I will not voice an opinion or render a judgement about the abolishment of fraternities, in that I do not have the experience nor an understanding of this issue from the perspective of the schools history, the reasons for doing so, or the importance of retaining or rejecting this system. But I do wish to comment on your significant advances on this issue, which for you is quite rare indeed.

This is the best writing from you that I have read well over an entire year. You generally comment sparingly and in general, quite cynically. I appreciate your views on the importance this had for you and thank you for those comments.

Thanks for taking the time to demonstrate an argument.

Cheers.

My impression of Mission early on was that sophomores, who otherwise might well have had roommates, liked the singles aspect, the views were popular, and there was a good social aspect to sharing the dinning room with a critical mass of other people (plus people liked the huge windows, especially in the winter) but Mission was problematic, largely because of the terrible social spaces in the suites (now hugely improved, with the renovations). I think it makes extraordinary first-year housing, particularly in the way it fits in with the Williams entry and JA systems. While it can seem a little cold, some of the JAs put up things in the common areas that make them much warmer and appealing. In both Bronfman and Mission, the rooms can become like canvases for the artistic students: flags, prayer flags, fabric on the walls, and colorful bedspreads go a long way towards individualizing and warming the tone.

The MTV TV show “My sweet 16″

My guess is that history will not be kind to a lot of the “growth” that has taken place under Morty’s supervision.

I’m not sure where Sawyer went wrong. It was popular in the late 1970′s just because it was such an improvement over Stetson. However, after that memory faded it seemed to lose popularity. Harry Weese was a Chicago-based architect and maybe he never quite got the Williams feel necessary. Also, Sawyer was built during the last gasps of the book only age. In the past, you thought of a library as a pleasant book warehouse. Now you have to have media rooms, network jacks every 6 feet, etc. Maybe it was a dinosaur when it was built.

A sequence in earlier Williams history makes this clear. President Garfield had attended Williams and was an insider. When he retired, the college wanted to shake things up and hired Dennett, an outsider. However, Dennett shook things up way too much and he was forced out after three years. The college then lurched back to Baxter, sort of an in-between: Williams degree, taught at Harvard, had been on the Board of Trustees.

Chandler was an in-between. He didn’t get his degree at Williams but he’d been on the Williams faculty (Religion professor, Dean of Faculty) before he became president of Hamilton.

Oakley was an insider: he didn’t have a Williams degree, but he was promoted from within the Williams faculty. Insiders are somewhat problematic, in that they know Williams’ peculiarities, but they also have allies and detractors that have built up over the years, so the detractors feel they got a raw deal. That’s the drive for bringing in an outsider–someone with a new viewpoint and without any previous alliances.

That was one of the reasons for bringing in Hank Payne–he was smart as a whip (being Valedictorian of your Yale class and graduating with an MA at the same time you get your BA is no small achievement) and hadn’t attended Williams or been on the faculty. However, his hamhandedness in dealing with the faculty doomed him. The final straw was when Allen was pressing for taking the money and getting the ’62 Center built—Herb Allen can be an impatient man, I’ve heard. Worried about this big prize getting away, Payne said “Yes” to the gift without asking the faculty and got his head handed on a platter.

After that debacle, the college went for an in-between: Morty. Morty didn’t get his degree from Williams, but he had served on the faculty and had seen the bigger world while helping run USC, so he was seen as the best of two worlds.

Sawyer Library (despite some great features and a commendable inclusion of sudent desires in the planning) was a disaster from the start. It only got worse as changes in technology overwhelmed it (I sense older-style libraries fared better on that score for some reason, although all types of libraries fared poorly with storage in what was, ironically, going to be the “paperless era” but just proliferated stuff — machines, wires, paper, books, new media, …).

Sawyer himself didn’t like that building. I suppose it must have been planned during the end of his era, but I’ve always associated it with the Chandler era since it was built then.

As for Oakley, my sense was that first, he was a very, very intellectual guy who just by his presence (as well as his policies) made Williams a much more intellectual place. I think it may have been him who instituted tutorials as well as some other new academic programs. The school definitely diversified tremendously under his tenure, if I’m not mistaken. He didn’t really do a lot of building (oversaw the tail end of Chandler and that was about it I think — by the end of his tenure, the physical campus was actually pretty dated and badly in need of sprucing up, of course after essentially 16 straight years of massive building projects, by 2011 every single major facility on campus will be brand new or newly redone) but he did oversee the enormously successful third century campaign which was record-breaking at that time, and enabled construction of the new science complex, new studio art building, and general expansion of the endowment. He was also just really cool to listen to speak.

As to the Sawyer-era buildings, it’s a matter of personal taste but a lot of students in his era loved Bronfman and Greylock as great buildings (and still do, but perhaps with a little less enthusiasm than when they were new and seemed so cool and on the forefront), and found Mission, providing all those singles for (at that time largely) sophomores and having the interesting room shapes and clean-lined flexibly-arranged furniture, wonderful (and Mission is a much better building now, after lots of space was turned into common areas and all the common areas were upgraded significantly).

I’ll wait to say anything abut Frank Oakley until Guy adds him in, as I’d like to see him complete the picture he was drawing so we can see it all in one voice (to mix images wretchedly on my part – apologies).

I am always tagging behind Larry’s thoughtful acknowledgements and saying “Ditto”, so yet again again, Ditto from me. I really enjoy your posts and hope to see more.

Your comment on past presidents inspired me to go to the Williams website bios, which inspired some thoughts and questions:

Sawyer was obviously influential…(although it was rather unfortunate that all that building took place during the 60′s as that era was somewhat the bane to architecture, IMHO)

Was Vogt meant to be an interim?

And what about Oakley? He served a long time. What ‘characterized’ his presidency?

I was an enthusiastic poster several years ago when I thought this really was going to be EphBlog. However, over time it became clear to me that’s it’s really KaneBlog with some purple window dressing. Since regularly contributing to someone else’s soapbox isn’t high on my list of things to do, I now just toss a word in every once and awhile.

I enjoyed this post. Thanks for taking the trouble.

Dick:
Mmmmmm!

Everyone else:
Pssst! Watch out for JG…she is exhibiting some very questionable behavior re patriotism and democracy.

;-)

Dear Recht (he begins),

In praise of the Monte Cristo.

“Though this sandwich tends to vary from restaurant to restaurant, the basic sandwich is two slices of white bread containing ham, turkey, or chicken, and a slice of cheese are dipped in beaten egg and fried in butter. A classic Monte Cristo sandwich should come with a side of jelly to dip it in.”

copywrite Linda Stradley, What’s Cooking America.

Today was the first day since the early June return from England and Spain that the promise of summer was actually manifest.

Heat and sun had returned to the mountains and to the high eastern desert along the Columbia River on both the Oregon and the Washington sides. It was the day to visit the garden center at Fred Meyer’s in The Dalles. Coleus, geraniums, petunias, marigolds, basil, rosemary, and flat-leaf Italian parsley needed to be in that earth neglected since April and, in truth, for most of the winter.

After the crowds of people speaking in a variety of what to me might as well have been ‘tongues’, after bucking filled streets and traffic on the wrong side, after gastronomic wonders and oeniphiles’ glasses, how suddenly relaxed and alone to be in a car driving a comfortable 70 on I 84. while listening to Schubert on the all-classical station.

It was time and I was ready for a lunch at Windchasers. The deck was open and I sat looking across the mile-wide Columbia . Hills appear like topographic maps in soft greens and yellow and ochers and like the maps, surprising, for at a distance you needed to remind yourself those soft mounds were in fact 2500 feet high. Shortly beyond but out of sight was the 12,000 Mt Adams.

A miniature train crawled along the Washington bank, the road and ballast a darker brown against the light brown of the palisades. It looked like an N scale model. 110 cars long of mixed freight, and tankers, and sea containers. A mile of goods on its way in land but looking like it should be going around a Christmas tree.

I had ordered the Monte Cristo. It was perfect, the eggy bread just browned enough to hold together but porous enough to hold all the flavor of the ham and the chicken and the cheese. The jam was a tangy pineapple orange and it was good to be home.

Anyway, if the frats only involved off campus activities, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been an issue. Right now, if seniors who had off-campus living privileges wanted to live together, share meals together, sing songs, buy a house, do whatever weird other stuff they feel like doing, etc. and be associated with a frat the school couldn’t stop them.

But is Williams an objectively better college today because of the unconditional abolition….

The make up of the campus every day since that abolition would have been fundamentally different. There are many students (myself among them) that really didn’t want to go to a school with fraternities. The eating clubs were something I was uncomfortable with, but overlooked in my desire to go to Princeton. I knew many at Williams, however, that felt much more strongly about the issue. True or not, many view such social segregation as a bad thing. And to anticipate your response, I don’t think the abolition of fraternities ended social segregation. But the choice to at least attempt to move toward something more egalitarian, more open, etc. says something about the school. Frankly I think the economic class issues were/are one of the biggest problems with fraternities/sororities. So I don’t know if you could say “objectively” anything about something so complex. But given the amazing student body we have now and the graduates we’ve produced since 1953, I’d say things are going quite well; not perfectly, but pretty damn well.

As far as Morty’s accomplishments, I think he’s done a remarkable job in terms of faculty satisfaction and cohesion. I was on campus during the Hank Payne term, it’s early end, the 1-year term of Trustee Carl Vogt, and Morty’s first year (lots going on). I think it did take a bit of finesse and a particular type of leadership to heal some of the rifts from that era.

And last but not least, since when is Williams or has Williams ever been run democratically? I highly support moves toward transparency and trying to get student input in decisions, but I don’t even know that a “democratic” campus would be a good thing when classes of students flow in and out after only a few years with nary a glance toward the bigger picture oftentimes.

i’m still convinced there’s no good reason to geographically split such a small community socially. I’m certainly convinced that leaving that split up to the whims of 20 year olds in college is more often than not an error. With frats you get hazing, with eating clubs, you get institutions like Ivy: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE3D91F3FF935A25756C0A96F958260

Per their attrocious, and tawdry behavior, I propose that you make a proposal, by submitting the official, the one and only…
(drum roll, please)

Frank Uible Code of Konduct
(Uncensored)…

That’ll set em straight!