Whitman Wire

Students learn alongside incarcerated classmates at Washington State Penitentiary

Zoe Schacter-Brodie, Feature Editor • February 2, 2023

At Whitman College, framed by exposed brick and wide open windows, students cut their teeth on abolitionist theory. A mile and a half from the center of Whitman’s campus, over 2,000 men are incarcerated...

Hunger Strike at the Washington State Penitentiary

Andrew Schwartz, Staff Reporter • May 3, 2018

Jeffrey Owen Dorman was released this March after spending roughly 30 years bouncing between Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC) facilities. On Easter Sunday, his sister prepared a big ham....

Behind Bars, in Our Backyard

Alissa Antilla, Feature Reporter • April 13, 2017

It’s easy to see prisons as an anomaly in our cute and charming Walla Walla. The state penitentiary can easily just be a set of bright lights you see while driving to the wheat fields, while the Two...

A Prison Sentence Impacts Many

Alya Bohr, Columnist • December 8, 2016

It’s not news to say that our criminal justice system is broken. The United States constitutes 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of that population are imprisoned individuals, the...

Criminal Injustice

Alya Bohr, Columnist • April 14, 2016

When we tacitly accept these beliefs as truths, when we label those convicted of crime as categorically “evil” and then avert our eyes, we are doing a great disservice to the progress of our nation.