Hampshire College Grads Celebrate Their Time as School’s Last Graduating Class

Hampshire College Grads Celebrate Their Time as School’s Last Graduating Class

The progressive school is closing its doors for good this spring after a string of financial struggles.

WGBH reports:

‘To know is not enough’: Hampshire College graduates reflect on their time as last graduating class

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.

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