Amy Goldstein’s documentary “The Unmaking of a College” chronicles a 75-day sit-in at the director’s alma mater Hampshire College in 2019.
As the 84-minute film reveals, the unrest at Hampshire was triggered when President Miriam Nelson announced to the students in January 2019 that the small, private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, was facing severe fiscal problems. As part of a downsizing regimen, Nelson proposed staff layoffs, cutting back facilities, such as dining rooms and dorms, and not enrolling the fall 2019 freshman class, as Hampshire’s administration sought a “strategic partnership” to rescue the troubled campus.
Hampshire students responded by organizing a sit-in, called “Hamp Rise Up,” that included a rotating occupation of the president’s office for 10 weeks and commandeering Nelson’s bathroom, where occupiers showered during the demonstration.
Among the protesters’ demands was “transparency,” and, according to the film, over the course of the struggle the Daily Hampshire Gazette, a regional New England newspaper, obtained emails through a public records request. The messages revealed that, behind students’ and staffers’ backs, Nelson had secretly been negotiating since November 2018 with the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s chancellor for UMass to partner with the economically troubled Hampshire College.
According to interviewee Holden Thorp, former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and now provost of Washington University in St. Louis, this served as “a microcosm of what will happen to small private colleges.”
Established in 1863, UMass Amherst is a public institution with a student body numbering 30,000-plus. In contrast, there are less than 1,200 students at Hampshire. Ken Burns, one of Hampshire’s most famous alumni, said in a 2021 interview, “When I went, [Hampshire was] the most radical college in the country, in terms of upending expectations of an undergraduate education, and still is incredibly revolutionary.”
Burns is also a recurring interview subject in “The Unmaking of a College,” as is another prominent alum, John Buckley, nephew of the late conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr., founder of National Review and longtime host of “Firing Line.” Buckley, who served in a communications role for three Republican presidential campaigns, comes across as forthright, contending that UMass “betrayed” Nelson, who “tried to do the right thing” but made “some bad decisions.”
“The Unmaking of a College” artfully interweaves Goldstein’s original material with “a mix of video captured by the students and their social media threads, traditional observational footage, press conferences, news footage, and radio broadcasts,” according to press notes. Goldstein interviewed an array of students, academics, board members, and alumni, but Nelson and UMass spokespersons declined to comment. Students Marlon Becerra and Joshua Berman are credited, respectively, as story consultant and additional cinematographer. Like the cause it covers, the documentary is participatory and collective in nature.
Music composed by Nathan Larson enhances the onscreen mood without ever being intrusive, and the portrait Goldstein creatively paints is of the admirable making of a vibrant, do-it-yourself, participatory democracy that intelligently launches effective direct actions.
By the way, spoiler alert, the sit-in succeeded in getting Nelson to step down as president in April 2019. The school continues to operate with the motto: “Non Satis Scire—To Know Is Not Enough.”
“The Unmaking of a College” opened Feb. 11 at New York’s IFC Center and Feb. 18 at the Los Angeles Pasadena Playhouse 7 and Laemmle’s Monica Film Center, as well as at the Amherst Cinema in Massachusetts.
Ed Rampell is a film historian and critic based in Los Angeles. Rampell is the author of "Progressive Hollywood, A People's Film History of the United States" and he co-authored “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book,” now in its third edition. This first appeared at progressive.org.
From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2022
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us