Remembering the Bold Thinking of Hampshire College
It’s hard to believe that nearly a half century has passed since I stood on a hillside in South Amherst, Massachusetts, with Van Halsey, then Hampshire College’s director of admissions, gazing at the rolling green farmland that stretched out toward Hadley, Massachusetts. “That is where the college will be,” Halsey explained. I was 17 years old, entering my senior year of high school, and convinced that this largely invisible place—then mostly a collection of dreams and ideals—was the only college in the country where I wanted to study.
My enthusiasm for Hampshire was shared widely that year. The new college attracted a couple of thousand applications for the 250 or so places in its first class of students. The school had no history, no traditions, no graduates, no campus when we applied in 1969. And yet we couldn’t wait to attend. The excitement I felt for Hampshire and all that it promised is as real to me today as it was on that spring day when I looked across that field and glimpsed the college’s future, and my own.
Hampshire’s core premise—that college-age students are capable of far more than what is usually expected of them—drew us to the college. We were invited to become active participants in framing our own education. Rather than selecting a major, we’d be asked to develop an area of concentration. Our progress would be measured not by grades, courses, or credits piled up, but by examinations across broad fields of knowledge. We’d be expected to create the architecture of our education, not passively wait for information to be delivered.
[Read more: The liberal arts may not survive the 21st century]
That message resonated with idealistic high-school graduates of my era. The prospect of taking charge of one’s own education, guided by the wisdom of talented faculty, was exhilarating. The invitation to participate in likewise offered us, as very young people, an invigorating sense of purpose. Additionally, the stress that Hampshire’s literature placed on social responsibility as a critical dimension of a liberal-arts education converged. We imagined that we could change the society around us. What better place to start than at this fledgling college that emphasized adventure and innovation, and that made a virtue of possibility.Today that soaring sense of possibility has been brought to ground by harsh realities. Hampshire is currently embroiled in a crisis—rooted in daunting financial difficulties and the administrative decisions made about how best to deal with them—that threatens its survival as an independent liberal-arts college.
