Hampshire stays open

A random reader found a past note here on Hamphire College's financial difficulties which led me to discover the good news that it appears Hampshire will remain open for years to come.

The Daily Hampshire Gazette included this note in its recent article on Hampshire's 2021 graduation:

"The tenacity of Hampshire College as an institution was also a key theme for the graduation, as speakers painfully remembered the college’s brief plans to shut down due to budgetary concerns in 2019.

"'Hampshire College is still here because many of you insisted that it must be,' Wingenbach said to graduating students in his speech. 'And because of the passions, effort and commitment of both you and a broader community that loves what this college and this college alone stands for, Hampshire will be here in another 50 years, when you return to celebrate our 100th anniversary.'"

Hampshire College

Some of my most fond memories from Wesleyan entail driving an hour north to play in Ultimate Frisbee tournaments at Hampshire College as well as hosting their team at Wes, so it is not only to defend liberal arts colleges in general that the news Hampshire may close is disappointing. So far, it's not clear as to what will happen although I believe that Hampshire has decided to admit a smaller class for Fall semester, 2019, with the thinking that it is much more appropriate to guarantee four years for a smaller number of students than to shut the doors on students who would be forced to leave before graduation. Undoubtedly, colleges and universities assigning Fight for Your Long Day and Auggie's Revenge as university-wide or first-year Book of the Year selections will have a much better chance of surviving than the others. Indeed, the experiences of the protagonists (or anti-heroes) of these novels are central to the predicament of the humanities in the twenty-first century, so I hardly see hope for any liberal arts college or curriculum failing to consider these novels.