CUL Methodology

Beyond the CUL's failure to provide any information about the experiences at other schools, we have more specific concerns about the manner in which they gathered and presented data about Williams. Despite CUL chair Will Dudley's insistence that he's not a believer in `spirit from the top' in the case of house coordinators or party planning, the anchor house proposal itself looks like an imposition of `spirit from the top.' The CUL asserts that establishing anchor housing would result in some sort of spontaneous well-spring of cluster pride, cluster spirit, and everything good that anchor housing could possibly bring. However, this carries more of an appearance of a top-down executive decision on students' residential -- and social -- structure without consultation of those most affected.

• Time scale. The proposal has been in the works for four years. However, it has not occupied the campus as an issue for any longer than a few months. Current seniors vaguely remember the idea of anchor housing failing in 2002, and only now does the issue appear again. The `version 1' proposal burst onto the scene in mid-January, students were (1) informed that the proposal would be finalized and presented by late February and (2) given the impression that the administration supports the proposal and would essentially rubber-stamp whatever crossed the President's desk. The mostly negative immediate student reaction induced the CUL to make alterations to some major details of the proposal, but they stick to their initial self-imposed deadline despite changing the proposal within the space of a day or two. This willingness to alter the plan is at odds with the insistence that four years of work lie behind it and that it should be trusted for its four years of continuous effort.

• Student information and input. Student input was not visibly sought before the proposal appeared in the campus consciousness in mid January. Since then, CUL strategy has focused more on selling the proposal to students and convincing them that they would not lose anything rather than seeking additional student input and advice on both the details and the fundamentals of the plan. Now that the implementation has been delayed, the CUL ought to carry out student opinion-gathering with as much transparency as it possibly can. Until now, CUL operation and data-gathering has been an extremely opaque process. The CUL also needs to remain open to fundamental objections to the plan rather than accepting anchor housing as an indisputable premise and recognizing only student input on details.

• Non-representative student committee members. As a corollary to insufficient student input gathered, the student members of the CUL are not representative of the student body as a whole. They were appointed from a self-selecting group: only those students who saw a problem to be solved applied. Only those students who believe that a change of housing system will spontaneously result in improved social and academic life are advocating this proposal. Furthermore, comments from some student CUL members suggest that they see very little suite identity across campus. These are not majority opinions among the student body.

Again, the point is not primarily that the CUL Report is faulty in what it chooses to cover. It is not. The problem is in what it leaves out. It is impossible to fairly consider a change in the housing system at Williams without grappling with the experiences of other schools and reporting on those experiences to the Williams community. As the Record noted⁵4 years ago:

Further elaborating on the College's position in comparison to other schools, Schapiro said ``this is not the kind of place where you just import what happens elsewhere, but we're far from an optimal situation now.'' Schapiro, along with Charles Dew, professor of history and chair of the CUL, and Tom McEvoy, director of housing, stressed the importance of studying models at peer institutions. Most comparable to the reform ideas presented seemed to be the cluster system at Middlebury.

The word ``Middlebury'' appears no where in the CUL's report. Indeed, there is no discussion of any of the lessons learned by any other school in considering the issue of housing policy. Why did the CUL leave this out? We do not know. But we do know that many students interpret this omission unfavorably. They believe that the administration decided that anchor housing was the best solution 4 years ago and that the current process is a charade. They think that the CUL failed to include any discussion of peer schools because such a discussion would have weakened the case for anchor housing.

We are not so cynical. Yet we think the students have a point. The reason that the CUL has failed to win over the students to its vision is that it has failed, so far, to take student concerns seriously. Providing a thorough analysis and discussion of the experiences of other schools with anchor-type housing systems would be a good place to start.