Twenty-nine years ago this week, the student body made unprecedented demands on the faculty by circulating a petition entitled "Give Us Voice in Our Education." Roughly one-half of the student body (630 students), demanded greater power in the College's decision-making processes and insisted on a more significant role in determining their own education. The petition was in part a reaction to a request by the Select Committee on the Curriculum that the Student Assembly hold elections for students to serve in liaison roles to the Committee. The Student Assembly responded by defying the Committee through its refusal to vote in student representatives. Assembly members instead opted to present President of the College John William Ward with the petition demanding that their voices be heard.

The Select Committee on the Curriculum formed in response to the inactivity of the Committee of Educational Policy, a group in which students acted as representatives endowed with voting rights. Professor of Biology Henry Yost formed the Select Committee of the Curriculum in 1975 and left the issue of student representatives to the discretion of the Committee of Six. However, the Committee of Six decided against installing student representatives, and in response to student protest, the 1976 Committee of the Curriculum Chair, Professor of Biology William Hexter, recommended that a non-voting Student Liaison Committee sit in on Committee on the Curriculum meetings. The Student Assembly denounced Hexter's ideas, and Jimi Williams '77 summed up the Assembly's opinion when he said that without a vote "students are like pieces on a chessboard," according The Amherst Student.

Students protested until they caught the ear of President Ward. "If student insistence on Committee voting representation will frustrate the Committee's work, students should be made voting Committee members," Ward finally stated in The Student. The President put the question of student voting representation on the Committee of Six's agenda, claiming that the "responsibility of the Faculty for the curriculum should not be blurred by student committee membership. However, the minor voting issue should not obstruct the single most important work of the College now."