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Winter Term and Its Abolition (1968–1987)

Overview

Hamilton’s January-term program — known successively as Winter Studies (1968–1975) and Winter Term (1975–1987) — was a month-long intensive study period between the fall and spring semesters. It embodied a 4-1-4 calendar structure in which students took one January course for credit alongside four fall and four spring courses. Introduced in 1968 at student initiative during a period of broad curricular experimentation, it was already the subject of persistent dissatisfaction and reform proposals by the late 1970s. The faculty voted in a controversial April 1986 meeting to discontinue the program, citing student apathy, faculty workload, and cost; the decision surprised and angered students who had supported keeping J-Term by margins of 92–95% in surveys. After a protracted fall 1986 calendar debate — during which a proposal to restore J-Term narrowly failed on a tie-breaking presidential vote — the faculty adopted a two-semester calendar for 1987–88. The last Winter Term ran in January 1987. A brief Intersession program of voluntary, non-credit courses operated for two years afterward before being discontinued; by January 1991 no January programming was offered at all.

Key Points

Origins: Winter Studies (1968)

Winter Studies was introduced in 1968 in response to student demand for a more flexible, innovative curriculum during an era of nationwide curricular reform. An October 1968 report of the Committee on Academic Procedure (CAP) described the new program as providing “an opportunity for independent work pursued in an organized and guided way,” with the aim of serving interests “not commonly served in the regular classroom” and allowing “flexibility and experimentation in learning.” Before Winter Studies, Hamilton students took five courses per semester and graduated on a credit-hours basis. After its introduction, four-per-semester became the norm and the January term completed the annual academic load, requiring four Winter Studies for graduation (Spectator Magazine, January 1984).

Professor Edwin Lee, who chaired the CAP in 1968, described the original intent as offering courses “which could not be dealt with in the regular semesters” and a time “to try new teaching methods and a time to do projects.” The founding vision explicitly excluded “a collapsed form of a fall or spring semester course” — January was supposed to be genuinely different. As early as 1969, Hamilton’s Winter Term planning committee was chaired by President Babbitt along with Dean Inez Nelbach and three student members, and proposals for non-credit independent projects and off-campus study were actively solicited (Spectator, October 10, 1969).

The 1975 Rename and Tightened Requirements

By 1972, according to Professor Robin Kinnel (Chemistry), there was already “discomfort with Winter Studies.” The absence of established standards and unclear expectations fueled persistent uncertainty about the program’s purpose. In fall 1975 Hamilton renamed the program “Winter Term” and restructured requirements: students now needed to complete 35 courses total (up from 32), with no more than four coming from Winter Term, and only three January-term credits were required for graduation. Students could use one Winter Term for an off-campus internship in an “office, or hospital, etc.” This change also created a temporary misalignment with Kirkland College, which retained the older Winter Study format that year; President Babbitt called the divergence “a little weird because we’re out of whack with each other” (Spectator, October 31, 1975).

Even the rename drew immediate criticism. A Spectator editorial in November 1975 declared the renamed program “a failure before it has even begun” — an “invention of compromise which satisfies neither those who wanted to return to a two-semester system nor those who wanted to retain the diversity and freedom of Winter Study” — because course selections were less extensive and class sizes would be larger (Spectator, November 14, 1975).

The 1976 Adler Conference (the annual Hamilton-Kirkland student-faculty discussion weekend) produced near-unanimous criticism: “Every group agreed that winter term was being taken too seriously by Hamilton and that the original idea of winter study — to pursue unusual and/or nonacademic interests — was being lost.” Participants cited Hamilton’s reluctance to sanction independent off-campus study and the lack of a coherent evaluation policy as major problems. Yet all agreed “that some January program was a necessary and vital part of the Hamilton-Kirkland experience” (Spectator, October 29, 1976).

Dean Gulick, quoted the same year, was “not opposed to winter term per se” but objected that “you can’t teach calculus in 18 days” and felt Hamilton was “not being as creative as we might be with regard to course offerings” (Spectator, November 19, 1976).

What Winter Term Looked Like in Practice

In its mature form, Winter Term offered roughly 75 or more courses during January, spanning faculty-taught classes, off-campus internships, independent projects, and visiting instructors. Each December, the Faculty Committee on Academic Policy selected visiting professors — typically 8–10 per January — drawn from Hamilton and Kirkland alumni, professors emeriti, and instructors from schools without 4-1-4 schedules who welcomed the short-term teaching experience. Eight departments hosted visiting professors in January 1984 alone. Course design was explicitly introductory and cross-disciplinary: the committee sought “introductory-level courses which will have broad appeal” that would not duplicate fall or spring offerings (Spectator, December 9, 1983).

Popular Winter Term formats included travel courses abroad (Italy, Paris and Madrid, Egypt, Israel, West Texas, Britain), dance workshops, ceramics and studio art intensives, and unusual seminars on topics like “The Incest Taboo,” “Women in Modern Japan,” psychopharmacology, Arthurian legend, and plants in ancient history. In January 1987 — the final Winter Term — approximately 75 courses were offered on campus, plus overseas programs in theatre (Britain), art (Egypt), and geology (West Texas) (Spectator, February 12, 1988; Spectator, November 7, 1986).

Grading data showed Winter Term consistently produced higher grades than fall or spring: in 1976, the Winter Term average was 86.4 with 39.6% A’s, compared to 84.6 and 29% A’s in spring — a disparity critics cited as evidence of lax standards (Spectator, October 29, 1976). The 1980 Adler Conference noted that Winter Term “still needs a consistent definition. No one really knows what it is or what it’s going to be” — some courses were “intense, some are exploratory and innovative, some are worthless” — but participants nonetheless agreed it should be kept (Spectator, October 31, 1980).

The January 1984 Spectator magazine cover story, the most detailed contemporary examination of Winter Term, documented deepening student ambivalence. Students valued it as “a change of pace” rather than intellectual exploration; Professor Henry Rutz (Anthropology) lamented that around 1981 faculty had tried to “generate curiosity in Winter Term with co-curricular projects: there were themes, conferences, a great extravaganza of lectures, films, etc.” but “what happened was that half a dozen faculty would attend with only one or two students.” Rutz concluded: “There is no excitement to Winter Term now.” He also noted that by 1984, CAP (now chaired by Professor David Paris) had circulated a questionnaire to department chairs asking directly whether Winter Term “should be retained or dropped in favor of a semester system,” signaling that abolition was a live option (Spectator Magazine, January 1984).

The Pressure to Abolish: Faculty Workload and Curriculum Commission

The 1982 Curriculum Commission — established in May 1982 and chaired by Robin Kinnel (Chemistry) — examined Winter Term within a broader review of course load, class size, and curricular coherence. Faculty grievances centered on the six-course-per-year teaching load (four courses plus a Winter Term course), which many felt was excessive alongside scholarship and advising duties. Professor Paris noted in 1983 that “the faculty seems to feel that there are problems with classes, that they are too large and that six courses per faculty member is too much.” A December 1983 CAP questionnaire to department chairs explicitly asked whether Winter Term should be retained or dropped (Spectator Magazine, January 1984).

Student opinion was strongly pro-retention. A survey conducted roughly two years before the abolition vote found that 95% of students polled wanted to keep J-Term; a separate Spectator figure places the support at 92%. Student government candidates in 1985 campaigned explicitly on keeping Winter Term, with some pledging that the administration had “no right to try to take it away from us” (Spectator, March 8, 1985). A March 1985 student opinion piece in the Spectator argued that the “abuse of Winter Term has mainly been an activity restricted to the faculty themselves” — professors giving “three or four lectures during the entire term” or repeating the same course year after year — and that eliminating J-Term in response to faculty-created problems would mark “the steer of the rudder which will stray Hamilton further and further from its liberal arts course.” The same piece warned that a “4-4 calendar would provide just the opposite” of the diverse learning environments a liberal arts school should offer (Spectator, March 1, 1985).

The April 1986 Abolition Vote

The faculty voted in April 1986 to abolish the 4-1-4 system. The Spectator’s October 1986 account names individual faculty members who cited “student apathy, increasing costs and workload problems” as the main reasons. Because no replacement calendar was ready at the time, the specific new structure was left to the Academic Council to research. An October 3, 1986 Spectator editorial noted that the vote “came as a surprise to Hamilton’s students (of whom 92% supported the 4-1-4 curriculum)” (Spectator, October 3, 1986). A 1997 retrospective in the Spectator confirmed the official rationale: J-Term “was abolished in order to allow for the creation of senior projects within the students’ declared concentrations” (Spectator, February 21, 1997).

Student Assembly Response and the Committee on Students Rights

Student Assembly President Ezra Kopelowitz ‘88 called re-establishing J-Term his “main objective” for 1986–87, accusing the faculty of not considering the 95% student poll result and arguing that “the faculty looks at the SA as a paper-pushing organization” (Spectator, September 19, 1986). The Student Assembly formed a new body, the Committee on Students Rights, to “help increase student input into curricular decisions made by the faculty” and to prevent students from again being “unnecessarily surprised” by such changes. The committee also proposed that the Spectator publish faculty meeting agendas in advance so students could respond through the Academic Chamber of the SA (Spectator, November 7, 1986).

The committee’s research showed that Amherst, Oberlin, Reed, and Smith Colleges had “successful interim programs including voluntary two-week non-credit courses offered by students, administrators, and interested faculty” covering concerts, dance workshops, poetry readings, film festivals, and special lectures — with seniors using the period for thesis work. The Student Assembly argued that an “extended Christmas break” adopting this model was “by far the superior option” because it would preserve popular J-Term activities (field programs, travel courses, internships) while addressing faculty workload concerns (Spectator, October 3, 1986).

The October–November 1986 Calendar Debates

The faculty met on October 14, 1986 to decide on a replacement calendar. The Academic Council backed “Model I,” which would start fall semester August 31 and end December 20, then begin spring January 18; it deleted October Break, extended Thanksgiving to ten days, and left a ten-day Spring Break. Professor Barbara Tewksbury (Geology/Biology) proposed “Model II,” which delayed the spring start to January 25 — leaving a “sufficient January Break for trips and research projects.” The athletic department voiced concern about both models eliminating the pre-season practice window (Spectator, October 31, 1986).

Professor Nancy Rabinowitz proposed that the college continue under the existing 4-1-4 calendar until an acceptable permanent alternative could be designed. President Carovano ruled that this would require rescinding the previous vote, needing a two-thirds majority. Professor James Ring then moved to make the Rabinowitz proposal a substitute for Model I or II — a vote that would have effectively restored J-Term by simple majority. The vote was a tie; Carovano broke it against Ring’s motion, ending the near-restoration of J-Term. Model II passed one hour into the meeting, but only as a calendar for the 1987–88 academic year; the faculty explicitly reserved the right to revisit the permanent calendar (Spectator, October 31, 1986).

A subsequent November 1986 faculty meeting tabled both the fraternity report and the calendar question after further failed amendments — including a proposal by Professor Simon to return to the 4-1-4 calendar pending a better solution, and a Pearle/Werner amendment directing the committee to explicitly consider “a J-term with some academic activity.” Several clauses of the latter amendment passed, including a requirement that “the committee consider a J-term with some academic activity” and that the permanent calendar be determined no fewer than 15 months after adopting any final guidelines (Spectator, November 7, 1986). The Adler Conference that fall identified the abolition of Winter Term as a leading example of curriculum changes made without adequate student input (Spectator, October 10, 1986).

The Last Winter Term (January 1987)

The final Winter Term ran in January 1987. The January 1987 Spectator magazine, published during that final month, still referenced “our attractive 4-1-4 calendar” in a humorous piece, signaling that students had not fully absorbed the change. A contemporaneous Spectator news piece described the final J-Term offerings: courses ranged from Plants in History (an explicit attempt to offer learning outside “the strictly scholastic, full semester course”) to Arthurian Legend, ancient history, and over 75 courses total. Overseas programs continued to Britain, Egypt, and West Texas. Some courses ran under faculty pressure to tighten academic rigor, and at least one professor (Professor Putala) explicitly resisted “an attitude among some faculty that students have to be coerced into learning,” recalling that J-Term “was a time to take the pressure off and allow for learning rather than testing” (Spectator, November 7, 1986).

A February 1988 Spectator retrospective on the last J-Term found roughly two-thirds of students hoped it would be reinstated, but many stressed wanting “intellectual requirements stiffened.” Students compared Hamilton’s elimination unfavorably to Colby College, which had “tightened restrictions and made J-term better instead of eliminating it.” Graduating seniors found the issue “moot,” while members of the class of 1991 — who had enrolled expecting four years of 4-1-4 — mourned: “J-term, we hardly knew ye!” (Spectator, February 12, 1988).

Impact on Academic Departments

Arts faculty were the most publicly vocal opponents. Art Department Chairman Rand Carter explained that J-Term “gives the Department the opportunity to bring in people who would not be available during the ordinary term. Even if they were available, we couldn’t afford to bring them to Hamilton.” He also worried that the loss of J-Term would eliminate the more experimental, off-beat seminar courses that could not sustain enrollment in a full semester. Ceramics Professor Robert Palusky called the abolition “a disaster,” arguing that since students were “isolated in Clinton because they aren’t near a city, any outside input is extremely important; outside influence makes students better off” — and that “any creative department loses its resources to bring people in to teach something not ordinarily taught.” Professor Bruce Muirhead believed “the arts will go on fine” but acknowledged students would face “more serious planning and harder choices.” Art historian Professor Deborah Pokinski argued that even without J-Term the department “should still try to bring visiting artists” and noted the continued high enrollment in Art History 150 as a baseline of student interest. Four senior art concentrators confirmed that J-Term had offered unique intensive project work that had no direct replacement in the new calendar (Spectator, May 9, 1986).

In Biology, courses such as Female Biology and Biology of Reproduction had been offered primarily during Winter Term and were expected to be discontinued or significantly altered under the two-semester calendar. The April 1987 Spectator noted that the new calendar’s mandatory Senior Projects requirement was intended to compensate for the loss of J-Term’s independent-study dimension (Spectator, April 17, 1987).

What Replaced Winter Term

The October 1986 Model II calendar — adopted for 1987–88 — left a gap of approximately one week between the end of the fall semester (around December 20) and the start of spring (January 25). This was not long enough for a formal J-Term but nominally allowed for short field trips or independent work. The November 1986 Adler Conference proposed that students be allowed to study at Hamilton during this period “on an optional, no-credit basis,” self-organizing workshops, cultural programs, or senior thesis work — closely modeled on the Amherst/Oberlin voluntary January programs the Committee on Students Rights had cited (Spectator, November 7, 1986).

In practice, a voluntary “Intersession” program of non-credit courses launched after 1987 but was short-lived. A January 1991 Spectator report confirmed that, unlike “previous years, where there had been a formal January term with classes for credit taught by professors or a more informal Intersession with noncredit classes taught by anyone, no courses were offered this January” — attendance at Intersession had been “disappointing” and no one had volunteered to teach. Students who remained on campus were described as enjoying the quiet and the absence of academic obligations (Spectator, January 25, 1991).

By 1997, a Spectator opinion writer called on the curriculum review committee to reinstate J-Term, noting that “most departments do not require a senior project for the major, so this is really not an adequate replacement for J-term” and calling the faculty’s argument — that J-Term “detracted from their resources in working with seniors on their theses” — “a fairly weak argument” given that J-Term had occurred between semesters (Spectator, February 21, 1997). J-Term was not reinstated.

Open Questions

• What was the precise vote margin at the April 1986 faculty meeting? The sources confirm the month (April 1986) but do not give a vote count.
• Did the permanent two-semester calendar adopted after 1987–88 retain any January break provision for travel courses or field programs? The November 1987 faculty meeting discussion of “a J-term with some academic activity” is not resolved in available sources.
• Which specific off-campus J-Term travel programs survived the abolition in modified form (e.g., credited winter field courses, semester-abroad options)?
• How did the mandatory Senior Project requirement introduced alongside the new calendar compare in scope to what J-Term had offered for independent work?
• Did any department formally document the curricular losses resulting from abolition, beyond the Arts Department comments in the May 1986 Spectator?

Sources

Related Topics

• Faculty Governance and Academic Affairs
• Campus Life and Culture
• Student Government and Campus Organizations