In August 2019, I set foot somewhere I never thought I would: Ohio. It was scorching hot, I had a side-part, and my nerves were uncontrollable. I was at college. I’m not going to spend this last article summarizing my college experience because, frankly, it wouldn’t be interesting. What I want to explore is the particular four-year timeframe that I got to spend at Kenyon. Now, that is interesting.Â
I arrived at Kenyon when there was a walled-off construction pit for the new library, trailers parked on Peirce Lawn as the current “library,” and two cranes as a permanent fixture in the skyline. I didn’t mind at all. This is how Kenyon looked when I fell in love with it. I know college campuses are constantly under renovation for one reason or another, but, in hindsight, I can’t help but think this library construction signified a more major change.Â
My freshman year was so quintessentially college—I felt like the movie of my life had finally begun. I joined upwards of twelve extracurriculars, took random yet fascinating classes, and crashed house parties. I met all these people that had the same interests and ambitions that I did, the same way of seeing the world. This Kenyon appeared clear to me. I had been sold this version during the admissions process and it proved true.Â
Then the pandemic hit. I had to physically and figuratively part from that perception of Kenyon. Everyone everywhere had to part with all kinds of things. I packed up my belongings in Mcbride and flew home on an empty airplane. Some indeterminable amount of time passed and I found myself back at Kenyon in August 2020. All the fluff had been trimmed from my Kenyon life. I lived in an apartment with the only five friends I had and dwindled down my extracurriculars to three. Sitting on the grass outside of Peirce, next to the library trailers, swarmed by bees, I didn’t recognize the place. This was not the campus I left all those months ago.
I assume students across the globe felt similarly. Small institutions like Kenyon had to shrink in order to survive, cut corners to stay afloat. The actual campus and the people that inhabited it were all in disarray. It seemed like nothing held us together. Students transferred, dropped out, or locked themselves in their rooms. I, for one, locked myself in my room. When I try to recall memories from my sophomore year, I have trouble remembering. My friends and I call it our “dark period.”Â
The upperclassmen, the only people we had to look up to and who defined Kenyon for a lot of us, had graduated without goodbyes. My clubs were almost nonexistent. I never saw the lower half of my professors’ faces. Then (and this I remember clearly) one of the construction cranes came down. The new library approached its finished state. Because Kenyon divided the 2020-2021 school year by having underclassmen on campus in the fall and upperclassmen in the spring, we sophomores had no one else with whom to mourn the crane coming down. We were all alone. The new freshmen (God bless them) were like war-torn soldiers—they had more pressing issues than the construction.Â
Strangely enough, we handled the COVID protocols “well” in the fall, and sophomores got to remain on campus with the upperclassmen in the spring. I think this might’ve been a mistake, but let’s not dwell. I have even fewer memories from this semester, so, when more upperclassmen graduated, I didn’t clock it. Without any thinking or scheming, I found myself in leadership roles. I realized that the number of people who remembered Kenyon as it used to be was rapidly decreasing (and I had known it only briefly). I felt like I had an obligation to try to preserve that version of Kenyon, the way we saw the world, and how we had experienced the campus.
That is an impossible task. New students kept appearing, and it was becoming more and more their campus than mine. On top of that, Kenyon’s administration struggled to regain its authority because students had begun to resent it. Everyone seemed to keep messing up. Desperate and well-intentioned missions, like stuffed-animal giveaways and food truck visits, didn’t repair things like the administration hoped they might. This new Kenyon was panicked, rash, and now craneless. The library was completed. I remember staring up at the beautiful, bright building for the first time and thinking “What the heck is this?” Where was the wall with “Rutherford B. Hayes” spray-painted on it? What were we supposed to do with Peirce Lawn now that the trailers had left?
To me, the new library meant a more symbolic reconstruction. Nothing I saw resembled what it was before. Perhaps most of the world is this way after the pandemic. Perhaps Kenyon wouldn’t be so different now if the pandemic had never hit. Or, perhaps Kenyon was destined to change when it did, and I just happened to witness it.
There is a band called Mark Twang—they were a seniors at Kenyon while I was a freshman—and they released an EP called Rearview in 2019. One of the first Horn concerts I ever attended was theirs. To me, their music sounds the way that Kenyon used to feel. I’m not trying to get back to that anymore; I gave it up years ago. I recognize that “my Kenyon” might be gone with the cranes and COVID. For better or for worse, I caught Kenyon at an in-between. These four years have held trials and errors, misguided experimentation, and a valiant effort to figure things out. Finally, I believe Kenyon has figured itself out and taken a new shape. One I don’t fit anymore. Â
There is not a doubt in my mind that Kenyon will continue to work its magic on students. It’s probably a good thing that my class is graduating, so we can release our grip and allow this new Kenyon to flourish. And maybe I’m entirely wrong. Maybe Kenyon is as it’s always been and I am the one that’s changed. Maybe I’m projecting. These were my in-between years and now I’ve made it out the other side, whole.
If you take a look at the album cover of Mark Twang’s Rearview, you will see two cranes. I leave you with them.