Grape Issue 4 Spring 2022

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Vol. 69 NO. 4

OBERLIN’S ALTERNATIVE STUDENT NEWSPAPER

EST. 1999 April 22, 2021

ISSUE FOUR COVER ART Front Cover: Maya McCollum Back Cover: Amelia Connelly

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, Reggie Goudeau, Emma Kang Staff Writers

Molly Chapin, Julian Crosetto, Olive Polken Production Assistants

SENIOR PICTURE DAY IS COMING UP spread spread the the word word spread spread the the word word

ad the word

spread the word

ATTENTION CLASS OF 2022 Our college experience is quickly coming to a close. Good thing we are bringing back the Oberlin Hi-O-Hi yearbook so that all your precious memories will never be lost! Yearbook photo days will be on Friday, April 29th, Saturday April 30th, and Sunday, May 1st from 10am to noon in Wilder Bowl. Arrive dolled-up and ready to give us your senior quote. Don’t forget to submit your photos, writing, jokes, drawings, prints or literally anything else to be put in the yearbook using the QR code to the left!

-Priya Banerjee, Editor-in-Chief

Friday, April 29th

Saturday, April 30th

wilder bowl

wilder bowl

10am-noon

10am-noon

S A V E T H E DA T E 2

Sunday, May 1st wilder bowl

10am-noon

Evaluation of the Senate Primary Debates, pre-March 3rd Teagan Hughes Staff Writer On January 25th, 2021, Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) announced that he would not seek re-election in 2022. This announcement marked the beginning of an acrimonious primary election, one that would feature acts of verbal provocation and even physical intimidation on the GOP side. As Ohio sheds its swing-state status, outside observers are looking to this Senate election as a temperature gauge for the rest of the country. The Democratic primary boasts three candidates, while the Republican primary is saddled with seven; the victors of each respective election may well forecast the rapidly shifting political trends within both national parties. It all culminates in a primary election on May 3rd, followed by a general election on November 8th.

The Senate primary candidates have faced off in a number of live debates over the course of their campaigns, both intra- and inter-party. One of the most recent debates occurred on March 28th at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. There, the Ohio Debate Commission facilitated both a Democratic primary debate and a Republican primary debate.

The Democratic primary debate featured candidates Tim Ryan, Morgan Harper, and Traci “TJ” Johnson. The debate touched on issues of labor, education, foreign policy, and the Supreme Court, among others. The most tense moment of the debate came when Harper criticized Ryan, a current House representative, for taking donations from the defense industry, to which Ryan responded that he supports Ohio labor regardless of the sector. “I want to be clear-headed to make the right decisions for our foreign policy,” Harper said. “That is why I’ve committed to not accept any money from any sector, including the defense contracting sector that my opponent here today has taken over $400,000 from over the course of his career, while we have seen so much harm to our economy and our people here at home.”

In response, Ryan said: “Ohio is a state that has tens of thousands of jobs that are directly connected to the defense industry--good-paying, union jobs here in Ohio.

And I don’t think we need to waste money, but I don’t think we should immediately be pulling the plug. These are businesses that, of course I’m gonna work with them, they’re putting jobs into Ohio and employing Ohioans.”

Ryan reiterated his campaign’s focus on Ohio labor

throughout the remainder of the debate and the post-debate press conference, although he did not specify many intended policies or concrete action steps that would aid workers. Ryan’s rhetorical focus on labor mirrors that of Sherrod Brown, the senior Senator from Ohio. Brown, a Democrat, has held his Senate seat since 2007 in an increasingly red state. Ryan seems to be hoping that his rhetorical focus on labor and his comparatively centrist policies will flip Portman’s seat in the same way they earned Brown a formerly Republican seat in 2006.

Ryan leads the Democratic primary, though it is difficult to tell by how much due to the infrequency of polls on the Democratic side. (The most recent available poll, conducted between February 17th and March 15th by the University of Akron, had Ryan at 42.6% to Harper’s 16.5%.) Harper is his most immediate challenger, and she’s relying on her experience as a lawyer for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to prove her readiness and fit for the position. Her campaign emphasizes the issue of special interests and corruption, and relatedly, Harper has vowed that she does not aspire to become a career politician: “I’m not making a career out of it. I’m only going there to be able to deliver value for the people of Ohio, as quickly as we can, because we have no time to waste,” Harper said in her post-debate press conference.

The ODC Republican primary debate followed the Democratic debate on March 28th. The Republican debate featured candidates J.D. Vance, Mike Gibbons, Jane Timken, Mark Pukita, Matt Dolan, Josh Mandel, and Neil Patel. Former President Trump loomed large over the debate; a great deal of the discussion was dedicated to false claims regarding the legitimacy of the 2020 election, with all but one candidate--Matt Dolan-claiming that the 2020 election was “stolen.” (Moderator Karen Kasler reaffirmed the falsity of each statement immediately after it was made. Candidates Vance and Pukita were especially irked by Kasler’s journalism, leading both to attempt a rebuke during the debate and leading Pukita to go on an anti-“fact-check”, anti-press rant in his post-debate presser.) A further portion of the debate was devoted to the question of who would receive the coveted Trump endorsement, with several candidates listing their Trump-related merits in bonafide cover-letter fashion. (Timken is especially guilty of this--a favorite catchphrase of hers is that she put “150,000 miles” on

her car as the head of the Ohio GOP campaigning for Trump in 2020.)

The discourse over Trump’s inevitable endorsement was settled by Trump’s (arguably) surprise endorsement of author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance on Friday, March 15th. In Hillbilly Elegy, the wildly successful memoir that made him the unrepresentative and unreliable voice of Appalachia, Vance disavowed Trump in no uncertain terms. In the years since, Vance has pulled a complete one-eighty, proclaiming his regret of his former position and his support for Trump in a number of venues including the March 28th ODC debate. “Of course, I did say some negative things about Donald Trump six years ago,” Vance acknowledged while responding to a question about his endorsement from far-right conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), “but if I was anti-Trump, then his strongest advocate in Congress [Greene] would not be behind me.”

Vance’s journey from a never-Trump pundit to a viable Senate candidate with the Trump stamp of approval is emblematic of the rightward shift taking place within the Republican Party. During the ODC debate, Vance proved his allegiance to Trump with a spate of policy positions that would have been unthinkable--well, maybe not unthinkable, but at least a little shocking--to Elegy-era Vance. “Why have we let our entire country become a drug- and warzone because of the illegal immigration problem in this country?” Vance said during the debate, going on to declare: “We need to finish Trump’s border wall.” As stated above, he also proudly touted an endorsement from conspiracy theorist and Trump devotee Marjorie Taylor Greene. Here, Vance is tapping into a larger trend. The Republican Party’s ongoing rightward movement and adoption of right-wing populist policies has seemingly unlocked something in the state of Ohio-the former bellwether state turns redder every day.

Vance’s rapid rebranding mirrors that of our state and of the GOP, and he’s become the symbol for the specific brand of realignment that is not new, but that has become more visible in the years since Trump’s election.

And this realignment pays off. According to the most recent available polling data on the GOP Senate primary election, Josh Mandel--who, by the way, does not believe that there is a constitutional basis for the separation of church and state--is leading the pack, with 28% of respondents expressing support for him. Vance comes

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College’s Complex History Surrounding OSCA, Reduction of Student Need-Based Aid Anna Holhouser-Belden Staff Writer Since their origins seventy-two years ago in the Spring of 1950, cooperatives at Oberlin have a long and tumultuous history. According to OSCA’s old website, the idea of opening a co-op on campus came from a group of eleven upperclassmen who wanted an alternative option to the college’s food, which they called “expensive and low quality,” and the college’s restrictive housing policies. In addition, these students wanted to revive Oberlin’s “Learning and Labor” slogan to create the opportunity to participate in a small-scale democratic system in order to shape themselves into more informed citizens and neighbors. Many of the women who advocated for the founding of the co-op stressed the benefits of learning to prepare food before departure into married life. The concept of an alternative, more affordable college experience through communal living and dining, however, was the integral idea that spurred the first co-ops’ creation. With the Rochdale Cooperative principles in mind, the help of the sincedisbanded Oberlin Consumer Co-op, and provisional permission given from the faculty and board of trustees, Pyle Inn Co-op was founded in the fall semester of 1950 in a building on West College Street.

After this first semester of dedicated work by the members of the original Pyle Inn Co-op, they already had a 40% savings rate over the 1950 equivalents of Res Ed and CDS, again according to OSCA’s old website. Due to their newfound success in financial sustainability, the co-op could remain open. During the spring semester of 1951 a second

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co-op called Grey Gables opened, along with the founding of the Inter-Cooperative Council, a student committee to help the rapidly-growing co-op population make collective decisions that would later transform into the OSCA Board.

Pyle Inn and Grey Gables were praised by various students, on top of having more affordable accommodations and a wider variety of foods, for having a “relaxed social atmosphere” complete with communal “folk sing” events and what participants described as “interesting, intellectual conversation[s]” facilitated by and for members concerning everything from politics to music and the arts.

OSCA also provided an escape from the college’s dining hall dress code policy–dresses for women, jackets and ties for men–and brought increased integration between the sexes, with all co-opers living in the same building sans supervision from a strict “house mother,” present in all college dorms at the time.

OSCA’s financial sustainability and cheaper rates for room, board, and dining, which initially allowed them to remain open and drew in new members, quickly became the reason for the College’s resentment of co-ops on campus and repeated rifts between the two organizations.

The first such occurrence began with the request for the opening of a third co-op in the spring semester of 1952.

This request was turned down by the college’s Faculty Council on the claims that co-ops promoted an “informal lifestyle” and “forced non-conformity” allowing students to skirt around the dress code (women could wear pants, men could wear shorts) and sex-segregation policies and do outlandish things like go barefoot in the dorms, put milk bottles on the dinner table, and take jam straight from the jar, according to the old OSCA website. This created a disparity between students on campus who aligned themselves with co-ops and those who did not a divide that exists to this day.

Those on the proco-op side argued for OSCA’s affordability, community, and higher rates of diversity while the anti-side argued that co-ops created “obnox-

ious” peers that didn’t dress or act like “typical” college students. The college continued to side with those in the anti- camp, claiming lack of student interest for a third co-op as a large population of enthusiastic applicants were turned away due to lack of space year after year. It was also argued by members of the Board of Trustees and the college’s president, Robert K. Carr, that co-ops took up too much of students’ time, therefore decreasing their academic standing, and that co-op participants were not paying a “fair share” to attend Oberlin compared to other students. Thus, the likely reasoning for the college’s delay on opening a third co-op (from 1952 until 1965) was fear that college-run housing and dining services would lose a substantial amount of income if all those interested in co-ops were allowed to join them. The Inter-Cooperative Committee was renamed as OSCA in 1962, and in 1965, Keep was founded, followed by Harkness in 1967.

Given this history, it’s easy to see a connection between OSCA’s slightly bumpy founding in the 1950s and 1960s and recent disparities between the administration and the students in OSCA, driven by OSCA’s financial competition with ResEd and CDS. OSCA is and has always been a nonprofit organization which functions solely off of yearly membership charges to pay rent to the college, and feed and house a quarter of the student body every semester, distributing partial refunds to students at the end of each year if there is money left over in the budget.

OSCA does not hire any outside help and all of its cooking, cleaning, maintenance, and management are carried out by students. Elections are held based on group consensus for higher-up organizational positions, which change on a semesterly basis. The college, on the other hand, currently has an endowment of $1 billion, and investments including stocks in the fossil fuel industry, but continues to claim that it is harmed by financial “losses” created by students opting to be in OSCA. On the college’s website, there is a projected “$1.9 million negative impact” yearly in the form of so-called subsidies to OSCA, hardly harmful given the college’s impressive endowment. These “subsidies” are really just the money that the college would have gained in residential and dining payments from students currently in OSCA, since OSCA is entirely student-funded and receives no form of aid from the college.

There are two recent policies implemented on campus that have particularly created ruptures between the college and OSCA: the administration’s “One Oberlin” austerity plan and OSCA’s recent five-year lease agreement with the college. The “One Oberlin’’ plan was put into place in May of 2019 by the Academic and Administrative Program Review (AAPR), which is a group formed in 2018 to assess Oberlin’s budget across all departments and programs. Their Final Plan can be found on the school’s website under a quick google search of “One Oberlin,” for those interested. The AAPR’s mission, according to the introduction in its “One Oberlin” Final Report, is to “help Oberlin fulfill its mission in a new way, translating its core values and distinctive strengths in a way that is most relevant and sustainable for future generations.” This

statement is soon followed by another, under the ominously titled section “The Challenge,” that Oberlin derives 83% of its operating expenses from student housing and dining tuition, and draws almost 8% from the endowment, an amount the report classifies as far too high. We can infer that if the AAPR’s goals are to sustain the endowment as much as possible for use of future generations, this tuition from college housing and dining becomes all the more valuable than before, placing OSCA in an incredibly awkward position, teetering on the edge of the slashing of seventy-two years of student tradition in the midst of fine print about budget cuts and fiscal cycles.

The AAPR’s “One Oberlin” plan soon proves this inference right: we can find our evidence under Section X: An Equitable and Financially Sustainable Residential Experience under AAPR Recommendations for Operational Efficiency in the Final Plan PDF. The only suggestion under this category is for the college’s administration to “develop a financial relationship that eliminates the $1.9 million annual negative impact on Oberlin’s budget.” The plan continues to focus in again and again on this $1.9 million loss (about one five-hundredth of the endowment), at one point stating that students who choose to live and dine in OSCA “represent both lost revenue and additional facilities capital and operating costs to the college,” deliberately stating the administration’s issue with the organization. The plan goes on to call the increased affordability of OSCA’s program in comparison to the college “artificially underprice[d],” suggesting that “students who participate in OSCA gain what is effectively additional financial aid, subsidized by students who live and dine with the college.” This insinuates that students in OSCA are somehow taking resources from those in college facilities, a claim that is entirely untrue and offensive. Subsequently, OSCA is described as the cause of the college “surrendering an important revenue source for its residential program, creating inequities between students.”

The solution for these alleged “inequities” between students in and out of OSCA comes in OSCA’s new 5-year lease with the college, signed–partly out of desperation for a re-opening during the pandemic–during late 2020. This new agreement claimed that instead of a flat fee each year, OSCA would charge students based on whatever amount they would have been paying for college housing and dining. It claims to treat students in OSCA “the same way that a student in College housing and dining is treated by asking them to contribute the same rev-

enue towards College operating expenses.” The methodology of acting out this proposal, however, was nowhere near as equitable as the language used by the college makes it sound. This “lost revenue,” since the college views being in OSCA as gaining un-justified financial aid, is taken away each semester from students’ need-based aid, at a dollar for dollar rate to what they would be saving from joining OSCA. This idea of being in OSCA as being equivalent to receiving more aid is untrue, however, since students in OSCA work around five hours of shifts each week (without time aid) for free in order to keep co-ops running. Without a “discount” on being in OSCA, a quarter of the student body would essentially be performing free labor, so this approximate $1,200 per student per semester is completely justified.

The idea of taking away need-based aid but not merit-based aid is also completely inequitable. Most students who receive need-based aid would be joining co-ops because, as the Pyle Inn founders stated in 1950, Oberlin’s campus dining options are overpriced and low-quality. OSCA was formed out of a need for affordability, not to be a social experiment for wealthy white vegans, which it will inevitably turn into without accessibility to those who receive need-based aid. Additionally, students with need-based aid often work in order to pay the high prices required to attend liberal arts college, and likely would not consider it worth it to add 5 hours of free labor to jobs and a rigorous course load. With no reduction in meritbased aid, students with need-based aid who rely on OSCA’s affordability the most are being pushed out, due to paying less for the same resources than wealthier students with more time on their hands. An anonymous student in Harkness states that the loss of their need-based aid from participating in a co-op “deters [them] from wanting to rejoin OSCA,” and that they feel they are “doing free labor.” With two meals a day, they sometimes have to “pay out of pocket to supplement,” which does not feel worth it with the loss of a scholarship. They find it unfair that those with merit-based aid “are paying less than [them], while putting in the same amount of work,” and think that “Oberlin doing this makes no sense” as they are “putting in extra labor and paying more than before.”

This speaks to how this policy,

on top of the post-COVID diminishment of institutional memory, has significantly decreased membership in OSCA, leading to a vicious cycle of dwindling resources.

Since OSCA functions entirely on an estimated yearly budget constructed with student tuition, and gives end-of-semester refunds if under-budget, membership seriously affects the resources available.

Due to lower membership, OSCA has not been able to afford rent for three of its previous spaces: Brown Bag Co-op, Old Barrows, and Fairkid, which has led to a decrease of accessibility within OSCA. Brown Bag Co-op used to provide extra food for students to enjoy outside of mealtimes, and without it students are left with only two meals a day, having to pay out of pocket for a third meal or snacks. Old Barrows was OSCA’s housingonly safe space for women and trans people, which now forces people that rely on these spaces to opt out of OSCA living entirely. Lastly is Fairkid, a dining-only option that was OSCA’s sole entirely-vegan co-op, increasing the difficulty of being in OSCA for those who cannot have dairy, or have other dietary restrictions.

Additionally, the lack of membership to lack of resources feedback loop leaves existing co-ops in the lurch for supplies. It is common for co-ops to have a lack of plates, cups, and utensils, leaving students eating off pot lids and using two knives like chopsticks, or not eating at all. Several co-ops are significantly over budget, with some doubts that enough food can be bought for two meals seven days a week, leading to a lower variety of food and discussions of having meals of entirely leftovers in order to self-sustain budgets by the college’s standards. This lack of accessibility to consistent meals

can lead to serious problems in students’ relationships with food, especially those with eating disorders or those coming from food-insecure backgrounds. All of this can be misunderstood by co-op members as simply disorganization on the part of OSCA, and while there is some truth to this, as all students work hard and inevitably make mistakes, these recent college policies are intertwined with any lack of motivation from OSCA members.

In this way, the administration has so far been successful in its gradual approach to rendering OSCA obsolete.

From the 50s to 2020s, the administration has repeatedly stood on somewhat difficult ground with OSCA due to its relatively low financial dent in the college’s housing and dining revenue. It started with claims that students in OSCA were practicing “forced non-conformity” and has culminated in the claim that students in the college are actively “subsidizing” students in OSCA and creating an inequitable pay-gap. Reducing the organization of OSCA to a mere number on a yearly budget erases its seventy-two years of history and significance in building communities between students and creating a unique campus culture that draws new students to Oberlin each year. The slogan “No OSCA, No Oberlin” speaks volumes to its integral role on Oberlin’s campus from its founding until the present day, as it is something truly only found at Oberlin. We must collectively find a way to push through these barriers and restore the beloved student-run non profit that over a quarter of us call home to make the accessible and welcoming space it once was. The immediate end of these unjust and inequitable financial aid policies is a good place to start.

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College to pay Gibson’s $31.6 million following descision Wyatt Camery Features Editor In a decision deemed “stunning” in an article by David Marburger, a former libel attorney, for Cleveland.com, the 9th Ohio District Court of Appeals upheld the verdict of the lawsuit against Oberlin College which awarded $44 million (now $31.6 million) to Gibson’s Bakery.

Stunning, indeed. Marburger likens the decision to “upholding a $30 million libel judgment against the lady who hawks newspapers at a Browns game, citing a derogatory story on the front page.” And rightly so, he recognizes that this case is at the heart of contemporary American culture wars, pointing to the sideline engagement such as the “Support Gibson’s Bakery” signs you have likely seen around town and the national media attention the issue has received. Surely we’re all aware of this by now. Perhaps painfully so, and I am not here to recount the details of the event or the details of the lawsuit, for that is easy enough to find plenty of material about online. I’m more concerned with the response the issue is receiving.

Look, I know we’re all probably sick of hearing about this. It’s an issue that has, other than the pandemic, cast a significant shadow on everyone’s Oberlin experience, especially third- and fourth-years, even though the event itself occurred up to three years prior to our arrival. In light of nationwide conversations about free speech, I don’t understand why we’re not talking about this. Well, I do know why: it’s embarrassing and as I said two sentences ago, we’ve heard enough of it. Ironically, that’s exactly why I’m writing about it: because no one else is, anymore.

Digging into the media response to this case, it’s alarming how divisive the rhetoric is. Everyone agrees the ultimate route to a Gibson’s victory was nuanced, but on one side, commentators feel that the sum owed does not equate to the crime and that the verdict has repercussions beyond a small town in Ohio, while others think Oberlin foolishly groveled to and aided its student over a false claim of racism. A Washington Post article uses the events as a warning to other colleges and universities, “especially liberal arts

colleges where students and faculty tend to be left-leaning and protests are not uncommon,” Noah Feldman notes in his article “Colleges Should Pay Heed to Oberlin’s Costly Libel Case.” Yet, student protests at institutions of higher learning have been going on for centuries, famously picking up steam in the 1960s. Most infamously, at Kent University, just under 50 miles away from Oberlin, in May 1970, the National Guard fired rounds into a group of student protestors, tragically killing four. $31.6 million dollars is nothing compared to even a single human life. But following this event, students didn’t slink away to their dorm rooms. In fact, this event ignited nationwide protests.

We can easily use this as an opportunity to discuss the ongoing culture wars, the deepening political divide, and issues of free speech, both in the United States and here in the town of Oberlin. This work has been done plenty of times over, and I don’t think I can offer anything new regarding these issues in this brief article. Let’s be honest with ourselves: Oberlin students are easily provoked. I mean that lovingly. We’re a pas-

sionate bunch, eager to take action over any number of political issues, regularly serving as a voice for the silenced. So, regarding this sizzlingly hot button topic, why aren’t we using our voices to raise hell about it? If you’re on the Gibson’s side of the issue (hey, I make no assumptions), it’s an opportunity to criticize the administration (albeit primarily of a bygone era) and college politics culture at large, and if you side with Oberlin, this is a great opportunity to demonstrate that this case will not in fact silence free speech; and if you prefer to take a multifaceted, albeit mildly informed opinion, then you, too, can be Features Editor for the Grape. Sorry, I needed some levity here. To be clear, I’m not advocating another organized protest of Gibson’s – you can take my argument how you please. But if this is ultimately an issue about freedom of speech – forcing colleges, students and administration alike, to approach their words and actions with greater caution for fear of legal or social backlash – then the last thing we should do is be silent about it.

Senate Debates continued of respondents expressing support for him. Vance comes in second with 22.6%.

(Qualifier: this data comes from the Trafalgar Group, a right-leaning polling firm with an opaque methodology--and the only major firm to show Trump ahead in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election.) Vance’s stock is sure to rise in the weeks ahead given Trump’s recent endorsement; Trump and his ilk are undeniably the tastemakers of this election cycle, a position that was only reaffirmed and reinforced by the ODC Republican debate’s focus on Trump, both in the content of the questions and in the candidates’ collective rhetoric. (And the Trump-spurred rightward shift isn’t reserved for Republicans--it’s been tugging at the Democrats too. For evidence, look no further than Tim Ryan’s latest campaign ad, in which he proclaims that we “can’t afford to be Democrats and Republicans right now. We have to be Americans first.”)

This election is the first Senate election without an incumbent running that Ohio has seen since Trump’s election in 2016. As a result, we are seeing the shifting political trends at work in our state play out in full force, without a likely-winner incumbent to dampen their effect. Ohio’s increasing gravitation towards rightwing populist candidates is mirrored by the rightward movement of J.D. Vance, the formerly anti-Trump Republican who just beat Josh Mandel--Josh Mandel!-in a Trump-alike contest. The March 28th ODC Republican debate featured a slate of candidates all attempting to prove their merits vis-a-vis Trump, a competition arguably encouraged by the ODC’s questions and definitely incited by Ohio’s red-state transformation. The Democratic candidates are also feeling the pull of Ohio’s rightward movement, especially front-runner Tim Ryan. All this culminates in a chaotic primary election in which substantive policy has been largely set aside, and yet so much turns on its result. Right now, all eyes are on Ohio. It’s not the first time we’ve been a harbinger.

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FLIP to check your answers!

Paranoid from 9 to 505:

Coverband Showcase 2022

Fionna Farrel Staff Writer For some gloriously stupid, uncovid related reason, I missed the coverband showcase last semester. Had my cat fallen ill? Had the five-minute walk to the ‘Sco proven too much for my atrophied legs? I really can’t remember, but I do remember kicking myself (so my legs worked, after all) because I had missed a seminal night of Oberlin Oberlin-ness. By that, I mean that I missed the chance to see my peers make like David Byrne and his lamp. What hurts even more is that, as an Oberlin student and generally insufferable person, Talking Heads and Pixies are literally two of my favorite bands. Why would I lie?

Anyway, safe to say I had extremely high expectations for this spring’s showcase. The winding line outside the ‘Sco seemed to be a portent for the fun, inebriated times ahead. So what if no one could move their arms in the crowd (except for when absolutely necessary, like holding up their lighter during that one F&M song)? And there seemed to be a lot less of that frenetic nervousness that has plagued other big events over the past year. It feels that we are at the point where people are comfortable mingling with each other again, even if, for the time being, it’s still behind masks.

Another thing that I found particularly special about this semester’s showcase was the awesome variety of talents it put center stage. Yes, I do love my dose of Talking Heads and Pixies, and other typical hipster-adjacent acts, but it’s important not to fall into those cliched indie trenches. After all, every musical recommendation I’ve gotten from an Oberlin student during my time here has been something I’ve never heard of.

I know that’s, like, the point of recommendations, but you know what I mean; there are very few music neophytes here.

However, that doesn’t make us pretentious—at least not all the time—we still know how to laugh at ourselves, and with one another. We still have the courage to look (not so) good on the dance floor.

In spite of that brilliantly placed reference, Tropical Chimps (Arctic Monkeys) were actually the last performers of the night. Kicking it off were their nice ‘n vengeful peers, Dykes Want Revenge. To me, She Wants Revenge hold up as a great post-punk revival band, definitely on the plane of my beloved Interpol and other gloomy darlings. I will admit, though, that they were probably introduced to me through the very controversial film 500 Days of Summer. Dykes Want Revenge,

Photo by Amelia Connelly

though, added a whole new layer of interest and finesse to the sound of the 2010s indie milieu. The music was not all doom; the vocalist tore down the barriers of monotone with heart and verve. Meanwhile, I found myself mouthing the words to “Tear You Apart,” just as I did on my walks home from school in eighth grade.

As alluded to earlier, the next set from Florid and the Obscene left me in an emotional mess. I attribute this to, at least in part, the band’s impressive ability to actually sound like Florence and the Machine—and I don’t mean that patronizingly. Rather, I’ve always considered Florence Welch to have one of the most stunning voices in rock, and “Obscene” gave them a good run for their money.

The crowd could do nothing but sing along.

For the next act, I was a little bit afraid that this wouldn’t be the case.

When I think of Mac Miller fans, our student body is not the first image that comes to mind. But oh, how delightfully was I proven wrong. Not only did ‘Sco capacity feel at its peak during Mike Miller’s set, but that was when the curly-haired dude in front of me was bouncing up and down with peak height. I was absolutely enthralled by the whole set, which was smooth, jazzy, and rejuvenating. What the

rapper gives us with his produced sounds, Mike Miller gave us with sprawling instrumental jive.

The crowd showed out for Black Shabbos, too. Throughout the whole night, no one held back, but that was that glorious time when the pit opened up.

It reminded me of Mannequin Pussy at the ‘Sco c. fall 2019, if only for a span of ten minutes. It also was a great relief to see that everyone was being cognizant of each other—or at least, trying to be.

Indeed, while Coverband can lend itself to a certain mayhem, after Shabbos’ set WOBC took to reminding everyone to be mindful of those around them, and also took the time to hold up some lost phones that had been victims of the pit. That for sure made me chuckle.

Going into the latter half of the night was, for me, when things got interesting. I had never heard of Erykah Badu. The moniker “Moderna Fartin’” for Dolly Parton had me puzzled for days. I had no idea what to expect from either of these acts, other than that they would be very different from one another. But this difference was no calamity—it was a highlight of the night. Sehrea Badu, who regularly perform as the band Mnglw (pronounced “moonglow”), led everyone on a beautifully hypnotic experience

of jazz and wonder. Moderna Fartin’ (I can’t type it without snickering) was their serendipitous antidote—all calculated pop and rust, that surely transported us all back to the time when it was reasonable to wear a cowboy hat to parties.

Are Big Time Rush and the Arctic Monkeys so different? The question that plagues a generation. Normally, I like to pontificate over these things—they give me a sense of stability in this maddened world. Not at coverband. One embraces the chaos; these bands blend into a sublime concoction of boy-band pop-rock.

Perhaps, now is the fitting time for that earlier bad pun: we all found a place on the dance floor. Or something like that.

Although the actual experience of coverband was a blur to me, each act was so remarkably distinguished that they have all managed to linger with me in their own way. I applaud the WOBC board for selecting acts that cater to a variety of music, but also, more importantly, a variety of voices at Oberlin. Coverband certainly felt a bit less homogenous than in former years, even if none of my desert island bands played this time. But that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make a thousand times over. David Byrne is already doing David Byrne; who else can do Erykah Badu like that?

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LaToya Ruby Frazier’s “Art As Transformation: Using Photography for Social Change” Anna Holshouser-Belden Staff Writer

and collective history.

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s connection to On Tuesday, March 29th world-renowned Oberlin stems not only from her interest in the photographer Latoya Ruby Frazier visited campus social dynamics of small, midwestern towns, to discuss her life-long mission of continuing the but also from the presence of one of her early legacy of 1930s social documentary work through photographs in the collection of our very own her own style—one highly influenced by ‘60s Allen Memorial Art Museum. This work, called and ‘70s conceptual photography. Frazier turns Grandma Ruby’s Refrigerator, was used as the the personal into the political and the political inaugural work in the Shared Art Program, in into personal in her work, which spans from which all enrolled first years discuss one work photography to video and installation pieces. of art as part of their First Year Seminar class.

Frazier was born to a low-income family in the Grandma Ruby’s Refrigerator was also on majority-Black Rust Belt town of Braddock, PA, display in an exhibit in the Allen as a part of which in the past was home to the one of the first this program. Grandma Ruby’s Refrigerator is Carnegie steel factories, and is now the location a gelatin silver print of the front of Frazier’s of a pesticide company, an air freshener company, grandmother’s refrigerator, from an angle at about and several manufacturing plants. It’s a town that the height of a child. From the vantage point of has been affected by environmental racism for the shot, the refrigerator is coated from top to generations, a steel town whose people have been bottom with family photos, school pictures of declared obsolete by the general public along with Frazier, childrens’ drawings and colorful magnets, the industry it harbored. She places an intentional along with professional prints of Frazier’s work. spotlight on small working-class company towns On the right of the refrigerator lies some of like the one she’s from, highlighting the voices of Grandma Ruby’s antique doll collection, sitting working-class Black communities most affected atop a cabinet and stuffed into drawers below, by neoliberal capitalism’s harmful policies. On along with childrens’ toys and six packs of Pepsi. the 29th, Frazier spoke to Oberlin students about Two metal sculptures below are hung on the wall how she has used her photography in particular above the cabinet. On the left, there is a counter to push certain social issues to the forefront upon which two bottles of Crisco oil and a box in–and out of–the art world. LaToya describes of cereal lie. The top of the fridge is covered in her photography as a collaborative process boxes of cereal and various snacks. The linoleum with whomever she is photographing, with floor is visible in the foreground, along with common topics in her work being industrialism, the edges of two rugs. Frazier describes her Rust Belt revitalization, environmental racism, grandmother’s kitchen as the center of her home, access to healthcare and clean water, community with the refrigerator and the images hung from it involvement and workers’ solidarity, and family as the center of the kitchen. In a way, this portrait

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of a refrigerator is a portrait of the artist’s own grandmother.

This event was organized in equal part by members of ABUSUA (Oberlin’s Black Student Union) and the Academic Programs department at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, according to second-year Lulu Chebaro. The process of getting Frazier to visit Oberlin was started by Chebaro’s fellow second-year Imani Joseph, who worked as a PAL and with the AMAM in the fall semester while the Shared Art Program was going on. Joseph, after discovering Frazier’s work, began doing research on the artist and urged both the museum and the college to bring her here to Oberlin for an ABUSUA event.

Members of ABUSUA started an initiative for Frazier’s visit, and after Joseph left for a semester abroad Chebaro took over as a main organizer of the event. Chebaro was motivated to take part in planning the event by a childhood interest in photography that she felt she hadn’t wanted to grow further, .

Chebaro had a childhood interest in photography that she felt she hadn’t wanted to continue into adulthood due to the space historically taken up in the practice by cis white men. Chebaro decided that Frazier could give a talk to the public of Oberlin, in addition to a more private “meet and greet” dinner with members of ABUSUA, the Africana Studies department, and the Studio Art department. Chebaro got a chance to speak with Frazier privately as well, in which the two discussed the trials of being overlooked in the higher education system with its historic (and current) over-valuing of wealthy, white students.

LaToya Ruby Frazier continued Photos by LaToya Ruby Frazier, from “The Notion of Family”

Chebaro describes their conversation as the highlight of the visit, and her favorite piece by Frazier is the book Flint is Family In Three Acts, which students in ABUSUA are currently trying to have the college’s library buy.

During her talk, Frazier let the audience in on her beginnings with photography at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. She claims that she had never set out to become an artist, and attended Edinboro, just a few hours drive from her hometown, for graphic

design and communications. Frazier credits a chance encounter in the basement of her school’s graphic design building as the start of her artistic journey, when she noticed an old woman hanging students’ photographic prints on a bulletin board and felt compelled to help her, as if by some kind of divine appointment (in Frazier’s words).

This woman turned out to be the photographer Kathe Kowalski, who taught at Edinboro University for the last ten years of her life, and whom Frazier credits as the

driving force that merged her onto a more artistic path. Frazier described Kowalski to attendees at Dye Lecture Hall as a strict, nononsense woman whose classroom policies often deterred her fellow students from taking classes with the professor. Kowalski, however, having created work on the subjects of rural poverty in Pennsylvania, young women, the aging human body, and life in Pennsylvania’s prisons, recognized great value in the portraits of Frazier’s mother and grandmother that the young artist

produced outside of class. Frazier describes having “hidden” these intimate portraits of her family, not having deemed them as sufficient artistic material for a classroom of majority wealthy, white students who she thought would not care about life in a low-income Black steel town.

She attributes Kowalski as having urged her to bring photos depicting her life at home in Braddock to the forefront, a piece of advice that influenced Frazier’s entire body of work, beginning with her first book of photos–The Notion of Family– published in 2014.

During her talk at Oberlin, Frazier chose three examples from her large body of published work that she felt best highlighted her career and development as an artist and human being. She began with her first book, The Notion of Family, which expands on her work during her college years with portraits of herself, her mother, and her grandparents in their Braddock home.

She also includes still lives of household objects like her grandmother’s dresser, mantlepiece, or refrigerator; and portraits of urban decay in Braddock’s fading downtown, with most photos in the series shot in black and white film. There is an emphasis on lineage here, drawn both from people and place, with Frazier naming buildings and signage an integral part of the community of her youth along with the people that raised her. In the book, this connection of physical place to a community lifeline is particularly emphasized by a sideby-side comparison of her mother’s back, visible through an opened hospital gown and strewn with wires from an epilepsy test, and the torn-

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LaToya Ruby Frazier continued down facade of her town’s hospital, electrical wires, cement, and steel hanging down from what were once windows. Frazier describes the loss of a local hospital as devastating to the community, as it was not only a healthcare resource for the majorityelderly citizens of Braddock, but doubled as a community center.

This comparison of her mother’s aging body to the dilapidated hospital building shows Frazier grappling with a dying community.

Along with this, her inclusion of protesters arguing for the hospital to remain open alongside portraits of her mother and grandparents in their home expresses the “notion of family” as something that crosses the threshold of the domestic sphere into the public community.

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s exhibitions have traveled far beyond her hometown to Belgium, Luxembourg, Paris, and Bordeaux; though even with the notoriety that came from creating The Notion of Family, Frazier continues to stick close to home with her work, moving from one small Rust Belt town to the next in order to depict human life in the midst of economic and environmental crises. Frazier also highlighted her photo series and book The Last Cruze during her talk, published in 2020. This book follows the auto workers of the Lordstown, Ohio General Motors Plant, just over an hour from Oberlin. The plant was shut down after over fifty years of supplying steady jobs to those in the village of Lordstown, and auto workers were forced to relocate to a tech plant in California with no increase in salary or housing provided. The workers from the plant along with the UAW Local 1112 Union worked to negotiate an agreement with General Motors, which LaToya documented on her camera, along with the fracturing of families and communities caused by the plant’s shut-down. During her talk, she emphasized a photo she took from

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a helicopter of a ring of Lordstown workers protesting, holding up signs and the American flag, stating that when asked what kind of photo they wanted taken, this ring of solidarity was their response.

Frazier submitted her photo series, along with personal statements from the workers photographed, to the New York Times Magazine, who did not publish it because of the so-called “unprofessional” quality of the personal statements. In

response to this denial, Frazier put on an exhibition of this work at The Renaissance Society, and installed a mock-assembly line in the gallery to hang her works on in order to literally put viewers in the shoes of those photographed. Along with this, auto workers from Lordstown were invited to speak at the exhibition, something out of the ordinary in most prestigious museums.

Frazier’s most poignant and personal work by far is found

in her latest book, Flint is Family in Three Acts, which she worked on from 2016 up until 2022, traveling to Flint, Michigan documenting the clean water crisis. Frazier lived with activist and friend Shea Cobb, her daughter Zion, and her mother while in Flint, and became ingrained in their family dynamics, documenting their daily life alongside the citywide water crisis. Frazier followed Cobb as she went to work as a school bus driver and hairstylist, and met the Cobbs’ family and community members. The first “act” of Flint is Family includes this material, along with President Obama’s visit to Flint and the 2016 election. The second act follows Shea and Zion Cobb, along with other members of The Sister Tour, a Flint collective of artists and creatives, as some are forced to migrate away from the water crisis while others continue to be affected by it. Shea and Zion relocated to Newton, Mississippi, where they saw family and learned about their roots, but then were forced back to Flint after segregation in the school district left Zion with a less promising academic future. The third act follows Shea and Zion’s community as they install a clean-water generator in a neighbor’s backyard and watch their neighbors and Zion’s peers take their first sips of clean water in years, or in their entire lives. Some particularly striking photos from the series that Frazier highlighted during the talk show are two photos of Zion: one with Shea pouring water from a plastic bottle into her daughter’s mouth to brush her teeth with. Zion’s mouth is open and her eyes look joyful as if this is a normal

nighttime ritual for mother and daughter. The second photo shows Zion doing homework in her mother’s bedroom, her mother looking up at her from the corner of the frame, while a jug and plastic bottle of storebought water sit on the bedside table behind Zion like an eerie still-life.

In a New York Times review of Flint is Family In Three Acts, Frazier’s photo series is described as “a marriage of art and activism.”

The funny thing about Frazier, however, is her insistence that she is not an activist. In her talk at Oberlin, she repeatedly emphasized herself as being an artist before she is an activist, stating that her work with the camera speaks in ways that she wouldn’t with words, and reaches those that she couldn’t.

She describes the process of taking a portrait as inherently collaborative with the sitter, and that in telling these peoples’ stories, it is not her but them who speak through the glossy prints on gallery walls to the public. Frazier and her camera are not always welcomed with open arms, with many in Flint and Lordstown viewing her as a big-city intellectual intruding on their social circles and communities.

Frazier sees what others may call “activism” as art serving its purpose, her using her “gifts from God,” as she said during her talk, in order to help others look at the world in a different way. Frazier ended her talk with a monologue on the purpose of art, education, and arts education, affirming that students should do what they love, and that all else will follow. LaToya Ruby Frazier’s talk on March 29th was an inspiration for Oberlin students to find both art and change within themselves.

April 12, 2022

Kassa Overall plays at the ‘Sco Raghav Raj Staff Writer Even before Kassa Overall and his all-star backing band stepped onto the stage at the Dionysus Disco, the atmosphere in the basement of Wilder Hall on April 12 was — much like the humid weather outside — warm and crackling with electricity.

The prior hour had seen Oberlin’s own DJ Kopano on the decks, delivering a bounce-heavy set full of breathtakingly bawdy club gems that sent the sizable crowd into a sweaty, frenzied fit.

By the time the quartet launched into their opening number, a frenetic remix of “Prison and Pharmaceuticals” from Overall’s 2019 debut Go Get Ice Cream and Listen To Jazz, the crowd was already warmed up; all they had to do was play.

It was the culmination of an exuberant homecoming for Kassa, who graduated from Oberlin with a Bachelors in Music in 2005, and had worked with the Jazz Society and Con-

servatory for a master class for students at The Cat in the Cream earlier in the day. In a way, his show at the ‘Sco was a masterclass as well — a joyous evening from one of modern jazz’s most singular voices, accompanied by his tightly-knit crew of stellar multi-instrumentalists. It was an experience as reverent as it was revelatory, a celebration of the genre’s rich history that also seemed to move solely in service of a radical, distinctly futurist vision. These contradictions are central to the music that Kassa Overall makes; throughout the night, you could often hear them in the very same breath.

Almost immediately after cracking a joke about his raps being officially sponsored by Oberlin’s jazz department, Overall proudly shouted out several members of the Conservatory faculty by name, beaming at the raucous cheers that each name garnered from the crowd. After previewing a fiery, poignant guest verse from “Jazz Is Dead” — a collaboration with Oberlin

alum Theo Croker and professor Gary Bartz — over the piano riff from “Still DRE,” the band dove into their delicate rendition of Coltrane’s swooning “Naima,” as pristinely entrenched a jazz standard as they come.

Through it all, what stood out was how the band synthesized various strains of Black music to utterly transfixing effect. Helmed by Bendji Allonce’s percussion, the quartet sounded limitless, firmly in pocket whether they were playing over trap drums, stilted Dilla-esque rhythms, or a polyrhythmic patchwork evoking Fela Kuti and the sounds of Afrobeat. At certain turns — especially with Ian Fink’s racing fingers on the keyboard — they locked into a groove not far removed from the racing pulses of Detroit house titans like Moodymann or Theo Parrish. A feverish peak arrived when they covered Bartz’s 1977 song “Music Is My Sanctuary,” a loving tribute that transformed the original’s soulful jazz-funk into radiant gospel, with saxo-

phonist Tomoki Sanders leading an anthemic call-and-response with the audience.

Stuffy purists may scoff at their delightful flair for showmanship — they careened across the stage with cowbells, shakers, and saxophones; they eagerly riled up the absolutely inexhaustible crowd with swelling crescendos and football game chants (“AYY-OHH!”); sometimes, the atmosphere felt more like a house party, especially when they brought up a few students onto the stage to dance (“I’m older than I look,” quipped Overall after a valiant, if ultimately fruitless, attempt at breakdancing) — but, quite frankly, it’s some of the most fun I’ve ever had at a concert. Within the death of jazz laid the future of jazz, playing out in front of our eyes for a wonderfully communal celebration of Black music in all its forms, unapologetically ecstatic and utterly liberatory in its sheer exuberance.

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Modern Music Guild presents....

Jeff Carey and Sarah Da Levi Dayan Editor-in-Chief Despite being one of the first music conservatories in the country to host an electronic music department with the TIMARA program, Oberlin sometimes offers limited opportunities to witness experimental and avantgarde music performed live in person. The Modern Music Guild exists to remedy these issues by booking the music that sometimes falls between the cracks in terms of what acts are typically booked.

“For example,” Jack Hamill tells me, “there may be an act that is too experimental for SUPC but not academically established enough for the composition or TIMARA departments. We strive to maintain a diversity of acts, both in terms of music and identity, and to serve the many enthusiastic music communities in Oberlin and the greater Northwest Ohio area.”

In the past, the Guild has hosted some of the most notable figures in contemporary experimental music, ranging from the tabletop guitar sound explorations of musicians like Kevin Drumm and Keith Rowe to the trancepunk-free improv jams of the Flower Corsano Duo. These shows highlight not only Oberlin’s position in the wider spheres of experimental and avantgarde music, but also the creative music community that is central to both the conservatory and the college. Recent performances

by Jeff Carey and Sarah Davachi respectively, the first after a COVIDinduced dormant period for MMG booking, are a testament to this sense

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of community, and each stand as some of the most singular performances I’ve seen of this music.

Smith (a TIMARA alum who, full disclosure, is also a friend) did one of the most incredible sets I’ve seen on campus.

Performing under the name Mirrored Monster, she cycled between guitar and electronics, beginning with sparse explorations in sound and texture before dramatically ratcheting up the intensity. The performance called to mind an anecdote from Jim O’Rourke, an experimental composer who has also worked as an engineer for Joanna Newsom, Wilco, and Sonic Youth. Early on in his career, O’Rourke’s music centered around non-idiomatic guitar experimentation, and guitarist Henry Kaiser told foundational Free Improv guitarist Derek Bailey he couldn’t tell if O’Rourke was trying to sound like Bailey or himself. Bailey responded by describing O’Rourke as “Keith Rowe in Blade Runner,” and I’d say the same for this performance, but only if Keith Rowe really fucking shredded it. The level of sweat and passion in this performance is one not always present in this music.

Hinsdale, who opened for Davachi under the name Claudia’s Graces, made masterful use of the Fairchild Chapel’s incredible acoustics. Her opening music centered around electroacoustic manipulations of her voice, fluctuating between the multichannel sound system in a manner that felt as though it surrounded the parameters of the space. The rest of her performance was more song-oriented and incorporated an Appalachian dulcimer, but

the feeling that the space was as much a factor in the performance as the instrumentation itself persisted throughout. The music synthesized many different elements; beyond the established influences of experimental electronic music and Appalachian folk, I could personally hear elements of polyphonic choral music, pop, and English folk singers such as Dolly Collins in there as well. Her vocal techniques complemented each of these seemingly disparate sounds and influences perfectly.

Though I had not been familiar with Jeff Carey prior to seeing him perform, the fact that he was billed as an experimental musician from Baltimore was enough to get my attention. Baltimore is home to some of the foremost creative musicians in the country, such as Susan Alcorn, Nik Francis, the band Horse Lords, and Oberlin alum Ami Dang.

The city is also home to the High Zero Festival, one of the most notable experimental music festivals in the country and one which Carey has performed for in the past. Even taking this history into consideration, Carey’s music is out-there.

His performance at the Sco utilized a large LED strobe light display, and his instrument is described on the Baker Artist Portfolios website as “a physically controlled software based instrument of his own development called ctrlKey.” With strobe lights flashing dramatically in the background, Carey shook and thrashed against his instrument, which looked something like a DJ setup with a joystick attached.

This generated torrents of noise whose vibrations made it feel as though

Art by Eva Sturm-Gross

something was grabbing hold of the room and rattling it about. Amidst these pyrotechnics, the music provided a measured assault with an impressive degree of depth and a layered, constantly shifting diversity of sounds. Still, like all of my favorite noise music, the performance was an aural and visual experience that grabbed the listener and gave them only two options: listen and take in the experience it presented, or leave and don’t. I’ve always found such experiences to be deeply liberating.

The Sarah Davachi performance that took place a couple weeks

after Carey’s performance could not have been more different, but it utilized the performance space of Fairchild Chapel in a similarly singular manner, leaving an effect on myself and (it seems) the rest of the audience incomparable to any other performance.

Davachi has been a major emerging figure within contemporary drone and minimalist music for the past few years. Like fellow luminaries such as Ellen Arkbo and Kali Malone, her music utilizes the pipe organ and pushes the influences of early music (i.e. medieval and renaissance era music) that have always been present in

minimalist composition to the forefront. Davachi performed in Fairchild Chapel utilizing a Renaissancestyle pipe organ, and in an Instagram post the day of the performance described the organ at Fairchild as particularly notable.

Davachi’s performance was notable inShe wrote “the instrument is tuned in an extended meantone temperament - meantone is not something you hear too often, and extended temperament also accounts for the subtle differences in tuning between “enharmonic” notes such as G# and Ab, which you can see in the split sharps of the second image. this

Davachi continued instrument, being of the era, also uses a tracker mechanism rather than the electro-pneumatic ones that you find in most modern organs. electro-pneumatics are great because they allow different pipes to be located all around the room, but their stops are either fully on or off, and thus there’s no gradient in pitch and tone. mechanical tracker organs, however, have the stops connected directly to the valves of the pipes, so you can open and close them gradually and create some intricate variations in frequency content.”

Though I am in no way qualified to explain all of the technicality and music theory that goes into pipe organ playing, I can certainly say that these dynamics had a noticeable effect on the music being performed that night. Davachi performed one extended drone piece, and like most drone music it had the feeling of stasis, but as she performed there would be subtle shifts in the piece. The tracker mechanism helped the music to make these changes covertly, thus giving it the ability to progress and evolve without breaking the trance state it imposed upon the listener. And this was trance-inducing music of the highest order, evoking a reaction in the mind and the body incapable of being replicated in any other space or in any other format. Witnessing this performance was a truly singular experience, and not just because Davachi was playing a pipe organ with her back turned to the audience.

Whereas Carey’s music felt as though it had grabbed and shook the room, Davachi’s music had such a deep, resonant presence that it felt as if it was walking up and down the aisles of the chapel.

Throughout the performance, my attention was stuck to a quote on the railing directly behind the organ, from Psalm 98:1 of the King James Bible: “Sing unto the lord a new song, for he hath done marvelous things.” It’s near-impossible to write about “the spiritual power of music” without being subsumed in cliche, but this passage is, to me, as succinct a way of expressing such power as I write this. Regardless of one’s religious or spiritual beliefs, the musical traditions Davachi is working within, from Hildegard and Bach to the Coltranes, Eliane Radigue and Catherine Christer Hannix, undoubtedly constitute marvelous things. And there is no other way to honor these marvelous things than by pulling something new out of the ether. I would imagine that, even if I was the slightest bit knowledgeable about music theory, I still would not be able to adequately explain the psychoacoustic effects of these techniques, and that’s a good thing. The power of Davachi’s music, like all great spiritual, trance-inducing music, is its ability to invoke emotions that exist in between words and any other form of direct human communication.

The Bleary Radicalism of Billy Woods’ Aethiopes Raghav Raj Staff Writer From the very first moments, it feels like the walls are closing in. Outside, there is a gated fortress, with galvanized steel security fences and cameras adorning the towering brick structure. Inside, his mother is breaking plates as his parents argue. He thinks his neighbor might be Mengistu Haile Mariam, whose regime in Ethiopia killed anywhere from 500,000 to 2,000,000 people, who still lives in Zimbabwe today despite being charged with genocide in absentia by an Ethiopian court. The swirling piano behind him is tense, discordant, anxious. A beat with no pulse, the song seems to limp into a hesitant, arrhythmic shuffle.

Even the boundless sky above seems like only a temporary escape.

So begins “Asylum,” the first track from Aethiopes, a stark, striking new album from Brooklyn-based luminary Billy Woods. It is a staggering dispatch from the rapper, lyrically dense, richly written, and dripping with unease. The songs here form a collection full of cold, dark visions that bleed from the eternal scars of colonial oppression in Africa and late-capitalist drudgery, incisive and unrelenting, lurching forward with every step. These are fractured, feverish transmissions, rhythmically intangible in structure and deeply haunted, drawing on jazz, dub, film scores, and filled with voices around every corner.

That’s something that I really find remarkable about an album like Aethiopes, perhaps as singular a rap record as you’ll hear this year: while consistently blistering and pointed, it’s also very much a communal record, a summit bringing together various voices from the underground hip-hop scene. Though I don’t think anyone sounds as firmly in-pocket as Woods does, there are a lot of great turns here. EL-P is forceful on “Heavy Water,” finding a rhythm that, at its best, resembles his days with Company Flow. On “NYNEX,” an Armand Hammer reunion with ELUCID that also features Quelle Chris and Denmark Vessey, it’s fascinating to listen as all these voices intermingle over the sputtering harmonicadriven beat, a flurry of gravelly voices pitter-pattering through what sounds like the ghost of a Sergio Leone film soundtrack.

Previously, Woods has rapped over beats from the likes of Navy Blue, Earl Sweatshirt, Kenny Segal.

Recently, Armand Hammer collaborated with The Alchemist, whose dusty soul loops and boom-bap beats animated their excellent 2021 record, HARAM. On Aethiopes, Woods locks into a groove with veteran NY producer DJ Preservation, whose sparse, bracing beats don’t even sound like beats — if anything, they’re roughedged sketches where instruments linger and reverberate against one another, always sounding like they’re just out of arm’s reach.

On “Sauvage,” Preservation culls together this flurry of clinking metal, timpani, and intermittent blipping, an expressive soundscape lingering precariously on a precipice, ever-so-often filtering in this blissful guitar that disappears just as fast as it arrived. “Christine”

moves at a creeping pace, molting its prowling rhythm with snippets from a Mets game on the radio and a jazzdrumming outro that only amplifies the restraint at play.

On the excellent “Remorseless,” the penultimate track on the album, Preservation fixates on this muted, flute-like synth, a gliding melody punctuated by disembodied, intangibly soulful vocal snippets. It’s a perfect platform for Woods’ disillusioned reflections on capitalism and neocolonialism, a refutation of generational wealth and a scathing indictment of bourgeois leftism.

It all comes to a head on the final track, “Smith + Cross.” It’s perhaps the most effusive beat here, a warm flood of organs, strings, and vocal melodies drenched in reverb, a soaring electric guitar lick lingering in the backdrop, all bolstered by rumbling brass underneath.

In one breath, Woods pontificates on an emotional affair that’ll never go any further. In another, he alludes to the revolutionary Assata Shakur, currently living in Cuba as a refugee from the US. Fundamentally, Aethiopes is a record about Africa, using the archaic European term for Africans as an inflection point to observe the condition of African life through the lens of the colonized. It’s a work entirely informed by the weight of generational trauma, a weight that’s never laid more bare than on “Smith + Cross.” The history of Africa, as Woods contemplates it, is a history of dehumanization and exploitation, of reducing Black people to the same commodity status as something like sugar, molasses, or rum. Even when the cane fields are set alight, Blackness is commodified; he looks at an exhibit in the museum, only to see himself in the diorama.

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The Troubling Case of

Eric Adam’s Theater

Fionna Farrell Staff Writer If there’s one thing that can unite a city of eight million, it’s disdain for their mayor. Former Mayor of New York Bill de Blasio promised a lot, but his stridence only ever seemed to lean towards posturing. Once hailed as “progressive before it was cool,” the ex-mayor has now made himself known to be distinctly uncool. He tweets things like this from his bermuda shorts: “The future of New York City is so bright I gotta wear shades!” That tweet was taken down because a woman’s chest could be seen reflected in his sunglasses. When de Blasio ran for president in 2020, he garnered roughly 0% of the vote. Needless to say, mockery of him spans across party lines.

If there’s anything that current mayor Eric Adams possesses over de Blasio, it’s incomparable amounts of swagger. He rides Citi bikes in color-coordinated suits; he goes on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert to discuss his clubbing adventures —”I am the mayor; this is a city of nightlife. I must test the product.” A favored trope of his is “going out at night with the boys and waking up in the morning with the men.” Adams is a former police captain, who hates the idea of the city being run from behind a screen. He will not grant us the indulgence of “wallowing” in covid. But he’s also a vegan. And just like he expects everyone else to, he puts himself out there — he is everywhere, whether it be for emergencies or meet and greets.

While de Blasio had a police escort drop him off at a gym 11 miles from his home, Adams is seen frequently riding the subway.

This constantly being out and about has not proven without consequence. Adams has tested positive for Covid in the past week, in the aftermath of the horrifying April 12th subway shooting. The attack, which left 29 wounded and ten shot, saw a 62-year-old man unleash a barrage of bullets on passengers from a Glock 17 pistol.

He also set off smoke grenades on the train. The suspect was captured roughly a day after the shooting, after calling in the tip on himself. From a makeshift media center in Gracie Mansion, Adams responded swiftly and concisely: “We will not allow New Yorkers to be terrorized, even by a single individual.”

The incident comes a couple months after Adams released a nine-point Subway Safety Plan, which placed

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By Priya Banerjee

more officers within stations and brought about roughly 256,000 subway inspections. Furthermore, Adams has also created a Blueprint Against Gun Violence and launched Neighborhood Safety Teams, either of which focus on locating the source of guns and “empowering violence interrupters.” He implemented a new Citywide Crime and Quality of Life Enforcement Initiative, which focused on the 17 precincts that account for nearly half of the city’s shootings. In short, Adams—since day one—has been firm with his initiative to fight crime. This has made him a source of controversy not just over whether these tactics “work,” but the ethics that inspire them. Many are concerned that Adams’ tactics will bring about a return to broken-window style policing (i.e. enforcement of lowerlevel offenses to prevent more serious crimes), a method that was popular under Giuliani’s notorious reign in the 90s.

Furthermore, in the wake of the pandemic, gun crime has been concentrated in communities hit hardest by the virus: that is, low income and minority communities. Instead of focusing efforts around these communities, Adams has made lofty appeals for “all of us” to help in stopping the violence. He negates the momentous class discrepancy between those most affected by this violence: white collar workers who still work at home can create walls between themselves and these gross acts. Not everyone has that privilege.

On a different though not unrelated note, Adams garnered lots of attention last month with his initiative to remove homeless encampments from New York City streets. While Adams claimed to the NY Times “We’re going to rid the encampments off our street and we’re going to place people in healthy living conditions with wraparound services,” only the former part of that promise

Oberlin’s Break Mistakes:

An Interview with Makayla Riggins

Reggie Goudeau Staff Writer

I’ve already given my two cents on what it’s like to stay in Oberlin during a break in the Review. Sadly, not much has changed since then, and I’m back to reveal more of the College’s numerous failures. I was at home in Warren, OH during this break, but I’ve interviewed my partner Makayla Riggins who remained here.

At first, I asked them if Oberlin had any policies or changes that helped students like them during Spring Break? Their response was not positive, to say the least. They said, “No. There was a lot that was the opposite. ‘Cause none of the food was open, and there just wasn’t a lot of options to do stuff. It kinda just felt like they forgot about us. We couldn’t even get into Wilder until 9:00 am, even though they said it would be open at 7:00 am. It really just felt like they forgot about us.”

Makayla and I had issues getting food while incubated here with COVID, so it’s disappointing that this hasn’t improved many months later.

When I mentioned my next question, Makayla did not have much better to say. I asked if Oberlin communicated effectively with students about available services and changes to existing ones. They claimed, “Absolutely not. I had no idea what was open and when it was open for the dining halls.” Makayla mentioned, “For some places, they didn’t put up anything until they started serving food.” They added,“The mailroom was closed on the Thursday of break, and you had to go there to find out.” This pattern was similar when Makayla attempted to access most buildings during their time here.

I went on to ask them what the best and worst parts of their stay were. That conversation was as follows: “The best parts were I didn’t have work, like schoolwork, which is cool. The worst part was I felt like my break was wasted because there wasn’t any activities, and there was nothing to do. You’d go get your food and then go home.” Amid all of this, Makayla was also alone in their house for the most part.

I then questioned if they came out of break rested at all, but their words here speak for themselves. “No. Not having work was cool, but being alone while not having work kinda defeats the purpose. It’s like, instead of being overwhelmed with school and everything else in your life, you have to be isolated and figure stuff out that way, which is so much better.”

When asked what Oberlin could have done differently, Makayla simply said, “Plan activities for the week for the people that are here, and have more facilities like just the food, have more options, or just be open longer.”

I ended the interview by asking for their general closing thoughts, and they were similar to what’s already been said. Makayla stated, “I’m just kinda disappointed overall. I feel like Oberlin should do more to help students who are stuck on campus during the breaks.

It’s not fair, especially for people who want to go home but end up stuck being alone still.”

By Ila Astin

Eric Adams continued seems to have come through. Never did Adams specify where those living in the encampments would go, nor can public officials force anyone to go to a homeless shelter.

The reality of the situation is that encampment sweeps do infinitely more harm than good. The city’s Progressive Caucus had a particular word to describe them: “cruel.”

Meanwhile, while New York City’s homeless population feels under attack, Adams has pushed for a 20% cut to the Department of Homeless Services.

Adams stepped into office full of abundant promise. Much of this seemed to stem from an image that was ostensibly the opposite of de Blasio’s; he was confident, articulate, assertive, and stylish. He promised

transformatie change to the city—something that now feels all too familiar. Yes, it has only been three months since Adams’ inauguration, but the trends that we see here point to an alarming reality: “swagger” is not enough to save a city when under its veil lie justifications for cruelty and, some would say, even sadism. Adams’ posturing as a tough-on-crime masculine reformist has done little good for those whom he aims to “protect.” Meanwhile, homeless encampments are being swept off the street with little concern for legitimate protection of homeless individuals. Even if its surface is more appealing to us, Adam’s routine is just as performative as de Blasio’s—and perhaps, even more dangerous, because, with its flairs of

self assurance, it is not so easily mocked. Adams is full of tweetable phrases; he wants to “get stuff done.” But we must reflect on what these pithy ambiguities really mean.

Who does Adams really serve? Ostensibly, it is New York as a whole—and I do think the Mayor means that—but this is just another vagary. Another justification for force and excessivity. Adams himself has said that he is focused on the “perception of crime” as much as “crime itself.” Let us not confuse the two — our perceptions so often deceive us, and come from biases that ought to be unlearned, niot indulged.

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Review

Yung Lean returns with new album Stardust Emma Kang Staff Writer Yung Lean is a Swedish rapper, singer, and songwriter who first became popular back in 2013. He garnered his following through Youtube, Tumblr, and Soundcloud and is attributed to be one of the founding figures of “cloud rap.”

Cloud rap is essentially lo-fi rap with a picture of a fairy made out of lightning on the song cover. It’s usually somewhat digital, floaty, and chill. His songs “Ginseng Strip 2002” and “Kyoto” blew up in 2013 and have made their way to being viral TikTok audios within the past few months.. He recently put out an album Stardust that has brought him back into the limelight once again.

A big part of Yung Lean’s appeal to American audiences is the fact that he’s not American, even though he raps in English and is obsessed with American culture. His early videos feature American brands including Gatorade, Coca Cola, Arizona Ice Tea, Oreos, and North Face. He said that the American audience was more accepting than the Swedish, which seems to be why he has so fully embraced the American consumer lifestyle.

I’ve been seeing Yung Lean come in and out of relevancy every few years since I was in high school. With his popularity rising on TikTok alongside the release of Stardust, I feel like he’s back on the radar. It’s weird he hasn’t changed what he’s doing over the past nine years, and yet his aesthetic of sadboy white rap has maintained its cult following. Overall, I thought the new album was pretty good. About half of the songs held my attention, while the rest I thought were kind of a wash. The first song on the album, titled “Bliss,” stands apart from the rest of the album. It features FKA Twigs, but sounds just like a Grimes song. It’s way poppier than the rest of his music, with the cutesy synth beat and FKA Twigs adding a fairy-girl vibe to the track. I really liked this song, rip off of Grimes or not. It’s different from the rest of his discography while still maintaining the elements that he’s really known for.

The music video for “Bliss” was equally captivating.

It was directed by Aidan Zamiri, who worked as the creative director for FKA Twigs’ album Caprisongs. The video is all about movement: Yung Lean picks up FKA Twigs in a car with two chandeliers attached to the front, they ride horses, there’s bikes, there’s a couch strapped to a truck. She’s wearing a wedding dress and he’s wearing an ugly purple T-shirt, and the whole thing looks like it was shot on VHS tape. Because the song is more upbeat that a lot of Yung Lean’s other music, the video has a lot of energy, and there’s a surprising amount of chemistry between the two artists. The video feels like a true collaboration between the two artists’ respective styles and work.

I don’t know if this new album means that Yung Lean is finally taking his music in a new direction, but his brief stint with FKA Twigs was a welcome, albeit unexpected change. I think the whole ‘drain-boy’ clique is on its way out, and I would love to see him fully embrace this new direction Stardust brought to the table. The genre of music associated with Drain Gang was considered innovative when it was brand new way back in 2012, but ten years later it seems like nothing more than a response to pop and hardcore scenes. Nowadays, any old idiot with a computer can do what Yung Lean does. I think that there’s better music that’s being made that can still be assigned to that same aesthetic without sacrificing musicality.

Maybe Yung Lean is trying to save his Swedish ass and is using FKA Twigs as his lifeline to mainstream popularity, because I think this genre is on its last leg.

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Review

Thoughts on Charli XCX Emma Kang Staff Writer Charli XCX is a British singer songwriter who, over the past decade, has become one the world’s biggest pop-stars. She is most known for making music in the genres of electro-pop, hyper pop, dance pop, experimental pop, and every other niche-pop genre you can think of. Her rise to fame began after she posted some of her music to Myspace and playing small shows around Essex, and her popularity has since grown exponentially.

She shared a tweet claiming credit for the creation of hyper-pop and hyper-pop adjacent styles, saying: “i transcend genres, but i also helped create one. it’s very impressive.” It would be a mistake to ignore Charli XCX as an important player in the popularization of dance music over the past few years, but Charli XCX does not

transcend genres and she definitely did not create a new one.

Hyperpop began in the early 2010’s and is often associated with artists signed on the PC Music label, which Charli XCX was previously signed on. Many songs on her last three albums were produced by A.G. Cook, the founder of PC Music. Her song “Vroom Vroom,” arguably her best, was produced by Sophie. Despite her close ties to the artists at the frontlines of the hyper-pop genre, I would argue that Charli XCX is not a hyperpop artist. She simply got involved with the best musicians in the genre at the right moment in time. Charli is a great songwriter who can make a catchy chorus that is perfectly palatable to tamer listeners. Her music is a diluted version of the true hyper-pop artists that might not be

Charli XCX continued appealing to the larger listening public. Her lack of intensity makes her the perfect hyper-pop poster-child catered towards mainstream audiences; even your parents can handle listening to her music. She didn’t transcend and create a genre, she simplified one that already existed.

Charli was crowned the princess of eclectic dance pop after her self titled album came out in 2019. Six months later, she put out another entire album titled How I’m Feeling Now which was one of the first pandemic projects to be put out by a mainstream artist. On both albums, she figured out the pop song recipe and tweaked it in some interesting ways. However, her newest album, Crash, disappointingly lacks any expansion on her original pop-song recipe. I thought it all mostly sounded the same and wasn’t even that much fun to dance to. Crash confirms her ability to write a song, but exposes her lack of vision and ingenuity, and I’m not sure why everyone is eating it up.

Maybe I’m just being a hater, but for the most part I think Charli XCX is boring. I never understand what people are talking about when they say she’s an “icon.” To bestow the title of icon upon her is a little delusional, in my opinion, and it says more about the lackluster star-power in our current batch of celebrities than it does about her. She reacted incredibly appropriately to a cultural moment three years ago and is still getting rewarded for it now. I don’t think her music or image will be important in years to come. Another important aspect of her devoted fanbase and supposed icon-status is that she’s not just considered an icon, but she’s considered a gay icon. Does any bitch wearing a little outfit who makes dance music become a gay icon? Is that all it takes? Come on. If we really need a straight white women for a gay icon, Charli XCX is terrible excuse for one.

What ever happened to Lady Gaga?

I sometimes feel confused as to why Charli XCX is as famous as she is.

The conclusion that I’ve come to is that Charli XCX is a great songwriter, but she does not have the “It” factor. She certainly contributed to making something really fun, really popular, because she’s normal as hell. She lacks her own creative initiative and is depending on other people to tell her what’s cool.

Some of her music is worth the hype, but she herself rarely lives up to it. To me, lack of charisma does not make an icon, but I’m glad you guys love it.

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Hey Review, You Thought That Was Bullying?

by Bad Habits Corp You guys really think our silly wittle Onionstyle satirical memes about your precious articles was “ragging on the Review for years”?

You think we don’t like you because you guys are “stuck up, by the book, normcore” narcs?

Oh well, then you guys have it all wrong. Have you ever thought maybe we don’t like you cuz ur pussy smell. Rancid ass pussy. That is one musty, dusty, rusty pussy you guys have.

Sometimes when I pick up the Review, some of your residual ancient pussy dust gets all over my clothes and I have to be like “damn should I miss class and go home to change, or should I just smell like nasty rotten pussy all day?” I’ve missed so much class because of this, I might not even get to graduate! You guys “would never publish [what the Grape publishes] in a million years?” Well we would never have that biohazardous pussy stench that you guys have in a million years. Real bold of some foul pussy ass publication to make a whole Grape parody *cue Mariah Carey’s Obsessed* and write a nasty little editor’s note, and just expect us to not bring up what everyone’s thinking: Damn is this the Grape? Wait no! Fuck! I just got some of that nauseating absolutely vile pussy dust on me!

Smells like the Review!

So yeah next time you wanna write about how the Grape is tormenting you, please quote this article. <3 Us Well I gtg or I’ll be late to my scissoring sesh with the Synapse!

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In Defense of Morbius.

By Guy on the Jared Leto Cult Island There’s a line right at the beginning of Morbius that I think gets to the heart of where it stands in the landscape of modern cinema: “like the original Spartans, we are the few… against the many.”

Truly, it’s easy to succumb to the rote mechanisms of mainstream monoculture, which eagerly latches onto entry-level boilerplate cinema while refusing to engage with art that is even slightly more challenging. Already, the entrenched bastions of cinema have laid their judgements on Morbius: according to their feeble, underdeveloped criticisms, the film is “bad,” “visually incoherent,” “completely unbearable to sit through” not to mention “thematically about as deep as a kiddie pool.”

But, to us Morb-heads who understand true cinema, who possess a truly comprehensive, fully fleshed-out understanding of the cinematic medium, the truth is evident: Morbius is the single greatest film of all time. Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Pulp Fiction? Move over. In no small words, everyone involved in these movies should kill themselves. None of these movies had a biochemist who accidentally becomes a vampire trying to cure an unnamed blood disease. None of them had another guy who also became a vampire, but instead of the first guy who’s all guilty and horrified and full of internal struggle or whatever, his whole deal is that he’s evil so he thinks that being a vampire rocks.

No one in any of these movies is more fuckable than Dr. Michael Morbius, even if he isn’t James Caan and never puts on one of those hot little gimp suits.

For the past two weeks, I have not merely seen Morbius. In between yoga classes amongst the trees, occasional siestas in the Adriatic sea, and lengthy praise sessions in The Chamber, I have lived Morbius. Breathed Morbius. Felt Morbius within my soul. On a particularly weird night — at The Chamber — I think I made torrid, unconscionably disgusting love to Morbius. (Frankly, I think I’ve killed to

By Levi Dayan

Morbius. Either that, or Sven finally managed to steal one of the sex-only dinghys and row back into international waters. In which case, good for him. The ayahuasca blurs everything together here.)

On Mars Island, a peaceful resort for fans of Thirty Seconds to Mars in Croatia, Morbius is all we watch. The locals — what we call the teenage girls that live here yearround — seem to enjoy it better than the movie they played before this one, House of Gucci.

Jared Leto’s performance is one of the greatest character transformations in cinematic history, but I think Lady Gaga’s schtick gets boring. I much prefer Morbius anyway, which saves us the Ridley Scott bullshit and lets us see Leto in his full glory as an artist and performer. His performance is excellent in that it conveys the breadth of emotions within a man’s internal struggle: sometimes he’s brooding and maudlin;

Morbius continued sometimes he’s dour; sometimes, he’s a bloodsucking vampire.

Truly, Morbius hinges on Leto’s juggernaut display, which elevates it from mere masterpiece to — in an attempt to avoid flowery verbiage whenever possible — a life-changing spiritual revelation captured on film, an unending accomplishment of the highest order, a cinematic equivalent to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. (We’re actually trying to do a version of the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of The Chamber — sadly, we’re wildly disorganized, our ladders keep breaking, and we’ve had to come to terms with the fact that none of us know how to realistically paint Leto in his nude physical form, no matter how long he poses for us. As of writing, 11 12 people have died from head trauma after getting hit with falling paintbrushes.)

Through every moment, it is Leto’s sheer gravitas imbuing the film with a raw, virile energy. Some have called the graphic sex scene between him and co-star Matt Smith “disturbing” and “borderline pornographic,” but quite frankly, it’s child’s play compared to an average service at The Chamber.

(EDIT: I am just receiving information that this insane and terrifying sex scene was cut out of US theatrical releases.

Hopefully, the Shout!

Factory 4K release amends this within the next few years.) His performance is rich with pathos, allowing the resilience of catchphrases like “it’s Morbin’ time” or “are you Morbin’ me

right now?” to resonate even at the film’s darkest moments.

Of course, Leto’s only as good as the material he’s working with, and fortunately, the writing and action direction are absolutely pitch-perfect through every emotional beat.

When he’s cornered by a swarm of inner-city youths trying to mob (Morb?) him to death, after attempting to reason to them with an eloquent speech that — much like the mass he delivers before our nightly Eyes Wide Shut-style orgy at The Chamber — furiously rails against age of consent laws in Croatia (it’s 15), he’s forced to resort to violence, a combat rendered in staggeringly blurry CGI that nearly moved me to tears before actually moving me to a splitting migraine. The film is a physical, visceral thing you can feel in your stomach, almost like the knife that Leto eagerly threatens every new guest to Mars Island with mostly as a form of hierarchy establishing and boundary setting, though he is apparently also into it from a sexual standpoint.

Quite frankly, it’s one of the most powerful things I’ve ever seen. Every single time I watch Morbius, I’m overwhelmed, practically beaten senseless by its brilliance, by how prominently it stands at the forefront of cinema. It’s easy to loathe something you don’t understand — I, personally, loathe the nightly whippings that Jared Leto administers to each member of the island before the aforementioned Eyes Wide Shut-style orgy

This is The Oberlin Grape’s recurring 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 how to position yourself so you can fart into the nostrils while simultaneously pooping into your lover’s mouth, feel free to reach out to Dr. Gags by emailing thegrape@oberlin.edu

Dear Dr. Gags, I love my boyfriend but his art is terrible and I don’t want anyone to see it and judge me. Should I destroy his work? Or blind all of my friends and associates?

Sincerely, Embarrassedgirlf Dearest Embarrassedgirlf, Thanks for writing in, sweetcakes. If it’s any consolation to you, I too have dated a healthy amount of idiot male artists. I have found, throughout my decades and decades of dating around (plus my seven years as a Coital Studies major at Lewis & Clark…), that this is an unavoidable problem. When I was lesbian in the 80s and in a 7-year open relationship with Andy Warhol, he often made pieces that embarrassed me greatly. Even so, I stuck by him!

Until he made that soup can sh*t. Then I knew I just couldn’t be seen with him anymore. See babeypants, everyone has a breaking point, a dealbreaker.

How much are you willing to take? And yes, you could definitely go the route of destroying his life’s work (like I tried with Andy’s), but the fingerprints always lead back to the lover! Try this: next time he’s working on a new project, tell him it’s incredibly ugly and you’re going to leave him if he doesn’t make something beautiful. Worked for me a few times! Good luck.

Xoxo, Gagatha Dear Dr. Gags, I recently got back together with my ex and forgave them for accidentally killing my cat on their rollerblades. The problem is now they keep writing poetry about me and posting it on Instagram. They think that their emotional vulnerability is why we got back together but really it’s because I was bored and horny. What do I do??

Love, Edgar Allen Ho (sometimes Tom Cruise is there) — but an open mind understands that, in the end, this is all for a greater good. Sitting through Morbius, quite honestly, is like getting shot in the head over and over again, but you just won’t die and you have to feel every bullet as it explodes through your brain, over and over again.

It is the greatest thing I have experienced in my piece of shit life, and if my white robes aren’t out of the wash soon, I’ll probably have to go and see it again. Please help.

Dear Edgar Allen Ho, Well first off, it was an accident baby! They should be comforting you! Okay now on to the real meat of this bone, you are sad because you’re getting too much attention?

Boo hoo! Cry me a river! See you wouldn’t know this because I don’t talk about it ever, like I literally never namedrop, unless it’s at a dinner party, a high school reunion, a shiva, an adult piano recital, or really any place where there are other people breathing or choking, but many songs are actually about me. I am Sharona of “My Sharona.” Delilah of “Hey There Delilah.” Roxanne of “Roxanne.” The sweetest of Carolines. And yeah, Olivia Rodrigo reeeally has it out for this blonde girl who always made her doubt. This is because, yes, I always lie to men because, what, is it illegal now or something? So I mean if being a bored and horny liar sounds like a bad gig, then you are talking to the wrong bitch. So what if you fuck a few one hit wonders, and history books (music blogs) write about you for literal centuries….wait…. Do you hear that? That’s the tiniest violin I’m playing. Because, being famous is awesome and has no consequences. This question is such a non-problem, you should really be paying me for wasting my time! Obviously, just cheat and keep cheating until every song I listen to on my bluetooth headphones is about you.

Au Revoir!, Gagatha

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What’s good, everyone? Ya boi is back for another edition of Reggie’s Ridiculous Reviews. Today imma be ranking each game in Wii Sports based on their controls, depth, and enjoyment. Each one finna get a score between one and five Miis. I ain’t covering training mode or the Fitness Gauge here, but I might make a follow-up piece about those modes if this is popular. With allat bein said,

let’s begin with number five.

5.

BOXING

Ion think any part of Wii Sports is objectively bad, but boxing is still this game’s weakest link. This mode is perfect for releasing stress after a long day of classes and work. The dodging mechanic works well and is a satisfying move to pull off against friends or CPUs. The punches also be relatively accurate, even if blocking em ain’t as easy. Besides these factors, though, this mode is kind of a mess.

The worst aspect of this game gotta be the knockout system. You can see your health throughout the match, but you only got 10 seconds to get cho ass up if it goes down completely. Whether you get up or not ain’t consistent, and I’m not sure if moving the Wii Remote and Nunchuck helps. I can’t help but feel robbed if I lost after one knockdown while my opponent gets up three fuckin times. Don’t even get me started on the resident menace of this game; Matt. Those who know this man rarely live to tell the tale, but I refuse to take those many Ls without a fight. What was I talking about again? Oh yeah; Boxing’s issues bring the sport down to two hooks to the jaw outta five.

4.

BASEBALL

Spot number four goes to Baseball and is admittedly the game I’m the worst at in the collection. I can pitch well enough, but scoring points here is harder than this semester. Imma talk about both perspectives, but I gotta start with how I be smokin niggas as the pitcher. You can throw four kinds of balls at your foe in that position; a screwball, curveball, splitter, and fastball. The splitter is the hardest to hit, but it also don’t count as a strike if the batter ain’t swingin. The game also makes em turn into fastballs more often if you spam, so use the trick with caution.

The splitters I mentioned earlier be the hardest to manage when you batting, but seeing enough of em helps out. Eventually, you’ll be able to not swing by force and get a “ball” instead. Getting four of deez gives you a free walk to first base. Technicalities aside, my main problem with batting is how little control you have over scoring. Unless you can hit consistent home runs, it’s up to chance whether the other team’s AI players play like first graders or professionals. This gets really annoying when you’re getting decent hits, but the opps be jumping or sliding all over the place to ruin yo greatness. I could’ve sworn I saw Matt catch a ball right by the stands just to fuckin spite too. Anyways deez niggas also rarely be hitting those moves whenever I’m pitching, which only frustrates me more. Despite its flaws, Baseball is a fun game with a lil more to offer than Boxing. Imma give this one three strikes outta five.

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3.

GOLF

Third place goes to Golf, and it’s my pick for the most underrated game outta the five available. If real golf is anything like this, maybe I need to take my ass to puttputt and practice. Golf has some of the most exciting mechanics compared to other games in Wii Sports, and these additions give the game a surprising amount of longevity. I like the wind not only for accuracy but also since it adds one more factor for you to consider when making a shot besides your club. Speaking of clubs, you can pick between three during your session. The driver hits the ball the farthest but usually isn’t great for closer shots. If I gotta hit the ball real far, I just pretend it’s Matt’s chrome dome. The iron club is my personal favorite since it works well while not sacrificing control as much. The putter is good for shots close to the hole but also is finicky as fuck when it comes to how much power you use. I could tap the ball by barely moving the remote, and it would still go past the hole almost every time. Thankfully, the game lets you take as many practice swings as needed before holding down the A button to confirm your actual one. I might not be ranking this so high if that weren’t the case, but regardless, it’s an entertaining game. I give Golf 3 swings outta five, along with a free plastic putter from Family Dollar.

2.

BOWLING

In second place, imma have to go with Bowling since it is a classic game well-known by many. The number of times I’ve played this with friends, siblings, and myself exceeds how long I’ve bowled on actual teams. The game ain’t got the most depth in the world, but sometimes simple is effective. All you do in this mode is trying to hit as many pins as possible in 10 frames. Even, in reality, throwing a ball down a lane ain’t complicated, and the game still makes it more accessible. Not feeling the

weight of an actual bowling ball makes this a lot easier by default, and the red sight line your character sees when you’re aiming helps too. You only got arrows, dots, and vibes to line up yo shot in real bowling, whereas this game primes you to get higher scores than average. If I had this sorta magic in real life, I’d be throwing strikes left and right.

Anyways, you can adjust your shot’s speed, foot placement, and the angle you throw it at in Wii Bowling.

You can also curve the ball slightly or heavily depending on how much you twist the Wii Remote left or right during your backswing. These options are great independently, and each adds more depth to the game when combined. I always have fun showing my niggas the trick shots I’ve perfected here, and I’m glad to find new angles and shots even today. Replaying it makes me wanna go bowling again down at the lanes and reminisce about simpler times. Nostalgia aside, this game is genuinely really compelling and entertaining. Matt chose not to invade my safe space during this game, and that was a wise decision. I would’ve hit a strike by throwing him down the lane if he popped out. My unhinged behavior aside, I’m giving this one four strikes outta five.

1.

GOLF

Finally, I think Tennis is the best game on Wii Sports.

Tennis and Bowling were closely matched, but the intensity of Tennis, combined with how the AI grows with time, gives it the edge for me. Tennis has you controlling 2 Miis at once (unless you get a CPU player or friends) to fight off your opponents. Every aspect of this game requires quick thinking and good reflexes. Even Bowling and Baseball couldn’t pull that off consistently. Bowling was slightly too clunky, and although dodging punches like Neo is fun, it ain’t this. Baseball gives you a taste of this when batting, but pitching is so much easier in com-

Levi Dayan’s Hot Takes and Wild Predictions Compendium: Here’s who the expert says is coming to Solarity Readers of The Grape, welcome to a new recurring* feature in The Grape in which I, the Editor-in-Chief of The Grape, impart my wisdom in the fields of hot takes and crazy predictions onto the readers. Using my powerful insights, I was able to foresee the list of potential performers at the upcoming Solarity concert. After having successfully predicted the Great Mudd Shaving Incident of 2018, the Great Hand Foot and Mouth Outbreak of 2020, and both the announcement and cancellation of Smino as the headliner for last semester’s Solarity, my expertise in predicting the future has been well established, and now that I have an outlet to share it, I’ll be fuckin damned if anyone’s gonna stop me from sharing my prophecies. Anyways I hope you like these bands and artists, because they’re coming to town whether you like it or not!!!

ART GARFUNKEL The Simon & Garfunkel frontman is considered one of the frontrunners in the race to headline Solarity this semester. His angelic vocals, warm sense of humor and rich sex appeal have all coalesced to make him an obvious choice for the Solarity bookers. And keep an eye out for a cameo from his creepy looking son!

RINGO STARR’S ALL-STAR BAND Believe it or not, this music legend was all set to perform Solarity a few years ago, but the Great Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020 put a stop to those plans. Whether or not the Jews were involved in this cancellation has yet to be determined, but it doesn’t matter because the Starrman just might be performing at Solarity after all! My visions of the future tell me that if Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band were to perform at Solarity, they would add to their rotating cast of music legends - which in the past has included Grank Funk Railroad conducter Mark Farner, Eagles guitar god Joe Walsh, and the guy from Men At Work members from Oberlin’s hottest bands. So get ready to see Ringo backed by members of bands like Winebox, Hot Sperm Bobby and Cud Dad. Peace and love!

DEAD & COMPANY & COMPANY And here is the moment where my fortune telling prowess knocks everyone’s ass into their balls. The

music world was recently devastated by reports that Dead & Company’s spring 2022 tour would be their last, and then confused when said reports were seemingly refuted by swole king Bob Weir. The truth is that no one knows the truth… except for me. And that truth is that Dead & Company will be over after their spring 2022 tour, but much like a phoenix rises from the ashes, Dead & Company & Company will emerge from the rotting corpse of the previous band. Just as the band Dead & Company originated from the concerts celebrating the 50th anniversary of the vastly inferior band Grateful Dead, Dead & Company & Company will form to celebrate seven whole years of Dead & Company. And just as Dead & Company featured original members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann along with some newer members of the Dead family, Dead & Company & Company will feature founding Dead & Company members Oteil Burbridge, Jeff Chimenti and foundational Delta Blues guitar player John Mayer alongside some fresh faces, including Everlast, the Sugar Ray guy, and Machine Gun Kelly. Considering Oberlin’s long and storied history as a hotspot for Mayer-heads, it only makes sense that Dead & Company & Company would make their grand debut at Solarity. *The Grape cannot confirm this claim

Art by Eva Sturm-Gross

parison; it’s equivalent to a break.

In Tennis, you can’t get caught lacking at any moment; otherwise, you finna lose the volley. I played Tennis for two years, and the tension I felt when playing out a point with lots of back and forth is eerily similar to what I’d experience in actual matches. The AI gets very tough after you turn pro and will consistently ace you (give you a fast serve) even with all the prep in the world. Even with these challenges, I rarely felt cheated except during a few points. The only major issue I’d say this mode has is that you can’t control your Mii’s running speed. I’ve lost too many rounds to my team member (myself) being a damn slowpoke. I need my niggas to be in sync so I can aim for Matt’s left eye more consistently.

Still, this is the most fantastic game in Wii Sports and earns 4.5 Miis outta five and a Gold Medal.

Even if not every mini-game here is perfect, Wii

Sports is still a classic up there with the likes of Mario 64 or Crash Bandicoot. It seems simple, but the fact that many friends I’ve invited to the crib love to boot this up every time proves how this shit got longevity. Even the enemies I made in my playthrough keep me coming back. I don’t have to beat that bastard Matt anytime soon, and maybe having an unbeatable opponent will keep me on my toes. If I ever see someone that looks like that nigga on the street tho, I can’t guarantee boxing will stay virtual for long.

Reggie Goudeau Staff Writer

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By Reggie Goudeau

Rock Shortage Leaves Rock Climbers in Shambles

Juli Freedman Bad Habits Editor

This week, the National Commission of Rocks and Minerals hosted a press conference announcing their new findings about the rock shortage. They predicted that by 2024 they will cease to make more rocks, and that by 2036 there may be no rocks. The rock climbing community has relied on rocks for their sport, which involves climbing rocks. This decline in rocks has led to the popularity of rock climbing gyms with plastic neon rocks charading around as real rocks. We sent our resident “One Time I Boned A Rock Climber” Guy, Juli Freedman, on the scene to see how the rock climbing community has been reckoning with the news.

can’t cry anymore tears. I have cried them all.

FOSSIL FRANK: Yeah, I haven’t slept in days. No rocks?

No life.

MM: I have the same condition. Are we supposed to climb the same rocks? And then just climb, no rocks?

MOUNTAIN MARTHA: Man, there used to be so many rocks.

Now what do we do?

JF: I see that this is an especially emotional topic so let me know if you need a tissue or anything.

FF: I have cried so much over this that I now have a medical condition where I physically

JF: Oh wow

FF: And fake rocks, wow they do not compare to the real thing. I was supposed to Free Solo this summer.

JF: That’s a big undertaking FF: But then I decided that it would be too hard and I got nervous. You know ever since the movie came out, kids have

been rock climbing like crazy.

They go crazy for Free Solo guy.

How do I tell a child that there will be no rocks by the time they get out of diapers?

MM: Kids go kookoo bananas for Free Solo guy. There are feral children running up and down the street trying to climb anything in sight. And I will be like “here is a rope,” and I look at their possessed faces as they paw at my face and say “NO! FREE SOLO FOREVER BITCH!”

Art by Anna Sophia Abundis

JULI FREEDMAN: Thanks for meeting with me, I know this news has taken a real toll on your community.

JF: That’s been a big problem here too.

FF: I don’t know how we are supposed to satiate the kid’s hunger for free-soloing when they aren’t making any more rocks. And don’t you dare bring up the gyms. I think Big Gym paid NCRM [National Commission of Rocks and Mineral] off so they could keep making fake rocks and get away with it MM: I heard they are starting to make fake rocks to look like real rocks FF: *violently throws up* JF: Not on my new Heavin by MarK Jacub!

FF: I’m so sorry *keep throwing up but even more violently* MM: Wait, Frank, is that what I think. . .

MM: What do you have to say for yourself you filthy rock eater? What do you have to say to the free solo children!

JF: Oh my! it’s ROCKS!

JF: Is that the grand canyon???

MM: FRANK YOU’VE BEEN EATING ALL THE ROCKS!?!!

FF: I am so sorry. I just wanted every rock in the world. I didn’t know it would cause a national shortage.

FF: *just keeps yakking up a storm* JF: Well in Shaggy McScooby

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fashion, ruh roh I think we caught the bad guy!

MM: One question.

FF: Yeah my dear friend Martha.

MM: Can you really not cry anymore?

FF: *slowly shakes head* no MM: You son of a bitch JF: Well this whole thing was very funny to me and I stand by this article.

Art by Eva Sturm-Gross

Getting Ready for Hot Girl Summer 2022!

Isabel Hardwig Contributor It’s been a week since it snowed, people are throwing Frisbees in circles, and I just cut my toenails for the first time in 3 months, so summer is RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER here at Oberlin College!

I was really excited to have a hot girl summer.

It feels like all my friends are constantly talking about their hot girl summers and other things that sound like a really productive use of the warmer months. So you can imagine my disappointment when I learned that this summer my hometown’s going to have a huge uptick in supervillains, and all of their villainous speeches will include commonly-misused words like “irregardless” and “inflammable.” Sorry to break it to you, gang, but it looks like this one’s gonna be another WordGirl summer for me.

I’m upset about this too, believe me. Historically, most of my summers have followed the same patterns. Take a look at these figures.

HOT GIRL SUMMERS: 0 WORDGIRL SUMMERS: 19

Those are some severely imbalanced statistics.

In fact, some would say that my WordGirl summers are kind of eating into the space that should be allotted for hot girl summers. I’m right there with you. My goal was to even out these categories a bit, and maybe even start a new chapter of my life where I could have majority hot girl summers with few, if any, WordGirl summers.

I’m really not as passionate about WordGirl summers as I used to be. When I was a kid, there was nothing better than running around in a cape all day, telling local kids to listen hard for the word “flabbergasted” because I was going to use the word “flabbergasted” at least twice and they better be listening or they were never going to learn how to read. But these days it’s kind of like, whatever, you know? If people want to say “poisonous” when they really mean “venomous,” I think they should be allowed to. It’s a free country. And if they want to rob a bank while doing it? Oh my god, be my guest.

Those things are insured. Literally nothing will even happen to them. (See how I just used “literally” when talking about something nonliteral? I’m fine with doing that now, because I’m an adult).

I’m not denying that some parts of WordGirl summers still have their charm. I’ve got nothing against educating children about words. I’m still a big fan of

words, and I use them every day. Kristen Schaal was in 8 episodes of WordGirl between 2010 and 2015, so that’s pretty fun. You never know when Kristen Schaal is going to pop up on an IMDB page, and it’s always exciting.

But at some point the WordGirl summers have to start winding down, you know? When you see a 10-year-old having a WordGirl summer, it’s always a good time, but a grown woman having a WordGirl summer is just not that cute. Maybe you’d start wondering why WordGirl hasn’t gotten a real job yet, or if there isn’t anything better she could be doing like, I don’t know, having a hot girl summer for once.

My parents keep saying to me, “everyone has a lot of WordGirl summers before they have any hot girl summers, it’s just something you have to get through.”

But it really seems like I’m the only one who’s having WordGirl summers, and most of the people I’ve talked to have never had a single WordGirl summer. It feels like the burden of WordGirl summers is pretty consistently falling on me, and I think I’ve had more than my fair share of them. If you want to have a WordGirl summer, be my guest. I’ll give you the cape myself. There’s only three words that I want to use this summer, and they’re bang, screw, and boink.

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Art by Dalia Tomilchik

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april

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crossword ACROSS

1. A sad tale asking for your sympathy 10. Curdling does this to your milk 11. Do this to a wrinkled shirt 12. You can’t do this under oath 14. A strategy board game of territory and conquest 15. Close this after a night out 17. Kroger’s stock market abbreviation 18. Contingency phrase 19. SLAC is fighting to raise these 21. A number and color based card game 23. Lovelace who is considered the first computer programmer 24. Computer boss 26. Man who recently switched careers from actor to murderer 29. Copper on the periodic table 30. A text confession 32. Part of the brain that connects the thalamus to the medulla oblongata 33. 2001s AI 35. The comeback of corded headphones is making these go out of style 37. Risky medical procedure and mockumentary 39. Where cowboys call home

DOWN

1. Font, can follow ‘sans’ 2. Marsupial that likes to play dead 3. Phrase meaning to expect with certainty that something will happen 4. Abbr. accommodation for spectators after all seats are filled 5. Pulled tight 6. Canadian capital 7. Indicating response over email 8. Abbr. French fashion house 9. Homer drinks these 10. The woman who lives in your phone 13. Goes with Mike on the candy 16. Someone of poor character, rotten fruit 20. Multiple clumsy people 22. Paid to get out of jail 24. Sound that receives a ‘bless you’ 25. Singer Lipa

27. “The nightly news starts at 8PM and ____ __ 9PM.” 28. Cybersecurity Service Provider abbr.

31. Rear 34. Licensed Social Worker Abbreviation 36. Uncooked 38. A number celebrated on March 14th

Done already?

Check your answers on pg. 6 27

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