MU| F e a t u r e s
question, and be uncertain about things
they previously accepted. Without
first-year worries about handling new
routines and meeting others’ expectation,
sophomores learn more about themselves
and get a better idea of the person they
want to be.”
The Sophomore Float, adds Gray
Brown, has helped students “bond with
Manchester and understand this as their
home, every bit of it. Even the waters of
the Kenapocomoco.”
Andy Rich lives in the campus
neighborhood close to the river. The
Oppenheim Professor of Mathematics,
Rich has volunteered for the Sophomore
Float “to support in any way I can
building community with the students,
and faculty with students, and faculty
with faculty.”
The longtime professor has organized
five canoe floats for faculty and their
families before the start of the academic
year. This year, staff and their families
joined in too. “Community is what makes
working at Manchester more than a job.
I hope that we keep finding ways to build
that – doing things together outside of
the usual setting.”
Interesting things have been happening
at the river since the last glacier carved its
basin about 10,000 years ago. Mastadons
roamed there. The French hunted beaver,
deer, otter and mink. Over time, great stands
of hardwood timber near the river were cut
down for structures, wagons, barrels and
tools. With no drainage of the land then, the
river was wider and deeper. As late as 1836,
when North Manchester was founded, the
Eel River was 130 feet wide and 10 to 15 feet
deep, according to the late L.Z. Bunker, a
local historian.
Before white settlers, Miami and Potawatomi
tribes lived along its banks, the Potawatomi
naming it the Kenapocomoco. The poetic
name stuck. Katherine Walker Beauchamp,
a professor’s wife, used it in 1936 when she
wrote lyrics for the alma mater, “By the
Kenapocomoco.”
The song stuck, too. “By the Kenapocomoco”
is still played on the Chime regularly, and at
special events such as graduation and Alumni
Days. Newly minted graduates sing it near
the close of each Commencement.
Sentimental alumni eschew the official
name Eel for Kenapocomoco, calling
it the “Kenapoc” for short and
remembering football games along its
banks or throwing friends into the chilly
current when they got engaged to be
married.
Those traditions give shape to the
college experience and provide lasting
memories, says Rosenbaum, who used
to float the river with her now-fiancé
Jordan Moss ’12 and his friends. One
of those friends, environmental studies
graduate Tyler Delauder ’11, was
“the mastermind” of their river floats,
says Rosenbaum. “When we floated
the river, we had so much fun,” she
says. “Those are the traditions that I
remember. I think it’s important to keep
traditions alive.”
Or in this case, flowing along.
By Melinda Lantz ’81
For Rich, Manchester life is better
because of the river, which flows along
the eastern boundary of campus and
meets the Wabash River in Logansport
on its way out to sea. “I like being out
in nature,” he says. Rich often walks
along the river on the way to work
and sometimes paddles it in a kayak.
“When you’re on the river it’s a different
environment.”
That the river’s shore is a boundary
between earth and water is also a
metaphor for the college years, adds
Rich. “You’re at the boundaries of
your parents’ influence and your
independence,” he says. Boundaries are
where “interesting things happen.”
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Katy Gray Brown ’91, associate professor of philosophy, and Andy Rich, the Oppenheim
Professor of Mathematics, have led students on river floats, and Rich has organized floats for
faculty and staff, too.