by Karlis Rokpelnis
STAFF WRITER
As I was sitting on the front steps of the UC Davis Student Living Co-op in California and sipping my cappuccino made with organic Fair Trade coffee from the Davis Food Co-Op and home made organic soy milk, filled into a recycled plastic mug covered in revolutionary slogans, I had a lot to ponder. Just before the end of fall semester the Pioneer had published an opinion piece by Lucie Dufkova (Pop That Liberal Bubble; Volume CXVIII – Issue 11), and I could not have disagreed more.
It was not the factual mistakes that troubled me. After all, I cannot expect everybody at Whitman to know that veganism and liberalism do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. I realize that not everybody wants to encounter the rather conservative Seventh Day Adventist vegans and vegetarians who live just a few minutes away by bike from the campus. Nor was I perturbed that somebody is still dwelling on the idea that Republicanism on campus is dead after seeing the Campus Republicans get together at least as good a show if not better than the one put on by the Young Democrats for the midterm elections.
Likewise, I was not truly surprised by the opinion that there is something fundamentally unchangeable in the union between a woman and a man that could be somehow threatened by extending the same legal and social rights to same-sex couples. Might not be down my alley, but I admittedly have heard that one before.
What got me was the assumption that what we see at Whitman is uber-liberalism. Coming from Eastern Europe where the “L” word still means “a proponent of the free market economy,” it has taken me quite some time to grasp the intricacies of this word, so pregnant with both positive and negative vibes and meanings. The best American meaning that I can muster would be something to the effect of somewhat lefty.
With a little stretch of my mind, I might just imagine how one could see Whitman College as an island of somewhat leftyness amidst a sea of die-hard family value conservative farm folk and small town dwellers at the frontier of Eastern Washington before the great, grassy nothingness of Idaho and Wyoming, and God-knows-what empty states found further inland from there. We do have co-ed dorms and even bathrooms, don’t we? And we manage to pull off Dragfest once a year. Plus, we do have a few hybrid cars around here.
But to proclaim this campus to be a bastion of hyper-liberalism is misleading. While raging conservatives or Republicans, or Libertarians for that matter, are few in numbers, the liberal front is not exactly overpowering. The issues that have widespread support, such as environmental protection or same-sex marriage, are far from exclusively left wing. In fact, let us recall that last autumn the British Conservative party ran for the municipal elections on a highly environmental platform, and the Log Cabin Republicans (a LGBT Republican organization) have been staunch supporters of the national and state Republican leaders and policies.
One could argue that ASWC, as the representative of the student body, would serve as an indicator of the “suffocating overdose of liberalism.” Over the last few years we have seen that assembly of the best and the brightest pass a few resolutions that could be considered liberal. ASWC has provided a starting grant for the Whitman Sweet Onion Food Co-Op, tried to ban military recruiters from Reid, and the latest effort spearheaded by ASWC was the resolution condemning extraordinary rendition- the systematic kidnapping of potentially dangerous individuals by the US government. However, to salute or decry this as the embodiment of Whitman’s suffocating liberalism would mean overlooking the very low public participation in ASWC decision-making and lack of true representation due to extremely low voter turnouts for the representative elections.
I have always thought that during the time at the university or college is when one should get involved in civil society and activism. This should then be where we see all the liberalism converge and create that overpowering liberalism that is supposed to take a conservative’s breath away. Unfortunately, many of the lefty or liberal organizations and clubs represented on campus have always had a hard time attracting a large membership. Be it the Organic Garden, Action for Animals, or Campus Greens: all are constantly suffering from lack of campus-wide participation. Also, none of the anti-war demonstrations that have taken place in Walla Walla over the last few years have seen more than four or five Whitman students there.
To return to my moment of contemplation over that cup of coffee, I was wondering what is it that makes the Whitman community accept the label of being liberal or what some call progressive. How come we are ready to settle for the word with very little action to support it? After all, what sort of intellectual challenge can this place offer if the most radical thing we do is dress up in drag once a year and perhaps attend a vegan potluck twice during our time at Whitman?
Lucie Dufkova was right in lambasting Whitman for being a bit complaisant and, may I say, living in a bubble, but to call it liberal, to paraphrase Lucie, isn’t that a bit too much? I feel that being a liberal entails a commitment that exceeds that of being pro this or that, going on hikes, and smoking a doobie on Saturday nights. This makes me wonder whether this college does not need an injection of some radical liberalism. Otherwise, many of us might just be failing to live up to who we think, and others say, we are.
