A couple of weeks ago, I watched a film that I have wanted to see for a long time. Ever since I read "Ender’s Game" for the first time in 2005, I always wished for a film version. Blissfully engrossed in a 10-year-old’s fantasy, I sat through the movie without a care in the world.
On a recent trip to New Orleans with a few other Whitties, a concierge at a hotel made a joke that made me think. Exhausted from almost a full day of traveling, we had come to the hotel for the Associated College Press conference hosted there. Amused by our dazed appearances, the concierge laughed and said, “Y’all look like you’ve never seen a black person before.†We explained our fatigue, but over the course of the weekend, I realized that the man had a point. African Americans, especially from working-class backgrounds, are conspicuously absent at Whitman. Less than three percent of the class of 2017 are African American, and while first-generation college students are more common, they still only make up 10 percent of the class. This has a lot to do with geography, of course. From sheer historical background, Louisiana will probably always have more African Americans than Washington does. The African American population of the state of Washington is not much denser than that of Whitman, representing a little under four percent of the total population.
Those readers I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting in person should know that I proudly represent St. Paul, Minn. To those who don’t care, I hope you’ll forgive me for discussing a topic that’s quite literally close to home for me. A debate in the city council of St. Paul's twin city, Minneapolis, caught my attention this week: three city council members made a proposal to equip police officers with body cameras. The proposed measure is still in its infancy, but it’s not a bad idea. The police force in Minneapolis, of course, is wary of the idea, but it may benefit them more than they let on. Cameras would have a positive influence on police work for the police as well as the people they apprehend.
Much of this rise in voter recruitment enthusiasm stems not from the handful of Walla Walla city and county offices up for grabs this year, but from Initiative Measure 522, a bill added to the ballot this year that would require labels on some genetically modified foods. The bill resembles similar ballot initiatives proposed in California last year and Oregon in 2002, neither of which passed. A number of Whitman students have shown a strong interest in the campaign, but the bill is all but toothless. Though it has high symbolic value as a fight against Big Agro, this battle was poorly picked. Genetic modification is a losing issue for the opponents of Monsanto and its ilk, and I-522 is hardly a fight worth picking.
Sure, it gets lost and crumpled, and it kills vast swaths of forest with each year’s batch of senior theses. Sure, it costs money to print things and money to buy notebooks. And God knows we don’t need to spend any more on textbooks than we already do. But I'm hesitant to abandon the age-old tradition of chopping plants into thin sheets and scratching out symbols on them. After all, there are some distinct disadvantages to abandoning everyone’s favorite (or least favorite) bleached tree product.
Filibuster. Filibuster. It’s a fun word, isn’t it? J.K. Rowling thought so when she named a fictional brand of magical fireworks after it. It sounds so silly and happy-go-lucky. What isn’t funny is the fact that a filibuster is even more idiotic than it sounds. Chronically aimless and generally futile, filibusters do little but waste time, something the governing bodies they delay are quite good at already. While this time-suck can serve a purpose, such as preventing or delaying the passage of a bill, the filibuster as it currently stands allows for far too much abuse.
As an incoming first-year, I’ve been presented with plenty of distractions in these first few weeks, but most of them seem to be on the decline. The initial scramble for new social circles and interests has calmed down, and the first-year class as a whole seems to have had our fill of vomiting outside Jewett bathrooms for a while. But now I have to deal with a new threat to my well-being: a Netflix subscription. Why go to fraternity parties when I could catch up on “Breaking Bad?" Streaming is a blessing and a curse to the bored college student, and as the entertainment industry catches up with technology, the future of online streaming is hazy.
It seems, miraculously, that the Syria situation has calmed down — from the American perspective, at least. Bashar al-Assad, the East Mediterranean nation’s dictator, recently agreed to a plan, proposed by Russia, to hand over his nation’s chemical weapon stockpiles to the United Nations for destruction. Late last week, the Obama administration agreed to the plan. This comes in the wake of fierce debates over possible U.S. intervention in Syria, proposed by the Obama administration as a response to the revelation that Assad’s regime has extensively used chemical weapons on rebels in its two-year civil war.
