Bridging The Gap Between Generations of Kenyon Students

This week, my group began our process of sifting through Kenyon’s archival collection of student life over the past one hundred years. Immediately, I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of artifacts, stuffed into multiple large boxes, all of which were practically overflowing. Each box had a label, and among them were “Dances,” “Greek Life,” and “The Chasers,” to name a few, but the box that caught my attention was simply labeled, “Student Life.” Upon opening the box, I discovered countless laminated sleeves in which negatives (undeveloped photographs) were enclosed. The images were hard to discern, but luckily, the photos had been digitized, and I was eager to look at them. Later that afternoon, when I was spending time with a close friend, she and I decided to scroll through the series of pictures. Although we were not alive or at Kenyon in the 1980s– the decade during which we estimated the photos were taken based on the fashion and hairstyles– we found ourselves feeling nostalgic for Kenyon and the time evinced by the photographs. We experienced Kenyon’s past and present all at once, reflecting on the similarities between ourselves and the students in the pictures back then. They hung out with their friends in their dorms, ate meals together on Old Side, lounged on the quad, and strolled down Middle Path. Therefore, we resolved that despite the campus’s visual and architectural changes, Kenyon students in the 80s were just like us. 

In one of our readings this week, an excerpt of Tradition by Edward Shils, a light is shed on the growing distance between current and previous generations, which is argued by Shils to be dangerous to the stability and longevity of a community. As an individual becomes more disconnected from a collective past, the group to which the individual belongs becomes more dismembered. Additionally, Shils articulates that failing to recognize the past of one’s group can disorient one’s perception of the present. By neglecting to consider ancestors and commemorate past accomplishments, younger generations can “lose the sense of being members of a collectivity which transcends themselves and which transcends their contemporaries” (Shils, 402-403). Thus, one can escape the confines of their own generation by eliciting contact with older generations, bridging the gap between a community’s past and present. 

This reading illuminated the importance of remembering a community’s past, and the photographs afforded me the opportunity to connect with Kenyon students who came before me. After my friend and I had finished looking through the pictures, we both noticed that our perception of Kenyon had changed; we were much more appreciative, sentimental, and present while walking around campus. We felt affixed to the Kenyon community, aware of our specific place in time, as well as the temporal boundlessness of our experiences at Kenyon, applicable to the past, present, and the future. Throughout the history of our Kenyon community, Shils’ sentiment rings true: “the human beings who lived in accordance with them in the past were not fundamentally different from those who lived in succeeding generations or who are alive now” (Shils, 404). 

Shils, Edward. “Tradition.” The Collective Memory Reader, Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 402-406.