How Descriptions of Kenyon's Past Embody Tradition

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This past week my group spent most of our time in the archives looking over old Collegian articles. Our group is working on the exhibit box titled "Kenyon in the World," so we focused a lot on Kenyon's reaction to major world events and Kenyon's public persona. One of my favorite things that we found was a Collegian article about the intro that was written by a professor for Kenyon's time on the General Electric College Bowl. Since it was written in 1963, this article really stuck out to me because it seems to fully represent Kenyon 60 years ago. It's important to understand because this short introduction includes everything that Kenyon hoped to show to the world while on this competition show, which gave us insight into how Kenyon was advertising itself to people. One of my favorite parts of the intro was all of the thing mentioned that still exist at Kenyon today. It discussed all of our collegiate sports and intramural sports and also brought up the Kenyon Review, both of which are still very prominent on our campus today.

    I think that this Collegian story relates to my favorite reading of the week, which was the excerpt from Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart. Bellah makes the argument that tradition is instrumental in the continuation of communities. He says that tradition allows members of the community to remember both good and bad things about the past in order to move towards a better future together. I also love the point that he makes about how story telling provides role models for younger generations: "a community is involved in retelling its story, its constitutive narrative, and in so doing, it offers examples of the men and women who have embodied and exemplified the meaning of the community" (Bellah, 229). This helps generations see what their future holds if they work hard to uphold traditions within the community itself. The final line of the excerpt also struck me: "We call these "practices of commitment" for they define the patterns of loyalty and obligation that keep the community alive" (Bellah, 230). He is saying that strong communities don't forget their past because they keep certain things continuous throughout their existence.

    This College Bowl introduction is a small piece of Kenyon's advertisement plan, but I think it relates beautifully to the idea that the way we present ourselves here has stayed similar in some ways. We use these "practices of commitment" that Bellah describes with things such as the Kenyon Review. Although it ceased publication briefly, it is a tradition that has been a way for the Kenyon community to stay alive through story telling. We advertised it to the world back in 1963, and we still advertise it today, which represents Bellah's ideas of about how communities find continuity through their traditions and memories. Since Kenyon presents as a changed community with fundamental similarities, I believe that our traditions have helped define us and connect current students with past generations.

Citation:

Bellah, Robert. 1985. “From: 'Habits of the Heart'." Pp. 229-230 in The Collective Memory Reader, edited by J.K. Olick, V. Vinitzky-Seroussi, and D. Levy. New York: Oxford University Press.

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