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Anchor housing

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Anchor [[Category:History]] [[Category:Student Housing2.0]]''Some of the following content is considered, by some, to not have a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view neutral point of view]. Users who find a bias they believe is wrong or unhelpful are encouraged to excise unhelpful bias for fact, also known as or add their own counterbalancing point of view in the appropriate places.''Cluster Housing  '' or the 'Note:'Williams House System'', Anchor Housing is no longer the new upperclass housing residential system implemented at Williams; upperclassmen are no longer restricted to be one neighborhood. Anchor Housing was the residential system implemented in fall 2006under the official name "Neighborhood Housing." The system is covered here under the name it first bore before a significant series of [[#Etymology|name changes]].
==Description==
Currently[[Image:clusterMap.jpg|right|thumbnail|Map of the four clusters.]]Before the start of "Neighborhood" housing in Fall 2006, Williams upperclass housing is was a "[[Free agency|free agent]]" system. Students form formed groups of 4 up to four and are were assigned lottery numbers within their class. They Individuals then choose chose rooms on campus in order of lottery number, from lowest to highest.
Anchor housing restricts the room draw to a small cluster of dorms. Houses on campus will be divided into five four clusters, each containing approximately six houses and one "anchor" house chosen to serve as the social hub of the cluster. Rising sophomores will form groups of six, and each group will be randomly assigned to a cluster. Upperclassmen will choose rooms in a lottery exclusive to their own cluster. Students remain in the same cluster throughout their time at Williams.
The housing system was formed with the following goals in mind, as presented by the CUL at two informational forums in 2004:
* '''Ability to live with friends, and have options within the system'''
There are ideas for a "House Cup" and other interHouse IM teams, cluster-associated faculty and informal events with them, designated bulletin boards in the [[Paresky Center]], and cluster competitionsoutings, but we have heard no plans are not definite plans yet. This suggestion has caused some Some students to joke (and CUL members) joked about whether the [http://wso.williams.edu/discuss/comments.php?DiscussionID=140 clusters will be named after the houses in the Harry Potter books]. As it turned out, the clusters ended up being named after their anchor houses, though some other sets of four names were available for voting.
The anchor houses and their associated dorms are:
* '''[[Curriercluster|Currier]]''': [[Fitch]], [[Prospect]], [[East]], [[Fayerweather]]* '''[[Doddcluster|Dodd]]''': [[Hubbell]], Dodd Annex, [[GoodrichHouse]], [[Parsons]], [[Sewall]], [[Tyler]], Dennett[[Tyler Annex]], Mills[[Thompson]], [[Lehman]]* '''[[Spencercluster|Spencer]]''': [[Morgan]], [[West]], [[Brooks]], Gladden[[Bryant]], Carter[[Mark Hopkins]]* '''Tyler[[Wood cluster|Wood]]''': Tyler Annex[[Perry]], [[Garfield]], Thompson[[Agard]], Armstrong[[Gladden]], Pratt[[Carter]]* '''Wood''': PerryThe houses [[Chadbourne House]], [[Doughty House]], [[Lambert House]], Garfield[[Milham House]], Agard[[Poker Flats]], Bryant[[Rectory]], Mark [[Susie HopkinsHouse]], and [[Woodbridge House]] will remain (or become) [[co-op|co-ops]]. [[Dodd Annex]] will become Economics faculty offices.
The houses ChadbourneFor the CUL's complete description of anchor housing, Doughtysee the [http://www.williams.edu/resources/committees/cul/reports/2005.pdf full proposal]. It is fairly detailed and includes a history of housing at Williams, Lambert, Milham, Poker Flatsthough it perpetuates the misconception that the change from house affiliation to [[Free agency|free agency]] was driven by the administration and was "accidental." In fact, Rectorystudents were freely swapping rooms well before the official switch to Free Agency, Susie Hopkins, and Woodbridge will remain (or become) co-opsthus a de facto free agency system existed at the end of the House Affiliation period.
==History==
Anchor housing was first proposed by the 1999-2000 [[Committee on Undergraduate Life]] (CUL) under the leadership of Professor Charles Dew, a Williams alum from the time when College housing was based around fraternities. The proposed system was a bit different back then, and was finally abandoned by the 2002 CUL in favor of making discrete changes to room draw procedures: decreasing the size of pick groups from 7 to 4, implementing a blind room draw, and instituting gender caps on individual houses. The reason There are a number of reasons given for this change varies depending on who you ask: 2005 CUL members claimed that the Committee of 2000 wanted to give their changes time to work, and allow time to see how the new [[House Coordinator]] system was faring; students who were on campus in 1999-2000 suggest that the student body protested the idea of anchor housing strongly enough to get convince the CUL to back down; and some student members of the 2000 CUL claim that it was their objections to anchor housing that kept the system from being implemented in spring 2003.
Though students thought that anchor housing had disappeared, it turned up again, suddenly, in fall In [[winter study|Winter Study]] 2004, when news was leaked to the Williams ''[[http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?view=article&section=news&id=6225 Record]]'' that the 2004-2005 CUL (led by Professor Will Dudley, an alum from the days when students were affiliated with one house throughout their upperclass years) was going to propose the system again. The proposed system involved creating six clusters, with houses in each cluster scattered across campus but united by a centrally located [[anchor house]]. Which freshman Each Freshman [[Entryentry]] a student belongs to determines which cluster the student would be assigned to as associated with a cluster, and rising sophomoresophomores would join the cluster of their entry. In the original [http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?view=article&section=news&id=6308 second article ] breaking the story, [[Morton Owen Schapiro|Morty]] was quoted as saying that anchor housing was , "It’s in the student body's best interestinterests of the students, and the only trick would be ultimately. The challenge is to convince themexplain why."
The immediate student reaction was strong opposition. Commentary saturated Shortly thereafter, commentary surfaced in the ''Record'' and , saturated [[WSO blogsBlogs]] , and continued for some time after the initial announcement. Most of the commentary from students was very critical of the proposed change. A group of students dedicated to preventing the implementation of anchor housing and maintaining [[free agency ]] housing formed the group [[Anchors Away]]. These students conducted surveys of students (in one case, they collected written opinions from almost 200 Williams students opposed to anchor housing), wrote letters to the CUL, ''Record'', and [[Trustees]], and compiled documents detailing student objections to the anchor housing proposal. Their efforts culminated in a failed campaign for the [[College Council]] co-presidency by two of their more vocal founding members.
In January 2005, the Committee on Undergraduate Life made a series of substiantial changes to the anchor housing proposal. Entries were detatched from clusters in favor of randomly assigning rising sophomores. This was generally regarded as an improvement by students. Additionally, the CUL determined that larger clusters would be more conducive to forming so-called genuine communities and decreased the number of clusters to five. The cluster boundaries were also redrawn to be geographically localized; each cluster, instead of comprising houses from all areas of campus, would consist of nearby houses. Also, the CUL began to refer to the new housing proposal by the name ''cluster housing'' instead of ''anchor housing'', because they felt that "anchor housing" gave too much of an impression that students would be stuck to something in their residential lives. Finally, the date of implementation was pushed back from fall 2005 to fall 2006. This move was [http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?view=article&section=news&id=6449 highly regarded ] by the student body.
The CUL finally [http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?view=article&section=news&id=6484 submitted ] its proposal to the administration under the vague name "Williams House System" in late February 2005, and recieved the promised rubber-stamp [[Administration|Administration's]] approval. Students in Anchors Away worried that the administration was ignoring their opinion, but the The CUL determined declared that its mission in the 2005-2006 academic year would consist solely of determining how exactly the transition from free agency to anchor housing would be carried out. This is Asserting that the decision to move to the new system itself ought still to be at issue, students in Anchors Away argued that the administration was ignoring dissenting students' opinion. In April 2005, College Council submitted a [http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?view=article&section=news&id=6706 letter of opposition] to clusters to the adminsitration. The letter makes explicit the point that anchor housing cannot be successful without support from the students. A suggestion by Dean [[Nancy Roseman]] took both the CUL and student body by surprise in December 2005. Dean Roseman believed that there might not be enough dedicated students to fill the number of leadership positions needed in a five-cluster system. The new idea reduced the number of clusters to four and changed the distribution of dorms within clusters. In an effort to make each cluster's dorm space more equitable, the new plan turned [[Morgan]], [[Lehman]], [[East]], and [[Fayerweather]] into upper-class (likely sophomore) housing, and moved the freshman entries previously located in those dorms to [[Mission Park]]. The former first-year dorms would recieve renovations to bolster the number of singles and availability of [[common room|common space]]. In general, students were encouraged by the reduction in number of clusters, but opinion on the relocation of freshmen was mixed. When students returned from [[Dead Week]] 2006, they recieved letters signed by [[Morton Owen Schapiro|President Schapiro]] and Dean Roseman announcing that this four-cluster plan would be adopted in fall 2006, and students would enter it through the Spring 2006 [[room draw]]. == Etymology == Over the years, the system pushed forward to replace free agency has had many names, depending on the year and the discoursing parties. In its first years, 2001-3, Anchor Housing or Anchor Affiliation was the name given the proposed system by the CUL and used by all discussants.  When the CUL of 2004-5 gave the system a serious revision it decided to push new names for it as well. In Spring 2005, Professor Will Dudley, CUL chair, discussed the system under the name Cluster Housing or Cluster Affiliation in his visit then to [[College Council]]. He believed that the old name was part of what held back student acceptance of the system, that it carried the poor connotation of dead weight and being "tied down." The CUL report in late Spring of that year would refer to the system as "The Williams House System," but while "Cluster Housing" had been adopted somewhat by the community at large, "Williams House System" never entered common parlance. When the movement to affiliated housing and the debate over it resumed with the next academic year, the 2005-6 CUL began referring to clusters as "Neighborhoods." Helped in part by [[Anchors Away]], whose members refused to use the updated monikers probably partly due to counter-campaigning of their own, many students continued to use the original name, "Anchor Housing." ''Record'' news articles covering the system used the official up-to-date terms as they are deliberating nowarose, while usually also including old ones. In contrast, some disgruntled students went a step in the other direction and termed the residential system by derogatory names, one of the most widely caught-on being ''Clusterfuck'' -- from military slang, a disastrous situation that results from the cumulative errors of several people or groups. Also known as Charlie Foxtrot, in semi-polite company.
==Student Opinion==
The first Wiki entry for Anchor Housing consisted of the single word, "Evilll." A few edits later, a poster had corrected to, ''[Anchor Housing] . . . is actually NOT called anchor housing. It is cluster housing, built in neighborhoods around a central "anchor house.'' To which the following response was added: ''But nonetheless, it is still eeeeeevil, just in case you were confused about that.''
Students have been deeply concerned about various Williams students are looking forward to some aspects of anchor the new housingsystem. In particular, students anticipate a better, more varied campus party scene and new campus traditions in the vein of the house affiliation system from the 70's-80's. Voiced However, during the debates immediately following the initial announcements about anchor housing in fall 2004, students enumerated a number of strong concerns includeabout the proposed system
* '''Loss of freedoms and choices.''' Any housing system that restricts the number of houses students can live in restricts students' choices. Given the great variety of dorms on this campus, many students believe it essential that they be at least given a chance to choose from some of the best dorms on campus. Clusters drawn by the CUL have rarely included equal numbers of "desirable" and "undesirable" houses, leaving students wondering whether members of classes after 2009 will find themselves randomly assigned to a "sucky cluster." Students also worry that they will be unable to form a housing pick group with their friends, especially with friends they make after cluster assignments have been made in their freshman spring.
* '''Social engineering.''' The attitude of the CUL and administration has been seen as very paternalistic by many students. Students are wary of attempts to ensure "diversity" in all dorms on campus. The phrase "genuine communities" has been particularly contentious among students, as some believe it suggests that existing communities were judged by the CUL and determined to be "not genuine."
* '''Freshman affiliations.''' The assignment of entries to particular clusters was met with strong disapproval by students worried that new students' housing choices would be determined entirely by their entry assignment, before they even set foot on campus. FortunatelyHowever, the CUL altered this aspect of the plan.* '''Loss of "class" living experiences.''' Sophomores will no longer be able to live as a class in [[Mission Park]], and juniors will no longer be able to live together in the [[Greylock Quad]]. Some credit the Mission Park renovations in the summer of 2003 as dramatically improving the Williams sophomore experience, and are concerned that anchor housing will take away the benefits of living as a class with all the people who got to know one another as entrymates during freshman year. The shift of first-year students to Mission Park will restore some of the benefits of the Mission "class living experience."
* '''Disregard of suite affiliations.''' Many Williams students live with the same (or a similar) set of friends in a suite throughout their career. Students believe that the CUL did not take into account strong "suite identity" and the smaller, more tightly knit communities of two or three nearby suites, often composed of good friends who enjoy each others' company.
* '''Differences in social behavior.''' The drinking culture on this campus appeals to some and not to others. Some of the less party-prone students worried that anchor housing would spread them thinly around campus, sandwiching them between students more interested in trashing common rooms with [[beirut]] refuse than using the common room for a quiet gathering, board game, impromptu poker night, or movie viewing.
* '''The Odd Quad.''' Members of the [[Odd quad | Odd Quad]] (officially known as the Berkshire Quad to the uninitiated and CUL members) community use the dorms Currier and Fitch as a social hub. These students, self-described [[deviants]], are often set apart from the rest of campus culture. Without a physical social base, they worry that their way of life will be severely disrupted. Anchor housing will randomly spread these students around the entire campus, effectively destroying the Odd Quad as a cohesive community. CUL members responded that the Odd Quad is a perfect example of "theme housing" and should not, in fact, exist as a residential community.* '''Failure of clusters at Middlebury.''' Middlebury College [http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?view=article&section=news&id=6393 recently implemented a cluster-model housing system], and students there have a low opinion of it. In fact, their objections are very similar to Williams students' objections to anchor housing: social engineering, preventing them from living with friends, et cetera.
In its March 1, 2005 issue, the Williams ''Record'' [http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?view=article&section=news&id=6491 conducted a poll ] of student opinion on anchor housing. The following results turned up:
* 13% of students support anchor housing
* 29% of students oppose anchor housing
College Council also conducted a poll, which was [http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?view=article&section=news&id=6578 reported ] in the ''Record'' on March 15, 2005:
* 17% of respondants support anchor housing
* 13% are undecided
However, the Committee on Undergraduate Life made statements to the effect that a student opinion poll would not affect their decision. The 2005-2006 CUL has singlemindedly dedicated intself itself to implementing anchor housing in fall 2006. == Current Status == Cluster housing, defined by the division of the campus as four different Neighborhoods, is fully in motion and began to function at the beginning of the 2006 fall semester.  Students elected leaders to fill four positions on each neighborhood board as well as electing to retain the existing names over such choices as nearby mountains and the Ninja Turtles. In addition to the elected students, each board will contain one [[HLC]] (basically an HC) who will also be on the board. These students will be arriving early to school for planning, team building and training in how to navigate the college's event regulations and budgets. Freshmen lived in entries loosely affiliated with Neighborhoods while all upperclassmen and most off-campus seniors picked into and are now living in one of the four neighborhoods.  The implementation [http://www.williams.edu/resources/committees/cul/members.html CUL website] currently contains a member list, links to previous CUL reports, and a feedback form. There are also minutes from some of the subcommittee meetings. In addition, there is a CUL listserv maintained by WSO: <email>cul@wso.williams.edu</email>. Students are encouraged to send feedback, comments, and suggestions to the CUL via the web form, this e-mail address, or by editing [[Stuff the CUL should do]].  [[Faculty Associates and Affiliates]]One of the assets of the anchor housing system is now considered increasing opportunities for student-faculty interaction. Though the neighborhoods will be largely student-run, they will also receive some assistance from a moot point (small number of faculty associates in factconjunction with the Office of Campus Life. In addition, indications are that anchor housing was destined to every faculty member on campus will be implemented right from affiliated with one of the beginningfour residential neighborhoods, when and have the administration voiced approval opportunity to it participate in its infancy), though some students push for a modified cluster system that preserves some elements of free agencyneighborhood activities.
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