Impressive credentials, even outside of his athletic ability. I heard (unconfirmed) that he turned down Harvard to attend Williams.
Second, the latest Sears Cup standings came out today. Middlebury has opened a sizable lead over Williams (Amherst is third) and for the first time in many years, it appears likely that Williams will not be winning the Sears Cup. This doesn’t really signal any sort of sea change, at least in terms of Midd vs. Williams: Middlebury’s athletics program has been as strong as Williams’ for some time (Middlebury has won far more national championships, for example), but the Sears Cup scoring structure (which favors good teams across the board over fewer, more dominant teams) tends to help Williams out.
With Amherst and Middlebury so closely grouped with Williams at the top of the standings, it is hard to argue (as some have) that Williams places a larger emphasis on athletics in admissions than most of its NESCAC peers. (Trinity also has great athletics, and if football and squash counted towards the Sears Cup standings, it too would be a perennial contender).
Considering how much smaller Amherst is, and considering that Amherst has fewer athletic teams than Williams (no wrestling, crew, or skiing, all of which scored points for Williams this year), Amherst may now actually be favoring star athletes even more than Williams does during the admissions process. It’s not by accident that after many years of playing second fiddle to Williams, Amherst has eclipsed Williams as the premier power in New England (and arguably, national) Division III men’s basketball. And it is no coincidence that Tom Parker, known as a big advocate of athletes, has been Amherst’s admissions director during the recent upsurge in Amherst athletic success. Although given his very different priorities, Tony Marx may work to change all that …
It’s all relative. The Director’s Cup employs a subjective scoring system, which Williams favors because it makes Williams out to be a winner. In other climes the emphasis is put elsewhere as it pleases the locals.
…it is hard to argue (as some have) that Williams places a larger emphasis on athletics in admissions than most of its NESCAC peers.
Follow the money. In this case, the athletic budgets.
It is hard to argue that Williams doesn’t place a larger emphasis on athletics than almost any other DIV III program in the country. Frankly, I’ve never understood why Williams doesn’t proudly embrace that identity. It really is the school’s differentiating brand identity relative to its direct peer schools (highly selective national liberal arts colleges). Differentiating brand identity is a good thing.
I don’t see what athletics budget and emphasis on athletics in ADMISSIONS have to do with one another. In fact, if Williams is spending so more on athletics, they should be blowing the competition away in athletics, all things being equal — meaning that all things are probably not equal, and other schools are likely taking short cuts in athletic recruiting that won’t fly at Williams.
And by the way, given Williams’ endowment (first or second among all coed liberal arts schools) and overall expenditures per student (right around number one among liberal arts schools) I’d say the athletic spending is not an outlier, but consistent with the overall spending pattern of a very wealthy institution that invests an enormous amount, across the board, on campus life.
Also, I don’t think your annual spending figures tell the whole story. Williams is pretty much number one among Division III school in every campus facility — student space, dorms, arts facilities, science facilities, soon library space — with one notable exception, athletic facilities. Athletic facilities are overall fine, but not in, for example, Middlebury’s league. Midd and Amherst have both invested huge amounts in new or renovated gym / fitness center space in recent years; Williams has not. Lots of other Div III schools (like Brandeis and Chicago) have gleaming new athletic complexes that cost many times Williams’ annual athletic budget. And of course the issues with the track facilities are well documented here. If the school was placing a disproportionate emphasis on athletics relative to its peers, it would be leader of the pack on capital-intensive facilities, rather than being somewhat behind the curve. I realize Williams is working on improving its facilities, but that is still several years away.
If the women win in Tennessee, crew gives Williams 100 points; 50 points for second or for winning the championship regatta on points but not being first in the V1, I believe. And I think Ralph White still has some magic to orchestrate for T&F.
It ain’t over until the Fat Lady sings….
I don’t see what athletics budget and emphasis on athletics in ADMISSIONS have to do with one another.
Williams is an outlier by both measures: athletic budget and percentage of incoming freshmen tagged as likely 4-year varsity athletes.
What they “have to do with each other” is that both are responsive to overall institutional priorities. Again, I don’t see why the Williams community seeks to downplay that. It’s an effective differentiating brand identity in a crowded marketplace, and one in which the College invests extraordinary resources (relative to its peers) to achieve.
Here are the top 100 NCAA DIV III schools in per student athletic spending (2004-2005) from the US Dept. of Education. I’ve indicated (in bold) the schools with a comparable or higher per student endowment to Williams so we are comparing apples to oranges in terms of overall per student resources (Note: Grinnell, with the largest per student endowmment of all LACs is not in the top 100 for per student athletic expenditures). Keep in mind that Williams tops the per student expenditures despite being the largest of the big 5 endowment LACs, so it’s not a small denominator issue.
$2,779 WILLIAMS COLLEGE
$2,311 ST LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY
$2,247 HUNTINGDON COLLEGE
$2,212 BOWDOIN COLLEGE
$1,895 UNITED STATES MERCHANT MARINE ACADEMY
$1,861 LORAS COLLEGE $1,832 AMHERST COLLEGE
$1,808 BATES COLLEGE
$1,754 HOBART WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES
$1,723 HARTWICK COLLEGE
$1,709 MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE
$1,652 CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE
$1,639 LINFIELD COLLEGE
$1,605 WISCONSIN LUTHERAN COLLEGE
$1,596 UNION COLLEGE
$1,594 BETHANY LUTHERAN COLLEGE
$1,542 HAVERFORD COLLEGE $1,502 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE
$1,499 WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE
$1,454 COLORADO COLLEGE
$1,448 HANOVER COLLEGE
$1,355 SEWANEE: THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH
$1,344 WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY
$1,327 COLBY-SAWYER COLLEGE
$1,324 MCMURRY UNIVERSITY
$1,318 WHEATON COLLEGE
$1,311 HIRAM COLLEGE
$1,308 CHOWAN COLLEGE
$1,276 UNIVERSITY OF THE OZARKS
$1,273 DENISON UNIVERSITY
$1,258 CENTRE COLLEGE
$1,254 SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
$1,252 LAGRANGE COLLEGE
$1,242 CHRISTOPHER NEWPORT UNIVERSITY
$1,226 FINLANDIA UNIVERSITY
$1,210 TRINITY COLLEGE
$1,208 MAINE MARITIME ACADEMY
$1,198 COLBY COLLEGE
$1,184 GREENSBORO COLLEGE
$1,181 MARIETTA COLLEGE
$1,170 CORNELL COLLEGE
$1,161 BRIDGEWATER COLLEGE
$1,147 MANCHESTER COLLEGE
$1,147 MARYVILLE COLLEGE
$1,144 ALMA COLLEGE
$1,142 TEXAS LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY
$1,136 HOWARD PAYNE UNIVERSITY
$1,135 TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY
$1,134 MITCHELL COLLEGE
$1,125 COE COLLEGE
$1,092 UNIVERSITY OF DUBUQUE
$1,078 LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY
$1,059 DEFIANCE COLLEGE
$1,055 LOUISIANA COLLEGE
$1,051 GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS COLLEGE $1,049 POMONA COLLEGE
$1,047 ILLINOIS COLLEGE
$1,035 FRANKLIN AND MARSHALL COLLEGE
$1,035 HAMILTON COLLEGE
$1,035 KENYON COLLEGE
$1,022 MACALESTER COLLEGE
$1,007 CENTRAL COLLEGE
$1,006 FRANKLIN COLLEGE
$1,006 BLACKBURN COLLEGE
$1,000 HENDRIX COLLEGE
$998 JUNIATA COLLEGE
$992 BETHANY COLLEGE
$989 WESTMINSTER COLLEGE
$980 DEPAUW UNIVERSITY
$962 EAST TEXAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY
$957 WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY
$953 EMORY AND HENRY COLLEGE
$947 RHODES COLLEGE
$946 LAKE FOREST COLLEGE
$942 FERRUM COLLEGE
$941 VIRGINIA WESLEYAN COLLEGE
$927 MILLSAPS COLLEGE
$918 SCHREINER UNIVERSITY
$912 CARTHAGE COLLEGE
$906 EUREKA COLLEGE
$889 EARLHAM COLLEGE
$889 WITTENBERG UNIVERSITY
$885 KALAMAZOO COLLEGE
$878 NORTHLAND COLLEGE
$877 ADRIAN COLLEGE
$875 AUSTIN COLLEGE
$873 OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY
$867 THIEL COLLEGE
$865 OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE
$855 LEBANON VALLEY COLLEGE
$845 CONNECTICUT COLLEGE
$841 WILMINGTON COLLEGE
$837 GREEN MOUNTAIN COLLEGE
$836 WHITWORTH COLLEGE
$819 BELOIT COLLEGE
$811 URSINUS COLLEGE
$810 ALLEGHENY COLLEGE
$800 ROSE-HULMAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
$799 CLARKE COLLEGE
$792 SAINT NORBERT COLLEGE
First of all, I do sort of agree with you that it is fine for Williams to market itself as someplace that emphasizes athletic excellence and achievement (and I think it does do so). The problem is when folks portray it as someplace where non-athletes won’t fit in or be happy, or where there is a dramatic difference in jock culture versus its peers (particularly its peers in NESCAC, where there barely any difference at all), or where athletics are a dominant force on campus to the exclusion of, say, the arts, or where sports are over-emphasized (the whole Nike camp idea). You make it seem like Williams is this mecca where athletes are flown in chartered jets while eating lobster dinners. But that is simply not the case.
There are lots of problems with your data. First, as I said before, your data does not include capital expenditures on athletic facilities, an area in which Williams lags FAR behind many of its peers. Second, you are looking at one year’s data, in isolation. For data in the other direction, here is an excerpt from a 2002 Sports Illustrated article on this very topic that belies a lot of what you are saying:
Operating costs for Williams’s teams in the 1999-2000 academic year totaled $426,000, slightly below the NESCAC average of $464,000. “Would I like to see more money?” asks the school’s first-year athletic director, Harry Sheehy. “Of course.” The football team (which finished 5-3 this fall in what, at Williams, passes for a down season) spent just over $30,000 last year. “You can’t run a football team for less than that,” Sheehy says. “If you took $1,000 from the budget, we wouldn’t be able to run the program.” In 1999, the 131 Division III schools with football teams spent an average of $58,000 in direct game expenses.
“I believe you can make a case that we’re underfunded,” Sheehy says, noting that his school’s budget is spread over a league-high 31 varsity teams. Sheehy insists that cutting a team is not an option. What his department is left to do, then, is to save in every possible way. Williams reports that it spends $1,151 on recruiting in a conference that averages $9,200. Mike Russo, coach of the men’s soccer team (which finished 17-2 and was ranked No. 1 in Division III most of the season), is given only $200 each year to spend on recruiting. A single weekend trip easily costs Russo more than $600, and the difference comes from his pocket.
Players on the women’s soccer team (11-7 this year and an NCAA Final Four participant in 1999) receive just $3 per meal when they’re on the road. Lisa Melendy, the coach for 16 years, often goes to a Stop & Shop to maximize the allotted money by buying bagels, yogurt and juice. “We use the same uniforms for four years, the same warmups for five or six years and the same travel bags for 10 years,” Melendy says. “Other [NESCAC] schools change them much more rapidly.”
While most NESCAC schools send their players to away games on charter buses, many Williams teams travel in vans, often with the coach behind the wheel. New England roads can be treacherous in the winter. “Our budget is very low for what we’re trying to do,” Melendy says. “At the same time, we get it done.”
Williams’s facilities are far from spectacular. The ice hockey rink has the feel of an old airplane hangar when a strong, cold draft blows through it. Williams is one of a quickly shrinking number of NESCAC schools without an artificial turf field, essential for training during long stretches of inclement weather. The football field’s antiquated stands are creaky and unstable. More than a decade ago, Williams’s facilities were ranked the best in the conference, but since then nearly every school has made significant renovations. In the past year alone Bates spent $4 million on improvements and Hamilton $2.5 million.
I should have said, 2000 article. And my original point, which still stands, was that Williams is not dipping down further than its peers to cut breaks to athletes in admissions: and in fact, probably the opposite is true. I doubt that there are any hotly recruited athletes at Williams who would not have been admitted to pretty much any other Division III school in the country, including any other NESCAC school.
It seems that every time the subject of athletics comes us, hwc must make an invidious comment about why Williams doesn’t engage in more “brand differentiation.” Well, perhaps Williams doesn’t see itself as a “Nike camp with enrichment classes” (pace Dr. Shanks) but rather as a vibrant intellectual environment that also has successful sports teams. The sense that I always got is that Williams achieved more with less, and with better students, and that’s something the college, the athletic department, the alums, well, everyone, should be justifiably proud.
As usual, Sheehy is just blowing smoke out of his you know what. These schools all lump the major portion of their athletic spending under non team specific reporting categories.
He’s just playing a semantics game. Even at that he’s being totally disingenous (some might say “lying”) when he fails to note the second category of football expenses in the federal reporting totalling $285,000.
BTW, exactly why would dropping a sport “not be an option”? Is that Massachusetts state law? Or a voluntary management decision (aka “institutional priority”)?
It seems that every time the subject of athletics comes us, hwc must make an invidious comment about why Williams doesn’t engage in more “brand differentiation.”
That’s because every time the subject comes up, somebody tries to make the false argument that Williams doesn’t emphasize athletics relative to its peers. See Jeff’s orginal post in this thread.
It’s precisely this reluctance to embrace the College’s institutional priorities and brand identity that I find so curious.
I think, ceteris paribus, that Midd or Trinity are far better examples of the type of jock palace you so evidently disdain, hwc. According to your own data, Swarthmore values jockery more than your favorite diversity whipping boy W&L…
The sense that I always got is that Williams achieved more with less, and with better students, and that’s something the college, the athletic department, the alums, well, everyone, should be justifiably proud.
Well, as you can clearly see from the athletics budgets, your “sense” was somewhat off-base. The truth is that Williams achieves more with more.
BTW, the whole issue of the 66 tips is a red herring. Those are (largely) controlled by conference rules. The real reason that Williams is so strong athletically (besides outspending its competition) is not the 66 tips, but the additional 90 recruited impact athletes in every freshman class.
How does Williams get these 90? Simple. The school’s brand identity as an athletic powerhouse with a sports-oriented campus culture is a tremendous recruiting tool.
Williams has a lot more athletes, and is much more willing to fund untalented athletes (see Cross Country, swimming, track). Williams also has a lot more teams than other schools, which requiers paying more coaches.
I have a difficult time understanding HWC’s numbers. The difference between Amherst and Williams comes to about $2,000,000 per year. How can you spend $2 mil more? Do we pay our coaches that much better? Is our equipment replaced more often? Do we spend more on national championship appearances? Do we just define spending differently? Beyond capital expenses, where does building maintenance come under?
I want more information about where our athletics budget goes before I will be convinced of anyone’s argument. It is simply impossible for me to believe without a better breakdown that Williams spends more per student than St. Lawrence, when SLU has a Division 1 hockey program, a national coach of the year, and a relatively small rink.
Additionally, while it is clearly more work to produce, spending per athlete would be more informative than spending per student.
HWC, I think you’re ignoring the fact that Williams has a lot of teams (many of which are non-cut). Given the choice between a track & field team, for instance, only composed of recruited athletes, and a track & field team composed of all comers, which would you prefer? Which situation is more in line with the ideals of an elite liberal arts college?
Honestly, the question is not whether or not Williams has jocks, or in some way caters to them. It does, and it does. (We might disagree on whether this catering is more extreme than at peer institutions like Midd, Trinity, or Bowdoin, but that might be irrelevant). What I find irritating is your reductive argument that because Williams embraces a particular set of priorities in a particular direction that is the entire scope of institutional values. In other words, I find your contention that Williams, because it has fine athletics, must be entirely and completely devoted to athletics, frankly specious.
And that’s why, whenever this argument comes up, you cleverly insinuate that you “find it surprising” that Williams doesn’t “place more emphasis” on its “branding” which is as servile as wondering, as some did, I’m sure, whether Jeffery Dahmer used A1 sauce or soy whilst marinating his victims.
According to your own data, Swarthmore values jockery more than your favorite diversity whipping boy W&L…
I’m not sure that’s true. It is true that they spend more per student and that difference would be enhanced by the fact that Swarthmore doesn’t have football team and W&L does.
However, there is a rather substantial difference overall per student spending. I haven’t taken an in-depth look at W&Ls annual financial reports, but I would make an educated guess that they have been spending somewhere in the $40k to $50k per student range compared to the $68k to $70k per student range at the luxury joints like Swarthmore and Williams.
But, honestly, besides the fact that they only enroll white folk (for all intents and purposes) and lead the pack in percentage of fraternity membership, I haven’t studied Washington and Lee that closely.
If it were being seriously proposed that the entire Bill of Rights be repealed, youse guys would find more words to write about athletics at Williams than about the proposed repeal.
Additionally, while it is clearly more work to produce, spending per athlete would be more informative than spending per student.
It’s no more work from the available data, but the numbers are flawed. The number provided to the US Dept of Education is “unduplicated members of a varsity athletic team”. However, the athletic budget includes all expenses. Thus, you end up with Bard College (with only 13 official varsity athletes) in the top 10 in “per athlete spending”, even though their total athletic budget is only $450,000, less than a tenth of Williams’. There’s a denominator problem.
Williams “per athlete spending” is $10,085 (2004-05). Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Middlebury are all in the $6,000 to $6,500 range.
In other words, I find your contention that Williams, because it has fine athletics, must be entirely and completely devoted to athletics, frankly specious.
You may find it specious because I’ve never expressed that contention.
I am not really aware of a college that is “entirely and completely devoted” to one thing. I suppose places like CalTech or Julliard may approach that standard, but for most colleges the brand identities rest with variations in the emphasis placed on similar component parts. For example, Amherst’s brand identity lies partially with its emphasis on low-income diversity relative to its peers, although of course we know that Williams has some low income diversity. The suggestion that Amherst would have to be 100% low income to consitute a brand identity is what is specious.
There are at least a dozen liberal arts colleges with absolute top-shelf academics (Williams included) and big endowments. The question is what differentiates Williams from that group.
I am with Richard, there are so many different factors that it is hard to take an absolute number and stamp it as definitive without understanding the context. In terms of Williams vs. Amherst, a big part of the difference is of couse that Williams, unlike Amherst, has varsity men’s and women’s crew, men’s and women’s skiing (which I imagine is an expensive sport) and men’s wrestling. Who knows where club sports are factored in — certain expenses associated with those sports may be included in certain budgets, others may not. Facility costs may be factored in differently in different budgets. Williams might have very high travel costs due to its relative isolation and lack of any major airports nearby. Of course Williams’ tremendous success individual sports like swimming and track ends up being quite expensive, due to high rates of participation in national meets. And on and on.
HWC is rightfully skeptical of statistics, like those cited by Sheehy, when they undermine his argument / philosophy. But he blindly, uncritically accepts other statistics, whenever convenient to him. Presumably, the SI reporter did some due dilligence when he wrote this article, so I don’t see these stats as any more or less worthwhile than those you cling to.
Again, if Williams was so over-committed to its athletic program, why did the track team have to start a petition drive to have a safe track to run on? Why does Williams have the worst fitness center in the NESCAC? Why was Williams one of the last schools in NESCAC to get a turf field? My point is not to say that Williams does not support athletics, but it is clear that Williams is not an outlier among its peers — football-playing NESCAC teams foremost among them — when it comes to supporting athletics, admitting tipped athletes, having a large varsity presence on campus, having nationally successful sports teams, etc. The main difference between Williams and the rest of NESCAC is Williams’ comparatively huge rosters in sports like track, cross country, swimming and crew, sports which simply do not create the cultural issues that HWC and others attribute to athletics. But if you take the football, basketball, hockey, soccer, baseball and lacrosse teams at Williams in the aggregate, and compare them with their peers at Amherst, Midd, Trinity, Bowdoin, etc., the Williams teams will have similar roster size, athletes with better (or at least equivalent) academic credentials, similar behavioral concerns, and similar winning percentages, overall. So why, exactly, should Williams be singled out? Because it has an enormous crew and track and field program? Does that really make Williams more of a unilaterally sports-focused place?
Is my mind, the difference in culture at Williams is not so much on the varsity sports, but in the rest of the student body — reputation is self-reinforcing, so some non-recruited kids who absolutely hate sports will choose Swarthmore over Williams, and some kids who are more the well-rounded athlete/social/scholar type would prefer Williams. So I don’t dispute there is more of a sporty vibe, overall, at Williams than exists some other schools. But is there more than exists at Bowdoin, or Colby, or Middlebury, or Trinity? No way. I’d say Williams is somewhere between Midd and Amherst (and the difference between all three is very, very slender) on the outdoorsy/sporty vs. artsy/urbane spectrum, actually.
I also note that Williams has a more substantial J.V. program than many of its peers — most of the kids who participate in that aren’t exactly star recruits or tips, but rather just decent athletes who want to play somewhat competitive athletics.
“Amherst may now actually be favoring star athletes even more than Williams does during the admissions process.”
So Jeff, does this mean that Amherst has lowered its admissions standards for athletes, or that Williams has raised its own?!?!
A couple of thoughts. First, I’m still fairly close to the athletic programs I participated in at Amherst and it’s my sense that the above quote is not true, although I certainly don’t have the access to the data to say one way or the other for sure. Also I am not suggesting that Williams provides or ever provided more lenient treatment to recruited athletes in the admissions process (a topic I am even less qualified to offer an opinion on).
It’s clear to me, however, that Amherst’s ability to admit athletes (meaning tips) has been severely restricted over the past several years. I know the football program only gets to support a handful of people in the admissions process, both nominally and certainly compared to my time as a player in the program, and that the academic quality of those limited spaces must be considerably higher than it was when I attended. Parker’s tenure as admissions director has been more restrictive. Also admitting the athlete is only one step of the recruitment of the athlete, albeit a critical one. I have no firsthand knowledge of what goes on today, but when I was a student, I knew athletes at other NESCAC schools who chose their school over Amherst in large part due to the financial aid package. Are you suggesting Amherst and Midd have been more aggressive than Williams in this regard as well?
Second, Jeff, are you advancing the “they let in better athletes with lower SAT scores and that’s why they are good” argument? I always thought that was lame (and untrue) even when I was at Amherst and on the short end of most contests I participated in against Williams. I think that Amherst has “caught up” in the Director’s Cup (although it was always in the top 15 I believe) as a result of factors other than the admissions office. Improved sports info website/marketing, which allows for broader and essentially costless recruiting is one factor and the structure of the Directors Cup which benefits schools with many sports programs is another. Certainly the effort on the field of some great people and coaches deserves the vast majority of the applause.
Amherst also has benefitted from Williams’ athletic success, which has created a better national profile and publicity for NESCAC schools as a whole. Jeff, I know you are trying to make an argument about the perception of Williams and its admission of athletes, but it sounds like an unwarranted dig at Lord Jeff athletes. The athletes at Amherst deserve the same congratulations you correctly extend to the Williams teams for this year’s remarkable athletic campaign.
It is illogical to think that there is one iota of difference (academically) between the 66 low-band athletic tips at Amherst and the 66 low-band athletic tips at Williams. They both recruit and admit under-qualified impact athletes under the same conference limitations, based on standard deviations from each school’s average academic ratings, which are nearly identical.
There are NO liberal arts colleges with absolute top-shelf academics.
I would argue that there are no R1 institutions with absolute top shelf undergrad academics. The size, institutional priorities (tenure criteria), and the use of practice teachers (TAs) makes it impossible — although that is not to say you can’t get a good undergrad education at an R1.
1) I’m still afraid I have no idea what an “under-qualified impact athlete” means.
2) It’s a bit of a shame that a post on a kid about to come to Williams has to be caught up in the cant of the anti-jock types. It’s not surprising, of course, but it is a shame nonetheless.
Signed–
Dumb Jock Professor Not as Smart as HWC. (OK — probably actually much smarter than HWC, but why debunk the sterotype? Me Dumb. Like sports. Grrrr!!! Angry!!!)
One “under-qualified impact athlete” is about the equivalent of one “chicken-necked, Coke-bottle lensed, library loving, socially inept geek” - not that Williams has any of either.
I see that my comments do come off as a little harsh on Amherst. I kind of went overboard in that respect — my point was more that you never really hear folks criticize Amherst (or many other Nescac schools) as some kind of unusual jock haven, even though it places, certainly, no less emphasis than Williams does on athletic attributes during the admission process, and now is essentially even with Williams in the sports that require the largest numbers of tipped athletes. Just shows how perception can trump reality. Williams’ standards for tipped athletes have gone up tremendously in the last five years or so, from everything I’ve heard. I have also heard from a lot of folks that Parker was/is an advocate for athletes. But even if true, that is probably trumped by Tony Marx, who I would guess would rather trade athlete spots for low income kids with relatively low numbers that don’t reflect their true abilities.
There are plenty of reasons to criticize AmHerst; though such criticisms should probably apply broadly to all of those Marxists, and not just the athletes. As for me, I think just about any criticism of AmHerst is warranted, up to and including how ridiculously Hadley Arkes dresses.
i honestly don’t get why this has received so much writing.
First, to “let’s be realistic”…I invite you to take a class that is offered at both williams and your pick of research 1 institutions. I will put down 10 to 1 odds that the williams version is a better undergraduate class. Then, I’ll pick one science, one humanities, and one social sciece intro class and advanced class at williams (and you the same at the research 1) and we’ll see which school has better academics for its students.
next, as with a thread from last year, the defenders of athletics are attacking a non-existant opponent. who has said anything opposed to athletics in this thread? look back over it…hwc said simply that williams should brand itself as the athletic and smart school. and it should. then aidan claimed hwc’s point that williams spends a good deal on athletics is an invidious comment (when hwc said nothing about lowering said expenditure, only that williams should pride itself on being athletic as well as smart. kinda like ND or Michigan or Cal or Stanford in D1 sports). and then all hell broke loose…
As always, Ephblog has managed to smear a student’s triumph with self-centered, illogical, and generally stupid quibbling. Here, a kid who isn’t even at Williams yet is getting trashed because you all feel the need to squabble about what you think is unfair or stupid for an institution that has changed since all of you were there. Cool it!
How can people argue that Williams doesn’t emphasize sports? Money talks. HWC has provided hard numbers on these matters.
Z, your arguments are irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if the money is spent on JV teams, big track teams, ski teams, weight rooms, or football teams. Williams has decided to take $6 million a year and spend it on sports rather than hiring more faculty members, improving dining hall food, advertising on television, or sending every resident of Williamstown $700. I always wondered how the college spent $80,000 a year on students, now I know that $10,000 goes to sports (leaving the other $70,000 unaccounted for … now there is a scandal Kane). The fact that some of the facilities are sub-par simply means that the College has spent its money poorly or thought other aspects of the sports program were more important. (My guess is that it also means future capital campaigns.)
Williams had a reputation as a school for smart athletes when I applied 15 years ago and that reputation has only grown. To the extent that Division III sports gets attention, Williams reaps more than its share. The reputation has allowed Williams to simultaneously raise admissions standards (or reduce TIPS) while recruiting better athletes. Many schools struggling with their identity (e.g., why should students attend Kenyon instead of its peers?), but Williams has a clear identity that appeals to a segment of the market (good school, good sports, nice hills).
Is there really an argument here or just antipathy towards HWC?
I’m still afraid I have no idea what an “under-qualified impact athlete” means.
It’s the working definition of the 66 low-band athletic “tips” that each NESCAC college is allowed to admit.
The system is based on “academic ratings” assigned by the admissions office and was developed by the Ivy League athletic conference. “Low band” refers to bands or levels of academic ratings based on thresholds one, two, three, or more “standard deviations” below the school’s average or median academic rating.
For example, Williams uses a 9 point academic rating with 1 being the top; 8 & 9 being too low to be admitted to Williams.
With the occasional exception, the 66 “tips” are reserved for athletics deemed by the athletic department as being “impact” players, i.e. good enough to have an “impact” on the performance of a varsity team, who have academic ratings below the centerpoint (which at Williams is currently somewhere between a 2 and a 3.
There is a bottom cutoff (a 7 at Williams) and usually an overall distribution of bands for the group of 66, i.e. so many 7s, so many 6s, so many 5s, and so many 4s. Depending on each school’s policy, the athletic department can have nearly exclusive decision making power in deciding which students are accepted in this group, as long as the group meets the statistical parameters.
Williams has a second group (called “protects”) of about 36 impact athletes who have roughly average academic ratings, presumably 3s and 4s. The presence on the athletic department lists serves as the “tie-breaker” for these applicants, earning them an admissions slot above other “average” applicants.
There is a third group of roughly 50 enrolled freshmen each year who have above average academic ratings (presumably 1s and 2s) who are designated by the athletic department as likely 4-year varsity athletes. The admissions office is aware that these applicants have been designated as varsity caliber athletes by the coaches, but they do not need, nor do they receive, a specific “boost” from the athletic department.
Jeff: I hear you loud and clear, although I don’t think most Lord Jeffs view Williams as a jock haven, since they’ve produced more athletes who earned Rhodes Scholarships than Amherst has produced Rhodes Scholars of any type in the last twenty years if I remember correctly. (Although, clearly I remember some contemporaries at Amherst who immaturely bemoaned Williams’ success as a product of lenient admissions. Dick Quinn, I believe, was always quick to refute those arguments.) Amherst got plenty of internal criticism from faculty regarding athletics in the late 90’s. The arrival of Tom Parker actually pacified the faculty grumbling to a large degree. Influential alumni also like Parker, who is somehow managing to keep many different constituencies relatively happy in this competitive environment.
Lowell: You probably asked to borrow one of H.A.’s tweed sportcoats when you approached him to sign your copy of “First Things” during one of his frequent trips to D.C. I like H.A., even though our politics differ greatly and I thought he stepped over the line (although having the correct position) in the imbroglio created when Antonin Scalia (or, Nino, as H.A. likes to refer to him) accepted an invitation to speak at Amherst a few years back.
Anonymous at 10:10. No objective reading of the comments here indicates that anyone is trying to smear this Williams pre-frosh. And, if anything, I think most alumni of NESCAC schools applaud the current approach to athletic recruiting, certainly compared to what occured about 10 years ago.
AC — I’m not a huge fan of Arkes, nor did I buy anything he’s written. I actually don’t even read National Review (whether on- or offline), with the occasional exception of a Victor Davis Hanson or James Glassman column here or there. I’m also entirely unfamiliar with said imbroglio.
Even if Stevens, whose jurisprudence I dislike more than anybody else on the Court, were speaking somewhere that I attended, I can’t say that I’d raise the slightest bit of fuss. I’m puzzled why the Marxist Hersties wouldn’t at least be honored to have a Justice come speak. For all Scalia’s personal opinions, he’s far from a Taney or McReynolds.
(D)avid, you’re missing most of my point. The money (I believe, and HWC has not disagreed) that HWC is referring to does NOT include money spent on capital expenditures. Look at what lots of other Division III schools have spent on athletic facilities in recent years — often ENORMOUS multiples of what Williams spends on its athletic budget in any given year. I don’t see how you can ignore facilities / capital expenditures when evaluating what volume institutional resources are devoted to athletics. Take a school near and dear to your heart: Nebraska. Even if Nebraska spent the same as, say, Kansas in any given year on its football budget, it is clear that Nebraska places far more emphasis on football due to the enormous outlays it made to build and maintain state of the art stadium, weight rooms, and practice facilities. If you are complaining, like HWC, that Williams’ priorities are way out of whack / huge outliers from other Division III schools, you can do what he does — look only at one statistic, from one year, that supports your arugment, or you can do what I’d suggest — look at other sources of information, like a Sports Illustrated article that focused (with both statistial and anecdotal evidence) on how penurious Williams is compared to its peers, or more importantly, capital expenditures on athletic facilities, where again, Williams lags far behind schools like Emory, Brandeis, Chicago, Middlebury, and many, many others.
Now, I don’t think there is anything wrong, or inaccurate, with saying that Williams is a place that celebrates athletic excellence and where it is a great place to be an athlete. But the same holds true for a lot of other areas in which Williams is a leader among liberal arts schools: the arts, science facilities, math / econ, grad school acceptance rates, etc. And I think Williams’ emphasis on, and success in, athletics is only marginally different from that at Middlebury or Amherst, the two schools most similar to Williams in my view. What bothers me is folks who make Williams out to be some uniquely athletically-focused institution to the point where non athletes will be miserable there verus, say, any other NESCAC school. Athletics ARE a major focus at the school, and a justifiable (in my opinion) source of pride, but that hardly makes it an outlier from many of its immediate peers.
There are just as many tipped athletes running around at every other NESCAC school, and many of those schools are much smaller than Williams. And the cultural problems that folks attribute (rightly or wrongly) to athletes, no one has ever attributed to what in fact differentiates Williams from its peers — enormous rosters of individual sports like crew, track, cross country, and swimming.
On a totally different point regarding something else raised earlier in this thread. Women’s Crew won the Sears Cup last year but got only 50 points for that. Unless the scoring system has changed, I think even a national championship in crew won’t be enough for Williams to eclipse Midd in the standings.
BTW, every liberal arts college I know of uses some variation on the low-band tips mechanism. Admissions offices like having guidelines set by management based on institutional priorities because it defines some limit on athletic department pressure in the admissions process.
The NESCAC reduced (within the last 5 or 6 years) the allowable number of “tips” from 72 to 66.
The top LACs are wrestling with conflicting priorities for the limited number of low-band slots: increasing diversity or athletic recruiting. Because elite college athletics tilts decisively white and more affluent (recruiting camps every summer cost money), every low-band athletic slot is one that can’t be allocated for increased diversity. So something has to give unless the college is willing to reduce its overall SAT distribution stats. The current demographic bulge in applications is somewhat masking this pressure by pushing overall SAT stats upwards.
LACs are more acutely impacted by these issues because they have so few admissions slots for each freshman class. So, for example, the percentage of students playing (or recruited for) varsity sports is much, much higher at an LAC than it is at a university, including a major sports school (like USC or U of Miami).
Lowell, sorry to incorrectly label you as a member of the Natural Rights/Claremont Institute group.
Said Scalia imbroglio was a good one (where faculty embarrassed themselves and the College by first encouraging a boycott and then writing snide open letters to each other in the paper) although not worth hijacking this thread with a discussion of it. E-mail me if you want details.
If you e-mail me answer this question: When you refer to us as Marxists, do you mean Karl Marx Marxists or Tony Marx Marxists or both?
Your argument about capital investment in athletic facilities may need a bit more perspective of time.
In the last 20 years, Williams has built a new gymnasium, a new squash facility, a new athletic department training facility, indoor crew tanks, and a new outdoor lighted turf field.
I suspect that most of the NESCAC building is being done in an effort to catch up to the facilities that Williams had already built.
Your argument would carry more weight if basketball games were still being played in Lasalle.
I find it somewhat amusing that you would compare the ability or desirability of Williams building athletic facilities on the scale of an Emory University, an R1 institution that dwarfs Williams by any conceivable measure: enrollment, total endowment, total revenues, total expenditures, etc.
HWC: Isn’t Williams competing with Emory for students? Students apply to both. My understanding is that Williams holds it own against all by the very type R1 schools (Harvard, Yale, …). I sorta assumed that the construction drive at Williams (e.g., theater, dance studio, student union, art building) was motivated by keeping up with the much larger Jones’.
Z: I suspect that HWC is correct about the timing of the building. Williams has been updating its sports facilities (along with everything else on campus). The trouble is that sports arenas become “outdated” just like anything else — maybe even faster. Key Arena and the Rose Garden were both built in 1995, but are already considered obsolete by NBA standards. Chandler probably seemed pretty impressive when it was built (certainly compared to LaSalle).
Yes, of course, in a larger market sense. However, let’s put it this way, if Williams is trying to lure consumers by going toe to toe on fancy buildings with Emory and the Woodruff Coca-Cola fortune, it’s going to be an uphill climb.
Emory’s new student center was designed by John Portman (Peachtree Plaza Atlanta, Renn Center Detroit, Marriott Marquis New York, Bonaventure Los Angeles, Embarcadaro Hotel San Francisco, etc.) and makes Paresky look like a tool shed.
That’s just not an arena where Williams can (or should) try to compete.
Williams’ building is mostly in keeping with the current trends at the top of the liberal arts college pack. The Harry C Payne Memorial Arts Center is a bit more pretentious than most (although the wacko president of Bard built a Frank Gehery performing arts center). However, the Williams arts center wasn’t exactly what the College planners had in mind before Herb Allen and Payne steamrolled ‘em
Chandler was a pretty amazing place when it first opened (probably in 1987 or 1988), but the Williams-Amherst basketball games were much more fun (at least for the fans who got in), in LaSalle.
This was a college that was flat broke in the 1970s, still has a weak, diluted endowment, and barely any science education. The president, Leon Bostein, is a symphony conductor and has run the college like he has attention deficit disorder since he took over in his 20s back when the college was broke.
“The school’s brand identity as an athletic powerhouse with a sports-oriented campus culture”
HWC: All of the student-athletes I know were attracted to Williams “as an athletic powerhouse with a … campus culture” that is multi-faceted and encompasses as many non-athletic interests and endeavors as athletic. They were sold as much on the theatre, music, art, science, math, and social sciences at Williams as on the college’s sustained excellence in their particular sport. They all would say that your irrational focus on the campus culture of Williams as “sports-oriented” is just plain wrong. It may have been so when you attended 35-40 years ago, but, like it or not, the student body at Williams has changed. It’s easy to guess that you personally know few, if any, athletes — especially at Williams.
I think it may indeed be a goner for this year, sadly. I was thinking that women’s track and field would add points for Williams but they won’t because only the highest season is counted in multi-season sports — that would be the winter national championship for 100 points, which has already been included. Don’t know that men’s track and field can add anything: as of yesterday, they were in 30th place (with six NCAA championship meet points) and there was only one Williams competitor still to go in a final. I think they need to be substantially higher than 30th on team points to add any Sears Cup points. The Williams women rowers came through with a national championship worth 100 Sears Cup points today. Midd gets no crew points. That puts Williams ahead by nine points but that’s without factoring in whatever Midd gets for men’s lax and whatever Williams gets for baseball. Does anyone know how this works? Can someone please figure it out for me?
On another subject, the Williams weight room/fitness facility in Chandler was the worst (most crowded, least free exercise space, fewest machines and free weights per user) of any we saw on a long series of college tour visits over two years, and that’s a real concern not so much for varsity athletics but for providing what’s necessary for building a foundation for a lifetime of fitness (for students, faculty, and staff). The trend seems to be to provide several large facilities in gyms and field houses plus scattered smaller work-out spaces in residential buildings.
My guess is that Williams nips ‘em at the wire - not that the Director’s Cup ought to be a big deal despite Williams making it so because emphasis on it favors Williams. With respect to the Fitness Center, what hours of the day, days of the week and months of the year have you found it to be crowded? I never do - although I seldom visit it in the afternoon during weekdays or in the evening.
first, congrats to the Women’s Crew team. If any sport rewards hard work it is crew (I lived with a few crew guys and their dedication was insane), so you know those rowers must have busted ass all year.
second, I think (and I mentioned this before but it got buried deep within this thread) last year crew only got 50 for winning the national title. If that is the case, Midd will take home the Cup, if that has been changed for some reason to 100 (and I don’t see why it would) it should be incredibly close …
Williams gets 100 Sears Cup points this year for crew because the first varsity boat was first in the grand final.
[Last year, the first varsity boat was second in the grand final (and the second boat was third, making the team the overall NCAA team points champion, a championship for which no Sears Cup points are given). Last year, they got 50 Sears Cup points for the first boat's second place finish in the grand final; Ithaca received 100 Sears Cup points for its first place 8+ in the grand final and was the NCAA National Champion in terms of winning the grand final but was not the overall NCAA team points champion. This year, as in 2002, the Williams rowers are dual NCAA champions by reason of the first boat's first place finish in the grand final (100 Sears Cup points) and because they had the highest team point total (for which there are never Sears Cup points)-- the Williams second boat was the fastest of the second boats, coming in third in the petite final behind two oter schools' first boats.]
This was a really remarkable feat. From last year’s national championship team, they had lost half the squad. They had one returning senior in the top boats, a very fine rower who was co-captain (and is a legacy — I’ve noticed that legacies often are strong leaders at Williams, with plenty of room for others as well, of course). Their regular coach was on sabbatical, improving his game by working with the Canadian national teams. They had a young one-year interim coach who came in from coaching the Colby novices. He was ably assisted by a carryover assistant coach, a recent alumna, who should also be given a good share of credit.
I still can’t figure out the baseball vs. lax points for Williams and Midd, so I don’t know who has the Sears Cup. Amherst has done very well in women’s track & field as well but they are a little too far behind to catch up.
I know that the Sears Cup isn’t important. Still, I feel that it links all (or most — football obviously being excluded from the tally) of the varsity sports together in a shared mission. For me as an alumna it has also helped spark my interest in several Williams teams. And the kids love the “#1 in academics and #1 in athletics” thing - and that’s especially important to those who came in with a clear notion of what they wanted in a college (quite a few of whom have turned down Ivies and other D1 athletics to get it).
To answer a question, the fitness facilities were crowded in the evenings. Also on a Saturday, but I don’t remember the time of day. We stayed away during the Division of the Day slot as we expected the teams to be there then.
More Sears Cup stuff. Sorry to be a Johnny One Note.
The difference between Midd and Williams with the 100 crew points thrown in is 9 points, with Williams in the lead. Still outstanding: track & field, men’s lax, and baseball. Midd might get something for T&F; Williams won’t — for the women, it’s already counted in the 100 points for the winter season championship; for the men, they were 32nd, which would give them fewer Sears Cup points than their winter 14th place finish, which is already counted in. So it seems to be down to the weight of Midd’s men’s lax vs. the Williams baseball points. I suspect Midd wins as they seem to have gotten further in lax than we did in baseball. Anyone know?
As of this academic year, for Director’s Cup purposes Winter T&F has been separated from Spring T&F - which means, I believe, Williams women will score points this spring in addition to those scored by them in the winter - as will Williams men.
Thank you very much for this information, Frank. Since the women were 9th in T&F this spring (doing a very nice job on pulling in the points on the last day) and the men were 32nd, that would indeed provide some good points. Perhaps Ralph White’s teams will reel it in as a last hurrah, then.
How does one find out such things as the separating out of the spring T&F results for points purposes? It does seem fair.
I thought fall-spring T&F were counted as one sport, but track was separate? If that was the case, if we did better than 9th and 32nd in the fall, then our points for the spring won’t count. If not, then they will.
Just a couple of quick points –
Aidan — let’s be careful what you say and how you say it. I’m having a hard time figuring out what you mean in your comment above — it was either failed tongue in cheek or precariously close to libel. (Swarthmore was not my cup of tea — they did recruit me for sports, but, oddly, more for football than for my best sport, track, which is the one I participated in at Williams.)
Second, I get the literal definition of “under-qualified impact athlete,” and how it ties to tips, but I’m still not certain what that has to do with this kid the post putatively features or with sports teams that overwhelmingly are not populated with tips but that are still successful enough to help the Director’s Cup rankings. And I’m still uncertain why a tipped athlete still is not qualified to be at Williams once he or she is at Williams. We do not, to my knowledge, separate students into categories once they are on cmapus. Or we didn’t in my day. If that has changed, please let me know.
I’m almost certain that indoor and outdoor track count separately as they are separate sports by the NCAA’s own standards and I’m sure that in the past Sears/Directors Cup tallies differentiated between the two.
2007-05-24 10:10:40
A few other sports tidbits. First, another profile of future Eph Jon Carroll:
http://www.thisweeknews.com/index.php?sec=bexley&story=sites/thisweeknews/041207/Bexley/News/041207-News-335633.html
Impressive credentials, even outside of his athletic ability. I heard (unconfirmed) that he turned down Harvard to attend Williams.
Second, the latest Sears Cup standings came out today. Middlebury has opened a sizable lead over Williams (Amherst is third) and for the first time in many years, it appears likely that Williams will not be winning the Sears Cup. This doesn’t really signal any sort of sea change, at least in terms of Midd vs. Williams: Middlebury’s athletics program has been as strong as Williams’ for some time (Middlebury has won far more national championships, for example), but the Sears Cup scoring structure (which favors good teams across the board over fewer, more dominant teams) tends to help Williams out.
With Amherst and Middlebury so closely grouped with Williams at the top of the standings, it is hard to argue (as some have) that Williams places a larger emphasis on athletics in admissions than most of its NESCAC peers. (Trinity also has great athletics, and if football and squash counted towards the Sears Cup standings, it too would be a perennial contender).
Considering how much smaller Amherst is, and considering that Amherst has fewer athletic teams than Williams (no wrestling, crew, or skiing, all of which scored points for Williams this year), Amherst may now actually be favoring star athletes even more than Williams does during the admissions process. It’s not by accident that after many years of playing second fiddle to Williams, Amherst has eclipsed Williams as the premier power in New England (and arguably, national) Division III men’s basketball. And it is no coincidence that Tom Parker, known as a big advocate of athletes, has been Amherst’s admissions director during the recent upsurge in Amherst athletic success. Although given his very different priorities, Tony Marx may work to change all that …
2007-05-24 11:48:25
It’s all relative. The Director’s Cup employs a subjective scoring system, which Williams favors because it makes Williams out to be a winner. In other climes the emphasis is put elsewhere as it pleases the locals.
2007-05-24 12:49:34
Follow the money. In this case, the athletic budgets.
It is hard to argue that Williams doesn’t place a larger emphasis on athletics than almost any other DIV III program in the country. Frankly, I’ve never understood why Williams doesn’t proudly embrace that identity. It really is the school’s differentiating brand identity relative to its direct peer schools (highly selective national liberal arts colleges). Differentiating brand identity is a good thing.
2007-05-24 13:08:20
A good meter might be athletic budget dollars per student over all budget dollars per student.
2007-05-24 13:12:31
I don’t see what athletics budget and emphasis on athletics in ADMISSIONS have to do with one another. In fact, if Williams is spending so more on athletics, they should be blowing the competition away in athletics, all things being equal — meaning that all things are probably not equal, and other schools are likely taking short cuts in athletic recruiting that won’t fly at Williams.
And by the way, given Williams’ endowment (first or second among all coed liberal arts schools) and overall expenditures per student (right around number one among liberal arts schools) I’d say the athletic spending is not an outlier, but consistent with the overall spending pattern of a very wealthy institution that invests an enormous amount, across the board, on campus life.
Also, I don’t think your annual spending figures tell the whole story. Williams is pretty much number one among Division III school in every campus facility — student space, dorms, arts facilities, science facilities, soon library space — with one notable exception, athletic facilities. Athletic facilities are overall fine, but not in, for example, Middlebury’s league. Midd and Amherst have both invested huge amounts in new or renovated gym / fitness center space in recent years; Williams has not. Lots of other Div III schools (like Brandeis and Chicago) have gleaming new athletic complexes that cost many times Williams’ annual athletic budget. And of course the issues with the track facilities are well documented here. If the school was placing a disproportionate emphasis on athletics relative to its peers, it would be leader of the pack on capital-intensive facilities, rather than being somewhat behind the curve. I realize Williams is working on improving its facilities, but that is still several years away.
2007-05-24 13:26:50
If the women win in Tennessee, crew gives Williams 100 points; 50 points for second or for winning the championship regatta on points but not being first in the V1, I believe. And I think Ralph White still has some magic to orchestrate for T&F.
It ain’t over until the Fat Lady sings….
2007-05-24 15:22:46
Williams is an outlier by both measures: athletic budget and percentage of incoming freshmen tagged as likely 4-year varsity athletes.
What they “have to do with each other” is that both are responsive to overall institutional priorities. Again, I don’t see why the Williams community seeks to downplay that. It’s an effective differentiating brand identity in a crowded marketplace, and one in which the College invests extraordinary resources (relative to its peers) to achieve.
Here are the top 100 NCAA DIV III schools in per student athletic spending (2004-2005) from the US Dept. of Education. I’ve indicated (in bold) the schools with a comparable or higher per student endowment to Williams so we are comparing apples to oranges in terms of overall per student resources (Note: Grinnell, with the largest per student endowmment of all LACs is not in the top 100 for per student athletic expenditures). Keep in mind that Williams tops the per student expenditures despite being the largest of the big 5 endowment LACs, so it’s not a small denominator issue.
$2,779 WILLIAMS COLLEGE
$2,311 ST LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY
$2,247 HUNTINGDON COLLEGE
$2,212 BOWDOIN COLLEGE
$1,895 UNITED STATES MERCHANT MARINE ACADEMY
$1,861 LORAS COLLEGE
$1,832 AMHERST COLLEGE
$1,808 BATES COLLEGE
$1,754 HOBART WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES
$1,723 HARTWICK COLLEGE
$1,709 MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE
$1,652 CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE
$1,639 LINFIELD COLLEGE
$1,605 WISCONSIN LUTHERAN COLLEGE
$1,596 UNION COLLEGE
$1,594 BETHANY LUTHERAN COLLEGE
$1,542 HAVERFORD COLLEGE
$1,502 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE
$1,499 WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE
$1,454 COLORADO COLLEGE
$1,448 HANOVER COLLEGE
$1,355 SEWANEE: THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH
$1,344 WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY
$1,327 COLBY-SAWYER COLLEGE
$1,324 MCMURRY UNIVERSITY
$1,318 WHEATON COLLEGE
$1,311 HIRAM COLLEGE
$1,308 CHOWAN COLLEGE
$1,276 UNIVERSITY OF THE OZARKS
$1,273 DENISON UNIVERSITY
$1,258 CENTRE COLLEGE
$1,254 SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
$1,252 LAGRANGE COLLEGE
$1,242 CHRISTOPHER NEWPORT UNIVERSITY
$1,226 FINLANDIA UNIVERSITY
$1,210 TRINITY COLLEGE
$1,208 MAINE MARITIME ACADEMY
$1,198 COLBY COLLEGE
$1,184 GREENSBORO COLLEGE
$1,181 MARIETTA COLLEGE
$1,170 CORNELL COLLEGE
$1,161 BRIDGEWATER COLLEGE
$1,147 MANCHESTER COLLEGE
$1,147 MARYVILLE COLLEGE
$1,144 ALMA COLLEGE
$1,142 TEXAS LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY
$1,136 HOWARD PAYNE UNIVERSITY
$1,135 TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY
$1,134 MITCHELL COLLEGE
$1,125 COE COLLEGE
$1,092 UNIVERSITY OF DUBUQUE
$1,078 LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY
$1,059 DEFIANCE COLLEGE
$1,055 LOUISIANA COLLEGE
$1,051 GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS COLLEGE
$1,049 POMONA COLLEGE
$1,047 ILLINOIS COLLEGE
$1,035 FRANKLIN AND MARSHALL COLLEGE
$1,035 HAMILTON COLLEGE
$1,035 KENYON COLLEGE
$1,022 MACALESTER COLLEGE
$1,007 CENTRAL COLLEGE
$1,006 FRANKLIN COLLEGE
$1,006 BLACKBURN COLLEGE
$1,000 HENDRIX COLLEGE
$998 JUNIATA COLLEGE
$992 BETHANY COLLEGE
$989 WESTMINSTER COLLEGE
$980 DEPAUW UNIVERSITY
$962 EAST TEXAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY
$957 WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY
$953 EMORY AND HENRY COLLEGE
$947 RHODES COLLEGE
$946 LAKE FOREST COLLEGE
$942 FERRUM COLLEGE
$941 VIRGINIA WESLEYAN COLLEGE
$927 MILLSAPS COLLEGE
$918 SCHREINER UNIVERSITY
$912 CARTHAGE COLLEGE
$906 EUREKA COLLEGE
$889 EARLHAM COLLEGE
$889 WITTENBERG UNIVERSITY
$885 KALAMAZOO COLLEGE
$878 NORTHLAND COLLEGE
$877 ADRIAN COLLEGE
$875 AUSTIN COLLEGE
$873 OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY
$867 THIEL COLLEGE
$865 OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE
$855 LEBANON VALLEY COLLEGE
$845 CONNECTICUT COLLEGE
$841 WILMINGTON COLLEGE
$837 GREEN MOUNTAIN COLLEGE
$836 WHITWORTH COLLEGE
$819 BELOIT COLLEGE
$811 URSINUS COLLEGE
$810 ALLEGHENY COLLEGE
$800 ROSE-HULMAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
$799 CLARKE COLLEGE
$792 SAINT NORBERT COLLEGE
$607 GRINNELL COLLEGE
2007-05-24 15:40:10
First of all, I do sort of agree with you that it is fine for Williams to market itself as someplace that emphasizes athletic excellence and achievement (and I think it does do so). The problem is when folks portray it as someplace where non-athletes won’t fit in or be happy, or where there is a dramatic difference in jock culture versus its peers (particularly its peers in NESCAC, where there barely any difference at all), or where athletics are a dominant force on campus to the exclusion of, say, the arts, or where sports are over-emphasized (the whole Nike camp idea). You make it seem like Williams is this mecca where athletes are flown in chartered jets while eating lobster dinners. But that is simply not the case.
There are lots of problems with your data. First, as I said before, your data does not include capital expenditures on athletic facilities, an area in which Williams lags FAR behind many of its peers. Second, you are looking at one year’s data, in isolation. For data in the other direction, here is an excerpt from a 2002 Sports Illustrated article on this very topic that belies a lot of what you are saying:
Operating costs for Williams’s teams in the 1999-2000 academic year totaled $426,000, slightly below the NESCAC average of $464,000. “Would I like to see more money?” asks the school’s first-year athletic director, Harry Sheehy. “Of course.” The football team (which finished 5-3 this fall in what, at Williams, passes for a down season) spent just over $30,000 last year. “You can’t run a football team for less than that,” Sheehy says. “If you took $1,000 from the budget, we wouldn’t be able to run the program.” In 1999, the 131 Division III schools with football teams spent an average of $58,000 in direct game expenses.
“I believe you can make a case that we’re underfunded,” Sheehy says, noting that his school’s budget is spread over a league-high 31 varsity teams. Sheehy insists that cutting a team is not an option. What his department is left to do, then, is to save in every possible way. Williams reports that it spends $1,151 on recruiting in a conference that averages $9,200. Mike Russo, coach of the men’s soccer team (which finished 17-2 and was ranked No. 1 in Division III most of the season), is given only $200 each year to spend on recruiting. A single weekend trip easily costs Russo more than $600, and the difference comes from his pocket.
Players on the women’s soccer team (11-7 this year and an NCAA Final Four participant in 1999) receive just $3 per meal when they’re on the road. Lisa Melendy, the coach for 16 years, often goes to a Stop & Shop to maximize the allotted money by buying bagels, yogurt and juice. “We use the same uniforms for four years, the same warmups for five or six years and the same travel bags for 10 years,” Melendy says. “Other [NESCAC] schools change them much more rapidly.”
While most NESCAC schools send their players to away games on charter buses, many Williams teams travel in vans, often with the coach behind the wheel. New England roads can be treacherous in the winter. “Our budget is very low for what we’re trying to do,” Melendy says. “At the same time, we get it done.”
Williams’s facilities are far from spectacular. The ice hockey rink has the feel of an old airplane hangar when a strong, cold draft blows through it. Williams is one of a quickly shrinking number of NESCAC schools without an artificial turf field, essential for training during long stretches of inclement weather. The football field’s antiquated stands are creaky and unstable. More than a decade ago, Williams’s facilities were ranked the best in the conference, but since then nearly every school has made significant renovations. In the past year alone Bates spent $4 million on improvements and Hamilton $2.5 million.
2007-05-24 15:46:11
I should have said, 2000 article. And my original point, which still stands, was that Williams is not dipping down further than its peers to cut breaks to athletes in admissions: and in fact, probably the opposite is true. I doubt that there are any hotly recruited athletes at Williams who would not have been admitted to pretty much any other Division III school in the country, including any other NESCAC school.
2007-05-24 15:52:33
It seems that every time the subject of athletics comes us, hwc must make an invidious comment about why Williams doesn’t engage in more “brand differentiation.” Well, perhaps Williams doesn’t see itself as a “Nike camp with enrichment classes” (pace Dr. Shanks) but rather as a vibrant intellectual environment that also has successful sports teams. The sense that I always got is that Williams achieved more with less, and with better students, and that’s something the college, the athletic department, the alums, well, everyone, should be justifiably proud.
2007-05-24 15:55:02
As usual, Sheehy is just blowing smoke out of his you know what. These schools all lump the major portion of their athletic spending under non team specific reporting categories.
He’s just playing a semantics game. Even at that he’s being totally disingenous (some might say “lying”) when he fails to note the second category of football expenses in the federal reporting totalling $285,000.
BTW, exactly why would dropping a sport “not be an option”? Is that Massachusetts state law? Or a voluntary management decision (aka “institutional priority”)?
2007-05-24 16:02:08
That’s because every time the subject comes up, somebody tries to make the false argument that Williams doesn’t emphasize athletics relative to its peers. See Jeff’s orginal post in this thread.
It’s precisely this reluctance to embrace the College’s institutional priorities and brand identity that I find so curious.
2007-05-24 16:12:12
I think, ceteris paribus, that Midd or Trinity are far better examples of the type of jock palace you so evidently disdain, hwc. According to your own data, Swarthmore values jockery more than your favorite diversity whipping boy W&L…
2007-05-24 16:17:07
Well, as you can clearly see from the athletics budgets, your “sense” was somewhat off-base. The truth is that Williams achieves more with more.
BTW, the whole issue of the 66 tips is a red herring. Those are (largely) controlled by conference rules. The real reason that Williams is so strong athletically (besides outspending its competition) is not the 66 tips, but the additional 90 recruited impact athletes in every freshman class.
How does Williams get these 90? Simple. The school’s brand identity as an athletic powerhouse with a sports-oriented campus culture is a tremendous recruiting tool.
2007-05-24 16:22:35
Williams has a lot more athletes, and is much more willing to fund untalented athletes (see Cross Country, swimming, track). Williams also has a lot more teams than other schools, which requiers paying more coaches.
2007-05-24 16:25:44
hwc, if your theory on the “90″ is true, then Williams apparently doesn’t need to do any more to enhance their brand identity.
2007-05-24 16:26:04
I have a difficult time understanding HWC’s numbers. The difference between Amherst and Williams comes to about $2,000,000 per year. How can you spend $2 mil more? Do we pay our coaches that much better? Is our equipment replaced more often? Do we spend more on national championship appearances? Do we just define spending differently? Beyond capital expenses, where does building maintenance come under?
I want more information about where our athletics budget goes before I will be convinced of anyone’s argument. It is simply impossible for me to believe without a better breakdown that Williams spends more per student than St. Lawrence, when SLU has a Division 1 hockey program, a national coach of the year, and a relatively small rink.
Additionally, while it is clearly more work to produce, spending per athlete would be more informative than spending per student.
2007-05-24 16:26:42
HWC, I think you’re ignoring the fact that Williams has a lot of teams (many of which are non-cut). Given the choice between a track & field team, for instance, only composed of recruited athletes, and a track & field team composed of all comers, which would you prefer? Which situation is more in line with the ideals of an elite liberal arts college?
Honestly, the question is not whether or not Williams has jocks, or in some way caters to them. It does, and it does. (We might disagree on whether this catering is more extreme than at peer institutions like Midd, Trinity, or Bowdoin, but that might be irrelevant). What I find irritating is your reductive argument that because Williams embraces a particular set of priorities in a particular direction that is the entire scope of institutional values. In other words, I find your contention that Williams, because it has fine athletics, must be entirely and completely devoted to athletics, frankly specious.
And that’s why, whenever this argument comes up, you cleverly insinuate that you “find it surprising” that Williams doesn’t “place more emphasis” on its “branding” which is as servile as wondering, as some did, I’m sure, whether Jeffery Dahmer used A1 sauce or soy whilst marinating his victims.
2007-05-24 16:31:03
I’m not sure that’s true. It is true that they spend more per student and that difference would be enhanced by the fact that Swarthmore doesn’t have football team and W&L does.
However, there is a rather substantial difference overall per student spending. I haven’t taken an in-depth look at W&Ls annual financial reports, but I would make an educated guess that they have been spending somewhere in the $40k to $50k per student range compared to the $68k to $70k per student range at the luxury joints like Swarthmore and Williams.
But, honestly, besides the fact that they only enroll white folk (for all intents and purposes) and lead the pack in percentage of fraternity membership, I haven’t studied Washington and Lee that closely.
2007-05-24 16:43:05
More, actually. For 2005-06, Williams total athletic budget was $6.029 million. Amherst’s was $3.470 million.
2007-05-24 16:50:56
If it were being seriously proposed that the entire Bill of Rights be repealed, youse guys would find more words to write about athletics at Williams than about the proposed repeal.
2007-05-24 17:07:12
It’s no more work from the available data, but the numbers are flawed. The number provided to the US Dept of Education is “unduplicated members of a varsity athletic team”. However, the athletic budget includes all expenses. Thus, you end up with Bard College (with only 13 official varsity athletes) in the top 10 in “per athlete spending”, even though their total athletic budget is only $450,000, less than a tenth of Williams’. There’s a denominator problem.
Williams “per athlete spending” is $10,085 (2004-05). Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Middlebury are all in the $6,000 to $6,500 range.
2007-05-24 17:19:07
You may find it specious because I’ve never expressed that contention.
I am not really aware of a college that is “entirely and completely devoted” to one thing. I suppose places like CalTech or Julliard may approach that standard, but for most colleges the brand identities rest with variations in the emphasis placed on similar component parts. For example, Amherst’s brand identity lies partially with its emphasis on low-income diversity relative to its peers, although of course we know that Williams has some low income diversity. The suggestion that Amherst would have to be 100% low income to consitute a brand identity is what is specious.
There are at least a dozen liberal arts colleges with absolute top-shelf academics (Williams included) and big endowments. The question is what differentiates Williams from that group.
2007-05-24 17:22:37
I am with Richard, there are so many different factors that it is hard to take an absolute number and stamp it as definitive without understanding the context. In terms of Williams vs. Amherst, a big part of the difference is of couse that Williams, unlike Amherst, has varsity men’s and women’s crew, men’s and women’s skiing (which I imagine is an expensive sport) and men’s wrestling. Who knows where club sports are factored in — certain expenses associated with those sports may be included in certain budgets, others may not. Facility costs may be factored in differently in different budgets. Williams might have very high travel costs due to its relative isolation and lack of any major airports nearby. Of course Williams’ tremendous success individual sports like swimming and track ends up being quite expensive, due to high rates of participation in national meets. And on and on.
HWC is rightfully skeptical of statistics, like those cited by Sheehy, when they undermine his argument / philosophy. But he blindly, uncritically accepts other statistics, whenever convenient to him. Presumably, the SI reporter did some due dilligence when he wrote this article, so I don’t see these stats as any more or less worthwhile than those you cling to.
Again, if Williams was so over-committed to its athletic program, why did the track team have to start a petition drive to have a safe track to run on? Why does Williams have the worst fitness center in the NESCAC? Why was Williams one of the last schools in NESCAC to get a turf field? My point is not to say that Williams does not support athletics, but it is clear that Williams is not an outlier among its peers — football-playing NESCAC teams foremost among them — when it comes to supporting athletics, admitting tipped athletes, having a large varsity presence on campus, having nationally successful sports teams, etc. The main difference between Williams and the rest of NESCAC is Williams’ comparatively huge rosters in sports like track, cross country, swimming and crew, sports which simply do not create the cultural issues that HWC and others attribute to athletics. But if you take the football, basketball, hockey, soccer, baseball and lacrosse teams at Williams in the aggregate, and compare them with their peers at Amherst, Midd, Trinity, Bowdoin, etc., the Williams teams will have similar roster size, athletes with better (or at least equivalent) academic credentials, similar behavioral concerns, and similar winning percentages, overall. So why, exactly, should Williams be singled out? Because it has an enormous crew and track and field program? Does that really make Williams more of a unilaterally sports-focused place?
Is my mind, the difference in culture at Williams is not so much on the varsity sports, but in the rest of the student body — reputation is self-reinforcing, so some non-recruited kids who absolutely hate sports will choose Swarthmore over Williams, and some kids who are more the well-rounded athlete/social/scholar type would prefer Williams. So I don’t dispute there is more of a sporty vibe, overall, at Williams than exists some other schools. But is there more than exists at Bowdoin, or Colby, or Middlebury, or Trinity? No way. I’d say Williams is somewhere between Midd and Amherst (and the difference between all three is very, very slender) on the outdoorsy/sporty vs. artsy/urbane spectrum, actually.
2007-05-24 17:25:21
I also note that Williams has a more substantial J.V. program than many of its peers — most of the kids who participate in that aren’t exactly star recruits or tips, but rather just decent athletes who want to play somewhat competitive athletics.
2007-05-24 19:26:51
“Amherst may now actually be favoring star athletes even more than Williams does during the admissions process.”
So Jeff, does this mean that Amherst has lowered its admissions standards for athletes, or that Williams has raised its own?!?!
A couple of thoughts. First, I’m still fairly close to the athletic programs I participated in at Amherst and it’s my sense that the above quote is not true, although I certainly don’t have the access to the data to say one way or the other for sure. Also I am not suggesting that Williams provides or ever provided more lenient treatment to recruited athletes in the admissions process (a topic I am even less qualified to offer an opinion on).
It’s clear to me, however, that Amherst’s ability to admit athletes (meaning tips) has been severely restricted over the past several years. I know the football program only gets to support a handful of people in the admissions process, both nominally and certainly compared to my time as a player in the program, and that the academic quality of those limited spaces must be considerably higher than it was when I attended. Parker’s tenure as admissions director has been more restrictive. Also admitting the athlete is only one step of the recruitment of the athlete, albeit a critical one. I have no firsthand knowledge of what goes on today, but when I was a student, I knew athletes at other NESCAC schools who chose their school over Amherst in large part due to the financial aid package. Are you suggesting Amherst and Midd have been more aggressive than Williams in this regard as well?
Second, Jeff, are you advancing the “they let in better athletes with lower SAT scores and that’s why they are good” argument? I always thought that was lame (and untrue) even when I was at Amherst and on the short end of most contests I participated in against Williams. I think that Amherst has “caught up” in the Director’s Cup (although it was always in the top 15 I believe) as a result of factors other than the admissions office. Improved sports info website/marketing, which allows for broader and essentially costless recruiting is one factor and the structure of the Directors Cup which benefits schools with many sports programs is another. Certainly the effort on the field of some great people and coaches deserves the vast majority of the applause.
Amherst also has benefitted from Williams’ athletic success, which has created a better national profile and publicity for NESCAC schools as a whole. Jeff, I know you are trying to make an argument about the perception of Williams and its admission of athletes, but it sounds like an unwarranted dig at Lord Jeff athletes. The athletes at Amherst deserve the same congratulations you correctly extend to the Williams teams for this year’s remarkable athletic campaign.
2007-05-24 22:56:18
“There are at least a dozen liberal arts colleges with absolute top-shelf academics”
There are NO liberal arts colleges with absolute top-shelf academics.
2007-05-24 22:58:44
It is illogical to think that there is one iota of difference (academically) between the 66 low-band athletic tips at Amherst and the 66 low-band athletic tips at Williams. They both recruit and admit under-qualified impact athletes under the same conference limitations, based on standard deviations from each school’s average academic ratings, which are nearly identical.
2007-05-24 23:02:26
I would argue that there are no R1 institutions with absolute top shelf undergrad academics. The size, institutional priorities (tenure criteria), and the use of practice teachers (TAs) makes it impossible — although that is not to say you can’t get a good undergrad education at an R1.
2007-05-25 03:27:17
1) I’m still afraid I have no idea what an “under-qualified impact athlete” means.
2) It’s a bit of a shame that a post on a kid about to come to Williams has to be caught up in the cant of the anti-jock types. It’s not surprising, of course, but it is a shame nonetheless.
Signed–
Dumb Jock Professor Not as Smart as HWC. (OK — probably actually much smarter than HWC, but why debunk the sterotype? Me Dumb. Like sports. Grrrr!!! Angry!!!)
DCAT
2007-05-25 05:37:01
One “under-qualified impact athlete” is about the equivalent of one “chicken-necked, Coke-bottle lensed, library loving, socially inept geek” - not that Williams has any of either.
2007-05-25 08:12:31
I see that my comments do come off as a little harsh on Amherst. I kind of went overboard in that respect — my point was more that you never really hear folks criticize Amherst (or many other Nescac schools) as some kind of unusual jock haven, even though it places, certainly, no less emphasis than Williams does on athletic attributes during the admission process, and now is essentially even with Williams in the sports that require the largest numbers of tipped athletes. Just shows how perception can trump reality. Williams’ standards for tipped athletes have gone up tremendously in the last five years or so, from everything I’ve heard. I have also heard from a lot of folks that Parker was/is an advocate for athletes. But even if true, that is probably trumped by Tony Marx, who I would guess would rather trade athlete spots for low income kids with relatively low numbers that don’t reflect their true abilities.
2007-05-25 10:00:46
There are plenty of reasons to criticize AmHerst; though such criticisms should probably apply broadly to all of those Marxists, and not just the athletes. As for me, I think just about any criticism of AmHerst is warranted, up to and including how ridiculously Hadley Arkes dresses.
2007-05-25 10:01:09
i honestly don’t get why this has received so much writing.
First, to “let’s be realistic”…I invite you to take a class that is offered at both williams and your pick of research 1 institutions. I will put down 10 to 1 odds that the williams version is a better undergraduate class. Then, I’ll pick one science, one humanities, and one social sciece intro class and advanced class at williams (and you the same at the research 1) and we’ll see which school has better academics for its students.
next, as with a thread from last year, the defenders of athletics are attacking a non-existant opponent. who has said anything opposed to athletics in this thread? look back over it…hwc said simply that williams should brand itself as the athletic and smart school. and it should. then aidan claimed hwc’s point that williams spends a good deal on athletics is an invidious comment (when hwc said nothing about lowering said expenditure, only that williams should pride itself on being athletic as well as smart. kinda like ND or Michigan or Cal or Stanford in D1 sports). and then all hell broke loose…
2007-05-25 10:04:24
Derek, consider how much smarter you’d be, had you gone to Swarthmore and eschewed such plebeian adventures as athletics and alcoholism.
2007-05-25 10:10:04
As always, Ephblog has managed to smear a student’s triumph with self-centered, illogical, and generally stupid quibbling. Here, a kid who isn’t even at Williams yet is getting trashed because you all feel the need to squabble about what you think is unfair or stupid for an institution that has changed since all of you were there. Cool it!
2007-05-25 10:34:52
How can people argue that Williams doesn’t emphasize sports? Money talks. HWC has provided hard numbers on these matters.
Z, your arguments are irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if the money is spent on JV teams, big track teams, ski teams, weight rooms, or football teams. Williams has decided to take $6 million a year and spend it on sports rather than hiring more faculty members, improving dining hall food, advertising on television, or sending every resident of Williamstown $700. I always wondered how the college spent $80,000 a year on students, now I know that $10,000 goes to sports (leaving the other $70,000 unaccounted for … now there is a scandal Kane). The fact that some of the facilities are sub-par simply means that the College has spent its money poorly or thought other aspects of the sports program were more important. (My guess is that it also means future capital campaigns.)
Williams had a reputation as a school for smart athletes when I applied 15 years ago and that reputation has only grown. To the extent that Division III sports gets attention, Williams reaps more than its share. The reputation has allowed Williams to simultaneously raise admissions standards (or reduce TIPS) while recruiting better athletes. Many schools struggling with their identity (e.g., why should students attend Kenyon instead of its peers?), but Williams has a clear identity that appeals to a segment of the market (good school, good sports, nice hills).
Is there really an argument here or just antipathy towards HWC?
2007-05-25 11:23:27
It’s the working definition of the 66 low-band athletic “tips” that each NESCAC college is allowed to admit.
The system is based on “academic ratings” assigned by the admissions office and was developed by the Ivy League athletic conference. “Low band” refers to bands or levels of academic ratings based on thresholds one, two, three, or more “standard deviations” below the school’s average or median academic rating.
For example, Williams uses a 9 point academic rating with 1 being the top; 8 & 9 being too low to be admitted to Williams.
With the occasional exception, the 66 “tips” are reserved for athletics deemed by the athletic department as being “impact” players, i.e. good enough to have an “impact” on the performance of a varsity team, who have academic ratings below the centerpoint (which at Williams is currently somewhere between a 2 and a 3.
There is a bottom cutoff (a 7 at Williams) and usually an overall distribution of bands for the group of 66, i.e. so many 7s, so many 6s, so many 5s, and so many 4s. Depending on each school’s policy, the athletic department can have nearly exclusive decision making power in deciding which students are accepted in this group, as long as the group meets the statistical parameters.
Williams has a second group (called “protects”) of about 36 impact athletes who have roughly average academic ratings, presumably 3s and 4s. The presence on the athletic department lists serves as the “tie-breaker” for these applicants, earning them an admissions slot above other “average” applicants.
There is a third group of roughly 50 enrolled freshmen each year who have above average academic ratings (presumably 1s and 2s) who are designated by the athletic department as likely 4-year varsity athletes. The admissions office is aware that these applicants have been designated as varsity caliber athletes by the coaches, but they do not need, nor do they receive, a specific “boost” from the athletic department.
2007-05-25 11:29:24
Jeff: I hear you loud and clear, although I don’t think most Lord Jeffs view Williams as a jock haven, since they’ve produced more athletes who earned Rhodes Scholarships than Amherst has produced Rhodes Scholars of any type in the last twenty years if I remember correctly. (Although, clearly I remember some contemporaries at Amherst who immaturely bemoaned Williams’ success as a product of lenient admissions. Dick Quinn, I believe, was always quick to refute those arguments.) Amherst got plenty of internal criticism from faculty regarding athletics in the late 90’s. The arrival of Tom Parker actually pacified the faculty grumbling to a large degree. Influential alumni also like Parker, who is somehow managing to keep many different constituencies relatively happy in this competitive environment.
Lowell: You probably asked to borrow one of H.A.’s tweed sportcoats when you approached him to sign your copy of “First Things” during one of his frequent trips to D.C. I like H.A., even though our politics differ greatly and I thought he stepped over the line (although having the correct position) in the imbroglio created when Antonin Scalia (or, Nino, as H.A. likes to refer to him) accepted an invitation to speak at Amherst a few years back.
Anonymous at 10:10. No objective reading of the comments here indicates that anyone is trying to smear this Williams pre-frosh. And, if anything, I think most alumni of NESCAC schools applaud the current approach to athletic recruiting, certainly compared to what occured about 10 years ago.
2007-05-25 11:40:11
AC — I’m not a huge fan of Arkes, nor did I buy anything he’s written. I actually don’t even read National Review (whether on- or offline), with the occasional exception of a Victor Davis Hanson or James Glassman column here or there. I’m also entirely unfamiliar with said imbroglio.
Even if Stevens, whose jurisprudence I dislike more than anybody else on the Court, were speaking somewhere that I attended, I can’t say that I’d raise the slightest bit of fuss. I’m puzzled why the Marxist Hersties wouldn’t at least be honored to have a Justice come speak. For all Scalia’s personal opinions, he’s far from a Taney or McReynolds.
2007-05-25 11:42:04
(D)avid, you’re missing most of my point. The money (I believe, and HWC has not disagreed) that HWC is referring to does NOT include money spent on capital expenditures. Look at what lots of other Division III schools have spent on athletic facilities in recent years — often ENORMOUS multiples of what Williams spends on its athletic budget in any given year. I don’t see how you can ignore facilities / capital expenditures when evaluating what volume institutional resources are devoted to athletics. Take a school near and dear to your heart: Nebraska. Even if Nebraska spent the same as, say, Kansas in any given year on its football budget, it is clear that Nebraska places far more emphasis on football due to the enormous outlays it made to build and maintain state of the art stadium, weight rooms, and practice facilities. If you are complaining, like HWC, that Williams’ priorities are way out of whack / huge outliers from other Division III schools, you can do what he does — look only at one statistic, from one year, that supports your arugment, or you can do what I’d suggest — look at other sources of information, like a Sports Illustrated article that focused (with both statistial and anecdotal evidence) on how penurious Williams is compared to its peers, or more importantly, capital expenditures on athletic facilities, where again, Williams lags far behind schools like Emory, Brandeis, Chicago, Middlebury, and many, many others.
Now, I don’t think there is anything wrong, or inaccurate, with saying that Williams is a place that celebrates athletic excellence and where it is a great place to be an athlete. But the same holds true for a lot of other areas in which Williams is a leader among liberal arts schools: the arts, science facilities, math / econ, grad school acceptance rates, etc. And I think Williams’ emphasis on, and success in, athletics is only marginally different from that at Middlebury or Amherst, the two schools most similar to Williams in my view. What bothers me is folks who make Williams out to be some uniquely athletically-focused institution to the point where non athletes will be miserable there verus, say, any other NESCAC school. Athletics ARE a major focus at the school, and a justifiable (in my opinion) source of pride, but that hardly makes it an outlier from many of its immediate peers.
There are just as many tipped athletes running around at every other NESCAC school, and many of those schools are much smaller than Williams. And the cultural problems that folks attribute (rightly or wrongly) to athletes, no one has ever attributed to what in fact differentiates Williams from its peers — enormous rosters of individual sports like crew, track, cross country, and swimming.
On a totally different point regarding something else raised earlier in this thread. Women’s Crew won the Sears Cup last year but got only 50 points for that. Unless the scoring system has changed, I think even a national championship in crew won’t be enough for Williams to eclipse Midd in the standings.
2007-05-25 11:47:49
BTW, every liberal arts college I know of uses some variation on the low-band tips mechanism. Admissions offices like having guidelines set by management based on institutional priorities because it defines some limit on athletic department pressure in the admissions process.
The NESCAC reduced (within the last 5 or 6 years) the allowable number of “tips” from 72 to 66.
The top LACs are wrestling with conflicting priorities for the limited number of low-band slots: increasing diversity or athletic recruiting. Because elite college athletics tilts decisively white and more affluent (recruiting camps every summer cost money), every low-band athletic slot is one that can’t be allocated for increased diversity. So something has to give unless the college is willing to reduce its overall SAT distribution stats. The current demographic bulge in applications is somewhat masking this pressure by pushing overall SAT stats upwards.
LACs are more acutely impacted by these issues because they have so few admissions slots for each freshman class. So, for example, the percentage of students playing (or recruited for) varsity sports is much, much higher at an LAC than it is at a university, including a major sports school (like USC or U of Miami).
2007-05-25 11:56:30
Lowell, sorry to incorrectly label you as a member of the Natural Rights/Claremont Institute group.
Said Scalia imbroglio was a good one (where faculty embarrassed themselves and the College by first encouraging a boycott and then writing snide open letters to each other in the paper) although not worth hijacking this thread with a discussion of it. E-mail me if you want details.
If you e-mail me answer this question: When you refer to us as Marxists, do you mean Karl Marx Marxists or Tony Marx Marxists or both?
2007-05-25 12:09:27
There is so much misinformation here that I don’t know where to start - so I won’t.
2007-05-25 12:09:39
JeffZ:
Your argument about capital investment in athletic facilities may need a bit more perspective of time.
In the last 20 years, Williams has built a new gymnasium, a new squash facility, a new athletic department training facility, indoor crew tanks, and a new outdoor lighted turf field.
I suspect that most of the NESCAC building is being done in an effort to catch up to the facilities that Williams had already built.
Your argument would carry more weight if basketball games were still being played in Lasalle.
I find it somewhat amusing that you would compare the ability or desirability of Williams building athletic facilities on the scale of an Emory University, an R1 institution that dwarfs Williams by any conceivable measure: enrollment, total endowment, total revenues, total expenditures, etc.
2007-05-25 12:12:32
Groucho Marxists!
2007-05-25 12:24:21
That’s also plausible, Frank!
2007-05-25 12:55:17
HWC: Isn’t Williams competing with Emory for students? Students apply to both. My understanding is that Williams holds it own against all by the very type R1 schools (Harvard, Yale, …). I sorta assumed that the construction drive at Williams (e.g., theater, dance studio, student union, art building) was motivated by keeping up with the much larger Jones’.
Z: I suspect that HWC is correct about the timing of the building. Williams has been updating its sports facilities (along with everything else on campus). The trouble is that sports arenas become “outdated” just like anything else — maybe even faster. Key Arena and the Rose Garden were both built in 1995, but are already considered obsolete by NBA standards. Chandler probably seemed pretty impressive when it was built (certainly compared to LaSalle).
2007-05-25 13:53:40
2007-05-25 14:22:21
Chandler was a pretty amazing place when it first opened (probably in 1987 or 1988), but the Williams-Amherst basketball games were much more fun (at least for the fans who got in), in LaSalle.
2007-05-25 14:30:47
Here’s a to the ridiculous $62 million 900 seat theater at Bard College.
This was a college that was flat broke in the 1970s, still has a weak, diluted endowment, and barely any science education. The president, Leon Bostein, is a symphony conductor and has run the college like he has attention deficit disorder since he took over in his 20s back when the college was broke.
2007-05-26 01:15:21
“The school’s brand identity as an athletic powerhouse with a sports-oriented campus culture”
HWC: All of the student-athletes I know were attracted to Williams “as an athletic powerhouse with a … campus culture” that is multi-faceted and encompasses as many non-athletic interests and endeavors as athletic. They were sold as much on the theatre, music, art, science, math, and social sciences at Williams as on the college’s sustained excellence in their particular sport. They all would say that your irrational focus on the campus culture of Williams as “sports-oriented” is just plain wrong. It may have been so when you attended 35-40 years ago, but, like it or not, the student body at Williams has changed. It’s easy to guess that you personally know few, if any, athletes — especially at Williams.
2007-05-26 01:26:50
“The top LACs are wrestling with conflicting priorities for the limited number of low-band slots: increasing diversity or athletic recruiting.”
HWC: It’s not “either” / “or.”
“There is so much misinformation here that I don’t know where to start”
Frank: I couldn’t agree more.
2007-05-26 02:28:43
It’s “either/or” to some degree, unless you are willing to increase the number of slots or reduce your overall academic stats.
You are dealing with a finite number of admissions slots.
2007-05-26 17:57:25
Back to the Sears Cup.
I think it may indeed be a goner for this year, sadly. I was thinking that women’s track and field would add points for Williams but they won’t because only the highest season is counted in multi-season sports — that would be the winter national championship for 100 points, which has already been included. Don’t know that men’s track and field can add anything: as of yesterday, they were in 30th place (with six NCAA championship meet points) and there was only one Williams competitor still to go in a final. I think they need to be substantially higher than 30th on team points to add any Sears Cup points. The Williams women rowers came through with a national championship worth 100 Sears Cup points today. Midd gets no crew points. That puts Williams ahead by nine points but that’s without factoring in whatever Midd gets for men’s lax and whatever Williams gets for baseball. Does anyone know how this works? Can someone please figure it out for me?
On another subject, the Williams weight room/fitness facility in Chandler was the worst (most crowded, least free exercise space, fewest machines and free weights per user) of any we saw on a long series of college tour visits over two years, and that’s a real concern not so much for varsity athletics but for providing what’s necessary for building a foundation for a lifetime of fitness (for students, faculty, and staff). The trend seems to be to provide several large facilities in gyms and field houses plus scattered smaller work-out spaces in residential buildings.
2007-05-26 18:48:44
My guess is that Williams nips ‘em at the wire - not that the Director’s Cup ought to be a big deal despite Williams making it so because emphasis on it favors Williams. With respect to the Fitness Center, what hours of the day, days of the week and months of the year have you found it to be crowded? I never do - although I seldom visit it in the afternoon during weekdays or in the evening.
2007-05-27 08:03:37
first, congrats to the Women’s Crew team. If any sport rewards hard work it is crew (I lived with a few crew guys and their dedication was insane), so you know those rowers must have busted ass all year.
second, I think (and I mentioned this before but it got buried deep within this thread) last year crew only got 50 for winning the national title. If that is the case, Midd will take home the Cup, if that has been changed for some reason to 100 (and I don’t see why it would) it should be incredibly close …
2007-05-27 10:40:24
Williams gets 100 Sears Cup points this year for crew because the first varsity boat was first in the grand final.
[Last year, the first varsity boat was second in the grand final (and the second boat was third, making the team the overall NCAA team points champion, a championship for which no Sears Cup points are given). Last year, they got 50 Sears Cup points for the first boat's second place finish in the grand final; Ithaca received 100 Sears Cup points for its first place 8+ in the grand final and was the NCAA National Champion in terms of winning the grand final but was not the overall NCAA team points champion. This year, as in 2002, the Williams rowers are dual NCAA champions by reason of the first boat's first place finish in the grand final (100 Sears Cup points) and because they had the highest team point total (for which there are never Sears Cup points)-- the Williams second boat was the fastest of the second boats, coming in third in the petite final behind two oter schools' first boats.]
This was a really remarkable feat. From last year’s national championship team, they had lost half the squad. They had one returning senior in the top boats, a very fine rower who was co-captain (and is a legacy — I’ve noticed that legacies often are strong leaders at Williams, with plenty of room for others as well, of course). Their regular coach was on sabbatical, improving his game by working with the Canadian national teams. They had a young one-year interim coach who came in from coaching the Colby novices. He was ably assisted by a carryover assistant coach, a recent alumna, who should also be given a good share of credit.
I still can’t figure out the baseball vs. lax points for Williams and Midd, so I don’t know who has the Sears Cup. Amherst has done very well in women’s track & field as well but they are a little too far behind to catch up.
I know that the Sears Cup isn’t important. Still, I feel that it links all (or most — football obviously being excluded from the tally) of the varsity sports together in a shared mission. For me as an alumna it has also helped spark my interest in several Williams teams. And the kids love the “#1 in academics and #1 in athletics” thing - and that’s especially important to those who came in with a clear notion of what they wanted in a college (quite a few of whom have turned down Ivies and other D1 athletics to get it).
To answer a question, the fitness facilities were crowded in the evenings. Also on a Saturday, but I don’t remember the time of day. We stayed away during the Division of the Day slot as we expected the teams to be there then.
2007-05-27 11:12:06
More Sears Cup stuff. Sorry to be a Johnny One Note.
The difference between Midd and Williams with the 100 crew points thrown in is 9 points, with Williams in the lead. Still outstanding: track & field, men’s lax, and baseball. Midd might get something for T&F; Williams won’t — for the women, it’s already counted in the 100 points for the winter season championship; for the men, they were 32nd, which would give them fewer Sears Cup points than their winter 14th place finish, which is already counted in. So it seems to be down to the weight of Midd’s men’s lax vs. the Williams baseball points. I suspect Midd wins as they seem to have gotten further in lax than we did in baseball. Anyone know?
Sorry to be so boring.
2007-05-27 11:19:19
As of this academic year, for Director’s Cup purposes Winter T&F has been separated from Spring T&F - which means, I believe, Williams women will score points this spring in addition to those scored by them in the winter - as will Williams men.
2007-05-27 14:01:40
Thank you very much for this information, Frank. Since the women were 9th in T&F this spring (doing a very nice job on pulling in the points on the last day) and the men were 32nd, that would indeed provide some good points. Perhaps Ralph White’s teams will reel it in as a last hurrah, then.
How does one find out such things as the separating out of the spring T&F results for points purposes? It does seem fair.
2007-05-27 14:22:40
I thought fall-spring T&F were counted as one sport, but track was separate? If that was the case, if we did better than 9th and 32nd in the fall, then our points for the spring won’t count. If not, then they will.
2007-05-27 15:08:29
Thanks for the clarification on crew, my mistake.
2007-05-27 15:20:18
Google “National Asociation of Collegiate Directors of Athletics”, then go to “Scoring Structure”.
2007-05-28 01:29:35
Just a couple of quick points –
Aidan — let’s be careful what you say and how you say it. I’m having a hard time figuring out what you mean in your comment above — it was either failed tongue in cheek or precariously close to libel. (Swarthmore was not my cup of tea — they did recruit me for sports, but, oddly, more for football than for my best sport, track, which is the one I participated in at Williams.)
Second, I get the literal definition of “under-qualified impact athlete,” and how it ties to tips, but I’m still not certain what that has to do with this kid the post putatively features or with sports teams that overwhelmingly are not populated with tips but that are still successful enough to help the Director’s Cup rankings. And I’m still uncertain why a tipped athlete still is not qualified to be at Williams once he or she is at Williams. We do not, to my knowledge, separate students into categories once they are on cmapus. Or we didn’t in my day. If that has changed, please let me know.
I’m almost certain that indoor and outdoor track count separately as they are separate sports by the NCAA’s own standards and I’m sure that in the past Sears/Directors Cup tallies differentiated between the two.
dcat
2007-05-30 14:27:42
The Sears Cup takes the higher of the two finishes in track and field. It has since my time, in the first half of this decade, at least.