I was wondering if anyone who currently attends Williams College, specifically people who identify as a person of color and/or low-income can tell me about their experiences at Williams College (the people, the environment, the adjustment, etc). Much appreciated!
Very good question! I am also interested in hearing about this.
The lack of responses to this question is very interesting…hoping this doesn’t reflect the environment at Williams. 
I was just looking at this as respects Williams College and didn’t find much outstanding either way. The USNWR diversity report rates them a 0.59 on a scale of 0 to 1.00, which put them about…in the middle.
Check out honeybee63’s comments (#10 & #11) on the following thread.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/williams-college/159547-elite-and-preppy.html
Thanks for the link to honeybee63’s comments. Very enlightening and allows me a sigh of relief. I am from the school of thought that you can make the most of social environment you are in, but I also want my child to feel comfortable and welcome from the get go. There is so much to adjust to as a freshman as it is.
From my limited experience at Williams I have sensed that what draws these students together transcends their differences. I never felt any sense of “entitlement” from any of the students. As a matter of fact it was the tremendously workman like manner that impressed me the most. Students truly are there to learn, and unlike a certain school i visited where the student body got the “princess” treatment all the people i met at Williams seemed down to earth. We are working class people and felt very much at home, i hope all of you will as well…
@Singersdad Was the “certain school” you refer to another elite LAC located in MA? Could you provide a brief sense of what the “princess treatment” consisted of and how it differed from the ethos of Williams? Thanks.
Yes actually, It would be one near Boston, where a certain presidential candidate did her undergraduate studies… The academics at this “other school” are quite excellent. From the moment of our arrival on campus we didn’t see any groups of people. There was a pervasive air of competitive aloofness. When we asked a student for directions to the student center she looked terrified, like she’d never gotten over the “Stranger Danger” video from Kindergarten. When we found the dining hall and saw the bottled lemon and cucumber water, my jaw dropped open.Compare that to Williams where the Bell book says.
"You don’t need to bring bottled water. Besides the fact that water bottles are a huge waste issue in the world, you will be given a beautiful reusable Williams water bottle AND the Williamstown tap water is delicious and healthy! "
I’m pretty sure that socioeconomically the students are similar, the mindset and environment are worlds apart. And that is reflected in the way the students act…
Now if you were referring the the arch rival “A” school lol We actually did enjoy our visit there. The town is wonderful tons of college students, nifty shops and restaurants… but somehow we felt Williams was more authentic.
I know my daughter who would have LOVED to be an aspiring princess will thank me one day.
@Singersdad LOL at your “Stranger Danger” observation. Thanks for the helpful feedback. I was interested to hear that despite your reservations about the “W” school, you did not find the “A” school objectionable.
@MrSamford2014 Although i realize it is blasphemous, at least in this thread, “the singing college” is a wonderful place. I felt a little “Old School” seriousness there. If one happens to be a big fan of Emily Dickenson, or the Folger Shakespeare library(both of which have strong connections to Amherst) I could understand the attraction. Actually i wonder how many Williams students might consider dropping in to see one of the Shakespeare First Folios, which will be on tour and stopping for a while at the Frost library in 2016. Maybe it’s not a bad thing to have another fine LAC in the neighborhood?
My daughter is a young woman of color at Williams and is a Junior. I would say that she feels very comfortable with her peers and hasn’t had any race related issues. There is a strong black student union on campus and she enjoys their functions. Students are pretty diverse both racially and financially. While the majority on campus are white students, you definitely see diversity everywhere. Hope this helps.
http://communications.williams.edu/news-releases/3_26_2015_admits/
The diversity in the 2019 admitted class looks outstanding: 50 percent are students of color, twenty-one percent (246) are first-generation college students, 14 percent (159 students) are affiliated with QuestBridge, fully 70 percent of admitted students applied for aid (average Williams grant is 46K), and they did this while maintaining the highest academic standards, “the admitted students’ academic profile is exceptional, with average SAT scores of 731 in critical reading, 720 in math, and 727 in writing. The average ACT is a 33”
As a white male at Williams, I’m going to attempt to tread lightly on this thread. I didn’t answer the question initially because I’m not a PoC, but I can see that this thread seems to be lacking some actual student input, so I’ll hope to share mine. If I offend anyone in any way, I’m sorry, and please let me know what was offensive and why so that i can refrain from making the same mistake again.
Williams is a very liberal-minded, progressive place. We have multiple different minority student organizations (Minority Coalition, Black Student Union, etc.) and a good percentage of PoC’s at the school, something around 50%. However, Williams was, for a very long time, a bastion of repressive white male-ness, and it seems to carry the reputation - untrue though it may be - into the current day. I can say unequivocally that this is not true today. The campus is, it seems, constantly rife with dialogue on the current racial issues, of which there are obviously many. Ferguson, MO and the inordinate amount of police brutality against black people rule the discussion currently, but the main topics of conversation are ever-changing, and always present in the campus discourse. We have speakers, performers, and presenters come almost weekly, it seems, to deliver more news of the injustices that we see in the world, safe in our little Purple Bubble. For example, the Williams Reads book this year (a book that all Williams students are encouraged to read over the summer) was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which is about a black woman whose cells were taken from her without permission and now form the backbone of a multi-billion-dollar industry, while her family still lives in a state of desperate poverty. We have had multiple events over the year discussing this book and its implications, as well as having members of her family come and speak about their experiences. We also have dealt with issues that arose in the College itself, smaller though they may have been. One incident that sparked outrage was the dressing up of a group of girls in taco costumes, sombreros, and moustaches, which was offensive to the hispanic population of the school because it belittled and tokenized their culture. the girls apologized profusely, but not until it had become a school-wide point of interest. This issue was the talk of the school for weeks, and tempers flared. However, I can honestly say that I came out of the discourse with a much better understanding of why tokenizing and appropriating a culture is harmful and offensive, and I know that this kind of discussion would never have happened had the incident taken place in my hometown.
Despite all the discussion, all the microaggressions that occur on campus (which are always, always unintentional), I hope that I can say correctly that Williams is a remarkably accepting place. The color of your skin is not the first, second, or even third thing that someone recognizes about you; in fact, as much as any other place that I have ever been, Williams is effectively colorblind. I can only speak to my personal experience, but I have friends of every race - multiple, usually. I don’t say this as though I was bookkeeping, checking races off of a list as if they were only a way to say, “Hey, I’m not racist!” No, I say this because I almost have to think twice about a person to remember what race they actually are. It’s that unimportant to day-to-day life at Williams. My best friend is Indian, but I just think of him as my best friend, not my Indian friend. That sentiment is shared school-wide, something I can see just by looking at who is talking to who: white people are walking with black people, an asian person is grabbing lunch with her hispanic friend, and no one gives racial biases the time of day. In my experience, Williams is a remarkably accepting place, whatever your background, story, or skin color. I sincerely hope others have found this to be the case as well, but I would bet my last dollar that they have.
In terms of the other part of your question (low-income students), money just doesn’t even factor in to who you are on campus. I couldn’t possibly tell you which of my friends are on financial aid or not, because a) no one talks about it, and b) no one cares. Your financial situation is simply irrelevant at Williams, because we’re all here now and that’s enough.
I hope that I answered your questions, and I especially hope that you don’t think that my answer was an indictment of Williams as a socially-conscious school. I love Williams, and everyone else I talk to does too - once again, regardless of skin color. Every school has racial tension, just because racial tensions exist in our culture today. The difference between schools is how they deal with that tension, and I firmly believe that Williams does the best job it possibly can.
One more thing: if you want more information on any of this stuff, the Williams Alternative has some very interesting articles that deal with the subject of race at Williams from a few weeks ago. I will caution in advance, however, that the site posts opinion articles, and some people naturally have very strong opinions. Take what you read on the site with a grain of salt, and realize that in many cases people post things that are not considered acceptable at Williams. Still, it’s interesting, and worth a look if you’re interested.
http://williamsalternative.com/ # to get to the interesting articles, go back a few weeks.
Thanks for reading, and I hope I shed some light on your question.
That’s a great comment. Thanks for sharing your informed and nuanced perspective!
@jersey454, I agree with Marvin100, as much as parents and others can try to describe the college, posts like yours really reveal the soul of Williams today. Thanks for taking the time.
As an alumnus of color of Williams who identified as low income then, I have to say that I found my experience immensely suffocating. Jersey 454’s comments on the Williams Reads’ book and his take-away from that racially insensitive action by those girls highlight one of my major gripes: that minorities and their experiences are treated like “case studies” for the white student body to analyze and dissect. It’s belittling.
Unfortunately, its that point that I find the least troublesome. Williams is colorblind? That’s nonsense. Money does factor into who you are! At the end of the day the richer kids only hang out with the richer kids, the poorer kids only hang out with the poorer kids. Minority groups typically hang out with each other, and people of color who hang out with whites are often villified by their more aggressive same race peers as “tokens” or “white supremacist apologists.”
I could go at much greater length about this, but am not sure if people are still paying attention to this thread. Anyone that is a person of color, or a parent of a person of color considering Williams, do yourself a favor and stay away. I immensely regret going, and hope that others do not fall into the same trap I did.
@WilliamsAlumni, I’m so sorry that you had a bad experience at Williams. No one should have to go through a bad college experience, much less regret going to the school that they did.
How long ago did you graduate? What was the diversity ratio like back then? I ask because your experience seems so opposite to what I’m currently experiencing, especially in terms of social groups on campus. I can say, unequivocally, that others’ money and financial status have not factored into my decisions while here at ALL. My best friends, whose financial status I know only because we spend so much time together, are composed of both well-off and lower-income, of both white people and black people, of both Indian people and hispanic people, of both international students and students who have never left American soil. It’s not just my own friends, either; I rarely see groups comprised of entirely one race walking around campus or sitting entirely together (besides groups of entirely white people, which is statistically far more likely just because they comprise half the student body). Besides that, the entry system seems to do an amazing job of resisting the segregation of the campus from the start. I have a lot of friends in my entry, and, as per the Williams goal, they are of all different races and backgrounds, both experiential and socioeconomic. I also made friends of all races and backgrounds outside of the entry, too. My best friend is Indian, and his group of friends mirrors my own well in terms of its diversity. However, this is not to say that there’s no identity for minority groups; as I said in my post, we have multiple organizations established where minority students can have their voices heard. Your experience seems so truly foreign to me that I have to wonder how long ago you were at Williams, and whether things have changed significantly since then.
In terms of the “case studies” issue, I have to say that I agree with some points and disagree with others. You pointed out the Williams Reads series as being a case study experience for white students to dissect, but I would say that this is inherently belittling that family’s own struggle to be heard and to bring more justice - that’s not a perfect word to use here, but it should suffice - to the medical research field. The family came and spoke with us about their experiences, and the campus as a whole learned about how to be more racially sensitive and learned about a real example where racism in the past has led to a cycle of extreme poverty for a family that should have been extremely wealthy. I’m not trying to tell you that your interpretation of it as a person of color was incorrect - after all, your own opinion of it is certainly much more viable than mine, since you are experiencing an emotion and expressing it - but I just wonder how we, as white people, are supposed to become more racially sensitive and decrease the presence of racism in the world if we are not given examples of wrongdoings and subsequently told how to correct them, or discussion thereof. With the girls dressing in taco suits incident, however, I agree with you. The school collectively gathered and discussed the morality of the situation as a whole, regarding the specific emotions of one group on campus (in this case, Mexican people). I can see how this would be belittling and demeaning to these people, who do not want an entire discussion on the issue but would prefer that the issue never present itself in the first place. However, I think that, given that the issue occurred, Williams collectively handled it in the best way possible. The student body educated each other on how to be empathetic to racial injustices, and all groups - not just white people, but other minorities as well - came away with a deeper understanding of how to identify and avoid racist or offensive actions. I know that it was not just white people because I was having discussions with my friends and entrymates, many of whom are people of color, and they were asking much the same questions I was. In essence, I think that having racial issues become case studies for everyone to learn from is a necessary evil for having more well informed and sensitive graduates of Williams.
As to people of color ostracizing people of their race who hang out with white people, my friends are either lying to me about that or it does not exist. Since coming to campus, I don’t think I have heard the term “white supremacist apologist”, nor “tokens” used in the derogatory way in which you have said. Campus seems to be integrated extremely well, and, although there are naturally people who take strong stances on either side, this has not translated to segregation of the student body in my experience. I regret that you found it to be so during your time here, and I hope that things changed for you after leaving Williams. Please let me know if I have been mistaken here, as, again, I would like to further my own understanding of the views of a culture that is not my own in order to become more sensitive and welcoming to that culture.
TL;DR I disagree with points in the post above, and I wonder whether things have changed since the poster was a student here. The campus that I see is fully integrated, with examples being my own friends and the entry system as a whole, and the issue of racial tensions being discussed as if they were case studies is a necessary evil in order to have a more racially sensitive student body.
@jersey454 I’ve graduated within the past 3 years. Will respond to the rest of your posts in greater detail soon, but wanted to let anyone seeing this threat that my opinions are based off of a recent experience at Williams.
Alright, first, I’d say most of my “friends” at Williams fell on the richer end of the spectrum. My white friends outside of Williams I have found to be drastically different from those I interacted with at the College. It’s hard to put my finger on it exactly, but its almost like they weren’t as “weird.”
Here’s an article written by a student of color recently where the terms I’ve listed are used, and the ostracizing I spoke of is somewhat highlighted. Also helpful for understanding how current students of color are thinking. http://williamsalternative.com/2015/03/valeria-pelayo-white-fragility-not-problem/