Feature pg. 6
Students break down their weekly budgets and discuss the dollars and cents of off-campus living
Sports pg. 7
A concussion story: Peek into one athlete’s experience of sports injury treatment at Whitman
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PIONEER
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For a look at Chantal ‘98 and Shane Valentine’s baby food movement, visit www.whitmanpioneer.com
ISSUE 11 November 17, 2011 Whitman news since 1896
On Friday, Nov. 11, Luz Rivera, lead organizer of the Consejo Nacional Urbano Campesino, spoke to a full house about her female empowerment work in Tlaxcala. Photo by Axtell
Activist Luz Rivera urges local grassroots involvement by DY L A N T U LL Staff Reporter
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by CAITLIN H A R DEE
A&E Editor
ARCHIVE PHOTO GRAPHIC BY HENDERSHOT
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magine having the freedom to travel the world for a year with a video camera, capturing inspiring footage from a multitude of cultures along the way. For alumnus Teal Greyhavens ‘08, the dream became reality when he was awarded a Watson Fellowship to explore cinema across the globe. The film that resulted from his year on the move, “Cinema Is Everywhere,” had its North American premiere on Oct. 22 at the 2011 Austin Film Festival. The Pioneer spoke to Greyhavens over the phone on the triumphs and trials of recording his masterpiece. “It was fantastic. We were at the Austin Film Festival in the Alamo Ritz Drafthouse Cinema, which I had never been there before, and it’s just one of the greatest cinema spaces that I’ve ever been in,” said Greyhavens. “Fantastic turnout and people really seemed to love it, so it was a great experience.” Greyhavens, who graduated from Whitman with a major in rhetoric and film studies and a minor in religion, almost left the college in his first year. “When I was a freshman at Whitman, I came within inches of transferring out to go to a proper film production school because I knew that’s what I wanted to do; that’s what I loved,” said Greyhavens. “I decided to stay at Whitman because I had the sense that what was more important than being able to make a film was to be aware, to absorb, to know how to listen to people,
to perceive the world and to really hear people’s stories and integrate that into all the wide variety of things that you can learn, that I did learn, from a Whitman education. I stayed at Whitman because of wanting to not pigeonhole myself into knowing how to make a film but not having anything to say. I think that absolutely came through in making this film. There was hardly any technical expertise involved; it was mainly my ability to immerse myself in these other cultures, talk to people, learn, absorb, interact and all the kind of things that I think you get from Whitman.” That decision also panned out in the form of the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, a highly unusual grant for self-development and world exploration only available to students at a select number of colleges. “I should probably say for Whitties reading this, and Whitman being a Watson candidate school, the Watson Fellowship is not a film production grant and it’s not a grant that one seeks with, like, ‘I’m going to make a product and sort of benefit from it in a tangible way’ in mind,” said Greyhavens. “My Watson project was to explore what it means to go to the movies and what cinema means to people in cultures all over the world. As part of the proposal, I said, ‘You know what, I’m going to take a camera and see if I can capture some of what movies look and feel like everywhere.’ So I did that. It was very open-end-
ed, I didn’t have hardly any plan or contacts or anything like that, and almost everything that went into the film that became “Cinema Is Everywhere” was total serendipity. Basically I came back from the Watson and sifted through about 150 hours of footage and sort of at that point decided, ‘I think I have a film here.’ And that became kind of the next project.” Greyhavens’ travels took him through a number of cultural and political climates, including Tunisia, brimming with the tension that would eventually spark the Arab Spring. “When I was in Tunisia, I followed a young filmmaker named Karim who had a documentary that was about a taboo subject in Tunisian Muslim society. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the reactions of the people to his film really were kind of a microcosm of the willingness of people, the desire of cultures to be open and to communicate with each other. In Tunisia in particular, it was affecting because we saw that play out just this year in ways that I never imagined. It was the same response that I found to cinema—I think cinema is ultimately a form of community—and to see that take place and then evolve into what it did in Tunisia was really amazing. There were very much sort of pre-echoes, premonitions of what was to come,” said Greyhavens. A journey of such proportions without a support network naturally posed significant challenges.
ot since the Vietnam era have social grassroots movements been featured as prominently in the world media as right now, as evidenced by the coverage of Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. Activist Luz Rivera spoke to the same goal of common people leading social change on Friday, Nov. 11, using her lively and inspiring personality to talk about her own from-the-bottom movement in Tlaxcala, Mexico. Luz Rivera, lead organizer of the Consejo Nacional Urbano Campesino, and her translator and colleague Stuart Schussler are traveling to schools in the Northwest to give their lecture entitled “Sowing Struggle: Urban and Rural Social Movements in Tlaxcala, Mexico.” Through her own movement, Rivera demonstrated how social change and solidarity are both incredibly possible and important for Walla Walla and oth-
er communities around the world. Senior politics major Katie DeCramer organized the lecture with the help of the Politics Department, WEB, the Intercultural Center, Beyond Borders Club and Whitman Direct Action. DeCramer explained why she feels Rivera’s presence is important at Whitman. “We’ve all been hearing about Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring and different sort of from-the-bottom social organizing. Luz and the movement she’s involved with in Tlaxcala speak to that same goal,” she said. “I think [it is important] for Whitman students to see movements within a larger breadth, and also to see how solidarity functions between movements and different contexts can be a very valuable thing to learn.” Sophomore Allison Bolgiano, who helped translate informational flyers into Spanish and attended the lecture and dinner, spoke about Rivera’s lecture. see LUZ RIVERA, page 3
ILLUSTRATION BY BAILEY
Whitman debate moves Whitman community concerned toward gender equality about recent Koch-funded lecture see TEAL GREYHAVENS, page 4
by ROSE WOODBU RY
by EMILY LIN-JONES Staff Reporter
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he conservative-allied Charles Koch Foundation and Whitman College would not normally seem an ideal pair. However, when the foundation funded a recent lecture series, this unlikely pair was brought together, resulting in mixed opinions from the Whitman community. The Classical Liberalism Lecture Series, held on Thursday, Oct. 27, was originally funded by a private donor with the intent of bringing more conservative ideas to campus, especially in the fields of economics, politics and environmental studies. Last year Whitman’s Development Department applied for and received a grant from the Koch Foundation, using it to fund the visit of the most recent speaker in the series, Gary Liebcap, who gave a lecture entitled “The Tragedy of the Commons.” The Charles Koch foundation is one of several organizations founded by brothers Charles and David Koch, billionaire co-owners of Koch Industries who have become well known in the political sphere for their financial support of conservative and libertarian initiatives. Director of Development
Rachna Sinnott explained that funding for academic programs like the lecture series is procured on a case-by-case basis. “What we look for are funding sources whose interests match the projects that we want to do. This foundation was brought to my attention because their funding interests aligned with the type of project that this classical liberalism series is,” Sinnott said. Faculty involved in organizing the lecture series noted that there was some contention around the decision to accept Koch Foundation funding originally. They have since recommended to the Development office not to re-apply for a Koch grant. “We’re all pretty comfortable accepting funds as long as there aren’t undesirable strings attached. When we accepted [the Koch grant], there were no undesirable strings attached,” said Associate Professor of Economics Jan Crouter. Miles C. Moore Professor of Political Science Phil Brick agreed. “The question is, when you take money from a foundation, to what extent are you endorsing that foundation and to what extent are you simply taking the money and doing what you want with it? The way we always see things here is that we want to take money
from foundations and we want to do what we want to do,” he said. Brick also noted that faculty made the decision not to re-apply for funding once they perceived the Koch foundation as overstepping its bounds. “The foundations often want reporting on how we spent their money, but what really turned us off to [the Koch foundation] was that they started wanting all sorts of other things, like student emails. They want contacts so they can recruit conservative-minded students . . . To me that really crossed the line, and it’s unethical,” he said. Senior Lecturer of Environmental Humanities Don Snow agreed that the problem in accepting the funds was not solely due to the Koch foundation’s political stance. He cautioned against oversimplifying the process of seeking out and accepting monetary donations. “If a person uses political ideology as a litmus test to judge the worthiness of the donors, that person’s potentially going to get in a position of near-paralysis in terms of actually gaining funding from sources,” Snow said. Snow added that the complications present in this case were relatively unusual. see KOCH FOUNDATION, page 3
Staff Reporter
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n the debate community, it’s not uncommon to hear derogatory terms used to describe female debaters who come across as overly aggressive. The unequal gender ratio within the activity seems to stem partly from its history as an activity practiced largely by white males and also from general sexism in society. Because of this, the Whitman Debate Team and the national debate community have started to provide more opportunities for women to gain a stronger presence in the activity. When senior debater John-Henry Heckendorn first joined the Whitman Debate Team in 2008, there were only a few women on the team. Now, in part because of efforts to promote female participation by Debate Coach and Professor of Forensics Jim Hanson, Whitman’s Parliamentary team has six women and thirteen men and the Policy team has six women and four men. While these numbers seem to be moving towards a more even ratio, the community at large is currently still dominated by men. Hanson said that there is probably a three to one ratio of male to female debaters nationally. “Women are not well-represented in debate. It’s not an equal
distribution of sexes in round or in the judging community,” junior debater Miranda Morton said. Junior debater Carly Johnson noted that sexism in debate seems to come largely from the general influence of society. “I definitely think [sexism in debate] is a real problem, but it’s not necessarily something that stems from the debate activity or community but [from] larger forces,” she said. Associate Professor of Religion and Director of the Gender Studies Program Melissa Wilcox discussed this issue. “It’s part of our society that women are expected to be accommodating; women are expected to be nice,” Wilcox said. “Men are expected to be aggressive, they’re expected to be tough, they’re expected to be go-getters . . . Therefore, when a woman is perceived as a tough, aggressive go-getter, she’s bitchy, she’s masculine, she’s a lesbian.” Morton agreed that sexism within the debate community is a reflection of a greater social problem. “I feel like it’s also in society too where, you know, there’s this group of intellectual women who don’t fit into the categories that are in our hegemonic patriarchical structure, and they become the ‘bitch’ because we have nowhere else to put them,” Morton said. see DEBATE, page 3