It was hoped that each contract review period would generate similar proposals which would provide for periodic review of accomplishment and restatement of objectives, thus maintaining an atmosphere of experimentation and innovation. A second compelling dimension to the contract system was its potential stimulation of faculty career development. It might well provide an incentive to faculty looking forward to renewal to be more explicit in planning their professional development than if they were securely employed without term. Finally, an intimate connection was posited between the maintenance of Hampshire College as an experimenting institution and the contract system. The history of new and innovative institutions strongly suggested that, with the settling in of permanent faculty, the spirit of innovation is often lost.
All social systems have unexpected consequences and outcomes, some of which are clearly negative.
Just as it is possible to detail the aspirations of the system, so it is important to detail the limitations of the system to date. First, the existence of an open file, whith input from an unlimited number and range of sources, can produce a genuine fear and an inhibition against participation in the system. Thus some people may refuse to write anything to anyone's file and may be quite cautious in their voting behavior out of a sense that they will in time be subject to possible retaliation should they provide negative comment on someone who may be reappointed and later sit in judgment on them. This may produce a situation where a file is predominantly composed of praise, however faint, while the vote shows negative judgments. The School Dean may be well aware of werious reservations held about a candidate, but search in vain for an expression of them in the file material itself.