<p>My D is a non-drinker and doesn’t do drugs. She might sip a glass of wine, but that’s it. She’s not into it for complex reasons, and these reasons are unlikely to change any time soon. If she is in an entry in which she doesn’t feel welcome (eg drinking is encouraged), is it ever possible to switch or is this impossible? How do they choose who is in which entry anyway?</p>
<p>I feel that in most entries, drinking is encouraged. The types of people and general dynamic of each individual entry determines what kinds of and how much pressure is involved, so it’s hard to give a generalization of entries. I am part of a heavily drinking entry, but I don’t drink (sans sips of concoctions new to me).</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of anyone switching entries…</p>
<p>Entries are supposedly formed by taking the percentages (i.e. gender, sport, ethnicity, etc.) of the entire class and recreating it in every entry. Obviously this is not completely accurate, but they try.</p>
<p>kkari’s right. </p>
<p>Well, so my entry was 16 girls and 5 guys. The majority of us were non-drinkers, and weren’t into the party scene. That didn’t change anything though. The common room would be trashed every weekend, and our JAs did nothing to stop it - in fact one of them was involved with the weekend partying. We tried having an entry meeting to sort things out, and the non-(beer) drinkers/partyers were told that we should ask for ‘permission’ a week in advance if we wanted to use the common room to watch a movie or something. And even when we did, that didn’t change things. We’d be there playing a board game, trying to watch a movie, and there’d be a loud game of beer pong in the other part of the room. </p>
<p>As someone who likes to drink in (what I think is) a sensible way, I didn’t feel at all welcome in my entry. I’m also not into the whole ‘pre-gaming and then heading out to a loud party for a random hook-up’ scene as most people - at least most entries - seem to be. So I was pretty miserable freshman year. In later years, you can at least choose who you live with but if you get a bad entry freshman year, that can sour your entire time at Williams. I did know of some people who switched out of entries, but Campus Life only does that in very drastic circumstances.</p>
<p>Also,mythmom mentioned something about the party scene starting at 11pm - the party scene starts <em>way</em> before 11pm. 11pm is when people usually head out for whatever campus party is on. The hours before that are when they pre-game. Concerts, for instance, (classical concerts, at any rate) are very poorly attended by Williams students even when we’ve had some pretty famous people perform. And it is <em>impossible</em> to do schoolwork/sleep in your room on the average weekend night, unless you’re completely impervious to external noise. Williams recently instituted a quiet house - the things I mentioned above were part of the motivation. To give you an idea, there was this girl who slept every night in her friend’s room because her house-mates were so loud and disrespectful. </p>
<p>Maybe this isn’t the right forum for all this, but I noticed some comments about drinking, the social scene, and the entry system, and thought I’d add my two cents worth.</p>
<p>I’m sorry a few of you had bad experiences with your JAs. I hope you provided some feedback to the Dean’s office or whoever would want to know about the problems. No system like that is perfect, and feedback is one way you can help improve it.</p>
<p>Along those lines, I had pretty bad JAs 30+ years ago, but I didn’t hear of any other entry having a bad experience that year. (We had two African-American JAs who didn’t even learn the names of the white girls in the entry and actively discouraged the AA girls from socializing with the white girls.) I still made very close friends within my entry and had a fantastic freshman year, despite the awful JAs. The situation wasn’t ideal, and we all could have used the support that JAs are supposed to provide, but it wasn’t a disaster at all.</p>
<p>It’s bound to happen that a few poor selections are made, but for the most part, I’ve heard of positive experiences.</p>
<p>Hoveringmom, my D is a non-drinker and also not much a of party goer. So, your D will have another like minded person at school with her and I don’t doubt there will be others. She does love to hang out with friends. I have no doubt she will find a place for herself as she would not be concerned about fitting in with the prevailing culture but is very tolerant of others. Is it helpful to ask for a roommate and you can request another like-minded person?</p>
<p>Alum (of a few years) here:</p>
<p>Yes, there is definitely a “typical” party scene available at Williams. However, as someone who participated in lots of the aforementioned concerts, you make friends with the people who have your interests. Half of my friends (including me) drank, half didn’t, but we all went to the same kinds of activities.</p>