Tue 17 Apr 2007
Ephailure update: not for general release
Posted by eph under Campus News at 9:52 pm
{Crossposted at UnderHopkins}
The slideshow component of the Ephailure project by Brandi Brown ’07, discussed earlier on UnderHopkins, will not be publicly available. Apologies to readers who were looking for this to be publicly released…but for several reasons, Brandi Brown ’07, who put the project together, has decided against generally releasing her slideshow and giving additional public talks based on it. She’s asked me to briefly explain here, since David Kane ’88 has already referenced her presentation to the Society of Alumni Executive Committee on EphBlog, and some readers are undoubtedly waiting for more info.
More on the flip…
The on-campus public talk Brandi gave was necessary to confirm the validity of her qualitative data and conclusions. The discussions and Lissack forum were also part of that process. And, if her data is to prove at all useful in lighting the path for change, people involved in the College needed to be made aware of the data, in order to start productive discussions among the relevant policy-shapers about what the College does, and why the College does it. I hope Brandi’s presentation to the SoA Exec. Committee will get that process started.
But making the data publicly available poses a few problems. First, the presentation relied in part on extended quotations from anonymous interviews. Should the information contained in those quotations become generally available, those interviews might not stay very anonymous for very long. Brandi has an obligation to the people who opened up to her to live up to her guarantee of confidentiality. Additionally, the slideshow, taken out of context, would read quite differently from the way it reads when used simply as an aid for Brandi’s talk. Given this potential for things to be read the wrong way, having the slideshow publicly available could cause a public ruckus over its contents that would be detrimental to the goal of simply improving the College. People might construe the slideshow and, by extension, the whole project as simply articulating a ‘syllabus of errors’, when in fact, Brandi is trying to turn it into something far more constructive. For these reasons, public release of the slideshow would be very detrimental to the project’s integrity.
Apologies to those these reasons don’t satisfy, but Brandi believes it’s for the best and I support her decision. If you’d like more information, check my earlier post at UnderHopkins. I’ll try to keep up with the comments thread there to answer any questions that pop up (anyone with a gmail account can comment, and if you need an account I’ve got tons of invites!)…but Brandi and I are both students trying to close out the Spring semester, so you know how that goes.
Cheers all.
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8 Responses to “Ephailure update: not for general release”
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frank uible says:
Star Chamber?
David says:
Thanks to Andrew for posting this. More background can be found in this Record article.
It is certainly reasonable to keep a presentation with sensitive quotes off the internet. Perhaps Brandi (and others) will have more time to discuss in the summer.
In the meantime, here are some (uninformed!) thoughts.
First, it is unsurprising that Williams students are stressed, competitive and fear failure. That’s what Williams selects for. If you are comfortable getting a C on a paper, then you don’t get into Williams. You may be a happier, more well-adjusted person, but you won’t get interviewed by Brandi.
Second, I don’t mind a little stress and competition. I want students to be worried when taking a math test from Frank Morgan. I want them to think twice before handing in something sloppy to Jose Cruz. Moreover, stress and competition require failure (or at least low grades). There is much less value in getting an A from Mark Taylor for a well-done paper if even sloppy work gets the same grade.
Third, a worry much more about problems where one can make a plausible claim that Williams is worse off than other schools. Is there any reason to think that this is more of a problem here than elsewhere?
Fourth, stress and failure are a part of life. Want stress? Lose your job and still have a big mortgage to pay. It would be a bad thing if the first stress/competition/failure that Williams students encountered happened after they graduated.
But, again, congratulation to Brandi on what seems an original and important project. I look forward to learning more.
Andrew says:
Thanks for your comments, David.
There are some problems where that claim can and is being made, and I’m hopeful action will be taken to correct them.
A concern about the larger point you seem to be making, though…the College need not ignore a problem because other schools share the problem, chalking it up, as you seem to be, to the “it’s good for you” narrative. Sure, there are problems we have that other schools have too, but if they are specific and fixable, we ought to take steps to address them.
Andrew says:
Youch…apparently my blockquote html didn’t come through. Imagine “Third, a worry…” as being in quotes, or indented, or something. Oops.
Diana says:
Fixed it for you.
current eph says:
Did Brandi’s study entail anything more than interviewing people who self-selected to her and her friends as having frustrations about Williams?
David says:
Again, it is tough to write informed commentary without seeing the presentation, but could someone outline:
1) The top problems that were identified.
2) Proposed solutions, if any.
Andrew says:
Hi there, Current Eph. Your question is a good one. I’m not Brandi, but I can at least give you a partial answer.
1) Yes, it did. Brandi’s sample comprised a pretty varied bunch, most of whom are not among Brandi’s group of friends, but a lot of them were recruited through extended word-of-mouth, so there is some selection bias.
2) To the extent that the sample is extremely biased toward people who have expressed dissatisfaction or unhappiness…that’s not a bad thing, since Brandi isn’t trying to assess who’s happy and who’s not, she’s trying to explore the qualitative dimensions of failure and disappointment for those who feel they’ve experienced it in some way.
3) To the extent that the sample is biased in some other way because of the largely word-of-mouth recruitment, yeah, that’s a problem. But Brandi spread the recruitment through a variety of sources, and not just through her social net.