Tue 1 Mar 2005
The Motherhood and Apple Pie House System
Posted by admin under Anchor/Cluster Housing
Posted at 8:42 pmI really want to like the CUL Report on Anchor Housing. And, even if I can’t like it, I want to respect it. And even if I can’t respect it, I want to buy it breakfast in the morning. Yet, having read only the first sentence, I may be in trouble.
What single word best describes that sentence? As opiner on all things Eph, I should avoid knee-jerk emotionalism and snap judgments, but “pathetic” is the only word that comes to mind.
The Committee on Undergraduate Life (CUL) recommends that the College adopt and implement a new system of residential life, to be referred to in this report as The Williams House System.
“The Williams House System”? Let me break out my Newspeak Dictionary and check the capitalization rules! Why not refer to the plan as “The Motherhood and Apple Pie House System” or the “Ephraim Lodging Master Plan”? All three are about as descriptive.
Why couldn’t the CUL have had the intellectual honesty to give their proposal an accurate name, a name that would inform people? Why not use the words “cluster” or “anchor” or whatever?
There is nothing wrong with good rhetoric. The CUL has every right, indeed obligation, to use rhetoric to persuade its audience. But insipid wording serves no purpose. Does CUL believe that the readers of this report find the name “The Williams House System” useful? Does it think that students are more likely to go along with the report if it hides the central organizing principle of the plan behind content-free phrasing?
Good news: The rest of the report can only be better! [You forgot to mock the wordiness of "adopt and implement," as if one could adopt without implementing or implement without adopting. -- ed. I am trying to take the high road here.]
March 1st, 2005 at 10:25 pm
Does it think that students are more likely to go along with the report if it hides the central organizing principle of the plan behind content-free phrasing?
That’s what they’re hoping for.
I love this little self-preservation clause:
An intelligent proposal would have a self-correction clause instead: if a lot of students are transferring out of their clusters, that’s evidence of failure, and a signal that the system needs to be reevaluated. Instead, this one says, in essence: we’ll allow students some semblance of choice as long as very few of them make use of it; if a lot of students want out of their clusters, we’ll shut down the escape hatch. Ensuring the preservation of our system and our “sense of community” is more important than our stated goal of improving students’ satisfaction with their undergraduate life.
I believe the CUL deceived us when they spoke about the “escape hatch”; they never indicated that it was a mere fig-leaf which could be eliminated as soon as a lot of students start using it to leave their clusters.
A question for CUL: Won’t this just lead to informal room-trading, like in the waning period of the old house system? What measures will be taken against students who wish to choose their housing and thus trade rooms informally?
March 1st, 2005 at 11:15 pm
You ask:
Answer: In the past (or so I hear) you could update your room on the WSO facebook, so that if you switched, people could still find you. Dean Roseman has informed WSO (or so I hear) that anyone engaging in either setting up or using such a system will be put at the very end of the sophomore room draw, and if it is a senior, other measures will be taken.
A short answer to your question: Force.
March 1st, 2005 at 11:35 pm
David and Ronit-
The previous house system at Williams was also known as the “Williams House System.” This name was chosen because it had the fewest connotations of any sort while connecting to a previous Williams tradition. I’m sorry that it isn’t as descriptive as you’d like it to be, David, but that’s why it’s accompanied by a proposal
Ronit–maybe you misread the bit of the proposal that you cited, but it is exactly a “self-corrective clause.”
The previous system had formalized room trading so it’s not really a parallel.
March 1st, 2005 at 11:55 pm
Noah:
How exactly is self-corrective? Self-correction would involve recognizing student dissatisfaction and changing the system in response. This clause (and I don’t think I misread it) says that at the first sign of widespread student dissatisfaction (i.e. a high number of transfers), the system will restrict or eliminate the only way students have of escaping their dissatisfaction. This will not correct the system if it found to be problematic, but rather suppress the most visible sign (a high number of transfers) of problems.
March 1st, 2005 at 11:57 pm
my previous post is missing an ‘it’ and an ‘is’. Yes, it is.
March 2nd, 2005 at 12:45 am
Diana: You are wrong.
WSO has never supported any type of informal room trading, and has always updated the facebook based on the school’s PH data, located on the school’s UNIX system (try logging into unix and entering ‘ph davis’).
WSO previously had a much stronger WSO/plans (nothing to do with the more-or-less automated facebook), which provided the campus with online up-to-date access to the names and the rooms that were picked as the roompicking occurred. This was never around in the waning days of the house system, and was not around too long in the current free agency system (this is all due to the relative youth of the WSO organization–young compared to Octet or the Gul or the Gargoyles). WSO now posts the year and sex of roompickers to WSO/plans.
March 2nd, 2005 at 12:49 am
As a provision for possible future modifications to be made in response to possible future problems, this is self-corrective. Whether you agree with the suggested modifications or not doesn’t change the nature of the provision.
Now, Ronit, you unfortunately did misread the clause. This piece of the proposal simply describes inter-houses movement. You seem to equate such movement with “widespread student dissatisfaction” but the two are by no means synonymous. Yes, a large amount of inter-house movement might be reflective of student dissatisfaction, but it is not necessarily so. Inter-house movement is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to indicate student dissatisfaction.
You’re reading the recommendation for what *possibly* could be done in a hypothetical situation four years down the road, to be the statement of what *will* be done four years down the road.
March 2nd, 2005 at 12:56 am
How else can I evaluate the proposal? If the CUL is suggesting something should or could be done four years down the road, I take them at face value. You can’t propose something, and then say “oh, this is not what *will* happen, but what *could* happen.” Or do you not intend us to take the words in your proposal seriously?
Also, what would you consider a real sign that students are dissatisfied with their housing (if you don’t think students trying to change their housing is a good enough sign)?
March 2nd, 2005 at 1:01 am
And I’m sorry, we seem to be using “self-corrective” in two different ways. You seem to mean a mechanism that makes sure the system is effectively implemented in spite of problems. I mean a system that allows for the possibility that it is wrong, that it is not serving its objective, and that responds to problems by fixing those problems - rather than one that tries to make sure that it is implemented no matter what the problems are.
March 2nd, 2005 at 1:20 am
Noah-
As an alum that has so far ‘lurked’ in the anchor housing debate, I must say that your defense of the quote that Ronit keyed-in-on seems really pedantic. The emphasized quote sure seems to imply to me that if the ‘powers that be’ see that there is too much (what’s “excessive”, by the way?) inter-cluster movement, they’ll just shut down that option. It is not self-correcting, it’s self-restricting. It does not strike me as a way to fix any problem, but rather to just remove/transfer the symptom.
March 2nd, 2005 at 5:46 am
Noah writes:
Hmmm. I have looked for a reference to the “Williams House System” in any college document or Record article and can’t find a single one. Can you provide any examples of this “Williams tradition” in an actual document before, say, 2004?
I doubt it. The CUL itself does not use the term in its 2002 report. The Housing Office also failed to get the memo on this one.
As always, just because the term was not used during my era does not mean that it isn’t a Williams tradition, but a single citation of actual use would be interesting to see. I am more than willing to be corrected.
Also, if I were Mark Taylor, I would point out that “connotations” in a name are generally good things, not bad.