“When spring rolls around, it’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue,” said senior Curtis Reid.

He’s talking, of course, not about graduation, post-grad or summer plans or the crucial assignments that loom over finals week. Instead, Reid refers to one of Whitman’s most respected, time honored, traditions: the beer mile.

The Beer Mile

The beer mile is known predominantly throughout campus as the epic night before Reading Day when Whitties shed their inhibitions and their clothing (often with the help of silly costumes, group reinforcement and of course, at least four guzzled cans of liquid courage), and run around Ankeny. However, the origins of this unique event lie deep in the dusty annals of cross country history, and in the lesser known, “official” beer mile that continues to be held by the aforementioned team today.

Elias Asch, Whitman Alum ’08, holds the secret to this rich history.

“We (we being the Beer Mile Committee/Charter) claim the Whitman Beer Mile started in 1989; we do this because the event moved onto campus in 1990, but the round number just doesn’t sound as good as the one ending in ’89,” said Asch in an e-mail.

“However, before that it had become kind of a senior tradition (started by, of course, the cross country team), on the night before reading day, to go out to the Martin Field Track and do something similar to what we now do on campus during Beer Mile: drink, get naked, run around, cause general mayhem,” said Asch. The cross country team’s free-spirited shenanigans escalated, and finally initiated the change of location from the city track to the college quad.

“This event officially got out of hand when Whitman administrators were informed of the event by the Walla Walla police department: this was in 1989. It was then subtly suggested by the admins to a few of the event ringleaders that if the event were to be moved onto campus, there was a pretty good chance the Ankeny Field lights would go off, security would not bust people’s balls and no one would get, like, arrested or anything. So that’s how that happened,” said Asch.

To this day, representatives from the cross country team continue to meet with the administration prior to the big event in order to get a thumbs up and go over the general rules. This year, the job will fall to Reid.

“I was surprised when, my freshman year, [’07 alumnus]  Sam Clark was like, ‘We have our meeting with the dean about beer mile.’ I thought, ‘Really, you meet with the dean! And they say okay?!! It shows a true Whittie-ness that’s really original to Whitman College: to have this freedom,” said Reid laughingly.

The Official Beer Mile

However, under the radar of the administration, and unknown to a large portion of the student body, the “official beer mile” continues to occur. This competitive beer mile occurs either the same day or a few days before the beer mile and consists basically of members of the Whitman cross country team. In the official beer mile, the thrill of nudity is replaced with competition (usually). In two heats, men’s and women’s, the runners must chug a beer and run a lap four times consecutively, with extra laps accrued for vomiting; a stopwatch records it all, and records are maintained, broken and kept for posterity.

“There’s a lot of pride circling around the official beer mile and breaking the record,” Reid said, which, to those unfamiliar with the adrenaline rush of the race, seems typically ironic.

“It sounds pretty Whitman to me, taking something with the context of being drunk and fun and turning it into a competition,” said senior Laurel Sarfan.

The current records were set in a thrilling series of races during Reid’s freshman year of 2007. While yours truly holds the women’s, breaking the previous 11 minute record with a time of 9:20, the drama of competition surged most obviously in the men’s race. After a year of increasingly contentious shit-talking, senior alums Sam Clarke ’07 and Sam Johnson ’07 went nose to nose and guzzle to guzzle for all four laps; the tension of the win seemed impossible to placate or predict as Johnson would throw down a beer and surge ahead, only to have Clarke hastily catch him at the heels. This continued for the required four laps until, in an unprecedented show of strength and determination, Johnson dominated the last 400 meters, bringing the winning record to an astonishing time of 6:00 flat that remains untouched by current competitors to this day.