Wed 2 Nov 2005
Congratulations to Williams, and the people who run it, for being so open in discussions of the issue of alcohol on campus. The full report is here. Below the break is the e-mail that Dean Roseman recently sent to the “Williams Community”.
[I make this point every week or so. Let me make it again now. Alumni are part of the "Williams Community." Any all-campus staff/student e-mail should be publicly archived so that interested alumni can stay abreast of campus issues. Why must the College be so secretive that we alums need to rely on undergraduate spies to be kept informed?]
The topic of alcohol (much less drugs) is an interesting one. Perhaps the report is worth reading. But, for a process-obsessed curmudgeon like me, the most important thing is that Williams has published it conclusions and the underlying data for all to see. Openness is the sine qua non of a scholarly community. Kudos all around.
To the Williams Community:
In 2004, the Committee on Undergraduate Life spent the year considering the impact of alcohol on the Williams community. One of their recommendations was to establish a Task Force that would continue that work into the future. As a result, the Alcohol Task Force, chaired by Doug Bazuin, Director of Campus Life, and Ilunga Kalala, ‘05 and Co-president of College Council, was established. To facilitate their work, the Task Force invited consultants Alan Berkowitz, Ph.D., and Brett Sokolow, J.D., to campus. Their report and recommendations established a road map for Task Force activities. This included the collection of data on drinking at Williams. The consultants and Task Force agreed that base line data were essential for the community to have an honest discussion about the difficult issue of the drinking culture at Williams. To that end, the Task Force produced a survey that was completed by a high percentage of students in the spring of 2005.
Due to the quantity of information gathered, the most efficient method to share it with the community is by Website. The address is: http://www.williams.edu/go/alcohol. You will find there the consultant’s report, the Task Force report, and the survey data. The report by the Task Force makes specific recommendations concerning College policy and procedures. I met with the Task Force to discuss each recommendation, and my decisions concerning them are also on the site.
Two survey questions allowed for open-ended responses and it is those responses that are so voluminous, and in my opinion, the most pertinent. The responses can be found under the headings: “Troubling Experiences” and “Further Comments”.
With these data we can now have an open and honest discussion about alcohol at Williams. I ask that you take the time to read the information we’ve gathered and think about whether what you read here reflects the Williams you know, or, more importantly, the Williams you want. The administration is responsible for setting and enforcing policies regarding alcohol use, but it is students who have the power to sculpt the community they live in when College employees are not present.
I will be holding an open forum soon so that we can discuss the report and
survey as a community.The many students, faculty and staff who participated in the Alcohol Task Force devoted considerable time and effort to this work. We should all thank them for their hard work.
Sincerely,
Nancy Roseman
Dean of the College
November 2nd, 2005 at 10:19 pm
Yes. Kudos to the college for posting the report. Doing so is not that unusual for colleges trying to combat a heavy drinking culture. It’s part of what is known as a “social norms” campaign.
Having read through the report (the comments sections are the most interesting), my sympathies go out to the Odd Quad’ers who will be forced into the dominant drinking scene with the advent of anchor housing.
I am also amazed that it never dawns on colleges to address their drinking problems through the admissions office.
On a related note, if I were Morty, I’d be putting serious heat on Harry Sheehy.
November 2nd, 2005 at 10:33 pm
Putting heat on Harry Sheehy to decrease drinking among 800 athletes is absurd. Let Morty direct that heat at the admissions office for admitting the students.
Along that vein, how should the admissions office go about fixing the drinking problem? Not admit people who look like they might drink too much? What do those students look like? Male athletes?
I object to the wholesale vilification of male athletes. Not all of us are sloppy drunks and C students.
November 2nd, 2005 at 11:12 pm
The “troubling experiences” section was, indeed, quite troubling to me.
Now, not to veer into one of my discourses (or Housing History), but many of these events seem to be easily addressed by common sense– and a functional social system that says “when your friend is lying in a pool of their own vomit, you don’t let them sit there.” “When someone is being attacked or harassed, you do something.” Etc.
Unlike many of the comments that “this is like any College,” it is not. Other colleges have similar problems, but what strikes me from the report is not drinking per se but asocial behaviors which are tolerated. Half the crap reported here simply would not be excused at Cornell, because Cornell has an effective social system with resolution methods. You don’t leave a common room trashed or play music until 3am, because if you do someone calls a dorm or frat monitor, and if they don’t fix the problem someone calls security, the house gets fined, the house officers get a talking down, and the problem-causers get social pressure of one kind or another. (This was a remarkable difference between Williams and my visits to Cornell and Harvard when I was a student).
Yes, people drink all over, but at some places they are held responsible for their behavior, and therefore they regulate their own behavior. Williams has struggled to regulare student conduct since fraternity days.
I can’t say that I believe that an all-campus discussion led by Dean Roseman is going to get Williams anywhere on this one. Frankly, with as much respect as is due, Roseman’s call to an “open and honest discussion” of drinking is a steaming pile of well-intentioned touchy-feely blindness mixed with bull crap.
Williams does not need to address drinking. Williams needs to address bad behavior. Williams needs to address discipline. Williams needs to address one student’s right to study, next to another student’s right to have a good time. Williams needs to establish a social compact between its students, that many of the behaviors listed are not acceptable, and if someone sees them– well, you take common sense action.
If you see a drunken jerk harassing someone in the Snack Bar, you intervene. My G-d, this is Williams, not Oakland.
What’s the solution to the problem? What’s the next step? Cornell manages this fairly well; heck, half the state colleges in the US have done this better than Williams. Where do you go next?
The solution is to stop talking about the problem, stop trying to regulate the problem through one of the catalysts of the problem (alcohol), and to exercise the authority it takes to put in place a political structure which effectively and meaningfully resolves the underlying conflicts– and disincentizes the kinds of experiences listed as disturbing.
Williams needs a Code of Conduct, a new (non-Anchor) housing system with the authority and culture to enforce it, and some Deans with enough practical experience to get things done.
Of course, Dean Roosenraad said this thirty years ago. Williams needs a new system of governance as well. But no Housing History tonight.
November 2nd, 2005 at 11:37 pm
Ken:
I could not agree more with what you have written. You are one of the few people to correctly identified the alcohol problems at Williams (and many other schools) as being problems caused by a campus culture that tolerates asocial, disruptive behavior.
The problem increases exponentially when disruptive drinking becomes a dominant aspect of the social scene, because then the normal function of “peer pressure” in a society gets turned on its head.
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:20 am
On another note, I find the vilification of solely “varsity” athletes unfair. In the survey, those deemed “athletes” were self-identified. I would surmise that a number of those students are members of either the WUFO or Rugby clubs that have their own cultures of alcohol excess. It’s not the varsity teams you see having beer practice on Fridays.
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:44 am
My apologies, however, for quite the level of negativity expressed. The “troubling experiences” section of this report is, unfortunately, hardly the first or only time I have heard a report of a drunken student “sodomizing” someone on the Williams campus. Fifteen years is a long time to hope that Williams might find a path to constructive action on these issues, and a long enough time to watch and consider the consequences of such behavior on individual lives.
I will not, however, withdraw from a sharp criticism of the admistrations’ role. While there is much positive in the tone and words of Nancy Roseman’s letter, it reminded me of the first time I sat in Dean Fix’s office and asked him to take a proactive role in dealing with students who vandalized the Williams C common rooms. Not only did he dryly tell me that the administration took “reactive stances,” he refused to reverse the $200 fine imposed on us for the damage caused to Williams C by people outside the entry– sending a remarkable message that not only were we expected to tolerate such behavior, but but we were to pay for it, as well.
Steve was far less receptive to my ideas for proactively regulating such behaviors and worse ones, and while I like and respect Steve in many other regards, I am intentionally choosing to attach his name to my interpretation of the Deans’ Office’s historical failings. Certainly the students have a role to play in shaping their community– and the Deans’ need to accept their role as leaders and models, and that the ultimate responsibility for what happens at Williams rests in their hands.
To stray into Housing History, it is amazing to me that these were prominent issues for the Guadino Committee, as well as Dean Roosenraad and others’ pushes for reform. For a half-century at least, Williams has consistently tried to demand that its students self-regulate their behavior. I entirely sympathize with many of Roosenraad and Fix and Rosemans’ sentiments. But why have we failed?
I hesitate to comment that the Deans are looking to someone else, to the students, to solve the problem, but it seems obvious that this is an error. The Deans barely have enough experience to address the problem– but they do if they commit themselves to a solution. How can we ask the students to take responsibility if they will not?
I should note that my usage “asocial behavior” is borrowed from current debates in the United Kingdom, where the culture of such behavior has become a pressing problem– and the combination of adolescent and early adult violence and alcohol and drug use has become a pressing national problem, followed by those of the northern European countries. To borrow the usage of some MPs, the underlying questions are about who we are, what our society is, what our values are.
Athletics plays a role here, but one that is “cross-cutting,” not one that plays clearly one way or another. The last I sat around Baxter during the start of the semester, team captains were telling members that they would not drink on days before games. In relation to my conversations with Steve Fix, it seems obvious that the Deans can encourage each team to address its members’ behaviors directly, and provide some strong disincentives for those few members who act anti-socially. Equally, it bears saying that many coaches, team leaders and members make strong efforts to do this on their own, and that residents of the “Odd Quad” can be just as anti-social drinkers as anyone else on campus.
As always, I hope and believe that Williams can lead in this and other issues, and will provide and work out the solutions necessary for the College and our world.
November 3rd, 2005 at 2:30 am
Ken, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Williams C common rooms were trashed during my freshman year in the basement as well, and by people outside the entry. Needless to say, we were the one entry who didn’t get entry t-shirts.
November 3rd, 2005 at 7:05 am
I think the real issue is targetting frosh. Frosh are the most susceptible to peer pressure, the least able to handle alcohol, the least likely to have a realistic assessment of their limits, the least mature, and, or course, frosh develop their drinking habits early in their Williams careers. The focus on JA’s in the recommendations, I feel, is appropriate and critical. The biggest difference between Wiulliams and other schools is that JA’s become friends with frosh rather than paid disciplinarians. In almost every area of life, that is a huge possitive.
But, many JA’s I knew during frosh year did not discourage excessive drinking, but rather, facilitated it, either through purchasing alcohol or flat-out peer pressure to drink. I think while the JA system is one of the best things about Williams, the selection committee has to really commit to selecting people who they know are not super heavy drinkers and, at the very least, will discourage frosh from unhealthy or excessive drinking. If they facilitate heavy drinking, they need some oversight by the college. I don’t want the system changed much, but I think the threat of warning and eventually punishments for JA’s who provide alcohol or overlook destructive drinking situations without intervening is an appropriate intermediate step. Also, I think all frosh should be handed the “troubling comments” section in a print out, so they can see first hand the level of destructiveness caused by excessive drinking.
Getting drunk is part of college life basically everywhere, and drinking at college, on the whole, I don’t see as an evil. It is the destructive levels / frequency of drinking, and in particularly the negative side-effects, that need to be eliminated. I believe that if responsible habits — e.g., discretely having a few beers in a dorm room with friends rather than chugging down everclear-spiked punch before a party — are encouraged by JA’s, the ultimate role models, early on frosh year, it will establihs a much healthier culture going forward.