FEATURE
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Making
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27 2013 While many students navigate the world of hook-ups or casual dating, others are signing up for lifelong commitments. Where exactly does marriage fit into campus culture?
Whitman, Walla Walla University accept personal marriage views
by Adam Brayton Feature Editor
W
hen junior Jamie Edison first came to Whitman, he had a certain preconceived idea of how college relationships worked. Both his parents had met and hit it off in college, and so did his grandparents—at Whitman, no less. There seemed to be a big difference between his expectations of Whitman and reality. “All of the married figures in my life met in college,” said Edison. “I guess I see the stereotypical Whitman student not finding a marriage partner at Whitman, but going on and getting married after school.” Whitman might not feel like a school where finding a soulmate is as common as the urban legends would have students believe. Usually Whitman students see the neighboring Walla Walla University as a school where students more commonly get married before graduating. Walla Walla University is the other private hub of tertiary education, located just a few miles away in College Place with an enrollment very close to Whitman’s, coming at 1,602 students. The biggest distinction that is often drawn is that Walla Walla University is tied to Seventh Day Adventist religion in its roots, student body and policies. The most notorious of these is the drinking policy. “At the University, we actually have a policy on drinking—we sign a piece of paper that says that we will not drink alcohol, and if anyone is caught drinking, that is grounds for
Marriage Statistics 31%
Percentage of married Whitman alumni who are married to other Whitman alumni.
getting kicked out,” said Alyssa Seibold, a Walla Walla University junior. Seibold notes that while spirituality guides the social scene at the University, not everyone fits the quiet student stereotype that Whitman students might assume. “There are people that party, and people that have chosen not to,” she said. As for marriage, Seibold has no illusions that for many students, she jokes, Walla Walla University’s initials (WWU) can stand for “Western Wedding University.” “A lot of people come here and they try to get married. Because of the community that we are in, I feel like people can find someone they are compatible with because we all come from similar backgrounds,” she said. Walla Walla Academy is one of these backgrounds, as College Place’s private Seventh Day Adventist Church. Community member Kaitlynn Vickroy went there for high school and graduated in 2006. Though she herself did not, many people from her high school matriculated to Walla Walla University. “Because it’s so close, if you went through the private school, a lot of your friends ended up going there,” she said. “A good 50 percent end up going to the University; it’s an easy transition.” According to Vickroy, the religion’s and community’s emphasis on group social activity provide a great chance for people to meet and get to know each other before making things more serious. “We’ll have vespers where we’ll meet on Friday nights. We’ll come together and you sing and you worship and you have a little talk and then you break off, and sometimes you’ll go over to somebody’s house for game night,” she said. “As far as relationships go, it’s always encouraged through being friends first, and then interest sparks from there.”
Despite this reputation, many Walla Walla University students might start their relationships in college, but will wait until after graduating to actually get married. “This isn’t back in the day Walla Walla University. Nowadays, people are focusing on their careers first and foremost and then getting married after they’ve graduated and found a stable job,” said Seibold. While it might be easy to lump all Walla Walla University students or Seventh Day Adventists into one category, even on the topic of marriage people differ. Even though both of Vickroy’s sisters married when they were 20 years old, Vickroy has not followed that same path herself. “There is no time limit for when you have to get married. You’re always encouraged to wait,” she said. “But when you get married, you get married, for better or for worse.” While Edison might see the Whitman dating scene as bleak, Vickroy believes that the lack of dating scene isn’t necessarily a Whitman affliction but something more problematic with our generation. “I feel like that sort of behavior in our generation is absent,” she said. “If you just go on a casual date, like going to coffee, it’s not a date. It’s hanging out.” While the dating scene might seem absent, that doesn’t mean people aren’t tying the knot at Whitman. There is a handful of students who are married or are engaged to be married among Whitman’s ranks. Junior Alecia Kaer is slated to marry her fiancé Matt Lindsay this coming spring break in their home state of Alaska. When they hit it off, marriage was always in the question. “We basically decided that if getting married wasn’t going to be an option, we wouldn’t be dating,” said Kaer. “We decided to make love a choice, not just a feeling.” Lindsay added that though it
Alecia Kaer ‘14 and her fiancé Matt Lindsay collaborate on their wedding invitations and planning. They are getting married over spring break. Photos by Krikava
might sound strange, it made the commitment and connection stronger. Both had had enough with relationships where people’s hearts weren’t completely there, so they took this relationship quite seriously. “You’re pretty much like, ‘will you marry me, but in the future.’ But just by doing it that way, it definitely just helps keep things going in that direction,” said Lindsay. When asked about how people react to her upcoming wedding, Kaer isn’t all that ostentatious about the whole thing. “I don’t usually go out and straight up tell people; I usually wait to see if they see my ring on my hand,” said Kaer. “This doesn’t happen very often, because people wear rings on their ring finger all the time.” There is a little bit of disbelief when they realize that Kaer is in fact getting married.
“When they do find out, they are like, ‘What? Really?’ and then their first response is always ‘Is it a Whitman student?’” Lindsay is not a Whitman student; he is on a fire crew in Alaska and doesn’t get much time off. In explaining all of this, Kaer doesn’t feel so much like she is judged for her unusual decision, but anxiety does set in. “I don’t think I feel judged, but I do feel self-conscious,” she said. “That feeling of ‘if I can’t figure out how to tackle my homework, how can I figure out how to get married?’” Even though each school has its own norm, when it comes to finding a soulmate, it seems to be an individual-by-individual incidence. Whether lovers meet at church, in class or in the workplace years later, when it happens, it just feels right. “When I met Matt, I just kind of knew,” said Kaer.
Military spouses bridge distance
SOURCE: NANCY TAVELLI, ASSOCIATE DEAN OF STUDENTS
80%
The alleged urban legend percentage of Whitman students who will marry someone from Whitman. SOURCE: NANCY TAVELLI, ASSOCIATE DEAN OF STUDENTS
1,151
Current total number of Whitman alumni marriages. SOURCE: COLLEGEPROWLER, “URBAN LEGENDS”
21.5
Median age for marriage in the United States in 1960, averaged between genders. SOURCE: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
27.6
Median age for marriage in the United States in 2012, averaged between genders. SOURCE: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
by Serena Runyan Staff Reporter
M
any students make sacrifices to be in long-distance relationships when they come to school. But the distance becomes very difficult to maintain when the relationship turns into marriage, and their spouse is scheduled for deployment in military service. Senior Lea Baker is recently married to her high school sweetheart, and after three and half years of a long-distance relationship through college, is finishing her last semester in San Diego to be with her husband. This is a welcomed change to the separation they’ve worked with for a long time. Even before college, when Baker and her husband began dating in high school, they had to work over a distance, as they lived in two different towns. The two still haven’t closed the distance gap they’ve worked with for
years, and Baker’s husband is due to deploy in the upcoming months. So while her husband’s military occupation still doesn’t allow the two of them a regular day-to-day connection, she appreciates the change. “I don’t get to see him a lot, but its better than we’ve ever had,” she said. Senior Sarah Schaefer is another student married to a member of the military. After their wedding in December, she now resides outside of Seattle. She recently finished her thesis for an environmental sociology major; she plans on coming back before long. “My husband deploys in about a month, and then I’m probably going to go back to Walla Walla,” she said. Of course, keeping up a longdistance relationship is difficult, especially in college years. “I always say that people who say distance makes the makes the heart grow fonder haven’t been in a long distance relationship,” said Baker. “I
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wouldn’t wish distance on anyone.” Baker, well-known around campus for her annual letter-writing campaign for soldiers, wrote a letter to her then-boyfriend every single day. “Staying in touch, that was the most important thing,” she said. “We always took it step by step.” They worked together to maintain a healthy relationship. They communicated well, and even set apart days to bring up anything they weren’t completely happy about. Baker, after a moment’s thought, said, “I think just knowing that we would be together eventually made it worthwhile to be apart for however long we had to.” Now that she lives in San Diego, Baker has other adjustments to make for her relationship. In the face of her husband’s inconsistent schedule, she focuses on her own daily routine for grounding. “I work on my thesis, read and work out every day, and as long as I do those three things I have some sort of sanity and consistency,” she said. The transition from Whitman to a new place away from her friends hasn’t been easy. “It’s a little bit of a harder transition than I anticipated,” said Baker. “Leaving the Whitman bubble is pretty hard; everyone at Whitman is really friendly, and I’ve been struggling to find a job and do all the real life stuff.” College also provides a pretty sound social safety net and routine. “When you’re at college it’s very easy to meet a group of people quickly. Here it’s been more of a struggle to meet people,” said Baker. She now faces the responsibility of being far more independent. “Now I’m in a world where I can’t write everything down in my planner,” she said. So in the face of the new challenges that come with leaving Whitman, Baker appreciates having the company of her husband during the transition. “I’m glad I have the opportunity to do all that while he’s still here, and I have someone to kind of help me out and show me the city,” she said. Schaefer echoed Baker’s sentiments, noting the support system found at Whitman is unrivaled anywhere else. “It’s a lot harder when you’re not surrounded by 1,400 other like-
minded students trying to be your friend,” she said. “I wouldn’t say it was any different than the transition any other student goes through. I just did it at a different time.” Though both students miss Whitman life, they are happy with the decisions they made. “I’m really glad to be here, but I definitely miss Whitman,” said Baker. Whitman misses these students as well. A tough part about leaving for Baker was leaving her sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta. “As a chapter we all really miss [Lea],” said junior Olivia Bates, a fellow Theta. “But we know her choice to be gone is more of a life decision and less of a school decision, so we’re sad but we understand.” And they’ve been good about keeping touch with friends back on Whitman campus. “Theta’s been wonderful; I’ve been Skyping with my apartment mates and the girls,” said Baker. “Whitman students are very good at keeping in touch.” Rather surprisingly, neither Baker nor Schaefer found it was too much trouble to finish their senior year off campus. Baker learned of the possibility after talking to Schaefer, as they both found themselves in similar positions. “It was fairly easy to finish off campus, especially since I was already a non-traditional student,” said Schaefer, who had already transferred credits and started as a Jan-start. This was doable for both students due to their flexible schedules. Schaefer had finished most all of her classes the semester before, and Baker only had distribution requirements left. “The reason it was so doable is that all I have left is my science credits, so I’ve been taking that science class here,” said Baker. “And I’m an English major so the thesis isn’t required.” Both agreed that Whitman made the process fairly painless. “Whitman actually made it ridiculously easy; I didn’t think it’d be possible at all,” said Baker. Through the difficulties of long-distance relationships, having a partner in the military and having to leave both school and community at Whitman, Schaefer and Baker can be both happily married and able to finish their degrees.