As an English Writing major, I am constantly asked the question, “what are you going to do with your degree?” The answer, as I have discovered during my time in Whitworth’s honors program, is that the possibilities are far more wide-reaching than even I would have guessed as I declared my major in 2019. Eighteen-year-old literature-loving me would not have anticipated using my writing skills to interpret and communicate water law— but that’s exactly what I did throughout the fall of 2021.

HN300, or the community-based research honors seminar, is a class that divides honors students into partnerships with local community members to research and develop solutions to real-world problems. My teammate, Kaitlyn Wornath, and I were paired to work with Whitworth’s Assistant Vice President of Facilities, Christopher Eichorst. We were briefed on the existence of two wells to which Whitworth holds a legal water right— a certificate stating that we are able to pump water from the wells, rather than pay for water from the city of Spokane. Previous students had wondered if it could be profitable to sell these water rights, begin using city water, and use any surplus money to fund some initiative benefiting the student body.

Kaitlyn and I began this project as we would most others. We developed a plan, obtained a signed research proposal, and got to work. I quickly realized, though, that this project was not going to be like the research papers I’d written in English classes. The hands-on nature of the work meant that my library searching skills didn’t really come in handy. I found myself outside my realm of expertise, and for a few weeks at the beginning of the semester, I will be honest and say that I felt overwhelmed. This was the situation that so many had foretold me of: I’d get my degree in English, do great in my classes, write some banging literary analyses, and then realize that none of those skills were worth anything after graduation.

Yet, as the weeks went on and the project progressed, I found myself bringing things to my partnership that Kaitlyn, as an accounting major, did not. Kaitlyn had the skills to read through data and create graphs and SWOT analyses. I had the skills to write summaries of the data that other non-experts could meaningfully understand. I found myself acting as somewhat of a translator: Kaitlyn would explain the numbers to me, I’d paraphrase and clarify with her, then I’d write up our findings in our ever-growing final report.

One of the coolest parts of our project happened in the final two weeks of the semester when we had the opportunity to speak on a Zoom call with Seattle-based attorney Joe Rogan, an expert in water law. Rogan answered many of our questions about water rights, water trusts, and water banking, some of the most pertinent concepts affecting Whitworth’s situation. I also finally got to put my reading skills to use as he recommended we study a court case discussing Washington State University’s water rights. If you have ever attempted to read the official documentation of a court case, you will know that they are not suitable for light bedtime reading. You need to be able to parse through jargon you’re unfamiliar with (unless you’re a law student) and extract the significant takeaways.

It was during this phase of the project that I really felt like my background as an English major was helping me succeed in a field that is, at first glance, wildly unrelated. I finished the semester incredibly grateful for the chance to live into the multidisciplinary liberal arts values that make it possible for me to answer the “what are you going to do?” question with, essentially, whatever in the world I want to do.

To my readers eager for the recommendations of Whitworth’s water law experts: Kaitlyn and I concluded that Whitworth’s best course of action is to keep the water right. There is no way to legally assess the value of the right because of anti-speculation laws, and the risk of losing access to the wells is greater than the potential benefit of spending less money on city water. We informed our community partner of a potential strategy for retaining rights to the wells if Whitworth were ever threatened with relinquishment (a type of eminent domain) in the future. The Washington Department of Ecology includes a program where underutilized water rights can donate water to nearby water banks, where the water is used to benefit needy areas. Parties who register their water right in the trust system gain protection from relinquishment and can exit the trust system at any time. For now, though, we recommend that future research teams focus their work on developing campus water conservation strategies outside of the legal system.