<p>I think what bothers me most about these threads is that some kid out there who might make the perceived problem better may not apply because of them. And they might be missing out on a great education with an affordable price. My kid is there on a lot of aid, following attending the diversity recruitment weekend. She probably fits the mainstream label. She attended a pretty mediocre high school and never traveled the world, so there are gaps in her knowledge that perhaps a more intellectual person might already know upon arrival at Williams. She’s never worked harder though, she’s made wonderful friends, she’s involved in campus acitivities, Williams has been everything I could have wished college to be for her.</p>
<p>Ephman wrote:
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<p>I don’t know which thread you were lurking, but, what I saw were four or five adults indulging in <em>ad hominem</em> attacks on people half their age. If you go back and read the OP’s first post (and, at this point, his only contribution to the thread) his biggest “crime” appears to have been the suggestion that most Williams students get a kick out of watching television. Considering how many of my fellow Wesleyan alumni are responsible for those programs, I felt it my duty to intervene.</p>
<p>My second child is about to graduate from Williams in June. He has had a great experiences with a few caveats.</p>
<p>My first child attended Barnard.</p>
<p>Both are intellectual; both were happy with their schools on that account. DD is in law school but wants to get an advanced degree in American Studies. DS doesn’t need to talk about his interests out of class; each class was chosen for intellectual stimulation. He has been both a music and Classics major.</p>
<p>I only wish he were a future dentist. LOL. (Not really, but his goal has been pure learning.)</p>
<p>On any given night he will call and tell me some arcane idea he has about Virgil or an new idea he has about Star Wars. He doesn’t differentiate. He doesn’t posture. LadyLazurus might not find him to be an intellectual if she met him casually. He certainly doesn’t pontificate. </p>
<p>He also is not an athlete and does not drink. At least not very much.</p>
<p>He has found many, many friends with similar interests.</p>
<p>I think each campus does a pulse and mood and Williams students are some what laid back in their style, so the hipster brand of intellectualism is not much on display. If that is wanted, yes, it may be missing.</p>
<p>As for the nay sayers, I think it is human nature to generalize from one’s own experience. That these negatives are expressed with such conviction and assumed to be universal is the prerogative of youth. </p>
<p>My D adored Barnard, but the daughter of one poster here transferred out.</p>
<p>No school is perfect. If we love or benefit from an institution we minimize its flaws. If we don’t, we maximize them. Again, just human nature.</p>
<p>That said, DS has had a very good experience there. My one complaint is that the advisement is not strong and he has gotten himself into academic pickles on occasion. There is not as much hand holding as there is at some peer institutions, for all the vaulted “faculty-student ratio” and “accessible professors” rhetoric.</p>
<p>On the other hand, that has helped him to grow up and he has emerged a very well-educated, intellectual and independent man.</p>
<p>John Wesley, glad you felt “obliged” to step in with constructive comments like “when Williams joins the big time” it will be more like Wesleyan. Thanks, but no thanks, Williams seems to be doing just fine as is. </p>
<p>Needless to say, I disagree with your assessment of both the responses (which were hardly ad hominen attacks but rather substantive rejoinders) and of the OP – who may have only posted once on this thread, but who has started essentially the identical thread, with the identical overbroad and, in many posters views (not all of them parents), unfair and inaccurate commentary, on prior occasions on this forum. We get it, the OP had a bad experience, and feels the need to – repeatedly – start threads here painting the students at Williams in a certain way. It’s more than fair for other students, alums, and parents of students who feel that depiction in no way represents who they actually are to vehementy disagree.</p>
<p>^^It’s one thing to call atttention to a statement that is unfair and inaccurate (although, as others have pointed out, I’m not sure how you go about delivering a “substantive rejoinder” to someone else’s experience?) It’s another to suggest that by posting something unflattering about Williams that the writer is a chronic malcontent, a loner, and probably a lesbian.</p>
<p>If, as you say, the OP feels the need to “repeatedly – start threads here” then, where are the threads? Maybe, if you guys would stop demanding they be removed, they’d eventually sink beneath the usual bushel of “Chance Me” threads Williams gets every week.</p>
<p>Who demanded that a thread be removed? Not me. I guess we are damned if we do, damned if we don’t with you – if we object to a characterization of Williams and, in some cases, to a claim that people like us are generally unhappy at Williams, then we are a lynch mob out for blood. Otherwise, you just assume we are petitioning for removal of threads. I guess we’ll have to wait to be as “big time” as Wesleyan before our views warrant consideration. </p>
<p>(The previous LONG thread with the SAME lengthy discussion, from the summer and featuring the same critics of Williams saying the same things, was something like: “Queer, minority, or intellectual? Don’t go to Williams!” – that isn’t inflammatory or anything. I’m sure you can find it; it’s not like I’m making this previous interminable discussion up).</p>
<p>Addendum, I just searched and that thread does indeed appear to be gone. No idea why. I certainly never called for its removal, nor do I remember anyone else doing do. NOt really sure how moderation at this site works. It’s too bad as it could just as easily have been bumped because it was the same two critics of Williams saying the same things (that time with the inflammatory statement that minorities, queers, and intellectuals shouldn’t attend Williams, notwithstanding the many happy Ephs in one or more of those categories), with about a dozen people, many of them current students, sharing a different perspective.</p>
<p>“I felt it my duty to intervene”</p>
<p>And your comments have been so useful and helpful. I really try hard to be respectful of someone’s experience. I guess I haven’t mastered “snide remarks 101.” I suspect a Williams graduate can handle him or herself in a discussion. Again, it’s an anonymous message board and Wesleyan is a great school. No need for such valor.</p>
<p>Reading these posts, and the similar ones which have preceded it, it does seem, without questioning motives here, that the OP intends to provoke. And the provocation has been met with some heat, particularly and rather inexplicably, from some of the parents here, though not all of them. Could this be the way opinions of this kind (the school is not intellectual stimulating, there is not enough acceptance of diversity, etc. etc.) are actually met within the college community itself? I hope not, but what I know about Williams today suggests it is not, though many may not agree with the OP.</p>
<p>I don’t see how it is helpful here to react to these opinions as though one has been slapped in the face, which is how I would characterize a few of these comments. The school is more resilient than that. What the OP is suggesting is not something that is not heard and discussed in the Williams community at large, not at all, and it is at least worthy of discussion, if not agreement.</p>
<p>It is true that some people are very unhappy at Williams, for a number of reasons, some of which have nothing to do with the school but with students’ private lives and mental or physical health issues; some are unhappy because they are unable to find a critical mass of like-minded friends. I do not wish to minimize anyone’s suffering, at Williams or elsewhere, or to say that the suffering is caused by something that the person in question does not recognize or acknowledge: I simply do not know who is posting, or why. But I do know that the distribution of misery at Williams doesn’t seem to follow the pattern identified by Person.
On the one hand, a large proportion of unhappy people here are “mainstream” people; they often find it very difficult to talk about their troubles, primarily because they are expected, and expect themselves, to be always successful and joyful. On the other hand, a considerable number of Williams students who are considered more marginal by Person - creative, intellectual, international, US minorities, gays, lesbians and bisexuals - are no less happy (if in a different way) than their jock peers. Simply put, I haven’t seen any correlation between misery at Williams and intellectual or sexual interests.
I know many artists at Williams who had never felt at home in large groups. I know “queer” people in every sense of the word - people who are not, by any measure, a part of the “dominant culture”, either at Williams or in the society at large. A vast majority of them were and are at least as happy at Williams as they were/are/are likely to be anywhere else. They have found like-minded friends and they enjoy exploring together - a different kind of friendship, a different kind of art, a different kind of evening than other, more gregarious, students. It is my impression that some people who are intellectually, artistically or personally “queer” or “out of the mainstream” actually LIKE the fact that they are a minority of sorts. Some think that this is a mark of true sophistication. And often it really is. But not always.
To sum up: Person and LadyLazarus - and a number of other people, some very different from them - were not happy at Williams. But the correlation between their interests, character, sexual orientation, literary taste etc. and their suffering has not been shown. From what I have seen, such correlation does not exist.</p>
<p>Navarre, thoughtful post. Brought to mind Tolstoy’s observation: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.</p>
<p>Hey everyone, I’m an international applicant who has already submitted his ED application to Williams and this forum and many news that I’ve read in the last couple of weeks have really shocked me, for example :<a href=“http://blastmagazine.com/2009/12/08/homophobia-plagues-williams-college/[/url]”>http://blastmagazine.com/2009/12/08/homophobia-plagues-williams-college/</a></p>
<p>Is Williams a homophobic school?? and does the mainstream of people hate minorities?? … I mean I’m from Colombia, a dangerous country, and I want to move to the United States because I feel that there I will have a more peaceful live, but even here I have never had an incident of violence in school in my live. So it would be very ironic that in the United States I’ll be harm just because I’m international or different. </p>
<p>I’ll really want to hear about it from the students, and this doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the comments of the parents, but let’s face it, you only hear a part of the whole thing that happens in Williams. And I’m really concerned because just a week ago I sent my ED application thinking that Williams was the best place for me, and I don’t want to be wrong, and certainly I don’t want to go to a place plagued of homophobia as the article says. Thank you very much.</p>
<p>Esdienti: </p>
<p>I’m sorry, but from what my S has told me, few Williams students would have the time or interest to be in a College Confidential forum. They’re incredibly busy, and they already got into college, so they’re not interested in beating a dead horse. Maybe it’s the people who aren’t happy that have the motivation to post, because they’re looking for a place to vent their feelings.</p>
<p>My S is from Mexico, and moved to the US for the same reason you’re thinking of moving. He’s VERY happy at Williams. He says that Williams students are friendly, and he hasn’t encountered any bigotry whatsoever. </p>
<p>From what I saw when I visited, people at Williams seem to classy to be bigots. In my experience, bigots are people that want to feel superior to others because they consider themselves non-special, so they look for something that they DO have, and then they declare themselves superior for it. </p>
<p>People at Williams are special, so they don’t need to uplift themselves by putting other people down.</p>
<p>Esdienti, you will come to no harm at Williams. You may enjoy it more or less; certainly there will be some form of “culture shock”. But no one at Williams was beaten, injured or physically attacked in any way for being international, gay, or different in any way. Date rape happens, though - but there are ways of avoiding situations that may allow such horrible things to happen. If you are admitted ED, come & visit if you can, or ask the admissions office to have a skype conversation with several students. That can easily be arranged on this end.</p>
<p>First, want to echo that Navarre’s longer post above is very well put, and very thoughtful, and I wholeheartedly agree.</p>
<p>Second, esdienti, you have no cause for concern. There are few places safer that Williams / Williamstown. Williams is not “plagued” by homophobia, in fact there are few places in America that are LESS tolerant of homophobes than a place like Williams. Basically, a (likely highly intoxicated) drunk wrote a slur on a wall. But what is more important is to consider the massive reaction on campus, which is wholly supportive of gay / minority students, and immediately condemns this type of behavior, which is an extreme outlier at Williams (or other schools like it). </p>
<p>If Williams is “plagued” by anything, it is by a small handful of aggressive drunk idiots who will do really dumb things when drunk (but in no case with they physically beat up another student or anything like that, we are talking petty vandalism and shouting moronic things). </p>
<p>Honestly, though, the college reacts (and some would even say overreacts) whenever the tiny minority of jerks does something that is anti-gay, minority, international etc., as the vast majority of Ephs just don’t put up with that garbage. Again to echo Navarre, you may feel culture shock, etc., but one thing you need NOT do is fear for your safety or worry about some sort of general culture of harassment, because the VAST majority of students are tolerant and appreciate diversity.</p>
<p>Thank you all, for your answers. It makes me feel very happy to know that the people whom you raised will hopefully be my classmates because I knew that you taught them well. I hope that I can be a part of Williams and enjoy with the rest of the community, and that all the information that I have found would be just a misleading way of presenting the facts. Thank you once again!! and if I’ll make it to Williams I’ll be posting in this same thread about my experience in a year =)</p>