I don’t usually comment on the news here but people have been texting and emailing and messaging about the news that Hampshire was closing and I have a very specific thought and then some longer ones.
The specific thought is that I have wished, since the original “Hampshire is in trouble!” stuff started in 2018, that Hampshire could have just wrapped it all up with a bow at 50 years (in 2020) and just said “We did the stuff we set out to do, and now we are done.” I understand why they didn’t do that, but just to say I’ve been saying goodbye to Hampshire for a long time.
Hampshire made me into ME. I discovered that I loved library work while I was there, and that librarian jobs could be cool. I made a group of fast friends many of whom I am still in touch with regularly and who have all turned into really interesting, principled people. As someone who felt like a weird misfit in high school–I had friends and hobbies and whatnot, but the overall vibe of that place was not one I clicked with–I felt like I could mostly just be me at Hampshire. I had a lot of Jewish friends who informed me that I, too, was Jewish. I met people from different countries, classes, and backgrounds. I modeled for art classes. I helped lead a marching band to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Washington DC. I stayed involved politically and got to learn how to do so tactically and well. I wrote a lot, I met writers. I realized that my strengths as a writer were more expository and less imaginative, which was fine. I studied linguistics and wrote a thesis paper on the use of singular “they” (in 1990!). I didn’t do much there with computers, though I could have. I met the people who would eventually help me make the decision to move to Seattle, and later Vermont. I was the boring student who went there for four consecutive years and then graduated. An atypical Hampshire student. I lived on campus two out of the three summers I was there.
And then, once I graduated and moved away, my connection to the school faded. My communications from them were all about money. I had been a full tuition student, so was clearly on a list of “people with resources” but I think they really should have been talking to my dad. I didn’t understand class at all until I went to Hampshire. I decided it wasn’t worth me continuing to explain that to them, so I eventually stopped interacting with them, asked to be taken off of their mailing lists. I went back for occasional alumni events but more as a gate-crasher with local friends than as an attendee. I was invited to be on a panel of library workers there once. It was good to be in the library again (picture above).
My last interactions with them were a few months ago as I was trying to get my thesis into their digital Archives. I had a scanned version of my paper which I tried to upload (which involved reactivating my Hampshire College email from 40 years ago). There was a lot of tech support involved. However, because I was from an earlier decade, they needed a bound copy of the thesis as well. That’s where I hit a wall and hadn’t revisited Hampshire stuff since.
I have less of a sense of the loss to the world, of an America with no Hampshire College. There are similar places, but nothing is the same. I’m happy they didn’t have to “pivot to AI” in some stupid way like the academic homes of many of my friends. I’m pleased they didn’t get into an ugly wrestling match with the current administration which forced their hand. Above all, I am glad they were decisive, this time. There’s so much which is uncertain and kind of awful right now, especially the not-knowing. I will feel weird with a closed alma mater, though I always feel weird, but in some ways it’s better than having a might-be-closed-soon-but-who-knows one. I dream about the place a lot; that’s unlikely to change. Good for you Hampshire, you helped a lot of people become better people.
