By SEAN GARNER Senior Reporter Okay, I don’t really commute. I live on campus in West Vandenberg Hall. So if I were really to write about my daily commute, I would have to write about my bitter treks from Vandy all the way to Pawley in sub-freezing weather past landmarks on campus that we are all too familiar with. So instead, I will tell about some place a little closer to my heart and my stomach as it still makes me ill from time to time: Kentwood, MI. I am one of the few students at OU from the western half of the glove. Kentwood is a large suburban community on the southern border of Michigan’s second largest city, Grand Rapids. Getting to Kentwood from OU is about as simple and convenient as a two-and-a-half hour drive can be. It is nearly all highway: I-75 to I-69 to I-96 to M-6, there. Bing, bang, boom. Kentwood is home to the largest high school in the state of Michigan, East Kentwood High School. To give you a general idea of the intellect in my hometown, East Kentwood is the only high school in the district and is located more than ten minutes west of my house. EK boasts traditionally strong programs in hockey (former Red Wing Mike Knuble is an alum), volleyball and (sigh) competitive cheer. It also has one of the nation’s strongest programs in a program called We The People, though the one year I was on the team we lost to those brie-eating, ascot-wearing, speeding ticket-writing snobs from East Grand Rapids because the other bastards on my team were too busy making trips to Dunkin’ Donuts when they were supposed to be looking up case law. But I digress. Most people will tell you EK is a wonderful place to go to school if you have zippers for your pockets and the Club for your car. I personally never felt threatened there aside from the occasional moocher begging me for a small loan to buy Juju Fruits. I personally saw a school that very accurately reflected the racial and economic diversity of the town. According to Wikipedia, EK is only fifty percent white with very large populations of blacks and Asians. There are homes that exceed $1 million and a large number of apartment buildings and trailer parks. EK accepts transfer students from the inner city and nearby farming communities. It is truly a melting pot. As for the city of Kentwood, there is no better place to be if you love chain restaurants and taking back roads to avoid construction. If you have other entertainment desires, I am afraid you will have to look elsewhere, perhaps in downtown Grand Rapids. Kentwood, like West Michigan in general, is politically conservative though not nearly as preachy and puritanical as the ancestors of Dutch immigrants that live closer to Lake Michigan. Kentwood has too many people with realworld experience to go for any of that bunk. On the whole, people in Kentwood are friendly so long as you don’t try to be too friendly in return. I like that. It is nice to know that I can say hello to someone on the street without being invited to a barbeque and pressured into moving furniture or picking their second cousin up from the airport. It has just the right mix of courtesy and contempt to make it a livable community.