2008 Woodie Awards
OPINION: The 5 greatest Whitworth decisions
Trevor Hansen, Staff Writer
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It's an interesting question: What if?
What if Bill Robinson had never been hired as president?
What if Whitworth had not been founded as a religious institution?
What if chapel were still mandatory, or Forum had not been abolished or the administration had never decided to allow dancing and co-ed dorms?
In the 117 years since Whitworth was founded, it's no surprise that the school has faced many turning points, both obvious and subtle. While we can only wonder what divergent paths could have been taken at these junctures, we can look back at turning points and see the choices that were made - and how these choices shaped Whitworth into the school we know and love.
Here are the five decisions I believe had the biggest positive impact on Whitworth.
#1 The Move to Spokane
For the first 24 years of Whitworth's history, the school was located on the west side of the state: first in Sumner, Wash., then in nearby Tacoma. According to professor of history Dale Soden's book, "A Venture of Mind and Spirit," the decision to move from Tacoma was due mainly to limited space for the college to expand as well as competition from other schools in the Puget Sound area.
After the move in 1914, the college was still isolated from the city of Spokane. Spokane's public transit service stopped well south of campus, and students without access to cars had to take the college's private bus just to link up with city buses.
This isolation had an interesting side effect.
"On the Spokane campus, Whitworth students were much more isolated than they had been in Tacoma," Soden wrote. "The isolation seemed to encourage a deeper sense of family. It also fostered development of school traditions and campus events."
"Community" can be something of a hackneyed phrase here at Whitworth, but as a transfer student I can testify that the sense of belonging, camaraderie and shared-experience available to Whitworth students (and remembered by alumni) is not a common phenomenon. Had Whitworth remained in Tacoma, within walking distance of a dozen different activities and subcultures, we might be missing out on the sense of - yes - community that characterizes our school.
#2 The Pirate Mascot
Once upon a time, before Whitworth was home to The Pirates, our sports teams were referred to as "The Presbyterians," or alternately (but just as underwhelmingly) "The Preachers."
I can hardly imagine these names drawing much support.
Cheering for a church-themed mascot can go one of two ways, neither of them good: Either it reduces players to pansies ("Love thy neighbor" doesn't work well as a football slogan) or it recalls the most unpleasant sides of Christianity's history ("Go Crusaders! Slaughter them!")
In 1926, Whitworth voted to adopt an official team name, and "The Pirates" was chosen over all other choices (Thank God.)
#3 The Big Three
Whitworth's Big Three, the campus-wide prohibitions against drugs and alcohol, destructive behavior and cohabitation, was adopted in 1976. Since then, the Big Three has been met with criticism and even outcry from students.
I contend, however, that the Big Three represents one of the best aspects of Whitworth campus life. The Big Three is hardly unreasonable, and far more importantly it represents a valuable compromise between Whitworth's commitment to "whole person education" and its identity as a Christian school.
Even in its earliest days, Whitworth always placed an emphasis on allowing students to make many of their own moral choices and grow as a "whole person," rather than as automatons rigorously following a strict moral code.
Perhaps the greatest strength of the Big Three is that these rules help to create a healthy environment in which you and I can live. Any student who has spent much time at our neighboring schools - WSU, Eastern, even Gonzaga - can testify to the excesses that become evident in dorm life when such restrictions are lifted.
So while it might be nice every now and then to drink a cold beer in my dorm room, it's a privilege I'm more than happy to give up in exchange for the assurance that I won't find vomit all over the bathroom floor Sunday morning. As for cohab - well, who wants to come back to their dorm and find their roommate in the middle of a, ahem, tryst?
If students recognize the Big Three as a system put in place to protect Whitworth community, rather than to a rule designed to legislate student morality, it doesn't seem so bad. (After all, you can drink, have sex and trash your belongings off campus if you really want to).
And if you look at the rules other Christian college students put up with, well, The Big Three seems downright liberal.
#4 Ending Mandatory Chapel
Required chapel attendance was abandoned in 1970, after several decades of rising student protest. Although I consider myself a committed (and conservative) Christian, I applaud that decision and consider it one of Whitworth's best moments.
The intellectual environment here at Whitworth is such that we students are confronted with a broad range of intellectual ideas and yet are rarely condemned for our own beliefs. This openness to all ideas, not just Christian ones, is perhaps the most valuable aspect of a Whitworth education. Certainly, it is the aspect I value most.
Whitworth could not walk this fine line today if it had maintained a mandatory chapel program.
By dropping the required attendance, Whitworth is able to welcome students who believe in different gods, different intpretations of God, or even no God at all.
We as students benefit from this religious diversity of philosophies just as surely as we benefit from Christian professors who are honest in their beliefs and open to opinions other than their own.
Even more importantly, in its decision to make chapel attendance voluntary, Whitworth has allowed us as students to develop our own spiritual habits. My decision to go to church or chapel carries far greater significance, personally and spiritually, simply because it is voluntary.
#5 Hiring Bill Robinson
From his openness and approachability to his gravitas as a public speaker, from his sense of humor to his uncanny ability to remember a name, President Bill Robinson serves as a living embodiment of everything we students love about Whitworth.
We rally around him at public events, name our intramural Frisbee teams in his honor, label him with affectionate nicknames and even compare him favorably to Chuck Norris.
Under Robinson, Whitworth has flourished. Since being hired in 1993, B-Rob, as we know him, has had a hand in changes large and small: from the installation of trash cans around campus, a sanitary luxury missing prior to his hiring, to the almost 30 percent increase in enrollment between 1992 and 1995.
More important than his impact on student life or enrollment numbers, however, has been Robinson's impact on Whitworth's identity and ongoing mission.
Soden recently told me that when Robinson became Whitworth's President, he revitalized and reinvigorated the school's commitment to Whitworth's mission of the Mind and Heart and to the principles of "whole person education."
On the university Web site, Robinson writes of "the narrow ridge," a metaphor for the balance Whitworth seeks to strike between cultural relevance and the Christian faith.
"We believe passionately that our students, the Christian church and society at large need Whitworth to stay on that ridge," Robinson writes.
Trevor Hansen is an opinions columnist and a junior majoring in sociology. Contact him at trevor.hansen@whitworthian.com.
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