From Brandi Brown ‘07, the greatest takedown of a Record editorial ever. It’s a year old, but still worth the read.

If you are a reader of EphBlog and visiting Cambridge, MA, make sure to drop me a line. Lunch is on me! In that spirit, I am taking Sam and Anna (our Yale friends from this thread) out to lunch today. Got a question about life at Yale? Leave it in the comments.

I hope to get deeper into the issue of class sizes at Williams versus Yale. And, even better, I now have some data. Consider the distribution of class sizes from the Common Data Set from page 27 on these pdfs: Williams and Yale. Sure looks like Sam and Anna are right! Yale has 2.5 times as many students at Williams and 2.5 times as many classes with 19 or fewer students. Impressive! Given that reality, there is much less reason to recommend Williams over Yale then Williams over Harvard. Time for Williams to go lecture-less.

Congratulations to the seniors who defended their Economic theses earlier this week. I defended mine 20 years ago. Special thanks to my adviser, Mike McPherson, for guiding me through the process. Sad to know that I can’t ever again thank Peter Lipton for his generous reading. Comments:

1) Kudos to the Economics Department for taking the time and trouble to arrange (doc) practice sessions last week for the presenters. This is a bother for all concerned but certainly improves the quality of the presentations.

2) In past years, the Department has provided copies of theses on-line. Why not this year? I still wish that the Department would post and archive the comments that professors make on theses. I doubt that this has happened yet, but perhaps some day. Note that skeptics used to mock my efforts to post theses on-line, yet now there is a web page at the library devoted to this effort. We play a long game here at EphBlog.

3) Economics students who want the results of their theses to be read by hundreds of people (as have the results from Jen Doloec ‘03 and Lindsay Taylor ‘05) should write about Williams. Even better (especially if you are interested in graduate school) would be to ask Morty to be your adviser. (Recommendations from famous economists like Morty mean a great deal in the graduate school application process.) Topics? How should we measure “intellectual vitality” and is the Williams admissions office able to identify it a prior? What factors predict dropping out from Williams? What factors prediction satisfaction with the Williams experience? (See some of Morty’s comments to College Council.) How can we predict which applicants accepted by Williams will choose to enroll? (I think that Institutional Data guru Chris Winters ‘95 is already working on this topic, but I am sure that he/Morty would be happy to collaborate with an undergraduate.)

4) Readers are free to give thanks and reminisce about their own thesis presentations in the comments.

Aidan sent this interesting story featuring Dean Grodzins ‘83.

[Theodore] Parker, too, had famously bad handwriting. William Lloyd Garrison, hard-line abolitionist and editor of the Liberator, once complained that an essay Parker submitted was so unreadable it would require a dozen assistants to interpret his clotted sentences for the printer “without any serious blunders.” Grodzins, nevertheless, found ways to decipher Parker’s private journals, even one stunning passage written in code. Grodzins sensed Parker was unhappily married, but he had little direct evidence. Parker’s wife, Lydia, often read through her husband’s journals when he was out of the house, so the preacher couldn’t bare his soul there. Parker sometimes wrote in Greek or Latin, however, languages Lydia didn’t know. One such passage, Grodzins divined from its uncharacteristic word spacings, was actually English written with Greek characters. Putting together crossed out words and the Greek alphabet spellings, Grodzins found that Parker had written: “My wife is a DEVIL. I. HAVE. NO. HOPE. in. LIFE.”

With luck, no one will look closely at my EphBlog posts . . .

Yet — wouldn’t you know it? — today is my lovely wife’s birthday! Happy Birthday Mrs. EphBlog!

In response to my request to “Show us the data” with regard to student activities, Drew Newman ‘04, former president of ACE (All Campus Entertainment) from 2003-2004 delivers. See below for Drew’s extensive write-up and links to supporting documents. Comments:

1) Drew is probably too modest to mention his outstanding Record op-ed from three years ago. Read that first to get a sense of the issues involved in improving social life at Williams.

2) Now that the College is overrun with student-social-life bureaucrats, there is much less freedom for a student like Drew to grasp the reins of campus leadership. The cost of having an Office of Campus Life is not just, or even primarily, the money spent on salaries and expenses. The most important cost is the damper such an office inevitably places on student leadership. If we did not have an OCL, then some student in the class of 2008 would have had a similar experience to Drew’s, would have saw a need and tried to fill it, would have fought and struggled and (sometimes) failed and (often) succeeded. What is that student’s name? We will never know. Remember the tablecloth colors.

3) Note that these are my criticisms, not Drew’s. I would be curious to read what he and other campus leaders think about creation and performance of the Office of Campus Life.

Drew writes:
(more…)

Solid article in the Eagle about a silly idea.

Massachusetts lawmakers have caught the attention of Williams College leadership with a proposal to study taxing any private college’s endowment funds that exceed $1 billion.

Williams College’s various endowment funds total about $1.8 billion. If the proposal to assess a 2.5 percent tax on any endowment above the $1 billion mark were to become law, it would cost the college roughly $20 million.

This will never become law because Harvard is powerful enough to stop it. And does the Massachusetts legislature even have the power to tax non-profits? I doubt it, but perhaps our lawyer readers can comment. And, even if it did become law, it would be easy to get around, at least for Williams, by splitting the endowment into separate parts. The whole exercise is a poor excuse for preening demagoguery.

North Adams Mayor John Barrett III described the concept as “absolutely crazy. I don’t know who comes up with these ideas, but they should be locked up and put in a padded cell someplace.”

He pointed to the millions of dollars Williams has contributed to the construction of Williamstown Elementary School, Mount Greylock Regional High School and Mass MoCA in North Adams.

“It’s totally absurd to even be thinking about that — there are other ways to raise revenue,” Barrett added. “You’d only be hurting the college and the community.”

Williams spokesman James Kolesar said the proposal would hurt the entire community.

“This would be really bad not only for Williams College students but for the people and economies in the nearby communities,” he said. “And who would donate to the endowments when it would eventually be taxed away?”

Kolesar added that virtually all the endowment money spent by the college is spent locally on payroll, supplies, repairs and maintenance, and in donations to local community efforts. He said the college also donates $500,000 annually to local causes.

In addition, Williams College donated $1.8 million last December to the Sol Lewitt Gallery endowment fund at Mass MoCA.

1) Barrett may be the quintessential Massachusetts political hack, but at least he is our political hack.

2) Williams contributes $500,000 annually? That’s a bigger number than I would have guessed. I thought that Morty mentioned a figure closer to $200,000 at the Roads Scholars event in March. I think that the difference lies in the treatment of large “capital” gifts. The annual gifts are around $200,000 but then there are the not-uncommon big gifts, like $1.8 million to Mass MoCA. Including those gets us to $500,000 annually.

3) Why do we even bother with an alumni fund? Instead of getting my classmates to write checks to Williams, why don’t I just get them to write checks to Mass MoCA or MGRHS or North Adams Regional Hospital? (See links for my rants.) Have I really been railing about this for five years? Yes!

4) If you are Morty or Jim Kolesar or any senior Williams administrator that lives in the local area, uses the local hospital and sends your children to the local school, then spending millions of dollars from the College’s endowment to make these institutions better seems like a great idea. Objectively! Of course, this is ridiculous. None of this spending makes students more likely to choose Williams. Almost none of it makes great faculty more likely come or to stay at Williams. And, if you really wanted to attract/retain great faculty, it is 100 times cheaper to just show them the money.

For the last couple years, I have seen announcements like this one.

Hey Seniors,

Had you not planned on going to Hilton Head because you didn’t have the time to plan it, or couldn’t find enough people for a house? Have other plans for Hilton Head week fallen through and you now would like to go but don’t have a place? Are you already in a house but it somehow got overbooked and now you’re sleeping on the floor?

Well look no further! We had 3 people back out of our 8 person house this morning, and would really love to refill the spots. The cost is about $175 for the whole week, and the house is just steps from the beach, and close by to the rest of the class.

My understanding is that there is now a tradition of seniors going to Hilton Head between the end of finals and graduation week. True? How many go? When did this start? Whose idea was it? Help us capture the history of Williams traditions as they start rather than try to recapture that history 20 years from now.

I hope that they are writing articles like this about me in 50 years.

Here are some vital statistics on Phil Cole. He stands 5-foot-6-inches, weighs about 150 pounds, and has been canoeing for 35 years. He can paddle at a pace of 60 strokes per minute, and he competes in races as long as 70 miles.

Here’s one more number for you: Cole will be 90 in November.

Cole, as he’ll be the first to tell you, is old. But he can still be found most afternoons gliding down the Contoocook River in Hopkinton, a stretch of water he’s basically owned for the past 3½ decades. And though he’s long since advanced beyond the highest age brackets, Cole competes in canoe races throughout the country. His next big race is a 70-miler in Cooperstown, N.Y., a course Cole expects to finish in about 11 hours.

“I’m the oldest one out there, period. Have been for a while,” Cole said.

His nine decades notwithstanding, Cole is sturdy and fit, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. He wears old sweaters, baseball caps, and sneakers. You won’t hear him praising the therapeutic benefits of canoeing or waxing poetic about the natural beauty of the rivers he’s spent so many hours paddling. He’s a canoer because he likes it and he’s good at it. And though he’s cocky, Cole knows his limits.

“Right now, I’m in the position that if you’re 75 or older, I can beat you,” Cole said.

Cole grew up on a dairy farm in Williamstown, Mass., and studied physics at Williams College, just three miles from his family’s house. When World War II began, he tried to join the military, but a knee injury kept him out. He managed to get a job as a physicist with the Navy - a job he kept for the next 31 years. When he retired in 1974, Cole and his wife moved to Contoocook, to be close to his daughter Nancy, who was a teacher in Concord.

The Alumni Directory is down so I don’t know what Cole’s class year is. Does anyone?

Was it only three years ago that posts like this used to appear on WSO?

If you want to get charged for after-party damages, get disgusted with vomit in bathrooms, and being left with no place to take shower or at least brush your teeth, then Spencer house is probably the right place for you to live. My email inbox is full of emails about damage charges in the house. Before going to bed, my stomach gets uncomfortable after facing the “shit” vomit in bathroom on weekend nights, and I lose my appetite for at least to meals sessions. Last night after leaving Schow library, I went to the bathroom on third floor of Spencer house where i faced the vomit in all over the bathroom- no spot for stepping in actually - yeq

Oh wait! That post was from yesterday, not three years ago.

Of course, for supporters of Neighborhoods, this post is inconceivable. It was only in the bad old days of free agency, when students lived where they wanted, and with whom they chose, that houses like Spencer lacked community. Didn’t Professor Will Dudley tell us (pdf) in 2005 that free agency was one of the causes of anti-social behavior, that free agency

gives them [students] a smaller stake in their local communities (which have become dormitory buildings filled with individuals and small groups, rather than houses filled with members), and a weaker incentive to get to know their neighbors (who are redistributed across campus every 9 months, rather than affiliated with each other for 3 years). Indeed, students frequently complain that they barely know the residents of their dorms outside of their own suites.

Yes, he did! Now that students have a stake, we should see less vomit in Spencer. Do we? I doubt it.

And this is the fundamental dishonesty of the process by which the Williams community has tried (and failed) to improve undergraduate social life. As I pointed out three years ago, the College has access to a great deal of high-quality data about student experiences. Why does the Administration continue to refuse to share that data with the wider community? If Neighborhood Housing, along with the many CUL-inspired policy changes which proceeded it, has truly made things better, then the data should demonstrate that fact. I bet that the data would show the opposite, that students at Williams were less happy with social life in 2007-2008 then they were a decade prior, before Morty, before the relentless attack on free agency began.

Show us the data.

A reader sends in this story.

Assistant Professor of Art Michael J. Kolster ['85] has been named the recipient of the 2008 Sydney B. Karofsky Prize for Junior Faculty. The award was announced at the College’s Honor’s Day ceremony on May 7, 2008.

Kolster is an innovative photographer who has exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Boston and Portland. An inspiring teacher, Kolster asks students to look at the world and examine how their perceptions of it are formed. He has been seminal in bringing digital and large-format photography to the forefront of Bowdoin’s photography offerings and is a frequent collaborator with other faculty across disciplines.

“Receiving this prize is so wonderful for me personally,” said Kolster. “I am honored to be a part of such a dedicated and talented faculty, one that values excellence in teaching and believes strongly that its research fuels a vibrant classroom experience for the students. Furthermore, I love how this year’s prize affirms the role that visual arts and photography play in the intellectual life of the College.”

Kolster’s ongoing sense of discovery informs his work. His photographs illuminate a fascination for the serendipities of the physical environment, which he says is inspired, in part, by Heraclitus’s observation that one “cannot step twice into the same stream.”

He shares this philosophy to a worldwide audience through his popular Web-based photographic gallery, The Daily Post, which is a daily, ongoing photographic blog begun on March 27, 2002. To date, it contains over 2,200 images taken from the stream of Kolster’s daily wanderings.

Great stuff. Why not shamelessly steal this idea for Williams?

What was the price of cocaine at Williams 30 years ago? Good question.

Ninety-six students were arrested in a San Diego State University drug bust.

Where’s Captain Renault when you need him? I’m shocked, shocked, to learn that drug dealing is rampant at fraternities at San Diego State (one of Playboy’s top 10 party schools). Actually, what shocks me is the price the student dealers were charging for cocaine: $35 a gram. In my college days almost 30 years ago, at a small, northeastern liberal-arts school with a less illustrious party heritage, a gram cost $100. So in constant dollars, the price of cocaine has fallen by 85 percent, to about $16 a gram — imagine how many more coke-fueled novels Jay McInerney could have written at that price!

Despite the shout out to Jay McInerney ‘76, the author, James Gibney, does not seem to be an Eph.

1) We need to know the history of drug prices at Williams. Comments welcome!

2) Still looking for feedback on my (genius!) simple plan for accomplishing drug legalization.

The three top discussions on WSO last night involved: 1) Railing at the hypocrisy and silliness of the College’s environmental initiatives, 2) Pointing out the stupidity of Cluster Housing and speculating on the date of its inevitable demise, and 3) Mocking excessive concern for Muslim sensibilities.

And people say that I am out of touch with the opinions of current students. Untrue! I am just a year or three ahead of my time . . . here, here and here.

There is much gnashing of teeth and rending of Williams sweatshirts in Dodd Neighborhood tonight.

Cluster Cup Results
1st Place: Spencer (41 points)
2nd Place: Dodd (39 points)
3rd Place: Wood (27 points)
4th Place: Currier (26 points)
Congratulations, SPENCER! In addition to winning the Cluster Cup Trophy, you are invited to attend a special neighborhood dinner at Whitmans’ on Thursday, May 8. Look for a special invitation in your mailbox soon as admittance will be granted by invitation only.

So close to that Whitmans’ dinner! Comments:

1) There is an official Cluster Cup Trophy? Pictures, please. Also, any readers at the dinner tonight should provide us with a report.

2) Last fall I claimed that the Cluster Cup competition was doomed to failure. Has it failed yet? How many events were there this spring? How many people participated? How many watched?

3) Although we are stuck with Neighborhoods for at least a couple more years, there is no reason to waste everyone’s time on a competition that no one cares about. End the Cluster Cup now and devote your energies elsewhere.

The May faculty meeting is going on right now, I think. How about an update from our loyal faculty readers? The two items on the agenda that we have been following most closely are the fate of Williams in New York on the scheduling of a day for Claiming Williams. My recommendation would be a No vote on the resolution: “Should the Williams in New York Program be discontinued?” and for tabling the proposal on a Claiming Williams Day until the organizers come up with a more thorough plan and generate some meaningful support from the student body.

And we all know that, as goes EphBlog, so goes the Williams faculty!

On the transparency front, some questions: Are faculty meetings public? Back in the day, they were. I attended one and the Record would regular report on them. Assuming that the meetings themselves are public, are the minutes available as well? I have not tried to get them (a copy is mailed to all faculty members a few weeks after the meeting) but I don’t see them posted on the web. Even more fun would be a live broadcast or after-the-fact podcast of the meeting. If EphBlog’s popularity proves anything, it proves that there is a large audience for every little detail of life at Williams.

What are we to make of the “Williams College Quality of Life Defense Council?” Start with their Facebook group.

The Manifesto
—
1. Our MISSION is the guardianship of the quality of life of Williams students.
—
2. The Council has undertaken this mission because no one else has. The Williams PARADIGM is one of a vocal minority imposing its will on a silent majority. The Council is the voice of that majority.
—
3. The Council considers itself an ENVIRONMENTALIST organization. It seeks to oppose the misguidedness of certain environmental measures, not their environmentalism.
—
4. The Council will oppose any supposedly environmentalist measure that REDUCES the campus quality of life or increases fiscal demands on their tuition without a reasonable benefit to the environment.
—
5. Furthermore the Council asserts that by paying tuition Williams students gain the right to a say in what they’re buying. It will therefore oppose any supposedly environmentalist measure that reduces the campus quality of life or increases fiscal demands on their tuition without first consulting the OPINION of the student body.
—
6. The Council requests SUPPORT, direct and indirect, anonymous and public. Please read the Recent News section to learn how to help.

Good stuff. Diversity of opinion is wonderful in all issues, environmental debates included. There was some dispute on WSO as to whether or not QLDC is for real but I think that they are. I have invited them to post here at EphBlog.

Of interest:

Here (pdf) is a listing of the top 50 private equity firms in the world. The most prominent Eph in the business is probably Joe Rice ‘54, ex-Marine, ex-Williams trustee and founder of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, number 28 on this list. But surely there are other Williams graduates in senior positions at these firms. Who are they?

A New York Times article from FROSH mom.

THE Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams is a cavernous temple of modern art, with exceptionally big and provocative works in a variety of media. The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., by contrast, serves up a whole different aesthetic, one filled with soda fountains, family dinners and sweetly nostalgic takes on small-town life.

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams is on a 13-acre site that was once home to the Sprague Electric Company.

The two museums stake out opposite positions in the art world. But together they add up to a eye-opening, art-infused weekend trip. Both are in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, which makes for easy back and forth. Both speak to children — Mass MoCA for its sheer eccentricity, the Rockwell museum for its gentle humor. And for adults, there is the pleasure of the contrast between the two.

I am a Rockwell Eph. You?

By the way, if I were trying to write a satire of how NYT arts reporters raise their children, I could do no better than this article.

Via Dan Drezner ‘90, here is a listing of of the top 100 public intellectuals according to Foreign Policy. Does anyone see a Williams graduate in the list? The only Eph I can find is Shirin Ebadi, an honorary degree recipient in 2004. Which Ephs should have made the list? Or, if that bar is too high, who are the most prominent public intellectuals among the 25,000 or so Williams graduates?

Has something bad happened to Williams in New York? Tell us more, Will.

Did you catch Discussion #1422 on WSO last night? See here for a screen grab. I am not sure why the thread was deleted. Basic story seems to be that Professor Jay Pasachoff is involved in an ugly dispute with one-time friend and co-author Philip Seldon. I think that Seldon maintains this website, including gems like:

FAMED ASTRONOMER’S LITERARY WORK DEEMED UNFIT TO BE PUBLISHED BY THE EXALTED

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

WILLIAMS COLLEGE PROFESSOR’S CONTRACT SUMMARILY CANCELED IN POSSIBLY THE BIGGEST SCANDAL TO HIT THE FIELD OF ASTRONOMY IN DECADES

Whatever you say, friend. Just, please, step away from the keyboard.

This is one of the few cases that I won’t recommend that you “Read the whole thing.” Someone, presumably Seldon, now makes a habit of sending out e-mails on this topic to a wide cross-section of the Williams community. Ben Rudick ‘08 forwarded a copy to me. Have any readers received a copy?

Were you reading the New York Times editorial page 5 years ago?

It seems likely that Jeffrey Sutton, a nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, will be confirmed by the Senate this week. But it is important to recognize why he was selected, and how he fits the Bush administration’s plan for an ideological takeover of the courts. Whichever way the Senate votes on him, it must insist that the administration start selecting judges who do not come with a far-right agenda.

There is no shortage of worthy judicial nominees. Federal courts are filled with district court judges, Republicans and Democrats, who have shown evenhandedness and professionalism, and many would make fine appeals court judges. State courts are overflowing with judges and lawyers known for their excellence, not their politics.

The Bush administration, however, has sought nominees whose main qualification is a commitment to far-right ideology. Mr. Sutton is the latest example. He is an activist for ”federalism,” a euphemism for a rigid states’-rights legal philosophy. Although federalism commands a narrow majority on the Supreme Court, advocates like Mr. Sutton are taking the law in a disturbing direction, depriving minorities, women and the disabled of important rights.

Mr. Sutton argued a landmark disability rights case in the Supreme Court. Patricia Garrett, a nurse at an Alabama state hospital, asserted that her employer fired her because she had breast cancer, violating the Americans With Disabilities Act. Mr. Sutton argued that the act did not protect state employees like Ms. Garrett. His states’-rights argument narrowly won over the court, and deprived millions of state workers of legal protection. He also invoked federalism to urge the court to strike down the Violence Against Women Act. It did so, 5 to 4, dismantling federal protection for sexual assault victims. Mr. Sutton has said that he was only doing his job, and that his concern was building a law practice, not choosing sides. But throughout his career, he has taken on major cases that advance the conservative agenda. He has left little doubt in his public statements that he supports these rulings.

At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Sutton faced protesters with guide dogs and wheelchairs, who were upset about his role in rolling back disability law. Naturally, they urged the Senate to reject him.

Pictures, please! See also.

The Eph connection? Jeff Sutton is class of 1983 and married to Margaret (Southward) Sutton ‘84. He is now one of the highest ranking Ephs in the federal judiciary and certainly the most prominent conservative. Questions:

1) What other Ephs have similar positions?

2) Has Sutton issued an interesting opinions recently? We need someone to write about this.

Most interesting comment on EphBlog in the last week? This one from a female ‘07. (Since it is comment 156 (!) in that thread, I think a few readers may have missed it).

I think hwc has a good point in his comments on this page. Specifically:

Are you arguing that a few specific individuals finding offensive language acceptable give them the right to impose such offensive language in a common area on ALL female members of an entryway?

Do you argue that this would never pressure women in the entry to just “shut up and go along” with somebody else’s “context”, even though they are deeply offended?

That’s exactly what happened in my entry, and I graduated last year. I was one of a few women who found a lot of the loud male humor in the entry offensive, both on quote boards and out loud, but yes, we all did “shut up and go along” with it without even being asked. Because when you’re a freshman in college and you’re told these people will be your best friends, and it takes a few months to find likeminded people and make solid friendships outside your entry, you don’t want to make people mad at you. In fact, you try to just get used to it and find it funny instead of offensive.

I’m not saying this damaged me or that I hold a grudge. In fact, I stayed friends with most of the guys and continued to live with them after freshman year, as did the other women who found some things offensive. Also, I do understand people in a group making jokes about that group ironically. But the fact that none of us women ever said, “Could you please stop calling people c*nts?” because we didn’t want to bother anyone, while none of the men ever thought “Hmm, maybe the three girls in the room who aren’t joining in to our jokes are bothered by us calling people c*nts”…do you really think it’s that unlikely, that ridiculous, that this entry-specific type of interaction is rooted in the fact that sexism DOES exist in American society?

Read the whole thing. Comments:

1) I, like Whitney Wilson ‘90, was shocked by this description of a (typical?) quote board. I never saw anything like that during my era at Williams. Has the world really changed so much?

2) I think that any JA who allows, much less encourages, such displays is not doing his job. You can be fairly certain that there is at least one first year in your entry who doesn’t like such crudity, even if he does not tell you. Simple guide: If your quote board is so crude that you feel the need to take it down when parents visit, your quote board is too crude for regular display. If you wouldn’t show something to your Mom, don’t show it to your entry, and don’t let your freshmen show/inflict such crudity on each other.

3) There is a world of difference between what you put up in your own room (i.e., anything you (and your roommate) want) and what you put up on your door, which your whole entry has little choice but to see. Is it a hassle for JAs to police this? Yes! But consider it a teaching opportunity.

4) All those who claim that hwc is out of touch should consider this a data point in his favor.

5) I am not sure if I see this as an example of “sexism” so much as boorishness. The problem is not that these boys think that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. The problem is that no one has taught them how to behave in civilized society, especially when women are in the vicinity. Is it too much to hope that Williams might turn such youngsters into gentleman?

6) I wrote to a member of the Women’s Collective, suggesting that they consider taking photos of quote boards and posting them. She did not have the common courtesy to even reply. Perhaps someone else will take on this project. It is hard to have a productive discussion without concrete and current examples.

It’s Family Days at Williams. Are you participating in any of the activities? Here is a report from FROSH mom:

Well…time for some puppies and unicorns and dewdrops in the purple valley…

It was another beautiful day here in Williamstown. I started the morning with a double shot latte and muffin at T.C., at which point (sufficiently caffeinated), I walked…ahem…trotted… over to the College Museum. It did not disappoint; the highlights being the J. Mehretu and W. Kentridge exhibits. The Rotunda was stunning, having in stark contrast to the room, an exotic, earthy collection of beautiful African masks.

From there, I strolled over through Hopkins Gate…the idea being to make my way up to the cupola of West College. Couldn’t get in the building , however, so I plunked myself down for a moment on a bench I had laid claim to on my visit last Fall…the very bench that Larry linked to above…no lie! In fact, I have a series of photos taken from that bench last year…blue, blue sky, through vivid fall leaves.

Next, I made my way past Paresky and Chapin, past the Frosh Quad, through the little park and Haystack Monument (facing the ’soviet bloc’ style Mission dorms), and then down to the college cemetery. At the very end of it, I turned around, and facing the backs of all the gravestones, one caught my eye. Most of the backs of the markers are blank, but this one, more contemporary in shape, had inscripted, in plain, block letters, simply ‘HELLO THERE’. Amused, I came around to the front of it. It was none other than the gravestone of S. Lane Faison…someone I’ve heard so much about. Inscripted on the front of it, below his name was ‘ars longa vita brevis’. It was a sweet, whimsical moment…and the highlight of my day.

I spent the afternoon at MassMoca; the Anselm Kiefer exhibit was, IMO, muddy, clunky, and somber. But Holzer was good…as was the lighthearted exhibit of Spencer Finch.

Off to dinner tonight with friends, students, and family.

A lovely day…special thanks to Professor Faison.

From all of us. Any other reports from the Purple Bubble?

It’s pre-registration time at Williams. What tutorials would you recommend for current students? My suggestions include:

ECON 357T(F) The Strange Economics of College (W) SCHAPIRO
ECON 371T(S) Economic Justice ZIMMERMAN
ENGL 343T(F) Whitman and Dickinson in Context (W) KENT
HIST 128T(S) Conquistadors in the New World (W) WOOD
HIST 487T(F) The Second World War: Origins, Course, Outcomes, and Meaning (W) WOOD
PHIL 350T(S) Beauty (W) WHITE
PSCI 323T(F) Henry Kissinger and the American Century (W) MCALLISTER

If you aren’t taking at least one tutorial a semester, you are cheating yourself out of an amazing experience.

Which tutorials would our readers recommend and why?

Brilliant op-ed from Professor Michael Lewis.

Has any work of art been more reviled than Aliza Shvarts’s senior project at Yale? Andres Serrano’s photograph of a crucifix suspended in his own urine did not lack for articulate champions. Nor did Damien Hirst’s vitrine with its doleful rotting cow’s head. But Ms. Shvarts’s performance of “repeated self-induced miscarriages” has left even them silent. According to her project description, she inseminated herself with sperm from voluntary donors “from the 9th to the 15th day of my menstrual cycle . . . so as to insure the possibility of fertilization.” Later she would induce a miscarriage by means of an herbal abortifacient. (Or so she claimed; whether she actually did any of this remains unclear.)

Ms. Shvarts may have, as she asserts, intended her project to raise questions about society and the body. But she inadvertently raises an entirely different set of questions: How exactly is Yale teaching its undergraduates to make art? Is her project a bizarre aberration or is it within the range of typical student work, unusually startling perhaps but otherwise a fully characteristic example of the program and its students?

A traditional program in studio art typically begins with a course in drawing, where students are introduced to the basics of line, form and tone. Life drawing is fundamental to this process, not only because of the complexity of the human form (that limber scaffolding of struts and masses) but because it is the object for which we have the most familiarity — and sympathy. Students invariably bristle at the drawing requirement, wishing to vault ahead to the stage where they make “real art,” but in my experience, students who skip the drawing stages do not have the same visual acuity, and the ability to see where a good idea might be made better.

Note that the Williams Studio Art major requires a year of drawing and a year of art history. Glad to see Lewis practices what he opines. Read the whole thing. (Rest below the break.)
(more…)

An Eph Corner reader notes this.

I’m [Andy McCarthy] on a two-day road trip in beautiful Williamstown, talking Willful Blindness with the students of Williams College, so I’m missing my Corner buds. But I have to say I’d be blushing over Jonah’s kind words even if he hadn’t just written the most important (and best written) book on political philosophy in at least a decade. I hope to squeeze back into the book sandwich at some point, but it’s an honor just to be mentioned with writers like Jonah, Mark and Iain (whose new book arrived on my desk just before I headed north), and I’m very grateful for all the encouragement.

1) Yes, my left-wing friends, people who hang out at the Corner really do think that Liberal Fascism is “the most important” book on “political philosophy in at least a decade.” They aren’t just being ironic! Hard to believe, I know. Just imagine that you are an anthropologist, sent to study the beliefs and customs of a primitive tribe. Try not to be too judgmental!

2) I don’t see McCarthy’s talk listed in the calendar. Am I missing something or is this a private visit?

3) Another Eph connection is with Laura Gasiorowski ‘88. Willful Blindness is about the prosecution of the ‘93 bombers of the World Trade Center and Laura was involved with a related case.

A knowledgeable Eph writes:

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HMMI) is the largest private sponsor of science research in the country and, by far, the largest benefactor of science research at undergrad colleges. In the five multi-year cycles since 1991, Williams has never missed a major grant: 1991, 1993, 1996, 2000, 2004. In 2004, Williams received the largest four-year grant $1.6 million.

HMMI announced the 48 winners of four-year grants in the next cycle yesterday. Look who is missing.

Wendy Raymond is the HMMI project coordinator at Williams. I have no idea what happened, but for one of the top LACs to not get one of these awards is hard to imagine. Somebody either forgot to submit the proposal, or submitted a godawful proposal, or failed to do the proper follow-up and butt-kissing reporting about the fantastic accomplishments from 2004’s $1.6 million grant.

Got any contacts in the Science Departments? Probably an interesting story.

Indeed. Comments?

Certainly, any non-racists would agree that it is more important for Raymond to spend her time working as Associate Dean for Institutional Diversity (e.g., this) rather than worrying about multi-million dollar grants.

UPDATE: Title corrected. Curious as to what it takes to get your HHMI grant extended? Me too! Consider Swarthmore and Amherst. Both seem to have spent HHMI’s money in useful and productive ways. So, they will get more money to spend. (Anyone with more knowledge about HHMI is welcome to comment.) Williams, on the other hand, seems to have wasted the money in a parody of PC preening.

While Williams College’s HHMI program has successfully initiated student research and curricular partnership with Bennett College, we have been unable to initiate Williams-Bennett faculty research partnerships to date. Multiple factors have contributed to this challenge. First, the physical distance and lack of non-stop flights between Bennett (in Greensboro, NC) and Williams (in Williamstown, MA) prohibit ready travel. Second, since the Williams-HHMI partnership was agreed to without input from the Bennett faculty, winning Bennett faculty buy-in to these opportunities continues to take time and patience. Third, most Bennett faculty members are not research-active, and they are stretched thinly by strenuous teaching responsibilities. Though HHMI funding would provide generous stipend, travel, and lodging funds to make summer research partnerships at Williams possible, this has not been enough to entice faculty members to give up even one or two weeks of their summer. Fourth, two Bennett faculty members considering the program soon left Bennett. Finally, Bennett and Williams liaisons now agree that such partnerships require annual visits to Bennett by one or more Williams faculty members. Though such visits have been made twice in the first three years of the grant, and two Bennett faculty members visited Williams in 2005, this has not been enough.

Glad to see that Professor Raymond is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in such a flawed exercise. Why won’t HMMI give her more money? Can’t they see that Wendy Raymond likes black people?! And shouldn’t that be the primary criteria by which grant money is allocated?

Now, to be fair, it could be that Raymond spent the HMMI money in exactly the way that she proposed four years ago. It could be that she promised pointless PC preening and then made it happen. It could be that no one could have done any better. And it could be that it is just the vagaries of the grant-making process — perhaps conservatives have taken over HHMI? — which have deprived Williams of more money. Perhaps the only thing that Raymond promised four years ago is that she would leverage HMMI money into a reduced teaching load for herself and more diversity gibberish for the College. If so, she has delivered!

But if I were a Williams science faculty member who used to have use HHMI funding to support my students, I would want to know what the heck happened . . .

UPDATE II: Goodness gracious! Here is what Williams proposed to do with HMMI’s money back in 2004. Did Williams (read: Raymond) fail to deliver on what was promised or go off the reservation entirely? [Racist! -- ed. You know where to report me.] Answer: both! Williams/Raymond both failed to promote “collaborative research between Williams faculty and faculty from other institutions” and did not even seem to try to expand “outreach initiatives at local K-6 schools.” Or, even worse, Williams did engage in these outreach initiatives (right?) but then failed to inform HHMI that it had done so.

Someone’s got some splaining to do! [More racism! -- ed.]

Posted without comment:

Another interesting discussion from Morty’s visit to College Council.

President Schapiro said that the public speaking requirement failed by one vote in May 2001 when the writing requirement, quantitative reasoning, tripling of the number of tutorials were all passed. President Schapiro wanted to require tutorials and thought a public speaking requirement would be a way to get students involved in tutorials. For public speaking requirement, 80% of the grade would be based on oral presentations. Would like to bring it back as something that would come out of the 2020 Committee. He said that one problem with requiring tutorials is that those who really want to be in course shouldn’t be paired with those who don’t want to be there. However, he hoped to bring back the discussion of public speaking and thinks there should be a tutorial requirement. He then said that Williams competes against wonderful schools that don’t have any requirements at all and this is problematic. He doesn’t want Williams to be perceived as a paternalistic institution where students are not trusted to make their own decisions.

Exactly right. The only requirements that Williams should have are 32 classes and a major. Everything else is either unnecessary or counterproductive. Now, individual departments have the right to require whatever they want. If PHIL wants to require a tutorial to be a philosophy major or ECON wants to require two writing intensive courses, then that choice is within the purview of those departments. See here for related discussion.

Note that the topic of public speaking requirements is particularly ridiculous because Williams already has a public speaking requirement, at least if you are a MATH/STAT major. I am unclear on the exact details (clarifications from current students welcome) but I think that every MATH/STAT major needs to present a public colloquium (see here for an example by Kristin Sundet ‘08. This is a serious presentation, requiring students to thoroughly master a small part of mathematics. All the students that I have discussed this with have praised the exercise, describing it as one of the highlights of their academic careers at Williams.

No professor at Williams should propose a public speaking requirement until her department has already instituted one.