Tue 15 Mar 2005
It does not appear that the results of the anchor housing portion of the recent election are available to non-students. Fortunately, EphBlog’s vast network of informants have provided the key data.
Do you support the “Williams House Proposal” in its current form, as outlined above?
Yes: 17%
No: 57%
Neutral: 12%
Undecided: 13%
Perhaps a better way to spin it, if you are a fan of free agency, is that fewer than 20% of the students are in favor of the CUL’s plan.
Daniel Rosensweig provides additional commentary.
[M]ore than 80% of students surveyed said they were either satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the current housing system, compared to less than 20% dissatisfied or even somewhat dissatisfied. Nearly 7 times as many students said they were “satisfied” as “dissatisfied.”
I bet that these numbers are much better than at any of our peer schools. In particular, the CUL presented zero evidence that students at Bowdoin or Middlebury — Will Dudley’s favorite examples of the direction in which Williams is heaed — are happier.
Such data is available of course. The people who run Middlebury and Bowdoin are keen to understand their students. Readers should draw their own conclusions as to why CUL failed to provide the relevant data in its report.
March 15th, 2005 at 2:58 pm
How about we don’t spin the numbers at all? That would be the most honest thing to do here.
Assuming the polling software recorded votes accurately enough to measure anything (we know that it didn’t record 100% of votes cast…I’m not sure if anyone can tell how many votes were lost at this point):
57% of the respondees don’t support the proposal. It’s a majority, but certainly not an overwhelming one. 17% of the respondees do support it. That’s a definite minority, but by no means an insignificant one. 25% of the respondees are either “undecided” or “neutral.” However, I think the most important piece of information to note while viewing this poll, is that only ~35% of the campus registered responses. It would probably be safe to assume that these non-responders generally fall much more heavily into the “neutral” and “undecided” categories than the responders do, with the rest of the vote breaking down similarly.
March 15th, 2005 at 4:04 pm
Noah - While your presentation of the numbers is fair, I would think that a natural corollary to your assumption that “non-responders generally fall much more heavily into the ‘neutral’ and ‘undecided’ categories” is that non-responders are also more likely to believe that the housing system is not broken and doesn’t require a major fix.
As for the results, while this appears strong evidence that Williams students do not, as anchor-housing advocates have sometimes said, support and oppose anchors in equal numbers, it does little to refute their other contention: that students are dissatisfied with “something about the life of the College,” and they just don’t realize that it’s the housing system.
I’m also gratified to see that many students continue to believe that institution of the 4-person group-size cap in 2002 was a mistake and that a 6-person cap is a strength of the proposed system.
March 15th, 2005 at 5:05 pm
Eric,
Thanks for your thoughts, but I disagree. Students who dislike changes to the housing system would be more likely, if anything, to vote on the subject than students who were happy with the proposed changes. The current “default” is at least perceived on-campus to be the 2006 implimentation of the proposal, so students who oppose the default would presumably turn out in greater numbers than students who supported the default.
I don’t remember ever claiming that students supported and opposed cluster housing in equal numbers–I’ve cited the Record’s survey several times (which shows a 60-40 split) if that’s what you’re talking about. I believe campus opinion to be more mixed than anything else, and I continue to believe that.
I’ve also never claimed that cluster housing is a “fix” for an aspect of campus life that is “broken.” This is largely Anchors Away’s characterization of motivations for the changes (”why fix anything that isn’t broken,” they ask). I believe that the current residential setup at Williams is decent, but that it could be much better. Just because I am generally happy with the status-quo doesn’t mean that I couldn’t potentially be much more happy with a different system, however. Sure, of course I could also be less happy with a different system, but I obviously believe that the changes will make a significant positive difference. I don’t want this to turn into another debate about cluster housing–I just wanted to point out that general student satisfaction with the current residential system doesn’t contradict (at least) my previous view of campus opinion, or undermine (at least) my reasoning for change.
March 15th, 2005 at 6:39 pm
Noah - I should have been more careful - I certainly didn’t mean to imply that you were the cluster-housing supporter that I was writing about. I’ve heard the equal-numbers or roughly-equal claim (based, I guess, on the Record survey) several times in the last few years, and Will Dudley has made the other argument that I attribute to supporters.
As for whether “students who oppose the default would presumably turn out in greater numbers than students who supported the default,” this presumption requires one of two assumptions. Either a.)change engenders stronger feelings of support than the default, or b.)those supporting the default believe the vote is irrelevant to its implementation.
With regard to the first possibility, studies of voting in other contexts have rarely demonstrated this effect — indeed, if it were easier to turn out votes for change than votes for stability, incumbents would enjoy a far-narrower advantage in politics than they do today. And since the default has been recently changed (I presume by the context this may be the explanation for why you put “default” in quotes), I think the latter possibility is unlikely.
If supporters on both sides have the same expectations of the likely consequences of a vote, and the same degree of intensity for their support, one would expect that they will turn out in like numbers, both because of their direct concern about the issue, and their secondary concern that supporters of the other position will outnumber them in turnout.
Thus, the reason that the non-voters are more likely to be undecided than the voters is because they care less about the issue in question. So while this means they probably don’t think the housing proposal will be a disaster, they probably also don’t think it solves a pressing need.
P.S. - I’m glad to hear that you don’t think the current system is “broken.” I think all we probably disagree on is the risk/reward tradeoff of the proposed system.