Public (?) Faculty Meetings
There was debate last week about whether or not the monthly Williams faculty meetings are public. The truth seems to be that, for decades, they were but that, very recently, things have changed. Pathetic. If you believe in the virtues of academia, then you believe in openness and transparency. Although many meetings at Williams will, of course, need to remain private, any gathering of the full faculty should be public. Aren’t all my progressive friends supposed to believe in open meetings? Details below.
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Suggestion for CCI
Emily Spine ‘11 and the other Ephs on the Committee on Community Interaction continue to do fine work. They are serious, thoughtful and — most importantly from a process point of view — transparent. Alas, their task is a hard one. How can we improve “the way people in this community interact with each other” at Williams?
My suggestion: Expand First Days (pdf) by one week.
Now, to be fair, the first part of CCI’s work is to determine if Williams has a problem. I think that too many people exaggerate the extent of, say, racism at Williams (c.f. the empty star chamber) but there is no doubt that a wonderful place can always be made more wonderful. Surely we can agree that the amount of drunken vandalism at Williams is suboptimal.
The key insight of organizations that try to change their members behavior (and even value systems) is that the best time to do so is at the very beginning. The Marine Corps places boot camp at the start of your service, not because it is critical to learn how to shine your boots the first week, but because that is the occasion for leaving behind your civilian values and replacing them with different ones. The same applies to religious cults. It is hard for the CCI to do anything which will significantly change the behavior of a Williams senior. He is what he is. You can try to change him, but don’t expect to succeed.
But the same student, as an 18 year-old first year, new to college and to Williams, having left behind the old landmarks of high school and family, trying to adjust to a new world with an unknown culture and foreign standards, that Eph is malleable. You can change his “heart and mind,” if not easily than with more ease than you can an older student, someone who has already found a place for himself at Williams.
Now, the exact mechanics of how we might make First Years better people, how we might change their values so that they are less likely to trash someone’s room or shout a racial slur, is a difficult topic. Yet we can all agree that that process takes time, that First Days are already too filled to accomplish much, that any effort to improve community interaction requires hours and hours of effort. Add a week to First Days and you have that time.
Imagine an extra week of First Days, a week that focuses almost completely on meeting your fellow Ephs, on learning their names, their dreams, their hopes and aspirations. Imagine a freshmen class in which every resident of Pratt knows, not just the names of everyone in her entry, but the names of every student in her dorm. Imagine a week cut off from Williams academics and Williams sports, a week spent focusing on your classmates, the students you will spend the next four years with and then stay connected with for decades thereafter.
If you want to improve “community interaction” then you need to strengthen the Williams community, and that begins by learning names and sharing meals. Such learning and sharing occurs in entries and during the school year, of course. But the more such connections are made, the stronger our community will become.
Student Book Initiative
A WSO Post introduces Springstreetbooks.org, a site for student book orders to avoid Water Street, which tends to run out and be expensive.
If Ephblog readers have ideas on doing this and making it work, as well as other possible uses (book swap / exchange?), I’d certainly welcome them, and will be inviting Joey to join this thread.
Rarely do I ask favors here, but this is a cause worth a bit of thought if you have the time. That goes for non-regular commenters too, all 800 of you.
Thanks!
The Function of RASAN
The Campus Rape Myth is a long an interesting read, especially as a male member of RASAN (the Rape and Sexual Assault Network). Make no mistake, it’s quite provocative.
The campus rape movement highlights the current condition of radical feminism, from its self-indulgent bathos to its embrace of ever more vulnerable female victimhood. But the movement is an even more important barometer of academia itself. In a delicious historical irony, the baby boomers who dismantled the university’s intellectual architecture in favor of unbridled sex and protest have now bureaucratized both. While women’s studies professors bang pots and blow whistles at antirape rallies, in the dorm next door, freshman counselors and deans pass out tips for better orgasms and the use of sex toys.
Context
The “Sex Signals” show mentioned in the article came to Williams as well, and I don’t think the writer was fair in her characterization of them, so take the article with a grain of salt. Follow the jump for more quotes. Read more
Learning from History: The Social Honor Code Proposal of 2004
Readers may recall that I have made the point a few times that, when it comes to social issues, controversies, and student self-governance at Williams, there is a certain circularity that seems to escape the notice of most on campus. The last time I wrote on this it was to cover 2007’s resurrection of the idea to “lock down” campus dorms to non-residents after a certain hour, in the name of descreasing vandalism. This same idea had been almost foisted on students four years ago, nearly to the day. Thankfully, Security showed forbearance in 2003, and student voters showed good sense in 2007.
The present project of a large group of students to consider adopting a Social Honor Code is another case of nothing new, and as intrepid and proud of their work as today’s students rightly feel, I hope proponents and opponents alike are aware that their peer predecessors had the same concerns and solution. Once again, nearly precisely 4 years ago, a draft of a Social Honor Code was on the floor at College Council. Sabrina Wirth ‘05 was its author and main proponent, and she brought it to the floor during the 14 January 2004 Meeting of College Council. The text of her draft and the debate over it are recorded in the linked minutes from that meeting, and included below the break for (highly) interested readers.
Back then, the project was allowed to be forgotten. A number of people including myself volunteered to work with Sabrina on the project, but it was never followed up on, due to a combination of timing, disinterest or suspicion by some in Council, including myself. Then and now, I did not believe in implementing such a code, largely because I knew it would be actually enforced by the dean, and not what I considered a true representative body of the community. The ability to “enforce community standards” is the most broad and vague source of disciplinary power for the Dean, and I had no desire to see it strengthened.
I don’t at all wish to impose my views or arguments on the students of today, though I do hope this:
- Students will read Sabrina’s work and the discussions of their predecessor peers.
- Students will not make the interpretation of community standards the discretion of a dean, who is already the executor and need not be made judge or jury as well.
- If they draft a code, students make it one amendable by students alone. The Academic Honor Code is amendable only by faculty and, in this way, is not a good model for a code of the community. Only a tiny percentage of the faculty are any meaningful part of the social community.
- The code be publicly deliberated and voted on, and written records kept of all deliberations. All of this will be crucial to properly implementing and revising such a code in the future.
Awful as scrawling “nigger” is, arguably worse incidents took place shortly before and after Sabrina’s code proposal, and it was not taken up by enough believers to continue her effort. I’d have to bet on the side of the idea of this code being eventually dropped—doing it right would take so much time and thought, and doing it wrong would be awful—but if a code is implemented, one thing is certain: administrators now and ever after will describe it as a mandate, as “the restrictions students convened to place upon themselves.”
They had better be smart ones. When you hand over the freedom to determine community standards informally—through public shame and subtler private mechanisms—no one ever hands it back to you.
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Debating Class Requirements and Public Speaking
In the WNY thread we recently had some argument over the usefulness of Williams’ requirements for graduation, namely the Quantitative Reasoning (QR) and Intensive Writing (IW) instituted in 2001, and the Foreign Language (FL) proposed but rejected then.
Not discussed as often is a fourth proposal then, that missed 2/3 acceptance by one vote: a Public Speaking (PS) requirement.
I’d like to reopen the debate on this issue. Should Williams have requirements for graduation beyond 32 classes and a major? David takes the con side of this.
For this argument, I’ll go pro for public speaking and division requirements but con for others. Prior comments show that others will take pro more generally, supporting FL if not other requirements. My opening points are below, and I’d love for others to join the discussion on this critical topic.
Lockdown 2007 Vote Follow-Up
We never did cover what happened with that ill-timed, ill-considered vote about locking down the campus that so bothered me to see reconsidered. Andrew’s blog for College Council has got it covered: Students voted NO to letting houses restrict access by a margin of 1,349 to 204. That’s about as clear a response as you get. I hope the College gives up trying to solve the problem this way.
Andrew’s post excerpts some good free-response quotes appended to people’s votes and posts the whole collection of free responses. Way to go, Andrew, that’s fine work. If all surveys of students were so transparent, they couldn’t be used to justify actions that were against the respondents’ wills.
A comment to Andrew’s entry alleges
Sure, restricted card access is probably unnecessary. But there are so many problems with that survey that the whole thing just became a joke.
I wonder what made it a joke? Were there other bad questions? Was it poorly advertised or something? Details, especially a post of the original survey would be great if it was anything beyond yes/no and the comment box.
Williams goes loanless
From Morty:
I am very pleased to announce that, in consultation with the Board of Trustees, the College has decided to eliminate loans from all financial aid packages and replace them with grants.
This applies to all future aid awards, including those of current
students. First-years, sophomores, and juniors will see the change
reflected in their award letters for 2008-09.
See the whole letter via the link below.
Lessons from the Lockdown Debate of 2003
Four years and three days ago College Council debated this very issue, and decided overwhelmingly against restricted card access. Direct input from a large number of students was the basis of the decision; we had an unusually high influx of opinions that week.
I urge the leaders of campus today to remember the debate of four years ago, links to its records are in the extended entry. I urge them also to remember that no decision that provides Security with a new tool that they feel prevents danger and damages can be easily reversed. In other words, restricted access in even some dorms this year is highly likely to lead to at least as much restriction in future years, and likely more, and even if no benefit from such restraints were to materialize the restrictions will remain in place.
We are looking at not just an inconvenience this semester but likely an enduring change in campus culture. Students may well have this forced on them someday, but they ought not to take it by choice.
Removal Policy Going Forward
Although policies will be set by our board of directors, we will always seek community involvement. Let’s start by revisiting our policy on removals.
How can I get a post or comment about me deleted?
Just ask! EphBlog will delete almost any post or comment which mentions a specific individual at the request of that individual. We have been asked a dozen times to delete specific material and have complied with almost every request. This is not to say that we will delete anything that anyone wants us to. For example, important, news-worthy topics (e.g., here, here and here) will be covered even if that coverage makes the subject uncomfortable.
What do you want this policy to be going forward? In other words, I don’t want to revisit for now how this policy might have applied to Julia (or anyone else) in the past. Feel free to use Julia or other historical examples) in making an argument and specifying how a new policy might work. But, if you don’t like this policy, please provide a new one. Write down exactly what the FAQ should say. The nice thing, in my view, about the current policy is that it provides fairly clear criteria. We need rules based, not on how much we like the person behind a given request, but on criteria that are person/viewpoint neutral.
