Your One-Paragraph Description of Kenyon

Emily Gould's is this: When I say I went to Kenyon, people usually assume I went to Oberlin, that breeding ground of cool bands and UItimate Frisbee championships and general Williamsburg, Brooklyn training camp some miles to Kenyon's north, and even after I say I went to Kenyon I think people are still sometimes imagining Oberlin. Aside from the fact that it was in Ohio, Kenyon was nothing like Oberlin. Kenyon may be the anti-Oberlin. Its dress code was preppy and its intellectual climate was second-rate conservatism. It was a place for people who'd flunked out of several East-Coast boarding schools, who'd been denied admission at Yale despite being double legacies. It was a summer camp for the loser younger brothers of the ruling class, and its social life was entirely dependent, you learned immediately - like on your first night there, hours after your parents finished helping you move in - on frat parties."

Mine (Class of '06) is: Kenyon selects for bright students, offers them a top-notch education if they want it, and then makes it nearly impossible for them to fail out. Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Jennifer Delahunty said this better than I could to the Collegian recently: "Usually, I say 85 percent of the students [who apply] can do the work here. This year it was greater than 95 percent." I can think of no better indictment of Kenyon's academics than that. That said, many students do take full advantage of the school academically, and some of the ones who don't are getting other types of experiences that may be equally valuable. The main social activity is drinking, and administration efforts to curtail this via outlawing drinking games, sponsoring sober weekend events, and heavily policing parties encounter either indifference (in the case of alternative events) or widespread student outrage. Outrage is also a major social activity. But, despite the outrage and drinking (or between bouts of it), most Kenyon students are getting a reasonable education, participating in a few of Kenyon's hundreds* of sports or clubs, and ambling toward graduation without especially preparing for a career. Some Kenyon students are doing quite a bit more than this.

* exaggeration.

Class of '08: Kenyon College is nestled in a picturesque village atop a large hill in rural Ohio. The student body is mainly comprised of white, upper class students, many of whom act as though they are owed the world. The campus has a summer camp-like atmosphere, fostered by the remoteness of the location. Students generally try as much as they need to in order to get by, but are not especially motivated. Many students believe that the quest for knowledge is of the highest importance, and getting there is only secondary.

Class of '05: First, Emily Gould didn't graduate Kenyon. Neither did William Rehnquist, John Snow, Paul Newman or Jonathan Winters. My best friend freshman and sophomore year transferred out. I applied to transfer both my freshman and sophomore years but eventually stayed. Perhaps my decision means I will be no Rehnquist or Snow but at least I finished what I started. For the many who embarked on Kenyon with great hope but sooner left with deep apathy, Kenyon was an abandoned academic institution that re-chartered itself as a country club for the weakest students of the most elite New England prep schools. My decision to stay occurred during a cycling trip in Vermont. I was leading a group of high school students to a spot to stop for lunch. I got off my bike and scoped a nice grassy and flat spot near an old house and set out a tarp for us to eat on. As I was walking back to the group to call them over, I froze: there, in the window of the house, was a sticker that said "Kenyon". It was the same sticker Kenyon sent me in the mail when I was admitted. I immediately recalled the feeling I had in the spring of my senior year of high school: "This is destiny". Only the weakest souls succumb to the assumption that Kenyon is a school full of anti-intellectual philanderers who would rather do drugs or get drunk or engage in casual sex than appreciate the ecstasy of learning and the intimacy of self-reflection. I, like Mr. T, pity these fools for their narrowness of mind and their flimsy and malleable ethical composition. Kenyon is its intellectually formative professors. Kenyon supplies moral cultivation simultaneously with the “life of the mind.” It transforms the Emily Goulds, who got rejected from the fancy east coast schools, into agents of intellectual self-confidence who, unlike the ivy-leaguers, were paid special attention as students. And Kenyon emphasizes the articulation of ideas through writing, not multiple choice exams. Soon enough, there will be a William Rehnquist School of Law or a John Snow High School, with statues to boot. But Kenyon will be buzzing with individuals emotionally connected to their ideas long after the bricks harden and the bronze cools.

More as they come, or leave a comment.

Update I: Class of '07: Academically, Kenyon is only as challenging as one wants it to be; it's far too easy to limp through without trying especially hard, partially due to the grade inflation endemic to liberal arts schools. Recreationally, the school runs on Natural Light and is dependent upon the entrenched fraternities. Politically, students either follow a rather fatuous brand of modern liberalism or a somewhat more serious conservatism with pretentions to greater intellectual rigor. Students are more likely to express impotent outrage at Walmart's existence or public cellphone usage than any substantial matter, and are exceedingly prone to political inaction. The student body mostly come from lives of tremendous privilege and it shows in their sense of entitlement and casual classism. Students graduate with deep nostalgia for the intimate social and intellectual environment that the admissions brochures promised them.