Virtual Memories Show 687:
Ida Kao
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“I can point to a dozen different problems that all meaningfully contributed to why Hampshire is closing now. How all those things accumulated is pretty tragic.”
“There are ways to downsize a college, but with Hampshire it felt more like a hollowing-out.” Our latest installment of The Hampshire Tapes features a conversation with Ida Kao (F18) about having a ringside seat for Hampshire College’s decline. We talk about how she’s trying to preserve the school’s spirit by co-curating the Post-Hampshire project, what it was like trying to pursue an education in the face of Hampshire’s financial crisis and COVID, the ups and downs of editing The Omen during those times, her exploration of The Omen‘s archives how it led to a nostalgia for the Hampshire before her time, and how she recognized pretty early on that some of Hampshire’s troubles weren’t fixable (at least not by sit-ins). We also get into Hampshire’s stabs at student government (see her Div III), the institutions that came and went before her arrival (more Div III) and what that said about ahistoricism on campus, whether she felt short-changed by her time there, and more. Give it a listen!
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“Education took a back seat to everything else that was going on.”
“We used to joke that Hampshire College was created as a CIA experiment to turn leftists against each other.”
“One thing that I really enjoyed about Hampshire was this ability to combine and remix and really question the way of doing philosophy.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Ida Kao graduated from Hampshire College in 2022, serving as editor of The Omen from 2019 to 2021 and Treasurer of FundCom (formerly FiCom) from 2020 to 2022. Ida is co-organizing To Remember is Not Enough: A Post-Hampshire Anthology, an interdisciplinary multi-medium online publication of works by the Hampshire College community.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Hampshire graffiti by Sven Birkerts. It’s on my instagram.