Archived Edition: February 15, 2005 | Back to Current	Sep 10, 2010

Entries and co-ops critical to cluster success
Editorial Board - WILLIAMS RECORD

Too often in group decision-making processes, coherence of vision falls before the dilution of compromise. As the Committee on Undergraduate Life (CUL) refines its vision of cluster housing and begins to write the proposal it will present to senior staff by the end of the month, taking into account the feedback it has thus far received from students and professors, it must find a way to toe the delicate line between erosive and constructive compromises. We applaud the committee’s current plan to group the campus in five clusters, rather than the six previously outlined, but there are two areas in the committee’s most recent draft that are of great concern to us: the entry system and co-op housing.

Early versions of the proposal advocated that first-years be assigned a cluster affiliation along with entry placement prior to arrival on campus, thereby using entries as way to feed microcosms of the College’s diversity into larger four-year groupings. That scheme has since been scrapped in favor of a version that instead assigns social affiliations, which tie entries to clusters but do not turn first-years into full cluster members until the spring.

In either scenario, we believe it absolutely critical that Junior Advisors (JAs) share affiliations with their frosh. For first-years to meaningfully engage in cluster social activities, their JAs need to be on board, leading the charge and introducing upperclassmen to the campus’s greenest Ephs. Having JAs and first-years share an affiliation is the best and simplest way to accomplish that end.

The JA advisory board believes otherwise, arguing that to tie cluster membership to JA placement would compromise the selection process. But with clusters as large as 400 students, it seems unlikely that a cluster would fail to produce enough worthy candidates for the job.

In the odd case where a cluster came up short, it would be no great effort to compensate for the imbalance by accepting an additional applicant or two from another cluster. From what we know if it, the closed-door selection process itself would change little, if at all. This is a time for thinking broadly and openly; to constrain JAs according to the mold in place today is to do a disservice to the possibilities offered by the cluster system.

Co-op housing is the second area of the proposal that gives us pause. At last week’s forum, a senior living in Poker Flats questioned the role of co-ops in a cluster system that purportedly seeks to better integrate seniors into campus social life. Co-ops, by their very nature, isolate small “families” of students and undermine the notion of communal dining that is so central to the committee’s hopes for fostering cluster identity. In a fully-realized cluster model of residential life, co-ops will eventually become strange anachronisms of the system that used to be. Thus we recommend that the CUL do away with co-ops as a distinct category of house and instead incorporate co-ops into clusters as desirable senior housing.

Students may balk at the prospect of losing a highly popular form of upperclassman housing. But the virtue of co-ops would remain: the ability to live in home-like environment with a tightly-knit group of friends. It would still be possible for those seniors living in houses to cook meals together; the difference would lie in the breaking down of the separatist mentality that now pervades. Chadbourne and Woodbridge have long been co-ops in all but name, and are as well regarded as their prized co-op equivalents. Why force artificial barriers on a system whose success depends upon the development of cohesive communities?

Continuing the co-op system in its current form might very well serve as an escape hatch for people unhappy with their cluster affiliations, counteracting the very benefit that cluster housing is supposed to provide. They may also serve to drain senior leadership out of the cluster residential structure, a troubling concern given the student leadership and class mixing that cluster housing is supposed to encourage.

Moreover, the distant Tyler cluster, which now includes Tyler and its annex, Thompson, Armstrong and Pratt, is sorely in need of a boost. The CUL has said it will encourage a remodeling of Tyler Annex; a worthy suggestion, but one not in keeping with the committee’s otherwise sweeping vision. Pulling part of Poker Flats into the Tyler network would do much to alleviate the cluster’s perceived lowly status.

CUL chairman Will Dudley has stated his desire to avoid going through another year of anchor housing debate next year, but he and the administration should bear in mind how much the proposal has been improved by its exposure to public scrutiny. The co-op draw for the Class of 2006 is now behind us, and it hardly seems fair to have asked students to make important decisions about the co-op draw without knowing what the regular room draw would entail. We remain convinced that the CUL’s proposal will be a good one for Williams, but we hope that the CUL will resist heeding a pressure that need not exist to implement cluster housing before the proposal has matured.