Hampshire president announces resignation

By Owen Boss

Staff Writer

AMHERST - Ralph J. Hexter, who has served as president of Hampshire College for five years, informed the college's board of trustees Monday that he would soon be stepping down from the post.

"My time at Hampshire has been filled with deeply meaningful work alongside dedicated and creative colleagues," Hexter said in a statement. "I take great pride in the innovations and accomplishments of Hampshire, its faculty, students, staff and alumni."

Although no date has been set for his official departure, trustee Chairman Sigmund Roos said Hexter's decision comes during a continuing formal review of his first five years as president of the college. Roos declined to comment on whether or not the review prompted Hexter's decision to step down.

But James Miller, a communications professor at the college, said the review "took on extra importance" following what he called recent "faculty disgruntlement."

In May, a student and faculty protest halted the construction of a $300,000 satellite admissions office in Adele Simmons Hall, an academic building in the center of the campus. The office would have been the starting point for future prospective student tours, but ran into trouble when students and faculty argued that there wasn't enough community involvement in the plan.

Following a sit-in at the president's office, online petitions and open letters from the college community, Hexter pledged on May 7 to postpone the decision to start tours at Adele Simmons Hall, as well as related renovations there, until further discussions on the issue could be held this fall.

In addition to concerns about the communications rift between college officials and the community, there was also concern among students and faculty that spending $300,000 on the project was unfair while the college was cutting back on other expenses, salaries for faculty and staff and building maintenance.

Hampshire College is an unconventional liberal arts college, with no majors, grades or standard exams. The college has a focus on independent student learning coupled with faculty guidance.

In August 2007, Hexter became the first openly gay American college president to get married when he and his longtime partner Manfred Kollmeier wed. Hexter did not announce the union until a month later, at his home during the college's annual back-to-school party for faculty, staff and administrators.

Elaine Thomas, the college's director of communications, said determining a date for Hexter's departure is still being worked out by Hampshire officials.

"He announced today that he planned to transition out of the office and I assume that (the date) is among the details that they are still working through," Thomas said Monday.

In a statement released Monday, Roos praised Hexter's hard work and diligence.

"Ralph has had a tremendous influence on Hampshire. He concluded a capital campaign, completed funding for a major building project with an addition of a new wing to the Jerome Liebling Center for Film, Photography and Video and promoted sustainability efforts on campus," Roos stated. "The Liebling Center addition received LEED gold certification for 'green' buildings.

"Under his leadership Hampshire established a program that provides a new model for world language learning ... and he has worked tirelessly on behalf of diversity both on campus and across higher education," Roos added.

According to the college's website, after earning degrees at Harvard, Oxford and Yale, Hexter taught for 10 years in Yale's classics department before moving to the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he taught classics and comparative literature. In 1995, Hexter joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he became chairman of comparative literature, dean of arts and humanities and executive dean of the College of Letters and Science.

Hexter became the fifth president of Hampshire in August 2005.

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com.