218
edits
Changes
→History: seeking NPOV
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§ion=news&id=6449 highly regarded] by the student body.
The CUL finally [http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?view=article§ion=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's|Administration]] approval. Students in Anchors Away worried that the administration was ignoring their opinion, but the CUL determined 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 what they are deliberating now.
In April 2005, College Council submitted a [http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?view=article§ion=news&id=6706 letter of opposition] to clusters to the adminsitration. The letter makes explicit the point that anchor housing cannot be successful without enthusiastic support from the students, something it is unclear the CUL can obtain.
==Student Opinion==