Meanwhile at my alma mater....

Parent Cafe
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<p>Life is good, and better that first-years aren’t real good at chemistry:</p>

<p><a href=“WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record”>WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record;

<p>Better at extracurricular poster-making:</p>

<p><a href=“WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record”>WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record;

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<p>Here are the beginnings of each article:</p>

<p>Students face bomb charges
Shannon Chiu - Executive Editor</p>

<p>As of yesterday, three male first-years have been charged by the Williamstown Police Department (WPD) in connection with a homemade explosive device found on Cole Field on Sunday morning, April 15. </p>

<p>The Northern Berkshire District Court will conduct a show-cause hearing later this week to determine whether or not to file the charges submitted by the police. These charges include one felony count of possession of infernal machine and one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct for each student. According to Scott McGowan, WPD sergeant, if jail-time should be administered, the maximum penalty – based on WPD’s charges – is ten years in prison or two-and-a-half years in a county facility. The maximum fine for each student is $1000. </p>

<p>–</p>

<p>Sophomore admits to hanging Hitler posters
Sayd Randle - Managing Editor</p>

<p>Last night Julia Cordray ’09 publicly acknowledged that she hung dozens of “Happy Birthday Hitler” posters on students’ doors last Friday. The posters, which featured an image of a marijuana leaf, a picture of Adolf Hitler and the word “REMEMBER,” were intended as a satire of last week’s similarly designed Holocaust Remembrance Day posters. Cordray expressed no remorse for her actions.</p>

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<p>Glad I chose Amherst ;)</p>

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<p>Cordray’s 33 year old boyfriend, who designed the Hitler posters and assisted her in hanging them on students’ doors, is a real piece of work. He apparently runs a web-hosting site for a number of neo-nazi type organizations. On his “friendspace” page, he listed desireable qualities in women, including “pale” and “no juden”. </p>

<p>Cordray listed one of her interests as “white people”.</p>

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<p>Colleges will have the occasional “oddball”, and clearly W. caught one. As has become my favorite expression in watching the idiocy on the daily news, “its a big country.” I wonder how much the admissions office loses sleep over her.</p>

<p>I was actually more perturbed by the bombmaking (sorry, “infernal machine”) story. Needless to say, it was all meant as good, clean fun, and I’m sure they’ll plead it out in a way to avoid the 10 years in the state pen.</p>

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<p>I dunno. Papering a campus with Hitler posters in response to Holocaust Remembrance Day is pretty hardcore. That’s pretty much right up there with burning crosses in front of the Black Students Union, in my book. It’s seriously hateful.</p>

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<p>Does Williams consider Cordray part of the diversity experience on campus? White kids, black kids, city kids, farm kids, fat kids, skinny kids, neo-nazis…What a nightmare! Imagine if your daughter wound up with her as a roommate!</p>

<p>How did the administration handle the Hitler posters? I imagine Che Guevera is seen on plenty of kids’ shirts, so it would be tough to ban one & allow the other.</p>

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<p>Apparently she is well rounded.</p>

<p><a href=“WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record”>WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record;

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<p>Here is the administration’s response in the form of an e-mail to the students, as posted on <a href=“http://www.ephblog.com%5B/url%5D”>www.ephblog.com</a> where alums have nicknamed the episode “Mary Jane Hitler” or “Bong Hits 4 Hitler”.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>As far as anyone can tell, the College has taken no further action, not even in regards to the 33 year old boyfriend who has made verbal threats of physical retaliation to a Williams student on his website.</p>

<p>The Williams College Jewish students association held a town hall meeting last Sunday, (not attended by anyone from the administation). The student council discussed the issue during a meeting last week and decided not to take any action.</p>

<p>The story was picked up by the National Review Online yesterday:</p>

<p><a href=“http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWQ4YmI2ODYzZmVhMzYwZjQ1YmQ4MWFlN2MyYjczY2I=[/url]”>http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWQ4YmI2ODYzZmVhMzYwZjQ1YmQ4MWFlN2MyYjczY2I=&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I was sorry not to see more support from the college administration for the town hall meeting. I think the students had the right to expect more.</p>

<p>Shvern is an interesting piece of work. Apparently he is also the President of the “Al-Qaeda Appreciation Society of North America”: <a href=“http://amerika.org/[/url]”>http://amerika.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Luckily, no known connection to the makers of the ‘infernal machine’.</p>

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<p>I was sorry that much of the campus debate turned to issues of where posters should be allowed and free speech rather than the underlying hatred of responding to the Jewish students’ Holocaust Remembrance with Hitler posters. The debate was framed by a small, but vocal, group of students who objected to Holocaust Remembrance Day posters being place on their doors.</p>

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<p>“Apparently she is well rounded.” How nice to know that there is still room at Williams for well-rounded kids after all. I should think the revelations on this thread will make a lot of people who did not get in to the class of '09 feel both better and worse.</p>

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<p>Williams should be ashamed of itself for writing this off as a free speech issue. How many Americans died fighting Hitler? Or is that just ancient history? It then makes even more sense to have the slogan “Never Again” about the Holocaust and WWII, so that students will not lose their memory of WWII.</p>

<p>If this particular student didn’t like the Holocaust Remembrance poster, then she could have removed it from her door, and written a letter about it to the school paper. And what is a nonstudent boyfriend doing making posters for Williams dorm displays?</p>

<p>Williams has no guts and no soul. This is a hate crime and should be handled by their honors committee. I’ve heard of students at universities being disciplined for far less when hatred is involved. Is she who they want as a proud alum? Doing alum interviews with posters of Hitler around her house or office?</p>

<p>I wonder how other colleges with more open, liberal traditions would have handled this situation. Williams was always known for its bigoted approach to admissions until it became politically incorrect to discriminate against minorities.</p>

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<p>You can’t just restrict free speech to the expression of ideas to which everyone agrees. As repulsive as the posters were, I support the response of Williams College. They should be proud of themselves for their measured reaction to a potentially incendiary situation. </p>

<p>For what it’s worth, if I were a college student I’d be angry at anything taped to my door other than maybe a note telling me where a study group was meeting. Even the Holocaust remembrance people don’t have a right to commit free speech in my living space.</p>

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<p>I think one practical consideration from this incident is that Williams might want to consider adding supplemental essays and interviews to the admissions process.</p>

<p>The girl had some kind of relationship with the “friend” and contact with his anti-semitism dating as far back as when she was 15 years old. While certainly not foolproof, interviews and supplemental essays give an admissions office a couple more datapoints to feret out this kind of bigotry before it gets an opportunity to slip through the cracks of a 17% acceptance rate. The ability of a small liberal arts college to get to know their applicants should be an advantage over larger universities.</p>

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<p>The handling of this incident is especially difficult for Williams because much of the senior administration is Jewish. Both Roseman and Schapiro are Jewish. Its really a no-win situation. If this woman is placed through the disciplinary ringer, Schapiro and Roseman will be accused of handling the situation in a biased manner.</p>

<p>Its pretty clear that the infernal machine incident was “experimental,” and not intended to hurt anyone. However, I view anyone who shows any inkling of support for Hitler as a real threat. I’m not sure that hanging posters on a door constitutes a “hate crime.” However, this incident was clearly hateful, and I think the college has every right to expel her.</p>

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<p>WashDad:</p>

<p>I don’t have any problem with Morty Schapiro’s initial response. Although Williams does not publish a detailed harrassment policy (that I can find), a single incidence of hanging Hitler posters would not be a violation of the more detailed harrassment policies I’ve seen. The reason it would not be a violation is the desire in these policies to use the first instance of hate speech as a “teaching moment”. That’s why you usually see these sorts of incidents result in a fairly rapid apology, presumably after a little “teaching” from the deans.</p>

<p>However, a single instance of hanging Hitler posters in response to the Holocaust Rembrance Day could, and should IMO, trigger a number of less formal responses from a pro-active college administration, especially when faced with not even a shred of remorse from the offending student. I would start with three:</p>

<p>a) A restraining order to keep the boyfriend off campus following his threats of physical violence. He has no “right” to any kind of speech at a private college.</p>

<p>b) Everything humanly possible to reach out to Mary Jane Hitler via counseling, faculty, students, whatever means available. This is a student with some serious issues.</p>

<p>c) Strong public support for the students targeted by the hate speech and an even stronger statement of what the college stands for.</p>

<p>After it became clear later in the week that the girl and her 33-year year old boyfriend really are virulently anti-semitic bigots and totally without remorse, I would support Morty if he did exactly what MikeyD suggests: just kick her out and say, “so, sue me”.</p>

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<p>Again, I-dad, I’m not sure that Julia would have discussed Hitler in either supplemental essays or in an interview. It would be interesting to see the other colleges to which Julia was accepted. Did she slip through the cracks at colleges with more comprehensive admissions policies???</p>

<p>She may be a horrible person, but inside sources tell me that she is “off the charts” brilliant, incredibly savvy, composed, and a masterful thespian.</p>

<p>This goes to show that intelligence and personal qualities are often unrelated.</p>

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<p>" The handling of this incident is especially difficult for Williams because much of the senior administration is Jewish. Both Roseman and Schapiro are Jewish. Its really a no-win situation. If this woman is placed through the disciplinary ringer, Schapiro and Roseman will be accused of handling the situation in a biased manner.</p>

<p>I don’t know – if they fail to act in the interests of the college as a whole because they are Jewish, then the argument against Jewish leadership of the institution wins the day. I’m not sure about the disciplinary issues, but I do think the administration had greater responsibility to those who held a town hall meeting to discuss hate speech. This was an educational venue, and their lack of presence…well, it was what it was.</p>

<p>“Its pretty clear that the infernal machine incident was “experimental,” and not intended to hurt anyone.”</p>

<p>Perhaps you have information that I don’t. I haven’t seen any such clarity, or even students’ statement of their intentions. (I presume you are correct, and hope so as well, but I just haven’t seen it.)</p>

<p>And oddballs do get through any admissions system. I think such an incident could have happened virtually anywhere; what I fault (based on the limited information I have) is the handling of it.</p>

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<p>I would hate to see the thought police try to uncover the personal opinions of all prospectives. Do you try to filter out anyone with widely divergent opinions from the mainstream? Will you keep out Black Muslims?</p>