If you've read my recent story on sexual assault reporting on the Whitman campus, you might be wondering what goes into writing an article like this. The short answer is: a lot of work. Here's a peek behind...
Note: Although both perpetrators and victims of sexual assault can be any gender, all of the people who were willing to speak to me for this article about being sexually assaulted were women who had...
Laura Curtis has been teaching piano at Whitman since 1997. She holds a master’s degree in music, instructs around 35 students per semester and is often busy from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. with lessons, rehearsals, practicing and accompanying. For this, Curtis can expect to earn a little more than $20,000 per year from Whitman.
Curtis is one of Whitman’s music teaching assistants: instructors who are hired on a per-semester or per-year contract basis to teach private lessons. Currently, students pay $300 per semester per credit of instruction, with one credit equal to a half-hour private lesson per week over the course of the semester. Music assistants receive $264 per credit they teach. The remainder of the fee covers employer related payroll costs such as social security, Medicare and worker’s compensation. An instructor with teaching 40 half-hour lessons is considered to be employed full-time by the college, and would earn a salary of $21,120 before taxes.
From 2005 to 2010, there have been a total of 43 incidents of sexual assault reported on the Whitman College campus, according to Whitman's Clery crime statistics. Of these, 31 were incidents of forcible rape. It is likely that far more rapes have actually occurred over that period, because many go unreported.
Some of these cases have made their way through Whitman's formal hearing process, and some have resulted in the college punishing the offender. Yet in the time that Detective Miguel Sanchez has been investigating rape and domestic violence cases for the Walla Walla Police Department, there hasn't been a single rape case from Whitman where criminal charges were filed.
Starting next fall, biology majors at Whitman will have a more flexible set of requirements to meet in order to receive their degrees. The changes have been made in response to rising enrollment rates at Whitman, which have saturated required biology classes and made it difficult for students to register for the courses they need to take.
Voters passed the Walla Walla School District Replacement Levy Tuesday, February 14, with 63.88 percent voting in favor. Total turnout was 8757, which represents 46.2 percent of registered voters in Walla...
With an election coming up, Walla Walla has been blanketed by campaign signs urging residents to “Vote YES for Kids". On February 14, 2012, voters will decide whether to replace the current school levy, which expires at the end of 2012, for another four years.
The line between healthy behavior and disordered eating can be razor thin. Physical fitness and healthy eating habits are presented as an ideal to aspire towards, and women in particular are bombarded with advertisements telling them that they can be perfect if they just count calories diligently and work hard to shed those last few pounds.
The Pioneer surveyed students about stress, coping behaviors, food and body image as part of the research process for our article on eating disorders. One hundred ninety-two students responded (almost...
Whitman's State of the State class, which has existed since 2005, does community research on a variety of issues affecting Washington Latinos, including political participation, immigration policy and bilingual education in Walla Walla schools.
Driving to Hacienda Ilitio is a bit of an adventure. The farm is nestled in the foothills of Mt. Cotopaxi, one of the tallest active volcanoes in the Ecuadorian Andes.
