Day Eight: Reflections of an Alumnus-- the Kenyon Bubble

I decided to sleep on this before writing about it, and since it’s still on my brain, here goes:

The Kenyon Bubble bugs me now, and it bugs me even more that it didn’t bug me two years ago.

There, I said it.  I’m in a tricky spot right now because I love this school, and I really feel like it’s what I needed in that particular phase of my life, but the more I walk around this campus, the more I realize how justified the surrounding community is in hating us.  Kenyon is situated in the middle of the poorest county in Ohio, so this campus’s opulence is a pretty stark contrast to the community around it.  I think I was already aware of this as early as my freshman year, when I started to avoid wearing Kenyon paraphernalia into the nearby town of Mt. Vernon so as not to draw judgmental stares from the people there.   In fact, playing on the Kenyon-Hogwarts similarity, I used to joke that I needed to put on my “muggle clothes” before going into town.  We all knew we were hated.  It’s not like the Kenyon community was blissfully unaware of our reputation.  At one point during my junior year (or possibly my senior year-- it blurs together), a man just up highway 229 from us pulled a truck out into his yard and spraypainted, “Aristocrat City- next left” on the side.  After the initial shock, the response of the Kenyon student body was to make t-shirts and turn his protest into a joke.  It seemed funny at the time, but now I groan when I think about it.

I understand the need to retreat to a place of safety from time to time, but I’m starting to have some serious qualms with my alma mater.  I don’t want to make it sound like the people here are immune to suffering since a lot of us did come from crime-ridden cities and poorer rural areas, and many of the students here experienced our fair share of misfortune growing up.  Still, while we were here, we were so insulated against all types of suffering.  I’m reminded of the story of Siddhartha (better known as the Buddha), who began his life as a prince shielded from all manners of suffering.  Throughout his early life, his father kept him in a palace where he would never behold old age or sickness or death or suffering of any kind.  Finally, at age 29, Siddhartha took a series of journeys outside of the palace walls, learning first of old age, then sickness, then death, and on the last journey, he saw an ascetic.  Suddenly aware of the many problems in the human condition, Siddhartha left his palace and abandoned his kingship and became a mendicant.  It’s a bit of a radical example, but I can’t help but feel like I was in Siddhartha’s shoes a few years ago when I went into Mt. Vernon to pick up a few basic necessities at Walmart and saw someone using food stamps for the first time.  The clerk gave me a judgmental stare when I asked about the EBT card that the person in front of me in line had used.  I had never seen that before.  I had been protected.  And unlike the woman using those food stamps, I got to go back to my place of safety and my meal plan and the luxuries to which I was becoming a little too accustomed.

As I’ve been walking around campus these past few days, I’ve been hearing a lot of students engaged in big, over-the-top conversations about national politics.  I’ve been hearing people make broad, sweeping generalizations about the military and about war.  I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about what the country is doing wrong, and I’ve been amazed at how much people are still complaining about the Bush administration.  In all this, I’ve found myself thinking, “How can we know staggering amounts about national politics and not be aware of the issues in the next town over?  How can we talk about the military and about war without having any recent veterans here to participate in the conversation?  How can we spend so much time criticizing the wasteful economic practices of an administration without looking to where the money from our own wallets is going?  We’re treating all the world’s problems as if they’re hypothetical scenarios to be deconstructed in a classroom or coffee shop.  We’re not invested in the world around us, and that’s just . . . well, it’s wrong.”  Understand that this is not an easy thing to have to say about my college, and I don’t say it lightly.  If anyone from Kenyon is reading this, I’d love to see the students and faculty work together to change it.

I should emphasize that not all Kenyon students are isolated from the community.  Many have family ties in the area and genuinely care about what happens in Mt. Vernon and Knox County and Ohio.  A handful even volunteer locally, serving at schools and at the hospital.  Still, in overhearing conversations around this campus, I can’t shake the feeling that the “Aristocrat City” truck had a point.  I still remember the main reaction students gave to that incident: “Why does this community hate us so much?  Don’t they realize that they need the money and jobs that come from the school?”  There was an effort to defend Kenyon and to say that our insular nature still somehow supported the community, but frankly, money doesn’t mean squat if that spirit of neighborliness is totally absent.  Rather than pointing a finger and saying, “But you still need us,” we missed an opportunity to reach out a hand and ask, “What can we do to change your opinion?  How can we improve our relationship?”

In the interest of full transparency, I will admit that one of the toughest things about this is feeling like I’m also implicated because of my time here.  Sure, I lived in Mt. Vernon for a summer and tried to build relationships with the workers on campus who commuted in from town, but I still missed a ton of opportunities to build relationships with the people of Knox County.  I was one of those kids talking about issues of poverty without getting the opinions of people who were actually experiencing it.  I was one of those kids talking about the military without listening to the insights of veterans.  I was one of those kids who thought that all the world’s problems could be solved through national politics whether you got to know your neighbors or not.  I’m ashamed of that now, and hearing a campus full of students falling into that same trap has been incredibly troubling for me on this visit.  Whether the four years of isolation benefitted me in the end or not, I want so much to take a gilded needle and pop the Kenyon Bubble.  I don’t want other students to have to go back into the “real world” before they can fully understand the practical applications of what gets discussed in the classrooms here.  I want them to learn those lessons now!

I’ve arrived at a conclusion: Kenyon gave me an amazing set of rhetorical and literary tools.  This place taught me how to write and articulate my thoughts effectively.  It taught me how to glean the important information from books and texts that might have seemed arcane and obscure otherwise.  It taught me analytical thinking and encouraged me to ask difficult questions not just of the people around me, but of myself.  Still, the one thing that Kenyon did not teach me was how to care, and that is a glaring omission that must be corrected.

Kenyon, here’s what you have to do:

As part of your freshman orientation, you must have a section on getting to know Mt. Vernon.  You must bring in leaders from the county, and you must plug your students into the larger community.  You need to focus on building relationships not just between students, but between students and the world outside the Hill.  I’m sure the faculty would get behind this since many of them live in Mt. Vernon already and would probably love to see their students more active there.  Hey, why not go ahead and make service hours a requirement for graduation?  Just a thought.  Kenyon, you have an amazing opportunity here to better your students, to make them more well-rounded and compassionate, and at the same time, you could also really help out some folks around the county.  Please consider this.

You know, it’s been rough being so hard on my alma mater this morning, so I think I’m going to go take advantage of our multi-million-dollar athletic facility and free dining hall.  Sure, I’m kind of a hypocrite for enjoying these things, but maybe I’ll get a chance to poke at the bubble a bit as I’m catching up with former classmates.  If nothing else, for the seniors about to graduate, I already know that the bubble is about to pop, and I hope that they’ll be substantially ready for it.

Peace and Blessings,

Tom