South Campus Tunnels

A series of tunnels connects buildings on south campus.

File this one under wishful thinking. During the cold winter months, when even the squirrels are hiding, it would be awfully nice not to have to bundle up to get a bowl of cereal at Peirce. And some colleges, in parts of the country that get feet of snow (can you hear Macalester in Minnesota talking smack?), actually do have tunnels connecting campus buildings.

But not Kenyon. If you want to stay warm trekking from Old Kenyon to Olin Library in the bitter cold, your best option is a healthy jog.

Alef and his buddies once launched an expedition to uncover the subterranean passageways, but failed. Probably because they were looking for something that doesn't exist. "We were trying to find the entrance to the catacombs," Alef said.

Their quest was spawned by hard evidence: "You can see the path of them when it snows."

And, in fact, when it snows the white stuff does melt in foot-wide straight lines to buildings on south campus, cutting across the quad and shooting off to each building. Highly suspicious—at least until Tom Lepley, the director of facilities planning, explains.

The melting pattern traces the path of twenty-two-inch-diameter steam tunnels that start in the maintenance building down the hill from Bushnell and provide heat to most of south campus.

The tunnel is "very, very small," Lepley said. Anyone envisioning Bruce Willis inching through heating ducts in Die Hard can hold that thought—the tunnels contain four- and eight-inch pipes that are quite hot, which is why the snow melts above.

"A person could never get inside them," Lepley said.

(That information hasn't made its way to Alef. Despite his foiled search, he believes the truth about an entrance is out there: "Apparently the Peeps know," he said, which is something one hears a lot when tracing campus rumors.)

Lepley, who is in his thirty-ninth year of working at the College, started to say that there has never been a tunnel on campus but realized with some chagrin that he couldn't quash the notion entirely.

The new science buildings of Hayes and Tomsich halls and the Fischman Wing of Higley are connected underground by an eight-foot-high corridor that anyone can find by taking the stairs down. No crawling required.

The truth, it turns out, just isn't that sexy. "It doesn't look like a tunnel," Lepley said. "It looks like a hallway."