Echoes from the Chapel: A Continuity Shared with the Past

    The Kenyon Collegian of April 1902 feels like an artifact from a distant world, yet as a current Kenyon student, I cannot help but feel a strange sense of connection to it. The newspaper’s aged, formal language, its concerns about student behavior in chapel, and its preoccupation with honor codes and political engagement seem almost quaint by modern standards. The events it discusses—faculty decisions, musical recitals, debates about campus governance—are weirdly similar to those of today, though the way they are framed reflects a very different social and moral landscape. The editorial, deeply moralizing and paternalistic, marks a striking contrast with contemporary campus publications, which tend to embrace diverse perspectives rather than impose a singular expectation of student life. Reading the collegian, I felt both removed from and embedded in Kenyon’s past, as though standing in a long, continuous current of institutional memory, aware that the traditions shaping my present were once new, contested, and evolving.

    Eric Hobsbawm’s (2011) concept of invented tradition sheds light on how institutions and societies create a sense of continuity with the past, even when that continuity is, in part, a constructed illusion. Unlike custom, which combines value and pragmatic implication and evolves organically over time, and routine, which is simply habitual repetition, an invented tradition is deliberately established to promote specific values and behaviors (Hobsbawm 2011). It relies on rituals, symbols, and repetition to instill a sense of historical legitimacy, making people feel as if they are part of an enduring lineage. For Hobsbawm (2011), these traditions often serve political or ideological functions, reinforcing social hierarchies, national identities, or institutional authority. While they claim to be time-honored, many of them are relatively recent constructions designed to stabilize rapidly changing societies (Hobsbawm 2011).

    Applying Hobsbawm’s argument to my impression of the Kenyon Collegian of 1902, I see how Kenyon’s traditions—its emphasis on honor, reverence, and scholarly discipline—were not simply inherited but actively cultivated through repeated discourse. The way the newspaper framed student misbehavior in chapel, for example, was not just about enforcing a random discipline but about reinforcing a shared moral identity that was meant to feel eternal and sacred. This insight helps me see that my own sense of connection to Kenyon’s past is shaped by similar processes. The continuity I feel is, at least in part, a product of institutional storytelling—a narrative that constructs Kenyon as a place where students have always wrestled with honor, tradition, and intellectual life. At the same time, this perspective is challenging because it makes me question which parts of Kenyon’s identity are truly enduring and which have been selectively emphasized, reshaped, or even forgotten to fit new needs.

Work Cited

Hobsbawm Eric. 2011. “Collective Memory: From The Collective Memory.” Pp. 271–274 in The Collective Memory Reader, edited by J. K. Olick, V. Vinitzky-Seroussi, and D. Levy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.