What the College’s social scene lacks in magnitude, it makes up for with its unique idiosyncrasies. For one, the significant familiarity afforded by the College’s small population enables you to truly know those around you at social gatherings.
While claustrophobic at times, this familiarity also promotes a kind of cross-campus connectivity. On a night out, students of all different academic backgrounds, class years, teams, and extracurricular interests migrate over to more or less the same final location. There, they can find an inclusive kind of socialization made difficult by all of the College’s rigors and demands. Often, these parties are hosted in the off-campus housing on Hoxsey Street or Spring Street. One of my favorite things about Williams is that social gatherings such as these are largely open to all. Students here aren’t subjected to the Sisyphean task that is passing a ‘door-pledge’ interrogation of how many frat brothers we know. But after at least four and a half semesters of the Williamstown Police Department’s (WPD) laissez-faire approach to policing college parties, they have suddenly begun to forcefully discourage student social gatherings at off-campus housing.
On any given Friday or Saturday night, many students at the College have now come to dread the appearance of the flashing red and blue lights driving down Hoxsey or Spring Streets. Usually, it means a premature end to the weekly respite from the demanding mix of coursework, athletics, and extracurricular activities that fill most students’ time.
The reasons for this dramatic increase in enforcement are not clear. In certain instances, the police have communicated their insistence that students remain off the Hoxsey Street roadway. Set aside, for a moment, the fact that there exists an identical roadway, with identical outlet access, located right next to Hoxsey Street on Stetson Court Boulevard. The argument that some students standing in the road pose a major threat to public safety appears less credible given the near complete lack of enforcement in years prior. Were there to be a serious need for emergency service access, it seems likely that the few students in the road would do the same thing that happens when police cars drive down Hoxsey Street to break up parties — move out of the road.
Yes, police departments have a legitimate interest in maintaining public safety. But assuming WPD does not aim to completely inhibit student life, why then would they not seek to work collaboratively with students? Why would the College administration not advocate for a reconciliatory effort? The College prides itself on its world-class faculty and highly capable student body — it should trust them to work with public safety officers to permit a thriving social scene that aligns with the goal of public safety.
Instead, the College has stood idly by while WPD threatened and ultimately initiated frivolous legal action against its students. Officers have engaged in increasing aggression towards students, barking vague threats of detainment or other legal action against what is, apparently, the most dire threat to Williamstown public safety: college kids in the middle of nowhere walking two-tenths of a mile to stand on Hoxsey Street with a singular open can of beer or seltzer.
Last spring, WPD filed applications for criminal complaints against a score of soon-to-be graduating seniors, for “keeping a disorderly house.” Used sparingly in modern society, this Massachusetts common-law statute originating conceptually in medieval times can be found in the Massachusetts General Law under “Crimes against Chastity, Morality, Decency, and Good Order,” a header that betrays its antiquity. Its original purpose was to suppress more serious criminal enterprises than hosting mediocre house parties, such as illicit gambling or prostitution rings.
In contemporary times, its infrequent usage is typically reserved for extreme noise complaints or social gatherings that pose particular risks to public safety. The evolution of the statute is a textbook example of the wide latitude with which police can interpret legal statues. That same discretion ought to be applied to parties at the College. They exist neither in close proximity to the general public, nor, to my knowledge, do they pose imminent threats to public safety that would be remedied by their suppression.
What’s worse, WPD determined the recipients of these legal actions summarily — without extensive investigation and including every resident of particular houses. Students who were out of town or asleep, alongside those who happened to be contributing to the campus’s social fabric that evening, faced exposure to a permanent stain on any future Criminal Offender Record Information check had the proceedings reached an arraignment, simply by virtue of having served as signatories on the allegedly offending house’s leases. The Magistrate ultimately sided with the students and did not issue the criminal complaint.
Given the impending arrival of the annual daytime party known as Sensations, we can assume that the WPD was merely seeking a method to expediently disincentivize congregation at off-campus residences. The College, for its part, allowed students to be unnecessarily exposed to a variety of consequences, ranging from difficulty securing future employment to an inability to chaperone a future child’s school field trip. Such a measure has been enough to produce a significant chilling effect on the willingness of off-campus residents to host social gatherings.
WPD claims to not be trying to fully inhibit student life. Yet just this past weekend, they were enforcing alleged noise complaints prior to 9 p.m. on Saturday night. I recall an officer breaking up a party at a Spring Street apartment two weekends ago telling students living there that “the house always wins.” Not only does this reveal a concerning lack of commitment to the ideals of fairness and justice underpinning our legal systems, it reveals something more cynical about the motivations behind these shifts in policy.
WPD has justified this action at times by arguing that College parties were out of control and posed a risk to safety. I argue that, inadvertently, WPD will ultimately make the College’s party scene less safe in their hasty reversal of years-long precedent of common understanding.
The College is intentionally not a dry campus. Administrators rightly recognize that banning the consumption of alcohol and levying harsh punishments against offenders will not succeed in eliminating alcohol consumption. It will only result in more secretive, less safe behavior surrounding its usage. The same thought process should be applied to parties. Since, in general, everyone knows everyone at Williams parties, increased visibility discourages problematic behavior to some extent. Sunlight is the best disinfectant for unsafe behavior that should not be tolerated, but WPD is yanking the shades shut. In forcing parties to become more clandestine, they will lose the built-in accountability often supplied by their public nature and, with it, a degree of safety. For incidents on campus, the College offers amnesty for violations of College policy in the event of a medical emergency. This is so that fear of disciplinary action does not get in the way of life-saving medical care. WPD’s new posture — and the College’s complacency — means that the same might not be true of off-campus residence incidents.
The momentous effect this shift could have on the College’s social life must also be noted. No longer able to congregate in one final location, the College will lack a consistent “third place” for students to enjoy. There will be no place where you know you’ll see your friend whose schedule doesn’t align with yours, the friend you haven’t seen since their athletic season started, or someone from your first-year entry who you probably only see at parties. Teams, clubs, or any other kind of social group will eventually be forced to become more insular.
Having spent time as both an athlete and a non-athlete, it’s not hard for me to not imagine the oft-discussed dividing line between these populations becoming far more institutionalized and far less permeable with the increase in police involvement. Widespread insularity stymies diversity of thought and association and seriously inhibits the College’s purported desire to foster an integrated and diverse community.
While a party venue might seem like a trivial concern, the degradation of campus social life could have severe, unintended downstream consequences. A meta-analysis of economic studies examining the benefits of socialization for college students demonstrates an abundant positive relationship between a sense of strong social belonging, academic achievement, and mental health. If the College is serious about promoting student academic achievement and overall wellbeing, it will not sit by and watch as one of the keys to those ends is eroded. Instead, it should use its institutional power to facilitate collaboration among students, administrators, faculty, and WPD to try and find solutions amenable to the legitimate interests of all involved parties. Police are endowed with discretionary capabilities for a reason, and heavy-handed tactics without ample consideration will not further the goals of the WPD, campus and Town safety, or the student body. All parties should work together with the College’s students to find constructive solutions, not just the easy ones.
Daniel Okstein ’26 is a history major from Sharon, Mass.
