Student Handbook

REVISED SEPTEMBER 2022

Bennington regards education as a sensual and ethical, no less than an intellectual, process. It seeks to liberate and nurture the individuality, the creative intelligence, and the ethical and aesthetic sensibility of its students, to the end that their richly varied natural endowments will be directed toward self-fulfillment and toward constructive social purposes. We believe that these educational goals are best served by demanding of our students active participation in the planning of their own programs, and in the regulation of their own lives on campus. Student freedom is not the absence of restraint, however; it is rather the fullest possible substitution of habits of self-restraint for restraint imposed by others. The exercise of student freedom is the very condition of a meaningful education, and an essential aspect of the nurture of free citizens, dedicated to civilized values and capable of creative and constructive membership in modern society.

—Traditional Bennington College commencement statement

Academics and Field Work Term

Information about academic expectations, registration, Field Work Term, and more.

Community Standards

These community standards support the practice of conscious citizenship on campus.

Policies and Procedures

Information about fire and life safety, as well as the policy on drugs and alcohol, and more. 

Sexual Harassment, Sexual Misconduct, Domestic Violence, Dating Violence, and Stalking Policy and Procedures

Financial Aid Handbook