Transition Subcommittee Draft Proposal
Long Term Policies and Procedures for the Williams College House System
This is the second proposal submitted by the Transition Subcommittee. While the first report dealt entirely with the short-term transition to the House System, this report will recommend long term policies and procedures in the following areas:
Our primary goal in developing the first two recommendations is to provide policies and procedures that are fair and provide avenues of choice within the neighborhood system. At the same time we want to preserve the cohesiveness of the neighborhoods by creating barriers to re-creating free agency through unchecked membership swapping by students. We feel that by striking a balance in these areas we can prevent the perception that student are ÒtrappedÓ in neighborhoods they do not feel meaningfully connected to, as well as create a system which discourages students to continually try to change neighborhoods in pursuit of choice housing around campus.
Recommendations 3 and 4 listed above are meant to offer suggestions on how lotteries could be conducted in the future once neighborhood affiliation and membership have been established among all three of the class years who will be going through the process. We will also look at the JA program and terms abroad to see how they might affect the timing and procedures surround the room draws. This report will also address how students returning from terms abroad or time away from the college will be placed back into neighborhoods.
3 Models for Membership Changing
In this proposal there are three systems in which a student or group of students can change their neighborhood membership. They are:
1. Groups of 4 or 5 first-year students of the same neighborhood affiliation may choose to become members of that neighborhood and pull in 1 additional first-year student of a different affiliation (maximum group size is 6). First-year students who form groups of up to 6 and are of various affiliations among the group members may choose to be randomly assigned as a group to the same neighborhood for membership. The group will then proceed to enter the room draw for their newly assigned neighborhood.
2. Upperclass students have the option (after sophomore and junior year) to transfer from one neighborhood to another in groups of up to 3 students (upperclass only). Students or groups of students wishing to transfer will submit their application to the Office of Campus Life and will be randomly assigned to one of the four neighborhoods. They will then proceed to enter the room draw for their newly assigned neighborhood. This provision is for students who feel that living with friends is more important than living in a specific neighborhood.
3. This subcommittee also recognizes that a minority of upperclass students may feel very strongly about having the option to choose a space in a specific neighborhood. For this reason we propose a second transfer option. In this system students would still form groups of up to 3 students and submit an application to the Office of Campus Life. However, this particular transfer option will function significantly differently from option 2. Groups of students requesting this type of transfer would be offered the chance to choose rooms in any neighborhood that were available after all other students had selected spaces within the normal neighborhood draws. In essence these students would choose after the current first-year students had made their room selections. Therefore there will be no guarantees that students will get in to the neighborhood of their choice, nor that they will be able to live in proximity to each other. However, for the purpose of this transfer provision the Campus Life Office would either conduct a separate, smaller draw after the other room draws were completed or, if the number of students asking for this option were significantly small enough, the process could be done within the Campus Life Office itself.
We feel that this combination of transfer options balances two essential things: choice and risk. There is enough choice built in for students to feel as thought they have options within the system and enough inherent risk in each of the provisions to prevent students from choosing to transfer more than once.
We also feel that the option to transfer or change memberships should be offered once a year (before the room draws). Students who request changes must meet that deadline or remain in their current neighborhood affiliation/membership. Exceptions to this rule may have to be made for students returning from terms abroad or time off who cannot be guaranteed housing in their assigned neighborhood. This will be explored later in sections pertaining to terms abroad.
Neighborhood Room Draws
We anticipate the neighborhood room draws to be a more simplified procedure in the future, as all students participating in them will already be members of, or affiliated with, a neighborhood when they enter the process. We envision each neighborhood having its own room draw. Four sets of numbers would be generated, one for each neighborhood, and students that are members of the respective neighborhoods would still choose their actual rooms according to seniority. Rising sophomores will be given the different re-affiliation options prior to the start of the draws, so that there will be no confusion about which neighborhood room draws they should attend. The logistics and timing of these lotteries should be worked out by the Office of Campus Life, as they will be the office primarily responsible for facilitating housing and room draws for the foreseeable future. It is likely that future room draws will function similarly to the room draws done this year (2006) as the underlying concept of choosing your room with others from your neighborhood (as opposed to by class year) will be the same.
Impact of Other Programs
The two programs that could have the largest impact on future housing within the neighborhoods are the Junior Advisor (JA) program and the study abroad program. Decisions about acceptance in to the JA program should be concluded prior to the room draws, while pink petitions and students planning to study abroad may not yet have received notification about their acceptance into the program. Therefore, students who are planning to participate in terms abroad will not be able to participate in the room draw, as their intention is either to be abroad. In reality there is no way to predict from which, if not all, of the neighborhoods these students will come from. Ideally there would be an even amount of students not living in their neighborhoods for the fall term from each. Students who are not accepted in to the JA program will then be placed in their neighborhood for the fall and live their throughout the year.
Students coming home from and going abroad may present more challenging complications for housing. Possible crowding issues may arise in a neighborhood when the amount of students returning to campus for spring more than the amount of students leaving, or during the overlap of people coming and going that is found during Winter Study. There is a possibility that a neighborhood may physically not have enough spaces for all of the members returning to campus. At this point the priority should always be to provide housing for students, hopefully on a temporary basis until they can be moved back in to their assigned neighborhood. We also suggest that if housing within a studentÕs given neighborhood can not be found within a reasonable period of time from the start of the term, they should be given the option to stay in the housing they were assigned and join that neighborhood, so as not to encumber them with the room change process during inopportune times during the term.
Conclusions
This committee would like to thank anyone who has provided us with feedback, advice and constructive criticism, as it has allowed us to be open to many different possibilities throughout our tenure. We hope that when taken together this report, along with our earlier report about short-term transition issues and procedures will provide the framework for a fair and equal transition into the new house system. Our goal for both the short and long-term recommendations has been to provide enough flexibility within the new system to ensure that current students felt as thought they had options and flexibility, and future students could not take advantage of that flexibility to create free agency all over again. We would also like to thank the Committee on Undergraduate Life for allowing us the opportunity to help shape the future of Williams CollegeÕs social and residential systems.
Respectfully Submitted,
Aaron Gordon, Chair (Campus Life)
Douglas Bazuin, Director of Campus Life
Anne-Louise Ennis, House Coordinator of Thompson, former JA
Annie Ferguson, College Council
Brian Hirshman, Committee on Undergraduate Life