The seniors are graduating: time to think about the “real world” and leave the posh luxury of campus life behind. For many seniors, the hunt for a job is on…with visions of student loans and health insurance dancing in their heads. Talking to seniors, it seems as though there is worry that their progressive ideals will be compromised when trying to make money.

As senior Nathan Reiss puts it, “I know I don’t want to support the evils of the military-industrial complex, but I just got to make a buck to survive…and that may mean working for The Man.”

He is not alone in his worries. Many who are graduating feel as though most jobs available to them support the environmentally and socially destructive institutions that they were so critical of in their studies at Whitman.

Will Davidson said, “It is hard to swallow the fact that most of the easily accessible, high paying jobs for college graduates are in the most horrendous industries…for me as a geology major, I could easily get paid to work on a gas drilling rig, but shoot, but they are literally pillaging the landscape.”

This worry about jobs and their socio-environmental consequences is what leads so many Whitman seniors to take the “Graduation Pledge of Social and Environmental Responsibility.”

The pledge states: “I pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider and will try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which I work.”

As part of an annual nation-wide campaign, over one million dedicated graduating students are joining together in solidarity and signing this pledge.

Graduates who voluntarily signed the pledge have turned down jobs with which they did not feel morally comfortable and have worked to make changes once on the job. For example, they have promoted recycling at their organization, removed racist language from a training manual, worked for gender parity in high school athletics, and helped convince an employer to refuse a chemical weapons-related contract.

In a sense, the pledge operates at three levels: students making choices about their employment; schools educating about values and citizenship rather than only knowledge and skills, and the workplace and society being concerned about more than just the bottom line. The impact is immense even if only a significant minority of the one million college graduates each year sign and lives out the Pledge.

“It is easily to feel like you are alone in working for change,” said senior Johanna Withrow-Robinson, “But things like the graduation pledge alliance let you know that you are not alone in your progressive efforts…Si Se Puede!”

Seniors who sign the pledge wear a green ribbon on their gown during commencement, and the printed list of names of pledge-participants appears on the college Web site: every year, upwards of 100 Whitman seniors have taken the pledge.

Seniors will have the opportunity to sign the pledge in Reid at the Graduation Pledge Alliance table, as well as at gown pick up for commencement.