Comments

by Chester C. Maxey
President Emeritus and Acting President, 1968

I have been present at so many turning points in Whitman History that I hesitate to say that the completion of Cordiner Hall should be recorded as such. It is true nevertheless that Cordiner Hall will enable Whitman to be an do much that was formerly impossible.

It will enable us to have assemblies of the whole student body at one time and place — a thing that has been well neigh impossible for the past forty years.

It will enable us to bring to the campus nationally outstanding speakers, performances, and activities which we never before have had room to accommodate.

It will enable us simultaneously to carry on under one roof a great variety of operations — social, educational, and promotional — something we have never had the facilities to undertake.

It will enable us to have beautiful convocations and commencements regardless of the weather.

They will enable us to collaborate with the people of Walla Walla — indeed, of all the Blue Mountain region — in the promotion of common interests and the sharing of common resources.

For these and several other reasons which might be mentioned I am willing to say that Cordiner Hall will open gateways to a richer and livelier future for Whitman College in all dimensions of intellectual, cultural, and even material concern.