Dear classmates,

Greetings new Owls! We’re excited to share with you what’s going on in our classmates’ lives and some news from the Hill this year!  

This semester, 12 members of the Class of 2026 were able to enroll as the direct result of donor support for the Kenyon Access Initiative (KAI), a vital scholarship effort to increase access for low-income students. We’re only just getting started and aim to enroll 50 students each year through KAI, in addition to other robust financial aid. This additional diversity in backgrounds and lived experiences will further enrich daily life on campus.

Chalmers Library in the West Quad has quickly become a hub for such connections day and night. Its neighbor Lowell House, home to admissions and financial aid and named for Pulitzer Prize winning poet Robert T.S. Lowell IV ’40, is also now open. Oden Hall, future home to social sciences and named for former president Robert Oden, will open for instruction next year. The 261-space underground parking garage for visitors and employees — with EV charging, naturally — is already helping to ease congestion in the Village without disrupting the beauty of Gambier we all remember so fondly. Hopefully that means less hauling down to South Lot!

This year students will also soon have access to a dining option in “downtown” Gambier, when Peirce Express opens in a space under the Gambier Deli. This space will also be home some evenings to a student-run bar known as Flats, helping to provide a non-residences nightlife option. While not the Cove, it’s exciting to see more options for students to blow off some steam besides at Aclands or Old Kenyon basement! Look for more about both of these in an upcoming issue of Kenyon News Digest.

To further support all students, the College increased the budget for the Student Success Fund — emergency grants for which any student can apply. They also welcomed Dr. Lynn Hampton to serve in the newly created Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion position, providing additional leadership to the daily efforts of ODEI and partnering with Dean Chris Kennerly so he can extend his reach across campus with DEI efforts.

In other news, the Music Department is celebrating its 75th year. Alumni Council is developing an updated version of the Kenyon songbook (Kenyon has a songbook!) which will be viewable online soon and distributed at Reunion Weekend during the all-class sing. If you haven’t saved the date yet for Reunion Weekend, remember that all alumni are welcome to attend May 26-28.

We hope you’re now feeling wistful about our own time at Kenyon. Our sweat-stained Kenyon hats are in heavy rotation, when dropping the kids off at school (Yancy) or taking clients out on the golf course (Dan); we think about our time at Kenyon all the time! We invite you to turn that nostalgia into action with a gift to help make all this possible! Gifts to the Kenyon Fund can be directed toward enrolling the next high-achieving group of students through the Kenyon Access Initiative, broader scholarships and financial aid efforts, athletics, one of the College’s many green centers and more. Please consider making our alma mater and today’s Kenyon students a philanthropic priority this year by giving online at gift.kenyon.edu.

We hope you’ve enjoyed hearing the news from the College this fall. We have certainly enjoyed (as always) hearing from those of you who submitted class notes for this letter (see below). We encourage folks who haven’t updated us with one recently to consider submitting a quick life update for the next batch of notes in the spring.

Thank you!
Yancy Edwards and Dan Gajewski