I very much enjoyed the recent piece on the Beloit Plan. I was a fortuitous and unsuspecting beneficiary of a wonderful innovation that turned out to have a significant impact on my future. I had no idea the “plan” even existed when I applied to, and entered Beloit, as my naïve reasons for wanting to attend were entirely unrelated to any such careful planning and forethought. Paul [Engleman]’s article presented a historical background that I was entirely unaware of until now, and which I very much appreciate.
Absolutely coincidentally (or maybe not), almost the same day the current issue of the magazine arrived, I had discovered a copy of my post field term report. I had sent a copy to my parents at the time, and had no idea they had kept it. I had not re-read it since 1975! (It almost seems like some sort of cosmic Beloit alignment thing). It was therefore really wonderful having the field term snapshots in the article. At the time, I remember, I had been concerned that my field term, as a ski instructor, did not professionally or sufficiently correspond to my anthropology major, and I had felt a little worried about an unconventional experience. In reading the snapshots and my own report I now see that I was not out of line at all. Thanks, Beloit!
Adam Koons’77, Ph.D.
Silver Spring, Md.
The Plan and the Greek System
It may well be that when the Beloit Plan was instituted in 1964, the traditional terms for college years were replaced by “underclassmen” and “upperclassmen,” but when I entered Beloit in 1975 those terms had disappeared and I never heard them used when I was in college.
Julie Ripley’s thought that the class of 1968 “killed the Greek system at Beloit until the 1980s” is incorrect. Two fraternities—Sigma Chi and Beta Theta Pi—and the Theta Pi Gamma sorority survived through the ’70s. Beta Theta Pi died in 1988, but Sigma Chi and Theta Pi Gamma are still active at Beloit.
Martin Morse Wooster’80
Silver Spring, Md.
Influence of the Plan
“The Beloit Plan was truly innovative and helped give Beloit a national reputation. I was one of the last classes of the Beloit Plan and these experiences influenced my adult life.”
—From the spring 2018 Beloit College Magazine readers survey.
Correction
In a spring 2018 story about faculty book recommendations, we misspelled an author’s name. N. K. Jemisin (not Jemison) wrote The Stone Sky, the 2018 Nebula Award-winning third book in her Broken Earth trilogy. Jemisin’s book was recommended, but not misspelled, by Robin Zebrowski, associate professor of cognitive science at Beloit.
