Whitman College Pioneer - Spring 2009 Issue 12 Feature Section

FEATURES

MAY 7, 2009

WHITMAN COLLEGE PIO NEER

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Students who are very satisfied. In terms of services, they have everything on campus that they need.

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OR s: EVERYO NE KN OWS that it’s easier to every compla about it. one k The Wh in about a prob nows le it m m an camp than to d you hear u s o is no e people somet aid, or th whining about xception; how o hing ften do studen e dinin str uctive g hall, and failin t ser vices, financ g to me ial ideas the Feat for positive cha ntion any conures team nge has com ? This week, for how p iled you to brin r on cam g about positive ideas pus. We ch hope to ange ate a bu g enerzz and g iv e a to thos e of yo voice u com mitted t o creativ ely improvin g the campu s.

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FEATURES

MAY 7, 2009

Meal Plans & Dining Hall

“G etting loc al a s ma n r es t au r a nt s t y ot h e o a c ce p r colleg “ Sopho es do w t s wipes m ould b lea s t b or es should e fant a e the o s tic.” n ot h a v p e to b tion of “ T he m e t o hem h e aving fe n a meal pla ing me al plans shou n, w e r mea als r ath ld r ein ls per s or ther e sho s e t a r t e t h uld at e m es te t an gue “ I appr s t s wip he abili t y to r.” ec s wipe es .” jus t wis iate that B on ot h e r p h ther A ppéti eople in e wa s hou r s t a lways h us mor e fl for din a s local n e r wo exibili t h e “ T he k y uld be i tch e ns appr ec in pr epar ing al thy food av ia ail in my o w t e d too d o r ms “G ues t n mea able , I .” would s wipe ls . L ate need t polic y r use t he o be im is r idic meals p r o u v lo ed a li t t hat t h tle .” ey pay us a s is- - peo fo r h ow ple sho u e ve r t h ey cho ld be allowe d to ose .”

Health center “It’s well known that the health center’s great for drunk people or those who need a bed to lie in because of the flu but they really can’t help with anything beyond that.”

“Better mental health services.”

“I also think that the health center needs to be more sensitive about women’s health; I was guilt tripped about birth control, avoided when I wanted to get a pap smear, and am now generally very discouraged from using their services at all.”

“Health Center should provide more services, more often.”

WHITMAN COLLEGE PIO NEER

q UoTa t io Ns C Ly n d s e y W i l s o n & A o L L e c let h T e ea d B Bu y ch al

“I think some sort of drug and alcohol free living option should be available to students living on campus.”

“Residential Life after freshman year has few activities, and if you are not greek you may still want some that are more than study breaks.”

“I think the RAs could be better chosen... There have been a lot of potentially great RAs and a share of not such great RA people who have become RAs.”

Residential Life “There should be more ‘non-major’ humanities classes and more alternative voices classes offered—there’s a wide selection, but most of them aren’t offered every semester. Also, more should be offered during morning lecture times.”

“The school should attempt to release a two-year academic catalogue to help students plan ahead.”

“Registration needs to be changed to allow for longterm planning.”

“Trimesters would be great at a liberal arts school to give us more opportunity to take various classes.”

“I think there should be a few more specific distribution requirements; for example, a student can currently complete their requirements without ever taking a history or philosophy

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course.”

“Perhaps there should be a bit more guidance in planning classes that give a truly broad and inclusive liberal arts experience.”

“Also, I think there should be a way to balance out registration times each semester—I’ve consistently gotten late ones, and it has affected the classes I was able to take here in a potentially negative way.”

“Whitman is assuredly a liberal arts college, but there should be more classes on at least a few essential life skills, such as how to invest and balance your finances, etc.”

Registration

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“Take classes in your major that are recommended to you and that you’re interested in, but also ask your academic advisors about classes in other disciplines that you can enjoy.”

“The fact we need six credits in fine arts has been absolutely devastating…for instance, people that aren’t good in quantitative analysis are only required to take one class and they can take something that doesn’t have involve too many numbers… Even though a lot of people have Math-phobia, the beginning classes in the math department are very simple. They take the easiest math concepts from the part of math and make it even easier. So people should challenge themselves, before giving up and jumping ship.”

“I feel like from my perspective the biggest problem is even though we’re a liberal arts institution we still don’t facilitate enough inter-disciplinary studies—like in the end you end up majoring in one thing. You learn the principals of that department and everything you learn is based on that department. The departments themselves don’t interact and sometimes they are antagonists.”

“They should have cool bio classes like ‘animal behavior’ be open to bio majors. They have all these ‘non-major’ classes so non-science people can get distribution that are way cool and I’m stuck studying the protein coat on vesicles in the Golgi body when the only reason I’m a bio major is that I’m interested in animal behavior! I mean come on!”

“I’d also rather be on a quarter system rather than a semester system with three classes at a time so that there aren’t so many conflicting deadlines/tests all at once. This would help reduce stress and allow students to really focus on each project at hand. And students could also take more classes since you’d have 12 per year instead of 8, which would be exciting for Whitman students who have so many different interests.”

“It would be great if we could get the math and physics departments to collaborate. For example for differential equations, you’re learning the concrete examples of how to do the differentials in respect to some concrete physics problem and the physics goes into the derivations of what the math is. I think if the two departments collaborated it would be a great way to improve both, but mostly physics.”

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WHITMAN COLLEGE PIO NEER

FEATURES

OrientAtion oOpS Es No college can make every one of its students happy, but 87 percent of survey respondents felt that Whitman tries to come as close as possible.

According to Simi Singh, who responded to the “Freshman Year” survey, the negative parts of the first year are important aspects of the college experience.

“Going to college is supposed to be a difficult and experiential transition and a lot of the valuable experiences you gain from freshman year should come from the difficulties that you encounter socially, academically, or extra-curricularly,” Singh wrote. “The bumps in the road make for exciting and worthy learning opportunities.”

These “bumps in the road” consisted of discomfort during orientation, difficulties finding the right classes and different opinions on what dorm living should be like.

When surveyed about what specifically, if anything, they would change about orientation, 10 out of the 53 respondents listed “Playfair” as something that should be taken out, or at least changed to a different date. Playfair was a mixer on Ankeny that involved getting-toknow you games and was a required event for incoming first years.

“Playfair should be a week or two later once people have started classes and gotten a bit settled in,” wrote Katie Lei. “The way it was done this year, it was just an overload of faces and names that didn’t seem very effective.”

Stephanie Herbst wrote that it was “weird being treated like a 12-year-old on one of the first days of college.”

The “Can I kiss you?” lecture about consent in intimate situations was commented on by various students. Many either disagreed with the way the speaker delivered his message in “Can I kiss you?” or felt that it was redundant when

MAY 7, 2009

BY

Sara Levy

there had been other discussions about first-years. felt we could come to them for advice consent already.

Class selection was also cause for dis- or support. Requiring freshman to live In regard to the presentation about comfort for many first years, as they get together in small dorms in even smaller alcohol consumption that took place to choose classes only after the upper- sections ensures that everybody makes during the first week, Timothy Wilder classmen have. Many respondents felt friends,” wrote Hayley Hemphill. felt that it was “fundamentally flawed” dissatisfied with the fact that they could Some suggestions for how to make because it lacked important facts. not get into many classes that interested dorm living more comfortable were to “We are told that drinking is a choice them. arrange more section-to-section bondthat some will make—but that we Nathan Ord wrote “I wasn’t entrirely ing as well as mixers with people of the should be wary of—and are then pre- happy about my classes because for the opposite gender, and to lower the temsented with anecdotes and statistics re- most part, I felt that they were simply perature in the dorms. garding alcohol’s use. But never are the things that I needed to do, and didn’t In general, though, the survey reactual effects of heavy binge drinking want to do. This was primarily due to sponses were all specific suggestions on illustrated or explained, and it would the closure of all the classes I wanted to small changes that could be made, not seem that these talks have very little take.” condemnations of Whitman in general. positive effect on the student body, if Dorm life, however, was something Most students commented that they feel any,” Wilder wrote. that got few complaints. well taken care of.

Some of the respon“All the ResLife staff were super Peter Olson summed it up when he dents who started approachable and made wrote: “I’ve talked to friends at other school in January felt sure that we colleges, and no one has it as cushy as that they missed out we do.” on important orientation events.

Aurora Bowers gr ea t said she wished w h e t o h av e a “It w r Jan-starts had a e al l s tu n ‘ar t clu ould be and b u scramble, and d cann p l i e s s e t h e a e n t s co ’ o f s o r t s ot a Oliver Wood r t bu , n ot uld ff c ar t c f i e l o s d o e m i n l s e e g an said he felt la sse o n to o r d to p ly th d su s .” os e p of a plike he enr o tui tio y the fi “ I fe e “ Mo l l ne a e n r d l e co .” in was just r ts f u n d l i ke t h e n ce r s r t s .” “ Wh “thrown d e n t av a i l a b l e e n e e d s it to b e s r eso ma n lack in” with d e r t t h a t a r e fo r g r o m u s or e u h n g e t a r c e s b e y o co m m i t the rest M u d e u m b r e ’ t fo r m a p s of s t l t n o ud ha l l a of l cl u of the of th ng.’ T he d ‘ever y ed spir i t sa bs A

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