There’s a housing crisis on the Kenyon College campus. The problem lies in that there’s no off campus housing unless you want to pitch a tent in the woods, and the college has overenrolled the freshman class for the past two years while simultaneously inheriting hundreds of “super-seniors” due to the pandemic. So now the school is caught with too many students and too few rooms.
Last year, their solution was to deport 50 freshman to Denmark for the first semester. This was a perfect solution with no issues. But what goes up must come down, and upon my arrival to campus, housing was an immediate problem.
Last spring, I lived in “Mather,” one of those “riot-proof” curving masses meant to house the college’s first female students in the 1970s. I got used to the non-perpendicular walls and the unfortunately patterned carpets, but when someone starting smearing their shit on the stairwell walls, I could sense the beginning of the end.
Soon, the “Mather Shitter” was a notorious campus name, akin to the “Scranton Strangler” in both hilarity and severity of the crime. The Mather quality of life only worsened when some boys smashed through a large window in the breezeway. My last straw came one morning in April when I walked out of my dorm and immediately recognized a smell that must have resulted from someone frying latkes in piss .
You can only imagine my excitement when the housing lottery opened and I could pick a room in the sophomore dorms: the majestic neo-gothic south campus residence halls that the school prints on every piece of their promotional materials.
I won’t draw this out any more. I don’t live in the pretty princess castles of south campus; I live in the “Modular housing units”—three temporary buildings separated into closet-sized single rooms that resemble something between a trailer, a shipping container, and a psych ward. And to add injury to insult, the Mods are down a steep hill from the rest of campus.
But I’m not writing this essay to complain about housing, though that’s surely what it looks like up to this point. What I really want to do is introduce you to my Mod, who I have named Edie after famous 60s Mod, Edie Sedgwick.
I’m trying to think of Edie’s and my living situation as “avant-garde” instead of unfortunate. It’s not dinky, it’s romantic. I’m thinking of “the factory” and the romance of the squalid rooms Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe must have occupied. Of course, I live in rural Ohio, not Greenwich Village, so they get points there, but I don’t have a nicotine addiction, so points to me.
So what will I do with Edie to live up to the aesthetic of the Chelsea hotel? I can’t abort Bob Dylan’s illegitimate child (for literally every reason), but I can try to turn my room into some kind of experimental space. How? I guess I’m taking suggestions in the comments.
But oh look at my manners! How could I be so rude? Let me give you a tour!
The first thing you notice when you enter is the 400 pound door that requires both hands and the embarrassing strain of your little noodle arms. Once you cram yourself in, the room is nice as hell! Look at the posters! Look at my books! Check out this comfy desk chair! Hey-wait don’t open my closet; I don’t have any shelves yet so all the clothes will fall on the floor. And ok yes, I can’t recommend any area of the wall that doesn’t have anything hanging because of the “I spilled coffee on the wall in a spastic episode” pattern of the wallpaper.
Shit—I was complaining again, wasn’t I? Forgive me and let me tell you more about the positives.
Edie has already taught me so much about Kenyon. Last semester, I was sure the Kenyon Football team wasn’t real and it was only on the website as a funny little goof. But now, I get to walk past their practice every single day! Turns out, they really have to wear those puffy little outfits and kneel in a circle and chant, like in the movies. I also learned that the most sexist boy in my film class last semester is on the team, so that tracks, I guess.
I don’t mean to demean the football team. None of them will read this, so I will continue to do it, but I’m also on a Kenyon team, and I understand sometimes it’s tough to have to recon with your personal identity when you’re on a team with such a strong personality on campus. For me, it’s been really hard to separate myself from the improv stereotype of being funny and hot.
So Edie’s gonna be a character in my year. Even if I move, I feel it will be a messy break between us. At the end of the day, I need Edie.1 Honestly, my friendship with Edie is already on track to be scarily codependent; she needs me to live in her and I need her to pretend all my issues are about my walk up the hill instead of anything else.
In closing, college is exciting, football is real, my step count is off the charts, and Edie is my friend.
this is funny because I literally need to sleep in Edie at the end of my day. do you get it?
are there still goldfish crackers under the cowboy hat?