More students will be sitting on governing board committees alongside trustees, overseers and faculty next year, announced ASWC President Kayvon Behroozian at an ASWC Senate meeting on Sunday, March 3.

Following conversations with several trustees last week, including the Board of Trustees’ chair Peter van Oppen and vice chair Nancy Serrurier, Behroozian said that plans have been confirmed to more than double the number of student representatives currently participating in governing board committees.

“Student representation has been my goal this entire year with respect to the governing boards,” said Behroozian, who brought up the issue of student representation when trustees visited campus in February.

Currently there is a student representative on the Student Life, Enrollment, Academic Affairs and Diversity committees. The change will add a student to each of those committees, as well as adding two students each to the Technology Task Force, Budgeting and Buildings and Grounds committees.

Behroozian and the ASWC nominations committee are in the process of appointing the new representatives in cooperation with the governing committee chairs, and hope to have them selected by May 2. The selected students will be able to sit in on committee meetings for the remainder of the year and will be officially appointed to their positions over the summer.

Though there was some discussion earlier in the year about having a student representative sit in on or participate in Board of Trustees meetings, Behroozian said that for the moment ASWC is focusing on building student presence in other areas of the governing boards.

“We didn’t abandon [the idea of a student representative]; we made a compromise,” he said. “That’s not to say that we won’t pick it back up in the future, but first we need to prove that we’re capable of doing it [through student representatives on committees].”

While the Board of Trustees does have voting power in decisions that affect the College, van Oppen noted that committees may play an equally important role in governing the school, citing the committee-driven creation of Whitman’s undocumented students policy.

“The bulk of the work in the governing boards is done through the committee structure,” he said. ”The committees are the functional governing units to a great extent.”

In addition to adding student representatives, van Oppen and other trustees have stated their commitment to setting aside more time to interact with students and hear their thoughts while on campus.

“It’s always easy in the crush of business to come to campus and not make time for students,” said van Oppen. “[But] students are why we’re there … we want to incorporate their viewpoint as a key constituency on campus.”

Though there are obstacles to appointing more students to committees, including the frequent turnover of student representatives due to graduation, Behroozian said he hopes that the dedication of the student representatives will establish increased student participation in governing boards.

“It is a matter of setting precedent. Unfortunately I can’t say for certain that this will stick around for years to come, but what I can say is that it likely will,” he said.

ASWC President Kayvon Behroozian announced at the ASWC Senate meeting on Sunday evening, March 3 that there will be expanded student representation within Whitman’s governing board committees next year.

Following conversations with Peter van Oppen and Nancy Serrurier, respectively chair and vice chair of the Board of Trustees, Behroozian said that next academic year he hopes to nearly double the number of student representatives currently sitting on committees. Additionally, these trustees have promised to allow a “meaningful amount of time” during future visits to campus to engage members of ASWC and other students in face-to-face discussions.

Currently, there is a student sitting on the Student Life, Enrollment, Academic Affairs and Diversity committees. The change will add an additional student representative to each of these committees, in addition to placing two students each on the Technology Task Force, Budgeting and Buildings and Grounds committees.

Trustees have also given permission for leaders of the Whitman Investment Company to sit in on meetings of the Investment committee without participating, when the committee convenes within a reasonable distance to campus.

“In the past couple years I’ve been on ASWC, the general attitude has been all or nothing with respect to stuff we want to do, and we’ve made very little headway with that kind of attitude,” said Behroozian. ”This year, we’ve moved forward so much because of compromise.”

Behroozian noted that while the idea of having a student sitting on the Board of Trustees itself will likely not come to fruition this year, other forms of student representation are just as crucial.

“We didn’t abandon [the idea of a student representative], we made a compromise,” he said. “That’s not to say that we won’t pick it back up in the future, but first we need to prove that we’re capable of doing it [through student representatives on committees].”

As for whether the added student-trustee interaction and student involvement on committees will persist through turnover in ASWC and the Board of Trustees, Behroozian said it was a matter of appointed students establishing strong presences and making solid contributions to their committees.

“It is a matter of setting precedent. Unfortunately I can’t say for certain that this will stick around for years to come, but what I can say is that it likely will,” he said.

Beginning March 10, Alaska Airlines flights departing from Walla Walla Airport in the morning will leave at 6:25 a.m. instead of 6:50 a.m. The change will likely impact the travel arrangements of students traveling home for spring break. Daily evening flights will also be arriving earlier, at 8:24 a.m. instead of 8:50 a.m.

“This is just one of the things the airport has been working with Alaska [Airlines] on. By getting into Seattle earlier, it’s going to help us make more connections in the morning,” said Walla Walla Airport Manager Jennifer Skoglund.

According to Skoglund, Alaska Airlines usually makes around two major changes to its flight schedules per year, of which this is the first.

“This is the first major schedule change [at Walla Walla Airport] in quite some time,” she said.

The change will be in effect at least until the end of the year.

Illustration by Luke Hampton

On Sunday, Feb. 24, ASWC Senate adopted a resolution calling for a gender-neutral housing option for first-years. Senators showed unanimous support for the resolution, passing it through a vote of acclamation.

The gender-neutral housing option, as it is currently defined in the resolution, would allow incoming students the option to room with another person regardless of how they identify in terms of gender.

Sophomore Evan Griffis, co-president of GLBTQ and the current GLBTQ intern at the Intercultural Center, has been advocating for a gender-neutral first-year housing option since he returned from a conference last semester that focused on GLBTQ issues in the college environment.

Griffis said he envisions the gender-neutral housing option as a way to create a more welcoming and safe environment for GLBTQ students, specifically students who identify as transgender or outside of the gender binary.

“I kind of started this mission because we don’t have a very present or active transgender student community here. I’ve heard a lot of stories of people transferring because the school doesn’t provide the right kind of accommodations for these students,” he said.

Griffis and other proponents of the resolution pointed out that the resolution ties into some of the college’s major long term goals and stated concerns about diversity and retaining students.

“Whitman’s current policy doesn’t back up what they’re claiming,” said senior senator Caroline Carr at Sunday night’s Senate meeting. “If we want a more diverse school, we need to attract more students who are diverse … We don’t want people who bring a new perspective to be leaving campus.”

The current housing system allows returning students to room with anyone they choose, though financially dependent students must obtain parental acknowledgment if they wish to room with someone of the opposite gender. First-years, however, are automatically assigned a roommate of the same gender if they’re placed in a double or triple. Alternative housing arrangements must be worked out on an individual basis with Residence Life coordinators.

Griffis pointed out that the current policy could put students into uncomfortable situations or make them feel marginalized.

“I feel like that’s not the best system. If we [have] a gender-neutral housing policy, it takes the onus off of the student and puts it more on the school to have that in place,” he said.

Nearly 100 other institutions of higher education have adopted gender-neutral housing models. In drafting the proposal, Griffis said he particularly looked at schools that allow students to state the preferred gender of their roommate on their student housing application, like Pitzer College.

The resolution also calls for the college to state on its website the current policies of gender-neutral housing for returning students.

“I think one of the strengths of having a gender-neutral housing policy is that it does put Whitman up a level in the eyes of prospective applicants … by not making our current practices public, it kind of weakens it a little. Right now you have to be a current student and know the system to use the [gender neutral housing option], and I don’t think it should have to be that hard,” he said.

Director of Residence Life and Housing Nancy Tavelli said Residence Life will add statements to its website and housing materials making the current policy for returning students more clear.

Though ASWC’s resolution represents the desires of the student body, it’s ultimately up to the Office of Residence Life and Housing whether any change will take place in the housing system. Adding a gender-neutral first-year section or dorm, Tavelli said, will be a complicated process. As housing assignments have already been sent out for the coming year, any change to the housing process for incoming students can’t occur until at least the next academic year.

“It’s a fairly big puzzle because there’s five different places to live and we match people by roommates … [even if] two people want to live in a gender-neutral room, they might be a terrible match,” said Tavelli. “There’s a lot of factors, and it’s a lot different for returning students because they’re choosing who to live with. We would have to take all that into account.”

An investigation into last week’s shooting incident on Lower Waitsburg Road has turned up evidence that the shots fired were not intended to hit or warn the students who heard them while running.

“We found no legal violations from these guys that were out there [shooting],” said Barry Blackman, chief operations deputy of the Walla Walla County Sheriff’s Department. “We’ve determined that there was shooting going on, but it was in a direction away from the students.”

Sophomores Joe Heegaard and Ryan Jacobsen were running near the intersection of Lower Waitsburg Road and Robison Ranch Road on Saturday, Feb. 3, when they heard what sounded like rifle shots landing on the road nearby. The students reported the incident to Dean of Students Chuck Cleveland the following day and filed a report with the Walla Walla sheriff’s office.

Investigators from the sheriff’s department, including a firearms expert, traced the origin of the shots to a shooting range on nearby property and concluded that the shooters were not firing in the direction of the students. The investigators speculated that the day’s foggy conditions might have confused the witnesses about the direction and location of the gunfire.

Heegaard said that he’s satisfied with the final results of the investigation. Neither he nor Jacobsen intend to press charges.

“Ryan and I are totally fine with that conclusion. We’re just kind of hoping the whole thing can be put behind us,” he said.

Cleveland, who sent out an email to student and faculty mailing lists last week advising against running or biking in the area where the shots were heard, retracted that warning in light of the new information.

“The sheriff’s department did a thorough investigation,” he said. “I think it’s safe; the sheriff’s department thinks it’s safe.”

Despite the results of this particular investigation, representative of the sheriff’s department emphasized that all reports filed are taken seriously.

“We want the Whitman campus to know that public safety is our utmost concern,” he said. “We would rather look into something and find out it’s okay than let something unsafe go unreported.”