Also In This Edition

Jump for Joy! Grammy-nominated musician Zak Morgan ’94 entertains children at a 2018 Reunion Weekend family concert.

Gund Gallery visitors admire “Bos taurus,” by Addison Wagner ’18, at the annual senior student art exhibition in May.

Comic Relief

Stand-up comic Delaney Barker ‘20 mines the college experience for laughs.

Read More

A New Edition

With renovations complete, the Kenyon Bookstore embraces its role as a community hub.

Read More

Kenyon in Quotes

“Participation in politics gives students clarity and enables them to understand their strengths.” — Diane Anci, vice president of enrollment management and dean of admissions, on the role activism can play in college admissions decisions, in the Atlantic.

Readers React

Readers share their thoughts, stories and questions about diversity, equity and inclusion at Kenyon.

Read More

Snapshots of Life on the Hill

Family Ties

Every year at Commencement, Kenyon alumni are invited to take part in the hooding ceremonies of their graduating children. Pictured here, Myles H. Alderman Jr. ’82 P’14, ’18, participates in the hooding of his son, Brooks H. Alderman ’18, on May 19. The younger Alderman graduated from Kenyon with a degree in political science.

Quad Pods

Four temporary modular units were installed on campus in the spring. Starting in the fall, the units will house library services and provide study space during construction of the new library. Three modular units on Ransom Lawn, totaling about 14,000 square feet of space, will host the library’s core services, including circulation, research and reference, Helpline, special collections and archives, public printers, periodicals, new books, computer workstations and study spaces. A
3,000-square-foot modular building between Watson and Norton halls will provide seating for more than 100 students.

Bells of Success

Kenyon’s third annual Bell-A-Thon raised $687,044 in donations with the help of 1,075 donors and a one-to-one trustee match. Live streamed from the belltower of the Church of the Holy Spirit, the event featured performances from student groups such as the Kokosingers and ballroom dance team, and conversations with professors like P.F. Kluge ’64 and Perry Lentz ’64.

Class Notes

Recent Class Notes
’91

Meryl H. Brott, Allston, Massachusetts, updates, “Still living in Boston with my partner Kevin Shanahan and continuing to work for the city of Cambridge DPW Recycling Division. Getting more and more freaked out about the climate and ecological emergency — and still volunteering with Extinction Rebellion. Encourage everyone to join — it’s an international movement (rebellion.global), and we are running out of time. We have a moral obligation to act.”

’78

Bruce V. Thomas and Julia H. Thomas ’80 split time between Richmond, Virginia, and Guiting Power, a village in England’s Cotswolds. Bruce is in his ninth year working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in infectious disease — mostly TB, dengue and now Covid. In seven years, he’s “averaged more than 400,000 flight miles per year, and then two years of zero flight miles,” he updates. “Headed back to India, then Indonesia, and then South America and Tanzania. Gliding toward retirement in 2023–24. Feel like these last 10 years with BMGF have sanitized the rest of my professional career.”

’73

Maria C. “Mia” Halton, Baltimore, concluded eight years of caregiving when she lost her mother in May 2021. “It was hard work to pick up the pieces,” she shares, “but I sold her house and said good-bye. I then found myself in the business of creating this next phase of my life. Two wonderful friends had invited me to join them on a trip to the Galapagos over the holidays, mostly on a small boat. I love to travel, and this trip proved to be the catalyst and jump-start that I needed. I hadn’t been able to make art since quarantine hit, but back at it now. I’m also still teaching — ceramics to special-needs populations, and a class designed to encourage participants to identify what it is they want to ‘say.’ And I’m looking at starting a new kind of retirement com-munity. I see a group of like-minded people coming together into, for example, a one-story industrial building. Each separate space would be open and contain a kitchenette. There would a common kitchen and dining area, also wood and ceramics shops. If this idea strikes your fancy…”

Past Editions