Stetson-Sawyer update
Recent pictures of the two new academic buildings going up on either side of Sawyer Library have been uploaded here. (The resolution is fairly high, so be prepared for a wait if your Internet connection is sluggish.) The construction is going well, and delivery of the buildings is currently expected to be on time: early July for the North Academic Building and roughly mid-July for its partner to the south. The expected move-in date for faculty and staff remains mid-August.
If you need to be reminded about what all this will look like when Sawyer Library is razed in 2013, click here.
Nesbitt Net
Jeff Zeeman ‘97 highlighted these two articles in a recent thread, but they both deserve their own post.
A story on Williams wrestling.
It’s only a formality now. Georgetown’s Ryan Malo will be continuing the St. John’s Prep connection at Williams College.
Malo, the 2007 New England champion with a perfect 58-0 record, began the year on scholarship at Boston University. But, after splitting 10 matches, he withdrew from school because he did not enjoy living in the city.
While taking classes at Northern Essex Community College for the last month, Malo has been mulling a transfer. Although he briefly considered Wesleyan and other schools, Williams was always the frontrunner and it looks like it will be his destination.
“It looks pretty good — I just have to wait for my official letter (of acceptance),” said Malo. “It’s a great school and having kids I know so well there just makes it better.”
Somehow I think that most transfer applications from BU, much less from Northern Essex Community College, are not so successful.
Despite Williams policy on tips, Dave Fehr asks “Will the Ephs ever catch the Jeffs?”
The last several weeks have convinced me that the men’s basketball teams of Williams and Amherst are miles apart - and I’m not talking about the 65 miles along Route 116 that separate the two towns. The Jeffs are 18-2 (as of Feb. 4), ranked second in the country and are, I believe, destined to return to Salem to defend the national championship they won last March.
The Ephs, meanwhile, started 12-0 but are finding it difficult to win in their league and have dropped a total of five games at this writing, including two to Amherst.
So, of course, I’m convinced the sky is falling and I’ll never again see these two teams competitive, much less Williams competitive on a national level. The only flaw in this analysis is that I felt the same way a decade ago and was happily proved wrong. When the Mike Nogelo Final Four teams of ‘97 and ‘98 graduated, I figured that was it for Williams and any further NCAA hoops glory. A short five years later, the Ephs were national champs, and they almost repeated in 2004.
One thing has changed, however, as back then there was no Nesbitt Net, which is director of Admissions Dick Nesbitt’s and President Morty Schapiro’s increasingly fine-meshed screen that weeds out applicants, including star athletes, with “low” board scores.
Wonder what the academic credentials of the Amherst mens basketball team are . . .
The rest of both articles is below.
No Help for Legacies
From College Confidential:
I spend a lot of time around Williams as a local and an interested applicant. Here’s what I’ve heard from admission information sessions (i’ve attended three this summer…since they all provide somewhat different details)
It doesn’t to help be a legacy anymore. Last year…they only took legacies that were going to be admitted anyway. Part of the problem is that they have significantly more legacies applying than ever before. So unless your parents will be donating a building…
This is consistent with my analysis. Unsophisticated applicants sometimes take heart from the fact that the admission rate for legacies is much higher than that for non-legacies. This (true) statistic results, I think, from the Admissions Office giving a “heads up” to legacy applicants about their chances. Williams will tell a legacy with no hooks and 1300 SATs not to bother to apply. A non-legacy with the same statistics and, therefore, zero chance, will be allowed, even encouraged, to send in an application.
1988 Yearbook: Page 39
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Omnivore’s Dilemma
Kudos to the alumni office for posting this video of Michael Pollan’s fascinating lecture on “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.”
1988 Yearbook: Page 38
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Missing Student
A scary announcement:
To the Williams Community,
Tanesha Lindsey was a student here from September 2006 to May 2007 and has been in the area for at least much of the time since. Early this morning a student notified us of what appeared to be a suicide note on Tanesha’s Facebook page. Her friends have not seen her for some time. In an effort to help her, I encourage anyone who sees Tanesha or might know where she could be to please call Williamstown Police at 458-5733 or Campus Safety at x4444. To help us all keep an eye out for her, a photo can be seen at http://www.williams.edu/go/lindsey .Thank you,
Jean Thorndike
Director of Campus Safety and Security
Pray for Lindsey’s safe return.
Co-ops 2008
Can someone provide the details of the co-op process this year? Leah Shoer ‘09 wrote:
So, having just gotten the scary email today about statistics of co-op draw…
Can we stage a sit-it of campus life or something? If over half the senior class is trying for a co-op, I think it’s time to get some new ones. Also, I love how their estimates were way off at the info session (around 160 people? 200 max? come on, it’s cluster housing making everyone run for the hills).
Did more than 250 juniors really apply for co-op housing? How many spots are there? Two years ago, there were 189 applicants for 108 spots, but then nasty neighborhoods took away some (?) of those. Other EphBlog coverage here. Note the use of Willipedia to organize the process better. I take a foolish pride in being the first to implement this idea. My position on co-ops is the same as always.
It is a shame that the College — as well as the students representatives on bodies like CUL and College Council — do not provide more co-op spots. It is an excellent program, beloved by all and largely unique to Williams. From a fund-raising point of view, there are few ways to bind Ephs more tightly to their friends (and future class agents!) then having them live together intimately senior year.
The problem with student leaders wasting their political capital on projects like Focus the Nation and Stand with Us is that this does little to concretely improve student life at Williams. It’s a free country, so each Eph may do as she pleases. But you only get to ask Morty so many favors. Think there should be more co-ops? Then you need to fight for them.
Is the dramatic (?) increase in co-op applications an indication that Neighborhood Housing is a failure. Yes! (To be fair, this could just be a random blip. If requests go back down to the tradition 150–200 range in future years, then this analysis is wrong.) Neighborhoods were supposed to be such wonderful communities that, if anything, seniors would want to stay in them rather than move away. That, obviously, hasn’t happened. More importantly, seniors — Call them crazy! — want to live with their very best friends senior year. And some of those friends will not be from the same neighborhood. Under free agency, seniors could live with who they pleased. Now they can’t, unless they go co-op or off-campus. The increase in co-op (and off-campus?) applications is a direct measure of student dissatisfaction with neighborhood housing relative to free agency.
Want to test that hypothesis? Look at the groups that applied. If most of them included students from just one neighborhood, then it was the chance of living in a co-op itself that caused them to apply. If (as I predict) most of the groups featured students from multiple neighborhoods, then it is neighborhood housing itself which is causing the increase in co-op demand. Seniors want to live with their friends. Why won’t Williams let them?
Simple plan for fixing Williams housing here. As true today as it was three years ago.
1988 Yearbook: Page 37
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One Night In May
Last year I speculated that the most prominent racial incident in the 2004-2005 school year might not have happened. (See here for a recent summary.) Turns out that the event did happen. David Rivera (the other witness besides Rondelle Trinidad) tells the story.
I was going towards Schow Library, Ron was comming back. We started talking as a large group of drunk people passed us by. At one point Ron started talking about this facebook group called “Clinton for Dictator”. At that point a drunk strageler began to take a piss between the area between Morgan and Jesup, piing on the Jesup part. After Ron mentioned the group I cracked a joke saying: “Well, I rather have Clinton for dictator than Bush for President”. A second later the drunk guy screamed at me: “Fuc-k you, N*” Since I had little knowledge about the conotation of the word I responded: “I’m not a N*”. Then he said: “Oh okay”. Then he started walking towards us. Once he got to us he kept looking at us and Ron asked him: “Can we help you?”. That I recall, he didnt respond to that. Then Ron and I started speaking Spanish and he responded by speaking “Mock Spanish”, speaking spanish for the sake of demeaning the language, and walked away.
Ron sent a letter to Shapiro saying how wrong that was and then posted a blog in WSO. In the latter version I was kept anonymous because I didnt want an uncomfortable tag for the rest of my college career (I was a freshman back then). Many blogs were created by other students discussing this matter. Then there was a discussion meeting with Shapiro and Dean Roseman. At security, I identified the perpetrator, but the evidence did not work because of a confusion of the time I indicated and the time he swiped his card. He was not caught.
Now, all the blogs, including the one started by Ron, disappeared over the summer of 05′. A lot of people were talking about it, but no one understood why. This happened before WSO was completely redone, so no one from the class of 09′ and up was able to see them.
There have been people saying that this did not happened. I can guarantee you 100% that it did happen and I am not a liar, you can ask anyone that knows me.
Just last night I spoke about this incident in front of almost 500 people (I’m guessing the number, I dont know for sure) during the testimonial section of the rally.
Good stuff. Kudos to Rivera for sharing this painful episode, both with WSO readers and at last night’s rally. Comments:
1) Who was the perpetrator? If you want to make Williams the sort of place where drunks don’t shout “Nigger!”, then you have a responsibility to identify the guilty party. Since Rivera was able to identify him, the rest of us should learn his name, especially since he was never (?) admonished by anyone at the College. I realize that some might take exception to a policy of naming-and-shaming — I am happy to have that debate in the comments. At the very least, we should know his class year. (If you want to understand the Williams culture, then it matters if these incidents are mostly from first years or seniors.)
2) Although it is true that WSO has undergone changes between now and then, there is no doubt that Trinidad deleted the blog discussions which he started (and which I linked to and participated in). This happened before the revamp of WSO. Other threads from that same time frame were still available after Trinidad’s disappeared. This isn’t necessarily sinister. We are all tempted to delete conversations from time to time. But I checked this out thoroughly back in the day, going as far as contacting senior WSO folks to try to retrieve the information.
3) Sure would be fun to have more details about Rivera’s experience with the Administration.
At security, I identified the perpetrator, but the evidence did not work because of a confusion of the time I indicated and the time he swiped his card. He was not caught.
A Record reporter ought to interview Jean Thorndike. So, Rivera identified the perpetrator. (That’s consistent with my claim from two years ago that, if you know that someone is a student, you can figure out his name, even if you have never met him.) That would, one would think, set the College’s disciplinary wheels in rapid motion. If Rivera identified him, then surely he was “caught” in the sense that the Dean’s Office brought him in and grilled him. (And his friends?) This happened, when? The day after the incident? (Schapiro’s campus wide e-mail went out the same day.)
And then what happened? Rivera (and Trinidad) claimed that the event happened at time X, but they were honestly mistaken. The perp showed that he had swiped in (for the last time that evening?) at sometime (well?) before X. And, so, the College did nothing. But why? If I were Dean Roseman, I would not have let things go so easily. Why not cross-check with the perp’s friends? Why not use Rivera’s and Trinidad’s own card swipes to set the time-line? Just because Rivera made an incorrect rough estimate of the time is no reason for the guilty to escape justice. Did the perp have some pull with the Administration? It would be easy, so soon after the fact, to corroborate various parts of the story. Was the accused out drinking late that night? Was he wandering around with a bunch of other people? And so on. Roseman and Thorndike know their business. Surely they did this . . .
But, again, kudos to Rivera (and Trinidad) for coming forward. If we are to improve Williams, we must first catalog, in detail, what is wrong. Tell those stories. Write them down.
1988 Yearbook: Page 36
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Whole Nine Yards
Curious how the rally/march went last night? Peter Nunns ‘08 reports:
I went. It was, to put it lightly, incredible. It started out with speeches, testimonials, poetry, and proceeded with a march to the libraries and Frosh Quad. The whole nine yards - chanting “Stand With Us!” and “Eliminate Hate!”, bullhorns, banners, marching through the slush on a cold New England night. I was staggered by the sheer number of people marching: there were perhaps 500 people there. On a campus of 2000 students, that’s huge. The noise was amazing.
I saw a bunch of people taking photos and videos - I’ll try to get ahold of some of those. Stand with us!
Good stuff. Five hundred people at 10:30 PM on a cold slushy New England night is a stunning achievement. Congratulations to all the Ephs at Stand With Us on a brilliant event, well-planned and well-executed. Comments:
1) Video and pictures would be great. And more descriptions too! If you were at the event, write down (here or elsewhere) what happened. Who spoke? What did they say? What was the march route? It all seems clear now but, in 2028 when you are preparing for your 20th reunion, you will be glad to have as much first-hand testimony as possible. Tell your future selves the story now.
2) Nunns mentions that the slur “was written across a Barack Obama poster on a black student’s door, and several other doors in the vicinity.” This is helpful information. I was concerned that the slur was directed at the student who lived in that room (and it might well have been). But drunken racist idiots would tend to use any Obama poster for purpose of self-expression, without worrying about who lived behind the door. Were all the slurs written on Obama posters or just one? If we are stuck with racist Ephs, it is better/safer if their hatred are directed outwards toward Obama (whom I voted for in the Massachusetts primary) rather than inward at a Williams undergraduate.
3) Nunns is a great writer. Consider: “Hate is the enemy, of course, but indifference is its ally.” He ought to write at EphBlog! He should certainly take the time to record several pages of his thoughts and observations of the march. It will be some of his most important writing at Williams.
Time and Again
Did everyone catch the Record editorial in favor of the new Social Honor Code?
While the current code addresses those matters of concern that reside in the academic arena, there is no mention of the social violations that are a major threat to campus stability. For every event of antisocial behavior in recent memory that has been discussed widely on campus, there are dozens more that go unreported because of the ambiguous position of the community on such issues. Harassment, defacing of property, and even violence do occur at Williams College, but there is nothing near the level of the current code to condemn such behavior.
We recommend that standards of social behavior be given weight and standing equal to that of academic behavior in the new code. We further recommend that the Honor and Discipline Committee be restructured to enforce this new code of conduct, with its new emphasis on social behavior. It is our hope that the community at large will benefit from making the standards of what is and is not permissible more explicit, with the goal of eliminating undesirable behavior of all kinds from this campus.
Good stuff. Kudos to Kevin Waite ‘09 and his staff for some fine writing. This is just the sort of student consensus that Stand With Us needs to create and nurture.
Wait a minute. Did anyone catch the date on that editorial?
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Happy Valentine’s Day …
to all reading at the ephblog.
Be nice, kiss someone you love,
and if you are searching for a standard of behavior,
you could do worse than remember the Golden Rule.
1988 Yearbook: Page 35
Click below for full image. I think (corrections welcome) that the woman on the left is Katie Chatas ‘88, wanting to know why you haven’t contributed to the Alumni Fund yet. (And that includes a certain EphBlog regular on my class agent list!) And who is that beautiful Eph in the Gladden House picture? I know that I have seen her around somewhere . . . Read more
A podcast for Valentine’s Day
So, I’ve decided to put up old shows occasionally, with some obscure tie to a holiday, or perhaps a non-obscure tie to an obscure holiday.As you may have guessed, the publisher’s I produce shows for don’t have a lot of Valentine-y material, though, for the record, I do some non-production work for Harlequin (always a happy ending!), and they are chock-a-block with the requisite Valentine goodies. Instead, I’ve chosen an interview I did about a year ago with a women named Leonie Gombrich, whose grandfather was E.H. Gombrich, a man probably best known for The Story of Art, but this interview was about a book he wrote in his twenties called A Little History of the World, an absolutely charming world history written for children, and one that is written to be read out loud. Leonie obviously loved her grandfather, and I think it comes through in this show.
What Happened
I shouldn’t get too involved in the WSO back-and-forth, but this thread mentioned an EphBlog post, so let’s review some history!
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1988 Yearbook: Page 34
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PCU
Regular commentator [space] keeps pointing to PCU as the best movie analogy for current events on campus. Alas, I have not had the chance to see this no-doubt cinematic masterpiece.
A high school senior comes to visit Port Chester (aka Politically Correct U) for the weekend, and the admissions department mistakenly sets him up to stay with Droz (Jeremy Piven), a seven year student and party-animal who lives in The Pit, the most offensive house on campus. After trying to pawn the pre-freshman off on his housemate (Jon Favreau), Droz sets off on his normal daily activities including disrupting a political protest by throwing meat at a group of vegan protesters. The President of the University then receives a number of complaints, and with the help of her lackey (superbly portrayed by David Spade), she may finally have the power to kick Droz’s house off campus. But the Pit throws an all-campus rager where George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic performs, and everything might turn out alright if the various political groups can forget their protests for one night and just have fun together.
Just have fun together! Words to live by. See you all at the march/rally at 10:30 tonight. Please send us a picture of Morty leading the community. Please.
[space] is now honor-bound to give us more plot details and suggest part assignments. Wendy Raymond as the David Spade character . . .
Profs in Class
Has Stand With Us reached the stage of PC Buffoonery yet? The audience has filled the theater. Curtain opening can not be far away.
To put it more clearly, I don’t think people are indifferent to racism in general, but they are relatively indifferent to the minor acts of a select few drunk idiots on campus.
If you had attended the meetings, you would realise that there are incidents involving sober perps, including profs in class, entrymates etc.
So, it is common for Williams professors in class to use racial slurs? You learn something new everyday.
Again, if we are to make any progress, we must catalog the events that happened, or are alleged to have happened. First we need the facts. Then we can talk about what those facts mean. Which professor? What class? What did she say? What was the context? Did anyone object, either in class or afterwards? What happened then?
Judging by many of the comments on WSO, many (a large majority?) of students have never experienced, first-hand, actions that might plausibly be covered by a social honor code. They, unsurprisingly, see no reason for such code. Many members of Stand With Us, on the other hand, have experienced such events, not uncommonly. But if the second group is going to convince the first group, they need to tell those stories in writing. Since 2000 students can’t come to a meeting, it is ridiculous to say, “This was covered at the meetings.” Stand With Us needs to tell those stories, with as much messy detail as possible but allowing students to remain anonymous if they wish.
That’s one incident. There are other less “apparent” examples. Some students will be speaking at the rally tonight about their own “incidents.” If anyone wants to hear more, it might be useful to check out the rally. I’m assuming that there are a decent number of incidents, because I’m only a freshman and even I heard some insensitive things said to me just last semester. I’m not going to write about them here, though.
Again, it is impossible to tell whether or not Williams has a problem unless someone is willing to spell out just what those “insensitive things” are. “You ought to clean up the common room,” might be perceived, depending in the context, as “insensitive,” but you can hardly ask for a Social Honor Code to govern all aspects of student interaction. Again, I am not asking this student, a member of Stand With Us, to put her name behind descriptions. That would be good but is not necessary. But no one should take her concerns seriously unless and until she spells them out, even anonymously.
Yet the best part is the behind the scenes PC brainwashing. Here we have a student who has spent 6 months at Williams. If the College has a real problem with racial slurs one would expect, you know, that she had heard one now and again. If she hasn’t, then isn’t Williams doing fairly well? What is the problem? But instead of trusting the evidence of her own eyes, this student is “goad[ed]” by faculty into thinking of Williams as overrun with racists. She just hasn’t been around long enough to see them! Perhaps she needs to have her consciousness raised. Beware! There are racists everywhere! Don’t believe me? Ask the faculty!
Can we please have some more details on the faculty who have “goaded” students on this topic?
Best part:
Testimonials will probably be recorded down in the form of artwork to be put on display, if I remember correctly.
Artwork!? I love it. Do I get to start complaining about PC buffoonery yet? The actors are taking their places on the stage . . .
History of Campus (In)Civility
As the Willy E. N-Word incident continues to roil the campus, it may be helpful to step back and review some past incidents of incivility at Williams. EphBlog itself provides thorough coverage of Nigaleian, Barnard/VISTA, QBE and Mary Jane Hitler. (And, yes, we do need catchier names for Barbard/VISTA — perhaps ¿Quién es más macho? — and QBE. Suggestions are welcome. And we need fun graphics. So much to do . . .)
But today’s project is a survey of various Record articles from the past, articles that describe incidence of incivility — harassment, assault and worse — from the last decade. My goal is not to draw any specific lessons. Each incident is unique. Instead, I want our readers to better understand the history of this topic.
First, we have the trial and acquittal of Mark Foster. Second, this article on the conviction of Graham Lee for assault.
Williams College sophomore Graham Lee was found guilty of indecent assault and battery of another student at a trial held in Central Berkshire District Court last month.
Lee was sentenced to two years probation.
Lee’s lawyer, Charles W. Rankin of Rankin and Sultan in Boston, said last weekend that he intends to challenge the conviction, and has begun the steps to have a transcript of the trial prepared.
Lee is currently enrolled as a student at Williams College. The survivor is no longer enrolled at Williams College, Assistant District Attorney Kelly Mulcahy confirmed.
When asked if the College had taken disciplinary action against Lee, Dean of the College Peter Murphy said the Dean’s Office does not comment on the disciplinary status of individual students.
The incident first came to the attention of many members of the Williams College community when the Berkshire Eagle ran an article on February 12 reporting on the trial and conviction.
According to the Eagle article, Lee denied touching the female survivor in an inappropriate manner during a party at Tyler house on December 4, 1997.
He did admit that he consumed five shots of rum and one beer, and told the court that alcohol might “make him a little looser.”
According to the Eagle article, the survivor testified that Lee invited her to attend the party, and touched her on the buttocks, thigh and breasts at various points during the evening, despite her requests for him to stop.
The woman testified that Lee forced her to dance with him, pulled her down on the floor with him and followed her when she hid underneath a table.
Lee denied being under the table with his accuser, forcing her dance with him or touching her on the buttocks, thigh or breast.
The Eagle reported that District Court Judge James B. McElroy found Lee guilty of one count of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14 and one count of assault and battery.
Read the rest of the article for more details. An actual assault is much worse and more important than racist vandalism, at least in the eyes of the law, but I think that Stand With Us should consider the range of student behavior which it is trying to change.
Third is an article on homosexual harassment.
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Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend played at Williams and all I got was this lousy video.
Frank Uible ‘57 appears in the crowd at about the 2 minute mark. Thanks to the student who posted these. Given the hassles of taping in the middle of a dancing/screaming crowd, he did a fine job.
1988 Yearbook: Page 33
Click below for full image. I believe the trumpet player is Paul Danielson ‘88. Paul is a surgeon who has served in Iraq. If you read nothing else from EphBlog this month, read his story (pdf). Read more
Actuals and Hypotheticals
Will Slack ‘11 makes two important points in this WSO thread.
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1988 Yearbook: Page 32
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Pact Against Hate Blog
Huge props to the students and faculty who have created a blog for the Pact Against Hate group.
The Williams community gathered on February 6, 2008 to discuss the prevalence of hate and indifference on our campus. Over 120 students spent hours sharing our anger and developing a vision for a better community. This is our way of beginning to change the culture of apathy and foster the real respect that we know is possible.
All of us with have differences with this group going forward. Some of those differences will be trivial. Some will be important. But surely all of us can congratulate the group for conducting themselves in such a transparent fashion. This effort represents the very best that a Williams education has to offer. By posting pictures, minutes, and letters, Stand With Us (the group’s new name) both communicates its actions and encourages participation. This is how Ephs ought to behave, at least when it comes to accomplishing change at Williams: no secrecy and maximum openness.
Kudos to all involved.
Odds and Ends
From around the web:
1) Former Williams Professor Marc Lynch sees “gobs of victory” in Iraq, or something like that. (Hat tip to Eph Planet.)
2) Rory challenged my description of the Jena Six as “thugs,” pointing out that, as far as I documented, only one had an arrest record. Well, here is another. Think that stuff like this will come up at the next Jena Six teach-in at Williams? (Hat tip to Steve Sailer.)
3) Newsweek reports on the “Science of Politics”:
Anxiety has a more subtle effect on voting decisions, too. It pushes people to seek out new information, research shows. Uneasy about either the state of the country or their personal finances, anxious voters are motivated to find out more about the candidates, paying greater attention to news coverage and debates. This year’s electorate is nothing if not anxious, says political scientist George Marcus of Williams College, with two thirds telling pollsters the country is “moving in the wrong direction.” That helps explain why polls have been so unreliable, particularly on the GOP side: anxiety pushed voters to learn more about the candidates, which translated into taking a new look at some they might have originally supported (Giuliani, who had long been leading in national polls) or dismissed (McCain).
Even when anxiety is triggered by a specific issue, such as fear of an impending recession, it prompts voters to seek out more information on all aspects of a candidate, not only his or her economic platform. “That’s why candidates and their personal qualities are getting a lot more attention,” says Marcus. Everything, in other words, is in play. “When voters looked again at Giuliani, they were, like, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t like all this stuff about the [three] wives and the kids [who don't speak to their father]‘,” says Democratic strategist Peter Fenn. “He began to tank under the power of the microscope.”
Not that there is anything wrong with multiple wives, of course. (Hat tip to The Monkey Cage.)
1988 Yearbook: Page 31
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Afraid to Voice
Still think that the student movement to do “something” about Willy E. N-word is nothing but sweetness and light? Consider Timothy Geoffrion’s viewpoint:
Today, I am writing to you today to express an opinion I think many students hold, but are too afraid to voice in the fear of being summarily denounced. I have talked with numerous students this past weekend who share the same views as me, but are too afraid to speak up. One objection I am sure someone will raise is why haven’t I or these students been more involved in the night meetings in Paresky. In fact, I have gone, and so have many of my friends, however the tone of the debate has hardly been conducive to the free exchange of ideas. I cannot speak for my friends, but after going twice I have no interest in going back again.
There is no doubt that there is a large amount of pent up anger and hatred held by many students and faculty members here on campus. That fact is deeply disturbing and sad. That said, I am extremely disturbed by certain dangerous trends toward overreaction–most troubling to me is the effect that some of these actions will have on interpersonal interactions as well as institutional policy.
The demands coming out of these groups are serious and require real debate and research. Changes should not be made so swiftly without serious consideration of their long term consequences. In the heat of the moment I fear that we are no longer always acting in the best interests of this place. Several of the items listed on the student website would move the community in a dangerous direction.
The most problematic “demand” is the creation of a “social honor code.” This mode would take the power away from the deans to make certain disciplinary social decisions and create a social honor committee. From my two years on the Honor and Discipline committees I want to stress how problematic and counter-productive such a committee would be for this community and diversity issues for a variety of reasons. I have numerous reasons for making this statement that I would be happy to discuss with any of you in person.
These policies could be helpful, but they could also be quite pernicious. The demand for speed in implementing these ideas is deeply troubling to me.
Robert Frost once said you should never tear down a wall until you know why it was built. Today, in our desire to have change now, we are steam rolling “real” dialogue and research. The current movement is dangerously pushing ahead with radical changes like a social honor code that would overturn years of policy without understanding why it is shaped the way it is.
Furthermore, the movement is feeding off its own indignations in a destructive way. The situation is being exacerbated be certain professors and the staff members seem to be goading the movement on for their own reasons. When I went to listen to them one night, one professor (not sure who) invoked a past hunger strike to impel the administration to action – she didn’t list any specific goal of a new hunger strike – but stated that drastic action is needed.
Read the whole thing. Comments:
1) Students are “afraid to voice” their opinions at cuddly PC Williams? Say it ain’t so! Why should they be afraid? After all, it isn’t like Williams fired baseball coach Dave Barnard after he expressed un-PC views. Oh, yeah! Williams did fire Barnard, primarily (if not completely) because of his political beliefs. You think that a student who, say, applied to be a JA would be accepted if he voiced similar opinions? I have my doubts . . .
2) Staff and faculty members “goading” students? Say it ain’t so! We aren’t quite to the stage of PC buffoonery, but we have entered the theater. Who are these faculty and staff? What are they saying?
3) Saddest part?
Before I go any further and I am decried or defined as a racist I want to state that I am not someone who has sat on the sidelines during diversity issues during my time at Williams. I have been very involved with diversity issues on campus during entire time at Williams, including serving two years on the Williams Diversity Committee. While it is true that I come from a privileged background (I am white and male) I care passionately about diversity issues and have worked hard to bring about changes during my time here.
Too late! Your opponents will soon be defining you as a racist precisely because you oppose their desired changes. And, moreover, it should be possible to have an opinion similar to Geoffrion’s even if you haven’t spent endless hours listening to diversity prattle. And, since when is being a white male the same as being privileged? I know plenty of privileged non-whites and non-males (starting with my wife and daughters) and plenty of white males who can not reasonably be described as privileged. If you allow the PC-niks to begin the conversation by defining you as “privileged,” you have already lost the debate.
Anyway, good luck and a thick skin to Geoffrion. If he publicly fights the folks who define their opponents as, by definition, racists, he will need both. Been there and done that.
1988 Yearbook: Page 30
Click below for full image. Want to see what Chemistry Professor Tom Smith ‘88 looked like back in the day. See the far right . . .
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