NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology Celso M. Villegas offered a Founders' Day address.
The following is the prepared text of the Founders' Day address delivered by Celso M. Villegas, NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology, on Oct. 29, 2026.
In 1953, Edward Shils and Michael Young published “The Meaning of the Coronation.” Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation that year, they argued, was a “ceremonial occasion for the affirmation of moral values by which (British) society lives.” The Coronation Service itself — a highly choreographed rite full of oaths and symbols of state — presented “a series of ritual affirmations of the moral values necessary to a good society.” Elizabeth Windsor was “transformed from a young woman into a vessel of the virtues which must flow through her into her society” and “thus transformed, she is reminded (not only) of the wide sphere of her power” but also “the responsibilities for its moral and pious use.” The public celebrations surrounding the Coronation, Shils and Young argued, were a “great national communion” in which “people became more aware of their dependence upon each other” and “more sensitive to the values which bound them all together.” It was a classic case of ritual putting people in touch with the sacred and thus affirming to themselves their own solidarity.
Two years later, Norman Birnbaum offered a scathing criticism of Shils and Young in his piece, “Monarchs and Sociologists.” Taking the authors to task for focusing on consensus and stability, Birnbaum argued “this proposition violates the evidence we do have, which suggests that complex and rationalized societies like our own are arenas for conflicts of beliefs” and that Shils and Young’s depiction of the Coronation elided too its ideological and propagandistic qualities. This exchange served as a major battle in mid-20th century sociology between functionalist theories which emphasized society’s equilibrium-seeking tendencies, and conflict theories which emphasized power and inequality. Indeed, Birnbaum’s critique would echo later in historian Eric Hobsbawm’s notion of “invented traditions”: “a set of practices … of a ritual or symbolic nature which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.” The Coronation and Founders’ Day become therefore subject to critique on the grounds that they insist on continuity in the face of real, empirical conflict.
I take those gathered here today down this path as a challenge: Can we find faith yet in the Matriculation, given that which divides us? What does the Oath and signing you do today, students, mean? All of us have already made commitments of both necessity and faith to things other than Kenyon and will take many more oaths — spoken and unspoken — to friends, to loved ones, to nations, to abstract ideals and to niche fandoms alike. We will make promises to ourselves, to bind us to rational goals, to stir us to individual achievement and to shared glories. If those things are true — that we are already oath-bearers, and of oaths of often different and competing sorts — then does taking one more oath matter? What is special about this ceremony and what does it actually bind?
This summer, I worked with Dalia Fishman ’27 to study how Kenyon has talked about Israel and Palestine since October 7, 2023. We read three years of articles in the Kenyon Collegian and online comment sections that, in many cases, were longer than the articles themselves. We looked at documents in Special Collections and Archives and we created an archive of YikYaks. I, an “old,” with Dalia’s help, spent a long time trying to parse Yaks like, “Everyone talking about Iran and Israel. How about we talk about when I ran up on the opps with the work. Cause that is real.” Jokes aside, there was a peculiar quality to the discourse on Israel and Palestine. We saw heated exchanges, calls for unity, and clever irony all evoking what seemed to be a shared concern with Kenyon, or more specifically, patterned sets of code words about how Kenyon should be in light of events.
Since the “Coronation” debate, cultural sociology has moved away from notions of value consensus towards the active use of culture by agents, expressing what they understand as sacred and profane in the texts they generate, as meaning-makers rather than as passive vessels. In our analysis, Dalia and I noticed meaning-making patterned around three dimensions or aspects of Kenyon which I believe are also reflected in the Founders’ Day ceremony and the Matriculation Oath.
The first set of codes cluster around discussions about Kenyon as an institution, as a place driven by “mission” and “responsibility,” concerned with the “value of a Kenyon education,” with “safety” not “disruption,” and with lawful “compliance.” Kenyon’s original Matriculation Oath from 1841 exhorted students to “strive by all proper means to promote Kenyon’s good name” and to obey the rules and regulations set forth in the Student Handbook. It asked for “loyalty” from its “faithful sons,” and then its “faithful sons and daughters,” a hierarchical devotion in both formulations. Oaths of this style — focused on the matriculant’s promise to comply — are endemic across matriculation oaths in other colleges, universities and professional schools. When the Matriculation Oath was revised in 2018, “values” took the place of rules and regulations, to which a Collegian article commentator sarcastically wrote, “Yep, gotta avoid those rules and regulations.” Still, your Oath borrows the phrase “mutual respect” from the Student Handbook — an insinuation of compliance — but as I will explain later, the code term
“mutual respect” belongs not to Kenyon-as-an-Institution but rather to Kenyon-as-a-Community.
The second set of codes deal with how to have a discussion, or a discourse about Discourse. In our data, we saw several variations of the following: “Challenging” and “uncomfortable” conversations and classrooms that lead to “learning” are possible with “humility” and “openness.” To remain “unchallenged” means to cling to one’s “arrogance,” to “staying in your comfort zone,” and often leads to conversations that “go in circles” rather than being “productive” or “constructive.” The Matriculation Oath you swore today calls for your devotion to “spirited inquiry and intellectual integrity,” reflected also in the College’s 2020 mission statement: “spirited, informed, and collaborative inquiry” alongside “courage and humility in equal measure.” No doubt your professors have exhorted you to challenge yourselves and leave your comfort zones. The Collegian opinions staff has been practically begging you for weeks to make your thoughts known in its pages. Kenyon is a place that is at least partially but substantially defined by improving its discourse, even if — and perhaps because — we seem to believe it is in short supply.
Finally, the third set of codes refer to “the Kenyon Community,” a place where “shared values” trump “division,” where its members are given “support” and “comfort,” where “mutual respect” and “empathy” keep “disrespect” and “fear” at bay. This Code of Community is so often evoked in Kenyon discourse and is seemingly both the source of Kenyon’s vitality as well as what saps it. It emphasizes “comfort” when the Code of Discourse aims for “discomfort,” it profanes “neutrality” while the Institutional Code sacralizes it. Still, as a student wrote in the Collegian after October 7, “…our focus should be on promoting constructive dialogue that springs from empathy and mutual respect,” identifying here that what makes Community good allows for ideal Discourse in challenging times. You today pledged your devotion to “mutual respect and inclusive citizenship.” You pledged not to matriculate to “Kenyon,” but rather to be “members of the Kenyon College Community.” You will, and likely have found, endless evocations of Community here at Kenyon, and in our most trying times you may hear the question, “But what is Community?” This ideal striving for Community, alongside Discourse and Institution, shapes the creative, ongoing accomplishment that is Kenyon’s culture — your Oath being a part of that meaning-making process.
But what of the act of taking your Oath here today? The people surrounding you and who we honor here today have indeed demonstrated an uncommon dedication to the College and its Community. But with a few notable exceptions, those who have witnessed your Oath have not themselves sworn any public, ritual, nor collective devotion to Kenyon at all. The trustees sign statements affirming their fiduciary responsibility, but take no public oaths to the College as trustees. Most of your faculty and staff negotiate their contracts individually: We answer to divisions, departments, and disciplines, and may be responsible to you from a professional standpoint, but we swear no oaths to this school. In fact, I have already ritually sworn my loyalty to another small liberal arts college, and, peace be to Professor Locke, and paraphrasing Paul Fussell, I will not beat my breast at any old alma mater!
The closest to you in public devotion is the president, who willingly took up the College medallion upon her Installation. At other schools, matriculation rites are followed by the ritual reaffirmation of shared governance covenants; we believe in shared governance, but do not pledge this to each other in any public way. Theoretically speaking, Community, Discourse, and Institution at Kenyon are cultural structures we internalize to give our actions meaning and to interpret the meanings of others. But that is just socialization, not public devotion as such.
This is what makes this Matriculation Oath so very important. Because we take no oaths to Kenyon, your promise binds us all to you and to this place. In promising to devote yourselves to the shared values of mutual respect, inclusive citizenship, spirited inquiry, and intellectual integrity, “now and in your lives hereafter,” we here are committed by your promise to provide you the resources to fulfill it — institutional, intellectual and communal. And every year when first-years and transfers promise again to devote themselves as members of the Kenyon College community, we again are pledged through them, in their lives, and in your lives, on Gambier Hill and beyond.
To close, what is the meaning of signing the Matriculation Book? Here it is good to consider the words of Maurice Halbwachs, the father of collective memory. He wrote, “History is a record of changes … hardly a year passes when some part of the whole is not transformed.” In contrast, “The collective memory is a record of resemblances and, naturally, is convinced that the group remains the same.” It is important to remember that when Rutherford B. Hayes, Allison Janney, John Green, and others signed the Matriculation Book, they were not yet the Hayes, nor the Janney, nor the Green we would come to know. They were, like you, making a promise to Kenyon, perhaps with some hope that the devotion to its values would form them into something more than the person they were then. The same is true for your beloved Professors Davidson, Powers, Tazewell, Heidt, Viccellio, Grace, McGavran, Gourrier, Curtis, and Carter, who were not yet Professors Davidson, Powers, Tazewell, Heidt, Viccellio, Grace, McGavran, Gourrier, Curtis nor Carter, and likely did not think they would become people here pledged by you to help fulfill your promise, but now do so gladly. And, as much as this ceremony and its Oath faces the past, as you “honor those who came before,” several elements look towards the future — the planting of the class tree, your promise of devotion, and the addition of blank pages to the Matriculation Book over time.
It is kind of a strange thing to look back into the past and see names of matriculants from two centuries ago. It is also quite strange to contemplate that, far into the future, matriculants may look back at your time and ask similar questions: “Who are these people? We are barely the same!” The Matriculation Book can be like a mise-en-abyme — the past and the present like mirrors facing each other, with you in the middle. You will see yourself reflected forward and back, endless, uncanny images that seem to move with you, or move like you, or are
you. And just as the past is never truly settled and the future fundamentally unforeseeable, the mirrors’ angles shift in unpredictable ways so that trying to focus on a resemblance can be vertiginous and frustrating.
But just as culture is people making meaning through effort, to make the reflections into resemblances requires effort too. You could just scribble a line into the Matriculation Book. Or, by your effort to place your name in the book with care, you can steady those uncanny images — even if just for a few seconds — to share in an act of meaning-making across time. Moving
together, pen on paper, paralleled in different eras, the figures in the mise-en-abyme come into focus — you see them, as they see you — as we see you — young people pledging devotion to a school and binding those whose dedicated care will and must give them the chance to make good on what they have promised.
And with that, the fundamental and important nature of the Matriculation is made known: This is the ceremony when we are enjoined to remake ourselves as a Community. Through promise, through devotion, through effort, and through meaning, we look forward to all the resemblances yet to come. Thank you.