Kenyon College - CASE

Small
Wonders
A photo essay celebrates
little things that enlarge
Kenyon’s beauty.
See page 30.
Kenyon
college alumni bulletin
volume 34 number 2
winter 2012

winter 2012
table of con@enTs
featuRe s
Wearing number 32, Olof Palme played on Kenyon’s
first varsity soccer team in 1947.
12
18
Things We Love to Hate about Kenyon
These are a few of our favorite things . . . to grouse
about. By Dan Laskin
Remembering Olof Palme
When Sweden’s prime minister was assassinated, the
world lost an admired and controversial statesman—
and Kenyon lost a loyal alumnus.
By Bill Mayr
22
30
The Higher Cost of Higher Education
While critics rage over college prices, experts analyze why
costs have risen and what families get for their money.
By Mark Ellis
It’s the Little Things
A photo essay looks at artifacts and slices of life that in
their own small way compose the College’s defining grace.
Photographs by Dan McMahon

Dan McMahon
Jazz in the cornfields?
Why not?
41
9
isabel da silva azevedo drouyer
30
2 Editor’s Page
Small things, both elegant and humble,
complement Kenyon’s grandeur
with touches of charm.
DeparTMEnts
3 Letters to the Editor
The Collegian’s blog offers a
daily dose of irreverence.
editor:
Shawn Presley
deputy editors:
Dan Laskin
Amy Blumenthal
associate editor:
Mark Ellis
designers:
Aldrich Design
Adam Gilson
4 Along Middle Path The Pumpkin that Ate
Peirce + Gambier is Talking About + Test Your KQ
+ A Pride of Presidents + Anatomy of an Athlete
+ Dancing with the Kenyon Stars + Pass/Fail +
Margin of Error + Kenyon in Quotes + The Hot
Sheet + Kenyon in Season
40 Office Hours burning question + Musings
42 Books
44 Class Notes
54 In Memoriam
58 Alumni News
60 The Last Page by Dan Shefelman ’84 P’14
22
In higher education, everything
is going up: budgets, costs,
anger. But also: expectations,
services, financial aid.
On the Cover: A chandelier
in the Campbell-
Meeker Room of Ascension
Hall.
assistants:
Mike Andrews
Robin Ball
Patty Burns
Martin Fuller
Rebecca Mazur
Hays Stone ’99
Visit the Bulletin
on the Web at bulletin.
kenyon.edu.
Printed by Bolger
Vision Beyond Print
in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, on
Lynx opaque ultra
10% post consumer
recycled paper.

the editoR ’ s page
Absolut Status
Or, why you don’t always get what you pay for
by Shawn Presley
Vodka. There’s nothing quite like it,
unless you consider rubbing alcohol.
Given the close relationship between
human taste and smell, rubbing alcohol
must be vodka’s sibling, if not a fraternal twin.
The Bulletin’s story in this issue about the rising cost
of higher education made me start to think about what
I pay for things and the correlation between price
and quality. The pricey designer shirt I buy isn’t
“better” than a more modestly priced garment. It
won’t necessarily last longer, and it’s probably made
in the same sweatshop as the clothes at Wal-Mart.
But I’m a sucker for the high-end label, the great
customer service from the stores that sell designer
brands, and the salespeople who serve me fizzy
water while they parade clothes in front of me.
Most of us are status conscious in some
area of our lives. I buy generic brands at
the grocery store, but the existence of
so many “name brands” is proof that
plenty of folks like their labels.
There are correlations between price
and quality that ring true, but not when
it comes to vodka.
Sometime in the 1990s, “premium”
and “ultra-premium” vodkas, which is a
subtle way to say they cost more, began
to proliferate. Fancy-pants bottles and
pretty labels have convinced consumers
to reach for the top shelf. Vodka
connoisseurs like to sip their favorite
brands and expound on distinguishing
characteristics like a smooth and clean
finish, fruity and spicy undertones, and
floral aromas.
There’s a problem here, though. The
world’s vodka gods all seem to agree on
one thing: the stuff is supposed to have
no color, no smell, and no taste. That’s
the point; vodka’s neutrality is what
makes it an ideal choice for so many cocktails. How can
booze that has no aroma or taste be fruity and spicy?
It can’t.
In 2007, ABC’s 20/20 conducted a blind taste test to
see if premium vodka’s taste lived up to its price tag. The
results confirm that vodka . . . is vodka.
I once discussed the results of ABC’s test with a few
Kenyon colleagues. They were skeptical. One was
adamant that Grey Goose is a superior vodka; it’s
always his vodka of choice. While the others weren’t
as definitive in their preferences, they were eager to
challenge the 20/20 test with our own experiment.
We used three brands: lowly Smirnoff, middle-ofthe-road
Absolut, and the reigning high-end champ,
Grey Goose, which is roughly twice the price of
Absolut and three times that of Smirnoff.
The results? My Grey Goose pal picked
Smirnoff as his favorite. Even better are
the results from 20/20. Four of the six
participants entered the taste test saying
Grey Goose was their favorite. In the end,
five of the six agreed on one thing: Grey
Goose was their least favorite, at least in
the blind taste test. One claimed it was
“kind of thick.” Thick vodka? Whatever.
If you’re a vodka drinker, save your
money and reach for the lower shelf. If
you’re embarrassed to serve Popov in
your home, pour it in a Grey Goose bottle
you’ve fished out of your neighbor’s recycling
bin. No one will know the difference.
One day I may work on what could
be the next big thing: premium rubbing
alcohol. I will sell it in a bottle designed by
architect Frank Gehry—that is, if he’s not
under some kind of no-compete clause
for the bottle he designed for
Wyborowa Vodka.

letters
To Our Letter Writers
The Bulletin welcomes letters of 300 or fewer
words. Letters to the editor may be used for
publication unless the author states the letter
is not to be published. Letters may be edited for
style, length, clarity, grammar, and relevance to
Kenyon issues. Please address submissions to :
Editor, Kenyon College Alumni Bulletin, Office of
Public Affairs, Gambier, Ohio 43022. Letters may
also be submitted to alumni@kenyon.edu.
Photographic blunder
Your fall 2011 cover story (“Jubilant Jump”) celebrated
the success of the $240 million “We Are
Kenyon” campaign. The moment was captured
with a photo of eleven ecstatic students cheering
on the steps of Rosse Hall. As one of Kenyon’s
proud African-American alumni, I was hurt,
embarrassed, and angry when I noticed that
none of the celebrants was a person of color. The
College is reportedly much more diverse today
than when I graduated in 1983. One wouldn’t
know from the cover photo. “We Are Kenyon”
refers to whom? A little forethought could have
avoided this photographic PR blunder. Kenyon
deserves better.
—Jeremy V. Johnson ’83
An iffy question
In the Fall 2011 Bulletin (Letters), Megan B.
Pomeroy ’90 corrected an error regarding “if
Kenyon wasn’t” versus “if Kenyon weren’t.”
However, she mistakenly said that the word if
“always takes the subjunctive.” This applies only
when the statement is contrary to fact: “If I were
the editor of the Alumni Bulletin, I would have
caught that error.” However, there are many
cases where “if” can be used with statements
that may or may not be true, and in those cases
“was” is appropriate: “If I was overstepping my
bounds in pointing out this additional error,
then I am sorry.”
—Joe Stollenwerk ’95
A sentence beginning with “if” takes the
subjunctive only for conditions contrary to
fact. For conditions that exist or may exist, the
subjunctive should not be used. “You wouldn’t
be reading this magazine if Kenyon wasn’t
special to you” is entirely correct: it is a safe
assumption that readers of this magazine have
special feelings for Kenyon.
—Julie Kuzneski Wrinn (married to Steve
Wrinn ’91)
Tattoo traditions
I was troubled by the letters in the last Bulletin
variously referring to the tattoos of Kenyon
students as “depraved,” “disreputable,” and acts
of “debasement,” and suggesting that tattoos are
“hallmarks of gangs and criminals” and indicative
of “psychopathy.”
The fact is that tattoos no longer carry the
stigma they did for earlier generations. As a
student at a prominent law school, I found
that tattoos were common among my peers.
At the Silicon Valley law firm where I represented
startups and tech giants, tattoos could
be spotted beneath the business casual attire
of my colleagues and clients. And now as a law
professor, I note that both students and faculty
members, like me, are among the growing ranks
of the tattooed. Very few of us, I assure you, are
gang members, criminals, or psychopaths.
The history of tattoos did not start with
Hitler and end with the Hells Angels. This
culturally blinkered account neglects rich traditions
outside of our own. The word “tattoo”
entered our language after Captain Cook’s
voyage to Tahiti, where the locals had practiced
the art for generations. After Cook’s return
to England, something of a trend emerged in
British high society, with no less than Edward
VII and George V embracing the art form. That
is to say nothing of Japanese tattooing, which
dates back to the paleolithic era. Humility
suggests we hesitate before dismissing a practice
that emerged and thrived independently across
these diverse cultures.
—Aaron Perzanowski ’01
Memories and joy
Every issue of the Bulletin brings great memories
of the past and joy at the present and future!
Thank you very much.
—John L. McKenney ’48
editor’s note: We are happy to know that we
didn’t go grammatically astray. But we still
appreciate Ms. Pomeroy’s reminder to write with
care. And, of course, we do hope that Kenyon is
special to our readers.

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ally schmaling ’14
The Pumpkin that Ate Peirce
The star of the Peirce Hall servery last fall was a 1,084-pound monster pumpkin installed by AVI, the
food service, as a touch—well, more than a touch—of harvest-season decor. Gourdzilla, as the entity
was known, generated its own gravitational field, figuratively speaking, inspiring awe, amusement, and
satire before it began to sag and was carted off to the compost pile.
gambier is talking about
bill nagel
“
smoking. Debate
flared last fall over a Campus
Senate proposal that would extend
Kenyon’s indoor smoking ban to all
College property, including outdoor
areas.
“ animals.
When fifty-six exotic animals
escaped from a farm near Zanesville,
Ohio—less than fifty miles from
campus—it made international
news. Authorities killed forty-nine lions,
tigers, bears, and wolves. The
owner reportedly had released
the animals before committing
suicide.
“
pinto beans.
The planned opening of a
Chipotle restaurant in Mount
Vernon generated local buzz. On
a bring-Chipotle-here Facebook
site, one Mount Vernon Nazarene
University student praised “these
delicious burritos sent to us by
our Lord.”
“
new buildings.
The campus celebrated the
dedication of new student
residences and the Gund Gallery
in October. The art gallery opened
its doors to the community with
the inaugural exhibition “Seeing/
Knowing.”

Test Your KQ
what’s your kenyon quotient?
Kenyon’s early supporters
and leaders were an
impressive and fascinating
group. From the following
lists, match the Kenyon
notable with the
accomplishment, event,
or factoid.
A Pride of Presidents
“Pride” is actually the term for a
company of lions, but the word certainly fit the mood
when Kenyon welcomed back former presidents Philip
H. Jordan Jr. and Robert A. Oden Jr. last fall, to join
President S. Georgia Nugent for a panel discussion on
the College’s accomplishments and challenges. As part of
the extraordinary gathering, Jordan (1975-95) and Oden
(1995-2002) also joined Nugent in presenting addresses
at Founders’ Day.
Rob Oden On tough
challenges
‘‘
Toward the end of
our years here, on an
alumni survey, we
asked, ‘What’s wrong
with Kenyon?’ The answer
that came back
was not a plurality; it
was a majority. The
answer was: February.
1. Timothy Wiggin
2. Hannah More
3. Charles Pettit McIlvaine
4. George Wharton Marriott
5. Lord Gambier
6. David Bates Douglass
7. Philander Chase
KQ Answer:
1. Timothy Wiggin (E)
2. Hannah More (C)
3. Charles Pettit McIlvaine (A)
4. George Wharton Marriott (G)
5. Lord Gambier (F)
6. David Bates Douglass (B)
7. Philander Chase (D)
A. Was sent to England by
President Abraham Lincoln
to argue against British recognition
of the Confederacy.
B. During the American defense
of Fort Erie in 1814,
created a gun emplacement
that bore his name.
C. Wrote a conservative tract
countering the arguments
in Thomas Paine’s Rights of
Man.
D. Once broke two ribs in a
stage coach accident.
E. Went to Dartmouth with Philander
Chase.
F. A mountain in Australia, an
island near Vancouver, and
islands in French Polynesia
bear this person’s name.
G. It was through this person
that Philander Chase came
to know Lord Kenyon.
Phil Jordan on moving
Kenyon away
from its lingering
all-male culture
‘‘
I came at a time when
Kenyon was palpably
male, and the male
tonality of the place was
very strong indeed . . . .
All-male colleges have
a certain territorialism
about them.
‘‘
S. Georgia Nugent
On the challenge of
choosing among many
good ideas, given limited
resources
It’s like Mae
West—so many
men, so little time.
In our case, it’s so
many ideas, so
little money.

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Ball in the family
Basketball is a big deal in the
Anderson household. In fact, she
credits backyard shoot-arounds
with her dad, brother, and cousins
for instilling her love for the game
and leading her to stick with it
after playing a variety of sports
growing up. Those pick-up games
also fueled her competitive drive,
which helps when squaring off
against her low-post mates in
practice. “We’re all very competitive
when we’re divided into
teams and have to play against
each other. It can get pretty
brutal, but we all leave the court
as friends.”
Bust a move
When the Ladies need to get fired
up for a game, each player seems to
take on a role, contributing to what
Anderson calls “a big ball of energy”
in the locker room. Some are motivators,
some are jesters, and some
are singers. Anderson is the dancer,
and the team looks to her any time
the music comes on. She’ll listen to
almost anything but considers Alicia
Keys her favorite artist. A Michael
Jackson tune is sure to get her moving,
too. “I can’t help it—I like to get
groovy.”
Anat°my Of An aTHle@E
The beautiful mind
Anderson is captivated by the human
mind and enjoys reading about the
subject. While she tries to stay away
from heavy-duty neuroscience, she has
delved into books dealing with how
the brain works. She’s fascinated by
insights into the power of the brain
and how people utilize it.
In the Entrepreneurial Arena
Rare is the student-athlete who can make the time to
help start and run a business in addition to balancing
the obligations of both academics and athletics. Meet
Autumn Rose Anderson ’14, member of both the Ladies
basketball team and Kenyon’s entrepreneurship club. She
joined eight other students in proposing Nite Bites, an
on-campus operation that provides quality food options
as fuel for students’ late-night study sessions. Anderson
and her group entered their idea in a competition sponsored
by the College’s Innovation Greenhouse program,
and walked away with $3,000 in seed money.
Now the post player finds herself serving as copresident
of Nite Bites. “Entrepreneurship is something I
have a passion for and love to do,” said Anderson, who is
majoring in international studies with a minor in Chinese.
“It appeals to my creative side—to figure out ways to provide
something that isn’t there. It’s demanding to be an
athlete, worry about my studies, and on top of that try to
start a business. But the benefits outweigh the costs. The
reward down the road will be how fulfilling it is to know
we got this started.”
Meanwhile, consider a few other aspects of fulfillment
in Anderson’s life. —Mike Andrews
Team effort
Not surprisingly, Anderson credits teamwork
skills cultivated in basketball with helping
in her entrepreneurial endeavors. “Even if
someone isn’t a captain, we’re still expected
to fill a role and do our part. We end up being
responsible for our own type of leadership,”
she said. “I absolutely think that translates to
entrepreneurship, where you’re working and
communicating with other people and you’re
trying to lead them to create something. It’s
the same in basketball, where you’re all working
together toward a common goal.”
These little piggies ran
all the way home
After reading Christopher McDougall’s Born
to Run, Anderson decided to give barefoot
running a shot. She ditched her shoes and
pounded the pavement on a couple of six-mile
runs before she grew tired of picking gravel
out of her feet. Opting for the next best thing,
she invested in a pair of Vibram FiveFingers—
shoes with individual slots for each toe. She
describes the shoes as “so comfortable” and
credits them with alleviating pain in her feet
from running in normal shoes. But she takes
quite a ribbing from her teammates when she
wears the shoes during workouts.
greg sailor

pass/fail
marcella hackbardt
Art professor Karen Snouffer and
physics major Ryan Talk ’12 chacha’d
their way to victory in “Dancing
with the Kenyon Stars,” a December
event organized by the Ballroom
Dance Club in which nine club members
paired up with volunteers from
the faculty and administration. The
event raised money for the Russian
Orphan Opportunity Fund.
fail pass honors
The field hockey program
sponsored a raffle to raise
money for Stick it to Cancer,
a national fundraiser for
cancer research.
The Office of Housing and
Residential Life sponsored
Community Advisor Appreciation
Week for the students
leaders who strive to promote
positive experiences in student
residences.
Students organized a series
of events under the umbrella
“Love Your Body,” with the aim
of promoting positive body
image. Among the programs: a
fashion show and an art exhibit
featuring photos of student
body parts.
Students took so many
cups and dishes from the
dining hall that, according to
the Collegian, the College may
consider refusing to replace
them and letting a shortage
occur. Kenyon spent $47,000
to replace missing dishes
last year.
The gates to Middle Path were
the victim of graffiti.
Philander’s Phling, a winter
formal begun in 1996, was
canceled by the administration
due to a lack
of student volunteers.
our somewhat scientific student survey
Margin of Error
Percentage of Kenyon students who think
a woman is more likely to be elected
president than a Jewish or gay person.
Percentage of
Kenyon students
who expect to find
a job within three
months of graduation.
Percentage of Kenyon students
who want children.
Winter 2012 Kenyon college alumni bulletin 7

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in the news, on campus, and online
KenYon in quotes
path
“Every time someone sells, transplants, or
moves a piece of human tissue from one
body to another, there should be a record.”
—Investigative journalist Scott Carney ’00, in an interview with the New Indian
Express of Chennai, India, about his book The Red Market, which explores the
global marketing of human organs and child trafficking.
“We started using face paint in the video for ‘Anna Sun’ because we were throwing
around themes of Peter Pan, the Lost Boys, and Neverland.”
—Musician Nicholas Petricca ’09, in an interview with the Baltimore Sun about the Walk the Moon song that borrows
the name of Anna Xiao Dong Sun, assistant professor of sociology.
“Fit happens!”
—Jennifer Delahunty, dean of admissions and financial aid,
quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education in a column about
the admissions myth of a perfect fit for a student at a college.
“Deep down, I chose to attend
Kenyon College because it
had a Gothic charm reminiscent
of Hogwarts.”
—Gregory Culley ’14, in an interview with the
Plain Dealer of Cleveland, Ohio.
“Don’t you think that studio marketing departments
have gone a long way to confuse audiences about
who actually creates films these days?”
—Jonathan Sherman, assistant professor of film, in an
Arizona Republic story about the fading prominence of
directors in film marketing.
“It can be a bit lonely
out there on stage
by yourself.”
—Meg Merckens ’75, in the
Waterloo-Cedar Falls (Iowa) Courier
about her performance as Ann
Landers in the one-woman play
Lady with All the Answers.
“The limit on ownership
gives birth to the public
domain, that vast realm
of expression to which all
of us have equal access.”
—Lewis Hyde, Richard L. Thomas
Professor of Creative Writing and
author of Common as Air, about intellectual
property and the “cultural
commons,” in a column posted at
www.huffingtonpost.com about U.S.
Supreme Court consideration of the
limits of copyright protection.
8 Kenyon college alumni bulletin Winter 2012

theology, thrills, tending bar, and five other things we love about kenyon
HoT s‰Et
Hot
HoT
HoT
Thrilling News
The Thrill, a daily blog produced
by the Collegian, spices
up local cyberspace with
amusing observations, offbeat
reportage, Kenyon-esque
lists, one-sentence editorials,
and some real news. The site
assessed a recent threeminute
campus blackout by
noting: just long enough to be
promising but too short for
anything interesting to really
start happening.
Combative Classes
Math professor Judy Holdener
pumped up her students in
a two-hour calculus class by
urging them to think of it as
“calculus boot camp.” Holdener
wore genuine military fatigues
and combat boots for a
day and encouraged the class
to do the same. The few. The
proud. The mathematicians.
peted to make the best dessert
in Kenyon’s edition of Top Chef.
One group shopped for ingredients
at Wal-Mart while the other
shopped at the Village Market.
Judging factored in taste, price,
and convenience. Pudding pie
made from ingredients at the
market trounced chocolate chip
cookies. Hooray for Jell-O pudding!
Meditation
The Buddhist Society, which
holds meditation sessions,
received club status from the
Student Life Committee. The Collegian
blessed the popular group
as the “club that holds the largest
non-alcoholic events.”
Theology on Tap
Top Chefs
Two student teams com-
Hot
The Newman Club, a Catholic
student organization, sponsored
Theology on Tap at the
Village Inn. The program is
part of a widespread movement
encouraging faith-related
discussion in comfortable
settings like bars. Next VI
topic: turning water into wine?
Tending Bar
The Village Inn offers a bartending
course for students. In
addition to mixology, students
learn how to deal with alcohol
responsibly. A great way to
“top off” a liberal arts education.
Holy Pets
Harcourt Parish sponsored its
yearly blessing of the pets on
the chapel lawn. Participants
were able to donate to the
Knox County Humane Society.
Praise the
Lord and pass
the kibble.
K-Bikes
Bob Brown, parttime
associate
director of admissions,
started K-Bikes, which loans
bicycles free-of-charge to
international students and
offers a public bike-rental
program through the bookstore.
Brown builds his fleet
by refurbishing abandoned
bikes.
oT

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KenYon In season

Fresh snow and a winter-blue sky
accent the grace of the musical
angels in front of Rosse Hall. The
works were created by Swedish
sculptor Carl Milles (1875–1955).
mitch casey

Kenyon
2H8
By Dan Laskin
12 Kenyon college alumni bulletin Winter 2012
Illustrations By Steve Spence

Things
We
Love to
Hate
about Kenyon
These are a few of our favorite things…to grouse about
Don’t be put off by the headline. Kenyon
students love the place, that’s a given.
We all do. But after we’ve been here
long enough to become true inhabitants—say,
three weeks—we learn to
express our love the Kenyon way. That is, we gripe.
Complaining is one of life’s pleasures, and, like so
many other things, it seems to be sweeter and more
intense on top of this far-away Ohio hill.
Perhaps it’s the syndrome of Kenyonesque smallness
magnifying everything, from local legends to local
landmarks . . . to local aggravations. One could argue
that in Kenyonesque isolation, legendary landmarks
are bound to aggravate us at times.
Perhaps it’s just February: not just the real February
of black-morning sleet storms turning Middle Path
into a death march, but the metaphorical February of
reality-bruising mythology—as when Ascension Hall,
one of Kenyon’s dream castles, loses some of its allure
during a semester of 8:00 a.m. climbs up the endless
staircases to face another Latin quiz.
We who fell in love with lovely Gambier Hill feel
betrayed when she reveals her blemishes. And she
inevitably does, especially when we’re stressed out. No
wonder we end up imagining a Kenyon Golden Age
beside which our own Kenyon falls short. And so, just
as inevitably, our Kenyon chauvinism takes on a tinge
of the curmudgeon.
Here are a few of the things that prove we are real
Kenyonites, because we love to grumble about them.

Location, Location, Location
Generation after generation, the wide-eyed innocents
come up the Hill and are smitten. Then
at some point they realize that when Philander
Chase looked out over the rustic expanses where
he chose to hide his school, he said not, “It’s
fabulous, I love it!” but “This will do.”
So the founder blessed us all. And doomed
the young scholars to spend their peak hormone
years in a place where nightlife means that the
skunks come out from under the porches to
swagger on the sidewalks. Yes, Ohio isolation
can rankle. No place to shop. No place to eat. No
place to carouse in the style to which they would
like to become accustomed.
They can console themselves, at least, with
the knowledge that deprivation builds character.
Kenyon kids learn to make do. While their
peers in cosmopolitan America are organizing
munchie runs to Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s,
Kenyon veterans know that everything they
really need in life is available close at hand, in
two rough-hewn heartland syllables: Kroger.
The Dorms
The administration insists on calling them
“residence halls,” but “reside” is a prim word for
the nature of existence in these seldom-tranquil
haunts that the students do their best to both
domesticate and destroy.
Kenyon students make their dearest friends
and funniest memories in the dorms. But they
take a special pleasure in chanting a litany of the
dorms’ creature discomforts. The dorms are too
hot. Or too cold. The windows leak, the linoleum
is chipped. The College’s secret system of boilers
and steam tunnels somehow fails to produce
hot water in the showers during the five minutes
between when Bob or Dick rolls out of bed and
the start of English 103. (Caitlin and Meredith
somehow manage to plan ahead.) The rooms are
never big enough. And everything seems to, um,
smell. That couldn’t be the aroma of youth?
Now we are entering the era of sumptuous
“townhouses.” Everybody wants to live in one of
these pleasure palaces. But somehow fate in its
unfairness always assigns the high-end real estate
to somebody else. (See “Housing Lottery.”) So:
more grumbling. In any case, give the townhouses
time. With use, they’ll take on the eternal
student patina of grunge.
Middle Path
The leaves are spectacular on one of those perfect October days. But, to
be honest, it takes a big heart and a blind eye to love Middle Path all the time. Into
each life a little rain must fall. That comforting philosophy comes alive on Middle
Path in the form of mud that oozes, spreads, and reaches up to caress. Shoes
crud over. Sneakers soak through. Even the girls’ brightly colored wellies fade.
When the slush, snow, and ice season gets under way, Middle Path shows its
vengeful side—not just messy but also treacherous. For students, there’s some
cheer in the knowledge that, if they slip and break a leg, Security will give them a
golf cart, so that they can bump along, hogging the whole pathway and annoying
everyone else.
It’s hard to imagine Middle Path without its untidy gravel and the satisfying
crunch of pebbles lodging in the soles of Reeboks. But sometimes gravel is
easier to love in the abstract. Ask women what gravel does to heels. The solution,
perhaps, is for the students who have bad-Path days to suck it up (and muck it
out) for four years, after which they become alumni—for whom all of Kenyon is
forever a lovable abstraction. Did Middle Path ruin all of your socks? Sure. That
was part of the magic.
14 Kenyon college alumni bulletin Winter 2012

The Housing Lottery
It’s not fair. It can’t be fair. If it were, the students wouldn’t bitch so much
about their bad luck.
Students are addicted to the high drama of the housing lottery, partly because
everything else is more or less predictable in Gambier but mainly because the
stakes are so high: their vision of luxury. For the same reason, they find the lottery
appalling. How can their quality of life depend on the luck of the draw? The idea
of chance controlling their fate: that’s supposed to happen to other people, out in
the cruel real world of real-life realities, not at Kenyon.
They resent the housing lottery because it reduces them to helpless children
hoping, hoping, hoping for a lollipop. They’re wary, because, even after they
think they’ve understood the latest sub-bylaws, they suspect that Res Life has
introduced new sub-sub-bylaws at the last minute. They have a feeling, too, that
somebody else has figured out how to game the system. And they know that the
lottery will always give off a whiff of deep mystery, because it’s entangled with
the ancient rites and blood feuds at the heart of Kenyon’s tribal system: division
housing.
On the other hand, when they luck out, all is right with the world. Geez, what’s
to complain about?
Winter 2012 Kenyon college alumni bulletin 15

The Bookstore
The case against the bookstore is that it committed
the most egregious of Kenyon sins: it changed.
Once upon a time, it was a paradise of books
and bagels. We sat, we chatted, we spent a quiet
moment with a novel. The College in its wisdom
created it—then, in its stupidity, changed it.
That’s the foul-weather wisdom, anyway.
Of course, the world changed, too, replacing
the rustle of pages with a new, seductive paradise
that streams 24/7 into our ear-buds and onto our
screens. In Gambier, where the bookstore was once
the place to hang out—because it was the only place
to hang out—now we can lounge anywhere because
the whole campus is wireless. As long as the laptop
or cell phone battery hasn’t run down, we can light
up and let the digitalia wash over us. Even in the
athletic center . . . while eating sushi.
Which is why we may yet see nostalgia
doubling back and returning the bookstore to
our fond bosom. The Kenyon way is to fundamentally
distrust the new-fangled. And to want
to feel different. So, even as we slurp the gourmet
delights of cyberspace, we will now and then
seek a refuge from electrons and sushi (and, hey,
anybody can find sushi, anyway, in a rest stop on
the Pennsylvania Turnpike).
We will look for a place with real tables and
chairs, where we can sit, converse, or turn actual
pages . . . while munching on a cookie. And we will
find this refuge in the bookstore. It won’t be Eden
anymore, and we’ll complain about the price of
the cookie. But it will feel cozily like Kenyon.
Public Art
Kenyon has planted great art around the campus, but at some point each
and every one of us has grumped about an artwork’s aesthetic worth or its location,
or we’ve simply taken out our frustrations with other stuff by mocking the art.
One explanation is that art gets in your face. Students can zone out during
introductory chemistry, but they can’t quite ignore Henry Moore’s Large Spindle
Piece lifting its abstract angles in the middle of the science quad. And while
there’s no way on a chemistry test to escape objective judgment—i.e., there are
many definitively wrong answers to each question—with art they’re allowed to
think whatever they please. When it comes to taste, all answers are right, right?
Which is liberating, especially when you’re in a bad mood.
So art makes for a convenient target when we want to rail or bicker. One day
we’re fond of the Rosse Hall angels; the next, we argue that they’re a desecration
of sacred ground. We marvel at Indian and Pronghorn Antelope behind Peirce,
except for when we’d rather enjoy the view unobstructed. And then there’s
Renaissance Man and Woman, to which generations of Kenyon students have
paid the ultimate compliment, dressing Man in a jockstrap and Woman in a bra.
Say what you want, you can’t get a bra onto Large Spindle Piece.
16 Kenyon college alumni bulletin Winter 2012

...And Some Other Things
Things we just hate
The Gambier tornado siren. Does it have to be so deafening? And do they
have to test it so often? And exactly at the moment we’ve stepped out of the
post office?
Boil-water advisories. They always make us feel like Gambier exists
either in the Middle Ages or the Third World.
Power outages. Occasionally an adventure. But every time the wind
blows? Please.
Parking. Somehow, in this tiny burg, there’s never a spot where we need it,
when we want it.
Skunks. They nest under every porch in Gambier, have no natural enemies,
and stink for days even when they’re roadkill.
Gambier’s “roofed” trash cans. They force you to stick your hand in
toward the garbage when you’re throwing something away. Disgusting, and
extremely dangerous in yellow-jacket season.
Course Registration
The problem is anxiety, the evil twin of hope.
For students, each semester brings with it the
renewal of hope that the stars will align, producing
a perfect schedule—all of their first-choice
classes, none of which meets before noon. The
only thing standing in the way is the registration
process. If both afternoon sections of Baby
Drama are already full, the whole plan falls apart.
To address the fears and ensure some
fairness, Kenyon developed a quaint, handcrafted
registration procedure. The elves in the
Registrar’s Office actually went through all the
scribbled enrollment sheets, individually, fixing
it so that each student supposedly got at least
one first choice. Then they went through all the
paper forms again, looking at second choices.
Antiquated, incredibly labor-intensive, and
sweet. Did some people get screwed? Well, there
were always stories. But the point is that, whatever
the merits of the hand-scooped method,
stress still stalked the campus.
And still does, even with a new, improved
all-online system that the College, in a spasm of
modernity, introduced last fall. It’s kind of nice
to edge into the twenty-first century. If there’s
one thing students are comfortable with, after
all, it’s onscreen menus. But stress-free? The
algorithm hasn’t yet been invented that can
soothe the worrywart.
At least the chaos of the drop-add period
survives. So, of course, does the age-old option
of begging a professor to open another seat even
though the course is over-enrolled. It’s reassuring
to know that, even in the age of entitlement,
supplication hasn’t gone out of style.
Things we’re embarrassed to hate
The Great Hall. It’s like hating Harry Potter. But the fact is, you can’t hear
yourself speak, the benches are a throwback to a Dickensian orphanage, and
the stained-glass windows don’t include any foreign or postcolonial literature.
Can’t we just replace “The One-Horse Shay” with, say, Things Fall Apart?
Ascension Hall. Another architectural treasure—but with flights of stairs
that never end and a heating system that either never works or works too well.
Things we hate, depending on who we are
The fraternities. Everyone hates ’em, except for those who love ’em.
The “Shock Your Mama” Party. Hated by the faculty and administration
(who have such fusty notions of good taste and alcohol limits).
First-Year Sing. Actually, emotions are complicated here. The administration
hates how the upperclassmen torment the freshmen. The upperclassmen
hate that Professor Locke seems to be making progress in civilizing the ritual.
And the first-years are just befuddled.
Things we used to hate
Cell phones. Upperclassmen considered them “unKenyon” and persecuted
anyone using one on Middle Path.
Lack of cell phone coverage. After we all got addicted to cell phones,
we discovered that in Gambier they were useless. Bummer.
Things we stopped hating
Cell phones. Now that there’s coverage and we can’t imagine life without
them, we’ve dropped them from the hate list.
The KAC. People railed that it was a monstrosity. But somehow they can’t
stay away.
Getting to the Olin Gallery. You could see it, but you couldn’t get
there without a weird detour. The new Gund Gallery has made Olin just an
ugly library again.
Things We Hate to Love
Gossip. It’s social poison, condemned by both Scripture and Dear Abby. But in the
buzzing mini-world of Gambier, gossip is our nectar. Impossible not to indulge.
Winter 2012 Kenyon college alumni bulletin 17

Remembering
Olof Palme
It has been a quarter century since Sweden’s
prime minister was assassinated on a
Stockholm street. The world lost an admired
and controversial statesman. Kenyon lost
an alumnus whose fondness for the College
never flagged. by Bill Mayr
Palme at a press conference during his 1970
Kenyon visit. The 1948 Reveille pictured him
with the other seniors (above, right), saying
“he was a bright ’un.”
What better way to start a weekend
than with a Friday night film. Make it a comedy.
After all, prime ministers need to relax, too.
For Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, the
evening promised to be especially enjoyable because he and his wife
Lisbeth would meet up with one of their three sons and his girlfriend.
A family night out in Stockholm.
The Palmes went to a late screening of The Brothers Mozart at the
Grand cinema on Sveavågen, a major thoroughfare. It was a little after
eleven when the movie ended. The family said their goodbyes and
bundled up—the night was cold and blustery on February 28, 1986.
Palme and Lisbeth strolled along Sveavågen. Like other Swedish leaders,
the prime minister disliked large entourages. He had dismissed his
security detail hours earlier. He and his wife walked alone.
Less than three blocks from the theater, a man stepped up to them
and fired two shots, point-blank, from a .357 Magnum revolver, striking
Palme in the back and grazing his wife. Other pedestrians ran over to
help. Two attempted CPR on Palme as he lay bleeding on the snowy
sidewalk. The gunman, meanwhile, fled down a narrow side street.

A taxi driver feverishly radioed for police; a second cabbie nearby heard
the transmission and flagged down a patrol car. Palme was rushed to a
nearby hospital.
But it was too late. Olof Palme—a much admired, much criticized leader
during a turbulent era—was pronounced dead just after midnight. He was
fifty-nine.
Palme was known for guiding neutral Sweden in a “middle way’’ during
the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. He assailed
South African apartheid, and, at the United Nation’s behest, he attempted
to mediate the Iran-Iraq war. He stridently criticized American involvement
in the Vietnam War, provoking hostility from the U.S. government and
many Americans.
He was also a Kenyon graduate, quite possibly Kenyon’s most prominent
alumnus on the world stage—a statesman formed in part by a youthful
sojourn in the United States, including a year on the Hill. He left Kenyon
with lifelong friends and an affection, for both the College and America, that
would never flag.
“Lucky to land there”
Palme arrived in Gambier from Sweden at age twenty in the autumn of 1947.
He was an unconventional student at an unconventional time in the
College’s history.
“He had wanted to go to school in the States; he never made entirely clear
why,” classmate and longtime friend Henry J. Abraham ’48 said in a recent
interview. “So he turned to his grandfather, who was a Lutheran bishop in
Sweden at the time. His grandfather said he would take care of it, but you
have to agree to one condition. You have to go to a Protestant college.”
Palme sought a scholarship through the American Scandinavian
Foundation. “Suddenly I received a letter from Kenyon,” he told the Alumni
Bulletin in a 1984 interview. “I had never heard of the College, but as it
turned out I was lucky, extremely lucky to land there.”
He entered Kenyon fluent in English, French, and German, with
extensive academic credit from studies in Sweden. He also had served as a
cavalry lieutenant.
At the time, the College was flooded with ex-military men, young American
veterans of World War II. Many of them lived in Splinterville, the nickname
for a temporary housing complex built to handle the enrollment bulge.
As a resident of the complex’s large “T barracks,” Palme met Paul Newman
’49; the two would remain friendly throughout their lives. Other friends included
William T. Bulger ’48, who went on to teach history at Central Michigan
University, as well as Abraham, who later taught political science at the University
of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia, and served as a College trustee.
The future prime minister, who majored in economics and political
science, was a straight-A student. But he found time for soccer, which had
just emerged as a varsity sport. Palme wore number 32; Abraham, the team
captain, wore number 37.
Palme worked as a dining hall waiter, said Abraham, who had the same
job. “He received, as we all did, 47 cents per meal and all we could eat. We
put up a sign [reminding the waiters] to wear neckties. And one day he came
in with a necktie and no shirt on. When we took him to task, he pointed to
the sign and said, ‘All you said was wear a necktie.’ ”
Palme spent Christmas of 1947 at the Bulger family home in Flint,
Michigan, and later would reminisce about banging on pans with the Bulgers
to welcome the New Year.
Meanwhile, he honed his progressive social views by visiting an industrial
plant in nearby Mount Vernon. “He spent every weekend exploring the union
standing in the center, wearing number 32, palme played on Kenyon’s first
varsity soccer team in 1947. The captain, number 37, was Henry J. “Hank”
Abraham ’48, who remained a friend.
movement,” Abraham said. “He would go to the plant and talk with people.”
The explorations widened. After graduating in 1948—extensive academic
credit from Sweden enabled Palme to finish up at Kenyon in just a year—he
hitchhiked through thirty-four states, taking odd jobs when he could.
His American experiences proved to be important. “For the first time, I
came out of isolated Sweden,” he said in a 1971 interview. The cross-country
trip gave him “a good picture of American society. It gave me strong feelings
about social injustices.”
Minister on the rise
Back in Sweden, Palme obtained a law degree and eventually took a job
in the prime minister’s office. In 1957 he was first elected to the Swedish
parliament as a member of the dominant Social Democratic party, the leftleaning
architect of the country’s famous social-welfare system. He joined the
government’s cabinet in 1963 as minister without portfolio. His first official
duty—grimly ironic in retrospect—was to attend the funeral of the assassinated
President John F. Kennedy.
Sweden maintained a neutral stance in foreign policy, attempting to walk
a narrow line between the two Cold War behemoths. Neutrality shouldn’t
mean aloofness, though, in Palme’s view. He joined in a demonstration when
the Soviet Union sent troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968 to repress liberalization.
But it was his criticism of America’s role in Vietnam that brought
him the most publicity.
During the late 1960s, Sweden accepted U.S. military deserters. The country
also had given a modest amount of financial assistance to North Vietnam.
In 1968, when he was minister of education, Palme participated with a North
Vietnamese diplomat in a protest against American involvement in Vietnam.
“The American ambassador (a ranch-owner from Texas) became angry and
went home and we had a magnificent internal row here in Sweden,” Palme wrote
to Bulger. “The opposition demanded that I resign immediately. But I stayed.”
In another letter, Palme told Bulger, “I am deeply worried, disgusted

Union members
(below, left) jeered
when Palme spoke on
campus in 1970, at the
height of the Vietnam
War era. The prime
minister chatted
with students
(right) and with
some of the police
officers on hand
(below, right).
loads of members of the International Longshoremen’s Association
arrived to protest against Palme. As he spoke to about 1,000 in front of
Samuel Mather Hall, the longshoremen hooted and jeered, but there was
no violence.
Possibly lost in the hubbub was the content of Palme’s speech. Titled “On the
Freedom of Men and the Freedom of Nations,” it didn’t mention Vietnam at all.
“Freedom is really a hope, a feeling of confidence in the future,” Palme
told his audience. He spoke about pollution, unsafe working conditions,
education and worker training, growing military spending, gaps
between rich and poor. “But these issues cannot be resolved by politicians
alone. They can only be overcome with the organized help of the people
. . . Democratic action rests on the awareness that stability can never be
attained by standing still . . . . To defend the status quo means to regress
from bad to worse. Stability can be gained only by social change.”
During his visit, Palme held impromptu discussion sessions with
students who had returned to campus for the speech. He casually sat atop
a worktable in a lecture hall answering questions. Here was a world figure
who, notwithstanding the controversy that sometimes surrounded him,
could seem extraordinarily at ease and unassuming.
and almost desperate because of the incredible folly of the Vietnam war.
Politically and morally America has lost the war, and it can only drive her
into a deeper and deeper isolation. For somebody who loves America, her
people and her institutions, this is particularly tragic.”
In the midst of U.S. criticism over his stance, Palme repeatedly spoke of
his affection for the United States. He called the United States the “Land of
Hope” and said, “I am not anti-American but I am critical of United States
policy in Vietnam.”
Palme was elected leader of the Social Democrats in 1969. As his party
held the majority in parliament, he became prime minister. At forty-two, he
was the youngest chief of government in Swedish history.
A tumultuous Kenyon return
Soon, a letter arrived from Kenyon President William G. Caples, inviting
Palme to be the 1970 Commencement speaker and receive an honorary
doctor of humane letters degree. Palme told Caples he was unavailable for
Commencement because parliament would still be in session. The two
agreed that he would visit during Reunion Weekend.
Some alumni and newspapers criticized the invitation. A Columbus
Dispatch editorial, for example, said Palme “would dearly love to come back
and make an old-grad-makes-good address. We would not recommend it.”
Caples defended the visit: “The premier is young . . . and the students
relate to him. His views on the Vietnam War are typical of theirs.” Palme was
to speak about freedom, “a timely subject of interest to everyone on campus.”
His speech, on June 6, 1970, came at a volatile moment in American
history, little more than a month after President Nixon announced the
American and South Vietnamese incursion into Cambodia. Protests
erupted, including the confrontation at Kent State University in which
Ohio National Guardsmen killed four students and wounded nine.
Tensions ran high at Kenyon. Local and federal authorities put some one
hundred uniformed and undercover officers on campus. Two bus-
Who shot Olof Palme?
The Social Democrats lost power in 1976 but regained it in 1982, returning
Palme to the premiership. He tried not to let prominence interfere with
the pleasures of an ordinary life. News photos over the years showed him
horsing around with his boys or riding a bicycle, dressed in tennis shorts
and carrying a racquet. He kept his home number in the Stockholm
phone directory.
To his American friends, this openness was unimaginable. Abraham, who
had taught in Denmark for two years, would return to Scandinavia from
time to time, stopping to visit Palme. “The last time I saw him was about a
year and a half before he was assassinated,” Abraham recalled. “We had lunch
in Parliament, as we always did. He wanted to show me some plans for buildings.
As we went downstairs, I asked Olof, ‘Where are your guards?’ He put
his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Hank, this is Sweden, not America.’ ”
Then came that fateful night in February 1986. And a mystery that
persists to this day.
In 1989, police arrested Christer Pettersson, a street thug with a long
history of violent crime. Mrs. Palme identified him in a police lineup. He
was tried and convicted, but an appeals court overturned the conviction. No
murder weapon had been found, no significant motive had been established,
and Mrs. Palme’s identification was shaky.
Others have been arrested, but the charges always were dropped.
Meanwhile, amateur “Palme detectives” have advanced various theories.
Certainly, the prime minister had many potential enemies, ranging
from right-wing Swedish police officers to the CIA and the Soviet KGB.
Speculation has also included agents from Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi secret
police, members of Germany’s notorious left-wing Red Army Faction,
agents of the South African secret police, and radical Kurds.
Abraham recalled once asking Palme what he would do if he were turned
out of office. “He said, ‘I’m not going to lose.’ But I persisted. He said, ‘All
right, I would like to be secretary general of the United Nations.’ ”
With Palme approaching sixty, a second career as a global leader was not
far-fetched at all. But of course, it was not to be.
Kenyon classmate Bulger put it simply, and wistfully. “I wished that he
had a security detail that night.”

While critics
rage over college
prices, experts
examine why
costs have risen,
what families get
for their money,
and whether the
current system
can survive
By Mark Ellis
tuition was “relatively modest” when David H. Feldman
arrived at Kenyon, and when he left with the Class of 1978
he was debt-free.
His parents were public schoolteachers and savers. The
cost to them in 1974 was $4,438, and young David took
not a penny of financial aid. Feldman, now a professor of
economics at the College of William and Mary, specializes
in the economics of higher education, and he feels the tidal pull of
controversy.
Critics, pundits, and scholars have stormed higher education,
targeted accelerating tuition, and lampooned comfy residence halls
and trendy recreation facilities. Professors have been nicked for
light classroom workloads and doing research of dubious value to
undergraduates.
Even the core value of higher education has come under attack.
Money Magazine wondered, “Is college still worth the price?” New York
magazine noted the fashionable idea that a college degree is “essentially
worthless.” The co-founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, established the
Thiel Fellowship—a $100,000 grant for entrepreneurial grooming on
the condition that those who receive it steer clear of college for two
years. A number of books have piled on, including Higher Education?,
which described the Kenyon Athletic Center (KAC) as “a Taj Mahal.”
A 2011 Pew Research Center survey showed that 57 percent of
Americans believed higher education did not provide good value for
the money, and 75 percent said college was too expensive. In that same
survey, 38 percent of 1,055 college presidents said higher education was
“headed in the wrong direction.”
Just follow the money.
The Higher Cost of

Higher Education
The average student-loan debt hit $24,000 by the time the 2009
class graduated from nonprofit colleges and universities, a 27-percent
increase from 2004, according to the nonprofit Institute for College
Access and Success. Easily outstripping inflation over the last quarter
century, tuition and fees have risen more sharply at public institutions
than at private colleges. But media attention seems to gather
around the $50,000 a year charged by the most selective private
colleges. The sticker price for a student attending Kenyon in 2011-12 is
$52,650, with tuition and fees at $42,630. Yet tuition and fees, according
to the College Board, cover only about 60 percent of national
education costs.
At a time of economic malaise, changing priorities in government
funding, and steep personal debt, higher education has become something
of a fatted calf in line for sacrifice on the altar of public opinion.
Why does college cost so much, and so much more than in the past?

A Service Industry
Into the breach step Feldman and his colleague, Robert B.
Archibald, also a professor of economics at William and Mary.
Their 2011 book Why Does College Cost So Much? takes a selfdescribed
aerial view of the economics of higher education,
explaining increased costs in the context of economic trends.
They reject the damning “magnifying glass” look applied by some
critics who, for example, equate the rising number of administrators
with wayward inefficiency, and the variety of dining hall food
choices with wretched excess. One of their goals is to cool down
the raging rhetoric.
An embrace from higher education “is not why we wrote the
book,” Feldman said. “I have been thinking about these issues for
a very long time now. We were surprised by the audience we got
for our papers.” Not everyone is a fan. Those who criticize higher
education also criticize Feldman and Archibald. “We’re picking
darts out of our various body parts,” he said.
Paying for the “big ticket item” of a college education is a
“family decision … an ethical decision.” In his view, a college education
is the best way to transfer wealth to children. The financial
advantage is inarguable. In 2008, median annual earnings of men
with a college degree reached $55,000; for men with just a high
school diploma, that number was $32,000.
And regardless of the public view about the expense of a college
education, the Pew Research Center poll found that 94 percent of
parents expect their children to attend college and 86 percent of
college graduates believe their education was a good investment.
Kenyon President S. Georgia Nugent pondered the paradox.
“That’s the mood of the nation at the moment,” she said. “ ‘Higher
education is doing a terrible job, and we want more access to it.’”
Feldman believes a vocal minority has unleashed the aggression
against higher education—those people “willing and able to
scream the loudest,” including those who are paying the most at
very expensive schools. He noted that half of the country’s college
students face a tuition list price of less than $10,000 a year. And
stories about some graduates leaving school with six-figure debt
{
Colleges must keep pace
with technology, both in
teaching and in the services
that students expect.
may be true but are, in fact, rare. “Making public policy on the
basis of outliers is bad,” he said.
The rising cost of higher education, Feldman said, can be
attributed to the requirements of the digital age and accelerating
technology; the growth of financial aid in the zeal to attract an
accomplished and diverse enrollment; and the fact that colleges
must maintain a highly educated work force.
Improvements in technology have reduced costs for manufacturers
but do not have the same effect in a “service industry” like
higher education. Yet colleges must keep pace with technology,
both in teaching and in the services that students expect. Science
labs must be state-of-the-art. Colleges that wired campuses for
the Internet have moved on to wireless technology. And, given
the ubiquity of mobile telephones, land-line phones installed in
residence-hall rooms face a phase-out.
“We react to technology very differently than Ford or General
Motors,” Feldman said. “We don’t adopt new technologies to
lower cost. We have to shape the world our students are moving
into.” When something new comes out, students expect it.
The ramping up of financial aid, called discounting by
Feldman, is a “big problem,” triggering an arms race among
schools to attract the best and most diverse students. Higher
tuition, along with a reliance on endowment revenue and philanthropy,
helps cover the cost of financial aid. “I don’t know where
the discounting is going to stop with the private [colleges].”
The size of a college budget, Feldman said, is largely based on
the quality of the program. If a college believes in the “supreme
importance” of a diverse student body and is determined to
provide discounts to reach that goal, the school may decide to
hold the line on faculty salaries or not replace or hire a high-profile
kenyon mandatory charges:
(tuition, fees, room, board)
1971-72 ..... $3,850 ($21,607 in 2011 dollars)
1981-82 ..... $8,525 ($22,545)
1991-92 ..... $19,425 ($32,397)
2001-02 ..... $32,130 ($40,624)
2011-12 ..... $52,650
kenyon budget growth:
1980-81 ..... $12,870,000 ($38,629,764 in 2011 dollars)
1990-91 ..... $33,312,000 ($58,556,973)
2000-01 ..... $56,189,000 ($73,459,589)
2010-11 ..... $102,916,000

professor. “The alternative is to raise the list price,” Feldman said.
“People look at the list price and see it soaring.”
The list price includes meeting the quality-of-life expectations
of the consumer. Apartment-style residences, good food choices,
and well-equipped recreation centers are in demand. “Why expect
people today to be satisfied with Spartan conditions of living? The
standard of living is three times as high as it was in the 1960s,”
Feldman said. “It’s a nostalgic conceit to rebuke the young for how
tough older people had it. That’s not serious.”
The growth of college administrations runs parallel to the
growth of administrations in business and industry, according to
Feldman. “Why aren’t you screaming at private industry? We are
hiring more administrators. It’s a fact, but it’s not proof of waste.”
Administrators not seen in great numbers by previous generations
include those working in information technology, health and
career counseling, writing resources, and other student services.
Higher education is a business that charges its customers less
than the cost of the service provided. Crucial support, then, comes
through gifts, and colleges anticipate that students will contribute
some of their future income. “It’s a deferred payment until you are
established in your profession and then you contribute according
to your means,” he said. “It’s not a particularly bad model.”
The system is sustainable “as long as the families who are
paying full price think that they’re still getting value for the
money,” he said.
Into the Real World
Joanna “Jo” Hayes ’10 treasures her Kenyon education, and her
parents paid the bill without financial help from the College. Now
the managing director of Hudson Dance & Movement in her
hometown of Hoboken, New Jersey, Hayes was an anthropology
major who graduated magna cum laude.
“The education I received was amazing,” she said. “It fulfilled
everything I wanted in a college—small classes and professors
who cared about their students. I couldn’t ask for better teachers.
I love the liberal arts and the emphasis on cognitive reasoning. I
wouldn’t trade my time at Kenyon or my education for anything
in the world.”
The family sacrificed so Hayes and her younger brother could
attend private secondary schools. They sold a 2,400-square-foot
brownstone home and moved into a condominium about half the
size. Jo lives happily with her parents in the same condo and is
considering a master’s in business administration.
“My parents are wonderful, generous people,” she said. “We
talked about this before going to college. I knew the sacrifices they
had made for me to go to high school. The sticker price at Kenyon
is pretty big, but my parents said they wanted me to go where I
would be happy.”
If Hayes has a suggestion for Kenyon, it’s to improve careerdevelopment
services. “I just didn’t know where an anthropology
major who worked as a [restaurant] hostess over the summers
Kenyon revenue 2010–11:
$102,916,000
Kenyon expenses 2010–11:
$102,916,000
mandatory charges
74.6 percent
endowment
7.7 percent
support from
reserves
gifts 7 percent
5.1 percent
other/auxiliary
4 percent
miscellaneous
1.6 percent
$
$ $ $
$ $
$
$
$
$ $ $
$
$
$ $$
$
$
personnel Financial aid other expenses
44.9 percent 21.5 percent 33.6 percent
$

Administrators not seen in
great numbers by previous
generations include those
working in information
technology, health and career
counseling, writing resources,
{and other student services.
Auxiliary
14.4 percent
Plant
operation
6.7 percent
Instructional
23 percent
Student services
12.8 percent
Academic
support
5 percent
Kenyon expenses
by function, 2010-11:
$102,916,000
Financial aid
21.5 percent
Reserves
5.3 percent
Institutional
9 percent
Information services
2.3 percent
was supposed to start. It was kind of like just throwing you out of
the Gates of Hell into the real world.”
Her father, Steven R. Hayes, is a corporate lawyer who knows
his way around higher education; he has a son in college and his
father is a former president of Marshall University. “I’m very
fond of Kenyon,” he said. “I really like what they do. My daughter
loved it.”
Like his daughter, he wonders why Kenyon does not provide
more help in finding internships and developing career choices.
“One would have expected, given the price of Kenyon, strong, active
support,” he said. He also thinks the College should do more to
help club sports, such as providing the women’s rugby team with a
trainer. Women’s rugby is one of fourteen club sports at the College.
The services advocated by Jo Hayes and her father are typical of
those expected by many of today’s college consumers.
Kenyon does have a Career Development Office, with a staff of
five. The number of full-time employees at Kenyon has grown to
574, from 455 in 2000. The roll call in that time includes, among
others, new staff for multicultural affairs, student activities, and
financial-aid assistance; a women’s lacrosse coach; a crew of about
nine to run the KAC; and about nine new professors added during
the period 2001-03 as the annual teaching load was reduced to five
courses a year, from six. And the curriculum continues to grow,
adding, for example, courses in Arabic, environmental studies, and
neuroscience. A film major was added as well.
“There’s always new knowledge, and the consumer is going to
demand access to new knowledge,” said Joseph G. Nelson, Kenyon
vice president for finance. Nelson likes to add that knowledge
multiplies—there is always more to learn. He’s seen the budget
grow about tenfold since he arrived at Kenyon in 1978. “The
College’s entrance qualifications are dramatically different than
they were then. That’s because the College has something to offer to
that sector of the market. The College wants to improve the quality
to attract a higher level of consumer.”
The faculty course load was reduced before Nugent arrived—
“and, indeed, it does add costs,” she said. One reason for the switch
was to enhance research opportunities that are attractive to faculty.
Nugent believes teaching should be the highest priority at a liberal
arts college and that the shift has enabled more time for course
preparation, advising, and grading.
“One reason why some parents are willing to spend $50,000 is
they want excellent teaching,” she said.
What You Get
Excellent teaching at Kenyon is defined partly by the ten-to-one
student-faculty ratio and ready access to top-notch professors.
Provost Nayef Samhat believes the “intimate learning environment”
pays off in a strong academic community. In “the pursuit
of research and scholarship,” moreover, faculty members deepen
their knowledge, expand their contacts with colleagues worldwide,
and familiarize themselves with new tools, trends, and methodologies—all
of which translate into more challenging classes and more
opportunities for students.

“I think we have a vibrant faculty, an outstanding faculty, deeply
engaged in their professional fields,” he said. “We have a fine understanding
of where this engagement fits in terms of our primary
mission, which is to teach students. You want these teachers of
young men and women to embrace the practice of learning, knowing,
and understanding. It’s what we do.”
And that’s not all the College does.
Samhat believes rising costs can be traced to the growth of
consumer expectations in the classroom and out. “Let’s look at
what you’re getting,” he said. “You’re getting an education in a
small-classroom environment with a highly motivated scholar.
You’re getting an education with some of the latest technological
instruments, some of the most advanced lab equipment. You have
a health club. You have a park-like setting. You have housing. You’re
getting food. You have security. You have health benefits. You have
counseling. You have art shows, concerts, and speakers. That’s a lot
of services and they are all costly in and of themselves.
“And we are in a competitive environment. All of these other
institutions are doing the same, and we’re outbidding each other
at times.”
Let the bidding begin with the $70 million KAC, which opened
in January 2006. “Keeping up with the Kenyons is definitely one
factor pumping up college costs,” according to the book Higher
Education?
Left unsaid, according to Nelson, is the “very unique situation”
that led to the KAC’s construction. What some critics saw under a
magnifying glass as an example of lavish collegiate one-upmanship
was, instead, a long-view focus on careful spending for value. Or, as
Nelson put it, “There are lots of people who write things that they
don’t know anything about.”
Kenyon had no equity investment in its aging and outmoded
recreation facilities when the KAC was planned. The Wertheimer
Field House was a pre-World World II military drill hall rebuilt at
Kenyon over a dirt floor. It was remodeled in 1980, when the Ernst
Center was built. Ernst went up without air conditioning and had
chronic ventilation problems. Remodeling the recreation hall was
not practical in the twenty-first century.
“Everybody else already had what we have now,” Nelson said.
“We had the luxury of starting over, and we did. What we did made
perfect financial sense and absolutely perfect long-term sense.
“We were in a very unusual circumstance, and … we had a
single donor pay for half the cost, so add that on. On a net cost-persquare-foot
basis and given the number of people who use it, I say
it’s the cheapest building we ever built.”
An Extraordinary Physical Plant
The KAC, an important piece of the campus puzzle, is just one
of many buildings and improvements undertaken since 1998.
The Brown Family Environmental Center, the Eaton Center,
the Graham Gund Gallery, Lentz House, O’Connor House, the
science quad, and Storer Hall also joined the mix. Peirce Hall was
completely renovated. Five new townhouse student residences
opened in 2011 and more are on the way. Horvitz Hall (for studio
art) is under construction. Kenyon includes 128 buildings, with
an insurance-replacement value of $238,759,000, housing
$23,402,000 worth of equipment, furnishings, instruments,
and the like. “You have an extraordinary physical plant that
does not necessarily generate the sort of revenue that can
support itself,” Samhat said.
The lion’s share of revenue for the 2010-11 budget
($102,916,000) came from tuition and fees (74.6 percent).
Endowment income chipped in 7.7 percent, and the rest
arrived from a mix of support from reserves, gifts, and miscellaneous
sources.
Teri Blanchard, associate vice president for finance, said the
heavy reliance on tuition and fees promotes efficiency and careful
planning. The College has run for forty-one years without a
deficit. “Because about 75 cents of every buck we spend comes
from tuition and fees, we have to be very careful about what we
add,” Blanchard said.
Financial aid ($22,095,000) gobbled up 21.5 percent of the
budget. “And it will probably continue to grow more rapidly,”
Nelson said, “simply because we’re trying to provide greater
access year after year after year, greater diversity year after year
after year.”
Blanchard sees the growth in financial aid as the cost of
doing business, “a reflection of all of the other costs that you
have,” she said. “If we were a much less expensive place, we’d
see less financial aid, but we wouldn’t be who we are.”
Changing Expectations
Can Kenyon and other liberal arts institutions continue to be
who they are?
Samhat questions the long-term viability of the economic
model. “Greater burdens are being placed on families,” he said.
“You’re told to save for higher education, and save for health
care, and then save for retirement.
“We know that public funding for higher education is eroding,
and so more demand will fall on families. The pressure will
{
What some critics saw
under a magnifying glass
as an example of lavish
collegiate one-upmanship
was, instead, a long-view
focus on careful spending
for value.

comparing costs: endowment per
student (and Mandatory Charges)
really be great on the private institutions. You can raise tuition as
much as you want, but nowadays you’re raising tuition and you’re
compensating that raise with financial aid. There’s no net gain. The
model will have to change.”
Nugent anticipates change. “A part of me thinks the current
system is not sustainable,” she said. “The current financial aid
system implies a social contract, where the wealthy assume a greater
share of the cost. And I think the social contract has broken down in
recent years.”
The financial aid system must be streamlined and simplified,
Feldman said, starting with the Free Application for Federal Student
Aid form. Beyond that, he envisions a sort of college-education
Social Security program that begins on the front end. With a “public
investment” by taxpayers, the government would establish a savings
account for each child at birth, providing enough income for a basic
college education at age eighteen. “The point would be that you
would begin, from the earliest age, to change the entire expectations
of a family,” he said.
“The United States used to be the world leader in having an
educated work force. Quite a number of countries have surpassed
us. The rest of the world is
not stupid. They see that
the investment in education
has a payoff.”
The payoff can be
tallied in more than a
payday.
“I think we devote too
much attention to simply
dollars,” Nugent said. “The
ability to live a full life as
a participant in society, as
a person who can take a
delight in the arts and in
your cultural surroundings,
a person capable
of making judgments, a
person with confidence—I think those are undoubtedly components
of a good life. And, by and large, if you are ending your education at
seventeen, you are probably not well equipped to enjoy those good
things in your life.”
Ronald K. Griggs, vice president for library and information
services, finds the value of a Kenyon education in the classroom.
“In every class you’re going to be exposed to something new. There’s
not a dud in the bunch,” Griggs said. “That’s the richness of the
environment.”
What results is the “incredible confidence” that Griggs sees in the
eyes of graduating seniors. “They can pretty much tackle anything.”
Williams ....... $685,672 ($54,560)
Grinnell ....... $649,517 ($49,144)
Middlebury ... $286,991 ($53,420)
Carleton ...... $261,929 ($54,180)
Denison ........ $255,835 ($50,170)
Bates ........... $103,518 ($55,300)
Kenyon ......... $92,051 ($52,650)
Making Kenyon Affordable:
Financial Aid
How do students and families expect
to cope with the high cost of college?
Short of winning a lottery, the answer
is financial aid. It’s often the deciding
factor in college choice. Cheyenne
Cody Cardell ’15—a talented artist
and outstanding student from New
Mexico—chose Kenyon over Parsons
Paris School of Art and Design (in France) and six
other private schools because of Kenyon’s more
generous financial aid offer. “Parsons offered her a
great package, but it was not good enough,” said
Ede Cardell, Cheyenne’s mother.
Kenyon devoted 21.5 percent of its $102.9 million
operating budget in 2010-11 to financial aid.
About 60 percent of its students receive aid from
the College and/or outside sources. At a time when
federal and state support for higher education is
falling, more students are qualifying for more aid.
The average need-based grant per Kenyon student
has been steadily increasing for more than a decade—and
in 2009, in the wake of the September
2008 economic collapse, it took a leap of $4,000.
To meet increasing demand, Kenyon raised
nearly $60 million in new endowment for financial
aid during the recently completed campaign,
doubling its financial-aid endowment. Campaign
donors created sixty-seven new scholarship
funds. But the sum still fell $11 million short of the
campaign goal for endowed financial aid. “I was
shocked that we didn’t reach that goal,” said
Jennifer Delahunty, dean of admissions and
financial aid. “We’re struggling to keep our commitments
to students and families.”
Financial aid is the lifeblood of the College,
essential in attracting the best and brightest
students and ensuring a diverse student body
(Cheyenne’s biological father is Navajo). “Part of
our social contract is to provide access to students
of all backgrounds,” said Delahunty. “Without financial
aid, Kenyon would not be a very interesting
or educationally solid place.”
A financial aid package at Kenyon typically
includes a combination of grants, scholarships, oncampus
employment, and student-loan options
for families. About 33 percent of the 468 first-year
students admitted in the 2010-11 academic year
received need-based aid from Kenyon. The average
package totaled $36,562, including a $28,162
grant from the College that does not have to be
repaid. “If an economically disadvantaged student
gets admitted to Kenyon, our package is likely the

est he or she will see,” Delahunty said.
That proved to be true for Cheyenne Cardell.
Of the eight schools that accepted Cheyenne,
only one—Bethany College in Kansas—
matched Kenyon’s offer. An aspiring graphic
novel writer and artist, Cheyenne chose Kenyon
for its excellent programs in both studio art and
English, and has declared a double major in
those fields. “Kenyon’s was the first offer we received
and we were shocked,” Mrs. Cardell said.
“We had no idea a package could be that good.
We were thrilled because Cheyenne would not
be able to go to a four-year private school like
Kenyon without it.”
The aid relieved years of anxiety for the
family. Mrs. Cardell and her husband Michael—
Cheyenne’s stepfather—are artists who operate
a bronze-casting foundry. They describe their
socio-economic status as “lower middle class”
and sometimes struggle to pay monthly bills. “I
have been worried about paying for college for
a long time,” Mrs. Cardell said. “Cheyenne is so
dedicated; she has been keeping sketch books
since she was seven years old, and she fills one
every three months. It would have broken my
heart to have her stay local or go to a community
college. She needed something more
than that.”
Despite the recent increase in endowed
scholarships, Kenyon still relies on tuition and
fees to fund the bulk of its $22.1 million financial
aid budget. The average annual cost for a
student attending Kenyon in 2011-12 is $52,650,
including $42,630 in tuition and fees.
While a few colleges are wealthy enough to
have “need-blind” admissions policies—they
do not consider the financial status of students
and families when making admissions
decisions—Kenyon must be “need-aware.”
This means that, while offering generous aid
packages to the best applicants, the College
must also give some preference to full-pay students
or students who need a little aid when it
decides whom to admit. About 60 percent of
first-year students admitted in 2010-11 received
no need-based financial aid from the College.
“To be perfectly honest with you, full-pay
students are funding our financial aid budget
and everything else,” Delahunty said. “If we did
not have families willing to pay the full cost of
Kenyon, we wouldn’t be able to offer such
extraordinary quality in every corner of
the College.”
Fortunately, Kenyon has been able to
maintain its admissions standards for full-pay
students. “Some schools are less selective
than we are because they have to reach more
for full-pay kids,” Delahunty said. “Kenyon is
in a really good situation because we have
full-pay kids who want to come here. The Kenyon
brand is highly valued. How else do you
explain the fact that we have one of
the highest parent giving programs
in the country? We have parents
who are paying the full rate for their
children and are still donating to
the College.”
John and Betsey Krause of
Westerville, Ohio, were willing to buy the Kenyon
brand. They turned down nearly a full ride
for their daughter Anna ’12 at Ohio Wesleyan
University to pay full freight at Kenyon. Had it
not been for their savings and Mrs. Krause’s
second income, the dual-career couple never
would have been able to afford Kenyon without
financial aid. “Education was a priority
for us and we just felt Kenyon was a more
appropriate choice for Anna,” Mrs. Krause said.
“For her first two years in college, every penny
I made on my job went to Kenyon, but we told
ourselves it was only for four years.”
The Krauses expected to qualify for a
“limited amount” of financial aid, but “we
were naïve,” Mrs. Krause said. Their estimated
family contribution (EFC), according to their
daughter’s Free Application for Federal
Student Aid (FAFSA), was too high. In Mrs.
Krause’s opinion, the FAFSA overestimated
their EFC because it failed to account for
substantial family expenses, such as assisted
living for an elderly parent. Nevertheless,
the Krauses accept Kenyon’s “need-aware”
admissions as an economic reality. “Kenyon
needs a diversified student body and it has to
be paid for,” Mrs. Krause said. “I don’t find that
discriminating.”
President S. Georgia Nugent has stated
that the ability of students and families to
afford a Kenyon education is the major factor
in preserving the financial health of the College.
It cannot take full-pay students such as
Anna Krause for granted. “We have to continually
improve and stay attractive to those
students who do not require financial aid,”
Delahunty said.
Cuts in federal and state support for higher
education have put mounting pressure on
financial aid budgets, forcing colleges and
“If an economically
disadvantaged student gets
admitted to Kenyon, our package is
likely the best he or she will see.”
universities to make up the shortfalls. Generally
considered the foundation of financial aid
for needy students, the federal Pell grant, with
a maximum amount of $5,550 for the 2010-11
award year, continues to cover a decreasing
percentage of college costs. Cancellation of the
Ohio Student Choice Grant program and the
uncertain future of the Ohio College Opportunity
Grant Program threaten to eliminate all
state funding for private colleges. “The private
colleges are educating tens of thousands of
Ohio students at no expense to the taxpayers,”
Delahunty said.
When comparing financial aid packages,
more is not always better. Kenyon prides itself
on the quality of its aid packages. “We don’t
over-loan students,” Delahunty said. Nationally,
college seniors who graduated in 2009 carried
an average of $24,000 in student-loan debt,
according to the nonprofit organization Project
on Student Debt. Kenyon’s average loan indebtedness
in 2009-10, the most recent figure
available, was $19,934.
In mulling over offers from eight schools for
her daughter Cheyenne, Mrs. Cardell said, “They
all said they gave her their highest scholarship
awards—the best packages they could—and
they still didn’t even cover half the costs. We
would have had to borrow between $20,000
and $30,000, and we couldn’t afford that.”
Kenyon’s package covered all but $8,000. After
a local scholarship picked up the difference, the
Cardells expect Cheyenne to graduate nearly
debt-free. “We didn’t want to saddle her with
a big debt burden,” said Mrs. Cardell, citing one
more reason why her daughter found the quaint
charm of the Hill to be a better fit than the excitement
and romance of the French capital.
—Dennis Fiely

It’s the
little things
We usually associate Kenyon’s beauty with images of
grandeur—a tower soaring against the sky, a path running
between rows of arching trees, long hilltop views,
lordly stone halls. But the splendor of the grand has its
counterpart in the charm of the small. Last year, we asked
photographer Dan McMahon to come to campus and look for
the little things—elegant and humble, iconic and odd—that
in their own way compose Kenyon’s defining grace. He found
them everywhere, from the College archives to the bench in
front of the Village Market. We hope you enjoy
this (small) sampling of his work.
Photographs by Dan McMahon

Radish seedlings germinating
in petri dishes as part of a
biology experiment. Facing
page, bottom: Dorothy’s
Lunch, the famous Gambier
eatery and watering hole,
in a September 1950 photo
by noted Life magazine
photographer Eliot Elisofon
(1911-1973). The photo (which
didn’t run in the magazine) is
in Kenyon’s archives.

A detail from HillCrop
(2010), a sculpture
made of painted wood
and nails by Professor of
Art Barry Gunderson.

facing page, top: A
freshman beanie belonging
to the late William Kindle ’44,
donated to Kenyon by his son
Kyle Kindle ’76. this page:
An early copy of Reveille bears
Kenyon’s old seal, representing
the arts and sciences in a
Christian context. The seal
was used from at least the
1830s until 1909, when the
College created the current
seal, based on the Kenyon
family coat of arms.

A cadet’s uniform belonging
to Merlyn T. Ellison, who
attended the Kenyon
Military Academy in 1904-
05. Established in the 1870s,
the academy was tragically
destroyed by fire in 1906
and never reopened.

office houRs
Q
&
Burning
A
Ques¤ion
for fred baumann, professor of political science
With gridlock, polarization, and rancor hobbling American politics
as another presidential election year gets under way, some wonder
whether the country is facing something essentially new—a system
not just struggling but actually broken. The Bulletin called in one of
Kenyon’s most admired professors and astute political observers to
ask about the direness of the nation’s straits.
Is the Sky Falling?
Last summer the United States Congress went
through a show that resembled an absurdist
Perils of Pauline. Though everyone “knew” that
we couldn’t possibly be dumb enough to default
on our debt, it came down to almost the last
minute, with recalcitrant Congressmen being
whipped into line by their leaders to support a
hokey “solution” that merely promised another
round shortly. A fine emblem it was for the
world-wide suspicion that the United States has
become incapable of self-government.
The signs were easy to read: both mainstream
media and the blogs in a swivet of partisanship
and mutual denunciation, an administration
denounced by large sectors of public opinion for
being variously radically leftist and pathetically
moderate, but which responded with its own
high-minded if petulant demagoguery, and a
new conservative populist movement—at first
dismissed as “astroturf” by the liberal elite—that
revived a party thought shattered by the 2008
election into something even more cantankerous
than before. And now, finally, we may be
seeing the birth of the counter-populism of the
Left. Where now, the greybeards lamented, was
Robert Strauss, the genial Democratic dealmaker
of yore? Where are the aisle-crossing friendships
of Senators Hatch and Kennedy, or of Speaker
O’Neill and President Reagan?
It seems to me that there has indeed been a
ratchet effect operating in American politics ever
since the Vietnam War, moving toward greater
partisanship, lower tactics, less compromise,
more real anger and vengefulness, and above
all much greater vulgarity and stupidity.
(Remember General Betray-Us, or the accusations
of dual loyalty against members of the
Bush administration?) Project that into the
future, and a nation too angry and demoralized
to engage in self-government becomes a
real possibility. I found a warning sign in the
position of some of the Tea Party, encouraged
by Congresswoman Bachmann, in supporting
default on the debt. They were bitter-enders
because they were sure that any compromise
would be a deceit, i.e. they lacked confidence in
politics and ultimately in themselves. Pushed a
lot farther, this sort of self-doubt tends to lead to
the Man on Horseback.
It is important, though, to remember that
in the end, the representatives who identified
with the Tea Party actually did, for the most
part, come around to support the leadership
compromise. It was also a heartening sign that
the same representatives who thought they had
to take a tough line to please their constituents
got an earful when they got home about having
been obstructionist. So far I am more impressed
by the relative good sense and high morale of the
American people, and rather more worried by
the self-indulgence of the elites in making (and
ostentatiously resenting) accusations.
Yet, however degraded our communication
and compromise skills are, substantively
we are facing a real crisis of institutions and
expectations. The sharp edge is entitlements, the
promises that clearly can’t be kept indefinitely.
And it is no wonder that we don’t deal with them
but know that we have to. “We ought to, but we
don’t” is, after all, the human condition in sum.
Still, after the 2010 election a panel was held
at Kenyon at which I asked an expert colleague
if she thought there was any chance of compromise
on the debt before the 2012 election. Not
a chance, we agreed. From that point of view, a
rather more optimistic judgment is possible. We
have, after all, begun to address the big questions.
Both Bowles-Simpson and the Ryan plan
are out there. The debt ceiling theatrics, for all
their absurdity, point to an increasing, if very
grudging, commitment to do something about
deficits. One might want to see, in all our screaming
and posturing, the enormous American ship
of state turning, however slowly, away from the
whirlpool. (And then again, given the supercommittee
fiasco, maybe not.)
In sum, I think there are real dangers of the
kind of degeneration of our democracy into
the mob-and-ideologue politics that so many
philosophers have warned against. But we always
do everything with maximum noise and fuss.
So I am hopeful that under the surface we are
finally beginning to pay attention to business,
despite elites who have been OD-ing this past
half-century on righteous indignation, the most
toxic drug in the political pharmacopeia.

kenyon professors reflect on the life of the mind
musings
theodore buehrer ’91,
even laughter erupt as the rest of us “listen in”
on the ongoing conversation.
The baritone saxophonist, for example,
repeatedly dips into his growly register for a
low pitch—and the drummer begins to antici-
office houRs
pate, accenting each low honk with a shot
office houRs harmonic attack that releases the built-up
James D. and Cornelia W. Ireland Associate Professor of Music
Putting Jazz in its Place
There are no clubs in the cornfields, but Kenyon
produces transcendent jazz moments too
It sometimes feels peculiar leading
Kenyon’s jazz ensemble. I don’t mean that the
study of jazz shouldn’t have a place in academia.
On the contrary, the last fifty years have seen
an explosion of interest in jazz education, and
this is as it should be. Today, jazz is more widely
celebrated as an art form than at any time in
its history.
No, it has more to do with our distinctive
local culture. At Kenyon, we proudly embrace
our rural character: the countryside, the farms
and small towns, the local foods. Our musical
heritage, meanwhile, draws heavily on choral
traditions that perhaps reflect our roots in the
Episcopal Church. In addition, our immediate
surroundings have fed an interest in folk music,
as evidenced in the success of the Gambier Folk
Festival that ran from 1971 to 1996.
Louis Armstrong once astutely observed that
“all music is folk music . . . I ain’t never heard no
horse sing a song.” Wordplay aside, where does
jazz fit into the local picture? Jazz grew up not
amid rolling hills and cornfields but in bustling
urban centers like New Orleans, Chicago, and
New York. These cities remain the epicenters of
jazz activity in America today.
What place does jazz have at Kenyon College
in Gambier, Ohio?
Beyond the obvious educational value—a
liberal arts education should include this hugely
influential American art form, including its
history and cultural significance—I would point
to the participatory nature of jazz. When I lead
rehearsals, especially of smaller combos, they
can take the form of organized jam sessions,
where the students themselves generate song
lists and trade ideas in a collaborative way, as I
facilitate from the side.
It is for this reason that we (like most jazz
groups) practice in a circle, facing one another
rather than an imagined audience. Every musical
and visual cue can spark a spontaneous
response. On countless occasions, as a soloist
and rhythm section play together, smiles and
Isabel Da Silva Azevedo Drouyer
to the floor tom. The rest of the group nods
knowingly, as if to say: “He’s listening.”
The trombonist finishes his solo with neat
melodic lick—which the guitarist repeats as
she launches into her own improvisation, as if
to say: “He was good, but I can do that, too.”
Approving smiles all around.
A trumpeter’s sixteenth-note flourish
is answered on the snare drum, then pingponged
to an accompanying figure provided
by the pianist, culminating in a spontaneous
full-ensemble crescendo and melodic/
tension. These are transcendent moments for
jazz performers; they send chills down our
spines. It’s jazz at its best.
In jazz performance, students learn
first-hand Miles Davis’s axiom: “Do not fear
mistakes; there are none.” That’s a lesson
which extends far beyond the rehearsal studio.
This dynamic of participation and
response pulls in the audience, too. At our
concerts, we’re spurred on by enthusiastic
listeners who applaud after solos or give a
shout-out to an especially exciting musical
climax. Sometimes our players surprise their
friends with their improvisatory prowess
because it reveals a side of them that the other
students never knew.
Last fall, the Class of 2012 grooved to the
jazz and funk tunes provided by our jazz
combos during the Senior Soiree in the Great
Hall, and the players commented to me afterwards
about the energy and excitement
of performing for a crowd so engaged with
their music.
Whether in our concert halls, at class
parties, or on the bandstand at the Village
Inn, jazz contributes to the larger musical and
artistic culture at Kenyon by providing opportunities
for people to come together. To use
the words of Daniel Kemmis, who has written
eloquently about the value of community, jazz
enables people “to live well in a place.”
And what’s more important to Kenyon
than its shared sense of community? Maybe
jazz in Gambier isn’t so peculiar after all.

ook s
The Highest Frontier
By Joan Slonczewski /// Tor
In October of Jennifer Ramos Kennedy’s first
year at Frontera College, the college chaplain
says “by this time of year, students become
convinced that all they’ve experienced has
cosmic impact.” The descendant of two presidents,
Jenny bears the weight of great expectations
and also great tragedy: her beloved twin
brother drowned in an accident. In The Highest
Frontier, Joan Slonczewski’s seventh science
fiction novel, Jenny finds the strength to persevere
without her brother and to deal with an
interlocking set of circumstances leading up to
a dramatic presidential debate that indeed has
cosmic impact.
Neglected Voices
Katherine Hedeen and Victor Rodríguez-Núñez of
the Spanish faculty along with Janet McAdams of
the English faculty have continued to work with
Salt Publishing, editing the Earthworks Series of
indigenous writing and Latin American poetry in
translation. Salt recently published Blue Coyote with
Guitar, by Mexican poet Juan Bañuelos, and The
Bridges, by Cuban poet Fayad Jamís—both volumes
translated by Hedeen and Rodríguez-Núñez. For La
Cabra Ediciones, the two also translated, from English
into Spanish, a collection of poems by contemporary
Native American writers. The book, Poesía indígena
estadounidense contemporánea, includes a prologue and
a number of poems by McAdams.
McAdams, meanwhile, together with Kathryn
Walkiewicz ’03 and Geary Hobson, edited The People
Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing after Removal
(University of Oklahoma Press). The anthology, of
works in many genres, calls attention to a culture that
survived in the American Southeast even after the
Indian Removal Act of 1830.
Slonczewski, a member of Kenyon’s
biology faculty since 1984, offers an
intimate, detailed account of what
life might be like in college a century
from now, when college is located in
a revolving hub thousands of miles
above Earth’s troubled surface. This
is humanity’s new frontier, a physical
landscape that embodies the same
hope that Jenny herself represents.
Freshman year is a totally immersive
experience, and Slonczewski
relishes the details. There are fresh
delights on practically every page:
slanball, the game of mind force;
toynet, a “brainstream” successor to
our Internet; Jenny having to print out
Aristotle’s Politics, instead of scrolling
through the text in her toybox;
a system of funding government
in which citizens “play” their taxes
at casinos. (One $50,000 wager at
roulette covers Jenny’s obligations for
a quarter.) We hear that one of Jenny’s friends attends “virtual University
of Miami, in a toyworld that re-created the submerged city. The real
Miamians had long since fled, most to Havana.” Slonczewski’s world is
built out of these witty, ironic extrapolations from where we are today.
Is The Highest Frontier a roman à clef? Slonczewski gives us plenty to
chew on. The president’s surname is Chase—but it’s Dylan, not Philander.
It’s Buckeye Trail, not Middle Path, but still there’s “gravel crunching
beneath . . . shoes.” There are no frats at Frontera, but the college of
the future has “motor clubs” that serve the purpose. (The Ferraris are
especially troublesome.) It’s Mount Gilead, not Mount Vernon, but the
contrast between the liberal campus and conservative community is just
as stark.
Dylan’s own son says that outsiders view the elite institution as “a
raft full of hedonistic rich kids,” but Jenny isn’t the only rich kid who
volunteers to build houses and go on runs with the local rescue squad.
Insufficient facilities force college precinct voters to stand in line for hours
before they can cast ballots. All this—and the biology professor who’s
involved in one mess or another—might seem very familiar to our Kenyon
community.
Ultimately, though, the question of whether Frontera is Kenyon is
immaterial, much less interesting than the lovely portrayal of the college
itself. One hundred years from now, Frontera students are still examining
DNA and RNA, and still discussing Aristotle and Plato. College presidents
are welcoming freshmen to an institution that, however flawed, sees
wisdom as the highest frontier and continues to believe that education
is “the highest calling of the human race.” It’s an optimistic call, and in
Slonczewski’s hands, it’s irresistible.
—Jim Huang, Kenyon Bookstore manager

Answering Ovid
recent books by Kenyon authors
Michael Berryhill ’67, The
Trials of Eroy Brown: The Murder Case That
Shook the Texas Prison System (University
of Texas Press). Chair of the journalism
program at Texas Southern University,
Berryhill recounts the story of a Texas
prisoner who killed two prison officials,
pleaded self-defense, and finally won
acquittal—but who remained in jail. “It was
a tragedy that needn’t have happened,”
writes Berryhill, “but it also became a
signal moment in the history of prison civil
rights, revealing everything that can go
wrong in prisons.”
Sarah Blick and Laura D. Gelfand,
editors, Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and
Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval
and Renaissance Art (Brill). Two volumes
offer essays on “the layered relationships
. . . between devotional objects and those
who interacted with them.” Blick is a
member of Kenyon’s art history faculty.
Simone Dubrovic and Daniela
De Pau, editors, Zoom d’Oltreoceano:
Istantanee sui registi Italiani e sull’Italia
(Vecchiarelli Editore). Dubrovic, of the
Italian faculty, and his co-editor have
assembled interviews with leading Italian
film directors, by Italian scholars working
in the U.S. The aim is to engage these two
perspectives in an exploration of Italian
identity and a changing Italy.
Larry Enright ’72, A King in
a Court of Fools. In this enjoyable novel
of 1950s America, Enright spins out the
adventures of sixth-grader Tom Ryan and
his “gang,” as told by little brother Harry.
Klondike bars, drive-in movies, Isaly’s
dairy store, and
a baseball mitt
signed by Bill
Mazeroski—
they’re all here.
Emily King ’87, Field Tested:
Recruiting, Managing, and Retaining Veterans
(American Management Association). A
seasoned organizational
consultant,
King is also a
veteran—a veteran,
that is, in studying
the nature of
military and civilian
leadership and the
unique challenges
involved in making
the transition from
the military realm to the civilian workplace.
Her book guides civilian managers, human
resource professionals, and other executives
through the process of recruiting veterans—
and retaining them.
Thomas D. LaBaugh ’64,
The Wins of Change. An executive coach,
LaBaugh has seen many careers derailed
by poor “management style.” His book
offers practical advice and proven tools for
avoiding “bad behavior” and developing
leadership.
Victor Rodríguez-Núñez,
Tareas (Renacimiento). Based on trips back
to his native Cuba, this long poem won
Spain’s prestigious Rincón de la Victoria
International Poetry Prize. Tareas (homework)
is about “memory, place, and cultural
identity,” Rodríguez-Núñez, a Spanish faculty
member, has said.
Clara Román-Odio and
Marta Sierra, editors, Transnational
Borderlands in Women’s Global Networks:
The Making of Cultural Resistance (Palgrave
Macmillan). Globalization has posed
challenges to feminism as well as to the
established orders (whether political or
cultural) that feminism has often opposed.
Román-Odio and Sierra, both of Kenyon’s
Spanish faculty, have assembled ten essays
that explore these challenges.
Jessica Savitz ’00, Hunting
Is Painting (Lake Forest College Press).
“Siesta time in sultry summer,” wrote Ovid,
opening one of the poems in Amores. “I lay
relaxed on the divan.”
“ ‘Happy hour’ in harsh winter,” writes
Professor of English Jennifer Clarvoe, “You
hunch, tense, at your desk.”
Clarvoe’s newest poetry collection,
Counter-Amores (University of Chicago
Press), includes a section with twelve poems
that “engage in call-and-response” with the
ancient Roman’s lyrics on love and sex.
Playful, richly suggestive, and finely crafted,
Clarvoe’s poems talk back to Ovid’s, often
twisting situations and reversing roles.
Ovid’s speaker gazes at his lover “On the
loose in a short dress, / long hair parted
and tumbling past the pale neck.” Clarvoe’s
proclaims herself “buttoned up / pinned up,
wound up, just to make you / work hard at
the work at hand . . . .”
Here, and in the other poems in this,
Clarvoe’s second collection, she makes the
work at hand seem effortless.
Reflecting on this
poetry collection,
Savitz has said,
“I feel liberated
thinking about how
poetry relates to our
relationship to the
animal world, to the
roots of things, to
primitive people, to
the first fire—and I
wanted to explore these ideas.” Savitz was
the first winner of the Madeleine P. Plonsker
Emerging Writer’s Residency Prize at Lake
Forest College.
Edward Schortman and
Patricia Urban, Networks of Power:
Political Relations in the Late Postclassic
Naco Valley, Honduras (University Press
of Colorado). Based on the extensive
archaeological work done by anthropology
professors Schortman and Urban along with
Kenyon students as part of the Kenyon-
Honduras Program, this book reconstructs
the “fragile hierarchical structure” of Naco
Valley society prior to the Spanish conquest.
Wendy Singer, Independent India
1947-2000 (Pearson). Most histories of India
stop before independence. Singer, of Kenyon’s
history faculty, takes up the story from there,
examining political change and social movements
as well as the arts and culture in this
dynamic world power.
Mark E. Sullivan ’68, The Military
Divorce Handbook (American Bar Association).
This is the second edition of Sullivan’s complete
guide for lawyers handling domestic cases
involving service members, military retirees,
and their families.
Stephen C. Volz, African Teachers
on the Colonial Frontier: Tswana Evangelists
and Their Communities during the Nineteenth
Century (Peter Lang). A history professor at
Kenyon, Volz re-examines the colonial encounter
between Europeans and Africans, focusing
on the role of African converts to Christianity,
often the sons of chiefs who became preachers.
Colonization was not a simple process of
oppression, he argues, but entailed a period of
give-and-take.

class nOTES
1930s
’33-’39 Kenyon College
Office of Public Affairs
College Relations Center
Gambier, Ohio 43022-9623
bulletin@kenyon.edu
Davy H. McCall is chairman
of the Historic Preservation
Commission of Kent County,
Maryland.
’44
William S. Rowley Jr. ’34, Rio Verde,
Arizona, celebrated his ninety-ninth
birthday on March 23, 2011. Bill says
he is looking forward to turning one
hundred!
1940s
’40 Kenyon College
Office of Public Affairs
College Relations Center
Gambier, Ohio 43022-9623
bulletin@kenyon.edu
’41 Richard H. Stevens
812 Clifton Hills Terrace
Cincinnati, Ohio 45220
rhsteve@fuse.net
’42 Kenyon College
Office of Public Affairs
College Relations Center
Gambier, Ohio 43022-9623
bulletin@kenyon.edu
’43 Philip T. Doughten
204 Gooding Avenue, Northwest
New Philadelphia, Ohio 44663
pdoughten@roadrunner.com
Carl Djerassi, San Francisco,
California, received honorary
doctor of science degrees from
the University of Heidelberg in
Germany and the University of
Porto in Portugal. The latter was
awarded on the occasion of the
Portuguese premiere of his play
Phallacy. In November, a Portuguese
premiere of his play Calculus was
performed in Coimbra, and his
play Oxygen (written with Roald
Hoffmann) will have performances
in German in Zurich, Fribourg,
Vienna, and Berlin. A Czechlanguage
premiere in Prague and a
French-language tour in Brittany
are also being performed as part of
the celebrations of the International
Year of Chemistry. Carl commutes
between San Francisco, London,
and Vienna and, even though now
emeritus professor at Stanford,
still teaches there during the winter
quarter. His newest book, Foreplay,
was published simultaneously in
English, German, and Spanish in
March 2011.
’44 Kenyon College
Office of Public Affairs
College Relations Center
Gambier, Ohio 43022-9623
bulletin@kenyon.edu
Davy H. McCall is living comfortably
at Heron Point, a retirement
community near Chestertown,
Maryland. He is active in local
historic preservation and is
chairman of the Kent County
Historic Preservation Commission.
Davy has taught a course in
Chestertown’s architectural history
at the Washington College continuing
education program and has
given talks on the local War of 1812
Battle of Caulk’s Field, particularly
British commander Sir Peter Parker.
’45 H. Noyes Spelman
1630 Post Road East, Unit 202
Westport, Connecticut 06880
noyesspelman@gmail.com
’46 Kenyon College
Office of Public Affairs
College Relations Center
Gambier, Ohio 43022-9623
bulletin@kenyon.edu
Kenneth W. Brooks, Merrimack,
New Hampshire, tells us that he
is keeping in touch with Donald
S. Benny ’48, James B. Persons
’44, John C. Gregory ’51, William M.
Marshall ’48, Don R. Clark ’50, and
Lee V. Schermerhorn ’51. Crawford S.
Brown, Potomac, Maryland, has
been keeping in contact with two
wonderful Delta Phi fraternity
brothers, Kennneth W. Brooks and
James C. Niederman. Charles H. Porter,
Lake Barrington, Illinois, married
Ann Evanson on January 3, 2011.

Ann is a wonderful woman whom
he met through bridge games at
Lake Barrington Shores. Chuck was
eighty-six at the time, and Ann was
almost eighty. They surprised many
of their bridge and tennis friends.
In May, after many good years
with few major physical problems,
Chuck finally had an operation and
some serious trips to the hospital.
He is gradually recovering, but it’s
taking much longer than he had
expected.
’47-’49 Kenyon College
Office of Public Affairs
College Relations Center
Gambier, Ohio 43022-9623
bulletin@kenyon.edu
Donald S. Benny ’48, Montrose,
Colorado, and his wife, Elizabeth,
are currently living in a retirement
community in southwestern
Colorado and are both doing well.
1950s
’50 Louis S. Whitaker
Wheeling, West Virginia
Don R. Clark, Roswell, New Mexico,
is still participating in Senior
Olympics on the state level in
swimming, tennis, and volleyball.
He tells us he is still working parttime
as well.
’51 Douglas W. Downey
Northbrook, Illinois
d-downey@sbcglobal.net
’52 Richard D. Sawyer
Nokomis, Florida
mlgsawyer@aol.com
Frederick C. Neidhardt, Tucson,
Arizona, tells us he has completed
an exhilarating three-year term on
the Kenyon Alumni Council. He
writes, “I saw anew the college that
had been a monastery of scholasticism
on the Hill during my life
there from 1948-52. Without losing
any of the virtues of the Kenyon
experience from those ancient days,
the College has morphed into a
remarkable new place to enrich the
lives of young men and women.”
Fred states that his experience on
the council would have been a joy
to any alumni of his era whether
or not they have maintained close
contact with the College.
’53 Arthur “Bill” Sprague Jr.
La Grange, Illinois
awsprague@sbcglobal.net
’54 Richard R. Tryon
Frankfort, Michigan
keepontryon32@me.com
Nicholas Crome, Bloomington,
Indiana, reports that he has three
children and eight grandchildren.
His oldest daughter, Althea, has
invented a new type of artwork
which can be seen at bugknits.com.
Nick also tells us that his former
wife, Nancy, won a gold medal at
the senior rowing championship in
Poland. Theodore N. Lynch relocated
to Houston, Texas, to be with family
in August 2010.
’55 B. Allen McCormick
Indianapolis, Indiana
bamccormick1@att.net
William E. Smart Jr. has moved to the
Bronx, New York, to a place called
Amalgamated Housing, started in
1927 by Sidney Hillman, founder
of the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers Union. PBS did a program
on it a couple of years ago called
Living in Utopia. Bill was on the
waiting list for eight years to get in,
and he writes, “As a WASP, I am in
the minority here, and it feels great
(for an old Tolstoyan like me).”
’56 Christian Schoenleb
Phoenix, Arizona
eschoenleb@cox.net
’57 Donald A. Fischman
State College, Pennsylvania
donaldfischman@gmail.com
Henry J. Steck
Homer, New York
henry.steck@cortland.edu
Vernon Powell “Woody” Bliss,
Montague, Massachusetts, writes,
“I am truly aghast at the extremism
and irresponsibility of the
Republican party as it permits
its Tea Party fanatics to push our
country into divisiveness and social
regression. I am contemplating this
sad reality and looking forward
to working hard for President
Obama’s re-election.”
’58 Adolph Faller III
Olmsted Falls, Ohio
afaller@sbcglobal.net
’59 William Harley Henry
Grinnell, Iowa
harleyhen@iowatelecom.net
Donald Bomann Jr.
Stamford, Connecticut
realty3@aol.com
Reverend Canon Jeremy W. Bond,
Grover Beach, California, is
enjoying retirement life along the
California coast, with the ocean
only a mile away. He hopes to visit
Gambier for his fifty-fifth reunion
in 2014.
1960s
’60 Robert G. Heasley
Gambier, Ohio
bpheas@ecr.net
J. Thomas Moore, Stillwater,
Oklahoma, reports that he has
advanced macular degeneration in
both eyes.
’61 R. Hutchins Hodgson Jr.
Cumming, Georgia
hhodgson@hotmail.com
Major Robert H. Broestler, Fairfield,
California, tells us that after
twenty-three years in the Air Force
and twenty-two years in real estate,
he is enjoying retirement and travel.
John C. Clark tells us he is preparing,
in earnest, for his eleventh season
of umpiring (refereeing) women’s
lacrosse in Virginia at Division III,
high school, and junior high levels.
Gene E. Curry reports that he and
eight members of the Bexley Hall
School of Theology Class of 1961
met in Gambier for their fifty-year
reunion. The group held a service of
Holy Eucharist at the Church of the
Holy Spirit on Kenyon’s campus,
then joined for meals and discussion
at the Harcourt Parish House.
Herbert H. Winkler, Mobile, Alabama,
has just retired and is now a professor
emeritus at the University of
South Alabama.
’62 Jonathan S. Katz
Gene E. Curry joined eight
other members of the Bexley
Hall Class of 1961 in Gambier
for their fifty-year reunion.
’61

class nOTES
Newton, Massachusetts
telcomman@hotmail.com
William P. Russell
St. Charles, Illinois
bigo2060@comcast.net
Colonel Edward L. Chase and his wife,
Eben, split their year between their
non-working farm in Pittsfield,
Maine, and their RV in Titusville,
Florida. Ed writes, “The myriad of
‘honey-do’s’ I am assigned in Maine
is payment for all the golf I play in
Florida. Sadly, all the golf I play does
not translate to good golf.” Ed looks
forward to seeing many of you in
May.
’63 Neal M. Mayer
Millsboro, Delaware
mmayer@mindspring.com
Calvin S. Frost
Lake Forest, Illinois
cfrost@channeledresources.com
Neal M. Mayer and his wife, Jane, are
delighted to report that their sixth
grandson (and twelfth grandchild),
John Elliott Rachwalski, was born
last May. John Elliott is the nephew
of Amy L. Mayer ’92 and cousin of
Tiffany C. Steckler ’88. Neal reports
that after four years of playing golf,
he finally broke one hundred on
July 29, 2011. He is looking forward
to his class reunion in May 2013.
Neal and Jane reside in Millsboro,
Delaware.
’64 Joel D. Kellman
Huntington Woods, Michigan
bjkellman@comcast.net
David A. Schmid
Norwell, Massachusetts
davidschmid_dds@hotmail.com
James W. Atkinson, Mason,
Michigan, writes, “Having retired
from the zoology department at
Michigan State, I’ve begun putting
full time into my art career.” James
is currently involved in three exhibitions,
two in Lansing’s Old Town
(gallery 1212) and one at the Gallery
Project in Ann Arbor. James is
also represented on the web at
www.jwatkinsonart.artspan.com.
Michael A. Claggett, Paris, France,
is now a partner in CH&C, a new
agency start-up based in Paris. He
tells us he also teaches masters
level students at Sciences Po and
I’Université Paris Dauphine,
swims three or four times a week,
bikes around Paris, travels around
Europe, and enjoys cooking and
wine. Frank W. Munger Jr. married
Karen Sherman in July 2010 in New
York City’s Central Park. Karen is
a lawyer for nonprofits specializing
in the development of affordable
housing and related projects in
New York. Frank and Karen live in
New York City.
david lamb
We could have been
a state park.
Kenyon is Philander Chase’s first college. His second,
Jubilee College in Illinois, closed in 1862, and today the
site is a state park. Now, a state park is a wonderful
thing, but wouldn’t it be sad to go camping next to
the ruins of Peirce Hall? You can help Philander’s first
college thrive by remembering Kenyon in your estate
or retirement plan.
Please call or e-mail us for more information.
contact: Kyle W. Henderson ’80, JD
Director of Development and Planned Giving
740-427-5729 or 1-800-KENYONC
hendersonk@kenyon.edu
Bequests ∙ Charitable Gift Annuities ∙ Charitable Lead Trusts ∙ Charitable Remainder Trusts ∙ Retirement
Plan Gifts
Fall 2011 Kenyon college alumni bulletin 46

’69
’65 Thomas R. Sant
Hilliard, Ohio
tsant@bricker.com
Frederick McGavran
Cincinnati, Ohio
fmcgavran@fuse.net
James Miller
North Baltimore, Ohio
Millers45872@peoplepc.com
Aaron R. Burke, Vandalia, Ohio, is
still working half-time at Wright-
Patterson Air Force Base Materials
Laboratory, doing basic research
in chemistry, after retiring from
Mound Lab, a Department of
Energy facility, in 2000. Aaron and
his wife, Anne, travel extensively,
especially since they have grandchildren
in San Diego and Stockholm.
Douglas L. Schmucker, Bolinas,
California, tells us that after nearly
forty years at the research bench, he
recently closed his laboratory and
retired as a senior career research
scientist at the San Francisco VA
Medical Center and as professor in
the School of Medicine, University
of California-San Francisco, but he
was recalled by the university one
month later. He continues to direct
the first eight weeks of the medical
school curriculum, teach first- and
second-year medical students, and
participate in university administration.
He tells us that this has
permitted him to spend more time
pursuing various projects at home,
to fish and surf, and to travel with
his wife, Joan, to Europe, Australia,
New Zealand, and Eastern Africa in
the past three years. Any classmates
traveling in the Bay Area are invited
to contact Doug for a “reunion”
“I plan on
retiring
two years
after I die.”
—John J. Fallat
(douglas.schmucker@ucsf.edu).
Doug also hopes to attend the fiftieth
class reunion. Jeffery S. Tullman,
New York, reports that he is happy
to still be working fifty to sixty
hours per week and is in no view of
retirement. Jeff also tells us that he
is looking forward to spending time
with friends at his Kenyon fiftieth
reunion in 2015.
’66 Jack Buckley
College Station, Texas
jackbuckleyjr@earthlink.net
’67 Thomas Lockard
Gambier, Ohio
lockardtom@gmail.com
Dennis O’Connell
Peculiar, Missouri
Dennis.oconnell@gsa.gov
Nathan Parker
New York, New York
nathan@nathanparker.com
Michael K. Berryhill, Houston, Texas,
reports that his new book, The
Trials of Eroy Brown, The Murder
Case that Shook the Texas Prison
System, was published in October
by the University of Texas Press.
He describes the book as being
about three murder trials wrapped
up in a civil rights trial. Stephen G.
Stonehouse, Calabasas, California,
was delighted to be on campus in
August to place his daughter Olivia
into the class of 2015. Steve says the
best was after two months when she
called to say, “Now I know why you
love this place, Dad.” Steve writes,
“I am here at Family Weekend and
the place is special.” He hopes to
see a bunch of his class at this year’s
reunion.
’68 Howard B. Edelstein
Shaker Heights, Ohio
hbe@edelsteinfinancial.com
Reverend Carl H. Beasley III, Colora,
Maryland, was received as an
associate member of the Episcopal
Carmel of St. Teresa of Avila in
Rising Sun, Maryland, on July 16,
Sara Anne Washam Cody
is in her thirty-fifth year of
teaching Latin.
2011. Timothy R. Holder, Herndon,
Virginia, writes, “As Arctic liaison
for the United States Department
of Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management, I continue to be
involved with the Alaskan Arctic
and affairs of the eight-nation Arctic
Council. Issues focus on balancing
off-shore oil and gas development
with protecting all aspects of the
environment including the human
element. The Kenyon lessons of
critical thinking, writing skills,
and looking at the big picture have
served me well throughout my
career.” Mark E. Sullivan, Raleigh,
California, spent a weekend in
September in Washington, D.C.,
on the drafting committee of the
Uniform Deployed Parents Custody
Act. The act is being written for
the Uniform Law Commission,
a national organization which
proposes model laws for states
to enact. The second edition of
Mark’s book, The Military Divorce
Handbook, came out in August.
’69 Christopher “Kit” Marty
Medina, Ohio
kitmarty@zoominternet.net
David B. Bell, Burke, Virginia, is
happily slipping into retirement.
Dave and his wife, Mary, spend
the warmer months on Cape Cod,
where friends and family, including
their five grandchildren, keep them
busy. Dave and Mary recently celebrated
their fortieth anniversary.
James W. Biddle, Atlanta, Georgia,
writes, “Since I have retired from
the CDC, killing little bugs, I have
worked for my son killing big bugs,
sometimes with little bugs.” John
J. Fallat, Fircrest, Washington, says,
“I plan on retiring two years after I
die.” He tells us he is presently the
head of school at NOVA School in
Olympia, Washington.
1970s
’70 Michael Hill
Napa, California
miguelado@gmail.com
Robert C. Boruchowitz, Seattle,
Washington, tells us that he continues
to teach at Seattle University
School of Law, where he also directs
The Defender Initiative, working
on improving public defense
services and reforming the criminal
and juvenile justice systems.
’71 Richard S. Alper
Bethesda, Maryland
rsalperesq@gmail.com
Jonathan C. Boyd, Waite Hill,
Ohio, is happily working for the
Cleveland Clinic after nineteen
years in the private practice of urology.
Jon tells us that he runs into
Jon M. Rainey almost every week,
caring for a common patient.
’72 Douglas G. Holbrook
New York, New York
dholbrook2@nyc.rr.com
Lawrence P. Enright, Barnsboro,
New Jersey, published his second
novel, A King in a Court of Fools,
’75

class nOTES
on September 10, 2011. Larry tells
us that this one is a lighthearted
nostalgia piece about growing up
in the 50s. He first published it as
a free serial on the Internet from
April through August and several
thousand folks read it weekly. Larry
writes, “For my classmates too
cheap to spend ninety-nine cents on
an eBook, I recorded each chapter
theatrically and left it out there
for free. Check larryenright.net for
details.”
’73 Marcia Barr Abbott
Greenwich, Connecticut
Mbabbot2@aol.com
Carol Eyler
Northfield, Minnesota
ceyler@carleton.edu
Amy Goodwin Aldrich is enjoying
life in beautiful Washington, D.C.
She is not quite an empty nester;
her son Adam is a junior at Maret
School in Washington, and Dan is
a junior at Washington University
in St. Louis. Amy’s husband of
twenty-five years, Bob, is a telecom
attorney. Amy tells us that she
recently connected with Maria C.
Halton and is keeping in contact
with Julie Miller Vick, Leonie Silverman
Deutsch, and Gay Garth Legg via
Facebook. Cathi Sonneborn Gilmore,
Waban, Massachusetts, tells us that
on a glorious July weekend, she and
Lauren Elliott Woolcott, Ann Ritchey
Sugrue Kransdorf, and Laurie Bingham
Sherwood celebrated their sixtieth
birthdays at her Martha’s Vineyard
house. They reminisced, laughed,
walked on the beach, and in general
had a great reunion. Cathi writes,
“Turning sixty is great, when one
can do it amongst dear, long-term
friends.” Shirley J. Leow, Philomath,
Oregon, returned to a liberal-artsstyle
learning environment and
completed a doctorate of the arts
in leadership degree this spring at
Franklin Pierce University in New
Hampshire. The last two years of
doctoral seminars were a challenge
as she flew from west to east coast.
Shirley writes, “Four decades after
Kenyon, I’ve now written a dissertation,
enjoyed it, but am really looking
forward to my first free summer
in six years. Come see beautiful
Oregon.”
’74 Stuart H. Anness
Cincinnati, Ohio
sanness@cincinnatieye.com
David H. Brown
Kettering, Ohio
dhbrown@woh.rr.com
Judge O’Malley Presiding
’79
You won’t find many thirteen-year-old girls
who dream of being a federal judge.
But once Kathleen O’Malley ’79 decided on a
judicial career as a young teenager, she pursued that
dream until she made it reality.
“My parents thought I was nuts,” O’Malley said.
They asked, what happened to being a nurse?”
O’Malley was appointed to the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Federal Circuit by President Obama in
2010. This was after serving sixteen years on the U.S.
District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, where
she handled several high-profile public corruption and
mob-related cases.
The journey started when she read the book Gideon’s
Trumpet as a young teenager growing up in Richmond
Heights, Ohio. The book is the true story of the landmark
1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Gideon vs.
Wainwright, which stated that courts have to provide
attorneys to defendants unable to afford to them.
“I was fascinated with the whole process of how
the Supreme Court justices worked, and how a letter
from a poor defendant could spark a massive change
in the law,” O’Malley said.
With her career path clear, she followed in the steps
of her two older brothers—Kevin McDonald ’75 and
Brian McDonald ’77—by graduating from Kenyon. She
completed a double major in economics and history,
going on to earn a law degree
from Case Western Reserve
University. She then went into
private practice, where she
focused on complex patent and
intellectual property issues.
After she did a stint in the
Ohio attorney general’s office,
James E. Breece III, Evanston,
Illinois, reports that he continues
to travel extensively in Asia. He
also collects Chinese art, particularly
ceramics, which may be seen
mostly in the Milwaukee Museum
of Art, the Birmingham Museum of
Art, and the Honolulu Academy of
Art. Jim also mentions that he has a
recent grandson, Greyson Theodore
Breece, son of James E. Breece IV
’04 and Sabina Theodore Breece ’02.
Karla Hay Diserens and Robert C.
Diserens ’76, Bronxville, New York,
visited campus in August as their
younger son, Charles F. Diserens ’15,
moved into Gund Hall and began
his freshman year. Karla tells us the
report after week one was, “This is
nothing like high school... everyone
is nice and smart and cool!” Both
Karla and Bob remembered all
over again why they love Kenyon.
Peter Smagorinsky, Athens, Georgia,
had a research article featured in
the National Council of Teachers
President Bill Clinton appointed O’Malley to
the District Court in 1994. There she presided
over big cases like that of a former Mahoning County
prosecutor who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate
the federal racketeering statute after taking bribes in a
case-fixing scheme.
At the Court of Appeals, O’Malley puts to use her
background in patent and intellectual property law.
One current case, for example, will decide whether
graphics chip maker Nvidia infringed on another
company’s patents for controlling and managing the
flow of computer data to and from a chip’s memory.
Her career has been marked with many firsts. She
was President Clinton’s youngest female appointee to
the federal bench when she was named to the District
Court. She was the first judge on the Federal Circuit
to have previous experience as a District Court judge.
And in 1995 she was the first Kenyon alumna to be the
Commencement speaker.
Not everything has gone according to plan for
O’Malley. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and
began chemotherapy the same week Obama nominated
her to the Court of Appeals.
“Cancer changes you, there’s no doubt about that,”
she said. “I’m lucky because I am a survivor. In many
ways, I think I was changed for the better.
“I don’t get insulted as easily and I don’t take
offense at criticism. There are
always people critical of the
decisions we make on the
Appeals Court, and my experience
with breast cancer has led
me to let much of that criticism
just roll right off my back.”
—Jeff Grabmeier

’83
William S. Spann is the new
chief executive officer of the
International Premium Cigar & Pipe
Retailer Association.
of English centennial issue of
English Journal. In the article, Peter
comments on the teaching life in
English language arts and his learning
and experience at Kenyon.
’75 Mary Kay Karzas
Culver, Indiana
karzasm@sbcglobal.net
Donna Bertolet Poseidon
Shaker Heights, Ohio
dp129088@ncr.com
Maria Muto-Porter
Phoenix, Arizona
mutomgt@cox.net
Sara Anne “Sally” Washam Cody,
Portland, Maine, is now in her
thirty-fifth year teaching Latin
at Thornton Academy, a private
school which also serves as the
public high school to local students
in Saco, Maine. This year she
has 136 students in five sections
of Latin, and a colleague teaches
two sections of Latin and one
of Homeric Greek. Sally writes,
“Needless to say, we are busy
with the classics.” Margery Artley
Hoffman, Lusby, Maryland, reports
that she has retired. Constance A.
Howes, Providence, Rhode Island,
president and chief executive officer
of Women & Infants Hospital of
Rhode Island, has been included
by Becker’s Hospital Review in
their annual list, 291 Hospital and
Health System Leaders to Know.
The list recognizes individuals
leading prominent American health
care organizations. Frank A. Porter,
Audubon, New Jersey, reports
that his older daughter, Elizabeth,
graduated from Boston University
last spring and is currently doing
research at the University of
Massachusetts while working
toward her master’s degree. His
younger daughter, Caitlin, is a
sophomore at Catholic University.
’76 Janet Byrne Smith
Englewood, New Jersey
janet@byrnesmith.com
’77 Laurence G. Bousquet
Syracuse, New York
lgbousquet@earthlink.net
Denese Fink Giordano
West Hempstead, New York
denese.giordano@gmail.com
Diane K. Braunstein, Silver Springs,
Maryland, received the 2011
Service to America Medal for
Citizen Services. Conferred by the
nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership
for Public Service, the award
recognizes federal employees for
significant contributions to the
nation. Diane was recognized for
her role in designing and implementing
a program that fast-tracks
the approval of federal disability
benefits. To date, one hundred
thousand people have received
expedited approval for disability
benefits under the program. James
T. Hazzard, Stafford, Virginia, tells
us that he has retired and is looking
forward to pursuing Italian and
Swahili language studies, travel,
photography, and cooking classes.
’78 John Klein
Mattawan, Michigan
John.klein@mpcmason.com
’79 Daniel A. Gulino
Mary Ann Gulino
Athens, Ohio
mgulino@nbia.org
Edmund A. Hartt, Lincolnville, Maine,
reports that he is on three school
boards: Lincolnville Central School
Committee, the Camden-Rockport
School Committee, and the
Region 8 Vocational School Board.
Edmund is also the chairman of
two of the boards mentioned.
Kristin Olsen Kiser, Chevy Chase,
Maryland, reports that her daughter,
Kelsey A. Kiser ’14, is now in her
sophomore year at Kenyon.
1980s
’80 Griffin Fry
Atlanta, Georgia
griffin.fry@comcast.net
Karl J. Shefelman, New York City,
informs us that he has been working
as a story board and conceptual
illustrator in the film business for
almost twenty years in New York.
He is in the process of developing
two feature films that he wrote
to direct. Karl writes, “It is a long
road to get an independent film
made.” One of them, Looking for
the Jackalope, was scheduled to be
shot partly on the Kenyon campus
this past summer (after the Josh
Radnor film wrapped) but has been
pushed to next summer. It will
also shoot in New York and New
Jersey over the course of the year.
Just recently he shot a fundraising
trailer for the film. Over half the
cast and crew were Kenyon alumni.
Karl’s other feature film, The
Hunters, is a much bigger project set
in West Africa.
’81 David Rose
Richmond, Virginia
drose@investdavenport.com
Merrill Robinson Peterson, Beverly
Hills, Michigan, reports that
she married her husband, Peter,
in 2006. Merrill has two sons,
Cameron Seichter, who is currently
a junior attending Miami of Ohio,
and Conrad Seichter, who is a
graduate of DePaul University
and is currently looking for a job
in finance. Merrill tells us she
attended her thirtieth Kenyon
reunion last May and had a great
time. Brett Pierce, Freeport, Maine,
reports that he has been working
on a new television series about
Iraqi youth for the United States
Institute of Peace. The series is
titled Salam Shabab, which translates
to Children of Peace.
’82 Myles Alderman Jr.
West Hartford, Connecticut
myles.alderman@alderman.com
Alison J. Black is continuing
her quest to run a marathon
in all fifty states.
’91

class nOTES
Kodiak Moments
’91
Peter S. Austin, Hingham,
Massachusetts, was hired to lead
T. Rowe Price’s newly created Fixed
Income Solutions Group. Peter
says he hopes to be in Gambier for
his thirtieth reunion and that he
has gotten one child through college
and has four more to go.
’83 Reid W. Click
Washington, D.C.
rclick@gwu.edu
Gregg O. Courtad
Canton, Ohio
courtago@mountunion.edu
David F. Stone
Birmingham, Michigan
dstone1@us.ibm.com
William S. Spann, Tallahassee,
Florida, reports that The
International Premium Cigar &
Pipe Retailer Association, based
in Columbus, Georgia, has named
him its new chief executive officer.
Bill was introduced to the association
at its 79th Annual Convention
and International Trade Show held
this past July in Las Vegas, Nevada.
’84 Beverly Sutley
Tyrone, Pennsylvania
bxb35@psu.edu
Susan Opatrny Althans, Pepper Pike,
Ohio, reports that her son Arthur J.
Althans III ’13, known as “Trace,” is
currently a junior at Kenyon.
’85 Laura A. Plummer
Bloomington, Indiana
lplummer@indiana.edu
Harvey M. Stephens
Springfield, Illinois
hmstephens@bhslaw.com
Susan Berger
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
sberger@pepcleve.org
Mary Marolf Bosworth, Dublin,
Ohio, reports that she is working
part-time, going to two different
nursing homes in Columbus, Ohio,
to provide individual counseling
for the residents. Mary keeps very
busy with her three active children,
Rachel (fifteen), Ryan (twelve), and
Anna (nine).
’86 John Keady
Oakland, California
jkeads@aol.com
’87 Stephen McCoy
Riverdale, New York
steve@alumni.kenyon.edu
’88 Patricia Rossman Skrha
Cleveland, Ohio
pskrha@bw.edu
Leland A. Alper, Hardwick, Vermont,
tells us he continues to labor as a
gardener in the wilds of Vermont.
He is also finding time to paint
and sculpt. Everyone is welcome
to contact him. Christopher E.
Schmidt-Nowara has accepted a new
position as a professor of history
and Prince of Asturias Chair in
Spanish Culture and Civilization at
Tufts University and will be living
right by the campus, in Somerville,
Massachusetts. Chris has also
published a new book, Slavery,
Freedom, and Abolition in Latin
America and the Atlantic World
(University of New Mexico Press).
Details are available on the publisher’s
Web site, www.unmpress.com.
’89 Andrea L. Bucey-Tikkanen
Hudson, Ohio
andreabucey@roadrunner.com
Joan O’Hanlon Curry
Ossining, New York
gijoan9@aol.com
When John Dunlop ’91 was a student DJ at Kenyon in the
late 1980s and early 1990s, Nirvana was touring behind
their debut album Bleach and Kurt Cobain was still very
much alive. But the dark music didn’t lead him toward
punk nihilism.
Twenty years after graduation, he lives on Kodiak Island, Alaska, and is the
Very Reverend John Dunlop, dean of the Saint Herman Theological Seminary,
and instructor of liturgics and theology. He
doesn’t dismiss punk, though.
“Punk music expressed dissatisfaction
with ‘normal’ life. It peered beneath the
plastic veneer of middle class life to expose
hidden truths,” Dunlop said.
“Many ‘punks’ have a great desire to
lay down their life for a higher cause and
to serve God and their fellow man. They
truly and deeply hunger and thirst for the
transcendent. Sadly, some never find
transcendent truth but end in nihilism and
self-destruction. They are thirsty souls
which never found water.”
Dunlop’s own quest for truth began at
Kenyon, where he majored in English, writing a senior thesis on T.S. Eliot’s
spiritual journey from nihilism to highly traditional Christianity. “My path,” said
Dunlop, “is not so unusual if we look at the lives of people like the bohemian
Dorothy Day of the Roman Catholic Church or the great Russian Orthodox
novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, who was once a political nihilist facing a Tsarist
firing squad.”
As an Orthodox priest, Dunlop feels he’s still living the “counter-cultural”
life expressed in the punk aesthetic. He’s certainly not located in the
mainstream.
“Kodiak Island is a beautiful place,” he said. “There are bears, eagles, sea
lions, salmon, and whales in abundance. There are huge snow-capped peaks.
“My work here,” he continued, “is primarily with Native Alaskans who
joined the Orthodox Church in the late 1700s. Kodiak was the capital of
Russian America. Russian monks traveled here from Siberia in 1794. Most of
my seminary students are either Yupik Eskimos, Aleuts, Tlingits, or Kodiak
Alutiiqs.”
Dunlop still writes—lectures, homilies, and talks. He says mass, teaches,
and attends to his Alaskan flock. “I have enjoyed serving the Alaskan people,
whether it’s baptizing babies or burying venerable elders.”
But his job isn’t all spiritual reward. “The biggest challenge is probably
dealing with the bureaucratic side of the church, whether it’s paying the light
bill or writing reports. Also, it is difficult to deal with tragedies in the villages
such as suicide or alcoholism or their loss of their culture.”
Almost all of Dunlop’s experiences in Alaska have fallen outside of the
ordinary, though some are more memorable than others. And, not surprisingly,
music is at the center of one of them. “During Russian Christmas time
in the villages, we go from house to house caroling, following a star, a large
wooden pinwheel which is spun. We follow the Christmas star and sing
traditional Russian and Ukrainian carols,” Dunlop said.
“This is always done in the deepest, darkest part of winter, but it is a
joyful time.”
—Bill Eichenberger

James M. “Jake” Kerr, Dallas, Texas,
reports that his short story, “The
Old Equations,” was published in
the Hugo-nominated online science
fiction magazine Lightspeed on
July 12, 2011. Check out the archive
online at www.lightspeedmagazine.
com. Mary E. Bennett Smith, Kailua,
Hawaii, says, “Life is good. Use
sunscreen and plan ahead.”
’98
An installation by David W. Eppley
is part of “The Line Unleashed,” an
exhibition opening in February 2012
at Wisconsin’s Kohler Arts Center.
1990s
’90 William J. O’Hearn Jr.
Eton, United Kingdom
bill.ohearn@gmail.com
Jenny Ross Thurber
John Thurber
East Lansing, Michigan
thurbers1635@comcast.net
Brendan P. Keefe, Cincinnati, Ohio,
informs us that he was honored
with seven more Emmys from
the Ohio Valley Chapter of the
National Academy of Television
Arts and Sciences in July. They
included awards for reporting, editing,
and photography. All were for
solo work as a multimedia journalist
for WCPO-TV 9, the ABC/
Scripps station in Cincinnati. These
awards bring Brendan’s career total
to twenty-three regional Emmys in
two decades. The Ohio Associated
Press recently named him Best
Large Market TV Reporter in the
state for 2010.
’91 Maureen Carr
Unionville, Pennsylvania
mmcarr03@gmail.com
Phillip E. Wilson Jr.
Yardley, Pennsylvania
pewilson@hangley.com
Alison J. Black, Natick,
Massachusetts, is continuing her
quest to run a marathon in all fifty
states. She would love to meet up
with some of her classmates along
the way, especially since she could
not make it to the class reunion.
Christopher A. Mitchell, Ypsilanti
Township, Michigan, has joined
Dickinson Wright’s Intellectual
Property Group. He was hired as
a member in its Ann Arbor office.
Chris focuses his practice on
handling the preparation and prosecution
of patents, with a special
emphasis on consumer products,
life sciences, and medical devices.
Dickinson Wright PLLC is a fullservice
law firm with more than
forty practice areas.
’92 Andrew Cope
Menlo Park, California
Katherine Suttle Weinert
has been appointed to the
Young Professionals United
initiative in Birmingham.
andrewtemplecope@hotmail.com
Heather Ahlburn Emerick and her
husband, Donny, announce the
birth of their daughter Phoebe
Bliss Emerick on July 20, 2011.
Phoebe joins her twin sisters,
Winnie and Charlotte (two). The
whole Emerick family is off on a
new adventure as Donny took his
post as the management officer for
the U.S. Consulate in Hermosillo,
Mexico, in September. Heather
will be telecommuting as a consultant
for the Center for Learning
and Professional Development
at Brown University. She expects
that her family’s first trip back to
the United States will be for the
upcoming reunion, and she hopes
to see you all there.
’93 Rosemary Turgeon
Newburyport, Massachusetts
chuckturgeon3@comcast.net
’94 Sarah E. Hall
Somerville, Massachusetts
stretch.hall@gmail.com
’01
Paul M. Penick III
San Francisco, California
neil_penick@yahoo.com
Meredith Patterson Clawson, her
husband, Eric, and their three children,
John (nine), Meredith (five),
and James (one), have relocated
to Kailua, Hawaii, for three years,
but they will continue to keep
their home in Lititz, Pennsylvania.
Meredith tells us that they are
all excited about this adventure.
Jeremy D. Willius, Denver, Colorado,
tells us that he and his wife, Laura,
celebrated the first birthday of
their third child, Sonja Louise, on
June 30, 2011. Jeremy also changed
industries and is enjoying life at
eTrial Communications.
’95 Colleen R. Canning
New York, New York
colleencanning@yahoo.com
Brett E. Brownscombe, Portland,
Oregon, started a new job working
as a natural resource policy
advisor for the Oregon governor’s
office last April. Brett writes, “It
has been a whirlwind, but ever
interesting.” Brett also tells us that
he recently performed a wedding
ceremony for his cousin. “It was
a nice ceremony and well officiated,”
he says. J. David Hicks, Piney
Flats, Tennessee, is the new athletic
director at King College in Bristol,
Tennessee. The Hicks family asks
that we keep them in our prayers
as they make this transition. Andrei
N. Massenkoff, San Francisco,

class nOTES
Understanding the Faked Orgasm
The orgasm—yes, the orgasm—plays an
important role in our lives and helped
shape the development of the species.
It’s best not to leave everything we know
about it to bar talk and magazines.
Erin Billie Cooper ’04 has ushered the orgasm into
the realm of science with her study, begun at Kenyon,
of heterosexual women who occasionally fake it.
“Studies have found that between 50 and 68 percent
of women have faked an orgasm at some point in their
lives, but until I started my research, we never knew
why. All the evidence was anecdotal,” said Cooper, a
fourth-year graduate student in clinical psychology at
Temple University.
Cooper developed an assessment measure that
unveils motives behind the behavior. She used it to
survey 481 women between the ages of eighteen
and thirty-two who endorsed faking orgasms. “The
common assumption is that women do this to protect
the man’s ego because they don’t experience a
real orgasm, but women fake orgasms for a variety
of reasons.”
One motive is indeed to protect a partner’s feelings.
But others include insecurity about sexual functioning
and the desire to end the sex act quickly. Some
women fake orgasm to
enhance their sexual
experience. “These
women are never
talked about. They are
taking control of their
sensuality and ensuring
that they have
a good time. Faking
orgasm can make sex
more fun and exciting
for them; it has little to
do with their partner.”
Cooper’s research, which has attracted national
attention in the popular media, originated with girl-talk
over lunch during her senior year in Gambier. “I was
looking for an independent study idea and this came
up as a bunch of girls were sitting around in Peirce
Hall,” recalled Cooper, who is originally from northern
Kentucky. “I think the conversation was triggered by a
Cosmopolitan article.”
Being the good psychology student, Cooper
searched the literature and was surprised to find
just two articles in peer-reviewed journals about the
practice. Under the tutelage of Professor of Psychology
Allan Fenigstein, she began collecting data from
Kenyon female undergraduates and developing her
questionnaire.
Presentations at professional conferences since
2007 have sparked a firestorm of interview requests
and reports in newspapers, magazines, and Web
sites. “I wonder every day if this is good for my career,”
said Cooper, who hopes to continue her research
in an academic or clinical career. “Most graduate
students are not yet respected enough in their field
to be contacted for interviews, so this has been great
attention for my work. But I have some concern that
it will not be taken as seriously as it should due to the
interest shown by the popular press.”
When people ask Cooper what she studies, she
typically smiles in anticipation of their response to her
answer. “I know they are going to react with shock,
horror, or fascination, but for the most part people are
interested, especially women. The practice is common,
so there is good reason to study it.”
Her work, which she hopes to publish soon,
advances knowledge about human sexual behavior
and can better inform therapy for individuals and
couples. It even has implications for men. “They
can use my research as an ice-breaker for
having an open and honest conversation
with their partners,” Cooper said.
—Dennis Fiely
’04
California, won the Professional
and Amateur Pinball Association’s
(PAPA) World Pinball
Championships in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, in August. Andrei
tells us that his first attempt at the
world title was in 1994 when he was
still attending Kenyon. He writes,
“All those hours I spent playing in
Gund Commons finally paid off.”
’96 Delia A. Kloh
Charlottesville, Virginia
delia1974@gmail.com
Sarah Michael
Long Beach, California
sarahemichael@gmail.com
Christopher Ellsworth
Mount Vernon, Ohio
ellsworthc@kenyon.edu
Christian L. Ball and his wife, Anne,
welcomed their new son, Maxwell
Thomas Ball, in November
2010. Chris and his family live
in Billings, Montana. Joseph F.
Herban, Columbus, Ohio, informs
us that he is a top producing
realtor and real estate investor
in Columbus. He married his
wife, Angela, at Kenyon, and they
have a three-year-old daughter
named Hailey. Joe keeps in touch
with Michael H. Schuermeyer and
Joshua H. Cornehlsen, and they
jointly own ocean-front property
in Nicaragua, where they plan to
eventually open a youth hostel/
resort home for tourists. Adrienne
Biggert Morrell is still living and
working in Washington, D.C. She
and her husband, Jarrett, are kept
very busy by their three children,
Greer (five), Charlotte (three), and
Anders (one).
’97 Barbara Kakiris
Cleveland, Ohio
barbara.l.kakiris@nasa.gov
R. Joseph Rodriguez, Austin, Texas,
had a research article featured in
the National Council of Teachers of
English centennial issue of English
Journal, in which he commented

Christopher C. Basile has been
invited to join the board of The
Monkey Wrench Collective, an
internationally recognized theater.
’07
beauty of the area. Daniel W. Bowles
remains happily married to Kelly
McMullen. They live in Denver,
Colorado, along with their twoyear-old
son, Noah. Dan looks
forward to finishing his oncology
fellowship in 2012 and starting
his practice at the University of
Colorado and Denver VA Medical
Center.
on the teaching life in English
language arts and his learning and
experience at Kenyon. Larae Bush
Schraeder informs us that she just
completed her first of three years
on the Alumni Council, and says,
“Thanks to all those who voted for
me.” Larae tells us that it has been a
great way to get involved at Kenyon
in a whole new way. She would love
to be a voice for your ideas about
Kenyon, so don’t hesitate to reach
out to her. Larae and her husband,
Jeffrey, are still living in Columbus,
Ohio, and somehow five years
working at Nationwide Insurance
have already passed by. She has
been spending her free time bicycling,
visiting her grandparents, and
doing family history research.
’98 Deborah Watkins
Wooster, Ohio
abcdwatkins@embarqmail.com
David W. Eppley, Brooklyn, New
York, reports that for the last year
he has been working on a permanent
installation for the School
Construction Authority of New
York City. Dave has moved on to
the final fabrication stage and tells
us that it has been very exciting.
This project is multifaceted and he
invites us all to go to the following
link: www.ny1.com/content/
news_beats/education/143758/
the-classroom-collection--part-
3--city-students-create-permanentart-for-their-own-school-walls.
Dave
has also been invited to prepare
an installation for a show at the
Kohler Arts Center, slated to open
in February 2012. The exhibition
is called ‘The Line Unleashed’ and
his idea is to create large streams of
color going everywhere they want
to go. Gallery walls and floors are
a given, but for this show he wants
to explore the security desks, and
the pedestals for donation, and
possibly go into other parts of the
museum. Stephanie Maier Summers,
Washington, D.C., was appointed
chief executive officer of the Center
for Public Justice in July 2011. Alison
L. Wolfgram married Grant Duke, a
1999 graduate of Georgia Institute
of Technology, on August 13, 2011,
in Ephraim, Wisconsin. Alison tells
us that they have known each other
since the fourth grade, having both
grown up in Barrington, Illinois.
The couple honeymooned in Costa
Rica and are residing in Barrington.
’99 Hilary A. Lowbridge
Hanson, Kentucky
hlowbridge@gmail.com
George W. Cook III, Alexandria,
Virginia, reports that he started
working at Toyota on August 3,
2011. Zachary B. Nowak, Perugia, Italy,
was named the coordinator of the
food studies program at the Umbra
Institute in Perugia. He will be teaching
courses on “Food Sustainability”
and “The Business of Food,” as well
as recruiting students. Zach says he
hopes to see his Kenyon buddies
next summer. J. Samuel Van Hallgren
and his wife, Carrie, announce the
birth of their second child, Susanna
Van Hallgren, in January 2011.
The Van Hallgren family lives in
Davidson, North Carolina.
2000s
’00 Austin Barger
Columbus, Ohio
austinbarger@hotmail.com
David Shearer
Nashville, Tennessee
dwshearer@gmail.com
Claire K. Beckett married Peter
Kvetko (Wittenberg) in May
2011 in Essex, Massachusetts,
with several Kenyon alumni
in attendance. Claire and Peter
continue to live in Jamaica Plain,
Massachusetts. Kathleen S. Birck,
Kingman, Arizona, continues to
work at Noah Country Healthcare
in northwest Arizona. This fall she
entered an online doctor of nursing
program through the University
of Pittsburgh. Kathleen continues
to love the sunshine, sunsets, and
’01 Erin Shanahan
Chicago, Illinois
shanahane@hotmail.com
Julianna Shaffer Belelieu, Long Island
City, New York, writes, “I had
the opportunity to supervise an
intern from Kenyon College, Yukiha
Maruyama ’12, this past summer as
part of my work at the TeenScreen
National Center at Columbia
University. It was fun to get to
work with her and hear about the
changes at Kenyon.” Alexis Braun
Marks and Adam D. Marks celebrated
the first birthday of their daughter,
Corinne, in August. Alexis tells
us she began her new job as the
university archivist at Eastern
Michigan University this fall. The
Marks family lives in Ann Arbor,
Michigan. Gillian K. Pollock married
Richard Turney on October 9, 2011,
and they spent their honeymoon in
Robert A. Dignazio and
Nathaniel C. Pritchard are
leading the new men’s lacrosse
program at Beloit College.
’08

’45
in memoR¹am
David Richard Lehrer ’40, on
December 18, 2010. The Bradenton,
Florida, resident was ninety-one.
David was a biology major. He
was a member of the Kenyon Klan
and was president of the Pre-Med
Club. David, known as Dick while
at Kenyon, was a Lords swimmer
and joined Beta Theta Pi. David
was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa
and was a Mensa member. He
earned a medical degree at the Ohio
State University in 1943. He served
in the U.S. Navy during World War
II.
David was a surgeon at the
Lehrer Clinic, a general medical
and surgical practice, in Sandusky,
Ohio.
He donated a collection of 450
records to the College in 1969.
Music professor Paul Schwartz at
the time described the collection as
“remarkable” and “of great educational
value.”
David was survived by his wife,
Betty, and nine children.
Alvin W. “Al” Bunis 1945 P ’78 GP ’12,
on August 26, 2011. The Cincinnati
man was eighty-seven.
Al served three years in the
U.S. Navy during World War II.
He went on to graduate from the
University of Cincinnati.
He became a metals broker and
retired from that field in 1969. He
founded and became president of
Sports Marketing Properties in
Cincinnati. A nationally ranked
junior tennis player, Al immersed
himself in seniors tennis at age
forty-five. He created the Grand
Masters tennis tour and conducted
more than 200 seniors tournaments
in twenty-five countries
in the 1970s and 1980s. The tour
included top professionals in the
twilight of their competitive playing
careers. A 1989 column in the
Baltimore Evening Sun described
Al as “dapper” and youthful at age
sixty-five. He also served as chairman
of the U.S. Tennis Association
seniors committee.
Al was survived by his wife,
Ann; sons Henry Bunis and Alvin
Bunis Jr.; daughter, Catherine
McDonough; and seven grandchildren,
including Gregory B. Bunis ’12.
Al survived the 2004 death of his
son William Bunis 1978. Memorial
donations may be sent to the
Cincinnati Recreation Commission
Foundation, Centennial 2, 805
Central Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio,
45202.
Victor “Vic” Adams IV ’46, on April
6, 2011. The St. Charles, Missouri,
resident was eighty-six.
Vic was a chemistry major. He
joined the U.S. Navy Reserve and
was called into active duty after
his first year, during World War
II. He was part of the V-12 Navy
College Training Program, which
was designed for officer training.
After his return to the College, Vic
in memory of alvin w. bunis
Al Bunis immersed himself in seniors
tennis at age forty-five, created the
Grand Masters tennis tour, and
served as chairman of the U.S. Tennis
Association seniors committee.
in memoriam
E. Peter Schroeder ’50
His photographs of sports figures
and celebrities were published
around the world.
’50
E. Peter Schroeder ’50 died on July 10, 2011. The New York City man was eighty-six.
Peter was a German major. He joined the soccer and track teams and was
a member of Delta Phi. He had served in the U.S. Navy as a pharmacist’s mate
during World War II before enrolling at Kenyon.
His career as a photographer was sparked by a three-month motorcycle
tour of Europe with a fraternity brother after graduation. Peter went on to study
photography at the Chicago Institute of Design. He became a freelance photographer,
and his photographs of sports figures and celebrities, including his friend
Paul Newman ’49, were published around the world. His work was seen in Time,
Life, and Sports Illustrated. His tennis-related photographs were published in a
number of books. Peter became a senior communications specialist and photographer
for IBM.
In addition to photography, he enjoyed tennis, travel, the arts, the New York
Times, and Riverside Park in New York City. An obituary for Peter included his
thoughts on living, including, “Love your life and treat it with respect. Love your
family … Always say, ‘I love you.’ ”
Peter was survived by DeeDee, his wife of fifty-six years; children Kyra, Keith,
and Kirsten; and six grandchildren. Donations in his name may be sent to the
Riverside Park Fund, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 455, New York, New York, 10115.
was part of the swimming team
and became president of Alpha
Delta Phi. He took advanced-degree
courses at the University of Detroit.
He embarked on a career of
construction-equipment sales
and eventually opened Vic
Adams Construction Machinery,
a construction-equipment sales
company in St. Charles. Vic had a
passion for hunting, fishing, and
canoeing.
“Vic treasured his Kenyon ties,
maintaining close contact with
Kenyon friends and fraternity
brothers throughout his life,” said
his classmate Thomas F. Lechner
’46.
Vic was survived by his son,
Victor Adams V; daughters Amy
Roesslein and Marcy Murphy;
sister, Cynthia Leslie; and five
grandchildren.
William D. “Bill” Brand ’47, on
September 24, 2011. The Waukesha,
Wisconsin, resident was eighty-five.
Bill was a mathematics major.
He played Lords basketball and
joined Phi Kappa Sigma. Bill was
inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.
He earned a bachelor of electrical
engineering degree at Pennsylvania
State University in 1948 and a
master’s in physics from that
university in 1950.
He became an electrical engineer
and worked for Cutler-Hammer
Inc. and the Eaton Corporation.
He later worked as an engineering
consultant.
Bill was survived by Dorothy,
his wife of thirty-seven years; seven
children; eleven grandchildren; and
six great grandchildren. Memorial
donations may be sent to the
Humane Society of the United
States, Department MEMIT9, 2100
L Street NW, Washington, D.C.,
20037; or Kenyon College, Office
of Development, Gambier, Ohio,
43022.

Robert J. “Bob” Derham ’47, on
August 17, 2011. The Danville,
Virginia, resident was eighty-eight.
Bob was a history major. He
played on the tennis and basketball
teams and joined Beta Theta Pi. He
was an accomplished tennis player,
ranked nationally as a teenager.
Bob left Kenyon in 1943 to enlist
in the U.S. Army Air Forces during
World War II and served in the
meteorological section until 1946.
Bob later earned a master’s in business
administration at New York
University.
He worked at the Hanover Bank
and the New York Stock Exchange
for ten years. In 1957, he moved to
Florida and entered the University
of Miami School of Law. In 1960,
he opened a law practice in Florida,
retiring in 2002.
Bob survived the death of his
first wife, Virginia. He was survived
by his wife, Denise, and stepchildren.
Memorial donations may
be sent to Sacred Heart Catholic
School, 540 Central Boulevard,
Danville, Virginia, 24541, or the
Danville Cancer Association, 2323
Riverside Drive, Danville, Virginia,
24541.
Robert R. Branen ’49, after a long
illness, on September 24, 2011. The
Staten Island, New York, man was
eighty-eight.
He was a history major and
graduated with honors. Robert was
on the Collegian staff and joined
Psi Upsilon. He earned a master’s
in business administration at New
York University in 1955.
Robert served in the U.S. Army
Signal Corps from 1941-45 during
World War II in the China-Burma-
India Theater. He began his
career with the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and later became an
accountant, retiring in 1986 as a vice
president at Bessemer Trust Co.
He enjoyed painting, gardening,
family time, and singing to
the accompaniment of his wife,
Madeline, on piano. He was a
member of the American Legion,
Veterans of Foreign Wars, Knights
of Columbus, and Society of
Former Special Agents of the FBI.
Robert was survived by his wife
of sixty-one years; sons Daniel,
Donald, Dennis, and David
Branen; and seven grandchildren.
John C. Young ’50, on June 30, 2011.
The Shaker Heights, Ohio, resident
was eighty-five.
John was a biology and chemistry
major. He joined Delta Tau
Delta. John became the owner of
Young Environmental Services.
John was a generous donor
and loyal volunteer for Kenyon,
serving on the Alumni Council
in memoriam
James C. “Jim” Livingston ’52
A teacher, mentor, and scholar with few peers.
James C. “Jim” Livingston ’52 died after a stroke, on
July 31, 2011. The Williamsburg, Virginia, resident was
eighty-one.
Jim was a history major and graduated with honors.
He was president of Delta Kappa Epsilon and joined
the lacrosse team. He later earned a master’s degree at
Union Theological Seminary and a doctorate, in 1965,
at Columbia University.
As a Presbyterian minister, he worked on the
staffs at Riverside Church and Central Presbyterian
Church in New York City. Jim began his teaching career
at Southern Methodist University in 1963. He joined
the faculty at the College of William and Mary as the
founding head of the Department of Religion, now
known as the Department of Religious Studies, in 1968.
Jim taught at William and Mary for thirty years, retiring
as the Walter G. Mason Professor of Religion in 1998.
He also served as the first dean of the undergraduate
program at William and Mary.
“As an author and scholar, Professor Livingston
had few peers,” William and Mary President Taylor
Reveley said in a news release. “As a teacher, mentor,
and devoted member of the college community, Jim
set the standard. He never shied away from the difficult
assignment and was one of our most respected faculty
members and campus leaders.” William and Mary
Provost Michael C. Halleran called him “a pillar on
which the modern William and Mary was built.”
Jim was widely known in religious-studies circles as
an expert in nineteenth-century Christianity. His fellow
and a number of regional and
alumni committees. He received
the Distinguished Service Award
in 1974 and 1990 and the Cleveland
Alumni Outstanding Achievement
Award in 1993.
He survived the deaths of his
wife of fifty-four years, Nancy, and
his son, John C. Young Jr. He was
survived by daughters Elizabeth
Boles, MacKensie Young, Alice
Klug, and Heather Wiehe; eleven
grandchildren; a great granddaughter;
and brothers Wallace Young
and James Young. Contributions
may be sent to the Shaker Schools
Foundation, 15600 Parkland Road,
Shaker Heights, Ohio, 44120;
Alzheimer’s Foundation, P.O. Box
74924, Cleveland, Ohio, 44194; or
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 2747
Fairmount Boulevard, Cleveland
Heights, Ohio, 44106.
Randall Mendelsohn ’55 (Bexley Hall
Seminary) P’83, on August 24, 2011.
The eighty-two-year-old retired
Episcopal priest lived in Cincinnati.
Randall had worked in the
Diocese of Michigan and had
continued to serve during retirement
at Holy Trinity Episcopal
Church in Cincinnati.
He survived the death of his
wife, Dorothy. He was survived by
his children Mary, Martha, Chad,
Clare, and Elizabeth Mendelsohn ’83.
Memorial donations may be sent
to the Diocese of
’52
scholars often called him “Mr. Nineteenth Century.”
JIm wrote eleven books on religious studies, including
Anatomy of the Sacred and Modern Christian Thought,
and hundreds of articles and scholarly papers. He
edited several books. Jim was a fellow at the American
Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment
for the Humanities, and the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars.
He was an early activist in the civil rights movement
and was arrested during a protest in Georgia in
the early 1960s and spent several days in jail. “He was
very passionate about that,” his daughter, Susannah
Livingston, told William and Mary officials.
In a profile for his 40th class reunion, Jim said, “I
found my classes and out-of-class life rather intense,
heady, and memorable.” In a note to the College,
Susannah Livingston said, “He … always spoke of his
time there as one of the happiest and most enriching
periods of his life.”
He loved tennis, classical music, dancing to
big-band music, and summers at Lake Michigan and
other travel.
Jim was survived by Jacqueline, his wife of fifty-six
years; daughters Sarah Livingston and Susannah;
and four grandchildren. Memorial contributions may
be sent to Kenyon College, Office of Development,
Gambier, Ohio, 43022; Union Theological Seminary,
3041 Broadway, New York, 10027; or Bruton Parish
Church, P.O. Box 3520, Williamsburg, Virginia, 23187.

in memoR¹am
Alaska, 1205 Denali Way, Fairbanks,
Alaska, 99701, or the Diocese of
Northern Michigan, 131 East Ridge
Street, Marquette, Michigan, 49855.
Arthur T. “Art” Osako ’55, on July 31,
2011. The San Juan Capistrano,
California, man was seventy-seven.
Art was a biology major and
graduated with honors. He was
a student manager for the swimming
team and joined Archon.
Art earned a medical degree at the
University of Rochester in 1959.
He served in the U.S. Air Force as
a captain from 1960-63 and was
stationed at the Itazuke Air Force
Base in Fukuoka. While in Japan
he married Michiko Morihisa, in
1962. He continued his medical
education in pediatric hematology
and oncology at the University of
Washington School of Medicine.
Art joined the Central Medical
Clinic in Honolulu. He was an
attending physician at Queen’s
Hospital, Kauikeolani Children’s
Hospital, and Kapiolani Medical
Center for Women and Children.
He taught at the University of
Hawaii. Art retired in 1996.
His son Tilden Osako said
Art cherished his time at Kenyon.
Art enjoyed gardening, painting,
cooking, reading novels, bridge,
ballroom dancing, world travel,
and spending time with his
grandchildren.
Art was survived by his wife of
forty-nine years; daughter, Lynn
Matsukawa; sons Philip and Tilden
Osako; sister, Margaret Platt;
brother, Warren Osako; and six
grandchildren.
Eric P.S. Jacobsen ’58, after a long
illness, on September 5, 2011.
The Cleveland, Ohio, man was
seventy-four.
Eric was a political science
major. He joined Delta Phi.
He earned a master’s in education
management at Pepperdine
University in 1978.
Eric retired as a colonel from the
U.S. Air Force after a twenty-sixyear
career in the intelligence field,
assigned to Strategic Air Command
Headquarters and, later, the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Studies and Analysis
Agency. He worked at the Planning
Research Corporation from 1984 to
1991 and later became a consultant
in the development of competitive
proposals for software integration.
He was most recently employed
at the Case Western Reserve
University Office of Continuing
Education.
He was survived by his wife,
Jean; sister, Christina Pohe; stepchildren
Blair and Jennifer Morton;
and a granddaughter. Memorial
donations may be sent to the USO,
P.O. Box 96322, Washington, D.C.,
20090, and the Cleveland Animal
Protective League, 1729 Willey
Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, 44113.
Richard Bradshaw ’60, on February
24, 2011. The West Chester,
Pennsylvania, resident was
seventy-two.
Richard was a history major. He
was a Lords basketball player and
manager for the baseball team. He
was president of Phi Kappa Sigma
and worked on Reveille. Richard
later earned a master’s in history at
the University of Pennsylvania. He
taught history at the West Chester
State College.
Stephen H. Solier 1960, on June 1,
2011. The Tucson, Arizona, man
was seventy-three.
He was a member of Alpha
Delta Phi. Stephen transferred to
Pennsylvania State University in
1958 and graduated in 1966 after a
stint in the U.S. Navy. He worked
as an electrical engineer at the
Boeing Company.
Harrison T. Simons ’62, on August 31,
2011. The Oxford, North Carolina,
man was seventy-seven. He died
while on vacation at his cottage in
Coles Point, Virginia.
Harrison was a religious studies
major. He also earned a bachelor’s
degree at Randolph-Macon
College, in 1959. He completed
a master’s in divinity at Colgate
Rochester Divinity School in 1980.
He received an honorary doctorate
in divinity from the Virginia
Theological Seminary in 2007.
As an Episcopal priest, Harrison
served at a number of parishes in
Virginia and North Carolina. He
was at one time the chairman of
Christian education for the Diocese
of North Carolina. As a sidelight in
1974, he started Education-Liturgy
Resources, a nonprofit bookstore
based in Oxford. Describing the
bookstore in 1992, a columnist
for the Durham (North Carolina)
Herald-Sun observed, “You find
yourself inside a small, crowded, but
sensibly arranged and amazingly
diverse bookstore.” Harrison’s enthusiastic
approach was contagious and
his knowledge crossed many genres,
the columnist wrote.
Harrison was an advocate for
civil rights. He was active on the
Human Relations Council and
received the Nancy Susan Reynolds
Award for Race Relations in 1997.
Harrison retired from St.
Stephen’s Episcopal Church in
Oxford in 1998 and from the
bookstore in 2010. He continued
to serve a number of churches until
his death. He was the longtime
chaplain for the Oxford Volunteer
Fire Department.
He was survived by his wife,
Eugenia; son, George Simons;
daughter, Deanna Hollis; nine
grandchildren; and sister, Dorothy
in memory of
harrison t. simons
’62
An advocate
for civil rights,
Harrison was
active on the
Human Relations
Council and
received the Nancy
Susan Reynolds
Award for Race
Relations in 1997.
Gibson. Memorial donations may
be sent to St. Stephen’s Episcopal
Church, 140 College Street, Oxford,
North Carolina, 27565, or the
Oxford Volunteer Fire Department,
112 E. McClanahan Street, Oxford,
North Carolina, 27565.
Brian G. Farney 1966, on August 1,
2011. The La Crosse, Wisconsin,
man was sixty-seven.
Brian was a member of Delta
Tau Delta. He also attended the
University of Illinois at Chicago.
He served in the U.S. Army from
1964-67.
He worked for Allstate before
starting his own marketing and
communications business. He
was a gifted writer and photographer.
Brian enjoyed exploring
the American Southwest and the
country’s national parks.
Brian was survived by his
daughters Caitlin Goebig and
Sarah Ganesan; four grandchildren;
brothers Terrence Farney and Paul
Farney; and sisters Sheila Ristau
and Gail Burley.
Philip S. “Phil” Trimble ’84, of heart
failure, on August 5, 2011. The

Northbrook, Illinois, man was
forty-nine.
Philip was a history major. He
was a member of Alpha Delta Phi
as well as the soccer and lacrosse
teams.
He enjoyed a career in financial
services and worked for a number
of companies, including John
Nuveen & Co., Oppenheimer &
Co., and Bear Stearns. As a vice
president at Bear Stearns, Phil
provided wholesale asset management
services to brokers, financial
planners, and investment advisers.
Phil and a partner opened
Lakeview Links in Chicago in 1991
as a sports bar. After ten years, the
business evolved into a live-music
venue called the Bottom Lounge.
It closed in 2006 to make way
for Chicago Transit Authority
improvements but reopened in
2008 in another Chicago location.
Philip was survived by his
wife, Jennifer; son, James Trimble;
daughter, Isabelle Trimble; and
siblings Martin and Emile Trimble.
Memorial donations may be sent
to the American Heart Association,
208 South LaSalle Street, Suite
1500, Chicago, Illinois, 60604.
Alexander C. “Alex” Walbridge ’06, on
July 26, 2011. The Delray Beach,
Florida, man was twenty-nine. He
died while visiting his mother,
Iolie Kriezi Walbridge, in Athens,
Greece, where he was buried.
Alex was a psychology major.
He was a member of Peeps and
participated in the Horn Gallery
Magazine, WKCO, and the drama
group Beyond Therapy. While at
Kenyon, he became fluent in Greek
and studied abroad in Athens.
He was an aspiring writer,
videographer, and comedian, and
he had made several music videos.
Alex performed improvisational
theater focusing on conflict
resolution in inner-city schools in
Philadelphia in 2001, while serving
in the nonprofit City Year program.
In addition to his mother,
Alex was survived by his father,
Hoyt Walbridge; brother, Nicholas
Walbridge; grand parents Kenneth
and Jean Walbridge; stepsister,
Anna Bacon; and stepbrother, Nic
Bacon. Memorial contributions
may be sent to the Miquon School,
2025 Harts Lane, Conshohocken,
Pennsylvania, 19428.
Yauncey Newman, who worked in the
Kenyon maintenance department,
died on September 26, 2011, at his
home in Howard, Ohio.
Yauncey befriended many
students during his time at
Kenyon, from 1984 to 1997.
He was survived by his wife,
Juanita, who had worked in the
office of Dean of Students Thomas
J. Edwards. Memorial donations
may be sent to Hospice of Knox
County, 17700 Coshocton Road,
Mount Vernon, Ohio, 43050.
Owen York Jr. H’93, professor
emeritus of chemistry and a College
statesman, died of a heart attack
on Wednesday, November 2, at his
home in Branford, Connecticut.
Owen and Bettye, his wife of
sixty-three years, were central to
the academic and social life of the
College. He joined the faculty in
1961, retiring in 1993 only to return
as acting provost for the 1995-96
academic year. His work for the
College included prominent roles in
the presidential search that brought
Robert A. Oden Jr. to campus in
1995 and in the construction of
buildings that transformed science
and music education by the turn of
the century.
“Fantastic” in the classroom,
Owen won the respect of the
entire faculty, said Charles E. Rice,
professor emeritus of psychology.
“He taught organic chemistry and
that was the path everybody took
to get into medical school. He was
considered very, very tough, but, if
you got through, the chances were
extremely good that you would be
admitted to medical school.”
Early in his career, Owen had
corporate-research opportunities,
but he embraced teaching. “He had
an incredible, analytical mind,” his
son, Michael York, said. “He loved
the students,” Owen’s daughter
Diane Linderman said. “He loved
the science. He loved teaching.”
Students were a common sight
for dinner or coffee at the York
household.
One former student, Thomas P.
Stamp ’73, now College historian,
in memory of owen york jr., professor emeritus of chemistry
was an English major who appreciated
what Owen brought to the
science classroom. “With Owen
York, organic chemistry was like
a challenging hike over rough but
often surprisingly beautiful terrain
with your brilliant uncle,” Stamp
said. “Years later, when I returned
to Gambier, Owen became a treasured
friend and taught me a different
but no less important kind of
chemistry—the perfect formula for
a dry martini.”
Conviviality was a way of life for
the Yorks. Adept at entertaining,
they enjoyed a home that was “very
cordial, very warm,” Rice said.
It was his keen interest in the
full breadth of College affairs that
led Owen to take decisive leadership
roles. “He was very sensible,
very level-headed,” Rice said. “He
was a rock.”
Perry Lentz ’64 H’89 P’88, professor
emeritus of English and a longtime
neighbor of the Yorks, called
Owen a natural leader. “For many
of us, Owen was a wonderful exemplar
of the College and all of its
best aspects,” Lentz said. “He was
intelligent, congenial, open. The
College instinctively turned to him,
even after his retirement. When we
needed an interim provost, he was
the inevitable choice.”
“With Owen York, organic chemistry was like a
challenging hike over rough but often surprisingly
beautiful terrain with your brilliant uncle. Years later,
Owen became a treasured friend and taught me a
different but no less important kind of chemistry—
the perfect formula for a dry martini.”
—thomas p. stamp ’73, college historian (and former student)

Alumni News
The Big Switch
To stay connected to Kenyon’s online alumni services, take a moment to re-register
Kenyon’s Web site for alumni—alumni.kenyon.edu—is changing to a new system that will provide
many more services for all graduates. The switch took place in January.
There’s just one thing you have to do. To remain in the online community, alumni have to re- register,
using their alumni access code.
The good news is that (1) it’s simple to re-register—see the box on this page; and (2) the new site
offers alumni all the services they enjoyed before plus an array of new ones.
Here’s what you’ll be able to do at the new alumni.kenyon.edu:
• Stay in touch with classmates, using the alumni directory.
• Make connections to help find a job or a new career, using the Kenyon Career Network.
• Upload your resume to the career network.
• Connect your Kenyon profile to your LinkedIn profile.
• Post a job on the career network, or search for opportunities.
• Sign up to sponsor internships or externships for current Kenyon students.
• Download Kenyon screensavers and songs.
Many more services will be available in the future. Make sure to re-register (or register for the first
time) as soon as you can.
Cast Your Vote
It’s almost time to cast your ballot for
Alumni Council members and alumni
trustees. You have your choice to vote by
e-mail or by paper, and ballots will soon
arrive in your mailbox and inbox.
Members of Alumni Council meet at
Kenyon three times each year to discuss
programs and issues that directly affect
the College and its alumni and to provide
feedback regarding alumni issues. Council
members serve a nonrenewable threeyear
term.
The Kenyon College Board of Trustees
meets at Kenyon twice each year to
provide strategic direction to the College.
Alumni trustees serve a nonrenewable
four-year term.
Vying for the three open positions on
Alumni Council are Larry Friedberg ’84,
Hilary Hodge ’02, Leslie Hough ’80,
David Lilly ’94, Rob Toth ’10, and
Rebecca Yarbrough ’09.
The candidates for the two alumni
trustee positions are Rose Britlinger Fealy
’84, Ashley Rowatt Karpinos ’03, and
Rebecca Vazquez Skillings ’93.
All candidates are nominated by
Alumni Council.
¡Vamos a Cuba!
In June, Kenyon alumni will be setting off for
Cuba in a once-in-a-lifetime trip arranged by
the Kenyon College Alumni Association. The
association has been granted a People-to-People
license for this educational trip, which will take
place June 3-10, 2012. Victor Rodríguez Núñez,
professor of Spanish, will accompany the group
on this tour of his native land. All Kenyon
alumni, parents, and friends are invited to join.
The group will travel by charter from Miami
to Havana and stay at the Saratoga Hotel in
Havana. Highlights of the week will include:
• Architectural walking tour of Old Havana.
• Studio visits with some of Havana’s leading
artists and private tours of art museums.
• Meals at some of Havana’s best-known hotels
and restaurants.
• Private performances by Cuban musicians,
dance companies, and theater groups.
• Travel by air-conditioned motor coach to
Cienfuegos and Trinidad.
• Private briefing on Cuban-American relations
by a member of the U.S. Interests Section.
Stay Connected: Re-register Today
Even if you’ve already been part of the
Kenyon Alumni Online Community, you
must re-register. Just follow the simple
directions below. If you haven’t been part
of the community yet, join in. The sign-up
process is the same.
1. Find your alumni access code in the
address label on the back of the magazine.
Your code is the number printed directly
above your name. Enter this code without
the preceding zeros.
2. On the Web, go to alumni.kenyon.edu.
3. Click on the LOGIN box.
Questions?
Contact the Office of Alumni and Parent
Programs, at shriverj@kenyon.edu or
740-427-5147.
Architects, museum directors, students, and
others will join the group for meals and discussions,
providing an opportunity to learn more
about the people of Cuba. Translators will be
available upon request throughout the trip.
The cost for the trip plus airfare from your
home city to Miami is based on double occupancy.
This includes charter airfare, hotel,
transfers, motor coach, meals, and all gratuities.
We are limited to a maximum of twenty hotel
rooms. For infor mation on reserving a spot on
this trip, contact Alex Compton at comptona@
kenyon.edu or call 740-427-5147.
istockphoto.com
58 Kenyon college alumni bulletin Winter 2012

“I See You. I See You.”
Returning for her twenty-fifth reunion in 2010, Susan Hillenbrand Avallon ’85
found herself thinking about what is lost and what endures
Not too long after I graduated from Kenyon—it
was probably at my fifth reunion—I spent some
time talking to a graduate who must have been in
his seventies. He told me that no matter how many
years have passed, the moment you step on the
Hill, it feels like home, like you’re twenty-one again.
I remember being really comforted by this thought.
That was not my experience, though, on
coming back to Gambier for my twenty-fifth
reunion. At first it was discombobulating—hard
to connect to the student I had once been. I felt
a little like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five:
“unstuck in time.” I have lived in Southern
California for twenty-three years, and the greenness,
the humidity, the elegant old buildings,
the endless walking—all of this felt like another
planet. Did I ever really live here and feel at home
here? Was I ever as young as the current students
I saw walking around the campus?
I brought my eleven-year-old twins with me
on this trip, partly because I didn’t have anyone to
leave them with, partly because I promised them,
when their father died suddenly two years ago,
that we would stick together. I also wanted to get
them excited about college.
As we walked around campus, I told them
the best thing about Kenyon was its enduring
attitude that learning is deeply valuable in and
of itself, aside from considerations about what
you’ll actually do with your education. I told them
about what another Kenyon graduate, the writer
P.F. Kluge ’64, once wrote—that Kenyon was “the
last place I truly believed the work I did would be
fairly judged and measured. It was the last place
in which good talk, wherever I could find it, was
the making of my day.”
And I had lots of good talk with my dear old
friends. Everybody looked older; everybody looked
the same; everybody looked great. We didn’t talk
about careers. We talked about our memories,
our feelings for the place, and our feelings for
each other. I found myself constantly saying to
everyone, “You look wonderful,” but I think what I
really meant was, “I see you. I see you. I see you.”
I was so moved to see everyone, I kept staring.
I kept wanting to mark every moment and keep it
in my mind forever.
I’ve had a series of big losses in my life during
the last few years, and part of what made this
trip so emotional was that it brought back that
poignant old loss—the ending of my sweet college
years. We had a great turnout for the reunion,
nearly 50 percent of our class, and though I was
happy about that, I knew this was almost certainly
the last time so many of us would be together.
Sarah Corvene and I talked about the very
strange experience we had shortly after graduation,
when we went off to Mount Vernon in my
car for some kind of meal or errand. When we
came back, we found that, shockingly quickly,
nearly everyone was gone. The roller-coaster
of our feelings of accomplishment and joy and
community at our graduation, followed by the
sense of sudden emptiness on campus, of a future
that stretched out so uncertainly: twenty-five
years later, those sensations were still vivid.
One of life’s hardest lessons is that all our
experiences and all our relationships, no matter
how precious, are temporary. I am still trying to
develop some grace in having to live with that
reality. I’m also thinking about classmates I loved
who are gone now, who didn’t get a chance to
come see the place again that weekend. But I am
also thinking about something Viktor Frankl said,
which gave me a lot of comfort after Tony died:
“Having been is the surest form of being.”
College was too short, but I’m glad it happened.
Reunion was too short, but I’m glad it happened.
I’m learning to be grateful for every blessing in
my life, for however long it lasts. You, my Kenyon
friends: I know what we have all been to each
other, and I know what kind of influence many
of you still have on me and on my life. I want you
to know how grateful I am that you were there to
share that remarkable time and place with me.
Share your story!
Visit the Kenyon Stories Initiative, at kenyonstories.
blogspot.com, to share your stories about life at
Kenyon or to read recollections from fellow alumni.
save the date
Regional Association
Gatherings
February 29: Los Angeles, featuring
Provost Nayef Samhat
March 8: St. Louis, featuring
Professor of Drama Jon Tazewell ’84
March 14: Boston, featuring Provost
Nayef Samhat
March 22: Indianapolis
April 10: Minneapolis, featuring
Professor of History Jeff Bowman
April 16: Seattle, featuring
Professor of Humanities Tim Shutt
April 18: San Francisco, featuring
Natalie Marsh, director of Kenyon’s
Graham Gund Gallery
Reunions
April 25-27: Post 50th Reunion,
with the classes of 1937, ’38, and ’39;
1947, ’48, and ’49; and 1957 and ’58.
May 27-29: Reunion Weekend
Football Homecoming
Football alumni gathered in Gambier during Homecoming 2011 to
enjoy the big game, reminisce, and see old friends. With the generous
leadership and support of David Rose ’81, a first annual gathering was
held with over forty alumni in attendance—including Rodney Boren
from the Class of 1938.
As the program welcomes a new coach, Chris Monfiletto, for the
next season, football alumni have been assisting the Admissions Office
with finding capable new student athletes for the upcoming academic
year. If you know of a student athlete who would do well at Kenyon,
please contact Noble Jones ’97, associate director of admissions, at
740-427-5788 or jonesbn@kenyon.edu. Thank you, football alumni,
for supporting your alma mater!
Winter 2012 Kenyon college alumni bulletin 59

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60 Kenyon college alumni bulletin Spring 2011

Trustees of
Kenyon College
Richard S. Alper ’71
Carole R. Artman-Hodge ’73
The Rt. Rev. Thomas E. Breidenthal
David H. Cannon ’73
James D. Cox ’60 H’97
Philip R. Currier ’56 P’82
Brackett B. Denniston III ’69,
Secretary
Samuel N. Fischer P’10
Donald A. Fischman ’57 H’85 P’13
Pamela P. Flaherty P’00,’04
Nina P. Freedman ’77 H’92
Paul J. Goldberger P’04 H’05
Robert W. Goldman ’63
David M. Guernsey P’11
Paul B. Healy ’85
Aileen C. Hefferren ’88
Pamela Feitler Hoehn-Saric ’80
P’10,’14
The Rt. Rev. Mark
Hollingsworth Jr.
Gary F. Holloway P’11
Larry H. James
Deborah Johnson Reeder ’85
Mary Kay Karzas ’75
Joseph E. Lipscomb ’87, Vice Chair
William E. Lowry Jr. ’56 H’99,
Vice Chair
David R. Meuse
S. Georgia Nugent, President
Susan Ramser
Elaina H. Richardson P’13
Alan E. Rothenberg ’67 H’10 P’96
R. Todd Ruppert ’78
Deborah Ratner Salzberg P’09
Thomas R. Sant ’65
Barry F. Schwartz ’70, Chair
Pierce E. Scranton ’68 H’09 P’97
Victoria Smith McKenzie ’82 P’14
William T. Spitz P’08
David L. Trautman
Charles P. Waite Jr. ’77 P’06,’10
Matthew A. Winkler ’77 H’00 P’13
Simon Yoo ’91
Emeritus Trustees
Letitia Baldrige H’90
David F. Banks III ’65 H’01 P’96
William E. Bennett ’68 H’11
P’96,’00,’07
Randolph D. Bucey ’50
Edgar G. Davis ’53
Edwin H. Eaton Jr. ’60 H’03 P’89
Gerald J. Fields ’62
Ellen W. Griggs ’77
Cornelia Ireland Hallinan ’76 H’91
R.S. Harrison ’53 H’01 P’82,’85
David W. Horvitz ’74 H’98
Robert E. Koe ’67
Harvey F. Lodish ’62 H’82 P’89
Beatrice C. Mayer H’87 P’71
John B. McCoy H’94
James C. Niederman ’46 H’81 P’76
Burnell R. Roberts H’92 P’77
John G. Smale H’74 P’79
James P. Storer ’49 H’85
William A. Stroud H’88 P’76
David D. Taft ’60 H’00
Richard L. Thomas ’53 H’72 P’81
Robert J. Tomsich H’84
Charles P. Waite H’97 P’77,’81
Kenyon Fund
Executive Committee
2011–12
Chair
R. Benton Gray ’73
Vice Chair
Myles H. Alderman Jr. ’82
Past Chair
B. Allen McCormick ’55
Leadership Giving Program Chair
Donna Bertolet Poseidon ’75
Members
Austin Barger ’00
Elizabeth C. Bitting ’07
James Breece ’04
Rose Brintlinger Fealy ’84
Reid Click ’83
Howard B. Edelstein ’68
Philip L. Edmunds ’09
Alan E. Goldsmith ’73
Jan Guifarro ’73
Sarah E. Hall ’94
Doug Heuck ’84
Thomas C. Keene ’82
Delia A. Kloh ’96
Frederick J. McGavran ’65
Kristin Ann Meister ’00
Scott R. Sporte ’90
Edward Symes IV ’04
Alumni Council 2011–12
Executive Committee
Todd P. Leavitt ’73 P’10, President
Marshall W. Chapin ’94, Vice
President
John T. Seaman Jr. ’54, Past
President
Scott R. Baker ’94, Director of
Alumni and Parent Programs
Alexandra E. Compton, Director of
Regional Events
Sarah Kahrl, Vice President for
College Relations
Committee Members
Susan B. Berger ’85
Jeffrey K. Bridges ’03
Marguerite Bruce Doctor ’85
Larae Bush Schraeder ’97
Joseph A. Gioia ’77
Gay Garth Legg ’73 P’05,’09
Densil R. Porteous II ’02
Margaret C. Scavotto ’02
Henry J. Steck ’57
Philip A. Stephenson ’02
John R. Symons ’61
Appointed and Ex-Officio Members
Barbara L. Kakiris ’97
Laura A. Paul ’11
Juan A. Solis ’11
Alumni Trustees
Richard S. Alper ’71
Carole (Robi) Artman-Hodge ’73
David H. Cannon ’73
Philip R. Currier ’56 P’82
Donald A. Fischman ’57 H’85 P’13
Mary Kay Karzas ’75
Deborah J. Reeder ’85
Pierce Scranton ’68 H’09 P’97
Visit Kenyon on the
World Wide Web
For up-to-date information on
events at the College, visit the
Kenyon site on the World Wide
Web at www.kenyon.edu.
The Kenyon College Alumni Bulletin
(USBS 931-480) is published four
times yearly by Kenyon College’s
Office of Public Affairs for alumni,
students, parents, and friends.
Postmaster: Please send all address
changes, including zip codes, with
the present address label to Alumni
Records, College Relations Center,
Kenyon College, Gambier,
Ohio 43022-9623.
Periodicals postage paid at
Gambier, Ohio 43022, and additional
mailing offices.
Diverse views are presented and do
not necessarily reflect the opinions
of the editors or official policies of
the College. Letters to the editor
will be used for publication unless
the author states the letter is not to
be published.
The Bulletin welcomes letters and
manuscripts for possible publication
and encourages inquiries
concerning reprints of articles.
Please contact Shawn Presley, Office
of Public Affairs, College Relations
Center, Kenyon College, Gambier,
Ohio 43022-9623 (740-427-5158).
copyright 2012 by kenyon college

Kenyon
Gambier, Ohio 43022-9623
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and Additional
Mailing Offices
Just One Click
That’s all you need to do to stay in Kenyon’s
online community at alumni.kenyon.edu,
where a new system will bring you an array of
new and better services.
You can stay connected with classmates,
career services, and alumni events.
But you do have to make that one click!
To stay connected, see page 58.