We’re fortunate: our place is endlessly fascinating.
Pásx̣apa—the place of the balsamroot sunflowers—has been the home of the Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Umatilla peoples since time immemorial and continues to be their homelands to this day as a result of the Treaty of 1855 which was negotiated very close to campus.
The Walla Walla Valley, home of Whitman College, is complex, traditional, innovative, surprising, and lovely. It’s a place that’s proud of what we have and also aware that we need to be looking ahead to guide our future.
Whitman students nearly always find their experiences beyond campus to be informative, meaningful and memorable. They’re frequently amazed at what they are able to learn when they venture just a few blocks past Reid. Last week, in a great interview with the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Nat Lange ’24 reflected on his college-funded summer internship with our city government:
“It opened my eyes that there’s more happening in this community than Whitman (College), there’s more happening in this community than Main Street … It feels good to be a part of that. I didn’t feel as a part of that until I started working with the city, really immersing myself in what’s happening here.”
Students, this new column is designed to help grow your understanding of our place throughout your four years—allowing you to identify and pursue numerous ways “into” the Valley. (Whitman maintains hundreds of meaningful collaborative relationships with local organizations, businesses, governments, nearly all of which students can tap into.)
To accomplish this goal, every other week I will explore a part of the Walla Walla Valley—this may be an event, an initiative, a neighborhood, maybe even a community leader. We live in a place that is diverse in so many, often invisible, ways, whether we’re talking about bioregions or economic sectors or political ideologies or demographic backgrounds.
For this inaugural column, let’s consider the Walla Walla County Fair, taking place from Wednesday August 30 through Sunday September 3, about a mile and a half from campus.
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