Hampshire College

Hampshire College is an "experimenting" private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1970 as an experiment in alternative education by four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (together with Hampshire they are known as the Five Colleges).

Current issues

In the spring of 2004, a student group calling itself the Re-Radicalization of Hampshire College emerged with a manifesto called The Re-Making of a College, critiquing what they see as a betrayal of Hampshire's founding ideas in alternative education and student-centered learning. On May 3, the group staged a demonstration which packed the hall outside the President's office during an administrative meeting. Response from the community has been amicable, but none of the manifesto's major demands has yet been fulfilled.

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The Re-Radicalization movement is responding in part to a new "First-Year Plan" entailing changes to the structure of the first year of study in the curriculum. Beginning in the Fall of 2002, the requirements for passing Division I were changed so that first-year students would no longer be required to complete independent projects (see Curriculum above). Though presently a major source of contention, this change is rapidly fading from memory as most of the students who entered into the old plan have graduated or are in their final year.

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The Re-Radicalization of Hampshire College launched a pilot program in fall of 2005 in which ten third semester students were paired with Division III students with similar academic interests to complete a "mentored independent study". In this program, third semester students design an independent study and the Division III students act as mentors to assist them with problems or issues they may encounter in the independent learning process. If the program is sucessful, it will be expanded to be open to all third semester students.

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