Hampshire College held its final graduation ceremony this past weekend on Saturday in Amherst. According to administration officials, there were 192 graduates as well as friends, family, current and former faculty and staff who gathered under a white tent in the middle of Hampshire college's campus. Colorful flags of all the graduating classes in the college's history hang over the last graduating class.
Faculty kept a brave face for the graduating seniors, but most eyes welled at President Jennifer Chrisler’s last commencement address.
“A parent recently sent me a beautiful, poignant email about Hampshire. She described it as, and I want to get this exactly right, ‘a radical and wild place whose heart will beat on even when the colleges has ceased for the radical and wild minds will echo there forever.’ I have read that sentence many times in the past few weeks,” Chrisler said. “I keep coming back to it because that is what you are. You are the radical and wild minds. You are the heartbeat that continues. Hampshire doesn't end today. It disperses."
Annez Smith, a graduating senior, said her Hampshire education has prepared her for her next steps — being a teacher in Holyoke.
"I met lifelong friends here, and I'm willing to take anything I've learned here from any professor — whether it's something that I didn't necessarily agree with at the moment and now have reflected on — but I will take even that with me into my education and into a classroom, especially into a classroom," Smith said.
William "Wolfie" Krebs, another graduating senior, said the day was difficult, since the school is officially closing its doors this fall. But, he said he was happy speakers didn't make that a focal point.
"If I see a need, I have to fix it, right? Not to be a martyr, to make the world better. That's what this place is about.” — Jenn Pozner, Class of 1992
"Obviously we have problems, but, I feel like the spirit of Hampshire is to deal with them, accept them, and to move forward with them as we find the solutions and to keep going ‘cause solutions lie in many different, unwieldy places. You know, to know is not enough and all that good stuff,” Krebs said banjo in hand.
"To know is not enough" being Hampshire's motto.
Alumni Jenn Pozner, who graduated Hampshire College in 1992, said the interdisciplinary curriculum that the college is known for, which includes students combining fields to create their original course of study, helped her find solutions when roadblocks emerged in her job.
“I was a working class kid. Only my mom went to college. My dad was an immigrant and a high school dropout. I would never have imagined creating things that didn't exist before in a medium or in the nonprofit sector, if Hampshire hadn't taught me that,” Pozner said. “That not only [is it] possible, it's my responsibility. If I see a need, I have to fix it, right? Not to be a martyr, to make the world better. That's what this place is about.”
Pozner is also a part of the Hampshire College group called Hampshire Next, which consists of alumni, faculty and staff trying to save the land the college sits on. Pozner said they submitted a proposal to the Board of Trustees asking them to consider their group to "keep Hampshire's legacy and mission and values going forward into the future in a new format." They're hoping to raise more than $20 million by September for the cause.
Other graduations that took place in the area included Springfield College, UMass Amherst, and Smith College.