If you have a few
If you have a few spare thousand dollars lying around, you might want to participate in this auction.
On a hot July day in 1859, the great collegiate sports rivalry between Amherst College and Williams College was born in the first intercollegiate game of ”base ball” ever played. Amherst won the game, 73 to 32, and also defeated Williams in a chess match the next day.
A newspaper account of the historic event is up for auction in New York City next month. The auction copy of ”The Amherst Express Extra” extolling the contests of ”Muscle and Mind” has a presale estimate of $4,000 to $6,000, according to the catalog of the Swann Galleries for the Thursday auction.
Do Williams and Amherst still play chess matches? In any muscle/mind contest, I would certainly bet on our baseball coach over their baseball coach . . .
;-)
One of the best Eph
One of the best Eph blogs is by Aidan. In particular, his blogroll (list of other blogs that he links to) has an entire collection of “Williamsania” links including ones that I have linked to before (Mike Needham ‘04 and Daniel Drezner ‘90) and ones that I didn’t know about (Miles Klee ‘07 and Godfrey Bakuli ‘07).
One common feature of the Blogoshere is that a particular blogger will sometimes take up a particular topic and become the source on that topic, the one place you need to go to find anything and everything about it. Finley has become that source on the St. Anthony Hall controversy. The best place to start is probably with his op-ed in the Record. The key paragraph is:
One of the reasons I applied to Williams, and one of the reasons I wanted to come to Williams was precisely because this place was fraternity free. I didn’t want my social life intertwined with pledging, hazing, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and the rest of the “community values” fraternities’ offer. I embraced the College’s elimination of these pernicious organizations from campus. I am not happy to discover that I have been duped, that the College has tacitly allowed an “underground” fraternity for thirty years, negotiating with its national board over purchasing the goat room, looking happily the other way as class after class of Williams students graduated with “secret” fraternity members, making a yearly lie of our paper pledge.
Although it is not clear to me that St. Anthony Hall is currently racist, sexist or anti-Semitic (I believe that it has female, non-white and Jewish members), it is tough to argue with Finley’s main point.
He has other thoughts on the topic here and his latest posting features some great history on the fraternity, formerly known as Delta Psi.
Although my sources are not nearly as good as Finley’s, they are older, so I can report that Delta Psi (”The Saint’s House”) had non-white members more than 40 years.
Ellis Wrapup
Just to wrap up the Joseph Ellis matter from September, I’ll note:
1) Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Ellis lectured at Williams in September as part of a series on the Founding Fathers. (The original news announcements about this have disappeared from the Williams server.) Ellis was paid for his time. My problem with Ellis is that he has, for years, lied about his past to the undergraduates he teaches.
2) No one at the College would tell me what fee was paid to Ellis. Although this is a small matter, I’ll note that the easiest way to run an honest institution is to be as transparent as possible in your affairs.
3) Jack Rakove, another speaker in the same series, declined to say how much the College paid him, but suggested that a) academics don’t get much for these sorts of talks and b) Ellis probably got more than he did.
4) Other academics that I talked to suggested that a “typical” fee for something like this would be anywhere from 0 to $2,000 with really big names commanding much more.
In any event, my main concern is that Williams, by the very act of inviting Ellis to speak, honors him. The money is a secondary concern. By honoring Ellis, Williams implies that lying to undergraduates — or perhaps lying in general — is no big deal. I think that this is not a good message to send to either undergraduates or to the larger community.
Surely there was an honest and responsible scholar who could have lectured in Ellis’s place . . .
Thanks to a posting on
Thanks to a posting on Mike Needham’s blog, I have discovered Scattershot, “The Williams College Journal of American Politics and Society.”
Scattershot seeks to present ideas and opinions on these and other topics in an ideologically balanced publication. We expect you will disagree with much of what is written within – indeed, we can find little to agree on amongst ourselves – but that is the goal. This collision of different beliefs can hopefully improve dialogue and raise the level of political consciousness on campus.
The first issue looks to be chock full with good stuff, nicely presented. Although the articles are little too non-Williams-centric for purposes of this blog, the piece by Robert Henn ‘04 entitled “Fighting Words: Hate and Speech on Campuses” seems well done and relevant. He begins:
“Why can’t you faggots keep to ur [sic] god damn selves…You’re all goin [sic] to hell.” These words, sent by a first-year student via e-mail to the social director of the Queer Student Union and then forwarded to a large potion of the student body, kicked off the latest iteration in a cycle that seems to occur here at Williams once or twice a year. The cycle usually goes like this: Something happens that a minority group on campus finds particularly offensive, which leads to a strong reaction that pulls the community into the conflict. Next follows a series of belligerent newspaper editorials and a discussion forum in which a plea for better understanding and communication between campus groups gets supplanted by opposing polemical forces, one demanding protection from the injurious scourge of bigotry, and the other defending free speech and lamenting the ever-increasing imperialism of political correctness. Like any good Greek tragedy, these little melodramas always end the same way: The discussions get nowhere, a new generation of ‘leaders’ voices the same concerns that were voiced last year, general frustration abounds and finally the upcoming midterms bury the issue as everyone goes back to the rat race.
Having participated in more than one of those melodramas myself a few years ago, I can report that this cycle has been going on for at least 20 years.
Here are the blurbs on
Here are the blurbs on the two new Eph Rhodes Scholars.
Jeffrey Ishizuka is a senior at Williams College majoring in chemistry. A varsity wrestler, he has done volunteer work for children with HIV/AIDS in Honduras. Jeffrey spent his junior year at Oxford, and wants to pursue research leading to a vaccine for HIV/AIDS. He intends to do a doctorate in medical sciences at Oxford.
Emily P. Ludwig is a senior at Williams College majoring in history. In addition to her work in history, she has won distinction in genetics and immunology and was a research assistant at the Whitehead Institute. A varsity soccer player, she also played soccer at Exeter College, Oxford, where she spent her junior year. She will do the M.Phil. in social and economic history.
Given Cecil Rhodes preference for “physical vigor”, it is nice to see that both Ludwig and Ishizuka are varsity athletes. A surprising number of the other winners have no athletic activities listed in their biographies.
Two Williams students, Emily Ludwig
Two Williams students, Emily Ludwig and Jeffrey Ishizuka, just won Rhodes Scholarships. Congratulations to both.
This week’s main controversy in
This week’s main controversy in the Record concerns the existence of a “fraternity” at Williams.
Amidst growing awareness of the Lambda Chapter of St. Anthony Hall, a secret fraternity and literary society at Williams, Dean Roseman has announced the College will forego disciplinary action against students involved in an underground fraternity if members come forward and agree to adhere to College regulations.
All the descriptions that I have read about St. Anthony Hall make it seem like almost an anti-fraternity. At least I don’t remember my father talking about all the poetry slams that they had at the DKE House back in 1958.
Jacob Eiser notes in his blog:
The ones who are [in St. Anthony Hall], according to my informants (that is, not the Record) strike me less as the truly intellectual honest and more as the very deliberately and aesthetically ‘tortured,’ who ask the ‘deep questions’ and are primarily interested in projecting a particular image of angst which is immature and self-indulgent.
I don’t know if Eiser is being fair, but the main motivation for the College’s prohibition against fraternities is the conflict between “traditional” fraternities and the intellectual values that Williams holds dear. How such concerns would apply to a co-ed literary society is unclear to me. The Record reports:
Sources have confirmed that members of St. Anthony Hall generally meet once a week to share literary works and personal experiences. Unlike other fraternities, alcohol is not central to the function of St. Anthony HallÂ’s weekly meetings, they said. These meetings take place at a variety of off-campus sites, including a meeting space located in Vermont, known informally to members as “The Barn.” It is uncertain whether St. Anthony owns the Barn or is given access to it by a friend of the fraternity.
Even though this particular “fraternity” — literary society and therapy group would perhaps be a better description — seems harmless, I think that Aidan is correct when he argues that the
Trustees of Williams College are very (crystal even) clear on the position that frat membership is unacceptable. In fact, let’s quote them:
…Williams students may neither join nor participate in fraternities during their time at the College.
I think that’s clear enough. Moreover, the statement, that we all had to sign to matriculate at Williams College, goes on to clearlyenunciatee punishments for those found in violation:
The College will take disciplinary action against students who are found to be participating in such organizations. Penalties may include suspension or expulsion from the College.
I don’t see a lot of wiggle room or ambiguity here. I don’t see any “amnesty” clause. I understand that the administration is willing (wants to) downplay this whole situation, but they are really softpeddaling on an issue of vital importance, in fact, what the Trustees deemed the “central goal” of the college:
the sustenance of a community characterized by openness, academic vitality, and equality of opportunity.
I ask, can we really fudge on this? Can we jocularly joke about “the ’secret’ frat” and chuckle that funny people like Amir Wyne were asked to join, and remember those whispered stories about “the football frat” up in Vermont, and in short, ignore this. Well, I don’t think so.
[...]
The only explanation, as far as I can see, is that St. Anthony Hall members are wealthy, donors, rich alums, well connected, and have been, as long as there haven’t been “fraternities” on the campus, tacitly allowed.
[...]
cut the crap–end the frat.
Note that Finley’s whole posting is well-worth a read. I think that he overestimates the impact of wealthy alums on issues like this, unless of course someone like Herb Allen ‘62 is a former member.
UPDATE: My own advice to the members of St. Anthony Hall at Williams would be to take the deal that Dean Roseman is offering. You can still be exclusive (think Gargoyle). You can still meet in secret. You can probably still maintain a relationship with the national organization. Not taking the deal, on the other hand, would be to run a significant risk. Don’t underestimate the degree to which Williams takes its anti-fraternity position seriously. If the administration lets you (continue to) flaunt the rules, they won’t be able to stop the sorts of fraternities that don’t read poetry.
The Transcript reports on how
The Transcript reports on how “Conscience Guides Some Williams Funds.”
A group of Williams College alumni, students and professors are promoting the Williams Social Choice Fund, a growing aspect of the college’s endowment that invests both in socially responsible programs and community development.
The only Eph quoted in Daniel Shearer ‘05. I’ll try to get some more information from him. The article noted:
Last year, the trustees accepted the social choice funds under the terms that 90 percent of the money would be invested in socially screened mutual funds and the remaining 10 percent be invested in local community development — for low interest loans for organizations such as area businesses and non-profits.
[...]
Help is being given through the college’s Development Office by sending out letters to alumni, asking for donations to the Williams Social Choice Fund.
The investment policies that the College uses to in managing its endowment have been a controversy for many years, at least back to the 1980’s disputes about divestment from South Africa. For the most part, the College has tried (wisely) to shield these policies from political disputes. At some point, the College created the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) which
advises the Finance Committee of the Board of Trustees on matters pertaining to the College as a stockholder. Chaired by one of its faculty members, the Committee consists of two students, two faculty, two alumni, the Vice President for Administration, and the Provost. Student members are elected by the student body at large; faculty and alumni members are appointed by the President.
I always felt that this was a brilliant ploy for making controversies fade away. Those interested in a thoughtful analysis of the issue by two Williams students (and former ACSR members) should look here.
What’s most interesting about the story is the fact that the College is, apparently, allowing (even facilitating) alumni to donate money outside of the main alumni fund process. It has always seemed to me that the College was loath to go that route.
After all, you could run fund raising in a very different, more decentralized, way. Right now, for all practical purposes money from alumni all goes through the College administration before it gets spent on all manner of items. Imagine, instead, a world in which students (even faculty) are encouraged to raise money from alumni for projects that they care about. Students at the Record could solicit for new computers. Football players could raise funds for better equipment. And so on.
I am not certain that this would make for a better process, either in terms of total funds raised or the distribution thereof, but I have always heard that the College has no interest in such a scheme. This article is the first (tiny) evidence to the contrary that I have seen.
Sad to see that Richard
Sad to see that Richard Squires ‘53, captain of the squash and tennis teams, has passed away. Although I never met Squires, I must have looked at his picture (along with all the squash players and other athletes from years gone by) many times along the passageways of the old gymnasium. Those pictures provided, for me, one of the most powerful connections to the Williams of the past. Shades of “carpe diem” from The Dead Poet’s Society.
Of course, there is something more than a little strange about linking to the obituaries, but perhaps it is the Irish in me. (The obituaries are occasionally referred to as the “Irish Sporting Pages” — I have no idea if this is a slur (Oh no! I have violated the “community standards!”) or a compliment or something in between. I don’t know if Squires made it back for his 50th reunion last June, but I know that my own father’s 50th reunion is just over 4 years away. It makes you think.
Ben Stein spoke at Williams a few weeks ago. The Record notes that
After discussing the values his father learned at the College, Stein stressed the importance of keeping in touch with one?s parents. He discussed how he spent more and more time with his parents as they grew older. One of his most prized possessions is a fax from his father expressing his gratitude for this attention. “What really matters is how you treat those close to you,” Stein said.
Long time fans of Stein will recall his many articles in the “Ben Stein’s Diary” series — a blog before there were blogs — in the American Spectator on this theme. I could not find any of those articles on-line, but Stein hits on a similar note here.
It is that it’s just past Father’s Day. But when you love your father and he is gone, and when you have a magic moment to evoke him, to conjure him up through the eyes of those who knew him, to play a movie of him, a holograph on the carpet in the White House, where he had his happiest days, you do it.
I also spoke to former secretaries of his and statisticians who worked with him 30 years ago and are still at the White House, and it all made his absence less keen for a moment.
But that is not the real lesson: Most of the readers of this page are younger than I am. You still have your parents. Treasure them. Value them. Be with them.
The day will come, soon enough, when you, too, are begging your parents’ friends for a word of remembrance, and getting tears when the word comes.
I suspect that Squire’s family and friends know this feeling all to well. With any luck, it will be many years before I do.
Attentive readers will have noted
Attentive readers will have noted that the “quote” from Music Professor David Kechley was a parody — not of Kechley but of the claim that Williams treats exceptional-in-other-than-academic-skills students similarly. Varsity level athletes, especially, impact athletes that have the talent to make the list of “tips,” are treated completely differently from similarly talented musicians. The real Kechley notes that:
As far as the “quote” it appears to be all in fun all right except that some people actually think that the music department gets tips which in fact we do not, at least not in any form one might associate with athletics. Perhaps you know this and this “quote” is a way of making that point. However, I am not sure that it does. So what I am saying is fun is fun, but this subject is something of a sore one with me since I have a hard time justifying the double standard that now exists.
I do too. Recall President Schapiro’s claim on this point:
“We look for students with very good records who are going to contribute to life here,” Schapiro said. “But why make more of a concession for an athlete than for a great violinist? We don’t. We’re rededicating ourselves to making no greater tradeoffs for athletics than for anything else.”
Kechley, at least, failed to get the word that great violinists are treated just the same as great football players.
Again, I don’t think that President Schapiro is the bad guy here. Note his use of “rededicating.” I think (although I have no evidence for this claim) that he played a part in the recent decrease in the number of tips and that we will see a further decrease in coming years.
It is always fun to
It is always fun to see what Ephs are up to. This story features a nice description of the life of young staffers on the presidential campaigns in Iowa. Jamiyl Peters ‘02 and Jonathan Pahl ‘03 earn a brief mention:
Jamiyl Peters, 23, who had driven to Des Moines from Washington two days earlier, made his way through the smoky, crowded room. At the bar, he ran into a classmate from Williams College he hadn’t seen in over a year. “What are you doing here?” Mr. Peters asked. The friend, Jonathan Pahl, it turned out, was working for Senator Edwards in Sioux City, Iowa. “It’s good to know there is still a familiar face so far away from home,” said Mr. Peters, who until recently had worked on the Kerry campaign in Washington.
Howard Dean, of course, has the savviest internet operation of any candidate. I don’t know if any Ephs are involved.
Rachel Davis ‘06 corrected some
Rachel Davis ‘06 corrected some misconceptions that I had about financial aid and debt burdens. She writes:
I stumbled on your blog, as I’m always interested to learn what people feel about Williams. I have on comment to make on your post about tuition. You said:
It is good to know that Williams does whatever it can to ensure that low family income is no barrier to becoming an Eph. I am a little suspicious of the $1,683 figure. Don’t students from low income families end up with a lot more debt than this? I would guess that this is just the actually out-of-pocket expense and doesn’t include the value of any loans.
Actually, you’re wrong. My family is in the lowest income bracket, with my mother being an early childhood education teacher and my father being retired for medical reasons. In my case, that “$1,683 figure” is an OVERestimate. Other than the $350 I paid for books as well as miscellanious expenses like entry and rugby dues, my family paid absolutely nothing last year, depsite the fact that my financial aid bill stated that my parents’ contribution would be $400. In fact, the final statement from the bursar last year said that I had a $1400 CREDIT, due, I speculate, to the fact that the total college budget from which they calculate your and your parent’s contributions has books/personal/travel added in. There were no loans.
This year, I have a $700 loan, my parents owe nothing, and my resources were tallied as $800. I highly doubt the college will charge me anything for this year either, since that $800 will fall under the $2150 that the school budgets for books/personal/travel.
So, I am quite happy to say that your worries are unsubstantiated. For low-income bracket students like me, the college expects as little as they possibly can from us, with loans being the last monetary resource they choose to add into our financial aid assistance calculations. They do whatever possible to make sure we don’t get into trouble.
I am very glad to have been wrong about this.
Tim Layden ‘78 Article
Nice article by Tim Layden ‘78 in Sports Illustrated on Coach Farley’s retirement. Williams has, for many years, gotten good press in Sports Illustrated and it is nice to see the trend continued. Highpoints included:
In response to these defeats, Farley took a decidedly un-Gagliardian approach: For 15 to 20 minutes a day, he lined up his first-team offense against his first-team defense and let them play football. It was the same thing he did 17 years ago. “I remember that first season like it was yesterday,” he said Friday morning, the day after making his official retirement announcement. “I asked the kids, ‘What do we need to do?’ They said wanted to be challenged. We didn’t beat the s— out of them, but for a few minutes every day, we played like it was Saturday. Best against the best. Somebody said to me, ‘What if somebody gets hurt?’ I said, ‘Maybe if the right guy gets hurt, we’ll start winning.’”
These sorts of sentiments are, of course, classic football. I suspect that Cheryl “Nike Camp” Shanks would not be impressed.
“I missed a lot of birthdays and I missed a lot of funerals because I was locked in a stupid office,” Farley says. Last Saturday, when he finished his career with the win over Amherst, his daughter, Colleen (a national-class track athlete), finished her high school soccer career with a 2-0 loss in the Western Massachusetts finals. “She was in the right place. I was in the right place,” Farley said. “But we weren’t in the same place. I’ve always preached to my players that family comes first, but I haven’t lived it in my own life. Now I’m going to try to do that.”
As always with Farley, there are lessons here for all of us.
It’s funny that Farley was in his office on Friday morning, checking up on early decision recruits.
And, in related news, Music Professor David Kechley was in his office Friday morning checking up on early decision music applicants. (We all know that Williams admits great musicians just like it admits great football players.) “It’s tough,” reported Kechley, “since this year the admissions department has restricted us to just 66 ‘tips.’ In between the demands of the a cappella groups, the orchestras need for some better percussionists and some key graduations from the Jazz Band, I am quite worried. I sure hope that the admissions department comes through for us.”
;-)
Salaries
Turns out that our readers are a knowledgeable bunch when it comes to things like salaries. With reference to this post on college president salaries, a reader who (wisely!) prefers to remain anonymous sent in this information.
[Apologies for the formatting, but my HTML skills are pathetic. If any of my more technically skilled readers could fix the source for this table and send it to me, I would appreciate it.]
| Institution | Employee | 2000-1 Pay | 2001-2 Pay | 2001-2 Benefits | 2001-2 Total Compensation |
| Williams College | Morton Owen Schapiro president | $290,000 | $307,400 | $84,095 | $391,495 |
| Williams College | Winthrop M. Wassenar design consultant, theater and dance center; former director, physical plant | – | $257,436 | $59,425 | $316,861 |
| Williams College | Harry C. Payne* former president | $238,000 | $238,000 | $8,750 | $246,750 |
| Williams College | Helen Ouellette VP, administration; treasurer | $165,000 | $174,250 | $39,001 | $213,251 |
| Williams College | George R. Goethals II professor, psychology | – | $183,151 | $26,267 | $209,418 |
Several items jump out from this table.
1) Morty makes $400,000 per year (he presumably got at least a small raise for 2003-2004). Whether this is a lot of money or a little money depends on your point of view. I wonder if the large benefits package includes some measure of the housing value of that modest place on Route 2 that he has?
2) Winthrop Wassenar has done pretty well for himself. I wouldn’t have guessed that running the physical plant was that remunerative. Presumably, there is some sort of back story here. I wish that I knew more.
3) The College is still paying Hank Payne! Or, at least they were 2 years ago. Wasn’t that 2 years after he had left? Doesn’t he have, you know, another job now?
4) Note the difference between Schapiro and Payne’s ($290,000 versus $238,000) base pay. Although this might be complicated by Payne’s departure (maybe he only gets, say, 75% of his base pay as a golden parachute), it appears that the trustees have decided that Presidents are worth 25% more than they were just a couple of years ago. Or perhaps this was the amount that they needed to entice Morty away from sunny California.
5) Helen Ouellette has a nice gig.
Another reader, Ben Roth, was kind enough to send in a link to an article, from November 2000, that mentions Hank Payne’s pay windfall. The article notes:
The former president of Williams College, Harry C. Payne, topped the list with $878,222 in salary and benefits when he received a special package related to his departure from the school. His base salary was $232,550.
Hmmm. It is unclear whether Payne’s golden parachute included the hundreds of thousands that the college was still paying him in 2001-2002. Perhaps there is some double counting going on. Does anyone besides me find this all . . . troubling?
Ben also pointed out an article from the New York Times on the same survey.
Shimon Rura ‘03 sent in a link to this Chronicle of Higher Education story on the same topic. The article ends with:
“It’s not going to be good for higher education if it becomes seen, at a time when tuition is going up, that college presidencies have become a new route to being a millionaire,” says Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, in San Jose, Calif.
Even so, The Chronicle’s annual surveys of the compensation of public- and private-college leaders show that presidents have not been bashful about accepting raises, nor have boards stopped handing them out.
Again, anyone familiar with how the unholy trinity of pay consultants, peer comparisons and lackluster governance led to an explosion in executive compensation over the last 25 years should worry about these trends, both for academia as a whole and at Williams in particular. Shimon notes that “But, you know, it’s just money. Williams is too good to worry about things like that, which probably contributes to your feeling that they could cut costs quite a bit.”
It’s not really the cost that I worry about. It is the culture. Morty now makes twice as much as any other professor and, rough estimate, around 5 times more than recently tenured professors. If that doesn’t worry you, how are you going to feel when it is 4 and 10 or 10 and 25? This is precisely the sort of relative growth that CEO’s of public corporations have seen.
For the record, I’ll note (and not just because I want a job from him someday!) that, if any College President is worth $400,000, then Morty definately is.
;-)
Although the WSO Blogs have
Although the WSO Blogs have not been a roaring success, there are some interesting rants. Here is one from Chris Douglas on the notion of “community” at Williams. It is worth quoting extensively.
On many levels, death row has a more stable population than Williams College. A quarter of the largest (and most self-absorbed) demographic cycles every year and we’ve no implicit responsibility or interest in each other unless we conjure it from some specter of association (in other words, to assert that “community” springs from the idea of community begs the question).
[...]
However, the “community” that Gerald and Oren speak of extends association. They speak of a set of individuals committed to the refinement of a culture in which each is invested. Oren scolds MinCo for “dividing” the community. Gerald trumpets the “good faith” of “minority activists” attempting to mold the campus for everyone’s benefit. Setting aside- for a moment- the laughable identification of anybody on this campus as an “activist,” both imbue this bazaar of sycophants with the nobility of a cloister of monks. The college doesn’t have a mission statement, let alone a mandate to foster either social justice or enlightenment. The inevitable reduction of any campus debate to platitudes and meta-analysis is evidence enough that the uniformity, parasitism, and ultimate irrelevance of discourse at Williams College renders the phrase “campus culture” more appropriate as a pun than as a description of any legitimate entity. We thrive in a petri dish- bacteria feeding on bullshit- under the warm light of intellectual elitism and the benevolent supervision of bureaucrats. To assert that this accidental collection of individuals cradles even a feigned interest in unity or truth requires the most painstakingly maintained “Pollyanna” optimism or violent head trauma in early childhood.
Reserve your sensitivity and indignation for a real community; this one isn’t.
Say what you will about the sentiments expressed above, this kid can write.
Conveniently enough, Aidan hits just the right note in a comment to Douglas when he writes:
[A]ll communities have their dullards, their slackers, their go-getters, their smarmy pseudo-leaders, their everyday worker bees. All communities have their faults, fault lines, tensions, problems. I firmly believe it does no good to imagine an ideal community; utopias, Rev. More, are a waste of your time.
If I were better educated, I would recognize the reference to “Rev. More.” In any event, Finley is exactly correct about every community (Marine Corps, graduate school, large firm, small firm, neighborhood, soccer team parents) that I have been a part of since Williams. My experience is unlikely to be unique.
UPDATE: Aidan kindly educated me on Thomas More, “author of Utopia, was a monk before he became chancellor. I think that would be a fudge on whether he’s actually deserving of the title ‘rev,’ but the hollywood depictions (A Man for All Seasons) have certainly stressed his religious angle. ”
Here is an eye-opening article
Here is an eye-opening article on the salaries of college presidents.
A survey of college presidential salaries revealed Monday that the compensation packages given the leaders of four private universities in the 2002 fiscal year topped $800,000.
The Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual salary report also said that the top officials at 12 public schools are scheduled to earn more than $500,000 in 2003-04.
There’s no discussion of Williams or even schools like Williams. Perhaps it is rude of me, but I wonder what Morty’s salary is. Long time followers of the Williams scene will recall that there was some sort of controversy along these lines during Hank Payne’s term in office. I don’t recall the details, but would be glad to be reminded of them.
If you are a trustee, this is of course a tough topic. On the one hand, you want to be frugal and reasonable. You can’t imagine that paying the President several multiples of what you pay other tenured professors is a good thing. You also probably suspect that the ideal candidate will want and love the job so much that you shouldn’t need to pay her much more than a typical professor’s salary. After all, the military has no trouble finding highly qualified folks to command it’s battalions and battle groups while paying low salaries because the jobs themselves are so amazing and challenging and rewarding.
On the other hand, once you have decided that, say, Morty is the guy for the job, you don’t want money to be an issue. And you certainly don’t want to be a cheapskate and pay your president less than peer colleges pay their presidents. Moreover, because you are probably rich (and certainly hang out with lots of rich people) — you’re a trustee at Williams, after all! — you might have trouble how people make ends meet at professor salaries. You also know that part of the president’s job is to spend a lot of time hobknobbing with rich people, a skill that may come easier if she is rich as well.
Of course, there is a direct parallel between public corporations and their boards setting the salaries for CEO’s and other senior executives and private colleges and their trustees setting the salaries for Presidents and other senior administrators. I don’t have any magic solutions, but I would never get in a bidding war for a potential Williams president. If she didn’t recognize that Williams was a special place and that it is a very cool job to be Williams President — even if you give up the opportunity to make $200,000 more at Some Other College — then I think that this revealed preference would be reason enough to suspect that she wasn’t the right person for the job.
Link courtesy of Invisible Adjunct, a great blog if you’re interested in higher education.
Sad to see that Dick
Sad to see that Dick Farley is retiring as Williams football coach. As has been noted several times in this space, Farley is a straight-shooter who tells it like it is. (Perhaps knowing that retirement is just around the corner helps one in this regard.) Best part of the article:
“I’ve said over the years about looking out for other people, but in some ways I haven’t been a very good example in that regard,” said Farley. “For 32 years, I’ve put nothing but football and track first and foremost and everything else second with this guy, this lady and this lady,” pointing to his son Scott, wife Suzanne and daughter Colleen.
“My family was put in a bind to see my last football game or my daughter’s last soccer game,” he continued with obvious emotion in his voice. “[Colleen] doesn’t need any help when she’s a New England champion, she doesn’t need me to be there then. I don’t think she needed me to be there the other day either, but I have a little guilt complex in that regard. I told her that morning that I know she’d rather be at my football game, and I’d rather be at her soccer game.”
I suspect that there are lessons here for all of us. Partly, of course, it is a loss to Williams for Farley to retire. But the example that he sets by knowing when to bow out, by going out a winner and by realizing what is truly important in life may have as profound effect on those around him (and those of us at a distance) as his continued coaching would have had.
The article notes that “A nationwide search to find Farley’s successor will begin immediately.” Nationwide search? I have this vision of dozens of Williams staff and faculty, fanning out across the country, looking in every nook and cranny for the ideal Eph football coach.
My own preferences in a football coach are for someone 1) Smart enough to intellectually engage both his players and the larger campus community on topics of the day, 2) Likely to want to make a career out of Williams and a home out of Williamstown, 3) Aware that his players should be students first, Ephs second and football players third and 4) A good football coach.
I think that 4) is far and away the least important criteria. In many ways, an alum of the College would make for a natural fit — think of men’s basketball coach Dave Paulsen. And surely a couple of the current assistants in football (Dave Barnard?) will make for strong candidates.
In terms of Williams alum
In terms of Williams alum activities, I am a sucker for stories in local newspapers on the theme of hometown girl (boy) makes good. An example is this article on the recent success’s of Kristen Forbes ‘92. The article notes that Forbes, besides having a high speed position as a junior professor at MIT, was recently nominated to the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Besides which, you have to like someone who puts a picture of herself on an elephant on her homepage.
The article notes:
Early on she decided that the rough-and-tumble world of Wall Street was not for her. Sure, there were the private cars, the bigger paychecks and the lavish expense accounts. But something didn’t click for her there, Forbes said.
“There’s some people who thrive in that environment,” Forbes said. “But I was never very excited about helping a very wealthy company get even wealthier.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
;-)
An article in the New
An article in the New York Times entitled “Five Truths About Tuition” features a quick quote from Professor of Economics Gordon Winston,
Gordon Winston, an economist at Williams College, told Congress that poor ‘’stars” were doing well — through scholarships awarded by private colleges — but ”the good-but-not-great low-income kid, and the average, are being lost.”
You can read the full text of Winston’s Congressional testimony here, albeit poorly formatted. All of what Winston’s says is perfectly sensible stuff, although I still suspect that Williams, at least, might do a better job in controlling its costs. My favorite quote from the testimony is:
We recently did a study of the prices actually paid by Williams students, relative to their family incomes, and found that kids who come from families in the bottom national income quintile — less than $24,000 a year — pay on average just $1,683 for a year at Williams. (The sticker price was $32,470). In this, Williams is typical of those high quality schools that use need-blind admission and give full-need aid — Princeton, Harvard, Swarthmore, Yale, Amherst, Stanford, etc.
It is good to know that Williams does whatever it can to ensure that low family income is no barrier to becoming an Eph. I am a little suspicious of the $1,683 figure. Don’t students from low income families end up with a lot more debt than this? I would guess that this is just the actually out-of-pocket expense and doesn’t include the value of any loans.
Thanks to the handy Williams in the News for the reference, although I do wish that they would provide some links.
Shimon Rura ‘03 has a
Shimon Rura ‘03 has a thoughtful post on the value of research at Williams. He concludes:
On the other hand, getting papers published is not really a good measure of research relevance; it is just something possibly related that is easy to measure. This metric is also easy to manipulate by people who build the right connections. Thus I’d say publishing is commonly overrated, but one of the unique strengths of places like Williams is that a professor actively engaged in specialized research can contribute to the learning of many kinds of students, from apprentice to dilettante.
I am not so sure that the publishing process is “easy” to manipulate, but Shimon is certainly correct in his point that value of “research” at Williams should be measured by the direct impact that the research has on Williams students. An article or book that is never read by a Williams student, that generates no funding for research for a Williams student and that is not directly connected to any class taken by a Williams student should count for nothing in the tenure process.
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