Unpacking Title IX

Campus sexual assault is a nationwide problem with no easy solution. Kenyon is not immune.

Read the Story

Reconstructing Rutherford B. Hayes

In the aftermath of this election season, it's worth taking a new look at Kenyon's very own U.S. president.

Read the Story

Defending the Ultimate Other

Bruce Hardy counters the caricatures of Neanderthals by analyzing microscopic residues on stone tools - and making remarkable discoveries.

Read the Story

Also In This Edition

Kenyon in Quotes

"This is not my little thing anymore; it's kind of a lot of people's thing. It's just a blessing. I wrote my feelings about my children, and people are reading it in Lebanon. I'm kind of like, 'Go, little poem, go. Enjoy your travels.' "
— Kenyon Review contributor Maggie Smith, in a Columbus Dispatch article.

The Things They Packed

As they arrived on campus in August, we asked members of the Class of 2020 what they brought with them that they couldn't live without. Some went for the practical (a laundry basket) and some were more esoteric (a positive attitude). Some were artistic (a harp) and some were sentimental (a lucky ring). A frog named Froggy, a triceratops named Trikey and a bison named Bison are also among the unofficial residents occupying first-year dorms this year.

Snapshots of Kenyon Life

Treasures from Kenyon's Archives

The young face is all the more haunting because of where it appears — on an ID card and work permit for the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, in Lodz, German-occupied Poland, in 1943. Ita Marien Kaltman would perish in the ghetto, one of the millions of victims of Nazi brutality. This small remembrance of her life is part of the Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection, assembled by Michael D. Bulmash ’66 and on loan to the Kenyon library.

The collection includes more than 1,500 documents, postcards, letters, photographs and other artifacts and is available in the Greenslade Special Collections & Archives and online at digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash.

Record Breakers

During Homecoming weekend, five alumni and one coach were inducted into the 25th class of the Kenyon Athletic Association Hall of Fame. The class represents seven sports, nine NCAA team championships, 13 NCAA individual championships and 37 All-America awards.

Since its inception in 1987, the Hall of Fame has celebrated the accomplishments of more than 200 alumni and coaches. 

Happy Birthday, Gund Gallery

The Gund Gallery celebrated its fifth birthday Oct. 28. Here are some important numbers from the gallery’s first half-decade of life.

303 artists and artist collectives represented in Gund Gallery exhibits; 143 Gund Gallery Associates who have completed internships; 73,336 visitors to the Gund Gallery since opening in October 2011; 300+ free film screenings, lectures and special events presented by the Gund Gallery; 1,849 students who used the gallery for a class assignment, representing 105 class sessions from 16 academic departments and programs; Gabillions of PB&Js made during the Gund Gallery’s weekly lunchtime event.

Class Notes

Recent Class Notes
’66

“Ironically, spending four winters at Kenyon on the swimming team prepared me well for the past six months of voluntary quarantine: Eat, read, swim, sleep, repeat! I swam an hour a day in the neighborhood pool last summer, maintaining my sanity but losing 26 pounds. Claudia and I are well and adjusting to the sad reality that the radius of our retirement travel has temporarily shrunk to 15 miles. Thankfully, I have been able to continue teaching part-time at George Mason University and serving on three voluntary boards, all via Zoom.”

— Gerald E. Reynolds, Fairfax, Virginia
’75

Richard E. Gordon, Pittsburgh, counts the months of pandemic as “long enough for me to get two self-inflicted haircuts.” A fifth radio station picked up his radio show, “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” out of WRCT in Pittsburgh. He adds, “WVUD at the University of Delaware had me come out of retirement to send them five or six remote folk music shows a month. With radio, no one knows if you’ve got a fancy hairstyle or a gnarly self-inflicted haircut. So it’s safe for me.”

’74

“As a first-time contributor, I suppose I have a lot of ground to make up. After leaving Kenyon I returned to Washington, D.C., and enrolled in law school. I retired two years ago from my civil litigation practice with the D.C. Superior Court, after working with Ulysses Hammond ’73 briefly there. I volunteer for an immigration rights clinic and am president of Accotink Unitarian Universalist Church. To keep active in anti-oppression work, I’m reading ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ by Robin Wall Kimmerer and ‘An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States’ by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, and I hope to continue to spend summers in an inherited family home in southern Alberta. I took advantage of my father’s birth in Canada to become a dual citizen. A longer residence in Canada is looking increasingly attractive.”

— Jan D. Forsyth, Springfield, Virginia

Past Editions