Regarding the April 19 guest column [“The death and loss of a local institution“] blaming “the valley” for the demise of Hampshire College, the “valley” is no more responsible collectively for the demise of Hampshire then it was for the farm damage in the 2023 flooding.
Of course many of us feel nostalgia for and pride in our college experience, but the argument that a region is responsible for sweeping national trends makes no sense to me.
I moved here almost 40 years ago when my husband took a faculty position at UMass Amherst, and as I consider the writer’s point of view, I’m hard pressed to imagine what exactly we could’ve done to prevent the closure of a particular educational experience that has run its course in the form of Hampshire College. Perhaps time would be better spent trying to ensure key lessons of the Hampshire experience are reformulated in different contexts.
Julie Zuckman
Florence