Ohio is home to a surprising number of private universities. I have only attended two of Ohio's many public colleges as a student, and have only been on the campuses of five. The five that have had the greatest gift of my visit as of yet does not include Kenyon. Gambier, Ohio is three hours away from my stomping grounds and I have not had sufficient reason to go there yet.

Eli has now attended at least three universities in two countries. He won a bunch of scholarships to go to a private university in Granville, Ohio by the name of Denison. The private universities in Ohio are clustered together in the central and southeastern portions of the state. Surely, when you have all those universities cluster together there is bound to be some cross-contamination. Some of his friends are from Kenyon. It is my guess that one of them gave him this shirt, but I know for sure that Eli one day presented this shirt to me. Since that day I have worn this shirt quite a bit.

Through my intentionally bad photography of these shirts, the situation might look as though this shirt has a tiny bit of thickness to it. That is false; this is the thinnest shirt I own. Were it not for the purple collar this shirt could easily function as a professional undershirt. As it is, the Kenyon shirt gets the most use during the summer months when the Ohio sunrise and another Pennsylvania sunset along with all other points of the day get hotter then your body in heat. This is the free shirt I choose when I don't feel like wearing clothing but have to for whatever reason.

This is also a shirt of risks. Risk one is a personal risk I run most everyday. As an infrequent wearer of deodorant, this shirt is hardly a filter at all if I have body odor that day.

The second risk, or perhaps a collection of risks, was taken by the designer of the shirt. Looking at the hip fashions of college students, especially the "ironic" outfits of the artistic crowd, it is no wonder that the shirt's developer felt safe in releasing this shirt to the incoming students. The developer needed a unisexual design that would be stylin', but not too terribly expensive to produce. The school wants to flaunt affluence, but wouldn't mind saving a couple of bucks. The students want to be hip.

Being hip usually involves a group that sees itself as mattering mocking the behavior of a "less important" group so as to establish competency with the addition of irony. This makes the cutting edge of the hipsters feel more important and connected. The rest of the people follow the lead of the hip because that has been their modus operandi throughout their lives. Thus, wearing shirts that just have three lines on the top and a "5" on the front is pretty fucking cool. This despite the fact that such a shirt is not crafted to any standard in particular.

This is at least how I rationalize the purple collar and sleeve hems. They remind us that Kenyon's colors are purple and white, even out the focus from just the centered "Class of" design, and make the shirt look more foolish than necessary.