<p>To begin with, the wso blogs are actually a pretty awful place to get an idea for what Williams is like. While you will see a wide variety of opinions, most passionate, expressed on the blogs, these opinions tend to be extremely radical when compared to the mainstream campus sentiment. Reading the blogs will give you a good idea for what issues are hot because they typically reflect such issues. However, neither the tone nor the content of the blogs typically reflects that of the average student.</p>
<p>On the subject of the “odd-quad:” There are undoubtably more students who share steriotypically “odd” interests living outside of the odd-quad than within it. The “odd-quad” may have a higher percentage of students who don’t drink than other areas of campus but even that’s debatable; there are certainly other dorms or parts of dorms with few drinkers.</p>
<p>On the subject of Jess Howard, Alex Bal, and CC: Unlike their opponents, Jess and Alex ran on the platform of representing the students’ interests to the administration. CC, led by Jess and Alex, presented their case against anchor housing to the Administration. The Administration effectively told the co-presidents “thanks, but we’re going for this whether or not you’re with us…although you’re welcome to help if you’d like.” At that point, CC was faced with the decision to continue to fight a seemingly unwinnable battle, or to work with the Administration to impliment a form of anchor housing most agreeable with majority student opinion. CC chose the latter option. Maybe you call that “rolling over.” I call it smart governing. </p>
<p>On a side note I’d like to point out that the student body is mixed in their reaction to the proposal. Two polls of student opinion were conducted with the first (the Record poll) being the more scientific of the two. The Record poll showed approximately 60% of students against the proposal and 40% for. There are strong student advocates for the proposal and strong student advocates against it. Whatever poll you use, whoever you talk to about this, you’ll find that there are significant numbers of well-informed students on both sides of the debate.</p>
<p>Anyways, I’m sorry that this thread has been hijacked. Renja’s footnote covers the topic well–whatever the housing system, whatever the steriotypes, you’ll find an incredible variety of people throughout Williams…virtually all quite friendly.</p>