25 years ago today marks the closed circuit tv suicide of Andrew Hermann, protesting the overly aggressive political correctness that was somehow also supposed to bring the school back to the mainstream of the Reagan era - as perhaps best documented in Richard Rushfield's book 'Don't Follow me I'm Lost'.
But is attacking young white males on the pretext of battling 'patriarchy' really politically correct feminism? Or is it really spoiled rotten white women providing scapegoats to the real crimes of old, white male abusers?
To a major point of concern today - is this same sort of sexual politics now used to manipulate corporate and governmental America? Is this technique an element of the current private and public economic situation? Did Hampshire invent this technique, to some large degree?
The sad fact is that the 1986 President Adele Simmons and Dean of Students Sue Alexander were, and still are, by their own standards, abusive corporate sexual predators - not creating alternatives as every student believed, but destroying them in an orgy of hate. Even though both of these individuals were gone not long after this incident, the trend had been set.
Hampshire is now an older institution, but is it one worth continuing? Certainly there is tons of leadership in the alumni ranks who have made their professional names in business and other endeavors with progressive integrity - as well as academic types including David Callahan whose last book concerned the status of Philanthropy in 21st Century America.
While Ms. Simmons, now living in Chicago, orchestrated a Goldman Sachs takeover of the nation's most progressive bank - SouthShore - calling it a 'private sector' bailout.
Can you Ms. Gerber Fried, Mr. Roos - harness that mature progressive talent to build an institution worthy of making a mark on history or are you just another Simmons/Alexander/Wall Street team of unproductive corporate control freaks?
Unless you change things now and hold past criminals to account, the evidence goes to the latter.
(As some of you know I have my agenda on this matter, still progressing. I'm happy to share my personal experience with anyone curious, on a one on one basis.)
