Stuff the CUL should do

Revision as of 22:06, December 5, 2005 by Ddavis (talk | contribs) (link to religion and fixed typo)

This is what the CUL is doing. http://www.williams.edu/resources/committees/cul/members.html

Stuff it should do. This will all be taken into consideration. Right now the most valuable things are ideas. please edit....

  • Not be so fixated on Anchor housing that it can't consider other ideas...like, for example, that the majority of students on campus don't like the idea of anchors.
  • Decrease the number of clusters to four
    • . . . and make those clusters Prospect House, Greylock Quad, Mission, and Dodd Quad, into which all students with liberty at their pick number will be free to pick into, or not. All other buildings on campus will remain officially unaffiliated, but free to participate what cluster activities the cluster residents and leaders wish to open to them.
      • ... Once a year, we can raid the non-Clusterite dorms and pillage their rooms, stealing their young for the random cluster-related odd job, such as clipping my toenails while I read...
      • Okay, you might think that's a good idea, and I might think that's a good idea, but we both know that the CUL is going to be just as receptive to that notion as the heartfelt, sincere, well-thought-out suggestion that they decrease the number of cluster to one. We are but poor Williams students who know next to nothing about social critical masses, genuine communities, or other vague and meaningless buzzwords.
    • Seriously, four is a good number. There are four class years on campus, four traditional dining halls, four houses each in Mission and Greylock. Five clusters make anchor housing even more contrived and artificial than it has to be.
      • Five are the books of the... Torah. Five are our half our fingers and five are half our toes, and five are half the commandments that Moses brought...
        • Is the CUL becoming a religion?
          • Is spiritual well-being and connectedness not a vital part of improved campus cohesiveness? What better way to unite us all than to formulate the cluster system through detailed exegesis of the sacred word? If we called CC the council of elders, maybe we would believe in them more...
            • Maybe each cluster should have an official religion. This could play into the Peoples and cultures requirement, by having them all be non-Western religions.
  • Realize that they are the committee on UNDERGRADUATE life and take the opinions, needs, and desires of that constituancy as their guiding light, rather than appeasement of the administration and perpetuation of their own position
    • Seconded. Opinion polls all 'round.
  • So the transition is going to be accomplished by a coupled room draw / cluster draw, where assigned room pick numbers are inversely related to cluster pick numbers. This should be how rising sophomores are assigned to clusters every year from now on. That would temper a lot of the awfulness of anchor housing, while still preventing "theme housing" from developing.
    • Seconded.
  • Be open to the possibility of reverting to a system based on free agency if the evaluation committee determines that anchor housing has failed in the future.
  • Implement the cluster over three years. For the purposes of transition, assign sophomores to clusters in 06-07, but maintain the roomdraw for rising juniors and seniors to fill in the housing spaces that are left after the cluster roomdraw. This will prevent seniors and to a lesser degree, juniors, from being thrown into a bath of ice water with respect to clusterization. Then in 07-08, assign new rising sophomores into clusters, keep the rising juniors in their clusters, and allow the seniors to be last (class) pick free agents. Then, in 08-09, your masterpiece will be complete and you'll be glad you didn't rush things.
  • Get more statisticians and social psychologists on the CUL.
    • Correction: Get statisticians and social psychologists on the CUL, period.
  • The only way to improve Tyler House is to move it to a location next to Route 2.
  • Fire the CLCs and hire Drew Newman in their place. This will instantly solve any and all problems related to residential life, entertainment, social life, parties, events, etc.