How to Win Whitworth: Part 2- Relationships
When we last left the How to Win Whitworth Guide, it was hanging from one hand from a crumbling clifface, as alligators snapped at its heels from the swirling lava below… now, we go live, to part 2 of the thrilling series: How to win Whitworth.
Relationships: A new last name in only 700 days!
If you came here to knock down random drunk college slutties like you see on MTV’s spring break, you came to the wrong place. Don’t worry, it’s not too late to get into WSU. What Whitworth girls lack in drunken sluttiness they more than make up for in some things that seem much less important when you are two Old English 40’s deep: substance and class. (BF)
If you need a Dramatic Love Confession (DLC) to figure out if somebody is attracted to you, they probably aren’t.
Don’t date until at least the Jan Term of your freshman year. Too many students – still intoxicated on the power of Traditiation wooing – get a girlfriend within weeks, and spend the next few months seeing nothing but each other’s eyes. Frankly, first semester relations have the lifespan of a goose going through a jet turbine. Oddly enough, this is exactly what the breakup looks like.
And then what happens? When the tears clear and you’ve bitterly incinerated the last of the heart-shaped cookies she baked you, what are you left with? While everybody else was making friends, playing the “whats-your major” game at Saga tables, you were spending all your time, oblivious to the buzzing world around you, making kissy-faces at your snuggle-wuddums in the Warren Hall Study Lounge. But now that you don’t have any wuddums to snuggle with, and you’ve missed those crucial first moments of friend making, now what?
You’re cold and alone. Somewhere, off in the distance, wolves begin to howl. (DW)
DISSENT: I maintain that first-semester freshman relationships get a bad rap. Speaking as someone who acquired my boytoy…I mean, boyfriend, in the first month of the first semester (I know, I know, I’m a walking cliché) my only advice is to be careful. Take it slow. If you must date in your first semester, leave time for homework and your other friends (yes, you have other friends). And by time for homework, I don’t mean leaving your darling at two a.m. and crawling into your dorm room, dazed with love, to discover five pages of incomprehensible French homework on your bed. Be smart. Your G.P.A. will thank you. (GV)
How to Win Whitworth: Part 1- the Vigilante Leader.
The following is the first of a four part guide written to Whitworth freshmen by Whitworth veterans. It is not endorsed by any official institution, and the viewpoints are that of the writers, not of the college, not of the ASWU, not even, really, of the Forum. In the next three successive days, I’ll post another section. Disagree with something said? Awesome! Write it in the comment section below. (That goes for any administrative or professorly types reading as well. We welcome the input, and welcome the debate.)
Contributors: Brent Flyberg(Senior) Gabrielle Vaughn(Soph.) Kelly Vincent(Senior) Daniel Walters(08 alum) Charity Whitney(08 alum) Galen Sanford(08 alum)
Congratulations. You somehow managed to graduate from high school and get accepted into the place of higher learning that is widely regarded, after extensive study and analysis by U.S. News and World Report, as “A College/University.”
You are officially, incontrovertibly, for-a-limited-time only: A Freshman.
And don’t you ever let anybody tell you otherwise.
By now, as you shake hands with your roommate, and tack (not nail!) your Newsboys and DC Talk posters to the wall (the cultural icons may have changed a bit since I was a freshman) you are likely experiencing one of two emotions:
“Ohmygah ohmygah ohmygah ohmygah I can’t believe it’s colllllleggge! I’m going to text all 37 of my friends right away.”
Or, slightly more soberly: “I think I’m going to die.”
But let me promise you this: No matter what attitude you have, you aren’t truly ready. You may have talked to friends, you may have glanced at the multicultural smiles of glossy Whitworth brochures, you may have read, dog-eared, and annotated that copy of “Surviving the Best Four Years of Your Life” that your Grandma gave you for graduation. But you don’t know Whitworth. You don’t know its secrets and warts and nooks and crannies. You can play. But you don’t yet know how to win.
That’s where the Whitworth Forum comes in. You ever heard of something called the “Internet”? Well, on the “Internet” there’s this official unofficial group blog for Whitworth students (www.whitworthforum.com.) A few of the regular writers at the forum decided they’d meld together some of their advice on how to rock Whitworth’s metaphorical socks off. How to, once and for all, win the great game of college – or at least get a nifty consolation prize. We are by no means experts. But that doesn’t mean we can’t act like we’re experts. It’s the America way.
If this little sampling of haphazard thoughts piques your interest, you may be interested in writing for The Forum. There’s a lengthy application process that involves three letters of recommendation, a personal essay, and a written statement of faith. We’re kidding. As long as you know how to spell correctly, don’t use annoying abbreviations (like “LOLing out loud!”, and don’t devote entire posts to what you had for breakfast, just e-mail Gabrielle Vaughn at gvaughn11@whitworth.edu, Kelly Vincent at kvincent09@whitworth.edu or Daniel Walters at danieltwalters@gmail.com and they’ll sign you right up. Like Whitworth, you don’t even have to submit your SAT score. After all, the entire point is open discourse, proving that disagreement isn’t a sign of the Apocalypse.
We want unique perspectives, we want opposing views. That sort of fire and friction powers the engine of education. It’s what college is all about. Not to mention the fact that we need freshmen writers like you, if only for your unique gawking wide-eyed sense of wonderment.
This is only part 1 of 4 the guide. The rest are also on this blog, ready for your clicking.
Leadership: Not just a title on your paycheck.
Whitworth has, officially, five gajibillion leadership positions. Many of these have names like Assistant to the Resident Coordinator, Cultural Diversity Exchange Awareness Events Coordinator, and Coordinator Coordination Coordinator. Because of the massive influx of students anointed as Leaders, Whitworth is awash in mediocre events. These are programs performed more for a paycheck than passion. This isn’t the leaders’ fault. They usually have to attend so many meetings and put on so many events, they have little time to produce something beyond the realm of the clichéd, half-hearted, and banal.
So where does that leave you, the freshman? Whitworth doesn’t need more Official Leaders. It doesn’t need more casual events. It does, however, need incredible events. It needs regular civilians who throw every last inch of themselves into making a program amazing. It needs freshmen who start working on the Mac Haunted House in September, who blow past all the usual haunted house clichés and tropes to produce something truly phenomenal. It needs events rippling with pure inspiration, like the Middle School Dance or Real Men of Genius.
And it needs students who recognize that sometimes Official Leadership is too busy doing Official Leadership activities to really put on something absolutely unbelievable.
Whitworth needs leadership vigilantes. (DW/GS)
Leadership Vigilantes implement stunning, remarkable ideas. Coffee House Concerts do not stun, nor do people remark on them except to say, “Whitworth Unplugged… again?” Vigilante Leaders are better than that. (GS)
Big Three, Little Three, what begins with Three?
How many freshmen can you pack into a single clown car?
Mistakes have consequences.
When Whitworth admissions underestimated the number of freshman who would decide to follow through on their Whitworth application, it spawned a number of very real pragmatic concerns.
(Remember, despite the fact that Whitworth had more students apply, and the fact that admissions go up in shaky economic times, we decided to accept more people than last year, and somehow planned on admissions going down.)
The most obvious consequence is the one of housing. You have x number of freshman but only x number of beds. You don’t have to be an algebra whiz to know that there’s problems when you end up with a negative integer. Our cup runneth over with freshmen. If you have too much frosh, and not enough rooms in the inn, you’ve got a problem. Instead, Whitworth has three choices:
1) Use the sweet, sweet lure of money to persuade upperclassman to move off campus. If my Whitworthian Archives memory serves me right, Whitworth did this back in the 80s when it had a similar problem. (In the early 90s, it was a struggle just to find enough students to fill the dorms at all.)
2) Cram more freshmen into a dorm room, hoping, with time, the close quarters will cause them to grow to love eachother.
3) Ask them to stay in the stable, and throw in some free maternity counseling.
I talked with Alan Jacob, Assistant Director of Housing about the situation. How many freshmen are there?
“The non-numerical answer is a lot,” Jacob says.
Out of that “a lot,” 556 of them are being housed in the dorms and resident halls. (That number includes transfers, not just freshman.)
“There were more that wanted to live on campus, but we told them that we didn’t have room for them,” Jacob says. “Because that was the truth.”
Whitworth University is designed to hold about 1130 students in the residence halls. But this year it’s being asked to hold around 1666. (Jacob notes, however, that the overflow is actually larger than that. For example, there may be a spot in Boppell available, but they couldn’t exactly place a freshman student in that dorm.)
The official overflow number, Jacob says, is 44.
44 extra students.
So what can one do with all those extra freshmen, especially now that Washington’s anti-hazing code is so strict?
“In many rooms, we’ve created overflow spaces.” Jacob said. Housing puts in an extra bed and loft kit, an extra desk and dresser, and an extra desk chair. To compensate for the cramped conditions, each affected student is given a small weekly stipend. For three students packed in a double, that’s $21 a week. For four packed in a triple, that’s $25.
There’s 44 rooms tied up in this sort of arrangement, for a total of 132 student, Jacob says.
Of course, this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. I was supposed to be with Scott Wagstaff, and Cole Casey in a double, which would have been a fantastic freshman arrangement. When an upperclassman decided not to live on campus, however they found a spot for me. (How different my Whitworth experience would have been, if I had roomed with Cole and Scott!)
But just because it’s happened before doesn’t mean that this isn’t a major overflow.
Jacob has been Assistant Director of Housing for four years. This, Jacob says, is the largest number of overflow that he’s ever seen at Whitworth. (Last year they had 12 rooms, instead of 44 on overflow. By the 10th day of classes, Alan said, there were only three more freshmen than beds.)
Of course, there are other, secondary consequences to having more students than the dorms are designed for. For one, Jacob says, it puts extra work on the custodial staff, who have to clean up more people in the bathrooms. It can create pressure to build more dorms, quickly.
Even more problematically, when you put that many students in the that small of space, it’s a pressure cooker. Tempers rise. Fuses shorten.
“It can elevate anger,” Jacob says, “There’s more alarm clocks going off in the morning.”
(The key to alleviating these situations, Jacob says, are some of the basic staples of roommate communication. Tell your roommate when your upset. Communicate often and honestly. Don’t let things build up until they explode.)
Claustrophobes can take comfort in the fact that Whitworth Housing is always, constantly looking for free spots to get the students resituated.
“As soon as we get an opening we act on it, usually within an hour,” Jacob says. “We start making phone calls. We know people don’t want to be in overflow.”
Housing will still try to resituate with roommates they’ll find compatibile, just like any other student. (Jacob likes the challenge, he tells me. “I like Housing. It’s a fun job for me,” he says. He compares it to “556 puzzle pieces we’ve got to stick together.)
In the meantime, the freshmen students who, essentially, lost the Housing Lottery, will continue to wait. Wait for that phone call. Wait for a room to open up. Wait for the double they’re paying for to actually become a double. They’ll continue to tiptoe around their two other roommates, dealing with their snoring, trying to reorganize their furniture so their desks aren’t hitting each other and their computer cords aren’t tangled, as their little quirks and idiosyncrasies grow more quirky and idiosyncratic — they’ll continue to tolerate that drip, drip, drip of roommate Chinese water torture.
They wait. And tolerate. And wait.
New School… Yes Please!!
I am stoked to start my four year trek at Whitworth coming up. Sure it’s a division three school and it’s only a few miles from my house, but I think I made the right choice.
I’ve only heard awesome things about Whitworth and I can’t wait to experience them for myself. I have a feeling it’s going to be a ton of fun and it’s going to be chaotic. A few people I have talked to are a little worried about being welcomed into Whitworth but I feel like that’s not going to be a problem at all. From an outsiders perspective, it looks like everyone on campus is friends. I’ve been in Saga a couple times for my Campaigner’s meetings and just seen piles of people at one table or tables pushed together and I can’t wait to be a part of that.
Another aspect of Whitworth I am absolutely stoked for is the chaos that goes on and being a part of that and hopefully getting a few friends together and starting that. I’ve heard awesome stories of pranks or just creative things to do in the dorms and i want to be a part of that and I think being in BJ will help with that.
On the academic side of things I plan on being a theology major and I know it’s going to be a brutal road but a really rewarding one. I always hear the theology program is one of the best in the country and I’m so excited to get into it and get destroyed by it.
But overall I’m stoked to be at Whitworth and I can’t wait to be a part of the awesomeness that is Whitworth University.
College Presidents: Let the youngin’s drink!
As you may have heard, a bunch of College Presidents — including one from PLU – signed a letter encouraging Congress to “reconsider” the drinking age.
There was a time, long ago, when the drinking age was set at 18 instead of the classic 21 years of age.
It makes sense that many College president’s would want it to return to 18. For wet campuses, it’s a pain to weed out the underage from the of age. A lower drinking age means that alcohol could be served at all-campus events, bars could exist on campus, and IDing students would be a thing of the past.
But there’s also a few assumptions in the oft-stated rationale for a lower limit I believe are falacious.
Kids are going to drink underage anyway. Absolutely true. Kids are also going to do heroin anyway. But will the same number of kids drink at age 18 if the drinking age is lower. I doubt it. Remember, there’s always the people who want to follow the rules. There’s underclassmen that, the only reason they don’t drink, is because of there’s a law against it. Not all that many, but they do exist. The amount of people getting smashed (for the first time) on their 21st birthday proves it.
It would cause binge drinking rates to go down. Maybe. Sometimes, with the idea that this might be the last time they will ever see alcohol (until they’re 21) try to cram as much alcohol as they can into their system to tide them over for the next years. So the thinking goes.
But even if people suddenly started drinking responsibly because it’s legal, a shaky prospect at best considering that many 21-years-olds still drink stupidly, I could guarantee this: Drunk driving rates would go up. I’m guessing less people would get full blown passing out alcohol poisoning, but more would get sorta drunk. Just drunk enough to not realize they shouldn’t be driving. At the age of 18, kids are bad enough drivers without adding alcohol to the mix.
It’d be sooo European. People have this assumption that if the drinking age was lowered, we’d automatically become like Europe, which people imagine to be a place where drinking consists of wine is gently sipped on a Tuscan Balcony, while they talk of Foucault and the savour faire of high society.
To that I say: Have you been to Britain? Getting drunk for them is like eating ice cream is for us, a necessary part of almost every day.
Furthermore, European society contrasts dramatically with American society. Reason Number 1: Transportation. When college kids in England get drunk they walk/stumble home. We drive/swerve home. That’s a problem. Reason #2: Culture.
We are a culture of obsession. Of overkill. We don’t just eat, we eat to the point of obesity. We don’t just go to movies, we camp out for them seven weeks ahead of times and write internet stories about them. We don’t just make bombs, we make the mother of all bombs.
For some things, that national obsessive personality is pretty awesome. We do some great things, precisely because we have frightening tenacity. But that also can be a problem, with things like drinking.
Does the current drinking age stop all underage students from getting drunk and making mistakes that mess up their lives? Obviously not. But I believe it does stop some underage students from doing that.
And, honestly, while lowering the drinking age may make it more convenient for college administrators, I doubt it would stop the binging, vomiting, and erratic driving. Drug Legalization advocates always dismiss marijuana’s negative effects by comparing it to the far more dismal effects of excess alcohol abuse.
And that point, we agree.
Student Journalists and their pesky ethics.
I’ve given Whitworth a lot of crap for it’s half-hearted commitment to free speech. (The notion that only official clubs can hang posters on campus — oh, and by the way, those clubs can’t have ties to *certain* organization, stands in stark contrast to basic values of a liberal education.)
But Whitworth’s generally got a pretty good free speech record. They haven’t censored the Whitworthian (to my knowledge) in about 60 years (when a bikini-clad advertisement got almost every issue literally burned in a bonfire.) They’ve threatened a few times, but each time they’ve come down on the side of free speech. Good for them
But when Whitworth students are upset, they can take comfort by chanting this mantra: At least we’re not SPU.
Seattle Pacific University made the Seattle Times a few days ago.
The story begins, as do many stories, with a whiny lawyer. See, back when Shakespear Feyissa was a student he was arrested for attempted sexual assault. He wasn’t charged, but he was still suspended. Granted, presuming he’s innocent, that sort of sucks. But Feyissa presumed that part of the reason for his suspension was his race (Ethiopian, I believe.)
So that’s what he told the SPU student newspaper in 1998. The student newspaper wrote about it. As they should have. There was an extensive investigation into the matter, an outside party investigated, and the university found itself innocent. The reporting was thorough, extensive, and featured quotes from many sources. From what I can tell, it was completely accurate.
So what’s the problem?
The problem is the persistance of the Internet. Grass withers and flowers fade, but the google cache remains forever.
10 years later:
Now a lawyer (and one with a unique name) Shakespear Feyissa finds the article cropping up in the most annoying places. From dates. From people on the jury. The accusation of sexual assualt and his crying “discrimination” when an investigation found none aren’t exactly good for your reputation.
From the Times:
The 1998 article in the student newspaper, the Falcon, quotes Feyissa saying “SPU is still a school like the KKK, in my opinion.” It also quotes then-provost Bruce Murphy saying there was “sound reason to believe that Mr. Feyissa is a threat to persons on campus.”
With that popping up every time someone searches his name, Feyissa said he cannot escape the shadow of the accusation of attempted sexual assault, even though Seattle police closed the investigation and he was never charged. He’s also worried what people will think after reading this article.
“Do you know how many girls, after they see that, we go on a date and they don’t want to see me again?” he asked.
And for the sake of his business, Feyissa said, he fears the article casts him as a troublemaker who files frivolous discrimination complaints — not exactly the image he wants as a civil-rights lawyer.
Opposing attorneys have dug up the article to smear him in litigation, he said. Once a juror asked him about it in court.
It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for him. Until you read this.
So for two years, Feyissa has requested that SPU remove the article, most recently four months ago, he said.
Seeking to end the bruising and expensive fracas, SPU moved to placate Feyissa. SPU’s attorney on the case, Michael Porter, agreed in a Sept. 5, 2006, letter to purge the article. Administrators a month later asked the Falcon’s student editors to delete the story.