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Free agency

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* Holding open fora at Williams designed to solicit student opinion
* Touring Williams dorms to examine the interiors, as well as speak with current residents.
* Allowing [[The Record]] to cover meetings of the CUL. The paper also published a weeks-long series on the history of student housing at Williams and comparisons to housing at other institutions. [http://www.williams.edu/resources/committees/cul/reports/2002.pdf [2<nowiki>]</nowiki>]
Research conducted by the CUL from 2000-2002 led the 2002 report to call for changes to residential life. The first of these listed in the report and the first to be implemented were changes to room draw procedures. These changes were intended to fight what they saw as trend towards "homogeneity in houses" [http://www.williams.edu/resources/committees/cul/reports/2002.pdf [2ibid, ''We Recommend'' #1<nowiki>]</nowiki>], or [[self-segregation]] by students. Thus, beginning with the [[Spring 2002|spring of 2002]] room draw, the following restrictions on room draw procedure became reality until the end of free agency:
* '''Group reduction:''' The maximum number of students that could pick together in one lottery number was reduced from seven to four.
* '''Blind draw:''' Previously, [[WSO]]'s "Plans" service would post the names of students and what rooms they picked into in real time, and students picking in made decisions based on this knowledge. Under what students would come to call "blind draw," WSO was prevented from doing this, over their protests. WSO was allowed to post only the boolean occupancy state of a room and the gender of any occupants, and students going through room draw were carefully corralled in and out of the room draw location so as to control how much exposure they had to information about where prior picks had ended up.
These restrictions to room draw were what caused the student body as a whole to take an alarmed notice to the movement that would eventually end free agency, but students noted little more action regarding residential life restructuring by the next CUL other than their [http://www.williams.edu/resources/committees/cul/reports/2003.pdf satisfaction survey], and the CUL of the year after that comprised something of a hiccup. That CUL, of 2003 - 4, tasked itself with the examination of alcohol policy [http://www.williams.edu/resources/committees/cul/reports/2004.pdf [3<nowiki>]</nowiki>].
But the 2004-6 CULs returned to a focus on residential life, and these years were the golden sunset of free agency, which would make way for the new system of residential life, which has had many names. Willipedia's article covering the system is named for the name by wich it was first widely known: [[Anchor housing|Anchor Housing]].
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