1ISSUE 13

WHITMAN NEWS, DELIVERED

Walla Walla, WAwhitmanpioneer.com

VOLUME CXXVIII

How much should athletic ability matter for college admission? For NCAA Di-vision I schools, prospective athletes are often considered even i! they fall out-side o! normal admissions criteria. For

Division III schools like Whitman College, the sto-ry is a little different.

“Regardless o! whether a student is an athlete or not, the !irst thing is: is the student academically quali!ied?” said Director o! Admission Kevin Dyerly.

As an elite academic institution, Whitman holds itsel! to a standard o! academic excellence which ad-mitted students must also re!lect. This standard is at-tractive to some athletes, who want to get a good ed-ucation while continuing to participate in athletics.

“I wanted to be a student-athlete rather than an athlete who happened to be at school,” said sophomore swimmer Katie Chapman, who de-cided to come to Whitman over the Uni-

versity o! Washington, a Division I school.In order to ensure that motivated and success-

ful student-athletes like Chapman !ill the athlet-ic rosters, the Of!ice o! Admission works close-ly with coaches throughout the year to address the needs and priorities o! varsity programs.

“The students who’ve been identi!ied by our coaches as priority athletes, prior-ity recruits, who are academically qual-i!ied, are going to get very strong con-sideration for admission,” said Dyerly.

Dyerly said that the Of!ice o! Admis-sion strongly considers any applicant who

has the potential to contribute to a Whit-man program, whether in sports, theat-

er, debate, music or another area. This con-sideration is sometimes referred to as a

“bump”, and allows a coach to identify a few se-lect students who would be critical to their team.

“We have a program where coach-es can identify students who might be

Dancers explore darker side of American history

PAGE 4

A series o! poems about Japanese internment camps are transformed onstage in Whitman Dance Theater’s “Minidoka.”

Opinion from the faculty

Associate Professor o! Politics Jeanne More-

!ield argues that overcoming gender

inequality starts with ASWC.

PAGE 7

MAY

052011

What is it? Who uses it? How does it affect our college? Find the answers in Feature.

PAGE 5

93.4%

86.3%

Since the seniors graduat-ing on May 22 !irst came to Whitman in 2007, the an-

nual cost o! attending Whit-man has continued to increase steadily. Over the past four years, tuition has increased by 5,470 dollars, from 32,980 dol-lars in the 2007-2008 school year to 38,450 dollars this year.

Next year, incoming !irst-years will start their college ed-ucation by paying an unprece-dented 40,180 dollars in tuition.

According to Chie! Financial Of-!icer Peter Harvey, increases in tu-ition are the result o! meeting the needs o! the college in order to pro-vide the best services to the students.

“Tuition is determined as part o! [the budget process]. There’s no magical answer. We look at what the needs are, what our priorities are,” Harvey said. “How much we want to increase salaries and how much fringe bene!its are going up are a big driver in the operating budg-et. And then we look at other re-quests for things like increased util-ities—whether we need more com-puters or labs, more staf! positions or faculty positions. And then we look at tuition and !inancial aid costs and try to come up with a balance.”

Whitman Controller Walter Froese further emphasised that the budget is never set before it is ap-proved by the Budget Advisory Committee and the Board o! Trus-tees. Setting tuition is part o! this process, and both groups can pro-vide input on any proposed raises.

“Sometimes, i! it takes say a 5 percent increase [in tuition] to bal-ance the budget, they may come back and say ‘we think that’s too strong o! an increase’ and so you have to come back and cut spending,” Froese said. “It’s not simply we just jack tuition to what it takes to meet our needs.”

The 5,470 dollar increase in tu-ition over the past four years rep-resents a 9.8 percent increase in tu-ition costs above the market in-!lation rate for those years, us-ing calculations based on in-!lation rates as determined by the Bureau o! Labor Statistics

athletes

non-athletes

GRADUATION RATES

A SEVEN YEAR AVERAGE OF

RECRUITMENT, PAGE 3

Led by a strong group o! up-perclassmen women, the Whitman College cycling

team took the NWCCC Divi-sion II title at the conference championships held on April 23 and 24 in Pullman, Wash.

The Whitman team took sec-ond place overall at the confer-ence race, trailing only Univer-sity o! Washington, a DI school. The team was able to accomplish this despite entering no men in the A category – the highest and most point-heavy racing category.

After a road race, team time trial and criterium, junior Rachel Hoar ended up as the top wom-an in the Northwest DII. Whit-man had many other top ten !inish-es in the various racing categories.

As a team, one o! the high-lights o! the weekend was the col-lective performance o! all o! the the teams in the team time tri-al. The Men’s C, Men’s B, Wom-en’s B and Women’s A teams all !inished in second place, while the Women’s C team took third.

Senior Simon Pendleton was proud o! how his whole team took on the challenging rac-es while having a good time.

“It was a really good week-end. People rode hard,” Pen-dleton said. “It was hard rac-ing, but it was fun racing.”

While the conference champi-onship marks the end o! the cycling season for most o! the team, four women will continue their season through this week. Hoar, along with seniors Roxy Pierson and Chelsea Momany, and sophomore Molly Blust are traveling to Madison, Wis. to compete at the Collegiate Road National Championships on May 6 through 8 where both Division I and II schools will be competing.

Pierson is looking forward to going to nationals and believes that the women can compete very well.

“It is extremely exciting. We have a long history o! excel-ling at nationals,” Pierson said.

According to Pierson, the team has the best shot o! winning na-tionals in the team time trial.

Cycling claims DII

crownby TYLER HURLBURT

Staff Reporter

Tuition keeps pace with peers

by DEREK THURBER and RACHEL ALEXANDER

Editor-in-Chief and News Editor

VARSITYATHLETES SWING THEIR WAY INTO WHITMAN

Theatre department brings musical spelling bee to Sherwood

Each year, one show in Harper Joy Theatre’s sea-son is either a musi-

cal or an opera. This year, Gar-ret Professor o! Dramatic Art Nancy Simon will be direct-ing the musical “The 25th Annu-al Putnam County Spelling Bee”.

The Tony-winning musical depicts a quirky group o! students competing in the titular spelling bee. Senior Monica Finney plays one o! the students, Olive Os-trovsky, who has a penchant for switching the orders o! words.

“I see her as kind o! a space cadet ... but in a cute and quirky way. It’s fun to play that,” said Finney. “The play’s just so ran-dom, all about these kids who are all quirky and have is-sues, so it’s very entertaining.”

Finney saw a produc-tion o! the show in Seat-tle last summer and enjoyed it

so much she wanted to partici-pate in Whitman’s production.

Senior Chris Reid is look-ing forward to this show mark-ing an exciting culmination to the year. Reid plays Vice Princi-pal Douglas Panch o! Lake Hem-ingway Junior High, who was al-most not scheduled to help with the bee due to a previous acci-dent, but was able to make it in and is eager to redeem himself.

“As a graduating senior I wanted to get involved with as much theatre work as possible before leaving a program that’s done so much for me ... [Be-cause o! the] simple fact that our closing night is the night be-fore commencement it’s easy to see this show as a count-down to graduating,” said Reid.

Performances are on two non-consecutive weekends, a sched-ule used in previous years to give students a free !inals week while still having shows during com-mencement weekend when fam-

ilies and friends are in town.Junior Charlie O’Rourke, who

plays a comfort counselor and gives juice boxes to the children who are eliminated (as a require-ment for his parole), feels the per-formance schedule is a good thing not only because actors will be less stressed after !inals, but also so that senior theatre majors can have one last fun performance project.

“Usually there aren’t the-sis requirements [surround-ing the spring musical]; sen-iors don’t really do their thesis as performing in the musical ... it’s sort o! just a fun way to cut loose at the end o! the year,” he said.

O’Rourke is especially en-thusiastic about the show’s mu-sic, which is also one o! the things he is most apprehensive about.

“Honestly I do love the mu-sic a lot, but it’s kind o! hard. It’s been challenging, for me at least, to get the music down.

by KATE ROBINETTEStaff Reporter

Choreographer Rhya Milici ‘12 and actor Nick Hagan ‘13 goof around during rehearsal for “The 25th Annual Putnam Coun-try Spelling Bee”, which will be performed in Sherwood Athletic Center rather than Harper Joy Theatre. PHOTO BY FENNELL

SPELLING BEE, PAGE 4

by RACHEL ALEXANDERNews Editor

and LIBBY ARNOSTISports Editor

!e Panel of

14

PHOTO BY FENNELLINFOGRAPHIC BY APPLETON

CYCLING, PAGE 6 TUITION, PAGE 3

2MAY

052011

EDITORIAL POLICYFounded before the turn o! 20th century, The Pioneer is Whitman College’s weekly, student-run newspaper. With a circulation o! over 1,200, The Pioneer serves both the Whitman College student body and its network o! faculty, staff, parents and alumni as well as the local Walla Walla community. The Pioneer publishes a weekly issue o! the latest news, arts and sports coverage and student editorials. The Pioneer is entirely student-run and serves as an open

forum for the student body as well as an outlet for gaining journalistic experience at a school that has no journalism program. The staf! receives guidance from a Board o! Advisors, a group o! campus and community leaders, including Whit-man College faculty and staf! with journalism expertise as well as members o! the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin. The Pioneer strives to maintain the highest standards o! fairness, quality and journalistic integrity and is governed by a Code o! Ethics.

For information about advertising in The Pioneer or to purchase a subscription please contact

BUSINESS@WHITMANPIONEER.COM

Letters to Editor may be submitted to The Pioneer via e-mail to editors@whitmanpioneer.com or sent to The Pioneer, Whitman College, 280 Boyer Ave., Walla Walla, WA, 99362. All submissions must be received by 4 p.m. on Sunday prior to the week that they are intended to appear. All submissions must be attributed and may be edited for AP-style and !luency.

The Code o! Ethics serves as The Pioneer’s established guidelines for the practice o! responsible journalism on campus, within reasonable interpretation o! the Edito-rial Board. These guidelines are subject to constant review and amendment by the current Editor-in-Chie! and Editorial Board. The Code o! Ethics is reviewed at least once per semester. To access the complete Code o! Ethics for The Pioneer, visit whitmanpioneer.com/about.

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Dozens o! concerned Wal-la Walla residents gathered on Sunday, May 1 to march

for immigration reform. Partici-pants arrived at Jefferson Park and marched down Main Street, past Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ of!ice. Whitman College students and faculty played an in-tegral role in this year’s rally, which was organized by senior Ariel Ruiz.

Ruiz transferred to Whitman as a sophomore and has spent much o! his college career working on im-migration reform. He founded the group El Proyecto Voz Latina, which raises awareness o! undocumented immigrants and advocates for im-migration reform in Walla Walla. Aside from organizing rallies, Ruiz is currently working with Whitman administration to add a statement o! support for undocumented stu-dents to the Whitman constitution.

"Club Latino has helped us

out a lot, as has the Black Stu-dents' Union," he said. "But no group at Whitman can of!icial-ly endorse [El Proyecto] because in the Whitman constitution there is a clause which says Whitman can-not take a stand on a political issue."

There are currently sev-en or eight undocumented stu-dents at Whitman, and Ruiz feels that Whitman could do more to support them by taking a pub-

lic stand on the DREAM Act and other issues affecting immigrants.

"Other colleges like Whitman have gotten so much farther than we have," he said. "I'm not asking George Bridges to hold press con-ferences or present [the issue] be-fore Congress, as presidents o! oth-er private colleges have done."

Many o! the marchers seemed to share similar sentiments about com-munity attitudes toward immigra-tion reform as they followed Ruiz's dynamic presence and blaring bull-horn. The message chanted by par-ticipants was simple but strong: “What do we want? Immigration re-form! When do we want it? Now!” and “We are Washington! We are Immigrants! We are Taxpayers!"

The march was coordinat-ed by El Proyecto and OneAmeri-ca, a statewide immigration reform group which Ruiz also works with. Similar marches took place around the state in Seattle, Vancouver, El-lensburg and Yakima. OneAmeri-ca's organizing director David Ayala Zamora spoke to rally-goers. Zamo-ra noted that immigration reform activists in Walla Walla have much to celebrate, such as the fact that Washington is one o! only two states which allows undocumented immi-grants to obtain a driver's license.

“ There are not many states that can hold up the light o! hope for im-migration reform,” said Zamora.

One o! the primary types o! im-migration reform that Zamora and Ruiz are !ighting for is occupation-al reform. Zamora said that some

Washington residents are hesitant to support full occupational bene!its and rights to immigrants because they fear a loss o! American jobs. He believes this fear is unwarranted.

“We are not taking jobs away. I! we did, it happened a long time ago because we are still here,” he said.

Senior JoJo Robertson was one o! the Whitman students who attended the rally. She felt that the rally was a great way to spend a sunny afternoon get-ting out an important message.

"Immigrants are often under-represented and I think that it's im-portant for us Whitties to show support. So it was great to see some o! the Whitman commu-nity out there because when you are so busy with classes and ac-tivities, especially around !inals, it can be hard to make time for the things that are important," she said.

Ruiz will be graduating soon, but hopes that many o! the advo-cacy projects he has worked on will have enough structure and momentum to continue with a new group o! student leaders.

"I think my efforts have devel-oped enough focus to set up a pro-gram. And Whitman is a great place — undocumented students here have access to !inancial aid; it is my gut feeling that they feel very welcome and supported," he said.

In spite o! these steps, Ruiz hopes the administration will speak openly about its undocumented population.

"It is something we have to talk about," he said.

Walla Walla residents march for immigrtion reform at a rally on Sunday, May 1. The rally was organized by Whitman senior Ariel Ruiz to call attention to issues facing undocumented immigrants. PHOTOS BY VON HAFFTEN

by ALYSSA GOARDStaff Reporter

MARCH FOR IMMIGRATION REFORMWhitman senior organizes rally calling for undocumented immigrants to be recognized

Two-thousand eleven has been a whirlwind for the students bringing back a

Whitman yearbook. After strug-gling to get ASWC funding, they rushed to produce a year-book in three months and have sold all but a handful o! their 350 copies. Lost in the process was broad discussion about their de-cision to stick with the yearbook’s historical name -- Waiilatpu.

According to Mike Ded-man, educational specialist for the Whitman Mission Nation-al Historic Site, Waiilatpu was the original name o! Marcus and Narcissa Whitman’s mis-sion. Waillatpu is a Cayuse phrase for “place o! rye grasses.” After the Whitmans’ deaths, the mis-sion was renamed in their honor.

Sophomore Ben Lerchin, ed-itor-in-chie! o! Waiilatpu, said that the yearbook staf! con-sidered new names, but ulti-mately went with tradition.

“Choosing that name was par-tially a re!lection o! the fact that we hadn’t created anything yet, but it was obviously going to come from the legacy o! Whitman [College],” he said. “I think the decision was more about preserving history than about saying a mission statement.”

Although the name Wai-ilatpu is ingrained in the year-book’s history, it is also re!lec-tive o! the United States dark past with native populations.

The Whitmans ventured West in an effort to convert the Cay-use tribe to Christianity, in the process infecting the tribe with measles; ultimately, members o! the tribe killed the Whitmans.

ASWC Finance Chair and Pres-ident-elect senior Matt Dittrich said that he was unaware that Wai-ilatpu was a reference to the mis-sion and would have discussed it in the Senate had he known.

“I wasn’t aware o! it,” he said. “We’re not into amend-ing or censoring the artistic ma-terial and decisions, but it prob-ably would have been nice to have a conversation about.”

Junior Meghan Bill, a race

and ethnic studies major, said she was also concerned by the lack o! a conversation about the implications o! the name.

“I don’t think students know what Waiilatpu means, and I think that is potentially problem-atic,” she said. “[History is] im-portant for our students to un-derstand — our school’s name, our yearbook’s name, our school mascot, the area in which the school is located. I think students not knowing what it means ne-glects any kind o! dialogue about that history, which is a really im-portant conversation to have.”

Although Bill believes it makes sense to stick with the name now, she nonethe-less says that it’s problematic.

“I think it makes sense that the yearbook staf! wanted to keep the tradition, but I don’t real-ly like it because I don’t see the sense o! having the name Wai-ilatpu in the !irst place,” she said.

With the yearbook back, Dittrich said now is a good time for a discussion.

“I’d be really interested to have a larger student discussion on this now that the yearbook will be alive and well for at least the next year or two,” he said. “I don’t think it’s ap-propriate for ASWC to make a de-cision about what the name should be, but I think it’s appropriate for students to have a discussion about it and let the yearbook staf! know.”

Lerchin said he hasn’t heard any comments on the name, but that’s largely because o! how the yearbook was marketed.

“That hasn’t been a ques-tion that’s come up for it at all. We’ve largely tried to market it as the ‘Whitman yearbook’,” he said, noting that ‘Waiilat-pu’ didn’t have name recognition.

For now, Waiilatpu has its fo-cus on growth. Lerchin envi-sions a longer production pro-cess and more planned-out con-tent, and thinks the yearbook will grow into its name in that process.

“I think it will be a name we grow into and it will be in-teresting to see once peo-ple know more about it what they associate with it,” he said.

Yearbook name lacks discussion

Take a look at the brochures on display in the Of!ice o! Admission, the course cat-

alog, or the Fast Facts sheet on the college web site and all will tell you that the number o! enrolled stu-dents at Whitman College is 1,450.

However, the actual enroll-ment in fall 2010 was 1,555.

Because o! the difference in numbers, the student-faculty ra-tio changes depending on the doc-ument. The course catalog lists it as 10:1; the Fast Facts page on the web site says 9:1. The actu-

al ratio for fall 2010 was 9.89:1.Though these discrepan-

cies seem strange, the explana-tion might actually be simple: print-ing costs make it practical to use a simpli!ied average rather than ex-act numbers. Neal Christopher-son, director o! institutional re-search, calls 1,450 a “ballpark !igure.”

In the last !ive years, total en-rollment has ranged from 1,455 stu-dents in 2006 to 1,555 this year.

Director o! Admission Kevin Dyerly believes that for now 1,450 serves its purpose.

“For a prospective student, knowing i! a school has 10,000 or 2,000 students is important. The dif-ference between 1,555 and 1,450 won’t have a huge impact,” he said.

Prospective student Molly Em-mett said she would like to see pub-lications re!lect the bigger student body. Coming from a high school o! 4,500 students, she saw Whitman’s small size as a potential detriment.

“I think 100 students is a consid-erable difference -- that’s 100 more people that you have the opportunity to learn from, be inspired by and form lasting friendships with,” she said.

First-year Claire Vezie doesn’t feel that the number discrepan-cy would have affected her de-cision to come to Whitman.

“I was looking for small schools, but small ranged from 1200-2000. One hundred students wouldn’t have made a difference,” Vezie said.

by KARAH KEMMERLYStaff Reporter

Read the full article online at whitmanpioneer.com

WHITMAN gets GREEN

Read about Whitman’s ranking in the greenhouse gas audit and placement in a college green guidebook at

whitmanpioneer.com

ILLUSTRATION BY URIU

ILLUSTRATION BY SLOANE

by JOSH GOODMANNews Editor

Number of students at Whitman misrepresented

3MAY

052011

Upperclassmen have com-pleted preregistration for the fall 2011 semester,

leaving many introductory-lev-el courses completely !illed. De-partments including politics, phi-losophy, sociology and psychol-ogy are struggling to !ind space for incoming !irst-year students. Meanwhile, the administration plans to solve the problem by in-creasing class sizes or creating more classes, which will most like-ly be taught by visiting professors.

Enrollment pressure for incom-ing !irst-years has increased with the introduction o! the 3-2 course switch, but other factors also con-tribute to the problem. According to ASWC Vice President senior John Loranger, the 3-2 switch is a major reason for enrollment pres-sure, but is not the only problem.

"We're having faculty teaching fewer courses this year, and then we have the largest student body in the history o! the college, and to compound those two issues we have course compression," he said.

Provost and Dean o! Faculty Timothy Kaufman-Osborn will de-cide in the upcoming week which departments will have cours-es added to make up for a lack o! available course seats. He an-ticipates that i! additional fac-ulty are needed, the hiring pro-cess will begin over the summer.

“There's two criteria that I need [to add courses]. I need the !inancial resources available to me, but I also want to ensure that I !ind quali!ied people,” Kaufman-Osborn said.

Chair o! the Sociology Depart-ment Keith Farrington worries, however, that hiring professors this late in the academic year may not bode well for next semester.

“I think that when you're hiring someone to teach the next year, you're at the end o! the hiring year and the most ex-cellent o! candidates are already hired, meaning we're not deal-ing with the best pool o! pos-sible candidates,” he said.

First-year ASWC Senator Brian Choe believes that increas-ing class sizes and opening new sec-tions o! intro-lev-el courses taught by visiting professors may be a short-term solution, but it may not be doing in-coming students jus-tice in the long run.

“As a liberal arts

school, we pride ourselves in small class sizes. As classes get bigger, it's going to affect our image and the way we learn,” Cho e said. “For !irst-years who have a hard time in an introductory class with a vis-iting professor, the solid founda-tion o! what they want to major in is not solid at all and they don't have anything to work of! of.”

Hiring new professors to teach sections o! classes for incom-ing students is not an easy task. Choe's opinion o! professors ech-oes the sentiments o! many Whit-man students who have had class-es taught by visiting professors.

"I'm really frustrated be-

cause my experience in the sci-ence department has swayed me away from majoring in science because o! the negative experi-ence o! having a visiting profes-sor in place o! a tenure-track fac-ulty," said !irst-year Julia Stone.

xIncoming !irst-years, howev-er, are not too worried about hav-ing to wait to take classes from ten-ure track faculty. Sarah Cronk, an incoming student from Bettendorf, Iowa is disappointed that she will have a hard time getting into in-

troductory-level courses taught by regular Whitman faculty; however, she is con!ident that Whitman is working on the issue and holds out hope that her following three years o! registration won't be as dif!icult.

“I'm a little disappointed be-cause you hear about certain class-es that are taught by amazing pro-fessors, and we won't get to take them at !irst,” Cronk said. “I !ig-ure that I have four years to even-tually get into classes I want.”

First-year ASWC Senator Kay-von Behroozian believes the key to getting an ideal schedule for in-coming students is planning ahead.

“I didn't get into any classes I wanted during pre-registration, but what I had done before pre-registration is I e-mailed professors to be put on my waiting list and I was let into those classes,” Behroo-zian said. “It's frustrating, but i! you plan ahead, you have a chance o! getting into the classes you want.”

Kaufman-Osborn ensures in-coming students that while regis-tration may be dif!icult for students initially, Whitman guarantees stu-dents suf!icient credits to stay on track for graduation in declared majors within four years and the opportunity to satisfy distribution requirements and elective cours-es corresponding to their interests.

“The college cannot guaran-tee that every student is going to get the course he/she wants in the semester he/she wants,” he said. “[But] it does have an obligation that students meet the require-ments [expected] o! them as a con-dition o! graduation, and I fully in-tend to keep that commitment.”

By comparison, a decade ago, between 1997 and 2000, Whit-man’s tuition rose by 1.6 percent above in!lation for those years.

According to Harvey, this in-crease can largely be attributed to two things. The !irst is faculty and staf! salary increases, as well as ris-ing bene!it costs. Personnel costs ac-count for about 60 percent o! Whit-man’s operating budget, and fac-ulty and staf! have received sig-ni!icant raises in recent years to keep their salaries competitive.

“The !irst couple years o! those !ive years when we were doing 7 percent tuition increases, we gave 6 percent salary pool [increas-es]” Harvey said. “That’s a big driv-er and those were larger increas-es than we typically do because we felt we were behind on competi-tive salaries for recruiting and re-taining both faculty and staff.”

Another large factor is the tui-tion discount rate -- the percentage o! tuition used to pay for !inancial aid -- which has increased from 36 per-cent to 40 percent over the past !ive years. Harvey said the discount rate

increase has been part o! an effort to increase diversity at Whitman.

“We have intentionally tried to increase the number o! stu-dents that are !irst-generation stu-dents and diversity students, and [those students] tend to have higher levels o! need,” he said.

Junior Matt Dittrich, who is the current ASWC !inance chair and a member o! the Budget Ad-visory Committee, also empha-sized the costs associated with nec-essary increases in !inancial aid.

“It is not a simple comparison be-tween changing faculty rates and tu-ition,” Dittrich said. “It is no secret that for whatever reason recently ac-cepted students have had high !inan-cial need and so !inancial aid has in-creased by a lot to meet that demand.”

For some parents o! Whitman students, like Rich Roberts, this !i-nancial aid has made all the difference.

“As the father o! two Whitman students, I am deeply grateful for the scholarship money [my kids] have been granted and equally concerned about the amount o! debt that they will have to repay for the expenses that were not covered by the schol-arships,” Roberts said. “The schol-

arship aid that my kids receive al-low me to send them to Whitman ... is it worth it? Yes, and more.”

Graduating is a growing con-cern shared by other college stu-dents and parents. The average debt o! a student graduating from Whit-man in 2009 was 17,955 dollars ac-cording to the U.S. News and World Report. However, Whitman re-mains competitive compared to sim-ilar schools in terms o! average debt.

Whitman parent Leslie Far-rar, who has seen large tuition in-creases and more dramatic cuts as an employee o! Humboldt State University in California, believes that Whitman has done better than other schools at maintaining ed-ucational quality and !inancial aid during the economic downturn.

“I think that you will !ind i! you dig deeper, that Whit-man is doing well with the re-sults o! the recession,” she said.

Harvey also emphasized that Whitman is doing the best it can in dif!icult times to keep tuition costs down while maintaining Whitman’s reputation and does not believe Whitman is driven by market forces.

“We don’t have that kind

o! market presence to be able to [raise tuition based on mar-ket forces],” Harvey said.

Harvey further emphasized that Whitman keeps track o! sim-ilar schools to make sure we re-main competitive in terms o! !i-nancial aid and tuition costs.

“We monitor other schools to make sure that our tuition and our !inancial aid policies are com-petitive,” Harvey said. “They don’t set our tuition but we mon-itor the marketplace just to make sure we’re competitive within it.”

According to Harvey, Whitman uses two groups o! schools as bench-marks for tuition comparison. The !irst are liberal arts colleges which have the highest percentage o! ap-plicants in common with Whit-man. The second is the Panel o! 14, a group o! similar liberal arts colleges which Whitman has been using to compare itsel! to for several decades.

Whitman’s current tuition rate places it as the seventh least expen-sive school, directly in the cent-er o! the Panel o! 14. This is an im-provement from 10 years ago, when Whitman had the ninth least expen-sive tuition. Relative to the Panel o!

14, Whitman’s tuition has become more affordable over the past decade.

In terms o! !inancial aid, Whit-man is slightly below the Panel o! 14 average for percentage o! students receiving need-based aid. The mean for the panel is 53.8 percent, while Whitman provides need-based aid to 49 percent o! students this year. These numbers do not take into ac-count the amount o! aid given to each student, only the overall per-centage o! student who receive aid.

Ultimately, Harvey empha-sized that increases in tuition re-sult in a direct impact on the quali-ty o! education provided to students.

“Frankly, i! we were too signi!i-cantly less expensive, it might mean that we’re not able to attract and re-tain the best faculty and do the best things like Semester in the West and many o! the educational pro-grams that we do,” Harvey said.

Most parents and stu-dents are inclined to agree.

“The bottom line is that we feel that a Whitman education is worth it,” Farrar said. “Despite the personal sacri!ices we have made to have this experience for our son, we would do it again.”

by SHELLY LE

Staff Reporter

from RECRUITMENT, PAGE 1

Athletic admissions prioritize academic ability, roster needs

Many departments lack open classes for incoming students

You hear about certain

classes taught by amazing

professors, and we won’t get to take

them at first.SARAH CRONK, ‘15

Whitman remains competitive in tuition costs, financial aidfrom TUITION, PAGE 1

ILLUSTRATION BY JOHANSON

PAGE 5

"#$%&'( 2010-2011 U.S. )'*" +), *#%-, %'.#%/ Total cost of attending college in academic year 2010-11 at Panel of 14 schools. Read more about the Panel of 14 in this week’s Feature Section. INFOGRAPHIC BY APPLETON

slightly more off-pro!ile than our median,” said Dyerly.

The most recent data for ath-lete admissions shows a small gap be-tween recruited athletes and the gen-eral applicant pool. For students ad-mitted in 2007, the average athlete high school GPA was 3.68 compared to 3.75 for non-athletes. SAT scores also varied slightly, with an athlete av-erage o! 1300 (out o! 1600) compared to a non-athlete average o! 1333. Dyerly pointed out that while vari-ance exists, it tends to be very small.

Jef! Northam, who is the head coach o! men’s tennis, said that he believes this policy is in Whit-man’s best interest. Northam is also a Whitman alum, and be-lieves that admitting these stu-dents makes sense, even i! their GPAs are a bit lower than average.

“Maybe they got a couple o! ‘B’s’ during their high school career, but they did something different,” he said.

He also pointed out that devot-ing a large amount o! time to an ex-tracurricular activity in high school likely means less time for stud-ying, so a lower GPA might re-!lect a student’s busy schedule more than their innate academic abilities.

Once at Whitman, athletes tend to have slightly lower GPAs than their non-athletic peers. This differ-ence is small--about 0.1 grade point on average, according to the Of-!ice o! Institutional Research’s data.

Athletes also tend to have a high-er average graduation rate. For the classes o! 2004-2010, an aver-age o! 93.4 percent o! varsity ath-letes graduated, compared to 86.3 percent o! non-athletes. Men’s soc-cer coach Mike Washington attrib-uted part o! this difference to the rigors o! a varsity athletic schedule.

“I think student athletes are more focused because they have to manage time better,” he said.

Coaches and admissions staf! both feel that the athletic department has a good relationship with the Of!ice o! Admission. Dyerly said that coach-es are very thorough in pre-screen-ing recruits and making sure they meet Whitman’s academic stand-ards before encouraging them to ap-ply. The Of!ice o! Admission also works hard to make sure that athlet-ic teams are able to have a full roster.

“We are looking to build a community o! talented ath-letes that can support our var-sity and club sports,” he said.

This can sometimes result in ath-letes being recruited during the sum-mer, after the normal Whitman ad-missions cycle is over. In the summer o! 2008, two men’s basketball players were recruited and admitted to Whit-man in August before their !irst year.

“I made my decision in three days, packed all my stuf! and

the next day drove up here,” said junior David Michaels.

The men’s head basketball coach, Eric Bridgeland, who had just been hired in May o! 2008, had no op-portunity to recruit incoming !irst-years during the regular admissions cycle. In order to build his eight-person roster o! returning players, Bridgeland used the summer as a last-minute recruiting opportunity.

Dylerly said this can happen for other programs as well, as long as the college has space. Class sizes tend to change slightly over the summer, as students leave Whitman’s wait-list for other schools or decide to take a gap year. Also, the actual yield rate -- how many admitted students choose to come to Whitman -- can be different than the rate admissions planned for, meaning that addition-al students can be accommodated.

“It’s not a matter o! emp-ty seats, it’s more [that] we have room,” said Katie dePon-ty, assistant director o! admission.

Michaels said that in spite o! the fact he applied during the sum-mer, the integrity o! the admis-sions process was upheld for him.

“I thought I was going to be able to do less o! [the application] be-cause it was so late, but [the admis-sions of!icers] were !irm in the fact that they were going to treat eve-ryone the same,” said Michaels, who completed the full applica-tion in under a week that August.

Whether a regular decision applicant or late recruit, a stu-dent’s athletic excellence does not excuse them from being held to a high academic standard.

“There’s no reason why ac-ademics have to be low-ered to have very strong ath-letic programs,” said DePonty.

Swim coach Jenn Blomme said that she appreciates working at a school where academics are viewed as a priority. She believes that athlet-ic scholarships, which are given out at Division I schools, would cloud her relationship with swimmers.

“Money gets in the way o! re-lationships,” she said. “I really en-joy swimmers who are here 100 percent for the love o! swimming.”

Athletic Director Dean Snider agreed that focus-ing on education was essential.

“I! you’re going to run an ath-letic program in college, it needs to be about education,” he said. “DIII provides maybe the few-est distractions from an educa-tional model, but it’s not the only place where education happens.”

Washington believes that Whitman’s recruitment strat-egies allow for a good bal-ance between sports and school.

“This is a good model: ex-cellence in the classroom, ex-cellence on the !ield,” he said.

4

This weekend’s dance per-formance, Minidoka, will bring a dark part o! Amer-

ican history back into the Whit-man consciousness. The per-formance, based on poems by Lawrence Matsuda, tells a sto-ry o! the Japanese internment camps during World War II.

Choreographer and Whit-man Adjunct Professor of Dance Vicki Lloid first en-countered Matsuda’s work through her friendship with writer Tess Gallagher. Lloid was initially hesitant to base this semester’s performance around such a serious topic.

“The poems are beautiful but they’re very sad,” said Lloid. “Then there was just this one poem where he talks about his mother, in the camp, being preg-nant in the summer time and wearing an orange dress, and dancing to the radio music; and that [moment] was just kind of, ‘Okay, I think I can do this now.’”

Besides the collaboration with the poet, Minidoka in-volves a high level of collab-oration between choreogra-pher and dancer. Much of the first movement was either cre-ated through improvisation or will be improvised in the show.

“Some of the improvs have been very powerful … because new situations develop eve-ry time we do it,” said sen-ior dancer Laura van der Veer.

Sophomore Dave Mc-Gaughey also found the improvisation power-ful under Lloid’s guidance.

“Vicky’s an incredible cho-reographer; incredibly ab-stract, post-post-modern, all these things, but she really is amazing,” said McGaughey. “We would spend, for exam-ple, a full rehearsal think-ing about how to [work ab-stractly with the concept of] making somebody the other.”

“We’ll create or make some-one into the other so we can treat them badly.... Everybody’s capable of that,” said Lloid. “I think it’s hard for [the students], though, to do it, because they’re working with their friends.”

The idea of the other might be difficult for Whitman stu-dents to work with in the abstract, but all the col-laborators had their own perspective on the history of the in-ternment camps. Van der Veer drew on her knowledge from class-es and from the Japanese historical society in Port-land, Ore. McGaughey visit-ed one of the internment camps.

“On Semester in the West we went to Manzanar [intern-ment camp in California]; and I’m really interested in Jap-anese internment,” said Mc-Gaughey. “It’s something that re-ally skips the history books way too much, Japanese interment; it’s a terrible time in history.”

Lloid had a person-al connection as well.

“My father had friends who were Japanese here in Wal-la Walla who were taken off to internment camps,” said Lloid.

Despite the seriousness of the topic, the performance is not all dark. It also includes a big swing dance number, inspired by de-scriptions of the dances held by the Japanese internees. The per-

formers also pointed to the show’s ability to provoke

conversation and its wide range of art forms

as reasons the Whit-man commu-

nity might enjoy it.

“It’s a very beautiful, pow-erful, emotional show,” said van der Veer. “I think it’s one of Vicky’s best shows that she’s done so far, so I am very ex-cited that this is my last. It’s a great way to end my experience with Whitman dance theatre.”

The performances will be Fri-day and Saturday at 8 p.m. in Cor-diner Hall.

MAY

052011

PIO PICKSEach Thursday, The Pioneer

highlights several events happening on campus or in Walla Walla

during the weekend. Here are this week’s picks:

W"#$%&' R(&)#'*

The Visiting Writing Readers Series presents the Whitman Reading, this year’s !inal series event o! the semester. The Whitman Reading celebrates the poetry and short !iction o! students who have completed a creative writing class this year. Thursday, May 5, 7-8:30 p.m. Kimball Auditorium.

W+#$(+’, C-.-'/

The Writing House will wrap up this year’s Writer’s Colony season with a fantastical tea party-themed gathering. Tradi-tional tea foods such as scones will be served, along with a healthy serving o! stimulating prompts. Saturday, May 7, 3 p.m. 121 Otis.

D+#0(1I' M-0#(

WEB and the Co-Op invite students to a pre-release celebration o! the !inal install-ment o! Harry Potter with this semester’s Drive-In Movie: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1”. Popcorn and cotton candy will be sold during the screening. Saturday, May 7, 8 p.m. 406 Cypress.

A.#2( I' W-')(+.&')

The Little Theatre o! Walla Walla presents Eva Le Gal-lienne and Florida Friebus’ mu-sical adaptation o! Lewis Car-roll’s “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass.” May 6-7, 13-14 at 8 p.m., May 8 at 2 p.m. $12 for adults. 1130 Sumach. Call for tickets.

There are some high notes I’m still not hitting perfectly,” he said.

Another sound challenge the actors and crew are worried about is that the musical will be held in George Ball Court rather than at Harper Joy Theater, which is in the process o! renovation.

According to the actors, the show’s script calls for a school gym-nasium, so the choice o! the George Ball Court makes sense. Howev-er, with echoes and limited tech-nical resources, they worry about acoustics and whether the audience will be able to understand them.

“One o! the perks o! using the gym is the ability o! doing a relative-ly low-tech show … low-tech shows are easy because there are fewer things that can go wrong during the performances,” said the stage man-ager sophomore Alison Thoma.

While the lack o! an intercom system makes communication dif!i-cult, rehearsals at the gym have been going well according to the cast.

“I think it’s funny that peo-ple are able to watch us rehearse from upstairs as they pass by … I just wonder what’s going through their heads as they see these dra-ma kids jumping around and singing in their gym,” said Reid.

Additionally, the setting al-lows for better audience par-ticipation, which the cast an-ticipates with excitement.

“The few times we’ve had peo-ple to !ill [the audience partici-pants’] role it’s been really fun. Also the words and their de!initions are pretty funny, it’ll be fun to see how they react to it,” said Finney.

Shows run at George Ball Court in Sherwood Athletic Center from Thurs-day through Saturday, May 5-7 and May 19-21 at 8 p.m., with a 2 p.m. mat-

inee on May 8. Tick-ets are availa-

ble at the Harp-er Joy Box O!!ice.

DANCERS BRING POEMS TO LIFE IN

“It’s something that really skips the history books way too much, Japanese internment; it’s a terrible time in history. DAVE MCGAUGHEY ‘13

Minidoka

from SPELLING BEE, PAGE 1

Gym acoustics challenge musicalShadow Hawk Music Festival features

Whitman, Northwest bands

Members of the Whitman Dance Theatre practice for the Minidoka performance, which is based on a series of poems about Japanese intern-ment camps. PHOTO BY AXTELL

ILLUSTRATION BY URIU

Antagonistic William Barfeé (played by Henry Nolan ‘13) spells an appropri-ate word for his character: “lugubri-ous”. PHOTO BY FENNELL

by TANEEKA HANSEN

Staff Reporter

The second annual Shad-ow Hawk Music Festi-val will feature a lineup

chock-full o! Whitman bands and a capella groups, as well as three bands who are being paid to come and play. The festival’s prima-ry organizer, senior Charlie Proc-know, will grill burgers on Reid side lawn for lunch, and the Taco Truck will be around for dinner.

“I just want people to be able to come and sit outside and en-joy themselves on a beauti-ful spring day and listen to mu-sic all day long,” said Procknow. “Shadow Hawk was my favorite event o! the year [last year].”

Chicago-based band The Dogs, who have been never played at Whitman before, will headline the event. Senior Matt Bachmann, bassist for The Dogs, says that his band is quite excited for their show.

“For the rest o! my band, Wal-la Walla has this sort o! myth-ical quality to it ... and coming here is kind o! unreal,” said Bach-mann in an e-mail. “We always talked about pulling all o! these stunts i! we actually played a show here ... and now that we are play-ing at Shadow Hawk, we have to !ind a way to make it all work.”

Other bands journeying to Walla Walla include Port-land blues band Jef! Handley Trio – which features !irst-year James Ford on drums – and Spo-kane blues band The Fat Tones.

WEB co-sponsor, senior Sa-rah Brooker, attested to the broad, Northwest appeal o! the event.

“I’m de!initely going to be there all day,” said Brooker. “It’s a re-ally great opportunity not only for student bands but [with this] bigger venue, having three slat-ed groups from the Northwest, [we’re] ... highlighting some talent from this area, is a really nice thing.”

Brooker es-timates that last year’s festival had only hal! the budg-et, which is why this year’s festi-val has three paid bands visiting Whitman. How-ever, since Brook-er and Procknow will graduate, this new tradition will not automatically stick around unless some enterpris-ing underclassman takes an interest.

“I want it to continue and I was trying to work with some under-classmen to do it with them, but there wasn’t much interest so I end-ed up doing it alone again,” said Procknow. “Maybe WEB could take it on. I haven’t talked to them about it; that was my idea, to have it keep going, but I’m graduating so I’m not going to be able to do it next year.”

Shadow Hawk will run on Sun-day, May 8 from noon-8 p.m.

by WILLIAM WITWER

Staff Reporter

New WEB chair looks to improve

young program, increase

participation Read the Pioneer

interview with junior Noah Henry-Darwish online at

whitmanpioneer.com

ADVERTISEMENT

5MAY

052011

Who uses the Panel o! 14 -- and for what? Ac-cording to Director

o! Development Jed Schwendi-man, just about everyone with some sort o! authority on campus.

“All branches o! the admin-istration as well as faculty look at this group as a default compari-son group ... In many ways, the panel is used for all kinds o! deci-sions across the board. Often, it is turned to for !inancial decisions, or at least gauging how we com-pare. We don’t necessarily want to be in the middle o! the group, but we also don’t want to be an outli-er -- unless it is for an extreme-ly positive reason, like unique sus-tainability programs that oth-er schools don’t offer,” he said.

Provost and Dean o! the Facul-ty Timothy Kaufman-Osborn !inds the Panel o! 14 useful when han-dling issues speci!ic to his position.

“In my case, I have a distribu-tion list o! my counterparts, i.e., the chie! academic of!icers, at the oth-er 13 colleges, and I often put ques-tions to that group about how they handle particular issues (e.g., fam-ily leave policies). Also, each year, we compile a comparison o! facul-ty salaries at different ranks at each o! the 14 institutions in order to make sure that Whitman contin-ues to offer competitive salaries.”

Though most students know little about how the panel is used, it is sometimes a key inform-er for administrators when mak-ing controversial changes on cam-pus, like the recent switch to a smaller course load for faculty.

“When faculty voted to move to the !ive course load, they looked at this group. In fact, very few schools on the list still had a six course load -- maybe one or two,” said Schwendiman.

There are also many other pan-els considered when the admin-istration or faculty is making im-portant decisions. For exam-ple, Whitman often compares it-sel! to other Northwest schools. In addition, the admissions of!ice looks at an overlap group, con-taining schools that Whitman stu-dents are frequently admitted to.

The Panel o! 14 is of-ten turned to !irst for informa-tion, but whatever data it pro-vides is never the deciding factor.

“Comparing Whitman to [Pan-el o! 14] schools is like doing your homework. We gather information from them, then use this informa-tion to see where Whitman stands in comparison. But o! course eve-ryone interprets that information differently,” said Schwendiman.

Kaufman-Osborn agreed.“I don’t use the Panel as

the basis for any decisions, al-though I do often use it as a reference group,” he said.

Few students have heard of, let alone know the function of, the Panel o! 14 -- a compari-

son group o! 13 other colleges Whit-man uses to assess everything from fac-ulty gender ratios to admission rates through comparative statistical analysis.

The college has used the Pan-el o! 14 since 1967, when it was intro-duced by Kenyon Knopf, an adminis-trator from Grinnell College in Iowa who later served as president o! Whit-man from 1973-75. According to the Comparative Data Report compiled by the Of!ice o! Institutional Research in 2006, Whitman’s aim in using the pan-el is to survey a “combination o! peer and aspirant institutions” to determine Whitman’s strengths and weaknesses.

As a result, the peer group includes liberal arts colleges that are similar in makeup to Whitman and several that rep-resent radically different geographic areas and cater to other demographics. In addi-tion to Whitman, the Panel o! 14 is com-prised o! Beloit College, Carleton College, Colby College, Colorado College, Grin-nell College, Haverford College, Knox College, Oberlin College, Occidental Col-

lege, Pomona College, Reed College, Swarthmore College and Wabash College.

Director o! Institutional Research Neal Christopherson, who compiled the 2006 Comparative Data Report along with Luke Erichsen ‘06, has mixed feelings about the relevance o! this peer group. The panel has been made up o! the same 14 schools since it’s implementation in 1967. Whitman is not the same school as it was 40 years ago; neither are the others.

“Over the last 40 years these schools have changed, and as a whole this peer group may not be the best one for us. For example, some o! the schools have bil-lion-dollar endowments, others have en-dowments o! less than 100 million. (Our endowment is about 11 percent below the Panel o! 14 median). This makes a big difference when it comes to some-thing like faculty and staf! compensa-tion. We tend to be somewhere near the median in compensation,” he said.

However, Christopherson also be-lieves that consistent use o! the same peer group can be bene!icial to compiling rele-vant and well-informed statistical analysis.

“[One] advantage o! keeping with the Panel o! 14 is the continuity it gives us in peer comparisons over time. This is the very, very helpful thing about having used the same peer group for so long,” he said.

Whitman compares itsel! to the Panel o! 14 in or-der to make major de-

cisions. So how do we measure up?All 14 were ranked among the top

100 by U.S. News and World Report for this school year. However, even with the US News rankings, the rank-ings o! the Panel o! 14 are spread out, varying from Swarthmore College at 3 to Knox at 75. Whitman, ranked 38th, is in the middle o! the U.S. News and World Report Rankings.

While they all have a relative-ly small student population, the stu-dent body size ranges from Wabash College with 872 students to Oberlin College with 2,948 students -- over three times the size. Whitman weighs in with a student body o! 1,555.

The selectivity o! each school also widely ranges from Pomona College at 15 percent admitted ap-plicants to Knox at 75 percent ad-mitted. Whitman is again in the middle with 47 percent admitted.

The gender demographics o! Panel o! 14 schools follow Whit-man’s trend o! a higher proportion o! women with the exception o! Wabash College -- a men’s college -- and Swarthmore, which has an equal percentage o! men and women.

Some o! the Panel o! 14 col-leges, such as Reed, Occiden-tal and Colorado, offer master’s de-grees along with bachelor’s degrees and Oberlin College offers diplo-mas, bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

In terms o! bachelors degrees of-fered, Whitman College is at the lower end o! the spectrum with 31. In comparison, Pomona, which is roughly the same size as Whitman, offers 47 majors. Usually, when there are fewer students at a college, there are fewer majors offered at that col-lege: Wabash has the fewest of-fered majors with 22, while Ober-lin has the most to offer with 53.

Geographically, the colleges are from all over the United States.

In 1967, Whitman College established a comparative peer group of various private liberal arts colleges from across the country. Called the Panel of 14, these colleges serve as a context that informs major decisions, such as the switch to a 3-2 course load.

the

ofpanel14?

!"#$%&&' %"$#(& %)&* +((

composition, function of panel

College faces peer pressure

by KELSEY KENNEDY

Staff Reporter

by HANNA KAHL

Staff Reporter

by MAREN SCHIFFER

Staff Reporter

Making the grade: How Whitman compares

RANK AND FILE

U.S. News and World Report’s rankings of Panel of 14 members

KNOX 75WABASH 58BELOIT 55REED 54WHITMAN 38OCCIDENTAL 36COLORADO 26OBERLIN 23COLBY 23GRINNELL 18HAVERFORD 9CARLETON 8POMONA 6 SWARTHMORE 3

ILLUSTRATION BY ALFORD

JUST WHAT EXACTLY IS THE

AND WHY DO WE CARE

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6MAY

052011

MAR

312011

As spring in Walla Wal-la continues to tenta-tively unfold, varsi-

ty sports this semester have drawn definitively to a close. The men’s baseball team re-cently had its last home game, and the men’s and women’s golf and tennis teams have all com-pleted their seasons. The Pio-neer looks back at the achieve-ments and awards of Whit-man College’s varsity sports teams over the spring season.

The women’s golf team re-cently finished its best season in Whitman College history.

“We, in our Spring Clas-sic, took first place, which women’s golf has not done be-fore. And we beat George Fox University, [which] was sev-enth in the nation,” said soph-omore golfer Tate Head.

Ultimately, the team took second in the Northwest Con-ference. In its final tournament, Head shot an 80 to lead the team.

“Last year was the first time we had a full team, so getting to be one of the top teams in the conference in a season is the best. Next year we have a good shot at going to nationals, be-cause George Fox is losing a lot of their best seniors,” said Head.

Men’s golf had similar high-lights. Senior Brian Barton shot par in the NW Conference fi-nal tournament, putting up the third best score of the day. Going into the final day of the tourna-ment, Whitman was one of four teams that was in position to take second, standing 19 points behind the leader and just nine strokes behind second-placed Whitworth University. In the end, the team went home with a fifth place conference finish.

Both the men’s and wom-

en’s tennis teams contin-ued to be dominant forc-es in the NW Conference.

The men’s tennis team fin-ished first in its conference for the fifth year running. This also means that it will com-pete in Division III nationals.

“This season we beat the number nine team in the na-tion, Trinity [University],” said first-year and two-time All-American Andrew La Cava. “Our team has three All-Ameri-cans: Etienne Moshevich, Conor Holton-Burke, and myself.”

The men’s success-es have given them confi-dence in their growing pres-ence in the national scene.

“I feel really good about us going to [NCAA] nation-als. I think after we beat Trini-ty our guys realized that we can play with the best teams in the country. We could be one big win away from the final eight

at nationals,” said La Cava.The women’s tennis team

ended its season with a con-ference record of 9-3, after a 5-2 loss in the semi-finals of the NWC final tournament to second seed Linfield College.

Sophomore Alyssa Rob-erg and senior Elise Otto both received all-confer-ence honors from the NWC for the second year running.

A majority of the wom-en’s team — all but three play-ers — are sophomores and first-years. With such a young team, the team’s in-confer-ence successes will likely con-tinue for the years to come.

The men’s baseball team, un-der the direction of coach Jared Holowaty, ended a rough season with a strong win against Whit-worth University last Sunday, May 1. After being down 8-2, the baseball team staged a re-markable comeback in the ninth

inning. Senior captain Erik Korsmo batted the game-win-ning hit to beat Whitworth 10-9.

“It made all our hard work worth it. After the two loss-es earlier [against Whitworth], we felt like we let our sen-iors down. To have a moment like that, to run onto the field and dog-pile Korsmo, it’s real-ly something special,” said first-year pitcher Dakota Matherly.

The men’s team end-ed its season with five wins, one greater than last year.

“As much as we hate to use excuses, we start seven or eight first-years when most teams start maybe one or two. It’s a disappointing record, but now we have more experience and know better the compet-itive level that we are expect-ed to preform at. We’ll come back next season and, hopeful-ly, kick some ass,” said Matherly.

Both varsity and club programs reached new levels of excellence this spring, with cycling and men’s tennis winnning spots at national championships. Pictured athletes clockwise from upper left: cyclist Luke Ogden ‘14, baseball players Justin Weeks ‘13 and Aaron Cohen’14, Frisbee player Jeremy Norden ‘11, tennis players Emily Rolston ‘12 and Alyssa Roberg ‘13, golfer Katie Zajicek ‘14 and tennis player Andrew La Cava ‘14. COLLAGE BY LAZAR

by ANDREW HAWKINSStaff Reporter

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“We have won the time trial !ive o! the past six years,” Pierson said. “It is very realistic for us to podium in the time trial, but the goal is to win.”

Unlike years past, no men will be competing this year at the na-tional championships. Although a very strong group o! seniors gradu-ated last year, leaving the team with no A Men, there is a strong group o! !irst-year men looking to move up.

First-year Luke Ogden, who had ridden for four years prior to coming to Whitman but had never raced before, was especially pleased with how helpful the upperclass-men have been to him as a !irst-year.

“They are very open. They are very welcoming to any new-comers on the team,” Ogden

said. “You can ask them any-thing and they will help you out.”

Ogden sees the team, par-ticularly on the men’s side, im-proving over the next few years.

“A couple o! years down the road we will be a really strong team. I see a lot o! potential for growth as a team,” Ogden said.

Pendleton echoed this sen-timent and pointed out that the team runs in cycles.

“The team kind o! grows and shrinks every four years or so. We lost a strong group o! sen-ior men last year who are now rid-ing professionally. So [this year] was kind o! a growing year,” Pen-dleton said. “But we have a strong group o! !irst-year guys who are looking really good for improv-ing over the next couple o! years.”

Every day, the W Club strives to foster excellence on and of! the !ield o! competition.

Last Friday, April 29, it turned to fostering connections between for-mer and current Whitman College student-athletes at the second an-nual W Club Gol! Tournament.

At Whitman, the W Club is an athletic booster group made up o! alumni, parents and staf! members led by president George Osborne ‘66. This year, the W Club and Whitman varsity gol! teamed up to put on the alumni gol! tournament.

“We invite alums and commu-nity members to support excel-lence in Whitman athletics,” said Athletic Director Dean Snider.

The main goals for the tour-nament were to bring people in the Whitman community to-gether, have a good time and pro-mote athletics, according to Varsi-ty gol! Head Coach Skip Molitor. The tournament was also an op-portunity to raise money in sup-port o! Whitman varsity athlet-ics. All o! the varsity programs were represented at the tour-nament, primarily through student-athlete volunteers.

The 80 players in attendance

included current Whitman varsity coaches and athletes, students, W Club members, parents and oth-er alumni. Held at the Wine Val-ley Gol! Course just outside o! Walla Walla, the players compet-ed in 20 groups to play 18 holes o! gol! in both a scramble and team best ball format. Following the competition a banquet was held to celebrate both the tournament and a year in sports at Whitman.

“[The tournament] is a great place to connect W Club mem-bers with athletes,” said Molitor.

Each group was comprised o! four players, with many quar-tets including at least one cur-rent student. The chance to meet and talk made the experience a re-warding one for all players in-volved, as the students were able to get to know and make connec-tions with alumni and alumni were able to learn a little bit about the latest group o! Whittie athletes.

While W Club members re-ceive weekly e-mails updating them on the goings-on in Whit-man athletics, the gol! tourna-ment allowed them to make face-to-face connections with the stu-dent-athletes who represent the school every day and expe-rience the importance that var-sity athletics holds on campus.

“[The alumni] were genuinely interested in what each o! the pro-grams was doing,” said !irst-year and varsity golfer Elaine Whaley.

The tournament also served as way to raise money for the var-ious varsity athletics programs. Those fund-raising techniques came in the form o! donations, sponsorships – o! players and holes on the course – and a raf!le draw-ing for auction items. Accord-ing to Molitor, the tournament hopes to raise 10,000 dollars from its various fund-raising methods.

The tournament was a success from all standpoints and not even the cool, blustery day could keep the players from enjoying them-selves. The W Club was able to raise money while encouraging the establishment o! connections between alumni and current stu-dent-athletes, checking of! each o! Molitor’s goals for the tournament.

“[The tournament] was def-initely rewarding because [the alumni] have given back so much to our athletics,” said Wha-ley. “We had a chance to show them how much it meant, how much their support means to all our varsity athletes.”

“It [was] as much o! a friend-raiser as a fund-raiser,” said Molitor.

W Club fund-­raiser cultivates connections

by PAMELA LONDONStaff Reporter

from CYCLING, PAGE 1

Drew Raher ‘13 and Peter Clark ‘13 mingle with alumni at Whitman’s second annual W Club Golf Tournament. PHOTO BY KLAG

Strong conference finish sends cyclists to nationals

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7

While Whitman College is a fantastic home for al-most all o! us, we all have

complaints now and again. Howev-er, it seems that recent complaints are more focused around a common source — a lack o! transparency and spaces for student and faculty partic-ipation in administrative decisions.

The clearest o! many recent ex-amples is the switch to the 3-2 teach-ing system. While the switch will have important bene!its for the long-term health o! the college, it is trou-bling that students were not con-sulted throughout the process and were left with little recourse to mit-igate the effects o! the change.

I am unclear, however, about the bene!its o! cutting the ski team. Or dropping the popular educa-tion minor. Or the push to cut Ger-man, had members o! the facul-ty not been able to intervene. Or o! cuttivng tuition exchange ben-e!its despite their role in at-tracting high-caliber faculty.

In all o! these cases, stu-dents (and sometimes fac-ulty) not only lack a voice, but often ears in what will be cut.

Rather than address these issues, however, the administration seems to be mak-

ing efforts to close of! av-enues o! communication. President Bridges decided to postpone discussions about the tu-ition bene!it cuts until June, when students and many professors will be unable to protest or present their side. This seems more in line with

how shady corporations are run rather than a liberal arts college.

The administration needs to open up space not just for transparency but increased participation in govern-ance. It seems ironic that at a school that touts its tight-knit community, there are no open discussions about some o! the most important issues on campus. Whitman is an ideal place to maintain an open dialogue between all levels o! community participants.

Many faculty and some ad-ministrators have made tempo-ral arguments, however, suggest-ing that limited perspective leaves students unquali!ied to make sound decisions about college govern-ance. We are so focused on our short four years here that we can-not think about the broader, long-term issues facing the college.

Not only am I troubled by the no-tion that Whitties lack the intelli-gence to think in the long term, but challenges to our expertise should not preclude us being at the table in some capacity. I would argue that students are more quali!ied to make certain de-c i - s i o n s

a b o u t the college

t h a n t r u s -

tees,

most o! whom come to cam-pus only four times a year.

Even i! the administration asserts that we cannot make sound decisions, at least let us provide input. I would rather have my voice be ignored than have no voice at all. There needs to be a push for increased student and faculty agency in college governance.

Fortunately, this process has al-ready begun, albeit slowly. ASWC’s push to get a student on the Cur-riculum Committee means greater representation, and our push to add a student to the Board o! Trustees would only expand the student voice.

This issue is more than just having some students in com-mittees, however. There needs to be a culture o! consistent dia-logue and deliberation i! these is-sues can be addressed. Extra facul-ty meetings with trustees — such as the one which happened last week-end — are a fantastic !irst steps in this direction, but we can go further.

Middlebury College has had suc-cess in the past issuing a survey to administration, students, alum-ni, faculty and staf! about budg-et priorities. The results o! the sur-vey were then incorporated into the distribution o! the follow-ing year’s budget, soliciting input from as many parties as possible.

This sort o! participatory budg-eting process would let every mem-ber o! the community have a voice

in determining what Whitman values. This would not only

strengthen the Whit-man community,

but have positive lasting impacts on the overall Whitman expe-rience for stu-dents to come.

I have faith that the administra-

tion will listen to the senti-ments o! the faculty and students

and open up more space for partici-pation in college governance. It is something that Whitman can afford and should embrace with open arms.

Alex Brott is an environmen-tal studies-politics major who is pas-sionate about politics, economics and the environment. He is a junior class ASWC Senator and enjoys any-thing outdoors and making music.

MAY

052011

Dear Editor,

Last weekend, students threw a party which employed certain Catholic stereotypes and tradi-tions as the party’s theme. The party organizers were clearly aware o! the potentially offensive nature o! their endeavor and they took some steps to reduce or elim-inate the possibility o! causing discomfort. They asked that peo-ple “think wisely” about the cos-tumes they wore to the party, they articulated a desire to make the party be an event where people o! all faiths felt comfortable, and they wanted guests to know that they were not trying to stigma-tize one particular faith tradition.

The problem is, o! course, stigmatizing one particular faith tradition is exactly what they were doing. It is not surprising that de-spite their articulated desires, people were offended. O! course they were! Some Catholics were offended, as were others who sup-port the idea that whether or not you are a person o! faith, people who are ought not be marginal-ized for this facet o! their identity.

What’s more, the “disclaim-ers” which appeared in the par-ty’s invitation puts the onus on the potentially offended to basi-cally “get over it”. The disclaim-ers reveal that the party organiz-ers recognized the potentially of-fensive nature o! their endeav-or, but by saying “with this par-ty we are not trying to stigma-tize or make fun o! any religious beliefs” they believed that they were somehow of! the hook. It is as i! any discomfort individu-als might feel is now a problem with those individuals, not the party. Even after being in conver-sation with some o! the party or-ganizers, I still don’t understand how such disclaimers could be made while so clearly trivializing the traditions o! one particular faith. Such statements ring hol-

low and are arguably more dis-turbing that simply owning the offensive nature o! the activity. Nothing is protected from criti-cism on this campus, nor should it be. People have a right, i! they so choose, to criticize, or to poke fun at anything — including reli-gion. And while I’d like to think that living in this community in a responsible way would mean that people would not throw a par-ty which marginalizes a particu-lar group, the bottom line is: of-fensive parties can be thrown. But folks should know what they are doing and not pretend otherwise.

Fundamentally, I think (I want to think) that the discom-fort caused to several people on this campus by the party was a re-sult o! ignorance and not malice. One’s motivations, however, do not change the end results. And because some Catholics might have attended the party and en-joyed themselves is, o! course, ir-relevant. Other folks were of-fended and it isn’t surprising and nothing can change that at this point. I’m disappointed that some students at Whitman would de-cide to make fun o! Catholic prac-tices. I’m baf!led, however, that those students would think that they could do so without making some Catholics (and those who support all religious expression at Whitman) “uncomfortable”.

Sincerely,

Adam Kirtley,Coordinator o! Religious and

Spiritual Life

VOICES from the FACULTY: Overcoming structural barriers to gender equality starts with ASWC

Whitman needs a culture of transparent dialogue for key decisions

ALEX BROTTColumnist

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

As reporters Kelsey Kenne-dy and Maren Schiffer made clear in their excellent April

7 article, ASWC has a serious gen-der problem. On a campus where women constitute 58 percent o! the student body, 66 percent o! the Ex-ecutive Council representatives are men. In my 10 years at Whit-man College, there has been pre-cisely one woman ASWC presi-dent. And, according to the Amer-ican Student Government Associ-ation, Whitman is not alone in this regard. Among U.S. News & World Report’s Top-50 colleges, men ac-count for more than two-thirds o! student presidents despite that fact that nearly 60 percent o! college stu-dents in the U.S. today are women.

What explains this gap i! wom-en are as suited for public of!ice by nature as men and there are no of-!icial policies that prevent their par-ticipation? Obviously, there is no hidden control room in Reid in which sexist men sit, smoking ci-gars, plotting ways to keep ASWC male. Rather, as the April 7 arti-cle suggests, there are informal net-works at work here which, through

friendships and af!iliations, end up reproducing gendered assump-tions about leadership that discour-age women from running for of!ice.

Why is this a problem? A theory o! democracy that privileges the rep-resentation o! interests alone would suggest that women aren’t necessar-ily better representatives o! wom-en’s interests than men (e.g. Rep. Cathy McMorris-Roger’s recent vote against Planned Parenthood). But a more civic Republican approach (which also has long-standing roots in the American tradition) argues that all citizens have a right and a duty to engage in formal democratic prac-tices, that we gain as human beings when we do so, and that participation in politics is good in and o! itself. In-formal mechanisms that steer wom-en away from campus politics deny them the experience o! that good – democracy in action – at Whitman.

On a practical level, Whitman women are also informally exclud-ed from the chance to get hands-on experience with political lead-ership and policy-making, and this has long-term, national implica-tions. Political scientists interest-ed in electoral gender disparity have found that, in contrast to men, wom-en are far more likely to run for pub-lic of!ice in this country i! they have previously been involved with stu-dent government. In other words, there is a real connection, for wom-en, between the experience o! po-litical leadership on campus and the choice to pursue political lead-ership on a state and national level.

This has major implications for anyone interested in addressing the basic gender inequality at the heart o! American politics. Women hold

a mere 16.4 percent o! the 535 seats in the 112th United States Congress, which represents a decline from the already paltry 18 percent that had held steady for the last three dec-ades. The U.S. is ranked 83rd o! 189 nations worldwide for total num-ber o! women in government.

I! we believe that participating in democratic politics is good in and o! itself, then clearly, when over 50 per-cent o! a nation’s population is de-nied access to public service through informal mechanisms o! exclusion, that democracy has a major prob-lem. Whitman has a fantastic oppor-tunity to make a difference in this re-gard. Simply, when you increase the number o! women in campus poli-tics, you directly increase the chances that they will someday run for of!ice.

Making these changes will not be easy precisely because the mech-anisms o! exclusion are not formal. ASWC and the Whitman student community are going to have to do some serious thinking about how to address the informal channeling o! women students away from campus politics. This no doubt will involve extensive mentoring, information campaigns and outreach to wom-en’s groups, perhaps even some form o! af!irmative action. It will de!inite-ly require creative, bold thinking.

It has been my privilege over the last 10 years to teach and know such fabulous, smart, service-orient-ed students. I exhort you all to em-brace this challenge and make Amer-ican democracy better by bringing real gender parity to ASWC. There are not many such clear-cut oppor-tunities for an entire campus to tru-ly be the change they want to see.

MORE CONTENT ON THE WEB

Additional columns can be found online at whitman-

pioneer.com.

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JoeyGottliebSophomore

A WARMER SPRING

Julia StoneFirst-year

CHANGES IN REGISTRATION SO

STUDENTS CAN GET IN TO THE CLASSES

THEY WANT

Teaghan PhillipsFirst-year

PERMANENT BADMINTON

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Natalie JamersonSophomore

OPINIONS from the STUDENT BODY What change would you like to see at Whitman next year?by KENDRA KLAG

MORE CLASSES AND MORE SPACE

WITHIN THOSE CLASSES

I’ve struggled with the introduc-tion to this column for quite some time, which is !itting

considering it’s the last piece that I’ll write for The Pioneer. Issue 13 not only marks my pending grad-uation but the end o! my four-year tenure working for the Pio.

I’ve probably composed at least !ive drafts o! this letter, and ulti-mately, I concluded that I couldn’t possibly sum up my experi-ence on the Pio in less than 600 words. What I can sum up, how-ever, are the accomplishments that I am most proud o! from my past year as Editor-in-Chief.

At the outset o! the fall semes-ter, my Co-Editor Derek Thurber and I decided to cut the paper down to only eight pages with the goal o! only printing the most relevant, well-written content. Nine months later, I can look back and say that this was one o! our better decisions.

This year, more than ever, the content o! the Pio has come to em-body its tagline, “Whitman news, delivered.” We have published a range o! in-depth, investigative ar-ticles exploring the 3-2 switch, the increase in tuition and the budget cuts being made across the board. We have also challenged ourselves to produce content that impacts not only the student body, but the college campus as a whole, for all too often students seem to over-look the fact that many o! the is-sues affecting students impact Whitman faculty and staf! as well.

In order to print high-quality, informative content, we are very much indebted to our readers who have provided us with “news tips” and suggestions for articles over the course o! the year. I encourage you all to continue letting our editors know what you want to read when we resume printing in the fall.

In shortening the print edi-tion, we have also been able to fo-cus more o! our efforts on im-proving the design o! the paper. This spring semester we pushed for not only quality news content, but quality graphics and page de-signs. I think it is safe to say that

the design o! the Pio looks as pro-fessional as it ever has, something that we hope to continue next year!

Speaking o! next year, junior Tricia Vanderbilt will be taking over the reigns as Editor-in-Chief. I am con!ident that Tricia will con-tinue to expand upon the success-es o! this past year, as she has many ideas for ways to further improve the paper. Next fall also brings with it a greater emphasis on our award-winning web site. Now that the web site is !inally up and ful-ly functioning, we hope that it will serve as another outlet for campus news, featuring content that is pub-lished more frequently through-out the week. We also hope to fo-cus on news and events coverage beyond the con!ines o! campus, and to feature stories from around Walla Walla. I, for one, can’t wait to see what next year has in store for the Pio, and will most de!initely be a regular visitor to the web site.

This column is not com-plete without a list o! those who have tirelessly worked to pro-duce the paper and those who provided us with constant guid-ance and encouragement.

I would like to thank the current Pio staff: with-out your hard work, produc-ing a paper wouldn’t be possible.

I would like to thank our Board o! Advisors comprised o! Keith Ra-ether, Bob Withycombe, Rob Ble-then, Julie Charlip, Ashley Esar-ey and Lana Brown: your guid-ance and insight have been in-valuable to our staff. I would also like to extend a special thank you to Julie Charlip who has tak-en many a late Wednesday night phone call from Derek and I.

To my fellow seniors, I wish you the best o! luck in the years to come. And to the rest o! the stu-dent body, best o! luck on your upcoming !inals and have a won-derful, well-deserved summer.

Until we meet again,

MollyILLUSTRATION BY JOHNSON

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

JEANNE MOREFIELDAssociate Professor of Politics

8MAY

052011

NUMBERS IN THE HUES Inspired by the It Gets Better

Project and its success in em-powering the LGBTQ com-

munity, redheads worldwide have taken the charge of mak-ing the world a better place for gingers. This has been hearten-ing for many gingers at Whit-man College, such as senior Derek Thurber, who explains, “It’s hard to connect with people while having red hair and freck-les. People make fun of me, and I really just need to shrug it off."

The It Gets Redder Project has many students advocating for ginger rights here at Whit-man.

“It’s no longer [political-ly correct] to make fun of eth-nic minorities like black peo-ple or Hispanics, but making fun of redheads has not been rec-ognized as a legitimate issue,” Thurber said.

“There was one time when an old woman walked up to me and called me a ‘soulless firecrotch’. She then asked, ‘Don’t you burn the crotches of all the people you sleep with?’” recalled redheaded sophomore Brett Clark. “It was perhaps the most hurtful thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Tired of hearing such stories of emotional trauma experienced by redheads everywhere, a close-knit group of friends in Scot-land started up the It Gets Red-der Project. The project hopes that by having adult gingers speak out to younger gingers (or "baby carrots" as luck might have it), awareness might spread and they might perhaps prevent en-counters such as the type Clark experienced from occurring in the future. The It Gets Redder Project envisions a world where firecrotches won't burn bridges, but rather blaze paths.

The project web site is headed with this concise mission state-ment: “Many ginger youth can't picture what their lives might be like as openly redheaded adults.

They can't imagine a future for themselves. So, let's show them what our lives are like; let's show them what the future may hold in store for them.”

In Clark’s video, entitled “Firecrotches Don’t Burn”, he ex-plains, “I don’t even ask that peo-ple recognize that I have a soul. I just want them to acknowledge that I sporadically have emo-tions, and that, sometimes when people call me names, it hurts a little.”

It is important to note that the community of gingers that have gathered around the It Gets Redder project don’t include daywalkers (redheads without freckles) as having to deal with the same struggle that gingers do. The freckles matter.

Thurber hopes, though, that the project will help gingers gain equality in their day-to-day life.

“I see a day coming when the little redheaded children and lit-tle regular children will all hold

hands and play games and be happy. I see a day coming when carrot top jokes will be a thing of the past. I see a day coming when boys and girls with red heads and freckled faces will become adults without being regarded as hav-ing dubious, if not [any], souls. I see a day coming, and boy, that day is bright. When that day comes, I’m gonna need some sunscreen.”

Despite the growing sup-port It Gets Redder has received around campus, the project still faces some opposition. The blonde community has been ral-lying to point out that they have put up with discrimination for ages because of their hair color.

Blonde sophomore Elz Hambleton has chosen to speak up on this matter. She has said that in terms of quantity of in-sults, she feels just as discrimi-nated against as her ginger coun-terparts. She notes, however, that "people don't go around say-ing I have no soul. Usually."

Exacerbating the tense sit-uation further, there exists the small community of blonde men who grow red beards.

One such man, sophomore Rick "Lambchop" Lamb, finds it difficult to remain positive about his facial hair.

"My beard has been called 'gross' and has been the sub-ject of a number of ribs. My housemate, [sophomore] Lesli Meekins, told me that my scruff would look good if it were dark, but it isn't, and it doesn't. Am I more likely to shave because of it? I feel like I should wear my fa-cial hair with pride, but I proba-bly do shave more."

Pressed with questions about this population of blonde-head-ed-red-bearded men, the It Gets Redder Project has yet to return the Backpage's e-mails.

IT GETS REDDER PROJECTRaises awareness, draws critique

Diary of a

Ginger-Hating

Whittie

Senior Derek Thurber laments his fiery-haired misfortune. His red locks, he believes, have prevented him from achieving greatness. PHOTO BY LAZAR

COMIC

ILLUSTRATION BY SONG

WORD LADDER

PITSPIESPIUSPISSPASSPASTFASTFISTGISTLISTLISPWISPWISERISERITERIFE

RAFT (RIFT WAS SUPPOSED TO COME BEFORE. WHOOPS!)WAFTWALTWILTKILTTILTTILEMILEMITEMATEKATEKITEKITT

Hey everyone,Because I made a mistake on

last week’s word ladder and I didn’t have time this weekend to pull to-gether a crossword ( … again), here’s another word ladder!

Enjoy!Adam, the Underperforming Slut

8:00 a.m. Got the last croissant before that redheaded girl in my biology class. SUCKS TO BE HER.

10:00 a.m. Some ginge in my religion class went on a rant about how he has a soul. LIKELY STORY.

12:00 p.m. There are six ginges in the dining hall right now. There goes the neighbor-hood.

1:00 p.m. Just saw a townie fall off his skateboard. He was red-headed. Correlation? Yes.

3:00 p.m. Chem lab reeks of copper. Must be that ginger work-ing at the next table.

4:30 p.m. Someone just liked a red-head on LikeALittle. They're totes high.

6:00 p.m. Saw a ginger drinking Big Red at Reid. WHAT KIND OF A WORLD DO WE LIVE IN?

9:30 p.m. Just watched "The Kids Are Alright". I'm learn-ing to love Julianne Moore, but her hair just makes it so hard ...

12:40 a.m. Still up working on a Pow-erPoint presentation for my 100-level class. I bet a bru-nette professor would've given me an extension.

ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S PUZZLE

1/3Fraction o! women who dye their hair at home and choose to become redheads

1 to 2Percent o! population with red hair

2 (maybe 3)Redheads in that photo slide-show on Whitman web site

6Number o! redheads liked on LikeALittle in the past four weeks

13Percent o! Scottish people with red hair

6 to 18Million redheads in the U.S.

20Percent more anesthesia is required to sedate redheads, according to a 2002 study

120,000Number o! hairs on the aver-age human head. Redheads have less.

"#$%&'"( $)%'*+,-*' ,. -'".

Terrify

Almost as good as a strike

Sudden flood of a river

A fine-grained, foliated, homogenous metamorphic rock

Armor worn over mail

Lots of stuff happening all at once

Make a speech

Barrel partner

Home of the Minotaur

Excellence of any kind

What 65 miles per hour is in terms of speed

Recess of a fireplace

A good place to begin

Downey’s role in Iron Man

It’s impolite to do this

What the future has in _____

2008 Maxis game

Something one might wash up on

Land of Tolkein’s pygmies

Avoid, as in responsibility

Hammerhead of tiger

The MacGuffin of the first Transformers movie

Sass

Lion-O’s nursemaid

What Sounders fans just love wearing

DID YOU KNOW?George Washington was a redhead! No wonder he wore that wig all the time ...