Thirty-seven years ago this week, The Student outlined a plan drafted by a group of Amherst and Smith students for the social and educational system of Hampshire College, which would begin admitting students in 1970. The plan was a response to "The New College Plan," first proposed in 1958 by faculty of Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke and UMass.

The student proposal followed in the experimental footsteps of Hampshire's original conception, pivoting on a "village" structure where five separate hubs, or villages, would serve as "educational as well as social centers." Not only would these villages be self-sufficient, as students were to clean and repair their dorms as well as create their own social rules, but they would also be the sites of seminar and group-style courses.

The school would also include a general "education center" common to all students. This center would house a "comfortable and relaxed" library, sitting rooms, a coffee shop, and a gym. Committee member Eric Reiner '66 stressed the non-traditional aspect of the education system, saying, "We want to eliminate the administration as an obstacle between the students and the faculty-which we feel it is here [at Amherst]."

Some faculty members of the Hampshire College Curriculum Committee greeted the plan with praise and excitement. Amherst Professor of Psychology Robert Birney said of the student plan, "This kind of document is extremely valuable to anybody planning a college, and it's too bad we don't have a fistful of them."