The class of 2019 moves in
Move-in day for incoming first-year students took place on August 27, with new Whitties, their parents, and staff and faculty members crisscrossing campus to help Whitman's newest students settle into their college lives. Here's a visual look at move-in day and the Class of 2019. Above: Whitman's new president, Kathleen Murray, talks to an incoming first-year and his family outside Anderson Hall.
Of the 384 first years, more than 78 percent took part in community service of some kind while in high school. Sixty-two percent attended public schools. Above: a new student settles into her room in Jewett Hall.
The new Whitman students have traveled to 55 countries, and, in their homes, they have spoken 19 other languages other than English. Above: a new first year enlists his family's help on move-in day, just outside Jewett Hall.
Among the ranks of new first-year students, Whitman welcomed a black belt in taekwondo, a Canadian national gold medalist in lacrosse, a three-time slam poetry champion and a Gates Millennium Scholar. Above: a birds-eye view of the Class of 2019 from a window in Lyman House.
Popular academic interests among the new Whitties included studio art, biology, English, environmental studies and psychology. Above: first-year Whitties get catch the elevator to their new rooms in Jewett Hall.
Around 21 percent of the incoming class are students of color, 13 percent are first-generation students and 7 percent are international students, the largest ever group in an entering class. Above: Whitman welcomes international students at International Student Orientation Day, which took place off-campus.
New students come from 17 states and 10 countries. Students from the following cities took the prize for longest trip to Walla Walla: Accra, Ghana, at 7,241 miles; Kolkata, India, at 7,405 miles; and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, at 7,670 miles. Above: Resident Directors from the Residence Life office take a walk through Prentiss Hall.
The day after students moved in, Whitman's new president, Dr. Kathleen Murray, welcomed them to the college's 134th academic year at the 2015-16 Convocation ceremony. Murray shared anecdotes of her arrival at college as a first-generation student, as well as a maxim from a mentor of hers: "Don't forget that your business here is to learn." Above: Resident Advisors for the upper-class halls offer warm cookies as a welcome to first years and their families, between Prentiss and Anderson Halls.
Associate Professor of English Scott Elliott delivered the Convocation address. Elliott's speech, titled "On Knowing the Good," took as its jumping-off point a 1907 talk by William James at Radcliffe College, in which James said "the best claim that a college education can possibly make on your respect, the best thing it can aspire to accomplish for you, is this: that it should help you to know a good man when you see him." Above: door signs welcome incoming students to their new rooms in Anderson Hall.
Elliott urged the first-year class to "turn to the work at hand of sifting the human achievements and worldviews of the ages so that you might recognize the good writ large in the human project," and to use the unique perspective of a liberal arts education to "discover[...] the good in yourself in close collaboration with your new community and in your own inimitable way." Watch the full Convocation ceremony online here. Above: Residence Life staff members reward first years' family members with a well-deserved cookie outside Anderson Hall.