<p>hi everyone! I'm new here, and I'm going to be starting as a freshman at Williams this coming fall (I can't wait :):)). </p>
<p>I was wondering what people know about the different neighborhoods. I heard that this is a new system and that all frosh will be affiliated with one neighborhood or another. Does anyone know anything about the neighborhoods? Are certain neighborhoods nicer than others? Will we be able to request to belong to a certain neighborhood at the end of freshman year?</p>
<p>Anyways, I was just curious what other people have heard or are thinking about this! I am really excited that Williams just started this system--it sounds like a great way for us to all meet tons of upperclassmen and to get to know people we're living with longer. When i visited campus one thing a lot of students said was that they didn't know people in other years and that since they switched houses every year after freshman year, they didn't get to know people in their houses that well. Hopefully this will change all of that!!</p>
<p>a warning-cluster housing is kinda a touchy subject for upperclassmen, so they might not have many nice things to say about it. Especially since we first years kicked the sophomores out of their housing... oops.</p>
<p>For sophmore year, you will be randomly assigned to one of four "neighborhoods" or grouping of dorms. You will then live in that neighborhood for the next three years, choosing your room in a seniority lottery within that neighborhood.</p>
<p>The Williams administration is trying to end self-segregation -- football team in one dorm, black students in another, artsy types in another, heavy drinkers in one, lighter drinkers in another. The cluster house system is intended to force a mixture of all types of students in each neighborhood. It has been put in place over considerable objection from the student body. </p>
<p>The biggest outcry came from students who had formerly chosen to live in the Berkshire Quad (or "Odd Quad" as it is known at Williams). These tended to be artsier, geekier, hipster, gay, minority, and international students who sought to have their own dorm life social scene apart from the more prevalent jock drinking social scene.</p>
<p>This is about the fourth or fifth housing system Williams has had since fraternity houses were abolished in the 1960s. This system is actually a throw-back to the house system in place when I was at Williams 35 years ago except there are four groups of dorms, rather than a dozen or so "houses". It will be a few years before anyone really knows how it will work out. Opinions about cluster housing are like...well, you know....everybody has one.</p>
<p>Jamie--no worries, you'll still be in entries. Your entry will be "affiliated" with a neighborhood, which means that there will be one neighborhood that your entry will get to know better than the rest. In the past, few frosh got to know upperclassmen and this will hopefully change with the new neighborhood system. Which neighborhood you're affiliated with matters a bit, as affiliated entries will probably tend to gravitate a bit more to their corresponding neighborhoods (especially with social events). You'll be able to either stick with your affiliated neighborhood sophomore year with friends from that neighborhood, or get randomly assigned to one of the three other neighborhoods (also with friends--all of your picks at Williams are done in groups). </p>
<p>Regarding the different neighborhoods, well, they're each good in different ways. With all of the frosh living in either the frosh quad or Mission now, however, Dodd Neighborhood is easily the closest to frosh housing of the neighborhoods, so you'll probably end up seeing the most of it--the Dodd neighborhood pretty much surrounds all of the frosh housing. All of the neighborhood planning boards seem really on top of their stuff right now, so it looks like each neighborhood will have a great slate of events lined up. </p>
<p>I guess I kind of want to plug my own neighborhood here (Dodd), but it's the one I know the most about. Regardless of what other neighborhoods do, definitely check out Dodd's activities--knowing the people living in the neighborhood and on the programming board (myself included haha), it'll have some really quality events.</p>
<p>You'll get mailings from the neighborhoods later this summer, which will have more info on what each neighborhood is planning on doing. In the meantime, if there are any events that you'd like to see Dodd doing (anything--nothing's too crazy to consider), pm me and I'll bring it to the Dodd board. Probably most neighborhoods (Dodd for sure) will host parties, jazz nights, bowling nights, movie nights, speakers, fancy dinners, IM sports teams, carnivals...etc.</p>