Hampshire College Top Questions

Some people look at Hampshire and say 'that's not a real college' because they don't take tests, because the students can do whatever they want, because that's not the way the real world works. People think we Hampshire students are all a bunch of hippies who would rather get high all day then open a book. A lot of people think this school is fully of a bunch of rich kids who can't push themselves and are basically going to a $50,000 camp every year.

pot-smokers rich kids artsy-fartsy anarchists idealists not very motivated

Hampshire students are lazy potheads who slack off as much as possible. They are always high, always grungy and dirty and naively interested in radical, left wing politics that will never happen. On the other hand, many students believe that because they go to Hampshire, they are automatically left wing and liberal and open minded. They do not need to work at all, join different groups, become involved in discussions for this, in a sense, they do not need to work to earn this title, they already just have it.

pot smoking, creative, slackers, smart, rich kids pretending to be poor hippies

Hippies and Hipsters

Well there are a lot of stereotypes. The most common one is that Hampshire kids do a lot of drugs. Stereotyped as hippies. Also many people think Hampshire kids are a little weird.

- We don't do any real work - We all do drugs, more so than our peers - We're all really liberal/progressive/leftist and therefore are not racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, capitalistic, imperialistic, etc., either as individuals or as an institution - We can't get jobs/into graduate school after college

birkenstock-wearing, pot-smoking, fanatically vegan trustafarians on one end and coke-snorting hipsters pseudo-intellectuals on the other

In the 5 College Consortium (so that's UMass Amherst, Amherst College, Smith and Mount Holyoke in addition to Hampshire), there's this idea that we're all represented in the 5 characters in Scooby Doo. Hampshire is Shaggy, and that's probably one of the easiest ways to think of the stereotypical Hampshire student. Laid-back, smokes a lot of weed. Hampshire's also known for being a hippie school- one assumes that Hampshire kids are vegans and wear hemp clothes and are involved in multiple activist organizations, the farther left, the better. The school itself, as a more alternative place (no grades, no majors, and the like) is often stereotyped as pretty easy- without grades or tests, people assume there's no real work to be done, and this would allow the above-mentioned students to spend more time smoking weed and attending protests.

dirty hippies or stoners