Center for Development Economics Dinner Hosted by the Gargoyle Society

Why the Gargoyle Society hosts this event

The Gargoyle Society hosts this annual event to promote interaction between the CDE fellows and the rest of the Williams community (undergraduates, faculty and staff). We think that the school does not do enough to integrate the CDE fellows into the Williams community. Thus, we host this event to show the CDE fellows that the rest of the community is eager to meet them and include them in the activities and events hosted on this campus. Furthermore, we think the event helps the fellows make connections outside of the CDE and thus increases the likelihood that they will follow up on those connections and branch outside of the CDE building. We also think that this dinner greatly benefits undergraduates. We think that undergrads can learn a lot from the diverse group of people (and their diverse experiences) at the CDE.

The Event Format

Once we had all of the sign ups, we created table assignments. Each table had a few CDE fellows, a few students and 1-3 faculty / staff members. The idea is for a table to be no more than one quarter CDE fellows. We put enough CDE fellows at each table so that they knew some people at their table. However, since the point of the event was to encourage interactions between the fellows and other members of the community, we made sure that there were no all fellows tables or all students tables. To encourage discussions, the format was a semi-formal sit down dinner.

Event Location

It was hosted in Dodd Dining Hall. Dining Services closed the dining hall for the event. The 100 dinner guests were the only people using the dining hall on that night. Dining services added some nice touches to the dining hall so that the event was more formal than a regular dining hall meal.