Hello Class of 2011!

It’s officially Reunion month on the Hill! Despite not being on campus last year to celebrate our 10 Year Reunion, we had a great time with our Reunion Planning Committee and all of you (through virtual trivia, concerts, and more). Even though this year isn’t a milestone reunion year for us, all alumni are welcome back for Reunion Weekend this year (and in the future!) and the fact that alumni are FINALLY able to reunite on campus again after two years of virtual gatherings is something worth celebrating. Reunion weekend this year, May 27-29, promises to be the biggest alumni gathering in the College’s history! 

Last fall, we hope you heard about (and perhaps supported!) the new Kenyon Access Initiative. We are eight months into our five-year partnership with the Schuler Education Foundation to increase access to Kenyon for exceptional students with limited resources. Our extended Kenyon community has enthusiastically responded by making more than 1,113 gifts to support this unique initiative, helping to create new scholarships that will be awarded to students we are enrolling now. In further great news, applications this year hit another record, up 14% over last year.

In other updates, there has been a movement across campus to consider adopting new mascots/monikers for the college to be more in line with the college’s recently updated mission and campus values. Thank you to all who have submitted suggestions or other feedback to the process. You can visit kenyon.edu/moniker to learn the latest. 

This spring, the College continued its commitment to integrating environmental stewardship into its curriculum, campus operations and campus culture. One exciting way this is happening is that Kenyon is refraining from new commitments in specialized private investment funds that focus on fossil fuels — expecting that less than 1% of Kenyon’s endowment portfolio will be invested in fossil fuels by 2030. This news and more was shared in Kenyon’s new quarterly Green Newsletter. If you don’t already receive it, we encourage you to sign up for it at bit.ly/Green-Kenyon.

All of the excitement and achievement at Kenyon today can be traced, in part, back to our support. Kenyon relies on our gifts to the Kenyon Fund to support every aspect of students’ experience today, from seminars to scholarships. We hope you’ll join us in making a gift today. We know first-hand how a Kenyon education can impact one’s future — not just professionally, but personally. When we support Kenyon’s current and future students, we help make a Kenyon family like ours a possibility for many more.

We hope you are all staying healthy and able to do some traveling this year to make up for the last two years. 

Hope to see you soon, 
Rachel and Sam

P.S. Do you remember playing Gambier Grillin’ in the weekly Kenyon Collegian? Apparently, none of our participants do! We wanted to bring it back because we both have strong memories of playing weekly in Peirce! See below for some of our classmates' attempts!