Campus Tour Groups

Wow, I've been overwhelmed recently by the frequency of campus tours and the number of people in them. When holidays happen parents and prospective students must hit the road fast to furiously drive up and down the east coast shopping for colleges. It must seem like getting up early to hit a string of great tag sales on a Saturday morning – grab that brochure, look over there, talk to those people, keep moving, where do we go next.

I'm always struck by how differently each tour group behaves. It's similar to a production class dividing up into smaller sections when I give a workshop. The first group is sullen and unresponsive, then the next is effusive and insightful, but they're all in the same class. Odd. Similarly, some of the tour groups I'd like to talk to all day. They're all fun and engaging. With others, the conversation dwindles, no one asks questions or makes comments, and I wonder where in the world their silent student will end up.

On Friday, Good Friday, three large groups right in a row, only six or seven minutes apart bumped into each other like ocean rafts. The second group arrived pushing the first out of the way and then the third group appeared just around the corner ready to do the same. I'm a shy, quiet guy to start with so it's a stretch for me to do any of this in the first place, then the forced repetition on top of that adds more stress. Oh my, did I talk about Anna Elliot and Chris Applebaum just a few minutes ago or did I say that to the previous group?

The groups do have the usual common concerns, misunderstandings and questions, but each family is different in interests and their ability to articulate useful questions. As I always say to Division III students it takes about an hour of back and forth questioning to finally get to the heart of their project and truly understand what they're trying to do. That three sentence description from their Div III contract really isn't deep enough, nor revealing enough to elicit the informed discussion that's so necessary in letting others understand and finally give back a useful response. No one believes that initially, but later they're astonished that we've uncovered new problems with their project or that they could take a new direction in method, outcome or presentation. It really does take that long and you have to stay with it and not give up just because the conversation seems too difficult or makes you uncomfortable.

So tour groups with their enforced brevity will also leave with an equally abbreviated understanding of what we do and how we do it. That's too bad, but I understand the reality of the situation. For me the easy way of interacting in that short time frame is telling stories either of alumns that I knew personally or the Div III and Div II students that I'm currently working with. While most of those stories seem well received, after so much repetition I feel them unsatisfying – at least for me. I wish we could talk more about theories of education and what have been parents and students personal experiences with learning and understanding, but no, that doesn't happen. It's a simple show and tell, not a deeper prolonged experience.

This frequency of interaction is happening because I now have an additional office in the new Jerome Liebling building of the film/photo program. The building is a show case and an obvious part of a general tour of the campus whether people are actually interested in media as a concentration or not. I'll happily continue to talk with prospective students and their parents and try and fill in their understanding of what Hampshire offers and allow them to decide if it's a good fit for them. However I'm only in the building on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I wonder who they talk with on Tuesday and Thursday?

gunther

Graduation, Celebration and the New Liebling Center

That bitter-sweet, happy-sad time of students finishing their final year with a flourish - speeches, applause, hugs, handshakes, tears and goodbyes - was mingled this year, as if that wasn't enough all by it's self, with the opening and dedication of the finally finished Jerome Liebling wing of the Film Photo building. This year held an unusually friendly collection of students who have all turned into friends and fellow workers to be missed most now, just at the height of their abilities - as their work shows.

Also sandwiched into all of that was an alumni weekend with older and wiser graduates returning for still yet more hugs and handshakes. Their stories of life and projects sounding bigger and bolder than we could have imagined interspersed with the hint of children unknown and travels previously unmentioned while eating, laughing, talking, drinking and more laughing all under a large tent.

The commencement speakers sheltered under the biggest tent of the day were official (president Hexter), funny (Bob Goldwaith), and deeply interesting (Ken Burns). Seeing the students so well dressed standing next to people who look much like them only older - of course their parents - made the day rush by and merge into the final ceremony under still yet another tent, of thanks to donors, praise for faculty and admiration of the new Liebling  building as a shrine to photography and workspace for media.

I've seen the Liebling building grow from drawings and ill formed ideas stumbled over in meetings to foundations, steel, sheetrock and doors. Only days before the halls were still littered with conduit, ceiling tiles and buckets of paint, yet you could see how nice it was going to be, but when the track lights came on and the floors finally swept clean it seemed even more impressive - quite nice indeed. Then the surprise. Robert Seydel and a troupe of students started hanging the photos. Suddenly - what a change - we're all working in a museum quality space. A really great museum in which I have a small office. Wow. I'm actually impressed.

So now all of us have to "up our game" to measure up to what the building demands of us. It's a real tribute to Jerry who we all have admired for so long both as a working photographer and as a teacher. It isn't just a building anymore - it's a feeling -  a spirit but it is a tangible reminder that what we do is important and substantial. Seeing the alumni photo work on the walls makes that direct connection from the past to the present to the future. You stand there and see current students looking at the work and you can read on their faces the wonder and the power of images and the stories that we tell through those framed prints. Earlier listening to the alums talk about what we all were thinking decades ago also reminds me that the uncertainty of that time was much like the uncertainty of this time. We didn't know then where we would go or how we would really live and oddly that seems to be closely reflected in our current time - a disappearance of certainty and a discovery that not only don't we control our world as we thought, but that we may barely know how it works.

gunther