Issue two Spring 2022

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Vol. 69 NO. 2

OBERLIN’S ALTERNATIVE STUDENT NEWSPAPER EST. 1999 March 25, 2021

Priya Banerjee and Levi Dayan Co-Editors-in-Chief Izzy Halloran Managing Editor Wyatt Camery Features Editor Liza MacKeen Shapiro Opinions Editor

Saffron Forsberg Arts and Culture Editor

Anna Harberger Layout Editor

Juli Freedman Bad Habits Editor

Eva Sturm-Gross Art Director

Fiona Farrell, Teagan Hughes, Raghav Raj, Anna Holshouser-Belden Staff Writers

Molly Chapin, Julian Crosetto, Olive Polken Production Assistants

ISSUE TWO COVER ART

Front Cover: Shay Rutkowski Back Cover: Eleanore Winchell

Letter from the Editor Levi Dayan Editor-in-Chief Hey guys! Last first editors note of the semester from me, I guess! I’ve been hit with the “must feel weird to be in your last semester” shtick from the various adults in my life a million times now, and I always have the same answer of “uhh I guess, I don’t really think about it.” The truth is that I’ve been so sucked up in my work and trying to tie up all the loose ends here on campus that I haven’t had too much time to reflect, or think about the future.

Maybe that’s for the better. I feel most at peace when I’m 100% focused - which obviously doesn’t happen too often - on everything happening in the present moment, be it the sound of car horns or the formations of people crossing the street. I’ve never had any use for thinking about the past beyond trying to understand the present, and thinking about the future, necessary as it may be, can also be more anxiety-inducing than anyone needs. But I think the right approach is simply acknowledging that my experience at Oberlin is one of an innumerable amount of random factors that I don’t necessarily feel any one way about, but has nonetheless shaped who I am, what I do and my worldview.

Yeah. That’ll sound interesting to people.

Art by Anna Scott

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Professors Prove Oberlin’s Pay is Piss-Poor Reggie Goudeau Contributor On March 10, I attended a demonstration in Tappan Square led by Professors Yveline Alexis and Pamela Brooks. We gathered there in protest of the Board’s refusal to revert back to the faculty compensation plan from 2013 that promised to raise many salaries. We also protested a new health plan which has increased faculty co-pay for seeing the doctor from $30 per visit to $100.

The turnout was spectacular, the speeches and readings were heartfelt, and I felt like everything went surprisingly well. The event showed me that although Oberlin paying professors enough was the main issue, this institution’s inability to accommodate everyone’s needs (from disabled students to students of color) is also a huge problem. While reflecting on our work, I turned to Professor Alexis to discover her thought process behind organizing this event and what made it so successful.

When I asked her what inspired her to organize the protest, Professor Alexis said, “Watching my parents and the larger community struggle. They are considered laborers, and now that they’re at this certain age where we’re caring for them, we’re essentially their retirement plan.” Our cries for fair wages and treatment go beyond helping those at Oberlin College. They are about rebelling against a pattern of marginalized people having to struggle for a chance at fair pay. Oberlin is an institution that prides itself on diversity and inclusion, so this place should not be another obstacle for students representing said values. Anyways, Professor Alexis went on to say, “It’s time for us to raise our voices for those people like our janitors here, dining staff here, but also the reality that you need to pay professors at the rate that Gridmore pays their professors, Smith College, and other comparable institutions.”

Alexis tried being slightly more civil at first and waited for those with more privilege in her faculty meetings to step up. Sadly, that did not work, so Professor Alexis worked alongside Dr. Pamela Brooks and several students to demand change. I wondered how she managed such a large turnout, but Professor Alexis again praised students’ efforts. She initially just sent the students in her three classes the egregious letter by the board. Professor Alexis had a mix of her current students, alumni of classes she took, and other allies help organize the event and spread the word. The UPS Store also offered to print out and laminate plenty of flyers with ample time. Kopano Muhummad, a third-year

previously involved in music and activism, even helped make a QR code for people to see the letter and get other updates. They also sang the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Besides these things, Professor Alexis also noted that she was struck by the testimonies from several neurodivergent students and how this place accommodates very few despite having so many resources.

I wondered if anything from that day besides the turnout surprised her, and the response here was striking. Professor Alexis was shocked by the rampant Title IX violations and mental health issues that Oberlin can’t adequately remedy. Professor Alexis respects and admires the great people at the Counseling Center., s She also knows that the three to five employees there, though extremely impactful, can’t accommodate every student here coming withfrom trauma. She was also shocked that RA’s don’t get a paid room from the College. Professor Alexis reportedly accepted that the protest slowly drifted away from being focused on properly compensating professors. She is a big advocate for rest and believes that if students aren’t functioning at even 70% capacity, they can’t learn, generate activism, or do anything else important. She was also happy to see students from immense generational wealth step back and offer their services.

When I requested that she name testimonies from that day that still resonated, she said the efforts of her classes were powerful. Beginning the testimonies with Kopano Muhammad and ending them with Joshua Jackson felt “holistic” according to her. Alexis also respected how everyone spoke once for the most part since she reportedly does “...not vibe with people who take up too much space.” I was concerned with privileged students doing just that, but thankfully the opposite happened.

When I inquired about whether Oberlin treats her with comparable respect to other institutions, Professor Alexis had to think a bit harder. According to her, the main difference between Oberlin and similar places was that other institutions and her colleagues there all encouraged her to succeed. At Oberlin, there’s a culture to always help others, regardless of how that impacts your well-being, and to support every Black event possible. I experienced this recently when I didn’t perform at a recent Soul Session because I’d had a rough week and didn’t want to break down or give a lackluster performance. Despite the many questions I received following that day, having the strength to say no was very power-

via the Oberlin Review ful. I’m proud that I gave myself the room to heal since Black people on this campus rarely get that opportunity.

Professor Alexis notably goes to Black Church as well, which is a 3-4 hour process along with her tons of other responsibilities. Doing all of this is unsustainable, and as she puts it, other professors aren’t often “put under this pressure to be everything to every Black student” while completing other tasks and still functioning.

Before I concluded my time with her, I asked Professor Alexis if she knew what the next steps are for Oberlin to give everyone here an equitable and comfortable experience (regarding wages, available resources on-campus, equitable class environments, etc). She responded by saying the solution was to keep the pressure on Oberlin and continue organizing. This may seem simple, but this course of action is bound to remain effective with solidarity across campus. Even though I had to leave the event a half-hour early, I still felt the power from that space even days later. I am not confident that Oberlin will respond correctly here, but I’d love to be proven wrong. If that scenario doesn’t happen, I don’t mind. I’ll try my best to make it to the next protest, and I encourage anyone who cares about workers’ and students’ rights to do the same. As Professor Alexis said during my final minutes with her, “Who got next?”

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COVID, Institutional Memory, and the Rise of the Oberlin ‘Finance Bro’ (continued on pg. 8)

Anna Holhouser-Belden Staff Writer Two weeks ago was the two-year anniversary of the initial pandemic lockdown, with March 13th marking the last day of relative freedom before months of quarantine, health anxiety, increased political polarization…etc, etc. Some of you may have discussed it with friends; this sort of twisted milestone recalling days of panic over the global health armageddon we know so well as the Covid-19 virus. After two years of increasing numbness towards this looming and ever-present specter, we’ve found ourselves discussing mask mandates and indoor dining like its the weather, joking with an increasing degree of cynical irony every time someone mentions wiping down groceries or the celebrity “Imagine” compilation video. As classes have moved online, offline, online, and offline once again, we have somehow all progressed two years in our academic lives.

Due to Zoom, these transitions from high school to college and from college to working life have very much felt unreal, superficial, and detached.

Students of all ages have been academically and socially stunted after two years of online or hybrid learning. It’s been hard beginning to adjust back to that already demanding norm, having to make that ten minute walk to a 9 AM in King instead of just rolling over and opening your laptop. With this constant ebb and flow of severity of the virus in its multiplying variants, and the rapid cycling of students through the short four-year process that is liberal arts college, aspects of our lives have been lost and forgotten. This, I believe, is due to the loss of institutional memory in almost all aspects of campus life.

What is institutional memory? A quick Google search offers up this definition: a collective set of facts, concepts, experiences, and knowledge held by a group of people. At Oberlin right now, the only group of people that holds the facts, concepts, experiences, and knowledge about the multitude of student organizations on our campus is extremely limited. The only class that has been present for an entire academic year of pre-Covid life–the class of 2022–is graduating in just a few short months. Additionally, this year of pre-Covid living happened to be the class of 2022’s first year at Oberlin, a year where most are only starting to dip their toes into the pool of campus extracurricular activity. Most current Oberlin students have gone through the major-

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ity–if not all–of their academic lives masked, with at least one class at a time online. A small school like Oberlin, in a small community like Oberlin, relies on student activity for much of its life force. Social events tend to revolve around the music, art, and cultural scene, and the majority of us would rather be at a house show than a football party on a Friday night. The administration seems to be obsessed with the sheer amount students here have going on, using it as an advertising tactic to draw prospies to the school.

However, with Covid, the natural flow of our institutional memory has been cut off relatively abruptly, leaving many student organizations in flux and scrambling to clean up whatever mess has been caused in the last two years before their leaders graduate.

As a second-year who came to Oberlin during the peak of the pandemic, I spent two relatively hellish semesters during my first year in majority-online classes with very few options offered in terms of things to do outside of my schoolwork but sit on the same four friends’ dorm room floors for my meals and spend long, contemplative hours on one of the two beds in my roommate-less dorm in Kahn or on Wilder Bowl (weather permitting). There were no co-op shifts, club or ExCo meetings, trips to Azzie’s, hours spent reading in Mudd, shows at the ‘Sco, in-person WOBC slots, or parties happening that we take for granted today. It has really felt like I spent a year suspended between high school and college, trapped between adolescence and adulthood with a lack of drive propelling my life forward in the direction it normally moves. And this year, it feels like every organization I have tried to become a part of–from OSCA to WOBC to this very publication and many more– has been scrambling to keep everything moving forward, not at the fault of any of the people themselves but due to the difficulties of adjusting to operating an organization under such rapidly changing circumstances both during the height of the pandemic and in this strange semi-post-pandemic period we’re in now. This task is a daunting one–especially on top of theses and graduation or even just regular life, packed with classes and social events–that many feel ill-equipped to take on, whether upper or underclassmen. There is often the question of what will stick around in the next few years, and what we can see slipping away due to this lack of institutional memory; a sad but inevitable reality.

New semester brings changes, revivals at WOBC !

Teagan Hughes Features Editor WOBC’s spring semester programming began at 8 A.M. on Monday, March 14th. Staff anticipate that the semester ahead will look the closest to “normal” that any semester has since spring 2020, hopefully bolstering and perpetuating WOBC institutional memory, much of which has been in jeopardy due to the station’s limited operations these past two years. (For more on institutional memory, check out Staff Writer Anna HolshouserBelden’s article on institutional memory in this same issue.) The COVID-19 pandemic has instigated a number of changes at WOBC that seem here to stay--a new website and remote broadcasting capability, to name a couple. However, it has also required many beloved station traditions and essential operations to go on hold, and WOBC board, staff, and DJs are now looking into which of these traditions and operations can be revitalized.

WOBC received more applications to host a radio show this semester than any semester since spring 2020, an influx that Station Engineer Katie Frevert attributes to the reunification of the entire student body that occurred this past fall after three semesters at limited capacity.

“I think one of the biggest reasons we’ve been able to bounce back in terms of numbers is that we finally have the whole student body on campus again,” she says. “[T]his was the case last semester too, but I feel like the fall ended up being an adjustment period, since first- and secondyear students had never been on campus during a ‘normal’ year for WOBC/the world, and many of them weren’t as familiar with WOBC as an organization.”

Facilitating the transmission of both new and returning shows this semester is WOBC’s new website, designed by longtime community DJ Dennis Cook in collaboration with the WOBC board.

In addition to managing the transitions between in-person shows and the handful of remote shows currently broadcasting, the new website also stores a variety of backup shows that can be broadcast if a DJ misses their assigned time slot. “As the station engineer, I’m super grateful to Dennis Cook for his work on the new WOBC website, particularly the feature that allows for prerecorded shows to play

automatically in unscheduled time slots or when there isn’t a DJ in the station,” Frevert says. “Before, if a DJ didn’t show up to their show and didn’t get a substitute in time, we’d end up broadcasting dead air and I’d have to run up to the tech room of the station to turn off the transmitter and prevent us from getting fined by the FCC. Now we have the backup sub shows as a safeguard in place to keep the transmitter on and to keep content broadcasting on WOBC 24/7.”

With dozens of DJs occupying a packed broadcasting schedule, WOBC staff are aiming this semester to revive a number of pre-COVID traditions and operations, all of which will hopefully bolster the sense of community around the station. “The main thing we are looking to bring back and ‘revamp’ are workgroups,” Music Director Emma DeRogatis-Frilingos says. Workgroups at WOBC organize and evaluate the music that gets sent to the station, among other essential operations, and membership in a workgroup is a requirement (and a perk!) of having a WOBC show. “Workgroups are an essential part of WOBC that have kind of been pushed to the side since the pandemic started,” DeRogatis-Frilingos says. “This is at no fault to the staff or DJs, but purely due to the uncertainties that come with COVID.” Staff are also looking forward to revitalizing semesterly communitybuilding events such as the Coverband Showcase. Frevert points out that this past fall semester brought the first indoor, in-person Coverband Showcase since the pre-COVID days, and says she is excited for the next: “Although I’m glad it stayed up and running throughout the pandemic--entirely virtual in fall 2020, socially distanced in Wilder Bowl in spring 2021, and out on the Tappan Square bandstand in summer 2021--there’s no way to replicate the energy of having Coverband Showcase late in the evening at the ‘Sco, and it was so exciting to be able to bring that particular tradition back, and I’m looking forward to helping run it again this semester.” DeRogatis-Frilingos says that the staff is also in talks about “bringing back some of the more lowkey traditions” like the WOBC Pool Party.

Overall, WOBC staff are hoping that this semester of broadcasting will foster a deeper sense of community that

goes beyond any singular event, opportunity, or obligation. “We also just want to have our staff and DJs feel comfortable being in the station and have that sense of belonging,” DeRogatis-Frilingos says. “I am encouraging staff to make the admin room their own space to do homework and hangout, and it is definitely beginning to feel more like pre-COVID.” Frevert emphasizes the opportunities for connection that this semester has already brought: “We have community members who are back in the station in person for the first time since the pandemic, and it’s been great to meet everyone. Part of why I’m so passionate about WOBC is because radio has given me the opportunity to connect with so many people in the Oberlin community, and being able to interact in

Art by Amelia Connelly person again makes me feel like I’m starting off my final semester at WOBC on a good note.”

Between a roster of both new and returning DJs, a new website, and the anticipated revamp of the station’s community-building practices, the upcoming semester at WOBC is shaping up to be a mishmash of new and old, constantly adapting to new capabilities and restrictions all while strengthening community within the station. Though the body of institutional memory associated with WOBC has long been in jeopardy, the spring semester is already providing invaluable opportunities to revive that institutional memory and pass it down to a new generation of DJs.

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Interview

Creative Writing Professor Allegra Hyde Releases Debut Novel, Eluetheria Teagan Hughes Staff Writer Allegra Hyde, an Assistant Professor in the Oberlin Creative Writing department, published her debut novel, Eleutheria, on March 8th. Professor Hyde’s previous works include the short story collection Of This New World (University of Iowa Press), as well as publications in Tin House, American Short Fiction, and the Kenyon Review.

Her novel Eleutheria was published

by Vintage Books, an imprint of Alfred A. Knopf. A work of climate fiction, or “cli-fi,” Eleutheria tells the story of Willa Marks, a young woman who, with her life in flux, joins a utopian community of ecowarriors in the Bahamas and begins to unravel its secrets. The novel, which is now available anywhere books are sold, was described by Shelf Awareness as “a moving meditation on the promise and dangers of utopianism in a potential future plagued by climate change and authoritarianism.” I had the chance to speak with Professor Hyde about her debut novel; what follows is our interview.

Generally speaking, where did the idea for this novel come from? Is it influenced by personal experience? Does it build on any previous work?

This novel builds on my long term interests in the utopian communities -- a topic that is explored in my first book, a story collection called Of This New World. Before embarking on Eleutheria, I’d actually written a short story called “Shark Fishing” that appeared in my story collection. Even though it was the longest story in Of This New World, I felt like there was still more I needed to unpack. I wanted to know the characters better and to push their various agendas to an end point. It wasn’t easy re-inventing and elongating that story, but I think that sometimes when a project calls to you, you have to answer.

And this project -- or this topic has been calling to me for a long time, as a writer and as a person in the world. Though the novel is very much a work of fiction, it does draw on personal experience,

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including time I spent working on environmental initiatives in The Bahamas and living on hippie communes in New Zealand. Writing a short story and then this book helped me make sense of my own life, and put it in conversation with many years of research, as well as my own imagination.

I have seen Eleutheria described as “environmental fiction”; what landscapes or locations influenced the book?

The Bahamas, New Hampshire, Boston...

What did the research process for this book look like? What types of sources did you pull from?

Research was extensive, and involved years of studying a variety of texts across many different fields and genres.

I read everything from historical surveys to wildlife guide books to poetry.

Research also involved fieldwork and interviews!

How does this book relate to your teaching career? Is there any of your work at Oberlin reflected in Eleutheria?

Though the book was written over a span of about five years, as well as in multiple countries and U.S. cities, a portion of it was written while I was living in Oberlin. I did some of the most difficult revisions while teaching at the college; though there aren’t direct correlations, I can’t help but think that some Oberlin-ness seeped into the final form of the book. I am constantly inspired by my students, who are pushing themselves to grow as writers and as humans every day. This is a book very much about figuring out how to do right in a world full of so many wrongs, which I think is a very Oberlinian question to be pondering.

I saw that there is an audiobook on pre-order for Eleutheria!

What did the process of getting an audiobook recorded look like? Do you feel that the change in medium affects the story, if at all?

how I heard the words in my head when writing them, but I think that’s okay! She brought the material to life in her own way.

As an avid audiobook listener, having my novel recorded was especially thrilling. The process involved listening to audio samples from various voice actors. Since Eleutheria is told from the first person POV, it was really important to find the right voice for the book -- for that voice to embody my narrator. Luckily I found a wonderful actor named Gilli Messer who fit the bill. Her reading sounds slightly different than

What’s next in your career?

I have a second collection of stories, The Last Catastrophe, slated for publication next year. These stories are all speculative, and take the idea of “global weirding” (a phrase that is also used to talk about climate change) literally. I’m really excited to share them!

Spring 2022 ExCo Profiles Anna Holhouser-Belden Staff Writer

Art by Priya Banerjee

There are few things as unique as Oberlin’s Experimental College, or ExCo, program–an entire department run solely by students and community members.

Founded in 1968 during a time when educational reform was shaking up undergraduate programs across the nation, the program allows for non-faculty members to teach skills and talk about their passions with like-minded peers. ExCos allow for more communication between “town and gown,” breaking down boundaries that so often make the world of academia limiting and inaccessible. It is led by a group of students called the ExCo Committee. Unlike other student-run organizations, it seems that the institutional memory of the organization has held up surprisingly well throughout these two pandemic-stricken years, with ExCo courses offered both remotely and in-person.

Something that is so special about a program like the Experimental College is that it is always shifting, with a course catalog that reflects current students’ interests, changing with them over time as students cycle through. In a way, a glance through the ExCo course catalog could reveal much more about the student body than any official college statistics or official documents. With the start of this semester, an entirely new group of student-taught classes has come into being, and I would like to highlight a few that really grasp the scope of varied interests present in our student body. Keeping record of these courses is a way for us to remember the unique-ness of the moment we are in, and how important student organizations like the Experimental College are in furthering the institutional memory of our student body. Currently, the course catalog contains the categories Community and Society; Language, Culture, and Religion; Computers, Math, and Science; Media and Literature; Dance and Theater; Arts, Crafts, and DIY; and Physical Activities, Mindfulness, and Games. I’ve chosen to highlight one or two from each group, with short profiles below:

Dictators in the Time of Covid One of the more topically relevant ExCos offered this semester in terms of social justice issues would be Dictators in the Time of Covid, taught by fourthyear Louis Gounden. Highlighting under-represented human rights and humanitarian issues both at home and abroad, this ExCo navigates the fragile, often troubled boundary between democracy and authority in governments and organizations during the Covid-19 pandemic. Louis says he was inspired to teach this ExCo after being inspired by a think tank focused on human rights’ issues that we worked with in highschool. He also looks back to Model UN, HIS time at the Harvard Kennedy school, and a winter term spent covering protests in Hong Kong. Louis taught this same ExCo prior to Covid as well, but has now shifted towards more specific topics involving the disruption of elections or protests under the guise of public health issues. He hopes to bring attention to the sudden lack of attention paid to issues abroad with the rise of concern surrounding the pandemic in the United States. In terms of an average class, each week the ExCo focuses on a case study in a different geographical area, spanning everywhere from Eritrea in Northeastern Africa to chattel slavery in India, modern-day witch burnings, the war in Ukraine, indigenous rights in the U.S., and the genocide of Uighur Muslims in China. Students work on unique projects that can be framed through a variety of skill sets to present at the end of the semester. For those interested in the course, it meets on Friday evenings from 5-7 pm.

Trading and Investing The Trading and Investment ExCo is a new course this semester, taught by third-year student Sam Hao. Sam has had a long-time interest in and passion for trading and investing, and thinks a crash course in the financial market for students who may not have time in their busy schedules to take Econ classes is important in gaining real-world experience managing finances. Sam emphasizes that he wants his course to be accessible to people in music and the arts, which he understands is a large part of Oberlin’s population, and for whom he believes money management to be crucial. A typical class period is lecture based and takes a mostly theoretical approach, preparing different topics each week to go over with students and then giving them time to ask questions and discuss what they have learned. Some goals for the course are to inspire people to day trade, because according to Sam the practical side of trading and investing can only come with real-world experience. He hopes to leave people with a good, basic understanding of the financial market that will come in handy later in life. Sam’s favorite part of teaching is when students approach him after class to delve deeper into topics that they find to be interesting.

BadArtCo BadArtCo is a course taught by Henry Wahlenman, third-year and advocate for experimental, underrepresented, and amateur artists. Their class poses the questions: Is there such a thing as “bad” art? If so, who and what defines it as such? Is it important to learn about? With subject matter ranging from works by prestigious contemporary artists such as Ai Weiwei to pop culture ephemera such as Riverdale and kitschy household objects, this course pushes the envelope on what we value as art across a multitude of genres.

Henry’s goals for the semester are to establish a discussion around art that may not be viewed as “good” in the way the Sistine Chapel or French film are, and to expand the palettes of Oberlin students in our small liberal arts echo chamber. Henry wants BadArtCo to show that there are ways to look at art outside of the inherently problematic historical canon that is so often pushed in academia.

They describe the curriculum as any type of art that could “piss off your dad”. Each week focuses on a different art form, with more umbrella topics like performance art, “outsider” art, and camp and kitsch; along with specific topics like the band The Shaggs.

Additionally, the course discusses what constitutes bad art, and the differences between art outside of the traditional canon versus art that is harmful to people. It asks if it is possible to go so far as considering all forms of media as art. A typical class period consists of a slideshow lecture with artistic examples followed by a class discussion on the week’s subject. This is the first time Henry has taught BadArtCo, and they have expressed interest in teaching it again in the future. BadArtCo never turns away interested auditors, who are encouraged to pop into any class on Mondays or Thursdays from 6-7 pm in King 323!

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Finance Bros continued I’ll use one of our largest, most well-known student organizations as examples of how fading institutional memory could be causing a shift in our campus life; OSCA: Oberlin’s Student Cooperative Organization, around since the 1950s and founded on the Rochdale Principles of Cooperation. Since its beginnings, OSCA has supplied an “alternative” to college housing and dining, and has been contested by the administration for, as a critic in the 1940s said, “forcing non-conformity”--and taking a quarter of the campus population’s room and board costs to an outside organization.

But with an administration increasingly focused on austerity Since the pandemic, OSCA has been shut down for a year, with several co-op kitchens being used as CDS dining options. Certain co-ops have been unable to come back, such as Fairkid–the vegan dining-only co-op–and Old Barrows– the women and trans housing-only co-op.

There is a lower rate of participation since the co-ops have come back, most likely due to a lack of money from the loss of a year of membership payments, and a lack of memory on how to prepare food, pass inspections, and carry out functioning elections all while

having to teach three classes worth of brandnew members how to live cooperatively. There is also the difficulty of those in leadership positions not having any training due to a year and a half of the organization being neglected.

On the other end of the spectrum, despite having a student body that has historically tended to prioritize conservatory recitals over sports games, and “Go Yeo” more often said in jest than seriously, our administration seems to have been prioritizing bringing more athletes to campus in recent years, pouring money into athletic facilities and new dorms on north campus by the gym and the Union houses. The majority of our athletic facilities have been built at some point in the last five to ten years, the Union houses in 2005, and possibility of a new dorm near Hales and Barrows being built sometime before 2024.

Additionally, the administration seems to be selling a more sports-centered, school pride vision of Oberlin to bring a more diverse crop of students to campus in terms of interests.

Along with the ways the administration has undermined OSCA in recent years, this raises questions of what role the administration has played shaping institutional memory. It’s interesting to think about how this could potentially affect Oberlin in similar ways to the fade of institutional memory as time goes on. With a lack of students willing and/or able to lead

Spring ExCo(s) continued Garden ExCo Garden ExCo is often one of the most sought-after ExCos in the course catalog. It’s up there with Beginner Pottery and SexCo in terms of the sheer amount of applications it receives year after year. This Spring, the ExCo is being taught primarily

by Hannah Isenberg and Sophia Gliatto, and secondarily by members of Oberlin’s Resource Conservation Team (RCT) who maintain the J-House garden.

In terms of the variety of ExCos in the course catalog, Garden ExCo is pretty straightforward, and consists mostly of getting everyone’s hands in the dirt on Sunday mornings (from 10-12!) to learn the basics of caring for a garden. A typical class period consists of discussing readings,

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which usually relay the benefits of a specific gardening practice, followed by a practical explanation by the class leaders of how to complete a specific gardening task. Since the Garden ExCo is run by the RCT, there is an emphasis on sustainability, with students donating leftover harvests to Oberlin Community Services to eliminate food waste. Students are also encouraged to come to the RCT’s general gardening hours from 3-5 on Saturdays and Sundays. Some goals Hannah and Sophia have for the ExCo going forward are increasing community participation and the promotion of sustainable practices. Hannah particularly enjoys the ritual of starting off every week with two hours in nature! One of the most special things about Garden Exco now is how unaffected it is by the pandemic; it takes place outdoors so no need to worry about masks!

our most cherished campus organizations and an increase of student athletes being admitted, how could this eventually change the campus culture and the events we center our social and extracurricular lives around?

In terms of academics, on the other hand, Oberlin has traditionally catered more towards those interested in the humanities, with a survey of Oberlin alums with PhDs on the college website categorizing people in the arts and humanities or social sciences as higher that of the natural sciences or mathematics. There have been some recent, out of character changes for Oberlin in the last few years in terms of majors and courses available. For example, a new entrepreneurship concentration in the business major is being offered, something that seems paradoxical to Oberlin’s reputation as an institution (and as a student body) that is so invested in being part of the first wave of social justice movements that often work against traditional capitalist hierarchies perpetuated by business, finance, and corporations. This semester, a new course on trading and investing has been added to the catalog of the Experimental College, a program devoted to skills that often cannot be found in a traditional classroom setting. Could a lack of institutional memory possibly be contributing to a shift in the academic interests of our student body?

Big Parade Since its beginnings in 2001, Big Parade has been a quintessential Oberlin event. It also happens to be an event that the majority of students on campus right now have never seen, as there has not been a Big Parade since May 2019 due to the pandemic. The parade itself is a day of celebration that both college and community take place in, with floats made by everyone from WOBC and the bike coop to the business owners in town. It is organized by a student-led club, but wouldn’t be possible without collaboration from the Oberlin community. As one of the many student organizations on Oberlin’s campus that suffered from a lack of resources and institutional memory, Big Parade has been shifting from club to ExCo in order to pull in new members and renew interest among the student body.

The ExCo is new this semester and is being led by Big Parade’s club members: Priya Banjeree, Mayu Evans, and Audrey Burkey, who describe their task as “putting Big Parade back on the map.” Having been members of the club before the pandemic, Priya, Mayu and Audrey look back on this time fondly and describe Big Parade as a good way to get creative outside of a traditional classroom setting, and a magical experience that during the pandemic is a muchneeded celebration of remaining normalcy. The ExCo’s goals for the semester are to find new committed club members to carry on the tradition, teach people how to create mass projects and “big ass floats,” and bring back the magic that its leaders found in the parade pre-pandemic. The ExCos leaders attribute Big Parade to helping them love Oberlin, and their favorite things about being involved are “crafting and hanging” with creative people who are excited to make art and have fun! Look out for the parade on May 21st on its route down Main Street to see what the ExCo and its leaders make!

Interview

The ever-experimental Saffron Forsberg Arts and Culture Editor When I attended Gabriel Baskin’s Junior TIMARA recital in Stull last week, I knew of his work only peripherally, as that made by a musician-friend-of-a-musicianfriend. Oberlin, in its way, is an ideal place to reside if you’re the sort to stumble into such things on a Sunday evening — I consider myself artistically open-minded though technically naive, thus apt to wander around campus grazing on anything that glints in my periphery.

Often that “anything” is of the broad sect of art deemed, in any attempt to shy away from a label too constraining or prone to further academic alienation, “experimental.”

And with experimental music, and especially regarding TIMARA, I have little concept of what is “good” nor successful, but only what stimulates my brain in such a way that, chest bubbling with post-show chemistry, I can gather the nerve to cross the room and ask a clever guy with a laptop, or a table mapped with chords and synths, or some fucked-up string instrument: hey would you ever want to talk to me about your work for The Grape?

I did so after Gabriel Baskin’s show. We met up the following Wednesday.

The first thing I noticed about Baskin was his way of speaking; he’s articulate, soft-spoken, honest. He possesses a quick, unsarcastic sense of humor. His voice was something that caught my attention at his recital, as well. Lights lowered, he explained his complex thesis with an unpretentious warmth I wanted to siphon off and sprinkle around campus. The conservatory does not often feel so intimate…particularly not to me, a Sunday evening stumbler. But at Baskin’s show, I could feel everyone – friends, family, faculty, and all those who stumble – smiling together. Baskin laughs when I tell him about his voice. “I was lucky to have been feeling communicative that day.”

I ask him about his thesis and how he went about presenting it.

GB: I’ve been experimenting with text art stuff ever since

Gabriel Baskin.

last summer…and it took on sort of a weird personal and emotional significance, and at the time, the idea of doing a presentation about it, it felt imperative to express it.

But fast forward months later, that expressive impulse has…diminished. And so I’m glad that it wasn’t imposing and that it was sort of just explicative.

But he’s funny, I point out. There’s a sense of humor draped over his work, a tongue-in-cheek sincerity, a passion that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

GB: I mean I didn’t want to be a dick about it; it can be easy to just beat people over the head when you’re trying to explain something. As opposed to, sort of, universally important, I just wanted to convey that it was personally significant. And I like to be funny when I can.

So what’s Baskin’s deal? What’s there to explain? Well, in short: he’s a musician and visual artist. He’s in the small, intense, and bleating TIMARA neck of the Con, but lately he’s taken to the visual. At his most recent recital, his visual art seemed to hold about as equal weight contentand concept-wise as his music. His audio and visual work really do hold their own – they’re all “separate experiments” – but also work well in conjunction under a broader thesis about technology, specifically the internet, and its experimental capabilities.

GB: I make a little bit of music, but mostly what’s occupied my attention for the past year has been coding and generative visual art. And then some interactive musical stuff. But a lot it comes down to the technical, the building of the systems. …I found working with generative stuff very freeing. It felt natural…the way in which you sort-of explore those systems…you’re led by the quirks to develop new additions or go in new directions. It felt more exploratory, as opposed to the top-down approach to music. Yeah, it was very helpful. Because then I was able to reapply those ideas back to music.

His Junior Recital, where spectral electronic soundscapes mingled with clever visual projections, showcased Art, photos provided by Gabriel Baskin

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Gabriel Baskin continued this well. On a table across the room: Baskin’s “scrolls” – long, table-length skeins of paper printed with intricate code. Beside them sat prints of Baskin’s generative art – viscous, extraterrestrial experiments in Blender. All such pieces are of their own tone and medium yet, somehow they all function well together under Baskin’s overarching conceptual premise, that which is at once somehow both deeply and abstractly philosophical, and as concrete as a gif of “Betty Boop on a surfboard in Hawaii.” His work makes notions of the internet and its assorted mechanisms contort in one’s mind. How can it encompass so much at once? And yet remain wholly intangible? What happens when one begins to understand such technology as a set of freeing, exploratory tools rather than the strange portal through which one may view a classmate’s bisexually-lit bedroom pop music video? How can it all exist, in actuality, as a capable sea of code? And how the fuck does code work anyway? (Well, maybe that’s just a question relegated to the churning mind of your darling old-soul A + C editor who hasn’t had a grasp on online technology since a heated tweenage stent in Sims 2 modding. But you understand where I’m coming from.)

At Baskin’s recital in Stull, the first pieces I stumbled upon were his scrolls of code laid out on the table, and almost resembling maps. When I ask about them, Baskin pulls out his laptop. He shows me a few files; the first is a birthday collage created for a friend. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY GEORGE” bobs amid horizons of characters – some abstract, some forming simple yet familiar figures. He tells me they’re gifs rendered in code. He zooms in. We enter a sea of keysmashes. A moon. A malevolent baby. He shows me another he calls a tapestry. He used a different overlay program for this one – one meant to give the code a fanned effect – but it glitched and created a complicated pattern. It looks abstract at first, but Baskin zooms in again, pointing at lines of code.

The eyes are right there. See the arms?

It clicks and now I can’t unsee it. The elf woman.

Baskin uses a lot of images like this one.

He finds most of them on Neocities, the contemporary of Geocities, and a corner of the internet he’s particularly taken with. We traverse it a bit together. It’s a realm I’d forgotten about; one that recalls my older millennial brother’s deep teenage immersion in MySpace, and within a broader culture of having a personalized website — a digital bedroom in which one is constantly changing the wallpaper and the autoplay track. Baskin doesn’t tend to engage in this himself, but its remaining cultural dregs interest him. “It’s more voyeuristic and educational,” he admits.

For, so much of his fascination is not with individual social expressions through the use of such tools, but of the tools themselves and their capabilities. “It’s led me to a lot of phenomenal stuff, but I don’t really think of it as a home.” He tells me.

— But, of course, Baskin’s recital was conducted within the walls of the conservatory. So I wanted to discuss that element of his work a bit more. When I wheedled him on his music, Baskin told me: GB: The last two songs [in the recital] are pretty squarely in the electronic acous-

GB: Here you can see there’s a gif, a frame of an elf lady.

SF: An elf?”

GB: Well, there’s like a half-naked elf woman. A gif. A huge one.

I can’t help but laugh.

SF: Man what. I can’t see it at all.

GB: You can see, like, the mirror down the center…the actual elf is right there.

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By Gabriel Baskin

matic [genre] – which is like academic speaker music, pretty much. From what I understand: early 2000s French-Canadian composers at universities making very, very sort of seamless, kinetic, samplebased music. I greatly admire the cohesiveness of that kind of music. And then the other stuff is….collage? Experimental collage? *laughs* I don’t really go into it with any genre in mind.

Baskin started experimenting with music as a teenager. At first with synths, and then later, the quickness of digital. He still has a soft spot for the analog though.

Sitting over his laptop in Wilder, he introduces me to Peter Blasser’s (OC ‘02) “Plum Butter” — a modular synthesizer with an eccentric and almost whimsically difficult interface.

GB: I had an older friend I used to carpool with, and he would play electronic music in the car. I was like thirteen, fourteen. I would go and look up the stuff that he had played afterward and go along from there. I pirated music-making software…did piddling little experiments with that for many years. And then coming out of high school, I had to decide where to go to college. And I’m looking at electronic music programs and I find Oberlin, the TIMARA program. I had been introduced to the work of a TIMARA alum in the early 2000s, Peter Blasser.

I understand this more and more as Baskin gives me a run-down on Peter Blasser’s work, where there are no upturned noses nor conceptual declarations, but instead: eager experiments in sound and design. I recalled something Baskin said in passing: “It’s all about the tools.”

GB: I like the puzzle of putting something together. I think when I find myself drained artistically, that’s something I return to.

Indeed, leaving my hour-or-so conversation with Gabriel Baskin, I felt endeared to a world of creation focused less on the ego of the conceptual, and more on the elements of exploration and play that make great experimental artwork. It’s great to remember that artists with such mindsets are active and passionate about what they do, and not merely prone to the theater of being seen as someone capable of creating newness from that which already exists. Yada yada yada. Insert grouchy tirade about Gen Z late-capitalist social media egotism here. What I’m really getting at is: when I asked if Baskin planned to work on music post-Oberlin, there was no careerist flourishing of the hands, no promises to transpose himself in NYC or LA. He wants only to continue learning and expressing his particularly experimental processes. His is an affirming sincerity…and it doesn’t help that his shit just fucks, either.

Disco Deewane: On Biddu, Bappi, and Bollywood in the 80’s Raghav Raj Staff Writer Last night, I watched Whit Stillman’s Last Days of Disco. It’s this dramedy released nearly two decades after Disco Demolition Night, attempting to capture a fading era through the eyes of a bunch of self-centered Mannhattanites, yuppie post-grads who nervously sip vodka-tonics and stumble into elaborate fraud schemes. Like any other Whit Stillman film, it’s positively insufferable. Like any other disco film (not named Saturday Night Fever, ironically — I loathe that movie), I think it’s brilliant, maybe solely because of how good its soundtrack is.

The death of disco, as Stillman seems to posit, was an inevitability. As the 1970’s wore on, disco had grown too big, too great, too important — I’m paraphrasing Matt Keeslar’s character here — to remain intact, crumbling under its image of hedonism and pleasure-seeking. In America, as the seeds for the Reagan era were being sown, the uninhibited euphoria of disco was far too vulnerable to outlast the paranoia, cynicism, and hatred of the new decade.

Instead, similar to the ways psychedelia did before it, disco sought refuge. Across the globe, the grooves and rhythms filtered into local strains of dance music. In Japan, it transformed into the sleek, sophisticated sounds of city-pop. In Indonesia, it became disko, a potent sonic defiance in cities like Jakarta amidst Suharto’s New Order regime. And in India, already a frequent well of inspiration and cultural cross-pollination for Western music, disco became a cultural lightning rod.

Couched within the Bollywood system, the intersection of music and cinema that lies at the heart of contemporary Indian culture, the genre found new roots. Even if America was busy stripping down to the barest, most elemental pulse in its strains of early-80’s post-disco dance music (think Larry Levan or Frankie Knuckles), disco was a fundamentally indulgent endeavor, filled with elaborate orchestration, tightly engineered grooves, and wholly expressive vocals, all stretched out for endless spells on the dancefloor. Given Bollywood’s penchant for maximalism — not to mention how eagerly it co-opted popular genres as a selling point — its marriage with disco felt like a perfect fit.

Though the sounds of disco had

Bappi Lahiri been percolating throughout the Indian subcontinent for a few years prior (mostly through European imports, record store bootlegs, and Saturday Night Fever’s infernal, everlasting impact — again, I fucking hate that movie), it wasn’t actually until 1980 that the sound of disco first broke through in Bollywood. The movie was Qurbani, a relatively mediocre Feroz Khan flick, one that ripped off a schlocky, Kirk-Douglas-starring Italian heist movie from 1972 called The Master’s Touch. In sharp contrast with the similarly discotinged Karz, which had been released the week before, Qurbani was a huge hit.

(For what it’s worth, Karz features one of the finest Indian disco songs ever, “Om Shanti Om,” a dense, groovy, nine-minute barn-burner from the Laxmikant-Pyarelal composer duo). Brandishing an all-star cast and a wildly popular soundtrack, Qurbani was the highest grossing film of 1980, and one of the biggest films released in India that decade.

The soundtrack of Qurbani is, in many ways, a perplexing intersection of filmi music. It was arranged by Biddu,

who, by the time the 1980’s rolled around, had already found rousing success in the West as one of the premier disco producers in England. (You may not be familiar with the hits he produced with the likes of Tina Charles, Claude François, and The Tigers, but some of his session musicians would go on to make “Video Killed The Radio Star’’ — more on that song later — and he’s the primary architect behind one of the greatest novelty singles ever crafted, Carl Douglas’s 1974 smash hit “Kung Fu Fighting.”) Along with this, the soundtrack features orchestration from iconic film composer duo KalyanjiAnandji, and a qawwali sung by beloved playback singer Kishore Kumar. (Kumar, ever in demand, was also the voice behind “Om Shanti Om.”) Sandwiched somewhere in the middle of all this is Nazia Hassan, a fifteen-year-old singer whose family split time between London and her hometown in Karachi. Though the exact details are muddled, the gist of Hassan’s appearance on the soundtrack stems from a party in London where Qurbani actress Zeenat

Aman introduced Hassan to Feroz Khan, who in turn told her to audition with Biddu for a playback singing role in the film.

After winning the role, Hassan managed to convince Biddu to scrap his plans for a Hindi version of a Boney M song, instead insisting that he write a new number for her. The resulting song, “Aap Jaisa Koi,” became a huge hit both in India and in Hassan’s native Pakistan, winning her a Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer.

Listening to “Aap Jaisa Koi,” what strikes me most is the song’s almost featherlight touch. Not to say that it’s even remotely a minimalist work — Biddu’s arrangement weaves wriggling guitar, plodding woodblocks, flute filigrees, and electric piano accents through the pitterpattering drum-machine and a bouncy bassline — just that all these elements are combined so delicately, melding into a streamlined slab of delightfully lush disco.

The real marvel here is Hassan’s voice, an instrument that’s both fragile and unbreakable, withdrawn and captivating all at once. She plays up the role of a

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Disco Deewane continued disco diva perfectly, delivering something wholly entrancing, imbuing every last syllable with this intense, intangible longing.

In the years that followed, Hassan’s stardom skyrocketed. She — along with her brother Zoheb — frequently worked with Biddu, who had come to see the siblings as his muse and, by his own admission, attempted to model them after another brother/sister duo, The Carpenters. A year after Qurbani, with the help of Zoheb and Biddu, Hassan became the first playback singer to release a solo album: 1981’s Disco Deewane. Not only is the record — which features gems like the proggy title track and the surprisingly muscular “Aao Na’’ — a seminal document of disco in the Indian subcontinent, but it’s also one of the region’s all-time best-selling records, having sold the second-most of any albums released that decade. The only record to top it is the one she released with her brother three years later, 1984’s Young Tarang, which again was produced by Biddu, sporting an even more polished disco sound with densely layered electronic instrumentation.

While Hassan carved out her own niche for independent musicians outside the Bollywood system, eventually reaching superstar status as the “Queen of South Asian Pop” before her untimely death due to lung cancer in 2000 at the age of 35, Bollywood continued to spend the 1980’s expounding on the footprint that Biddu and Hassan had left behind.

As Vrinda Jagota aptly puts it, “much of the pop music released in South Asia at the time had some combination of disco’s pulsing synths, cascading keys, and opulent strings mixed with tabla drums and sitar.” In the wake of Qurbani’s success, disco had become the new sound of Bollywood.

There was perhaps no one who embraced this sentiment quite like Bappi Lahiri. Though he had worked in Bollywood since the age of nineteen, bouncing around various writing and composing gigs in Mumbai throughout the 70’s, Lahiri’s career really began to take shape after he visited America on tour in 1979.

Playing in nightclubs across the US was revelatory for the young producer, who eagerly soaked up the waning light of the disco era, buying a Moog synthesizer, multiple drum machines, and so much other music equipment in New York that he needed two taxis to carry it all. It was the sort of grandiosity expected from the man who would go on to call himself

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India’s “Disco King,” a man whose boyhood obsession with Elvis transformed him into a larger-than-life figure, clad in velour tracksuits, shiny jackets, and oversized tinted sunglasses, decked out from head to toe with gleaming gold jewelry.

(The jewelry in particular became such a signature that, according to Lahiri, a fan once refused to accept that it was him because Lahiri was wearing a coat and the man couldn’t see his chains.)

The only thing that could ever outshine Lahiri’s personality was his music, which was deeply reverent to the conventions of disco while also hell-bent on pushing its boundaries to their outer limits. Eagerly elevating the inherent melodrama of the genre, Lahiri’s sound was breathlessly extravagant, dense with swanky rhythms, and full of bravura, perfectly in tune with the conventions of Bollywood. Even when he was interpolating established disco classics like Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” which he did on “Raat Baaqi Baat Baaqi,” a song from the 1982 masala film Namak Halaal, he could imbue that iconic pulse with a theatrical flair all his own, surrounding Asha Bhosle’s seductive vocal performance with orchestral accents and percussive breakdowns.

Elsewhere on Namak Halaal’s soundtrack, he delivers the monstrous “Pag Ghungroo Baandh,” which kicks off with an utterly audacious flurry of sounds — strings playing Beethoven’s Fifth, dizzying synths, choirs, talkbox vocals, saxophones — before literally clearing its throat and going acapella around three minutes in, eventually settling into a prancing, tabla-driven gallop that wouldn’t sound out of place at a Desi wedding. It’s really just such a jubilantly flamboyant display, a quintessential example of the sort of exuberance Lahiri was preternaturally gifted at bringing out of his compositions. His soundtrack was a large part of Namak Halaal’s rousing success, raking in ₹120 million (US$12.64 million) at the Indian box office, the thirdbiggest film released that year.

The biggest Indian film of 1982, as it happened, was another Bollywood movie helmed by a Bappi Lahiri soundtrack: Disco Dancer.

As a film, Disco Dancer is, like most of the great Bollywood films of its time, an absolutely unhinged film. In the most simple sense, it’s a rags-to-riches story; if you dig further, it’s an absurdly engineered Marxist critique, one that fights the class war on the dancefloor.

The main character (played by Mithun Chakraborty, in a role that’d eventually win him superstar status as far as the Soviet Union, where Disco Dancer was actually the all-time highest-grossing foreign film) is Jimmy, a street singer traumatized by his mother’s abuse at the hands of an evil rich guy, eventually managing to stumble onto an opportunity to hit the big time/become a warrior for the proletariat by ousting that evil rich guy’s asshole son from disco stardom.

From there, Disco Dancer gets even more insane — a gang of goons try to sabotage his gig in a West Side Story-esque fistfight, he saves a village by kicking some major ass, he develops a phobia of guitars after seeing his mom get electrocuted to death by one, his mentor resurfaces out of nowhere before promptly taking a bullet for him — but quite frankly, none of that matters. What unifies the delightful madness of the film

is its soundtrack, an open-hearted, absolutely boundless love letter to the genre, arguably the high watermark of disco on the Indian subcontinent.

To its very bones, the Disco Dancer soundtrack captures Lahiri in all his multitudes, a gaudy, corpulent, endlessly plagiaristic work that oozes brilliance from every orifice. On one song, he bites every part of “Video Killed The Radio Star” that’s not the hook, pulling the carpet from under The Buggles and warping their song into a slick, sleazy, flute-driven call-and-response duet between him and the great Usha Uthup.

On another, he rips off a song about Jesus from this Indonesian pop group, the Tielman Brothers, transforming it into a genuinely mind-boggling set piece that celebrates the Hindu god Krishna, firing off an absolutely filthy synth solo halfway through that sends the golden chariot into the stratosphere. Any semblance of good

(left) Still from Qurbani (right) Qurbani poster

taste is irrelevant, and that’s what makes Disco Dancer’s soundtrack so great — this is disco without restraint, liberated from rhyme and reason, free to meld into groove after groove.

And what grooves. Even if Kishore Kumar’s just firing off nonsensical syllables on “Ae Oh Aa Zara Mudke,” it doesn’t matter; every guitar lick, every violin swell, every trickling arpeggiator, every springing 808; all of it is rendered with surgical precision, not so much chained as it is soldered to the rhythm, melding into a supremely euphoric body high. On “Yaad Aa Raha Hai,” that beat is ramped up, with Lahiri’s disarmingly soulful voice swept up in the burbling storm of drum-machine percussion. His approach to “Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja,” maybe the closest thing to a pop song here, is a little different; here, Lahiri lets the relatively unknown Parvati Khan take center stage, framing her heartbroken pleas to Jimmy (who, if you’re following,

is now terrified of guitars) over a rich interplay of piercing strings and noodly synth work.

Still, all of it pales in comparison to the title track, which ramps everything up to eleven, a glorious, punchy showcase of hip-shaking polyrhythms, raucous horns, and pure, unmitigated bravado.

Purely in terms of structure, it’s staggering, flying out the gate with a scream and a call-and-response spelling of the word “DISCO,” jumping between direct address, extended percussion breakdowns, and Vijay Benedict’s swaggering delivery with such conviction that it’s hard not to sing, clap, and cheer along with the absolutely enraptured crowd. It’s such a forceful, spirited, physical thing, a song that commands your attention from the very first moment, holding you in complete awe for the entirety of its spell, no matter what directions it ends up taking.

In the film, Mithun Chakraborthy is

performing on this absurdly kitschy auditorium stage, wearing this shiny silver velour tracksuit getup, prancing around on stage as he poorly pretends to know how to play the guitar. If any other song was playing, I think he’d probably look like the stupidest man alive. Fortunately, the song he’s dancing along to is “I Am A Disco Dancer,” so every shimmy, every fist pump, every silly little leg kick he does somehow becomes the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s really just incredible; no matter how absolutely ridiculous the movie is, as soon as the soundtrack comes in, I’m absolutely spellbound, incapable of looking away.

In the years that followed, Bollywood’s golden age of disco inevitably came to an end. After desperately trying to replicate the success of films like Disco Dancer with increasingly diminishing returns, the industry spent the late 1980’s in a creative slump, replete with cratering box-office totals and a rise in video piracy. When

the “New Bollywood” revival arrived in the early 1990’s, it came with a financial crisis and a large-scale push towards the neoliberalization of India’s economy. The conditions that had allowed disco to seek refuge in India over a decade prior were vanishing; there was no place for the sort of socialist rhetoric that films like Disco Dancer eagerly championed anymore.

Watching Disco Dancer now, especially after Bappi Lahiri’s death earlier this year in February, there’s something so beautiful in how blissfully unaware it is of its own ephemeral nature. In Disco Dancer, the dancefloor is an eternal communion, a realm beyond space and time, untouched by the realities of what our titular dancer has faced, unfazed by the losses he has endured. Therein lies the power of Bollywood disco, as eternal as any strain of disco ever was: even though it exists mostly as a memory, it lives on in our spirits, as glorious, as cathartic, as purely euphoric as ever.

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Catalytic Sound and the fight for musical self determination Levi Dayan Editor-in-Chief A few weeks ago, Bandcamp co-founder and CEO Ethan Diamond announced the sale of Bandcamp to Fortnite creators Epic Games for an undisclosed fee. The decision aggravated the many musicians and music fans who over the years had championed the streaming platform as a crucial network of support for independent music, one which had become a lifeline for musicians cut off from touring during the pandemic. The announcement of the merger stressed that Bandcamp would continue to operate as it has for the past few years, and that being sold to a corporation such as Epic would allow Bandcamp to expand its operations in ways that would not have been previously possible. Maybe this is true, and maybe an expanded Bandcamp could even be a net positive for the fight for pay equity - all of this will become more clear as things pan out.

But the indisputable facts that we do know about this merger is that CEO Ethan Diamond profited off of the work of musicians who made his platform work, and that Bandcamp has now become part of yet another corporation with expansionist ambitions.

If the past 15 years have taught us anything, it’s that corporations branching out into several different facets of art, culture, and day-to-day life has not exactly been a positive thing.

The big takeaway from this merger is something that many musicians have been saying for ages: a more fair and equitable world for working musicians will have to be created and

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shaped by the musicians themselves. No corporation, no matter how benevolent, will be able to give self-determination to musicians, because, of course, that’s not how self-determination works.

Luke Stewart, a bassist, improviser and organizer based in my hometown of Washington, DC, told me “when an independent label puts something out on Bandcamp, logistically they’re still a Bandcamp label, or at best a Bandcamp distribution service, because you’re using their platform to make your music available. Now, that’s not to say that Bandcamp has been completely a bad thing, or a bad thing at all, necessarily. But at the end of the day, it is a corporate distribution service, especially now that they’ve been bought by Fortnite. If you look at it for what it is, it makes total sense that they would do that.” Part of the solution to these issues, in Stewart’s words, is “just coming to the realization that to be a truly independent music effort, at this point, in the streaming ecosystem, you have to take it as far as yes - creating your own streaming service. Then you’re truly independent.”

As a member of Catalytic Sound, Stewart, alongside 29 other independent musicians in the creative / improvised music fields, has taken part in doing just that.

Catalytic Sound is a musical collective that functions as a co-op - a system that Oberlin students are surely familiar with. Of the monthly revenue generated from subscriptions, which include access to the Catalytic Soundstream, subscription to a zine called Catalytic Quarterly, and two free downloads per month from the Catalytic Band-

camp page, one third goes towards the overhead of the co-op itself, while the remaining two thirds go directly to the musicians themselves. The 30 members of the co-op each agree to release one record per year that is exclusive to the streaming platform, and are given $450 for each of these exclusive records. With one member waiving their share of revenue each month, the remaining monthly revenue is split evenly between those 29 members - crucially, how many streams an artist gets or however much name recognition they may have plays no role in how they are compensated for their labor.

Ken Vandermark, legendary Chicago-based composer and improviser, described the initial idea for Catalytic as an online record store meant to consolidate the catalogs of a handful of musicians into one place. Vandermark credited a 2018 Instagram post from the late rapper Nipsey Hussle, which listed the pay rate for 1 million streams on various different streaming platforms, with shaping his interest in creating a streaming service. “What Nipsey Hussle pointed to in his discussion about how most streaming services, and in particular Spotify, were ripping off artists, is that the music industry is crushing musicians at a level that is unprecedented,” Vandermark told me. “If they all have to have like six day jobs to pay their rent and bills and put food on the table, they have less and less and less time to make music. So we started thinking more like a co-op, where the listeners and the audience were members paying to support the musicians.

It’s like a food co-op, but

instead of food that they were creating, they were creating music.” In turn, by amassing a collective of 30 musicians, most of whom are fairly prolific, through their consolidated online record store format, Catalytic now had a large catalog of music that could stand alone as a streaming platform.

The creation of the streaming service itself was a result of both a doit-yourself mentality, and wide-spanning collective support from people in different fields who were willing to contribute and make the project work. When I asked Vandermark, who recognizes streaming’s omnipresence in the market but doesn’t use streaming services himself, and has no interest in doing so, how he followed through on the initial idea to start a streaming service, he bluntly responded “you kind of just do it.” But he also pointed to the support of designers who helped put together the streaming service, and music lawyers who helped come up with a straightforward, easily readable contracting license for the musicians in Catalytic, all of whom did so because they were excited about the idea.

“Building that kind of community and building something around it that helps generate economic stability for those people is what I’m hoping catches on and spreads more and more,” he told me. “And then ideally, the ultimate thing would be that these communities share this information together so people don’t have to keep so-called ‘reinventing the wheel.’ We figured out a way to do a streaming service, but maybe there’s a better way to do it, so let’s share the information, because this is better for music period.”

The plan originally was to distribute revenue in a manner similar to Tidal. Unlike streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, Tidal pays musicians on a per-stream basis, meaning that they are paid based on each stream they get rather than the number of streams they get. “This turned out to be well beyond the financial capabilities of the organization,” Vandermark told me, “but what ended up happening,

which in retrospect was extremely positive, was that we decided to split everything evenly.” This, in turn, creates a system meant to nourish artists regardless of the size of their discography, showing equal preference for lifers and up-and-comers alike.

“All of the people in the co-op are there because they’re amazing artists, and they contribute at a high level, whether they make lots of records or not,” said Vandermark.

“Also, some of the artists have been doing the work longer, so when you have younger people in the group, like Brandon Lopez and claire rousay, who might have less recordings than someone like Paul Nilssen-Love and Mats Gustaffsson, who have been doing the work for more years, should they be penalized just because they don’t have as much material for listeners to go to? That’s ridiculous.” This is a stark contrast of Spotify’s modus operandi, as

CEO Daniel Ek stated that musicians simply need to release music more often if they want to make a living. “The thing about music and art is that you can’t perpetually generate materials that, in turn, are going to perpetually generate income,” Vandermark told me. “Spotify doesn’t even talk about the fact that they’re using music to generate their income.

It’s just a product. They don’t even use the word music most of the time. It just happens to be music,

and it happens to now be podcasts, and it happens to be audio content that they want to own and then create algorithms that guide people to listen to whoever is paying them off to run the way they are.

They have a new form of payola.”

Indeed, despite streaming services such as Spotify championing themselves as hubs of musical discovery that are free from the gatekeepers that had previously determined what was played on the radio or stocked in record stores, the streaming era has brought about plenty of gatekeepers of its own. As Luke Stewart told me, exposure and access are not the same thing, and though defenders of Spotify will say they “pay musicians in exposure,” listeners have no way of knowing who determines what music gets put on playlists and what is and isn’t favored by algorithms, to say the least of where all the money Spotify rakes in year after year is going towards.

Referencing the research of people such as DeForrest Brown Jr., a rhythmanalyst and media theorist who also makes music under the name Speaker Music, Stewart criticized “this concept of putting a dollar sign or a monetary value to an abstract idea so it can be consumed in a capitalist, manufactured sort of way. In music we’re dealing with this conundrum that, yes, we live in this system where we have to make money, we also live in an environment where we can make that declaration of ‘yes, I am an artist, and that is my job.’

The opportunity to be a musician at all, and make money off of it, is a high honor and a high privilege.

On the other hand, this is indeed a money making industry that reflects the

same issues as any other capitalistic endeavor, in that there are the people that exploit, and the people that are exploited. And a lot of times in the music industry, the artists are the final consideration. You’re just out there. And looking at the music ecosystem in that way suggests that artists need to take agency and get that money, and take back those resources that have been allocated to the executives at Spotify. “ The issue of how to maintain a streaming service, or any kind of collective platform in music, that is free from any form of gatekeeping is more difficult than, say, whether or not musicians should be paid. “We’re trying to survive within the capitalist framework to make a living,” said Bhutan-born free improv guitarist Tashi Dorji. “If we lived in a society where large-scale mutual aid and communal living was possible, I would only give away music for free. I think people should also give away music all the time. If people write to me and ask me to give them music, I’ll give it to them. I would love to not sell any music to be honest. I would love to sustain by giving and not selling.”

Adding on these questions of access, Dorji added, “if Catalytic was just an open upload community based thing, that would be a whole other approach. Because then, we’d need way more people in order for it to work. There’s some level of curatorial process that goes into it. But I don’t see it as gatekeeping because I knew about Catalytic before I was a member, and I knew friends that were in it, and I saw it as more of a model. And I remember, even before I was invited to join, thinking it was such a cool project, and thinking ‘I could probably do this with a bunch

of friends, and maybe in a different approach.’ I mean, it’s membership based, and that’s increased exclusivity, so it is a capitalist model, in a sense.

But Catalytic is creating the cooperative to provide a framework that can be used by a larger community of creative people.”

This community-driven framework is crucial to Catalytic’s mission, much more so than the simple idea of a creative/improvised music-driven streaming platform. Though Catalytic may, for the time being, consist of 30 musicians, it’s meant to be an experiment in finding ways for musicians to reclaim their independence from a music industry that has increasingly commodified their work. “Catalytic is a model for other things like it to happen,” said Stewart. “Obviously it’s not comprehensive in terms of representing the entire community, but it does a really good job in the sense that there are 30 people in the collective, and each and every member of that collective represents dozens of other musicians and artists. So, there’s a lot of expanded and overlapping communities within the entire Catalytic collective.

In actuality, I like to think about Catalytic as being spearheaded by the 30, but it’s representing hundreds, potentially.” Rather than putting up barriers - as Spotify has done by keeping musicians from being able to easily contact their listeners - Catalytic aims to share its resources with as many people as possible.

“The way that the corporate and music industry works is that it wants to break people apart,” Vandermark told me. “It’s like what Starbucks wants to do to its employees, they want to prevent that power that comes from unioniza-

tion from happening. It’s a lot harder to get up every day as an individual and a musician and face all of these challenges without having people to go to directly, who are supporting the work equally together, right?”

Though Catalytic is, in many ways, a reaction to the ways in which making a living in music has recently become even more unsustainable than in the past, the hardships that musicians working within experimental and improvised fields have faced from a hegemonized music industry - one that has no room for music that can’t easily fit into a box - have been around much longer. In tandem, experimental musicians and improvisers have always responded to such hardships by forming communities and then devising their own ways to sustain themselves within said communities. For me, Catalytic calls to mind the Jazz Composers Guild, spearheaded by composer and improviser Bill Dixon following a series of free music concerts billed as “The October Revolution in Jazz.” Formed during a time in which Jazz musicians, particularly within the avant-garde, were subject to low pay and harsh treatment from audiences, the Guild was, in essence, a form of collective action meant to fight exploitation of working musicians and provide a proper platform for musical forms that were shut out from more mainstream Jazz spaces.

In retrospect, Dixon stated “I had a point that I had to prove to people. All these writers... were telling me that this music I saw wasn’t worth anything, that no one could be interested in it. I knew people could be interested in anything if it was presented to them in the proper way. I

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Colin Farrell and the MidCatalytic Sound continued knew that.”

Similarly, Catalytic not only demands self-determination on behalf of musicians, but also encourages self-determination for the listeners themselves. Though the music may occupy a more peripheral space than more mainstream musical forms, myself and the musicians I spoke with could all agree that this music has a power to it, and is more than capable of reaching people. Vandermark referenced a quote from Minutemen bassist Mike Watt, saying “the only thing you had to do to belong to the scene was contribute.” When I brought up the connection between Catalytic and groups just as the Jazz Composers Guild and the AACM, Dorji, who came into free improvisation through punk music, immediately responded “but that also goes towards punk rock, right?”, making a particular connection to the scene in DC. “For me, at least, improvised music is the most anarchistic, in a sense, because it’s very liberating, the horizontal nature of it really breaks the sense of hierarchy, at least the way I approach it.” He connected the nature of improvised music with Catalytic itself, telling me “It’s this process of rhizomatic creation, planes of possibilities. I mean, if, like, ten more cooperatives came up this year of other improvisers, or rock bands, or whatever, imagine how we could create a network and share all of our resources? That’s how I think organizing is, or activist movements. You create networks of all these resources that you can share, and create mobility and all of these different ways to navigate outside of the system.” Stewart, in particular, described free music as the progenitor to punk culture, stating “it’s the culture of independent, so-called underground music that was mined and created and fomented by musicians playing Jazz and other forms of improvised music. And, you know, people lost their lives doing this. It’s the same energy because it comes from the same place.” The thread connecting all of these things together - Free Jazz, punk rock, and co-ops themselves - is that sense of collectivism and autonomy working in tandem, of communities building their own models of self-sustainment rather than depending on the same institutions that exploit them. “That’s kind of a testament to the history and the tenacity of the tradition of improvised music,” Stewart told me. “The experimental/improvised music community, that is the pioneer for this approach. It happened here first.”

Fionna Farrell Staff Writer We have the same last name, and we were born only ten days (and twenty-five years) apart, so I’d say I was relatively destined to write this article. From a young age, I was not unaware of this; my first encounter with the Irish actor was at the ripe age of eleven. I’d like to say the experience was a positive one, but, in reality, it was watching a movie so bad that it would elicit groans from the class—if, that is, teachers were audacious enough to play

films with a 16% Rotten Tomato score. That was Alexander.

Farrell deserves some slack, though; not many can say they’ve made a film with Oliver Stone by age twenty-eight. Unfortunately, during those days, it wasn’t necessarily Farrell’s acting chops that preceded him. And that’s beyond the fact that, er, he might not have been the best Alexander the Great.

Off set as much as on, Farrell had something of a “bad-boy” reputation in the early aughts, complete with non-stop partying antics that were a front for more profound struggles.

Art by Willa Frierson

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He has called his journey a “garden variety” tale of addiction.

Jump to 2022, though, and Farrell has been sober for sixteen years. He has saturated Hollywood with an air of both freshness and finesse.

I watch one of his films, and then I watch another, and I balk at the fact that on any planet that could be considered the same person. Sure, this, in part, might be due to a particular role he played in 2022’s emo The Batman— apparently, becoming the Penguin entailed a three-hour makeup procedure each day. But there’s something

beyond the mere physicality of Farrell’s characters that has designated him as truly versatile—a newfound Renaissance man in the flesh.

After I first watched Alexander in horror, the next encounter I had with Farrell was through 2015’s The Lobster. That film evokes a different sort of horror— one that is intentional, and not rooted in the deep shame of misplaced casting. Farrell, believe it or not, actually felt perfectly cast for the role of soon-tobe-turned-into-an-animal single man. I don’t know how anyone can feel per-

-Career fectly cast in this very dark, very European surreal comedy but he somehow does. As he does, as well, in 2017’s followup The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

That film’s plot line is so grotesque, so bleak, hopeless, and meaning-denying by any angle you look at it, that I shouldn’t really go into detail here. But perhaps it’s too late, and I’ve already evoked your curiosity.

Let’s just say that Farrell, this time a renowned yet haunted heart surgeon, is forced to make a devastating choice that will change his life forever. This is at the behest of eerie childman Barry Keoghan, whom you might recognize from his Joker cameo in the aforementioned emo Batman.

It is uncertain what, exactly, prompted Farrell’s sudden proclivity towards A24-adjacent art-horror. But that’s not to say that his acerbic roots can’t be traced elsewhere. In 2007, in perhaps his most critically acclaimed role, Farrell played a hitman with a dark secret, while happening to be trapped in Bruges (Europe’s Disneyland) with his partner. In 2012’s less dark, though almost insufferably meta Seven Psychopaths, he plays a tortured screenwriter whose dreams are put on hold when he accidentally kidnaps a gangster’s dog. The list goes on with varying degrees of subtlety over the years. But it is certainly an understatement to say that Farrell has done it all—he’s done that, and more. He has worked with Michael Mann as well as Sofia Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos, Stephen Spielberg, John Lee Hancock

Balancing Act... and Clark Johnson (you probably don’t know who those last two people are—I don’t either). Farrell has made future classics and terrible, cringeworthy busts. He has been in the darkest part of the light and the brightest part of the shadows. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds good, and it seems to capture Colin Farrell—especially this year.

In 2022, Farrell’s imperfect balancing act has refined itself beyond measure. As opposed to mixing the good, with the bad, with the terrible, Farrell now only appears to mix the good with the good, without losing sight of any of the versatility for which I have lauded him.

This has allowed both his artistic conscience and his bank account to thrive.

Perhaps, when I talk of the latter, it is indeed The Batman of which I speak, which has grossed an obscene $500 million worldwide. In it, Farrell gets nothing short of gimmicky with his portrayal of Mr. Oswald Copplepot—which, in this case, inarguably works for the better. In a 3-hour film that feels more like Se7en than anything Marvel (or DC), it is impossible to not want to cleanse the bleakness of The Batman out of one’s system at a certain point. Like the final season of GOT, the entire film is constantly bathed in darkness, to the point where it is physically hard to see.

R-Pat’s pale face serves as no counterpoint, for, even when we see it naked, it is usually smudged with eyeliner.

So we need the Penguin—he is our light.

We need the comically

exaggerated, mid-level Gotham mobster. He looks and sounds absolutely unrecognizable, and the Batman director agrees: “I was like, who is this guy?” he tells Variety. Oddly enough, though, beyond his physical appearance, the Penguin is far from a one-note creature; within minutes he goes from angry, seedy, and volatile, to someone whom, within the general scope of the film, we come closest to empathizing with, whether it be from his mawkish tenderness or his fate in a batmobile chase. Farrell is able to walk these lines with grace and precision, even considering that these terms do not exist in his character’s dictionary.

Farrell’s second notable film this year, let’s just say, was not as much of a box office smash. It’s an A24 film whose director goes by one name, so you get the picture I’m trying to paint. That is After Yang, a heartfelt, aesthetically minimalist (and bright) sci-fi drama in which Farrell plays a confounded father, considering the many options he has after Yang breaks.

Yang is, in the film’s vernacular, a techno-sapien— in this case, an incredibly lifelike android, whom Farrell and his wife bought for their daughter in hopes of connecting her more with her Chinese heritage.

It is a quiet film, and an absolutely heartbreaking one. We have bounded past the mythical A24 sci-fi tropes, which so often can come across as artful yet soulless. As encouraging us to be luddites. Kogonada’s film does not, and the movie’s subtle, yet pounding heart is brought out devastat-

Art by Eva Sturm-Gross ingly well by all members of its cast. Farrell deals with grief, and memory, and what it means to be a father—a good one—in a way that has never been done before. In the ethereal light, he finds not whimsy, but brooding and questioning. His performance is fine tuned and purposeful, in a film that feels that way too. In this effort Kogonada did not intend to be epic. Nor did Farrell. This works infinitely in either of their favors.

If there’s any way by which I can connect these two equally seismic films, it is to say that they

each make me appreciate the other even more, for their darkness and light.

I would not be able to see Jake’s (from After Yang) subtlety, in all of its small, insuppressible moments, if I were not able to see— and look away from—the Penguin’s caricatured grandeur. I never would have guessed that Colin would be the man to do them both, but given his past, I never would have seen their difference as something to stop him.

His chances seem more calculated now, but of the same nature; blockbuster, or arthouse, it doesn’t matter, as long as there

are no Alexanders in the picture. A sobered man, whose career isn’t at risk of nosediving any time soon, he has matured past that, and into new depths.

This doesn’t mean that he can’t pursue the epic—just not (usually) the epically bad. You don’t have to be the lead every time. You just do have to be remembered.

I, surely, will remember After Yang as much as I do The Batman. They were released on the same day.

If only I could’ve watched them consecutively—I think a sort of equilibrium would have been established in my soul.

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What Does it Mean to be Palestinian?

Two Perspectives on the Palestinian Experience Zane Badawi Contributor

Farah Sabbah Contributor

Part I Being a Palestinain means that you leave your home every day not knowing if you will be able to come back at night. You have to remember the names of the martyrs that gave up their lives fighting for every Palestinian dignity and freedom. You have to be strong and not give up. You have to expect that any day you might be kicked out of your home so that settlers can live in it instead of you. It means that your biggest dream is to live in a free country and to be able to visit every part of your homeland without restrictions. I lived 17 years of my life in Gaza, a compact city that is populated by 2 million people and is known as the largest open air prison in the world. I have never been to any other city in my own country because I and everyone else in Gaza are not allowed. I memorize the name of every Palestinian city without ever being able to see them with my own eyes.

In 2021 I was lucky enough to be accepted into a college in the US meaning I would be able to leave Gaza. I was so excited to get a permit from the occupation which allowed me to visit Jerusalem for my visa interview, even though I knew that I wouldn’t be able to walk in Jerusalem or go to Al-Aqsa mosque due to the restrictions. The instructions on not stopping the bus until we arrive at the embassy and to wait for us there to be done with our interviews to be taken back to Gaza. The idea of being physically in Jerusalem was enough for me and meant a lot. During the drive to the embassy, I took a million photos for my family and friends who have never been able to leave Gaza to show them how beautiful our country is. It was a day that I will never be able to forget. I had mixed feelings of happiness and anger at how these great places were stolen from us and we can’t even visit them. At the same time I felt very low about getting this opportunity while many other Palestinians–almost all of them, really–would never be able to experience it. But I keep

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reminding myself to use this opportunity wisely and amplify the voices of Palestinians.

Living in Palestine my whole life meant experiencing four wars and a stolen childhood. That is all I can remember from my life whenever anyone asks me how it feels to live in Palestine. I forget about all the beautiful things that Palestine allows me to experience as well as my rich and unique culture. Palestine, despite the pain it goes through and all of the people that gave up on it from the beginning of the occupation, is still resistant and steadfast. Coming to the US made me realize that the suffering of my own people is not the only thing I want to talk about with my fellow friends and classmates. I also want to share my culture and traditions. The people of Palestine are strong and they never give up.” if you live, live free or die like the trees, standing up.” Palestinians never complain about anything despite all that they have been through. Still they hold firmly on their lives, family, culture, and traditions. Coming to the US is a great opportunity as here I’m able to share the voice of thousands of palestinians.

Farah sabbah

Part II: The Home I Never Knew My father always told me I have my grandfather’s eyes. I have my great uncle’s name. I have Baba’s curly hair. I have the gift of wisdom, given to me graciously by my Tata who spent only her youth in the place she still calls home, fifty years down the road. Living alone, divorced for decades, and stripped of her right to the Palestine she loves, wisdom is all my grandmother has left to give me, and I cherish it.

She often talks to me about the value of family, about the newest technique she’s learned to keep fruits and vegetables fresh, about how proud she is of her children, and her grandchildren, about how happy she is that I remembered to call her. And I respond with inshallah, mashallah, alhamdulillah, little snippets of the language I wanted to learn but never did, just to show her that I still care. I still care about the land she reminisces on over afternoon phone calls, about her native tongue, about the values she holds so near and dear to her heart–respect, family, kindness, charity– and about her.

I care about her because she is my grandmother, the woman who helped raise me and gave me

all of her love as often as she could; but I care about her, also, because she is the last link to my history– a history that would be remiss of me to forget. My grandfather, a native of Tulkarm, passed away in 2017.

My father and his siblings were raised all over, except, it seems, in Palestine; they were never able to realize physically the internal connection they felt to the land their parents grew up in. I have no memories of sunrises over the Mediterranean, no memories of olive branches and fertile earth, no memories of the home I never knew, or the songs I never heard. I have only memories of recitations, grand tales of an intangible past that seems far removed even from the people who lived it. And so, my grandmother is all I have left.

I often feel more American than Palestinian; I grew up in the mountains of Tennessee, where industry is the chemical factory that spits plumes of smoke high into the air, and my parents’ divorce meant I was removed from the Palestinian side of my family for months, years at a time. But I am forever alienated from America because of my status as a Palestinian.

The United States funnels billions of dollars to the oppressors of my people every year; many of those I grew up around refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Palestinian existence; and I could never escape jokes about my ethnicity, which I displayed proudly as a child but quickly learned to hide through cruel experience.

When I do tell people that I’m half Palestinian, I always make sure to include, “My grandmother is from Bayt Lahm,” because I am proud to be the descendant of a woman from one of the Holy Land’s most famous cities. I feel blessed to be able to converse with someone who knew firsthand a place that is almost mythical to me.

And yet, I feel guilty laying claim to a land that I only ever knew from a distance.

Why should I feel proud to be a Palestinian if I haven’t suffered the indignities of those still living there? I ask myself. Who am I to so arrogantly attempt to represent a country in which I’ve never stepped foot, a people from whom I am estranged? I ask myself these questions, and when I do I am reminded that I am one of three Palestinians on my campus of 3,000 students, and to most of the people I know outside my family, I am the only example of a Palestinian–so I need to make myself a good example. I have to put forth

my best effort to show those around me that Palestinians are not a dangerous people. We are not a belligerent group of antisemitic radicals, but a nation with a rich, beautiful culture and all the complexities of human beings. We are not hungry for war, but desperate for dignity and for recognition of our basic human rights.

Despite the hardships, being Palestinian is a beautiful thing. I am a part of a wonderful, charitable, loving heritage that I will hold close to my heart forever.

Sitting down for breakfast with my family and having sage tea, pita with labneh, and a selection of vegetables from cucumbers to tomatoes is a memory that warms my heart. Hearing the joy in my grandmother’s voice when I speak to her in Arabic will always bring a tear to my eye.

And the hospitality of Arabs of every nation is something that continues to astonish me. I am forever proud to call myself a Palestinian, and the keffiyeh my grandfather passed down to me will serve as a reminder that, though Palestinian liberation may be far off, Palestine will live on. She will live on, because the call of freedom is louder than the silence of oppression. She will live on, because her people are stubborn and proud and bear a love for their country and culture that is unrivaled throughout the world. She will live on, because, for the sake of justice and peace and pride, she must.

‫يروذج‬ ‫تسر نامزلا داليم لبق‬ ‫بقحلا حتفت لبقو‬ ‫نوتيزلاو ورسلا لبقو‬ ‫بشعلا عرعرت لبقو‬ My roots Were deeply entrenched before the birth of time And prior to the ushering of eras Before cypresses and olive trees And even before the grasses grew Mahmoud Darwish, “Write Down, I am an Arab”

Zane Badawi

Photographs of Palestine provided by Zane Badawi and Farah Sabbah

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Disney and “Don’t Say Gay”:

Hypocrisy at the Happiest Place on Earth Sophia Carter Contributor Every first Saturday in June, Disney World’s main avenue — the one leading to Cinderella’s iconic castle— is awash with red. Ever since 1991, park-goers in red t-shirts emblazoned with rainbow heart-shaped Mickey hands have made the pilgrimage to this annual pride event, paying upwards of $179 a night for “Disney’s Gay Days.” Nearly thirty years later, in September of 2020, the park’s “four keys” of conduct (safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency) have been updated, with the addition of a fifth key: “inclusion.”

In doing so, the corporation has finally put in writing the welcoming ethos its parks have long capitalized on with events like these.

This “earth-shattering” step towards social justice did not come out of nowhere; indeed, it coincides interestingly with a recent changing of the guard.

Several months prior, in February of 2020, The Walt Disney Company made history by replacing its former CEO, a white man named Bob, with a different white man named Bob. Iger and Chapek, respectively, share backgrounds in business, but their reputations are pretty disparate. While Iger boasts nearly fifty years of creative involvement in the entertainment industry, fifteen of which were spent as Disney’s CEO, Chapek began his career at Heinz, and has the persona of a “numbers-oriented, bottom-line-focused businessman” (according to The Hollywood Reporter). Rumors of a tense exchange between the two at Iger’s last appearance during a board retreat sent shockwaves through the entertainment industry; supposedly, Chapek countered Iger’s emphasis on Disney’s creativity

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saying that the company is now “data-driven.” Inside sources debate the truth of the story, but regardless, it reflects current anxieties about the takeover of streaming platforms and Disney’s aggressive monopolization of entertainment. The political discourse of the last turn of the century is interestingly similar. As monopolies seized control of industries, and political machines like New York’s Tammany Hall swayed legislation, public anxiety mounted. Disney, it seems, has dipped its toes in both pools.

Florida’s HB 1557: Parental Rights in Education, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, “prohibits classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” for kindergarten through third-graders and was approved by the Florida House in late February of this year. On March eighth, it was enrolled, and by July first, if it were to pass, teachers in violation would invite lawsuits against their schools. Disney, which employs 62,000 in the state and makes political handouts to the bill’s supporters, declined to comment.

Scandalized and surprised, LGBTQ+ allied Disneyfans lead protests imploring Bob Chapek to speak, and speak he did.

In defense of his initial silence on the bill, Chapek explained that he believed becoming a “political football” in the situation would do more harm than good. He did apologize later on, vowing to “reevaluate” the brand’s donation strategy. In a typically Iger-like fashion, though, he harped on the company’s power to drive social change through its “diverse stories” such as Black Panther and Coco, instead of through tweets or lobbying efforts. Despite Disney’s total of $299,126 in political gifts to Governor Ron DeSantis and other Florida supporters of this legislation over the past two years, I think he’s right in a backwards way. When stacked up against box office earnings from films like these, ticket sales on Disney World-hosted “Gay Days” and revenue from Disney pride merchandise, less than three hundred thousand dollars is peanuts. In fact, it seems hard to even calculate the exact profit they make from queer creators, queer fans and “good liberal optics’’ in general. Disney’s power has always been narrative-driven– its ideological sway over the American public.

Indeed, keeping up progressive appearances, the corporation pulls hardly any weight for marginalized communities, often doing overt damage in cases like these. These days, they seem largely to be focused on backpedaling from past errors which include the portrayal of indigenous people in Peter Pan, the “Siamese Cat” caricatures in Lady and the Tramp, and of course, the horror-show that is Song of the South (the inspiration for the parks’ enormously-famous Splash Mountain ride). The list goes on, but more subtle forms of bigotted messaging are also an issue. From the obvious gender roles imposed through early (and I would argue, current) princess content to their strict portrayal of straight relationships in the vast majority of their stories, compiling an exhaustive record of the more pernicious aspects of Disney’s programming would take hours.

Ultimately, their direct involvement in political issues like HB 1557 is only a symptom of the more subtle, pervasive, and dangerous power they wield.

The prison notebooks of Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who was jailed for opposing Benito Mussolini, provide an interesting way to look at this. There, he proposed the concept of cultural hegemony, or the idea that the ruling class of a culturally-diverse society controls populations not through force, but instead by imposing social norms and narratives (Jackson Lears, The American Historical Review). The iconic image of Walt hand in hand with a child-sized Mickey Mouse has for years conjured up the paternalistic role the corporation plays in American pop culture (and increasingly, international pop culture). Its products bring comfort to nostalgic adults, act as virtual babysitters for young children, and above all, spoon feed audiences social scripts.

It’s easy to see why Bob Iger was so much easier to swallow as CEO: he channeled Walt by maintaining an easy veneer of benevolence and political neutrality, whereas Chapek has let some of the virulence and “money talk” slip through the cracks.

Disney’s role in “Don’t Say Gay” is an affront to basic human rights, as he admitted in his apology letter to employees last week, but more than that, it is a warning. A warning that for dominant entertainment corporations, the goal has always been to homogenize cultural attitudes and lull audiences. It will never be any kind of distinct social change.

(bottom left) by Leonora Tepper, (top right) by Eva Sturm-Gross

Administration Response to Professor Demands Juli Freedman Bad Habits Editor On March 10th, students and professors gathered in Tappan Square to talk about equitable compensation and bring attention to further demands by surrounding the Cox administration building. While those in attendance found the demonstration to be powerful, they are not sure whether the school will take tangible action. We sent our resident teacher’s pet, Juli Freedman, to scope out the scene. Freedman sat down with Lex Loother, head of Loother Public Relations, to discuss the administration and trustee board’s proposal to compromise on these issues.

Juli Freedman: Hello! Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice Lex Loother: No problem little girl!

JF: Well let’s get right to the questions why don’t we.

What is included in the administration’s proposal to the demands of the professors and students?

LL: Oh boy! I think you guys are really going to love this!

We have set up a 12-point plan to fully compensate our beloved educators.

JF: Oh that’s aweLL: First we will be providing all professors a 30-day free trial of Audible if they sign up with the code SOLIDARITY. That’s audible.com/SOLIDARITY and get your first month free and the rest of your months triple the regular.

JF: Oh, see I thought meant like wage— LL: Silly tiny little girl, I’m getting there!

JF: Oh okay, go ahead.

LL: Our next step is to give every professor a little glass paperweight on their desk that says “You are valued.” *sniff sniff* Sorry I’m just tearing up just thinking about it. Step three will include a matching glass dolphin vase which will have sand art correlating to the flag design of their sexuality, or the colors of their pronouns. As a way of saying, “we see you slay gay”.

JF: Oh my god LL: Over the next 30 years we will be tearing down JHouse to build a Bubly Nap Pod Castle. Our best friends

over at Bubly will be donating 4.3 million dollars for this project. Not only will we have nap pods, but scream rooms, fight rings and a ZARA. Everyone say “love you Bubly!”

JF: Love you bubly…

LL: Oh okay step number 5 is one of my favorites, we will be bringing in Kelly Clarkson for an exclusive performance in Finney. Now that Kelly is more TV than singer, it was almost impossible to get her here, but I pulled a few strings. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

And hey, taking away dental won’t kill ya!

JF: Taking away dental?!

LL: Okay so in order to fund this next one we will be charging $5 for laundry, buuuuut, we will be putting fire extinguishers in all the buildings.

JF: There are buildings without fire exting— LL: Okay hold on to your horses, because if you thought wow this is already just too much JF: Not exactly but LL: Then you will blow your brains when you see how cute these Langston Middle Schoolers are in their production of Dear Evan Hansen. We will be taking them out of school to provide entertainment, so when you have your next little “Boo Oberlin” gathering, Oberlin wants you to know that even when the dark comes crashing through, when you need a friend to carry you, And when you’re broken on the ground, you will be found.

JF: Oh no no no no LL: We know you SJWs hate institutions, and hey we are one of the cool ones, so Oberlin will launch our official “Down With Big Union” campaign. We already made signs that say “Union more like Boo-ion” and “Comrade more like Cum Rag” JF: There’s gotta be better puns LL: And you know how student workers are always like ahh this is too much money what do we do with all of it?!?

JF: Not really LL: Well if all of those “people” pool half their paychecks, we could get a really big bounce house. Like super big.

I had one at my son’s party and the kids went totally

feral for it. I talked to the bouncy guys and they said they could throw in a free rusty snow cone machine. Just lick around the rust.

JF: Are we getting to the good stuff soon?

LL: Oh totally, really good stuff here. Um, well in step ten, we have ummmm well I am not sure how well this will translate over interview, but I have this cameo of Murr from Impractical Jokers saying “Oberlin loves you!

Stay strong!”

JF: I guess it’s cool that he did that.

LL: Well that is because we told him if he filmed it we could bring him on as our new head of GSFS, and if it weren’t for Bubly’s generous donation, we would not get to have him! So say another “Love you bubly” JF: Love you…bubly….

LL: We will be gifting an edible arrangement!

JF: I guess those bouquets are sweet LL: No. Bouquet.

JF: Bouquet?

LL: We will be throwing one bouquet in the middle of Wilder Bowl and scream “BOYS IT”S SLOP TIME” and watch all those little piglets squeal for their stick of fruit… if they’re lucky.

JF: Now that seems a little messed up LL: And the last step in our 12-point program is that we are going to a big ass golden box right outside Decafe.

When you walk into the box you can video chat with someone from a different country.

JF: Didn’t you guys do that a few years ago?

LL: Yeah, we literally did, this was a real thing that happened, and it was a huuuuge hit.

JF: So when do higher wages come into play?

LL: You people and your “money, money, money.” It’s all you care about. Maybe you should take a page out of the holy word of Jessie J. WE just wanna make the world dance, because WE don’t care about the price tag. And I really hope you don’t take that in an antisemetic way because I couldn’t even tell you were a Jew until after I read your name and met you and I just wanted to say that you guys are people too :) JF: It was so great to sit down with you.

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This is The Oberlin Grape’s third installment of Ask Dr. Gags, an advice column from our resident sexologist Dr. Gagatha McCreampie. If you have a question about sex, intimacy, dating, or breaking the Guinness World Record for most cum guzzled under a minute, feel free to reach out to Dr. Gags through emailing thegrape@oberlin.edu Dear Dr. Gags, Two of my best friends who aren’t best friends want to have a threesome without me! Should I feel jealous or relieved they didn’t include me to explore their bodies?

Did I potentially lose two friends?

Currently Sobbing, Unlucky Third Dear Unlucky Third, Have you ever considered that maybe your friends actually hate you? Like they talk about you when you’re not there. They think that you don’t notice the flaws they tear to shreds in their shit talk sessions, but it’s the exact things you are most insecure about. Maybe they even talk about things you thought no one would notice, but oh honey they know about the weird pussy rash. Really sucks that you are a friendless loser. I was once in your position, I mean they still wanted a threesome and actually I was the one to decline, but then I met my husband. And now husband is only friend. He is so brunette when he speaks. Everyone says that your kids are your built-in best friends, but I would pack all of them on a Greyhound to soar into the Grand Canyon if that meant I die before my husband does so I don’t go a day without him. His glassy eyes and straw like chest hair make me go wild. So yeah, just find a husband who will fill the void of all the friends you will ever have or need in your life!

Dear Dr. Gags, I’ve been an avid reader for a few months now, and I really trust your opinion. I was wondering if you could tell me how you know when you’ve found ‘the one?’

-GagsBiggestFan Dearest GagsBiggestFan, It always warms my heart to meet a devoted fan!

I love all my fans, especially the most helpless in-love ones. I’m going to let you in on a little secret sugarpie… there is no such thing as ‘the one!’ I know this might come as a mighty shock, but stay with me babe. G*d herself made dozens, possibly hundreds of people for each of us to fall in-love with. Honey, sometimes it’s just intuition! And it’s okay to make mistakes in love.

For example, as I was walking down the aisle to marry my 4th husband, I was like ehhh maybe this wasn’t the best idea, but I did it because I love the drama!! And you know what I got out of it? A huge diamond I sold on ebay for a small fortune and two of my boy children, SmackyMcSucker and E.D. McCreampie! And then I met my 5th husband. Hope that helps.

Xoxo, Dr. Gagatha

I love Love!, Gags

Click here to find Women in the area who are Horny Click here to find Tuba Players in the area who are HOR Click here to find Rose Enthusiasts in the area who are Click here to find Babies in the area who are BORN-y Click here to find Huskers in the area who are CORN-y Click here to find SNL Cast Members in the area who ar Click here to find Grievers in the area who are MOURN 24

Self-Care Tips Frum Board Bronco Fionna Farrell Staff Writer

there name to “new phone who dis”

3. Read a gud book– You must have one or two of

Hello Im Bronco the Horse. Welcum to myself care tips.

I don’t rlly write much because im a horse. But Bobbie Millie Pippa Pearl has been mo rose and annoying lately.

I just want sum alone time with the smarmy new mustang Costco but the farmcel won’t leave me alone. I tried sell her on craigs list but didnt work. So if i cant get rid of Millie I might as well try an help her be less annoying and whatever farmcel is reading this too.

1. Lov yourself- I know it real hard to do that,

Millie, and all you other fuglies, when you look like that. Thats why your parents keep you in the attic or send you to ohio so they dont have to see you. But you have to try. Farmcels have inner beauty so do jenner studies majors so do people who play Dee an Dee, so does everyone.

2. Call or text someone you lov– I know you can’t text, Millie, because your phone from before the war of northern aggro doesnt have letters yet.

But the rest of you have no excuse. It’ll make you feel better even if they block you or changed

those lying around Im sure your family hasnt burned all of them yet. (maybee HOW TO PUT A SADDLE ON RIGHT FOR DUMMIES or OR HOW TO MOUNT BRONCO RIGHT FOR DUMMIES VOLUME INFINITY). The rest of you can learn from that to. If those don work then maybe you can try Camoo, I think you wood like The Playge Millie because of the rats in your walls.

4. Take a shower— Not a bath i repete not a bath Millie you smell worse then my nemesis Fredy who died of ketamine overdose the rest of you smell like wet dishreg.

5. Listen to som soothing music- my favorites are limp biscuit nickelback and rockmoninfahf.

Swipe up and we can do a spotifi blend !!!

6. Go For A Long Drive– I have no ideer what gas is but its expensive so i buyed a lot fir you Millie. Its all in the trunk in the boxes. Thank me later. Treat yoself. The rest of you can leave to with her you are so grating and dont apprecyate everything i do for you.

Art by Wilson Crook

10 Instances Where People Actually Shouldn’t “Say Gay” Juli Freedman Bad Habits Editor

RN-y e THORN-y

re LORNE-y N-y

While a classroom is a perfectly fine place to say gay, some other places, maybe not. If you want to ban the word gay Mr. Government, maybe try these places first.

1. Gary’s Birthday Card

Hey you forgot the R!

2. The Quiet Place

Unless you wanna get murdered by some lagoon creatures like jim office did! Actually I never saw the movie but I think I get the premise from the title.

3. A football game where the home team is the Cleveland Browns and the opposing team is the Little Italy Gays We all know how intense Browns fans can get!

4. Pointing at Neil Patrick Harris

He knows.

5. Pointing at my dad

He doesn’t know yet, but that’s sort of my thing.

6. When you are really trying to say “gaze”

I won’t know if you trying to talk feminist film discourse or about a group of twinks.

7. When trying to explain why people hate Ellen.

See that’s why I hate her, but it seems like the majority cares more about the mega cunt behavior.

8. When a guy with a big machete threatens “the next person who says gay gets their head macheted off”

I wouldn’t wanna mess with him!

9. At a spelling bee

You have to spell it, not say it silly!

10. Falling down a well

I think “Oh Geez I’m Fallin Down This Well, Will An Honest Country Boy Come Save Me?” would do the trick.

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An Official Apology Isabel Hardwig Contributor Times change, and so do the facts. We at the Grape would like to take a moment to apologize for all the things we’ve said in previous issues that now seem kind of uncool and untrue. We acknowledge that it was very, very wrong of us to spread these rumors along the Oberlin student body, and we are very sorry for any harm we may have caused. We would also like to clarify that, from this day forward, everything published in the Grape will be 100% right and good.

We no longer stand by our claim that you cannot get pregnant if you have sex while wearing a hat. That was our bad.

In a previous article about “favorite holes,” we named several items that are, upon further consideration, NOT holes, such as snakes (contain holes, not themselves holes) and the Bermuda Triangle (famously a triangle)

For Your Consideration: Academy Award Best Picture

My Rockumentary Dear Mr. and Mrs. Oscar, This summer, I directed a music documentary about my big brother Liam’s awesome awesome rock band OpenMouthLizardBoy. It is really good and you should give it an Oscar please. Filmed on my cousin Peter’s old iPad, the film chronicles the band’s grueling process of rehearsing many covers and writing one (1) song, all with just three months until their big gig at Sarah’s party. See the dramatic trials and tribulations of the band‘s constant name changes, Liam’s crush on Sarah the second guitarist who is a Girl (!!!), and that time the drummer was grounded for growing something in his bedroom, all from the iconic practice space of our stepdad Frank’s garage. Stay on the edge of your seat as I document the exciting B-plot of the bassist Phil learning how to do a kickflip! Watch as our dumb stepdad Frank has to step in at the last minute because the new drummer followed his girlfriend to Prague. How did the show go, you ask? Watch the movie!! It boasts rave reviews from distinguished critics such as:

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2022

“This is kinda long.”- my camp counselor Jake “It seems like you had a lot of fun making this!”my mom “They are loud.”- my Pop-Pop It’s 17 minutes and it’s on Youtube as This-IsOpen-Mouth-Lizard-Boy-Timmy-F- Productions-Directed-By-Timmy-F-Songs-By-Open-Mouth-Lizard-BoyThe-Band.mp4. We will all gladly attend the ceremony to accept the award and I think OpenMouthLizardBoy would definitely play a song if they’re not too nervous about it. We live in Phoenix, Arizona, which is so close you wouldn’t even have to send a plane, just a limo.

Looking forward to hearing from you, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar. Please tell Olivia Coleman my mom loves her and tell Kristen Stewart my sister let me watch Twilight and I thought it was good and I’m not allowed to watch her new movie but I’m sure it’s great and OpenMouthLizardBoy wants to play a song at her wedding please.

I love you, Timmy F.

We should not have said that it’s cool and fine to bite a dog if it bites you first, and we should have taken full responsibility for that claim instead of attributing it to a bill that recently passed the Senate.

In a recent multi-issue debate about the funniest single digit number, we erroneously came to the conclusion that it was 5. We at the Grape would like to clarify that it is, in fact, 9.

It was not nice of us to run an article on “Ugliest Bangs in This Creative Writing Class Right Now,” and we apologize specifically to anyone whose full name was used We should not have claimed that you are legally allowed to leave class if the professor doesn’t show up after fifteen minutes. This is NOT true and you WILL be arrested This is just like a personal thing but Mom when I was 15 I told you that I “didn’t know” why the upstairs bathroom smelled like weed and we at the Grape would like to acknowledge that it was probably because I was smoking weed in there.

All of the 613 nipple jokes we have made in the past are extremely tasteless, and we apologize in advance for reusing all of them in the upcoming “Nipple Throwback Issue” We no longer stand by the claim that you cannot contract an STI if you go bowling directly before and after sex.

We apologize profusely for all of these errors, and promise to do better in the future. Again, anything not mentioned in this list and anything published afterward can be assumed to be completely factual and the best thing that anyone has ever said about any topic.

REJECTED

WOBC Applications

Content and Graphics by Teagan Hughes

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Comic Corner

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(top right, left) by Saffron Forsberg (below) by Niovi Rahme

ACROSS 1. Cinema organization known for their rankings of classic movies 4. British cartoon pig 8. Oscar-nominated movie that I didn’t like 11. Queen’s Gambit’s last name 12. Got something from the menu 14. Last name of slapstick trio Moe, Larry and Curly 16. Type of Japanese wrestling 17. Europe’s favorite skiing destination 19. What’s happening from February 2nd-10th 21. A whiff 22. Awards show achievement that Whoopi Goldberg has 23. What Marilyn Monroe and Barbie have in common 25. Every Tik Toker’s dream 29. Written promise to repay a debt 30. Going out at Oberlin usually means going to one of these 31. The animal star of Hitchcock’s 1963 thriller 32. Oberlin to Cleveland dir.

DOWN 1. Abbreviation for a noun modifier 2. Place to soothe the sole?

3. “May the odds be ever __ ____ ____”.

5. ___ out a victory (barely beat the other team) 6. Colorful allium, will make you cry 7. Facemasks are a type of this 9. Sign in 10. What a miner digs for 13. Where you sit down to work 15. To edit out 17. 2012 Ben Affleck thriller set in Iran 18. Airport security might give you one of these

19. Secretly We Are Gay 20. Ring at a wedding 23. Before Anyone Else 24. Follows chant-; Édith Piaf was a famous one 26. Hi-__-___, the Oberlin yearbook that The Grape is bringing back 27. You won’t get pregnant with one of these lodged in your uterus 28. Blog feed acronym

All done?

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