‘Let this day be all about joy’: Hampshire College’s final spring commencement honors Class of 2026

AMHERST — In a tent pitched outside Hampshire College, 192 Class of 2026 graduates walked across the stage to receive their diplomas Saturday morning, likely for the last time in a spring commencement.

Founded in 1970, the liberal arts college known for its progressive and creative approach to education, announced that it’s slated to close at the end of the Fall 2026 semester in a letter disseminated to faculty, which cites a “lack of resources” to pay back a significant debt on the campus land.

The school’s imminent closure brought a bittersweet tone over Saturday’s ceremony, with speakers expressing an excitement and pride for the graduates that was matched with sorrow for the end of the college’s 56-year run.

“In the midst of all the complicated emotions — that I have, that you have, that our alumni have, that our faculty and staff have — I don’t think today should be about any of that. Today should be about one thing: the graduating class of 2026,” President Jennifer Chrisler said, holding back tears in her commencement speech. “Let this day, the day we send 192 new Hampshire Alumni out into the world, be all about joy.”

Sprinkled into most of the speeches was the sentiment that Hampshire’s spirit — being a mecca for independent and critical thinkers who challenge the status quo — will live on in the lives and careers of the 192 graduates. As Chrisler summed it up, she saw the class as “people who care deeply about the world” and who are “willing to engage with it honestly, even when it is difficult.”

Keynote speaker J Finley, a Hampshire alum and associate professor of Africana Studies at Pomona College in Claremont, California, said Hampshire was “in [her] bones,” and remarked that the college’s closure took her by surprise joking that she expected to deliver a standard commencement speech and then wound up being “the voiceover in a Ken Burns documentary,” referencing Burnes as one of the college’s most famous alumni.

“It’s our duty to find ways — not everybody’s going to do it the same — to spread those freedom seeds wherever we can,” Finley said to the students. “Listen, no one’s coming to save us.”

Others, such as Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies Noah Romero, commended the graduates’ ability to “stare down some of the world’s gravest iniquities and do something about them.”

“There’s an idea going around that Hampshire is a place for people who don’t fit in elsewhere or need some kind of refuge. The Hampshire College I know, is more than that,” he said. “Hampshire is for people who, like all of you, are not afraid to see their inquiry through to its conclusion, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it reveals our own complicity in some truly awful things.”

Romero, noting that Hampshire College did not “keep [the graduates] safe from the world,” but instead kept “an irredeemable world” safe from the graduates, ended his remarks by explaining that the college would soon “unleash 192 miniature Hampshire Colleges on the world,” and invited them to clap their hands at a progressing rate, taking part in a classroom ritual one last time.

Student speaker Samara Ternoir reminisced about holding a dance party in the woods with her classmates when they first learned that the college would close and remarked that “the end was always near.”

Ternoir, who recalled memories of biking home “wine drunk,” and bringing puppets to class, at one point mentioned that she had considered becoming a “death doula.” She joked that the she felt like one speaking to the college’s final graduating class.

“We called for a woods party, and so we danced. It was one of the best parties we’d had in a long time. Graduates, I encourage us all to find that dance again,” she said. “We are stepping into a world of seemingly never-ending hard times, as many of us have already been responding to in our art, literature, labs and organizing. We know intimately what hard times require, because we did it just a month ago, and long before that.”

When asked how it felt to have spoken at Hampshire’s final graduation, Ternoir paused for a moment, steadied her eyes and then remarked “it’s an honor — that’s all.”

Sporting a frog cap, emblematic of the school’s mascot, Campus Safety and Wellbeing Assistant Mike Purcell reflected on his more than 60-year relationship with the college, having first witnessed Hampshire’s construction as a young boy in the mid-1960s, when the campus was just a small building surrounded by apple orchards.

Before leading the crowd in a singalong of Jim Croce’s 1973 hit “I Got a Name,” Purcell commented that the graduates belief in love, art, peace and global good carried on the values of the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival.

After the commencement, Purcell explained that he considered his ability to speak at the college a “great honor,” adding that the “college will always be here” and that its “spirit will live on.”

As students celebrated on campus, hugging and kissing their family members and posing for photos with their diplomas, some stopped by the campus library to ring the “Division Free” brass bell, which is traditionally rung to symbolize and celebrate the completion of coursework.

Chrisler, who chatted with recent graduates and hugged her colleagues in the moments after the ceremony, reflected on her career at Hampshire in an interview, noting that the college will forever be a part of her and will hopefully live on in the graduates students as well.

“It’s been really hard — I’ve worked here my entire adult life. I could not be more proud to be here today and celebrate with these great students. This place has fundamentally changed me, and so I will never forget it here,” she said. “It’s such a special place. I hope whatever happens to this space embodies what we’ve always believed in, which is believing in yourself, self-advocacy … these kids here are amazing, and I’m excited to see what they all end up doing with their lives.”