Two Members of the Hampshire College Board of Trustees Have Resigned
“tensions within the board as Hampshire charts a course forward amid financial hardship”
The meltdown at Hampshire continues. Now people are apparently turning on each other in anger.
The Daily Hampshire Gazette reports:
Second Hampshire College trustee resigns
Another member of Hampshire College’s board of trustees has resigned, submitting a letter that sheds light on tensions within the board as Hampshire charts a course forward amid financial hardship.
Mingda Zhao, an alum and trustee, stepped down from the board just a day after Gaye Hill, the board’s chairwoman, announced her own departure over what she described as “vitriol” and “slanderous attacks.” Zhao’s resignation letter, obtained by the Gazette, also points to what he calls “bullying and fear tactics” on the part of college leadership.
In his letter, Zhao said he was accused of breaching confidentiality after he reached out to the presidents of Amherst, Mount Holyoke and Smith colleges. Zhao wrote that he contacted those presidents to independently verify an assertion from Hampshire President Miriam “Mim” Nelson that those colleges were considering dropping Hampshire from their captive insurance company.
In their own statement, board vice chairman Kim Saal and Fraser Beede, the chairman of the board’s trusteeship and governance committee, said a board member resigned after “a significant breach of confidentiality … done without authorization of then Board Chair Gaye Hill.”
“These actions, while deeply distressing, are not related to the details of any specific proposals currently being considered to secure Hampshire’s future,” the statement reads.
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Comments
Hampshire may be doing their students a favor by closing. Their curriculum is heavily politicized with many useless courses. Students can spend $200,000 tuition on four years with a degree in Gender and Sexuality Studies, with little or no chance of getting a job in that area. (Would you hire someone who majored in “Gender and Sexuality Studies”? I didn’t think so.)
So, were those three colleges considering dropping Hampshire from their captive insurance company? I bet we haven’t heard the last of it, and that the troublemaker might actually be the one who is concerned about getting to the truth. Based on what I have seen from colleges recently, when caught in a lie, the next move is to double down. I sure am looking forward to the day that the Oberlin administration gets to explain their actions to the “pretty much still in the dark” alumni.