The “Tradition” Narrative Wants You to Have OCD Tradition

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    As we shuffled into the archives classroom in lower chalmers, it immediately felt like a room of preservation: white walls, little clutter, and archival material placed at each desk. I joined my group at a table on the far end, only later realizing each table was grouped chronologically, and the materials we were faced with marked the beginning. I picked up a dark green/black dusty catalogue from 1849 with a broken spine. When I opened the book on the first page, there was a sketch drawing of “Rosse Chapel,” holding a similar facade as Rosse Hall today. The next page specified “Catalogue of The Theological Seminary of the Diocese of Ohio, Kenyon College, and Kenyon Grammar Schools.” During our time in the archive classroom, I was initially drawn to the depictions of the old buildings, but outside of class, I was able to read more in depth in the online archives consort. The catalogue introduces the college's beginnings in academia to “show the rise and progress of the institution”(4). In reveling in the campus’ beauty, the course catalogue states that “perhaps no part of Ohio is more favorably situated in this respect than the high central region of which “The Hill” of Gambier is a part; nor would it be easy to find, within that region, a place more free from all local influences calculated to produce disease. It is these kinds of beliefs that will produce an “invented tradition,” A doubt is introduced, an obsession begins, and a compulsion will tell you an irrational thing to prevent you from disease. 



    In Hobsbawm's essay, “Introduction: Inventing Tradition,” the author discusses tradition as an element that will always be in humanity because even if a tradition dies, there will always be the notion of “invented tradition.” Hobsbawm uses the term to stress that here the focus is not on whether traditions survive or not, but that we feel a need to create traditions. Usually these needs feel emergent when there is uncertainty or change, tradition can provide certainty, and is often not completely new but re-created because Hobsbawm states that “new” tradition is the reaction to a past “inability to use or adapt to old ones”(273). The author then depicts the limited studies that have looked into tradition, but through his understanding and description “a ‘tradition’ is deliberately invented and constructed by a single initiation”(273). In attending Kenyon, I have known tradition to be this thing that follows in philander chases footsteps (one could call him the initiator), as if everything we do, we do for him. 


    I always think it's interesting discussing the habits of tradition, especially on a college campus. There is something that feels necessary in order to make it a credible institution, but who/what imposes tradition, and what makes it last. The idea of tradition symbolizes a long and rich history, even though Hobsbawm introduces to us the idea of a formation “invented tradition”[...]“is essentially a process of formalization and ritualization, characterized by reference to the past, if only by imposing repetition”(273). it is said that you can't split the gates of hell between your friends or else you may not be friends anymore in the future. My friend's parents (who are alumnus) visited and scoffed at this, “this was never a tradition when we were here, we had to always touch the pole between the gates of hell.” So are these traditions just self preservation for the four years you're here. Does tradition stop when it gets inconvenient or when you find out some fraternities would pee on the pole and touching it never felt appetizing after that. Or does tradition start with a doubt.


Hobsbawm, Eric, “Introduction: Inventing Tradition,” The Collective Memory Reader, Olick, Jeffrey K, et al. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011.

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