Our two EphBlog meet ups are confirmed. For those in town early, we will meet on Friday morning at 11:00 in the snack bar. For those arriving late, we will congregate on the back balcony in the gym (facing the main stage) during the Society of Alumni meeting after the parade. Look forward to meeting you all!

Surely we have some authors and readers who are going to be in Williamstown this week-end for reunion. I will be there and am eager to buy lunch for any and all. It would certainly be fun to meet such EphBlog luminaries as Derek Catsam ‘93 and Ken Thomas ‘93 in person. What about 11:00 AM in the new snackbar in Paresky on Friday morning? (I want to attend the alumni lecture from 9:00 to 10:30 on “Perspectives from the Ground and Air in Iraq.”) If not Friday, perhaps we can arrange a meet-up during the Alumni Meeting itself in Chandler Gym on Saturday morning, perhaps on the balcony above the bleachers and opposite the main stage?

Or will I be the only EphBlog reader in town?

In previous discussions of EphBlog’s readership, I have estimated that about 1/3 is on campus (students, faculty and staff), 1/3 off campus (alumni, parents and local residents) and 1/3 random Web surfers (people looking for information about Williams issues like legacy admissions or about famous Ephs like Erin Burnett ‘98, Chase Coleman ‘93, Bethany McLean ‘92 and others). We make all this data public using the links to the lower left of the side bar. In the past, readership from the williams.edu domain has averaged between 20%-25% on a typical weekday. Today (and early this week), it is close to 10%. My interpretation is that about 1/2 of our campus readers are students, most of whom are now either not reading EphBlog or are reading it from elsewhere for the summer. The remainder are faculty and staff.

All are welcome.

Thanks to a reader for noting this article about the search for Dartmouth’s next president.

Former and current college presidents, administrators, professors and possibly a member of the current Bush administration could make it onto the Board of Trustees’ search committee’s list for a successor to College President James Wright, who will step down in June 2009. The committee will be announced in early June.

…

The search committee will likely consider several candidates from other Ivy League institutions’ recent presidential searches, including Dartmouth’s last search. Williams College President Morton Schapiro was a finalist to succeed former College President James Freedman in 1998, according to the prominent Williams “Eph” blog, and will potentially be considered in the current search.

It is not clear if the The Dartmouth has another source for this speculation besides my post. And, even though The Dartmouth got our name wrong, EphBlog appreciates the compliment. No such thing as bad press!

We came, we saw, we ate some bacon. So this morning I went to breakfast with Mr. Ephblog himself, David Kane. I will have you all know that the entire affair was quite civil - indeed, quite friendly. Although the fur flies here on Ephblog, we alums know how to behave in public (when not at sporting events). Anyway, our discussions and David’s exhortations that just about everything I said would make a good post for Ephblog have motivated me to write something tonight.

We joke sometimes about making David take an Ephblog vacation for a week, or about how posts need to be more positive or the general tone of our discussions. It is really one of my favorite little pastimes to poke holes in David’s arguments and needle him about being less critical. But this morning as we were talking about all the trouble I used to cause at Williams when I was there, I realized that the only way to change anything is to work on making it better. In keeping with that, I’m going to try to post more (NOT because I am in any way better, but because I want to change the tone). Thus far, I post here and there, then get really frustrated by some of the things I see up here and get discouraged, then come back and make snarky comments, eventually feeing motivated enough to make my own post again. This is a pretty circular pattern that doesn’t seem to accomplish much. So, I’m going to start off with a modest goal of one post each week even if that means expanding a comment into a whole post (good idea btw David) or just finding some obscure Williams connection to a news item. If I want more positive or constructive posts, I should quite whining about it and do something, so I will try.

On a related note of navel gazing, when I went to write this, I noticed the list of incoming links to Ephblog and one caught my eye. It is a comparison of Williams and Princeton of their relative “ridiculousness.” Now this fits under navel gazing, because I really thought I wanted to go to Princeton, got waitlisted, and picked Williams. Thank goodness I did! Anyway, so I thought I’d check out that link and discovered a pretty hilarious chart comparing various aspects of the two schools, from reunions to newspapers, to latin names to random days off, to the best category of all:

Blog Run By Students/Alums Who Care Entirely Too Much

• For Princeton: IvyGate
• For Williams: Ephblog

And the winner was (of course): EPHBLOG!!! Good to know someone thinks well of us. So keep caring entirely too much everyone - you’re doing your part!

P.S. Any Boston-area Ephblog readers should get in touch with David and grab a meal.  Fun stuff!

In roughly 26 hours, I and 6 pieces of baggage shall embark on a 28 hour taxi/train trip back to Decatur/Atlanta to roast the summer away. While I wait for my clothes to dry (no way am I getting 3 washers tomorrow), I thought it might be appropriate to share some reflections on Ephblog about the past year. (more…)

For those interested, below is some discussion of our readers. Previous discussion here.
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For those who care, here is a snapshot of our readers.

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Only gaze below if you really want to . . .

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We do our best to avoid an excessive amount of navel-gazing here at EphBlog. Blog posts should, in general, be about “all things Eph” and not “all things EphBlog”. But, on occasion, there is nothing to be done but to consider our own navels.

Only read further if you would like to join us.

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