You wouldn’t know
In the massive discussion of the Vagina Monologues below, Dr. McPherson raised an interesting matter. Since him and I were both of male gender, were we really qualified to judge The Vagina Monologues as a play?
It’s that implied question of criticism that permeates academia: the question of how important identity and experience are when we are judging our surroundings.
Can I talk about black issues if I’m white? Can I talk about gay issues if I’m straight? Can I talk about the AARP if I’m twenty-three? Can an old pretentious guy like A.O. Scott judge a movie like “Space Chimps,” if he’s *clearly* not the intended audience?
A large part of this goes back the notion of identity. To many in academia, ‘Identity’ — a few pieces of census data — are the most important part about who you are.
If I’m black, my entire life is consumed with my blackness. If I’m gay, my entire essence is gay. Not only that, but it immediately makes me an unassailable expert on these topics…right?
This is the same type of thinking that leads a person who took a two-week trip to South America to believe he or she automatically knows more about how to solve South American problems than a person who’s been deeply studying the issues for years, but has never shelled out the $400 for a round trip ticket to go.
Experience, in this mindset, trumps everything.
To me, such thinking shuts down debate. It’s a matter of Ethos trumping Logos - “Why should I have to explain myself to you. I just KNOW. I am, after all, an expert.”
There are several fallacies inherent in that thinking.
First is the notion that there’s a complete unity of experience within a certain demographic. To do so ignores the fact that we’re not just the part of one demographic.
We’re a part of multiple ones: wealth, class, religion, race, gender, philosophy, region, entertainment exposure.
Second is the fallacy that experience always leads to equal conclusions.
People with the exact same experiences can often come to multiple conclusions. I can find Whitworthian women who found The Vagina Monologues compelling, and some who find it pretentious and silly, and still others who find it horrifying…but there’s a bigger philosophical aspect here.
The notion that our beliefs, our actions, and our creed are our everything is the sum total of nature and nurture. We are the effect of a cause. The world is the stimulus, and we are the mindless response.
From a purely naturalist perspective, that’s the only way to look at the world. Of course, with this philosophy there’s no such thing as morality. With no such thing as “choice” we can no more blame a serial killer for serial killing than we can blame a rock from falling when dropped. It’s the result of immutable scientific laws. (Of course, so is our outrage)
I however believe in free will, which by its very nature is an unscientific, downright magical belief. It’s a belief that we can, somehow, defy the laws of cause and affect. That we can come to conclusion ourselves.
Thus, I believe that we can break free of the philosophy of our surroundings and experience. We are not lashed to the mast of our identity.
Otherwise, of course, the whole effort of seeking knowledge and truth is utterly pointless.
And even if our identities make up the majority of who we are, unique the perspective we bring to an argument is just as valuable. I bring a dude’s perspective to judging the Vagina Monologues. Sure, I’m not Ensler’s intended audience, but what makes my perspective any less valuable, or even correct, because of the inherent fact that I’m male?
I don’t have personal experience with many of the issues involved, but because of that, I can analyze in a different way. Personal experience can taint and bias one’s perspective – as well as crystallize it.
The “You wouldn’t know – you wouldn’t understand-” belief is a common one – no, an understandable one. But that doesn’t mean you should stop trying to teach me or help me understand. And I’ll help you understand my perspective as well.
That, not the competition to whose backstory is more pertinent to the topic, is more important. Where we should go and who you should become is always more important to talk about than who you are or where you’ve been.
“If it was rape, it was good rape.”
The administration’s choice to allow a production of the Vagina Monologues on school grounds represents but one sign of Whitworth’s ongoing de-Christianization.
George F. Whitworth, when he first established the college back in 1890, envisioned a college where students would “honor God, follow Christ, and serve humanity”. By endorsing and condoning such an inherently anti-Christian and perverse play such as The Vagina Monologues on campus, the administration has violated, at the very least, the first two objectives of George Whitworth’s vision.
With its glorification of fornication and perversity, manifested in subject matter such as a dominatrix pridefully going on about the merits of her work, as well as its heaping doses of crude shock value (exemplified in the skit where the performers chant notable slang – sometimes ouright obscene words – for the vagina), it doesn’t surprise me that this performance was just barely allowed to be performed on university grounds [criticism of The V. Monologues from a colonial, heterosexual perspective can be found here].
Moreover, the fact that it managed to slide past the same people who thought the title “Free Beer” was an unacceptable name for an art show in which no alcohol was served, further proves that this university is beginning to compromise on its original message.
The very concept of The Vagina Monologues, with its focus on the female genitalia as the pinnacle of worth and pride among women, represents a naturalist and materialistic view of the female persuasion, which stands in contrast to the Judeo-Christian view of women, whose bodies belong not to them, nor their lovers, but to God, who warns against the misuse of His gifts*.
Men, in The Vagina Monologues, are shown primarily as hypersexual simpletons, (such as in “Because He Liked to Look At It”, in which a man stares infatuated for hours at a woman’s mid section after just meeting her at the grocery store), and sadistic savages (nearly every other story involving men).
Women (the play implies), are totally incapable of abuse, as can be seen in the case of”The Little Cootchie Snorcher That Could”, in which a woman fondly recalls being drugged and rape at the age of thirteen by a woman in her twenties. Although the Whitworth presentation changed the last few words, in the original script, the woman narrator ends with “If it was rape, it was good rape.”
Now, this critique is not, in the least, meant as a personal slant against those participating in the play. I’m all too aware that the actors, like those of every respectable performance, poured their time and labor into not only raising awareness of domestic violence, but making the show entertaining to all. Rather, this critique is meant primarily as an assault on the immoral content and anti-Christian attitude of the play in question.
If Whitworth still wants to call itself anything more than nominally Christian, it will have to play a more active role in keeping watch against, as well as actively banning, subversive performances on campus. With more prestige as the university grows, there will be an ever present temptation to be more open to “alternative views“, much like other once religious colleges have, selling their souls so that they might attract more students – and not tick off the PC police!
Although non-Christian views and ideas should not necessarily be shut completely out of the the picture, blatantly vulgar and ideologically flawed plays – such as The Vagina Monologues - should not be endorsed by a university that prides itself on solid Christian values. Especially not a play that arguably condones sexual deviance, much less assault.
*1st Corinthians 6:13: “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body [NKJ].”
Just Don’t Censor the Sweatshirts
“So, people get more fired up about sweatshirts than censorship?,” Elizabeth Johnson commented on her own article. “Great.”
She had a point. The article chronicling the administration’s censorship of the intended title for the annual senior art exhibition had received precisely one comment from the Whitworth community in the week it had been posted. Conversely, the article attacking the average Whitworthian’s propensity for wearing sweatshirts to class (also penned by Ms. Johnson) received five comments in its first week and thirteen as of this posting. It also inspired a Letter to the Editor, notable as being the only Letter to the Editor that the Whitworthian has published in 2009.
I won’t even get into the Vagina Monologues incident, which spurred the writing of two Whitworthian articles and an opinions column, but apparently failed to garner any attention from individual students (at least judging from the lack of comments upon said articles/columns).
It is, as a recent In the Loop column stated, “an upsetting trend.” But what I find more upsetting than the administration’s actions is the lack of response from the Whitworth community at large – a community that erupts in outrage when someone makes negative remarks about their everyday attire, but says not a word when the artistic expression of their peers is imperilled! What kind of attitude is this?
One friend who I pestered about the administration’s actions vis-a-vis the senior art exhibit said, “Well, I don’t really care about art. It’s not my [rights to free speech] that are being infringed upon.”
I hate to subcribe to an obvious logical fallacy, in this case the slippery slope argument, but indulge me. In recent years Whitworth has been moving more and more toward a particular image, the image of a hallowed institution of learning. This is fine, but their image apparently does not include seniors who wear wigs and make silly faces for their ID card photos, or advertisements that don’t have a “Whitworth University” stamp on the corner, or students who bedeck the other university in town’s campus with fliers declaring Whitworth’s societal, academic, and athletic superiority (in unapologetically silly terms, of course).
Understandable? Maybe…but the administration’s objections have now cut a little closer to home. No ironic art show titles. No productions of plays that dare to criticize traditional sexual mores.
How many more such decisions will have to be made before students as a whole start taking notice?
GO. VOTE. NOW.
…before you forget, ’cause you were busy doing @#!# CORE homework!
OKAY, here’s what I did. I logged into Facebook and typed each candidate’s name into Facebook search. Their first name I made a link to either the picture they’re using to campaign with, or their profile pic (in many cases, both [in one case a Paint interpretation of a particularly evocative campaign poster]). Their last name is a link to whatever picture on their Profile Pictures Page amused or intrigued me most. And after that I quoted an intriguing, amusing, or just plain WHAT?! quote from their “Favorite Quotations” section on Facebook. And after THAT I linked you to any existing Facebook support groups. WHEW.
President
- Tyler Whitney (Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is [[Ghandi])
- Michael Harri (I‘m not weakened by the fears/that you have applied/See I’m now learning in these walls/that You have supplied./Slow, slow down boy./Slow down to/Control [Collective Soul]) The Official Facebook Support Group. The Website.
EVP
- Tyler Hamilton (If at first you don’t suceed, then lower your standards.)
- Charley Brinkman (We cannot all do great things, but we can all do small things with great love [Mother Teresa].)
FVP
- Carl Chan (Spirituality is not religion. Religion divides people. Belief in something unites them.) The Official Facebook Support Group.
Boppell Senator
Mac Senator
- Jesse Prichard
- Stephen Jansons (..when I’m going through the hard times I like to punch dance away life’s problems…) The Official Facebook Support Group.
Ballard Senator
Stewart Senator
- Brittany Roach (life is a series of images that change as they repeat themselves [Andy Warhol]
East Senator
Arend Senator
- Beau Lamb (I feel like I’m in some Greek play, you try to control your fate, but the gods have other plans.)
- Rachel Busick (violence is not the answer [though it is a solution at times]) The Official Facebook Support Group.
Off Campus Senator
- David Kuraya (The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work [Emile Zola].) The Official Facebook Support Group.
Off Campus Rep
- Dan Lewis (The world will never be safe as long as millions live in poverty so the few can live as they wish [Shane Clairborne].) The Official Facebook Support Group.
25 Things about Whitworth
You saw it on your friend’s note on Facebook. You might have seen it parodied in Time Magazine. You might not have a Facebook.
Regardless, here it is: Everyone’s least favorite favorite meme: with a twist:
25 Things Gabrielle Vaughn Loves and Hates About Whitworth
1. My favorite theatre major said [a really bad word] (I edit myself for Daniel Walters’ grandma’s sake) really loud in Saga-I-mean-Sodexo at 6:45 PM, Thursday, April 1st.
2. I play Dungeons and Dragons with a group in Hendrick Hall. The security people leave the lights on in Hendrick Hall for us from after classes leave the hall until about midnight. Sometimes the security people stop by mid-session & tell us stories about epic things that happened in their high school/college/insert time period label here sessions.
3. Very few people commit the egregrious sin of PDA on the Whitworth Campus. Those who do, do it with passion (find the pun, it’s not very hard [if you noticed the pun between these parentheses, you're a perv (if you noticed the double puns, email me, I think we'd like each other)]).
4. Percentagely speaking, everyone at Whitworth loves Facebook.
5. Those who don’t love Facebook have really interesting reasons why the heck not.
6. Go to the Whitworth Coffee Shop alone sometime. Say hello to the inevitable fifteen people there that you know/took a class with/took a class from/have about .2390572938456 degrees of separation from. Take a moment to mourn Stan’s loss to the Whitworth community. And then sit down. And people-watch/listen. People talk about EVERYTHING in the Coffee Shop. It is one of (surprisingly numerous) places on campus where Whitworth’s diversity of psyche can be clearly seen. I have heard/participated in any number of conversations there. I have had conversations planning road trips where people felt free to lean over and suggest places to go (incidentally, Julia, Powell’s was amazing, as promised). I have heard intense debates between conservative professors and liberal students (and vice versa [Whitworth's subtitle should be vice versa]). I have interviewed Bill Robinson (no, he’s not an unusually lifelike hologram) for the Whitworthian. I have seen first dates there. I have experienced a first date there. I have had people meet me and my boyfriend six months later and say, “Oh! You’re that couple I saw that one time doing that one thing!”
7. I have sat with a Theology major in one of the larger dorms on campus and listened to him rant about how very, very, wrong evolution was as a concept, knowing that several dorm floors away, someone was pushing the Everclear a little farther behind the Whitworth-approved Mountain Dew in the minifridge. The contrast in personalities amazes me.
8. I, who grew up a flaming Southern Baptist, have been taught the beauty of Roman Catholicism by simply watching other people love it.
9. I sat in a lecture with close to fifty other people. The lecture concerned Chaucer and Sex. Maybe a third of the student audience were English majors. The professors there (some of the legends, Doug Sugano, Corliss Slack, Arlin Migliazzo) expressed amazement at the amount of people there. I was fresh out of high school. I hadn’t even declared my major yet. I was struck speechless that a) not only were there people who CHOSE to take English class, but b) they were taking time out of their social life (AND MANY OF THEM WEREN’T EVEN MAJORING IN ENGLISH!) to listen to a professor who didn’t teach at their school lecture about the blatant sexuality in a piece that is bandied about by at least as many people as have seen A Knight’s Tale!
10. I have gone on a roadtrip with an opinion columnist thinking about transferring to a college back home and a girl who carried her Canon camera on every beach we visited who is giving serious thought to transferring to Seattle Pacific University. I was taking a trip driving the car, in a rainstorm, on a curvy mountain road. I was distracting them and myself from the bad weather and dangerous conditions by telling them stories about my other friends (sounds dangerous – actually helps me focus & drive better – ). I found myself telling them about the horrible things that a high school friend of mine had gone through while I was simultaneously experiencing my freshman year at Whitworth. I had never talked to anyone about the experiences before. Because it was a road trip and I had just spent two days camping on the Oregon coast with these girls and listening to the amateur photographer playing folk songs on her fiddle for us in the dark while our campfire burned, I forged ahead. ….Not to put too fine a point on it, but I found myself trying to drive and sob at the same time. Without expressing any (justified) concern for her life at all, the opinions columnist gently offered to drive the car (which is owned by the amateur photographer). And I let her. And instead of doing what MOST people would do, which is let the change in drivers allow the mood to lapse and the crying and sharing stop, the opinions columnist hugged me as we passed each other on the way to changing seats, and once everyone was settled and we were on the road again, the amateur photographer started encouraging me to finish the story, “because it’s important to get these things out.”
11. Stewart is the dorm known for being attractively sketch, having sewer problems of mythic proportions, and testing the patience of the surrounding residential neighborhoods every year with the Stewart Lawn Dance (Save a horse, ride a cowboy!) But Stewart is also the dorm whose front lawn was featured in the ‘07/’08 school year, as a photography student took pictures of the four seasons in action from his dorm window. Stewart also vies with BJ for my personal title of “most flags displayed on dorm windows” (Colorado seems to have the most state pride, flag-wise).
12. Whitworth is obsessed with good art, even if half the campus doesn’t know it. There is a 3-D art sculpture in the HUB right now. It’s triangular & made out of broken mirrors. There are small-sized advertisements for REALLY INTERESTING events on the Whitworth campus stuck to it. You should go see it. The sculpture, I mean. And the interesting events. The HUB’s a pretty good thing to see too, while you’re out seeing things because some girl on the Internet told you to (protip: there are no girls on the Internet).
13. Whitworth is a campus that simultaneously has art students paying their way through college who really, really try to make a show called “Free Beer,” and who write very contained opinion columns when their idea is turned down….and conservative students from California whose fathers are millionaire businessmen who go to Hosanna every Tuesday night, rain or shine (or April snow).
14. While we’re on that topic, I love the glow of Whitworth’s lights in December/January when they are mere halos through fogs of snow, low-lying clouds, or other inclement weather. But I’m a little bemused by the beauty of an inch of snowfall when it comes on April Fool’s day (you see what God did there?).
15. I have a really skinny friend who lives in Arend and sometimes forgets to eat. He has ADD and sometimes gets really caught up in checking websites and doing homework and talking to friends and he…just…forgets…to eat. One day he fainted in front of his roommate (who I later heard threaten him: “If you ever do that again I will strangle you myself!”). It’s been roughly six months since that incident, and he’ll still meet people in Arend or associated with Arend (you know, dating some of Arend’s infamous geeks or the like) who, after a while, will suddenly look intensely focused, then surprised, and go, “Oh! You’re that guy that fainted!” They will then look suddenly concerned, put a hand on his shoulder, and ask sincerely, “Are you doing okay?”
16. I once brought a plate of cookies to Whitworth for the express purpose of sharing them with my boyfriend and inadvertently invited three computer science majors over to chillax in a tiny Keola room (that’s right, Village pride) and have some cookies as well. This is how it went. I was in charge of the cookies, sitting in the one chair in the room, simultaneously trying to listen to everyone talk and finish painting my Dungeons and Dragons figurine. My boyfriend kind of pressed himself against the wall and watched everything (I may or may not have invited those guys over while my boy was in the shower, I’m not sure – IT’S ALL A BLUR TO ME NOW -). One friend argued, cookie in hand, his theory about why women shouldn’t play World of Warcraft. The other friend argued with the first friend that he didn’t think ANYONE should play World of Warcraft, because it does all the imaginative work for you (that was the first time I’d met this guy face-to-face). And the last friend was curled up on my boyfriend’s bed, having kidnapped my boyfriend’s copy of Watchmen to reread.
17. In the last month before the ‘07-’08 school year was over, a group of us took to the back 40 one night. Those who played instruments were encouraged to bring them. We went down to Pirate’s Cove. The boy who played bagpipes was heckled until he got up on stage and played for us. Several others had particular pieces of poetry memorized and got up on stage and recited them for the group. One boy did all the voices and motions of the “Bring out yer dead!” scene of Monty Python and the Holy Grail fame. Another performed some obscure speech by some crazy English revolutionary, in a funny accent (he’s talented with those). Then we walked in large circles around campus, singing shreds of songs that we all knew (The Beatles proved popular as the large majority knew at least a chorus’ worth of lyrics) as well as showtunes…..Incidentally, the boy who played the bagpipes still practices near Pirate’s Cove in the back 40 now and again. He prefers to practice in daylight, but often plays at night, lit by a bare lightbulb, surrounded by cigarette butts and dead pizza boxes.
18. If you are that rare creature, a sophomore or freshman who lives off-campus, most of Whitworth’s dorms and The Coffee Shop are a great place to just get away from it all. Take a book, take some coffee, take your laptop, take your sheet music & practice on the pianos that are in every single dorm (Thank you, to whoever’s idea that was). Any of the above, or your own idea, works. I especially recommend the big dorms for lounge-hopping, like Arend or Warren, but also spent about an hour in Schumacher last year when it was still girly and it worked pretty well. Haven’t been back in The Shoe since it changed gender, but I hear good things!
19. Whitworth lives in Spokane, a city that has a heartbreaking handfulsworth of metropolitan area centered around the Spokane River Falls and miles and miles and miles of condominiums and housing development. It takes a village to raise some beauty…
20. Three words: The Garland District. I don’t care when you go or where you go or what time of the day you go, just go. There’s Garland’s Dollar Theatre. There’s an excellent used-book store, I visited once and at the counter the owner looked through my selections and randomly started muttering, “That’s too much” and marking things down (which ended up really good because I was in a book glut mood and bought waaaaaaaay too much stuff that trip). There are about five semi-famous greasy-spoon restaurants (The Milk Bottle has Doug Sugano’s personal recommendation, if that means anything to you – plus the door is in the middle of a 15 foot milk bottle sculpture and there are lots of black and white pictures over the counter inside – what more do you need?). The Blue Door Theatre does cheap-ish but REALLY EXCELLENT improv every weekend or so and they need bigger audiences. GO SEE. REPORT BACK.
21. If you’re the occasional Whitworth student who actually has money, get yourself to the Spokane Civic Theatre. Two years ago they sent a Sondheim Musical (Assassins, for those literate in Sondheim Speak) to AACTFest in Charlotte, North Carolina. Why do I know this? Because I attended middle school and high school at Northwest Christian in town, and was in every musical from 7th-12th grade, and the theatre teacher graduated from Whitworth College. He played The Balladeer in that production of Assassins and as a person is why I attended Whitworth and plan to again.
22. Don’t be fooled by Whitworth’s white-bread exterior. It’s not all rich kids attending on their parent’s money. It’s also kids who cut and alcoholics and kids who love premarital sex and kids who write poems and kids who write worship songs and kids who wish…that…someone…would…just…react. Whitworth is like that crazy bread that Costco sells sometimes that looks nice and easily edible until you open it up and realize all the nuts in the inside. (”Everything is edible. People are edible, but that is cannibalism my dear children, which is in fact frowned upon in most countries [Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka, Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory].)
23. Whitworth is a boy who’s never known a kiss listening to his friend describe how much she misses sex in all its flavors.
24. Whitworth is a girl in a skirt hanging out with a group of boys, saying to one of them, “Stop being such a boy,” and having another boy twitch as in irritation and say, “As a boy I take offense to that,” and having the girl lean and say into his ear, “As a girl to a boy you know I’m right. Sometimes you have to realize that cliches are true, so you can transcend them.”
25. Whitworth is the marriage of the sacred and the profane.
Tear Down This Wall, Mr. Schwab
I’m not sure if this is the best place for this, but it is basically the first draft for a piece I am writing. I am interested in hearing your opinions on both the subject, and the piece itself. Thanks. -Brent
There is no wall separating east Mountlake Terrace from west Mountlake Terrace. If there was a wall, the East side would be populated by the Smaller Learning Communities proponents. These would include former principal Mark Baier, former vice principal, and most prominent pro-SLC voice, Steven Gering, and most notably, Bill and Melinda Gates. Yes, the Bill Gates and his wife. The Westside would consist of the SLC opponents, including most students, many parents, and some faculty members. The Smaller learning communities, much like communism looks great on paper. The idea is simple. In the last fifty years, the average high school has grown from 1,000 students to 1,500 students, and research has shown that “smaller schools are safer and more productive because students feel less alienated, more nurtured and more connected to caring adults, and teachers feel that they have more opportunity to get to know and support their students” (Great Source Grants and Funding). So, if you are a large school, like Mountlake Terrace High School with its 1,800 plus students, you use grant money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to divide yourself into smaller “academies” within the school to give each individual school the feel of a smaller school. As a former Mountlake Terrace student who attended the school both before and during the implementation of the SLCs, I can tell you that like communism, in practice, the SLCs are not an effective fix.
Let the Great Experiment Begin!
My friend and I have decided to create our own blog. This is Justin. He is my blog partner in crime. His minor celebrity shouldn’t hurt ( not to mention he is dreeeeamy). I, to the dismay of some, will not cease posting in this forum, but this new blog will be an outlet for things not relevant to this blog (or posts about chacos).
So, in preparation I am beginning a blog training regimen to get into tip-top blogging shape. I figure that with just two of us writing, I should write at least two posts a week. I am going to start by doing a blog a week. I am going to find articles online that somehow relate to Whitworth, college life, higher education, or something along those lines, and then write something about them. Hopefully something insightful, dialogue inciting, or otherwise interesting.
The first story I found is about certified smart guy Lukasz Zyblut who decided to go to Harvard after being accepted to Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Dartmouth, Pennsylvania, Amherst, Cornell, Columbia, Georgetown, NYU, Middlebury, Occidental (does Occidental seem out of place to you?), Richmond, Ohio Wesleyan, DePauw, Carnegie Mellon, and CUNY Hunter. That must have been a tough decision. Which brings me to the subject of this post, what made you decide to come to Whitworth? Furthermore, at what point did you realize you had made the right, or wrong, decision?
I had my decision narrowed down to two choices, Whitworth College as it was known in those days, or Concordia University Portland. I knew I wanted to go to a small school because I would be easily distracted by the social life of a larger state school like WSU or UW. I decided to visit both schools before making my final decision. Concordia was first, and after my visit I was ready to move to Portland. In retrospect I think I was blinded by the huge dorm rooms. All the dorms were new, built in the last 10 years, and had huge rooms with a bathroom between every two rooms. Think Duvall but bigger. I was so sure I even created a facebook page with my CU-P email address ( I still have to log with my now defunct bflyberg@mail2.cu-portland.edu email address). My Whitworth visit was a week later and when I arrived it was early evening in May. The first time I saw the loop lit up in all of its sparkling, shimmering, splendor, I knew CU was not in my future. Baseball, money, and location also played a role in my decision, but the campus was the deal maker for me.
The second night of traditiation was the moment I knew I had made the right choice. I don’t remember what we were doing, but I remember having more fun than I thought humanly possible, and feeling like I was already a part of the Whitworth family. I also remember a lot of free food those first few days. That was nice.
So I ask again, why did you come to Whitworth, and when did you know that it was the right, or wrong, choice?
Classes I learned something from.
It’s easy to slip by in many Whitworth classes without learning a bit of information. By the time we reach college, we’ve perfected the art of slacking, getting by with a hodgepodge of Cliff Notes, test-taking skills and bribing the teacher. But some in some classes, despite our best efforts, we actually end up learning something. Here’s some classes where I came away with more than just a title on my transcript:
Marxism: Marxism is the academic equivalent of the team in the sports movie that gets absolutely crushed, until the end of the movie where it finds the strength it never knew it had and rises up to defeat Team Evil and win the pennant. For most of the class, I learned minimal information. But then came studying for the final test, where we had to speak eloquently on a Marxist thinker for two minutes. Here was the catch, we wouldn’t know *which* Marxist thinker it was before the test. We had to be able to wax poetical on all twenty thinkers. With that roaring fire lit under my belly, I dove so deep into Marxist thought that for a few days, I was Marxism.
Looking back, it seems the test was just a devious scheme of Yoder’s to trick us into learning the material. Sneaky, that guy.
I also learned that many things I’d “learned” in other classes was wrong. For example, everyone believes that Hegel’s dialectic can be reduced to “thesis” “antithesis” and “synthesis” except, well, Hegel.
Medieval Russia: History classes that deal with a large amount of time usually try to teach so much material that I learn none of it. The advantage with early Russia? Information is so comparatively scarce that there’s not much to teach. We spend a lot of time mucking about in primary sources, which in the end is the best way to learn history. Corliss Slack’s classes usually don’t specialize in the recitation of chronologies, but they do help communicate the *flavor* of historiography. In Medieval Russia, however, there’s plenty of both. True, I can’t list off the Seven Changes Vladimir I enacted in Russia, but I can tell you the general ebb and flow of the Russian state — and the controversy in the historical community over exactly what that entails.
Theories of Human Communication: Thi-Comm for short, I learned far more in Theories of Human Communication than in Interpersonal communication. First, the textbook, Communication Communication Communication rocked. Rather than simply saying “This is how it communication works”, Communication Communication Communication says “here’s a theory on how communication works” and even more importantly “here’s why people disagree with that theory.” The notion that experts disagree on sociological and psychological concepts is downright revolutionary for Whitworth’s typical pedagogical methods.
Of course, it helps that the class is taught by Ron Pyle. Pyle isn’t the smartest prof, or the funniest, or most charismatic. But he just may be the best teacher at, well, teaching. He threads in analogies and examples into his explanations artfully enough for even college students can understand. The fact that “Coordinated Management of Meaning” is useful in the everyday (even if only students like Michael Vander Giessen references it in everyday conversation, and I do mean *everyday*) makes it worth learning. Not to mention realizing that “let’s make meaning together” is a great pickup line.
Core 250: Some students like to complain that the course called “Western Civilization” doesn’t talk much about, say, “Eastern Civilization.” But what Core 250 does is hand students a basic intellectual arsenal to work with. These are the thinkers regularly referenced by philosophical and psychological thinkers. Core 250 teaches you almost all the language of higher ed, the jargon and buzzwords of theology, philosophy, psychology, and epist0-freakin’-mology . All in a single class. And somehow, whether because of the infamous tests or simply Forrest Baird’s lecture style, I remember almost everything today. Except for Saarte and Kierkegaard. Whoever they are.
(On an unrelated note, the Forum just reached 1000 comments. Congratulations, commenteers)
Major Pluses and Minuses
Okay, writing a little about the Westminster lounge and faculty in response to Corey’s list has encouraged me to post a little list of my own: a list of my favorite things about my majors. I’m hoping you’ll also share what you like about your major(s), and then we can all bask in how much we love Whitworth. (Seriously, there’s a lot of negativity in talk about Whitworth, which is sometimes necessary, but there’s also a lot to appreciate.)
These are numbered not out of preference or priority, but for convenience.
Major: English
The good:
1. Faculty. Not only is this department peopled by legends, but the internal relations among professors are amazing. In the [70’s?] when, for financial reasons, Whitworth had to cut one faculty position from each of several departments, the English professors got creative. Knowing that the position would be restored once finances were better, the English professors chose to take turns in taking a one-year leave. I think Vic Bobb even took more than his share of the blow, because he could make enough money freelancing, and other professors had bigger families, etc., to worry about.
2.Westminster. Sure, the desks in 206 can’t fit an 8½x11 sheet of paper. Sure, the upstairs women’s restroom is about 4’x4’, and the downstairs one is creepy to the max. But the building has character. And more importantly: couches. And computers, and a printer, and English majors, and the Fortunado closet. What more could you want? Read more
Persuing Rigor with Vigor
Well, it took four years, but ASWU has finally impressed me. In last night’s meeting, they rocked like the ancient ASWC of yore, asking tough questions, challenging administrative claims and assumptions, and demanding — demanding! — that Whitworth remain a vigorously rigorous institution.
Hear that? That’s the soft thwip-twhip of pig wings flapping, gently gliding over the frozen hellscape below.
The general issue concerns Whitworth deciding to nosedive standards for maintaining Whitworth academic scholarships — currently at 3.5 and 3.0 — to a 2.0. That’s right, students will be able to come in, after a mere 3.75 GPA and a 30 point ACT score, and be paid $12,000 a year for the Mind and Heart scholarship. At Whitworth, meanwhile, they can get a C-average, every single semester, and still be paid $12,000 a year for simply coasting by, Van Wilder/John Belushi from Animal House style. Colleges that give athletic scholarships don’t continue to pay students that decide they don’t want to play football, why should we continue to pay academic scholarships to students that decide they don’t want to get good grades?
So the person who does great in high school, who takes easy classes, and who does moderately well on the SAT is rewarded over the person who struggles in high school but excels in college? Can anybody honestly say, they are the same student junior year of college that they were senior year of high school?
2.0, by the way, is the required average to be able to graduate. So the standard for maintaining a scholarship isn’t just being lowered it’s being entirely obliterated.
Of course, Whitworth’s incoming GPAs and SAT scores have steadily risen in the past few years, mainly due to a sudden influx in Whitworth applications. But here’s the thing. Since the SAT scores are no longer required for admission, it’s expected that around “15-20 percent of applicants will choose not to submit test scores.”
Let’s play a guessing game: Which students do you think won’t submit their SAT scores? The ones with high SATs or the ones with low SATs? If I’m correct, and only low SAT scores will not be submitted, that skews the hell out of any SAT data.
There’s a reason high school grades are focused on. They are a great predictor of college success. (Although College Board says the new SAT writing portion is helpful as well. In some cases, the new SAT actually does better than high school grades at predicting college freshmen grades.)
But do you know what’s an even better predictor of grades in college than grades in high school? The actual grades in college. Why does Whitworth focus so much on high school grades — and believe me, I’ve known Valedictorians who would genuinely struggle at Whitworth — while practically ignoring grades in college?
There’s a few reasons given for obliterating the requirements to maintain your scholarship. One is that, even if there were no requirements, students still wouldn’t slack off.
Maybe some. Some feel the sum total of their intrinsic worth can be summed up by a few letters on their report card.
But most, like me, do what we can to get by. Once we put in the work to get, say, a B we concentrate our work on other projects. We take more classes, join more clubs, or start a blog.
I don’t worry too much about my grades because a 3.0, the stat needed to maintain my middle-of-the-road scholarship is very, very, very easy to maintain. (At least with a history and communications double major.)
But if I had to maintain a 3.5 GPA, like some of friends, you can bet I’d put in more work to my classes. You can bet that I’d send my paper’s to the writing center, read through every book, and meet with teachers outside of class. I’d fling myself full on into academics, scraping by with every morsel of intellect I could muster.
I would learn more.
Many students, however, understand that, unless they’re applying to Grad school, their College grades won’t matter much on Job applications. They aren’t going to give much more than a C-average of a damn unless they have an incentive. Currently all we do to reward good-grade garnering students is to say, Congratulations, you can take more classes.
(If I seem to be contradicting myself — simultaneously saying that college grades matter, but many students don’t care about them, because college grades don’t matter — I apologize. College grades may not matter all that much practically, but they matter educationally. They are a proof of how much you’ve learned. They measure your work ethic.)
Maybe our cash-strapped institution shouldn’t be forking over yearly $12,000 academic scholarships to reward students who happen to barely scrape by in their Gen eds. Like a college junior still wearing his letterman’s jacket, the Whitworth academic scholarships are still stuck in a high school mentality.
There’s other reasons why Whitworth is lowering the requirement. It’s frustrating to have to send out all those “You’re about to lose your scholarship” letters and e-mails.
(Solution: Tie the students transcript to the E-mail system, and use some automated Alan-Jacob-style form letters.)
Things happen, students get sick, there are deaths in the family, dogs eat homework, to cause grades to plummet. Students shouldn’t be punished for events beyond their control.
(Solution: Then don’t. If students have a very good reason why they struggled during a semester, then give them a semester to boost their grades back up. Or even better, don’t have it be an “all or nothing” loss. Let’s say a student’s grade dips from a 3.5 to a 3.2, and he loses his Mind and Heart 1200 dollar scholarships. Just bump him back to the $11,000 Presidential scholarship. If he gets his grades back up, then he can have the old scholarship again.)
But more than the wonky details of how to fix the current system, there’s a greater philosophical question. How rigorous do we want to be?
What type of school do we want to be? Do we want to be the School Where you Don’t Have to Write an Admission Essay? The School Where You Don’t Have to Submit an SAT Score? The School That Strives for the Muddled Mediocre Middle of our Peer Institutions? The School that dropped from a 3.7 to a 3.3 in academic reputation last year?
Or do we want to be the School That Challenges The Snot Out of You. The School that Looks you Straight in the Eye and Says “Hell no, I Won’t Let You just Slide By.” The School that Doesn’t Take “Slack” or “Sloth” for an Answer. The School Where Intellect and Work Ethic is Celebrated, Instead of Being A Trivial Stat when Compared to Your Frisbee Score.
(Personally, I’m a person, who , like Groucho Marx, doesn’t really want to be a part of college that would accept me as a student. I’d prefer to be the stupidest person at my University. My favorite classes – the one’s I’ve learned the most in — are the ones that I barely survive. I hold Whitworth to a high standard, and I expect Whitworth to do the same to me.)