Posted on 14 November 2016.

A DATE FROM DOWN UNDER
A Whitman student anonymously shares insight from her experiences in high school and college. Honestly Brutal is posted weekly online, with longer stories posted monthly.
Senior year winter formal– not quite as important as prom but definitely still a time of excitement for most teenagers. You get to dress up, look all nice, take pictures, go to dinner, and dance the night away with your hot date. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t dream of that perfect Cinderella Story kind of a night with the glittering gazebo, the impromptu serenade, and my prince charming sweeping off my feet. But senior year winter formal was anything but a fairytale kind of a night.
To give you some context, I had gone on a group date with this Australian exchange student at my school. I was warned that he was a player before even meeting him, but for some reason this made me want to meet him even more. In this particular situation, it is unfortunate that I am so outgoing because it was wayyyyy to easy to introduce myself and get his digits. We texted for a while, then I finally invited him to go ice skating at this awesome arena downtown. It was a great night! Everything went super smoothly. He was so easy to talk to and super flirty. After the date, he kissed me in my car parked outside of his house. Now since the title of this blog is Honestly Brutal, that is exactly what I am going to be right now. The kiss sucked (haha). It was awkward because it was like 30 degrees outside so I had on a vest which was super puffy so you do the math. And then the stupid ass middle compartment of my car was just right there and I’m like HOW DO PEOPLE DO THIS? On our way to his front door he was like, so yea friends with benefits? And me being my teenager self was like uhhhh yea sureeeeee, ignoring the fact that I knew friends with benefits was not a healthy relationship for me with my self-confidence being as low as it was in high school. From that point on, I continued to talk to him excessively; I wanted to keep his attention on me because I was worried that he would start hooking up with other girls. So what did I do? Well I did what any rational person would do which was ask him to winter formal 3 MONTHS IN ADVANCE. He said yes and I was relieved because I snatched hot foreign exchange guy before anyone else did.
Let me just fast forward you to the day of winter formal. The only conversations we had from the ask up to winter formal was about winter formal logistics (that equates to roughly one hour of texting in an entire three-month span). I had heard rumors that he had been hooking up with another girl, however, it was too late for me to back out and not look like a complete douchebag for uninviting him. The day of winter formal I started getting super nervous because I texted once in the morning and once at like 4 in the afternoon (2 hours before pictures) with no response. At this point I am thinking about the worst case scenario: a) he either is dead and therefore can’t go to winter formal with me or b) he ditched me. FINALLY he answers saying he is in fact alive and will see me later on that night.
It’s finally the hour. I am at the pre-party waiting for him to arrive. All my friends are there; I’m just chilling having a good time waiting for him to show up. He finally arrives, beautiful bouquet of flowers in hand and his cute suit on. I start a conversation thanking him for the flowers and making small talk. Then I notice we have a visitor. The visitor being a large purpleish bruise on the side of his neck above his collar. YES PEOPLE. YES YOU ARE THINKING CORRECT. THIS MOTHERFUCKER SHOWED UP TO MY WINTER FORMAL WITH A HICKEY FROM ANOTHER GIRL. At this point, I am utterly mortified because all the parents at the party are beginning to notice (well, all the parents except mine coincidentally). And of course, they all think the hickey was from me. So that’s great. Most all of the pictures were tainted by his love bite (but it was fine because I ended up cropping him out of most of the pics anyway). After letting it bother me for most of the pre-party, I finally decide, no this is my night and I am not gonna let some idiot guy ruin it. The party bus arrives and we all pile in. We get dropped off at dinner; I felt obligated to sit next to my date so I sat on his left side, which also happened to be the friskier side of his neck apparently.
At the end of the night, I just wanted to get him off my hands. I drove him home, dropped him off at the door, gave a quick side hug, and ran down the front steps leaving no room for any funny business. The next morning my parents asked me how the dance was and I told them the whole story. My dad, who apparently is super oblivious, had a full on face-to-face conversation with him and didn’t even notice. We’ll just say the morning after winter formal my dad was very steamy and quite frankly wanted to hunt this guy down in the most literal kind of a way. My mom wanted me to just leave it, “Be the bigger person. Don’t instigate anything or make it look like you care.” But I am the exact opposite of that. In most situations I am able to keep my composure, but if you are disrespectful it is hard for me to contain my rage. I text him that day:
Me: Hey had a fun night last night. Here are the pictures
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted on 04 November 2016.
On Thursday evening, members of Divest Whitman placed signs outside Memorial Hall. The signs form a timeline of the different divestment movements throughout Whitman’s history. The most recent sign read, “In 2015, students, faculty, and staff sat in Memorial Hall to support a 1% cap on fossil fuel exposure.” The signs are captured in the slideshow below.
(Tywen Kelly)
(Tywen Kelly)
(Tywen Kelly)
(Tywen Kelly)
(Tywen Kelly)

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Posted on 02 November 2016.
To the Editor and Publisher:
The Kappas’ recent achievement of raising more than $50,000 from the Mr. Whitman contest for The Health Center is astonishing and should be celebrated. I would be surprised if any student group has generated that much philanthropic success through other fund raising efforts. Especially worth noting is the leadership of Meghan Ash, Claire Revere, Mikaela Slade, Jackie Greisen and Nora Leitch, who, along with their very large group of partners, set a high bar for next year’s event.
Moreover, in addition to the impressive number of dollars generated is the inspiring number of human connections that the Kappas created between Whitman students and community members, including students at Lincoln High School, Walla Walla School District teachers and administrators, and staff members at the Health Center. The work that they did this semester to build in opportunities to create these meaningful interactions (including the one described in your excellent Oct 20 story) was truly exemplary. Indeed, I have heard from several students that that human aspect of Mr. Whitman was the most rewarding part of the whole endeavor.
Going forward, I invite all Whitman students who seek to raise funds for local organizations to consider following this model of bringing Whitties closer together with residents of our amazing and interesting community. Doing so would be a powerful way to increase your understanding of the special place that we all get to share.
Thank you.
Noah Leavitt, Associate Dean of Students
SEC

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Posted on 02 November 2016.
I know I say this every week, but wowowow I can’t believe it’s Issue 9 already. This week is our election issue, so each section has at least one election-themed article. We also endorsed a presidential candidate and a few local candidates!! Pick up a copy or check online tomorrow to see the big decisions.
5:29 PM: Peggy just gave me a piece of Swedish Fish flavored gum! It was confusing.
5:34 PM: The light looks really pretty on the roof of the art building out the window and Marra just leaped across the newsroom to get a picture of it.
6:00 PM: Mickey is very busy tonight, so the literal angel Marra has gone to pick up dinner for her. What a gem.
6:04 PM: [Georgia walks in] “Hi! In a surprising turn of events, we have a page ready for you.” -Mickey
Have a great week everyone!
Martina

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Posted on 30 October 2016.
First year Ian Bourn is a Rubik’s Cube master and once held the unofficial world record. Videographer North Bennett learns about his skills.

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Posted on 26 October 2016.
Things are looking good for Issue 8! We have some awesome content this week; I’m particularly looking forward to an article about Whitman’s frolf course (including a beautiful map!), an article about the best and worst campus jobs, and an
article about underrepresented groups in STEM.
Mitchell, Tywen, and Natalie are back from their Associated Collegiate Press conference in DC and we can’t wait to hear about everything they learned!
It’s been a hectic week, but the pages are shaping up.
P.S. Today Georgia brought in “extra toasty” flavored Cheez-Its. I would highly recommend.
P.P.S. To the left you can see a fine example of our headline writing talents.

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Posted on 19 October 2016.
Tonight the newsroom is quieter. The cold is making it’s rounds around Whitman and most of us are running on a combination of caffeine and DayQuil.
Marra is at a dinner with the student government of Walla Walla University, and Mitchell has been holed up in the office for most of the night, doing one-on-ones with editors. Slowly but surely we are trucking along on the pages–by this point most of the editors have filtered in and out, and the copy editors are hard at work.
If you see Tywen (one of our amazing photography editors) around tonight, wish him a happy 20th birthday! Pick up a paper tomorrow at noon.
-Martina

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