<p>I'm looking at Williams College for one of my children. Should I be concerned about this?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ephblog.com/archives/004365.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.ephblog.com/archives/004365.html</a></p>
<p>I know that drunken vandalism is not unusual at colleges, but this seems extreme.</p>
<p>I'm concerned, both as an alum and as a parent of a prospective student.</p>
<p>ncram: As a Middlebury alum, you should be more than aware of the "antics" that occur at Midd in relation to drinking as well -- some also including human excretions (one in particular resulted in the competitive season of a Midd sports team being cut short two years ago).</p>
<p>Most Williams students are not happy with the disrespect and abuse exhibited by a small number of "miscreants" -- either students or "visitors."</p>
<p>Yea, I've recently talked to some Williams students and they were more than disgusted. These are a small minority of students doing such things and one of the incidents was from an "outsider". So yes be concerned, but with college drinking period, not necessarily just Williams.</p>
<p>Full links and commentary here:</p>
<p>No need for concern. There is no good evidence that things are worse (or better) at Williams than at any similar school, at least on the bio-cleanup dimension.</p>
<p>The head of buildings and grounds at Williams says you're wrong. He says he asked his colleagues about the spreading of fecal matter at other NESCAC colleges and was met with blank stares - they didn't even know what he was talking about.</p>
<p>"Director of Campus Life Doug Schiazza’s recent survey of peer institutions confirmed this reality. Staffers at one other NESCAC school expressed shock at even being asked about the topic, and were only able to recall a single case of bio-cleanup on their campus."</p>
<p>Eph country has had 24 just since September.</p>
<p>They aren't isolated instances, or in only one part of campus either:</p>
<p>"Miles noted that because the bio-cleanup incidents have occurred all over the campus, the inability to target the problem’s source heightens the frustrations related to the issue. “These have been in every neighborhood in every kind of building,” Miles said. “I can’t say that there’s a pattern, because it’s been all over campus, which in some ways is more disturbing.” </p>
<p>It seems to be becoming a Williams tradition. Paresky has now been "broken in".</p>
<p>"Eph country has had 24"</p>
<p>To be specific, only a handful (pardon the expression) involving "poo" -- but any number is more than the vast majority of students, and administration, would like to see. And though cleanups have been necessary in each of the four "neighborhoods," they have not occurred in all of the dorms. </p>
<p>I believe resticted entry would keep out the transgressors who, most likely, do not live where they are wreaking havoc.</p>
<p>Mini, clearly the vast majority of Williams students do not fit the mold you have cast for them. Nevertheless, there is still a very small number of bad apples who are slipping through the cracks. I firmly believe that the admissions office bears at least some of the responsibility for this, and think that this spate of incidents should send a clear signal to the administration that change is in order.</p>
<p>It's probably just a coincidence, but biological wastes are currently a hot topic at [url=<a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/10/15/news/18995.shtml%5DPrinceton%5B/url">http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/10/15/news/18995.shtml]Princeton[/url</a>] as well.</p>
<p>These stories concerned me two years ago when D2 was considering Williams. I asked D1, who attended Princeton, if that was "normal" college behavior. She said absolutely not; there might be occasional vomit messes from too much drinking but she had never heard of anything like the poop incidents. (And public urination, while gross, is not on the scale of what is going on at Williams.) And getting sick was very much frowned upon, as the officers of the eating clubs hosting the parties were the ones who had to clean it up! D is in her second year at Williams and is disgusted by this revolting behavior. Still, except for the embarrassment to her school, it isn't something that really impacts her college experience. But it is very unfortunate and I really hope the vast majority of students who find this completely unacceptable will use as much peer pressure as possible to stop it.</p>
<p>What actually happened? I read the blogs but it is not specific. It sounds very disappointing given the acacdemic caliber of the student body. My D is hoping to get away from that type of behavior. So what happened? And what is being done about it? mom</p>
<p>I am looking (and have looked) at Midd for my kids as well (and Amherst, and Dartmouth and Georgetown and Fordham, etc, etc). One of the things I do is read about the schools on this site and other blogs. The student papers are also a good source of what's going on.</p>
<p>I would be just as horrified to read of bio cleanups at any school, including Middlebury College. (But I haven't.) For what it is worth I am big fan of Williams College and encouraged my 2 kids that have been through the application process to apply. </p>
<p>I guess I should be clear--while I am really down on the type of drunkeness that leads to messy vomiting and public urination, I know it happens at most colleges. (I am not sure about the vandalism though -- lots of reports on ephblog about vandalism at Williams--is this a common occurence at peer schools?)</p>
<p>But this Williams situation seems to be on a whole other level of repulsiveness. In the three years or so I have been looking at colleges for my kids, I haven't heard or read about anything like this.</p>
<p>"But I haven't. ... I haven't heard or read about anything like this."</p>
<p>To their credit, The Record's editors write about the types of issues that won't ever see the light of day at other colleges -- I highly doubt the Midd student paper published the "messy" details relating to the sports team occurrence I referenced in post #3.</p>
<p>....particularly one I was encouraging my children to consider. Share the details if you will on the Midd incident onemoremom. It would be easy to confirm that a college sports team had games cancelled for disciplinary reasons.</p>
<p>Now I suppose you can find one example of just about anything, but 6! </p>
<p>And the Williams Record doesn't seem to think this is common college behavior:</p>
<p>"While we acknowledge that unhealthy drinking patterns are common at schools across the nation, we know that custodians cleaning up 24 biological messes including six involving feces in less than two months is not. Director of Campus Life Doug Schiazzas recent survey of peer institutions confirmed this reality. Staffers at one other NESCAC school expressed shock at even being asked about the topic, and were only able to recall a single case of bio-cleanup on their campus. Though excessive imbibing is common at other colleges, the level of rampant disrespect for property were seeing here cannot be written off as average."</p>
<p>"It would be easy to confirm that a college sports team had games cancelled for disciplinary reasons."</p>
<p>Yes, it would -- I suggest you begin by reviewing team news from late winter 2006. I really don't feel it's my place to publicize what Middlebury College may have chosen to keep quiet about. </p>
<p>Another parent's take on the recent occurrences at Williams (from EphBlog):</p>
<p>"While waiting for me in the hospital yesterday, my wife had an interesting conversation with several other relatives of patients. One family had brought in a young girl they are adopting from an orphanage in a former Eastern Bloc country. They fell to talikng about her adjustment problems and the mother said, "Well, at least she's finally stopped smearing ***** all over the walls." Another parent talked about how his son had done that briefly after lightning had caused a fire in their house years ago. Apparently, smearing fecal matter is a surprisingly common reaction to trauma among children up to early adolescence.</p>
<p>We tend to just think, "Oh, it's some drunks" when we hear that someone is smearing feces on the walls at Williams. My wife is wondering whether the perpetrator or perpetrators might be someone who, in addition to substance abuse problems, also is haunted by some trauma. In other words, are the feces-smearing incidents a cry for help (that goes beyond a need for garden variety substance abuse treatment)? That would not excuse the incidents but it makes me hope even more fervently that the college quickly finds out who is doing it and requires that the perpetrator or perpetrators (assuming it is students) have a psychological evaluation and get help if it is needed. There may be someone in the Williams community who is hurting very badly.</p>
<p>I'm no psychologist but what I'm suggesting and wondering is whether the feces smearer(s) might be different from the run-of-the-mill drunken doesn't-make-it-to-the-toilet-and-throws-up-all-over-the-room type (who probably also could use substance abuse counseling)."</p>
<p>Yes, this certainly can be considered to be "sick" behavior.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'd be very sad to hear about similar incidences at any college..... </p>
<hr>
<p>....particularly one I was encouraging my children to consider. Share the details if you will on the Midd incident onemoremom. It would be easy to confirm that a college sports team had games cancelled for disciplinary reasons.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It's not a secret at all. The coach of the Middlebury men's swimming team cancelled the remainder of the team's season in February of 2006 after learning of violations of team policy with respect to the use of alcohol during a team initiation of some sort for freshmen swimmers. A similar thing happened to Wesleyan's men's hockey team in 2004 (the team was barred from the NESCAC play-offs for similar reasons). Both stories were covered by student newspapers.</p>
<p>Bad things happen at good colleges -- ALL of them. This particular bit of perversity appears to be exclusive to Williams for reasons that we may or may not ever understand, but if you scratch below the surface of any college you will find some kind of un-pleasantry. It's the old Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll syndrome: the sex and drugs (or alcohol) are fairly consistent, but the rock and roll varies considerably and surprisingly. If you had the time to comb through the blogs, local papers and police reports of any college, you would find enough human frailty to "harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand an end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine."</p>
<p>I'm glad that Williams airs their laundry publicly, but doing so has the unintended consequence of bringing out the bashers in force and forcing the real concerned parties into retreat. A lot of schools deal with scandals furtively, but not Williams -- they get them out there, in the Record, in surveys, in studies, in reports. </p>
<p>Williams is a wonderful college full of wonderful caring kids, faculty and administrators. There are plenty of reasons to choose another college instead of Williams, but this particular issue shouldn't discourage serious consideration.</p>
<p>What is important to remember is that what happens at Williams, for better or for worse, is subject to far greater scrutiny than equivalent behavior at Williams' peers due to Ephblog, which is widely read by students, alums, and prospectives. No other top liberal arts college features an equivalent source of scrutiny. (Although there is an Amherst blog, it features perhaps 1/100th of the activity of Ephblog, and I don't know of any other Williams peer to even have an active alumni blog of this nature). As a result, a news story that might be buried in a Bowdoin student paper, or a comment thread on a student-run website like WSO that is normally read only by other students, blows up into a major story on Ephblog that almost inevitably finds it way to this site. That transparency is a good thing, but it can often lead many readers of this site to believe that problems endemic to all NESCAC schools are in fact experienced only at Williams. </p>
<p>And I'm not saying this particular story is such a case. In terms of this story, it is something that certainly should concern you as a parent, but as others have said, it is a very small minority of students responsible, and the fact that other students, recent alums, and the administration are all clearly outraged is something you should also consider: it is not as if the majority of campus is tolerant of this type of behavior, let alone are perpatrators. At the same time, there clearly are students who are engaging in out of control drinking and flat-out immature, disgusting, selfish behavior, and while that happens at almost any college (and certainly all of Williams' closest peers), the problem does seem particularly bad at Williams over the last few years. I hope it has reached the tipping point where students and admins just aren't going to put up with it anymore. One silver lining: at least the tipping point (if this does indeed prove to be the tipping point, as I believe it will) is this, rather than a student death (which ends up being the provocation for change at many other schools).</p>
<p>
[quote]
No other top liberal arts college features an equivalent source of scrutiny. (Although there is an Amherst blog, it features perhaps 1/100th of the activity of Ephblog, and I don't know of any other Williams peer to even have an active alumni blog of this nature).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>While certainly not as obsessively active as Ephblog, other NESCAC schools do have blogs. They are mostly maintained by current students, but do touch upon the daily happenings at their respective institutions.</p>
<p>Check out:</p>
<p><a href="http://wesleying.blogspot.com/%5B/url%5D">http://wesleying.blogspot.com/</a>
<a href="http://middblog.blogspot.com/%5B/url%5D">http://middblog.blogspot.com/</a></p>
<p>I think the really important thing to understand about this (admittedly disgusting) incident is that it is NOT a reflection of the Williams student body, nor is it the sort of occurrence that influences any but a few students' experience at Williams. Think about it--at most, this is the "work" of 6 students (more reasonably it's probably one student). Like it or not, every college has some population of disturbed students...most colleges brush such incidents under the rug, as most incidents caused by disturbed students are a bit lower profile than this. While for the average prospective student or concerned parent these fecal incidents may seem like a very big deal, for the average matriculated student, other than causing much more discussion around campus, a disturbed student-caused fecal incident will impact their lives little more than many other lower profile incidents at other colleges that are also caused by disturbed students. Maybe these events are drinking-related, maybe they're not...regardless, if they have shown us anything about Williams culture-as-a-whole, it is that just about all current Williams students are as horrified and disgusted by these events as you or I may be.</p>
<p>I agree that smearing crap on the walls is not normal. As far as I know it didn't happen once during my four years at Williams (I graduated last year). However, it is also no more a "Williams" thing than the swim team at Wesleyan pulling a similar prank is a "Wesleyan" thing. Such incidents--at just about any college--are infrequent and isolated enough that they shouldn't be attributed to anything other than the particularly offensive actions of one or two disturbed students. </p>
<p>Finally, regarding disturbed students at colleges, one might take these occurrences at Williams as evidence that Williams has a higher percentage of emotionally disturbed students than the average college. I'm afraid that I only have anecdotal evidence to contradict that assumption, but in my experience (which I strongly feel is much more indicative of Williams' culture than the Record or Ephblog, as strong as those publications may be), Williams is filled by an unbelievable number of wonderful and interesting people. Sure, there are a few bad apples, but I've never seen a place with as relatively few of a number of bad apples as there were at Williams--the overwhelming majority of students fall into the "I'm super glad my brother/sister/daughter are friends with them" category. Maybe more important (well, possibly in the minds of the parents reading this) there were surprisingly few who fell into the category of "I'm a little/very nervous about this kid being around my son/daughter/sister."</p>