Thu 3 Nov 2005
Thought that my praise of the College’s openness with regard to the Alcohol Report was premature? You were right! Director of Public Affairs Jim Kolesar ‘74 writes:
We made a technical mistake in posting the alcohol web site. The data is intended to inform college discussion. The intent was for it not to be available to the public since we’re not aware of sufficiently comparable data from other schools. The mistake was that the site was posted originally in a way that made it open to all. That’s now been corrected. We intend to make it available to alumni and parents. That correction will take a day or two. When it’s ready, we’ll notify all alumni and parents for whom we have e-mail addresses.
Pathetic. As Jim notes, the site is no longer available.
1) File this under the category of no praise goes rewarded. When will the College learn that, 95% of the time, honesty is the best policy? I find it impossible to believe that any potential applicants would choose, say, Amherst over Williams because of what they read in the Report if Amherst refuses to publish similar data. High school seniors are not that stupid!
2) It would be reasonable for the College to sanitize the Report a bit, prior to publication. Reasonable people might suggest that the raw comments should be summarized and not included. But to hide the entire report from the world over concerns about the lack of “sufficiently comparable data from other schools” is borderline dishonesty. Will tour guides be instructed not to mention the Report? Will applicants who request a copy be denied one?
3) Still want to read a copy of the Report? Well, EphBlog is here to help! Now, the relationship between EphBlog and the College is a tricky one. We are not out to embarrass the Williams; we want more people to apply and more of those accepted to enroll. But, as Dean Fix reminds us, “intellectual honesty is the highest value at Williams.” So, while I have never abused my alumni login privileges by accessing a private document and then making it public, I am happy enough to facilitate such abuse by others. So, where is the student brave enough to post the Report (or at least the highlights an summary) to her own blog?
4) The most recent example of similar College reticence concerns the Report on Varsity Athletics. To this day, the College refuses to post a copy of this Report on its website, despite the fact that it is one of the most important College documents produced in the last decade. Why should the College be afraid of discussions like this? It is sad to see a similar pattern of secrecy and denial in the case of alcohol on campus.
November 3rd, 2005 at 2:27 pm
I knew there was a reason my instincts told me so strongly to save copies.
There’s an interesting dynamic here. I, personally, think Williams should embrace an identity as being the number one “work hard/party hard”, “smart athlete” small college in America. In my opinion, it is an exceptionally strong, highly differentiated market position, obviously attractive to their customer base in light of historically high numbers of applications. It is a much easier sell to 18-year olds than pitching them an “intense academic experience”.
However, for reasons that I don’t really understand, the administration is resistant to that identity. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. They enroll that kind of class (through conscious choice), but then resist the identity. I don’t sense a clear concensus among the various constituent groups (students, alumni, faculty, and administration) about what the college should be. For example, the alcohol report makes it very clear that a large segment of the campus, perhaps even a majority, likes the drinking culture just the way it is and sees no problem.
November 3rd, 2005 at 6:21 pm
Ask and ye shall receive. The entire report is available at the link below, with tables and comments, each section on a different page. Use the sidebar to navigate:
Williams Alcohol Task Force Report
Because information wants to be free.
November 3rd, 2005 at 6:26 pm
hwc-
Williams has so much more going for it than just being a great place for smart athletes. The fact that you continually highlight this, implying that it is the biggest unique trait that differentiates Williams from other schools only indicates your ignorance of Williams College as it currently stands.
November 3rd, 2005 at 6:28 pm
I agree with you, David, that the college should make the report and data open. I genuinely believe that transparency makes institutions function more efficiently in the long run.
However, I can see a perfectly rational reason to keep it quiet — it makes the college look bad and I do believe it would hurt admissions. A parent could read over the report and say, “Well, I certainly wouldn’t want my child going to a school with those types of problems” and then not allow the student to apply or matriculate. “Stupid” or not, that type of behavior and reasoning will occur.
But I am not entirely convinced that such reasoning is irrational. The report would confirm to the parent that Williams is not the type of school they would like her/his child to attend. On the other hand, the parent has little or no information on Amherst and Swarthmore. Those schools simply might be the wrong type of school. People rule out schools for all types of irrational reasons. If you know a school fails a criteria, you’ll concentrate on the schools that might pass muster.
I suppose that a parent could view the release of a report that the college takes alcohol and other issues seriously, but:
a) I am not convinced that people think strategically when analyzing data;
b) The report could just as easily signal that drinking is a real big problem on campus;
c) You’d still need comparable data from other institutions to really interpret the signal.
Since I can afford to view thebest interests of Williams in the abstract, I personally want openness on these types of reports. However, if I were an administrator, I’m pretty sure that all institutional pressures would point towards keeping embarassing information under wraps.
November 3rd, 2005 at 6:36 pm
I’m going to side with (d)avid here. Why would the college publish such a report when none of their peers have done so? After a quick browse through the “troubling experiences” a prospective student’s parents (or the students themselves) would likely think Williams is nothing more than a real-life version of Animal House.
The data itself, I feel, is perhaps misleading. While the survey was mailed out to everyone, I feel that it is a somewhat self-selecting group that actually chose to participate. It’s also worth mentioning, as someone pointed out, that the term “athlete” was a self-designation.
If anything productive is to come of this, it is perhaps to encourage our peer schools to conduct similar surveys so as to see if we are really worse than the next school.
November 4th, 2005 at 1:28 am
David R:
Every one of Williams peer schools do surveys that collect the alcohol data on a regular basis. All 31 of the COFHE schools (which include Williams) ask alcohol questions on their regular surveys.
In addition to these institutional surveys, most participate in the Harvard School of Public Health “College Alcohol Study” that has surveyed colleges nationally on three occasions since the early 1990’s and collected a wealth of data on college binge drinking and its effects.
Here’s a link to a short monograph summarizing the CAS findings:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cas/Documents/monograph_2000/
If Harvard ever gets their website up, I can find you the links to the detailed survey results with comprehensive data.
The data from the Harvard study is available to participating colleges as is the data shared by the 31 COFHE schools — although colleges and researchers with access to the specific comparative data must sign confidentiality agreements. In other words, Williams can publish their own binge drinking rate, but they can’t publish Amherst’s or Swarthmore’s or Dartmouth’s.
There isn’t a school out there that isn’t aware of its “binge drinking” rate and the data is available for interested parents and students — either publicly on their websites or by calling the Dean’s office.
The national average for binge drinking within the previous two weeks (using a 5 drink for men/4 drink for women measure known as “5/4″) is 44% of all college students. Generally about half of the binge drinkers at a school due so more than once a week and these “heavy binge drinkers” are the ones who cause the vast majority of the problems. For the most part, they started heavy binge drinking in high school, which is why ignoring the admissions piece of the puzzle makes efforts to reduce the rate difficult.
Factors which correspond to higher percentages of bringe drinking are northeast, whiter student body, wealthier student body, rural locations, the presence of fraternities, and emphasis on varsity athletics. Williams has been well above average, but not quite into the heaviest territory (Penn State is off the charts). If anything, this most recent survey showed binge drinking rates a little lower than they have been at Williams in the recent past. The binge drinking rate published in the Diversity report (using a 5/5 measure like this recent survey) was 52%.
Schools with high rates of “binge drinking” experience much higher rates of secondary disruptions.
This is a very comprehensively researched topic.
November 4th, 2005 at 1:56 am
Here’s the link to the full survey report of the most recent Harvard College Alcohol Survey in 2001:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cas/Documents/trends/Trends.pdf
This provides comparative data for each of the four editions of the survey.
November 4th, 2005 at 4:19 pm
As a sidenote, while Williams made the “error” of publishing this information to the “extranet,” the pages were tagged to be excluded from external achives– and thus do not appear in Google’s cache or the Internet Archive.
This does not require a high degree of sophistication, but it does require a deal of preplanning. Is this a default policy for administrative materials?
Of course, there are many times when you would like specific information not to be included in a permanent public archive (or search engine) for similar reasons of “recall”-ability. I daresay the issue affects ephBlog posts, though I am haven’t seem much considerations of such issues in a blogging context.
I’m afraid in general I agree with Jim Kolesar’s position– at least, that this isn’t information you want outside people seeing when they rummage around the Williams site.
On the other hand, it should be available to alumni and parents.
The middle ground is, should it be available to communities (such as ephBlog) which discuss Williams issues, but who may include outsiders?
One answer is “no,” because random people who browse the web can come across the info. As demonstrated above, however, simple methods of control are easily defeated.
A middle ground (which requires planning) would be establish minor to medium barriers between College outsiders and the information. Publication could be in digitally signed graphical format; you might need to be a site member(…) or make a special request to view content.
And, of course, the material is copyrighted. Williams could certainly make a DMCA request to have the blogspot copy above removed, or potentially be much more agressive. (It took me all of 90 seconds to determine the physical campus location of the poster, who should consider using a proxy!).
November 4th, 2005 at 4:35 pm
It took me all of 90 seconds…
And another 10 minutes or so to review their posting pattern, likely travel patterns on campus, non-anonymous friends who post to ephBlog, and likely identity.
Anonymity on the Internet is a matter of “you get what you pay for.”
November 4th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
OK. Give me one sentence that truly differentiates Williams from Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, and Carleton. In other words, I’m a high school kid looking for a one sentence description (stereotype) so that I can tell those five schools apart. I already assume that they all share excellent academics, rigorous admissions standards, first class faculty, and small classes. I’m looking for the two or three most prominent unique qualities.
I don’t know how you can do that without noting that Williams has been the perennial #1 ranked Division III athletic program in the country or that Williams has the highest percentage of varsity athletes of all LACs. While the athletic emphasis may not negate many other fine attributes, it is certainly a defining characteristic of the school at the start of the 21st century.
November 4th, 2005 at 7:49 pm
I think saying that the typical Williams’ student is passionately involved with extracurriculars is far more accurate a description of the aspect of Williams you’re attempting to describe than by simply calling it a school for “smart jocks.” Most students on campus have at least one commitment equivalent to a varsity sport, so highlighting varsity sports as The Unique Characteristic of Williams is extremely misleading.
That said, summarizing the difference between Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore will always fail when it is restricted to a mere single sentence. The schools are far more similar than they are different, leading to subtle rather than obvious distinctions between them. To characterize Swarthmore as the “nerd school” of the three or Williams as the “jock school” of the three ignores these subtle distinctions, creating steriotypes that only vaguely mimic reality.
Your specific portrayal of the three schools implies that for an intellectual, with all other things being equal, there are no good reasons to choose Williams over Swarthmore–and that is far from the case.
November 4th, 2005 at 8:27 pm
Disclaimed: my usual long-winded self, and no time to make this shorter much less clearer:
Ah, but the problem is, that it often does! For, say, the section of the student body that self-segregates into the “Odd Quad,” this vision of Williams would be highly off-putting (for good or bad reasons).
As a public branding, declared as “the” key differentiator, would it not result in admissions and faculty recruiting difficulties?
Would it not increase the perception (stated so much better by someone here recently) that Williams is predominantly white, convervative, Eastern, athletic, suburban, country club– and behind the times?
I do not necessarily agree with those perceptions. But at some point we have to take account of the fact that the “Odd Quader” who doesn’t want to hang out with people in Mission likely views “athletic” as “anti-intellectual” and “superficial,” and this is the basis of some very strong social barriers. (And, given my experiement above, it would be interesting to make a spot-map of where EphBlog posts are made on campus).
Of the institutions you mention, Pomona and Carleton are not institutions I consider in the same “class” as Williams (on several fronts: the faculty are not the same). Swarthmore’s “sweat-more” reputation, and more substantively, its public ideologies of service, religion and governance are significantly differentiated from Williams. Amherst seems subtly more generically urban, closer in structure to the state schools which surround it… though I as an Eph surely have some odd prejudices against it.
As it is, I believe those who care about being at a school that is so often #1 usually get this information. Perhaps not in some niches, but generally is this not true? (If so, could it be improved without making this Williams’ top differentiator?)
Except in the first stages of assembling a list of schools to consider, do that many high-schoolers considering such a school operate by one-sentence prejudices? Rather, I’d suggest that once a school is within their horizon, they look very closely, considering hundreds of factors and impressions.
On the other hand, before a school makes it into that horizon, negative prejudices can result in a school being discounted, either by the student or by a guidance counselor. And, as expressed earlier, I worry that this is a significant factor for prospective students from California and elsewhere.
I would say that Williams’ rural traditions and setting, its personal approach and the relationships it creates, and its (currently poorly expressed) history of public service are very strong differentators. (I would at least suggest that they have been given short shrift by recent PR visions).
As far as athletics as a larger phenomenon, I wonder if Williams is not creating something of a time bomb. Generally, the issue of athletics is highly polarized, with the liberal faculty and a notable section of students discounting athletics and its “negative role, and coaches and many others cherishing the athletic tradition and just not seeing eye-to-eye with the faculty and anti-athletics students.
As I’ve claimed before, there’s a lot of pre-judging and consequent blindness due to this level of polarization. Back to alcohol and behavior, athletics often are a symbolic substitute for “fraternities” in Williams’ pantheon of things which “have a negative impact on the academic purpose of the College,” and, in the view of some, “are incompatible with the purpose of the College.” And again, in place of this face-off, I’d like to see some serious bridge-building, classrooms that encourage teamwork and teams which better benefit from the classroom.
Behind that, I think there is a need to take a hard look at the shape of athletics at Williams, within the context of the shape of athletics in American communties– I hesitate to invoke a phrase such as “soccer mom,” but certainly many high school coaches have been talking about the “professionalization” of middle and high school athletics for a few years, and whether in such a shape it conveys the values that they cherish. Do those conversations happen among coaches at Williams, much less between coaches and professors and administrators?
Restating my worry, then that Williams is not simply assembling great athletes and people naturally drawn to acheivement, but instead assembling a microcosm of highly economically and socially differentiated sections of American society, niche demographics which, from an early age, place very high pressures on their children to participate, achieve and compete in athletics and other forums– and create notable social problems along the way. A New York Times Magazine article several years ago described such children as “another fashion accessory” for their parents, a phrase which conveys both an odd level of parental control, and an unhealthy substitution of the child’s life with the parents’ own material and competitive goals.
My concern in this regard would thus be: while I admire the athletic tradition of striving and achievement, and the pursuit of excellence, is that the only phenomenon we are seeing in Williams athletics, and campus behavior as a whole?
From the Milton Academy antics reported here and elsewhere, to the cancellation of prom at Kellenberg high school, flare-issues such as alcohol and athletics and sexual (mis)conduct turn back to questions of behavior, values and social structures.
Restating that as a concern: that Williams is marketing itself (and creating internal changes and incentivizing problems, re: our asocial behavior conversation) to these very specific demographic segments, with results which may be very negative in the long term.
Elsewhere, I have reported my dismay at meeting students in the Odd Quad who could not understand why I would visit Williams as an alum– they bluntly stated they hated being at Williams. Years later in New York, I moved around networks of more “athletic” alums from Greylock and Mission who made similar statements, and felt that they had not been able to be themselves at Williams– only after moving to New York had they found the freedom to “find themselves.”
Now, that’s anecdotal, but disturbing. Isn’t self-discovery one of the things that is supposed to occur in the college years, and which binds alumni to their institution to form a multi-generational community? Wasn’t “unprecidented freedom” Oakley’s favorite phrase to describe the transition from high school to Williams life?
If, as HWC suggests in our alcohol thread, the predominant social pressures are towards asocial (or non-self-fulfilling) behaviors, does not that compromise the Mission of the College?
In short, instead of niche-marketing to people who highly and innately value athletic acheivement, Williams may be running the risk of niche-marketing to highly-needy parents who shelter and guide their children at every turn, and the risk of intimately associating itself with that parentalism, its long-term negative consequences, and the resentment it can breed.
How does one measure such a proposition? Can admissions quantify the difference from a naturally great athlete and a non-motivated one? If the social/behavioral bubble I am trying to describe exists and has validty, does a significant section of varsity athletes meet this profile– or another segment of campus?
Do Williams students today really not know each other to the extent suggested by the comments in the alcohol report, or do those comments represent a minority cut off from the community? (Is it really common for Williams students today not to have any idea of who another student is– something I, personally, can’t imagine even if I thought the College was a little to large to know everyone?)
Regardless, even if suggestions theses prove only marginally true, many athletes could benefit from closer guidance through classroom experiences, just as many Odd Quaders can benefit from stronger intramurals, WOOLF hikes, and the like.
Perhaps, instead of a Freshman Residential Seminar focused on an academic class, there should be an FRS housing a member of a team or teams who also take a specialized academic curriculum together?
An idea that would likely rise among the faculty faster than a lead balloon. (I myself led the quashing of an ECON/ENGL 101-based FRS, likely one of the more remarkably blind things I’ve done).
November 4th, 2005 at 9:35 pm
There are tons of reasons to choose Williams over Swarthmore, including:
a) a much stronger commitment to varsity athletics
b) more access to, and focus on, outdoorsy activities
c) a much stronger party/drinking scene.
d) a much larger, more recognized, art history program and somewhat broader offerings in music and theater.
e) an overall campus culture that is more upscale, more prep-school affiliated, and more pre-professional (at least in terms of law and MBA) with less of the diversity, social responsibility, do-gooder, PhD/academe ethos that is prevalent at Swarthmore.
Ken nailed Swarthmore with his one-sentence description. Those stereotypes (especially the work hard/work hard reputation) certainly cost the school applicants, just as Williams’ emphasis on varsity athletics costs it students. But, that’s OK. Are the students turned off by the stereotype right for the school to begin with? Probably not. A lot of Swarthmore students ending up at Williams would probably complain about the drinking. A lot of Williams students ending up at Swarthmore would probably complain about how the sports teams suck. And, both would be right. I don’t think an LAC can be all things to all people.
I don’t see much advantage in schools running away from what they are. Swarthmore certainly doesn’t. They lay out everything Ken mentioned right up front in their mission statement. Long-term, schools are served by embracing their unique identities — if they are fortunate enough to have one to begin with.
I don’t understand the propensity to pretend that the Div III commitment to athletics at Williams doesn’t exist. What is wrong with having the largest athletic budget, the highest percentage of varsity athletes, and umpteen consecutive Sears Cups? Seems like a marketing bonanza to me. Embrace it. Most LACs would love to be able to recruit the kind of scholar-athletes Williams does.
November 4th, 2005 at 11:32 pm
Hwc….
I suspect the differences between Swarthmore and Williams are more subtle than you think. From reading the phoenix articles to which I was directed on another site, (one with which you are quite familiar) it seems there is quite a stir this year about the alcohol problems at Swarthmore. Tables being thrown from balconies, excessive vandalism, and public urination..See the Swat phoenix articles.
We know that the binge drinking rate has decreased at Williams in recent years. Is it possible that the binge drinking rate at Swarthmore has increased? I read the disturbing comments associated with the report above, but I wonder if the Swattie comments regarding their experiences with alcohol would be much different if they had to fill out the identical survey. This is what one Swattie has to say about drinking at his school.
http://phoenix.swarthmore.edu/2005-09-29/opinions/15414
Listen HWC…. I agree with much of what you say, but you would be so much more effective if you didn’t have clear anti-Williams pro-Swarthmore agendas in all of your posts. I know you think your hand is on the pulse of Swarthmore, but I’m certain that your “connection” to Swarthmore doesn’t disclose all encounters and happenings.
My major concern is that the alcohol issue is presented as a Williams problem, when I think it may be move of an American problem. College drinking is absurd in DC. In my four years at Williams, I never witnessed the public intoxication that I have seen down here. In fact, last night a drunk GW brat shoved me and barfed at my feet.
Also, I think Williams offers much more than simply good athletics, theater, art and beer. Yes I have met unhappy alums, but I am always astounded by how positively Williams wax about their Ephy-days compared to people I meet from other schools.
November 5th, 2005 at 12:51 am
Of course, binge drinking is a problem at nearly all colleges. See the links I provided above to the Harvard School of Public Health Studies. I thought that was rather self-evident.
Swarthmore’s binge drinking rate is around 30%. Most of the womens colleges are in the same range, as are the high-end California schools (Stanford 27%, Claremont Colleges 32%). That’s still a lot of heavy drinking. The difference at a “low binge-drinking” college is that the majority of campus either doesn’t drink or drinks moderately, so the pervasiveness of disruptive drinking is reduced, fewer hospitalizations for alcohol poisoning, etc. You still have people getting stupid drunk and doing stupid things, but it’s not a dominant social scene.
BTW, as at Williams, the drinking scene at Swarthmore is centered around the varsity athletic teams, who make up the membership of the two small frats. I suspect that, if they had more varsity athletes, they’d have a higher binge drinking rate, too.
The idiot who pitched the table off the balcony was a varsity baseball player who had gotten blotto drunk at a frat pledge event and, sometime after midnight, staggered over to a large all-campus dance sponsored by the African-American students and Students of Caribbean Ancestry groups. At the party, he proceded to go on a rampage of some sort (I suspect as he was being asked to leave). Just a few feet from the exit door, he went nuts, smashing a computer, kicking furniture, and heaving an end table over a balcony railing. He is no longer at Swarthmore.
I was surprised that there were no alcohol arrests at the Halloween party last Saturday. It is the biggest party of the fall semester, held in an off-campus dorm in a residential neighborhood that requires walking right through “downtown” from campus. Imagine a large dorm hosting a party down at the end of Spring Street or over by Weston Field on a Saturday night in Williamstown for comparison.
About half the students (and virtually all the freshmen) attend the party, and it usually accounts for about 75% of Swarthmore’s annual quota of alcohol arrests with hundreds and hundreds of students walking back and forth, in costume, through town under the watchful eye of the town constabulary. To get through that without an alcohol arrest was a first as far as I can tell from college newspaper archives going back about 7 years. The college got smart and chartered a bus to ferry students to and from the party, in addition to the college vans that usually circulate.
November 5th, 2005 at 12:59 am
Perhaps naively, I hold colleges, like Williams, that cater to the best and the brightest, to a higher standard. It bothers me when the binge drinking rate is roughly the same as at Florida State. I suppose it shouldn’t, but I have a lot of pride in my alma mater.
And, I am by no means against college drinking. I am against the weird, competitive, “drink ’til you puke” style of drinking that seems to be prevalent at colleges these days. I don’t understand a campus culture that doesn’t recoil against that.
November 5th, 2005 at 1:11 am
Oh Boy.
Indeed, drinking is an American problem, a world problem– and a Williams problem. Speaking as an interpreter of history and text, the challenge is understanding the very complex relationships, the threads of causality and action, between the multiple microcosms and macrocosms. And, of course, directing it if you can.
My one-sentence (and other) descriptions of Swarthmore and elsewhere are certainly not my own; in other regards I might claim to have created a few neologisms with the power of Ted Nelson, but I’m simply (and perhaps creatively) borrowing the phrases of others.
Offhand, I’ve always been surprised by the “Sweat-More” description. I studied under Swarthmore faculty before I came to Williams and during my year at Deep Springs; by no means was the workload at Swarthmore in the ’90s, when this image appeared, greater than that at Williams. By no means was the Swarthmore campus more “nose-to-the-grindstone.”
I would claim in fact that there is a very strong relationship between Williams’ athletic emphasis, its larger culture, and the “work hard” mentality. And that Williams students absolutely sweat more that Swarthmore students.
My longer one-sentence description of Swarthmore is certainly drawn both from my very close relationships to a few of their faculty, and their Mission Statements. One of the remarkable things here is that this Mission Statement remains so close to what it was thirty or forty years ago, and remarkably parochial in vision. On the other hand, I value these focuses not only because they were the values of some of my first remarkable teachers– but because they express incredible commonalities between Williams, Swarthmore and Deep Springs. If we look back in the history of the College– to the values and teachings of Mark Hopkins– can we not reassert and revise those values and visions in ways that are more vibrant and relevant to our times than Swarthmore’s vision? As with Sawyer in the 60s, can Williams cannot lead the path of American education, including Swarthmore?
Indeed we can, and President Shapiro has said similar things in San Francisco several times. The question is, will we? Williams risks becoming something less than Swarthmore if it takes a role that is primarily reactive, administrative and technical.
Athlete-scholars? Soldier-scholars? Both those visions are very powerful, and indeed relevant to our world. Williams has many people who live up to them. But on the other hand, I doubt either is a fair characterization of the Student Body or the athletes on campus. The knee-jerk reactions against David among the campus’s “intellectual” left– reactions which I certainly once indulged in– are one indication that no such balance currently exists.
Athlete-scholars as a public image? Indeed, I think this is very compelling– I came to Williams with the hope of joining crew or baseball, spent the summer before in training, and wish that the polarizing divisions between “intellectualism” and “athleticism” had not directed me towards a default choice. Soldier-scholars? The wake of 9/11 has greatly changed that choice, but many of my friends at Williams openly declared and celebrated that “we” did not need to serve. Given that I believe that the events of 9/11 were entirely foreseeable and preventable, I have a good deal of guilt and shame in this respect, which I believe are entirely appropriate.
Returning to microcosm and macrocosm, I assert that the issues of alcoholism and behavior at Williams and in the world are interwined. I remind that Plato’s Apologia is a tale of binge drinking, mixed with scholasticism and knowledge. (Should I relate the tale of a drunken Bill Bennett mooning the President’s house, and falling on his rump in front of West College?) Should Williams choose to direct the behavior of its students appropriately, to find the solution and path out of a local problem, Williams will also lead the nation and world.
Skipping far forward, should I find the time to improve my Czech and interpretation of Milan Kundera, (and Kant and Leibniz and Fueurbach and Ree and Nietzsche and Freud), I hope I might also show how closely and intimately related the choices and decision of everyday life on the Williams campus is, to the patterns of world history, and how what each of us acheives each day affects the fate of humanity.
But I am overreaching. Allow me to approach this, awkwardly and inadequately, in my other thread.
November 5th, 2005 at 1:16 am
But here lies the problem… you immediately point to the Swarthmore student’s status as a varsity baseball player. I read your posts as “athletes cause drinking.” Perhaps weneed to think about why athletes are associated with drinking. Where are you finding the data regarding binge drinking rates at Swarthmore?
By the way… Totally unrelated, but I would like to point out the SAT mean scores for incoming Swat students vs. incoming Williams students.
Williams= 709 math 716 verbal
Swarthmore= 708 math 719 verbal
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/institutional_research/SAT.pdf
Williams has had a noticeable upswing in SAT scores in recent years. To what extent do we think this is associated with athletic de-prioritization?
A few years back, the averages were around 690 in each section.
November 5th, 2005 at 2:12 am
The heavy workload reputation predates the 1990s by many decades. When I was at Williams in the 1970s, Williams was considered to be the most academically-challenging LAC in the country, except for Swarthmore, which drew oohs and aahhs from Williams students (I’d never heard of the place, so I’m only going on what all the New England prep school kids said). That reputation stemmed from the unusual Honors Program more than anything else — that remains a serious challenge.
I do not perceive it as having an insurmountable workload today. In fact, from what I see, the school has about the same workload and a nearly identical approach as Williams had when I was there — although, in keeping with the times, vastly more global content.
The thing that makes it a bit unique is that the reputation scares off everyone who isn’t interested in working pretty hard academically, so a very high percentage of students make a good faith effort to come to class prepared. This, in turn, motivates the professors. You simply don’t hear professors grousing that certain students have a disdain for the academics or that class is better when those students don’t show up.
This is actually a case where embracing the stereotype actually helps in admissions. It lowers the number of applications, but helps identify students who fit with the school’s academic climate.
November 5th, 2005 at 4:14 am
Very little. The number of recruited athletes in each enrolled class has remained constant and there has only been a slight reduction in the number of ultra-low band athletic admits.
Instead, I think that the increasing applicant pool has allowed Williams to cherry pick higher SATs for the top end of the class to offset the low end. In other words, they have replaced some of the middle (say 1420 SATs with more 1500+ SATs).
Williams 2004-05:
700 to 800: Verbal 59% Math 63%
600 to 699: Verbal 32% Math 30%
500 to 599: Verbal 9% Math 7%
Williams 1999-00:
700 to 800: Verbal 56% Math 59%
600 to 699: Verbal 34% Math 32%
500 to 599: Verbal 9% Math 8%
400 to 499: Verbal 1% Math 1%
The Swarthmore numbers are interesting. In 1999, they were similar to Williams. But, the first admissions cycle following the demise of football, the percentage of admits in the 400 to 599 range was cut in half, with a signficant shift to the 700-800 range. Now, Swarthmore and Williams are virtually identical at the extreme top end (say above 1520 combined), but Williams has more low end (500 - 599) and Swarthmore appears to have more in the 1400 to 1500 range.
I point to the student’s status as a baseball player because it is well-known fact at Swarthmore that a couple of the men’s sports teams and the fraternities they provide membership for are the center of the “heavy drinking scene” on campus. They constitute the same social group as the “athletic dorms” and “team parties” at Williams that Morty is determined to bust up with anchor housing.
I heard of the table incident within 24 hours after it happened. People involved knew who threw the table and certainly knew he had been at a frat pledge event because the frat-boys advertised it by marching their pledges to the party with their shirts off. The only people who join the two frats are male athletes. Most everybody else on campus avoids them like the plague, even those who enjoy tipping a few at parties on Saturday night, but like to stop somewhere this side of Animal House. Whenever there is stupid drunk behavior, like a fist fight, or vandalism, or throwing a table, it is ALWAYS male athletes/fratboys.
What do you want me to say? Every national survey, supported by every survey at Williams, shows a clear association between male athletes and heavy drinking. I don’t know how much clearer this week’s Williams alcohol report could have said it.
Do you think Williams is just making this stuff up? Certainly not all male athletes, but those associated with the higher profile team sports — football, hockey, and to a lesser extent, basketball, baseball, and lacrosse. It’s a culture. When was the last time you heard of a hazing incident by the math team or the chamber orchestra or the literary magazine?
The particular challenge that Williams faces is that such a huge percentage of the student body are athletes. Among the male students, 39% play on a varsity team alone, not even counting JV or major club sports. That uniquely high percentage is why binge drinking is perceived to be a social norm on campus and why Morty keeps fighting battles associated with two distinct cultures on campus that really don’t share a vision for college life.
It is one thing to have a “socially bifurcated campus at a big state U where you can just go do your own thing. But, at a small liberal arts college in a remote rural location, you can’t. Thus, it is a challenge:
November 5th, 2005 at 4:26 am
It is simple. Compared with the general populace their age, athletes are persons who have a heightened need for excitement in their lives. This need by athletes is addressed in, and in large part satisfied by the challenges of, athletic competition - usually the greater the challenge the greater the satisfaction. Not infrequently this need to the extent not otherwise satisfied also surfaces in the form of, and is temporarily mollified by, alcohol consumption, especially during an athlete’s off-season when the need may not be so greatly met.
November 5th, 2005 at 11:09 am
Frank:
That may be part of it. But, there is also some kind of group behavior dynamic involved — same mechanism as fraternity/sorority behaviors.
Expected behavior is taught to new members of group, as we see in hazing initiations or as we saw in last week’s recruiting visit at Williams noted in the Record.