Changes

Anchor housing restricts the room draw to a small cluster of dorms. Houses on campus will be divided into five 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.

There are ideas for a "House Cup" and House IM teams, informal faculty dinners, designated bulletin boards in the new Baxter, trips for apple picking and bowling, etc.cluster outings, but plans are not definite yet. Some students (and CUL members) have joked about whether the clusters will be named after the houses in the Harry Potter books.

The houses Chadbourne, Doughty, Lambert, Milham, Poker Flats, Rectory, Susie Hopkins, and Woodbridge will remain (or become) [[co-ops]]. For the CUL's complete description of anchor housing, see 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, though it perpetuates the misconception that the change from House Affiliation to Free Agency was driven by the administration and was "accidental." In fact, students were freely swapping rooms well before the official switch to Free Agency, thus a de facto free agency system existed at the end of the House Affiliation period.