Fall, 2001 President's Letter to First Year Whitman Students, Fall 2001 We are proud we recruited and admitted you, and we are delighted you will soon be joining us at Whitman.   I’m pleased to announce that Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, will speak here at Whitman on Sunday, September 16th.  Come prepared to ask him a lot of questions!   I write to welcome you to the Whitman community, to challenge you and to share a few paragraphs of advice.  I write also to ask every one of you to help us make Whitman College an even stronger institution for learning and personal growth.   As members of the Whitman community, all of us here invite you to excel and create and grow intellectually and spiritually.  You will be challenged to learn how to learn, challenged to understand the world and the people around you, and challenged to find a positive and productive leadership role in our increasingly technological and multicultural world.   What’s the most exceptional thing you’ve done in high school?  What’s the most exceptional thing you will do at Whitman College?   Most of us live in an unnecessarily restricted circle of potential being.  We all have reservoirs of untapped energy and genius.  One of the challenges and opportunities of beginning your college years is reminding yourself that “things which matter most should never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”   Dreams, commitment and initiative all derive in part from understanding our values.  In a provocative essay titled The Other 90%, Robert K. Cooper suggests the following useful exercise: What are the five values that best describe or define who you are and what you stand for?  Choose any word or phrase to describe each value.  Jot them down.  Think of who you are when no one else is looking, how deep your roots go and how high your aspirations extend.  What words first come to your mind and heart?  What words would you want others to think of when they think of you?   . . . . Now take a moment to read the words aloud.  Do they sound like a true and distinctive reflection of who you are?  If not, find other words that are closer.          Your college years offer you a new beginning, a time to grow and align your life with your dreams.  With new beginnings we are given new opportunities to shape the person we want to become.   Cast a wide net in your first years here.  You will seldom have a better opportunity to explore the various disciplines.  No one can anticipate what specific course of study will be most helpful for you in the future nor can we predict exactly what the future holds.  Yet what we do know is that this new century will be—like the past 50 years have been—full of remarkable change.  A revolution in technology, genetics and communications is transforming society and relationships as we have known them.   You will find many role models here—some will be fellow students, some will be faculty and staff members—others will be individuals about whom you will read or study.  Make room in your life of learning for those who are idealists.  Idealists are people who are inspired by ideas greater than themselves, who are driven by a moral compass to imagine a world better than the one they found:  “Idealists care about the health and well-being of neighbors . . . . They care about the legal rights of all. . . . They care about the working poor who struggle to make their way and to preserve their families in a global economy of bewildering technological change,” writes Jim Freedman. “And they invite us, through their generosity, to be open to the possibility that what they have been for us, we might be for others. . . .”   Seek out study groups and collaborative learning situations.  Cooperation at Whitman is more important than competition.  Educators agree that most people learn more by doing things together than by racing to see who can do them better or faster.  As Donald Kennedy put it: “This new world of ours will work only when people of different backgrounds and different lines of expert knowledge find ways of collaborating on complex, difficult tasks.”  Expand your interests and skills.  This is a great time to discover new fields and try new ventures.    There is an old saying that the person with whom you will spend more time than anyone else is yourself.  Thus, you owe it to yourself to make yourself as interesting, vital, and creative as possible.  And one of the best ways to do that is to develop all your talents, move out of your comfort zone and push yourself.  “We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible,” writes Vaclav Havel, “if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality.”   Whitman is preeminently a place of opportunity—don’t underestimate the opportunities that are available to you here.  Don’t be a spectator.  As graduating seniors tell me each year, four years is a deceptively short span of time.  Make the most of every day.    Join us in our commitment to freedom of thought and freedom of expression.  This may be unsettling to some of you, yet in the long run, it will be exhilarating.  We want a hate-free, discrimination-free and harassment-free campus, yet all of us have to strive for the courage to face ideas we may regard as wrongheaded, unpopular or even stupid.  A first-rate college is preeminently an open forum—open to the broadest possible range of values and views.  Thomas Jefferson once said of the academy that “error is to be tolerated so long as reason is free to combat it.”   Law Professor Benno Schmidt made the case for encouraging a robust reading of the First Amendment this way, and I quote him because this perspective is essential to a place of learning:   Freedom of thought, like the most valuable lesson of life, is not easy to embrace.  It is, indeed, the effort of a lifetime.  It requires a willingness to take the long view, the courage to confront the unthinkable without losing one’s composure, and a willingness to trust that reason and good, if free to play their part, can overcome evil and insanity. . . .   Because ideas live, because imagination is the key to wisdom, John Stuart Mill was surely right to contend that if we give in to the urge to suppress that which is error—even very offensive and dangerous error—we lose a benefit as great as truth itself, namely “the clear perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” Much expression that is free may deserve our contempt.  We may well be moved to exercise our own freedom to counter it.   Indeed, Martin Luther King, Jr. aptly noted that “he who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”  We celebrate open expression, a robust exchange of ideas, and a continuous search for truth.  These are fundamental principles of the academy.   Diversify your friendships. Befriend those of different backgrounds and interests.  We celebrate diversity of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, experience, talents, and economic circumstances.  Not only is it the just thing to do but it provides all of us a chance to experience new values and richer ways of learning.   Remember to look for the light inside other people.  If at first you cannot see it, look deeper.  It’s there.  Among the most admirable qualities of the human spirit is the courage to trust in others.   Be aware of the impact you have on other people.  “The distinctive thing about our dealings with other human beings,” John W. Gardner writes, “is that we not only react to our environment in some measure—we create our environment!”  The person who craves a quarrel creates circumstances in which a quarrel is inevitable.  Help us to make this as healthy, collaborative and nurturing a community as possible.  Accept your missteps not as failures or even setbacks but as opportunities for learning and growth.  I’ve found that I respect those who, regardless of age or circumstances, remain open to self-improvement.   You will meet faculty and even some students here who are smarter than you.  You will earn an occasional grade that is lower than what you have routinely earned.  Such events will be a first for some of you.  And it isn’t always easy to function in a place where you can’t win every intellectual argument.   Don’t be shaken by momentary setbacks.  Ask for help and exploit our splendid network of academic and residential advisers, counselors and other mentors.  You will find faculty and staff here care a lot about you.   Let me paraphrase some related advice a friend of mine once offered:  “Your world is full of technological inventions . . . .but you will never encounter a technological achievement more wonderfully intricate than your own body.  Treat it well.  Respect it and seek out help when you experience stress.  Develop habits that promote physical and emotional wellness and discipline yourself to avoid activities that are destructive of those ends.”            Help us continue to make Whitman as “green” and environmentally friendly as possible.  We have a major recycling program, a student-run organic garden, and pay attention to energy efficiencies.  Remember the bumper sticker that reads, “Ignore the environment—and it just might go away.”   You’ll find an enormous number of courses, sports, cultural groups and related activities here.  Be careful not to take on too much.  Set reasonable expectations, and remember the wise advice from Wendell Berry: “We can make ourselves whole only by accepting our partiality, by living within our limits, by being human—not by trying to be gods.”   You will enjoy greater freedom here than you have doubtless enjoyed.  But with freedom comes responsibility.  Respect your fellow students.  Indeed, respect people.  Remember the old saying that “when you betray somebody, you also betray yourself.”    Carefully read the policies of the College as provided in the Student Handbook, often called the “Look Book.”  If you are bright enough to be admitted to Whitman, you know that alcohol and drug abuse ruins lives.  Please know, too, that both the College and most students here have zero tolerance for those who engage in irresponsible sexual conduct.  If you are unwilling to live responsibly and respect the rights of your fellow students then we do not want you here. Over the years, Whitman College has educated students who have gone on to distinguished service in many influential fields.  The longest serving U.S. Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas, was one of our nations most ardent and tireless defenders of the Bill of Rights.  Nobel Prize Winning Physicist, Walter Brattain, was a co-inventor of the transistor.  VoiceStream and Western Wireless Founder and Chairman, John Stanton, is one of today’s leading entrepreneurs in the telecommunications industry.  Santa Barbara Mayor Harriet Miller has been a remarkable civic leader.  Margie Boule is a prize-winning columnist for the Oregonian and Craig Lesley is one of the Northwest’s most respected novelists.  U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker has recently served as ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait and currently Syria.  Thousands of other Whitman graduates serve as educators, physicians, scientists, journalists, diplomats and civic and business professionals.   What these Whitman alumni all have had in common is a passion to improve things, invent things and make life better.  Some people see things as they are and wonder why, others such as Robert Kennedy “dream of things that never were and say ‘why not?’ ”   Please don’t underestimate the indispensable role your parents and many of your grandparents have played in raising you.  Thank them regularly and stay in contact with them.  They love you and they will miss you—and more than you may ever appreciate, this will be as much a defining time of transition for them as for you.   We are an imperfect institution yet you will, I trust, be pleased at how many staff, faculty and fellow students will try hard to make you feel at home here.    Please come by and introduce yourself to me or stop me on campus to tell me about yourself and your experiences at Whitman. Sincerely,  Thomas E. Cronin  President, Whitman College     P.S.  Be sure to finish reading Jared Diamond’s prizewinning Guns, Germs, and Steel.  You’ll be in discussions about it with fellow students on Saturday afternoon, August 25 (3:30 to 5:00).  Author Jared Diamond will be at Whitman College on Sunday, September 16th for an evening talk and discussion of his book (Cordiner Hall, 7:00 pm).   P.S.S.  I’ve enclosed a copy of our Admission’s Office newly revised Viewbook for prospective students.  Please look through it and then pass it on to a friend who might be interested in Whitman.    Also, I’ve enclosed a list of advice current and former students pass along for your consideration.   Back to the President's Homepage