The first whiff of Hampshire College’s crisis point I received was a cryptic text sent to me from one son, a junior studying abroad in South Africa this term: “What’s happening to Hampshire?”
I texted back I wasn’t home and had no idea. I hurried through the last errand to get home. Once I learned that Hampshire College’s President Miriam Nelson had announced the college might not take a 2019 class, I discovered just how quickly one’s kitchen can become a mini-war room. The afternoon melted away in a series of intense phone conversations and email threads. Beyond being shocked, I was bereft. I couldn’t picture life without Hampshire.
I’ve long known I can’t quit Hampshire. I moved to Amherst to attend the college, worked as a staff member for a number of years, became a trustee, and am a parent to a current student. I helped to establish the James Baldwin Scholars Program and was instrumental in the relationship between the college and the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, where I also served as a founding board member.
Hampshire has been a kind of familial home for me in the Valley over decades now.
In mid-January, I was far from the only person bereft, worried, and determined. After 10 weeks that can be characterized as a series of intense conversations and long email threads marked most prominently by a shared confusion by everyone “outside” of the inner circle making these decisions, things changed on last Friday, April 5. President Nelson resigned (some trustees, too). The board determined to seek an independent path for Hampshire.
This little college that could has long skated financially on the edge of deferred maintenance and disaster, while somehow, despite everything, managing to produce gold from straw. Now it had another chance to hum along.
So, now what?
A coalition of faculty, staff, students and alumni had already come together to create the beginnings of a plan for Hampshire College. When the coalition laid out its plan just a few weeks ago to various interested stakeholders in the community, the room was as electric as it was engaged; people were working together in community across the silos of their roles to figure out how to help Hampshire thrive now, in the 21stcentury.
The process mattered. At Hampshire, the process always matters. That has been the point of the college from the get-go. To be messy and audacious and methodical and small and bold and vulnerable, that’s all Hampshire — and it was in full evidence in the West Lecture Hall on Thursday, April 4, and in the pages/slides of the Re-Envisioning proposal. I left with deep hope restored. The Hampshire I wanted — and want — isn’t a Hampshire of old; it’s a place ripe with ideas to test, challenges to attempt, magnificent discoveries to make and failures to experience.
What distinguishes this Re-Envisioning plan from any other is that it takes on a central problem Hampshire College has faced as an institution, which is isolation. At Hampshire, isolation has often led to attrition.
Even when students have loved their academic experiences, they reported feeling isolated due to the very individual nature of their studies. Retention is one of Hampshire’s chief financial problems, because it’s such a revenue drain. The Re-Envisioning plan shakes this up, by ensuring that everyone works collaboratively throughout their four years of study, from their first days on campus through their Division III (thesis).
To move forward, collaboration will be critical. To reinvent a school requires shared effort. Much as the early classes reflected upon their pioneering years at Hampshire as exhilarating in part because they were inventing the college in practice. Anyone who studies or works at Hampshire in the coming few years will partake in its reinvention — and that’s an exciting, energizing and terrifying prospect.
Abundant creativity and engagement — and a lot of money — are necessary to finesse this bold, tender task. I look forward to hopping on this train, to ride along and see what this reinvigorated future might reveal.
Sarah Buttenwieser is a writer and community organizer who lives in Northampton.