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8
MAY
8
2014
Seniors prepare for graduation Student looks back,
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s the school year slowly winds down, senior Whitties are becoming increasingly excited about graduation. “I have been waiting for this moment for a very long time. I can’t wait to see what the real world holds for me and for my peers. I am going to change the world!” said super-senior Alex Bates. Numerous other seniors, including biology major Yanny Crandall shared this sentiment. “I just can’t wait to experience the real world and be free to pursue my career,” said Crandall. At the neighboring Odd Fellows Home, however, seniors are far less thrilled about the prospect of graduating. Yes, there will be plenty of flower arrangements, and everyone will wear their best black (robes) to the ceremony, but the air of excitement is decidedly absent. Coordinator of Odd Fellows Home Rica Tandel even confirmed that Odd Fellows Home will no longer be serving alcohol at the post-graduation wakes. “It just felt disrespectful to our recent grads. We do hope that this will not deter residents from coming to the ceremonies,” said Tandel When asked about their postgraduation plans, senior citizens
were fairly ambivalent. “Honestly, I am sick and tired of everyone asking me about my post-grad plans, but if I have to choose I’ll probably go with cremation,” said longtime Odd Fellows Home resident Gertrude Kadinsky. “I don’t know. I just want it to be kind of mellow since I’ve been working so hard for the past four years here. I want some peace,” said fellow resident Andy Kilbourne. Newer resident Janice Smirf was less optimistic. “I feel like I haven’t really learned enough here to be prepared for post-graduation. I don’t know if all the money I spent to go to Odd Fellows was worth it— what with all of the debt I had to go into. At least I met some new people who I will never forget,” she said. Smirf graduated immediately after speaking with The Pioneer. Her final words were full of inspirational advice for newcomers to the Odd Fellows Home. With her eyes flickering shut and her heartbeat slowing down, Smirf wheezed.
EIC INTERVIEW Editor-in-Chief Shelly Le: Hey Backpage! Isn’t it about time for my interview? This my last Pio ever after all!
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“Don’t be afraid to take chances and meet new people— you only have a little time left until your life as you know it is over. Also, if you want extra painkillers, talk to Rosy on the second floor. If she graduates, then talk to Fanny.” Congratulations to the Odd Fellows Home class of 2014!
Graduation Jumble Unscramble these fun graduationrelated words!
SL: GREAT. I’m SO done! Especially because of those staffers who write their articles on production night ...*Cough cough* BP: Ha ha ha, yeah ... So Shelly, you’ve been with The Pio for all four years here. What has been your favorite Pio moment?
tle liquid courage has gone a long way to getting me to this point. That and a LOT of baking soda.
SL: You are probably thinking of when we won the Pacemaker award for prettiest nonread college newspaper website from ACP, but you’d be wrong. My favorite moment was when the News section won the coveted Pio skull at my first Pio party during Pioneer initiation week my sophomore year. I worked hard for that trophy! Changed my profile and everything.
SL: Thanks to my account dates4does&deers.com, I have a buck in my life now, and things have never been better. We’ve been on a few frolics in the woods, and I think it’s getting pretty serious. We’re thinking about taking a trip to the meadows together after graduation.
BP: Has your first Pio party experience influenced your work at The Pio and tenure as the EIC? SL: Well ... let’s just say a lit-
BP: Incredible. What are your plans after graduation?
BP: Well, that’s great to hear! Thank you for all of your hard work at The Pio all these years! SL: Thank you for finally writing your damn article!
thisnpienr evacid eslhmeos eprtsan ohsue collaoh raitbas rntekiwnog Answers: internship, advice, homeless, parents’ house, alcohol, barista, networking
Backpage: Oh gosh, yeah! I guess so. How does it feel to be finally done with The Pio?
deems class of 2014 flawless
have to say that I am very disappointed in this new generation of Whitties. When I was a freshman, things were tougher. We weren’t as spoiled as these young people. The administration didn’t care about our feelings, and there was none of this “first-year” business. We were freshmen, and we knew it! Hell, by the time they were 14, we were already 18! They were still reading “The Great Gatsby” when I was voting for the damned president! We were tough! We smoked weed illegally and we liked it better that way. We bought our booze from the liquor store. Safeway only sold beer and wine, and we had to make do. Gas was less than $3 a gallon, and minimum wage was still $8.55. We saw plays in a building covered in scaffolding. Memorial Hall was still not earthquake proof. We even had to make do with only four tennis courts—and we were grateful! You know why? Because we were built of sterner stuff, I’ll tell you what. I remember a simpler time when only 5 percent of Americans had smartphones. (Look it up; this is true.) We worried about the safety button that security introduced because so many students did not have iPhones. When we wanted to know something, we pulled out laptops out of our bags and waited for Whitman wireless to load as God intended. And we didn’t have any of your fancy computers either. MacBook Air? Please. Who could afford that? It only came out that year, for goodness sake. #prolife #notwhatImeant. And iPads? iPads were new, fancy and uncommon, and none of us thought college students would need one. Now every Tom, Dick and Harry is playing Angry Birds in class, and you know what? It makes them weak. Look what it did to Steve Jobs. I’m not saying technology made him weak, but he was alive and kicking when I was a freshman. Technology has truly become the scourge of college culture. These days, I can barely understand underclassmen. Cut me some slack. When I first came to Whitman, Facebook was still cool with the youths. Hashtags had only existed for a year, and all this speaking with hashtags business? We didn’t dream of it. And we couldn’t clean “all the things” because IT HAD NOT BEEN INVENTED YET. Adele was still a kind of computer to
Memories (slightly worn) for sale
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can’t believe it is time: time to graduate, time to move on, time to spread my wings and fly. These past four years have gone by in the blink of an eye. From the cardboard box forts of freshman year to the drunken nights lying on the floor of a grungy off-campus house, every single memory has been wonder-
ful, but alas! I am a senior and only have a few precious weeks left here. I remember the first piece of Goodwill furniture I bought, an adorable little loveseat in a green-and-black 80s Aztec print. My roommate and I went halfsies on it to cram it into our Lyman dorm room, making it the cool-
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us. When we grappled with our heartbreak, we had no soundtrack. We sucked it up in a stoic silence. “Game of Thrones” was just a book, Netflix never produced a series and Hulu had only one ad per commercial break. And what has happened to the hallowed culture of academic inquiry that used to define college life? When I was a freshman, we had to be willfully ignorant of our power and privilege on our own. We didn’t have any symposiums to “educate” us so we feel better about our inability to fully understand the intricacies of the unfair and invisible bias in our favor. And Whitman still had an education department—flourishing academics could actually learn about teaching before deciding that it would be their career. Now you can just jump right in with no training whatsoever. But even from the beginning, we were learning real things—we started Encounters with the “Odyssey”—now that’s a classic! None of this wishy-washy “Frankenstein” business. It was a trashy novel when it came out and now all the freshmen are reading it? Let’s just put “Twilight” on the syllabus, and call it good. And—to add insult to injury—now they want to take out St. Augustine? How will the incoming class understand suffering? I tell you, we had standards back then. What has this college come to? Whitman College needs to take a firmer stance toward the inherent weakness of these young people with their parties and their Netflix binges and their drinking of all things fermented and distilled. Take a lesson from the good old days! A time when we worked hard and didn’t have so many things to help us get by. This college was founded as an institution of higher learning on good old fashioned values, after all, so it must stand firm against this sea of change. If we keep going in this direction, Whitman may become some bastion of useless knowledge too abstract to have any bearing on a world that is not only changing at such a rate as to leave many of our understandings outmoded, but also increasingly disconnected from the standards of a classical liberal arts education. A world wherein an increase in esoteric knowledge only serves to further alienate its disciples from the lived experience of the modern world. And that would be unthinkable.
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est room in A-Sec. So much laughter and memories on that couch, also some minor stains. $30 OBO. And then there was the coffee table I was willed in my first off-campus house. It has a few scratches and carved right into the table are the words “Chug Life,” a motto I have chosen to live by these last two years. A truly inspirational place to set your midnight quesadillas and post-Beta party hangover cures. It supports your food, drinks and spirit. $60. All of those parties and all of those mandatory costumes have piled up over the last four years. I have tried on identities like hats: cowgirl, pirate, planet, space-pirate, lumberjack, space-lumberjack, flamingo and space-flamingo... I am so going to miss those late crazy evenings dancing and sweating the night away in a basement, feeling so wild and young. $40 for the whole collection or $5 per item. I really can’t believe it is time for me to move on. I am not ready to let go. Thank you Whitman for the best four years of my life. My experiences here have truly been priceless (unlike my nearly new biology textbook, $50 OBO).