Archived Edition: January 20, 2004 | Back to Current	Jul 31, 2010

Retreat focuses on drinking
Drew Thompson - FORMER EDITOR

Members of the Board of Trustees, the President of the Society of Alumni, the President’s Staff and College faculty and staff gathered this past weekend in Boston to discuss a variety of campus issues, including the new student center, legal issues involving liability and affirmative action and student drinking.

The weekend served as an official board meeting and retreat for the Trustees. During the board meeting, the Trustees formally approved the tenure decisions of the Committee on Appointments and Promotions and gave the go-ahead for the new student center.

In addition to the board meeting, there were several committee meetings and “break-out sessions,” which dealt with issues of building projects, budgets, Town-Gown Relations, experiential learning and residential life.

The biggest topic of contention was alcohol and excessive drinking. According to Roseman, the alcohol-related debates drew “intense discussion and very passionate statements” from the Trustees.

“[Some said,] ‘Ban hard-alcohol, do it today,’” she said. “[Other] strong statements included ‘not only ban hard alcohol but think more globally, think about campus life.’”

Trustees and administrators are looking for ways to decrease excessive drinking and bad behavior and the health risks that result from such activity.

College officials are currently exploring reasons for why students are drinking heavily in addition to trying to find a solution to the problem. Roseman is looking to peer institutions such as Wesleyan, which has a three strikes rule for drinking, and Bowdoin, which has banned hard alcohol, to see what other colleges are doing to change their drinking culture.

Roseman believes it might be wiser to analyze campus drinking from a more global perspective: “Why are students drinking so dangerously?”

“We have to provide them other things to do,” cshe said. “We have to provide them with different structures, different ways to spend their time… [We have] to promote a more healthy lifestyle overall.”

While Roseman believes that a cultural shift is necessary, she is wary of saying that doing so would be as simply as instituting various policy shifts. “I don’t think you create a cultural shift by just making a single rule,” she said. “I think it needs be a package of residential life, social norming, disciplinary package, certain kinds of behaviors are going to have certain kinds of responses by the institution that are very, very clear.”

“Regarding alcohol, the board doesn’t decide how the College should deal with the matter,” President Schapiro said. “That’s determined by those on campus who work on those issues. The board, however, rightly gives a sense of how important the issue should be to the administration that alcohol abuse is indeed an important issue at Williams, one that we are right to focus significant energy on.”

The Trustees find frightening the number of Health Center and hospital transports for drinking-related incidences. They are more troubled by the number of students who have to be intubated at the hospital. Some Trustees said they were embarrassed by the drunken behavior at Homecoming, with one remarking “this is not the way I want [a college like Williams] to be functioning.”

Matters involving campus life and alcohol will be vigorously debated in the upcoming months as the College searches for the appropriate response to the drinking issue. Roseman said that the College would not implement any changes impulsively.

In regards to the new student center, Trustees were provided with the same presentation and designs that were given to students last Thursday by Polshek Partnership Architects, LLP.

“They were excited by both the building’s program and look,” Schapiro said.

According to Dean Roseman, the Trustees “released the funding” for the student center. In essence, they approved the usage of funds from a bond and the endowment to finance this project.

In preparation for future building projects, those present at the retreat looked at lessons from past building projects, in particular the Unified Science Center. Ideas from this discussion will be taken into consideration when approaching projects such as the Stetson-Sawyer project.

The Unified Science Center, like Stetson-Sawyer, was a massive undertaking. Participants in an open-forum discussed its educational value and success. The Science Center has been a great asset to the College according to Jim Kolesar, director of public affairs, but in some ways, it did not accommodate the College’s future plans, which also entailed expanding its faculty.

The legal segment of this retreat specifically focused on the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s decision last June on affirmative action. It also dealt with liability and insurance issues that colleges like Williams face. Besides discussing legal matters, there was a forum on how the political climate in Washington, D.C. is shifting towards greater governmental involvement in higher education, specifically when it comes to legacy admissions and tuition prices.

Kolesar said the seminar announced the current status of the High Courts decision on affirmative action and liability, but noted that there is little expectation for internal policy changes.

EJ Johnson, professor of art history, provided the Trustees with a mock Art History 101 lecture, using a Quicktime virtual reality program that provides real-time panoramic images of a building.

“It was awesome,” Schapiro said. Kolesar added that the Trustees reacted positively to the program.

There was also a part of the retreat dedicated to discussing the Office of Career Counseling (OCC). Kolesar said that all parties were looking generally at the department’s services, structure and staffing. There was some discussion on whether OCC was seen as a resource or a career counseling/job placement agency.

Roseman said that student complaints about the OCC were discussed. She noted that career counseling departments differ from college to college. At Amherst, for example, the career-counseling agency handles job placements and fellowships.

Roseman said that parties involved in the open-forum were specifically looking for ways to increase student participation and to improve the office’s job placement alumni resources. With respect to the OCC’s services, she said, “We are [currently] not reaching the student body.”

Another important topic of conservation among parties at the meeting was Town-Gown Relations.

“[The Town] sees us almost as the Ford Foundation,” Roseman said. “It is not Williams College, it is like the Williams Foundation.

Williamstown has to an extent fallen on hard times economically. This forum served to determine the role of the College in solving some of the town’s financial problems. Roseman added that the town sees the College as a “big monster [with an] endless supply of money.”

“People ask us for money with some frequency,” Roseman said. “We want good medical care and good school, [but] when is it enough?” Rather than provide the town with financial resources, the College is looking for ways to provide it with “intellectual capital.”

Trustees and others involved with the weekend were also informed of the College’s decision to implement a pilot program for Williams-in-New York.

“We informed the board about current planning for a pilot Williams-in-New York program,” Schapiro said. “Details still need to be worked out but the current target date is the fall of 2005.”

The Williams-in-New York program would entail 10 students and a faculty advisor living for a semester in New York City. These students would engage in tutorial and seminar classes, while donating a significant portion of their time to an internship.

Kolesar said there was “positive response” from the Trustees to this program and the decision to run a pilot.

Trustees retreats, such as this one, are held every three years. The Trustees make decisions on financial and legal issues the College faces, and are essentially the College’s governing body.