And then there was the time . . .
In response to our call for "Kenyon family squabbles," alumni sent in lots of memories of controversies, protests, uproars major and minor, and debates profound and trivial. We found more in the College archives. There wasn't space in the printed edition of the Bulletin to include everything. Here, then, in no particular order, are a few squabbles that didn't make it into print but that will live forever on cyberspace and, we assume, in Kenyon history.
President Caples and students spar over drug use and the law, culminating in the president's (in)famous 1968 "like it or not" speech."The phrase ‘like it or not' quickly became a watchword on the Hill," notes Greenslade's Kenyon history. "‘Like it or not' T-shirts appeared, and outside speakers who used the phrase must have been mystified by the sudden burst of laughter which followed its use."
Two Peeps members (who else?) in 1979 mount a semi-serious but futile campaign to replace Student Council with town-meeting-style direct democracy. "Maybe it's time we put a stop to the idiocy," opined one of the agitators in a letter to the Collegian. "We created this inept bureaucracy, and we can dispose of it." What began as something of a lark culminated in a campuswide referendum. Student Council survived.
Female athletes periodically question, and defend, the name "Ladies." Gender theory gets a workout with this debate. Is "lady" an offensive, antiquated term implying white gloves and weakness? Or should Kenyon women embrace tradition and simply remake the L word in their own unconstrained image? The question seems to have been settled for now. Athletes and fans alike shout "Go Ladies!" without thinking it means they have to retire to the parlor.
Charges, countercharges, confrontations, and coarseness color the 1977-78 conflict between the Kenyon Film Society and Student Council. In retrospect, the complexity of this controversy, and the way it dragged on and on, seem inversely proportional to the importance of the issues involved. It all had something to do with money, power, and personalities. It's significant, perhaps, that the battle first flared after a screening of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Under evolving names (the Kenyon Women's Caucus of 1974 ultimately became the Crozier Center in 1985), the women's center perpetually parries charges that it's anti-male, radically feminist, discriminatory, and divisive. From the mid-eighties into the early nineties, students argued over the center's guidelines for who can actually use the facility. Did the policies exclude men? Did they entail unfair "gender-oriented criteria"? For various reasons, sororities also proved controversial at various times. At one point, some women formed an "anti-sorority" called the Kenyon Yodeling Society.
Campus and village community members rise up (in vain) against 1996-97 plans by the Peoples Bank to construct a new building on Wiggin Street. Opponents argued that the character of the village was at stake, as well as the safety of children walking home from Wiggin Street School. Also that the building to be demolished by the bank was a historic house where Rutherford B. Hayes took his meals while a student. The College mounted, then abandoned an effort to acquire the bank's proposed new site through eminent domain. In the end, the bank got its new building but agreed to wood clapboard siding (instead of brick). The College got right of first refusal to buy both the old bank building and the new site. Kenyon did eventually buy the old bank. As for the house where Hayes ate, the village denied Kenyon's request to move the structure to a site beside Palme House. The building was razed.
The snowball riot of January 2001 leads to six arrests. After campus security shuts down two north-campus parties, students start throwing snowballs and soon things get out of hand. Knox County deputies show up, and are pelted. The police spray mace. Five students and an alumnus are arrested. A Collegian editorial scolds everyone involved, asserting that Kenyon emerged with "an all new embarrassing public image."