TKC Letters Project - Big and Accessible World

To Whom it May Concern,

I’m a King’s PPE alum from 2012. Last Tuesday I went back to New York for the first time a while, for a special occasion. A play I wrote was premiering in a little off-Broadway black box theater. It was a dream come true. Without King’s, it couldn’t have happened. I mean that literally; the director, Connor Kopko, is a King’s grad as well, and without his commitment the play wouldn’t have happened. But I mean it in a deeper way too, because without King’s, I don’t think I would have written that play. I’m not sure I would have known that writing a play is something a person could do, let along getting it staged in New York. And even more fundamentally, I don’t know if I would have written that play, a play with theology and philosophy as well as comedy and tragedy.

The faculty of King’s are unique, and I mean that: they are actually unique. They come with the finest credentials, to a college that offers no tenure track, located in the middle of a difficult, expensive city. And they stay. The professors I owe my education to are, in large part, still teaching at King’s. They are still leading trips abroad, still starting new Centers and developing new courses.

And the students of King’s are remarkable. We are a crazy bunch, that’s obvious: we choose, out of all the Christian colleges in America, to come to the one located in Manhattan, in the most overwhelming, intimidating city in the country. And we choose to live in that city. We work in it, go to church, go grocery shopping, make friends, volunteer. We meet spouses, marry. Some of us have children there. And even when we leave (as I have done) we take the confidence and exhilaration of New York City with us (because, after all, if you can make it here….)

King’s showed me that things are possible. It also showed me the importance of learning where we humans have come from, “the best that has been thought and said,” and of continually striving to learn more. It showed me that the world is much bigger and also much more accessible than I imagined it to be.

The world will be a smaller and more obscure place if King’s should close down. That is why I continue to pray and believe that King’s will pull through.