^But, the OP is not exactly a totally unbiased observer, considering that he or she is a member of the very body that was the subject of one of the examples given in the initial post. In retrospect, the post sort of smacks of revenge. 
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Welcome to the internet. Maybe an axe to grind, maybe not. At least we have forums to discuss. I find sites like CC and Reddit a great source of info. You have to sift through some of the garbage to find the useful nuggets. I tend to disregard single user complaints but when you see a trend or corroboration the information becomes useful and lets you ask intelligent questions.
The story of the 2 black profs who didnât show up to teach is interesting but they seemed to have different things going on. One had significant mental health issues.
Of course, the OP âis not exactly a totally unbiased observerâ since he or she is an actual third year student who has real life experience at this school. Sometimes folks need to read & hear fresh, honest perspectives which are not sanitized, politically correct, pre-approved observations.
Honesty counts. And no one is accusing the OP of misrepresenting his or her impressions & experiences. Othersâ impressions and experiences may differ and those impressions and experiences should be considered as well.
I trust readers to be mature enough to handle unfiltered information in a fair light.
Additionally, college is one of lifeâs major expenses which occurs during a significant period of an individualâs life as these are sensitive and formative years for most.
I found the video of the April 9th College Council meeting, and it is quite intense. As an outsider I canât speak to whether whatâs shown there is applicable to the wider campus culture. There are two versions, a ten minutes one that shows the visit from the two frustrated, unhappy students and a longer one that shows the entire meeting, including the conversation after the two students left.
That was hard to watch. The CC floundering after the screaming was also painful.
I note that two current students have posted on this thread, and both have dramatically different perspectives on the campus environment. As always, I encourage those interested in Williams to try to visit the campus for themselves, and speak to as many different current students or recent alums as possible, to get as representative a view of campus life as possible. Some people are always going to be extremely disaffected with campus life - for a variety of different reasons - on any college campus. Itâs why every college has students transferring or dropping out (although Williams of course has relatively few). So while I would not entirely dismiss the perspective of any single student, and the concerns expressed should be taken seriously, I also wouldnât let one unhappy student define Williams for you.
As an alum who has paid close attention to campus life, I too have been distressed by some of the extremist perspectives that have been highlighted on this thread. At the same time, I do think some outside interests have magnified / seized upon some particular incidents in order to cast a narrative that does not accurately reflect the vast majority of students, or campus life in the aggregate. Ephblog is an example of one perspective to be very careful in giving too much credence to. Itâs a site created by a far-right alum, with a far-right agenda, that has a long history of distorting campus life and posting very inflammatory things about, in particular, minority students on campus. Again, Iâm not saying any perspective should be outright dismissed. But keep in mind that some students and recent alums are as angry about Williams, from the left, as some are angry about campus life, speaking from the right. The loudest, most aggrieved perspectives will often get the most attention and most traction, and if you catch any one loud and angry voice on any one particular day, you may come away with a view that is not accurate or balanced.
Iâll also note that this weekâs issue of the Williams Record provides a good example that some of the perspectives claimed to be impossible to hold in public at Williams are, in fact, publicly-held. There are actually THREE Op Eds angrily reacting to a prior weekâs Op Ed claiming that athletic recruiting plays too much of a role in admissions, and all of them defend the student-athlete culture on campus. Again, not necessarily a âpolitically correctâ perspective, yet one that is freely written about (persuasively, in my view) by multiple students in the campus paper.
@Ephman: The third paragraph of your response seems to miss the point of this thread.
Hopefully, a debate about whether or not a college should recruit athletes is not a âperspective claimed to be impossible to hold in public at Williamsâ. If it is, then Williams College has more significant issues than the alleged culture of excessive political correctness.
Sigh, sometimes it boils down to, âSo whatcha gonna do about it?â And I do agree with @Lindagaf that thereâs only so much one can complain if they help create an atmosphere of backing down and giving in.
CC is a place of opinions. Lots of disagreement. The fact of viewing things one way doesnât necessarily make it important to assert how valid it IS or more valid than anotherâs experience. And under the header, âBuyer Bewareâ and some ensuing clickbait. Once can always caveat, âin my experienceâ or somesuch. Not pronouncing absolutes. Not for an entire campus.
We each can process and filter, do our own research. Not just buy whatever side we agree with, in the moment.
And there have been so many stories on CC about disruption on campuses.
I do not think I missed the point of the thread, which, after all, is essentially entitled (among other things) that no athletes need apply. I think a vigorous defense of the role of athletes on campus, from multiple students, is directly relevant to the argument about campus culture made on this thread.
Which isnât to defend everything that happens at Williams. But, regarding athletics (among other things, including more core political perspectives), there is plenty of evidence of Williams students speaking out and/or writing in response to left-wing perspectives that they disagree with. And the institution itself has taken positive steps in this regard, including recently bringing in a Republican member of Congress as a term faculty member, passing what I view as a robust defense of campus freedom of speech, and overturning the (awful, in my view) WIFI decision.
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As with most college campuses experiencing these very same issues, the Williams administration brought this upon themselves. Coming out and stating openly that you want to strike a balance between free expression and inclusion, in the one place that should serve as the most open market for the free exchange of ideas anywhere, just means that the admins donât understand free speech to begin with.
Students and faculty should be able to share ideas without being shouted down, fired from their job, cursed, threatened or intimidated in any way. This behavior is almost exclusively from one side of the debate. Itâs baffling that those who preach inclusion and tolerance, while celebrating diversity, donât see that they have become the very people they claim to loathe.
How do we separate good ideas from bad ideas if one side is unwilling to consider opposing points of view, and will go to any length to suppress speech they donât like? How do you learn from others when you refuse to allow them to speak? You canât love diversity but hate diversity of thought. One side believes they are above being challenged when they are, in reality, heads filled with mush who should be using their college experience to learn, think and tolerate. Thatâs the way it was not all that long ago. Mario Savio would be appalled by what exists on college campuses today.
Colleges should be making their students strong, not providing safe spaces. Students who enter and leave college closed minded are destined to live very unfulfilling lives.
Yet, university leadership continues to cater to a small group of perpetually offended malcontents whose interpersonal skills, such as they are, contribute nothing but conflict. In doing so, they are depriving the majority of students the most important benefits of attending college. Williams could have stood for free speech and adopted the Chicago principles. Instead, they brought speakers to campus who claimed administrators should dictate what can and cannot be said on college campuses, and that only âfactual talksâ had a place in higher education. Just wow. Itâs unfortunate because my son fell in love with Williams on his visit. However, when we saw pictures of students carrying signs claiming âfree speech is harmful,â and that anyone in favor of free speech was trying to kill others, I made it clear to him that he would need to come up with the $70,000 a year to attend the school. Iâm not paying to have my child subjected to that craziness.
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Definitely agree that freedom of speech is the main issue here.
Colleges & universities should encourage the free exchange of ideas & opinions in a respectful manner.
Despite all of the obvious problems of the past, itâs clear that this most important freedom is under assault in many ways. We may have less ability to express views today, 2019 than say 1890 or 1776. Thatâs not a good idea, at all.
One can agree that hate speech is awful, most people get it. But some of what may be currently defined as âhate speechâ has broadened into areas outside of the clearly abhorrent into areas reasonable debate and discourse within a civil society. Itâs cancel culture. Thatâs a problem.
And Williams specifically ignored the wishes of many academics to withdraw its apparent acceptance of the Chicago standard, which is not ideal for a school of this level of excellence and academic reputation.
@Anisqoyo : What in your view are âthe Chicago principlesâ ?
@privatebanker: What is your understanding of âthe Chicago standardâ ?
I ask because your posts seem to contradict one another.
Speech is speech whether itâs rude and vicious or delicate and cerebral. Calling this a Free Speech issue is a misnomer.
@privatebanker: I agree with @Anisqoyo that âthe Chicago standardâ is simply another way of saying that free speech should be permitted & protected on college campuses.
@privatebanker: I am not clear about your last paragraph in post #32 above as it seems like it could be intepreted in two opposing ways.
@circuitrider: Free speech has limits. For example: Inciting riots as well as slander / libel should not be permitted.
Yes. I was only saying that Williams profs wanted in and were overridden. Not a good look or supportive of free speech.
I just used standard instead of principals, as I typed off the cuff. Total agreement here.
Am I missing something. Perhaps it wasnât clear in my post.
S1 didnât go to Swat because he perceived that a loud, entitled SJW minority there was something he didnât want to deal with. I always thought that Williams would be less radical than Swat, and was also surprised to hear Middlebury brought up. All we saw was LAXbros on our tour there. I mean, they have their own Ski hill and golf courseâŠhaving a hard time getting my head around the problems they might have.
The school he is going to is smack dab in the middle of a city. You have radicals there, for sure, but you can only go so far. Real life within spitting distance tends to moderate extreme views.
I will also note that the OP is involved in Student politics himself. Iâm sure it can be frustrating, but guess what, thatâs what you get in politics! Learning how to deal with these problems now should help you later on should you continue to be politically active. Having meetings where everyone agrees with one another is not the norm.
The Chicago statement, or principle, is very simple. It re-establishes the importance of freedom of speech at institutions of higher learning â something that has gotten lost at many college campuses today.
Hereâs a portion of the petition that was circulated by the faculty at Williams that supported adopting the Chicago principles:
âThe ideas of different members of the university community will often and quite naturally conflict. But it is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable or even deeply offensive. Although the university greatly values civility, and although all members of the university community share in the responsibility for maintaining a climate of mutual respect, concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.â
Pretty straightforward stuff for anyone with any grasp of our Constitution and the many laws that flow from it - not to mention wanting to live in a civil society. This was basic civics when I was in high school and it was something we all accepted without question. Some things are self-evident.
Approximately half of the Williams faculty signed on to this petition, but when they met to discuss it in full, students showed up and began yelling at the white members of the faculty to shut up, sit down and admit to their privilege. They claimed free speech is racist and hurts minorities. Good grief, these children are behaving like spoiled, privileged, aspiring totalitarians. They effectively shut down the petition. The adults at Williams have allowed the students to run the university. How do you think the real world is going to treat students who think the world should work like it does at Williams?
It wasnât all that long ago I was a college student in California where we absolutely had wannabe authoritarians as peers. They were a loud but small minority and the administration gave them plenty of latitude to present their ideas, but they would never allow the students to run the school. Todayâs radicals donât want to be part of a diverse and tolerant society. They want to be in charge. They are the thought police Orwell wrote about. Unfortunately for our society, these young adults never realized that Orwellâs book â1984â was meant to be a warning, not a road map.
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@Anisqoyo : Love your posts in this thread !!!
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