A purple carpet and an evening full of events and awards for someone who crashes an NCA party?

Kenyon has a long history of producing great alums, but the College has fallen into a tendency to advertise the living daylights out of a few select ones of their choosing. Famous alumni are an obvious selling point for the school, but with applications this year up something like 64 percent, why overdo it? Here are a few examples of the College feeding the egos of alumni — and not necessarily the student body’s most beloved either (let us praise Allison Janney for a minute):

1. Putting them on giant posters in Peirce – Nothing says “big ego” more than a giant poster. The posters have been validated under the guise of, “the College was just trying to let people know about the event,” but I say that a small poster would have been just as effective — this isn’t Gourdzilla. When we do we cry wolf and admit that bigger is not necessarily better? 

2. Featuring soon-to-be graduates on the home page – Congrats to those seniors who already have jobs [*cue crying for those who are eternally unemployed*], but isn’t that enough? We should feature more people like this.

3. Making people get tickets to see them speak in Rosse – Sure, John Green is exciting. He currently holds four of the top 10 spots on the New York Times’ Young Adults Bestsellers list. The College doesn’t need to feed into his ego further by requiring students to get tickets to listen to him speak. It clearly was not necessary if they had to send out emails after the ticket distribution saying they had a “few remaining tickets.”

4. Everything and anything the College does to accommodate Josh Radnor – Pretty much every student who isn’t a first-year or wasn’t abroad last fall remembers all the excitement surrounding the Liberal Arts premiere. The College rolled out the purple carpet, the Nuge put on her most sparkly gown and we all celebrated the work of “Kenyon’s favorite son.” But was it deserved? Do we want to be praising the man who comes back to campus and crashes an NCA party just to sit in the corner and sip on a Keystone?

5. Constantly writing about them/paying attention to every minute detail of their actions. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.