What Makes Whitman
Students Great ?

"The quality of mind to face challenges with confidence and resolution"

While Whitman students have many characteristics I appreciate — their humor and irreverence, their ability to talk or write about the strangest things, their willingness to cooperate — what I like most about Whitman students is their courage.

My first encounter with Whitman students was through the forensics program where I had the pleasure of watching students walk into debates and competitive events against opponents from some of the largest and most prestigious colleges and universities in the country, and walk away winners. While Whitman’s research facilities have improved substantially, and support for forensics is impressive, Whitman students regularly outshine students from programs with huge libraries, huge budgets, and huge coaching staffs. I have come to expect our students to rise to the occasion when asked to match their research skills, intellectual habits, and sheer determination against other bright and articulate college students.

I suspect there are colleges and universities where intellectual courage is not essential, where students can hide, where they can keep their opinions to themselves and avoid intellectual confrontations, where “going along to get along” is the most important attribute. The Whitman students I know would be both appalled and bored if we tolerated such indifference. The Whitman students I know expect to face the challenges of demanding reading lists. They know they will need the sophistication and intellectual agility to comfortably move from Plato and Aristotle in one class to Foucault and Paglia in another. They expect to read two thousand lines of verse by Virgil for core a night, prepare a presentation for the next morning, and begin working on a paper comparing heroic aspects in The Aeneid to three other texts. They know they will have to write more pages of carefully argued prose than their peers do at most other institutions, and yet they have the courage to keep coming back for more.

If courage means having the quality of mind to face challenges with confidence and resolution, then the Whitman students I have known over the years have courage; they have the kind of courage that makes free inquiry, free speech, and a liberating education both possible and valuable.