Decentral Records

Decentral Records is a planned student group. It is the brainchild of Matthew Meneghini and some friends, and it's a group dedicated to academics at Hampshire. The purpose of the group is to provide a community which helps members (and newcomers!) find ways around beauracratic problems at Hampshire and abroad to get their learning recognized; as well as to broaden and enrichen the learning community itself.

Core idea:


 * have a practical forum devoted to helping individuals and individual communities learn and recieve due credit for their learning projects
 * create a learning community dedicated to furthering student-run and community-focused academics
 * broaden and deepen the variety of learning options available at Hampshire

The group will probably seek to operate as a catchall group representing a variety of workgroups. Example names for such sub-units might be

"Summer Learning Collective"

"Janterm/Winterim Memorial Study Group"

"Field Study Workgroup"

"Collaborative Learning Committee"

"Online Learning Forum"

"Resource Library"

"Reform Advocacy Team"

About the name:

Decentral Records in the interim name which has seemed popular with people it has been exposed to. It is meant in cheeky jest as well as a vague description of what the group intends to do, not as an adversarial statement. Current alternate names are Deregistrar, Student Union Union, the Hampshire Microcosm, Microcosm, and the Society for Academic Subversion/Support and Activities (SASA, a pun on CASA). Feel free to suggest another.

Other Groups:

Decentral Records is indebted to numerous other groups and individuals. Groups like Re-Rad have done a stellar job advancing the interests of the student body generally and have led by example on student-centric learning. Decentral Records is not intended as competition to any group, but rather to build on the theme of facilitating learning exclusively, without any administrative or single-program aspirations. It would counterproductive to reinvent the wheel, so Decentral Records is committed to expanding on and diversifying the previous successes of EPEC and the mentored independent studies.

Suggestions

Place any suggestions, thoughts, or questions you may have here.

Have a first meeting. People who are really excited about this idea, get together in a room with a whiteboard and brainstorm. Delegate responsibility. Form a mission statement.