1988 Yearbook: Page 8
Click below for full image: a pretty snow-clad hillside. But where was the photographer standing? Read more
Fight The Man
Is Dean Merrill stocking up on the tear gas?
Tonight (THURSDAY), we’re staying in Paresky after hours. The administration thinks that we, the students, don’t care about having our student center open 24/7 for our use. If you want to be able to sit in Paresky late into the night during the semester, come show your support at tonight’s sit-in.
Stop by tonight for a little while or a long while. DVD or board game in hand. Pretend spring semester hasn’t started yet or get a jump start on this semester’s reading! Or just socialize with whoever else you happen to find in Paresky throughout the night.
Support the cause! We deserve our student center!
Who says kids today aren’t idealistic?
Best strategy for the Administration is to totally ignore this and not try to lock up tonight, or for the next few nights. Then, once the students have moved on, just start locking the doors again.
Once the Administration does that, best strategy for the students is to ensure that at least of their number is in Paresky at the lock-up time (2:00 AM) and refuses to leave. After a few weeks of that, the Administration might give up. See the Record for background reading.
UPDATE: Are you a Record reporter? Make sure to read Jonathan Landsman’s comment below.
However, 24 hour access to the new student center was a feature of it, a promise made about it by administrators at all levels—I heard this personally from Morty, Dean Roseman, a number of times.
Did Morty and Roseman “promise” that the student center would be open 24/7? It’s an empirical question. Go ask them. And, if the try to weasel out with a non-response, call Landsman and confirm. Promises should be kept.
Undergraduates Everywhere Ignoring David Kane’s Advice
The WSJ reports that, in spite of EphBlog’s tireless efforts, love is, in fact, dead:
Remember the movie “Love Story” and its star-crossed student lovers? Such torrid campus romances may be becoming a thing of the past. College life has become so competitive, and students so focused on careers, that many aren’t looking for spouses anymore.
Replacing college as the top marital hunting ground is the office. Only 14% of people who are married or in a relationship say they met their partners in school or college, says a 2006 Harris Interactive study of 2,985 adults; 18% met at work. That’s a reversal from 15 years ago, when 23% of married couples reported meeting in school or college and only 15% cited work, according to a 1992 study of 3,432 adults by the University of Chicago.
Gone are the days when sororities and dorms marked engagements with candle-passing ceremonies while men serenaded beneath the windows.
Seriously, when did people ever do that?
If you’re a parent, as I am, you may be wondering what all this means. Such sordid campus-life portrayals as Tom Wolfe’s “I Am Charlotte Simmons” aside, the news about students’ social lives isn’t all bad. To be sure, the “hookup culture” — the campus trend toward casual sexual behavior, usually linked with alcohol and no expectations of a continuing relationship — is rife. Some 76% of college students have engaged in hookups, which usually stop short of intercourse, according to a study of 4,000 students by Stanford University sociology professor Paula England.
And this is different from the ’60s, ’70s, or ’80s how? If anything, students are a great deal more prudish now than they were 30 years ago, and they’re much more concerned about staying safe than the generation that brought us the sexual revolution. Plus ça change…
1988 Yearbook: Page 7
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1988 Yearbook: Page 6
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1988 Yearbook: Page 5
Click below for full image (includes nice sunset and view of Pine Cobble). Can you identify the building pictured? Read more
Purple Bull Investment Club
Hey All, I am quite new to the blog scene, but with Dave’s help, I am posting the Purple Bull Investment Club Portfolio. For those of you who don’t know, we are an investment club here at Williams. The group was started 3 years ago as a way for Williams students to research and invest in the stock market. Seeing how we have so many successful Ephs in the financial world, but no real finance training here at Williams, I believe this group is a great starting point for many students. Each member is required to contribute $500 and we work together to invest the money. More than the profits, we are more concerned with the educational aspect of investing. Anyhow, I have posted our current holdings. Please note that we also have a strong cash holding, nearly 5k. Basically, we would appreciate any advice you have on our current holdings or perhaps some things we should consider buying. Our goal is to try to establish a conversation between more knowledgeable Ephs and the Club. Thanks in advance for your time and help! CAT; DFS; FRO; MS; NYB; PFE; TRST; WM; WYNN; YHOO
1988 Yearbook: Page 4
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Suriyapa ‘88 to Veracode
Seksom Suriyapa ‘88 is moving to Veracode:
Veracode Inc., provider of the industry’s first on-demand application security testing solutions, announced today the appointment of Seksom Suriyapa as the company’s senior vice president of business development. A veteran of several successful businesses with a high-profile background in security, Suriyapa will assume responsibility for global business development at Veracode.
…
Suriyapa will drive Veracode’s business development strategy, including opportunities with outsourcing providers, managed security service providers and system integrators. With over 10 years of experience working with enterprise software companies, he brings strong market understanding and expertise to Veracode.
“This is a challenging and uncertain time for businesses as the severity of security threats against applications increases, while corporate security budgets tighten,” commented Suriyapa. “However, Veracode offers a unique value proposition to those organizations that are required to do more with less by offering multiple code testing techniques, as a service, from one vendor. I look forward to working with those organizations to extend their value proposition to allow them to protect the application infrastructures of their enterprise customers from the software security vulnerabilities that put those businesses at risk.”
Perhaps Seksom can provide a translation for we non-techs at reunion.
1988 Yearbook: Page 3
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Bridge At Williams, 2001-2005 and after
When a friend forwarded me a link to the recent article in the New York Times spotlighting Williams Bridge, I was all revved up to make sure the story made it to ephblog. Who better to break the news than one of the club’s former devotees? Then I saw that it had already been linked—in an itty bitty mention at the end of Jeff Z’s Athletics Round Up. Well, Jeff, that just won’t do. This story is getting prime billing, and will be used as another excuse for me to deposit a few more Williams memories into this site, this time from the point of view of someone who learned and taught bridge at Williams and saw its level of play reach what I believe was a peak since its last heyday over a decade ago, maybe longer.
Mind you when I say “peak” I am using the term in the New England skiing context, or as a mathematician might say a “local maximum.” We’re still talking about bridge, and that means we weren’t ever packing Goodrich hall. But by my junior year, we did have enough interest to run both a beginner’s class during Winter Study and a handful of semesterly tournaments, not to mention get covered in a paper that, if not the Times, was still national news. We also always had weekly social bridge nights, which is really when most of the learning for everyone happened, and when all of the learning happened every year before we and Frank Morgan started teaching formal classes. For me, the “peak” of bridge was when social bridge night had a record attendance one night of 28 players: enough to pack two common rooms in Currier, with 7 simultaneous games, enough to be a fire hazard.
This is a picture from that night in January 2004. In the upper left is a table of people who had just learned that night, mingled with Dave, shuffling, who was in Morgan’s class at the time. Top center you can see two players from the third game in the hall, the fire hazard. The foreground game was historic: Elaine is holding up and pointing to the strongest hand I have ever seen from a true deal. She herself had 20 high card points and a void, translating to an ability to take at least 8 tricks out of 13 all by herself (the average hand in bridge takes about 3 tricks. A hand of Elaine’s value is dealt 8 out of every 1000 deals). Her partner had over ten high card points, which meant they were able to take all 13 tricks, called a “grand slam.”
What follows is a “brief” overview (think Ken Thomas brief) of bridge at Williams and after, as I know it.
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1988 Yearbook: Page 2
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1988 Yearbook: Page 1
As noted previously, we will be posting pages from the 1988 Gulielmensian twice a day, at 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM, from now till reunion. Thanks to Ronit for suggesting that the pictures themselves, which can take some time to load, are posted below the break. Readers are invited to submit their comments, memories and questions in the thread for each scan.
Technical readers will note that the images are stored at locations like:
http://www.ephblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/yb_001.jpg
You can check out other photos before we post them by replacing “001″ with some other page number.
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Fly Me To Boca
Chilly day in Williamstown, with a low of 19 degrees. Much better to be in Boca Raton, Florida, sunny and 74 degrees. And, as luck would have it, Boca is just where the Executive Committee (EC) of the Society of Alumni is meeting this week-end.
Perhaps hypocrisy’s name is Boca, not Gulfstream.
I have few problems with folks, like the Williams administration and trustees, who make a big deal of global warming, carbon emissions and sustainability. Their holy trinities are for them to choose.
I have few problems with folks whose carbon emissions are not influenced by green shibboleths. If you want to fly all around the country or build a factory in China, then that’s your business. Although I could imagine scenarios in which externalities start to become important, the science seems too weak and the political possibilities too limited to worry about that just now. And, if it will make my friends at TNG happy, I am more than ready for massive carbon taxes as long as similarly-sized cuts are made elsewhere, thereby keeping federal revenue/spending at current levels.
My problem is with folks who do both, folks like the Williams administration. If you really believe that carbon emissions are a huge problem, then you should not be scheduling meetings in Boca that could just as easily take place in Williamstown. The hypocrisy is pathetic.
The arguments against this claim are like fish in my barrel. See below for the shooting.
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Global Warming Solutions and Herding Cats
Holding a big event at Williams is like herding cats. In an institution run by independent and motivated professors and administrators, getting collaboration and consensus is very difficult. That is why I’m very proud to announce plans for Focus the Nation, an event which really will capture the attention of the entire school, at least for a day.
A little background on Focus the Nation: conceived of and promoted by Eban Goodstein ’80, this day-long symposium for global warming solutions will take place at over 1500 schools, churches and businesses across the country. Held on Jan. 31st nationally, the eve of super Tuesday, the goal is to engage 5 million citizens in active and intelligent conversations about global warming solutions.
The classic problem in any sort of activism is that when you throw an event, only the people who are interested come. In order to address this age old problem, we’re going to the students. Starting in September, we embarked on a campaign to speak to every single faculty member individually and ask for some or all of class time on February 5th to discuss climate change from the stance of their department. To speak to over 300 faculty is a big project, and I applaud Meredith Annex ’11 and Martin Sawyer ’08 who have coordinated those efforts.
Its paying off. Currently over 60 faculty will use between 5 minutes and all of their class time to talk about where their passion for a better world intersects with their discipline and subject matter. And more new commitments are coming in every day. We’ve actually been surprised at how many faculty are genuinely eager to participate in an event that addresses a big issue and uses their particular strengths. Maybe it’s not that surprising after all.
James Carville Disses Williams
What’s up with this random diss (I think?) of Williams students from James Carville? Good thing I’m already an Obama supporter:
James Carville, Mr. Clinton’s political strategist in 1992, said that the jousting between the two camps had hardly turned toxic, and that the stakes of this election were too high to have a milquetoast campaign.
“This is not Williams College students electing a commencement speaker. This is a huge deal,” Mr. Carville said. “Does the president risk going overboard? Sure. But Obama runs a risk of being wussified.”
Athletics Round Up
Lots of interesting Eph sports-related news of late. First, today is the Amherst vs. Williams hoops double-header, take two. See previous discussion of this rivalry here. Last time, both Jeffs squads emerged victorious, but Williams has the home court advantage today. The Ephs are slight underdogs in both contests (Amherst women are undefeated, and the men are ranked third in the country), but will be looking for payback. Speaking of basketball, two recent news stories featured future Eph ballers Jordan Mickens and Brian Emerson. Emerson was on last year’s Boston Globe all-scholastic super team.
Second, Will Bruce won the Wooden Cup. This is an absolutely incredible accomplishment recognizing the most outstanding role model in all levels of college athletics.
Third, a few weeks back Dave Clawson ‘89 was appointed offensive coordinator of the University of Tennessee football squad. In light of his prior success as a head coach, if he performs well in this high-profile (and very high-pressure) role, he is sure to ascend to a big-time Division I head coaching position.
Finally, today’s NYTimes has a feature on bridge-playing Eph undergrads, led by the legendary Frank Morgan. No word on whether they successfully employed Morgan’s famous “soap bubble gambit” strategy … Chris Willenken of the great class of 1997 is often featured in the NYTimes for his bridge acumen.
RFC on Yearbook Posts
Longtime readers will recall that, five years ago, we generated interest for the class of 1988’s 15th year reunion by posting scans from the 1988 Gulielmensian, the College’s yearbook. (Examples here and here.) In keeping with EphBlog’s Kaizen program of constant small improvements, we will be scanning in the entire yearbook and presenting readers with a new page each day, starting sometime next week. Here is an example:
I am interested in reader preferences on how this should be done. For example, we could step through the book page-by-page or randomly. We could show the picture in full-form (as above) or as a smaller thumbnail. We could post the picture in the main thread (as here) or force readers to click on the “read more” option to view it, thereby not cluttering the other posts. We could close comments on these threads or invite reader memories on the people and events pictured.
I make no promises on what we plan to do (and, certainly, the class of 1988 reunion committee will have a say as well), but feedback is always welcome. Note that we plan to do the same with the class’s facebook. (Yes, little Ephs, before there was Facebook, there were facebooks.)
Your Color Preferences?
Today is color/font/organization day at EphBlog! Genius Daniel will soon chime in with a comment about what colors we have access to and how different items are colored together. Obviously, this ugly pail shade of green that you see everywhere will need to go. Also, links will need to be easier to find. Other suggestions welcome. We will be experimenting throughout the day. Apologies for all the changes, but, if you see something you like, please let us know.
UPDATE: Thoughts on Eph Planet are also welcome.
Merit Aid at Harvard
New Record editor-in-chief Kevin Waite ‘09 provides a solid overview of the debate surrounding recent financial aid changes at Harvard and Yale. Read the whole thing but, for now, I just want to comment on the opening sentence.
Beginning next year, a Harvard student whose family earns $180,000 will only have to pay $18,000 of the school’s $45,600 sticker price.
Always bad to start a news article with an untrue statement. Former Record editor Mike Needham ‘04 must be weeping from his aerie high in the rapidly imploding Giuliani campaign. I am almost positive that Harvard has never made this claim, although they have said things like this in a misleading fashion. Shame on them!
First, do you really believe that a first year student in the class of 2012 with $300,000 in a 529 fund which can only be used for education expenses is going to get away with only paying Harvard $18,000? Hah! The student/family would, of course, like to save that money for graduate school or devote it (after penalty?) to some other expense. (What are the rules on unused money from 529s?) The key distinction that Waite misses is between money which belongs to the student and money which belongs to the parents. Harvard has done nothing, I think, about the former. If you have non-trivial amounts of money in your 18 year-old name, Harvard will want it. All of it. See previous discussion here and here. (Click on those links if you are a new reader. Good stuff!)
Second, there is a difference between paying $18,000 on average and “only” $18,000 at most. Harvard wants people to be confused, as Waite is, about whether the $18,000 is a maximum for all families with $180,000 in income or an average across all of them. Do you really think that a billionaire family with low income one year will get away with only spending $18,000? No. Harvard wants to know both how much money you made this year and how much wealth you have. Note how Harvard phrases things:
Harvard’s new financial aid policy dramatically reduces the amount families with incomes below $180,000 will be expected to pay. Families with incomes above $120,000 and below $180,000 and with assets typical for these income levels will be asked to pay 10 percent of their incomes.
I predict that a lot of families with incomes in this range will be quite upset about how Harvard defines “typical” in that sentence.
But those are quibbles. Waite’s article is still worth reading. And, can we finally agree that it is intellectually dishonest for schools like Harvard (and Williams) to pretend that they don’t give merit aid? If you define “need” to include families with incomes of $180,000, then you are no longer speaking English.
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