The Struggle for the Students' Kenyon

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In the archives this week, my group spent our time finalizing the selections for our case, and drafting descriptions for the objects we chose to display. In this stage of the process, the task at hand was to decipher the through-line and cultivate a cohesive depiction of Kenyon’s student life over the past one hundred years. After reviewing our artifacts, the focal point of our case is centered around the emergence of student groups and organizations over the last century, which championed diversity and expression. Our selections–pamphlets from Black Student Union and Hillel, an issue of a literary magazine, and a photograph of WKCO– reflect the expansion of not only Kenyon’s student body, but the possibilities for connection and outlets for creative expression.

Our reading this week, The Struggle for the People’s King references the civil rights movement to highlight the ways in which different groups deploy, distort, and falsify collective memory in order to define their identity. The book’s author, Hajar Yazdiha, explains that groups strategically misuse and orient a collective memory– such as the civil rights movement– to validate their political and social position above other groups. However, each group and their usages of the same memory is interconnected, constantly shifting to challenge and contradict their opponents’ message. Therefore, Yazdiha emphasizes the importance of considering the power dynamics between groups, their temporal understandings and self-perceptions, and how the group with the most power can cause cultural repercussions to our recollections of a societal past.

Although the subject of The Struggle for the People’s King (civil rights) has little to do with my work in the archives this week, I began thinking about the collective memory of Kenyon as an institution, and how it might vary between student groups. The way one thinks about Kenyon may differ depending on their experience and what pockets of student life they existed in. Furthermore, as Yazdiha articulates, “the continual interaction between group identities and memory produces conflagration of interpretations of memory,” (Yazdiha, 44) as well as contradictions or gaps. For instance, it’s possible that a group or particular subdivision of the student body with the most influence can define the entirety of Kenyon’s student life by championing only their experience and perception of Kenyon. Perhaps, within the past one hundred years, there have been elements of student life that are no longer acknowledged or remembered (such as a student club, literary magazine, or acapella group, for instance), either because they dissolved or because their existence was erased. Despite the pessimism of this assumption, I am hopeful that my group did our best to showcase and exalt as many aspects of student life at Kenyon as possible.




Yazdiha, Hajar. The Struggle for the King’s People. Princeton University Press, 2023.

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