``In God we trust; all others must bring data.''
-- W. Edwards Deming.
Excessive skepticism becomes annoying at some point but the burden of proof is on the CUL to demonstrate its evidence and reasoning. CUL has talked to plenty of people. But it is not good enough to talk to many people, decide on a policy and then say, ``Trust us.'' CUL has an obligation to present its evidence and reasoning along with its conclusion.
The members of the CUL need to describe exactly what they did, who they talked to, what those people said and why all that adds up to anchor housing. One CUL member claimed that CUL has ``a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't work. There are numerous other schools, many of them similar to Williams which have well-working systems resembling the cluster system.''
Even in the absence of hard data, the CUL still has an obligation to describe in writing the case study approach that it used, the interviews it did and the reasoning it followed. This is not hard to do! Indeed, it is clear from comments made by CUL members that they have already done this, but they still need to let the skeptics see the work, not just the result.
If CUL specifically describes how, say, Middlebury and Bowdoin have anchor housing (more or less) and students at both schools are much more satisfied with social life than students are at Williams -- and if individual students/administrators from Middlebury and Bowdoin claim that a reason for this satisfaction is the housing system -- then the opponents of anchor housing need to come up with a reason (other than just generic skepticism) for why the same won't hold at Williams. But, as the Record articles on Middlebury and Bowdoin make clear, there is no evidence that the students there are any better off than the students at Williams. In fact, we suspect that the reverse is true, that the students there are worse off and that one of the reasons for this is that the current housing system at Williams, while not perfect, is better than any anchor-type arrangement. Alas, although the College has access to all sorts of data that would address precisely this question, the CUL Report fails to include any of it.4 Many students believe that the reason CUL failed to include this data is because doing so would weaken the case for anchor housing.