Whittier College
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Whittier College is a private college in Whittier, California.
In recent years, Whittier College has become known as a locus of independent scholarship and ideological diversity among faculty and students. The student body is well known for its social diversity. As of 2003, the college boasts 1,535 enrolled students.
The liberal arts university was founded in 1887 by members of the Religious Society of Friends, who named it after Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Student athletes at Whittier College are known today as the Poets in his honor. The college is no longer affiliated with the Quakers, though it does retain some of their ceremonial traditions.
The college has four local fraternities: The Franklin Society, The Lancer Society, The Orthogonian Society (founded by Nixon), and the William Penn Society; as well as five local sororities: The Palmer Society, The Ionian Society, The Metaphonian Society, The Thalian Society, and The Athenian Society. Other long-standing campus groups include the Arturian Order of the Knights of Pendragon (A.O.K.P.) and the Sachsen Society.
Whittier College continues to exist under the shadow of Richard Nixon, who remains the most infamous and controversial alumnus.
Whittier College revisited a chapter from its past in 2002, when an electronic bugging device was found in the office of the college newspaper, the Quaker Campus. The discovery quickly made headlines on the Drudge Report, the Student Press Law Center and other media outlets due to the similarity to the illegal bugging of the Democratic National Convention in 1972 that brought down Nixon's presidency in the Watergate scandal. The source of the QC wiretap was never conclusively proven, but one strong theory suggested that disgruntled members of the student government planted the bug to spy on student journalists during the early 1990s, when ongoing political tensions between the faculty and the Orthogonian Society were reported in the newspaper.
Whittier College maintains a satellite campus for law studies in Costa Mesa, CA.
Notable Alumni
- Richard Nixon, former U.S. President
- George Allen, NFL coach
- Andrea Barber, actress
External link
- Official website (http://www.whittier.edu)
- Quaker Campus newspaper (http://www.quakercampus.com)