Many of us probably thought that fascism was at our doorstep after the election of Donald Trump in November of 2024, but it is much less likely that you’d expect our colleges and universities to so quickly cave into fascism. Look no further than Whitman College, which is slowly shifting its alignment to the Trump administration, hurting students in the process. 

A perfect example of this is the way that Whitman College has been controlling campus spaces, especially since the Trump administration took office again. Students have long had limited places to build unsupervised communities and few spots to express their thoughts and ideas. 

Recent policing of chalk on our campus sidewalks, which is an approved activity for students to partake in, is merely one example of the increasingly limited access students have to defining their own campus environment. 

As Jason Pribilsky, a faculty member at Whitman College since 2003 who also grew up in Walla Walla and attended Whitman College, explains, not all campuses feel this way. 

“I would say that comparatively with lots of other campuses – I am thinking of Reed and Pitzer off the top of my head – students at Whitman have many fewer spaces that really feel their own. We lack a student-run cafe, or student committees that decide about campus murals,” Pribilsky said. 

The college hasn’t quickly or aggressively made changes to the campus environment, but small moves have slowly shifted how students can engage with the campus. 

When students enter Reid Campus center, they are welcomed by an outside corporation that overcharges them for food. Upon heading upstairs, students are met by numerous staff who hand out policy violations and advise students into corporate careers. 

When we head to the basement to buy books for our classes, a third party runs that service as well. What about a student coffee shop, as Pribilsky noted? Or a used bookstore that works with local partners? These services would give students skills to lead their own initiatives and connect with the community in realistic ways.

Conduct and career engagement aren’t completely useless services, but they can function elsewhere and give students the chance to imagine their own spaces. Unfortunately, such moves are unlikely in our current local political climate. As the Junior-Senior housing complex nears its completion, it is only further evidence of the college’s interest in defining the college experience for students. The housing complex stands for a future where students spend their whole college career in a space created and managed by the college. 

Not only does this undermine the political and social possibilities of students, but it leaves students with few possibilities to exist in the harshness of the real world. Politics are depressing, but students need the capacity to create their own futures, especially in our current political moment. 

While moves such as certain staff in Reid Campus Center and the development of the Junior-Senior housing complex have long been tactics for the college, the Trump administration has made the college’s efforts to control space harsher and less discrete. 

Policies such as “Failure to Comply” and “Disruption of College Activities” have long been part of the Faculty Code of Conduct, but they were rarely used, and therefore loosely defined, until students began reasserting their right to influence the college campus environment. 

While the college has not introduced new policy, they have been reviewing policy all year and proposing changes to further undermine student activism. New policy is sure to follow, and with it will come new tactics for administrators and the security department to limit student speech and expression. 

Whitman College invites fascism onto our college campus when security officers take student information for nothing more than chalking “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.”

The college invites notions of fascism, not to mention ICE, when it fails to make the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism clear and correct. When the college puts students through conduct hearings that have no basis to them, the college is slowly allowing fascism to control the campus environment.  

On the bright side, the college’s overt crackdown on student activity means that we can see their intentions clearly. As fascism knocks on our door, it will be up to students to keep each other safe. Reasserting our rights to actively engage with the campus in a number of ways is central to this task.