|
|
Hampshire College - Inside ScoopCollege Prowler0.00
Interested in
Hampshire College? FactsSchool Slang
- Alumni - Anyone who completes two semesters at Hampshire
- Atkins - Not the diet, the farm-style market that’s a short distance from the campus
- Committee - The group of faculty and students who guide divisional work
- Community Council - The student governance body
- Div Free - A Hampshire graduate; someone who has completed Div III
- Div IV - A student who completes Div III, graduates, and stays at Hampshire to work
- Eval - Evaluation
- Fi-Com - The student-run financial committee (a sub-committee of Community Council) in charge of dispersing funds to student organizations
- Hampsters - Hampshire students
- Interns - Hampshire’s version of resident assistants
- Mod - The modular apartments on campus
- Moho - A Mount Holyoke student (or Mount Holyoke College)
- Noho - Northampton
- Red Scare - The name of the ultimate Frisbee team
- Roberta - Roberta Tudryn, the invaluable dispenser of advice, weather predictions, and general support. Officially, she’s a cashier receptionist at Saga and has been with the college for 25 years, but as a recent article in the student newspaper describes, she’s become “the trademark face of Saga.”
- Saga - Dining Commons
- Signer - Hampshire’s non-hierarchical term for a student organization leader (one who signs the paperwork)
- Smithie - A Smith College student
- StalkerNet - The name for the online College directory, which lists photos and campus contact information for all students. Some browse this directory compulsively, much like MySpace or Facebook.
- The Daily Jolt (the “Jolt”) - The much-used Web site and home to the Daily Jolt forum �
- The Hub - The electronic administrative site, home to course registration, academic forms, and financial information
Things I Wish I Knew Before Coming To School
- Don’t count on a specific class always being offered.
- Film/video, photography, and creative writing classes are really hard to get enrolled in, especially if you’re not concentrating in that field.
- Independent studies take a lot of legwork and sheer luck because it’s tough to get the right faculty to sign on to a project (many are overworked as it is).
- Most student-initiated long-term projects are hard to sustain. Many things collapse or disappear as a core group of students graduate.
- Paperwork at Hampshire can be a nightmare.
Tips to Succeed
- Be persistent. This goes for getting into classes, getting faculty members on your committee, getting to do independent studies, and even getting financial aid.
- Be sensitive and aware of others; Hampshire can be a cramped place if you make enemies.
- If you want to see changes on campus, stay active and go to the numerous meetings with administrators and faculty.
- Keep track of all your paperwork—much gets lost in the Hampshire bureaucracy.
- Learn to budget your time: it may seem like you have plenty of time to lay back and chill, but if you let assignments, papers, and final projects snowball, the end of the semester is going to be brutal.
- Make backup plans just in case students or faculty flake out on you.
- Take advantage of the “course-shopping” period where you can attend any class you have a remote interest in, get a syllabus, get a sense of the professor and other students, and weigh your options.
- Talk to professors and other students about your interests to build possible connections in the future.
- Utilize the Five College Consortium.
Urban Legends
- A UMass alumnus created Scooby Doo and based each of the main characters on one of the Five Colleges, Hampshire College being represented by Shaggy.
- Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns graduated from Hampshire College: Yes, Burns is an alumnus, but Hampshire’s official policy is to recognize any person who attended the College for two semesters to be alumni. Burns’ name is nowhere to be found in the Hampshire Div III archives.
- Hampshire is/was officially “clothing optional.” To this day, residences informally designate themselves “clothing optional,” and streakers sometimes shock campus visitors, but there is no campus-wide policy.
- If you ring the Div Free Bell (by the entrance of the library) before you complete your Div III, you will be doomed to fail. Most chalk this one up to myth, but so far no one has done a documented study.
- Merrill and Dakin blueprints were based on those for an insane asylum and prison respectively. Some speculate that the horseshoe design of Merrill (bathrooms split the rooms) reflect the designer’s wish to have “patients” be unable to look across the hall at each other. Others attribute Dakin’s unusual architecture (the halls are all linked by common bathrooms) to a possible prison layout.
- The circular Greenwich buildings (the “donuts”) were part of a military practice exercise.
Traditions
- Campus Publications - Publications at Hampshire, particularly student newspapers, come and go every few years. The oldest publication is the Dakin TP which provides Dakin residents with toilet-side reading, but the longest continuously-running publication is the Omen (omen.hampshire.edu), the free speech publication publishing since 1993. The current incarnation of the school newspaper is the Climax, a revival of the newspaper’s original name. Past names include: the Climax (1971–1981), Apostrophe (1981–1984), Communique (1984/1985), In Black and White (1985–1987), Permanent Press (1987–1992), Hampshire Examiner (1992–1993), Phoenix (1993–1996), Forward (1997–2003), and, again, the Climax (2003–Present). The Fred, Merrill’s counterpart to the Dakin TP, has been revived in recent years as well.
- Div Buttons - Central Records give students buttons when they pass a division. When students pass Division I, they get a “Division II” button, when they pass Division II, they get a “Division III” button, and when they pass their final Division III, they get “Division Free” buttons. Locals in the area recognize the buttons and will often congratulate students they see wearing them (like at Collective Copies, a worker-owned business where students go to make copies of their portfolios).
- Drag Ball - Every spring, students and organizations like the Queer Community Alliance, Trans Student Alliance, and the Women’s Center organize Drag Ball. The main event is the campus-wide dance party featuring student performers and bands, and students often dress and act a different gender identity than the one they typically represent.
- Hampshire Halloween - The Halloween bash at Hampshire was once a notorious affair of debauchery and hallucinogenic drugs called “Trip or Treat” that Rolling Stone once listed as a must-see party. Some of the highlights include art installations, dances, hayrides, fireworks, and the creativity of attendees’ costumes, though in recent years the event has tamed down (and cut back on certain activities). It is now an invite-only party in which every student has limited invites to give out to their non-Hampshire friends.
- Keg Hunt - Every Easter, groups of students go out and hide kegs of alcohol in the woods on campus, then others go out in search—cups in hand—of the hidden kegs. People get drunk and lay in the grass, play Frisbee, and sometimes run around naked. Needless to say, this is not a school-sponsored event.
- Ringing the Div Free Bell - Hampshire students used to ring the bell after they passed any division, but over the years it morphed into a rite of passage for Div Frees (those who have finished their Div III projects). Students do a range of things, from casual bell-ringing during the day to full-out parties with food, friends, and champagne.
- Velvis - The tradition of the Velvis (a velvet painting of Elvis) was that students would steal the Velvis from one another and perch him in the common spaces of their homes. The unofficial rules were that he had to be in a public area, visible (not hidden away), and your mod had to be left unlocked. The Velvis was given to outgoing president Gregory Prince as a farewell gift, and many students regard this as the end of the tradition, but others have floated the idea of stealing it back from Prince in the spirit of the Velvis tradition.
Most Recent Contributing Author
Name: Tal Schechter
Hometown: Stamford, CT
Major: Health, Science, and Technology Fun Fact: Tal loves dairy even though he's lactose intolerant Contributing Author Internship
College Prowler is actively seeking talented students to be "Contributing Authors," and assist with updating
the College Prowler guide to their school. This is a great opportunity for a student to gain internship experience, be a part of a nationally
recognized company, gain tremendous exposure, utilize new media techniques, and share advice with high school students about what life is
really like at your college. Read more about the internship.
|
|
