NOVEMBER 11 2018

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VOL. 19, NO. 4 Editors-in-Chief Sophie Jones Ian Feather

OBERLIN’S STUDENT CULTURE MAGAZINE

Treasurer Charlie Rinehart-Jones Content Editors Ruby Anderson PJ McCormick Devin McMahon Kiana Mickles Cover Art Dani Brito Back Page Andrea Wang

Layout Editors Natalie Hawthorne Grace Kirk Leora Swerdlow Nico Vickers

Copy Editors Nell Back Eleanor Cunningham Olivia Hacker-Keating Indrani Kharbanda

Staff Writers Jason Hewitt Zoe Jasper Sam Schuman

Photo Editor Emery Webster Web Editor Leah Yassky

EST. 1999 NOVEMBER 9, 2018 Contributing Writers Abby Lee Gabe Schneier Marisa Kim Willa Hart Rashad Saleh Malaya Nordyke Anna Polacek Shane Lorenzen Grace Smith Jessy Noily

WANT TO SEE YOUR NAME IN PRINT? COME TO OUR NEXT MEETING! SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 4:00 PM IN WILDER 115 OR, IF YOU HAVE AN IDEA, SHOOT US AN EMAIL; THEGRAPE@OBERLIN.EDU

Letter from the editors: insert here insert sub head here (IAN and SOPHIE: write this later!)

BY SOPHIE JONES AND IAN FEATHER | EDITORS IN CHIEF Greetings, Grapers!

Well, Ian and Sophie are going to be REAL surprised when they open a copy of this week’s issue! We were sure the esteemed Grape readers wouldn’t miss their bi(tri?)-weekly ramblings, so we took the liberty of pulling a post-Halloween trick. Luckily, The Grape office has minimal security and even less oversight and we were able to slip this letter into layout at the last minute. We feel like we earned it after getting naked for them this week! So greetings from your actual favorite editors, Sydney Allen (she/her) and Nathan Carpenter (he/ him) — the Editors-in-Chief of Oberlin’s publication of record, The Oberlin Review!

We think this letter will be an important step in The Grape’s longstanding mission to be more like us, which is admirable! We love reading articles every other week about stuff we wrote about the month before. But seriously, we want to use this opportunity to extend an olive branch to our eccentric sibling next door, The Grape. We’ve seen The Grape go through its ups and downs over the past few years, and we’ve been excited to see Ian and Sophie revitalize the publication this fall.

The Review and The Grape have a long, contentious history. We’ve seen nasty article exchanges, cross-publication kickball games gone awry (we won by a landslide, of course — check the archives from 2010!), and memes exchanged in secrecy. We found it hilarious when they failed to publish an orientation issue or launch a website after three years

of promises. They probably really enjoyed it when we published the headline “PSA Motherfucker” in 2005 (that, unfortunately, is also in the archives).

But even with our tumultuous history, we’d like to publically turn over a new leaf with The Grape and thank them for being such amicable collaborators this year. As student publications, it’s important to remember that our allegiance should be to the Oberlin community and to distributing relevant, timely information. The Grape editors understand that and both of our publications have worked hard to achieve that goal this year — albeit using very different approaches.

In the past, the Review has been criticized for being stuffy and boring. While we might take ourselves a little seriously, it comes from a place of love and commitment! We spend 30-40 hours each week trying our best to get reliable information, news, and opinions to the student body and broader community. Our work may not be as glamorous as The Wilder Voice or The Synapse, but we think every publication at Oberlin is valuable in its own way, and we hope you see that too. Also, we’d like to make the argument that we can be fun and edgy (check the centerfold if you don’t believe us)!

So, here’s to The Grape team and all four of their readers — thanks for letting us get a little frisky this week. Now go find a copy of the Review!

Sydney Allen & Nathan Carpenter Editors-in-Chief, The Oberlin Review

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Alexandra Bell’s Counternarratives Challenges Journalism’s Subjectivity

BY ABBY LEE AND GABE SCHNEIER | CONTRIBUTING WRITER You may have noticed that the exteriors of Oberlin’s Terrell Main Library and Art Building recently received a small but notable update. The posters adorning the façades of said buildings, titled A Teenager With Promise and Charlottesville, respectively, are part of a series of public artworks by up-and-coming Brooklyn artist Alexandra Bell.

Bell’s pieces utilize the front page of the New York Times as an arena of public news media in an effort to highlight bias around race, violence, and gender. Bell, who holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, turns the typical newsroom editing process back on itself. She makes a mockup of an article in Adobe InDesign, then annotates, redacts, and reproduces the piece to present a new narrative that runs counter to the dominant one. Bell is striving to reframe the Times’ reporting through this series of works in a way that questions the objectivity and integrity of mainstream news institutions in the United States.

To accompany the public installations, Bell gave a lecture about the conception and process of this project, which she calls Counternarratives. She opened with the following quote from sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant: “The power of the media lies not only in their ability to reflect the dominant racial ideology, but in their capacity to define it in the first place.” These words from Racial Formation in the United States remind us that journalism has historically been practiced foremost by white men, and thus its most deeply entrenched biases are those of a white male perspective. This series pushes back on what Bell learned while working toward her degree, that “the news is new.” She emphasizes that her work looks back on the legacy of racial bias in the institution of journalism that has been present for centuries in order to critique how this bias is maintained today.

Bell started pasting posters around Brooklyn in 2014 and has since achieved widespread recognition. She’s made her way into New York galleries and has been featured in multiple publications including Village Voice, Vice, the New Yorker, and, yes, the New York Times. Andrea Gyordy, the Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Allen, wanted to bring Bell’s art to Oberlin as part of an effort on the part of the museum to participate in more public art exhibitions.

In her talk, Bell proposed the following question as central to her work: “Is there a way something can be factual, but not completely true?” In an era where “fake news” is an oftspoken slur, the intricacies of this question are a compelling topic. Opinions are no longer restricted to the Opinions page, but rather overtake entire publications. Still, many

people rely on trusted sources such as the New York Times to maintain the highest standard of fact-based, objective journalism. Bell’s focus on the Times serves as a challenge to the aura of factual truth that its reputation and prestige lend to its reporting. Her work reveals perspectives that are missing from the Times, and, by logical extension, from the news media at large.

A Teenager With Promise was the first in this series that began for Bell a few years after graduating from Columbia in 2013. Police shootings of African-Americans were receiving mainstream media attention in way they hadn’t previously.

The piece features a full-page photo of Michael Brown at his high school graduation — a bold revision of the Times’ original front page, which featured side-by-side profiles of Brown and Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot him in 2014. Bell cast aside the overly careful pretensions of objectivity in order to present the non-dominant narrative of this story: that Michael Brown was just a kid with a life ahead of him.

Bell’s work also deals with the ways bias quite literally shapes the layout of a front page. Headlines that are meant to grab your attention or images that fill up half the page, yet are unrelated to an adjacent article. contribute to a publication’s coded rhetoric.

Her work Olympic Threat deals with this theme by focusing on a front page Times article from the summer of 2016, about the American swim team at the Rio Olympics. The article, titled “Accused of Fabricating Robbery, Swimmers Fuel Tension in Brazil,” was placed next to an unrelated photo of Usain Bolt winning a race. Although the image’s caption directed readers to an article about Bolt’s gold medal race on page B10, Bell questioned the decision to place a photo of a black Olympic athlete next to a headline implicating a group of white Olympic athletes in criminal actions. Her revised caption reads, “Rio Gas Station Footage Reveals White-American Swimmers Were Offenders,” and replaces the photo with one of swimmer Ryan Lochte.

Bell mentioned that people critiqued her identification of the swimmers as “White-American,” but she staunchly defends it as integral to the piece, emphasizing in her talk that it was intended to point out the ways in which “Whiteness is made invisible in this country.”

In an interview with the Grape, Bell identified her work as “about frameworks and awareness.” Placing her works in public settings allows Bell to reach a wide audience, many of whom are not amongst the typical art gallery crowd. Beginning as a street artist, Bell worked in

anonymity, placing her work on walls, alongside graffiti tags and concert ads, catching the eyes of people who passed by.

She realized the works’ power after she put up her first piece, when concert ads pasted over her poster were scratched off by random passersby so that it might stay visible. In her talk, Bell showed images of the piece as it was preserved through this wear and tear. Since then, she has found that different people find different values in her work — and she’s okay with that. “For some people, the work makes them feel like their perspective is being represented, and they appreciate that.

For some, it gives them the tools to think critically about the way that news is presented,” said Bell.

The inception of this project, and its history of guerillastyle distribution gave Bell her spotlight. She quipped with this notion lightly as she spoke to a packed Hallock Auditorium. She also introduced her next piece, which she plans to show in a New York gallery. This new work will be twenty-two panels long, and deals with a Daily News spread covering the case of the “Central Park Five.” The article is about an incident that occured in New York in which five black teenagers were wrongfully convicted of raping a white women.

It also addresses the impact of Donald Trump’s hate speech and the influence of money on media attention, as the newspaper featured a full-page ad by Trump championing use of the death penalty. “It’s not about history,” Bell told the Grape, “It’s about money and race and their influence on journalism.”

As for the effect that her work may have on journalism in this country, Bell hopes that, if anything, her message can reach editors. Word choice, headlines, layout, and image choice are just as influential as the articles themselves.

Follow Alexandra Bell on Instagram at @heyitsalex to stay up to date on her current projects.

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PHOTO COURTESY OFMARISA KIM

Siam Cafe in Cleveland

Creating Spaces for Asian-Americans in Cleveland

BY MARISA KIM | CONTRIBUTING WRITER

On Tuesday, October 16th, Joyce Huang and Michael Byun came to Oberlin for a joint lecture, “Neighborhood Policy Planning Issues in the Northeast Ohio Asian Immigrant + Refugee Communities.” The lecture was promoted as an opportunity to “learn about Asian immigrants and refugees in Northeast Ohio and concerns relating to neighborhood planning in Cleveland’s Asiatown,” and was co-sponsored

by Oberlin’s Comparative American Studies department, the Bonner Center for Service and Learning, and the Multicultural Resource Center.

Joyce Huang is the Director of Planning and Placemaking at MidTown Cleveland, one of the seventeen community development corporations (CDCs) operating in the Cleveland area. Community development corporations, as defined by the National Alliance of Community Economic Development Association, are “501(c)(3) non-profit organizations that are created to support and revitalize communities, especially those that are impoverished or struggling,” and they often deal with providing affordable housing, healthcare, education, and other social programs.” Cleveland has more community development corporations than most metropolitan areas, with one for each neighborhood. Huang explained that this is because in the 1960s there was a gap in public sector funding.

According to a report from Cleveland State University, the city government poured money into the suburbs rather than the low-income urban areas, so the people of Cleveland decided to take matters into their own hands and start their own CDCs. Today, these nonprofit organizations are helping Cleveland residents grapple with high renters’ rates, growing gentrification, and lack of housing.

MidTown Cleveland in particular serves downtown Cleveland, which encompasses part of the Asiatown neighborhood. Asiatown was originally known as Chinatown, but was burned down multiple times by xenophobes until the city decided to take over the neighborhood through eminent domain. Many Chinatowns were burned down in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Huang stated that it was not until San Francisco’s Chinatown built its ornamental Dragon Gate that stands at its entrance that the fires stopped. By selforientalizing, the neighborhood was able to market itself as a tourist attraction and become economically viable as well.

This practice comes at the cost of reinforcing a stereotyped image of Asian-Americans, but was necessary for the physical and economic safety of the neighborhood. Huang believes in

a different placemaking philosophy, and posed the question: “Is there a different way to do placemaking that shows that you’re in Asiatown but it’s not like you’re walking through 1300 AD China?” She highlighted Oakland’s Chinatown as a practical and realistic example that is not intended to be performative for tourism’s sake.

Cleveland’s Asiatown itself does not possess a Dragon Gate at its entrance. The neighborhood originated in downtown Cleveland before moving over to Rockwell Avenue in the late 1920s, where it then became known as Chinatown. After 1965, the neighborhood expanded westward, and Rockwell Avenue is now recognized as Historic Chinatown or Old Chinatown.

As Chinatown grew in size, it was simultaneously growing in diversity with Korean and Vietnamese immigrants settling in

IS THERE A DIFFERENT WAY TO DO PLACEMAKING THAT SHOWS YOU’RE IN ASIATOWN BUT IT’S NOT LIKE YOU’RE WALKING THROUGH 1300 AD CHINA? the area as well. Thus, Chinatown became Asiatown in 2006.

Huang also detailed the exploitation of some Chinatowns, such as Detroit’s, that are marketed as being Chinatowns without having any Chinese residents or business in the neighborhoods. She noted, “I think something just to be careful of is, you know, when are you marketing an idea but you’re not really respecting the people that are there,” and expressed the need for a center in which Asian-American communities are able to come together, one that does not yet exist in Cleveland.

The second guest lecturer, Michael Byun, is the chief executive officer of Asian Services in Action (ASIA). ASIA is a nonprofit organization that was founded in the mid-90s by four Asian-American immigrant women who sought to meet the healthcare needs of other Asian-Americans. According to ASIA, they are the only 501(c)(3) organization in Ohio

dedicated to providing health and social services to AsianAmericans. In 2013, ASIA opened the ASIA International Health Center which became the first and only federally qualified health center to serve Asian-Americans in the United States. This came about after Byun discovered that many elderly Asian-American residents were traveling to New York City for healthcare, because it was more linguistically and culturally comfortable than the healthcare they found in Ohio.

In addition to healthcare, ASIA is active in social justice advocacy and in promoting Asian-American Pacific Islander (AAPI) civic engagement. In 2015, the AAPI Civic Engagement Network of Ohio (ACE) was launched by ASIA in tandem with fifteen other Ohio organizations. The network is described by ASIA as “the first ever New Americanfocused civic engagement network focused on voter registration, voter education and voter turnout,” and their target demographic includes “young voters, minorities and immigrant voters, and first-time voters” — voters typically labeled as “low propensity” and rarely reached out to by political campaigns. Additionally, ASIA is active in Ohio AAPI Legislative Days, which allow Asian-American voters to interact with legislators and local elected officials. ASIA’s civic engagement efforts extend beyond Ohio — they’re one of the named plaintiffs in a lawsuit against President Trump regarding the census citizenship question. Though Byun could not discuss the case in-depth, he did reveal that “We are named plaintiffs, there are three other AAPI organizations that are listed as well as Latinx organizations.”

Outside of ASIA’s contributions, Byun took the time to praise fellow guest lecturer Joyce Huang, stating, “It is individuals like Joyce, who are embedded in mainstream organizations, that have strong influence on shaping and developing a community, [who have] to be that inside voice to make sure that they are doing the right things and establishing the right processes and basic transparency so that the community is engaged in the process.”

Oberlin students can take a lot away from individuals like Huang and Byun; considering how one can be an agent of change in their community, activism can exist within many different realms such as community development planning.

Furthermore, it is important to be aware and respectful of the Asian American Resource Center in Terrell Main Library and other AAPI spaces on campus.

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Travel Bias in Oberlin’s Study Away Office

BY WILLA HART | CONTRIBUTING WRITER When I was a kid, my dad’s signature saying was, “Safety never takes a holiday.” It was often repeated, especially when I was crossing the street or riding my trike to the park in the glory days of 1997 to 2003. The saying has since been unofficially retired, but its gist still rings true in my house — I think when you have parented for twenty-one years and still have a lot more to go, you have to change it up to keep it interesting. The youngest Hart is still eight, so safety hasn’t taken a holiday in our house yet.

Given that his saying is stamped into my brain, I was definitely surprised when my dad, Mr. Safety himself, suggested I head to Lebanon for Winter Term this past January. He insisted from the start, though, that it made sense, and he was right. I had been wanting to integrate my focus in Middle East Studies at school with my interest in wine from our family business. I could get a taste (in some cases, quite literally) of both in Lebanon. It really was ideal.

However, Oberlin did not agree and refused to give credit for a Winter Term project in Lebanon. The problem there was two-sided. Sure, with decades of negative media attention, Lebanon has an image problem. But Oberlin also seemed two-faced, acting contrary to priorities that the College claims to strive for.

Oberlin’s policy for international student travel to a country with a US State Department travel warning is that the student must complete a safety petition explaining their itinerary and understanding of the risks. I thoroughly wrote this petition. I would live in an apartment in Beirut’s Ashrafieh neighborhood, and had plans to host and attend various wine events around the country. I explained my eagerness to engage with Beirut’s vibrant art scene. I was excited to see old friends, and I gave Oberlin an extensive list of contacts I have in the country.

Still, I was shut down. “I am writing to tell you that your petition to travel to Lebanon over Winter Term was not approved,” Linda Arbogast, the former administrative head at the Study Away Office wrote in an email. “The committee felt that given the travel warning that the State Department issued the risks were too great at this time for student travel.” I met with Linda and explained that I had a structured plan and many contacts in the country. I told her I was eager to meet with the College’s General Counsel and President, from whom I was told the deciding veto had come. She just told me to write a new petition for her to bring to some ambiguous committee meeting. That one was rejected, too. Linda sent me another email, saying, “[The Committee] will not sanction a trip to Lebanon for Winter Term at this time….Part of the decision making process involved talking to peer institutions and many of them forbid travel to Lebanon right now as well.”

It is true that Oberlin is responsible for its students abroad, and thus must prioritize their safety. Still, these responses were exceptionally frustrating for two reasons.

First, the school’s rationale for rejecting my project was incorrect. But perhaps more concerningly, Oberlin seemed to be motivated by a prejudiced and ethnocentric perspective, statingthat peer institutions forbid travel. Well, the last time I checked, Oberlin considers the University of Pennsylvania, Amherst College, Boston University, Reed College, Pitzer College, Stanford University, and New York University to be peer (or at least fellow) institutions. All of these schools have strong student exchange programs with the American University in Beirut. Oberlin also said that the State Department travel warning for Lebanon is reason to forbid student travel (and dare I mention the prejudiced and political nature of these travel warnings).

How curious! Lebanon is a level three country on the State Department’s one to four scale, but Russia is, too — a country in which Oberlin has affiliated study abroad program agreements with institutions in four cities and where students travel for Winter Term projects. There is a glaring difference between Russia and Lebanon: Lebanon’s

population isn’t generally considered white, and it is situated in a region associated with Islam, and thus, “terrorism.” However, Oberlin doesn’t seem to care about Russia’s frighteningly corrupt state (Lebanon is not run by a former KGB operative) or the increasingly tense Russia-America relationship, both of which are far more unnerving to me than Lebanon’s history, from which the country has since grown beyond. Is it possible that the school subscribes to racist and bigoted stereotypes that associate the Middle East with a xenophobic “Arab” trope and misconstrued notions of religious dynamic?

Moreover, Oberlin sends a lot of students to Israel.

Students go on Birthright trips for Winter Term every year, and the school has exchange agreements with many Israeli universities. In light of Oberlin’s verdict on student travel to Lebanon, it’s crucial to remember Israel’s proximity to Lebanon. Therefore, in terms of the travel warnings that Oberlin holds so dear, there is virtually no difference between the security concerns for travel to Lebanon versus travel to Israel. Both countries share the same border, both countries were involved in the same conflicts (on opposing sides), and both countries continue to be vocally aggressive toward each other. Why is it safer to be on the Israeli side of another Israel-Lebanon conflict than across the border in Lebanon? It isn’t. I expect the US government to be biased toward Israel. Is this bias present in Oberlin’s risk assessment, too?

I get it. For anyone that watched the news between 1975 and 2007 (so, most adults today), Lebanon might seem like a freaky spot. There was the Lebanese Civil War that broke out in 1975 and continued into the early 1990s.

Then, the violence picked up again in 2005, when the Prime Minister was killed by a car bomb, and then in 2006, when Hezbollah killed and captured Israeli soldiers, inciting the 2006 Lebanon War. Media coverage has perpetually focused on the destruction, the bombings, and the confusing divide between religious and political factions. Print and television media diffused it all into photos and videos of bombs and rockets destroying buildings, children crying, and Beirut in ruins. It is important to set this straight: Beirut is not in ruins, and it hasn’t been for a long time. While it is easy to recall these Back streets of Beiruit PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLA HART disconcerting images, it is Oberlin’s duty to strive for an unbiased assessment of risk when considering student travel. time. Some vineyards and wineries are in areas the State The 2006 bloodshed didn’t last past 2007, and it’s been a Department considers volatile and extremely insecure, so long time since then. What I’m about to say over-simplifies I had my fair share of opportunities for the peril of which the situation, but the Oberlin administration was unable to I was falsely informed. Yet, day-to-day, I felt more secure understand this timeline. Perhaps I should have explained overall than I sometimes do in my own city here in the US. it like this for them: the last spell of fighting was over a When I came home, I knew I wanted to study abroad at decade ago when I was in the third grade! At the time of the American University in Beirut. Not only is AUB a great my application for Winter Term, it was 2017, and I’m in the school in an outstanding city, but I guess I maybe wanted to fourteenth grade. prove Oberlin wrong.

To say that time heals is pretty cliché, so let’s say instead I embarked on the travel petition saga again. But this that time grows. That stretch of time between 2007 and time, I needed to add a few things. I explained the errors 2017 was enough time for me to grow seventeen inches, in Oberlin’s rejection of my Winter Term Project and I and it was enough time for Lebanon to grow beyond those suggested that the school’s outlook was prejudiced and few difficult decades. While shelled-out buildings, as well as obsolete. Believe it or not, my petition was accepted at first national and regional tensions, linger today, Lebanon is not submission. Still, this doesn’t change the broader issue of the war zone it’s been made out to be. Beirut is a dynamic principle at hand. city, as are the other urban hubs that line Lebanon’s western The way the College handled my situation suggests that coast and dot the valleys to the east. Moreover, the country it is biased against the Middle East region because it doesn’t is socially liberal and, particularly, politically secular in treat it as it does others. This deprives students, especially a region that generally isn’t. Forget Amsterdam:Beirut those involved in MENA Studies, of essential educational is the place to study abroad. A legitimate safety concern opportunities. If the College hopes to live up to its marketed for foreigners in Hezbollah-dominated areas is that one image of inclusivity and support of students’ studies around shouldn’t take pictures — but if I went to any military-held the globe, perhaps College administrators should consider buildings or land in the US and took a picture, I’d probably an initiative to better interpret and understand conditions be arrested on the spot. Risk is relative. in the Middle East.

In the end, I went to Lebanon anyway. During the month I was there, I didn’t encounter any of the dangers I was told to expect. In fact, I had a truly excellent (and safe)

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Lorain Residents Debate Confederate Flag’s Role at County Fair

BY RASHAD SALEH | CONTRIBUTING WRITER On Thursday, October 18th, a dozen Lorain County residents met in a sea of pews at the Church of the Redeemer to discuss the continuing sale of the Confederate flag at the Lorain County fair. While the contingent was small, the conversation spilled late into the night and far beyond the subject of the county fair.

The Elyria YWCA, whose mission is the elimination of racism and the empowerment of women, hosted “From the Confederacy to the County Fair: What’s History Got to do With It?” in the absence of its executive director, Jeneane Donaldson who was unable to attend because of a race-related emergency. Donaldson, on behalf of local advocacy group the Fair Minded Coalition, led a billboard campaign this summer against the Confederate flag, stating “Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Keep Your Pledge! SAY NO to the Confederate Flag at the Lorain County Fair.” Two of the three billboards involved in the campaign were vandalized.

The Ohio State Fair banned Confederate flag sales in 2015, yet no ban has come from the Lorain County Fair Board, which oversees the second-largest county fair in the state. Most recently, the Fair Board ruled in favor of flag sales despite Lorain County’s northern geography, claiming that said flags are Civil War memorabilia.

The Fair Minded Coalition has begun to approach the issue from the angle of community standards in its wider campaigns, and, at the Church of the Redeemer, Oberlin resident and coalition member David Ashenhurst claimed that the flag’s presence at the fair betrays the fair’s family-oriented nature, and lags behind a larger commercial rejection of the flag: “Walmart said it’s not going to [sell the Confederate flag] anymore. Target said it’s not going to do it anymore,” he said. “In this context, this sticks out like a sore thumb.”

Caroline Meister, the talk’s host and YWCA program director, initially framed the debate around freedom of commerce, citing laws regulating the sale of offensive materials. “The Lorain County Fair has really dug the way and is teaching other fairs how to maintain that symbol and frame it as something else.”

But the conversation quickly moved to the issue of history and beyond. A member of the church and South Carolina native, sitting in the back of the room, claimed that the flag was a marker of history, and that we must acknowledge our history while moving forward.

In response, Imam Paul Hasan said without glancing back that the distinction between the present and the past is not so clear-cut, that he must constantly remember his history and teach

his children what happened to their ancestors.The debate

THE OHIO STATE FAIR BANNED CONFEDERATE FLAD SALES IN 2015 [...] BUT MORE RECENTLY, THE FAIR BOARD RULED IN FAVOR OF FLAG SALES quickly inflamed. While almost all attendees stood firmly against the flag and the overwhelming majority of statements condemned the flag as a symbol of hate and racism, the conversation did include a mention of one individual’s love for Robert E. Lee as a man. Despite the extreme and unpopular nature of some comments, full-fledged arguments never broke out. Instead, deliberate pauses formed as members of the debate gathered their thoughts.

All attendees faced forward in their pews toward the altar.

For the most part, no one turned around to look at each other, and any emotional intensity was directed forward, rather than toward other members of the discussion.

Alex Barton, a priest at the Church of the Redeemer and the discussion’s facilitator, stepped in occasionally to steer the conversation back toward the flag as the debate progressed for two hours without a lull. The discussion ranged from Confederate statues to the shortcomings of the public school system

to Cleveland Indians’ mascot Chief Wahoo.

The wide volume of topics covered was met with a recognition of the limited diversity in regards to the group’s age. Much of the conversation addressed issues in education and landed on a wider apathy among young people to engage in this issue and American history in general; however, the majority of those in attendance were middle-aged or older.

The YWCA’s discussion of the Confederate flag’s position at the Lorain County Fair quickly morphed into a larger discussion of racial politics in the United States. The group agreed that the effects of the past continue today in many ways and that racism is all over the place today. Alex Barton brought this consensus to the immediate present, highlighting that to this day many of the pews in Episcopal churches across the country are named after Confederate generals.

PHOTO COURTESY OF ELYRIA CHRONICAL

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Editor’s Note: Welcome to the Extra Spooky Halloween Edition of Arts + Culture!

BY PJ MCCORMICK & CHARLIE RINEHART-JONES Look, I get it. I’m as over Halloween as you are. With Fall Break falling a week later than it typically does here at Oberlin, Obies were confused about how exactly to celebrate. Splitchers on Halloween: that’s a no brainer. But what of Halloweekend? And, more importantly, which day to really go all out with your costume?

Sure, there’s Halloween itself, but is Splitchers really deserving of the costume you drove all the way to Volunteers to pick up? And that’s without even addressing Friday and Saturday. “I was only able to come up with two [costumes]; it was stressful,” said Ben Richman, a third-year who claims to love Halloween, but hate the process. “There’s a lot of pressure to be creative, hot, and funny.”

Even if you are naturally hot and funny, it’s the creativity that might really get you. Are people going to love your Pete and Ariana costume, or would that have been better if Halloween had happened to fall in August this year? Maybe your costume is a funny pun, or a character from a TV show that the Obie public haven’t made it around to watching; if either of these are true, we here at The Grape hope you thought twice! There’s nothing more annoying than having to explain your costume ad nauseam for the entirety of Halloweek, even if it saves you from going as a cowboy again.

Whatever you went as, it’s likely that you got Halloween fatigue this week. Oberlin takes Halloween seriously— between Murder Mystery Night, Get Wilder Halloween, Halloween Splitchers, the Film Coop’s Halloween Movie Marathon, and the numerous Halloween parties last weekend, it’d make sense if you never wanted to think about the nation’s spookiest holiday again.

Unluckily for you, you don’t edit this section! But I do!

And I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to milk every last drop of Halloween content possible. Whatsmore, it’s probably my favorite holiday, as few offer Americans an opportunity to be quite so silly. It’s very dumb!

So forgive me for indulging myself with this belated Halloween edition of The Grape— I had to. What on earth was I going to have people report on for the first week of November anyway? It’s not like there’s anything nation-altering unfolding as I write this at 11:00 pm on Tuesday, November 6th, 2018.

So strap in, readers, because we’re going in heavy on the Halloween material this edition. And if you get too spooked, don’t worry about it! Just close your eyes, take a deep breath, and remember: “It’s not real life, it’s just The Grape.”

This Halloween Season, Cuffing’s Out, Ghosting’s In

BY MALAYA NORDYKE

You’ve heard of cuffing season. Now meet ghosting season.

Some hopeless romantics may falsely identify post fall break as cuffing season. The leaves are turning, temperature is falling and everyone is just looking for a special someone to cuddle up with. Right? Wrong.

Hot take alert: It’s not cuffing season, it’s ghosting season. Halloweek is the spookiest week of the year. Oberlin is crawling with ghouls, gremlins, and, worst of all, ghosts.

The ghosts come out of hiding after a week of being away— you’d be surprised what getting out of the Oberlin bubble can do to a person.

For some, break means the resurfacing of family issues, so ghosts are lugging extra emotional baggage onto their shuttle home bus. For others, break means reviving old feelings for a former fling, leaving one confused about their relationship with their Oberlin bae. Some Obies encounter neither of these things but still come back with a lingering urge to switch things up for the second module. This, coupled with bad communicative skills and unconcern for one’s feelings leads to a ~ghost~. Whatever the case may be, the months from October to December yield some pretty spooky ghost stories.

Ghosting literally means to disappear from someone’s life -- but what does that look like at Oberlin, given that the ghost is constantly in a one mile radius of their ghostee? “I don’t think ghosting is possible here” says an off-the-record Oberlin fourth year. Ghosting as it is practiced in the real world might not be possible because of closeness in proximity, but Oberlin ghosts get creative. To help you identify just what kind of poltergeist is refusing to hit you back up, here are the three different kinds of ghosting that’ll go down this Halloween season.

Soft ghosting: The soft ghoster really just lets things fizzle. While they don’t stop replying, they definitely let their ghostee know they’re not interested, without actually

telling them straight up. These soft ghosts have curt, dismissive, and/or passive responses. Soft ghosts will occasionally like their ghostee’s Instagram selfies just to keep them on their toes. They’ll engage in brief, uncomfortable conversations with their ghostee at parties but act like nothing ever happened. For some, this is the most agreeable type of ghost, but unlike most real-life spirits, this one is not transparent.

As the easiest variety to pull off, soft ghosting will probably be the type you encounter most on this list, but that doesn’t always mean the disappearance won’t sting. My advice? Get yourself back on Tinder and find another turkey you can drop the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Ghosting: The regular ghost stops responding to texts/ calls and will never follow up on plans. But they’ll give their ghostee an awkward wave every now and then. For that reason, this type of Oberlin Ghost is maybe the most uncomfortable on the list. How do you know whether to expect the kind of Splitchers where you smile at each other or the kind where you dance 6 feet apart with your backs to each other and tell your friends to stop looking? Of course, just to make things a little easier for the both of you, regular ghosters avoid any verbal exchange at all costs.

Hard ghosting: Hard ghosting is possibly most similar to real-world ghosting. Hard Oberlin ghosting goes above and beyond not responding to texts and/or phone calls. Because Oberlin ghosts can’t really disappear, they do the next best thing: completely ignore. These kinds of ghosts won’t even make eye-contact passing their ghostee in Decafé. They’ll look straight on as their ghostee offers a friendly wave. Rough.

If you find yourself being ghosted, feel free to send the perpetrator a couple of ghost emojis, just to let them know you’re on to them. For those who will become ghosts this season (RIP), remember that ghosting isn’t cool and consider leaving your ghostee a spooky sign to let them know you’ve passed on.

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A Monster Smash: An Oral History of the Best Halloween Song of All Time

BY BORIS “BOBBY” PICKETT | THE MONSTER MASH GUY (AS TOLD BY PJ MCCORMICK)

*NOTE: WHILE THIS ACCOUNT IS FABRICATED, ALL FACTS WITHIN THIS STORY SPOKEN BY BORIS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES ARE 100% TRUE, AND GOOGLE-ABLE! Boris “Bobby” Pickett (BBP): Howdy, stranger! I’m Boris “Bobby” Pickett, a Korean War veteran, and writer and performer of the indelible Halloween bopper “The Monster Mash.” I’m speaking to you, fittingly, from beyond the beyond. I died in LA back in 2007, at age 69 ( ;) pretty sweet, right?). Still, in the spirit of All Hallow’s Eve, I decided to get in touch via spirit medium with your Grape Arts + Culture editor PJ McCormick, to finally tell the tale of how I came to write the most ghoulish Halloween song ever put to tape. What follows is a true account of my misadventures. If you’ve ever done the Transylvanian Twist, read on!

Part 1: Humble Beginnings BBP: You might not have guessed, given my prominence as a novelty Halloween superstar, but I never even wanted to be a singer! Back in the 60’s I moved to Hollywood to become an actor. The talkies had just started rolling out 35 years prior in 1927, and I wanted to strike while the iron was hot. So I packed up my stuff and moved to the City of Angels, just to get all mixed up in a rock group called Cordials! Who woulda thunk!

Leonard Capizzi (LC) (Bobby’s bandmate): So me and Bobby were playing a show one night and we decide to bust out a cover of “Little Darlin’” by The Diamonds.

Bobby was always such a silly goofball, full of these Hollywood aspirations, doing impressions and stuff all the time. One of the impressions he’d pretty much mastered was horror legend Boris Karloff, most famous for portraying Frankenstein in the 30’s.

Boris Karloff: Side note here, but I died at age 69. Pretty sweet, right? ;) LC: In the middle of the song, Bobby decides to do a monologue as Boris Karloff, and the crowd went nuts. I remember thinking after the show, “We gotta do something about this.” So we did!

BBP: I got an idea about how cool it would be to go to a party full of monsters. Like, what if you were right in the middle of Dracula and the Wolfman and you all decided to just start dancing? That would be freaky dope! So me and Leo sat down and finished the whole thing in one afternoon. For a songwriter, this is rare. But when you have subject matter as rich as a party where Frankenstein does a dance and Dracula joins my band— I mean, the thing just writes itself.

LC: We start shopping it around to labels, but no one is biting. Hard to believe, but monster party material was pretty hard to sell in the 60’s.

HOW COOL WOULD IT BE TO GO TO A PARTY FULL OF MONSTERS? LIKE, WHAT IF YOU WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF DRACULA AND WOLFMAN AND YOU ALL JUST DECIDED TO START DANCING?

Me. Boris “Bobby” Pickett, back from the grave and ready to oral historicize!

BBP: Finally, we got in touch with Gary S. Paxton, who agreed to produce and engineer the track.

Part 2: Halloween Magic Gary S. Paxton (Producer): There are some times in life when you hear a song and it just stops you in your tracks. For some, it’s a track by the Beatles, Nas, Elton John, or Soundgarden, but for me, it was the “Monster Mash”. The demo was transcendent. I had never considered what it might be like to attend a party where most of the guest were monsters or ghosts before. Nowadays the song’s themes have been copied so much it can seem commonplace, but back in 1962 it felt like Bobby and Leo had a key to the future. There was a lot to be scared of at the time, but I found solace in the notion of a world where humans and monsters peacefully coexisted, and even got to boogie down together.

BBP: We laid down the track pretty quick. I did my trademark Boris Karloff for the whole thing, except for the line about the Transylvanian Twist, where I do a pretty

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good Bela Lugosi, another horror movie star. This thing had come together quicker than a ghost can say “boo!”

Part 3: Spooky Superstardom BBP: 8 weeks after we recorded it, in October of that same year, the “Monster Mash” was a #1 single on the Billboard Charts! Me and Leo had done it! We had finally conned the world into believing that monsters weren’t scary. It was the greatest trick I ever pulled.

LC: A lot of ink has been spilled trying to describe what life is like when you’re a nationally recognized rockstar, but I can confirm firsthand that nobody has ever done it justice. The rush that I felt every morning waking up knowing that I had co-written the best Halloween song of all time... there’s nothing like it.

BBP: We tried to follow up on our success a couple times, but none of them connected with Americans in the same way the “Monster Mash” did. I also recorded “Monster’s Holiday,” a Christmas song about naughty monsters trying to steal Santa’s sleigh in 1962. In the midst of the media blitz surrounding “Monster Mash,” it was hard to see why, but looking back, I think that making the monsters naughty in “Monster’s Holiday” was a bad idea. People really liked when the monsters were nice.

LC: I tried to talk Bobby out of making the monsters so naughty in “Monster’s Holiday.” The people weren’t ready! We had just gotten to #1 on the basis of monsters being nice and good to party with. But he wasn’t having it. He went forward with lines like, “The Mummy was to signal from the castle roof/ At the very first sound of a reindeer hoof/ As Santa slid down the chimney wall/ The zombies were to make off with sleigh and all.”

BBP: I was disappointed then, but even more in 1985 when I recorded “Monster Rap.” I was trying to connect to the kids with a song about trying to teach the monsters how to rap. One of the actual lyrics is “I’ve given you a voice, now rap for daddy!” To this day I can’t work out why the song didn’t catch on.

Part 4: Looking Back on a Halloween Masterpiece

MAD-LIB: So You’re Home For The Holidays...

BY ABBY LEE | CONTRIBUTING WRITER

As I board the plane at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, to fly

home to ____________ for Thanksgiving, I think about what is in store for me. (geographic location)

My mom is making her famous maple-glazed ____________, and my aunt will (noun) surely bring the ________ pound _________. At dinner, I might be inclined to bring (number)

(bird)

up the problematic nature of this holiday, but my uncle will probably just call me a

liberal ____________. Inevitably, the family will ___________ about the election (noun) (verb, present tense)

results, and my grandma will threaten to move to _______________. My aunt will (country)

LC: All in all, it’s been a wild ride.

pointedly ignore my new ___________ piercing, but will express her disaproval later (body part)

BBP: I hope you enjoyed my account of “The Monster Mash.” To honor my memory, please play it at your Halloween bash this Hallow’s Eve. For my money, it’s the Halloween treat that can’t be beat!

once she’s had her _________. Everyone will ignore her clueless new boyfriend (beverage)

when he talks for an hour about his struggle with ________ fungus. We will go around (body part) the table and say what we are thankful for. My brother will say he is thankful for

_____________. I might say I am thankful for my friends and ______________. (plural noun)

(popstar)

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Pay Attention to the MRC!

BY SOPHIE JONES | EDITOR IN CHIEF Let’s get one thing straight; this article is in the “Opinions” section of The Grape.

I am writing because I have an opinion on this issue. But I am also writing as a white, middle class, able-bodied person whose engagement with the MRC is fairly limited. In this article, I focus on the apparent lack of support for MRC professional staff and do my best to provide some context as well as some next steps. I do this with an eye towards the support work and activism that the MRC has done for and with countless unnamed individuals, as well as student groups including Asian American Alliance, Obies for Undocumented Inclusion, La Alianza, and Zami. The MRC has long served as a launch pad for community organizing and a space of refuge and relaxation for POC and QTPOC students in particular; these and other services for marginalized students are primarily at stake here. I would like to thank EmmaLia Mariner, Student Senator, for her support and records in the writing of this article.

Next to Kahn, there is a sky blue house with white columns and banisters and oeilde-boeuf windows. The space is home to the Multicultural Resource Center (MRC), a department committed broadly to advocating for marginalized students. Previously located in Wilder, the Multicultural Resource Center moved to its new, more spacious home last Fall with plans to grow; expanding their work in everything from community building, to individual support work, to social justice programming and events, to allyship training. Enter this house a month ago and you would have been greeted by the five friendly professional staff members dedicated to these vital projects, plus an eager dog dedicated to greeting you. Just a few weeks later, the MRC is smaller and quieter than ever. Since June of this year, four professional staff have vacated their positions at the MRC; why?

In June, Toni Meyers resigned as Director, leaving Associate Director and Event Coordinator Anna Phung as de facto Director-- without the title--until last week, when they accepted a position at Princeton University’s Women*s Center. Libni Lopez, formerly a Program Director at the MRC, also left his position last month to become a counselor at Oberlin’s Counseling Center, followed by Elliot Director, who resigned last week, in his words, “as a response to institutional changes surrounding the MRC”.

If you visit the MRC after Thanksgiving, you will find just one remaining permanent staff member, Khalid Taylor (‘17), plus the interim

director (and Dean) Adrian Bautista. . Oberlin is not seeking to fill any positions that are not “required” for the college’s day-to-day operation; the MRC director position has been deemed essential and a committee has been assembled for the search, but no agency has been hired to assist in a candidate search.

There has been no move by the administration to fill three program coordinator positions.

These searches continue indefinitely and could take months, and even a whole school year. There is no guarantee that the director position will be filled soon.

Does this remind you of something? Last fall, Isabella Moreno vacated her position as Director of the Office of Disability Services (ODS)-- now called Disability Resources (DR) --allegedly due to being overworked and undersupported. Nearly a month later, Monique Bergdorf was appointed as interim director. Student action spurred the college on a lengthy search for a permanent replacement, a position that proved difficult to fill in part because of the less-thancompetitive compensation offered. As with the recent restructuring of the MRC, the dissolution of ODS and subsequent failure to meaningfully revive the office until late spring of 2018 sparked similar outrage over financial austerity and raised questions about the college’s treatment of vital professional staff. Moreover, as with the MRC, the sudden shrinkage of ODS and accompanying lack of support harmed students, some leaving Oberlin for good.

I do not mean to overgeneralize, nor would I presume to place undue meaning on individual staff’s complex reasons for moving on from Oberlin, but the departure of five individuals in such a narrow window is indicative of something larger. This pattern of departures and failures to rehire suggest a lack of administrative of support for professional staff; a standard of neglect that causes direct harm to students. The folks employed in these professional support jobs are mostly young, they are closer to us in age, background, and belief than much of the college administration, and act as vital advocates and links between us and them.

So why are they leaving? Why aren’t they being replaced? Are they being overburdened as positions are eliminated and permanently vacated? Are their concerns being respected by the administration? Are they being adequately compensated, supported, and mentored as young professionals in their fields? The effects of their departure is clear. Long-term and short term advocacy projects are neglected, institutional memory flounders, individual and student group support becomes more difficult. Who will be most affected by resources stretched so thin?

The MRC’s work with and on behalf of undocumented and first generation students, queer students,students with disabilities, and students of color in particular is what is fundamentally at risk here. I appeal to white students, and white queer students especially, to reflect on what issues we get upset and vocal about and why. Why has there been relative silence about the MRC? On my part, I have noticed a trend of some white, wealthy, able bodied queer folks paying lip service to the MRC without ever engaging meaningfully with its programming. And that’s okay, if you don’t need the MRC, you don’t have to use it. I would argue that people who are not directly served by the MRC, or those who choose not to use MRC resources, should take action to advocate for their availability; protect these positions and this space as if you were being personally affected.

Do you remember posting on your instagram stories about emailing administrators to save

ODS last fall? Do you remember texting your legacy parents to tell them to email, too? Do that again, but for the MRC. Whether or not you personally have relied on the MRC (or DR, or Res Ed…) for support, it is important to recognize the necessity of these departments and their exceptionally hard working professional staff. It is important to vocalize this to administrators. They might tell you to take it up with the Academic Administrative Program Review (AAPR), and yes, contacting the committee to voice concerns about the MRC is vital, and the influence of this committee and the shadowy firm behind it should not be ignored. However, it should be noted that it was student engagement with administrators-- not the AAPR --that lead to action (albeit tepid action) on ODS last year. I would also encourage you to speak to the professional support staff and faculty (especially those not on a tenure-track!) in your life about their experience working here to get a better understanding of our shared interests.

MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD & ASK QUESTIONS: The search committee tasked with finding a new MRC director (not program coordinators) is holding listening sessions next week. Show up to ask questions and express concerns, if you have them.

• Tuesday, November 13, 12-1 pm, in Wilder 101 • Monday, November 19, 12-1 pm, in Wilder 101 12

I Am Trans And I Am Angry!

BY CLIO SCHWARTZ | CONTRIBUTING WRITER When the news alert popped up on my phone that the Trump administration was considering defining gender as a biological condition assigned based on genitalia at birth, essentially “defining transness out of existence” and making discrimination against trans people legal, no part of me was shocked. Upset, frustrated – sure. But shocked? How could I have expected anything else?

What was shocking to me was how quickly cis people managed to center their experience of this threat of executive action. And that reaction was naïveté on my part, because again – how could I have expected anything else? Any time I went on Instagram in the days immediately following, at least three cis people had posted a screenshot on their story that read something like “What to do if you are cis and feeling helpless.” Frankly, I don’t give a shit if cis people are feeling helpless. That is absolutely not the priority here or in regards to literally any trans issue ever. Cis people have plenty of opportunities to talk about their feelings and worries and are taken seriously while trans people are silenced. Cis people are the last people who should be feeling helpless.

The ubiquity of this screenshot on Instagram is just the latest example of cis people performing good allyship.

Reposting it provides reassurance – at least you’re doing something, right? And surely someone else who sees it will

follow through with real action. But it all seems a farce to me.

What are you actually doing for the trans people you like and love? What are you actually doing for the trans people you don’t like? And what are you doing for all the trans people you don’t even know? Why is this particular action the time you chose to say something?

The state perpetuates violence against trans people, especially trans women of color, and cis people aren’t busy posting about feeling helpless about that. The National Center for Trans Equality (NCTE) counts 28 people who were murdered for being trans in 2017, and that is just the tip of

the iceberg of the very real threats trans people face. Not to mention that these are only the reported deaths and it is extremely likely that the actual numbers are much higher – especially because trans people are often misgendered in their deaths. And it is worth knowing that a large majority of these victims were trans women of color. NCTE has also run surveys that show that 57% of trans people are afraid to seek police help. Transgender inmates in prison are frequently put in prison based on their assigned sex at birth, are disproportionately abused and assaulted by staff, and are frequently refused access to medical care. So what makes you think the government has ever had trans interests in mind?

Whether the government chooses to acknowledge us or not, we will continue to exist. This is the least of my concerns about the trans existence. I am terrified by the prospect that we can all be so distracted by bureaucracy that we forget that there are imminent violent and mortal threats to trans people.

I suppose my point is that I am sick and tired of your efforts to make yourself feel better about being cis in a world that is made for you. You took something that has been very destabilizing and traumatizing for many trans people and made it about your cis experience. You took up space and made sure everyone saw you doing it. I am too exhausted to pat you on the back for doing the bare minimum.

Elections Are Scary Enough Without Voter Shame

BY OLIVIA HACKER-KEATING | COPY EDITOR

liberals suddenly have faith in the American democratic has shown the ability of voting to abolish systems meant to system, one that was built on racism and the suppression silence such individuals: Florida approved amendment 4, of marginalized communities? Voting is not the beginning which allows for those formerly incarcerated for felonies to or the end of implementing political change, it is a step. vote. We need to show politicians that we need more acts One that, yes those who are able to should take part in, but such as that to be passed, that we know that the suppression it should be acknowledged that, just as your mom posting of marginalized voices is not an accident and that we demand “fuck Drumpf” for her equally liberal middle aged facebook change. We need to ask more of our representatives, and also friends to see, cannot be treated as the be all and end all of understand the limits of the American political structure resistance. and that community organizing and direct action is also While there is something admirable about unwavering necessary. It’s not enough to just vote, we need to demand hope in the face of adversity, it’s also important to take into and create a system in which every vote counts. account the very valid reasons that many people may have for not wanting to pay service to a system that, time and time again, has been shown to not care about their rights.

Voting can feel like playing into the fantasy of a representative democracy that is really by and for the people, instead of acknowledging that the system has always been skewed to keep the white, upper class in power. For non US citizens, incarcerated Americans and, in some states, those with a convicted felony on their record, working people who cannot take time off and people with disabilities voting comes with fear, difficulty, and legal barriers. Furthermore, these groups are the same people that liberal voting advocates claim to care about.

That being said, this election Desmond Meade,Florida Rights and Restoration Coalition president, speaking in avor of Florida Amendment 4

PHOTO COURTESY OF BRONTE WITTPEN

My Freshman year of college, I was so excited to vote for the first time. The days of tagging along with my mom to eagerly watch her cast her ballot were behind me— I was finally an adult, ready to play my role in the democratic process, and in a presidential election at that! However, when the day finally came and I filed into Phillips with my peers, I was faced with the reality of the voting process that was a far cry from my fantasies of fresh faced youth stepping up to change the world. Instead, the process was sweaty, crowded, and anxiety inducing, and reminded me more of waiting to take my SATs than anything else. The following elections were even more disheartening, so when election election season rolled around this year, I had much less faith, let alone excitement, in the process then my eighteenyear-old self had.

People’s responses to disappointment vary, though, and while the influx of GOP victories and unabashed bigots in office in the past few years left me and many of my friends weary and cynical, other democrats reacted with a kind of aggressive excitement about the electoral process that stood out starkly againsts streams of bad news. Since September, it’s been impossible to scroll through Instagram and Twitter without seeing phrases like “delete my number if you don’t vote november 6th,” often in cheerful font in front of an American flag background. The people who post such things are well intentioned: it is important to use every resource available to attempt to implement change, and voting is one of them. However, the “vote or else” rhetoric is also simplistic, and confusing.

As I saw my various social media feeds blow up with red white blue, I found myself wondering where this sudden burst of patriotism came from. We have seen hate win over and over again, often through unapologetic fraud— why did

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Gender Outside the Classroom

BY ANNA POLACEK | CONTRIBUTING WRITER pressed femininity, no matter how much my friends assured me I looked fine.

I place a hell of a lot of meaning on my hair. All the discomfort I have with the feminine parts of my body and the feminine ways I carry myself are put onto it. If I can’t change those parts of me, maybe they can hide behind a short haircut. The femininity that plagued my life, that raised me into existence; like I can chop it all with my hair and it will go away. As much as I so badly wish it worked this way, I have to come to terms with the fact that it doesn’t. I have to come to terms with the fact that even if a chest binder doesn’t cover up everything I wish it did, this and many other parts of my body don’t define who I am. This still leaves me constantly searching for a label to grasp onto. Some kind of word or pronoun that defines and tells me who I am. But because I haven’t been able to find one that truly feels like me, I always feel lost.

In most situations of introduction, we have grown accustomed to following our names with our pronouns.

And this is important.

For many, concrete pronouns are essential to establishing a sense of self. But sometimes it feels like there is such an overwhelming weight placed on pronouns, it creates the sense for people who are not struggling with their own gender that in order to know your identity all you need to do is decide your pronouns and announce them to the world.

But what I’m discovering is there’s so much more to it. Gender is a process. Gender is stretchy and flexible and not even close to within the confines of my language abilities. Gender is I-don’t-know-so-I’m-not-going-to-try-to-give-a-concisedefinition. All I know is it’s confusing.

There’s more to gender than stepping onto Oberlin campus your freshman year and all of a sudden feeling comfortable changing everything you thought you knew about yourself. It’s years and years of taking an hour to get dressed in the morning. It’s looking in the mirror and seeing a body that falls short of everything you want it to be one day and seeing someone so handsome the next. Gender is wondering if the fact that you still tell people to use she/her while writing a personal essay about gender dysphoria makes you a fraud.

Once again, it’s confusing; I’m confused.

There’s a unique social code at this school that attaches social capital to a certain queer presentation: white masculineof-center. This has created a very specific image that is often associated with this identity; it may include strictly wearing work pants, sporting a carabiner, or randomly adopting Southwestern culture. The social capital that is sometimes attached to a non-normative gender presentation in concert

WE AREN’T ALWAYS GOING TO KNOW DEFINITIVELY WHO WE ARE. IN FACT, NONE OF US DO. WE ARE 18-22 YEARS OLD. IF THERE’S EVER A TIME THESE IDENTITY-RELATED QUESTIONS ARE LIKELY TO KNOCK AGGRESSIVELY AT YOUR DOORSTEP, IT’S NOW.

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with these and other random qualities confuses me even more.

It creates the misguided feeling that if I happen to be of this very specific presentation, and finally “know” who I am, I have to adopt all the social images that come with it.

I know that knowing your true self isn’t finding your side of the binary, or your niche in a liberal arts college scene: it’s finding your place on the spectrum. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to transcend the binary thinking we have been taught to adhere to our entire lives. This goes beyond questions of gender. Most of us aren’t provided with the tools to look inward and interrogate the parts of us that fall away from binaries. We should allow more space for ourselves to be confused, frustrated, mind-fucked, lost. Let yourself be vulnerable about how little you know about the type of person you are and who you might become.

We aren’t always going to know definitively who we are. In fact, none of us do. We are 18-22 years old. If there’s ever a time these identity-related questions are likely to knock aggressively at your doorstep, it’s now. I’m trying to get to a point where I have a more mature, developed sense of gender as it relates to myself. I’m awaiting the moment where I don’t feel like I constantly have to choose anymore. Where I can exist comfortably within and between categories and not even think twice about it. But until then, I promise to let myself be confused and disoriented, and occasionally a little distressed in the process.

With love and support, Anna P (she/they/ *subject to change

PHOTO COURTESY OF PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Going to a school like Oberlin, where I can write entire essays about the intricacies of the gender spectrum, makes me wonder why I have no idea how to place myself on it. I can confidently explain all the problems with binary thinking, but once I leave the classroom I feel trapped by binaries I actively engage in on the day-to-day. Oberlin can be a comparatively safe environment to explore and express different parts of our respective identities. But as easy as it may seem to express identity publicly here, it can be difficult to settle on these identities privately.

I’m confused every day. It’s confusing when I get dressed in the morning and put on a pair of pants made for women and wonder if that means they make me look like a woman. So I take them off and put on a pair of pants made for men. It’s confusing when I grow out my body hair because that’s what I feel like I should do, and then finally shave it all off because that’s what I actually want to do. It’s confusing when I talk to my therapist about restricting my eating, and she tells me it’s because I want to look like a malnourished female model.

Because I don’t.

I want to look like an underdeveloped pre-teen boy.

It’s confusing when I’m asked my pronouns, and I say she/her because all the other options don’t feel right, but all the things that come with she/ her don’t feel right in the slightest. The closest I come to feeling like I know who I am is when I can feel what I’m not.

I am someone who needs control over my life. Walk into my room, and you will see an impeccably clean and organized space. The only thing on my kitchen counter is a jar of coffee beans, a coffee grinder, and a coffee drip placed in order of the coffee making process. In my pantry sit three backup boxes of almond milk in case I absolutely cannot make the trek to decaf. My planner is filled out according to an organization system that has taken four years to develop. If one part of my three hour morning routine falls from the plan my whole day is thrown. Without this control, I am in a state of complete flux. For this reason, the fact that I don’t have a sense of control over myself and my gender identity has left me with an underlying feeling of instability for what might be my entire life.

Over fall break, I went home and got a desperately needed haircut. It was the same haircut that I had last time: the young Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s the cut favored by many a young lesbian looking to take that next step towards full-ongay presentation. Each day building up to my appointment, I could feel my hair growing. As my hair got longer my face in the mirror looked more like it did before I started to overtly explore my gender presentation. All I could see was my sup-

)*

Thanksgiving Emergency!

Your Uncle Just Said, “But the Irish Were Slaves Too!” What Now?

BY SHANE LORENZEN I CONTRIBUTING WRITER Yes, folx, it’s that time of year again!

Turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes — everyone loves Thanksgiving! However, it can be stressful spending time with your family, especially when their ideas can be a little…well, let’s just say “old fashioned!”

For instance, there’s always that point in the night when everyone’s a few rounds in, the dessert’s not quite ready yet, and the lull in conversation has been seized upon by your Uncle Rob as an invitation to expand on his fucked-up thoughts on the current state of race relations in this country. But that’s okay because we know you’re the Good Kind of White Person, so here are five things you can do when political conversations at dinner get tense and your drunk-ass uncle says something silly like “the Irish were slaves too!”

1. Ask Your Grandmother to Tell a Story!

Your grandmother has led an interesting life and when she speaks, people listen!

Ask her about what it was like coming to America, or how she and your grandfather met. Those are some real important stories and your uncle is going to have to shut the fuck up!

2. Yell at your annoying cousin!

Everyone knows your little cousin, Declan, sucks. Chances are, he’s doing something he’s not

long line of attempts to belittle the ongoing Black American struggle to attain equitable legal and social standing in this country, and that it is truly sad he only pretends to care for the struggles of his own ancestors as long as they allow him to condescend to and demean people of color, and further tell him to seek out works of scholarship like How the Irish Became White, The Wages of Whiteness, et cetera, in order to understand the history behind his words and the ways in which they propagate the injustices upon which this nation was built!

Sure, I guess this might work!

5. Shake your head no, look at your phone, and hope he stops talking soon!

supposed to! If you start ragging on him, the whole family is going to want to get their two cents in; it’ll be a great opportunity to blow off steam. And then hopefully your uncle forgets whatever nonsense he was saying about Colin Kaepernick!

prospect of more alcohol will make your uncle forget what he’s saying? Hopefully!

Plus, you get the opportunity to smoke weed while you’re out there, which will make disassociating and ignoring your family’s little quirks that much easier!

3. Offer to go to the store and buy more beer!

4. Explain that his statement is a myth propagated by white supremacists whose willful misunderstanding of the differences between indentured servitude and chattel slavery in the Caribbean Islands and North America as they were both used by the British empire is simply another in a

This one’s especially good, because it gives you a reason to leave and avoid whatever racist bullshit is about to go unchallenged. And who knows, maybe the

That last one would be opening a can of worms now wouldn’t it? He’d probably ask, “Where’d you learn that? Snowflake University? Where you got a degree in being triggered?”, then burp in your face and then all your family would laugh at you again like last year when you quietly pointed out that “Redskins” is technically a slur during the football game. Addressing your family’s long held prejudices is hard and anyway, you want him to get you something nice for Christmas, right? Don’t worry, just make sure you retweet something from Shaun King or Noam Chomsky later. That’s way more useful than confronting instances of actual, real-life racism!

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Slow Train’s Ties to the Mafia

BY GRACE SMITH | CONTRIBUTING WRITER “Hello?” I called out. “Mrs. Costello, are you here?” I tentatively pushed open Slow Train’s door. The overhead lights were off, yet the moonlight illuminated an ominous array of abandoned chairs. Mrs. Costello’s email clearly stated that my interview would be held at midnight. It seemed rather odd to host an interview two hours after closing, but I was hardly one to question a potential employer.

A glow glinting off the milk steamer caught my eye. I followed the hum of fluorescents to the basement door. I thought, perhaps Mrs. Costello had forgotten about the interview while caught up in backstock. As I descended the stairs I heard the fragments of a tense conversation.

“I heard you were having second thoughts about our deal.”

I froze mid-step while a second voice spoke frantically.

“Of course not! I swear, ma’am, I’m as loyal as the day we met. When that student emailed to ask if CDS was working to improve the quality of dining hall coffee, I had to say yes. You know, to placate them for the time being. But we aren’t! The coffee is as burnt and violently hot as ever. It’s just empty politics.”

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I peered over the railing. Mike Lansky, Director of Campus Dining Services, was tied to a wooden chair and was sweating profusely as café tycoon Frances Costello

the caffeine in this town. Slow Train, the Local…nowadays you can make more selling a Dirty Chai than a bottle of Adderall. If the dining hall coffee were actually decent,

slowly circled him.

“After years spent cultivating and executing this plan, I’ve finally monopolized

students would no longer feel the need to come to my cafés. Do you understand my problem, Mike?” She placed her hands on

the back of his chair.

“Of course! This was a complete misunderstanding, ma’am. I’m not getting cold feet, I swear on my mother’s grave,” he promised, his voice vehement.

“Good. Because if you want to keep the rest of your family above ground and make sure that stipend’s still showing up in your bank account, you will keep the coffee tasting like caffeinated mud. Don’t underestimate me. I won’t be as generous the second time.” She squeezed his shoulder and smiled, “Support your local businesses.”

As stealthily as I could manage, I hurried up the stairs and out of the café.

I was still reeling by the time I reached my dorm. Of course, I knew the dining hall coffee was subpar; paradoxically as bitter as a conservative when someone takes a knee during the national anthem and as weak as my nana’s bones riddled with osteoporosis. However, I had never considered that mob activity had downgraded from heroin to over-roasted coffee beans. In that moment, I knew I had to expose the truth. If the Slow Train Mafia sees this…may God rest my soul. Please pray for me or Venmo me at @Grace-Smith-100.

Notes from Halloweekend

BY GERRA GERTRUDESTEIN | CONTRIBUTING WRITER Editor’s Note: This piece was written several weeks before Halloweekend.

Ah yes, another Halloween come and gone at Oberlin. Another Wednesday spent trying fruitlessly to get into Halloween Splitchers, followed by a weekend of overhyped and ultimately unsatisfying partying. The Grape sent one of our reporters to document this year’s Halloweekend, and this is what they found: First-Years Roaming in Packs Making friends in college is tough.

What better way to keep putting yourself out there than to pregame with half of your floor in Kahn before roaming Tappan Square in groups of 10 to 20, then entering a party just minutes before it’s busted in order to grab a quick squad pic or two with people you’ll likely never interact with again?

That Lax Player Desperate for an Excuse to Go Shirtless We get it. You go to the gym. It’s 45 degrees outside. Look, chief, if reciting word for word the Wikipedia synopsis of Fight Club didn’t get you laid, this won’t

either.

Someone from Scooby-Doo I’m at a total loss as to why and how Scooby-Doo, of all things, became the hot Halloween costume this year, but the sad fact is that no matter how good you think your Mystery Machine costume is, there’s someone at the same party who’s doing it better.

Guy Literally Bursting at the Seams to Tell You About His Costume Not interested in season 3, episode 2 of Community? Too bad, because this guy is here to tell you all about it. His costume is unrecognizable at first, but all it’ll take is 15 minutes of detailed background information and you’ll be roaring with laughter at his creative and iconic getup!

(Note: this guy is often dressed in an obscure costume as a last resort—someone probably beat him to the last Pickle Rick costume at Walmart) Six Different Politics Bros Dressed as Voting Ballots Voting is important. Sure. But somehow these guys manage to give off the vibe that

voting is also somehow some weird fuckedup play for social capital. Is there no better way of getting out the vote than by showing up a Halloween party with a costume that screams “Look at how democratically woke I am”?

Guy With No Costume Who’s Doing His Best But Not Quite Cutting It There are some really cool, creative lastminute costume ideas to be had, but they’re certainly not being had by this guy. It’s not enough to throw on an Oxford shirt and tell people your costume is Kenyon Student, Jack (his name is always Jack).

Wannabe Sorority Queen With a Vaguely Problematic Costume I can’t put my finger on it, but something about this costume just rubs me the wrong way. It’s nothing specific, really, but taken as a whole the thing just gives me the impression that the wearer could stand to go to another Power, Privilege and Oppression workshop before the next Halloween.

Fragment from the Last Will and Testament of Edward S. Harkness, 1940

BY JESSE NOILY | CONTRIBUTING WRITER Note: What follows is an astonishingly prophetic extract from the will of Edward S. Harkness, the chief benefactor of Oberlin’s Harkness Hall, a student co-operative. It has been reproduced here, both in order to pay respect to an honorable philanthropist and to provide some explanation for the current state of the co-op. – Jesse Noily I, Edward Stephen Harkness, being of sound mind and body, do hereby declare that a portion of my estate be dedicated to the foundation of a dormitory building at Oberlin College, that shall always smell like piss and incense.

Let this facility be perpetually occupied by cynical communists loudly engaging in radical leftist discourse in the common areas into the wee hours of the morning. Let there be undergarments and full jugs of milk left out in the dining room overnight, and let ants parade triumphantly through the halls carrying tiny homemade loaves of bread on

their backs.

Indeed, Harkness Hall shall be the stuff of legends and a prideful testament to my memory. It will be this building that tour groups hurriedly walk past on their way to the AJLC. There shall be no human chefs in the kitchen, but instead only a horde of rats cooking soup to the sound of Parisian accordion music. The food will be surprisingly good, though.

The residents of my building will stride pridefully barefoot across Oberlin campus smoking cigarettes and debating whether Pokémon or Digimon is a better franchise.

Harkness Hall will be a refuge for the ostracized politics major who likes to dress like a homeless person despite her father owning two charter airline services, or that insecure comparative literature major who found Dascomb “too neoliberal” for his taste. It will be Harkness where these students find a home.

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The Pasty Gentleman’s Guide to Communication

BY JOSHUA DANIEL MATTSON I CONTRIBUTING WRITER Hey. I’m Josh and I use he/him/his. I’m an Environmental Studies major and History minor, and I joined frisbee because — Oh sorry. Forgot what this was for a second. Anyways, hey guys. Sorry — I mean hey y’all. I’m here to talk to y’all about a really important learning experience I had. Last weekend, I was at a party on South Professor, nursing a Black Label, bopping my head on one and three because let’s be real, I have no sense of rhythm. Suddenly, I saw a figure approaching me on the dance floor. It was a girl who I definitely knew but whose name I couldn’t remember right away. Before I could mumble “What’s up,” she dragged me off the dance floor and sat me down. “Dude, literally what the fuck!?” she said, then started yelling at me for not responding to her texts for a week, especially because we had talked about what a bad texter I was a thousand times before.

As she was talking, I remembered where I knew her from: I’d been hooking up with her pretty consistently since school started.

And she made me breakfast last week after I stayed over cause I ran out of meal swipes.

And I cried to her about my parents’ divorce freshman year on our Barrows hall. Kayla!

Her name is Kayla.

Kayla walked away from me and we didn’t make eye contact for the rest of the party.

Soon after that I went home and smoked with my housemates cause I was pretty wiped.

Three weeks later, I remembered the conversation and stopped in my tracks. I was disgusted with myself. I must learn how to communicate, I thought. So, here I am. 24 hours and one Adderall-fueled writing session later, I have changed like the water in my bong every six months. I consulted my panel of experts — three girls who sit together on the stairs during Tank meals — plus one Jezebel article about

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ghosting I saw on my timeline. Here’s what I found out: communication is hard. And takes effort. But don’t worry! If you’re like me, you can use these tips and tricks to be a great communicator without sacrificing your precious energy:

1. Don’t ghost!

It’s really draining to pick your phone up from your night stand and send a reply text to the human being you hooked up with. However, you can still be in touch without performing this difficult task! Some alternative methods include communicating via carrier pigeon or organizing a campus wide game of telephone and hoping your “hey I can’t hang out tonight I have a screening” message gets to them.

2. Queerbaiting: Don’t.

Don’t!!!

It’s unquestionably fine to explore sexual fluidity. But flirting with a friend of your same gender when you know you’d never follow through? Nuh-uh. But hey, you can still show them that you’re an ally! A more respectful way to go about honoring your friends’ identity is to always be saying things like, “if I were queer, I would totally date you, but I’m not”. That’s not queerbating, right?

3. Emotional Labor

It’s really shitty to never give emotional support to someone who constantly listens to you talk about your own feelings. Next time you vent, show them you appreciate their time and energy by leaving a tip when you’re done talking. It’s awesome if you make a really big show of fishing a few singles out of your pocket when you do this — a little gesture is all it takes to show how hard you’re working to be better.

4. Don’t Be Vague

Your partner deserves specificity about what you’re thinking and feeling when it comes to your relationship. So, the more idiosyncratic language you can use to describe where you’re at, the better. For help on this one, consult your friend whose creative writing capstone is a cross-genre exploration of texts from his ex, chemtrail theories, Cory Booker’s Twitter, and Lolita. Here are some handy turns of phrase to get you started:

“I care don’t w a a littl bout y nt to b e bo e ou b y” = ut I exclus hair ive care “I g rig smo rey/ w t’s jus m o t lik re a ht now ith ke p e a b ge l uff” ‘cau out ike the tid se I es/ being an o a ho wav “I’m ak t rn e ree no how ring ring he y obs t really r or/ es goin i circ g” = sed yo nto yo u l ar u u bac “Ye k!” tem are wit anymo re b ptre hm ut I e so ss!

Ye s kin I just “I’m iren kep da like ! Tu end inti rn b t thin ing m g thin ack spe acy an ! Tu s gs b cial dI r e n n tha aba t pr eed sp cause I nd edi ace ’ own ons h to t m afra is sc camen hea h id o ink t alpe turn rt l m is” = “W abou f ed o go? It idth som fl ff G h rey’ atline operat en a s ow e sc ur s. s io otch . It Anatom Boom n whe geon r stai b e y o doe .Is om ned .B sh hu my she t the li eeeeep is ets. g .I Lik ht. Po e yo ure d u.”

Come Write! our next meeting is:

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 4:00 PM IN WILDER 115

email us at: thegrape@oberlin.edu We invite students organizations to get in touch about guest writing!

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