Kenyon Farmers: Our plan to make the residential program more accessible by expanding it
Dear President Decatur and Provost Bowman,
As you know, on Monday, one of the farmers presented President Decatur with a petition signed by nearly 1,400 members of the Kenyon community. Among these signatories were hundreds of current students, many with personal ties to the community we have built at the Farm, prospective students who pledged not to come to Kenyon due to the decision to end the residential program, and alumni who have pledged not to donate until this decision is reversed. It has become clear that your administration's unilateral decision to sever our residential program with no clear plan to replace it has severely damaged the goodwill of hundreds of members of our community.
This outcome benefits no one. So we would like to propose a different path. We recognize that the residential program as it currently exists proposes challenges to this administration, in particular concerning management and accessibility. But we believe the only way to address these concerns is to improve upon the residential program, not eliminate it. If your administration is serious about making the Farm into the thriving work environment we know it can be, it can only succeed in this goal by investing in the Farm’s future, not by destroying it. Instead of eliminating this beloved program—one that has improved the lives of hundreds of students and alumni—we want to see it reinstated and built to last. We have a positive vision for the Farm, a model that is sustainable, accessible and adds considerable value to Kenyon College’s curriculum. We present our vision as a demonstration of our commitment to the future of the Farm. Although we have been denied workplace autonomy at every turn—which is why we recently unanimously voted to authorize a ULP strike—we hope to work with the Kenyon administration to find the best solution for the future of this community.
The education that we get at the Farm is unlike any other offered at Kenyon. It is one that is grounded in the daily experience and responsibilities of farming. Since farming is about being on and making connections with the land, the best academic experiences on a farm will come as a result of the student’s engaged experience on that land. If an academic institution is to support a farm program as a part of its broader educational program, it must accept this. According to Kenyon’s website: “Some of the students who work at the Kenyon Farm plan to operate their own farms when they graduate…This hands-on experience is a chance to participate in agricultural life to its fullest within an academic environment.” The College’s own professed goals are simply not realistic unless long-term, sustained residency on the farm is an available option to interested students. Students must live on a farm in order to learn on it. Thus the farmhouse is central to our vision of the future of the Kenyon Farm. We will be happy to expand upon this reasoning and further explain the deep significance of farming the land on which one lives, as well as what it means to us as Kenyon students, in ongoing conversations with you.
In our meeting last week, you expressed your concern that the demands of being a residential farmer are too much of a burden for those who take on that role, and that the residential role is therefore inaccessible to students who might otherwise choose to work at the Farm. We understand the challenges the farmhouse presents, particularly in regards to accessibility, and appreciate your concern for the responsibility that student farmers shoulder. However, we believe that this concern is not a reason to discontinue the residential program, but rather a reason to expand it.
We have spoken with several alumni of the Kenyon farm residential program who agree that the path toward a sustainable farm would require the purchase of another house, or a substantial expansion to the existing one. This is the only logical solution that would allow more students to live in and work at the Farm, diffusing the workload of the residential position across a greater number of student workers and creating new, rewarding jobs for Kenyon’s student workforce. Every year, we receive more applicants than we can accept for the residential positions. Our proposal, backed by alumni who have expressed their willingness to fund it, should be the starting point for negotiations between our workplace and your administration.
In the context of the College’s current plans to expand residential halls, our proposal is a drop in the bucket. The plans to build new residential halls on South campus will cost $502,512.56 per bed added. At a fraction of that cost, we could build more than enough beds to accommodate the demands of the residential program and expand its accessibility.
Expanding, not cutting, the residential program will uplift Kenyon’s community. It would continue to foster an experience comparable to programs at our peer institutions that also aim to provide students with opportunities to work and learn about sustainability and ecological governance. Examples of such projects include the Homestead program at Denison University, the George Jones Farm at Oberlin College, and even the residential Farmhouse at Provost Bowman’s alma mater, Carleton College. We would love to integrate the Kenyon Farm more fully into the curricular program at Kenyon, as some of these programs do. We have worked with faculty in the past to do this, and have specific curricular visions for the future that we hope to continue to develop in consort with professors going forward. We invite faculty and staff with ideas to reach out to us as well. However, compared to similar programs at peer institutions, the Kenyon Farm does truly stand out as one of the few programs in the country that offers students an opportunity to develop such intimate ties to the land they live and work on. Highlighting this fact may be especially prudent given that many prospective students expressed their reluctance to attend Kenyon following the announcement of the decision to end the Farm’s residential program. It would be a shame for Kenyon to lose its opportunity to be a leader in this respect.
Our vision also addresses the concern you both raised about the willingness of the Farm Manager to oversee student residency. Expanding institutional and structural support for the Farm will certainly lessen the daily responsibilities of the Manager. However, in suggesting that it has been difficult to find a manager who is willing to handle the functions of the residential program, you insinuate that a hiring process is more important than the value the Farm clearly provides to so many people. Whatever the supposed costs or difficulties of running the Kenyon Farm’s residential program are, they do not outweigh the life changing impact it has had on hundreds of people’s lives. There is a way to solve the issues at our workplace. Kenyon is at its best when it acts like a community, not a business. We, along with our alumni allies, are willing to do whatever it takes to preserve and perfect the community we have been building at the Farm for the past ten years. If you are serious about making the Farm more accessible and sustainable as a program, we would like you to meet with us and with concerned alumni next week in a public-forum to address our visions for the future of the Farm. We sincerely hope that you will join us.
With hope and optimism for the future,
The Kenyon Farmers