News from Western Massachusetts

Specifically, the hippie haven of Northampton.  It's come to this: "Smith College program stops using word ‘field’ over ‘negative associations’."

Smith College’s graduate School for Social Work will abandon the term “field” — as in “going into the field” or “field work” — from its lexicon, following in the steps of other universities who have claimed the word has connotations to slavery that could be considered offensive.

While “field” can mean an expansive area of land or crops, in academia or the sciences it often describes work done in a real-world environment. A biologist, for instance, may collect field observations on an animal by observing it in its natural habitat.

“We recognize that language is powerful and that phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may hold negative associations,” administrators for the School for Social Work said in a message to the school community last week.

This sounds like something dreamed up by the loons at Hampshire College but the whole Pioneer Valley is infected with this eye-rolling nonsense.

Pictured: Sally Practicum