Hobbled Hampshire

My wanderings over the past week have brought me to the campus of Hampshire College. Here's Johnson Library, a really cool place.

In fact "a really cool place" is a phrase you often heard about Hampshire College in general over the past half-century. But lately, not so much, at least when it comes to finances. Hampshire appears to be hobbled by a life or death fiscal crisis as the college president and several board members have abruptly resigned.

However, as I traversed the gorgeous Hampshire campus, hands-down the prettiest of the Five College system, I could detect no sense of impending doom. This sign announcing a pro-abortion conference, however, may be one small symptom of what has gone wrong.

Like a lot of Liberal Arts schools, Hampshire's once famously free style has been choked by political correctness. Good grief, even their gym has a pro-abortion sign overhead!

For some reason, people appear to be reluctant to spend over $50,000 per year to be turned into an unemployable social justice warrior so buried in debt you have decades of monthly bills as big as a mortgage payment - except you don't have a house. Hampshire's problems are just the symptoms of a wider crisis in higher education, which is that colleges today have become absurdly expensive, indoctrinate more than educate and do a poor job of preparing students for productive lives.

Only when this changes will students once again be willing to go to college in sufficient numbers to sustain small colleges like Hampshire. Right now, the smartest kids are avoiding college altogether and just plunging into whatever interests them, learning their field from the bottom up. Such people do not remain on the bottom for very long, and they by-pass all the leftist hooey and ruinous expense of what passes for a college education today.

Hampshire may be fading, but already gone is the Northampton Faces, a Valley commercial fixture since its origins decades ago in Amherst. The day after they closed, a mysterious wreath appeared in their doorway.

Lo and behold, it was a sympathy wreath from Packards, the bar around the corner.

Northampton's downtown business environment is the most cut-throat in the Valley, as merchants compete for dominance in our area's most successful downtown market. But bonds of friendship still form across the business district, and whenever a member goes down, the whole commercial community is saddened.

On a happier note, UMass had their literary bake sale, where students make funny and punny spoofs of famous books. This is so corny I had to laugh.

Never has a chocolate cake looked less appetizing.

Meanwhile, I was in arty mode this weekend as I attended an opening at the Oxbow Gallery on Pleasant Street in Hamp.

There was a good crowd.

I was never previously aware of the joint, but I'll be back.

The gallery undoubtedly gets its name from the nearby Oxbow section of the Connecticut River, which was painted by Thomas Cole in 1836 and entitled, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm. Learn all about this Pioneer Valley masterpiece in the video below.