Burn the Bylaws: Williams College Students Criticize College Council

WILLIAMS COLLEGE, MA - Samuel Wolf at the Williams Record penned an interesting article about the recent town hall event conducted by the College Council. The purpose of the town hall was to gain input regarding the future of the student organization. The results were both appalling and disturbing.

Adam Jones ’21, a Marine Corps veteran, took issue with College Council 

at its October 22, 2019 town hall. 

It turns out that one of the students most adamant about abolishing the College Council is an impressive, ex-military student named Adam Jones '21. Jones has a spectacular military record. Prior to coming to Williams College, Jones served as a Battalion Gunner's Aide in the 2nd Battalion 8th Marines. “Disband yourself,” he said. “Apply your efforts and your talents to things that matter on this campus. Force this institution to pay for the labor that you provide. And form an organization that serves as a forum – a forum – a place for ideas to be discussed, not decided on. An organization of 40 will never have the mandate to decide the issues of a campus of 2,200. So don’t kid yourself.”

Jones also suggested that student representatives were foolish for doing what they did because their work amounted to unpaid labor on behalf of the college.

Jones' excellent advice was spurned, however, Suiyi Tang ’20 who has described herself elsewhere as a queer, feminine Asian American. Hailing from Communist China, Tang serves as the Co-Chair of the Minority Coalition at Williams College, a group which also dishes out money but with less strings attached and only to minority students. “Whatever we work for should be with the goal of increasing student autonomy, rather than ceding it,” she said. Tang, along with Isaiah Blake '21, was a leader of the CARE Now group which opposed efforts to bring to Williams College freedom of speech protections similar to the Chicago Principles. Her aim appears to bring some of the same stifling social control that afflicts her native land into the United States.

Another defender of the College Council was Joseph Moore '20 who last year distinguished himself as one of the representatives who was most aggressively opposed to allowing a Jewish student organization Williams Initiative for Israel (WIFI) to gain status as a recognized student organization. “It looks like any potential reform of CC that takes the shape of more involvement by admin is going to deepen our lack of autonomy and make it even harder to resist the administration,” Joseph Moore ’20 said. The alarming decision to deny WIFI official status brought immediate negative attention to the college and resulted in a decision by the administration to strip the CC of its power to approve student organizations.

The event also demonstrated the continuing efforts to undermine the status of young white men on the campus. As far as I can tell, no one complained, for example, about the disturbing anti-white and anti-male comments of a black student, Emmanuel Copeland '23. “My fear is about turning over things like the budget to the administration,” she said. “We already know that most of the admin are white and male, and that doesn’t fix the problem of CC being white and male. You’re just giving it to white male middle-aged people.”

To her credit, however, Copeland eventually figured out that it was a mistake to say that "most of the admin are white and male." In a later communication with the Williams Record, Samuel Wolf reports that Copeland noted that she had fact-checked her statement and found that the administration has a fairly balanced ratio of women and men but that “the administration aren’t racially diverse at all.” It is difficult to underestimate the crowds' negative reaction if the roles were reversed and a white student said that the problem of the CC was that is was black and female.

Another black student, Morgan Whaley '20, asserted that student representatives should be paid for their work. “There’s a lot of unpaid student labor on campus,” she said. “For the administration to see institutions like CC or JAs [Junior Advisors] or housing as such integral parts of the tradition of this college, but then also not [care] about the students who actually run those, I think is problematic.”

According to the report in the Williams Record, both Joseph Moore and Suiyi Tang expressed concerns about the schools new, tighter restrictions on student protests. Surprisingly, support for the public safety aspects of these restrictions came from Landon Marchant '20. Marchant is a female student who now wants to be seen and treated as if she were a man. Her story is particularly interesting because she used to serve in the military in the U.S. Air Force, mainly as welder-machinist. Like Jones and Moore, she came to Williams College after studying at a community college. Thanks to the Trump administration, people with her odd behavior are now banned from openly serving in the military.

“If somebody’s protests are going to interrupt my ability to have a safe, stable life, both at Williams and afterwards, I actually do have a problem with that,” she said. “I respect your free speech. I have a very big problem with you removing my ability to function as a human who also believes in the same rights and dignities that you deserve.” It may be that you can take the girl out of the military, but you can't take the military out of the girl.

One of the students who appears most open to ignoring or destroying the bylaws which govern the distribution of money to students groups is CC Co-President Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí ’20. Born in Mexico, Cabrera seems clueless about the impression he leaves as he apparently seeks to bring to the U.S. the same dysfunctional values which characterize Mexican politics. In an earlier interview, he reported, “When I was a rep, I would chant, ‘Burn the bylaws!’”

Speaking about the WIFI scandal, he responded, “I think that this whole situation kinda reflects on how limiting it can be to operate a student representative body with a set of rules. The student body changes entirely every 5 years… Every 5 years, different priorities and different expectations come in … I think this whole situation was an example of us running into an outdated document.” With leaders like this, I can understand why so many students also voted to seat Papa Smurf.

According to Cabrera-Lomelí, the next steps may include “forming an independent commission of students that will research, design, and present a series of concrete reforms and/or a future alternative to CC to present to the Council and the student body by Winter Study.” 

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.