Rebecca Kaplan 1

Bennington College: A Field Guide

Bennington College is considered a top tier liberal arts college. It is known for its

alternative policies, such as giving detailed evaluations instead of grades, and for having a Plan

Process that allows students to study whatever they want (there are no required classes). Many

people have read about Bennington College by other names in Bret Easton Ellis’s “Rules of

Attraction,” Jonathan Lethem’s “Fortress of Solitude,” and Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History.”

(Bennington, VT was also the inspiration for Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” giving

you an idea of how pleasant it is.)

Recently I was led to wonder what exactly brought students to Bennington. Was it their

student-friendly administration? Their easy-to-navigate registration system? Or perhaps it was

just their unique student body, the outcasts and detritus of our generation coming together in the

misty mountains of Vermont in a celebrated ecstasy of alcohol, marijuana, and well, ecstasy.

For anyone interested in Bennington College, here is a handy guide.

Traps to Avoid, or, Why I Chose Bennington:

A cookie. All of this because of a cookie.

I know there were other things that affected my choice to attend Bennington, but a

seminal moment for me was that week in April after I had received all my acceptances, and the

schools were starting to blur together—was Hampshire built on top of radioactive waste or was

that Marlboro?—when I got a box in the mail. I opened it to find a cookie inside, with a note

from the Bennington admissions office. I don’t remember what it said, something corny like,
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“We wanted to give you a taste of Bennington! Hope to see you next term.” As I ate that

delicious chocolate chip cookie I knew where I was going next year.

Tip: Don't let a cookie sway your decision. Have a heart of steel.

There were other things Bennington had going for it, cookie aside. I had applied because

of its reputedly stellar writing program. Of course, I never thought to ask whether I would still

want to go to Bennington if I couldn’t get into any writing classes.

The other trap I fell for was the beautifully manicured campus. The rest of Bennington's

web site may be a stream of carefully manufactured half-truths and lies, but the photos are all

real. The campus is really that beautiful. They spend a lot of money to maintain the sprawling

lawns and gorgeous gardens, and that works to lure in students. The instant I set foot on campus,

I was charmed by the sweet smell of fallen apples and fresh-cut grass, the innocence of swings

and hammocks hanging from trees, the teal depth of the pond.

I was an idiot. Choosing a college based on appearance and reputation is like paying $50

for a $10 shirt just because it says “ABERCROMBIE.” Now imagine that shirt cost $50,000, not

$50.

Diversity:

Racial Division at Bennington College (from the school’s web site):

 African-American: 14

 American Indian/Alaskan Native: 4

 Asian/Pacific Islander: 16
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 Caucasian: 527

 Hispanic: 20

 Two or more races: 1

 International: 45

 Other/Unknown: 41

Keep in mind that these are numbers of students, not percentages. You can practically

count the number of black people you will meet at Bennington on both hands.

Dating:

Bennington has a reputation for lots and lots of no strings, drunken sex. This is not true.

You see, the school is 33.1% male, 66.9% female. Some people are having lots and lots of

drunken sex. A larger percentage isn’t getting any at all.

“There's no guys to date. I’m going to throw a party when I lose my virginity!”

—Female student

Straight women and gay men, beware: women like this one might start looking pretty

good by the time you graduate:

“Adam is going out with Hannah.”

“Isn’t Adam gay?”

“Oh, sure. But he couldn't find any boys to sleep with.”

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On the other hand, for the guys:

“Being straight, and at Bennington, is so awesome. But then again, when you

go through a dry spell, you feel like a loser.” —Male student.

This gender imbalance leads some girls to go into denial. Heated discussions arise over

the sexual orientation of boys. It is a severe faux pas to suggest your friend's latest crush is gay:

“I like Kevin.”

“But Kevin is gay. He's dating Sam.”

“No he's not. Sam is gay, but Kevin isn't. They're just friends.”

“Sam and Kevin were totally in each other’s laps last Coffee Hour.”

“I know, but they’re just playing gay chicken.”

“Well, they must play gay chicken all the time, then.”

The Student Body:

“Bennington seeks to liberate and nurture the individuality, the creative

intelligence, and the ethical and aesthetic sensibility of its students [such] that

their richly varied natural endowments will be directed toward self-

fulfillment and toward constructive social purposes.”

—Traditional Bennington Commencement speech (from Student Handbook)

Last year, three students from Bennington College attempted to steal the giant chili
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pepper from the local Chili’s restaurant. They ran an electric saw with 470 feet of extension cord

across four lanes of traffic to do so. I can only imagine Bennington’s spin on that:

“The students meant no offense by this prank,” they would say. “They were merely

directing their richly varied natural endowments toward the constructive social purpose of

removing that hideous chili pepper. You’ll thank them later.”

There are only 668 students enrolled in Bennington College. They put their minds

together to do creative things to save themselves from the boredom and isolation that comes

from being part of such a small population, such as creating their own entertainment (see above).
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Pretension:

“Most other places are just glorified community colleges compared to

Bennington.” —Bennington Professor

Some people will tell you that the rumor of Bennington students being pretentious is

exaggerated. These people are lying. Almost everyone I met was pretentious in some way or

another, both students and faculty. I was told time and time again by faculty how lucky I was to

be at Bennington College, to the point where I thought there must be something wrong with me

for not enjoying it more.

In one class, a student commented on how people at Bennington don’t wear sweatpants

like at other colleges, because “we’re better than other schools.” As everyone in the room agreed

with him, I shrank down in my seat a little. I was wearing pajamas at the time.

When one is at a school where everyone is “weird,” weird becomes the norm, and people

who are conventionally normal become the outcasts. At a place like Bennington some students

become more aggressively weird to stand out. There was one girl who became legend for eating

leaves while giving tours of Bennington. Once, when it was snowing fairly hard, a girl

announced that she was going to ski to class.

“I’m so weird!” she said, grinning broadly.

“I don’t think it’s that weird,” I said politely, still under the impression that weird meant

bad.

“I think it’s pretty damn weird,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me.”

“OK, OK, it’s weird.”

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Parties:

A random sampling of annual parties:

—The Haunted Whore House

—Swalloween

—Transvestite Nite

—Pigstock

—Dress to Get Laid (AKA Dress to Get Raped)*

*Unbelievably, I did not make up this name.

Housing:

There are 12 houses at Bennington; each holds about 30 students. In 2003, Princeton

Review ranked Bennington the #3 college with “Dorms Like Palaces.” This is becoming less

and less true as Bennington accepts more freshmen every year. Last year, 16 singles were

converted to doubles, 21 doubles were converted to triples, and 9 doubles were converted to

quads. Rooms that would be very spacious as singles are really not enough space for two people.

Bennington has not been very upfront with prospective students about the changes. For the

moment, they are hiding behind their reputation.

My roommate and I ended up in Fels House, despite a very long questionnaire intended

to match students into the most ideal living situation possible. We had both requested quiet, non-

smoking dorms; Fels is a 24-hour loud house for smokers, known for attracting people who like

to scream.

The first night of school, our House Chair taught everybody the Fels anthem. “There's a
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rule that you have to sing it while screaming at the top of your lungs and banging on any

available surface,” she explained, before launching into song:

“FELS FELS FIGGEDY FELS

THE MORE YOU DRINK, THE LESS IT SMELLS.”

They shouted that song until 3 a.m. that night, thumping the walls like thunder.

Fels does smell. It has a distinctive odor, a mixture of urine, pot, tobacco and Cheese

Doodles.

Tip: smoking in the dorms is OK, but plugged-in Christmas lights are considered fire

hazards. Students can light up the real fireplaces in the dorms without supervision, but any

student caught with a burnt candle will receive a $500 fine. Even a decorative, never-been-used

candle merits a $250 fine. One senior advised us before our first room checks, “Don't fucking

have a candle, OK? They got me twice. Just don't even do it.”

Campus Security:

Bennington College would be an excellent place to rob.

The student houses do not lock, and most students choose not to lock their rooms. In this

trusting environment, people leave laptops in public areas overnight and any person who looks to

be around college age is treated with utmost respect and friendliness. If you tell a librarian that

you forgot your ID card, they will let you check books out with just your name written on a piece

of paper. One day, a townie walked right into my hall’s bathroom and stole a retainer (no one

knew why). My roommate was in the bathroom at the time and saw him doing it, but didn’t
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suspect any foul play.

You would hardly guess it from the opulent luxury found at Bennington, but you can

walk right off campus and into a trailer park. Say what you will about faith in human nature, but

I don't want to be there when the people in that trailer park figure out that they can walk right

into Bennington, too.

Food:

“Bennington disproves the myth that college food has to be bad, bland, or boring.”

—Bennington web site

“I don't know what they did to this meat, but this is disgusting.”

—Student in Bennington dining hall

Perhaps the goal of the Bennington dining hall is to make everything sound so fancy that

you don't realize what you're eating until you're throwing it up again. Here is a decoder:

Edame lo mein = spaghetti cooked in a brown sauce, with lima beans

Cavatapi with Spinach and White Beans = curly spaghetti, spinach, goo

Spring Vegetable Paella = unidentifiable vegetables, goo

Vegan Vegetable Etouffe = vegetable goo, in a soup

Vegan Tofu Rasta Pasta = you too can channel the power of the Rastafarian movement while

eating colored pasta at a white liberal arts school. Who knew bland, unflavored tofu could taste

so good?

The food may be bad, bland or gooey, but it is always interesting. Dinner often sparks

stimulating conversations like, “Why the hell did they put pineapple in this Cajun tofu?”
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Transportation:

Miles Away From:

 New York City: 160

 Boston: 150
 Montreal: 210
 Albany, New York: 40
 Burlington, Vermont: 110
 Hartford, Connecticut: 115
 Portland, Maine: 180

Unless you have a car, you are trapped. The closest public transportation is in Albany, 40

miles and a $100 cab ride away. The school offers a subsidized to Albany for $30 shuttle (for

Bennington students only; your friends must find other ways to get there), but only at very

limited times on Friday and Sunday each week. This isolation is referred to lovingly by students

and faculty as “The Bennington Bubble.”

Registration:

Q: How small are classes?

A: The average class size is 13 students, with some classes of 5–6 and some of 20–30.

Q: What is the student-faculty ratio?

A: 8:1

Q: If there are that many professors, there must be loads of classes, right?

A: Well…

We stood outside Green Wall Auditorium, the place where registration happened, waiting
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for them to let us in. An upperclassman shepherded we freshmen around, trying to explain it.

She gestured to a table in the middle of the floor where Dan McLaughlin, an advisor, stood. He

was young and blond, with a paunch and friendliness that reminded me of Santa Claus.

“That’s where you go to cry if you don't get into any of the classes you want,” the

upperclassman told us in a hushed, reverential voice.

Tip: If the registration process has reduced you to tears, it is probably time to find another

school.

The minute they let us in, the stampede started. By the time I got on line for the class I

wanted most, “Russia: Bolsheviks to Baristas,” the line was already swelling up. Students began

to flee the lines to McLaughlin. He consoled them as they stood, on the verge of tears, fingering

dog-eared copies of the curriculum.

Trembling, I clutched at my add / drop form and repeated my mantra over and over again:

I will not end up at the Crying Table.

An hour and an ordeal later, I was at the Crying Table, feeling like I'd just been standing

on the wrong side of the thruway. McLaughlin looked at my blank add / drop form, tsking in a

motherly way.

As he pulled me from teacher to teacher, asking uselessly if anyone had any classes at all

left open (they didn’t), I was still in shock. As someone who had always been picked last for

sports teams, I hadn't been expecting a race to the death for entry into college classes. Maybe I

should have trained better, attended a marathon or something.

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Eventually, McLaughlin got me a full schedule:

—Heavy Metal Pathways (Nothing To Do With Music)

I took this because it was my only option. I wanted it to be easy, like Rocks For Jocks. I

asked the professor if it was OK to take for someone who was bad at science. She said that it

was. It wasn’t. She expected every student to do original research in the field of chemistry and

geology, despite listing it as a beginner class. I had come to Bennington so that I would never

have to touch science again. I flunked out of it so hard I still have the burn marks.

—American Humor, 1900-1939

A class taught by Chris Miller, a man with Turret's Syndrome Lite, who had ticked off the

entire rest of the faculty at Bennington. He spoke out against President Coleman's policies and

maintained that students could, if they wanted to, drastically alter the student-unfriendly

conditions at Bennington by writing letters to the Board of Trustees and putting our money

where our mouths were, since the entire endowment came directly out of our tuition. He cursed

a lot, assigned the Three Stooges for homework, and showed cartoon pornography of Blondie

and Dagwood during class. He was a student favorite, and was let go by the end of my year

there. Students angrily complained that he had been fired for speaking out against Coleman.

—A series of three-week courses called “modules.”

One of the three week classes I took was in math. It covered about a month's worth of

my 9th grade algebra class at Brooklyn Tech, and the only thing I learned from it was how

abysmally most other people at Bennington did at math. I glanced over at a classmate's paper at

one point and saw “5 + 0 = 0” written down. When I pointed it out, he was unable to find the

error.
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Here's how the registration process at Bennington works:

Step 1: Pre-Registration

Choose the four lower-level classes you really want. Enter a random lottery. You cannot

pick back-ups; you have only four chances to win. There is no ranking based on seniority; there

is neither rhyme nor reason. If you are very lucky, you will get two of these. You may get none.

Step 2: Advanced registration for 4000-level classes

Apply to get into upper-level classes. Beg professors to let you in; have your writing

samples rejected. Try again. Fail.

Step 3: Green Wall

Enter the mob of students in a race to get the signature on your add / drop form before the

spaces fill up. Caution: May lead to dizziness, nausea, panic attacks, etc.

Step 4: ???

Do whatever you are willing to do to get into a class. Lie? Steal? Cheat? Sleep with

your professors? (Haven’t figured this one out yet.)

Bennington’s Retention Rate:

79% of Bennington College freshmen return to the school for a second year; only 61% of each

entering freshman class will graduate from Bennington.

To be fair, this retention rate isn’t so bad compared to the national average. However, the
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way they talk it up, you’d expect that no one would leave.

So why do people leave? I called up the Admissions Office, and this is what they said:

“Bennington is a very self-motivated school. You have to advocate for

yourself. A big reason many people leave is that they’re overwhelmed by

it. It definitely doesn’t fit everyone.”

What they mean: We are in no way responsible for causing students to want to leave our

school.

In my second term, I had another registration nightmare, drawn out over months. My

mother despairingly contacted an assistant dean and asked why every class had to be applied to,

why attending the school was’t enough. He told her that having to fight to get into classes “built

character.” My mother snapped that if she wanted me to have to fight for classes, she'd have sent

me to SUNY and not wasted so much money. (Ironically, I've had no problems at all with

registration at SUNY Purchase).

By that point, I was disenchanted with Bennington. It was a little like Disneyland: you

go in thinking it'll be fun and exciting, but you leave hating everyone and wondering why you

paid so much. I applied to other schools and left when the year was over. The cookie had grown

stale.

I’m sure Bennington doesn’t miss me, nor the others who have left. The math’s not hard;

they reported a $14 million endowment to US News. They only need about 280 students of the

668 to pay full tuition to make $14 million a year; so what’s a little attrition to them?

There’s another batch of freshmen coming up, and another batch of cookies.