Word: northampton
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...NORTHAMPTON, Mass.--Sweeping reform of college curriculums that are "now designed specifically to separate the student from the rest of society" is an urgent need, Harold Taylor, former president of Sarah Lawrence College, told a gathering of about 100 students at Smith College last weekend...
Certainly the system had weaknesses. There was a rule, for instance, that girls must be in Northampton from 9 a.m. Monday to 5 p.m. Friday all during January, and in a town like Northampton this rule has the ring of a prison sentence. Every one of the 2300 girls goes to see "Charade" at the local theatre. Every one races to the mailboxes to pick up the incoming mail twice a day. And everyone who can possible arrange it--perhaps half the school--escapes on the weekend...
...Northampton, Mass...
Each weekend, Northampton is jammed with boys from Amherst, Dartmouth, and Yale; the girls' experience is reflected in their poise around boys, and in their command of any social situation. (One small, defensive-looking girl, when asked what she did when a big Dartmouth animal got out of hand, smiled and said, "It's really quite simple. If he is being very obnoxious, you just pull back, look him straight in the eye, and say coldly, 'Frankly, you don't appeal to me at all.' It never fails...
Independent study, which presumably prepares the individual to continue her education alone after graduation, has long been a sore point at Northampton. President Mendenhall observes that "this (ability to continue after graduation) is particularly important for a young woman to acquire, and there is unhappy, clamorous evidence around us that her predecessors somehow failed in the attempt." To give the Smithie a taste of life on her own, the college has instituted a three year experiment called Interim, which provides the student with three weeks in January without classes or course commitments of any kind. So long as they remain...