Kenyon students have a warped perception of rural life. I am sick of going to Mount Vernon and witnessing my peers openly berate locals behind their backs. As a student from Kentucky, even though I live in a more urban area of the state, the stereotypes and misconceptions are hurtful. The greatest harm of this divide is with regard to Kenyon’s position in the Knox County community. To combat these prejudices, I believe it is essential that the College begin requiring students to complete mandatory service hours. In a community as tight-knit as ours, such service would not just spark connection outside our campus but also disassemble prejudices that are antithetical to Kenyon’s purpose. 

Before arriving to Kenyon in the fall of 2024, I had never been ashamed of being from Kentucky. My hospitality and slight Southern drawl made me who I was. Yet as I headed down to Convocation and dropped some of my everyday Southern vernacular (a friendly “y’all”), I soon realized that my identity was not aligned with the attitudes of my more metropolitan peers. As I started talking to my neighbors in McBride Hall, a fellow new student turned to me, laughed, then said, “You sound like a hick.” 

Do not worry, though. I have gotten over it. As Associate Professor of History Patrick Bottiger said to me, “You’re putting Kentucky on the vanguard.” We could all learn a thing or two from Kentucky. 

I attended an all-girls Catholic high school where 20 service hours were required over the course of the academic year. Each semester I chugged along, checking off my required hours without a second thought, until my senior year theology teacher encouraged my class to look at our service hours not as a task to be done, but a transformative opportunity aimed at bettering our community (and ourselves). 

Required service hours made me care more about the issues fragmenting my city. Soon, I discovered my own service niche: educational inequity in Kentucky. My home state is ranked 32nd overall for education. In my county, a large number of elementary schools are among Kentucky’s lowest-performing. While I was a student at a well-funded private school, I was rarely exposed to these inequities. As mandated by my school, I spent four days out of the week volunteering at the Louisville Urban League where I tutored high school students in English. A majority of these students attended low-funded high schools in the west end of my town. While engaging with these students almost everyday, we became close friends. 

Mandatory service hours for Kenyon students would embolden them to interact with people outside their everyday circles. Life from the ages 18-22 should introduce you to more people than your Peirce dinner group or Latin TA session. When interacting with the local community, Kenyon students will break down the veil that obscures the rest of the world from the Hill. Select student organizations at Kenyon are already working to broaden the College’s community connections, including service efforts hosted by Kenyon Young Democratic Socialists of America and annual fundraisers sponsored by Greek organizations. However, these opportunities should exist outside of political advocacy or Greek life required service hours. I want to see the linebacker on the football team and my MSSC tutor cleaning up a park together, not just because they have to, but because they want to!

Now, I am not proposing the College begin sending a flock of Kenyon students to “save” Mount Vernon. Instead, I am suggesting that the College begin forcing students to approach unfamiliar dynamics; force students to understand they have an existence outside of the Kenyon context. Every day, students primarily engage with the same people: their professors, residence hall neighbors and club leaders. While each person is unique in their own way, they are not representative of the wider world. Mount Vernon offers a perspective we do not hear every day. Through mandatory service hours, we could view the world without our Kenyon-supplied rose-colored glasses. 

While I know it can be difficult to empathize, Mount Vernon is more than the occasional Trump sign or Amish child at Walmart. Mount Vernon is a diverse, growing community that contributes so much to our lives here. After all, it is not “us vs. them,” it’s everyone. I think I’m beginning to see the waiters at Fiesta Mexicana more than I see my dad. If this space is our home, we must do all that we can to uplift it. 

In high school, my volunteer work was challenging. But that challenge was crucial for me to look beyond my day-to-day existence of pleated skirts and suburban neighborhoods. If Kenyon students are forced into the wider community, they will see their existence outside of their college years. 

I recognize that taking three hours out of your Saturday once a month seems less than ideal. “On a campus as beautiful as this one, why would you ever want to leave?” I can assure you, though, that the work you do in Mount Vernon could be fulfilling. Maybe you need the College to force you to see that. 

The purpose of a place like Kenyon is not just to learn the works of Aristotle or take in classic poetry amid the tall trees and cornfields of rural Ohio. Above all, to be a student at a liberal arts college means to develop holistically. The distance between the College and Knox County is hindering any possibility for us to develop as human beings, rather than just students. So I have had enough of y’all city slickers. Go do something good for your community. 

Anna Sugg ’28 is a history major and art history minor from Louisville, KY. She can be reached at sugg1@kenyon.edu.