My love affair with Hampshire is not unique to me. My wife Patty Huff Solomon (F78) and her Facebook are blowing up with remembrances, stories, and perspectives. I look forward to diving into that gusher of a manifesto. Here are mine:
As with many Hampsters, my bond with Hampshire exceeded its label as a small New England liberal‑arts college. It mattered more than projected salaries, professional networks, or the rarified spoils of a BA. Hampshire was the longing glance I cast at its catalog when I was ready to flee the rote rituals of high school, the mercurial cruelty of a stepfather, and the suburban trappings of my parents’ deferred ambitions. I had no map, but native Long Island was already in the rearview.
Flash Forward #1
April 14, 2026 — four hours after the official announcement. Students, the president, board members, staff, and alumni gathered under a heavy emotional cloud that soon split into grief and the anger of betrayal. The one moment of unbridled applause was in appreciation of the faculty for their talent and the sacrifices they’d made, which surged through the room and amplified the outrage. Later we learned many faculty had waived retirement benefits in their contracts — another postponement of an inevitable cost.
I had no plan after Hampshire beyond serving some nascent horizon‑gazing project that defied an incremental career progression. Would I have embraced Hampshire as fully had I come from a more nurturing domestic scene? I hadn’t yet learned that outpacing my own learning is a solitary race without clocks or other contestants. I wouldn’t have traded that time for a conventional track. I found a self‑designed curriculum that was not a canned alternative to traditional majors but a rallying cry, an explicit rebuttal to bell‑curve thinking and the cattleprod of standardized academic norms. It justified aiming big and carving a path outside well‑worn career tracks.
Institutional Missteps
Hampshire never fully capitalized on its promise as an academic haven for self‑directed learning. Its uniqueness was marginalized and co‑opted by peer schools who allowed students to declare a major supported by course work. Independence framed by Hampshire meant that each student was responsible for all curricula – the full package. This uniquely Hampshire approach wasn’t fully realized in Hampshire’s own marketing. Why did the sauce remain secretive? Focusing on Division-immersed students and their committees was a first-mover leadership advantage. Instead it reads to me in retrospect as a missed opportunity to engage the independent learners who would thrive at Hampshire.
That botched advantage wasn’t limited to academics. There were the group dynamics of the shared housing arrangements that played out in one of Hampshire’s three modular communities. The makeshift support structure of the mods was another notable interpersonal asset of Hampshire that would have been alien to the dorm life of most schools.
Flash Forward #2
But Hampshire mods were never treated as catalog items or marketing assets. That’s curious considering Jenn Chrisler’s tearful observation in the Crown Center announcement of the school’s closing that it’s “always been about the people.” That extends to the lifelong friendships we share as Hampsters. This includes the generous chunk of attendees who never graduated but are counted as alums regardless.
Her poignant comments also served to divert our attention to the non-people assets of the college and the auto-pilot state of the campus infrastructure. The core legacy buildings (Franklin Patterson, Johnson Library and Cole Science) are all long-delayed makeovers. The grounds will always be hallowed but the grounds-keeping remains neglected. We had the living building (the Kern Center) as our beacon of hope, if not solvency. We will always cherish the ugly Bauhaus architecture that anchored the campus.
Post‑Hampshire Trajectory
When I left Hampshire in 1984, my future focus shifted to the 1985 job market, not to legacy, mentoring, or stretching my meager income beyond the coupon book of student loan payments. I would have called you a euphoric trust fund fraud if you had told me then I’d be a reliable phone bank volunteer on future capital campaigns.
Like most of you, I am despondent about an outcome that was always looming but pushed aside by blind optimism (the most efficient of all wishful delusions).
Hampshire has long carried a strain of hard‑left determinism. At times, that outlook proved prescient — its early‑1980s push for divestment from South Africa is a good example of anticipating the broader arc toward justice. Certainly the contemporary parallels of the Netanyahu government reflect these same collective actions. Lately, however, that same impulse has often narrowed into signaling, focused more on performative observance than on structural change.
The willful surprise at Hampshire’s collapse rested on three assumptions:
- First, that same beacon of self‑directed education that once attracted generations of graduates would continue to draw a steady stream of independently minded iconoclasts.
- Second, that the college could rely on robust fundraising from those like‑minded boomer alums.
- And third, that some hard-headed financial maneuver, selling land, restructuring debt, etc. would bridge the cash gaps. At least until the estates of the early‑seventies classes (the original, true believers) could come home and bolster the school’s meager endowment.
Resolutions for Life
On a personal level, we’re all quite saddened and even a little chastened. Coming of age in the doubtful seventies turned out to be perfect preparation for a Hampshire education: question everything, resist convention, and bring skepticism to problem‑solving rather than to resignation. It’s a bitter reality that, at a moment when those habits are most needed, we’re losing institutions built to cultivate them.
It’s also true that Hampshire never carried the prestige that smooths a résumé in the corporate hierarchy. A Hampshire degree never inspired confidence in any hiring manager I encountered. But once inside the door, there was never a broken process, an unexpected obstacle, or a choice between two bad options that left me feeling unprepared. Especially where there was no authority, no budget, and no clear structure. Maybe that’s what Ken Burns meant when he said he learned “everything” at Hampshire.
That expansive assessment traces my path and the virtues lauded in Division II and III. I never thrived in roles that asked me to replace the last person and reproduce a menu of pre-qualified outcomes. When others see a daunting problem, I think, “I got this” – so long as there are no unbending rules, barricades, class attendance requirements, or competitive scoring of grades. Those are the moments I step into shoes no one has yet walked. I learned that situational confidence from my people: my Hampshire professors and peers.
Flash Forward #3
I fully expected to spend my retirement years in the service of protecting and extending the Hampshire dream to what the school’s former CMO, David Gibson, referred to as “The Thrivers.” Those rare minds for whom Hampshire isn’t a fit but the only sensible choice. I wanted to spend my retirement years in support of strengthening the Hampshire mission.
The best outcome for preserving Hampshire ideals is to embed them in the redoubling of commitment to the liberal arts. That’s not about addressing the bleak business concern of declining enrollments. That’s about a future where independent thinking is valued over wholesale acceptance of automated commands and synthetic suggestions. That’s where a love for Hampshire lives on beyond the world we will know.
