What’s with all these professors at Peirce Hall recently? I love it, and I found out. Starting the 2026-27 academic year, Kenyon faculty and staff members get one meal a day included in their contract. I heard a professor say they were getting better at not using “the tray,” that mystical set of training wheels first years don’t even get. These shared experiences are exactly the point: I want the professors around us to feel closer, more familiar and less distant. 

When I first toured Kenyon four years ago as a prospective applicant, unsure what I wanted my college experience to look like, the small, house-like classroom buildings around campus drew me in. I toured plenty of acceptable campuses, but none imparted the same sense of home Kenyon did — even despite the rainy weather that day. 

Now that I’m in my senior year and doing some reflecting, I’m thinking about all the ways I’ve continued to find experiences that feel like seeing those warm, class-cottage lights shining through the rain. Getting to know professors in office hours, collaborating with faculty and staff on outside projects and working on campus all rank as activities that got me closer to the actual people of the Hill, and not just to the horde of us clowns who migrate through yearly. I spend plenty of time with you guys already. 

Kenyon administrators do a lot to build an inclusive community through scheduling and opportunities. Professors have to schedule office hours over a number of different days and encourage students to drop by, something everyone could do more often. Administrators preserve, when possible, these smaller buildings, smaller class sizes and professors’ ability to offer courses unique to their interests. They even bring speakers and events to us, into our little home, that by all other accounts should — and sometimes does — feel like living in a howling wilderness. 

However, there are limitations to what Kenyon administrators can change, physically, about campus. They can’t build new houses for every faculty or staff member, and even if they could, who’s to say faculty would want to live in them. They also can’t change the number or cost of houses in Gambier, Knox County or the surrounding area. This is why, among all the other monetary changes that happen yearly, which I either can’t or don’t know about, I find the recent change to offer faculty and staff a meal a day at Peirce an immensely impactful one. 

During the school day, professors exist to me exclusively in meetings or classes — behind the lectern, not casually. Now, I see plenty of them trooping into Peirce for lunch with the rest of us. I see professors chopping it up in big groups around circle tables on New Side. I have to admit, I’ve been snooping, keeping an open ear, because what do our mysterious sages talk about over a tuna melt? I know if they keep it up, they too will have a favorite Peirce meal, a most hated Peirce meal, a secret culinary hack or even consider having lunch with their students! This is the kind of experience that can make our wonderful faculty, who know more than enough academic information, into even better shepherds for new students each year. 

With this new allowance that encourages campus engagement within existing structures, Kenyon has found a way to enter its third century while keeping campus and our professors feeling young and alive, making this change one of its best — one that perfectly aligns with the welcoming and familial sense I initially felt. 

Wyatt Strawbridge ’27 is an English and Russian major from Haverford, PA. He can be reached at strawbridge1@kenyon.edu.