As most people here probably already know, the entry system is one of Williams’s most unique characteristics. Until just recently, the entry system consisted of 2 JA’s per approximately 20-25 students. This year, however, marks the first year of a big change: there are now 3-4 JA’s per 40-50 first years. Some initial reactions to the changes can be found here: https://williamsrecord.com/2018/10/jas-react-to-new-system-larger-entries/
Personally, I’m not that worried about the changes to the entry system, but more so concerned with the impetus for why people wanted the system to change. JA’s had complained of being overloaded with emotional work and not getting adequate compensation, with minority JA’s being especially overburdened with the amount of minority students coming to them for support. I’m a white male so I won’t claim to be able to comment on the minority experience in the entry system — actually, it seems to me that the changes made probably have the most benefits for minority students due to less of a feeling of tokenization and isolation — but I can definitely offer my two cents on why JA’s have felt more overworked in the past two years than in the 40 or so before that, where it was a hard job but not an impossible one.
First, why have JA’s been feeling overworked? There are obviously many factors at play here, but I think that the major cause is an increase in the acceptability of struggling with mental health. With so many young people now realizing that it is quite normal to struggle with anxiety, depression, or even just having hard days, the frequency of people reaching out for support will inevitably be higher. We’ve seen this effect elsewhere at Williams too, as psych services has had to be significantly expanded in the wake of the infamous “marble block” event. JA’s that used to deal with a couple kids with significant mental distress per entry are now inundated with students that have recognized their mental problems and, in a time of great change in their lives, are coming to a college-given resource in droves. This naturally places a much heavier burden on JA’s. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think that the decreased stigma on mental health issues is a great thing, but it’s become a really widespread issue that the JA’s in years past have definitely been taking the brunt of the increase (see also: “Williams Depression” shirts).
The second part of the complaints was the lack of compensation, which I think is indicative of a much larger campus problem: a lack of community. JA’s have been complaining about lack of pay since the dawn of time, but it only picked up steam in the past couple of years. To my mind, this indicates that an element of the actual compensation to JA’s was lost: prestige. JA used to be a highly prestigious position, with only the best of the best getting to live in an entry for a second year. That prestige has DEFINITELY dropped off recently, just as applications have been decreasing for years on end. In fact, last year JAAB (JA Advisory Board) had to beg more people to apply because not enough suitable candidates had. When your peers no longer look up to you as a result of being a JA, you’re naturally less inclined to become one without some other form of compensation. The question of why the prestige declined, however, is the one I’m really interested in. Although I don’t have any hard answers, I have a hunch that it is connected with a pretty widely recognized trend of a decrease in community feel at Williams.
Community at Williams has been decreasing since my first year. Intramural sports, which I had participated in as a freshman, have become pretty much nonexistent. Entries, which used to spend the first 2-ish months just hanging out with each other, have started to fragment much more quickly. And people that live on the same hallway can go an entire year without getting to know each other if they didn’t pick in together, which I know from direct experience living in a couple buildings without floor common rooms. Even houses with common rooms on each floor can suffer from this issue, as the biggest and loudest pick group will usually win de facto control of the common space closest to them. This slow decline in community feel coincides closely with the decimation of the neighborhood system. Before the 2008 financial crisis, my understanding of the neighborhood system was that it dictated that students could only pick into one neighborhood for all three years after their entry was finished, with the exception of off-campus housing. This split the campus living situation into smaller groups that were really forced to get to know each other, at least partially. It’s much harder to justify not getting to know someone when they’re part of a group of 150 people (average number of people per class year in each neighborhood) that you will be living with for the next 3 years. The expansion of your potential living-mates from ~150 over 3 years to ~500 is a huge difference, and even starker if you ignore class borders: ~300-400 to ~1500. This expansion made Williams no longer feel small and intimate, but rather — somehow — large and impersonal. That was my experience by senior year, and I know it was the experience of others as well. So to me, the current lack of prestige of the JA position makes perfect sense, as there’s no reason to value people that help the community when there doesn’t feel like there’s much of a community at all.
Having said all this, I’d like to offer some pretty significant caveats: I was not a JA, so I won’t claim to know exactly what that experience was like. I am white and male, so the minority experience may be very different (although probably not better). I have benefitted enormously from my time at Williams, and have grown into someone that is much more self-sufficient than before, although I do think that that would have happened at most high-caliber institutions. And this is just my personal experience, though I think it is probably generalizable across many people at Williams, especially non-athletes since athletes still have the built-in team community. But at the end of the day, Williams has a crisis of community right now, and I think the entries can feel that. First years basically take their lead for how to act socially from the upperclassmen, and if there’s no attempt at community from seniors and juniors then there will almost certainly be a similar lack of effort from the newest members of the college. I, and many others, see the entry system as being on its last legs simply because it is essentially alone in attempting to foster community at Williams.
Now, i don’t think that these problems are insurmountable, nor do I think that they will always exist. We have a new president and the new entry system seems to be making some positive changes, at least so far. I was also a senior when I really started noticing this lack of community and am generally a little cynical about large institutions in general, so maybe it was partially SWUG-ness. But I worry about the state of the Williams community, and I think we will need to be very intentional at creating spaces where community and comradeship can be fostered amongst the upper classes, because we currently don’t have much in the way of structure past the entry system.
Make what you will of all of this. I don’t think Williams is a bad place, just a hard place to be sometimes. It makes you grow a lot, and that’s very valuable in such formative years. But sometimes I wish it had been a little easier to feel like I was a part of something greater.
