Rethinking Hampshire Community

Published in The Omen, Issue 58. 6, April 2023

Rethinking Hampshire Community:

The Interconnected Role of Various Groups in Saving a College  

When I attended the on-campus screening of “The Unmaking of a College” last spring, a student in the audience asked why we hadn’t been told more about the events of the 2019 crisis. I remembered the brave students holding hands along the perimeter inside the RCC when the board announced they wouldn’t accept a full F19 class. Right after that, students invited me to visit the sit-in as it was starting. 

I want to share my experience as an activist and later advisor to save college movements at three colleges listed in “Colleges that Change Lives” and one former women's college. I learned about the tragic mistakes Hampshire made before, during, and after its crisis. Students can play a critical role in making change at the college, but it requires knowing the history and underlying dynamics alumni in particular know too well.

I seek to bring this information to the community despite built-in disincentives for doing so. The system depends on explicit and implicit rewards for toeing the line and deterrents for critiquing it. The college has made impressive improvements in enrollment, fundraising, and curricular innovation. Yet, the willingness to question the status quo is critical because, despite the parts of Hampshire that are very innovative, there are stagnant elements that pull in the opposite direction. In particular, I focus on some areas that Hampshire often doesn’t understand or want to face, to its own detriment. This includes its own students and alumni, the inter-connectedness of various groups, and power dynamics. James Baldwin wrote, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." 

We were often told that things are done in particular ways because Hampshire is on a financial precipice and needs to heal. The truth is that the healing period is never over. Stagnation has thrived on the excuse that the situation is too precarious to accept outside critique and ideas for new ways of doing things. Hampshire now has exceptional leadership and made many improvements and innovations. Yet the same forces that fight to maintain the status quo in certain ways remain in place. Now we see there can be an existential threat to the college based on stagnation. As Robert A. Heinlein wrote, “There is nothing in this world so permanent as a temporary emergency.“

Justifications for seeking a strategic partner, which almost led to the college’s demise, were fatalistic assessments of donor fatigue, plummeting enrollment, and curricular stagnation; the powers that be had this delusion but not the grassroots movement, which overthrew them. Christoph Cox, former Dean of Faculty at Hampshire (after the crisis), told Vice News Tonight: “If for 50 years you graduate a steady stream of organic farmers, social activists, and experimental filmmakers, I mean that doesn't generate an enormous financially sound alumni base, so that's part of it.” But history has shown that was not the cause of the crisis; the same graduate base is donating much more now and making up for the lost revenue from the prospective students who were turned away. If the college had been able to understand better and adequately harness its alumni base, it could have raised more money without having to experience a near-death experience. 

While Hampshire briefly welcomed the grassroots movement that helped save the day, it immediately began to push away this source of energy and innovation even amongst some of the coalition leaders who had sought their help and invited their participation, and even before the acute crisis had ended—this isolated students from alumni. 

Hampshire thinks of itself as radically inclusive, but to many, it is not. The college doesn’t see the effects on individuals or even major groups who become disaffected and leave, taking valuable feedback with them. This article is a small attempt to buck that trend.

In the following sections of this article, issues are surfaced related to alternative colleges, Mim Nelson’s compensation, democracy at Hampshire, why Hampshire was created, and the vast underutilization of help from alumni.

Alternative Colleges in Danger

On a broad scale, many of the most exceptional small liberal arts colleges are under duress financially, which changes how these institutions can operate. One of the colleges I fought to save was Mills College, which had a far stronger financial position than Hampshire; it was a historic women’s college open to non-binary and trans students. Some estimated its campus is worth over $1 billion for the land alone. If colleges like Mills can close, Hampshire remains vulnerable. Hampshire’s board is committed to independence and has an exceptional president, but changes in leadership can cause people to lose confidence and change course. 

For exceptional colleges to survive requires broader collaboration and engagement among all stakeholders. Alumni must be more than a donor class, they need to be actively engaged in the college’s well-being. In some ways, akin to what happened during the crisis and unlike the sometimes tokenized manner that was quickly reverted to. These types of relationships and creative approaches to problem-solving are precisely what we need. Reverting to the classic model of liberal corporation will not cut it. 

While Hampshire was created to solve some of the problems of higher education and has had some major successes, it has not been enough to counteract the negative trends in higher education. Hampshire itself has had trouble remaining financially sustainable, as have a number of other alternative schools mentioned in “Colleges that Change Lives”. Overall liberal arts have been under massive threat, the rate of change in the world is accelerating and even colleges with higher endowments are being closed. An honest inquiry into the forces within Hampshire that have hampered necessary changes remains critical. Those forces still hamper the fullest realization of a continually innovative and impactful institution. 

Leadership Selection - A Fuller Lookback is Needed 

Hampshire’s threat came primarily from within and that’s why it’s important to have as wide a base of people included as possible and a clear understanding of these dynamics so that it’s not repeated again in the future. Some people believe Mim just listened to the wrong people or as portrayed in the film “The Unmaking of a College” was, in part, a victim of UMass leaders. 

The movie’s take on Mim Nelson as being the victim of UMass is overly charitable. Mim Nelson received nearly $900,000 in total compensation in 2019, according to Hampshire’s IRS 990. Comparing this to compensation for Hampshire’s president in previous years, this amounts to a payoff of about half a million dollars. In the same year, when claiming a lack of funds, she let go of almost the entire admissions department and fundraising staff and refused to guarantee the continuation of the Baldwin program. Students were sleeping on concrete floors to protest her decisions endangering their education, the staff and faculty's jobs, and the college's survival. 

Jeff Sonnenfeld is an expert featured in the movie. He is the Lester Crown Professor in the Practice of Management at Yale School of Management and Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies. He told me:

Mim Nelson and her lieutenants/enforcers were no more victims than were Jeff Skilling CEO at Enron, Elizabeth Holmes CEO of Theranos, and Bernie Ebbers CEO of WorldCom.  They also faced external pressures but created fictions about their respective enterprises, lied to all constituents within and external parties about their true strategic plans and situation – fighting back with coercion, intimidation and reprisals against anyone who told the truth. 

It takes quite an imagination employing distorted knowledge to twist deceptive bullies into appearing as heroic forces or even as sympathetic victims. The heroic forces were bold loyal faculty, students, and alumni as well as crusading journalists at the local NPR member station and the Hampshire Gazette which, through their persistent FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] diligences, surfaced the documentation of Nelson’s pattern of deceit. That was also called out by fellow five college presidents- and unparalleled condemnation by informed peer institutional partners.

Sadly, bad leaders often fail up and cause harm in their next role. As bad as they are at running institutions, they excel at crafting their own narratives about their tenure, which are accepted by those who benefit from perpetuating them or can’t see through it, and because they are granted non-disparage agreements by their employers. An anonymous account of her tenure at the University of New Hampshire, Thomson School of Applied Science was posted on Reddit and articles are easily found about controversies at Newman’s Own Foundation during her tenure.  

Democracy at Hampshire?

It has been 50 years since Robert Rardin, a Hampshire College professor, wrote about the competing ideas at Hampshire in “Liberal Corporation or Radical Collective: Two Models for a College.” This matter has been overwhelmingly settled: Hampshire is a liberal corporation. Legally speaking, Hampshire is a corporation and the board has the ultimate power: it can hire and fire presidents and it can decide to close, stay the course, transform, or become acquired. The important tradition of shared governance in higher education is granted at the board's will and can be taken away just as quickly. Student government can be allowed or taken away by the administration. Tension arises because Hampshire culture aspires to equality, liberation, and critiques of power structures that challenge corporate hierarchies. The real question now is how Hampshire can best understand how to relate to all of its stakeholders. 

Gaye Hill, chair of Hampshire’s Board of Trustees during the 2019 crisis, told a packed Main Lecture Hall that “We [Hampshire College] are a representational democracy, whether you appreciate that or not.” Although the board is comprised mainly of alumni, it’s not a representative democracy since all but a few members of the board are picked by the board itself, and all members of the Alumni Action Group (AAG) are picked by the AAG members themselves. This lacks a self-correcting system for avoiding groupthink. Even though they are chosen by a small group, we are sometimes told that we have “representation.” Only the alumni trustee is elected by alumni, and even that seat is required to represent the college writ large. 

The board remains virtually as opaque as it was in 2019 and there appears not to have been a process that looked into what went wrong with the board’s governance during that time. I still see signs that some trustees are fighting for the status quo, are non-inclusive, and hold some of the same neoliberal ideas that got us into trouble in the first place. 

Why Was Hampshire Created?

Hampshire was created by other colleges because institutions become stilted as people, processes, and pressures cause gears to become entrenched. The new college started free to innovate, but traditional power dynamics inevitably caught up with Hampshire. Hampshire lost some of its cutting edge compared to other alternative colleges, a major factor affecting enrollment prior to the crisis. It was saved only by a fantastic coalition. Entrenched energies retook much of the control when the crisis ended, dismissing the grassroots movement and depriving Hampshire of the energy therein. Various entrenched powers deliberately and reflexively made grassroots alumni invisibilized to maintain the status quo power structures. Their intentions appear selfish but they had the survival of the institution in mind. 

Early Hampshire’s plasticity enabled experimentation with the college model.  Some parts of Hampshire in 1970 were incredibly fresh and exciting, while others were hundreds of years old, inherited from older institutions. Not having grades, calling professors by their first names, not having majors, and a number of other experiments were a departure from most colleges; however, its core power structure remained the same. Hampshire, like the other colleges, is a corporation run by a board, and employees are divided into staff, faculty, and administration; it has a semester system, etc. Of all the colleges in the consortium, it was most influenced by Amherst College; a graduate from Amherst was the biggest donor; a disproportionate number of Hampshire’s early administration, trustees, and two presidents worked at or had attended Amherst College. 

As Hampshire continues to evolve, sometimes it creates things that are new and other times it is influenced by other colleges. Staff come and go between colleges and compare what is being done at each college. In this way, individual colleges, no matter how unique they are, are part of a greater ecosystem and process of co-evolution. Hampshire has an innovative layer covering over deeper layers in which it, and other colleges, are essentially replicants. 

Ed Wingenbach told WGBH: “The radical colleges of American higher education, they’re the skunkworks for this really kind of stodgy industry.” I think it’s a more mixed picture where these institutions are also struggling with sustainability and resistance to change. 

Undermining Alumni Limits Change

I first saw this when I was part of the re-envisioning coalition, a large group of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and parents. I was one of the point people for the committee tasked by coalition leaders to create a major event to fundraise, present the re-envisioning plan, and unite the community. The committee created the “Our Hampshire Our People” event but quickly saw that one of the coalition leaders sidelined my leadership, causing me to leave the committee. 

I was one of three alumni on the re-envisioning committee. We were all removed as soon as it looked like the sands were shifting. The faculty leaders admitted this was for political expediency. This removal was part of dismantling the re-envisioning coalition, which was headed by that committee. 

The committee changed its name twice, becoming the Curricular Innovation Committee and the Academic Innovation Planning Group. Core leaders stayed in place as we were replaced by “alumni representatives” who were not chosen by the alumni and didn’t survey or report back to us. Rachel Conrad admitted that they were chosen after talking to people on campus. I spoke to one of those “alumni representatives” and complained about the process by which we were removed. Their answer included comments such as “They are smart people…they don’t need me…us alumni can be a difficult bunch.” This rep had been a supporter of Mim. I remember thinking that in removing the connection from those who had come to help save the college, they weren’t likely to get as imaginative and radical change as needed. I also believe that people would donate even more if they were involved in more organic and varied ways because there would be a greater sense of belonging and inclusion. 

That same committee later decided that alumni wouldn’t be allowed at Ed Wingenbach’s first major speech to the community, essentially his inauguration. I brought up my concerns about this with the (now former) alumni director and with our liaison from the AAG (in writing), but they reaffirmed their decision. Some made an excuse that it was because the college couldn’t afford a tent to hold it outside and have enough room. They could have even held the speech outside without a tent, as it was 74 degrees with no precipitation. 

While this exclusion may have escaped the notice of most of the community, the symbolism was still evident. The re-envisioning coalition, sit-in, and overthrow of the past administration created a rift with much of the remaining administration and they needed to reassert their power. In order to do that, outsider alumni had to be invisibilized and those in power on the re-envisioning committee cooperated with that by exiling alumni back to their expected place on the outskirts as members of an external or donor community, not an integral part of the college itself. 

This would have been a perfect fundraising opportunity and a chance to signal greater inclusion. While many things were done well in the last few years, Hampshire went through more austerity than necessary because of excluding much of the grassroots movement. It took away those who might challenge limiting beliefs, bring in outside knowledge, etc. 

Involving alumni

Is this article outlining a new vision of the college that is not just radical but overly imaginative and impractical? Does it take a visionary to see these possibilities? In a way, it’s quite the opposite. During the crisis of 2019, various groups, including students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, and other community members, worked in incredible, creative, resourceful, and interconnected ways. It’s not just that this more interconnected framework couldn’t be imagined; it’s not even just that it happened but wasn’t learned by those more familiar and guarding of the status quo – it’s that the grassroots organizations were actively undermined and invisibilized. They turned away from these new possibilities that would have put Hampshire on a much more accelerated path. While all those who have helped to save Hampshire deserve much credit for bravery, ingenuity, and steering Hampshire away from the path of closure that so many other small liberal arts colleges have taken, there is another path that is supercharged: true inclusion means that the entire community are equal partners and part of the ongoing co-creation of the college. 

Problems of Involving Alumni

People who work at the college may be fearful of alumni involvement. I certainly saw this among a portion outside the coalition who felt that alumni were trying to “burn the place down” and were an invading force. Even some of the faculty, who wanted alumni to be part of the coalition helping to save the college, viewed them as a force they were “calling in” instead of an ongoing integral part of the community. 

While stakeholder groups such as alumni are part of the community, that doesn’t mean it’s without limits, needs for roles and boundaries, and downsides. Faculty and staff are often overburdened and fear losing autonomy over their roles. There are also cases in higher ed where alumni are perceived to have too much influence. Corporate or unethical individual donors may negatively affect curriculum, policy, and board decisions. Some people think of major collegiate sports and fraternities/sororities as elements that take away focus from academics and cause other problems. 

Being inclusive of alumni is not a complete solution in and of itself. Alumni can be either killers or saviors of the college. After all, the board decided to hire Mim Nelson instead of Ed Wingenbach, who was a candidate at the same time. And it was the board that approved the decision to seek a strategic partner and not accept a full F19 class. However, alumni within a greater movement also played a major role in reversing those decisions. 

Conclusion

Many will wonder if this entire article stems from a mentality some call entitlement. Is dissecting Hampshire a privileged activity of rich white people at the expense of looking at labor rights, racial diversity, LGBTQ rights, gender, and other essential justice movements? I believe this either/or lens is mistaken. 

All the problems exist at once; it’s a multi-layered tapestry, and ignoring any of the issues yields an incomplete view that is detrimental to the necessary understanding of the culture, power dynamics, and emotional economy of the college. Such an understanding would make a massive difference to the college's survival and benefit the lives Hampshire touches. It’s essential to recognize the energy and genius of the collectivity of grassroots alumni - especially when they are closely aligned with student interests.

Jonathon Podolsky 94F is a journalist member of the Education Writers Association and moderator of Local Frogs: Hampshire College Alumni of Western Massachusetts. He can be reached at movies@podolsky.cc