Demanding democracy at Hampshire

[Hannah Bell]

AMHERST, Mass--During the last week of the semester, when most students are cramming for finals, Hampshire College erupted with a movement for transparency and democracy involving at least half of the student body, along with staff and faculty.

Students were outraged when they learned about administrators' plans to move a satellite of the admissions office to a more central building, Adele Simons Hall (ASH)--a plan that would cost a projected $350,000, displace faculty offices and include the construction of a 5,100-square-foot parking lot on what is now a grassy field.

In just a week, pressure pushed the administration to respond to student demands, and exposed the consistent lack of transparency on a campus that preaches radical pedagogy...Michael Meo, a junior at Hampshire, first heard about the plan through the student-led architectural re-design group, Re-Hamping. "Having studied spaces for a long time, the plan seemed incredibly illogical," he said. As he and the rest of the group began to look into the plan, they quickly realized its greatest flaw: The vast majority of the people who should have known about it were excluded from the decision-making process...

The students began to spread the information through word-of-mouth and by announcing the plan on the area's five-college public PVTA buses. Within days, Meo and other Re-Hamping students presented the ASH plan to a group of 100 students, staff and faculty, and asked if anyone had heard about this plan to of the admission ASH project before that week. A loud chorus of "No!" arose from the crowd....

http://socialistworker.org/2010/06/09/demanding-democracy-at-hampshire

[JackintheGreen]

1. As an alumn (F92)

Why don't they just move the satellite office to that useless yurt? Sure, it might be smallish, but when that was in the planning stages they were talking about making it big enough for contra dances.