At Merchant’s this past April I began talking with Susan Bungard, a religion professor at Walla Walla College (now Walla Walla University). At some point, Bungard off-handedly mentioned that a few years ago a reporter from the Pioneer switched spots with a reporter from the WWC Collegian for a day and they shared their experiences in articles for their respective newspapers.

Immediately, I became enthralled with the idea of a WWC: Whitman switch. I began developing elaborately grandiose visions of this switch being the event that opened the floodgates of communication between all Walla Walla college students (including Walla Walla Community College’s 13,000 students). United in our newfound commonalities we would come together to force Walla Walla to keep places that aren’t Sheri’s open past 9 p.m., force the fascist movie theater to give student discounts and greatly increase the size of our prospective dating pool while we’re at it … or something like that. …

Several weeks, phone calls and e-mails later, Tuesday, May 1, my designated switch day finally came about. My phone rang on my way out of microeconomics; editor of the Collegian Jason Friedrich’s voice came through on the other end of the line: “Hey, you wanna come over a little early and meet the president?”

As I walked into the gleaming president’s office, a tall kid with an artistic explosion of blonde hair and fantastically hip glasses stood to shake my hand

“Jason,” he said.

“And I’m Elsbeth,” I replied, shaking his hand.

I glanced over to the other man in the room, who, despite lacking a bow tie, I had wisely deduced was the president.

“John. John McVay,” said the presidential man, standing to shake my hand.

“So what do you want to do today?” asked Friedrich, pulling out printouts of Tuesday’s class offerings.

“I figured you should check out an engineering class, since you guys don’t have that sort of thing: or those sort of people, really,” said Friedrich. Along with an introductory engineering course, we also decided on a religion class on the books of Daniel and Jeremiah.

As we joined the mass of students filtering into the auditorium-like church for the weekly all-campus chapel we were handed several colored slips of paper.

Friedrich informed me that the melon-colored paper in my hand was for signing in to chapel. My apologies to the person who probably spent a long time trying to find ‘Elsbeth Otto’ in the attendance files.

“We get two skips per quarter,” added Friedrich.

“So chapel’s required, then?” I asked.

Friedrich confirmed chapel was indeed required: along with worship credits that can be acquired any night of the week at a variety of different worship events. Church on Saturday is entirely optional.

Feelings appeared to be fairly mixed in regards to required religious activity.

“There’s a lot of variety. [There’s] a different kind of worship going on every night,” said sophomore Ashley Baderus. While she applauded the school for being accommodating of busy schedules and different worship needs, she was torn on the idea of mandatory worship. “It’s a really hard subject. I do like how it’s set up, but obviously it’s not perfect.”
Chapel also brought up several other issues among students.

“First of all, teachers should be required to go if they’re going to require us to go,” said sophomore Jimmy, echoing a concern of many students.

“And second, if they want people to go to chapel, they should make it interesting. If you listen to something good, you’ll want to stay, but if not, you have no incentive to stay,” said Jimmy.

“You’re treading on delicate ground anytime you require people to do anything religious,” said Friedrich.

“But then again,” he added, “people appreciate the community time of chapel. It’s cool to see people all come together.”

It was indeed impressive to see basically the entire student body gathered in one spot. It also provided a prime opportunity see if the rumors that the WWC student body is significantly better-looking than their Whitman counterparts were true. Preliminary observations proved inconclusive.

We sat near Jillany Wellman, the fantastically hip humanities major who would be accompanying me to classes on Thursday.

The pipe organ bellowed vibrantly as students reached into their bags to turn off their cell phones and stood to sing the opening hymn. As almost two thousand voices rose up from the crowd of college students I opened my notebook to make note of the sea of sound now engulfing me.

Chapel, for the most part, was reminiscent of high school convocations, except instead of half-hearted attempts to arouse school spirit by letting some lucky kid throw a pie at The Cool Teacher Everyone Liked, the service was interspersed with worship songs and hymns; instead of someone commending the football team on putting up a good fight in the face of adversity someone talked about living a grace and mercy-full life. Other than that, there were the usual announcements about the benefit dinners and school elections.

From what I could tell, the ASWWC president seemed to be an exact clone of the funny, well-liked, hyper-involved, sandals and cargo shorts-wearing kid who has inhabited every student body president position of my academic career. I guess some things are universal.

Before the engineering class, Friedrich informed me that about a quarter of the class would be cool engineering guys who were perfectly normal and in possession of entirely adequate conversational skills. The other three-quarters of the class, he warned, would be the “stereotypical engineering guys whose social skills haven’t developed since they were three.”

I was not disappointed.

The class of about 30 students (two, maybe three of whom were girls), were presenting in groups on a prosthetic leg they were designing for a disabled Walla Walla veteran. Almost every student was there at least five minutes before class was supposed to start. During class, students avidly took notes.

After class, I followed Friedrich to the student union building to taste the food offerings of WWC. At the food stand in a cramped corner of the student union building I ordered a smoothie and a sub sandwich. Because the majority of Seventh-day Adventists are vegetarians, my “meat” choices consisted of a tofurkey and wham, which Friedrich explained basically boiled down to light and dark fake meat. The smoothie advertised something like 55,000 percent of my daily vitamin C. I have no idea if that’s healthy or not, but it tasted good and I’ll probably never have to worry about scurvy for as long as I live.

We descended into the Collegian office to consume our lunches. Not unlike the Pioneer office, an overflowing recycling bin festered in one corner while old newspaper issues were sprinkled throughout the room.

I began on my sandwich and smoothie and quickly discovered that there was a reason that, when I asked Friedrich if he was ordering a sandwich, he replied with a quick “no.” The sandwich definitely left a lot to be desired: except for mustard. Contained within just two pieces of wimpy wheat bread was enough mustard to garnish sandwiches for most of the population of College Place. “Um, yeah…” said Friedrich, half smiling as I deposited the rather extensive remnants of my mustard-saturated sandwich in the trash can. “Yeah.”

After lunch, Friedrich and I made our way to a religion class entitled “Daniel and Jeremiah.”

I introduced myself and explained my presence to the professor, Zdravko Sefanovic, who gave me a hearty nod and a packet of texts.

After some opening prayers, class began. That day’s study of Daniel, chapters four and five, was not much different than when my Core class discussed Job, or “The Odyssey” for that matter. We analyzed pride in the passages, connected pride in the book of Daniel to themes of pride throughout the Bible, and questioned the meaning and wording of various lines. Other than the fact that the students obviously had an extensive knowledge of the Bible, and some sense of the sovereignty of God was generally accepted, the class wasn’t really distinguishable from any class involving literary analysis I’ve taken at Whitman.

After class I bid Friedrich farewell and decided to compile my notes over a cinnamon roll at local vegan bakery and hang out, His Garden & Bakery. While I sat in the bakery eating my tasty cinnamon roll, I began talking with the gregarious bakery owner, Steven Binus.

“This cinnamon roll truly is amazing. I can’t believe they’re vegan,” I informed Binus, after he inquired about my dining experience.

“I know: vegan food really is delicious. I keep trying to go completely vegan. I kind of had a milkshake today, but I’m thinking after this milkshake…. Although I’ve definitely said that before. But [eating vegan] is so good for your body,” said Binus.

And so Binus, a religion and business double major at WWC who has taken some time off to travel and get the bakery up and running, sat down and began to tell me the story of the bakery and his ever-increasing love affair with vegan food.

“It’s been amazing,” said Binus in regards to his bakery experience. “This is the ministry that I do: all the profits that I’m making from it, which aren’t much yet, are being donated.”

For my last interview of the day I talked to Jimmy, a sophomore who is studying history, English and ancient Near East languages and takes a Greek class at Whitman with Dana Burgess.

While he patiently waited for me to try and transcribe his last comment in my brown notebook, Jimmy smiled and said, “So is that notebook 100 percent recycled paper?”

“Ummm, yeah,” I admitted.

“And the exotic bracelet from India?”

“I know,” I said blushing. “And I’ve got the Chacos and the hippie bag from South America and I’m an environmental studies/humanities major. I’m kind of the epitome of every Whitman stereotype. Pretty pathetic, really.”

“That’s okay. I guess I’m pretty liberal when it comes to the environment. Don’t apologize for who you are,” replied Jimmy.