There is an interesting discussion at WSO about free speech and related issues. The problem is that, like a poorly run Williams seminar, it is a bit all over the place. It is too bad that more Williams faculty don’t participate in this aspect of the Williams Conversation. Imagine if Will Dudley or Mark Reinhardt or Cheryl Shanks or insert-your-favorite-professor-here were involved in that thread. Wouldn’t the conversation be a lot more focused and productive?

The key is to have a concrete example of “free speech” that some people ay Williams would like to ban and others would protect. Such an example will highlight the opposing views and the reasons behind them. My suggestion: Imagine a student (or professor!) with the following sign on her own door.

The average combined SAT score (math + verbal) for Chinese-American students at Williams is 200 points higher than the average for African-American students at Williams. The College should stop discriminating in admissions again Chinese-American applicants.

Would such a sign be obnoxious? Obviously. Would it lead to hurt feelings and even emotional pain among some members of the Williams community? Of course. Would I recommend that the student with this sign on her door take it down? Yes. But should the College require that the student remove the sign? No.

If free speech at Williams means anything, it entails the right to voice unpopular political opinions.

If the WSO discussion would use that specific example (or a different one), the conversation would be more productive.

A possible trend I’ve noticed on campus is the push on several fronts for more community. That word is broad, and is easily lent to misinterpretation, but I suppose the next best description is “open events of free expression,” which doesn’t quite do the trick. Some of these have been around, some are new. In all cases, they have been well attended this year.

Here’s where I’ve seen this:

• All Acoustic Alliance, where singer/songwriters can come to share their creative works, then perform at “Coffeehouse” in Dodd living room. This past weekend (when I performed while simultaneously managing not to breathe), the room was packed from start to finish, though some came and left. There were many more than the only Coffeehouse I attended last year.
• The Waterstreeters, a satirical a capella group that recently paraded through the dining halls as a Mariachi group one night for the enjoyment of all, trumpet, fake mustaches, and sombreros in tow.
• Storytime, where a member of the community shares a special story - a private space that should never be quoted in the Record or here. Rachel Ko ‘09 was honored with a special award during commencement ofr starting this, I believe.
• Immidiate Theatre, which just held Petri Dish in Perry, for short works of theatre, followed by an open mic. A theatre version of AAA, if you will.
• Pause, a chance to blow lots of bubbles during lunch outside of Paresky. They flew all over Chapin lawn, and made for quite a bit of fun between class times.

Follow the jump, regular readers, for a discussion of anonymity and Ephblog. (more…)

We hope you have noticed the recent addition to the EphBlog sidebar - the pictures are randomly drawn from over 2000 Williams-related photos on Flickr. Clicking through on these pictures will take you not only to some excellent photography, but snippets of life like the following from “stenz”:

Chadbourne on the Williams College campus. My senior year, my friends and I lived on the top floor of the house.

I first kissed my wife here after watching a really awful movie (Event Horizon), which she will never let me live down. I kept a different schedule than my friends (up late and at the art studio and then slept in until lunch), so I was usually gone while crazy things were happening, but I was there in the morning when everyone else was in class. That meant I usually was the one who got in trouble with the cleaning person and forced to clean up things I wasn’t part of - but I figured it was just karmic retribution for other events in the past for which I surely had been a terrible person.

Some notable clean-up events I can recall were after an apple war (someone was nice and left out a bowl of apples, which my suite mates were less nice about [w]hen throwing around the house), another was a jar of spinach dip going into my toilet, a few brooms and such being thrown out windows or awful pictures off of the internet being hidden in various places, and then the big one was after nationals a bunch of drunk xc guys absolutely destroyed my room and finalized it by coating it all with Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion - the room never really recovered from that one.

If you have Williams-related photos you’d like to share, we encourage you to contribute them (tagged with “williamscollege“) to Flickr.

I had a useful conversation with Ken Thomas ‘93 about the future of the Williams Conversation. Do you care? See below. (more…)

The purpose of this post is to elicit community feedback on the technological future of EphBlog. I have strong opinions about our future content, but limited experience for judging good technology, beyond a bias for open source solutions. Our current plan is to abandon Movable Type (our current blogging platform) and move to Wordpress (the leading open source blogging tool). In fact, genius EphBlog technologist Eric Smith ‘99 and I had breakfast last week and discussed these and other issues. Eric, because he takes the running of his business seriously, does not have endless time to spend on EphBlog. So, we had tentatively decided to give me (and my interns) admin authority over the new site. This allows me and my posse to do stuff for ourselves. The problem is that we may not have the skills required.

Ken Thomas ‘93 comments:

I may be a little bit late in the game here, but I’d strongly recommend Drupal over WordPress as it *can* do the former and so much more– before user-custom views, I’d suggest simply having different sections such as Tech and Sports and Politics, surrounding a main page with more general “front page” content. In fact I might even *volunteer* to do it, or…

If nominated, I would volunteer to create and host ‘88 and ‘93 websites prior to reunion, based on Drupal, on the presumption that it would work toward an alumni-driven, online alumni COI purpose.

Be careful what you volunteer for, Ken! Is Drupal the correct solution? Comments are welcome.

In terms of requirements, the key issues are:

1) We need to have a notion of “views”. A member of the class of 1988 needs to be able to bookmark a page that provides updates on just 1988 related posts and content. That page should have the standard EphBlog templates. Similarly, someone interested in just EphCOI:Finance related posts should be able to bookmark a page just for that. And the same for other views. There also needs to be one main view which aggregates everything.

2) We need the administrative hassle of adding new bloggers (or whate is the term for people who use Drupal? Drupalers?) to be simple. It sure would be nice to have other delivery methods like daily e-mails. How about a better comment system? I am giving serious thought to using the code from Slashdot, but wouldn’t that be a bother? Does that or something like it integrate with Drupal? Are there working examples we can check out?

3) Integration with other tools. It is just about time to move Willipedia over to alumni control. Current students are barely using it. I could imagine reunion alumni having a lot of fun with a well-run Wiki. Imagine one with a page for memories from each entry. How well do Drupal and Wiki software play with each other. 2008 may also be the year that I cajole some students into draining the Williams advising swamp once and for all.

4) We need a better, more automatic way of managing our Eph Blogroll, as well better integration with the Planet software we use for Eph Planet. Or does Drupal do all of that?

5) Our Eph News service is beyond pathetic. Here are my previous thoughts on the topic. Will Drupal make this easier to manage?

And so on. Two questions: First, what should our main platform be, given these goals? Second, is anyone willing to volunteer to be our technological lead, the person behind the scenes who makes EphBlog function? (I want Ken to have a chance to reflect a bit before he volunteers for this.) I will provide the content (mainly by recruiting the contributors) if you maintain the platform.

EphBlog turns 5 in January. Who wants to help take us to the next level?

What is the best phrase to capture the collection of interesting, public comments made by and about Ephs? My suggestion is the “Williams Conversation.” Every lecture by a member of the faculty, every op-ed in the Record, every comment posted to WSO, every interview on WCFM, every article in the Alumni Review, every question at College Confidential, every New York Times story about the College, every blog entry written by an Eph — all of these, and much more, are a part of the Williams Conversation. If EphBlog 2.0 is to have a mission statement, then my candidate is:

EphBlog encourages, organizes and supports the Williams Conversation.

(Thanks to Rory Kramer ‘03 for replacing “moderates” with “supports.”)

I have used the phrase “Williams Conversation” a few times in the past, groping toward a vision of EphBlog as a place where that exchange of views and opinions among open-minded Ephs might flourish. If anyone has any comments about either the phrase or the mission statement, I would be pleased to read them. Whatever else may change, our motto — “All Things Eph” — is fixed.

One problem with the Williams Conversation is that it is every difficult to follow. We try, via tools like the Eph Blogroll and Eph Planet, to aggregate the different voices in the conversation, but they work imperfectly, if at all. In our next version, using Wordpress, we hope to do a better job of this. Please join us for the ride.