How Bennington College Became a Home for Transfer Student Ken Keeney ’27
Learn about transfer student experiences at Bennington College.
Ken Keeney ’27 is a transfer student at Bennington College. They study Theater and Linguistics with a focus on acting, stage management, and audio, alongside language documentation and revitalization. After spending a term at the University of Southern California, they came to understand that it was not a good fit. “It’s really, really big. It has 20,000 undergraduates and more than 20,000 graduate students, and I was having a really hard time making friends, and I really wasn't clicking with most of the teachers in the drama department, specifically.”
So they spent the next term at a community college back home in Cleveland, Ohio, before looking for their transfer school. They discovered Bennington in an unconventional way. “I found it through TikTok. I wanted to get as far away from USC as possible. So I was like, ‘I want the most unconventional school that I can find.’ And I was looking up lists of weird schools, and Bennington was on one of the lists.”
“Of all the colleges that I looked at as a senior in high school and while I was transferring, Bennington is one of the most truly open colleges,” they said. “Seeing the weird, wacky, unapologetic vibes of the students on campus was comforting. I knew I would be able to be myself, and that has rung very true.”
Once they visited, they saw the viewbook images of Bennington come to life. “Every college catalog has the kids out on the lawn in a group on a blanket, and they’re all talking. That image does happen naturally at Bennington.” And they found that the faculty, staff, and administrators are friendly, open, and easy to work with. “I have never had an experience with an administrator or a member of staff or a member of faculty at Bennington that has made me think that I made the wrong decision or that I never want to talk to that person again. I’ve never had that at Bennington, and I’ve definitely had that at other places.”
This fall, Keeney is studying abroad at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, the capital of Fiji. Their interest in linguistics motivated the decision. “I am interested in languages that have fallen out of use, and Fiji is a really good example of an indigenous language being used in everyday life,” Keeney said. “A lot of people in the population know it and speak it. We can trust that it’s not going to disappear within a few generations. I am here in Fiji because I wanted to see how that happened and to experience it.”
All of Keeney’s classes are in English, but they are also studying the Fijian language. “The most difficult thing for me is the pronouns and the possessives,” they said. “For pronouns in English, it’s just I, me, you, we, us. Very simple. In Fijian, there are things called short and long pronouns... There are a lot of them, and that’s difficult for me. It’s not something I’ve quite wrapped my head around yet.”
Keeney is thoughtful about how their two academic interests intersect. “I really do envision them both separate and together in different parts,” they said. “My ultimate vision for them is to translate contemporary shows into indigenous languages and put them on for indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences and also to support indigenous playwrights in like their original creations. I’m aiming to work with native speakers of indigenous American languages and to translate shows and help document and produce theater.”
They’re already getting hands-on experience through Field Work Term. “Between terms, last winter, I made props at Great Lakes Theater Company, near Cleveland. That was fun. Next semester, I’m imagining going for the Lortel Fellowship.”
As the semester in Fiji winds down, Keeney is looking forward to returning to Bennington. “I’ve grown to love and appreciate Bennington, and it feels like a home away from home for me.”