University of Rhode Island - Renaissance / Grist Yearbook (Kingston, RI)

Page 25 text:

A Living and Learning Experience: That is the present billing for Project 70, a dorm-classroom experiment set up by the University in 1969. It is the attempt by interested students to unify their lives as students. These students set up their classes in the buildings in which they live. Osten- sibly, this enables them to relate what they learn in the classroom to everyone else. Project 70 is one of the few organizations on campus to sponsor educational events; whether these events be a lecture from a Sociology instruc- tor or a discussion of the health problems at U.R.I. with the campus medical coordinator. But perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Project is the sense of unity within the dorms themselves. Too often a student’s dormitory experience at

Page 24 text:

There is a dorm in Kingston, Rhode Island. On the third floor it keeps a room, like any other, of scattered clothes and mis-laid books. A rocking chair, treated by stories untold, extends the arms of an open door. With 4 o’clock shadows of petals detached against mosaic love, reflections color the people of our days. They are the adhesive for piecing together our understanding not only of classroom learning, but comprehensive education. We wandered here merely as students; we have learned to become persons. And this is our home. Lynn McCrae

Page 26 text:

U.R.I. consists of a few years in a building with 3 or 4 hundred other people whom one never knows, until the student gets fed up enough to leave and go ‘down the line’ and start his own system of education, whatever that might be. Within the Project, however, students get together and learn about each other and what’s more — learn how to adapt to each other. There is no sense of isolationism, if one doesn’t get along he is able to leave but encouraged to stay. This is perhaps the Project’s greatest aspect. For on a campus that is becoming more and more deper- sonalized there is still a place where you can have a say in what goes on and not just follow every- one else.