Photo by Tywen Kelly

Today is Fall Visitors’ Day and there are three banners hanging in prominent locations around campus.

The first pair of banners are hanging on the fences of the tennis courts in the center of campus, which read, “WHITMAN ONLY PUNISHES VICTIMS,” and “IT HAS BEEN 3 DAYS SINCE THE LAST REPORTED RAPE.” These banners are strikingly visible from the entrance of the library, where an information desk for prospective students and parents is stationed.

A parent of a prospective student takes a photo of the banner on the tennis court fences. Photo by Tywen Kelly.

The second is a banner hung from the roof of the east face of the science building, which reads, “VISITORS ASK YOUR TOUR GUIDES ABOUT DIVESTMENT.”

5:12- The pages are looking good! Editors are filtering in and out to write captions and headlines.

5:43- We had a “Bagpipe Gram” from a mysterious Wire admirer! It was very exciting. Here he is.

6:30- We have found Georgia’s cool gloves! They have tiny animals on the fingers.

6:35- We are now on amazon looking at children’s gloves.

6:46- Mitch has left for his night class. What are we supposed to do without his leadership?

7:20- I’m off to my Wednesday night movie screening, leaving only a handful of editors in the office. The paper is in good shape- after a bit of polishing it will be ready! This week we have a great review of the Netflix documentary “Amanda Knox” in our A&E section as well as an article about concussions in Sports. I’m looking forward to reading the rest! Pick up a copy tomorrow morning.

Martina

Here’s the thing about a lot of bright-eyed millennials: we want to change the world. No, we may not know exactly what we’re doing after college or what specific career we’re angling towards, but we know we “just want to make a difference.” Whitman is brimming with passionate, talented people and I have no doubt that many of you will, in fact, go on to change the world. But that’s a little bit beside the point right now. It’s really easy to have lofty goals, to project ourselves into the future, envisioning grand plans of making a difference and doing good in the world, and yes, I think that’s absolutely a valuable thing to work for. But there’s something that’s a lot harder and arguably more important than having a vision for the distant future: doing good in the world right now, exactly where we are.

It’s all too easy to get caught up in daydreams about what our lives will be like when we finally shoot out into the real world. It seems like that’s when things really get started, and that right now we’re only prepping. But these are our lives—this, right here—and we may as well live like it.

So, how do we make a difference right now, in this moment? How do we live by the values we espouse instead of just imagining them in our future? I’ll let author Kurt Vonnegut take a crack at the answer:  “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies: God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” Maybe it seems a little trite and a little simple, but that’s because we’re so primed to dream big. I’m not saying we shouldn’t dream big (please, end poverty! Stop human trafficking! Solve the refugee crisis!), but sometimes when we dream too big we can feel powerless. And when we feel too small to help, we get stuck. Changing the world seems like an unattainable task, but anything short of it feels too miniscule to matter.

Illustration by Meg Cuca

But it does matter. Those little things—a kind word, a thoughtful gesture—they make a difference. The mighty oak, the little acorn, you know how the saying goes. It’s okay to start small. Heck, it’s okay to stay small! The point is, we could all do a lot worse than be kind and loving and work to reduce the pain in the lives of those around us. Change, after all, happens person by person, moment by moment.

There are so many people whose external lives reflect a myriad of accomplishments and accolades, but whose personal lives tell a different story. If we get caught up chasing perfectly packaged moments of success, we can lose sight of the things we have the most control over: our own lives, our actions, our effect on those around us. The legacy we leave doesn’t have to be a laundry list of impressive achievements; it can simply be that we touched the lives of those around us, that we made people feel valued, appreciated, seen, and cared for. That is a revolutionary act. We sometimes forget to prioritize these things when our frame of reference is so zoomed out and our focal point is somewhere in the far-off horizon.

We are constantly faced with choices of virtue: to be honest or lie, to be kind or bitter, to help others or focus on ourselves, to do right or wrong. If you want to make a difference, try leaning in the direction of kindness, of honesty, of goodness. Your littlest actions matter; the ripple effect will carry them far. And that is enough to change the world.

Junior Catherine Fisher, an intern to Associate Dean of Students Barbara Maxwell, is attempting to start a Coalition to End Sexual Assault that would invite diverse groups from around Whitman’s campus to converse and help support each other’s efforts to end sexual assault.

Planning for the coalition is still in the preliminary phase, so no one knows exactly what the group might look like in its final form. Generally speaking, the representatives from various campus clubs and organizations such as All Students for Consent (ASC), the Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC), FACE (Feminists Advocating for Change and Empowerment), Residence Life, varsity athletics and the Greek System would meet twice a month to coordinate the various ideas they have for ending sexual assault at Whitman. There would be one representative from each of these groups, except for the Greek System, which would have one representative for fraternities and another for sororities. When representatives from these various clubs and organizations communicate regularly, the hope is that their programming won’t conflict with like it occasionally has in the past. Instead, all the groups can work together to publicize each other’s educational efforts and events.

According to Maxwell, the need for this new coalition arose when she realized that campus clubs and organizations often had programming addressing how to end sexual assault at similar times, which put them in competition for the same student audiences.  

“The trigger for this particular job description was my students talking about the fact that athletics had done an, ‘It’s On Us’ campaign…It stuck me that there are a lot of student groups out there doing outreach, education, programing on the topic of sexual assault prevention, but that we don’t coordinate that very well,” Maxwell said. “Sometimes, without intending—or even knowing—we step on each other’s toes.”

To encourage more of these student organizations to work in harmony, Fisher felt that communication about the different initiatives they were taking on would be key.

“I feel like the communication is not always great, which is nobody’s fault, but that’s what I am trying to remedy with this group,” Fisher said.

While Fisher has some ideas for how she wants to coalition to look, she hopes that representatives from various campus organizations will inform the shape that this coalition takes as well.

“I really want to keep it open for other people to have a say in where the group goes. I don’t want it to be my little pet group. I will be planning ground rules and leading meetings, but I want it be something that other people have input into,” Fisher said.

Sophomore ASWC Senator Caroline Bauwens’ voiced excitement at the possibility of a more cohesive effort to end sexual assault all across campus.

“I hope that it will help students feel a lot safer…and decrease the number of sexual assaults that happen,” Bauwens said .

Both Fisher and Maxwell agreed that The Coalition to End Sexual Violence should encourage all clubs and organizations who may have new, insightful perspectives to send a representative to the meetings.

“The idea with including things like Athletics or Residence Life is to get outside of the echo chamber of ASC and FACE and organizations that have in their mission to deal with these issues and instead get some new people into the conversation,” Fisher said.

Maxwell believed that the best way to end sexual assault would be for anyone who was interested to join the conversation.

“Everyone on campus is welcome to come to the table and participate on this topic. This is a campus topic, and anyone who wants to work towards ending sexual violence is welcome to participate…The more people feel welcome to come to the table, the more people that are invested in that, the more people that are actively working on that, the quicker we are going to get there,” Maxwell said.

Photographer Henry Honzel polls the community with the question: “Does Greek life have a positive presence on Whitman’s campus?”

We are getting into the swing of things! The newsroom is abuzz with the sound of furious typing and the Django soundtrack.

5:22- We have some awesome articles coming out this week. I’m looking forward to an article about the role of the Greek system on campus as well as Eric’s review of “Hell or High Water.”

6:41- I just had a lot of fun making a Wire snapchat account. Follow whitmanwire to get in on the excitement.

Copy Editor Anthony and PA Yarden finding fame

7:12- I’m heading to my 7:30 Film Class soon! Until next Wednesday.

Martina

We’re back at it, folks.

Pretzels were consumed, headlines were over-thought, and Beyonce was played. Issue one is happening!

As this semester’s Managing Editor, I will be live blogging the up and downs of production night every week.

Here are the highlights:

• Humor Editor Peggy brought Disney Princess fruit snacks today because they were on sale, and she thought that Rapunzel was Elsa.
• Editor-in-Chief Mitchell was acting like Copy Editor Anthony’s dad for a minute, and it weirded both of them out.
• For a while it looked like we were going to be low on content on the humor page, so Marra and I whipped up a limerick titled “The Funniest Poém in the Whole World” about two first-years who fall in love at the 80s dance. We actually (luckily?) didn’t even need to use it this week, but you might have the privilege sometime in the future. Until then, here is a sneak-peak of the first stanza:

There once was a first-year named May

She was nervous for move-in day

But Mom and Dad just wouldn’t leave

And she was peeved

She just wanted to find a bae.

Until next week!

-Martina

Cleveland, Ohio – And just like that, it’s over. Crowds packed into the Media Zone on Fourth Avenue in downtown Cleveland to watch Republican nominee Donald J. Trump deliver his acceptance speech. Chants of “USA! USA!” rose from the assembled crowd, and the atmosphere was happy and inviting.  

Day four was probably the most high energy day of protest throughout the convention. The city of Cleveland turned the fountain on in the center of Public Square, which prevented the congregations seen on previous days, but protesters were unperturbed. Rev Com, a group of socialist protesters teamed up with self described anarchists to launch a rally that turned into a march down St. Claire, eventually doing loops around Memorial Park.  

Protesters wore rags concealing their faces and held flags, some of which bore the notorious “A” of the anarchist movement. The crescendo was a spirited debate between members of Rev Com and members of Turning Point, an anti-Communist group with student chapters all over the country.

It was surreal to hear these well informed debates over the macro structure of government and economy at a political rally. None of the debaters seemed to have any political allegiance, they were more interested in weighing the merits of capitalism versus communism.  

At 5:00 PM the square erupted into chaos as a protester threatened to burn an American flag. Within seconds he was flocked by police officers and journalists, though it ultimately came to nothing.  

Rev Com mobilized again towards the beginning of the evening session of the RNC, protesters marched the perimeter of Public Square and called for a revolution. As the sun began to sink below the skyscrapers, a group of protesters clad in yellow bearing signs reading “Love Trumps Hate” danced through the square to the beat of drums and the crowd’s mood began to change.

The rest of the night felt like a party. Everywhere I turned police officers were taking photos with kids and shaking hands. Men draped in Trump flags embraced women wearing Black Lives Matter shirts. By the time Ivanka Trump began her introduction, most people had settled in to watch the ending unfold.

I watched Trump’s speech with a group of older Trump supporters from Southern California. They were all nice, well informed, tolerant men. None of them displayed the kind of vengeful spite that we have come to expect from Trump’s fan base, and they all had valid reasons for supporting Trump. They were willing to hear my arguments, and I heard theirs. Though we didn’t all agree, we were all agreeable.

Political pundits will undoubtably analyze every stutter and misstep, searching for meaning. This was without a doubt one of the worst-orchestrated conventions of the past half century. Though the convention didn’t live up to it’s catastrophic billing, Melania Trump’s plagiarism will go down in history as one of the silliest political blunders ever. Cruz’s refusal to endorse the Republican nominee will also be talked into the ground, and the political insurgency staged on the convention’s first day seems like a problem only temporarily solved.

Having said that, I loved every minute of it.

Thank you to the police officers who came from far and wide to make sure that no one was hurt. This was truly a clinic on effective and ethical policing. Final totals have yet to be announced, but I doubt the arrest tally will exceed ten.  

Thank you to all of the local Clevelanders, for sharing your city with us and making sure everyone stayed safe.

Thank you to Guys Pizza, on the corner of Superior and 6th which without a doubt served the best $2 deep dish Pepperoni pizza I have ever had in my entire life.  

Check up on Monday, July 25 for our coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, PA.