Return to Chris Kawecki Peter Christopher home page.

...Kawecki

Prepared with joint support from Hampshire College and the Johnston Center for Individualized Learning at the University of Redlands. Hampshire College, Amherst MA 01002.

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...experience.

These terms are the first that come to mind to me after one month of intense research on Johnston. Of course the list is impossible to complete, the number of individuals who are part of the Johnston story and the way they have impacted the institution becoming ever-more lengthy as I discover more of the story.

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...orientation.''[17]

Most of the quotations in this section can be assumed to come from A History of Johnston College, 1969-1979, henceforth referred to as the History with a capital H. I have purposely left this chapter uncluttered by citations. It should be assumed that any uncited quotations in this chapter come from that History. I realize that ordinarily it is quite a faux pas to rely primarily on one source for an entire chapter of a book. In the case of this chapter, my main task is condensing an entire book into a chapter. My own background research into the College's history, through interviews and examination of archive material showed no inconsistencies with the History.

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...Overseers.

In an interview, the secretary of Johnston for the past 20 years suggested that Orton's real goal lay in reforming the University. In a Time Magazine article in October 1993, Orton is quoted as seeing ``rigiditiy in attitude and rigidity in structure'' as the two main problems of higher education.[24] The secretary's suggestion is supported by Orton's later position against Johnston leaving the University alogether.

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...job.

Herb Bernstein, albeit only an acquantance of the history, suggests the possibility of an alternate reading of the history, in which Armacost is fully aware of the conflicts he will have with McCoy. This suggestion is therefore a parallel to Hampshire's development, where the four established colleges came up with the New College Plan specifically so that they would not have to change. Herb suggests, then, that Armacost never intended to have a traditional Christian school for international business, but that the ultra-conservative trustees had to be told something. I am weary of this interpretation, but didn't feel right in leaving it out entirely.

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...strength.''

In the Johnston archives, I ran across a statement of purpose for Johnston College, proposed by the University Board of Trustees in 1967. The first objective was ``the establishment of a Liberal Arts College that will equip young men and women for proficient service and leadership in business, government, and international relations.'' I found a later draft of the document, from May, 1969, with the end of that sentence crossed off in blue pen. The corrected version read ``the establishment of a Liberal Arts College that will equip young men and women for proficient service and leadership.'' Whose pen made those marks, however, I do not know.

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...institution.

I have been debating about whether the parentheses here should surroud the ``kind of structure'' or ``lack of structure''. The answer to that depends on the meaning of ``structure''. If by structure we assume a universal set of guidelines, independent of the student that make up a college, then it should read a ``lack'' of structure, whereas if by structure we mean freedom to act against the community's decisions, it should read a ``kind'' of structure, the difference merely being the source of community norms. At Johnston, that source was (and, to a lesser degree, still is) the source of those community norms. In contrast, at Hampshire the trustees and the administration were the source of these norms.

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...hand.

Another kind of sensitivity training was in the vein of Gestalt therapy - more for the liberation of the individual than for improved group dynamics. McCoy intended that Johnston concentrate on the first. History, however, shows that Johnston was at least as interested in the personal liberation aspect of sensitivity training as it was interested in the group dynamics.

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...Dimension.

There may have been Directors of the other Dimensions as well; I happened to see a letter addressed to this Director in the archives, and a number of early self-studies mention the three dimensions. One study also mentions the environmental dimension, but I saw no other mention of it before or after.

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...faculty.

Soon, it had developed the motto ``Everything is Negotiable'' just as we at Hampshire have developed our ability to ``go outside the lines.'' Yet as much as many of the internal ideas about an indivdual's education, and the resulting academic policies, were similar, the context in which the two Colleges were born was very different. Hampshire was intended to be its own entity, clearly self-determining, with initial guidance from the three colleges and the University of Massachusetts already present in the Pioneer Valley. It was to construct its own facilities on new property, but engage in a serious exchange program with the other four institutions of the Valley. In contrast, Johnston was founded on the grounds of the University of Redlands. Hampshire received a 6 million dollar grant from Harold Johnson, and secured over 10 million extra in loans. Johnston received a 1.5 million dollar grant from Graham Johnston, the overseas manager of IBM, and secured 3.5 million additional dollars in loans.

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...program.

In contrast to McCoy's vision of a college whose first class determined its structure, the man whom one would most identify as Hampshire's founding father, Franklin Patterson, fulfilled the role that was outlined for him, providing much of that structure himself. McCoy's vision was egalitarian from the beginning, always in contrast to Armacost's idea for the College. Meanwhile, Patterson was himself openly forming a hierarchical institution with significant structures in place the day the students arrived, a practice that McCoy would never have allowed. Thus, of course McCoy did not write an outline of how the College would be run, as Patterson did. But, though the idea of a College at the University of Redlands had been in the air for over 5 years, there had been no formal proposals or full-time thought given to the project until McCoy himself had accepted the job as Chancellor in 1968. The idea of Hampshire College, however, was already well over 10 years old. The goals of the college had been outlined in the formidable New College Plan[14], and Patterson was simply to meet those goals, not to design his own college. As I have already noted, McCoy was not interested in carrying out someone else's plan. He had no intentions of consulting Armacost and the reactionary University trustees more than was absolutely necessary.

In fact however, I am struck here by two separate incidents. The first, I met a woman who had been a Professor in Hampshire's first year; she commented on how ``no one at the college knew what was going on in the first year'' - not a single student, she claimed, did a div 1 that year. I am also told, however, that some student did div 1s throught the short-lived ``human development program''. The other thing I am remembering is an early division 3[13], which wrote that the actual structuring of div 3 had not been decided (by the Academic Council) until some students had already entered their div 3 studies. Herb Bernstein also emphasized this point to me in conversation.

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...cabins.

The rental of the summercamp cost approximately $20,000.

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...employees

These group leaders cost just over $20,000 and were payed for by a grant from IBM.

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...T-groups

The ``T'' in T-groups is for ``training'', according to the History.

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...open

The construction of the Johnston dormitories had been more expensive and took longer than anticipated.

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...Forum''.

These faculty meetings are now called Faculty Fishbowls. Johnston Director Yasuyuki Owada now invites all University faculty to the monthly meetings. The purposes of the meeting are to get University faculty indoctrinated and interested in the Center, and secondarily to give students some ideas about what faculty are thinking about. According to some Hampshire faculty (and my own experience), one of the weaknesses of Hampshire lies in its failure to indoctrinate new faculty properly.

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...year.

The emphasis the History of Johnston College places on this conflict is certainly the distinguishing feature of the document (the History) as well as the history. In truth, although that conflict seems to be the least interesting in providing a context for Hampshire, it is so fundamental to the development of Johnston that it would be misleading to avoid it.

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...Pres

Pres was Presley McCoy's informal name, rather than a reference to his position (which was Chancellor)

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...most.[1]

Indeed, as I will suggest in the Conclusion, Johnston has helped the University develop. However, the attitude of the Board of Trustees, and the administration they install, like Athens to Socrates, are intent on killing the fly that bites the University's behind, and do not acknowledge the positive role Johnston plays in the University.

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...GYST.

The chapters on the Academics of Johnston and Becoming a Johnstonite talk about GYST in detail. It is a combined academic and community-building retreat.

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...University,

The History claims that in retrospect it is widely accepted that this balkanization was not at the root of the fiscal troubles, and that the reorganizations did not favorably improve the deficit situation

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...faculty

Moore fired the more ``touchy-feely'' professors, the new age psychologists, and incorporated the rest into the University with three years credit toward tenure, some with the understanding that they would retire within a few years.

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...asked.

And in answering that question - exactly that question - Hampshire was to have found its meaning. In contrast to that mission, Hampshire now prides itself on integrating courses into every student's education as well as they can possibly fit. My question, of course, is how well courses fit, period, not how to maximize the fit.

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...eleven

It used to be eight Cores, but in the fall of '91 the University moved to 10 Liberal Arts Foundation Requirements. Last year, community service was added, so the total is 11.

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...arts.

The variety of different explanations in the Johnston literature for how breadth is measured is impressive, closely approximating the range of ideas in the community. For example, one student told me that if a student really convinced the contract committee that breadth was achieved, the meeting could completely ignore the University Cores.[25] Of course, there are other committees that make very specific demands, like a required women's studies course, on students. Because the Contract Committees vary exactly as much as the Community does, this range of demands is not as surprising as it must seem to most readers.

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...Keays

the Johnston student who constructed the Johnston Computer Center using equipment thrown out by the University's Administrative Computer Center.

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...Johnston.

A 1991 Johnston graduate points out one of the ways in which Johnston community decisionmaking really fails:

I can think of six instances where a woman within the JC community has come to the community - formally or informally - with the statement that she has been mistreated by another community member. In every case, the women attracted some degree of support; but they also attracted a considerable amount of scorn, ridicule, disbelief, and mistreatment because she chose to come forward. I think that's a disgrace to the ``community''; in fact, it's one of the reasons that I'm not sure it's accurate to call JC a community. In no case did the community ever reach a consensus that they supported the woman, believed her account, and were willing to even symbolically denounce the community member who had mistreated her. In every case the alleged attacker also attracted a fair amount of supporters, who claimed that either (a) he couldn't have done that, (b) he wouldn't do it again, (c) it wasn't fair to pick on someone for one little mistake, (d) it was a misunderstanding, (e) it was her fault, (f) she made it up to harm him, or (g) this was just a feminist ploy for attention. I understand that it's difficult to believe bad things about one's close friends, and that few of us can claim to be ``morally pure''; but I'm amazed at the degree to which the JC community, over the years, has managed to turn a blind eye to JC-on-JC violence.[9]

This failure is a strong problem with my central theme, that egalitarian decisionmaking is the fundamental success of Johnston. I suppose I could say that nothing works for everyone; but when the needs of the same group of people are constantly unmet, and the community is really that ineffectual in preventing future incidents, I cannot say that with a just conscience. I could also say that the egalitarian community cannot exist without the kind of training that early Johnston College students received, but I don't think that's the case either. This point remains an arrow in my side.

Another student who had just moved off campus told me that the family-like atmosphere at Johnston was simply not appropriate for a lot of students (including herself) who needed more private space.

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...committees.

A 1974 Hampshire College Division 3 exam, Hampshire College: The Governance System, made a number of recommendations. One was the absolute necessity of having some kind of group responsible for management of the commitees, that is, coordinating what committees have jurisdiction over what issues, and making sure temporary commmittees do not become permanent. He also notes that ``it is the opinion of this study that if the college fails to conduct an overhaul of the governace system, there is the distinct and ominous possibility that the current system will eventually collapse in a situation that may result in the separation of the staff from the rest of the community, the polarization of the faculty from the studentsand the administration, and vastly increased apathy on the part of the students. The damage to Hampshire would probably be irreparable.

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...own.

I'm not going into the Tenure issue at all here. It was a long and juicy discussion, and apparently for most of its life, the College officially went with the idea of respecting ``external protections (like free speech and freedom to choose textbooks), but not internal protections (dismissal only for moral turpitude or gross incompetence).''[17]

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...it.''

Yet this opposition reveals a misunderstanding of the distinction between pre-experience negotiation and post-experience negotiation. Pre-experience negotiation is to insure that 1) a student is conscious of the educational value of the activities that student is considering 2) to avoid later conflicts of misunderstanding by giving the student an understanding of what the institution requires. Post-experience negotiation, on the other hand, is to give the student and the world an idea of what educational value they did get from the experience. Both seem very valuable, especially when they are negotiations, rather than tasks. The idea of being forced into keeping a contract seems like it could really hamper successful learning whenever subject materials (or approaches) are discovered rather than covered - which ought to be much of the time.

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...ASUR

The Associated Students of the University of Redlands, which is in turn funded by a fee charged to each University and Johston student along with tuition. The fee is similar to Hampshire's student activities fee.

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...GYST

GYST stands for Get-Your-Shit-Together and is pronounced jist.

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...GYST.

There is some suggestion, however, that part of the reason for the Pilgrim Pines retreat was that the Johnston buildings were not completed when students arrived in September[1]

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...years.

Bill McDonald suggests that I am implicitly (and unrightully) valorizing innovation: ``You give reasons why the faculty `didn't have the energy' for continuous innovation; I think rather we had the conviction that the basic design was itself enabling of individual innovation, and that that was what we were seeking. That should provide at least a beginning point for `future generations' and their needs. Continuous institutional innovation is, for me, an insidous idea; critique and even destabilizing are valuable, and starting over may well be unnecessary, but the folly of continuous innovation is embodied for me - excuse the hyperbole - in the old Mao and the Red Guard. I'm sure you're aware of these extrememes, but I couldn't help memntioning them''[16]

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...College,

This is due in large part to having no full-time Johnston faculty. Since each Johnston faculty, as a result of the 1979 reorganization, is employed by a department within the University, they are each required to fulfill the departmental duties within the Univerisity, and Johnston really relies on their good will and commitment to the Center for its existence.

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...Indio

The juvenile facility where an early program placed students as probation counselors

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...students.

Again I am here going to insert a comment by Bill McDonald - a reply to one of my drafts. He writes: ``It seems plainly wrong, even as a rhetorical gesture, to talk about `ossifying' when faculty, even the Old Farts, clearly maintain their enthusiasm and energy. For example, how many sixty-year-old faculty members in America, not just our two campuses, would do what Owada does if they were `ossified'?!? If Owada concurred in that description (as you imply), I think his really astonishing commitment to the place belies tit. Or look at the sign-up sheet on Kevin O'Neill's door of the four classes he's teaching this term in voluntary overload: no burnout there! Agai, junior faculty literally campagin to get offices in JC; this is hardly a mark of persons `uninteresting and unrewarded' by the program. I suspect, though without empirical foundation, that Hampshire has plenty of like-committed folks as well. I think the Binary Disease, coupled with the undeniable pleasure of revolution/reformation, has oversimplified your analysis here.''[16] One reason I include this comment is that it brings into the forefront the question of whether ossification is bad, and innovation good. When writing this I didn't think I was taking the side of criticizing ossification as much as Bill suggests here. The question is not one I can answer, but only one I had to bring up.

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...it.

In 1994, Johnston Alumns raised $15,800 towards the operation of the Johnston Center, in the year of the College's 25th anniversery. This was more than twice the usual level.[5]

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...``legends'',

Some Johnston students achieve unofficial ``legend'' status by the incredible Johnston education they get for themselves, the good they did for the University and Johnston, while making incredibly few enemies and incredibly many allies, within Johnston and the University.

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...are.

Generative is a concept whose corresponding word I was introduced to a few weeks ago by Hampshire faculty member Mike Fortun. He suggested that Generative work was work that engaged the reader in constructing original thoughts about the subject matter, as opposed to attempting to once-and-for-all solve its riddles.

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...upon.[8]

Tom Levitan tells me that indeed many of their suggestions were indeed lifted from Hamphsire - most noticeably, however, from the New College Plan.

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