Party Rules
A student writes in with the rules for campus parties. Full e-mail below the break. Comments:
1) Thanks! We love to preserve these details for future historians. Can someone explain the meaning of “host” and “server” in this context?
2) The rules seem not dissimilar from what I remember in the mid-80’s, especially the requirements to have some non-alcoholic drinks and food.
3) As much fun as I like to make of Campus Life, the job of regulating parties is not an easy one. What rules would you suggest?
4) Want to improve the party scene at Williams? I have an easy solution! Do a better job of matching Ephs who like to throw parties with housing that makes throwing parties easy. (There is nothing wrong with social engineering as long as it is done intelligently.)
Williams has a variety of houses that make for great parties. (What buildings would you include on this list? I need to be specific for my future Record op-ed on the topic.) Right now, we make no effort to ensure that the students living in those houses want to throw parties. That is a huge waste of resources. Solve this mismatch with a mechanism similar to the JA Selection Committee.
First, remove three (5?) houses from the general pool (some will be co-ops and some not). These are “Party Houses,” designed for students who make a credible commitment to throw lots of parties and, thereby, improve the social scene at Williams. Prior to the co-op process, allow groups of seniors to “apply” to these houses. The groups would be large enough to fill the target house and would be restricted to seniors. (Throw in diversity requirements if you like.) A student committee would then select the winners. Losers would then be able to participate in the co-op process and regular housing draw.
Winners would be chosen on the basis of their credible commitment to throw parties. A student selection committee would be an excellent, although not perfect, judge of that commitment. Heavily involvement in organizing/throwing parties in your Neighborhood or your entry would be key credentials.
Losers in this process would be quiet students who a) Don’t want to throw parties or b) Can’t credibly claim that they would throw parties. Their housing options would be (slightly) more limited in this scenario.
Comments welcome, especially on what houses to include in the plan and what counter-arguments I need to consider.
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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.
Compromised
Fun thread on neighborhood housing at WSO. Some highlights:
“Welcome to Williams College’s new housing system. As you may already know, the housing system is compromised of four neighborhoods, each with about a fourth of the student body affiliated or members.”
This is from the official neighborhood system webpage. http://www.williams.edu/dean/campus_life/neighborhoodsystem.html
And yes, you read correctly, not comprised, compromised.
Ha! Miss my endless neighborhood housing analysis? Read on!
Co-Op Pick Update
What has been the coolest example of collaborative technology at Williams in the last 24 hours? Easy! The Co-Op 2006 Pick page at Willipedia. See our previous discussion. Comments:
1) It was very interesting to watch the conversation happen in real time. You can see the history of changes made to the page here. Kudos to everyone for the maturity and honesty displayed. Given that most people were willing to reveal their identity, there is no reason not to make everything public next year.
2) Good luck to all. It might make sense for students to gather 30 minutes ahead of time so that they might all have a chance to talk.
3) Best part:
In order to increase the likelihood that housemates from different groups will get along, you’re encouraged to describe the social environment that your group envisions. However, when doing so, you’re discouraged from employing sly intimidation tactics under the guise of straightforwardness in an attempt to scare others away from your favorite house. Such tactics are decidedly not the way of the Eph.
Very true! Now, there are tricky issues here about whether or not the College should take account of the tendency of different groups to contribute to campus-wide social life by throwing parties, but, if that were to be done, it should have been done before this stage in the process. Indeed, a better process would include these sorts of externalities. But, at this stage, what is done is done. The highest picks should get their picks without regard to implicit threats about partiers who will pick in after them.
4) Funniest line from the group near the bottom (and, therefore, unlikely to get anything): “MILHAM!!!!!!!!!! WERE CONFIDENT THAT WE’LL GET IT!!”
5) Exercise for the reader: Create an animation which loops through each edit to the history of the page and displays the changes in various colors in the order in which they occur. A visual representation of a virtual conversation would be quite stunning.
Co-Op 2006
The results of the co-op lottery are available and the draw is tomorrow night. Comments:
1) See below the break for the e-mail announcing the results. Alas, I can’t find any updated information on how many rooms/houses are available. I made a special plea to increase the number of co-ops this year, but I doubt that this happened. Where can students in the lottery go to find out what their choices really are?
2) Thomas Kindred suggested coordinating the picking process by sharing information about pick numbers and likely selections. Great idea! I created a Willipedia page to help out but my attempts to point this out in the discussion failed because I (like all alums?) can’t login to that part of WSO. Perhaps a reader could provide a pointer in the thread.
3) By my count, there 189 participants. 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. How many spots are there?
More Co-Ops
There is a meeting tonight on physical spaces. More on this tommorrow but, in the meantime, if you are a student or student leader you should go to this meeting and lobby for more co-op spaces, at least for keeping Goodrich, Parsons and Sewall as co-ops. In a four cluster model, there is no particular reason why the clusters need to be the same size, so there is no reason why these co-ops need to be converted. Below is my email to the CUL on the topic.
Tick, Tock
Co-op applications are due in 6 weeks. (See below the break for the latest e-mail on the topic.) One factor that led to the delay Anchor Housing last year was that time ran out on implementation. Since we still (!?!) don’t know if there will be 4 clusters or 5, can there be enough time to plan for this year?
Any news or updates from the CUL meeting tonight would be appreciated.
Save the Co-ops
Just when I thought that my work deconstructing the CUL’s 2005 Report on cluster housing was done, I am sucked back in. Such is our windmill-tilting life here at EphBlog. Only die-hards need read further.
A Vision for Williams Housing
UPDATE Feb 2008: See at the bottom for modifications caused by the switch in freshmen housing to Mission.
I have been bombarded with requests to provide my own vision of housing for Williams. Well, perhaps “bombarded” isn’t the mot juste. In any event, if I were CUL, here’s how I would think about housing . . .
Anti-Co-op
Noah notes that CUL will urge
future attention to the addition of more high-quality singles through the conversion of small houses that are currently in use as offices (but no longer will be after the new Stetson complex is completed).
If there is one thing that “everyone” agrees on — other than the system of first year entries with junior advisors — it is the wonderfulness of Co-ops. (It would be handy if a current student could tell us how many co-op spots there currently are as well as how many applicants there were this year.) I suspect that the students on CUL and the Anchors Away folks all agree that co-ops serve a useful purpose and that the College should provide more such opportunities. I would suspect that, if the data were public, we could see that seniors living in co-ops are some of the most satisfied students at Williams, at least as far as living space and social life are concerned.
But, despite the fact that Noah and other CUL students might be pro-co-op, there can be no doubt that the anchor housing proposal is, objectively, anti-co-op. First, unless and until the clusters have equivalent amounts of desirable senior single space, there will be a constant demand that any new space that comes available be devoted to this. So, instead of turning newly freed buildings into co-ops, they will be added to clusters. Second, if not enough new space becomes available, there will be a demand, in a few years time, to add co-ops back into clusters. You heard it here first.
