“He’s a tough act to follow,” professor Michael Welsh said of his former colleague Charles “Chuck” Weed.
The two worked together in the Political Science Department at Keene State College for seven years, from 2004 to 2011, but Weed’s career at KSC, and his interest in politics, had begun decades before.
According to Weed, his uncle, former Lt. Governor of Vt. Robert Babcock, was an early role-model in his political journey. “In New England, my uncle Bob tried to figure out whether he should be a Republican or a Democrat, and since there weren’t any Democrats he said, ‘Okay, I’ll be a Republican,’” Weed explained. He went on to say that during the Nixon presidency, Babcock was criticized by other Republicans after publicly condemning the administration.
According to an online biography written by Weed, he started teaching as a professor at Keene State in 1972. When Weed began as a professor at the college, there was no established teachers union.
“When I walked in the door in 1972, somebody handed me a card and said ‘Are you interested in having a union here?’ and I said ‘I don’t know, what’s the issue?’ and they said ‘Oh, it doesn’t make any difference what the issue is, do you want to have democracy at the workplace or not?’” Weed said. Weed soon thereafter became an early and ardent supporter of the faculty’s efforts to unionize.
“In the next few years, from ‘72-’76 anyway, it became rather clear that the workers were being ignored and that the college was doing what it wanted, and that it was perhaps doing more what the trustees wanted [instead of] what our local administrators wanted,” Weed recounted.
Weed recalled the first vote to unionize showed the pro-union side with a narrow victory margin, but due to disunity among pro-union faculty about which organization was to represent them, they were unable to form a union initially. After a new vote was called a year after the initial one, the union support numbers were unified and sufficient enough to draw up their first contract with the college.
According to Weed, his prominent support of the union throughout did not earn him favor with the college, “I was on the s**t list of the administration, and the trustees, they are not very progressive people, never were…they made it pretty clear that they were watching me closely and didn’t approve of a lot of the stuff I did.”
Outside of Weed’s pro-labor activism at the college, he was known in the classroom for voicing his left wing views, while also encouraging debate during discussions. Weed defended his style of teaching, “When you have important issues happening around you, I think it helps to make a case one way or the other, and to use evidence in terms of your support or controversy.”
“Chuck was very out with his Democratic politics, and his left-leaning political ideology, and the way that he managed that in the classroom is that he liked his classes to be these highly-engaged debates, he really valued students that jumped in,” Welsh said. “He liked the debate, he liked the give-and take, and he never shied away from the fact that politics can be about debate.”
Following a 1998 nomination by KSC to be a part of a year-long study of the state of New Hampshire in which he and others toured various public facilities around the state, Weed explained that his experience during the study is what sparked his desire to run for office. “I can continue to criticize from the ivory tower or I can get involved,” he said.
In 2000, Weed would do just that. According to records from the N.H. Secretary of State, he ran for an at-large state house seat in Keene and prevailed through a field of six candidates in the general election. Weed continued to serve in the N.H.
State House while working as a professor up until his retirement from the college in 2011. According to Weed, he served on the labor committee, which he enjoyed. In 2014, Weed would leave the state house and go on to run unopposed for Cheshire County Commissioner, which he said was “the best public service job I ever had.”
“What the county in New Hampshire does is, it runs the jail, it runs the nursing homes, it provides a home for the county prosecutor, and any criminal justice concerns, and it tries to coordinate actions amongst the 22 municipalities,” Weed explained, while also noting that county offices in New Hampshire have less power than they do in other states. After leaving his position as county commissioner, Weed went on to win an election to become Cheshire County’s Treasurer in 2020, a position he currently holds.
Weed’s message to college students today is to get involved in your community. “Go out to any community involvement that you can. Be there and be responsible. Pay attention. Go to city council meetings in the city of Keene…if you begin to get involved in politics [when you’re] younger, there’s a definite correlation with involvement later on in life,” he said.
Nathan Hope can be contacted at
nhope@kscequinox.com
