation for itself in just the three short years that it’s been reinstated,” said Rommel.

Sophomore Zac Parker, ASWC’s Nominations Chair, spoke afterwards about the response to Rommel’s speech.

“It was fairly positive. Most people seem to come to the heart of it very quickly, that the yearbook needs to either be completely decommissioned or just be given the chance to grow and become something that would be really productive and useful,” Parker said. “Personally, I think that a yearbook does have a lot of value on campus, and it is something that we should be trying to keep around, especially [when] there are students who are as passionate about it as the two that came and talked.”

The ASWC Committee on Student Affairs will vote on whether or not to decommission at a meeting on Thursday, April 10.

After yearbook concerns were addressed, students were able to bring to the table new concerns or ideas that they wanted to present to ASWC. One of the concerns that was brought up was the issue of off-campus housing for upperclassmen. One student suggested that the Whitman housing lottery could be reworked, to possibly give preference to seniors and to take place earlier in the semester, when all other housing decisions in Walla Walla are generally made. The lack of information regarding off-campus houses was another concern.

“I was surprised about the number of people that were really concerned about off-campus housing and trying to learn more about that. There was a pretty apt observation made that there was not any concrete way to get information about off-campus housing, or at least there’s not one that’s very well publicized if there is one,” said Parker.

The final suggestion that was raised was that of a Whitman-organized shuttle or bus to the Walla Walla and Pasco airports. This generated a lot of student support at the Town Hall, and may be something ASWC looks into further in the future.

Illustration by Marlee Raible

How would your perspective on the inmates in the penitentiary change if you could read the creative writing and poetry that they produced?

Undeniably, a passionate poem or creative story would give new depth and humanness to prisoners that are often regarded as violent and cold. A group of Whitman students spearheaded by junior Cameron Young are hoping to instigate this opportunity by offering a creative voice through which inmates at the penitentiary can express themselves to the surrounding community.

Despite its close proximity to Whitman, the Washington State Penitentiary remains something of an enigma to most students. In order to evolve the community’s relationship with the prison, Young has worked with the penitentiary staff to design a course where a group of Whitman students will go teach inmates about creative writing with a focus on poetry and creative fiction. They hope that eventually they will be able to work with the inmates to create a literary publication similar to quarterlife.

“We’re looking to do a kind of community outreach to prison inmates. For our first programming, we’re going to do a fine arts focus and teach prisoners basics such as symbolism, metaphor, simile and ask them to create work where it would display their prison experience,” said Young.

There are currently about 15 Whitman students involved in the project, many of whom are in Sociology 269: Prisons and Punishment, taught by Peterson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences Keith Farrington. Young and sophomore Alisha Agard were inspired to develop the program when they visited the penitentiary on a field trip for the class. The class was introduced to a panel of three inmates who were excited to share their prison experiences openly.

“I feel like some of these guys deserve a second chance, because it’s really easy to slip up in life. I think that was evident in one of the inmates who was there for only a year and was going to be a student at UW the following fall, who got convicted of a drunken assault,” said Young.

First-year Noel O’Shea, another student involved with the project, also spoke to the rehabilitative aspects of the creative writing course, and how others might gain a new perspective on inmates after they have been given a chance to express themselves.

“I think the big thing for me is giving people a chance who didn’t have a first chance. A lot of people think of prison as a place to rehabilitate and get a second chance, but what we forget is a lot of these people haven’t been given a first one,” said O’Shea.

Agard said that she hopes the creative expression will help to break down the barriers and stigmas surrounding the inmates.

“I guess that I hope to gain an understanding of the inmates, because society has a picture of them as these criminal, horrible, hard people and I’m pretty sure that’s not what they are,” Agard said. “So giving them an outlet to kind of share their story is important because I feel like so many people misconstrue who they are based on what they’ve done in the past.”

Once the class begins, a group of the students will go to the penitentiary to teach sessions lasting between one-and-a-half and three hours, where they will work with a classroom of minimum security and close custody prisoners. Young expects to start teaching there within the next couple of weeks. Since students are still finalizing communication with the staff at the penitentiary, however, final dates for the classes haven’t been set.

Young stressed that opening up dialogue with the surrounding community through creative works could seriously reduce the stigma surrounding the prison and possibly encourage prison reform.

“I don’t know if anyone would read it, but I think the idea is what we need, because as much as you want to talk about prison reform, a large step needs to be taken by the greater society [to] ask ourselves why we put felons in a caste system. It’s not necessarily fair, and from my perspective, it only perpetuates crime. These guys get out of the walls and really there’s no life for them,” he said.

In addition, the group wants to stress that the classroom experience will be a collaborative one, where the nine Whitman students will be learning as much from the prisoners as the prisoners are from them.

“It won’t be like the students are coming and teaching the inmates. It’ll be a collaborative [experience]: Everyone’s learning and everyone’s working together. So it’s not like a hierarchy of ‘we are the educated people coming to school you on how to do this.’ It’s more of ‘let’s experience this together and let’s learn together,’” said Agard.

Young and the other group members are eager to have the opportunity to explore and learn from both the penitentiary and the inmates themselves.

Professor Farrington, who led the students on the class trip to the penitentiary, spoke to the unique experience that has been presented to the students and the inmates they will be working with.

“I think it’s an opportunity that most students really welcome,” Farrington said. “It appeared that students really enjoyed having the opportunity to be talking to [the inmate panel]. Remember, rightly or wrongly, the people in the penitentiary are judged to be the worst in the state, and here is the opportunity to find out what makes them tick, to talk to them in a non-confrontational way and to hopefully let them see another side of life that they don’t normally see.”

Open prisons, where inmates can simply walk across a grass field back into society and spend the weekend at home, sound like an absurd concept here in the United States. The idea of open prisons sounds especially foreign in communities such as Walla Walla, where the Northwest region’s most violent criminals are held under the strictest guard in the Washington State Penitentiary.

Anne Okkels Birk spoke about open prisons in Denmark.  Photos by Catie Bergman.

Anne Okkels Birk, criminologist and instructor at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad, spoke to students and community members in a lecture about Danish prisons at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5.

She began her lecture by asking a few questions of the audience: Do you ever restrict yourself in certain ways? Don’t you have to restrict yourself in some ways in order to function in society? She used these questions to kick off her discussion of Denmark’s philosophy of incarceration and how it differs so drastically from those of the United States.

“You have to imprison yourself. Here you actually have to be your own prison guard,” she said.

Prisoners are not allowed to leave, but there is essentially nothing stopping them from simply walking away. If a prisoner does leave, Birk said, then the police will be notified and the prisoner will be retrieved. More important prisoners will be rounded up promptly, but less important ones might be allowed to wander in society for a few days before they are forced to return.

Denmark prisons differ in their goals for inmate reform as well. The purpose of these prisons is not to make the inmates’ lives as miserable as possible. Instead, Danish prisons strive for the goal of normalization. The prisons are designed to closely resemble life on the outside, an idea Birk called “re-socialization.”

“Normalization is not about normalizing the prisoner; it is about normalizing the prison conditions, the way that things are inside the prison … People cook their own food. Cooking their own food means that they shop for their own food in the grocery store,” Birk said.

So how can self-regulated, domestic prisons exist? Birk explained that a prison system like Denmark’s open prisons could only function within the context of certain societies. Denmark is a small country, and violent crimes that occur in almost every corner of the United States are simply nonexistent.

“Violent crime is not an issue in Denmark,” Birk said. “When there is, it is [almost always] late at night on the weekend, and alcohol is always involved.”

How a society perceives crime also plays a huge role in how the offenders are treated.

“We explain crime in a very different way … My understanding is that in the U.S. there is more of a tendency to say that the person is a bad person,” Birk said.

In Denmark, the Danish tend to attribute crime to the social factors surrounding the criminal, such as whether or not they had a traumatic childhood. This alternative way of thinking allows Denmark to address the issue of crime through methods beside strict punishment.

Speaking to this, Birk said that average 21-year-old Danish citizens pay no tuition for university schooling; they receive an allowance of $800 a month from the state if they are in school. They do not pay for doctors or hospital visits, and they do not share dorm rooms. The state is able to provide such a safety net for its people that citizens don’t have to resort to crime to get by.

Birk was adamant in noting, however, that it is the specific culture of Denmark that makes these prisons possible. An open prison system simply couldn’t function in the United States, or many other countries. There is no positive or negative value in this; it is just a matter of societies operating differently.

“I would like to say, ‘you should do what we do,’ but it wouldn’t be reflective of your society,” Birk said.

The United States and Denmark are very different countries, and so different prison systems are necessary. Birk discussed the way the Danish interact with one another in order to illustrate this point.

“We don’t smile [at one another]; we look into the earth. I think it is because we trust other people … We don’t need to show that we are good people,” she said.

After long months of student and ASWC advocacy, Whitman College has voted to install a permanent staff position that would coordinate and oversee all green and sustainable efforts on campus. The Board of Trustees met Friday, Feb. 16, to decide whether or not to approve the sustainability coordinator position. Back in November of last year, the Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC) sent a request to Whitman College for the approval of a permanent sustainability coordinator position. The Board of Trustees released the decision to approve the sustainability coordinator position Wednesday morning, Feb. 20.

Working towards sustainability has not been an easy or a short process. Student groups, ASWC and current part-time student sustainability interns, seniors Natalie Jamerson and Zoey Rogers, have worked diligently to convince the college that installing a sustainability coordinator would be beneficial to the campus.

“I was just relieved that all the work we put in to getting this position, and showing the college that it would be really useful on this campus, had an impact. That’s why I was pleased. I also think that it’s really important for the school as [it is] trying to grow to be focused on sustainability,” ASWC Finance Chair senior Sam Sadeghi said.

The sustainability coordinator will be a permanent faculty position that helps to organize all of the green projects happening on campus. Currently, Jamerson and Rogers fulfill the role of sustainability coordinators for the school. However, they felt that the job of developing Whitman’s sustainability projects required more time than two student interns could give. In addition, a single faculty adviser could help unite green groups on campus to more effectively carry out sustainability projects.

“As a member of groups throughout my time here, there has been a distinct lack of advising from faculty or staff, and the groups operate pretty independently—which is great because it leaves a lot of room for student initiation and leadership. But I think the groups can be more unified by a coordinator,” Jamerson said.

In addition, the sustainability coordinator will be able to initiate his or her own sustainability projects.

“They would identify projects of their own. So, for example, ‘We want to make Olin Hall green leaf certified…’ They would be the person pushing for that initiative rather than Campus Climate Challenge or all these other student groups trying to make stuff happen. They would be that point person,” said ASWC President junior Kayvon Behroozian.

The current sustainability interns’ work in the spring will be to transfer knowledge regarding Whitman’s green projects to the new coordinator, and make sure that he or she is acquainted with the way sustainability efforts and groups function on campus.

“A lot of my responsibilities this spring will be to fill out our manual to prepare someone to take on this position. That’s going to be really important: to transfer the knowledge base that we’ve collected to someone that may not even be familiar with Whitman at all,” Jamerson said.

Perhaps most importantly, Whitman College’s decision to approve a sustainability coordinator position represents a renewed commitment to the green efforts in the community. While Whitman students are clearly very environmentally minded, the school has had yet to prove its intention towards building a greener campus. Both Sadeghi and Jamerson spoke to the importance of this in relation to Whitman’s peer colleges.

“Students on this campus are super environmentally minded … That same sort of standard is sometimes overlooked by the college, so this is a cool way to finally see that the college is recognizing students’ interest in sustainability,” Sadeghi said.

The sustainability coordinator position is a sign of great progress for Whitman students’ sustainability efforts. The combination of student group efforts and a full-time coordinator could lead to more effective and widespread green campaigns.

“We say that we’re green, that we have students interested in these things, but we can’t really prove it because we don’t have anyone to be our voice. Middlebury [College] has an office of sustainability and has hired lots of people for this issue, and we have two students. This is a tangible step in integrating more sustainability-focused projects and having a greater commitment [to sustainability]. I’m really hopeful,” Jamerson said.

Do you have old shoes gathering dust in your closet that someone else could make use of?

Senior Alyssa Roberg and Alumnus Conor Holton-Burke ’12 bet that you do, and in order to make productive use of all those worn shoes, they have contacted Soles4Souls to set up a chapter of the nonprofit organization at Whitman. Soles4Souls is an organization that collects donated shoes and distributes them for crisis-relief and to support micro-enterprise in impoverished countries.

Roberg and Holton-Burke were struck by how many old shoes they owned that they no longer had any use for, and they figured that many other Whitman students were likely in the same boat.

“We’re both tennis players, and it’s so obvious when we use shoes, and when they get worn on the bottom, that we can’t use them for our sport anymore, but that they’re still really good shoes,” Roberg said.

By placing boxes all around campus, Roberg and Holton-Burke will collect all of the shoes donated by students and community members and then send those shoes to the nearest Soles4Souls warehouse, where they will then be distributed all around the world to developing communities that need footwear.

“[The shoes] go all over the world. Part of it is donated for crisis relief, so wherever it’s needed at that moment in time,” Roberg said.

For now, all of the shoes that are in good condition and don’t need fixing up are destined for Haiti. The shoes that do need fixing up, however, are used to supply an entirely different model of charity: micro-enterprises. Micro-enterprises are market-based charitable programs designed to assist people in impoverished countries in starting and running their own businesses.

“The ones that need fixing go anywhere from Kenya to the Appalachian region … They don’t give them—they sell them at a very cheap price and then the cobblers fix them and sell them [to] make a profit. So then people get jobs and other people get cheap shoes. Give a person a fish and they eat for a day; teach a person to fish, they eat for life,” Holton-Burke said.

The shoe drive began in early February and is expected to continue into April.

“We wanted to give the Seattleites and Portlanders a chance to go back and pick [shoes] up from their homes and bring them back from spring break,” Holton-Burke said.

Progress has been quick, however, and students hope that this first week was indicative of future success. The boxes have only been out for a week, and already Roberg and Holton-Burke have collected about a hundred pairs of shoes.

“Our goal is 500 [pairs], and if you think about, if a third of Whitman donates one pair of shoes, we’ve reached that goal. So that’s what we’re aiming for, but obviously we’re not going to stop until the shoe drive ends,” Roberg said.

In order to realize their goal, Rober and Holton-Burke are not limiting the drive to Whitman. They are looking towards the Walla Walla community for support as well, and have plans to make further outreach efforts.

“We’re reaching out not only to Whitman students but [to] the Walla Walla community as well. We’ve already had quite a few community members who use the tennis courts or who go to the gym and have seen it and donate, which is really cool. So we’re trying to spread the word everywhere, not just among the Whitman community,” Roberg said.

While the scope of the shoe drive is large relative to Whitman’s small size, Roberg and Holton-Burke have organized the entire charity event themselves. They both said that the assistance of Soles4Souls has made it incredibly easy for them plan and execute the drive on their own. Now it is simply a matter of getting the word out and making Whitman students and Walla Walla community members aware of the drive and the charity it represents.

“[Soles4Souls] makes it so easy. It’d be really cool to see it in a lot of schools. Especially if you think about how small Whitman is, if it was at a big school like UW, how many shoes they could get,” Roberg said.