Talk:Hampshire College
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How about a new picture? This one is ugly. Also, it snows like 2/3 of the academic year at Hampshire. Maybe a nice picture with snow on the ground would be good.
A few people have mentioned on the discussion page that the re-rad stuff is quite POV and I think that's impossible to argue with. I'm torn over whether or not it should be deleted. Any thoughts? It should AT LEAST be shortened down to a single paragraph, at most. BlackCoffee
I can't figure out the right wording, but something ought to be said about the fact that 3-person dorms have existed at Hampshire, as lounges have been occasionally converted to triples in recent housing-crunch years. Doctawojo 18:09, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
The elitist re-radicalization stuff needs to go. I would go as far as saying it's not a valid cause *and* is POV and doesn't belong here anyway. -ChristopherC
Yo, the Re-Rad stuff is a bit POV. There are lots and lots of other projects that go on and have gone on at Hampshire that are as important as that. Putting it in is just shilling for a pet cause. Not that it's not a valid cause, but it doesn't belong here. 69.236.95.188 22:08, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
Over Hampshire's history, different projects have come and gone. This seems like a much more serious investigation of the school's academic structure. I'd put it up there with the reorganization of the four schools into five, and the Cole Science Center protests (which actually needs to be added to this article history at some point), as a pivotal moment in designing Hampshire. Hampshire was created as a "great experiment," as discussed in the history, and these more recent events show the continuing controversies over defining the school and its programs. 67.10.133.121 09:16, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Sorry I changed before checking the talk page... still pretty new to Wikipedia ettiquette... but I don't know that Re-Rad is anything more serious than the Radical Departure which happened in 1996-1997. I tried to capture the fact that these things happen all the time at Hampshire in my edit. and I know my opening sentence was a bit POV, but seriously, students DO have a tendency to get all sky-is-falling about these issues. I agree that the Re-Rad stuff here reads like it got added by students involved in the project who didn't have much perspective on it. Seriously, Tim Shary's booklet includes some half a dozen projects which were very much like this. I agree the Cole Science Center protests should be added. 24.199.118.71 04:41, 11 September 2006 (UTC)GusAndrews
- "Today the school is on more solid financial footing (though still without a sizable endowment), a condition often credited to the fundraising efforts of current president Gregory S. Prince, Jr.."
Okay, this is really getting into minutiae, but I've much more often heard (prior president) Adele Simmons credited for fundraising than Prince. And the College's selectivity is still comparable to many, many other liberal arts colleges'.
Rbellin 05:02, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)
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[edit] "Lily" the frog
(in response to Rkevins82's comments on my talk page:)
- Thanks for fixing the motto of your alma mater. However, I have reverted your change to the mascot. Just because you have never heard of something, that doesn't make it wrong. Two seconds on Google would have shown you this: [3]. Quote, "Taking Root explains Hampshire history, Hampshire legends, and the Hampshire academic system, narrated by the friendly mascot, Lily, the Hampshire frog." Rkevins82 - TALK 18:56, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
This is a good example of an instance where a single Google hit shouldn't be relied upon so exclusively. The link you're pointing to is to a comic book, created over twenty years ago, which invents a frog character to narrate about the school. I've seen the comic book (it was rediscovered and updated a couple years ago), but had forgotten the frog even had a name and I'm pretty certain "she" doesn't appear in any other college publications (official or student-generated). The whole frog-as-mascot thing is pretty marginal to the campus culture these days to begin with (our only interscholastic sports team is the "Red Scare" and Hampshire students are, if anything, known as "Hampsters"), and Lily simply doesn't exist outside of this comic book. I'm removing the reference again -- please don't revert back unless you've got something more substantial to point to. RadicalSubversiv E 20:41, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
- Actually, the lesson here is that in trying to fill the gaps in a story, it's best to look for multiple sources. While I don't think it matters what the campus thinks of a mascot (if Illinois students either didn't like being the Illini or didn't know about it, that wouldn't change their mascot), I am glad that we've been able to straighten this out some more. After looking at some wire reports online, I've seen Hampshire college's mascot also called the "Fighting Frogs". The original use, as you seem to agree, was Lily, though that has apparently fallen into disfavor (not enough that Lily was removed form the College webpage, in fact, restored!). Put simply, I didn't go to Hampshire and I've never been to Hampshire - all I was trying to do was improve the article with what I thought was proper information. The College doesn't exactly have the largest online presence, so I went with what I could. Hopefully, we can agree to leave it at "frog" - best wishes. Rkevins82 - TALK 02:48, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
The frog actually predates Lily, going back to the founding of the school when a pictorial directory was issued and quickly became known as the "frogbook" -- I believe because it had frogs on the cover. In any case, thanks for your research and good-faith efforts. RadicalSubversiv E 07:47, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Folklore from Hampshire while I was there maintained a number of traditions: first, much as many people at Hampshire are averse to team sports, they're averse to their trappings, so we did not consider ourselves to have an "official" mascot or team color. According to legend, the frog was chosen because a species or subspecies of frog was wiped out when a swamp was drained in developing the campus. "Lily" would be the creation of Mark Tuchman, who wrote Taking Root. The fencing team when I was there was known as the "Fighting Hamsters;" the basketball team was the "Fighting Black Sheep," after the flock of sheep sold to the school along with the land the college was built on (so named by a Dean of Students who was nearly universally despised and moved on after a few years); the Ultimate team became the "Red Scare" when the UMass newspaper called them that as a joke in an April Fools issue; and the Tavern was named the Negative Space Cafe after the relatively new (and also disliked) institutional logo which replaced the breadfruit tree (which itself was mistaken as a pot leaf by many, and was drawn by the son of a school founder or original faculty member, I forget which). Many of these legends could be confirmed with the library's campus archivist, who keeps great records, but I'm not on campus and don't have the time to get in touch with her. 24.199.118.71 04:50, 11 September 2006 (UTC)GusAndrews
[edit] Discussion on selectivity
In the "History" section, it reads, "For several years in the early 1970s, directly after its founding, Hampshire College was among the most selective undergraduate programs in the United States (Making of a College 307-310)." Yeseterday, I added the word "among," which was not previously there, and asked for a citation which was quickly provided. Thanks for provideing that. It's important, however, to understand the meaning of selectivity (the citation, BTW is availabe online at http://library.hampshire.edu/archives/makingcollege/President_report.pdf relevant pages are 308 and 309.) For the first two classes at Hampshire, 14.8% and 18.9% of applicants were accepted, respectively. The next year, the rate jumped to about 30% and now sits at about 59% according to numbers provided by the College to the Princeton Review. Obviously a very low acceptance rate is one measure of selectivity of a college but by no means is it the only measure, particularly when a college is populating itself itself for the first time. There remains questions of whether the College received large numbers of minimally qualified students and accepted a smaller first year class for that reason? Or perhaps they accepted a smaller number of students because they expected to have a higher yield (the numbe of accepted applicants who, in turn, accept the invitation to attend the school). Or, perhaps, the small percentage of acceptances was due in part to a an adjustment in the College's estimation of how many students it could accommodate in the first two years, so it scaled down the number of admitted students to purposely keep the College small during the first year or two of its operation. Selectivity must be evaluated in context. We can't just look at acceptance rate alone and conclude that Hampshire is four times less selective now than it was in 1970. 71.195.206.168 12:43, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
- Obviously you're right about the dangers of overgeneralizing from this one statistic, and I added that source because it was the only one ready to hand -- I'm afraid I've forgotten where else this institutional history is documented. This claim about selectivity does not seem very important to retain (to me), though it's a useful subject for further research for this article. The college's folklore, at least, has it that the college was turning away many extremely qualified applicants during the few years after its founding (though you'll note that the President's Report itself expected this to revert to the norm). -- Rbellin|Talk 20:13, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] the frog
Do frog books still exist?
(Back in the day, those were the self-produced yearbooks. They weren't comic books!)
Who knows! In fact I had the same question: I think the (national/international) Facebook website may have eroded the need. But you should be signing your questions/comments, bud (friendly smile) - anonymous comments will still list the IP - Use four tildes at the end of your comment, like this - 67.10.133.121 09:00, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
nope, there aren't any more frogbooks. they haven't been around for a while. although a student search engine is lovingly referred to as "stalkernet"
The frogbook certainly does still exist at Hampshire! (Or at least it did as of November 2005, which is when I recieved my last one.) It does not, however, have pictures anymore, it's pretty much just a listing of names and numbers. There is also a search function on the Hampshire Intranet which displays ID card pictures.Tuckerekcut 03:09, 18 May 2006 (UTC), previous Hampshire Student
[edit] removing/keeping various "notable names"
I added Abraham Ravett. We're not buddies, I haven't seen or spoken to him in ten years, but can't for the life of me understand why someone would remove his name, noting that he was "not notable". (Sour grapes? - He told you you'd have to wake up at 5 AM to get a job in the film industry? He told me that, too. grin)
Please define your standards of what "notable" is. Notable does not necessarily mean "famous". It can mean being well regarded and having made achievements in your field, particularly when the person is an academic. In terms of Hampshire, its reputation has grown as a "film school", so it seems especially worthwhile to list people who are actively working in film. You can't argue that it's a matter of sheer audience size, though. Although Eugene Mirman's done great and has a VV column, arguably another alumn, Sarah Goldfinger, the script editor/writer for CSI, is having her work seen by millions more people every Thursday. But no one thought to add her before. (Hey, I didn't even know until I caught a rerun on Spike!)
Like Bill Brand (and Liebling, who has been on the planet a lot longer), Ravett is an experimental and/or documentary filmmaker. This stuff isn't going to show up with a lot of hits on IMDB, but the sheer number of prestigious theatres and festivals that have shown his work makes him notable. Oh, he's also listed on the New York Times film database, with particular note to his work "Forgotten Tenor", a critically acclaimed jazz documentary. It's still considered one of the main references on Wendell Gray's life: http://www.villagevoice.com/home/0323,mitchner,44581,23.html
Meanwhile, one of the alumns listed is primarily known because he appeared once on a game show and is a political blogger and operative. Outside of political circles he might not be considered as notable as, say, Micah Marshall, but in his field, he's notable.
In fact, there are several other professors associated with the school today or at one time, who belong on the list. Off the top of my head: Susan Douglas, popular culture critic and David C. Kelly (due to the popularity of Yellow Pig Day). I don't know Kelly and have generally snarky things to say about Douglas, but they've made their impact.
So, again, if anything - this list of notables is too short, not too long. 67.10.133.121 19:12, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
- No, I'm not in the film industry. I don't know him, just like the next 100 people you would meet on the street. He pulls about 500 hits in the Google test, which doesn't seem very high to me for a professor. If he is so notable, maybe you could make a page. Any of the others that are non-notable you should cut. Rkevins82 23:52, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Div 1 requirements
"Before the fall of 2002, Division 1 traditionally consisted of five independent projects, one in each of the "Schools" or academic departments. These projects could consist of purely independent work, or one course and a smaller independent project."
I entered in 2000, and this statement does not describe my program. There were 4 div 1 exams in 5 areas, one of which was not a school (QA- quantitative analysis). Students were required to complete 2 project-based exams, and 2 other options (one-plus-one, two-course, or transfer credits). Transfer students were only required to complete 1 project-based exam. Students were allowed- but not required- to use more than two projects to satisfy the exam requirement.
I thought I'd post before changing the article, because the program was continually changing at that point, and often pretty vague. I'm positive about the 4 div I exams, but there may have been more options for satisfying them. As a transfer, I had one transfer credit, a two-course, a one-plus-one (an AP test from high school + an HC class), and a project. I definitely only completed one project.
Juicifer451 16:27, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
- Yes -- the sentences you quote are simply false. Thanks for pointing it out. That whole paragraph seems garbled and distorted, and a bit like it's trying to advance an agenda -- it should be corrected or cut to strictly factual descriptions. Feel free to fix it, and I'll try to look it over as well. -- Rbellin|Talk 16:38, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
-
- Done. Juicifer451 19:49, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Accreditation
I'm removing a section from "current issues" on the school's accreditation. It does not seem important enough to merit a mention, since (a) all colleges and universities are periodically re-accredited in exactly the same way and (b) Wikipedia is not a current-news source. And no sources are cited that would give any reason why this was more relevant or interesting than every other routine reaccreditation in the academic world. If there's some reason why it is more relevant or meaningful than it appears, then this needs to be cited and explained in the article. -- Rbellin|Talk 00:46, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Yellow Pigs Day
Is there a reason that Yellow Pigs Day does not have it's own article or at least have it as part of the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics article. I went to Hampshire College and didn't know about Yellow Pigs day until I heard it about it from someone at MIT. It's definitely important but definitely not an important part of the college. -- mako (talk•contribs) 23:22, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
- I think that there was originally a separate article on Yellow Pig Day, and when that article was deleted (the subject not being important enough to warrant a separate article), the content was mistakenly merged into this article. You're right, it should be in the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics article, not this one. -- Rbellin|Talk 01:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Andrew Rich
I removed "Andrew Rich, American Winemaker" from the list of notable alumni because I there was no article and, searching around on a few places, I couldn't find any information to claim that he was notable. He does, of course, seem to be a winemaker. Before re-adding him, please add a reference to demonstrate notability or, better yet, provide such a reference on the Andrew Rich page and then link to it from her. —mako๛ 12:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
- The list of "notable" alumni should really only contain people who are notable enough to have Wikipedia articles. I'm removing the red-linked names again now; editors who think any of them are notable enough for an encyclopedic treatment are welcome to begin articles on them and then re-add them to the list. -- Rbellin|Talk 15:26, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] "experimenting"
It seems like every month or so someone deletes the word "experimenting" from the lead sentence, or substitutes "experimental," without explanation. But the school's preferred self-description uses "experimenting," and it's worth preserving for that reason and for descriptive specificity even if it reads a bit oddly. It is a principle of Wikipedia's house style that a lead sentence needs to mention what makes the article's subject interesting, and succinctly describe what distinguishes it from other things like it (i.e., in this case, from conventional liberal arts colleges). Unless someone can present a strong argument for deleting it, "experimenting" should stay in the lead sentence. Please don't continue delete it without providing any explanation or justification. -- Rbellin|Talk 20:45, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
