Class of 2009

Colleges and Universities A-Z Williams College
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<p>Here are a couple of articles I posted last year that provide great information and dispel a few myths regarding the athletic aspect of the Williams culture. One is from the Chronicle of Higher Education, the other from the NCAA News.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.ncaa.org/news/2002/20020722/active/3915n02.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ncaa.org/news/2002/20020722/active/3915n02.html&lt;/a>
<a href="http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i26/26a03701.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i26/26a03701.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>First. My daughter has not had a "crazy" drinking experience with Williams. That was the description of her friend, a current freshman at Williams, who described the drinking at the school as "crazy". I can't press my daughter's friend for details....Come on! She did say that 30 of the 32 freshmen in her entry "party".</p>

<p>The only think that shocked my daughter during her January visit (a weekend stay in the Williams Inn) was the weather. She caught a cold snap and it was a quintessentially Williamstown Siberian experience. It took me more than a year to convince her to visit in the summer and give the place a fair shake.</p>

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<p>From the Williams Record, October 19, 2004:</p>

<p>"Also discussed at length was the concept of students enabling alcohol abuse by other students through their lack of action against it. Sokolow spoke of students’ unwillingness to confront other students about alcohol problems, saying that Williams students had the highest tolerance for taking care of other drunk students that he had seen anywhere."</p>

<p>"According to Jean Thorndike, director of Campus Safety, there had been eight hospital transports as of Oct. 2. Four of these transports were alcohol-related, three were injury related and one was for illness. Security is made aware of student ambulance transports because the Williamstown Police Department notifies the College when it receives a 9-1-1 call from the College, Thorndike said." (now, mind you, the North Adams Regional Hospital is 7 miles away, so we're talking about things being pretty darn serious.)</p>

<p>“You’re doing a good job at protecting students from harm while having an environment in which some students drink a lot, [often] in ways that you ought to be very concerned about,” Horowitz said “On the other hand, you’re not doing very well from the point of view of presenting alternatives to drinking and countering the perception of the predominance of the drinking culture.” </p>

<p>Horowitz called the drinking culture “hegemonic,” explaining that those students who do drink tend to dominate the social scene. “There needs to be a way to put forth the fact that a significant minority of Williams students don’t drink and don’t feel like they have to drink to have a good time,” he said. </p>

<p>Although Horowitz emphasized the need to counter the perception of the College’s drinking culture, Sokolow was quick to point out that dangerous behavior is still taking place. </p>

<p>“The mythology is that this is a safe place to drink and that we are controlled about our alcohol, and although we party a lot here we do it responsibly,” he said. “The extent to which [non-administrative] members of the community buy into the Williams mythology was really quite staggering.”</p>

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<p>Mini--
What--exactly--was the drinking event was that so "shocked" you and your daughter that you continually pop up here like some teetotalling whack-a-mole every time someone asks for input as to life at Williams, ca. 2004? Anyone can read the Williams Record online, whether you're 300 miles away like me, or 3000 (?) miles away like you. Williams happens to be confronting a problem that bedevils most colleges and universities, and is doing it a public way. Hence the publicity. The issue is whether or not Williams has some unique problem with alcohol that is absent at other schools...and you don't make that case.</p>

<p>ID has erroneously stated several times that Williams "closed" their health center due to liability issues re alcohol. Not true. Williams no longer has evening hours on weekends (Wesleyan made the same change, at the same time.) I don't recall seeing that the issue at either school was specifically alcohol. But both schools have functioning health centers. Wesleyan, btw, has instituted a "3 strikes" rule (how illiberal) for drug/alcohol related treatments. Williams specifically rejected such a proposal, because it conflicts with administration admonitions that <em>any</em> student exhibiting <em>any</em> alcohol-related distress should be taken by his/her comrades for treatment--no penalty. It is drilled into them these days. </p>

<p>It doesn't surprise me at all that 4 freshmen (out of 500), under these circumstances, would end up at North Adams Medical because they drank too much at their first party or playing Beirut, or something else. (Not that far, anyway...North Adams is where they buy their hooch.) I don't say that I like student drinking, but it seems to me that the fact that Williams has chosen to deal with student drinking issues publicly is what has caused the publicity. Not some notion that this school, filled as it is with brilliant, talented, scholar-athletes-artists-musicians performing at the highest levels is in fact some upper-echelon crackhouse.</p>

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<p>Mini:</p>

<p>You missed this gem from this week's Record:</p>

<p>"At the meeting, Ilunga Kalala ’05, CC co-president, shared with Council incidents custodians encountered the previous weekend, including eight incidences of vomit around campus and feces smeared in the Field House. Expecting members of the College staff to regularly clean-up situations like this is unacceptable and embarassing, particularly given the ideals of service and community to which Williams students are usually held. In meetings of the Task Force, Bea Miles, manager of custodial services, has repeatedly emphasized the secondhand effects of alcohol that custodians must deal with regularly. For a campus that prides itself on having one of the best and brightest student bodies in the nation, this is disgracefully mindless behavior."</p>

<p>BTW, those 4 upper-class alcohol hospital transports by Oct 2 took place in a three-week period. Classes didn't start until Sept 9th. I am amazed that people are still in denial about this problem, given the headlines this fall about college students dying from alcohol poisoning. There is not a college parent in the United States, at any college, who should be in denial about this issue. We talked about it with my daughter before she left for college, specifically about the danger of consumption of alcohol at a rate faster than it is absorbed by the bloodstream, thus short-circuiting normal protection mechanisms.</p>

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<p>Actually, the Health Center is now closed after 9:00 pm on weekdays and after 8:00 pm on weekends. Prior to this year, the Williams Health Center was a 24/7 facility, as it is as most elite liberal arts colleges.</p>

<p>The specific reason for the change at Williams was the refusal of the attending physicians in Williamstown to assume the liability for alcohol-related treatment due to the alarming number (and alarming blood-alcohol levels) they had been seeing in recent years.</p>

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<p>Well, that's what the consultants reported - the campus is in deep denial. Dean Roseman knows it is only a matter of time before they have their first death - they've gotten close on several occasions, including a prospective student who was rushed to the emergency room with with a blood-alcohol level of .041. Had he died, the JA would have been charged with felony endangerment. The consultants noted that of all the campuses visited, Williams students were the least likely to confront their peers about dangerous drinking behavior - in other words, of the dozens of campuses they've visited, Williams is the campus on which dangerous drinking is most normative - "hegemonic" is the term they used.</p>

<p>Drinking witnessed? D. arrived Wednesday at 5. Drinking started at 5:30. Continued after dinner. Quiet drinking. Students complained that folks in the next entry way were roaring loud drunk 3 times a week. D. asked "what if she didn't want to live with someone, or next to someone who was roaring drunk 3 times a week? She says students looked at her as if she was from another planet. Went to an a capella concert at 9:30. Students took flasks with them. Booze was provided by the JAs.</p>

<p>Campus health center averaged 80 overnights for alcohol poisoning over a five year period, and closed at night because no physician was willing to take on the liability of treating them.</p>

<p>It is NOT the same on other campuses. It is isn't to say that there aren't problems on other northeast LAC campuses. But Williams is in deep denial -- to quote the consultant again:</p>

<p>“The mythology is that this is a safe place to drink and that we are controlled about our alcohol, and although we party a lot here we do it responsibly,” he said. “The extent to which [non-administrative] members of the community buy into the Williams mythology was really quite staggering.”</p>

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<p>You guys make a great tag team. But other than Mini's daughter's one night experience...and I have to say, that if the kids were going to an a capella concert on a Wednesday night, with flasks, and drinking at 5:30 in the evening, and during and after dinner....this was not your ordinary weeknight....and other than ID's hearsay from his daughter's friend...everything else you're basing your opinions on is the Williams Record online. And what you see there is a college that takes student drinking as a serious issue, and is willing to address it publicly. I applaud them for that. Charges of "denial" are insulting.</p>

<p>Wesleyan's Health Center change their hours at the same time Williams did, but Wesleyan's are significantly more restricted. They close at 7pm on weeknights (except for Fridays, when they close at 5pm). They close at 4 pm on Saturday, and are closed on Sundays. Using ID's logic, they must have a huge problem. They also have a 3-strikes policy which would tend to reduce the number of reported alcohol incidents. I've also never seen anything that suggests that alcohol issues were the reason either school changed the hours of their health centers....if you have a source, I'd appreciate seeing it. Doctors have lots of liability issues these days. There is a lot of drinking going on at most colleges, and I don't know how you compare one to another when most aren't willing to publicly discuss any problems they may have. You guys seem to have some kind of weird, soft vendetta against the school you claim did so well by you. I'm going to go watch the ball game.</p>

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<p>I recently spent a few days in Williamstown visiting my son who is a sophomore. I talked at length with him and his friends about Williams’ reputation as a drunken jock school. The consensus among them is that this stereotype is much overblown and that the non-jock, non-or-light-drinker can do just fine. Are they in “denial”? No, they are there and they know what’s going on. </p>

<p>My son is not an athlete, although he is physically active in outdoorsy pursuits. In his housing draw group of four boys and four girls, 2 are athletes (girls) and others are musicians, artists, actors, politicians, hikers, museum docents -- you name it. What they have in common is that they are all very smart, active, social, outgoing kids. They are happy! They juggle fierce academics with organized events and random fun activities. Some of them drink, some don’t, but for sure they’re not drunk Thursday to Sunday. As for the sports, again, it’s partly the healthy body, healthy mind focus and partly the fact that Williams kids support each other. If someone’s doing something publicly whether it’s sports or art or music or theater, his/her friends turn out to watch and cheer him/her on. It’s fun, it’s social, it’s active.</p>

<p>All small colleges have stereotypes. Smith is known for militant feminism. Swarthmore for brainiac introverts. Wesleyan for drugged out multi-sexuals. Although there may be some smoke behind these images, there is no fire – at least not enough to discourage anyone from attending these fine schools. The same goes for Williams: There are plenty of reasons to choose another college instead of Williams – weather, isolation, size are foremost – however, I would never recommend that any one avoid Williams because of perceived drinking problems or an excessive emphasis on sports (unless s/he really is a brainiac introvert).</p>

<p>I applaud Williams for bringing drinking issues to the forefront and for trying proactively to avoid a real problem and to divert a perceived problem. They did the same thing a few years ago when they focused on recruting artistic or intellectually minded non-athletes, which is the main reason that my son ended up at Williams. </p>

<p>My son and his friends had wonderful freshman years and appear to be well into wonderful sophomore years. The entry and JA system contributed greatly to their ease of transition. They made what I like to think of as friends for life, both their peer and the JA's. Emphatically, they -- and I -- don’t want to see the entry system changed.</p>

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<p>Interesteddad...did you catch "the gem" in this week's Phoenix at Swarthmore. An alumnus won the Nobel prize in economics. He was captain of the football team at Swarthmore many years ago. There goes an argument that scholar athletes take up valuable admission slots.</p>

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<p>And the surgeon who did Clinton's heart surgery played football for Williams.</p>

<p>(Having said that, though, it does surprise me how much Williams has been willing to stretch its admissions standards for football players in recent years (based PURELY on anecdotal evidence)).</p>

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<p>Yep. Class of 1962. He would have been a teammate of Swathmore's best known football player, Neil Austrian '61. Austrian went on to serve as President of the N.F.L. </p>

<p>Austrian was a member of the Athletic Review Committee and Swat's Board of Managers when they decided to drop football in 2000. He bitterly opposed the decision and had left the Board by the following year.</p>

<p>Interestingly, another Swat board member and member of the Athletic Review Committee, Neil Grabois, was a JV athlete at Swat and has strong ties to Williams, where he worked for 25 years as a math professor, dean of the college (when I was there), dean of the faculty, and Provost before leaving to become President of Colgate. Grabois was strongly in favor of the decision to drop football.</p>

<p>It's a very difficult issue that has nothing to do with the merits of football, but everything to do with small enrollment at these schools and the increasing necessity of recruiting in Division III athletics. The 80 or so football players you need for a competitive football team is nothing at a large university, but represents a significant number at a college with only 700 male students and an even more significant number to the admissions office, requiring them to send acceptance letters to a lot of football players to keep the pond stocked each year. There are a lot of much larger universities, Emory and U Chicago being two examples, who have opted not to support football programs.</p>

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<p>Momrath -- the consultants spoke at length about the mythologies that Williams students hold about responsible drinking at Williams. Ignore me totally - I'm fine with that - after all, it is true that all my d. saw was one visit, the same allocated to other colleges, where she witnessed little of that sort. Listen to what the consultants said. "Mythology". "Hegemonic". More tolerance of dangerous levels of drinking behavior than at any other college they had ever visited (and they've been to dozens.) I didn't say that -- consultants hired by the College did.</p>

<p>If you want to see why Williams restricted to the hours of their health center, just search the Williams Record for Dean Roseman's comments. Check the visits to the overnight health center in the past 5 years (average 80 per year - I would call that "fire" not "smoke"), and then just query other colleges for the same data.</p>

<p>Frankly, I do think Williams will change, and very quickly. One death will do it. According to the Dean, they've gotten extremely close already, and their luck won't hold out forever.The College will act unilaterally, just as they did with smoking. They didn't ask for student opinion. They just banned it. Yes, some students still smoke "secretly" in their rooms. They don't smear feces on walls. They don't require trips to the emergency room in North Adams. </p>

<p>But the College will move because of liability concerns. Now that they've publicly recognized the problem, and the consultants have confirmed that it is indeed worse than at comparable colleges, Prez Morty and the trustees will act - the costs of not taking action will outweigh those of taking it. If they can protect student health 40 years from now by banning smoking, alcohol is relatively easy.</p>

<p>And they have such a large array of choices, it will be even easier:
- A ban on hard alcohol and kegs n the two freshman quads, with enforcement from security.
- The removal of any JA who provides alcohol to underage students.
- The athletic suspension of any athlete who commits an alcohol violation, in season or out.
- An addition to the honor code, requiring (at risk of academic suspension) students to call for help when they perceive any one in trouble from dangerous levels of drinking.
- Suspension for the spreading of vomit and feces in the field house. (Duh....)
- Increased cooperation between the College and local police in checking for underage purchases at liquor stores (there aren't that many in Ephland.)
- A ban on alcohol-related games.</p>

<p>These are all actions that have been taken at comparable colleges. Williams would not in any way be considered odd for taking such actions - indeed, in many instances they are the "odd college out" in NOT taking action.</p>

<p>They will attract three applicants for every one they lose as a result. The college, already a wonderful, wonderful place, will be even better for it.</p>

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<p>to support the notion that drinking is not an enormous problem at Williams, and to the extent that it is, it is not more pronounced than at peer institutions. I haven't seen any comparison, by Mini or interestestdad or anyone, that provides any quantum of evidence that drinking is more prevalent at Williams than at any NESCAC or Ivy school. That was the original point of this thread and many of their posts -- that somehow, you would be making a sacrifice vis a vis other comparable institutions in terms of drinking culture if you were to choose Williams. The reality is, based on the experiences of myself and many friends at these institutions, I would put Williams smack dab in the middle in terms of campus drinking. During the fall and spring semesters (winter study is slightly different), if drinking happens mid-week, it is very limited to a small subset of student life. </p>

<p>I was on campus for four years, and I'd say based on heavy involvement in student government and other campus activities as an undergrad, I knew about 90 percent of my classmates. Of this 90 percent, I knew very, very few who ever drank outside of Thursday through Saturday night, and once again, very few who drank to dangerous extremes. Does it happen? Yes. Is there inappropriate behavior? Yes. And these are the examples, the few bad apples, who attract an inordinate, disproportionate amount of attention from adminstration, media, police. But you'd be hard pressed to find any college west of BYU where you could not say the same thing. I don't recall ever feeling peer pressure to drink, and I had nurmous friends who never drank at all as undergrads, still loved Williams, and donate money to the school as alums. I am sure that any campus struggles with providing social options that don't involve alcohol -- after all, big parties just aren't very successful at attracting kids, whether at Swarthmore or anywhere else, if no alcohol is present. However, Williams does manage to have movies on campus most weekends, sporting events on campus many weekends, lectures on campus every week, three top-nothc museums near-by, and a plethora of well-attended arts performances on campus, not to mention a world class golf course, ski slopes, and great mountains to hike, so it's not as if yo ucan't have a good time or find plenty to do at Williams if you don't drink. </p>

<p>Regarding athletics at Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, and Middlebury, Williams' closest peers, all have similar percentages of athletes on campus -- in fact, I would bet Bowdoin and perhaps Amherst have even higher percentages of male athletes, given that they have essentially the same number of varsity sports programs, programs which are, like Williams, very successful, and given that they have significantly smaller student bodies overall. </p>

<p>I am confident that Williams has never been stronger. Look at the facts: two straight years atop US News, four Marshall / Rhodes winners last year alone, expanding the tutorial program and adding the Willimas in New York program, incredibly financially healthy, top of the heap in athletics and undergrad scienctific research among LA's for many years, top LA school in terms of sending kids to professional school according to Wall Street journal, most diverse group of students, racially speaking, arriving on campus over the last two years, etc. etc. Each year, admissions acceptance percentages are going down (19 percent is the lowest in many, many years, if not ever) and SAT's are going up -- getting into the 1420 range on average. Yes, Williams can improve some of the extreme examples of kids drinking too much on campus -- and that is exactly why they brought consultants in to address the problem. But to say that all over campus, people are binge drinking on weeknights is just irresponsible -- given that the average Williams kid take s avery demanding course load, either plays a sport, does extensive community service, or engages in other time intensive campus activities, plus attends lectures, concerts, sporting events, and meetings, they just don't have the time or energy to be trashed three nights a week.</p>

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<p>"Mythology". "Hegemonic". "Tolerance" (of dangerous levels of binge drinking.) Do you think the consultants went out of their way to lie? I mean I'm not there. You're not there. The consultants were.</p>

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<p>Mini:</p>

<p>I don't think it will be as easy as you think. It seems to me that "campus culture" issues are self-perpetuating. A school develops a reputation and, in turn, attracts students who find that reputation attractive. This perpetuates and reinforces the behavior that led to the reputation in the first place. IMO, Williams can have an incremental impact with the kind of sanctions you propose, but a more sweeping change in the culture will require looking at the admissions department. I think that they have tacitly approved the growing reputation as a work hard/play hard drinking school as a way of offsetting the marketing liability associated with the location and the "lack of stuff to do". I'm also not sure that they have really been paying much attention to the types of students they have been accepting -- as evidenced by the fact that it is the only elite LAC I've seen that doesn't ask "Why Williams?", a question that can provide a lot of insight into how a prospective student views the college experience.</p>

<p>I found it very interesting that the consultants at Williams seemed to be recommending a relaxation of prohibition-style enforcement as a potential solution (although they also implied a strengthening of sanctions for irresponsible behavior).</p>

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<p>Interesteddad: I agree that the campus cultures are self-perpetuating to some extent. That's not always bad. I wonder how much of the blame can be placed on the admissions department from the standpoint of to whom they're offering admission. It seems to me that that's where the yield concept comes in, because if I recall correctly, Mini stated that he new of quite a number of admittees who had turned down Williams because of the alcohol situation. The admissions committee may be offering admission to a great number of sober, artsy non-athletes, but those admittees may be declining the offers because of their perception of the school's atmosphere. (Also, I should add that when I was at Williams, over 20 years ago, most of the hardest core partiers I knew were not athletes at all.) I don't know what in particular the school could do at the admissions office to increase the yield of students who would make a difference in their effort to change the culture of the school. I think if there were an easy solution, the problem would have been solved long ago.</p>

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<p>Good point. The yield self-selection does limit the effectiveness of the admissions department.</p>

<p>If I were a dean at Williams, I would be identifying the problem "entries" and pulling the applications and housing questionaire forms to look for common identifying characteristics. To me, there is just a little too much "playing dumb" on the part of the Williams administration. </p>

<p>I know that Swat's Dean of Housing takes a quiet, proactive approach by using the housing questionnaires and freshmen housing assignments to avoid reaching the "critical mass" that turns a hall (or an entire dorm) into Animal House.</p>

<p>Also, when there has been an instance of drunken damage to a dorm and the students want to protect the problem drinkers, the Dean of Housing divides the cost of repairs by the total number of residents in the entire dorm and they each get a bill for $10 or whatever. I think this tends to create a little impetus for self-policing.</p>

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<p>I agree that looking for patterns in the troublesome entries would be helpful. One other thing I think they could do would be to match the overnight hosts and guests a little more carefully. Again, drawing on my own relatively ancient familiarity with hosting prospective students, I know a number of hosts set out to show the prospective students a "good time" and really stepped up the partying to impress them. Some were impressed, some weren't. Perhaps selecting the hosts more carefully and looking at patterns involving the student hosts (and whether their guests accepted the offers of admission) might be helpful, too, in not discouraging the more sober applicants from attending.</p>

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<p>The closest Williams has come to an alcohol poisoning fatality occurred a couple of years ago. A pre-frosh prospective student on an overnight visit was found unconcious on the steps of an entry in the Freshmen Quad by campus security and sent by ambulance to North Adams hospital. The student had a blood alcohol level in excess of 0.40 (50% survivability rate), was unconscious for a considerable period of time, and spent several days in the hospital before ultimately recovering.</p>

<p>I would certainly concur that Williams needs to select their hosts more carefully.</p>