
The closure of Bard’s campus at Simon’s Rock has left faculty facing an uncertain future.
The Berkshire Eagle
The closure of Bard’s campus at Simon’s Rock has left faculty facing an uncertain future.
GREAT BARRINGTON — An online petition by a student trying to save the livelihoods of Bard College at Simon’s Rock faculty has gained 912 signatures since it was first released on Tuesday, Nov 19.
And another student is working on a campaign to establish a fund that employees of the school who lose jobs and health insurance can draw from.
After the Nov. 19 announcement that the school would close its early college at the end of spring semester, employees and students have been grappling with the news, attending frequent meetings and trying to help those whose jobs are likely on the chopping block.
There is much sorrow, anger and frustration in the atmosphere, students said.
“It’s been really, really sad,” said Isabella Zeisset, 18, a sophomore, who started the Change.org petition asking Bard to renew faculty contracts. “The students are really worried about the faculty.”
Numerous faculty contacted by The Eagle said it is too early to talk about what’s happening.
And, the students said, it is also too painful. Many longtime faculty and staff at the school are facing layoffs as the school moves its entire operation to Bard’s new Massena Campus at Annandale-On-Hudson, N.Y.
It’s a move that Bard has been mulling for several years.
Bard said in its announcement and on its website that faculty positions will not be transferred from Simon’s Rock, and that they have to apply anew for any available teaching slots.
A spokesperson for Bard has not answered specific questions the number of positions at the New York campus, about 40 miles southwest of Great Barrington.
Rumors are flying through campus about these numbers, students and other sources told The Eagle. The Bard website showed roughly 50 job openings as of Thursday evening.
A Simon’s Rock spokesperson said the school currently has 238 employees. It was unclear exactly how many staff and faculty may lose their jobs.
Those who do get rehired at Bard could lose seniority in terms of benefits. It will be up to the discretion of Bard, the website says.
For these reasons and more the announcement on Tuesday rattled the entire campus and town, given Simon’s Rock’s immense economic and cultural significance in town since the 1960s.
School officials cited declining enrollment as a primary reason.
Students who continue on will transfer to the new Bard campus in the fall to finish their studies. Summer housing will be available “on a limited basis and prioritized for students with the greatest need,” the school website says.
The school is one of Great Barrington’s largest employers. And over the decades its students have worked and shopped at businesses in town. Many returned to the town later to raise families and open businesses.
“It’s a huge deal,” said Erik Bruun, who owns SoCo Creamery downtown and has employed Simon’s Rock Students. “And once you start pulling back the layers of the impacts, [the closing] really almost affects every element of the community. It’s a great loss.”
“The school made a big difference,” Bruun said, “in a lot of people’s lives.”
But Bruun, who wrote about the school in the 1980s when he worked as an Eagle reporter, remembers that the school has long struggled with money.
“It was sort of touch and go in the 80s,” Bruun said. And apparently also for the last “several years,” according to the school’s website.
The school’s board of overseers and college administration “have been working to find a solution for a path forward for Simon’s Rock … after it became clear that the current state of enrollment and fundraising was not sustainable”
The school, as a nonprofit, did not pay property taxes and has not made any payments in lieu of taxes, according to the town.
Another big question is what will happen to the campus. It will be sold, but the question is to whom and for what. Great Barrington residents have floated a variety of ideas, such as affordable housing and even as the new location for a Monument Mountain Regional High School, which could cost around $140 million to rebuild.
In response to questions, Bard spokeswomen Liz Benjamin said that there are no offers currently on the table to buy the campus or any part of it.
The Kilpatrick Athletic Center will carry on with its regular programming through the end of summer. “More information will be shared as it becomes available,” she said.
The Daniel Arts Center, Benjamin added, “will honor all performances and rental agreements through the end of 2025 summer season.”
There are various other campus programs, including a farming program, whose fate is uncertain.
Bard has not responded to the the student petition. Benjamin said that school officials are aware of it, and that “this situation is developing, but faculty and staff will have the opportunity to apply for positions at the new campus.”
Some petition supporters expressed their concerns and anger in comments.
“Shameful,” wrote one. “The school knew full well and hid this from us when our daughter started a few months ago. At the least they should offer the teachers the new jobs and allow all students to enter Bard full time ASAP.”
“The faculty at the Rock,” wrote another, “are the school’s heart and soul. I was there twenty years ago and can attest to the lifelong impact of the incredible professors I had back then.”
The petition’s author, Zeisset, said she has “deep connection” to the school. Her parents met at Simon’s Rock when they were students. She will continue to Bard next fall, but worries about the employees and faculty here. She hopes the petition will help pressure Bard to hire them.
“A lot have dedicated half their lives to Simon’s Rock,” Zeisset said. “Just the idea of leaving their life’s work behind has been really difficult.”
Salem Lockney, a junior, said she’s working on the fundraising aspect of this for the employees. A professor is helping her figure out the “ethics” conundrum of who would be able to draw money from a fund and how much.
“I’m not sure what that looks like yet,” said Lockney, 18, who also attended the pre-college Simon’s Rock Academy. “I have so much anger about the whole thing and I wanted to do something about it.”
“The staff and faculty,” Lockney said, “have really changed my life.”
SHARON — Angela Derrick Carabine, 74, died May 16, 2025, at Vassar Hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was the wife of Michael Carabine and mother of Caitlin Carabine McLean.
A funeral Mass will be celebrated on June 6 at 11:00 a.m. at Saint Katri (St Bernards Church) Church. Burial will follow at St. Bernards Cemetery. A complete obituary can be found on the website of the Kenny Funeral home kennyfuneralhomes.com.
Sam Waterston
On June 7 at 3 p.m., the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington will host a benefit screening of “The Killing Fields,” Roland Joffé’s 1984 drama about the Khmer Rouge and the two journalists, Cambodian Dith Pran and New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, whose story carried the weight of a nation’s tragedy.
The film, which earned three Academy Awards and seven nominations — including one for Best Actor for Sam Waterston — will be followed by a rare conversation between Waterston and his longtime collaborator and acclaimed television and theater director Matthew Penn.
“This came out of the blue,” Waterston said of the Triplex invitation, “but I love the town, I love this area. We raised our kids here in the Northwest Corner and it’s been good for them and good for us.”
Waterston hasn’t seen the film in decades but its impact has always remained present.
“It was a major event in my life at the time,” Waterston said of filming “The Killing Fields,” “and it had a big influence on me and my life ever after.” He remembers the shoot vividly. “My adrenaline was running high and the part of Sydney Schanberg was so complicated, so interesting.”
Waterston lobbied for the role of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for years, tracing his early interest to a serendipitous connection while filming in England. Even before Joffé’s production was greenlit, he had his sights set on playing the role. “I knew I wanted the part for years even before it was a movie that was being produced.”
What followed was not just critical acclaim, but also a political awakening. “The film gave all of us an intimate acquaintance with refugees, what it is to be a refugee, how the world forgets them and what a terrible crime that is.”
In Boston, at a press stop for the film, two women asked Waterston a pointed question: now that he knew what he knew, what was he going to do about it? “I said, ‘Well, you know, I’m an actor, so I thought I’d go on acting.’ And they said, ‘No, that’s not what you need to do. You need to join Refugees International.’” And join he did, serving on the organization’s board for 25 years.
Both Schanberg and Dith Pran, whose life the film also chronicles, were “cooperative and helpful … in a million ways,” Waterston said. Upon first meeting Pran, Waterston recalled, “He came up to me, made a fist, and pounded on my chest really hard and said, ‘You must understand that Sydney is very strong here.’ He was trying to plant something in me.”
There were more tender gestures, too. Schanberg used the New York Times wire to relay that Waterston’s wife had just given birth while he was filming in Thailand, adding to the personal and emotional connection to the production.
Though “The Killing Fields” is a historical document, its truths still resonate deeply today. “Corruption is a real thing,” Waterston warned. “Journalism is an absolutely essential part of our democracy that is as under siege today as it was then. It’s different now but it’s the same thing of ‘Don’t tell the stories we don’t want heard.’ Without journalists, we are dust in the wind.” Waterston added, “Democracy is built on the consent of the governed but the other thing it’s built on is participation of the governed and without full participation, democracy really doesn’t stand much of a chance. It’s kind of a dead man walking.”
When asked what he hopes the audience will take away from the screening, Waterston didn’t hesitate. “This is the story that puts the victims of war at the center of the story and breaks your heart. I think that does people a world of good to have their hearts broken about something that’s true. So, I hope that’s what the impact will be now.”
Tickets for the benefit screening are available at www.thetriplex.org. Proceeds support Triplex Cinema, a nonprofit home for film and community programming in the Berkshires.
Scott Reinhard, graphic designer, cartographer, former Graphics Editor at the New York Times, took time out from setting up his show “Here, Here, Here, Here- Maps as Art” to explain his process of working.Here he explains one of the “Heres”, the Hunt Library’s location on earth (the orange dot below his hand).
Map lovers know that as well as providing the vital functions of location and guidance, maps can also be works of art.With an exhibition titled “Here, Here, Here, Here — Maps as Art,” Scott Reinhard, graphic designer and cartographer, shows this to be true. The exhibition opens on June 7 at the David M. Hunt Library at 63 Main St., Falls Village, and will be the first solo exhibition for Reinhard.
Reinhard explained how he came to be a mapmaker. “Mapping as a part of my career was somewhat unexpected.I took an introduction to geographic information systems (GIS), the technological side of mapmaking, when I was in graduate school for graphic design at North Carolina State.GIS opened up a whole new world, new tools, and data as a medium to play with.”
He added, “When I moved to New York City, I continued that exploration of cartography, and my work eventually caught the attention of the New York Times, where I went to work as a Graphics Editor, making maps and data visualizations for a number of years.”At the New York Times, his work contributed to a number of Pulitzer Prize winning efforts.
In his work, Reinhard takes complex data and turns it into intriguing visualizations the viewer can begin to comprehend immediately and will want to continue to look into and explore more deeply.
One method Reinhard uses combines historic United States Geological survey maps with “current elevation data (height above sea level for a point on earth) to create 3-D looking maps, combining old and new,” he explained.
For the show at Hunt Library Reinhard said, “I knew that I wanted to incorporate the place into the show itself. A place can be many things.The exhibition portrays the exact spot visitors are from four vantage points: the solar system, the earth, the Northwest Corner, and the library itself.” Hence the name, “Here, Here, Here, Here.”
He continued, “The largest installation, the Northwest Corner, is a mosaic of high-resolution color prints and hand-printed cyanotypes — one of the earliest forms of photography. They use elevation data to portray the landscape in a variety of ways, from highly abstract to the highly detailed.”
This sixteen-foot-wide installation covers the area of Millerton to Barkhamsted Reservoir and from North Canaan down to Cornwall for a total of about 445 square miles.
For subjects, he chooses places he’s visited and feels deeply connected to, like the Northwest Corner.“This show is a thank you to the community for the richness that it has brought to my life. I love it here,” he said.
The opening reception for the show is on June 7 from 5 to 7 p.m. On Thursday, June 12, Reinhard will give a talk about his work from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the library.“Here, Here, Here, Here” will be on display until July 3.
Scott Reinhard’s 16-foot-wide piece of the Northwest Corner is laid out on the floor prior to being hung for the show. L. Tomaino