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