MARCH 9 2018

OBERLIN’S STUDENT CULTURE MAGAZINE READ ONLINE AT THEOBERLINGRAPE.COM

VOL. 18, NO. 9 MARCH 8, 2018

EST. 1999

Editors-in-Chief Jake Berstein Luke Fortney Managing Editor Eddy Tumbokon Content Editor Devin McMahon Molly Bryson Brian Smith Juan Contreras

Production Editor Hannah Berk Gabe Schneier Ella Causer Leora Swerdlow

Copy Editor Benjamin Silverman Olive Sherman Keerthi Sridharan Rian Szende

Staff Writers Ian Feather Gio Donovan Leah Treidler Sam Schuman

Photo Editor Em Webster Web Editor Ezra Goss

If ObieHub is a Litmus Test, We F*cked Ourselves On March 1, CIT Communications Manager Jacquelynn Gaines took to Facebook to announce the name of the much-anticipated replacement to PRESTO. Posting as the Facebook page “Oberlin College Center for Information and Technology,” Gaines writes: “OberView is making its big debut on March 26.

It’s the next gen way to access campus services. Get free merch at our all-day launch parties in the Con Lounge and the Science Center Commons.”

Each day for the next week and a half, the page would post one reason “to get excited about #OberView.” The most recent at the time of my writing was #7: “It’s built to alert you about things like breaking news. Global announcements will alert you of campus closures and deadlines.”

But amid a Facebook feed of newfangled features, one question remains for Oberlin College hopefuls: what happened to #ObieHub? Remember: in December of last year, the Center for Information and Technology (CIT) announced it would be launching a mobile-friendly replacement to PRESTO and — to this fourth year’s surprise — they wanted Oberlin College’s students to cime in. As Madisyn Mettenburgh has already pointed out in an uncharacteristically colorful oped for The Oberlin Review, “ObieHub Rams Expectations Hard,” CIT took a page out of 2016’s book when it put PRESTO’s name up to online popular vote.

Mettenburgh reports: “In March of 2016, the UK Natural Environment Research Council announced that the public would be allowed to choose via online poll the name of a new research vessel. The

public spoke, and more than 124,000 people voted for the name ‘Boaty McBoatface’ to be emblazoned on the side of this state-of-the-art ship. But their democratic spirit was ultimately doomed — after a period of stalling, the NERC disregarded the people’s will and went for a namesake with much less grandeur: naturalist Sir David Attenborough.”

NERC should have been a red flag — for both CIT and student participants — when Gaines first announced the online poll. And yet the weeks between then and now tell me that in that moment everyone involved in the search for PRESTO’s replacement gave one collective shrug.

To no-one’s surprise (except apparently CIT’s), students took to Oberlin College meme groups on Facebook and mobilized behind names to vote for en masse. Names included puns, cultural references, and jokes, but to the best of my memory, none of the names proposed were serious.

After “carefully narrowing down the over 800 suggestions,” on February 21 Gaines presented five finalists to the Oberlin community and again put it to a vote. Only this time, when students followed the link to the online poll, the names felt oddly sterile. What had happened was abundantly clear: a number of student submissions students had been censored and the folks overseeing the survey had intervened with their better judgment — except on one front. Between “ObieVerse” and “One,” one lone victor stood out: ObieHub. That students took to the meme page to rally behind ObieHub should not surprise. Not only did it embody the spirit of many of the names that had been lost along the way, but it was a symbolic

CORRECTIONS FROM DEC. 15, 2017 and FEB. 23, 2018 The art on the back cover of the December 15th issue of The Grape was miscredited. The artwork was done by Patrice DiChristina. The editors would not only like to apologize to Patrice for this oversight, but we also recommend that our readers attend their upcoming senior show in which the work will be featured.

Due to a layout error in our last issue, the end of PJ McCormick's article was cut off. In addition, the last paragraph of staff writer Ian Feather's coverage of the NEXUS Pipeline was a misplaced image description. This error no doubt changed the impact of the piece, as it featured unrelated content where it was arguably most important. In this same issue, a comic by Zoe Dyer was misattributed.

On behalf of our entire production staff, the editors would like to apologize to PJ, Ian, and Zoe for these errors. We appreciate the work that our contributing writers and artists put into The Grape — unfortunately, in our most recent issue, our editing did not reflect the quality of the content that you produced.

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THE GRAPE

thumbing of the nose to the folks behind the survey, given it's connection in name and branding to one of the world's most-visited porn websites: PornHub. Then, at a General Faculty meeting on February 21, Chief IT Officer Ben Hockenbull debuted the name of PRESTO’s replacement. Although I wasn’t in attendance for the presentation, that afternoon I received a photo of a Powerpoint slide from a student who was present for the announcement. In a default Google Slides font it read, “Presenting: ObieHub.” The earnestness with which Hockenbull presented (and owned) ObieHub made it clear that the folks behind the poll weren’t aware of the name’s associations to PornHub. Receiving that picture, it felt like we had gotten away with something. And, honestly, as someone who voted for ObieHub, it felt great.

As Mettenburgh writes, ObieHub was a diamond in the rough, the best worst case scenario, but at the end of the day, still a win. “The will of the people is more resilient than we might think. For just as I was beginning to despair, I and many others realized that in both structure and logo, this new choice resembles another website favored by Oberlin students: PornHub. “PornHub was probably not an association the administration was expecting to make with the new name choice. And yet this association is now our legacy: With democracy on our minds and clickbait in our hearts, we the students have managed to exert our will in the face of limited options and a regime of censorship. Perhaps democracy isn’t dead — perhaps the hope that America desperately needs lies with younger generations, waiting for the chance to burst forth like a phoenix from the ashes.”

That was March 2. Unbeknownst to Mettenburgh, 24 hours before The Oberlin Review went to print, something dark had unearthed itself in an uncharted corner of social media: the CIT’s Facebook page. With just 68 likes, it’s unlikely that anyone saw Gaines publicly announce that OberView, not ObieHub, had been selected as the name for PRESTO’s mobile-friendly replacement. In fact, that’s almost certainly the case, as only one individual (who is not affiliated with Oberlin College) responded the post.

If you’re like me, you’re thinking: that’s strike two for CIT, but since I haven’t played baseball in a decade, they’re cancelled anyways. Or, as Mettenburgh puts it, it’s “just

In This Issue Eilish Spear Moira Peterson Martin Rabot Miriam Khanukaev Nell Beck Lee Khoury PJ McCormick Charlotte Kropf Anna Polacek Joey Shapiro Molly Gump Eder Aguilar Brian Cabral Zoe Jasper Liz Frank

another take-back in a long line of take-backs — the tyrants win again!”

But the real blow, so to speak, comes less from the names themselves, and more from their context.

At President Ambar’s talk on Oberlin’s finances last week, she informed students that in the coming year Dascomb Hall would most likely be closed as a dining option and the houses on Woodland Street would most likely be razed — two Oberlin College institutions that, grimey as they are, students have learned to love. Appended to this news, however, was a consolation prize: that students would be able to offer suggestions about what would be done with those spaces. OberView leads me to ask a question that I’ve always suspected but hoped had changed with Oberlin’s current administration: how much weight, if any, do student suggestions truly hold at this institution?

It’s tempting to leave it at that, but I would be remiss to leave out President Ambar’s advice those present for her finance talk. She made one request of those gathered: that students do their best to be “institutionalists,” that is, to see beyond their time at Oberlin. In a media session before her presentation, I asked Ambar if she really thought that fouryear undergraduate students could do that.

Without hesitation, she responded, “I do.”

Selecting ObieHub as the replacement name for PRESTO was far from institutionalist (it was, in reality, a short-term and self-serving win). But then again, neither was the way in which the Center for Information Technology handled the results of the survey. Despite the many emails I received inviting me to submit a name suggestion for PRESTO’s replacement, to this day, I still have not received an email that OberView was selected. If moving forward is about community, communication, and transparency, let ObieHub be an indicator that there's still work to be done.

And speaking of self-serving, short term wins: if there’s a silver lining in all of this, it’s found in the fact that the domain name “obiehub.com” was recently made available for purchase at $12/year.

And purchase it we did. It is with great pleasure that The Grape staff invites you to visit our website at this new web address.

Peace, Love, and Porn, The Editors

FRONT AND BACK COVER BY LYA FINSTON.

Remaining Awake: A History of Oberlin Activism

BY EILISH SPEAR CONTRIBUTING WRITER The broad-strokes history of Oberlin civil rights activism is well known—it was the first institution to admit African Americans and women, a prominent stop on the underground railroad, and was vigorously involved in the civil rights movement, anti-war protests, and more. The specifics of these experiences, however, are harder to find. It is easy to go about day to day life at Oberlin without even considering the movements and leaders that have come out of and been a part of Oberlin’s history. They are nevertheless significant.

Oberlin students’ involvement and devotion to civil rights and social justice movements reached historic heights in the middle of the 1960s. Oberlin students were repeatedly arrested in relation to civil rights protests, and the campus climate was explosive. It was in this fiery mix that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited the college on several instances between 1957 and 1965. In his commencement speech in 1965, King said of Oberlin, “I can never come to this campus without a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude for all that this great institution has done for the cultural, political, and social life of our nation and the world. By all standards of measurement, Oberlin is one of the great colleges, not only of our nation, but of the world.”

REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR GIVES COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS FOR OBERLIN COLLEGE. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE OBERLIN COLLEGE ARCHIVES. On June 11th, 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King spoke at Oberlin’s 132nd Commencement weekend, giving a speech entitled “Remaining Awake Through the Great Revolution.” In the speech, MLK described the danger of failing to be awake to the changes riveting in the world, the danger of missing the “revolution.” Dr. King spoke out against violence, advocating for his famous stance on peaceful resistance, and called for

an end to racial segregation, not because it “is sociologically untenable or because it is politically unsound, not merely to meet the communist challenge or to create a good image in the world or to appeal to African and Asian peoples, as important as that happens to be,” he says, but “In the final analysis racial injustice must be uprooted from American society because it is morally wrong.”

King’s speech followed a long period of Oberlin student conversations on the most effective methods of protest and activism, of the merits of the peaceful/non-peaceful possibilities.

In an interview with the Oberlin Review in 1998, Professor of Sociology James Walsh said, “When I came here there was a great deal of intellectual discussion. There was a lot of talk about the method of protest - King’s passive resistance vs. violence. This was carefully discussed.”

Dr. King’s commencement visit, his third time at the college, was tinged with a hint of irony. Among the recipients for honorary degrees in 1965, including King, was Dean Rusk, then Secretary of State to President Johnson and a primary figure in the United States continuing conflict in Vietnam.

The award prompted widespread outrage across campus, including threats to boycott commencement if Secretary Rusk was not removed from the list of honorees. The threats followed the increasing involvement of Oberlin students in anti-war protests in Oberlin, Cleveland, Washington, and beyond, over the course of the 1960s.

In a point of stark comparison, Dr. King devoted a large portion of his commencement speech to the dangers of isolationism in favor of achieving a global perspective, saying “all mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be this is the interrelated structure of reality.” This interrelated nature of reality included the racial segregation in the United States and similar civil rights abuses around the world.

Of Secretary Rusk, however, King said, “I am also deeply honored to share the platform today with so many distinguished citizens of our nation - particularly our great secretary of state who, through dedicated and brilliant service, has carved for himself a niche in the annals of our nation’s history.”

Dr. King’s commencement address in 1965 occurred just eight months after his previous visit to Oberlin in October of 1964, the second public address given after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. To a packed audience of 2,200 students, faculty, and community members in Finney Chapel on October 22nd, Dr. King addressed the upcoming election between Barry

Goldwater and LBJ. In a fiery attack on the republican nominee, King exclaimed that Goldwater “threatens the health, morality, and even the survival of this country.” He went on to say that “Goldwater is not a racist himself, but his ideas unfortunately support those who are.” According to archives of the Oberlin Review from the time, King viewed a Goldwater victory as a serious setback in the quest for racial equality and the Civil Rights Movement as a whole. King’s support for Lyndon B. Johnson as an alternative to this potential evil was well reviewed by the Oberlin community—striking, for size and frequencies of protests against the administration peaked in the spring of 1965, exemplified by the threatened boycott of commencement and Secretary Rusk.

The frequency of Dr. King’s visits to Oberlin, beginning with an address on peaceful resistance in Finney Chapel in 1957,

IT IS EASY TO GO ABOUT LIFE WITHOUT CONSIDERING THE MOVEMENTS AND LEADERS THAT HAVE BEEN A PART OF OUR HISTORY. through his selection as commencement speaker in 1965, exemplified the college’s commitment to and role in the Civil Rights Movement. The activism of the student body continued through his assassination in 1968, to widespread protest throughout the 1970s and 80s and on. Oberlin’s role today as a school of activists has been harshly attacked and problematized in the past few years, with the publication of the infamous New Yorker article “The Big Uneasy” by Nathan Heller, and widespread national press. What role does activism at a small school in Ohio play today, in this era of instant communication and worldwide awareness? Perhaps the circuitous path of activism at Oberlin speaks to Dr. King’s words in Remaining Awake: “Let nobody give you the impression that the problem of racial injustice will work itself out. Let nobody give you the impression that only time will solve the problem.

That is a myth, and it is a myth because time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively.”

Contact contributing writer Eilish Spear at espear@oberlin.edu.

MARCH 9, 2018

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A Final Word With Linda Iroff

How Oberlin’s Former Director of the Tech Department Splits Her Time Between “Middle Earth” and the Midwest

BY MOIRA PETERSON CONTRIBUTING WRITER It began at a hotel. She ordered a hot cocoa, and though hesitant, decided to indulge herself by adding a dollop of whipped cream into her cup. As she took her first sip, I asked my first question --- “Was the college’s decision to remove the tech store completely ‘out of left field’?”-- a question that has been unanswered since Oberlin College decided to close its only tech store indefinitely after 30 years of service. This decision went unannounced until long term employees like Linda Iroff were told their jobs were being terminated.

I sat down with hot-cocoa-drinking Linda, who worked as the “Director of Desktop Resources” for 15 of her 28 years at Oberlin College.

Linda’s road to Oberlin was unconven-

LINDA IROFF, DIRECTOR OF DESKTOP RESOURCES FOR 28 YEARS, COURTESY LINDA IROFF. tional, to say the least. A former student of Chemistry at UVA, she later moved on to continue studying the science at Princeton University, where she was part of the first class of women at the historically single-sex institution. Linda then traded in her lab coat to enter what was, at the time, an up-andcoming industry: technology. After making this vocational switch, she was placed at the IT department of Cornell, but moved to Oberlin after her former husband was relocated. She now proudly owns a home with one acre of land, though one could argue that the tech store was her true home.

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The tech store was a unique place of business because it was a source of student employment, with some students working there through the summer months as they prepared for the notorious “back to school day” blow up. The store not only considered itself at the forefront of groundbreaking technology since the beginning, but it was also a unique establishment because few liberal arts schools have a private tech store. What started as a tiny office only open for sporadic hours through the week turned into a technology advice hub that saw net gain profits and steady inclines in sales that benefited the institution. Linda even mentioned that the store served over 1500 students and faculty, assisting them with purchases that weren’t using the “hard sell” sales technique that you might find in competing technology stores.

In addition to serving as an accessible retail outlet for purchasing Apple products, the store also served the college as the purchaser of all college tech, such as the desktops on the first floor of Mudd. As such, it came as a shock to Linda that the college would make the decision to close their doors.

“To get called into your boss’ office and have him say, ‘So we’re closing the store and your position is ending,’ was kind of a shock.”

And yet, Linda felt that it wasn’t completely out “of left field,” given the situation with the college’s financial state being in the economic red zone. However, Linda stated that she “disagrees about how essential the need for the services the store provided in the related services I provided outside of the store are…

The idea [is] that cutting this service is going to save the college money, [and] I don’t necessarily think that is going to be true.”

Furthermore, she believes that while this decision does affect her on a personal level, eventually it will affect the institution as a whole, adding that “it definitely decreases accessibility to students.” When I asked for further elaboration on what this meant, Linda explained to me that “students can put things on Financial Aid, put things on their term bill and not have to pay it off to the end of the semester...those options are and will no longer available anymore.” With the rising rate of tuition, one could argue that this will prove to be a complication to current and incoming students.

When I asked Linda what the best thing about working in the store was, she responded: “It really was working with the students.

The students here are just awesome. They’re amazing and it helps keep me young, to know

THE GRAPE

what’s going on in the world rather than just remaining an old ‘fuddy duddy.’And yet when I hire students as first years and I get to watch them grow… It’s just the best job you can have in the entire world to be able to do that.”

One of the students who Linda took under her wing was senior Callie Harlow, who began working at the tech store in the fall of her freshman year. Harlow expressed that it was a comforting environment, and that she will miss working in the tech store with Linda.

“Linda specifically was really good to me, and a wonderful first boss and was always there for me and to give me advice, and I’m thankful to have worked for her.”

Linda admits that she is normally introverted, but when it comes to technology she can’t help but talk. “Most of my best friends are friends I made online. It’s helped me be more open to people.” Linda has always felt more comfortable being social online, but she felt a similar comfort at her position at the tech store, which one could argue was the marriage of her interests: giving advice, staying at the foreground of groundbreaking technological trends and helping others.

So what is next for Linda? Linda found out about her position being terminated the week before Thanksgiving, but I found that

the tech store, while her life’s work, was not her only passion. On one of these online platforms, Linda found a blog devoted to discussions about her favorite author, J.R. Tolkien, on a site called “Live Journal.” Linda had been a fan of his series, The Lord of the Rings, since she was in college and was happy to find that there was a community of aficionados out there just like her. It was here that she engaged in lively conversations with fellow Lord of the Rings fans, and more specifically on the portrayal of one Samwise by actor Sean Astin. For those of us who are not familiar with the Tolkien series, he played Frodo's trusted companion Samwise Gamgee in Tolkien’s famous trilogy, and most recently can be found playing the character “Bob” on Stranger Things. Linda found herself mesmerized with his portrayal of the character, so much that she pioneered and created the first Facebook fan page and personal blog devoted to discussing Astin’s performances both inside and outside of the “Mines of Moria.”

As Linda discovered this passion, Astin discovered her. They made contact in 2011, when Linda proposed that she interview him about running the L.A. marathon, which she later published on her blog. It was with that post that their professional relationship and

LINDA IROFF AND SEAN ASTIN BEHIND THE SCENES AT COMICCON, COURTESY LINDA IROFF

friendship was born. Astin would later invite Linda to be his guest at a Comic Con in Louisville Kentucky, and he would recruit her to manage his various social media accounts, which she still manages to find time to do today. Linda recounted this experience with a sort of childlike glee, and remembered admiring how attentive Astin was with his fans. Linda has since accompanied him on recent Comic Con’s promoting his role on the Netflix series, and now holds an “Executive Producer” credit on his recently debuted documentary titled Remember The Sultana, trading her Director of Sales cap for a shot at a different kind of direction. The film was just released on March 1st documenting a tragic ship wreckage whose numbers were higher than the deaths on the Titanic during the Civil War. Iroff assisted with crowdfunding campaigns and promotional media for the film.

While Iroff is one of many employees who feel directly affected by these budget cuts, she’s looking forward to the next chapter and her students are excited for her as well. “I’m really happy for her. I’m really excited for her, because I know how much she loves the community she’s found through going to comic cons and through going to LOTR fan bases and i’m excited to see her go through with that more,” reified Harlow.

It is safe to say that this is not the last time we will be hearing from Linda, and her lasting imprint will be present from the depths of Mudd’s A-Level, throughout our community. devoted to discussing Astin’s performances both inside and outside of the “Mines of Moria.” As she discovered this passion, Astin discovered her. They made contact in 2011, when Linda proposed that she interview him about running the LA

Dionysus’ Monster: Reanimating Splitchers and the ‘Sco As a second-semester Senior, I have been preparing myself for that tight-rope crossing I must perform in a few months’ time. What I had not been preparing myself for is looking back. This school has really changed during my time here, and as a four year ‘Sco employee, that particular space and its (d)evolution has given me many a sleepless night.

The Sco’s average Splitchers intake has gone down several hundreds of dollars from my freshman year. Additionally, only on one or two Wednesdays a semester would you find more than 50 people in the space before 11:45 P.M. My freshman and sophomore years, attendees came in as soon as they got a wristband and stayed until they wanted to leave, often until the end. To be honest with you, we managers, we shepherds of the Sco, have been trying and failing to come to terms with what role the Sco plays on today’s campus and what role you students and community members want it to play. It is also undeniable

that people who work at the Sco interact with the space in a different way, perhaps a more comfortable way. Maybe that’s why we can’t figure out what’s wrong with it – we never stopped loving being there, you did. So for this article, I tried to stop talking, and just listen.

In Spring 2017, Jake Berstein published a piece in the Grape on the History of Splitchers. It illuminates an event that many people on campus take for granted, one that appears institutional and immovable. But in that article, you will find that Splitchers is not as old as the Sco, nor is it what makes the Sco as special of a place as it is. First run in 2002, the original Splitchers had no music, was set up with tables on the dancefloor, and was packed from open to close. It responded to the campus environment of the time, and when there became a need to dance on Wednesday nights, Splitchers again changed.

HOT YOUNG SINGLE CLEANS BAR AT THE ‘SCO, COURTESY ANGIE VAALER

marathon, which she later published on her blog. It was from there that their professional relationship and friendship were born. Astin would later invite Linda to be his guest at a Comic Con in Louisville Kentucky, and he would recruit her to manage his various social media accounts , which she still manages to find time to do today. Linda recounted this experience with a sort of childlike glee, and remembered admiring how attentive Astin was with his fans. Linda has since accompanied him on recent Comic Con’s promoting his role on the Netflix series, and now holds an Editor’s Note: Since the reporter interviewed Iroff , she was notified that her position, though promised to have employment through the remainder of the semester, has officially been terminated as of this past Friday.

BY MARTIN RABOT CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Perhaps now, too, is time for a change at the Sco. “I’ve been to Splitchers maybe 2 or 3 times,” says first-year Julia Rohde. “It just isn’t my idea of fun on a Wednesday night.” For Julia, much of this lies in the “vibe” of the Sco. The monotonous, ritualistic Splitchers – Rohde, interviewed on a Wednesday, said that despite only having gone 3 times, she could tell me “exactly what would happen” were she to go that night – has come to be regarded as a concrete element of a status (Sc)quo. This essentializing of Splitchers’ existence, however, impacts the way students view the Sco. Above all, it limits how students see the space as being able to function. “While I don’t think Splitchers is detrimental to the Sco’s reputation,” says senior Sco manager Jake Frankenfield, “we need to let people know that it can be used in other ways.” In my first two years, I witnessed afternoon improv performances, Shakespearean recitations, and multimedia senior capstone presentations, all at the Sco. The Sco is, after all, under the watch of the Student Union. Sean Lehlbach, Assistant Director of Student Activities at the Union, wants the Sco to be reflective of the student body’s wishes. He gave me an overview of the limitations he would impose on student programming: “No loud music before 4:30 and between 8 and 10, and adherence to liquor laws. Outside of those few things, if a student wants to do something in the space, and we can figure out how to do it, I say let’s do it. If a student wanted to host a sleepover in the Sco, we’d find a way to make that happen.”

If the Sco is reflecting the wishes of the student body, and the current programming is not doing well with today’s student body, the Sco needs to overhaul the ways it invites students to interact with the space. Clara Berger, Class of ’16 and ex-Sco manager, expressed a sadness with regards to this trend in Sco attendance, but emphasized that “the Sco is a space that is supposed to be for the community, for the student body.” Berger was one of the other two people on my first ever shift at the Sco and she taught me how to

interact with the space in a meaningful and caring way. The passion she and other older managers had for Splitchers, a feeling I try to carry on every shift, is a sentiment I wanted to get to the root of. She described to me what Splitchers was when she first arrived in 2012.

“My older sister had gone to Oberlin and she passed on to me that the Sco was the cool place to be. Sometimes freshmen would go to Splitchers.” My freshman year was like this: if you were an underclassman, Splitchers was a place to hang out with any upperclassmen friends you had, or it was a place to meet new people. Looking inside the room before 11:45 will show you that both of those things are no longer true.

I’m sure other upperclassmen have pointed fingers below them as well, but I’ll stick to the person whose mouth I’ve heard it out of the most: myself. Clinging to the perception of Splitchers, of the Sco, that I came into and that existed before me, is restricting what the Sco can be for today’s student body. For this student body to make the Sco their own, two problems need to be solved.

At some point during the past three or four years, a dynamic that allowed the Sco to thrive stopped working. It consisted of Sco staff programming exciting, challenging events and concerts, and the student body engaging with those events at the Sco, either through attendance and feedback, or programming of their own. I’m not going to engage in a chicken or egg debate about these two problems, and one may not have necessarily caused the other, but they are definitely related and need to be fixed. The Sco is often seen as an organization whose programming ways are, in a sense, pre-programmed. It is not. “People should understand how unique this space is,” Berger asserted at the end of our conversation.The Dionysus Discotheque is a student-run and student-programmed space; it’s about time we, Sco staff and students, start acting like it.

Contact contributing writer Marty Rabot at mrabot@oberlin.edu.

MARCH 9, 2018

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OBERLIN COLLEGE SOLIDARITY WALKOUT March 14th at 10 a.m.

Tappan Square

We stand in solidarity with the victims of gun violence everywhere and will be walking out of class to protest our government’s inaction on gun violence. We will spend 17 minutes out of class; 17 minutes to honor the 17 victims of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

This event is sponsored by Student Sentate, the Oberlin College Democrats, and Indivisble Oberlin

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THE GRAPE

What’s in a Transfer?

Why Students Are Choosing To Leave – Or Come To – Oberlin As Enrollment Challenges Persist

Twenty-seven is a big number to Oberlin College. Retaining just STAFF WRITER twenty-seven students who had planned to leave the College last Spring—only enough to fill a single lecture course—impacted Oberlin’s revenue significantly enough that President Ambar chose to highlight the achievement during her March 1st presentation on Oberlin’s finances.

“We found the faculty member, the staff member, the coach, the whoever-it-is that was connected with that student and said ‘Hey, we really want you to return, what can we do to help make that happen for you?’” said Ambar to the students assembled in King 306, later adding “We’re trying to institutionalize those types of strategies and others to help students be able to stay here at Oberlin.”

Keeping students at Oberlin is increasingly a concern for the College. In the past several years, Oberlin’s retention rate has at times dipped below 90 percent--a “major” drop, according to Ambar. As the College struggles to reach its enrollment goal of 2,950 students--a number it has only reached twice in the past ten years--student shortages have contributed to the College’s structural deficit, which is projected to be as much as $5 million this fiscal year.

A Student Senate survey conducted last semester shows that the College, which depends on student tuition for well over half of its annual operating revenue, has ample reason to be concerned about retention: Of over one thousand students surveyed, just under half said that they have at some point

BY SAM SCHUMAN

PRESIDENT AMBAR PRESENTS ON COLLEGE’S FINANCES, PHOTO BY JAKE BERSTEIN considered leaving Oberlin before graduating.

The most-cited factor among those who had considered leaving was student community, including parties, peer support and community building. Said one respondent: “everyone is a dam [sic] hipster elitist.”

This attitude was prevalent. Said another respondent: “I have honestly started to despise how much people care about their aesthetic here and now i [sic] pretty much hate the ‘hip’ people i always wanted to be lol.”

Many students also cited a lack of support from the Office of Disability Services, suggesting the college hire more staff for the office. A common complaint was that the ODS needed to

make itself more accessible through better student outreach.

Other popular factors were the lack of desired majors or classes and the cost of attendance. At least one student has left the college due to upheaval in the creative writing program, professor Dan Chaon told the Grape last month.

One first-year student who declined to be identified told the Grape that they are leaving at the end of this semester for a variety of reasons. “Financial inaccessibility, lack of diversity, an isolated campus—pick a reason.” they said via Facebook messenger. They will be attending school abroad full-time in the Fall.

Interestingly, while few students had complaints regarding isolation in Oberlin, improved transit to Cleveland was the project students said they would most like to see the Student Senate take.

While many students have considered leaving Oberlin, there are nonetheless several transfer applicants who choose to enroll each semester--a decision sure to pique the interest of an administration trying to parse what makes Oberlin stand out among small liberal arts colleges.

First-year Adeline Grame is one of a handful of Spring 2018 transfer students. An Oberlin native, she attended Kalamazoo College in Michigan for a single trimester before applying for transfer. Despite the College’s website stating that students in their first year at another college can only apply for Fall admission, Grame said she received her offer of admission “well under a week” after submitting her application.

For her, the decision to transfer came down to wanting to live closer to home and to attend a bigger school than Kalamazoo, which has fewer than 1,500 students. Oberlin’s financial problems did not affect her decision, even though she was aware of them through her mother, a College employee.

For second-year Phoebe Pan, the calculus of transferring was a little bit different. The dual-degree student transferred from Columbia University this semester in order to study music along with a liberal arts education.

“Oberlin…gives you space to breathe… It’s not as intense [as Columbia]”, said Pan, adding that the dual-degree program “feels much more well put together than other dual-degree programs” like the Columbia-Juilliard exchange. Financial aid was a factor for her, as well.

Oberlin’s perceived prestige also played a role in students’ decisions to transfer. Pan said she had her doubts about leaving an Ivy-league university for Oberlin, but ultimately “saw this transfer decision as a step towards making my own decisions and trying not to be influenced by things like prestige or the name of Columbia.”

For other students, it wasn’t so easy to escape the pull of rankings. Aoi Nakazawa spent a year at Oberlin as an exchange student from Waseda University in Tokyo, but this semester she will graduate from Wesleyan University. Aoi applied to Oberlin after deciding to transfer from Waseda to an American school. She was not accepted, despite having letters of recommendation from multiple faculty members. Nakazawa probably would have enrolled in Oberlin had she been accepted. Still, she said, her parents are glad she is attending Wesleyan instead. “They wanted me to go somewhere that’s better known outside of the country.”

Nakazawa lived in Transfer Hall during her time at Oberlin,

and said that many students she met there chose to transfer to Oberlin for a smaller college experience and because they wanted a school more accepting of various identities.

One common thread among transfer students is their appreciation of the College’s academic atmosphere. “I think Oberlin is definitely more challenging [than Kalamazoo],” said Grame.

Pan and Nakazawa described Oberlin as less competitive than Columbia and Wesleyan, respectively.

Despite the College’s enrollment difficulties, some students as well as administrators are confident in Oberlin’s ability to increase enrollment in the next several years.

Twenty complete transfer applications were received this

COURTESY STUDENT SENATE semester, with three of seven admitted applicants enrolling—a higher yield rate than the first-year class of 2021—according to Associate Director of Admissions Leslie Brat. Last Spring, the College received 34 complete applications and four new enrollees out of the 14 students it admitted. Brat noted that, generally, more students apply for transfer in the Fall than in the Spring. There is no fixed number of transfer applicants that the College accepts each semester.

Kam Dunbar, Admissions Office intern and chair of Student Senate, doubted the College’s enrollment and retention will be affected by its ongoing financial troubles. “They’re [prospective students] thinking four years, eight, even the rest of their life out…I don’t think they’re thinking about Oberlin’s structural deficit.”

He also expressed doubt that any faculty departures and staff cuts would discourage prospective students. Said Dunbar: “There are more than enough people here to take care of students and provide a good experience, even if you take 100 of those people out.”

Last month, the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid projected it would meet its target admission rate for the class of 2022.

Late in her presentation Ambar stressed the role of everyone in the Oberlin community in maintaining a healthy student population: “I will submit to you…that every person on this campus has a role in admissions and retention.”

Contact staff writer Sam Schuman at sschuman@oberlin.edu.

MARCH 9, 2018

7

Learning In & Out Of The Classroom

A Look Inside The Border Studies Program

BY MIRIAM KHANUKAEV CONTRIBUTING WRITER The border between the United States and Mexico spans approximately 2,000 miles from Texas to California. It is a space of complex cultural shifts, contestation, and politico-economic significance. With the country facing the effects of 143,470 overall administrative arrests in 2017, and Donald Trump’s move to end DACA announced in September, the study of migration and immigration policy on the border remains especially relevant.

To learn more about policy, each year, a group of Oberlin students travels to the border, specifically, the southern Arizona borderlands. Instead of traveling to one of the many study abroad sites in Europe or Africa, each year a number of Oberlin students attend the Border Study Program (BSP). They choose to spend their semester in their own country, digging into local activism and issues surrounding migration in order to understand the implications of their own positions.

The idea for the BSP was first conceived by the Great Lakes College Association in the mid-1990’s. Though originally designed to take place between El Paso and Ciudad Juaréz, the program was moved to Tucson in 2008. Located 60 miles from the border, Tucson remains a city of distinct cultural richness and complexity. The population is made up of indigenous people living there (The Tejano Tribe), immigrants of Central American origin, and the white inhabitants of the city. Its activist history as a border city makes it a unique place to engage in coursework, field studies, and seminars that provide them the opportunity to, as BSP alum Alizah Simon puts it, “study both the U.S.-Mexico border as a physical place, and also of some of the structural conditions that explain U.S. immigration policy and migration from within the States. So you’re learning about border culture, about interaction between immigration and the United States, but also thinking about the larger political context”.

To students currently at Oberlin, the program may seem almost elusive and mysterious, since to many, day-to-day life on the physical borderlands can seem like a world away. While in Tucson, however, students on the program have more or less regulated schedules. Most live in South Tucson with first-generation immigrant families. The experience of living with a host family gives students the opportunity to practice Spanish while allowing for an authentic experience of living in the city. The opportunity to move around the city independently and familiarize themselves with many neighborhoods integrates students into Tucson’s culture, and

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grounds BSP as a program. For Sofia Smith Hale, who returned from BSP after the Fall 2017 semester, this integration was intrinsic to the program: “A powerful memory I have from the Border Studies Program is moving and existing in a city and landscape that is ‘neither here nor there,’ as [critical theorist] Gloria Anzaldúa puts it. Tucson felt like a beautiful in-between world, caught between the national borders of the U.S. and Mexico, distinct from both but made of both at the same time. This place and its people taught me to question the dichotomies that are so pervasive throughout the rest of the country; those dichotomies that teach us to disconnect from our own bodies, from the natural world, and from each other. This teaching has stayed with me since and has deeply influenced how I carry myself through the world.”

Besides regular classes, students go on a broad variety of trips in and around Arizona and Mexico to learn about issues of militarization. Outside of trips and classes, they engage with a local organization to complete an internship dealing with a topic they are passionate about. These field works directly contribute to justice work and educate BSP students about social and environmental change.

Field studies are the essence of BSP’s model of experiential learning: students learn outside the classroom and continue to connect to Tucson’s community. Smith Hale, for example, worked with an organization called Florence Immigrant and Refugee rights project: “I was accompanying a legal assistant to a detention center called Eloy Detention Center just outside of Tucson. I was doing intake forms with people who were being detained, either after crossing the border or after living in the States for their whole life, and in the process for applying for political asylum.

I was doing intake forms, so basically interviewing people to find out their history and what kind of political relief they were seeking, and helping the assistant in any way she needed.” Laura McManamy, who completed the program in Fall 2017, worked at Las Milpitas de Cottonwood Community Garden, where Alizah Simon had been in her semester at BSP a year prior. “We learned about desert agriculture, gave workshops, and did actual physical gardening and planting” explains Simon. The urban garden involves learning about “desert farming methods and workshops. Community members can sign up for plots and get seeds and tools and help.

It’s a community oriented bilingual space run by the food bank” says McManamy. An example of a less “political” field study, it re-

THE GRAPE

A SCENE FROM THE PROTEST AT THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER ORGANIZED BY SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS WATCH IN 2016. MANY BORDER STUDIES STUDENTS PARTICIPATED IN A PUPPET SHOW PUT ON BY THE BREAD AND PUPPET THEATRE, CELEBRATING SOLIDARITY WITH MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES ON BOTH SIDES OF THE BORDER WALL IN NOGALES, ARIZONA AND NOGALES, SONORA. PICTURE PROVIDED BY ALIZAH SIMON. mains a powerful memory for McManamy, who looks back on Las Milpitas as a one of the highlights of BSP. “Getting to know community members as we planted or helped with maintenance projects gave me another lens through which to experience the borderlands. A place of intense militarization, where the border patrol has a constant and visible presence and deportations occur in weekly mass hearings, the borderlands felt at times overwhelmingly inundated with state violence. But Las Milpitas reminded me that the borderlands are also a place where people laugh together as they plant kale, and throw garden parties after Halloween to compost old pumpkins. Cultivating community life, these “small” acts contribute to the wider, vibrant network of resistance that is woven into Tucson’s border culture.”

The BSP students who I interviewed agreed that coming back to Oberlin after the program is both difficult and opportuneful. Returning from a study abroad is always hard, yet BSP students are faced with the unique task of employing the knowledge they learned and continuing to synthesize it. “I was a little bit stunned just by how much I was regressing to feeling physically powerless whereas when you’re physically on the border there’s so much infrastructure to get involved with.

While there is amazing organizing going on at Oberlin, it is physically distant. But at the same time, coming back to Oberlin has allowed me to channel what I know into the community and I see ways that local outreach goes in Lorain and more, and that is exciting” says Simon, characterizing the challenges of coming back. Furthermore, what students experience and learn there proves to widen the scope that Oberlin as an institution can provide. “Everything I took away from Border Studies has added to my path in terms of what I want to study,” says Smith Hale. “I feel like I can be really present here while experiencing the experience of last semester.”

And finally, what should current Oberlin students consider? Simon asserts, “The Border Studies Program is an experience you can’t get on your own, the education that the program provides is so well formed and specific. It’s a special thing we have access to and I would recommend it to anyone.”

Contact contributing writer Miriam Khanukaev mkhanuka@oberlin.edu.

In Case You Missed It

“Whose Music is It Anyway?”

BY NELL BECK CONTRIBUTING WRITER I don’t mean to ruin your mood, but remember Robin Thicke? Blue-eyed manchild who was launched into stardom with his blatantly sexist and predatorial song, “Blurred Lines”? Do you remember when that song brought about a lawsuit?

Ken Freundlich certainly does. As an entertainment lawyer, he worked directly on the Robin Thicke vs. Marvin Gaye case, in which the family of Marvin Gaye filed a suit alleging that Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” copied Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up.” In the end, Thicke and Pharrell Williams were found guilty of violating copyright law, and had to compensate the Gaye family $5.3 million, along with 50 % of the song’s royalties.

But this is not always how copyright cases work out. In fact, music copyright is often an extremely complicated and nuanced issue - what counts as copying? Where is the line between influence and reproduction?

All of this, and more, was addressed by Freundlich, NPR Music Critic Ann Powers, and Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music Director Jason King when they served as panelists at “Whose Music is It Anyway? A Discussion on Music and Copyright.” The talk was hosted by Aassistant Pprofessor of Eethnomusicology, Kathryn Mets, and was held in the Birenbaum last Wednesday night.

In the nearly two-hour long talk, the three panelists addressed many of the issues associated with copyright law, exposing a variety of social and philosophical dilemmas.

The conversation was informative and relevant, especially for Oberlin students, who tend to be particularly invested in both music and politics.

On the surface, the basis for copyright lawsuits seems fairly simple. As King put it, there are two stipulations upon which a copyright infringement may be taken to court: substantial similarity and proof

of previous access to the original song.

If someone wishes to file a suit against a musician for unlawful stealing, they must prove that the similarities within the pieces go beyond imitation of rhythm (which isn’t grounds for suing), as well as; they must prove that the artist had access to the original track. But, put into practice, it all gets pretty muddied, especially when looked at in terms of exploitation and appropriation.

The Thicke case was more than just a simple copyright lawsuit. In the chapter that Powers read from her new book, Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music, she reflects on a trend of white artists co-opting black music, and then benefitting from it. “I think that’s the history of America, frankly,” King pointed out. It happened with rock and roll music, when Elvis gained massive fame by doing what Ike Turner, Lloyd Price, Ruth Brown, Ray Charles, and Fats Domino had already been doing. And iIt happens now, when white rappers like Eminem win all of the Grammys.

“I could name fifty more deserving artists than him,” King said.

Sampling is another interesting realm of music copyright theory. It was frequently used in hip-hop in the eighties and led to the creation of some great works such as Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.” This all came to a screeching halt, though, in the nineties, when many artists began filing lawsuits against sampling. One such lawsuit happened in 1991, when Gilbert O’Sullivan sued Biz Markie for sampling several bars of the familiar piano riff from his 1972 song, “Alone Again (Naturally),” in his song, “Alone Again.” O’Sullivan won the case, with the judge even writing the words “Thou shalt not steal” at the end of the ruling.

At one point, an audience member asked the panelists about the sampling case involving

Vanilla Ice and his song “Ice Ice Baby,” which took from David Bowie and Queen’s “Under Pressure” without permission. In that specific case, Vanilla Ice was particularly vilified by the public, but all of the panelists agreed that he definitely deserved it; as King put it, “there was a souring toward Vanilla Ice because he was worthy of souring.” And again, he, too, was a flawed artist who was proffitting immensely from a system that rewarded white rappers.

Looking towards the future of music copyright, all three panelists agreed that there is much work to do. The last time the copyright law was updated was in 1991, yet music production and distribution is changing more rapidly than ever before.

In the age of Spotify and Youtube, it is becoming harder and harder for musicians to benefit from music copyright laws. While free music streaming services are widely used and enjoyed by the public, artists often suffer financially because they are not receiving compensation for their music.

But then again, it goes both ways, and easily accessible streaming services can often be very beneficial to artists who are just starting to put themselves out there. King, who also works as a professor at NYU, said, “I have second-year students making six figures” after putting their music on some of theses streaming sites. This elicited a few bemused

laughs from the audience.

As Freundlich, Powers, and King all expressed, music copyright is a difficult area of law, but it is also important and influential; it protects the rights of artists and allows them to feel secure in their career. However, straddling the line between subjectivity and objectivity isn’t easy, and copyright law can’t seem to keep up with the times. Even more pressing than figuring out what counts as stealing and what doesn’t is remedying the exploitation and racial bias that so dominates music copyright law today.

Contact Contributing Writer Nell Beck at nbeck@oberlin.edu.

MARCH 9, 2018

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Oberlin Creative Writing Professors Release Collections Of Poetry

BY LEE KHOURY CONTRIBUTING WRITER On Thursday March 1st, Oberlin creative writing professors and award-winning poets Chanda Feldman and Kazim Ali held a reading at The Feve to celebrate the release of their most recent collections of poetry. Feldman, a visiting professor and winner of myriad prizes and fellowships, including an endowment from the National Endowment for the Arts, read first. Her book, Approaching the Fields, thematically explores family history, generational perspectives of Southern Blackness, and how growing up with haints in the halls and chitlins on the plate have shaped her own identity. She read “Native,” “Election Day,” “Interior,” “True Autumn,” and “Approaching the Fields” to applause as raucous as a crowd of twenty students and professors brave enough to journey through that night’s snowstorm could muster. Ali, an assistant professor, read from two of his recently released books, Silver Road and Inquisition, a collection of poetry that explores, among other topics, the poet’s own identity in a particularly hostile time for queer-identifying people and Muslims.

He read “Abu Nuaz,” “John,” “His Mosaic Prayer,” and “Origin Story,” the last of which addresses rootlessness and his mother’s medical issues. Then, asking the crowd if they wanted to hear another “emo boy poem,” Ali read an encore of “The Astronomer’s Son,” among laughs and calls from the audience. I had the chance to talk to both poets, and the resulting interviews follow. These interviews have been edited for concision and clarity.

LK: What is your usual writing process, and what was different for you when you were writing this collection?

Chanda Feldman: I try to carve out a three-hour time block at least twice a week where I can write. I always start on paper; I keep a notebook, and I usually start by just fast-writing, sometimes with the desire to try something formally, or I’ve read a poem and I’m like “I wonder how they did that and if I can do that.” But not all the time.

Sometimes, I’m just trying to see where the writing takes me, and sometimes it takes

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me somewhere interesting, sometimes it’s a big struggle. So, I just have to show up and put in my time and kind of do it for the discipline of doing it. But at the same time I find little nooks of time to write.

When I was a Stegner Fellow, it took me a little over an hour to go from my home in San Francisco on the train down to Palo Alto, so I would use that time on the train to write. Commuting time is a really good time to write. I could just block out everything around me if I was riding a train or the subway or the bus and just write. I feel like I’m rambling! (Laughs) LK: No, that’s completely ok! Talk as much as you want!

CF: I read a lot while I’m writing. I think that’s also part of my process. It’s really nice to be in conversation with poems while I’m writing. I get jealous sometimes when I read a poem and I’m like “I wish I could write a poem as good as that!” So it inspires an ambition to write a really good poem or to say something I haven’t been able to say. Or sometimes it’s like a productive antagonism. It’s like, “Hmmm, you know I don’t agree with what’s being said in this poem and I want to say it my way,” or “I see what you’re doing there, but I think there’s another way to do this.”

And I think both of those things are good.

It should be a dynamic conversation with other people’s work.

LK: Was there anything in particular you were reading when you composed this collection?

CF: Oh, wow. All sorts of things. The second-to last section of the book, which is section three, is a sequence of 14 poems.

That was the last section of the book that I wrote. And they’re not sonnets, but they kind of ghost the sonnet form in that they’re short poems between 12 and 16 lines. They take something from the “crown of sonnets” form, where you have the poems linked one to the other by taking the last line of one poem and using it as the beginning line of the following poem.

So I was thinking about that formally and

THE GRAPE

looking at other crown of sonnets. Bruce Snyder has a wonderful crown of sonnets that I really admire. And so I was looking at the narrative propulsion of the poems and the lyric depth that a sequence of poems in sonnet form could hold onto and give the space to explore. Subject matter wise, I would say that at some points I turned to Rita Dove’s Thomas and Beulah.

LK: I love that collection.

CF: Yeah, I love that collection. It’s a collection that I read for the first time when I was—wow, how old was I? Probably sixteen or seventeen. And it kind of changed my world because I didn’t know about many poets at the time. I mean I knew poets existed, but this was an African-American poet, this was a woman poet. On one hand I really identified with those poems because they were about Black people in the south, and at the same time I felt like my eyes were really opened by the entire collection because she wrote about all sorts of things and places. She wrote about antiquity and myth. Her husband is originally from Germany, so she has these poems that take place in Germany and include German in the poem. I felt really impacted by this collection. I thought “oh this is equally my family, my sense of who I am” in terms of identity, in terms of place. These are also things that are worthy of poetry. So I did return to that collection to look at it while I was writing that section because I thought “oh no, am I doing the same thing Rita Dove did?” And then on the other hand, really having deep respect and admiration for those poems, wanting to work against them too. I think those poems really honor and capture the internal mental life, and I guess spiritual life of Beulah, that’s what I was really drawn to in those poems. My poems, I wanted to focus more pointedly on using the personal to mirror the public circumstances of the times. What else was I reading at the time? I also read another set of poems—I feel like my book is really elegiac for place and for community, and also not related in subject matter so much, but thinking about how the elegy

functions. I fell in love with Thomas Hardy’s elegies for his wife, the Elegies of 1912-1913. I was just really in love with the way that in those poems Hardy looked at the landscape around him as a trigger for personal memories. So those poems are really important to me too.

LK: How much of your work is informed by autobiography, and do you prefer the autobiographical speaker or do you try personas? I know you talked some about this at the book opening about your family history. Do you usually go outside perspectives that you’re really familiar with?

CF: That’s a good question. So this collection does rely a lot on autobiography or my parents’ biography, so there are things that are close to my life and my family’s history. Yet at the same time there is blending of details, masking some people and circumstances, and also wanting to be faithful to facts, to not skew a record, especially if you’re writing against a dominant culture’s record, but at the same time knowing that the goal is not propaganda, the goal is to make a poem, it’s to make art. Also, being interested in the material of language and wanting the poems to be sonically beautiful or to be imagistically compelling or to appeal to the senses and really evoke a visceral reaction. So I feel like yes, autobiography is definitely there in this collection, but it has to negotiate amongst aesthetics. And I do have a lot of other poems, though, that are not autobiographical, that are not in this collection just because they fell outside the thematic concerns of this collection.

So I guess I’m interested in both but it’s interesting seeing that there are thematic currents that keep the poems together. It meant that I had to exclude a lot of other poems that perhaps aren’t as rooted in the facts of my life, or aren’t as interested in the same sort of identity issues or issues around history and storytelling or oral histories.

LK: Do you have a specific reader in mind when you write? Or when you’re revising?

CF: You know, that’s funny, since I’m always asking my students that question!

“Who’s your audience? Who are you writing this for?” Sometimes it’s just for me. Sometimes I feel like the poems are for my parents, or at least in my first collection sometimes I felt like it was a kind of correspondence with our history.

And sometimes I’m writing for anyone who wants to come to the poems. So I think it varies—it’s such a hard question to answer! Now I see how hard it is to answer when I do this to other people!

Because in the act of writing I think I enter into the process just wanting to write for myself, like “Gosh, you know, if only I could write another poem!” It’s like this desperation every single time—“please, please, please let me write another poem!”

And just wanting to see if I can still do it!

So there’s that audience. But at the same time, I have to say that there’s the sense that sometimes the poems are personal, and they are for family. Although I hope they have an audience beyond that, but that might be what’s in my mind while I’m writing them. Other times they’re for a part of me that I can imagine existing in other people. I think back again to myself at sixteen or seventeen, and thinking “oh, you can write like this” or “these stories are valid” and wanting to find that kind of audience, if that makes sense.

book that’s out right now which is essays, but it’s not really essays—it’s creative nonfiction but it has multiple strands in it. There’s four different types of writing in it. There are traditional essays, then there are journal pages, there’s more diary writing, and then there’s lyric prose I guess you would say, kind of cross genre writing, and then there are actual poems in there too. There are 8 poems kind of punctuated through, and it’s called Silver Road and it works in a braided structure where first you have a diary page, then you have an essay, then you have a prose poem/lyric essay, then you have a poem. And then it repeats in that pattern throughout the book. And then what’s interesting about that book—it’s really short too; it’s only about 100 pages long—but what’s interesting about that book is that none of those strands were written together at the same time.

LK: What is your usual process, and if there are differences, what was different for you when you were writing for this collection?

KA: Yeah! It wasn’t written to be a book.

They were all these separate writings that I had that came together as a book.

SO I DO PUBLISH, YES, BECAUSE I WANT TO GET THE WORK OUT THERE, AND IT’S NICE TO MAKE A LIVING, BUT IT’S TRULY FOR ME. EVERYTHING I WRITE IS TRULY FOR ME.

LK: That’s what I was going to ask! That’s fantastic!

LK: So it just happened that way for you?

KA: My usual process is very long. I will often start thinking about something or writing notes towards a poem a long time before it is ever really a poem and then a draft will come and then it often takes me a year or more to really arrive at the endpoint of the poem. I’m always performing them in process so I’d say performance is part of the writing process itself. The poems revise themselves by being spoken out loud, for me. This book was very different than some of my earlier books because the work in it is very much like from a wide range of time and in very different forms. There are more traditional descriptive narratives, there’s more lyrical short fragmented pieces, there’s even three or four pieces that were initially written as spoken word pieces. Inquisition is really governed by this sort of current political moment of crisis and citizenship especially for Muslim people and queer people and I’m in both of those communities which has not traditionally been a huge identity for people. So there’s that. I have another

our life, you know what I mean? And what we’re capable of imagining is defined by our experience. So I don’t see these as oppositional. To me, the form of the poem is a container of language, in rhythm and breath, and so I’m always led by language and I’m lead by rhythm. So I listen to a lot of music. I look at a lot of dance--and I have a dance background so I’ve lived that

KA: It just happened that way, which I love. The unplanned book.

LK: So going off your generative process, do you use stream of consciousness, trying to get unconscious meaning out of something that you’ve thought a lot about?

Or is it very controlled?

KA: No, No there’s never a plan. There’s never an idea. I’m always led by language as well, not just experience. There’s often, in writing, a polar opposition between when people talk about imagination or experience. So sometimes people will give you the advice “write what you know,” so this is like “write from your own personal experience” and then the flipside of that is imagination, “write from what you invent.” But for me, I don’t live in either of those regions. First of all, I don’t see them as oppositional because we do imagine our own life as we’re living it and our experience is defined by how we imagine

in my body. But I feel that language and its properties will often get me to the topic of a poem a lot more than thinking about it will get me to the topic of a poem. And sometimes not knowing it goes all the way to the end when the poem is finished. I’m still mystified or unclear myself.

LK: Are you trying anything out, experimenting linguistically or with forms that you hadn’t worked with before?

KA: Yeah, I’m currently working in a longer poetic form—so my book, my 2009 book called Bright Felon was an extended poetic memoir. It’s made up of nine chapters and each chapter is multiple pages. It’s written in prose but it’s written in a disjunctive, nonlinear style of narrative. I’m actually working on extended poems at the moment, some of them are between 10 and 40 pages long.

It’s taking that nonlinear and fragmented style but putting it into poetry. And without the intention of memoir, where in the memoir I really was trying to actually tell a story. And in the current stuff I’m just working on ideas and working through music and working through the poetic line so I’m kind of excited about those projects.

using the structure of jazz. I’ve looked at the way that the jazz music manipulates the 12-tone structure of non-jazz music— and I had to research all this stuff, I didn’t know anything about it! I didn’t know anything about geography, I didn’t know anything about astronomy or quantum theory or any of it but I’m learning about it. And the jazz musicians, there was a jazz musician named John Coltrane. He actually has a chord progression in one of his pieces that this physicist at MIT has identified as one of the equations of quantum mechanics. And it doesn’t mean that John Coltrane understood quantum mechanics, it just means that he was on a wavelength of one of the building blocks of the universe. Whether he understood it or not, he was plugged in in that way. So I’m trying, in poetry, to sort of plug into the truth that’s beyond language. That’s a little of the intangible.

LK: Reach for the ineffable.

KA: Yeah. Right.

LK: Do you have a specific reader in mind when you write?

KA: No, I don’t—it’s me, I’m my only reader. Odysseus Elitus, a Nobel laureate of the late 20th century from Greece, said that “all any serious poet needs is 3 readers who truly understand his work, and since any poet worth his salt has at least 2 devoted friends already, his entire career becomes the search for that third reader.”

That’s what Elitus said. So you’re just looking for one more person in the world to truly get you. I love that concept. But I also don’t feel pressure to find that one person because as long as the writing that you’re doing helps you, in your life, then that’s the purpose of it. And that’s what I believe. So I do publish, yes, because I want to get the work out there, and it’s nice to make a living, but it’s truly for me.

Everything I write is truly for me.

Contact contributing writer Lee Khoury at lkhoury@oberlin.edu.

LK: So this is kind of like your The City in which I Love You (Li-Young Lee’s 1990 collection of long poems)?

KA: I guess so, because he has that long poem in there, yeah. These long form poems are also bringing in a multidisciplinary approach. I’m using geography, I’m using astronomy, I’m using physics, I’m using dance, I’m writing about jazz music. The poem about jazz music is

MARCH 9, 2018

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The Bachelor of Oberlin How To Fully Live Your Bachelor Life

BY PJ MCCORMICK CONTRIBUTING WRITER But improvisation is a gift, as are the numerous Bachelor recap columns that exist on any entertainment site on the internet. With that in mind, let’s turn to the events in The Bachelor Universe this week, which have been tumultuous.

Actual Bachelor Spoilers Ahead Week 10 of The Bachelor brought Fantasy Suites. First-time Bachelor viewers often ask how much sex the contestants are having on the show. Couldn’t a contestant cheat the system by sleeping with the Bachelor or Bachelorette early on in the season? Is The Bachelor just a ludicrously corny orgy?

While the sexual politics of The Bachelor are often difficult to parse, the show is typically surprisingly conservative.

Contestants don’t talk about sex. For the first 9 weeks of any season, kissing is as physically intimate as any contestant and Bachelor/ette can be. It can be sobering to remember that everyone on the show is

competing for marriage! Actual marriage.

But it’s primetime TV, and such are the show’s values! Until, of course, the Fantasy Suite episode the week before the finale, wherein the three remaining contestants are invited to spend a night with the Bachelor/ette. In this case, that’s Kendall, Becca K., and Lauren B, and The Bachelor, of course, is Arie Luyendyk Jr, the least cool race-car driver of all time.

It should be no surprise at all that Kendall went home this week, considering the small amount of airtime she got in comparison to the other two contenders (roughly 20 minutes of Kendall compared to at least 45 for both Lauren B. and Becca K).

The week’s biggest news, however, had nothing to do with Fantasy Suites. In last Sunday night’s edition of The Bachelor:

Women Tell All -- the annual wrapup episode featuring a round table of all of the losing contestants -- a bombshell was dropped revealing this week’s two-part, 5 hour finale to be “like nothing in Bachelor history.”

You heard it here first! Here’s the twist: in this week’s episode of The Bachelor, Arie is going to propose to either Becca K. or Lauren B. only to redact it, dump her, and beg a past contestant to take him back….and they do!

So stay tuned! Arie’s season of The Bachelor is about to go from notably boring to “the most dramatic season ever.”

Contact Contributing Writer PJ Mccormick at pjmccormi@oberlin.edu

Do You Really Want to Live Forever… Forever… Forever

BY CHARLOTTE KROPF CONTRIBUTING WRITER Is there anything to lose in cryogenically freezing your body after you die?

Immortality seems like a fictional phenomenon, but developments in modern science are beginning to convince some that it could be attainable in the following centur(y)ies. Take for instance, the Russian Transhumanist Movement (РТД), which facilitated creating Krio Rus (КриоРус), the “first and only cryonics company in Eurasia ‘at the moment.’ Their philosophy is deeply inspired by a 19th century cosmist named Nikolai Fyodorov.

He believed in a utopian future in which the universal “Common Cause” could be fulfilled by immortality. He described it as a “Resuscitation,” which was the

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“supreme task” that a united mankind had to confront. I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to be convinced...

The cosmist movement began in Russia before the October Revolution and developed through the ‘20s and ‘30s; like Marxism and the European avant-garde, Russian Cosmism aimed to create not merely new art or philosophy but a new world. By the time the movement had developed by the 1930s, “Stalin quashed Cosmism, jailing or executing many members of the movement.” Now that “philosophical imagination has again become entangled with scientific and technological imagination, the works of the Russian Cosmists seem newly relevant,”

Illustration by Ava Zuschlag

Being a fan of The Bachelor is a lifestyle.

Twice a year, it requires the memorization of the names and faces of 30 identical looking contestants -- all named Lauren or Lindsay if you’re watching The Bachelor, and Chris or Josh if you’re watching The Bachelorette -- and the ability to, at a moment’s notice, mentally flip through scores of past contestants to give context to the current season.

It requires a near constant defense of The Bachelor to any detractors -- those out there who have mocked this very column know who you are. If you’re reading now, ask yourself: how many seasons of TV do you have under your belt? The Bachelor has twenty-two!

Maybe most importantly for student fans of The Bachelor is finding time in amidst all their schoolwork for weekly 2 hour episodes. That can be tough for many, and potentially devastating to miss if you’ve tasked yourself with writing a weekly column for your school’s alternative student newspaper.

according to the book Russian Cosmism,

by Boris Groys.

Krio Rus has a storage facility two hours north of Moscow. The 4-8 hour long process involves draining the body of blood and replacing it with -196 ℃ liquid nitrogen. If $36,000 for having your entire body cryogenically frozen sounds too expensive, you could just have your head done for half the price. Pets can also get the treatment. The facility has a chinchilla...

Chapters of РТД are mainly existent in Russia and Ukraine, but Krio Rus is inclusive for “patients” from all over; there is one American among the 56 frozen bodies. Even one of our presidential candidates, Zoltan Istvan, ran as a transhumanist (before changing to the Libertarian party in 2017). At this point I’ve been fully persuaded-- and I’m being sincere. Though the thought of waking up in the year 3000 is both incredibly terrifying and exciting,; utopia or a dystopia, I’ll be ready.

Contact Contributing Writer Charlotte Kropf at ckropf@oberlin.edu

Fishy Fairytale Wins Best Picture A Catalog of Political Flubs at the Oscars

BY LEAH TREIDLER STAFF WRITER Sunday marked the 90th Anniversary of the Academy Awards, a four-hour event hosted by Jimmy Kimmel featuring Ansel Elgort with a hot dog gun, Gal Gadot pretending that she doesn’t know what pot smells like, and very, very clearly marked envelopes. If you didn’t follow the annual awards show — maybe because you had too much homework, or because you believe art is not something which can or should be ranked, especially by an academy which is 72% male and 87% white, — then here’s what you need to know: The best picture nominees ranged from Lady Bird, a witty coming-ofage story written and directed by Greta Gerwig, the fifth woman ever to be nominated for best director, to Call Me By Your Name, a beautiful, subtle, utopian love story between two men with a questionable age gap, to Get Out, a horror movie and pointed critique of racism written and directed by Jordan Peele, to the winner, The Shape of Water, a fairytale love story between a mute woman and a fish with a costume that’s eerily reminiscent of the creature from the black lagoon.

Perhaps Jimmy Kimmel described the mood best in his opening monologue as “the year men screwed up so badly, women started dating fish.”

Since its roots as an unselfconscious celebration of cinema, the Oscars have become a platform for stars to declare themselves socially aware in an increasingly politicized entertainment industry. The night teemed with thinlyveiled political stands, mostly in reference to the #MeToo movement, though never

mentioning Weinstein by name. But, for all the powerful words, the facts reflected a mixed picture.

The night began with an awkward red carpet covered by Ryan Seacrest who has repeatedly denied sexual harassment allegations. Gary Oldman, accused of domestic abuse in 2001, won best actor for his role as a sugar-coated Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. Kobe Bryant, accused of sexual assault in 2003, beat out Pixar for best animated short. And a white guy hosted the show, remarking in an awkward, almost unnoticeable aside at the very end of the ceremony, “I wish I were a woman, I really do.”

Possibly the best summation of the stumbling, but earnest political atmosphere of the night was in the speech by the director of Pixar’s Coco, Lee Unkrich, when he thanked the entire country of Mexico. “Coco would not exist without your endlessly beautiful culture and traditions,” he said, exoticising Mexican culture in a sincere attempt at celebrating diversity.

The clear climax of the night was Frances McDormand’s acceptance speech for her role in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

“If I fall over, pick me up because I’ve got things to say,” she began. After giving thanks, she asked every female nominee of the night to stand up.

“Look around, ladies and gentlemen, because we all have stories to tell and projects we need financed,” she said, then used her final words to call specifically for inclusion riders, clauses that actors can insert into their contracts, obligating diversity on both sides of the camera.

McDormand’s speech captured a truth that nobody else would admit: The Academy Awards don’t matter. Whatever is said on that stage will be washed away in the next news cycle. What matters in Hollywood, and what has always mattered in Hollywood, is money. And if Hollywood wants to say that it's #woke, it has to back it up with cash.

ALL-IN-ALL, THE NIGHT WAS MOSTLY PREDICTABLE, MARKED BY A MIX OF SIMPLE, RAMBLING, AND POLITICAL SPEECHES, A SELECT FEW OF WHICH WERE SUCCESSFUL. All-in-all, the night was mostly predictable, marked by a mix of simple, rambling, and political speeches, a select few of which were successful.

Guillermo del Toro, as widely predicted, won best director for The Shape of Water, the fourth time in five years that a Mexican director won the category. “I am an immigrant,” he began, remarking that art can “erase the lines in the sand.”

Jordan Peele won Best Screenplay for his film Get Out. “I thought no one would ever make this movie,” he said in a quick speech for a film that speaks for itself, “but I kept coming back to it because I knew if someone let me make this movie, that people would hear it and people would see it.”

Contact Staff Writer Leah Treidler at ltreidler@oberlin.edu

MARCH 9, 2018

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Oberlin Alumni Poetry Reading: Meditations on Poetry

BY ANNA POLACEK COLUMNIST Adam Gianelli ‘01 speaks with a stutter, which became evident when he read the title of his first poem (also the first poem in his book Tremulous Hinge), “Stutter.” alone in my room I can speak any word since I can’t say memory I say underbloom What Gianelli can’t physically say gives way to what he means; it’s almost as if his speech impediment pushes way towards a more honest representation of what he’s trying to communicate. Adam says this on the intersection of poetry and stutter: “Every time I stutter, I feel the tension between the physicality of language and the ideas that I want to communicate.

Poetry also inhabits this space. Poetry doesn’t simply communicate, but is a form of communication, like stuttering, flooded with the density of language. I’m not sure I would write if I didn’t stutter. I no longer see poetry as a way to escape my stuttering, but as a way to embrace it.”

Gianelli was one of three poets to read at an event that took place last Thursday, put on by the Creative Writing Department.

Three Oberlin Alumni presented readings from their published books of poetry.

I asked my professor in poetry, Lynn Powell, what she thought about how her former students- Lauren Clark ‘11 and Elizabeth Lindsey Clark ‘07- presented themselves and their poetry. Powell said that what was so special was “how they each were speaking in the voice that really belonged to them. And that’s what I try to communicate in my classes: you need to write the work only you can write.”

After the readings, the three poets came to the stage to take questions from the

audience, offering their best advice for young poets and young people. “Embrace your strangeness,” Gianelli imparted, the same advice that he once received during college from poet Brenda Hillman. All three of the poets relayed that while they were here at Oberlin, they did not hold much confidence in themselves and only began to take pride in what they could do once they had graduated. It’s easy to see this on our campus; most people question whether they’ve achieved enough, whether they deserve to be here.

Lauren Clark ‘11 read next, and seemed to entrance the whole room with their sharp humor, emotionally resonant poems (one about the first time they had sex with a woman and another about their relationship with their mom), and funny anecdote from their years at Oberlin. It was sobering to hear about the childhood and life experiences from which their striking sense of humor had grown.

Clark’s lines remind me of the principles of impressionistic painting that I love; in capturing an impression, you’re finding a resemblance to the moment that’s deeper than what a photograph could portray.

Following is an excerpt from one of Clark’s poems that mimics the expressive, personal quality of an impressionist painting: Yesterday at sunset I saw Galen eat a grapefruit cell by cell. The light glanced off her purple tights, seeped through the dripping pink. She spit the seeds and the late sun moved in slow motion just you are becoming paler in a steady parade of shades. In the silence after you take off

your glasses, I understand: I have broken the rule of show, don’t tell, and you look deeply into the lexicon’s dark print.

I should have come to you a suppliant, silent, citrus in hand.

-Meditation, 2013 I feel like Lauren is hinting at the greater significance of poetry here. It’s sort of like ars poetica; maybe they’re saying: fuck anyone who silences you, who pressures you to express your feelings less honestly.

Poetry is about life, and sometimes life is as simple as the way someone looks eating a grapefruit. You don’t have to describe it as anything more or less than what it is — at least that’s my interpretation.

Elizabeth Lindsey Clark was the final poet to read. She introduced her poem by saying that climate change has been a huge impetus for her newer poetry. This one is about how the Manifest Destiny mindset of American pioneers has materialized itself as environmental destruction. The poem is titled after a region of Mars that looks like the American West-- analogizing Westward expansion to spaceward exploration.

Our own carbon dates us. If I could cut myself open, you’d see rings lapping more rings: my mother crying for her mother in the same way her mother wept for hers.

You’d see the silvery orbit, where each life dissolved.

But for now, I remain human.

-Arcadia, Mars 2015

During the Q&A , Lindsey admitted that before publishing her book, she had these ideas about how poetry would “change the culture” and make people think about climate change, but that when it was published, she realized that only a couple of people actually read poetry books.

Although this was disheartening to hear, I’m not entirely sure I believe it. The room she was speaking to was packed with young people eager to hear what others had written, eager to see what could be in their own future. Lindsey’s poems make me feel less alone when dealing with the psychological taxations of climate change, and that’s all I can really ask for.

Professor Powell said something that stuck out to me: “I think poetry is a deep resource for everyone for their lives, if they know how to open themselves to it.

Either as readers or writers.” I’ve been discovering this more and more every day; anyone can be one of those people who ‘gets’ poetry. Poetry is an art that truly speaks to the human condition, so everyone who so chooses can partake in it. It does a remarkable job of making you feel less alone in the universe. I’d like to say thank you to the Oberlin Alumni who come back here to show us that we’re not alone. Check out their latest works: Chord Box by Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers ‘07, Music for a Wedding by Lauren Clark ‘11, and Tremulous Hinge by Adam Gianelli ‘01, all of which can be found at Mindfair books.

Contact contributing writer Anna Polacek at apolacek@oberlin.edu.

ART BY ANYA SPECTOR

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Black Love (for self)

BY BRIAN 'B' SMITH OPINIONS EDITOR

I was told not too long ago that when I walk into rooms people are pressed against the walls by my massive ego. After first chuckling at this pitiful attempt at a “drag,” I had two thoughts: (1) White men have no room to talk about anyone’s ego when they habitually self-indulge in mediocrity, and (2) Is this what bubbles to the surface of someone’s mind when they see me? I cannot control how people perceive me, nor do I necessarily want to, but I do think that if a person is going to make a statement as obnoxious as the one aforementioned you should bother getting to know me.

So, this is for all the people who continue to make grandiose assumptions about who I am. I do not frequently explain myself, because I don’t have to, so be grateful. This is my testimony as a gay Black man at Oberlin College.

If you are curious about what fuels the fire of my strut, why I laugh so loud, and am unapologetically flirtatious the answer is very simple. I love myself. I feel that there are many on this campus that preach about self-love, but you scoff when Black folks love themselves.

You’re offended or intimidated by the fact that I am not intimidated by you.

Let me take the time to clarify that the you I am referring to is white people, especially white men. I have a genuine question for you: Does it anger you, or at the very least make you uncomfortable, that I love myself? If you immediately answered no I would like to challenge you to think longer and harder about my question. After all, here you are with all this privilege you did not earn, but you were handed. You were conditioned to believe that you are superior to anything and anyone that does not look like you.

So who am I, a gay Black boy, to love myself? To think that my life has any value

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at all when you were taught that your life is all that is valuable in the world. I can see why Black joy would make you sick - even if you refuse to acknowledge it.

I also think it is about damn time you

Maya Angelou’s poem, “Still I Rise,” especially when it comes to dating as a gay Black man on Oberlin’s campus.

This stanza in particular is my favorite: Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?

stop saying you are “intimidated” by me.

I’ll let you in on a little secret… Black people know what that means. You can try to convince me all you want that it’s because your Meyers-Briggs test results said you were an INTJ, but we all know it’s because of your subvert racism.

You have all the social privilege in the world so what exactly are you intimidated by? (That’s a rhetorical question).

When I think about self-love in the context of Blackness, I often think about

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Reading the poem in its entirety, it is not difficult to understand that Angelou is writing about the perseverance of self-love in a Black body. It is no easy task, especially when those around us try so hard to squander our joy with bitter racism. Toxic animosity brews deep within those who would rather see Black bodies hunched over, bearing the weight of insecurity and self-hatred on our shoulders. Our bodies are fetishized. Black submission has always been the kink of white supremacy.

To my folks: do not live in the chains of shame so that whiteness can sleep comfortably in mediocrity. If they are pressed against the walls by your confidence, if they cannot breathe because the love you have for yourself is sucking up all the air in the room, remember that it is seldom that our people can breathe. Eric Garner is no longer breathing. Sandra Bland is no longer breathing. Philando Castile is no longer breathing. Tamir Rice.

Trayvon Martin. Marsha P. Johnson.

Emmett Till. Orlando Boldewijn... Our

love for ourselves is not about ego. It is about life. If we do not love ourselves then who will? Black love, whether it be for ourselves or for one another, is necessary. Black love is revolutionary.

I have written two poems. The first being written in a moment of grief upon reading the news on Orlando Boldewijn, and remembering the countless Black lives that did not matter until they stopped breathing.

Poems from the collection ‘The Bluesy Heart of a Black Boy’ by Brian ‘B’ Smith.

A Black Body Is...

A Black body is a wind chime Limp and loose, hanging from a tree.

The soft chimes a mournful cry from the spirit.

They hang.

Like chimes, Moving only by the push of the wind.

Dangling there from wood.

A Black body is a capsized boat Abandoned in wading waters Covered in seaweed and algae Reclaimed by the earth.

Carried by waves until washed ashore It is viewed as nothing more than…

Debris.

A Black body is born a cadaver Never becoming acquainted with life.

A Black body is Death’s favorite song.

With verses written in blood The melody our collective cry.

The lyrics of our corpses, On repeat.

Continued on next page

Eat More, Pay Less The second is about Black beauty. While this poem was written about a specific individual, I encourage every Black body recognize their beauty.

Beautiful Black Boy Dear beautiful Black boy, I see heaven in your eyes.

Angels sing in harmonious chorus in your irises.

I see mountains sprouting from your scalp, Did you know you were the embodiment of earth?

Beautiful Black boy your voice is rough, Do you carry your past in the thick tendons of your vocal cords?

I don’t know your past, But I see your future In the horizon of your smile Your laughter is the sunrise Seeping the nectarine hue of possibility In the break of dawn.

Beautiful Black boy I can tell you are descended from royalty Gold fits onto you so perfectly, Looping into your flesh, A metaphor for infinity I don’t quite understand.

I want to fall into the daybreak of your mouth, Taste your sunshine And trace your past through your tongue.

Black boy, you are beautiful.

Black is beautiful.

Black Lives Matter.

Contact Opinions Editor Brian Smith at bsmith2@oberlin.edu

BY MOLLY GUMP CONTRIBUTING WRITER It goes without saying that the meal plans at this school are ridiculously expensive, and regardless of which one you choose you’re getting screwed over. However, if you’re deciding on a plan and meet the following “requirements for eligibility”—you became an Oberlin student before Fall 2017, you’re going to be living on-campus next semester, and you don’t want to join a Co-Op because you have strong feelings against either cooking or beans—then you should absolutely choose the 40 meals/month plan.

While all of the meal plan options are designed to squeeze the maximum amount of cash out of you, you can beat the system by going with 40 meals per month, regardless of how many meals you actually eat.

The table shows each plan (for the people meeting those requirements), their costs, the costs per meal, and the Flex Points per semester included in each plan.

The main takeaways are 1) eating at this school is fucking expensive, and 2) the cost per meal is more expensive than what you’d pay at most restaurants around campus. However, here’s the trick: if you pay for a meal swipe at any dining facility on campus, the cost is only $7.50, and you can use Student Charge, ObieDollars, or Flex Points to pay. Therefore, if you get the 40 meals/month plan, you’re going to save a ton of money because you can buy meals when you run out for less than you’d pay if they were included in your plan, even if you eat 19 meals per week. Here’s the proof: 19 meals

per week equals 285 meals per semester, and 40 meals per month equals 200 meals per semester, an 85-meal difference. Even if you bought those 85 extra meals, each costing $7.50, you’re only spending $637.50. The cost difference between the 19 meals/ week plan and the 40 meals/month plan is $779, meaning that even if you eat the same amount of meals, you’re still saving $141.50. Further, you’d also receive 160 more Flex Points than before, bringing your total savings to $301.50. That’s assuming you want the additional 85 meals per semester, but the odds are you probably won’t need that many, anyway.

Now, with the $779 you’re saving, you can buy meals at the dining halls, but you can also eat in town more. You can use your savings to buy 155 five-dollar bowls from Kim’s, 89 cheeseburgers from The Feve, 64 large cheese pizzas from Domino’s, or any combination you want. You can also buy your own groceries and snacks with the money you save. Because you can use your 40 meals per month any way you like, you can cook for one week, eat out the next, and eat at the dining hall for the

last two. If you’re sick for a few days, you won’t be wasting your swipes because you can use up all the ones you have leftover at the end of the month.

If this was too much math to follow, I understand. Here’s what you need to know: get the 40 meals/month plan for next semester. Even if you end up eating the amount that the largest plan offers, you’re still saving almost $150, not including the extra Flex Points you’d get. You can spread out your meals over the course of the month any way you’d like, so no more dragging yourself to Fourth Meal on Sunday night because you don’t want to waste your swipes. Spend more time eating at the awesome restaurants in town and support local businesses. Buy groceries so that you can eat exactly what you want. Enjoy having more control over what you eat and when you eat. Most importantly, enjoy the fact that you didn’t fall into the trap of spending hundreds of dollars more than you need to on dining plans.

Contact Contributing Writer Molly Gump at mgump@oberlin.edu

ART BY AVA ZUSCHLAG

MARCH 9, 2018

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A Reflection on President Ambar’s Address to the College

BY EDER AGUILAR CONTRIBUTING WRITER I took public speaking back in high school for two years, so I think that I am pretty good at judging a person’s body language and presentation skills. I was once told that communication is ten percent verbal and ninety percent physical. Physical in terms of body language and how a person is visibly guiding the listener. In all honesty, I cannot get over how phenomenal of a speaker President Ambar is. The way that President Ambar presented herself was through brutal honesty and openness; in other words, President Ambar was real as hell at this lecture. I am not a numbers person and the powerpoint slides had a lot of content in each slide, but President Ambar elaborated on her points in a way in which it did not feel like you were listening to an hour-long presentation.

With everything that President Ambar said, she was always getting straight to the point and was honest with what I felt were the most important points that she was trying to make. President Ambar is a very busy person who is not trying

to waste her time and is not trying to waste our time either, so she cut to the chase with the majority of what she was saying, which was greatly appreciated.

The biggest points went like this: Oberlin has a goal to get a certain number of incoming students every year, but how many times has the school gotten to that mark? The goal is 2950, but Oberlin has only made that mark twice. How much will tuition increase and why? Three percent, as it is common for colleges to raise tuition around three percent every year because if an institution does not, there would be a much larger hike in the near future. What is going on with private liberal arts colleges around the country? Industry disruption. High school graduation rates are declining along with people questioning how valuable a liberal arts degree is. There was something comforting in the delivery of President Ambar’s presentation. I know that Oberlin is a mess right now, the staff, faculty, and all the other students are well aware of it, but Oberlin is not

the only school struggling. It is always comforting to know that you’re “not the only one.”

Another part of the presentation that was surprising was that President Ambar was not about blaming anybody for the mess that Oberlin is in. She is about getting shit done. President Ambar knows that shit won’t get done if Oberlin and its students are out-here sulking in the fact that the institution is nine million dollars in debt. President Ambar gave the metaphor of telling her children how to deal with a problem before it gets too big, and even though it seems like this debt is enormous, she said we’re in the process of doing something about it. President Ambar brought up her kids a fair amount when she talked about enjoying a night at the Apollo and having to pay for three kids to attend school at the same time. Not only was she open about her kids and doing some of the things we as students do, she was open about the fact that she was in our shoes as a college student. Struggling when tuition

increased and being frustrated with the institution, but she wasn’t and still isn’t about complaining. She also said that she can’t go up to an audience and say “Oberlin is nine million in debt but its all good,” because it isn’t all good. However, she has the mentality of getting to the problem and doing something to fix it.

President Ambar left the students with one last piece of advice. Be bold. Clear, straightforward, doable, and positive.

That last piece of advice really does sum up how the lecture was: a lot of information that was presented in a way that was understandable and optimistic despite there being a lot going on with the mess that is Oberlin. Everybody at Oberlin knows that what comes next is not going to be easy, I’m talking about the cuts and changes, but with President Ambar leading the way, I can get down with that. Catch me being bold around campus.

Contact contributing writer Eder Aguilar at eaguilar@oberlin.edu.

Girl Fieri Reviews: Dascomb in the Wake of its Death

BY ANNA POLACEK COLUMNIST On Wednesday, February 28, President Ambar delivered a presentation on the college’s financial situation and the impending budget cuts. One of the cuts that will be a huge blow to our everyday lives as Oberlin students is the decision to get rid of Dascomb Dining Hall. So this week, Girl Fieri will be straying away from her usual food-centric reviews to a slightly more politically-charged review of the dining hall that we simultaneously seem to love and hate.

Despite Dascomb’s many quirks, it is with great sorrow that I write this article. As I mentioned in last weeks’ column (for those of you who follow), Oberlin students like to complain about our food options. And don’t get me wrong, this isn’t entirely misguided. Reviews of

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Dascomb Dining Hall always seem to be mixed. But underneath all those complaints, I think there’s some hidden love.

Personally I’m going to miss many things about Dascomb. It’s the dining hall that brings us fourth meal, refuge from Stevie, and locationally-convenient meal breaks — not to say that I won’t gladly bid adieu the depressing lighting and the anxiety-inducing lunchtime rush hour.

When asked about what she will miss most about Dascomb, second-year Malaya Nordyke lamented that “the vegetables suck. But I’m gonna miss the yogurt.” Adriana Teitelbaum, also a second-year, seemed to backtrack when asked the same question: “I'm not gonna miss anything about it, I literally never go there, I'm just angry about it. Oh wait

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— I'm gonna miss fourth meal. And having somewhere to eat that's not all the fucking way across campus."

GETTING RID OF THIS DINING HALL IS CERTAINLY A BLOW CONSIDERING THE SCARCITY OF FOOD OPTIONS WE ALREADY HAVE. Teitelbaum brings up some really great points. Does the death of Dascomb also mean the death of fourth meal? Even if they move fourth meal over to Stevie, there’s no way that even half of fourth meal’s regulars will interrupt late night

study sessions at Mudd to trek all the way over to Stevie.

CDS already has issues of accessibility in terms of dining hours, location, and options. Getting rid of Dascomb will inevitably mean more students will have to choose between Stevenson and the Afrikan Heritage House, creating wider gaps in meal plan accessibility.

To state the obvious: The North-South divide is intensified with Stevie being on North Campus and A House being on South Campus.

One thing about Dascomb that seems to be widely agreed upon is the friendly staffing. “I really like the staff there.

I'm friends with the woman who's always there for breakfast and I love [Al], the guy who's always dancing at fourth

meal," said second-year Megan Maguire.

Maguire also brought up that Dascomb is a hub for student job opportunities at a school where there are so few. I can only wonder what the college plans to do about making up for this disappearance of student and community jobs. That is, if they plan to do anything at all.

I think it’s safe to say that most people on campus are not happy about this decision. While Dascomb may not be everybody's favorite, getting rid of this dining

hall is certainly a blow considering the scarcity of food options we already have.

Budget cuts are unavoidable, and choosing where those cuts should be made is obviously a difficult decision. However, it’s also important to question which students will be affected the most, as well as the effects these cuts will have on the Oberlin community at large.

Contact columnist Anna Polacek at apolacek@oberlin.edu

Activism and Athletics, Discourse and Sports

BY BRIAN CABRAL CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Divisions exist across campus that create binaries, and one of them is the athlete/non-athlete binary that other Oberlin students have previously written about. I noticed the social divide between athletics and activism since my first-year at Oberlin in 2014 when I occupied spaces of protest and no athletes were present, and when I attended varsity games that my activist friend group never attended. I, then, come to this opinion on activism and athletics as a club sport athlete, student leader activist, and devoted fan of varsity athletics.

On the last day of Black History Month, a panel with professors Sarah Jackson and Louis Moore, journalist Kevin Blackstone, and former D1 basketball phenom from the “Fab Five” at the University of Michigan, Jimmy King discussed the issues and intersections of Black Athletes, Activism, and the Media.

Blackstone briefly mentioned that he was confused that a divide between athletics and the larger campus community at Oberlin exists. I jotted this down because in a way, I am confused too. Last Fall semester, student athletes, professors, and staff members hosted three events that created a space to talk about the divide. The first event called for an integration of athletics and academics, but the last one was a more intentional discussion. The facilitators posed the question, “How do we (dis)solve it?” it being the binary divide between athletes and non-athletes. The events highlighted some of the issues that created and sustained the divide, such as sexual misconduct, biases, and stereotypes towards athletes and activists, and the lack of support and attendance at workshops, protests, and games, to name a few. These issues, among others are important to consider and discuss, but what confused me was the distinction

and separation of students into the athlete/non-athlete framework itself. On one end, student activists critiqued athletes for not showing up to their workshops that engage in social and political discourse or to their campus protests.

On the other end, some student athletes claimed that they did not have the time to go protest and attend the workshops put together by other students on top of their commitments to schoolwork and their sport. The consensus between the two, however, was that there was a willingness to engage in solidarity and allyship for both discourse and sports.

The consensus for showing up to workshops, protests, and sports is key in understanding the dynamic between the two groups. First, I argue, we need to rid ourselves from talking about this issue through the athlete/non-athlete binary. We can do this by getting rid of the stereotypes we hold about athletes and activists, and understand that we are all Oberlin students that come

from different backgrounds and perspectives. Then, we must continue the conversation about what support looks like from athletes and what it looks like from activists, and form collaborative interactions that will hopefully open space for dialogue, trust, and diminish the divide. In the aforementioned panel, Blackstone asserted that sports provide “a political organized structure” that professional and amateur athletes use in sports for activism and uplifting marginalized communities. People are often quick to dissociate politics from sports, but sports culture is inherently political even if you are an athlete that avoids being political.

I hear the concerns voiced by Oberlin students who do not play varsity sports and sympathize with the amount of time they spend on discourse trying to solve or bring awareness to issues plaguing our campus community. I also sympathize with varsity athletes for the amount of time they spend training

and playing their sport. But we have the potential to make Oberlin a place where academics, activists, and athletes hangout, support one another, and build friendships outside of their own circle of friends. As someone who lingers in between both as a student activist leader and club sport athlete, bridging this divide is important to build a cohesive student body, be able to change the social dynamics of this campus, and build a stronger base of school spirit for sporting events. GO YEO! GO OBIES! This short opinion piece is inspired by a second-year student at Oberlin who after the panel mentioned that I was in a position to express my opinion on the highly contested divide between athletics and the rest of the college campus. Thank you. Let these conversations continue.

Contact contributing writer Brian Cabral at bcabral@oberlin.edu

Millie, Who Likes Bugs #3 & #4 By Paddy McCabe

MARCH 9, 2018

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A Letter from the Wilder Information Desk We Do Not Sell Solarity Tickets

A Review of Co-ops from Someone Who Can Taste.

BY WILDER FRONT DESK

BY JUKE FORTNITE

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

It’s no secret to us that our fellow students often describe our jobs at the Wilder Info Desk as “sitting and looking pretty”, but little do they know what really goes down on the other side of our laminated countertops. Now that the building has been renovated and the wooden curtain removed, we are ready to spill our secrets...and maybe some of yours along the way.

And speaking of these intimacies, stop having sex in the open meditation room. Knock it off. Quit it.

Spare us the humiliating eye contact as we do our closing tours. That’s right, we know all of your dirty little secrets. I don’t care how strong your energies are, nobody reflects so hard they leave their meditation session naked, flushed and sweaty.

Take the ID, swap for a key, rinse and repeat. Right?

WRONG (just kidding the patron is never wrong. I’d like to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.) But seriously, we are so much more than our open handed gestures, shift cash count sheets, bike pumps and walkie-talkies.

Also, nobody is as good at small talk as we are.

Especially when it comes to chatting with the townspeople of Oberlin, Ohio. Local politicians, neighbors, prospective parents, drunk alumni at commencement, you name it we’ve met them. We are good at old people. So good, in fact, that people have taken to memorizing our shifts and visiting us weekly, even occasionally bringing us gifts. Between all of us we have received a variety of books, chocolates, letters, art, and more. And yes, we know this is weird, and we have a secret language of code words reserved for situations like these. From walkie-talkies, to giant safes, to a high-tech cash register circa 1990, we are basically the Spy Kids of Oberlin College. You come to the desk for the free food, but every shift we have is essentially a top-secret mission.

First of all, the fourth floor urinal that won’t stop flushing? Haunted. That’s right, this building is full of ghosts. Try walking through the secret stairwell alone past midnight, with nothing but Tom Reid’s training on stellar customer service and a bottle of multipurpose cleaner to protect you. Also, there are wooden stocks for prisoners hidden in the attic. And bats. Lots of them. Think about that the next time you toss a key too hard and watch us pick it up off the floor. You can’t begin to understand the things we’ve see or heard. If walls could talk these marble beauties would tell you to keep your dang voices down. The tiniest whispers turn into deafening echoes thanks to our grand staircase, and there is such a thing as too much information (we would know...information is sort of our thing). A few weeks ago a man fell asleep on the fourth floor and we could hear him snoring from the desk. Just keep that in mind the next time you’re giving a very visual account of your weekend adventures. Let’s just say we could draw a diagram of Oberlin’s hookup culture so accurate it could be stored in the cabinet with maps of the bike path.

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THE GRAPE

So the next time you ask to reserve a ‘study room’ for your Dungeons and Dragons group or tell us about the mysterious blood that needs to be cleaned up on the third floor, remember that while we may be the keepers of information, we are also the keepers of your secrets.

Oh and one more thing...you need the sticker to access the key to our hearts.

Let’s be honest, the dining hall food at Oberlin isn’t great.

As quiet and reserved Oberlin Sophomore Jack Lutsky likes to put it, it tastes like “assfault.” However, Oberlin has an age-old question that needs to be answered: is co-op food any better?

I’ve always thought that students who join co-ops both hate things that taste good and love unnecessary work. But I wondered if maybe the food was tastier than I had presumed, so I decided to go on an adventure.

I would attempt to see if the co-op food tastes like anything at all.

A daring test, but one that I thought I would be able to handle.

So I surveyed the food, it took days to sample all the different beans each co-op had to offer, each less seasoned than the last.

Everytime I inquired about what meal I would eat, the co-ops would say that it was a “bad meal, but it’s normally not like this.”

I still wonder what it’s normally like.

But after eating Pyle’s signature tofu, followed by Tank’s signature tofu, and Harkness’s signature avant-garde soybean blocks, I learned that co-op food sort of tastes like how north quad feels: lonely and void of anything notable.

As each piece of “food” traveled from my mouth to my stomach, I thought about the massive economic movements that have occurred in the world to obtain seasoning and spices.

White people, especially at Oberlin, have a propensity to conveniently forget things. And when it comes to white people in co-ops, they always seem to forget that the desire for spices literally led to massive death and colonization throughout the world. You would think that the white people in these co-ops

Article Continued On Next Page

would at least consider this and spice their shit up Yet, these co-op-ees wouldn’t travel a marginal distance to procure even the most basic spices. It’s as if they were drinking soylent (a meal replacement.) It honestly scared me a little bit, but nobody seemed the least bit surprised by the blandness of the food.

They also kept trying to explain to me about something called a “legume,” which I’m pretty sure is fake, so I ignored them. They also told me that while each co-op serves beans quite often, that everyone in the co-ops has developed a large amount of fart resistance to the entire bean family. I seriously wondered how much this diet has changed each coop participant’s digestive system. Would people in Co-ops be able to eat rocks if they tried? Are they prone to the flavorless? Can they taste?

I’m a farter; anyone who knows me knows that, So I knew I had to get in and out of each of these co-ops as fast as possible without tooting. I managed to do so, but i’m sure my gassy expressions made me look like an outsider.

The long and short of it is co-op food doesn’t taste like anything. The people who choose to live such a enclosed lifestyle don’t seem to mind, they have chosen to dedicate themselves to this Lord of the Flies-esqe world and that’s their choice. I, however, will choose the dining hall, where I can forever season my food to my delight.

The Signs As Oberlin Sexts

BY ZOE JASPER CONTRIBUTING WRITER Aries: ugh this TED talk is making me horny

Libra: i lit a candle for you but the smoke alarm went off

Taurus: stole a bottle of chocolate syrup from stevie for us to play us to play with tonight ;)

Capricorn: seasoning these lentils just the way u like them

Gemini: hey sry i wouldnt make eye contact with u in stevie but i brought u dominos Virgo: come over and bring a quarter for my laundry, then fold it while I watch Scorpio: [to everyone in their contacts] there’s an open womb chair come fuck

Leo: tune in to WOBC at 3 am to hear our sex playlist Cancer: obvi i would rather be fucking the moon but you’re my second choice Aquarius: Reading foucault and thinking of u haha Pisces: the light is hitting the arb in a special way and im missing your body

Sagittarius: loool i have a car lets got to the currito in the cleveland airport

ART BY: JOSÉ MANUEL

MARCH 9, 2018

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Balut Bussy & Cholula Love talk Romance and other Sh*t CW: EXPLICIT SEXUAL DESCRIPTION *SOME OF OUR LANGUAGE ORIGINATES FROM BLACK QUEER VERNACULAR AND BLACK BALL CULTURE* How to meet new people?

Grindr is a great scene, honestly the best way of meeting new people. There are so many faceless people that ask “swap pics?”, its wonderful. Jazz forum has really worked for me, hit up the Cat n the Cream for the “best type of men”. Also, the Grape contributors meetings I hear are AMAZING for meeting new people-- honestly, they’re

life changing (and every other week on Sundays at 3PM in Wilder). I am having a bit of difficulty with this answer because I am such a social person, I just be like “hey what’s up?” and that’s how I meet new people. But the issue really is with how to meet new people: on this campus people really think that apathy is cute. (Hmm, I think I went to school with Apathy in kindergarten!) Honestly, just treat people

nicely. When you get your Lemon LaCroix at Azariah’s, ask them how their day was.

Human to human contact is so special.

Also, once you have these relationships, make sure to check in with people. If one of your squirrel friends suddenly is wearing clogs, check in with her and ask “Girl, are you okay? What is going on?” We gotta watch out for each other, stay safe out there.

(Cholula Love)

How do I spice things up in the bedroom? Sexually?

So you know Mexican elotes, how you can put chili powder on it? It’s called Tajin, so basically you take some of that and put it under the foreskin and you’re good! Yea, I’ve found that you don’t even need condoms when you have foreskin, you just tie a knot with it and you are all set. Cholula here loves a good foreskin, she LOVES being tucked in at bed at night, she even keeps the cheese from the sheets for later. But basically, we think that bringing in any type of food works really well. Nothing like some fun with avocados, some grapefruit you know? The other day I had some man who had the audacity of bringing the carnitas from Agave to the bedroom! I was laying there, covered in meat drippings and he did not even bring me a towel to wipe myself off. It was embarrassing. (Balut Bussy) I’m dating someone who is totally different from me on paper... but we really care about each other. He’s like not an “intellectual” at all and hasn’t gone to college, but is really knowledgeable and caring. Do you think we are too different to last after I graduate? lmk!!! Xoxo Let’s unpack this. So basically, are you saying that you can’t be an intellectual if you didn’t go to college? Hmm, eyebrow raising. But we not trying to come for you. Let’s practice some call-in culture, holding our family accountable. Just because this person is from a “different” part of your life, doesn’t mean that they can’t contribute positively to your life. Does he lay pipe? Yes, maybe he’s a plumber, who cares, if you knows how to throw it down then it works. Call it blue collar….wait, are we still talking foreskin?

(Balut Bussy)

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THE GRAPE

Hit After Hit: An Inside Scoop on ‘Sco Booking Success

My Top Four Marvin Krislov Dreams In Order of How Much Hair He Had

BY JACE BURNSTAIN

BY LIZ FRANK

SUPC (Student Union Programming Committee) and Concert Board are bringing an exciting new artist to the Dionysus Discotheque and they want you to know about it. Following up on the success of Palehound (7.3 Pitchfork rating) and Big Ups (7.6 Pitchfork rating), SUPC and Concert Board are very excited to announce their next marquee booking: Indie Band With an 8.4 Pitchfork Rating. Recently named Artist to Watch by Stereogum, this band lists their influences as Duster, Bikini Kill, and (Sandy) Alex G, among other top search results for “influential indie bands.” Members of both organizations cited how, in 5 years, it will be cool to say that this band came to Oberlin. “Maybe you can even lie and say you went to the show!”

1. Time: Fall 2016 Hairdo: Bald

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

SUPC are tasked with booking only for the Sco, and indeed they put on most of the Sco’s concerts. It is a thankless task, and most members seem not to mind that the millennial students of this head-down, tide-pod-obsessed campus don’t even know that their shows are happening. Both booking organizations revel in bringing in artists that the community enjoys. Or at least, that members’ immediate friend groups enjoy. “Sometimes,” Concert Board members chimed in, “we even book our friends’ bands regardless of campus interest or attendance!”

However, don’t let this lead you to think SUPC members don’t have their fingers on the heartbeats of campus music-heads. They explained this booking in the context last spring’s Joan of Arc show. “Only 5 people came to that show because they only got a 4.2 rating on Pitchfork. But I think with an 8.4, we’re looking at minimum 15 people, maybe even 20.” SUPC members have your best musical clout interests at heart.

Concert Board members, however, did not share the same enthusiasm. When asked if this show was booked with students in mind, all constituent members responded in unison, “who?”

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

This one was my first, and boy, what an awakening it was. One minute I’m climbing into bed in Dascomb 214 at 1am, and the next I’m walking around the Arb with Marv, talking about his time at Oxford and sharing our dreams of what we’ll do once we get out of this godforsaken town. We stare into each other’s eyes, but before I can say anything I wake up. I’ve wet the bed.

2. Time: Winter Term 2017 Hairdo: Fuzzy I had thought my Krislov dream was a one-time thing, a single blissful aberration. But as I slept soundly in my bed at home, Marv chose to visit me yet again.

This time we’re in the ‘Sco. He’s dressed in JNCO jeans and a Papa Roach Shirt.

I look down and realize that I’m wearing jelly shoes and overalls. It is 2003. As he slowly walks across the room to matchbox twenty’s Unwell I can’t help but notice his full sleeve of tattoos containing the full text of the Oberlin College Charter and Bylaws. I want to ask him to read it to me while I dance, but alas, my alarm goes off. I wake up disheveled. My bed smells of sweat and saliva.

3. Time: Spring 2017 Hairdo: Crew Cut It is the night before Spring Break. I find myself on the ShuttleHome bus alone with the driver. But I don’t see Pennsylvania through the window. I see stars.

I’m dreaming. The bus driver turns around. It’s him. The Man Who Announces the Tuition Increases. He stands up, and we walk slowly towards each other.

The bus stops. Outside I can see the dark side of the Moon. The bus goes right through the moon, destroying the celestial body and all that it stands for. As we drift through the cosmic dust of the former satellite I feel moisture on my face.

The fire sprinklers have come on in Dascomb.

4. Time: Fall 2017 Hairdo: Preppy Shag At last! Krislov is gone. Or so I thought. I’m finally settled into my room in Firelands. No one can hurt me here. I sleep. Suddenly, I find myself in Pleasantville, New York. A sign says “Pace University.” Everyone is wearing Sperrys. All the boys are wearing salmon-colored flat-front shorts and polos. I am in Hell.

Across the quad, I see Marvin. He looks simply ravishing in his concrete-gray suit. He brushes his bangs out of his face and shoots me a smile that could melt steel. “Hey Liz,” he says. “Didn’t expect to see you here.” I turn and run as fast as I can, but he catches up to me on his Pace-branded segue. “Why don’t you let me show you around a bit? I can take a selfie of us and put it on my Instagram.”, he tells me. I scream, but no words come out. I wake up in a cold sweat. Someone is standing above me. It is the Archangel Gabriel. His body is god-like, but he is wearing Krislov’s head. He has come for me. But I am ready to be taken. I go with him willingly, and finally I awaken. The cycle has been broken.

Send Liz your best Krislov or Ambar dreams to lfrank@oberlin.edu

ART BY JUAN CONTRERAS

MARCH 9, 2018

24

He Creamed Mushroom Soup!

A Dip in Cracker Lake: Poc and Their Hookups with yt People

Thinking outside the box

BY IAN FEATHER STAFF WRITER

BY ANONYMOUS CONTRIBUTING WRITER “Happy New Year!” he shouted. At least, that’s what I think he said. Much of it is a blur.

I remember arriving at the club. My friends and I were told that Shanghai had some of the best nightlife in China and I believed it. The club was pretty nice. It was one of those “no jeans and you need to take the elevator up to the top floor” type of deals.

We got upstairs and the music was whack. It was all techno, and everybody there seemed like a business professional--people in suits and shit.

Me and my girls decided to grab a few drinks at the overpriced bar, avoiding the sweaty international executives in favor of some strawberry daiquiris.

Nobody bought me a drink, or really even looked at me and my friends.

It could have been because we were Black, but who really knows (it was definitely because we were Black)?

That was ok though, because my friends were lit af and we started to make our own fun even with the shitty dance music.

While dancing, this dude started to approach me. I’m usually pretty cautious off white men approach me, but there was nothing for him to colonize (except my body) so I responded positively and smiled. We started to dance together and it was getting hot and steamy. Literally, the club was hot and he smelled like shit and was really sweating and I really wondered if he had taken advantage of some antiperspirant that day.

While grinding, I felt him pull away.

Thank God. I was happy to be free and enjoy the relatively fresh air around me. It almost felt like when you’ve been underwater too long and just barely make it up for air. Yes, everything was cool until I turned around and saw

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The Oberlin Budget Crisis:

him dancing with my FRIEND. Honestly, it’s my fault for having assumed he was gay. I’m no hater though, so I let them dance. Clearly he was down with the swirl, so I wasn’t mad at him.

Oh, the guy was British. And, if Prince Harry can teach me anything, it’s that the Brits love some chocolate.

I digress.

So him and my friend were dancing, and out of nowhere Brit boy takes off her baseball cap. My friend is mortified. And if you know why, then you know. She needed that headwrap because her shit was truly busted under those satin wrappings.

Being the good friend that I am, I swung back around to get the scarf from him and be my friend’s saving grace. Of course he took that as a cue to try and make out, so I figured why not and let his mouth slit touch mine.

Before you know it, we’re in the bathroom stall and his mushroom head dick is in my mouth. Now, I’m talking button mushrooms, not shitake or oyster honey.. I was gagging (literally) because it’s lowkey big and I was into it! He started moaning though and it got a bit weird, but I kept going until he finished and ended up with a mouthful of cream of mushroom soup.

It was quite tasty, yum!

“Do you want me to take care of you?” he asked. I politely declined. The bathroom started to smell like bathroom, so the fun was over. Two Blacks, one Brit, and no attention paid to the sign that clearly stated that no sexual activity was to take place in the bathrooms.

I guess that’s how he wanted to bring in the New Year.

THE GRAPE

As President Ambar made clear to students at her talk on February 28th, the college is facing a dire financial situation that is going to require tough decisions to be made. She challenged the audience to “think about what the possibilities are” and said that “while there are challenges there are also opportunities”. Well President Ambar, I’ve got just the solutions you and the Board of Trustees have been searching for: • For every STEM class, just use Khan Academy instead of professors.

• Turn the football field into an arable plot of land for growing cash crops--less concussions, less toxic masculinity, more revenue.

• Make the students who appropriate traditional working-class clothing (millionaires wearing Carhartt) grow and harvest crops for OSCA. • Make the students who work at the CIT Help Desk do something other than working on their computer science homework.

• Turn WOBC into a SiriusXM station.

• In order to improve retention and yield, put silly ethical considerations aside and just start cloning students.

• Ever heard of a ‘swear jar’? Create one for microaggressions.

• Confiscate and auction off every Canada Goose jacket.

• Do we really need what feels like 5 deans per student? Probably not, so let’s make them prove their worth in an Olympics-style competition. Gold medalists get to keep their jobs, and the rest can go find another school to do their “dean-stuff” • Turn Dascomb into another hotel, except make this one run entirely on fossil fuels just to change things up.

• Make tuition extremely expensive. Oh wait….

Tappan Square Squirrel Cult Emerges From the Shadows, Demands Organizing Rights

BY SAM SCHUMAN STAFF WRITER

Tappan Square—College-staff relations got a bit nutty Saturday, as a group of squirrels arranged in the shape of a pentagram demanded that Oberlin College recognize them as a professional association.

Speaking through their representative, the academy award-winning actor Matthew Broderick, the group of 5 fox squirrels (scientifically known as sciurus niger) told passerby that they considered themselves a “benevolent cult” who have for decades influenced events at the College, ranging from tuition increases to the creation of Decafé’s Hot and Ready section. After 60 years, they have decided to exercise their collective bargaining rights.

Although many students assume that the squirrels of Tappan Square are entirely ordinary, it’s an open secret among the administration and faculty that the Office of Safety and Security pays the small cult of rodents to narc on students in Tappan Square. According to Broderick, this once-amenable relationship has soured in recent years, as the college has

implemented salary freezes and refused to improve workplace conditions, namely by continuing to allow “too many fucking dogs” in the 13-acre public park.

The squirrels reportedly became interested in unionizing after taking POLT 239: Marxian Theory with Marc Blecher last spring, and subsequently finding a discarded copy of The Marx-Engels Reader on a bench.

Many students were puzzled to witness the meeting, which consisted of five squirrels sitting roughly equidistant from one another directly across the street from King. There was speculation that the five were attempting to summon Satan, or at least Brockhampton, however Broderick assured The Grape that the unconventional arrangement was simply attempting to summon the ghost of legendary socialist organizer Eugene V. Debs.

The Tappan squirrels also announced that they will strike until the College administration agrees to their demands.

The work stoppage has already become a topic of conversation among students.

“At first I thought I was looking at a bunch of squirrels just standing around like they always do, but eventually I realized that I was looking at a sit-down strike.” Said first-year psychology major Natalie Passaro.

The Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences released a statement on Monday acknowledging the squirrels’ legal right to organize while disputing claims PHOTO BY SAM SCHUMAN that the College had ignored workplace speculate the Politics department chair safety concerns, saying “When was the will advise them on how best to organize last time anyone saw a dog bigger than in order to become spectre haunting a fucking dachshund in Tappan? If five Tappan Square. squirrels can’t take down one weiner dog we’re all wasting our time here.”

Contact staff writer Sam Schuman at The squirrels were last seen attending sschuman@oberlin.edu Marc Blecher’s office hours, where some

Security Notebook

BY RÄBO BIRCH CONTRIBUTOR

Tuesday, February 27th

11:33PM--Student was found puking on first floor of Fairkid due to consumption of homebrewed kombucha.

Wednesday, February 28th

12:44PM--Safety and Security officer assisted student who received seconddegree burns from Stevenson dining hall plates.

1:58PM-- Officers responded to D cafe stampede for last ciabatta roll resulting in one student being trampled.

3:14PM--Safety and Security received reports of a student in Wilder bowl stripping naked and professing their thanks to Apollo for the blessing of sun.

(72 degree day)

6:23PM-- Stevenson dining hall staff reported a student falling into the abyss of the silverware chute while putting away dishes. An investigation to find and retrieve the student is ongoing.

Thursday, February 29th

Friday, March 2nd

1:24AM-- Mudd staff reported a student emerging from circulation desk cabinets and asking for the date.

4:25PM-- Faculty reported discovering environmental science students growing cannabis plants in AJLC ‘Living Machine’.

The plants have an estimated street value of $20,000.

3:13PM-- Safety and Security officers assisted a student found in the arb after drunkenly attempting to dive into the still frozen pond.

9:45PM-- An alumnus reported the theft of their bike, which was left unlocked, from the racks outside South Hall in the spring of 2011.

6:50PM-- Safety and Security officers responded to reports of a student attempting to leave Stevenson dining hall with a fountain machine: when asked, student said it was “for the pregame.”

MARCH 9, 2018

26

ART BY JOSÉ MANUEL

BY JULIA HALM AND JUAN CONTRERAS