Hampshire College Escort Service



The Hampshire College Escort Service was a fictional (?) date-for-hire business serving the Five College system created in 2003. (Not to be confused with the Escort Service operated by Public Safety.) The escort service was only active for a few weeks, but became notorious at Hampshire as well as at Smith College and remained a cultural marker among students for the next four years. The original architects of the site were Devin Asch, Josh Rowan, and Emmett Smith, all Febs. The idea came out of a discussion about how to both make money and get girls. Devin, who had web design and photography skills, created the site the same evening and posted it on the hosting site Tripod. Pages were created for Devin, Josh, and Emmett. It was decided that Emmett be the manager. At the time of writing, the site is still up and can be found at hampshirecollege.tripod.com.

The site quickly became notorious on campus and several other students were added to the stable. Devin served as photographer and web-designer, and his skill in the areas served to make the site sexy and professional. Emmett fielded many calls asking if the service was real, and did his best to sow confusion and desire. Many Escorts received calls, but little or no money was ever exchanged. Ricky was rumored to have been paid $50 to strip at a party on Smith campus. Andrew reportedly paid Devin $25 to be added to the site. While the enterprise was hardly profitable, it did result in many dates and hookups.



As the Escort Service became a phenomenon on campus, there were rumblings that Administrative action may be taken against it, since it seemed to encourage prostitution. Devin was picked up by then Dean of Faculty Aaron Berman while hitch-hiking back to campus from Amherst, and the two had what Devin described as an awkward by friendly conversation about the site. The conversation was initiated by Aaron, who recalled Devin's name as having been associated with the Service. No action was ever taken.

After the website had been active for a few weeks, a student at Smith College posted it to the Smith Daily Jolt. Within two hours, the site had received so many hits that it used up an entire month's bandwidth allotment from Tripod and was taken down. It was reinstated by Tripod some weeks later, but by then those involved had moved on to other things. The Service was essentially abandoned, but remained a notorious to those who were at Hampshire at the time.

Devin came to Hampshire to study photography, after having traveled the world as a freelance photographer for 5 years. He was academically withdrawn from the college in 2004 for failing to apologize for an incident where he and a few other students water-ballooned a tour group in the Dakin Quad from the upper balconies in Dakin. He was also an author of the fictional resignation letter from then President Gregory Prince sent out to the entire campus on April 1st, 2003. Emmett was also a collaborator. Josh was a yacht-charter Captain from Key West who came to Hampshire for engineering. He left the college in 2007. Emmett studied in the SS department and graduated in 2006.