<p>I am a soon-to-be-graduating Kenyon senior, and with exams coming next week, I’ve begun to reflect upon my time here at Kenyon. As my college career comes to a close, I have come to the conclusion that I would never choose Kenyon if I could go back in time 4 years and make my college decision again. It is not that I have had a miserable time at Kenyon, far from it. Rather, I think that Kenyon has a number of real drawbacks that are hidden from prospective students and that would have turned me away from the school if only I had known. So here is a list of the things that suck at Kenyon.</p>
<li><p>The internet - Kenyon has a bandwidth management policy. That means: online games are blocked, Peer to Peer applications are blocked, bittorrent is blocked, irc is blocked, streaming video is blocked, and all sorts of random things like AIM file transfers or iTunes podcasts go extremely slow. If you consider yourself to be a heavy internet user, you will hate Kenyon. If you manage to get an apartment as an upperclassman you can get cable internet instead, but this is far from guaranteed. With OCS and some unfortunate lottery numbers, I never managed to get into a housing option where cable internet was available.</p></li>
<li><p>The town - yes, Gambier is very pretty and tranquil. However, being in the middle of nowhere will suck much more than you might realize. Want to purchase something you can’t find at Wal-Mart? Good luck - the nearest Barnes and Noble, Best Buy, and shopping mall are all 40+ minutes away by car. Want to get a job? Good luck - the limited supply of on-campus jobs goes quickly, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything paying more than $6/hour. </p></li>
<li><p>The Kenyon Community that admissions sells you is a lie. This is not to say that you won’t make great friends at Kenyon - you probably will. But this is a community where your stuff WILL get stolen if you don’t lock it up. This is a community where vandalism IS a big problem. This is a community where real tension exists between local residents and students because of noise and litter issues.</p></li>
<li><p>In a million tiny ways, the administration generally sucks. I could relate a dozen funny (now) stories about the arcane bureaucracy that you have to navigate through at this school sometimes. While some departments (the registrar) are competent and cheerful, many administrators seem either hostile, incompetent, or both. To give just one example, I tried calling Residential Life over the summer once to ask a quick question. Once I identified myself as a student, the woman on the phone interrupted me to say “We’re busy right now, call back in a week” and hung up on me. Ridiculous. This is a direct result of #2 - in order to attract professors to the middle of nowhere, Kenyon needs to provide jobs for their spouses. Administrators are hired because of who they are married to, not because they are competent or qualified (not true for all administrators, but true for many).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>That said, I’ve had some great classes with some great profs and met some great people. I just think you would be able to find all that at another school that didn’t have so many aggravations.</p>
<p>Transferring credit is a *****, especially if you're a transfer student (like me). </p>
<p>I think it is very interesting that Kenyon only makes students take 4 courses per semester for a total of 32 courses to graduate while most other colleges require 5 courses per semester (40 courses to graduate).</p>
<p>All Kenyon courses are just as hard/easy as courses from other colleges.</p>
<p>"That said, I've had some great classes with some great profs and met some great people. I just think you would be able to find all that at another school that didn't have so many aggravations."</p>
<p>What other school? I would be grateful if you could provide me a (list of) school(s) that doesnt have any aggravation while also being as good as Kenyon.
While I can see what you are trying to say, I dont think you are portraying a fair picture here. Yes, there are some administrators that are very arrogant and incompetent (I cite the Health Center), most administrators are very cheerful and helpful who go out of their way to make us comfortable.
I dont understand your grievance about Kenyon students and community memebrs having issues with noise and litter. Is it not the students' fault that they litter and make noise? What is to be expected of those that live in towns: just bear with it and let Kenyon students do whatever the hell they want?
Regarding vanadalism and stealing, where is that not a problem? I disagree with you that things will get lost if you dont lock stuff. While there have been some cases of the same, I have not locked my room the entire year and yet not lost anything. You might have lost a few things but in general, theft and vandalism is not as widespread as other places. I know of schools where people will rip off seats and wheels and stands off bikes locked properly: Kenyon is definitely not amongst those schools. </p>
<p>I have only finished my freshman year here. First semester, I felt Kenyon was heaven. Over the course of the year, I have developed some grievances and found shortcomings that Kenyon needs to overcome to attain greater standards. However, I still think Kenyon is a friendly place and I, for one, will be back next year.</p>
<p>Frankly, this post strikes me as coming from someone with a chip on his shoulder. Generally, on a site like this, you'll here only from those people who have something negative to say and/or an axe to grind. The vast majority of students who are happy at a school won't bother with a site like this. My son, who just finished his sophomore year at Kenyon and loves it, wouldn't come near this site. When I told him about this negative post he just laughed and shrugged.</p>
<p>Also, to be honest, I find this critique to be rather lame. Should anyone be surprised to find out that Gambier is in the middle of nowhere? Not if you've been paying the least bit of attention. A student upset with the administration of a college? Shocking. Low bandwidth on the Kenyon internet? Hardly a damning indictment (my son disputes this is a real problem). As to the supposed lack of community at Kenyon, this is simply not an opinion shared by many I have spoken to. My son has made wonderful friends (I have met many of them) and he speaks very highly of the community. A difference of opinion, I guess.</p>
<p>Well that post is not really realistic. The campus is realy secure, everybody keeps their room open and at the most somebody can borrow (steal) your bike for a couple of days.</p>
<p>The internet connection again works pretty well and if somebody comes to Kenyon to play games online for 10 hours a day probably this is not the right place</p>
<p>I didn't say the post was invalid because it is negative. I simply think the critique is not very compelling and certainly open to argument at points. </p>
<p>My point with regard to negativity is that, in general, sites which are set up to review things (colleges, cars, toasters, etc.) attract more people who are negative and have an axe to grind. Someone who is unhappy with a purchase or product is far more likely to seek a forum to air their complaints than someone who is happy with the same product. This is true on this site if you spend some time looking around.</p>
<p>In the end, I just wonder why someone would take the time to author a post entitled "reasons not to attend kenyon" and air it in multiple forums on this site. It certainly seems like a gratuitous potshot at Kenyon. And in the end, as I said, the reasons given are hardly compelling.</p>
<p>This guy is a real idiot. He posted the same thing on another two - not one, but two, and this is his third - thread. My first reaction is that he's not very secure that people really heard what he said the first time - well, for good reason: he's not so very persuasive, now, is he? I think this is satire. Poorly crafted, mind you, but satire nonetheless.</p>
<p>Let me try this again. A dull but diligent kid gets into Kenyon and then, against everyone's best judgment, he actually shows up in Gambier. He tries, but frankly the kid's a bit of a prosaic thinker - someone who would have found a happy home at Ohio State - and, well, what this kid really values isn't in Gambier: the student finds a slow internet and not enough channels on the TV and suddenly a place that looks like a planned and gated community actually is in the sticks of Ohio, the kind of place where you should lock your door; and, worse yet: the administrators aren't even second-cousins to school nurses. So this student posts three threads on this board, hoping to transfer the misery to someone else. Seems a bit lame, if you ask me.</p>
<p>Wow, reading this thread makes me feel a little relieved my son did not choose Kenyon as agonizing as that decision was for him. Unlike dennis I have not found that posters to collegeconfidential are those with axes to grind. Rather, the healthy,honest and unemotional discussion of the pros and cons of each institution has been some of the best information we have received. NO college is perfect (check the other college forums) and after reading homogenized info from sources like Fiske, I am happy to hear about the real life problems from folks who are living with them. Rereading the posts from anotheroldguy, they feel like personal attacks and frankly that is of no value to those of us looking for objective assessments of a college. If I am not mistaken, the original poster stated that the forum monitors copied his post to a different thread (see reply #4). Thanks to Hinjew for trying to bring this discussion back to something of value. Kenyon is a great LAC or my son would not have had such trouble making a decision.</p>
<p>PS Macalester College, the institution my son unltimately selected, also has 4 credit classes so you take 4 per semester. New to my oldworld model of 3 credit classes/ 5 classes per semester.</p>
<p>If I were an outsider looking in on these posts, I think my conclusion would be: Kenyon is a place where you are allowed to have your own opinion...as long as it's the rightone.</p>
<p>This has nothing to do with Kenyon "allowing" an opinion if it is a "right one"...these are just different people with different opinions posting on a board...some with first hand experience at Kenyon and others from the outside looking in.</p>
<p>But some people with favorable opinions posting on this board make it seem like having an unfavorable or alternative opinion to Kenyon is "wrong."</p>
<p>Yes, I understand. I just don't like the way this post has evolved but I feel that the original post was someone's valid opinion. Everyone has their own positive and negative experiences at every college and this board should be informative and show as many sides as possible.</p>
<p>if you attend Kenyon you just see how the stuff stated in the first post are not true. There are opinions and there are facts. Some of the stuff mentioned in the first posts are facts unture like the locking the doors thing and so on.
I felt like people actually believe stuff written on this wall, i was reading stuff on this web site before coming to Kenyon thus i want then to understand it is not really like that. Kenyon is not perfect everybody knows that. Nothing is perfect.</p>