Kenyon College Top Questions

The best thing about Kenyon is the professors that take the time to get to know you personally, especially a student's academic adviser. The village of Gambier is small. There are three restaurants, the bookstore, an overpriced small grocery store, and the post office that mostly comprise "downtown." In order to do real shopping, you have to go to Mount Vernon, which is about 5-10 minutes away. The administration think they have a handle on things, but I feel as though they are completely separate from the school itself. Our last big controversy was a scabies outbreak, and that was hilarious but scary. Not everybody buys into the Kenyon mentality, and there are some weird people here, but it all balances out.

Kenyon's community- the students, the professors, bookstore workers, Safety and Security, all of them- is the best thing about this place. We're a friendly, supporting, warm group of people. Sometimes we're awkward, sometimes you walk down Middle Path and hear people very seriously discussing the deeper philosophy of Garfield. It happens more often than it probably should, and we're kind of proud of it. Kenyon is also prone to those "Oh! I'm actually in college!" moments when you're sitting out on the quad and discussing the idea of a meta conversation, or something equally useless and wonderful. The biggest problem right now is that there is a feeling that the administration isn't listening or responding to the needs and desires of the students and professors. Part of it is the ongoing construction projects that don't seem to make a lot of sense, and part of it is the students not wanting anything to change. There are real complaints, but sometimes it isn't as bad as student think.

Kenyon professors are fantastic! Well, some are better teachers than others, but I have yet to meet one that doesn't really care about their students and won't go above and beyond what I expect of them. They invite students into their homes, extend their office hours as long as possible if students need it, really care that we understand what they're trying to teach us, bring treats into class, let us play with their pets, socialize with students, and buy us coffee. I really respect all of my professors. That said, they have very high expectations of our work, which can be exhausting. For some reason, I find it hard to relax and forget about my impending schoolwork on this campus (although I don't drink, so maybe that makes a difference.) I like Kenyon's size. It's easy to walk everywhere, and it's quiet. The student body is big enough that I don't know everyone's name or face, so I can still meet new people pretty regularly. But, it's small enough that I feel comfortable because I usually know someone whereever I go, and we can bond together as a student body pretty easily. I'm a huge fan of the allstu email system- students have to subscribe to it, so not everyone receives them, but anyone can send out uncensored allstus at any time. It can be a pain when everyone's asking for a ride to the airport, or when people send mean, obscene, drunken emails. The allstu is an excellent means for learning about free food, events on campus, funny Youtube videos and other internet sites (particularly during exam time, when the campus wants to procrastinate), important news from around the world, writing bad poetry (like haikus about the scabies outbreak of 2007), and complaining about the administration (for example, why the dorms shouldn't get a swipe card system.) Most people don't know anything about Kenyon, where I'm from, and it's frequently misheard as "Kenya." But people who do know about it are generally impressed. There's no real athletic pride- Kenyon doesn't have a pep band or marching band. Apparently we do have a dance team. But the teams don't usually do very well, and nobody really cares. I like that. Apparently the athletic situation was much the same back in 1950.

Kenyon is a great place where you can really be who you want. There is little or as much pressure in every sphere of college life as one would like. I couldn't imagine myself anywhere else. I have been able to do everything I wanted to and even more. I have multiple groups of friends who are very different, but just as fun all the same.

The best thing about Kenyon is the academics. Come rain, come shine, the academics make everything else worth it. I spend most of my time in my room or at the library, alternately doing homework and taking a break from doing homework by chilling with friends, watching movies, etc. Then on the weekends we spend a lot of time at the coffee shop, MiddleGround, which is sort of a social hub, or out at parties in dorm lounges and apartments. There is often a lot of drama surrounding the administration--I think the student body feels that they don't listen enough to student input in making decisions, but really I just think that Kenyon tends to be afraid of change. For example, the whole school is in an uproar over the pending installation of a proxy card security system on the outer doors of the residence halls. It's really just to quell parent fears after stuff like Virginia Tech, but everyone's got their panties in a twist because it's going to be tough to get used to carrying a card everywhere. We LOVE the whole "Kenyon community" thing. We love being able to brag that we don't have to lock our doors at night. I think that's one thing that people have a lot of pride about. The small town close-knit community thing is really what makes us Kenyon. I swear, the admissions brochures aren't lying. We have so much school pride. Nearly everyone who's ever been affiliated with Kenyon--students, faculty, alumni--we don't just like Kenyon, we LOVE Kenyon, and we will talk to you about it all day. If you meet a Kenyon grad on the street, you're automatically best friends. From talking to friends who go to other schools, I think it's rare and very special to love your school as much as we do. And you'll see more spirit wear on campus than you can shake a stick at. We love that purple.

The best thing about Kenyon is how students stick together. It's a small community , and the students are definitely their own little group within it. Unfortunately, the school is trying really hard to be an Ivy-type school with less personality. It used to be that most people at Kenyon were really unique, smart, and usually quirky people, but now it's pretty cookie cutter students from New England prep schools. Again, most people haven't heard of Kenyon, so when I tell them I went there, they kind of go blank. It's OK, I know how good of a school it is, even if they don't. There have been a LOT of recent controversies at Kenyon, most of them to do with the administration making unilateral decisions about student life. I spent most of my time at Middle Ground, the coffee shop on campus, or at the Cove, which used to be the only bar in town. There are a lot of unusual things about Kenyon -- its basically in the middle of a corn field, so you're going to have your unique experiences.

One of my favorite things about Kenyon is the community environment fostered by the relatively small size of the school. This provides for an excellent classroom experience, plenty of opportunities for close interaction with professors, and close relationships with peers.

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It's a little too small in my opinion, but overall it's fine. We need an environment to live in pretty badly though, for this time in our lives, corn fields don't cut it. Iffy and conflicted school pride abounds, irony is usually employed when love of the school is expressed, but most people seem to feel it deep down. Irony is employed in regard to absolutely everything else, so it's hardly a reflection on our commitment to the institution. I'll always remember the various antics of my friends: public recitations of "Love Song of J. Alfred Proofrock", filming pumpkins being thrown out of a window on the 10th floor of the ugliest dorm imaginable. We make something of this place. Frequent student complaints are nonsense: students seem to believe that the school had soul which it is in the process of losing, but this is nostalgic and delusional. It's always in a state of transition, as is every other place. We can look back on the past with pleasure but it's just silly to expect it to stay the same. There will be new and different good things to come, we just need to have a little imagination. We're writers, it shouldn't be that hard.

Probably Kenyon's best quality is its people- students, professors, and most of the staff- who create the atmosphere so associated with the college. If I had to change one thing, it might be the lack of trust that's grown between students and members of the administration in the past year or so. I love the size of the campus, it's wonderful to walk anywhere and 98{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of the time see someone you could wave and say "hi!" to. A lot of people have never heard of Kenyon, but those who have generally smile and say good things about the quality of education, as well they should! I usually spend much of my time with friends, so that means a lot of time in dorm rooms, the Atrium of the library, and some at Middle Ground or Earnst/Gund (none of us can wait until we can eat a leisurely dinner in Peirce again!). I don't think it matters much to those of us who have chosen to come to Kenyon that it's in the middle of nowhere- by the time you're in your second semester, freshman year, it becomes somewhat of a private campus joke that we're surrounded by cornfields and no one knows where we are. Kenyon's administration is a controversial topic on campus; I think a lot of the older students resent the recent paternalistic approach that we feel has been taken towards matters which directly effect the student body. Interestingly, with the new swipe card and alcohol policies, the controversy really hasn't been so much that they are proposing such plans- many other colleges, including ones comparable to Kenyon have these already, and some of us can see the benefits, even if they are maybe less needful in the Kenyon environment- but rather the problem has been in the way these policies have been introduced to the student body without our input. We've resented the unilateral decisions which seem so antithetical to the sort of community feelings the administration is always touting in our guidebooks and encouraging us to foster once we arrive; such treatment feels very disrespectful and disdainful of the students, and I think maybe really hurt some of the upperclassmen's future dealings with the college.