<p>I just thought I'd ask:</p>
<p>"Does Hampshire have the worst reputation for recreational pharmaceuticals among the Five Colleges?"</p>
<p>D: Oh yeaaaaah. For amount of alcohol, Amherst and U/Mass would lead, but for everything else, Hampshire.</p>
<p>One local opinion. Fwiw.</p>
<p>In your own words "When D got admitted to Smith and decided to go there, people seemingly came out of the woodwork everywhere (those who even knew about Smith) with, "Aren't there a lot of lesbians there?" It got to the point where I thought of printing up a card"</p>
<p>I think that the parents of Hampshire students have those same issues with the "reefer madness" label. There is always a reason for those stereotypes, but as we all know, they don't apply to everyone at a given school, or even most. Take a look at the other schools on that list: Weslyan, Vassar, Bard, NYU, Oberlin. In part it is that these schools don't have the typical Frat/Sorority culture, so this other aspect stands out. A friend's son was shocked when he got to Bates at how much pot smoking there was. It's everywhere.</p>
<p>Hampshire does student interviews, or at least they did when my D was considering the school. The young man who did my daughter's interview not only appeared high to me, he smelled of marijuana and BO (which I found repulsive but which my D told me I was overreacting to). </p>
<p>The stoner ethic wasn't what turned my D off, however; it was the fact that the school is literally in the middle of pasture land.</p>
<p>I'm pretty shocked to hear about these experiences with tour guides, interviewers, etc. as this was not my experience at all, and in doing further research, talking to other parents, students, etc. I have really over the past year questioned why Hampshire even has that reefer madness reputation. Sometimes I think a school gets a reputation and then that is what people look for. Smith is known to be very "gay" but Yale actually has a very high percentage of gay students, yet we don't hear about that.</p>
<p>Educated, if you are saying that a general campus culture is not indicative of any individual student, I have no disagreement.</p>
<p>However, that's a different matter from saying that generalizations about campus cultures don't have some validity. Smith is routinely rated among the most gay-friendly campuses in the country, with around 1/3 being some kind of non-straight orientation in a recent survey. Smith (and to a similar degree) Mount Holyoke stand out (per Seriously's observation) only because they're all-women and gay male populations generally dwarf gay female populations...except at an all women campus. In terms of total numbers, I doubt that Smith is significantly different from Vassar, Yale, and a number of other reputations.</p>
<p>Hampshire, using the similar and admittedly imprecise metric of PR's "Most & Least ____________" lists based on student surveys, consistently rates among the highest on the "Reefer Madness" scale...#9 in 2004, #4 in 2005. I don't think the precise rankings mean anything; I think the broad conclusions are accurate.</p>
<p>While I know at least one Smith parent that would prefer to keep the gay aspects of Smith under the table, I think it serves no one well to keep all aspects of a college from being considered, whether it's Smith and Mount Holyoke for its gay population, Hampshire and Bard for their propensity for recreational pharmaceuticals, Williams and Amherst and Dartmouth for drinking, Grinnell for its remoteness, or Carleton and St. Olaf's for the weather. It is what it is and imo issues should be looked at without flinching. People may choose to fix upon or ignore them as they choose. Personally, the gay population at a school is a non-issue for me as long as those who are straight aren't made to feel uncomfortable about being straight; otoh, there are any number of indicators, including high alcohol and drug use or high participation in Greek life that I look askance at. YMMV. </p>
<p>N.B. My alma-mater probably has a reputation for having the second highest per capita consumption of marijuana in the UC system. I didn't touch a joint in my time there, other than perhaps pass one to the person sitting next to me. Cue: inhale jokes.</p>
<p>Alcohol at Hampshire:
Last fall,,while attending an Open House at U Mass, we dropped S off to visit a friend at Hampshire (in the evening).While in the parking lot near a dorm area, a car pulled in,the trunk opened, and the older guy in the car started distributing alcohol from the trunk,obviously prearranged orders as the transactions went quite quickly.He had quite a crowd waiting.So they obviously drink at Hampshire too!</p>
<p>Of course there is drinking at Hampshire. There are drugs and alchohol at all of the schools. From my experience, and that of many of my friends, there are, in fact, more serious drugs like cocaine and ecstacy at the bigger, wealthier schools like Duke, Vanderbilt and Amherst, than at the so-called "reefer madness" schools.</p>
<p>Reviving a thread that has been useful to me.</p>
<p>I was curious to see where this quirky kid ended up – research shows that he matriculated at Boston University after being accepted at all of the schools to which he applied, which apparently included Skidmore but none of the other schools on the list - the others were Goucher, American, Vassar and College of NJ.</p>
<p>That’s really interesting, actually. BU is not my the first school that come to mind when I think “quirky”.</p>