According to the esteemed PEW Research Center a new study was released last Monday finding that over half of Whitman graduates are now living out of their vans. From 2008 Honda Odysseys to renovated Volkswagen buses the versatility speaks to the ingenuity and creativity of Whitman students. Crusted with an outer layer of dust and bugs, the inside of the vans are actually quite nice. Typically equipped with a bed, shelf and cabinet, these vans literally scream sophistication.

Typically coming out of majors such as geology, these alumni feel not only an emotional urge to leave all society behind, but also an intensely spiritual one. (They usually pack a guitar so that they can sing about it.)

Pursuing the American Dream through different means, these twenty-something graduates cherish the thought of wind in their tangled locks, sore muscles from spending hours ‘sending it’ on a rock wall and the sound of Neil Diamond’s “Tennessee Moon” crackling on the ancient cassette tape player. (Yes, it only plays cassettes, and yes the cassettes came directly from their parents’ collections.)

Coming from all types of upper-middle-class families, they pack up their thousand dollars worth of rock climbing gear, buy a dog, withdraw the extra thousand dollars of graduation money from their parents and kiss civilization goodbye. They evade the system. To them, the classic notion of settling down, getting a job and having a few children is merely a revolting suggestion. They survive off Rolling Rock and Ramen. Their Bible Into the Wild and Slaughterhouse Five fuel their passions. With great vivacity, they search for the meaning of life.