Tue 24 Jan 2006
[This thread is an elevation from another post. In consideration of other discussions, it may be lowered in priority or temporarily removed. -K]
Frank, hwc, ‘04 and All,
First, thanks for your responses. Because this is not the kind of seminar where we can look across the table at one another for guidance, I hope I may use them as a series of starting points in examining Goff-Crews (and Hu-DeHarts’) concrete proposals.
As you seem to note, the consultants’ section of the report, and the report in general, is more-than-complex in structure. I tend to prefer that proposals begin with a very short goal or mission statement and a series of bullet points. Literary theorists (and we later) may ponder that the policy recommendations of these reports are not clearly highighted by such bullet points, or even vertical bars and bold titles.
Rather, they seem subordinated within the larger narrative of the reports, a narrative that (I think it is fair to say) seems disjointed and confusing … in that old question from first-year philosophy, what do we make of how this is presented to us?
But before we get to “narrative” and structure, perhaps it is time to do what others have done– pull out the specific proposals of this section of the report, and place them in something like bullet point structure (with my comments, which I’ll keep very brief).
Goff-Crews’ specific proposed action items (using her headers) are thus:
Proposed Diversity Initiatives to Improve the Quality of Student Life
1. Create [a] centralized academic support center:
(self explanatory?)
2. Consider reshaping transition programs:
Goff-Crews suggests that existing Humanities, Social Sciences and Sciences summer transition programs have their components extended into term-time, “strengthening” their impact”.
3. Use New Residential Plan to Enhance Initiative: [my emphasis]:
Goff-Crews suggests the development of a “full-blown” diversity training model for HCs and JAs, and use the new house system as a “new opportunity” to enhance “awareness” of “diversity.”
4. Enhance Role of Associate and Assistant Deans in the Diversity Initiative Efforts:
Goff-Crews suggests that the Deans take a stronger role in campus life, that the officially make themselves available to address racial/diversity issues, and that they become more “connected” to such issues by assigning one Dean to diversity/race issues.
5. Make campus protocol and expertise on racial incidences transparent:
In short, appoint an Omsbudperson to as point-of-contact for racial issues, and distribute a policy document that outlines procedures.
6. Enhance diversity of Health Services staff:
(self-explanatory?)
7. Regularly discuss diversity issues among senior staff:
(self-explanatory?: senior staff should meet every six weeks to explicitly address these issues).
8. Consider creating fellowship opportunities to attract more diverse senior administrators to Williams:
(self-explanatory, but within, the suggestion is that current senior staff can explicity serve as mentors for a more diverse junior staff)
9. Recognize and enhance support staff efforts to support student development:
recognize that ’support staff’ such as secretaries, dining services etc play a key role in student life, and “regularly” educate these support staff in diversity issues.
Do we believe in these proposals?
Regardless, the above is the real “meat” of the section, and again I have to wonder, why each section of the report does not begin something like:
INTRO: …
We therefore propose:
[series of actions]
…
…
and then proceed to justification and discussion? Other than giving me a headache to read through– what does the form used in these sections in tell us about intents?
Next, on the face of things, I agree with the basic logic of most of these proposals. I as much as proposed #9 in an earlier post; and who can argue with the fact that various better cross-departmental (Deans-Academic Departments-Staff-Housing Clusters) structures of communication would help Williams acheive goals? As for an Academic Complex…
But: did really I propose #9 as it is stated? The concrete content of Goff-Crew’s proposal seems to me to be largely formal: develop handbook of statements about “diversity” and “racial incidents,” and deliver these to the support staff with regularity. Encourage them to connect with the students on these issues on a more regular basis. And I keep wondering: how? If this comes down to a series of “formal” “rules,” I’m not sure of the effect. If it encourages students and faculty and others to interact meaningfully, and create their own relationships, understandings and solutions– I am more positive.
I see no discussion of such issues. A proposal such as an “ombudsperson,” while formally positive, seems to me both top-heavy and lacking in detailed substance. As stated elsewhere, I’d like to see issues rarely reach such a level; I believe that people will produce better solutions if they are free to– and first attempt to– do so among themselves.
Equally, I wonder if we could not look closely at proposals 1 through 9, propose four or five different structures and ways of implementing each goal? Would we not then have the task of approximately weighing the costs and benefits of each restructuring– and, in that process, learn a bit or more than a bit about the diversity we were trying to acheive at the same time? While Alex Woo has reminded me recently that such work can be very hard, for now, I’ll go so far as to suggest that this is what Williams is not doing above, and that some version of such a project is what we should be doing.
In my initial introduction, my hope was to quickly frame these issues within a far larger history of course-changes and corrections within the University– and within particularly relevant examples of the College’s struggle with related issues. What I hope we attempt is to see these immediate debates from what someone such as Don Gifford might have called “the farther shore”– from moments whose criteria of judgment were far different.
From your comments, I have drawn three salient judgments about the the “Diversity Initiative” — feel free to correct my understanding of your words:
Frank: “Williams claims that it is seeking to become more diverse… [but] what is a precise definition of the diversity being sought?” (And what are the cost/benefits of each form? Etc. I believe the project outlined above lacks any such final definition at its core, and that it hesitates from engaging in cost-benefit an analysis. Yet I believe it does have a vision…
hwc: “I… found the the “diversity report” to be frustrating[.] My frustration derives from a lack of an clear rationale for these initiatives.” I take the main point here to be “lack of clear rationale…,” and I agree. But: I believe the proposal texts themselves are truly difficult to “parse,” if not obsurantist… and that there are underlying (exoteric) rationales.
‘04:Each… marks time in the same tugs of war over un-PC/delicate questions. All of these matters will be revisited… [and] that’s a moving target. With great respect to your idea of constant revision, what I’d like to add is that this seems to be a ship whose course is constantly being changed mid-journey.
In my next installment of this inquiry, I hope to re-visit the consultants’ report again, to trace some of its rationale and committments and draw what answers it may give to each of the three inquires above… and to place its intents within the history of “revisions” of the goals and “uses” of the University.
But for now, what do we make of the above proposals? For instance, how many students would like to see an “Academic Complex” at Williams? What would it mean for “character”– and the meaning of the Williams experience?
Here at WKU, we have a big round brick building that says “Academic Complex” on the side– a mid-70s addition that followed similar accoutrements at Berkeley and elsewhere. What is an Academic Complex? What does it mean to concentrate “academic” goals into such a “container?” And in terms of all our goals and rationales, our guesses at costs and benefits, how does such an “innovation” relate to the idea of having a hundred professors sitting on logs– and the fact that Clark Kerr was so worried about using that particular Williams value, as to place the image of its loss within the first page of the most important work of his life, to mention it on par with Oxford and Glasgow, just before Berlin and the German University, and far before Harvard and many others?
23 Responses to “Goff-Crews: Practical Directions (revisited)”
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Ken: Neither the definition nor the weighing of virtues against costs need be digital. In fact I would be substantially surprised if either of them would turn out to be very quantitative in nature. However, my curiosity requires (certainly my support is not required) that my tiny and tidy mind understand approximately (but in some detail) the goal which has been set, what Williams plans to get out of achieving it and what would be the price for it.
Ken,
Here’s the part that befuddles me. As I read the Ad Hoc Committee on Athletics, the Alcohol Task Force, the Housing Committee, and the Diversity Initiative reports, I see a common theme: that a minority of students (non-athletes, non-drinkers, non-whites, or Odd Quaders) feel a sense of estrangement from the dominant campus culture. Although never explicitly stated, concern over fragmentation of the campus seems to be the motivation for Morty’s initiatives.
The never mentioned elephant in the living room is the obvious question, “Do we need to change the dominant campus culture?” Because this question is not asked, all of these reports have an Alice in Wonderland quality, dancing around the core issues.
The Diversity Initiatives recommendations provide a perfect example. Of the nine bullet points you so kindly outlined, virtually none of them suggest any action involving the dominant majority on campus, with the possible exception of “diversity” training for JAs (I can only imagine having to sit through those sessions) and forcing the estranged minority groups to live with majority groups — something neither group seems to be particularly excited about. Beyond that, the initiatives all focus on the minority group doing things to feel more comfortable or changes aimed at the staff. Is it possible that so many great minds couldn’t think of a single role the majority student group could play reduce the sense of fragmentation on campus?
If the majority student group on campus is making minority groups feel marginalized, then how can you address any of these issues without at least considering the need for change within the dominant social group?
Frank:
As much as I believe in digital initiatives, I see no such solution here– I believe this is a problems that boils down to “face to face” interactions. Does anyone see another path?
hwc:
In your recent response, do you feel the real need here is for change in the “dominant social group?” If so, what do you feel is necessary?
This is a cynical set of comments, far more cynical than my actual views on the matter:
1) Williams has no incentive to change the dominant campus culture, since it produces happy (shiny) loyal alumni who donate lots of money.
2) Williams wishes to assimilate as many people as possible into the dominant campus culture, because those who are not assimilated into this culture give it less money (if any) after they graduate. It wants to break up minority cultures to assimilate some students who might otherwise have been their members, even at the cost of turning the rest of these students into miserable loners.
3) Even though it frankly goes against the idea of a liberal arts education, Williams is happy to have 25% econ majors since these go on to make lots of money, lots of which will be given back to Williams. (How many of them are really interested in grappling with economics in a serious intellectual fashion, and how many of them are trying to get good grades (without really thinking much about the subject) just so that Morgan Stanley will hire them?)
Ken:
Yes. If the issues outlined in Athletics, Alcohol, Housing, and Diversity reports are accurate and if the college were serious about addressing them, then it would have to look at repositioning the dominant culture of the student body. The minority groups described in the four reports feel estranged because they ARE estranged. Look at the comments after the drunk epithet incident last year. What were the bloggers worried about? Not an outcry against the behavior, but concern over unfairly stereotyping athletes.
Specifically, the college would need to ease off of the heavy recruitment of full-fare, athletics, private school, future i-bankers. I’m not talking about massive changes. However, if you marginally replaced 10% of those with “geekier” students, perhaps tagged as being politically active or involved in real community service activism or diversity issues, you would change the campus culture in a way that would address the issues outlined in the reports, especially coupled with the strong existing art/music cohort and the reasonably strong minority enrollment.
I do not believe that the college has any intention of doing so, which is why they avoid the question in all of the reports. Alexander Woo has it about right. Williams is the way it is because Williams wants it to be that way.
In addition to Alexander’s points, I would also refer you to Morty’s published works on maximizing tuition revenues by offering a high-status product specifically targeted to appeal to full-fare, high-stat customers. Note that Morty has also written that, in the elite college segment, a certain degree of diversity and the appearance of inclusiveness is required to appeal to the target customers — hence the Diversity Initiatives.
Morty is a numbers guy. He knows that Williams has the highest percentage of varsity athletes of any school in the country. He knows that Williams has a higher percentage of full-fare customers than his immediate peers. He knows that Williams has a higher percentage of private school customers than his immediate peers. He knows that Williams is 25% Econ majors. He also knows that the Williams community likes it just the way it is.
Realistically, if I were in Morty’s shoes, I would embrace a winning formula, too. “Work hard, play hard, get a prestigious degree” sells. I don’t know why the college tries to distance itself from a very attractive and unique brand identity — the Duke of liberal arts colleges.
Sounds as if Williams is getting and is slated to continue to get an attempt (most probably a very solid one with a high likelihood of at least reasonably good success - but easier said than done) at gaining Morty’s vision for Williams, which will be developed by him and disclosed piecemeal to the various parts of the Williams community when, as, if and to the extent that he becomes ready. If this proposition should be the case, then we should all passively sit back, observe, enjoy the action and start putting aside the huge endowment needed to fund the inevitable and well earned Morton Owen Shapiro Memorial.
hwc: If Morty pulls it off, then Duke will be eager to call itself the Williams of the private multiversities.
Frank: briefly, I wonder if Morty has more up his sleeve. To skip a few beats, every time I heard him say “unilaterally change…” education, I did wonder if he was another Sawyer. Is an economically optimized Williams it?
Alex and hwc: (I really have to reign in my comments here:) but my general question to both your comments is, “is Williams really economically optimized?” If you were in charge, and the goal was to maximize alumni giving over the next forty-five years, would you be pursuing this course? Or what course would you take?
Is Williams really full of happy shiny people? (Who will give to Williams…?)
[quote]“is Williams really economically optimized?” If you were in charge, and the goal was to maximize alumni giving over the next forty-five years, would you be pursuing this course? [/quote]
Yes. Absolutely. Williams is very close to economically optimized. This is based not only on Shapiro’s and Winston’s extensive writings, but on the strategic plans of other liberal arts colleges that are seeking to further optimize their economic models. Oberlin and Smith have both written about their need to appeal to wealthier customers and reduce their financial aid discounts.
The goal is to maintain prestige while maximizing the number of students who can pay full-fare and who are aiming towards careers in high-paying fields (primarily business). Any “elite” school can increase full-pay students over the short term by lowering its admissions standards. But, to do so while increasing academic standards (thus bolstering “prestige”) is the holy grail.
Shapiro and Winston have both written on the subject of “prestige”, specifically that the well-healed customer base expects a commitment to diversity (or “racial aesthetics” as Justice Thomas bitterly calls it). Schapiro’s imprint on admissions has been in the area of strengthening ethnic diversity and income diversity, primarily through the Questbridge and Tyng quasi-merit aid programs.
I suspect that he looked at Williams stats viz-a-viz Amherst and the Ivies and realized the need for additional diversity from a marketing standpoint. So far, he has been able to accomplish that without eroding a very high percentage of full-fare customers.
The athletics emphasis is desireable because it creates an focused point of pride to drive future alumni engagement and giving. It is possible that this is also some of the thinking behind the anchor house proposal — the non-frat, fraternity. We’ll know the answer to that if we ever see endowments sought for the houses.
All in all, I would have to give Morty very high marks for economic optimization.
Okay - i guess i’m being asked to make a serious comment. Warning: I ramble long and poorly.
I know only the very basics of economics and no social psychology at all, but I would guess that students who are more assimilated into mainstream Williams culture are more likely to donate more money after they graduate. Furthermore, I would guess the difference in giving between a miserable loner and someone in a non-mainstream culture is relatively small. Given that Williams is not big enough to support two cultures and have both of them feel they “are Williams”, this leads to the conclusion that the financially optimal route for Williams is to assimilate as many into mainstream Williams culture as possible.
There are of course factors to giving other than personal loyalty to the school, which is roughly the factor addressed above. For example, donors, even alumni, consider to a large extent how much they feel Williams is good for society as a whole. So an assumption has been made that an assimilationist policy does not lead to significant, publicly measurable effects that would negatively affect the school’s image. (For example, I am assuming that such a policy would not lead to having two students commit suicide every year, or, less dramatically, to a significantly higher dropout rate.) I don’t know if this assumption is correct. I think it is not unreasonable.
That being said, I do not actually believe that Williams is actually simply going for financial optimality, though one unfortunate effect of having an economist (and especially one who has studied higher education) as President is that it invites such cynicism. However, not having any expected negative financial consequences certainly removes one reason for rethinking decisions.
I highly value “minimizing misierable loners”, and by that measure, I think the model of one majority cultural group and several other smaller cultural groups, with friendly relations among them partly facilitated by some individuals with feet in several camps, is probably the right one for a school with 2000 students and everything within 15 minutes walking distance.
The cynicism above was prompted much more by Housing than by anything in the Diversity Initiatives.
What I have seen so far about the Diversity Initiative does not tell me which model they are looking at. Are they looking to simply help all individuals assimilate into the main culture, or are they going to encourage other distinct but not entirely seperate cultures? (Of course a mixed model encouraging each to some degree is also possible, but it still has to be decided which one to what degree!) This is a fundamental decision. I get the feeling that this question has not even been asked, and therefore this decision will get made in an incremental, haphazard, occasionally contradictory manner by individual judgements in particular situations, and by decisions on whom to hire which may largely be based on other factors.
I should expand on that last point. It is clear that the Diversity Initiatives aim to, at minimal cost (where cost is not only in financial terms), increase minority students, faculty, and staff, and, moreover, improve their perceptions of their experiences at Williams so that they encourage those after them to at least apply to Williams. It has a reasonably clear sense of what rich white students get out of having more diversity on campus. It never seems to think in large terms about the questions: What should Williams provide a minority student? or What does a minority student want from Williams? Of course it does address (and imo do a reasonable job with) the smaller question of “What would make a minority student a happy and satisfied student?”, but I mean these questions on a larger scale - on the scale of Freud’s insightful and baffling question (which he then proceeded to ignore) over 100 years ago: “What does a woman want?”
To assume that the answers to these questions are identical to the answers for rich white students is to turn around and deny that there is actually any fundamental diversity at all. At the other end, thinking the answers are significantly different leads to the conclusion that nothing of personally applicable value can be learned from the experience of diversity. I do think diversity is of value, and that is in part because I think the answers to those questions are different, but in subtle ways, and subject to large individual variation, but with some small trends hidden in the noise.
Of course there is no answer to these questions, but I see no sign that they are being wrestled with.
Ken: Morty is much more complex than I or, I suspect, you can imagine. Consequently he has a great deal up his sleeve not meeting the eye.
Reading hwc’s comments, I was reminded of a quote from Morty in the report from the “Student Discussion” thread two weeks ago, namely:
“To put it more generally, we want to move toward the day in which every Williams student, faculty, and staff member can feel that this is their college, not a college for others to which they’ve been invited.”
hwc seems to be claiming that this quote is false, or more accurately, it should be taken absolutely literally. The claim is that Williams thinks of itself as being for full-fare paying students aiming towards high-paying fields, and for everyone else, it is indeed a college for others to which they’ve been invited. In that case, the aim of Diversity Initiatives is to delude these people.
Really? In that case, either there is a huge intellectual disconnect, or brazen dishonesty. I guess i can believe the former but not the latter.
Alexander: In the commercial world the first time you provide your ideas to a General Manager in the foregoing style, his eyes will glaze over. There will be no second time.
Alexander: You intervened between your blog about which I was talking and my immediately prior blog which should be amended by changing “in the foregoing style to “in the style of your penultimate blog”.
One of my concerns here is an article in the NYT’s education section about 3 years ago, with the approximate title “Forget the Dorms, Check out Psych Services.” Sorry for not being able to locate the link.
The general situation outlined was an exponential curb in the use of psych services at most institutions reporting– including a rough doubling of serious psychological incidents and [attempted -Ed.] suicide rates from academic ‘01-’02 to ‘02-’03. I don’t have any stats for Williams– or any idea–, but outside George Mason (hello Lowell), my sense is that very few institutions have escaped the general trend.
I should perhaps stop there, but Harvard (and Berkeley and Cornell) haven’t escaped that trend– “psycho singles” began well over two decades ago, and isolation and depression are frequent topics on their student blogs.
Anyone have an idea of the statistics and problem at Williams?
Frank!
Woo’s posts are fine. (Although there might be some factual issues.) We can’t all be as pithy and thought-provoking as you . . .
By the way, how many “General Managers” are there in the “commercial world?” I have never met one.
Frank,
By the time I figured out that what managers at BBN really needed were bullet points and half-sentence descriptions of what-would-get-done-when, I was no longer working there.
But they did give me many more chances than one; probably because I caught on to social realities a bit faster than the average geek, preferred white collars to tattoos, and didn’t try to chat about the latest anime… unless I was chatting to the geeks and not the managers.
Now I get to give the same glazed look… and contemplate all the things that the 25-year-olds working for me have never done, and how they breach protocol and step on each others’ toes so often because they’ve never done these things before, and how the heck I’m supposed to tell them anything worth wasting my breath and their time on.
Today, one of them asked another to come by his office at 10:30 if he didn’t call her to say he wouldn’t be there. (I watched him as he did this and bit my tongue).
As expected, she came by on time, and he wasn’t there because… does it matter? Result: ruffled feathers and a minor political struggle between the two, followed my best quick lecture-that-is-not-a-lecture to each and, I hope, no lasting resentments. Maybe. (Actually definitely).
However, the above seems to be getting old, and I’m still a young-un. How can you possibly bear those of us who have so little experience?
Alex and All,
There is quite a bit in that post– which makes it hard to digest and hard to decide what to address.
Let me try to selectively quote and restate one of Alex’s paragraphs — with the very high risk of altering his meaning far beyond his wishes:
Restated as above, I believe we more or less have Plato’s question of eudaimonia– though perhaps it would be equally appropriate (and certainly better art) to formulate the meaning of our lives in terms of the Gitas, the Koran, Buddhism, or even some version of the Bible? (I tend to believe we need students capable of viewing these questions within each, and multiple frames).
But is the restatement above valid and valuable, or (perhaps) hostile to Alex’s intent?
Do we get somewhere by moving to …
… perhaps what the young Freud, sitting curled above his little Cherry desk in his little corner of the TAs’ room of the Faculty of Nervous Diseases in Vienna, in 1887 or so– meant when he wrote in one of his letters to Wilheim Fleiss: “The one question I cannot come to understand is, ‘What does a woman want? What does a man want?’ ”
I don’t think Morty or anyone else involved in the “Diversity Intiatives” at Williams is consciously cynical. They believe that diversity is an inherently good thing and that it benefits the education of all students. They are legitimately concerned about perception of disenfranchisement on campus. The proposals are mostly reasonable (and mostly standard boilerplate stuff that’s been around since the late 1960s).
I think that the College is eager to make every effort to increase diversity and decrease whatever disenfranchisement exists as long as those efforts stop just short of asking hard questions or altering the admissions profile to change the campus culture. The people who feel disenfranchised will bear the brunt of the initiatives, whether it’s cluster housing or attending more training sessions to learn how to fit in better.
To be perfectly honest, the Diversity Initiatives report reads like a standard CYA response that a college prepares when it knows it is going to get docked for something on the next round of accreditation reviews. “Yes, we know that we are falling a bit short in terms of community and we’ve already begun an initiative to improve….” It’s pretty tepid stuff. I’m surprised that it has generated any controversy and I doubt that it has, outside of Ephblog.
Frank - i’m not in the commercial world, and glad it is so. Yes i have had experience.
I realize I wasn’t very coherent there. The aim was more to expose my thought process than to communicate my thoughts. The truth is - i don’t really know what i meant. I thought it might be possible and valuable for others to draw insights from my thought process different from what i thought.
So Ken - i don’t have any wishes (as far as that post is concerned) restricting how its meaning could be altered.
One idea we get more clearly out of Freud is that the answers to the question about a man and the question about a woman could be different. (Use of the singular is intentional.)
So perhaps in bringing up Freud i wanted to highlight the possibility that the answers might be subtly different for a minority student and a white student.
Ken:
I would be dubious of a “doubling” of suicide rates at colleges. It doesn’t seem like the kind of statistical measure that would “double” overnight.
The national trends do show a significant uptick in the use of college psych services over the last decade. I think this is generally viewed as a positive development and is probably a major reason that graduation rates have increased at elite colleges. I know that during parents orientation at my daughter’s school, the old folk were taken around in small groups and introduced to all of the major support services (security office, deans offices, health center, psych services, etc.) so that we would be able to nudge our kids should the need arise. Schools are pushing kids to psych services. For example, if you get referred to a dean for a drinking incident, you will end up at psych services for a discussion and an alcohol workup. Residential advisors are trained to nudge kids as well.
I’ve not run across statistics for Williams, but here a link to detailed annual report from psych services at Swarthmore. It provides complete data broken down by class, number of visits, as well as historical data going back 10 years, etc.
2004-05 Annual Report
18% of the students visited psych services at least once during the year. Smith estimates 25% on their website so these appear to be pretty universal numbers. They are probably higher than at large state universities, simply because small liberal arts colleges are likely to have more mechanisms in place to spot trouble signs (like repeatedly missing classes, etc.). Interestingly, the rates are highest for white students, lower for minority students, and lower still for internationals. Rates for female students are double those for male students (probably has more to do with the willingness to get help rather than the need for it!)
David: Your disaffection has been duly noted.
On a side note, I love Ken Thomas’ note about BBN managers with a short attention span. When I worked as a programmer supporting manufacturing at a high tech company, I was told by a Manufacturing VP, “Never send me a memo longer than a page. If I have to read a page 2 I forget what was on page one.”