Devotion
Marc Lynch is right, as usual. “[C]hildren and wife must be showered with unending hours of love and devotion.” Very true.
Bubble Back?
Does this mean that the internet bubble is back?
Start up company needs experienced web page designer to make our page. Send resumes to 09cks or 09rso.
What start up company is this? Perhaps EphBlog can get in on the first round of funding . . . Someone call Bo Peabody at Village Ventures.
Frank Grant, The Hall Of Fame, and Williamstown
The Boston Globe has a feature on Western Massachusetts native Frank Grant, one of the African American inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame today. Grant lived in Williamstown for about ten years, and his family made their way largely through town-gown links to the college.
Fuller ‘52, RIP
Vince Fuller, Navy veteran and father of my fellow Marine Tony Fuller ‘89, has passed away.
Vincent J. Fuller, a leading Washington lawyer who successfully defended would-be presidential assassin John W. Hinckley Jr., has died. He was 75.
Fuller, who lived in Bethesda, Md., died Wednesday of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in a suburban Maryland hospice.
The lawyer defended a wide range of notable figures, including boxer Mike Tyson, boxing promoter Don King and financier Michael Milken.
But Fuller was best known for his successful representation of Hinckley, who shot President Reagan, Press Secretary James Brady, a Secret Service agent and a policeman outside a Washington hotel March 30, 1981. Retained within hours of the shooting, Fuller built his defense on Hinckley’s mental state.
…
Fuller said Hinckley was delusional and obsessed with actress Jodie Foster.
In his closing argument, he told the jury, “In his own mind, the defendant had two compelling reasons to do what he did: to terminate his own existence and to accomplish his ideal union with Jodie Foster, whether in this world or the next.
“I submit these are the acts of a totally irrational individual.”
Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on all 13 charges.
Fuller had little to say immediately after the verdict. His only comment was, “Another day, another dollar.”
…
Fuller’s survivors include his wife of 48 years, Beatrice; five children; 13 grandchildren; and a sister.
A life well-lived. The New York Times claims
Mr. Fuller, noted for his representation of high-profile defendants, including the former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson and the boxing promoter Don King, was a senior partner in the powerful Washington law firm Williams & Connolly. His college teacher and mentor, Edward Bennett Williams, was a founder of the firm in 1967.
I do not think that Edward Bennett Williams ever taught at Williams College. Three of Fuller’s other children are also Ephs: Kenwyn ‘82, Beatrice ‘83 and Allison ‘85. If you only have time to read one obituary, go with the Washington Post’s.
Mr. Fuller’s most memorable trial came in his defense of Hinckley, who shot President Ronald Reagan, press secretary James Brady and two law officers at the Washington Hilton on March 30, 1981. Within two hours of the shooting, Mr. Fuller had been asked to take the case. Over the next year, he shaped an insanity defense that has entered legal annals as one of the finest courtroom performances of modern time.
…
Lon Babby, a Williams & Connolly lawyer who assisted Mr. Fuller on the case, said, “His closing argument was extraordinarily powerful, so powerful that Hinckley became emotional in the courtroom.”
The argument is one of 15 featured in “Classics of the Courtroom,” a set of transcripts of famous legal cases.
But is this the lesson that the rest of us should draw from Fuller’s life, that we should all strive to success and even fame in our chosen fields? Perhaps. Yet I’ll choose some different lessons.
He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts, then served two years as a Navy officer — “Undoubtedly, those were the two most important years of my life,” he later said.
If you’re a current Williams student and these words strike home for you, then go join the Marine Corps. It will be one of the best decisions you ever make.
Mr. Fuller, who could be warm and jovial outside the courtroom, always encouraged younger lawyers to spend time with their families. He coached his children’s soccer teams and was a member of Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church in Potomac. He was a student of history in his spare time.
I’ll be coaching both Michaela and Casandra’s soccer teams this coming fall, as a I did last year. No doubt my professional work would go better if I spent more time on it, but that is a shallow concern. Life is too short not to spend every available moment with your children and your parents. If I can be half the father than Vince Fuller was to his family, then I will be a successful Eph indeed.
Condolences to all.
Fat Toad
Great article on Yankee owner George Steinbrenner ‘52. Highlights included:
It’s another June evening in baseball and the Boston Red Sox are visiting New York for the latest showdown with their archenemy, the Yankees. As it is at every meeting between the teams, the stadium is packed and crackling with energy.
Few in the stands, though, notice that the man perhaps most responsible for the revival of their rivalry is not there. George Steinbrenner, the principal owner of the Yankees and the man New Yorkers love to hate, now watches more games at his home in Tampa, Fla., than he does in his private box above home plate.
Although he is 76 and noticeably slower than he was when he took over the Yankees 33 years ago, Mr. Steinbrenner remains, according to those who know and work with him, deeply involved in the Yankees operation. Despite rumors that failing health has shrunk his ambition, the Boss, as he is known to all in baseball, is pushing all of his employees to try to win championships — and spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to accomplish it.
…
Yankees fans and the city’s news media, never warm and fuzzy about outsiders, initially greeted Mr. Steinbrenner’s arrival with skepticism. He professed admiration for the Yankees, talking about how as a child he could not wait for the team to visit Cleveland, his hometown, to play the Indians. He also promised to take a back seat, leaving the running of the team to others.
But he quickly did an about-face, bringing in his own people to run things, involving himself in every aspect of the club’s operations and alienating employees, players and fans. He publicly lambasted his managers and players — serially hiring and firing Billy Martin as manager in the 1970’s and 80’s, for example. The ranting went on for decades; in 1999, he called a pitcher, Hideki Irabu, a “fat toad.”
Buster Olney, a former sportswriter for The New York Times, summed up the Boss’s management style in his book, “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty”: “George Steinbrenner would never entrust his team to God. That would mean giving up too much control. Instead, the Yankees’ owner audited the team from moment to moment, like a caffeinated rent-a-cop monitoring a Wal-Mart through security cameras.”
Ouch. Steinbrenner was a DKE, like our own Frank Uible ‘59 and David H.T. Kane ‘58. Steinbrenner was been a faithful donor to Williams for many years, but I am sure that the alumni development office hopes that his estate planning keeps Williams in mind.
Morgan Hall renovation
Several days ago, David begged for Williams photos, so here are some. These will be of particular interest to all of the rising seniors who picked into Morgan for next year, when their future rooms did not even exist yet.
This is Morgan Hall as seen from Spring Street. There are other views in the extended entry.
D’oha!
Dan Drezner ‘90, still the most popular of Eph bloggers, reports on the collapse of the Doha round of world trade talks. I wonder what Drezner’s take is on the performance of chief US Trade Negotiator Susan Schwab ‘76. Not everyone on the web is a Schwab fan, or a fan of global trade agreements at all.
Almost no living American has wracked up more experience making trade policy than Susan Schwab, the new U.S. Trade Representative. Her first job in the field was with consummate Washington wheeler-dealer Robert Strauss, who served as the nation’s chief trade negotiator under Jimmy Carter. (Schwab was too junior to deserve blame for the Carter-Strauss decision to permit Japan to dump America’s consumer electronics industry into the grave.)
Yet judging from some of her first comments after being nominated, it’s clear that few Americans have learned less than Schwab about U.S. trade policy and why it’s been pushing the nation rapidly towards insolvency and de-industrialization.
…
What President Bush and President Clinton before him have really wanted are low-wage production sites from which U.S. multinational companies can supply the U.S. market – which, unlike Vietnam or Peru and America’s other new third world trade partners, still contains consumers wealthy enough to buy this output. In other words, most of America’s recent trade agreements haven’t been trade agreements at all but outsourcing agreements.
So far, the result has been to push U.S. trade deficits and cumulative deficits to dizzying heights (and increasingly to encourage the foreign purchase of tangible American assets as well as Treasury notes). The willingness of protectionist, export-dependent foreign governments has filled the financial gap created by their own stripping of U.S. productive and earnings capacity.
Eventually, the result will be (1) a protracted nosedive in American living standards as these same governments lose faith in U.S. creditworthiness and start to flee the dollar, followed by (2) an equally severe global downturn as the world discovers that America is irreplaceable as its importer and thus growth engine of last resort.
Consequently, it’s difficult to know which interpretation of Ambassador Schwab’s recent remarks is more troubling: That she rejects this entirely conventional economic analysis; or that she accepts it but plans on leading the nation farther down this path and blaming the messengers for the bad news all the way.
Not sure if Professor Ralph Bradburd would describe this as “entirely conventional economic analysis,” but it’s been 20 years since he taught me economics. Perhaps I need to brush up on my reading!
Eph Bear Encounter
This is a pretty hilarious story featuring Sabrina Oei of the great class of ‘97. The message to all bears out there: it may look meek, but don’t mess with the purple cow.
(Thanks to Dave Nickerson for the tip).
DC MeetUp
The new first years are now posting to WSO.
I’m going to start at Williams this fall and right now I’m staying in the Washington DC area. I was wondering if any other new students in the area would like to get together sometime before going up to Williams. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll set something up.
Good stuff. The more time that first years spend getting to know each other, and other students, the better for all concerned. It is amazing how much more of an opportunity first years have to communicate with each other than we did back in the day. Here is a report on Facebook usage an UNC. I wonder what the figures would be for Williams. There is a great senior thesis to be written about this.
Triangles
Diana Davis ‘07 seems to be having a fun time teaching math this summer. She reports:
We had a problem in geometry a few days ago that involved saying whether something was an acute triangle or an obtuse triangle. This is an easy problem, because if one of the angles is greater than 90 degrees, you say “obtuse,” and if none of the angles is greater than 90 degrees, you say “acute,” and if two of the angles are greater than 90 degrees, you say “get back to plane geometry.”
This problem got me to thinking: what are there more of, acute triangles or obtuse triangles? Which naturally led me to wonder: what is the ratio of acute triangles to obtuse triangles?
Now, one way you could do the problem would be to make a “simplification” like say that the angles have to be whole numbers, and then count. But then you’d have to do a lot of counting, and you’d get all confused with the right triangles. So this would be a bad way to solve the problem.
The way I decided to solve the problem was to imagine that the first angle is plotted on the x-axis, the second angle is plotted on the y-axis, and the third angle is plotted on the z-axis. Then your x, y, and z values can all range between 0 and 180, but with the constraint that x+y+z=180. This is the equation of a plane that intersects the axes at (180,0,0), (0,180,0), and (0,0,180), respectively.
Interesting stuff, but a diagram would be very nice. Perhaps Brent Yorgey ‘04 can chime in. Diana also
realized recently how much free time we have here — unless we have duty, we have all of Wednesday afternoon free, and Saturday afternoon and almost all of Sunday. So I could go somewhere even if it wasn’t my weekend off. For example, I could up and decide to go to Williamstown, you know, tomorrow.
Or you could post some pictures of Williams. Having tricked all of your EphBlog fans into addiction, you owe us a couple of summer-time fixes. Don’t make us beg!
Eph Parent for Senator
“I’ve got people who believe in me, and I’ve got a copy machine. I’m ready.”
Now, all state Rep. Diana S. Urban, R-Dist. 43, North Stonington needs is 7,500 signatures by Aug. 8 to be a contender in the race for the U.S Senate seat from Connecticut.
Good luck to the mother of Alex Urban ‘04.
Urban said her decision to pursue the required petition signatures so she can make the run is a “real, true grassroots effort.”
“Why do I want this? I’m against the war, yes, but it’s not a simple issue,” she said.
“The problem is it’s a mistake we make over and over. We don’t learn. We never should have gone into Iraq – like Iran, Afghanistan, Vietnam. But we’re there now,” she said. “It seems like it’s a move – and always has been for some – to get re-elected.
Not go into Afghanistan? That’s an interesting point of view! Is there a single United States Senator who now thinks that bombing/invading Afghanistan was a bad idea? I don’t think so. Clearly, Urban’s voice needs to be heard in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.
Parker ‘65 for Vermont Governor
One thing is abundantly clear about Scudder Parker, a Democratic candidate for governor: He is all about energy. He knows energy policy better than most, and during an interview with the Banner last month, he fervently outlined where he believes Vermont has gone wrong and where it can improve.
The former state senator from Caledonia County is running against popular Republican incumbent, Gov. James Douglas. But Parker doesn’t seem fazed, and with his aggressive approach to campaigning, appears prepared to offer Douglas his most challenging campaign yet.Parker grew up on a farm in the Northeast Kingdom, where he said he learned the value of working hard. Although not a native Vermonter, he’s lived here for just about all of his life.
Read the whole thing. An ambitious student should join Parker’s campaign right now and write a thesis or independent study on “The Making of the Governor 2006.” As long as you didn’t publish until after the election, I’d bet that Parker would let you tag along and see everything. Take lots of video as well.
Why read history books when you have the chance to dive into the arena?
Student Investment Club?
Would this be a good idea at Williams?
Once an anomaly, student-run investment funds are taking off as a teaching tool everywhere from the University of Texas at Austin to Cornell University. As recently as the early 1990s, there were about 30 such funds but they now number more than 200, according to the Association of Student Managed Investment Programs at Stetson University in Florida, formed to coordinate efforts among funds such as these about five years ago.
Perhaps. This is something that I and other Ephs in finance would probably be willing to help out with. The College wouldn’t want to devote any meaningful amount of its endowment to this exercise, but the students involved would learn a lot with only [! -- ed.] a million dollars to invest. I suspect that the economics department — with little interest in most of the jobs that its majors go on to after graduation — would be unwilling to get involved, although I would be eager to be proved wrong.
Partners
Mike Needham ‘04, recently appointed Director of the Asian Study Center at The Heritage Foundation, writes on China’s ‘Time for Choosing’.
China’s latest United Nations veto threat should convince even the most generous diplomat that Beijing is part of the problem in North Korea, not a “partner” in a solution. If it ever hopes to get a solution, Washington should now make Beijing’s policy toward North Korea a vital test of China’s ability and desire to be a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. Specifically, the United States should insist on the introduction of the Japanese draft Chapter VII resolution proposing sanctions against North Korea for noncompliance and allow China to use its veto, if it follows through on its threat. Forcing a veto would clear the air and reset the issue for policy-makers and diplomats.
I wonder what Professor Sam Crane thinks about Heritage’s approach to US-China relations. Longtime readers will recall that Sam and Mike have discussed US policy in Asia in the past.
Garfield Reconsidered
If you are like me (pity for you) you know little about the life and career of James Garfield beyond the received wisdom that all good Ephs garner in the form of trivia-cum-school-pride. One among that faceless clutter of Gilded Age presidents, assassinated too soon to leave a mark on the nation, Garfield has seeped as deeply into historical anonymity as someone who once served in the highest office possibly can. As alums of Williams we can add a little bit to his biography if Garfield comes up in conversation — “he was assassinated on his way to an alumni reunion at Williams!” we can helpfully add when the twentieth president comes up as a topic of discussion — but seriously, how often does that happen? I’m a professional historian, albeit not of the Gilded Age, and I knew little beyond the rudiments before today.
My guess is that few of you are inclined to dig deep into the library to find the latest Garfield scholarship. But Times Books has a useful series, edited by the estimable Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “The American Presidents.” The books are short and readable, geared toward a broad audience (well, as broad an audience as biographies of most presidents are likely to receive), but not without merit for students and scholars. Ira Rutkow, clinical professor of surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and an accomplished scholar of medical history, has written James A. Garfield for the series. Because of its accessibility, brevity, and readability, it is worth the space on your bookshelf.
The section on Garfield’s time at Williams is of necessity brief, but it reveals how important his time in Williamstown was to the future president’s development. Mark Hopkins plays a prominent role during Garfield’s tenure at the school (truncated not, as some legends have it, simply because he did not graduate, but rather because he had spent two years at what would later become Hiram College in Ohio before heading to the Purple Valley and graduating from the college in August 1856) and fingered Garfield for future greatness. The burly Ohioan was renowned as the finest debater not only of his, but perhaps of any era at Williams. He also served as chief editor of the literary magazine Williams Quarterly, was president of the school’s litarary club (the Philologian Society), was involved with the Theological Society, took leading roles in both the campus anti-secret society and the anti-fraternity faction, and won class salutatorian. On his graduation day he gave the college’s “Metaphysical Oration,” a high honor. (See p. 9.)
Garfield quickly rose to prominence in politics, first in Ohio, then, after an interregnum in which he served as a General in the Union Army, at the national level — it was at Williams that the theretofore disengaged Garfield took an interest in politics. Garfield eventually reached the highest ranks of government during an era in which the Republican Party was deeply divided.
Unsurprisingly, Rutkow is at his best in dealing with the medical issues surrounding Garfield’s utterly avoidable death at the hands of Charles Guiteau, well known to those conversant in the thumbnail sketch as a “frustrated office seeker,” but who was also reacting to the divide within the Grand Old Party. Rutkow shows how a combination of negligence, hubris, and ignorance led to Garfield’s death seventy-nine days after he took two bullets in the train station from which he was to head to Williams.
Garfield today hovers in the marginalia of American history, yet at the time his death was seen as a tragic loss to the Republic. Americans deeply mourned his death. Songs were written. (Johnny Cash sings a song devoted to Charlie Guiteau that I assume originates from the era.) Garfield’s tenure and subsequent assassination can be qualified as one of those great “what ifs?” in American history.
Rutkow’s book also, perhaps, will allow Williams folks to feel a bit more pride about our one contribution to the center of executive power on Pennsylvania Avenue (perhaps I am especially sensitive to this issue because, as a New Hampshire native, I am also shackled to Franklin Pierce, who was undoubtedly a failure as President). One of Garfield’s sons, Harry, would serve a long tenure as President of Williams; another, James, would serve as Secretary of the Interior under Teddy Roosevelt (indeed, his sacking in favor of a far less conservationally inclined successor would prove to be one of the reasons for the demise of William Howard Taft in the eyes of Progressives). But Garfield’s premature death does not place him in the category of failed presidencies, but rather of ones cut tragically short.
Reflections upon Emergent Events
“Origin” Title: “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions”
Summary of the Argument as it stands Today: (Introduction follows)
REVIEW OF INCONSISTENCIES IN MEXICO’S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF JULY 2 2006
[[Again-- I remind-- you are describing an alien process-- new events on the stage of human affairs. Arendt (citing the sophists): we travel into history walking backwards; these events are still at the far periphery of our vision.]]
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Observers of Mexico’s electoral process have been attentive to the developments since July 2nd and many of them were also well informed of developments in the months running up to the election.
As public manifestation against the lack of transparency in this election grows and as AMLO’s coalition has demanded a ballot-by-ballot count in order to eliminate all doubts, observers demand to know the evidence against this election.
Evidence casting doubts that this was a clean election has flowed and continues to flow since the evening of July 2nd. Here is a summary of this evidence so far:
(1) The IFE failed to name a likely winner on the night of the election, even though it’s calculations had Felipe Calderón (FC) ahead of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) by 1% of the vote, a respectable 400,000 vote figure, given that the PREP count system was established with the presumption of a margin of error of 0.03 percent.
(2) On July 3rd, the IFE admitted that this difference had narrowed to 0.6%, because of the inclusion of results from a large number of voting stations left out of the original PREP count. This occurred only after AMLO had objected that such voting stations still not being counted.
(3) There were 283,448 less votes reported as cast for President (from any party) than reported for senatorial positions. In many ‘adjacent’ voting stations (”contiguas” in the IFE’s parlance), there no votes were reported as cast for President at all.
(4) In states where AMLO was leading, the difference between votes reported for senatorial positions and for President was the largest (in favour of senatorial ballots) and this discrepancy harmed AMLO. In states where Felipe Calderon was leading, the difference between reported votes for senatorial positions and those for president were the largest (in favour of Presidential votes) and this favouredof Felipe Calderon. The extremes were in Tabasco (96,450 votes less for President) and Nuevo León (41,290 votes more for President). In the six states where AMLO led, votes for president were less than those for senator by 313,882. In states where Felipe Calderon led, ballots for President outnumbered those for senators by 111,178.
(5) After the PREP, [[AWK & unclear] the next stage of the electoral process was the count by district]], which involved a count of tally sheets in all 300 districts. [In this process...,] councils are authorized to open ballot boxes for a manual recount of votes [under... [what limited conditions: "a majority vote of..."]]. AMLO’s coalition demanded that 50,000 boxes be opened on the grounds of irregularities visible to varying degrees. District councils only authorized the opening of 2,700 boxes. This ‘manual recount’ gave AMLO an additional 102,000 votes.
ThoughtCast
What is the coolest Eph website that you haven’t been to? ThoughtCast, by Jenny Attiyeh ‘87. (Thanks to Sean Denniston ‘87 for the tip.)
Welcome to ThoughtCast, a podcast and public radio interview program on authors, academics and intellectuals. I’m Jenny Attiyeh. ThoughtCast offers something that is glaringly absent from the media today: a bridge between the publications and pursuits of the intellectual world and a curious, informed, mainstream audience.
By providing detailed, unhurried and personal conversation with current writers and thinkers, ThoughtCast is that rare hybrid: a show that is both informative and entertaining – a synergy between mass media and the ivory tower. Think of it as “Terry Gross comes to Harvard.”
Interesting. But where is the Eph undergraduate who wants to do the same thing for Williams? Matt Piven ‘07 can’t do everything himself! And he still doesn’t podcast . . .
Voting? Yes. Democracy? Not at All.
Journalist: “I’ve never seen a political race end like this, but it has just happened.”
Z: “I’ve seen a lot of elections, Gaius, most honest, a few fakes, and you can always tell the fixed ones, because they don’t make sense. And this doesn’t make sense.”
– Ron Moore script (aired 3/10/06 in UK)
What a wonderful and prescient explanation, of the experiences of July 3rd, 2006. Would that I had viewed Ron’s work, prior to its later distribution in the United States.
James K. Galbraith saved me a great deal of effort and anxiety earlier today, by publishing, in clear words, Doing Maths in Mexico, a far better explication of events than I had come to. (To be fair to myself, I had only begun to assemble datasets from election results, have many more internal documents confusing my perspective, and spent much of last night writing about the significance of Mexico’s teetering democratic experiment to our own).
Galbraith begins:
The election was stolen. It’s not in doubt. Colin Powell admits it. The National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute both admit it. Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana – a Republican – was emphatic: there had been “a concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse”; he “had heard” of employers telling their workers how to vote; yet he had also seen the fire of the resisting young, “not prepared to be intimidated”.
In Washington, Zbigniew Brzezinski has demanded that the results be set aside and a new vote taken, under the eye – no less – of the United Nations. In The New York Times, Steven Lee Myers decried “the use of government resources on behalf of loyal candidates and the state’s control over the media” – factors, he said, were akin to practices in “Putin’s Russia”.
and Galbraith ends with words almost as strong as my own:
[F]or those of us outside Mexico, we must decide where we stand: with democracy … or quietly on the sidelines?
I, of course, do not stand outside of Mexico, nor on the “sidelines,” but with those who march to defend democracy’s name, and its meaning, in the streets of Mexico. As an American, with the people of Mexico, I also consider Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador “my President,” and the hope and symbol of our common future.
Galbraith continues by outlining the problems of the July 2nd election:
Cities of the 21st Century
Frequent EphBlog commentator Webb Collings ‘75 writes:
Thought you might be interested in a study abroad program two Eph juniors are doing next fall.
It’s called Cities of the 21st Century and involves a group of 25 students from various colleges and universities plus several faculty travelling to four of the world’s largest cities. Academically, the program involves four courses, all related to aspects of rapid globalization and urbanization — economics & politics, sociology, urban planning, and urban ecology. In each city, the group lives with local families, does field visits, and studies with local academic, government, business, and NGO officials.
The itinery starts at the International House at Columbia in NYC for a week. Then, moves to Buenos Aires for 5 weeks. Then, to Beijing for 3 weeks. Shanghai for 2 weeks. And, finally Bangalore, India for 5 weeks. You might say it’s the “Amazing Race” study abroad semester. Sixty five hours in airplanes.
Next fall’s group includes students from Williams, Swarthmore, Wellesley, Vasser, Barnard, Penn, Berkeley, BU, and Harvard among others. I know that both Williams and Swarthmore have been sending a student or two annually on this and other similar programs for quite a few years now.
Great stuff. It would be fun to have these Ephs do an EphBlog Diary about their experiences.
Counting Noses: The Details
The process of racial classification at Williams is endlessly fascinating (see here, here and here). In a previous thread, I was struck by this comment from fellow EphBlog author Reed Wiedower ‘00.
As I pointed out during Winter Study, I’m still curious as to why the college keeps lying about the racial question.
Many people my year refused to answer the question, especially those of mixed heritage. Many so called “whites” were equally dismissive of it.
I think that removing oneself from racial aggregate data is statistically a good move. Why? Because it forces the administration to take a look behind the numbers at what is going on.
I should have challenged Reed at the time on his use of word “lying.” First, there is the issue of the anthropomorphizing the “college” — a sin of which I am regularly guilty. The college doesn’t lie (or talk or tell the truth). Individuals at the College do. Second, the honest and hard-working Ephs at the College who are actually responsible for these statistics are doing the best that they can given the constraints that they face.
In fact, Dave Winters ‘95, Director of Institutional Research (and the man whose name appears on these documents), was kind enough to explain the mechanics of what happens. Endless details below the break.
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