“2 percent growth,” the Unicorn, and other fanciful Whitworth myths.
From today’s Spokesman-Review:
Whitworth’s freshman class is expected to be about 557. That’s an increase of 4.5 percent over last year, while the university’s goal is to grow at 2 percent a year, said Fred Pfursich, dean of enrollment services. “We were planning on having a class slightly smaller than last year,” he said. “But what’s happened is we already have a higher number of students enrolled.”
Ah, yes, the fabled “2 percent growth” limit. Legend has it, if you follow the leprechaun trail through the Forest of a Thousand Dreams, on the vernal equinox under a full moon, you may catch a glimpse of the 2 percent growth limit. Otherwise, you’re not likely to see it anytime soon.
As for this years, figures, I don’t want to say, “I told you so,” but…
In the last two years, we’ve surpassed our growth plan by more than double. The freshman classes last year were each larger than this year’s graduating class. That means the amount of students at Whitworth increases by a considerable amount. Whether or not that growth is “culturally sustainable” or even sustainable with regards to the cafeteria, housing or class size, is debatable.
Keep in mind, we grew at 4.5 percent more than last year, which also had excess growth. This is compound interest we’re talking about.
Granted, student acceptance rates is a tricky guessing game. A large number of students that apply (often because, hey, you don’t have to write an essay) don’t accept. So admissions has to eyeball and estimate, given demographic and admission trends to figure out how many to accept to hit just the right numbers. This year, they were, shall we say, off.
Nadine Chapman, in Memoriam
By now many of you have probably read the e-mail sharing with the Whitworth community about the death of beloved English professor Nadine Chapman. She was gracious, generous, and well-loved. She will be greatly missed.
I want to open this up for people to share thoughts, remembrances about Nadine, encouragement, whatever you want to share. Grief is never easy, but it is even harder when we’re apart. So let’s come together and testify to the amazing impact that Nadine left on those at Whitworth who were privileged to know her. I’ll go first.
I took only one class from Nadine: Creative Nonfiction in fall of 2006. Students from that class still reminisce about how it was the perfect mix of people, the perfect class atmosphere. I suspect that for many of us, that was the class or semester in which we first felt that we had a real home in the English department—that we were somehow at the heart of what was going on there. I know it was that way for me. And a lot of that is owing to Nadine, whose classroom management was one of maximal involvement. Students felt at home in that classroom because Nadine was always asking us, each single one of us, to share our input in every class session. This was pure seminar style, pure Nadine style: not didactic, but exploratory.
One of my most vivid memories of Nadine is of the first day of class. Not having taken a course from her before, after signing up for the class I had looked her up on stalker-net so I could keep an eye out for her around Westminster. Her most striking feature from the photograph was thick, dark, curly hair. On the first day of class, however, she walked into Westminster 102 sporting short, spiky, white-blonde rocker hair. Nadine gingerly set her things on one of the miniscule desks, sat down, smiled at us with her sweet broad smile, and simply said, “Everyone needs a change sometime.” And that was that.
I never really knew what was going on with Nadine’s health during the time when she was on medical leave. All I knew was that every once in a while, Nadine would show up in Westminster (to the heart-felt and emphatic chiding of Laurie Lamon) and sit in on a class or two or chat with Lisa in the department office, sometimes walking, sometimes in a wheel-chair. I could sense that in Nadine there was a heart of strong tenacity. She couldn’t stay away, or wouldn’t. She loved us as much as we love her.
Nadine, we miss you and cherish our memories of you. You are well-loved.
KMV
The Shack and Christian Pop Lit
A Couple Preliminaries:
It is my intention not to reveal anything about The Shack which would constitute a decent plot “spoiler.” I’m not going to tell you who kills Dumbledore in book six, all right? I won’t mention specific events. I’ll skirt around the heavy imagery. I’ll even try to avoid quoting choice lines, because you too want to stumble across them in the sand as unexpectedly as I did. Pearls make for poor deja vu. But if you’re like me and prefer to hear nothing besides Vic Bobb’s hearty “read this” prior to opening a novel, then… you’ve probably stopped reading this post by now anyway. Proceed, as always, at your own discretion.
If you’re still reading, here’s the reason why we can have a full-fledged discussion of The Shack without revealing even the premise of the novel: the novel is somewhat of a frame story. What happens in the plot is in some ways secondary in importance (at least, I imagine, to the author of the book, if not spiritually and metaphysically) to the conversations the protagonist has with God, which occur in the middle section of the book and most of which have frustratingly little correspondence with the plot and main problem of the narration. There’s plenty to be in suspense about, etc., which doesn’t bear all too heavily on what I want to discuss with you. There were even times when, reading, I would think to myself, “This is so scripted. William P. Young is just using this novel as a dispensing machine for his little theological nuggets of wisdom. I prefer to search for nuggets, but no! Young has dumped a whole box of nuggets right into my lap. I have nugget overload, and what’s more—some of them are a little hard to swallow.” (These are chicken nuggets, of course; I’m not mixing metaphors.) I even felt a little vindicated, when, upon reading the afterward, I discovered that the conversations came to Young first, followed by the process of constructing a suitable narrative in which to frame them.
This brings me to preliminary two: I will also try to take off my critical/editor’s glasses and not comment about those literary elements of the writing which caused me to squirm, occasionally reconstruct sentences in my mind, and generally miss the message of the novel (which, I labor to remind myself, has nothing to do with commas, sentence structure, or the per-capita quantity of similes). Yes, there were times when I literally closed The Shack on my bookmark and exclaimed loudly to everyone in general, “This is stupid.” But the things that bugged me are of far less cosmic importance than the things they distracted me from. So while this post could be titled “The Literary Gnats and Other Capital Annoyances of The Shack,” I’m trying out this new focus-on-the-important-stuff approach. We can all vent our grammatical angst elsewhere.
Enough for pre-lims. Now to the liminaries themselves. I want to talk about one of the things Mack (main character) and God (other main character) discuss: the distinction between forgiveness and relationship.
Whitworth Announces Installation of Greek Life
Beginning in the fall of 2009, Whitworth will have two new off campus houses, Alpha Chi Omega, a sorority, and Delta Beta Gamma, a fraternity. Vice President of student life Kathy Storm made the announcement Monday morning, “With Whitworth’s increasing enrollment, the law of averages dictates that we will be welcoming more douche bags and floozies into our community, but we would like them to have their own community.”
The Delta Beta Gamma, or DBaG, house will replace the Poverty Awareness theme house. The previous residents will be forced to live on the streets and, “really become aware of poverty,” according to Storm. Storm also noted that Alpha Chi Omega will take over the Men and Women in Community theme house because, “there will be men and women communicating diseases,” in the sorority house.
Incoming students who decide to join one of the Greek houses will not be required to take the traditional “Freshmen Seminar” class. Alpha Chi freshmen will instead take a class titled “Avoiding Date Rape.” DBaG freshmen will take “Date Rapist Seminar.”
Senior Education major Michkayla DuPont will be Alpha Chi’s first sorority president, and says she looks forwards to meeting her new sisters, “We’re looking for girls who are dedicated to making poor decisions, but still wear Christian affiliated jewelry. You know, girls who will go to church if they’re not too hung over on Sunday. This is a Christian university after all.” DuPont went on to say that there will be a meet and greet for students interested in joining, “but DePauw rules will be strictly enforced.”
Junior Business major Trevor “T-Hug” Huggins will be the first DBaG president will host a “Jack Johnson karaoke night” for male students who are considering joining the fraternity. “There will be prerequisites,” he said, “WSU frat rules apply, you need to be willing to get an MIP before the first year is over, and you should be able to hold a keg stand for at least twelve seconds, and respect for women is frowned upon.”
The Spokane Police department has been notified and has pepper spray, riot gear, stomach pumps, and DNA test kits prepared.
Written by Jeff Madeuplastname for the Ifyoubelievedanyofthisyou’readumdum Press.
The more things change, the more they “stay the same.”
I don’t know if you actually read Whitworth Today, the publication delivered to Whitworth Parents and Alums. Now that I’m officially an alumnus of the college University, I’m especially interested in hearing how my former alma mater is faring. After all, I need to make sure my annual donation of $3.95 doesn’t go to waste.
But here’s what I read on the back of this spring’s issue:
When former ASWC president Wendi Story McFarland, ‘96 graduated from Whitworth 12 years ago, the Internet was just hitting its stride, Bill Clinton was on the verge of being elected to his second term as president, and the average cost of gasoline was $1.23 per gallon. It wasn’t that long ago, and yet much has changed since then. But some things don’t change – like Mock Rock, The Big 3, and the value of a Whitworth education.
Really? The Big Three and Mock Rock haven’t changed?
I’m sure this was just a throwaway line. A basic transition to connect phrases. However, Unluckily for this particular line of the publication, in my time digging through the Whitworth Archives I focused on two topics: The Big Three and Traditiation. Specifically, whether or not they’ve changed.
Answer: They have.
When the Big Three first burst onto the Whitworth rule book in 1976, it forbid, as you know, three things: 1) cohabitation 2) drinking alcohol, and 3) using drugs.
Notice the conspicous lack of anything regarding violence or disruption of community? That’s because there wasn’t any. The “disruption of community” clause didn’t come on the books until 1986, perhaps due to news of my birth. So really, the thing we have today is, for all purposes, “The Big 4.” Of course, what “disruption of community” means has changed drastically according to the whims of the dean of discipline. Student involvement in the disciplinary proceedings, meanwhile, dwindled from its major role in the early 1990s to pretty much non-existent today. (The Student Judicial proceedings have been taken over by the RA, RD, and the dean of discipline.)
As for Mock Rock: Well, we all know how Mock Rock — and traditiation in general — changed fairly significantly this year. Mock Rock’s change in venue isn’t its first. When it began (around 15 years ago, about 1992) it was held in the Library Courtyard. Each setting had drasitically different tones: Library: Silly skit. Auditorium: Musical/theatrical production. Auditorium: pep rally.
The first Mock Rocks, according to Whitworthian archived accounts, were more like skits than musical perfomances. Dressing in drag, always height of comedy, was so popular it eventually had to be banned, along with other aspects of initiation, like military formation, bawdy skits, intiatiors yelling at initiates, “tubbing” “icing,” Mac Men throwing their shirts up into the Mac tree, and even allowing alumni to be at traditional accounts. Change happened — a lot. Sometimes because of legality, sometimes because of liability, sometimes because of growth, and sometimes because “hey, why not.”
(That we now call it “traditiation” is a particularly classic irony.)
As to whether the “value of a Whitworth education” has changed, that’s arguable. I’ve heard people argue, fairly persuasively that the value of a Whitworth Education has increased. I’ve also heard people claim that — with things like a lack of SAT and Entrance Essay Requirement, or a Scholarship Maintance requirement– the value of a Whitworth Education is slowly deteriorating. Either way, you can make an argument. It isn’t just some inherent “well-duh” fact.
I’m sure that this mistake in Whitworth Today was a simple over-generalization, borne out of lack of research rather than some sort of intent to deceive.
Still, Whitworth Today has a definite motive to try to maintain that Whitworth is still roughly the same school – plus a few buildings – that it was 30 years ago, or even 4 years ago. Donors tend to give to the school they remember, oblivious to the school it’s become. Sometimes change is good. Other times it’s bad. But it’s a bit silly to pretend that it hasn’t happened.
Blogging
“Old Desiderio asks young Desiderio: ‘And when he offered you a night of perfect ecstasy in exchange for a lifetime’s contentment, how could you possibly choose the latter?’
And young Desiderio answers: ‘I am too young to know regret.’”
~ The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman, Angela Carter
The other night, in the midst of a family outing, my mom and one of my little brothers got into a rather heated argument about his MySpace. One of the family rules for the use of such sites is that they must be set on private. My mom had randomly looked up his profile and found it to be set on public, meaning any random stranger could browse his (rather extensive) albums of photos and read the (rather personal) thoughts on his blog. Naturally there was the usual discussion about the wide variety of pervs on the Internet these days, followed by the increasingly more usual discussion about what kind of impact that availability of one’s personal thoughts can have on one’s eventual career and current relationships.
I say increasingly more usual because, as opportunities for posting one’s personal life on the world wide web, whether it be in videos or passionate blog posts, increase, so too does discussion on the consequences of such behavior increase. In the media world, The New York Times Magazine published an article in May by avid blogger Emily Gould called Exposed, detailing the disastrous results of overly personal blogging in her own life. On the home front, concerned parents admonish their younglings that if a potential employer found that badly-spelled love letter to anarchy the child posted on their MySpace, job offers might not be the first thing on their minds. Friends of mine have been known, when asked by me why they don’t share their wealth of opinions in the occasional Facebook note, instead of only in late-night discussions, to shrug and reply, “Well, I want to go into politics someday, and I don’t need some stupid thing I wrote at twenty coming back to haunt me.”
What about you? Have you ever had something you published online come back to haunt you in your personal or professional life, and, if so, do you regret it? If it came out that a politician or other leader you admire had written something when young that contradicts their current opinions, would it change your feelings about them?