Because you have it set to that color on line 32 of your ourStyle.css.

How can I correct this then? Is there a way to code my CSS so when first arriving at the site, all the words in the menu appear in white lettering? But change to tan to reflect the page being viewed?

I like the tan color that currently the menu elements change to in order to reflect the page being viewed. I just don't like that the word "home" is shown in tan right when arriving at the site. I hope that makes sense.

Thanks!!!

Samantha, maybe you'd be happier with something besides just color change to indicate what page one is on. You could leave all the links white (keep your hover, visited active colors), but use an icon instead of color to show which page one is on.
Something like this:
Home_____About______» Contact «
(Ignore the underlines, that was just to space the words out.)
You could use any icon or image you wanted, or do a border under the link...whatever will make it obvious to users what page they're on.
You could also use an <h1> tag on each page right under the header to identify it.
"Career Outcomes for MPW gradutes", "Listing of Important Chatham Contacts", etc.

I seem to have read some place that 'visited' pages should not be made to stand out from the rest. There was some security reason for this.

Mind you, if you insist on a visited colour or some other effect, the visited css should come before hover and active.

Inger, I've come across that before, too. Since then I make the a and visited the same color/style.
Here's something:
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/03/priva … -vistited/

Yes, it was a short version of that article I had read, some years back when I was trying to make some visited css to work in Ffx.