Ella Kitchens, Editor-in-Chief
Denison prides itself on being a fully residential campus. In your four years of liberal arts education, you can stay within the same two square miles. After all, over 100 clubs, fascinating speakers and artists brought to campus, entertainment on the weekends, and a variety of on-campus jobs are waiting.
But in my time here, I’ve learned just as much off the Hill as I have in classrooms. This is why, even though Denison has everything you could need, you should leave every once in a while.
I started writing for The Denisonian at the start of my freshman year, but it wasn’t until I took journalism classes that I was encouraged to learn and write about our county. We were quizzed every week on local issues (Who is the mayor of Granville?) or on news in the area. Thereafter, in almost every journalism class I took, we had assignments where we weren’t allowed to write about Denison. There’s even a journalism class I’m in right now called “Get Off the Hill” that changes its topic every semester, focusing on a different issue in Licking County. Over the course of these classes, I wrote about the refugee agency Community Refugee & Immigration Services (CRIS) and the issues they ran into during the first months of the Trump administration, the board of elections and election security, journalists reporting on crime, and more.
In the spring semester of my sophomore year, I started working for The Reporting Project, a newsroom run through the journalism department and focused on reporting on our county. I continued learning not only about local issues that affect us, but also learned random details that made this county feel more like home. Now, my favorite bakery is R&M Bakery because I wrote about a local musician playing music there every Saturday. My favorite coffee shop is Coffee Shack in Heath because I’ve met sources there who are from Heath. My favorite Fourth of July celebration is in Utica because I bought a delicious hot dog from a stand there while reporting on their festival.
Not everyone has time to fit a journalism class into their schedule or cover local news in our area. But I encourage students to look for opportunities to let them explore beyond our campus. Classes with service-learning components, such as some psychology and education classes, often place students in local schools and community service organizations. Weekend trips, such as Saturday service trips or freshman class trips, can offer the opportunity to go to Newark or Columbus.
Even beyond that, off-campus study lets students go to another country or another part of the United States for a semester or summer. Study abroad is something students often say is one of the best parts of their college experience. Many students express excitement about exploring a whole new culture, city, and way of seeing the world. But I rarely hear students talking about doing the same thing while they are here.
Unless you are from the area, these four years are an opportunity to explore a culture different from your own, even if the differences may seem slight. Granville is only a three-and-a-half hour drive from my hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, but I’ve noticed differences in the culture, from the way Ohioans talk to the way they show hospitality. You can explore why this place is the way it is, from the area’s industrial history to earthworks in Newark that are thousands of years old.
Denison has so many opportunities on campus. We have a diverse population of students from across the globe who we have so much to learn from. But we are stuck in a bubble if all we do is stay on campus, separated from the history and culture of the county we live in. There’s a lot to experience in our county, so I challenge students to get off the Hill.
Ella Kitchens ‘28 is a journalism and global health major from Lexington, Kentucky.