Whitman Stories

A global pandemic. Social unrest. A presidential election year. Across the nation and college campuses, 2020 has upped stress and anxiety to exhausting levels.That’s why counselors representing the Walla Walla Tri-Colleges came together to provide self-care tips and resources for students, faculty and staff across the three communities.

Although musicians have to deal with a variety of limitations, many students are still enjoying making music from home or the Whitman practice rooms.

The Princeton Review has ranked Whitman No. 9 among the 2021 Top 50 Green Colleges. Whitman ranked highest among schools from the Pacific Northwest. This ranking acknowledges the college’s efforts to promote sustainability and environmental responsibility on and off campus. The Princeton Review determines a school’s rating based on comprehensive measures of being an “environmentally aware and prepared institution.”

As the election nears, Whitman’s virtual campus has been abuzz with voter registration events, presidential debate watch parties, guest lectures and more. Whitman College faculty, students, staff and alumni have incorporated crucial voter education, activism and involvement into their busy schedules. In 2016, the last presidential election year, nearly 74 percent of eligible Whitman students voted according to campus voting data from the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education.

"Our moment of crisis, which should be both welcomed and deepened, calls for the rendering of judgment on the following question: will the majority of the country allow an anti-constitutional minority, empowered by an anti-democratic constitution, to rule in perpetuity?"

“Disgust likely evolved to keep us away from sources of pathogens,” said Tom Armstrong, assistant professor of psychology at Whitman College in Washington State. “Creepy crawly insects could be repellent because they tend to live in dark, damp places where bacteria thrive. Some may be human parasites, whereas others could transmit disease. While worms or maggots in food may not be harmful in themselves, they could indicate that food has been compromised by pathogens.”

In response to the global and national events of 2020, Whitman has selected "Race, Violence, and Health" as its first academic theme to help students navigate trying and transformative times.

Pahlke writes that most children today know very little about the history of women’s rights in the U.S., including the suffrage movement or the fact that a woman has never served as president or vice president.

Whitman’s decision to hold fall semester via remote learning left some students feeling FOMO (the fear of missing out) about what is popularly referred to as the “freshman experience.” First years can usually look forward to the fall as a period for self-growth, forging friendships and other experiences while on an exciting new campus. 

His 2019 book “The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez" has garnered several awards, which now include the Washington Center for the Book 2020 Washington State Book Award for biography/memoir.

Amid a global pandemic, Steve McConnell ’85, a software engineer and data scientist, was frustrated with his inability to understand what was going on. He encountered what he saw as biased and unreliable data.

The U.S. Department of Education Office of Postsecondary Education recently announced that it will be investigating Princeton University for possible misrepresentations in its reports of adherence to federal non-discrimination law because its president publicly recognized that historic racism has been embedded in the institution over time.