Committee on Undergradute Life

Summary of Meeting, 4PM, 12/8/2005

 

1. Will Dudley opened the meeting by reminding the committee that many of the sucommittees had reports due at the end of WSP and noted that the full CUL would be busy reviewing drafts of these proposals during January.

2. Tom Murtagh proposed that additional efforts be made to provide a record of the deliberations of the CUL and its subcommittees to the college community.  He proposed that members of the communications subcommittee be assigned as members each of the other subcommittees with the task of collecting draft reports and summaries of the meetings of those subcommittees.  Tom will coordinate the arrangements for this system in January.

3. Charlie Toomajian presented a draft report of the subcommittee on support services.  (A copy of the report can be found at http://www.williams.edu/resources/committees/cul/supportsub.html .)  He observed that their plan was designed to make living arrangments central by having offices that provide support services on campus reach out to students in their living spaces.  He noted that their report rested on certain assumptions regarding the ongoing work of the physical spaces and governance subcommittees.  The CUL then discussed issues raised by this report at some length.

1. The roles of “ambassador” and “dean” were discussed.  Ambassadors would not be part of house governing boards, but boards would have members assigned to coordinate with ambassadors.

2. There was concern that the role of the “dean” might overlap with that of the house president.  Charlie indicated that the support services committee was flexible on the idea of a dean, and that the concern was to have individuals involved who would provide continuity over several years.  Eiko Makuko noted that the notion of a “dean” of each neighborhood was rejected within the governance subcommittee in favor of relying on the presense of 3 faculty associates.

3. A concern was raised that associating members of the OCC staff with neighborhoods might conflict with the existing specializations of the OCC staff.  John Noble explained that ongoing reorganization within OCC would mitigate this concern and stressed the benefits of outreach.

4. The timing and handling of the application process for  ambassadors and peer advisors was discussed.  The timing was designed to make it possible for students to have all options available to them (ambassadors, JAs, HCs, etc) at the same time.  While ambassador applications would be processed through the Office of Campus Life, individual support service offices would make choices.  

5. Eiko Maruko Siniawer provided an update of the work of the governance subcommittee (detailed summaries of their meetings can be found at  

6. http://www.williams.edu/resources/committees/cul/govsub.html)

1. The governance subcommittee has been considering plans for the election of neighborhood officers.  They suggest that guides to the offices and election system be distributed after room draw allowing self nominations during April.  The elections themselves would be coordinated with dinners.  Dinner itself would be followed by brief campaign speeches followed by elections with results for dessert. Various concerns were raised about the impact of the timing of the elections on student athletes (division of the day?) and students who were studying away.

2. The governance subcommittee hopes to identify candidates for faculty associates early so that their selection can be integrated with appointment of faculty to standing faculty committees.  Suggestions for candidates were solicited.  The issue of whether it was important to have one faculty associate from each division was discussed together with the question of whether athletic faculty might serve as faculty associates.  

7. Megan O'Malley presented a draft report from the programming subcommittee ( which can be found at http://www.williams.edu/resources/committees/cul/minutes/prog/OngoingProgDraft.html )

8. The committee discussed the timing of an open meeting to discuss plans for improvements for the Tyler neighborhood and the work of other subcommittees.