Whitman College has been fighting for the environment for years. In the past month, however, environmental awareness has reached a new high.

Students have been trying to help save the trees in every way possible. When asked if Whitman is green enough to compete with other liberal art colleges, President Bridges pointed out many “green” aspects of campus.

“We’re definitely pretty green. Ankeny is green 11-and-a-half months of the year. Most of the trees are green. The area of Mill Creek where we dump leftover Bon App soup and all of our garbage has a murky, greenish tint to it,” he said to a Pioneer reporter whose face grew progressively greener.

As he continued, it became evident that Bridges may be colorblind.

“We use a lot of green bricks to build buildings. The tennis courts are all green. Hell, we have green stop signs,” he said confidently.

The school has a lot of recycling bins that are green, but “recycling” is a vague term that gets tossed around casually.

“We recycle a lot of paper and stuff,” ranted Bridges. “It gets recycled into all sorts of things. Mostly trash, but also paper hats and spit wads. Sometimes if we have too much we burn it to heat Memorial Hall. Those gray stones are horrible insulation.”

One of the campus’ most promising environmentally aware additions was the introduction of Dyson hand-dryers to the bathrooms in the library. The air-dryers save fuel and paper, but are not the perfect substitute for paper towels.

“I blew my nose in one once and it broke. The machine. Not my nose. But my nose still tickled. I still think paper towels are better,” said first-year Kim Nelson. Nelson is currently being investigated for destruction of school property after tearing an air-dryer off the wall to clean up a puddle of spilled latte.

Even the Greek system has gotten the green bug, and that is not a reference to the plague of the Norovirus. Tau Kappa Epsilon signed a survey to divest in Greek yogurt because, well, we’ll let Chef Daniel Gerry explain.

“Greek yogurt is from Greece. Greece is across the Atlantic. We don’t want to waste oil on our food,” said Gerry while double-frying some bacon in its own grease. “We instead invested in grapefruits. Think about it.”

The Beta Theta Pi house has responded by using recycling water bottles as tobacco-spit receptacles.

“I shower with this stuff,” said senior Eric Herst, not specifying whether he was referring to the dip spit or Fiji bottled water.

Not all students are so certain that the environment is something worth their awareness.

“Sometimes I sauna with the door open. It’s like, is that global warming? Maybe, but it is really funny when people walk by,” said Emma Logan, a junior Kappa Kappa Gamma.

Other students have focused on positives when it comes to climate change.

“I like it when it’s warm. Like summer all year. Global warming sounds awesome,” said junior John Zacharson.

Somewhere between his cleats, mitt, jerseys and schoolwork, Whitman College first-year John Lee finds space on the bus to take his cameras with him on the road to indulge his other passion. Lee is a finesse pitcher that has been coming out of Whitman’s bullpen this spring to relieve the starters, but off the field he finds his own relief through the artistic expression of his photography.

John Lee ’16. Photo by Devika Doowa.

Baseball came first for Lee, who began playing in first grade. His love for photography wouldn’t come until much later, when his first camera sparked his interest. Once a camera was put in his hand, photography grew to become a large part of his adolescent life.

“I’ve had a camera since I was in seventh grade, but the first time I sold one of my photos was in the fall of 2010,” said Lee.

Lee acknowledges that the two passions are markedly different, but both play major roles in his life.

“There is definitely an overlap at times, but for the most part they both remain separate, very distinct parts of my life,” said Lee.

Lee’s two interests become one on baseball road trips when he combines his eye for the aesthetics with his love for sports.

“Sometimes when the baseball team is traveling, I take pictures after our games during my free time,” said Lee.

John Lee’s photography

While Lee’s focus on the baseball field is strictly limited to the game, in photography he is able to open his scope to get perspective on other aspects of life.

“I like taking pictures of anything and anyone where the emotions that I experienced when taking the picture can only be re-experienced when you look at the photograph. I definitely find the pictures I take of people in urban areas to be the most rewarding, despite the fact that they aren’t necessarily the most beautiful, because of their ability to expose the audience to people they wouldn’t necessarily have ever noticed had I not taken the picture,” said Lee.

Photo by Devika Doowa.

On road trips and between classes, Lee uses his time out of baseball to try to capture the human experience through his photos. For the purpose of traveling lightly, Lee avoids larger cameras, but the smaller cameras also cater to his style of photography.

“I also use a smaller camera for a more practical reason. When I’m out on the street taking pictures of candid people it is much less obvious that I’m a photographer if I can conceal my camera in my pocket before taking the picture. If I used a larger camera I’d be instantly seen as a photographer and it would be much harder to take pictures of people without them noticing. I’d rather come across as a tourist than a serious journalist or professional photographer,” said Lee.

While Lee does not like to flaunt his cameras or draw too much attention to himself with a camera in his hand, he takes a certain pride in his work. Likewise, Lee is not a flashy baseball player, but uses his unassuming presence to his advantage. In both baseball and photography, Lee keeps a low profile but does not reject the idea of either blossoming into something larger, like a career.

“It’s hard to say what the future will hold, but if I have an opportunity for either I could definitely see myself taking it,” said Lee.

For now, Lee will continue to play baseball as long as the opportunity to continue his childhood passion exists and keep taking photos as long as there are experiences to be captured.

“I generally have a camera on my person at all times. You never know when you’ll find a great picture,” said Lee.

John Lee’s photography

In a disappointing loss to Whitworth on Saturday, the Whitman men’s basketball team’s season came to an abrupt end.  Whitworth has now won the conference tournament seven years in a row. Whitman has shown the ability to beat the Pirates in recent years, but again fell short of a conference title this year. Although all of the seniors will leave voids to be filled, none are larger than the void being left by Drew Raher.

Raher was not the best player on Whitman’s team. He didn’t receive awards or honors like NWC Player of the Year Ben Eisenhart or his other teammates. But there is no doubt in my mind that Whitman would not have even made it to the championship against Whitworth without their starting forward.

Raher has played the same way since I came to Whitman his sophomore year: blurring the lines between scrappy and insane. Raher dives for balls, crashes the boards despite being undersized for a forward, and somehow finds his way into every key moment. Early in his career, Raher was a spark plug; a workhorse who could come into a game and use his physicality to set up his teammates to succeed. But it was not until this year that Raher became a true offense threat, lighting up three-pointers and driving to the lane like a blitzing linebacker filling a gap, only to lay the ball in with touch he did not have two years ago.

Raher built himself into the kind of player you couldn’t afford not to have on the court. He still roamed the court like a free safety, but when putting him in no longer meant sacrificing offensive production, he became a necessity for the team. With Coach Bridgeland’s high tempo offense and full court defense, Raher was able to create second-chance opportunities that led to free baskets.

No play sums up Raher’s playing career and its development like his second-chance layup against George Fox in the conference semifinals. On a loose ball, Raher dove onto the hardwood to tip the ball to a teammate. Moments later, the teammate hit Raher with a pass to the block where he finished the play with two points that could easily have never happened had he not put himself on the floor. The casual fan probably comes away from that game remembering Duckworth’s dunk or Eisenhart racking up points, but I hope there are people out there realizing what Raher is doing.

Raher is not the best athlete on the team. He is not the biggest or fastest, nor does he have the prettiest shot. He may never play at the next level. But Drew Raher has made himself into a great Division III basketball player and a vital piece to a team that turned a lot of heads this winter. He is the best competitor on the court at any given moment and I am utterly convinced he could be a key player on any of Whitman’s varsity or club teams. If he wanted to he could probably start on the baseball team or soccer team, make a lot of enemies on a Frisbee field, or make a lot of friends on a rugby pitch. Hard work and disregard of bodily harm seem transferable to almost every sport, and Coach Bridgeland is lucky Raher chose to apply his skills to basketball.

I don’t know how the team is going to replace him but they need to find something to compete with a school like Whitworth.  To compete with an established program filled with talent like Whitworth, who has great shooters, ball handlers, rebounders and defenders, Whitman needs to have something they don’t. This year, it was Drew Raher. Whether Coach Bridgeland has the team practice penguin dives on hardwood floors at practice or finds a way to convince his younger players that the bruises and scrapes are worth it, someone needs to be a little more like Drew Raher.  Maybe we all do.

I don’t mean to undermine the work of the other seniors in any way. Ryan Gilkey is a beast and physical presence Whitman will sorely lack, Peter Clark one of the best pure shooters I have seen in three seasons of Northwest Conference basketball, and Ignas can jump through the roof when he isn’t draining threes of his own. But you can recruit size, train shooters and develop physical athleticism. What I am skeptical of is the ability of the coaching staff to replace more intangible qualities like Drew Raher’s tenacity and competitive spirit. I hope they find a way.

I don’t think debate is a sport. I think years of swirlies and teasing from jocks would make even the debaters to be hesitant towards such a categorization. Still, debate is a highly competitive and tactical contest that pits individuals against each other and overall a pretty bizarre spectacle.  Whitman was filled with debaters this weekend and I wanted to see a match (game? bout? contest?) in person.

First thing to know about debate matches is that you do not need to arrive early. In fact, you shouldn’t. There aren’t exactly people fighting for seats and it isn’t like you can watch them warm up or get autographs beforehand anyway.  The debaters roll in flustered and feigning confidence just prior to the event beginning. While Whitman likes to associate debate with the pubescent high schoolers who swarm the campus in oversized suits and disproportionate fedora numbers (you should never have more than one fedora wearer per social circle). This was college debate. The debaters are underdressed and unshaven and the judge is a pretty young woman in what you hope (for her sake) is fake fur.

The debate topics are predetermined. You probably should pay attention beforehand because as soon as the match starts there is no telling what the debaters are talking about. As they rattle off big words a mile per minute, stopping only to gasp for air like they just played their first minutes of organized sports, they will shoot through topics. The debate I watched started with talk of foreign relations in North Africa. Next thing I knew the opposition was bringing in references to Fight Club.  At the risk of breaking the first rule, I will say that I know for a fact that Palahniuk’s “organization for quarreling” did not take place in Africa.

Apparently, as I learned through inappropriately loud whispering that drowned out the “Fight Club Defense” as it would later be remembered as, the opposition was using a defense of questioning the purpose of debate and urging the judge not to vote for the affirmative because it would only buy into a useless system.

This, to me, carries the argumentative merit of the one kid in every English class who supposes that perhaps “the book is just a book, and doesn’t mean anything because it is words on paper.” Only the debaters are debating about the pitfalls of debate.  That would be like that idiot in every English class somehow getting his idea published. Why books shouldn’t be taken seriously by That One Idiot. Probably a bestseller.

The next hour was a debate that focused on whether debate mattered or what argument lacked logic, but seemed to turn their back to Africa altogether. I have to assume that debating mundane issues while ignoring an entire continent needing attention is what makes debate a solid gateway into law school or political careers.

You can’t really cheer for debate, though I don’t know what you would cheer for. A coherent sentence? It finally ending? Do you cheer for the judges? I don’t know, and quite frankly, I am pretty glad about that.

After graduating several key seniors last year, the Whitman men’s ultimate Frisbee team, the Sweets, did not get an invitation to the power-packed Stanford Invite, a Bay Area tournament held yearly to showcase the best teams in the country. Although their personnel losses led the Sweets to be overlooked nationally and snubbed from one of the top collegiate tournaments, the Sweets earned their own invitation over the past weekend by winning the Stanford Open, the precursor tournament to the invite.

The Sweets huddled up at a recent practice. Photos by Brennan Johnson.

By the end of last season, Whitman had earned its rank amongst the top 25 Division I schools in the nation, despite being a Division III school in all intercollegiate sports. Whitman competes using a vastly smaller student body than most of the premier programs, like the Wisconsin Hodags, Oregon Ego and Texas Tuff, the current top three teams nationally according to Skyd Magazine. This year, Whitman entered the season unranked, having to reaffirm its status as a premier program nationally.

“We lost a lot of seniors last year. We knew our success wasn’t going to depend on one person stepping up, but on everyone playing their part on the team,” said senior captain Peter Burrows.

The team managed to come together in the Bay Area this weekend and emerge as the champions of a 30-team tournament. Whitman rallied from a loss in pool play to Las Positas College to handily beat Occidental College and UC-Santa Barbara and reach the semifinals, where it narrowly edged out University of Victoria (British Columbia) 12-11. In a final match that showcased the Sweets’ unyielding focus and commitment to a well-honed game plan, Walla Walla’s best summoned the energy to beat UC-Santa Cruz in their eighth game in just two days.

The weekend marathon of games took a physical toll on the team and it took effort from all of the Sweets and a few alumni to maintain enthusiasm.

Nathan Sany ’14 and Jacob Janin ’13 mark up on each other during a scrimmage.

“I’ve never been part of a more cohesive team effort. Everyone killed it,” said sophomore Russell Arkin, who was one of many players who filled an important role in the Sweets’ first tournament of the spring.

“ [Junior] Eddie [Hill] and Russ [Arkin] had standout tournaments and stepped into bigger roles to tap into the potential that they have always had,” said junior Nathan Sany, who played a new role himself. Sany battled through painful bursitis in his heel to play an unfamiliar handler role in the tough, windy weather of the Bay Area.

Players were able to rise to the occasion because the graduating seniors left voids to be filled.

“Unlike other years, there are not set expectations for any players, which means everyone gets a chance to grow into their own,” said Sany.

The team is not without great talent, but strong performances from players like Hill and Arkin allowed standouts like senior captain Jacob Janin to play comfortably within the team.

“Jacob Janin had an incredibly average tournament, but even on his average day he is better than everyone else,” Sany joked about his talented teammate, who toured with the NexGen all-star club over the summer, showcasing his talent against the best club teams in the nation.

The team will take little time to recuperate before heading back to California for the Stanford Invite, which they qualified for with the first-place finish.

The competition in the tournament will be tough, but not anything Whitman hasn’t seen before.

When healthy, the Sweets are capable of going toe-to-toe with any team in the nation. Just one week prior to the Stanford Open, the team played University of Oregon’s Ego, the second-ranked team in the country, on universe point in a scrimmage in Eugene, Oregon.

“There’s always someone who brings the fire when we need it. There’s always someone who steps up at the right time,” said Burrows.

The Sweets hope to bring the fire to the Stanford Invite March 9-10, where they will kick-start their spring break with a chance to earn a bid to the Division I Nationals.

“Let’s go, Sweets!” said Sany with a boyish grin.

Illustration by Tyler Schuh

In Issue 4 of The Pioneer, our editors let slip some errors that may have even circumvented the critical eyes of our three readers (Hi Mom! Hi Dad! Hi Grandma!).

On the front page of the issue, the lead story read, “ASWC Debates Student Fee.” The title should have, instead, read “ASWC Debates Student Phi [Phan].” Our school’s government does not actually concern themselves with financial issues, but rather spent four hours discussing senior Phi Phan.

“It was pretty controversial. I mean, who are we to raise him? I can barely raise my hand,” blurted President Kayvon Behroozian to a Pioneer reporter conducting an interview with Tim Reed.

The mistake was a simple misunderstanding from an editorial standpoint, both in overlooking a misused homophone and in thinking ASWC were actually conducting business. In fact, the picture featured on the front page was not taken at an AWSC meaning, but at a screening of a Nicholas Sparks movie marathon.

Nobody was more confused by the mistake than Phi Phan.

“I think they owe me 14 dollars. I think,” he thought out loud.

Later, the editors fell short again on Blair H. Frank’s sassy gaming column.  The title, “Games Journalism Needs Better Audience,” was originally “Games Need Better Audience” and the content was doctored to stray from its original intention.

“I just think more people should watch me play games,” said Frank with frankness in his voice.

Frank has actually been advocating for larger gaming audiences for years now. He developed a fantasy league in his first year at Whitman that allowed members to gain virtual points through the virtual successes of their team. Unfortunately, the domain name “fantasygaming.com” was taken and “BlairFrankfantasy.com” never took off.

A&E writer Quin Nelson would also like to apologize for describing Dr. John as looking like “an Ewok shaman” in his Grammy article. The racially insensitive comment dismissed many of the advances in Ewok medicine.

“I thought the juxtaposition of ‘Dr.’ and ‘shaman’ might get some laughs. I felt like I could make the joke because I have an Ewok friend, but maybe it was out of line. Ewoks do have doctors—or are they technically vets?—I have to ask my friend Weechit,” blabbered a flustered Nelson.

While we are handing out apologies, our photo editors should probably apologize for turning in propaganda for the study abroad article.

“Turning Memorial Hall into a mosque was controversial, and we probably should have left the llamas out of it,” admitted Marie von Hafften and Julie Peterson, neither of which were sure whose job it fell under.

Kyle Seasly’s review of FIDLAR’s album gave inaccurate information to the meaning of the acronymic band name. All of the letters in FIDLAR are, in fact, silent and meant to offer some quiet to drown out the awful music they produce.

In Evelyn Levine’s humor article, she forgot to mention that the event was sponsored by WEB. Sorry for any confusion there.

Feature misspelled “nepotism” about 47 times.

Senior Matthew Morriss has done things in the past six months most Whitman students only dream of. Not only is he spending time climbing and skiing in some of the most remote and beautiful areas of the region, but he isn’t paying to do it, either.

By receiving grants from multiple outdoors organizations, Morriss has been able to take up climbing and skiing projects by exploring neighboring wilderness and getting published along the way. Morriss’s grant-funded “work” is a culmination of interests he developed at Whitman, but taken to larger applications outside of the realm of school.

Matthew Morris on one of his recent climbing expeditions. Photos contributed by Morriss.  See the slideshow below for more.

“The last three years I have been a climbing instructor and I took Advanced Climbing with Brian Sheedy. The course focused on traditional climbing, through which I got really interested in climbing the mountains,” said Morriss.

Morriss is a geology major who sees the connection between climbing and his academic interests as intuitive.

“Obviously, it is awesome to be up on a granite wall and know what you are looking at, but I think that geology and climbing just attract similarly motivated students with interests outside of the classroom,” said Morriss.

For Morriss, who plans to attend graduate school in geology, the climbing trips are also helping him bolster his résumé. Morriss has mapped routes and been published in a well-known climbing magazine, The American Alpine Journal.

The American Alpine Club was the funder of Morriss’s first grant, a $400 Live Your Dream Grant he used to climb and document previously undocumented areas of Oregon. Morriss went with other Whitman students to the Wallowa and Elkhorn Mountains.

“I went on three different trips and only one of them took me to a route that looked like it was a new route, but that was probably the pinnacle of my climbing career,” said Morriss.

Morriss’s high motivation has driven him to unique climbing experiences few Whitman students share, despite a flourishing climbing community on campus.

“The Whitman climbing community is really active, but usually climbs smaller cliffs nearby. There is a core group of guys interested in climbing mountains,” said Morriss.

Morriss’s newest project is being funded by a Winter Adventure Grant through an organization called Summit Sealants. The thousand-dollar grant is allowing him and Andrew Spickert to take several trips to ski and document remote mountains.

“We get to go to really remote, really beautiful places and document our experiences skiing where people may have never skied before,” said Morriss.

Just last weekend, Morriss spent a couple of days in the Seven Devils Mountains in Idaho, which Morriss called the “crown jewel” of the grant application.

“[The range] is extremely isolated and has seen no reported winter ascents of any of the majors peaks in the range. Andrew and I summited something called Heavens Gate (8,421 feet high) and skied from the summit,” said Morriss.

Morriss is still amazed to have been granted the opportunity to pursue his interests, but believes everyone deserves the chance to chase their dreams.

“I hope people understand the opportunities at Whitman. I would easily say coming to Whitman is the best decision I have made in my life. The recreations of climbing and skiing are things I didn’t have coming into Whitman, but that I will leave with. I am doing stuff that is really fun and cool, but I hope that people realize there are opportunities everywhere. All you have to do is look.”

Whitman’s men’s and women’s swimming teams finished second and third, respectively, to wrap up their season this weekend at the Northwest Conference Championships. Although the men and women finished in the same places as last year, the attitude leaving the meet was very different.

NWC Championship photos contributed by Rachael Barton.

“The performances this weekend were amazing on both sides of the fence, men and women,” said senior Kevin Dyer.

Whitman’s men and women came away from a long weekend of swimming with a lot to be positive about. In total, the teams broke 20 school records and had many individuals rise to the occasion. The event wrapped up a successful season for each team, and four individuals qualified for the chance to continue at the national level.

The men fell short of taking down Whitworth again, after breaking Whitworth’s 90-meet winning streak in a dual meet just two weeks prior to the Northwest Conference Championships. The team’s rivalry with Whitworth highlights the growth of the program in the last couple of years.

“The bottom of the conference is starting to get a little bit better, and the top end has just gone absolutely crazy,” said Assistant Coach Chris Bendix ’12, reflecting on the development of the conference swim programs over the last five years.

The men may not have been able to pull off the upset of Whitworth that they had hoped for, but the Whitman program’s growth was very evident from their individual performances. The men netted a total of 10 wins, including seven individual conference titles. Every record on the men’s record board is now held by current swimmers, most of whom will be returning for another run at the Conference title in the fall.

Sophomore Karl Mering set school records en route to first-place finishes in the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyles, as well as the 100-meter butterfly. Mering also swam on freestyle and medley relay teams that set meet records. All three of his individual performances placed first at the Championships and qualified with provisional nationals cuts for the NCAA Division III National Competition. Mering was recognized as the meet’s Most Outstanding Male Swimmer for his successes, an award teammate Galen Sollom-Brotherton won last year.

Sollom-Brotherton won and qualified with provisional times in each of his individual meets this year and joined Mering on the relay teams that also qualified.

“Between the national cuts, meet records and even conference records, I think our performance really stood out,” said first-year Robby Dorn, who competed in both breaststroke events and the mile.

After various setbacks during the season, the women’s team also put up some incredible performances.

“Our women this year had probably their best finish since I’ve been part of the program,” said Bendix.

The women’s team was eyeing a second-place finish, but fell to third by a margin of just four points. While the end result may have been a disappointing cap to an amazing season, the women had a lot to be proud of looking back.

“Even though people could focus on the fact that we lost by four points, that doesn’t take into account how amazing it was that we actually did end up getting third place by such a close margin,” said junior Claire Collins, a breaststroker who took first place in the 200 Individual Medley.

Collins was the only woman to win an individual event, but she and senior Genay Pilarowski both qualified with provisional national cuts that may get one or both invited to the NCAA Division III Nationals in March.

First-year Elise Tinseth wrote her name into the record books by breaking a 19-year-old 400 IM record; fellow-first-year Cameo Hlebasko broke a 200-yard backstroke record set in 2006 on the way to taking second place in the event.

Competitive successes aside, for the swimmers the championship meet only reinforced the love and support for each other that they had developed over the course of the year.

“What I always find most impressive is simply how much we come together as a family,” said Dyer. “I don’t think any other team in the conference shares quite the bond that we have.”

Dorn emphasized that this closeness shaped his experience of his first championship meet.

“One of my favorite things about the weekend was definitely the team atmosphere that surrounded us. Wearing costumes, paint, waving flags and ultimately losing our voices to push our swimmers to get to the wall really showed how much we were invested in each other’s races,” said Dorn.

Collins highlighted the team’s unique ability to use this positive team energy to drive success in the pool.

“We have this ability to still have fun and then once we get in that pool we swim super fast. And that’s kind of intimidating … that we can do that,” said Collins. “I think that’s what sets us apart.”

The mood walking away was that the team gave everything to their weekend.

“Between the cheering and the swimming, we just proved over and over again that we put in the most and we worked the hardest and we want the most out of all of our teammates,” added Bendix.

As the competition came to a close Sunday, so, too, did most swimmers’ seasons. Mering, the only swimmer to achieve a time that automatically qualified him for nationals, will be training for the next five weeks with his teammates hoping to be invited to the competition.

As Dyer sets aside his goggles in official collegiate retirement, he reflects on the last meet of his college career.

“It’s exhausting, looking back at it, but so incredible while it’s going on.”

The event was the last meet each team will compete in as a group until next fall, when 14 graduating seniors will be replaced by new faces. As select individuals take their talents to a national stage, the rest of the team can only continue to cheer their teammates on as they look ahead to the 2013-2014 season.

“It’s going to be fine physically, swimming for six more weeks, but mentally it’s going to be hard. I think I’m going to have to rely on my teammates more than I have had to in the past,” said Collins, who is preparing for a potential bid at nationals.

This season’s successes for the program and for individuals give the team a lot to look forward to in the coming years. As they did with this year’s first-years, they will look to instill the competitive fire in the new class of swimmers arriving next fall.

“I feel like from the support and guidance the upperclassmen have shown the first-years, the [first-year] class will be able to welcome next year’s class in the same way,” said Dorn.

Last Saturday, Jewett Hall resident Max Wallets went out to get a beverage with a friend of his. A week after the morning out on the town, one thing still confuses Wallets.

“Was it a date?” he asked a Pioneer reporter and first-year romance expert.

The two met on Ankeny Field and walked to the Patisserie to get coffee after hooking up on the dance floor at Tau Kappa Epsilon Post-I.

“We danced a lot. Like, a lot. At the Post-I. Not on the walk. The walk was kind of awkward, actually,” admitted Wallets.

In fact, the awkwardness began at the conception of the plan, which was riddled with misunderstanding.

“We were talking about Taylor Swift, as I often do at parties to get girls. Girls love Taylor Swift. When she asked what I thought about the new album, I suppressed girly giggles to coolly tell her it ‘was way too poppy.’ She thought I said ‘way too coffee.’ I told her that would not make sense, and she asked what time we were going to the Patisserie. I still don’t know her name,” he cried.

Wallets is actually allergic to heated beverages, so he drank room temperature water while his companion sipped an extra foamy caramel frappe-mocha-ccino and told him about her ex-boyfriend for two hours.

“I drank a lot of water. I had to pee for most of it. Pretty much all, actually. She talks a lot,” he said.

The girl he took forgot her wallet, so Wallets was forced to pay for her beverage. On the walk home, Wallets finally got a chance to talk.

“I told her she was pretty hot. Like hotter than most girls I have hooked up with. And a good dancer, too. I was really just thinking aloud. I’m still pretty surprised she hooked up with me,” confessed Wallets.

When they got back to campus, Wallets walked her back to her room, which he discovered was right across the hall from his own.

“I guess I never really noticed her before. I play a lot of Smash Bros. Seems pretty weird that we met up on Ankeny, now that I think about it,” he said.

They gave an awkward hug that lasted a little longer than Wallets expected and then went into their respective rooms.

“I don’t know if I’ll see her. Not in the dating sense. I am really busy and probably won’t notice her again for a while,” he said.

For Wallets, the cups of water he drank at the Patisserie marked the first food or beverage he consumed outside of Jewett Dining Hall.

“Except Prentiss brunch. I love brunch,” he admitted shamefully.

Wallets has never drunk cups of water with a girl, but doesn’t see it as a binding contract.

“What if I get thirsty around another girl? I can drink with her, right? I mean, it was just water, and kind of awkward, really,” he said awkwardly.