The Unmaking of a College is a stealthy Hampshire College recruitment/endowment film, but it’s easier to breathe through the subtle sales pitch because the story is true and the message is broad: our nation needs critical thinking skills and creative, disciplined solutions to complex problems. We need schools like Hampshire College.
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Everyone at Hampshire College in 2019 left with a few bruises and an education.
The Unmaking of a College, directed by Hampshire College alum Amy Goldstein (East of A, Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl) is a first-person survival story.
The documentary opens with a slight, fiftyish blonde with a pixie cut and an anxious aura on the floor of a distinctly unglamorous office. The room is packed with college students. They are multicultural, nonbinary, and appropriately scruffy. They are respectful and articulate. They want the woman on the floor to resign.
That woman is Miriam “Mim” Nelson, a nutritionist, best-selling author, and policy advisor. She’s been president of Hampshire College for only a few months.
The future of Hampshire College is, at that moment, bleak, but not lonely. Twenty-five percent of independent liberal arts colleges in the United States are in danger of closing. Only the wealthiest institutions may survive – and perhaps have the culture drained out of them in the process.
If every independent liberal arts college has a unique culture, Hampshire College might be the Academic Island of Misfit Toys. Students are bright, creative, and capable, but they’re wound differently . . . and they make a valuable clatter when they’re pissed off.
Liberal arts schools offer an important contribution to America’s social, moral, creative and economic well-being. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, a Hampshire College alum, claims his alma mater didn’t just educate him – it transformed him. “I remember occupying the president’s office,” Burns says with a wry smile, “but I don’t remember why.”
President Nelson, says Hampshire professor Salman Hameed, “picked the wrong school to mess with.” Founded in 1970 under an experimental plan that celebrated independent study, the school’s motto is Non Satis Scire – “To Know Is Not Enough.”
When they realized they were denied information, Hampshire students planted their asses in the president’s office for the longest sit-in in American college history – 75 days. They demanded transparency, shared governance, and overall equity. They made sure everyone understood that they were going to act, because “to know is not enough.”
Goldstein structures her documentary with strong narrative and compelling characters. We’re witness to passion and frustration from the outset, but we’re uncertain in the early minutes of this 84-minute documentary where to aim our angst.
At 10:00 a.m. on January 5, 2019, while students, faculty, and staff were away on winter break, Miriam Nelson sent an email bomb: Hampshire College, she announced, may be “taking on a strategic partner” and “may not enroll a freshman class.”
Nelson’s bomb had a short fuse. At 10:11 a.m., she sent a follow-up email, announcing an “all-community” meeting at a lecture hall on campus in 49 minutes, at 11:00 a.m. Tick, tick, tick.
Miriam Nelson. Credit Span Productions/Zeitgeist Films
Rhys McArthur, a student who worked in the admissions department, was blindsided. Her education, her job, and her conscience are at stake: did she recruit students in bad faith? Student Joshua Berman, whose firsthand videos are featured throughout the documentary, drove back to campus early, on the cusp of a snowstorm.
The remainder of the documentary answers the question: Will Hampshire College survive, and if it does, at what cost?
Hampshire College was 200 students shy of full enrollment when Nelson sent her devastating email. Unlike older schools, Hampshire has a small, socially responsible endowment. It’s 87% tuition dependent. Without a full freshman class, Hampshire College would be in a death spiral.
“I began to realize this is more than a financial crisis. This is a political crisis,” says student organizer Marlon Becerra.
On January 31, 2019, Nelson and a stiff-but-fidgety board of trustees met with students, professors, administrators, staff, and locals. “All we are asking for is time and communication,” Becerra pleads to President Nelson and the board. “You need to choose a better process.”
The meeting ended without a decision. The next morning the board denied the request to delay their decision. Within days, mayhem erupted.
On February 2, 2019, Moon West opened a “welcome” email from the school of her dreams. The high school senior was dumbstruck. She and about sixty other early admission freshmen were told there would be no dining on campus at Hampshire, and no dorms. “Bus service to food banks,” however, “would be available.” If students wanted to opt out of their early admission status, Hampshire College would advocate for them with other schools.
West, in hot pink highlighted hair and a black henley, remembers thinking Hampshire’s email had been hacked. To add injury to insult, standard admissions to other colleges expired just before early admission students received their weird welcome email.
Student organizers didn’t accept Nelson’s actions. A loosely organized sit-in began. Participants who thought it would last for a few days had to readjust. Students took turns going to classes, taking showers, and spending nights on the floor of Nelson’s office, sustained, it appears, by nearby vending machines.
The New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe sent reporters. The Nation published a feature by a Hampshire professor. This crisis was seen as a microcosm and a mirror for deep troubles in liberal arts education.
It wasn’t just students who were affected. Many instructors at Hampshire have such eclectic backgrounds that, while they excel in their passion and job performance, they might not qualify for traditional professorships. Salman Hameed, professor of interdisciplinary studies, a trained astronomer, and published sociologist, said at the time, “They’re not just announcing layoffs. They’re announcing the end of your career.”
The documentary handles the story with a deft, if somewhat biased, hand.
Goldstein stops short of portraying Nelson as an academic Cruella de Vil. Nelson is smart. She sounds great in speeches and in print. Her management style, though, was . . . less than collaborative. Conservative political consultant and Hampshire alum Jim Buckley offers a defense. Nelson’s tactics were all wrong, Buckley says, but that could perhaps be forgiven. “What was missing was empathy.” Nelson, according to Buckley, had been given an impossible choice by a huge shadow player: the University of Massachusetts (UMass). Behind the scenes, UMass was sniffing hard for a takeover of Hampshire College, while making unreasonable demands of the beleaguered university president. Buckley compares Nelson’s position to that of pilot Sully Sullenberger, who had to land a jet in the Hudson River. “(Nelson) panicked,” Buckley says, “and UMass let the plane sink.”
The Unmaking of a College is a stealthy Hampshire College recruitment/endowment film, but it’s easier to breathe through the subtle sales pitch because the story is true and the message is broad: our nation needs critical thinking skills and creative, disciplined solutions to complex problems. We need schools like Hampshire College.
The Unmaking is nicely made. Its well-edited chronological narrative works. Music director Nathan Larson’s music adds heft, and the use of student video gives the story intimate authenticity. The “where are they now” coda demonstrates the social conscience of former students. The technique of filming interviews in front of projected activist video, though, was overused. It went from interesting to downright distracting.
The Unmaking of a College, produced by Anouchka van Riel and Troy Takaki, will open in New York City on February 11 and in Los Angeles February 17.
