Kenyon College and campus geography

Gambier Ohio,
April 2, 2010

I have long considered Kenyon for its strong, Eastern liberal arts values coupled with a familiar Midwestern feel to the likes of Carleton or Chicago having a different atmosphere than their peer institutions. I decided to visit Kenyon to offset the mostly East coast colleges I have visited. Visiting the campus with a friend from Ohio and seeing the school in person really brought me back to the Midwestern attributes that I value but seem to forget as attributes like ranking and prestige somehow manage to end up as top priorities.

So first off, let's begin with the campus. Kenyon has long been considered one of the most beautiful schools in America, recently earning a place on Forbes' "World's 20 Most Beautiful College Campuses" list. The article sums up the appeal of Kenyon's strategic spacial planning, rural location, and Gothic architecture in the following quote from Forbes' most beautiful college campuses:

Mike Evans, a principal at Norfolk, Va., design firm Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas Company, says to be beautiful a campus must have a "signature campus space as a carrier of the campus brand." At Kenyon College, that space is "Middle Path," a 10-foot-wide footpath that serves as the Gothic hilltop campus' central artery. More than just a trail, it's a village green for the tight-knit campus community. Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky, who teaches 17th-century poetry at Kenyon, says the college, both isolated and pastoral, is "a small place to think big thoughts."

The environment of Kenyon is largely defined by the aforementioned "Middle Path," which aims to integrate all of campus into one linear channel of interaction. The most interesting thing to me is that Middle Path doesn't only span the college grounds; it also spills off campus and continues to form the main street of the tiny town Gambier (population 600). In fact, the town is straddled by campus buildings, with several underclassmen dorms also along Middle Path on the other side of town. The seamless feel of the campus community really just works here. During the fair weathered months, farmers and locals sell goods at a market along middle path, and local music enhances the relaxed feel. Along Middle Path, by far the most communal geographic item I have seen on a college campus, people and place overlap to create a natural residential environment.


















Ironically, Kenyon came off as almost too communal for me, with students reporting only 15-20 hours of work per week, compared to the average Williams student working upwards of 40 hours per week while still maintaining strong campus community and a very enjoyable residential life system. During a class I visited at Kenyon, which was a mid-level sociology class, we examined the implications of age, wealth, and race demographics on the movie rental choices Netflix users from certain areas, which was popularized by the New York Times publishing a snapshot of data on their website. Though it was exciting to predict how "tasteful" of a film a community would pick based on its social demographic, I seemed to be just as good at it as most of the students, who had just finished a series of reading assignments on the matter. That is, the class seemed to be fairly common sense, and I doubted that many students in the class were challenged or even wanted to be challenged. Even for a sociology class, the course material was far more political and flimsier than that of any course I have ever sat in on, which are typically much more challenging social science courses. Essentially, I was not blown away by the students, who, though extremely likable, simply weren't of that near-genius caliber of the students I met at more rigorous schools like Carleton and Bowdoin.

In the end, I really enjoyed myself at Kenyon and will definitely add it to my list as a safety school. I learned a lot on this visit and it reminded me of how impressive a school can be in a number of material and statistical ways yet still not be quite "there" in terms of the intensity and overall rigorous experience I'm looking for in college.