December 13, 2019

The Oberlin Review December 13, 2019

Established 1874

Volume 148, Number 12

Posters Call Upon Students to Boycott Course Evaluations Rachel Choi

Ferd Protzman, OC ’75, whose career spanned journalism and university administration, will retire from his position as chief of staff in the president’s office at the end of 2019.

Photo by Chris Schmucki, Photo Editor

Ferd Protzman, OC ’75, Retiring Chief of Staff, Reflects on Oberlin Career

Nathan Carpenter Editor-in-Chief

After serving for three years as chief of staff in the Office of the President, Ferd Protzman, OC ’75, will retire at the end of the calendar year. Protzman will be replaced on an interim basis by David Hertz, managing director at Cleveland-based crisis communications firm Dix & Eaton, while a national search is launched to find a fulltime replacement.

Protzman returned to Oberlin in 2006 while working as an author and journalist for publications including The Washington Post and The New York Times. A German and Government double major at Oberlin, he spent a chunk of his career overseas and covered the fall of the Berlin Wall for the Times.

Protzman began his career at Oberlin in 2007, when he was hired by former President Marvin Krislov as the assistant to the president for communications. In 2009, he assumed a lecturer position in Rhetoric and Composition and taught Journalism Basics and private readings until June 2017. Protzman also served as a faculty advisor for the College’s debate and men’s varsity basketball teams.

“Every leadership team in every organization, there are these incredible people who are behind the scenes who make much of it happen,” President Carmen Twillie Ambar said. “People sometimes focus on the president. …

I can’t express how important Ferd has been to helping many of the wonderful things that have happened in Oberlin over the course of the last many years.”

Protzman described the chief of staff’s role as multifaceted.

“You’re doing communications, you’re doing a certain amount of project management, keeping things on track,” Protzman said. “You’re the person when both sides decide they want something creative but they don’t want to do it, they say, ‘Well, okay, you do it.’”

According to Ambar, the chief of staff role still isn’t universal at colleges and universities across the country — she didn’t have one when she was president of Cedar Crest College — but many schools, like Oberlin, are recognizing its utility.

“I think that part of the reason why [the role is] becoming more common is because the presidency has changed over the last 20 years,” Ambar said. “The ability for the president to move all of these large projects along just on their own … at all the meetings, all the strategy sessions, all the discussions just really isn’t possible anymore.”

Ambar said that she relies on Protzman for a variety of functions, including setting communications strategy,

screening requests that come to the Office of the President, speaking for her at meetings when she can’t physically attend, and more.

“He brings a kind of steadiness,” Ambar said.

“Typically, people are bringing to this office the most complex, the most challenging, the most difficult issues that need to be dealt with at this institution. So the steadiness of thoughtful, deliberative advice is not as easy to come by as you might think.”

During his time working at Oberlin, even prior to becoming chief of staff, Protzman has been involved in setting the College’s communications strategy in response to a number of national controversies. This includes media coverage of a story published in the Review about cultural appropriation in the dining halls and the verdict in the lawsuit filed by Gibson’s Bakery against the College.

While Protzman admits that the institution suffers from a negative outside perception, he says that the College has learned important lessons from appearing so frequently in the national media.

“My views on communication have been that you try to communicate early, often, and that you’re open and honest,” Protzman said. “I’ve always tried to abide by that. … Communications is just an ongoing challenge, and there are things we could have handled better, responded more quickly, responded more clearly, and we’ve gotten better at that.”

Inside the Cox Administration Building, where Ambar and Protzman both work, Protzman’s private communication style is also well known.

“His sense of humor is so sharp, and it has a way of cutting through the noise,” Ambar said. “It has a way of lightening a room that [is] really heavy. It also has a way of adding clarity to a room that’s very foggy.”

Ambar also cited Protzman’s knowledge of Oberlin’s unique history and culture — and how these factors shape its present — as an important resource. Hertz, who will assume Protzman’s responsibilities beginning in the new year, echoed this sentiment.

“You don’t replace Ferd Protzman — he [has] an encyclopedic knowledge of Oberlin,” Hertz said. “He can tell you what class alumni are in, and he understands the importance of relationships with all the audiences. I’m just learning as much as I can from him before he retires.

I dread the time when he says goodbye.”

While Protzman said he doesn’t recall his time as an Oberlin student with any particular nostalgia, he does have warm feelings toward the campus and the many roles he’s filled here over the years — including as a

Conversations around the ethics of studentsubmitted course evaluations have surfaced after anonymous posters were put up around campus urging students to boycott filling out their evaluations.

The posters argue that inherent implicit biases may cause unfairness and inequity in the evaluations, particularly toward professors who identify as women or LGBTQ+, as well as professors of color.

“Due to our implicit and internalized biases, we hold minority professors to disproportionately higher standards than we hold their majority counterparts,” the poster read. “This bigotry fosters an atmosphere in which marginalized people must work substantially harder to earn the same amount of recognition, opportunities, and benefits that their more privileged peers are afforded comparatively easily. … To participate in a prejudiced system is to enable its continuation. The only way to dismantle this system is to boycott it and encourage others to do the same. Skip the course evaluations and provide direct feedback [to] your professors.”

Faculty members use the Student Evaluations of Teaching to receive feedback from their students, but the College also uses these evaluations to assess professors who are up for tenure or promotions.

However, according to a Dec. 5 email sent to students by Acting Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences David Kamitsuka and Acting Dean of the Conservatory of Music William Quillen, Oberlin accounts for potential biases in their review.

“Oberlin’s elected faculty personnel committees are aware of implicit bias and its impact on SET results, and they factor that awareness into their evaluation of the quality of instruction,” Kamitsuka and Quillen wrote. “We use SETs as just one instrument among many in the evaluation of teaching.”

In addition to SETs, these committees draw on teaching portfolios, classroom observations, syllabi, class enrollment, mentorship data, and other information in assessing faculty, according to Kamitsuka and Quillen.

In response to the original posters, College second-year Maisie Sheidlower put up posters to raise different perspectives on completing course evaluations.

“I was thinking that if I were a professor, I would find feedback from my students very helpful,” Sheidlower said. “One of the things that the original poster said was that we hold minority professors to higher standards, so my poster said, “Here are ten signs that you are doing that.’”

Sheidlower’s poster urged students to fight implicit bias in other ways and argued that a boycott could actually make the problem worse.

“This person is right: implicit bias in course evals is a problem,” read Sheidlower’s poster. “But ONLY boycotting them without other action is counterproductive in so many ways. If the people who are aware of implicit bias boycott online course evals, they become even more skewed towards white male professors because the people that aren’t aware are still filling them out, making the system even more broken.”

Professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies Cindy Frantz studies implicit bias and

See Protzman, page 2

See Implicit Bias, page 4

CONTENTS NEWS

OPINIONS

THIS WEEK

ARTS & CULTURE

SPORTS

02 Independent Congressional Candidate Visits Oberlin

05 Following Quillen’s Appointment, College Must Pursue Similar Stability

08–09 A History of Science Education at Oberlin

10 In Bittersweet Move, House of the Lord Finds New Space

16 Oberlin’s Oldest Club Sport Sees Arrival of New Members

facebook.com/oberlinreview

11 Surprisingly, Cleveland Has a Wine Scene — And it’s Thriving

16 Yeofit Undergoes Schedule Changes

INSTAGRAM @ocreview

03 City Council Rezones Land for Potential Retail Center

06 Solarity Failed Students By Refusing to Provide Condoms

The Oberlin Review | December 13, 2019

oberlinreview.org TWITTER @oberlinreview

1

Ne w s

Independent Congressional Candidate Protzman Set to Retire Visits Oberlin on Listening Tour Continued from page 1

Chris Gibbs speaks to Ohioans at The Corner Joint on Wednesday. Gibbs aims to run as an Independent in the fourth congressional district race in Nov. 2020.

Photo by Sophia Herron Geller

Ella Moxley Senior Staff Writer Chris Gibbs, who is planning to run for Representative Jim Jordan’s seat in Congress as an Independent, met with potential constituents at The Corner Joint on Wednesday. Gibbs is currently traveling around Ohio’s fourth congressional district, which includes Oberlin, on a listening tour as part of the exploratory phase of his campaign.

Gibbs is a farmer, the former chair of the Shelby County Republican Party, and a former supporter of President Donald Trump. After becoming frustrated with political polarization and the current administration’s trade war policies, Gibbs decided to step down as chair and run as an Independent. The district’s current representative, Jordan, has served in Congress since 2007 and is a creator of the far-right House Freedom Caucus.

Gibbs viewed Wednesday’s event as a chance to meet with voters and get to know the district.

“Not everybody in this district is being represented, and very frankly, if a person doesn’t subscribe to a far-right ideology … they’re not represented in this district,” Gibbs said. “That’s not how our republic is built. You don’t have to agree with everybody all the time, but people expect to be heard and they expect to be represented.”

Jordan has been challenged in the last three election cycles by Democrat and Oberlin resident Janet Garret.

Many people at the listening session cited concerns about gerrymandering as a reason that her campaigns have failed to unseat Jordan. Gibbs hopes his run will be a chance to restore democratic representation to the district.

“I worked on Janet Garrett’s campaign last year, and the truth is the numbers just don’t add up,” College third-year Ilana Foggle said. “I did some research last year about gerrymandering, specifically in our district, and if 100 percent of Lorain County voters had voted for Janet Garrett, she still would’ve lost to Jim Jordan.”

Gibbs has an unconventional background that might make it hard for him to break into Oberlin students’ left-leaning political demographic.

“I could see him generating enthusiasm just from his ability to potentially win,” College fourth-year and OC Dems Communication Chair Ezra Andres-Tysch said. “I don’t think he fits the Oberlin political norms. I

The Oberlin r eview Dec. 13, 2019 Volume 148, Number 12 (ISSN 297–256) Published by the students of Oberlin College every Friday during the fall and spring semesters, except holidays and examination periods. Advertising rates: $18 per column inch.

Second-class postage paid at Oberlin, Ohio. Entered as second-class matter at the Oberlin, Ohio post office April 2, 1911.

POSTMASTER SEND CHANGES TO: Wilder Box 90, Oberlin, Ohio 44074-1081. Office of Publication: Burton Basement, Oberlin, Ohio 44074. Phone: (440) 775-8123

2

think where he really has the potential to strive is with moderate older white voters in more rural areas and people that have been disaffected by the trade war and

by Trump’s just egregious personality.”

However, Gibbs feels that because Oberlin students often feel unrepresented by Jordan, he needs to listen to students.

“Oberlin students’ views are important to me,” Gibbs said. “Their views need to be incorporated into my learning as a representative, so I can carry those throughout the district and use them to have useful discussions with other constituents. … What I wanted to do is to prove by coming here ... that I wasn’t afraid to come here and listen and learn.”

Gibbs specifically feels that Jordan’s leadership does not reflect the northern parts of the fourth district.

“Truthfully, [Gibbs] could stay down in Shelby County where he’s from and just try to mobilize the entire Southern part of the district,” Foggle said. “But he decided to come here — a three-hour drive — to hear from us, hear our perspectives because Jim Jordan has never done that. So that’s why I urge Oberlin students to at least pay attention to this race.”

Throughout the listening session, voters expressed concerns to Gibbs about a range of issues including gun reform, reproductive rights, the electoral college, and immigration reform. Another prominent concern was Gibbs’s ability to beat Jordan as an independent.

Many listeners argued that Gibbs would be a stronger candidate on the Republican ticket.

Voters also expressed some concerns that Gibbs would split the block of anti-Jordan voters, throwing Jordan another win.

“My worry is that he gets 20 percent of the vote and takes significantly from the Democrats, doesn’t take from the Republicans, [which] gives Jim Jordan an even more like ‘I’m obviously the person that deserves a seat,’” Andres-Tysch said. “I think it’s an interesting and unique way of dealing with this unwinnable race.”

Still, Gibbs feels that he has a clear-cut strategy to win the congressional seat.

“My view was I needed to get to the real people,” Gibbs said. “[Running as an Independent] fit me anyway. It wasn’t an opportunist move. … Somebody has to stand up and I believe I have the pedigree for it because, coming from the Republican side, I have the pedigree to pull those votes.”

Editors-in-Chief

Nathan Carpenter Katherine MacPhail Managing Editor Ananya Gupta News Editors Anisa Curry Vietze Katie Lucey Opinions Editor Jackie Brant This Week Editor Lily Jones Arts Editors Kate Fishman Aly Fogel Sports Editor Jane Agler Cont. Sports Editors Khalid McCalla Zoë Martin del Campo Photo Editors Mallika Pandey Chris Schmucki Senior Staff Writers Imani Badillo Ella Moxley

Layout Editors

journalism instructor.

“There’ve been a lot of good things, but just working with Oberlin students — that’s been awesome,” Protzman said.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition Hal Sundt, OC ’12, teaches a popular course on long-form literary journalism. He was also once a student of Protzman’s, undertaking a private reading in his senior year that focused on many of the same topics he now teaches to a new generation of Oberlin students. Sundt found Protzman’s pedagogical approach very engaging.

“He did this cool thing once where he wanted us to find a piece of journalism that we really disliked,” Sundt said. “It encouraged me to … [be] thoughtful about understanding why it didn’t resonate with [me], and that is, I think, such a productive mode of inquiry.”

As he prepares for his next chapter, Protzman hopes that Oberlin will continue to broadcast itself and its values to the world, even as national controversies persistently intersect with campus life.

“I think we’re getting better at … trying to figure out ways to tell our story,” Protzman said. “It’s about all the incredible work that goes on here. … I think that’s the part that we have to keep getting better at, is crafting a compelling narrative about what really happens here.”

William Quillen Named Dean of Conservatory Anisa Curry Vietze News Editor William Quillen has been hired as dean of the Conservatory after serving in the position on an interim basis since June 2018. In May, Oberlin launched a confidential national search for the position.

Quillen was vice-chair of the Academic and Administrative Program Review’s Steering Committee, alongside Acting Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences David Kamitsuka. The Committee led the institution-wide evaluation and made recommendations to address the College’s financial issues.

“I am excited that Bill will continue to provide thoughtful guidance and leadership as dean of the Conservatory,” President Carmen Twillie Ambar said according to a Dec. 10 College press release. “He has demonstrated a vision for excellence and creativity that will allow Oberlin College and Conservatory to maintain its position as a leader in higher education for decades to come.”

Before coming to Oberlin, Quillen taught at the University of Cambridge and the University of California, Berkeley; he also worked as legacy and major gifts officer at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Before becoming acting dean of the Conservatory, Quillian worked at Oberlin as associate dean for academic affairs starting in August 2017.

“I am honored and humbled to have been chosen as the Conservatory’s next Dean, and I am overjoyed at the opportunity to continue working with our esteemed students, faculty, and staff,” Quillen said in the College’s press release. “The Conservatory represents the single best education of its kind in the world. I look forward to working with President Ambar, the Board of Trustees, and the entire Oberlin community to shepherd the Conservatory into its next era of unparalleled excellence and innovation.”

After the selection is approved by the Board of Trustees, Quillen will start serving in the new role on Jan. 1. The search for dean of the College of Arts and Sciences is still ongoing.

Emma Jane Haas Lila Michaels Parker Shatkin Nico Vickers Ads Manager Jabree Hason Web Manager Sheng Kao Production Manager Devyn Malouf Production Staff Gigi Ewing Christo Hays Jimmy Holland Olive Hwang Kushagra Kar Allison Schmitt Ivy Fernandez Smith Jaimie Yue

Corrections:

To submit a correction, email managingeditor@ oberlinreview.org.

Makerspace Cultivates Student Creativity The Oberlin Student Makerspace nestles itself in a nondescript room on Wilder Hall’s third-and-a-half floor. No larger than an office, the space is ergonomic; various workbenches, cabinets, and machinery rest flush to the walls, ringing a small carpeted space which rolling office chairs can cross easily — perhaps to grab a tool or part.

“There was no functional place for students to go and work on maker projects, where the idea is you have access to tools and can make things,” double-degree fourth-year Dirk Roosenburg said when asked about the origin of the space.

Roosenburg, along with College third-years Maeve Greising and Ellis Lane, act as the club’s officers, which costs a one-time fee of just $5 to join.

“The idea here is the makerspace doesn’t actually provide projects,” Roosenburg said. “We hold office hours that are completely open.”

Any student or faculty member can come to the space with an idea, regardless of their knowledge of the variety of tools, and receive guidance. Having a stock of consumable materials and over 200 unique tools on hand overcomes a major hurdle that many aspiring and lone makers face: access to resources.

Partnerships with community artists and makers are also on the horizon. One of these involves refurbishing electronics, such as turntables, for sale in local thrift stores.

Interested students can stop by Wilder 329 or email oc3d@oberlin.edu to pursue their creative desires with the Oberlin Student Maker Space.

Security Notebook Friday, Dec. 6, 2019 1:14 a.m. Campus Safety officers and the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm in the Talcott Hall basement. No fire or smoke was observed in the area. An electrician responded to replace the detector.

7:55 p.m. Mercy Allen Hospital staff requested transport for a student to their East Hall dorm.

Officers responded and the transport was completed.

10:44 p.m.

Officers and the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm in the Talcott Hall basement’s mechanical room. Steam from the HVAC system was found to be the cause. A work order was filed.

Saturday, Dec. 7, 2019 3:52 p.m. Officers and the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm at a Union Street Housing Unit. Smoke from cooking activated two detectors. The area was cleared, and the alarm reset. There was no fire.

Sunday, Dec. 8, 2019 Text and Photo by Christo Hays, Production Editor

City Council Rezones Land for Potential Retail Center

The preliminary site plan for a new shopping center at the intersection of Ohio State Route 58 and U.S. Route 20 in Oberlin.

City Council voted to rezone the land for commercial development at its last public hearing.

Photo courtesy of The Chronicle

Katherine MacPhail Editor-in-Chief Last week, Oberlin City Council voted 7–0 to rezone land at the intersection of Ohio State Route 58 and U.S. Route 20, opening up the plot to be developed into a shopping center by the Carnegie Management and Development Corporation. The vote followed a public hearing, which many community members who spoke against the possibility of a new commercial building.

Residents’ concerns mirrored those raised at two previous meetings on the topic, and included how these plans might contradict the city’s commitment to sustainability. Resident Aliza Weidenbaum spoke out against the rezoning.

“There is no consensus that we need a generic-looking shopping area that is hard to get to,” Weidenbaum said. “We are not ready to give in to the temptation of building another mall, because we can’t be very proud of another mall.”

Councilmember Sharon Pearson responded to some of these concerns at the end of the meeting.

“I personally believe that with this project we can find a balance between economic development and sustainability,” she said. “I trust and believe in the incoming elected officials to be able to hold the developers’ … feet to the fire to make sure that this is sustainable development.”

Councilmember Heather Adelman echoed a sentiment put forth by Councilmember Ronnie Rimbert about prioritizing The Oberlin Review | December 13, 2019

low-income community members who could benefit from the job opportunities that the shopping center would create.

“I think too often the desires of people who value sustainability are pitted against low-income people,” Adelman said. “That’s often the debate. I think Oberlin needs to look at that. We need more jobs, we need more taxes, and we can do it in a way that is sustainable and smart. Not all development is bad.”

Council Vice President Linda Slocum addressed the concerns of small business owners, who worry that a shopping center could compete with their stores.

Slocum believes that the new stores will fulfill different needs, and she hopes that this development could bring more visitors to Oberlin who will trickle into downtown.

“I’m hoping too that we can attract more people to come and — as Mr. Rimbert said — explore our community, and that our downtown businesses can fill a niche that these particular businesses that are going to be located off of a highway are not going to be able to fulfill,” Slocum said.

Councilmember Kelley Singleton brought up the issue of tax revenue, which he hopes this development will help boost. Singleton cited multiple factors which he predicts will lead to city tax issues in the future, including the potential privatization of the Federal Aviation Administration in Oberlin — currently the city’s largest source of tax revenue — the possibility of a recession in the coming years, and the dip in college-aged children in 2025.

“We need tax revenue,” he said. “47 percent of this town is tax-exempt when it comes to property. That’s not sustainable.”

However, Council President Bryan Burgess explained that the development alone wouldn’t ease a tax shortfall.

“There’s no single solution,” he said. “It’s really more of a matter of diversifying our tax revenue.”

Even without predicted tax difficulties, Burgess said that he would have voted to rezone the property. He explained that, although it was previously zoned for office space, the land was always set aside for some kind of development.

Burgess stated that, outside of City Council hearings, he feels that residents have been in favor of the shopping center.

“The overwhelming response that I received is positive,” he said.

Still, residents like Weidenbaum are not convinced that this shopping center is right for Oberlin.

“Oberlin’s financial anxieties or worries about the future aside, I think we can probably agree that the world doesn’t need another shopping mall,” Weidenbaum said. “We can see through the temptation of extra tax money. We don’t want sprawl in the name of profit. Mall jobs are not green jobs. It is responsible of you to be so duly concerned about the budget.

But this one proposal is not our only ticket to putting more money in the city budget.”

11:52 p.m. Officers responded to assist a student in Langston Hall who cut their finger. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

12:08 a.m. Officers were requested to assist with an intoxicated student outside at the northeast end of Philips gym. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

2:00 a.m. A student reported loud noise and possibly an unauthorized party at a Union Street Housing Unit.

Officers responded and located the party. Party attendees were asked to leave and complied.

4:11 a.m. A resident of Barrows Hall reported that an intoxicated student walked into their room and fell asleep. Officers responded; the individual was identified as a student. The student was walked to their room, accompanied by their friends. A custodian responded for a biohazard cleanup.

Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2019 11:21 a.m. Officers were requested to transport an ill student from the Student Health Center to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment. The transport was completed.

4:09 p.m. Staff at Philips gym reported property damage in the President’s Walkway. An officer observed minor damage to a high-top table and one barstool. It is unknown who is responsible for the damage.

4:16 p.m. Staff conducting a Life Safety inspection at a Union Street Housing Unit reported drug paraphernalia observed in plain view.

Officers responded and confiscated two grinders, a bong and two glass pipes. Items were turned over to the Oberlin Police. A smoke detector was also found bagged; the bag was removed.

11:49 p.m. A resident of a West College Street Village House reported a bat in their living room.

An officer and a maintenance technician responded. The bat was captured and safely released outside.

3

Ne New wss OFF THE CUFF

Jad Abumrad, OC ’95, Creator of Radiolab, Dolly Parton’s America

Jad Abumrad.

Photo courtesy of The New York Times

Jad Abumrad, OC ’95, is the creator and producer of some of the most popular public radio programs and podcasts, including Radiolab, More Perfect, and Dolly Parton’s America. Abumrad’s show Radiolab — previously co-hosted by Robert Krulwich, OC ’69 — airs on over 500 stations in the United States and is downloaded over 9 million times a month as a podcast. Radiolab was awarded a Peabody Award in 2011 and 2015, and Abumrad was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2011. While at Oberlin, Abumrad studied Music Composition and Creative Writing.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Anisa Curry Vietze News Editor Sarah Dalgleish Can you talk a little bit about how Oberlin led you to the work you’re doing now?

I feel like Oberlin is infused in everything I do, to be honest. I wouldn’t have said that the moment I walked away from Oberlin — I distinctly remember leaving Oberlin and feeling like, “Okay, I just got a degree in Music Composition and Creative Writing. What the hell am I gonna do with it?” I felt like I had gone to this incredibly interesting place and had incredibly interesting conversations but had zero skills at the end of it, which turned out not to be true at all. But it’s weird. Oberlin was like a grenade that went off a few years late or something, like you pull the pin and it goes off four years later. When I started to tumble my way into journalism — totally unexpectedly — I

suddenly found myself in this very Oberlin state of mind, constantly exploring and curious and dissatisfied, and wanting to try new things.

The thing I feel defined Oberlin for me was this restlessness, this idea that you’re not satisfied with the way that the world is and that the world could be better, the world could be different. And so you want to explore and understand the world and all of its nuances and not settle for the stories that people tell you. And I suddenly found myself in this position where that was my job: to do interviews and explore ideas and get to some new understanding of stuff. I feel like my job is an embodiment or an expression of the Oberlin ethos. Oberlin planted a seed of dissatisfaction in me that has continued to bloom throughout my career. And every good decision I’ve ever made has been because I’d been frustrated and restless and unsatisfied with the thing that’s in front of me. You know, you take a risk at that point and you do something, and then suddenly it becomes its own thing. That’s how Radiolab happened. That’s how Dolly Parton’s America happened. It was out of feeling like I just want to hear something I’m not hearing and then you just go do it.

Robert Krulwich, [OC ’69,] your cohost on Radiolab, has been very vocal in the past few years about his complicated relationship with Oberlin. I was curious if you share any of his feelings of tension in your relationship with Oberlin?

I mean sure, I share it, but to a much different degree. I’m much closer to my time at Oberlin than he is. And so I empathize and I understand the very things that he criticizes about Oberlin. His criticism is, as you alluded to, out of a deep, deep love. He has been so involved with Oberlin over the years.

For me, I mean, here’s how I process it: Certainly in Robert’s generation and to some extent in my generation, the people of Oberlin — that is, the sort of far left — were kind of the gadflies, they were the agitators. They were the people who stuck their finger in the eye of the powerful. And they did it through humor and they did it through a deep sense of mischief. They didn’t take the powerful seriously and they didn’t take themselves seriously.

It is interesting to me that that sense of

play and mischief has shifted — and now you see that a lot more, unfortunately, on the right. On the left, we can often appear to the outside as a bunch of wet blankets.

Right? And so for me, that’s an interesting shift and I don’t have a real particular moral position on it, but, I think if anything, what Robert’s reacting to is that sense that we used to be so mischievous. We used to not take ourselves quite so seriously. And that loss of lightness is actually a pretty important piece of real estate. It might not seem like it, but it is the bridge that you build to the people who hate you, to the people who don’t agree with you. I think that’s what he’s referring to.

But I also think that I don’t want to live in the world that we used to live in.

We’re all progressing and moving in a new place. And a lot of what some people call — and I put this in air quotes — “political correctness” is just people trying to be taken seriously and trying to say, “Look, we don’t want to live in a stupid world, so let’s not be stupid.”

When you talk about all these problems that are dividing us right now and coming to that with a lightness, to me the epitome of what you’re talking about would be Dolly Parton’s America.

What you think Dolly Parton would think of Oberlin?

That’s a great question. Oh, wow. I have no idea what Dolly would think. We spent a lot of time at The University of Tennessee with a college class that was called Dolly Parton’s America. They very generously allowed us to borrow the name from that class. The students reminded me very much of the people that I went to school with, in that they were incredibly smart. They were all History majors, so they had a very deep appreciation for the complicated histories that have led us to this moment. They’ve all taken a gender studies class and they all had the language, right, this sort of Oberlin language. And I asked Dolly about some of the ideas that came up in that class, and she just laughed like she thought it was the most hilarious thing — not in a dismissive way, but in a, “Isn’t it funny that you live a life and then suddenly you are studied by a bunch of college kids?”

I think she would be healthily suspicious of Oberlin, but also because she’s Dolly Parton, she never casts anyone

out. And so I think she would be incredibly empathetic of the change and the struggle that Oberlin students are engaged in. But I think she would be empathetic, you know, dispositionally that’s just who she is.

What advice would you give to current Oberlin students who are interested in going into audio journalism?

The thing about podcasting that is both incredible and also daunting is that the barriers are gone. When I was stumbling into journalism, there was just public radio and you had to intern for like three years for no pay before they even noticed you. And then if they noticed you, you just had to somehow ingratiate yourself to where they would finally give you something interesting to do. You just had to pay your dues in the stupidest way for the longest amount of time. You don’t have to do that anymore. You can make a thing and then get it out there in 48 hours.

The process of taking the interview we’re doing now and putting it on SoundCloud and then getting it up on iTunes, is trivial. But the unfortunate flip side of that is that everyone can do it. And so, how do you even get someone to pay attention to you? In a way, it’s the same problem. On some level my advice to you would be don’t wait around; just do it.

Two things matter at the end of the day.

The first: Are you doing something that pleases you? Are you working in a way that you enjoy on some deep, irrational level? Like yeah, it’s hard, and there are deadlines, and it’s stressful, and there might be all-nighters, but on some level, do you just like it? You have to just like it in order to weather the ups and downs.

For me, it is still pleasurable to sit in front of Pro Tools and to take one little block of sound and shove it up against another and shuffle them around until you get just the right order. I think you always have to connect with that because that’s what will get you through it.

The other piece of advice I’d give you is that even though I said don’t wait around, you also have to understand that it takes a while to get an audience and to get a voice and to develop a style that people want and to figure out how to cleverly rearrange what you’re doing so that people will like it. That takes a long time. So I would say hurry up, don’t wait, but also give it a minute. That’s my paradoxical advice.

Implicit Bias Questioned in Conversation About Course Evaluations Continued from page 1

discrimination, and says that students who are aware of possible biases are actually capable of mitigating them in course evaluations.

“There are three conditions that need to be in place for us to be able to correct for our biases,” said Frantz.

“First, we have to be aware that we have them which, you know, people don’t want to see themselves as prejudiced. Recognizing, ‘Oh, I might have an implicit bias’ is important. Number two, people need to be motivated to correct for it. And then number three, they have to be cognitively able to correct for it. ...

In the context of course evaluations, people do have

the cognitive resources to be aware of these things and correct for them. And my sense is at Oberlin, the students are pretty aware of the fact that they have implicit biases and very motivated to correct for them.”

Professor of Theater and Africana Studies Caroline Jackson Smith believes that the advantages of course evaluations outway the downsides.

“I feel that course evaluations are the very place that students can exercise real power and make their voices heard,” Smith wrote in an email to the Review.

“In all the departments I’ve been a part of, we have taken student feedback extremely seriously, and any evaluation of faculty members heavily involves

scrutinizing course evaluations. They matter! They matter to professors like myself, who make changes based on student opinions and experiences, and they matter to the College as a whole.”

Furthermore, the email from Kamitsuka and Quillian acknowledged new initiatives that are underway in working towards continuous improvement of the course evaluation process.

“Our Gertrude B. Lemle Teaching Center has supported efforts at the departmental level to reflect upon and deepen the quality of teaching evaluations,” they wrote. “The Teaching Center will continue to facilitate careful study and further refinement of sound, fair, and meaningful evaluation processes.”

Ohio Legislative Update Lt. Governor Speaks at blockchain conference Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted gave a keynote address at the Blockland Solutions Conference, a symposium about blockchain and cybersecurity, in Cleveland on Wednesday. In his address, Husted discussed InnovativeOhio, a state platform with the mission of making Ohio the most creative and innovative state in the Midwest. A priority of the platform is the Ohio I.P. Promise, which aims to create a uniform and intercollegiate process for students and faculty of Ohio universities to commercialize their ideas and research.

4

City Pledges Funding to Cleveland’s West Side Market Turczyk’s Meats, a longtime vendor of the West Side Market in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood, announced its plan to leave the space on Saturday via a Facebook post. Owner Michael Turczyk cited mismanagement of the city government and increasing operational costs. After an outpouring of support by Turczyk’s social media followers, the city pledged $5.5 million to the West Side Market through 2021, approximately $2 million of which is already secured.

Ohio Ranks First for Subsidy Transparency in the U.S. According to a Public Interest Research Group and Frontier Group study, Ohio leads all other states in providing citizens with information about economic development subsidies. Moreover, Ohio provides citizens with access to an online checkbook portal that lists every state expense, as well as a yearly analysis of economic development grant programs.

OPINIONS December 13, 2019

Established 1874

lEttEr tO thE EdItOrS

Legislature Must Consider HB 6

I am writing in response to last week’s article “House Bill 6 Poses Serious Environmental, Health Risks” (The Oberlin Review, Dec. 6, 2019).

I was involved in the multi-year campaign to keep the Lake Erie-based nuclear electric generators open and operating. The Ohio Public Utilities Commission reports that 15 percent of Ohio’s total electrical generation volume comes from these facilities. This electricity is provided to customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, regardless of the weather. The electricity is generated by the fission of uranium in nuclear reactors — a process that is highly monitored, maintained, regulated, and inspected.

The Ohio PUC reports that 11 million tons of carbon, 18,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and 12,000 tons of nitrous oxides emissions have been avoided since the plants began operation in the late ’70s and the mid-1980s. This is because they displaced fossil fuel combustion electrical generation. Davis Besse has been re-licensed to operate up to the year 2037 and Perry Nuclear Generating Station could be re-licensed after 2025 for another 20 years up-to 2045. Both facilities account for all of the partially fissioned uranium fuel rods in Ohio.

Nowadays, the current fleet of nuclear reactors — 99 in total — produces 20 percent of the United States total electrical generation. Most of the fleet was originally constructed three to four decades ago. However, the original builders would recognize very little of the operation subsystems. The fleet on average provides electricity 92 percent of the year between fueling and maintenance outages. They are also some of the most injury-free industrial workplaces for the engineers and union trade people. Both facilities, east and west of Cleveland, are the cornerstones of their local county’s economy. Davis Besse NPP occupies 947 acres, most of which is a nature preserve and 1,100 acres at Perry, most of which is also a nature preserve.

Some Ohioans have said that FirstEnergy Corp really doesn’t care where it gets the electricity it sells to customers.

If the plants were closed, they would be decommissioned, an expensive pro-

cess that electricity rate payers have also kicked into our electric bills. FirstEnergy Corp would be eligible to extract administrative fees from these decommissioning funds. So if the plants operate or if they don’t, it will not hurt the corporation’s profitability. Plant closure, post decommissioning, would hurt both county and the state and regional economies.

This scenario has played out multiple times as first generation nuclear power plants have been closed around the country.

When one looks at Ohio Public Utility Commission data, the big picture of renewable electricity generation becomes evident. After years of mandates and tax credits and the relaxation of migratory bird and endangered species regulations, wind, solar, hydro, and biofuels only make up three percent of electricity production statewide. Hydro dams make up one percent and are pretty reliable, outside of drought periods. Solar only works when the sun is out and wind energy only works when it’s blowing enough to spin turbines. What makes up the nighttime generation and the windless periods? Fossil fuel burning, mostly from rapid-starting, fracked gas burner plants.

Those two nuclear power generators in good working order that have been essentially paid for by citizens’ electricity bill past payments. HB 6 keeps them operating. We all benefit from cleaner electricity. The renewable energy mandate should be modified into a clean energy mandate. Maybe the state legislature can take a look at the old Zero Emission Credit proposal.

Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that get you into trouble, it’s what you know for certain that just ain’t so that does”.

Many good hearted environmentalists think they understand energy and electricity production. I encourage folks to really study the issue. A good starting point is this website: www.ElectricityMap.org. Another good website is: www.

GridWatch.ca. It goes into detail on the Ontario Canada grid — often the most carbon-reduced electricity grid on the planet. If you commit to looking at these sites, you’ll know more about real world electricity generation than 98 percent of the people on the planet.

– Scott Medwid Oberlin Resident

SUBMISSIONS POLICY

The Oberlin Review appreciates and welcomes letters to the editors and op-ed submissions. All submissions are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. All submissions must be received by Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. at opinions@oberlinreview.org or Wilder Box 90 for inclusion in that week’s issue. Letters may not exceed 600 words and op-eds may not exceed 800 words, except with consent of the Editorial Board. All submissions must include contact information, with full names and any relevant titles, for all signers. All writers must individually confirm authorship on electronic submissions. The Review reserves the right to edit all submissions for clarity, length, grammar, accuracy, strength of argument and in consultation with Review style. Editors will work with contributors to edit pieces and will clear major edits with the authors prior to publication. Editors will contact authors of letters to the editors in the event of edits for anything other than style and grammar. Headlines are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. Opinions expressed in editorials, letters, op-eds, columns, cartoons or other Opinions pieces do not necessarily reflect those of the staff of the Review. The Review will not print advertisements on its Opinions pages. The Review defines an advertisement as any submission that has the main intent of bringing direct monetary gain to a contributor.

The Oberlin Review | December 13, 2019

Volume 149, Number 12

EdItOrIal BOard EdItOrS-IN-ChIEf

Nathan Carpenter

Katherine MacPhail

MaNagINg EdItOr Ananya Gupta

OPINIONS EdItOr Jackie Brant

Following Quillen’s Appointment, College Must Pursue Similar Stability At this crucial moment in Oberlin’s history, we need a seasoned captain at the helm of the ship. Particularly, at a time when significant changes are being instituted to improve the functioning of the College, we need all the stability we can get.

Until recently, both the College of Arts and Sciences and the Conservatory have been entrenched in a hiring search for their respective deans. The hiring committee for the Dean of the Conservatory concluded its national search for a suitable candidate, which began in May of this year. The hiring committee for the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences also began earlier this semester and is currently on-going.

The Conservatory has proven that promoting stability is a priority, demonstrated by the astute decision to appoint William Quillen, former acting dean of the Conservatory, as the dean of the Conservatory of Music.

Quillen has served as dean on an interim basis since fall semester 2018 and was also the vice-chair of the Academic and Administrative Program Review Steering Committee, which conducted a comprehensive review of all campus and administrative programs last year which culminated in the One Oberlin report.

We urge the hiring committee to make the same decision for the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences as it did for the Conservatory by appointing David Kamitsuka, acting dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

During the year-long AAPR process, Kamitsuka played a pivotal role as chair of the AAPR Steering Committee and has been overseeing its implementation alongside Quillen since April.

Under his leadership, the entire AAPR process has upheld unprecedented standards of transparency that have persisted throughout the implementation of the changes. While many reasonably disagreed with the recommendations that the Steering Committee ultimately proposed, this commitment to transparency — certainly as compared to peer institutions — speaks highly of Kamitsuka’s ability to skillfully oversee the implementation of One Oberlin which, like it or not, is here to stay.

In short, regardless of whether or not we agree with the institutional decisions made by the AAPR under Kamitsuka’s guidance, we must realize that he is not only our best but also our only realistic option. The knowledge he has regarding Oberlin’s administrative history, current functioning, and vision for the future is so extensive that it would be virtually impossible to insert someone midstream and expect them to do as good a job overseeing the execution of One Oberlin’s plans.

One Oberlin’s recommendations tackle a wide array of institutional changes, including diversifying revenue streams for the College; reforming curriculum to adapt to the needs of current and prospective students; addressing equity issues in housing and dining facilities; and addressing employee and labor costs, to name just a few. These different avenues to create a more financially stable and educationally enriching Oberlin are all incredibly complicated, and Kamitsuka has been present for all of these difficult conversations. If appointed, Kamitsuka is our best shot at a smooth transition, one we desperately need as we try to retain Oberlin’s spirit and values amid administrative change.

Certainly, external intervention in revamping processes can be helpful in that it can bring fresh perspectives and a higher likelihood of objective assessment of problems. However, the ideal time for such an intervention was during the AAPR and the One Oberlin drafting period. The College has made its difficult decisions and plans for the future. Now, we need a leader who can keep the concerns that students, faculty, and staff had during AAPR in mind. Now, we need someone who is attuned to the pulse of the student body to address potential conflicts that may arise during implementation.

Given the work that David Kamitsuka has already undertaken as the College’s acting dean and the degree to which the recommendations he oversaw are nearing implementation, we hope that when the search committee for the next full-time dean of Arts and Sciences concludes its work, they will announce Kamitsuka as Oberlin’s continuing dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Editorials are the responsibility of the Review Editorial Board — the Editors-in-Chief, Managing Editor, and Opinions Editor — and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff of the Review.

5

Opi n ions

Solarity Failed Students By Now Empty, Crane Pool Symbolizes Refusing to Provide Condoms Oberlin’s Progressive History Taylor Andrews Contributing Writer This weekend, I was extremely disappointed that I was not allowed to provide condoms at Solarity. As a Sexual Information Center student staffer, I aim to increase access to safer sex supplies for Oberlin’s campus. I have personally done so by filling the condom bins in both Mary Church Terrell Main Library and the Science Center. Additionally, in my role as a Residential Assistant, I make condoms freely available for my residents at my door.

Solarity is one space where the need for safer sex supplies has been overlooked. In general, music events tend to involve riskier behavior with drug usage and sexual practices. Solarity is no exception. If you decide to hook up with the person(s) you are with after a night of dancing, you do not have many options to acquire safer sex supplies.

Wilder Hall closes at 1 a.m., the same time Solarity ends, so you cannot access the condoms that are freely available on the SIC’s door in Wilder Hall, room 203. If you do not already have either your own personal condoms, access to a friend’s supply, or live on campus with a RA that supplies residents with condoms, then you have few remaining options. You would have to drive to either Mickey Mart or Walmart to buy condoms. However, that option requires access to reliable and safe transportation at 1 a.m. and the funds to purchase condoms.

Making condoms freely available at Solarity would eradicate the barriers to safer sex. In order to do this, I reached out to the Solarity Facebook page a couple of days before the concert and wrote, “Hi! I’m [an] SIC student staffer and we were wondering if we could provide safer sex supplies for Solarity?

We’re thinking at the table where students tap their ID to enter we could just have safer sex supplies there!” I was left on read.

Solarity organizers have recognized the issue of drug abuse at similar events and on Dec. 6, they shared information posted from the Oberlin Students for Sensible Drug Policy Facebook page urging students to be mindful of what they consume. In this post, Oberlin Students for Sensible Drug Policy said, “Remember that sharing snorting devices puts you at risk for contracting Hep C and HIV!” It is odd to me that Solarity advocates for not sharing snorting devices

because of the increased likelihood of contracting sexually transmitted infections but event organizers would not respond to my query about providing condoms. So, on Dec. 6, I messaged them again and wrote verbatim, “Hey! Just wanted to check back on this.

Would it be okay if we, the SIC, came prior [to] students entering to provide free safer sex supplies?”

Once again I was left on read. Increasingly frustrated at the lack of communication, I decided that I was going to bring condoms to Solarity anyway.

I took a bag with approximately 100 condoms in it and approached one of the check-in tables. I asked the two students working the table if I could distribute the condoms across the two tables between which students have to walk to enter and exit. One of the students shifted the question to the student who was physically tapping cards and placing wristbands on people coming. They looked at me and said no.

I left the bag of condoms on the table anyway.

I was one of the last 30 students to leave Solarity and noticed that the bag of condoms I brought was left in place.

The majority of the students who go to Oberlin, or college in general, fall within the age range that experiences half of all new sexually transmitted infections per year in the United States.

Why would an organization that claims to put the safety of students first deny students access to free safer sex supplies? I wonder if maybe implicit bias was at play. Does the fact that I am a fat, black woman-presenting person have anything to do with why my request was ignored and why two white men denied me the opportunity to provide condoms to students? Would condoms have been available at Solarity if I had asked one of my thin, white co-workers to bring them? There is no clear rationale as to why one of the most popular events on campus would not allow safer sex supplies to be distributed.

There is clearly room for improvement. It is possible that the staff working Solarity were over capacity for handling any new requests. In the future, there should be someone dedicated to answering questions from students. It is unfortunate that students were unable to access condoms that were freely provided for their use. I am hopeful that in the future Solarity will be better able to respond to the inquiries brought by the students whose tuition and fees allow it to exist.

Hong Kong Protesters Hold Tight to ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Leo Hochberg Columnist The youngest generation of Hong Kong’s citizens has never seen anything like the summer and fall of 2019.

Protests that broke out in March of this year in response to a controversial criminal extradition bill have since morphed into a massive, complex, and well-organized civil uprising. Looming over Hong Kong’s civilian protest movement is the specter of mainland China, to which Hong Kong was repatriated in 1997 after a century and a half of British colonial rule.

Hong Kong has since received special status within China — commonly

6

Carson Li Max Finkelpearl Contributing Writers In the May 10, 2019 issue of The Oberlin Review, one might have noticed an unusual entry in the Security Notebook: “The south double doors to the vacant Crane pool area were ajar, and the master lock was pulled from the door. There was an odor consistent with burnt marijuana, and alcohol bottles were found throughout the area.” Similar break-ins also were reported in 2017 and 2018. However, most Oberlin students are likely unaware of the building referred to in the security report: the now-abandoned swimming pool languishing behind Hales Gym called Crane Pool.

Crane Pool was constructed in 1931 and was planned entirely for women’s needs. The pool was a $115,000 gift given by Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop Crane and their daughter Barbara, OC ’30, of Dalton, MA. The reason why the Crane family decided to donate money specifically for building a pool is unknown.

Crane’s construction occurred in a pre-Title-IX period when women were often characterized as having no interest in sports. Title IX was issued in 1972, addressing sex discrimination in institutions, including unequal opportunities for men and women’s athletic needs. Before Title IX, societal taboos and conservative ideologies discouraged women from pursuing athletics. Additionally, funding for women’s athletic programs was also significantly less than that allocated to men.

In 1973, the average athletic budget received by women’s programs nationwide was only 2.1 percent of the total available athletic funding at Division I schools, while the men’s programs received the remaining 97.9 percent, according to a 1980 report by United States Commission on Civil Rights.

“Title IX provided the impetus for women to assert their right to an athletic program, and many of them did so as the number of women who participated in intercollegiate athletics soared from 16,000 in 1966–67 to 150,000 in 1983–84, a growth of nearly 1,000 percent,” Leland J. Brandt, OC ’92, wrote in his History honors thesis in 1992.

Though the College was progressive in providing space for women’s athletics, women’s team photos don’t show up on the team photo board on the wall of Philips Gym until the 1978 women’s swimming and diving team. If these teams did exist before then, they might not have been unofficial.

Eventually, after decades of use, the pool fell into disrepair as maintenance costs rose.

Crane Pool was shut down in 1993 and used as an art space through 1998. As of today, there is no available record of the College’s plans for renovating the pool. Though the pool’s doors have been locked, it holds a special place in Oberlin’s athletic history.

By the 1960s, the pool was no longer exclusively used by the College. According to

community members in a Facebook group facilitated by Executive Director of the Oberlin Heritage Center Liz Schultz, Crane Pool consisted of a small shallow instruction pool and a big pool. Children got excited when they were “promoted” to the big pool. Additionally, there was a balcony that didn’t seem to be too high, as people jumped from it directly into the pool. Everyone who responded to Schultz’s post expressed delightful memories of going to Crane as a kid. Respondents also recalled the heavy chlorine smell as well as how much they hated wearing the required rubber swimming caps.

Crane Pool’s role in physical education became less important when Philips gym and Carr Pool opened in 1971. By that point, Crane Pool had been used for almost 50 years, and its filter, pump, heater, and piping systems were all broken. The repair costs were expected to exceed $50,000, according to the Oct. 8, 1993 issue of the Review. The College ceased operating Crane as a swimming pool in 1993 because of a budget shortfall, according to The Observer.

After the shutdown, the building housing Crane Pool was soon transformed into an alternative art space. A 1998 Review article titled “Installation Works on the Rise” discussed the trend of installation art: projects encompassing a whole space while engaging with the audience. The article featured the installation “Womb Life” by Fereshteh Toosi OC ’98, a former art major.

Recalling her project today, Toosi said that her inspiration was mizuko kuy, a Japanese ceremony for people who’ve gone through stillbirth, miscarriage, or abortion. Toosi wanted to “transform the entire pool into an altar space” by using materials such as clear plastic bags filled with red water on the floor of the pool, candles, and so on.

As the College was concerned about paint peeling from the ceiling, people visiting the installation had to wear safety helmets, according to Nanette Yannuzzi, professor of Studio Art, Installation, Sculpture and Book Arts, who also worked closely with Toosi.

Yannuzzi wrote via email that, after the College hired its first in-house attorney, certain sites — such as Crane Pool — that were used for student art projects were closed off.

“This is an older building where asbestos and lead paint may have been used, so precautions for that need to be considered,” Chief Facilities Officer Kevin Brown wrote in an email to the Review. “The most important safety issue is that the pool is empty and anybody potentially [could fall] down into the pool.”

With those concerns in mind, Crane Pool is sealed off today. Toosi and other users of the space, however, remember it fondly.

“When a pool is filled with water, we experience it in a very different way,” Toosi said.

“The lack of water and the fact that the pool was no longer in use connected to the themes of loss and memory.”

referred to as “one country, two systems” — allowing the city to maintain a liberal economy, protection from the Chinese Communist Party’s influence, and limited participatory democracy.

However, as mainland China has grown increasingly aggressive in its national and international policy, it has sought to strip away Hong Kong’s special status and absorb the city back under the CCP’s authority. In response, the protesters have since made their stance quite clear; Hong Kong is not the same as the rest of China, and protesters would rather ignite a risky revolution than give See Demonstrators, page 7

Photo courtesy of Facebook page – Oberlin in the Past

Oberlin Must Retain Professors Despite Financial Difficulties Raavi Asdar Contributing Writer

I recently realized that all four of my professors this semester will not be on campus next year, and two of them are leaving the institution permanently after this semester. My situation is not unique; many students from various departments have echoed concerns of losing an advisor or faculty mentor.

There is a real and present fear among students that many of the faculty members who are leaving will not be replaced, leaving gaps in our curriculum and threatening certain students’ continuation in their courses of study. And though the One Oberlin plan makes the choice not to cut any departments outright, smaller departments losing faculty due to “attrition” is increasingly resembling an existential threat.

When searching for a college, I was drawn to liberal arts colleges, Oberlin and others, for their promise of small class sizes, an undergraduate focus, and access to and engagement with professors. I was further attracted to Oberlin because of its

reputation for having professors dedicated to mentorship — be it in STEM, social studies, or political activism.

At Oberlin I have felt incredibly grateful for the interactions I have had with my professors. Here, I have found experts in their field who are extremely generous with their time and energy.

My professors are responsible for my profound sense of academic and intellectual growth in only a year and a half on campus. I also recognize that the work of mentorship often times disproportionately falls upon female, queer, younger faculty, and faculty of color in ways that are not institutionally valued. Alarmingly, it is many of these underrepresented faculty members who are leaving the institution.

The One Oberlin report, unveiled in May of 2019, outlined a commitment to preserve the integrity of Oberlin’s academic ecosystem, recognizing its fundamental importance to the institution.

The document reads, in part, “the Steering Committee favors both preserving the breadth and depth of Oberlin’s current educational offerings and main-

taining the capacity of our faculty to be scholar-teachers.” Since the unveiling of the One Oberlin report, I’ve often heard this line repeated by key administrators praising the institution for choosing to protect these areas. Still, as we enter the end of the first semester of One Oberlin’s implementation, I fear this commitment to faculty is increasingly compromised.

The One Oberlin report also outlines a cost-saving plan to eliminate the equivalent of 25 full-time faculty lines by the fiscal year 2024. This is to be done through attrition, retirement, and the elimination of visiting professorship positions. Over the past year Oberlin has lost a number of tenured and tenure-track faculty, many from underrepresented groups, as well as a number of well-loved professors who left their visiting positions before their contracts ended. For me and many of my peers, these changes have meant the sudden departure of some of our most valued professors, advisors, and sources of support on campus.

In the past two years, the College has also over-enrolled the first-year class — or, in their terms, met or exceeded ad-

missions targets. Additionally, the One Oberlin report recommended transitioning 100 students from the Conservatory to the College over a four-year period.

While neither reality is inherently negative, I have serious concerns about our ability to maintain small class sizes, close student-faculty interaction, and a breadth of course offerings in the face of a growing student population and shrinking faculty numbers. Already, some students struggle to find courses that match their intellectual or identity-based interests.

I understand that this is a difficult financial moment, both for the school and the broader national landscape of liberal arts colleges. Nevertheless, we should reject the idea that balancing the books entails targeting the very academic breadth and depth we claim to be safeguarding.

Having more students, fewer faculty, and the same teaching load will necessitate fewer course offerings and larger classes.

In this I fear that we are dismantling the very core of what makes Oberlin unique, valuable, and ultimately marketable as an institution: meaningful student-faculty interactions.

SB 162 Must Be Passed Urgently Demonstrators Test Mainland Alice Koeninger Contributing Writer Editor’s note: This article contains mention of rape and sexual assault.

The Ohio State Senate began hearings on Senate Bill 162, which would eliminate the statute of limitations on rape, attempted rape, and conspiracy to commit rape, on Nov. 13 of this year. Co-sponsored by Senators Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood) and Sean O’Brien (D-Bazetta), the bill would also close a legal loophole that allows rape within marriage to go unpunished.

This bill is important for a variety of reasons, many of them self-evident. Murder and aggravated murder are currently the only crimes without a statute of limitations in Ohio. Rape is a horrible, violent crime that turns the survivor’s body itself into the crime scene. Already, several other states — such as Kentucky and West Virginia — have implemented laws to get rid of time constraints on the prosecution of certain sex crimes.

During her sponsor testimonial, Antonio described how current Ohio rape laws do not account for modern DNA technology because investigators used to believe that biological evidence had too short a shelf life to be used in trial decades later. Now, DNA technology can be used to identify a perpetrator even when a sample is decades old. This technique was recently used to identify and arrest a suspect in the Golden State Killer case in California, a case more than 30 years old. Inputting the DNA from old

samples into a genealogical database led authorities to the serial murderer and rapist Joseph DeAngelo after decades of searching. It is important to note that in this case, authorities were able to arrest DeAngelo only because he had committed murders as well as rapes.

Antonio also highlighted how survivors of rape often do not feel comfortable or even safe reporting their assault immediately after it happens. According to the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network, four out of five rapes are committed by someone known to the victim. A person’s rapist may be a family member or someone in a position of power over them. Unfortunately, and sickeningly, reporting a sexual assault still has realisticly more consequences for the victim than for the perpetrator.

Senate Bill 162 is a step towards a legal understanding of the impact rape has on someone. The bleak fact, as Antonio put it, is that out of 1,000 reported rapes nationally, only five cases ultimately end in a conviction, according to RAINN. This, Antonio said, “means that prosecutors need more, not fewer, tools to prosecute rapists.”

Currently, Ohio law actually works against prosecutors, since rape within marriage is only considered a crime if “threat of force or violence” exists. With that wording, it is perfectly legal for someone to drug their spouse and force them to participate in sexual acts. SB 162 would close that loophole. Laws about spouses not testifying against each other, which understandably complicate the prosecution of assault

The Oberlin Review | December 13, 2019

within a marriage, are also explicitly addressed by the bill.

SB 162 is extremely important and, luckily, it looks like it has the support it will need to become law. This past May, current Attorney General Dave Yost and five former attorneys general came out in support of such a bill in a letter to Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives Larry Householder and President of the Ohio Senate Larry Obhof.

“We now know that the trauma associated with a rape has a lifetime impact on a survivor, making it a different sort of offense than theft or dealing drugs or extortion,” the letter said.

Governor Mike DeWine made a similar request for a bill to end the statute of limitations on rape the month before, in April, in response to the sex abuse scandal at The Ohio State University. This request may be surprising considering his stance on abortion — DeWine signed the “heartbeat bill” into law that same April, prohibiting abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, with no exceptions for rape or incest.

SB 162, if put into effect, would not apply to crimes already past the statute of limitations. This means that if a rape case that is over 20 years old reaches its expiration date before the bill is signed into law, the state would be unable to prosecute the perpetrator. That’s just another reason why lawmakers need to approve this bill as soon as possible. Until then, it’s important to believe and support survivors because the law is not necessarily on their side.

China’s Resolve Continued from page 6

up the fundamental tenents of their unique political and legislative status.

Since initial protests against the extradition bill, Hongkongers have sought to challenge China’s growing dominance over the island by internalizing democratic values into most aspects of the movement. Tides of protesters ambulate the city like waves, transferring quickly by metro, springing up in new locations, and rarely collecting in order to maintain the movement’s momentum and project a popular, ground-up political image.

Hong Kong’s citizens have also taken inspiration and critical lessons from the 2014 Hong Kong Occupy movement five years ago, which was largely unsuccessful in its attempts to curb Chinese influence over the disputed city’s electoral system in part due to the arrest of prominent activists. The protests of 2019 instead have no publicly recognized leaders. To coordinate action, protesters share possible action plans on social media and the AirDrop function available through iPhones.

They then vote on methods of disobedience in massive group polls on messaging apps such as Telegram. Because disobedience is coordinated through democratic votes and person-to-person contact, police are unable to undermine the movement by arresting or targeting specific individuals in order to blunt the movement’s capacity to organize.

Finally, recent gains in the polls have emboldened Hong Kong’s protesters. Citizens voted in November for their local district council representatives, which have comparatively little power and control smaller resource pools for things such as bus stops and district-specific ordinance issues. Protesters arrived at the polls in droves, taking a landslide victory and winning over 90 percent of available district council seats for pro-democracy candidates. While district council members affect little change on the ground, the win provided a welcome symbol of victory for pro-democracy protesters and was regarded as a referendum on China’s growing influence over the island.

The vestiges of democracy that remain in Hong Kong are worth their weight in gold. If the protesters are to achieve their dream of prompting a politically distinct Hong Kong with a fully integrated one-person, one-vote political system, they will first have to overcome an aggressive and confident Chinese government which opposes participatory democracy at a fundamental level. Moreover, the Hong Kong protesters’ political capital around the world will have to withstand the growing onslaught by CCP officials. The protesters have thus far been highly resourceful in sourcing global support through targeted advertising in publications such as The New York Times, but China continues its attempts to delegitimize the protests through claims that they threaten law and order.

The CCP will soon be forced to make extremely difficult decisions regarding the fate of Hong Kong’s unique democratic concessions. Its last resort would be to deploy the Chinese military garrison stationed in Hong Kong to crush the protests, although CCP leaders appear reluctant to take this course. At the end of the day, regardless of the CCP’s ideological opposition to Hong Kong’s exceptional status, China still needs Hong Kong, and would be loath to crack down too harshly. The coming months will likely show to what extent China values its complete political homogeneity, and to what extent it is willing to stifle dissent even at severe economic risk.

Since their inception earlier this year, the Hong Kong protests have bloomed into one of the most sophisticated and well-organized protest movements of our time. But the movement faces off against a government which wields tactics of political repression unparalleled in the modern world. At stake is the fundamental principles of exceptionalism and democracy that make Hong Kong the city that it is. With the world’s eye turned toward China’s growing influence, the Hong Kong protest movement stands to test China’s resolve in one of the growing global superpower’s most crucial hours.

7

A History of Science Education at Oberlin Layout by Lily Jones, This Week Editor Science majors are some of the most popular at Oberlin, and for good reason.

Oberlin prides itself on its liberal arts approach to science education and the range of research opportunities available to students. But what isn’t always discussed is the history of these wonderful programs. You have probably seen a historical plaque or two scattered around the Science Center, but beyond that, most students aren’t aware of how the experience of studying the sciences at Oberlin has changed over the years. This week, we’ve collected snapshots and accounts of how science education at Oberlin has changed — and a few of the ways in which it’s stayed the same.

Late 1800s to Mid-1900s

Abov

Mid-1900s

“Science at Oberlin is as old as the College. …

Even before a president was selected, buildings erected, and students admitted, Dr. James Dascomb was appointed, on recommendation of Mr. [John J.] Shipherd, to teach chemistry, botany, and physiology. Thus, from the beginning, science and the ‘liberal arts’ developed together in the College” (Luke E. Steiner, OC ’24, Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Dec. 1961).

Experiential Learning

One of the most signi science at Oberlin wa faculty collaboration of Chemistry, is one making this transitio

Right: George Nelson Allen.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Below: Photos by Lily Jones, This Week Editor Right (near): Two student operators process programs in the Computer Center.

Right (far): The large plant belongs to the genus Tillandsia of the family Bromeliaceae. The photo was taken in southern El Salvador in 1968 by Professor David Benzing.

“When I joined the ch a glimmer of undergra wrote in an email to place. New faculty ma with students during Foundation began supp in 1961, thereby prov doing research. The c introduction of yearthe early 1960s was a was another significan It gave students time projects.”

Right (bottom): Kettering Hall of Sciences

The Oberlin College Museum of Natural History The project of starting a natural history museum at Oberlin was initiated by George Nelson Allen, professor of Sacred Music, Natural Science, and Geology.

He established a Cabinet of Natural History in 1859, the same year that Darwin published On the Origin of Species. This collection served as the “precursor to the Oberlin College Museum of Natural History realized by Allen’s nephew and successor Albert A. Wright in the last three decades of the 19th century,” according to the The Oberlin College Ethnographic Collection. His focus on natural history also speaks to Oberlin’s early work of reconciling emerging scientific discoveries and the College’s Christian origins.

According to the Oberlin College Libraries, Allen wrote about the significance of the collection in a letter, stating that “the great importance, to every Institution of learning, of an extensive and well-arranged collection of objects illustrating the Mineralogy, Geology, Biology, Zoology etc. of the country, and so far as possible, also, of foreign countries, is freely admitted by every enlightened friend of public education. Indeed, in these and kindred departments of knowledge, there is a steadily increasing demand for instruction — a demand which imposes upon Literary Institutions an obligation to furnish ample facilities for their successful prosecution.”

Although the pieces from this collection aren’t widely used for instruction anymore, you can still find remnants of the museum around campus, such as the minerals on display in the Carnegie Building or the taxidermy displays in the Science Center.

“The emphasis 20 year textbook,” said Aliso Library. “You were su to take notes and tes — there’s experientia

“The biology department, particularly when I came, was family-like,” said David Benzing, professor emeritus of Biology, about science faculty culture when he began at Oberlin in 1965. “Those eight people or so were very supportive, and I was quite taken by the fact that I was welcomed and I was very well-treated and, as a younger person, was mentored to some extent. We did teach the general biology course collectively; it was a team-taught course. We’d go to each other’s lectures — that was a bit intimidating early on for new people — but it was also something that made everyone coherent. And then we’d go for coffee afterwards. It was a very friendly place.”

The old Science Library (above) and the new Science Library under construction (below). Photos courtesy of Alison Ricker

ve: Norman Craig. Photo courtesy of Oberlin Alumni Magazine

g

ificant developments in the teaching of as the increased emphasis on studentn. Norman Craig, professor emeritus faculty member who was committed to on.

hemistry faculty in 1957, there was aduate research in chemistry,” Craig the Review. “Soon much change took ade a difference, and they did research the summers. The National Science plying support. Kettering Hall opened viding greatly improved facilities for college became more supportive. The -long Research Status appointments in a big boost for faculty. Winter Term nt development in the late 1960s. e to make good progress on their

rs ago or more was on one seminal on Ricker, head of the Science upposed to read from that, and you had sts. Pedagogy is more interactive now al learning right in the lecture.”

2000s & Looking Forward We have much to learn from Oberlin’s educational past.

Associate Professor of Anthropology Amy Margaris says that the pieces left over from the Oberlin Natural History Museum Displays, though around a century old at this point, have modern value, both in the face of climate change and in the name of expanding educational programs in the College.

“If we know when and where [specimens] were collected, they can give us an idea of species representation in the past,” Margaris said. “Species distributions are changing, so they’re a record of what was around when.”

Margaris has also supported the initiative to develop a Museum Studies academic concentration, which would also utilize these resources.

Weekly Events Empty Mugs Holiday Brass and Organ Concert Annual brass, organ, and voice concert and pottery sale. The concert is free and all pottery sales benefit Oberlin Community Services. Food and services donated by Slow Train Cafe and the Feve.

7 p.m. // First Church in Oberlin

Children’s Holiday Concert Enjoy festive events including holiday crafts, face painting, instrument petting zoo where children can interact with different instruments, and sing-along carols. The afternoon will conclude with a performance by musicians from the Conservatory’s classical and jazz departments, featuring guest students from the Northern Ohio Youth Orchestra.

Activities 2:30–4 p.m., performance from 4–5 p.m. // Warner Concert Hall

Saturday, Dec. 14

Monday, Dec. 16

Art Market Art sale featuring the work of Oberlin students, faculty, and staff. Come support local artists and find the perfect holiday gift for a loved one.

10 a.m. – 5 p.m. // StudiOC

Chocolate Covered Study Break Take a break from studying and curb your appetite with chocolate fountains and a variety of dipping items.

Vegan options available.

9 p.m. – 12 a.m. // The ’Sco

Friday, Dec. 13

A r t s & C u lt u r e

ARTS & CULTURE December 13, 2019

Established 1874

Volume 148, Number 12

In Bittersweet Move, House of the Lord Fellowship Finds New Space Nathan Carpenter Editor-in-Chief When College fourth-years Miyah Byers, Jaris Owens, and Griffin Woodard were asked why they attend weekly services at the House of the Lord Fellowship despite not being regular churchgoers before starting at Oberlin, they just turned to each other and laughed. There was too much to say.

“We could talk about this for days,” Byers said.

For Byers, the House of the Lord is a space in which she can make meaningful connections with the congregation.

“I get to see my elders being vulnerable about their experience with God, and they’re sharing because they want me to hear and they want to hear what I have to say,” Byers said. “I feel so safe there. So seen, so heard, valued, and appreciated.”

For the past 17 years, the House of the Lord’s pastor, Reverend A.G. Miller, and his wife Reverend Brenda Grier-Miller have welcomed the congregation into their home for services. Now, the church is moving from the Millers’ basement to 125 South Pleasant Street, where the growing congregation will have more room to welcome new members and host community meetings. On Dec. 7, the church hosted a dedication ceremony to mark this bittersweet transition.

“We’re excited about being in this place,” Miller said. “It’s a little bit of fear and trepidation. … [I hope] that this will allow us to have better access to the community, to serve the community more and better, [and] to have a lot more outreach.”

According to Miller, his fellowship first began as a Bible study in the 1990s.

Among the original members were Miller, Grier-Miller, and Phyllis Yarber Hogan, an Oberlin resident and former administrative assistant at the College. All three were part of a group called Oberlin Black Alliance for Progress, and they wanted an

avenue both to express their faith and to support Black members of the Oberlin community.

“We started in 1995, just after the Million Man March, as a way to talk about what Black people can do for other Black people in this community to help lift them up,” Miller said.

Using faith as an avenue to advocate for social justice is at the core of Miller’s ministry.

The Oberlin House of the Lord Fellowship is one of several member churches in the national House of the Lord Church, which has a long history of leading issues of social justice and civil rights.

“The main church is a historic Black church in Brooklyn,” Miller said. “Our previous bishop, for more than 50 years, was one of the leading social and political activists in New York City. … Jesse Jackson announced his candidacy [for president] in the basement of our church in New York City.”

The previous bishop, Herbert Daughtry, is known for his long career in civil rights activism, beginning in New York in the 1950s. His daughter and current president prelate, Leah Daughtry, was the chief organizer of the Democratic National Convention Committee in both 2008 and 2016, and co-authored the 2018 book For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics. Both father and daughter spoke at last week’s dedication event, and their commitment to faith-based political activism was at the fore.

Members of Miller’s congregation find this same commitment to social justice thrives in Oberlin’s congregation.

“It serves as the activism,” Owens said.

“I struggled to find a backing for my activism coming to Oberlin ... I was [wondering], ‘What is my goal here?’ Is it justice, is it kindness? … Another spiritual way of being was opened for me when I came to this fellowship.”

In addition to church activism, all

From left to right, College fourth-years Jaris Owens, Griffin Woodard, and Miyah Byers. All three students are congregants of the House of Lord Fellowship.

Photo by Chris Schmucki, Photo Editor

three students spoke about the impact that a Sunday service called ministry of arts has had on them. During this time, attendees are invited to showcase an artistic skill — playing an instrument, singing, sharing a poem, and everything in between. The rest of the congregation is asked to simply listen and appreciate the offerings.

“Ministry of the arts is a big one for me, because I ain’t never seen that in a church before coming to this one,” Owens said.

“I’ve just never been to a church where they put so much emphasis on ‘God has given everyone gifts — please share them.’”

Woodard was also touched by the Sunday performances.

“Sometimes, someone will get up and play the piano and it will just wrench your heart out,” Woodard added.

Regardless where the church is located, the fellowship has created a space that feels like home. Byers, Owens, and Woodard all plan to stay connected with

House of the Lord after they graduate this spring, no matter how far away their postgrad plans carry them.

“I’ve been to many churches, and none of them are like this one,” Woodard said.

“My mom and dad can testify because when they came for my junior recital last year, I took them to the fellowship on that Sunday. My mom gave a testimony in the church … she was just like, ‘It’s so good to see that my son is in good hands.’ She actually broke down crying.”

Byers, who is on the verge of transitioning to post-college life, reflected on the significance of the fellowship taking a similar leap of faith.

“I feel like the new church building is really about opening up the arms to the community,” Byers said. “Not that they weren’t already open, because they were, but it’s kind of like when you put a seed in some dirt and you cover it and you’ve been watering it and watering it and now, all of a sudden, … it’s about to grow. It’s about to turn into a flower.”

AndWhat!? Fall Show “Vulnerability is Power” Opens Tonight

The members of AndWhat!? pose for a pre-show portrait.

Lyala Khan It is impossible to sit in on an AndWhat!? rehearsal and not be blown away by the power and energy they build. In their drive to rehearse each piece again and again until it is just right, and their ability to channel

10

Photo by Mallika Pandey, Photo Editor

complicated and raw emotions into moving pieces, the group’s hard work, energy, and talent are palpable. AndWhat!? is a powerhouse hip-hop group that slays each performance, and creates an important space at Oberlin.

“AndWhat!? was founded [in 1999] on the idea of

Black female activism,” said College second-year and co-chair Deijhah Scurry. “We are a Black dance group on campus that highlights hip-hop’s female and femme-identifying people.”

Ruby Marzovilla, College fourth-year and co-chair of AndWhat!?, has been a member of the group since her second year. She explained that prioritizing Black femme voices is extremely important at a predominantly white institution. “[We prioritize Black femmes] to counteract the many dance spaces where that isn’t the case,” Marzovilla said. “It’s honestly been a problem in the dance department at Oberlin that Black and POC bodies are not represented to the same level as white people here. So, AndWhat!? is definitely a safe space for that to be prioritized.”

Over the years, however, the group has expanded and now includes non-Black people of color and white people in its ensemble.

“A large reason why the group expanded was because there just wasn’t enough interest to have a big group for this type of ensemble,” Marzovilla said. “So even though we now include both non-Black POC and white women within our space, I think as long as we’re knowledgeable about what this space is for and every member is consistently thinking about that — that in my mind is powerful.”

AndWhat!?’s commitment to maintaining the values of its founders is evident in its rehearsals and the conversations that take place during practice sessions.

See Hip-Hop, page 13

“Odysseans” Bond Over Unique First-Year Seminar Experience Kate Fishman Arts & Culture Editor While the First-Year Seminar Program, a primer for liberal arts writing composed of small classes, is described as “a singular opportunity for learning,” few students are still sincerely attached to their first-year seminar experience by the end of their college career. Not so for alumni of Nathan A. Greenberg Professor of Classics and Acting Chair of Comparative Literature Kirk Ormand’s first year seminar, “Odysseys and Identities.” The ‘Odysseans,’ as they’re dubbed, have had semesterly reunions since leaving the class, which runs every four years as the Classics department rotates through its first semester offerings. This past Friday, Ormand brought the first-year and fourth-year classes together for a pizza lunch, where they got the chance to ask questions of one another and share wisdom from opposite ends of their Oberlin careers.

Ormand’s class is thematically apt for a first year seminar — the course centers on Homer’s Odyssey and a variety of more contemporary books and films that utilize similar structure or themes.

“The class is organized around the Odyssey, which is, at its root, the story of a man coming home after 20 years, and having to figure out who he is, who others think he is, and how to be that person,” Ormand wrote in an email to the Review.

Discussions of identity, self-discovery, and change abound. What’s more, the class encourages students to examine what’s unique about a particular work of art.

“We [talk] a lot about what makes the Odyssey the Odyssey, and in a bigger conversation, what makes any piece of literature that piece of literature, as apart from an amalgamation of other stories,” said College first-year Diana Montero. “What makes that story that story?”

Beyond the academics, though, it’s clear that there’s something special about Ormand’s approach to the first year seminar that is hard to describe. College fourthyear Rami Teeter, who came to Oberlin as a prospective Creative Writing major and will graduate with a degree in History, called the Classics seminar “probably the best class I’ve taken at Oberlin.”

College fourth-year Adrienne Rozells still cites being deeply touched by an

email Ormand sent after fall break during her first year, welcoming his students back “home” to Oberlin. Ormand didn’t even remember writing the message, but it inspired Rozells to write about it for the Office of Admissions, and after reading her piece he sent the same remark to his class this fall. Ormand’s thoughtfulness toward his students is evident.

“Long after his duties as a first semester advisor should have ended, he has continued to tolerate our inside jokes and has helped every ‘Odyssean’ thrive at Oberlin and learn not just the foundation of the liberal arts, but important lessons about who we are and what direction we’re headed,” College fourth-year Johan Cavert wrote in an email to the Review.

Since Cavert’s time in Ormand’s seminar, Ormand has reached out to students each semester to plan gatherings. He’s hosted the cohort at his home for brunch, treated students to meals at Oberlin Kitchen, and taken them apple-picking, among other excursions. Modestly, he maintains that it was the cohesion of this group of people that fostered such an inviting community.

“You’re giving me too much credit for actual forethought,” he said. “It just [seemed] like a natural thing to do. This was a nice group of students that obviously liked each other.”

Many classes at Oberlin have friendly relationships, but few can maintain years of cohesion — the difference is in the details, and the fourth-years agree that Ormand’s simple email missives worked wonders. It’s a role akin to that friend who keeps sending memes to the group chat; Ormand is the nucleus of the class, while also being sure to take a back seat.

“I haven’t known anyone else who still talks with their first-year seminar, or if they even remember who was in their seminar,” College fourth-year Arielle Hernandez Lyons wrote in an email to the Review. “I remember that at the end of the semester, we all got together and made Kirk a big thank you card with [a] drawing and everything, and then we gave it to him and someone made a cake, during finals week. I think we just kind of liked each other, and having Kirk to organize things made it super easy to keep in touch.”

Ormand has facilitated similar reunions for his past classes — although this fourth-year group was particularly

Nathan A. Greenberg Professor of Classics and Acting Chair of Comparative Literature Kirk Ormand and former students in his “Odysseys and Identities” first-year seminar class on an apple-picking trip.

Photo by Kirk Ormand

interested in maintaining their bond after class was over. Last week’s pizza lunch, though, was new territory.

“I was kind of nervous about it because I didn’t know what would happen,” Ormand explained. “I didn’t really have a plan. I told the elder Odysseans to come with advice, and I told the younger Odysseans to come with questions. [And actually], they perfectly naturally all just sat around and talked for an hour and a half, and nobody seemed to want to leave at the end of it.”

For the first-years and fourth-years alike, the meeting provided an interesting opportunity to talk about their different experiences within the culture of Oberlin, and their different feelings about the future.

“He got up and actually left the room for 15 minutes in case we wanted to talk about him, which is very trusting,” said College first-year Gillian Ferguson of the group’s pizza lunch last week.

This level of trust makes students comfortable in Ormand’s classroom, and binds them together after the semester’s end. This devotion to a welcoming space also seems to have had a trickle-down effect — elder Odyssean, Review Production Manager, and College fourth-year Devyn Malouf is now the Peer Advising Leader for the seminar’s first years, and tried to model her role on the care and support

Ormand provided in her class.

Others have also been inspired by Ormand’s guidance and dedication to his students.

“Watching Kirk teach helped me become a better PAL and tour guide,” Rozells, a PAL for a different seminar, said.

“He clearly knows what he’s talking about — he’s an amazing professor. He’s so smart and holds a lot of authority … but he has never wielded that as a power over anyone. It’s a true exchange of ideas [and] just shows a level of confidence to be able to be like, ‘yes, I can control this space, but I can also be a human being who does exist as a friend in your life.’”

Ormand finds that the seminar’s content lends itself particularly well to students not only forming connections with one another, but engaging in valuable self-discovery during a key transitional moment. Each semester that the current fourth-years have met since their time in the class, he asks them what they wish they’d known as first-years.

“It works well for a first-year seminar, in part, because the students in the class are constantly going through something similar,” Ormand wrote. “[They are] moving into new social contexts, and figuring out how to be themselves in those changing contexts, and then returning home — wherever home is — and having to figure out who they are all over again.”

Surprisingly, Cleveland Has a Wine Scene — And it’s Thriving Katie Lucey News Editor Cleveland is not a wine town. Not historically, anyway.

Recently, though, the city has given rise to a thriving, albeit small, wine scene — for those who know how to find it.

Although beer still reigns king in Northeast Ohio, the wine industry has a larger presence than one might think. Ohio, despite being the 34th largest state, was the sixth-largest wine producer in the United States in 2016, according to an Ohio Grape Industries Committee economic impact report.

“The Cleveland wine scene is getting bigger and better,” Elan Hoenig, general manager of The Wine Spot, a wine retailer in Cleveland Heights, said. “I think there’s definitely more interest coming to the city in all aspects of wine.”

The first stop on your Cleveland wine tour should be the Balcony Bar at Heinen’s, a hybrid grocery store and bar open seven days a week on the corner of Euclid Avenue and East Ninth Street. Heinen’s offers a selection of 40 fine wines available on an automated wine system, and, using a unique prepaid card system, customers can serve themselves a one-ounce taste, a three-ounce sampler, or a five-ounce glass of wine.

Not enough options for you? The tasting menu is merely a small subset of the over 1,000 wines sold in the historThe Oberlin Review | Dec 13, 2019

ic grocery store’s wine department.

Those who want a more intimate setting can try the Market Avenue Wine Bar on 2521 Market Avenue or Toast Wine Bar on West 65th street, which boasts an owner-curated wine list updated seasonally.

While Toast doesn’t currently feature any local wines, their rotation frequently highlights Northeast Ohio-produced wine, such as vinifera wines like that of M Cellars, on the menu.

“There are some people are doing some really cool stuff,” Jill Davis, owner of Toast Wine Bar, said. “Matt Meineke [of M Cellars] is a great friend of ours. We pour his wines whenever we can.”

Although “your palette is going to tell you what she likes,” according to Hoenig, must-tries for a Cleveland wine tour include cooler-climate wines that have long flourished in the hot, humid summers and cold winters of Northeastern Ohio, such as Catawba, Frontenac, and other French hybrid varietals.

“Those particular grapes have the tendency to make rather sweet style wines,” Peter Badal, wine consultant and beer specialist at Heinen’s, said. “But vinifera wines have really come to the forefront, and there are [also] people making great Cabernets, great Chardonnay, [and] some really delicious Pinot Noir.”

Cleveland wine experts note that younger customers are most interested in the natural wine trend.

“I’m finding that our younger customers are very interested in this idea of low-intervention wines, which really just means winemaking with as little intervention as possible, meaning minimal additives, no added colors, no added flavorings, no added sugars,” Hoening said.

However, this trend is not just for younger connoisseurs — some wine experts claim that all sorts of Cleveland residents have garnered interest in unexpectedly-flavored natural wines. “[Natural wines are] not the easiest sell,” Davis said.

“The wine is a little different, [but] I think people are getting a little more immersed and trusting about it. They try it and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, can I actually kind of like that.’”

Cleveland’s unpretentious identity is the perfect spot to experiment and explore what wine is right for you.

“What is my favorite wine?” Badal posited. “My immediate answer is the one that’s in front of me. When I think about it, it’s an unfair question because it’s like asking me which one of my grandchildren I like the best.”

Still, the most compelling aspect of the Cleveland wine scene is its heart. Wine isn’t snobby here — it’s as hardworking and spirited as the city itself.

“Cleveland feels — most of the time — like an open-minded city,” Hoening said. “It allows us to be open-minded in recommending [wines] and allows people to explore new things.”

11

A r t s & C u lt u r e ON THE RECORD

Hannah Wirta Kinney, AMAM Assistant Curator Imani Badillo Senior Staff Writer

Why did you decide to apply to work at the Allen?

I was drawn to Oberlin and the Allen Memorial Art Museum in particular because my education was always in liberal arts colleges, and I think that liberal arts learning is really important … [Oberlin] is a liberal arts college with great students, and a museum with a collection of Renaissance and Baroque art, which is my specialty.

It was just so many things coming together that seemed like a great fit. My role is working between the museum and faculty members who want to bring their students into the museum. I was always told going through my education that [I was] never going to be able to do both museums and academic teaching, that [I was going to] have to choose one.

And this lets me do both, which is exactly what I wanted to do.

Hannah Kinney.

Photo courtesy of Hannah Wirta Kinney

Hannah Wirta Kinney is the assistant curator of academic programs at the Allen Memorial Art Museum.

One of the new curators this semester, Kinney started her position at the AMAM in September. Prior to working at Oberlin, she taught college classes on Renaissance and Baroque art, and has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

She talked with The Review about her time at Oberlin thus far, and her thoughts about art and identity.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you talk more about why colleagues said you can’t do both museum work and academic teaching?

There was actually a famous book [of essays] about [this topic] called The Two Art Histories …

And the argument goes that we’re all studying objects and art and thinking about what they mean and where they overlap that are two distinctly different approaches to art history between the museum and the university, which would mean that all art historians have to make a choice: whether they’re going to be a museum person or an academic person. For me, that was a choice I didn’t want to have to make.

Because I like teaching, doing research, and the kinds of questions that academic work in a book format allows you to think about, but I also like these conversations around objects, thinking about audience and making visual arguments. I would say that even in a museum, there’s kind of a divide, too,

in the jobs that people have. [There are] curatorial positions, people who work more with collections — and then there’s the education department. In my role [at Oberlin], I get to do both of those things within the museum as well.

What kind of work have you done in the past?

My research is on sculpture in … 17th-century Florence. I am especially interested in questions related to replication and originality in the early modern period … My first job out of college, really by chance, was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where I worked with academic programs. I really just loved working in a museum: walking past things every day that you get to look at, and the kinds of conversations that you can have around works of art that are different than in the classroom, so not necessarily reading a text and saying, “What is this about?” but thinking how works of art can make us reflect on lots of things that we might be thinking about in our personal lives, class, and society.

I worked in the education department at the Met, and then I most recently was at the Brooklyn Museum in New York working with visitors who were blind or had low vision, becoming their eyes at the museum and describing works of art to them.

That was an incredibly meaningful experience for me because it really made me think about what it means to see, what it means to look at something, and that it isn’t just visual, it happens on so many different levels and associations.

In what other ways is your position at Oberlin similar to your past job experiences?

In my job at the Met, I worked with academic programs. What we thought of as academic programs most often was professional development within a museum setting, so I worked a lot with See New AMAM Curator, page 13

Conservatory Professor Celebrates Grammy Nomination

Last week, Assistant Professor of Harp Yolanda Kondonassis was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category for her world premiere recording of Jennifer Higdon’s “Harp Concerto.”

Kondonassis — no stranger to accolades — is considered one of the best solo harpists in the world. This is her second Grammy nomination, and she was also awarded the 2011 Cleveland Arts Prize.

In addition to her work in music, Kondonassis is also a driven climate activist. She has do-

12

nated her royalties from several projects to environmental nonprofit organizations, and she is the founder and director of Earth at Heart, an organization that encourages climate activism through an artistic lens. She also authored an environmentalist children’s book, Our House is Round: A Kid’s Book About Why Protecting Our Earth Matters.

Kondonassis’ music career started when she picked her instrument as a child.

“I started playing the harp at the age of nine, and it was actually my mom’s idea,” Kondonassis wrote in an email to the Review. “I think

she thought the angelic qualities of the instrument would rub off on me! I’ve often said that instead of me becoming more angelic with the harp, I’m afraid that my forty-five years of promoting this instrument have probably made the harp a little less angelic as a result of me.”

Despite Kondonassis’ humility, her many talents have made a mark on music history and the environment alike.

Text by Aly Fogel, Arts & Culture Editor Photo courtesy of Yolanda Kondonassis

New AMAM Curator Speaks About Goals Hip-Hop Group Prioritizes Black Femme Dancers Continued from page 12

high school, undergraduate, and graduate student interns, and fellows — people who are working on their Ph.D. or who have their Ph.D. and are working on a book project.

At the Brooklyn Museum, there is a really great exhibition program with contemporary art, and a lot about the diversity of Brooklyn; they do a lot of interesting programming about where the museum sits with the community, so that has to do with all sorts of different identities: racial, socioeconomic, gender, sexuality. … Those are things that I’m interested in at Oberlin too, because it seems like something that the students are thinking about as well.

Along the way I’ve also taught college courses, and so one thing that I miss that I’m trying to find is finding ways to talk to students about what they’re working on, and hearing what they think about stuff. Teaching undergraduate students, you can see this moment when something gets really exciting, and when their whole idea about something has changed, and that’s the fun part of teaching: when you’ve blown somebody’s mind, and they’re never going to look at something the same way again. I’ve only been here since September, so I want to keep thinking of ways that I can hang out with students and talk to students about what they’re thinking about.

What are your impressions of Oberlin?

The students are smart here, and that makes it fun …

I’ve also realized that I like being in a college town, which is weird because I was living in Brooklyn … I’ve realized that living in a college town and having the college at the center of this town has this particular energy. It’s like optimism and pessimism at the same time, but the optimism is energizing in thinking that these people who are going to make big decisions in the future and change the way we do things, are here just scurrying around trying to get their papers done or get to class or have fun.

CROSSWORD Lauren O’Hear

The Oberlin Review | Dec 13, 2019

Are there any other hopes you have for your work in the future?

One priority is putting the student voice more out there, and I don’t know yet how it’s gonna happen, but it’s something that I want to do. Also, bringing people in a more casual way; not just with classes, but how to create programs or opportunities for conversation or have the museum be a part of your free time as well as your academic time. That’s something I’m interested in knowing: Do people come here when they don’t have to come here for an assignment?

I worked in these big metropolitan museums where we thought about the barriers to entry, and what it means to walk into a Neoclassical temple or a Renaissance temple and [they’ll say], “Do you think is this a space for me?”

And the answer is yes, it is a space for you, but people have those hesitations [if ] they’ve never been in a museum before or [they] don’t know how to act in a museum.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about, too, is that I started my job at the Met when I was straight out of college, and I was the youngest one around. They were having all these discussions about how to bring young people into the museum. It was always this idea that you need to have alcohol, and all that young people want is a party. All right, young people like a party, everybody likes a party, but they were like, “They won’t just come,” and I was saying they had a lot of preconceived ideas about how young people spend their time.

I don’t think it’s about parties, but just being comfortable to think and meditate here, walk around and have a chance to think through an argument with someone, be inspired, be happy, whatever. All of those things are valid things to do in a museum, but giving people the space to do all those things is an interesting challenge that museums are always thinking about … We always have to keep thinking who is our audience? What do they want? What do they need? Within the whole array of things Oberlin is giving you to do, where does the Allen fit in to give you something you need that you don’t have here already?

Continued from page 10

“We always put Black and brown bodies towards the front of our pieces because hip-hop is a Black art form, and so those are the people that should be celebrated the most,” Marzovilla said. “Even in our music choice, we’re always prioritizing Black female artists. No matter what the theme is, that’s always a focus.”

AndWhat!? puts together two main performances a year — the Fall show and the Spring show. This semester’s Fall Showcase is called “Vulnerability is Power: How We Heal from and Celebrate our Insecurities.”

“Our main focus was to have the choreographers be inspired by something that they’ve either experienced prejudice because of, or been marked as not matching the stereotype of someone’s perception of that,” Marzovilla explained.

AndWhat!? has always used its Fall Shows to explore more serious and emotional themes, while their Spring show is more light-hearted.

For example, their last Fall show, “Pissed Off Kinda Attitude,” focused heavily on Black anger. However, this semester’s show stands out from previous performances.

“I’d say what’s really distinctive about this show is that the emotions we’ve tapped into in the past are anger and letting go of very intense feelings, but this is definitely showing a softer emotional side which I think is very special,” said Marzovilla. “We focus on both acknowledging the things that make us, which may have caused a variety of feelings in the past, and how we’ve grown from them and are now starting to embrace them and celebrate them.”

College second-year and recent AndWhat!? addition Nasirah Fair explained her take on the show’s theme.

“Everything just goes back to being a Black woman,” Fair said. “We’re expected to be strong all the time and not really show our emotions, because if we show our emotions we’re not taken seriously or we’re considered angry or irrational. There are forces in the world and in our everyday lives that are put in place to harm us and we don’t often get a chance to fight against that but also celebrate being vulnerable as something beautiful that make us stronger because it makes us more open to growing. For this show, we got to choreograph whole pieces together, just the Black girls and that was really beautiful.”

Scurry encourages audience members to come to the show with an open mind.

“Watching the show you’re going to see a lot of different experiences, a lot of different insecurities and a lot of different ways of understanding those insecurities,” said Scurry.

“So people coming in with an open mind and respecting that these dancers and choreographers are willing to be so raw with their souls is important to us.”

In addition to respecting the dancers, nonblack audience members should also be mindful of the space they are occupying and their positionality in relationship to the show.

“White members [of AndWhat!?] are working as allies in the space … and it should be the same with the audience,” said Marzovilla.

Fair spoke about the importance of call and response in a Black arts tradition.

“Give the dancers energy when they’re giving you energy,” Fair said. “But also be aware of the space that you’re [occupying]... This is a space that was created for black women to be activists and dancers at the same time and while it’s transformed into something different we still hold that in our values. If you come to the show, take the time to listen and reflect on the ways in which you interact with Black art.”

“Vulnerability is Power: How We Heal from and Celebrate our Insecurities,” will take place today and Saturday at 8:00 p.m. in Warner Main.

13

Sp ort s IN THE LOCKER ROOM

Chilly Wallace, First-Year T&F Record-Breaker

Hailing from New Jersey, College first-year Chilly Wallace has already made a massive impact on Oberlin’s athletics record books. At the very first meet of her college career, the varsity hurdler broke the school’s record for the 60-meter hurdles by 0.1 seconds, crossing the finish line with 9.60 seconds on the clock. In addition to track, Wallace has also been exploring all that Oberlin’s campus has to offer: she is currently on the pre-med track and looking to major in a science-related discipline; performs with Oberlin’s dance team AndWhat!?; and lives in Afrikan Heritage House, a Program House reserved for students with identities or interests that pertain to the Black community.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jane Agler Sports Editor How do you feel about breaking the 60-meter hurdles school record at your very first meet?

It was kind of wild. I still can’t believe it happened, but it did. I just ran the race, and one of our captains, [College third-year] Victor [Salcido], asked, “What was your time?” I said, “Oh, I think it was like 9.6.” And he said, “Oh, I’m pretty sure you broke the school record. I’m going to go check, but I think you broke it.”

So he walked over to my coach, and my coach goes, “Well, the record was 9.7 seconds.” I was so surprised and said, “Shut up. I did not just break the record at my first meet. That’s kind of insane.” So I was just in shock and still am. It feels nice.

Was breaking the school record your goal for this meet?

It just kind of happened. And the thing that’s even crazier is that in high school I didn’t run 60-meter hurdles; I ran 55-meter hurdles, and the time that I ran for Oberlin was equivalent to how I had ended my high school season. I didn’t really change. I’m still as fast as I was when I was my fastest in high school. High school is why I was able to already have the speed I needed to compete for my first meet. I think that’s how I was so prepared.

What is the track team’s dynamic like?

I really like my track team. They’re really funny. They make practice fun. Typically in high school, the hurdlers only knew each other, and the sprinters only knew each other, and so on. But here, it’s a group of jumpers, hurdlers, and sprinters who all know each other. I know a few distance people, and I’ve never had that type of relationship before.

So the Oberlin track team is really like a family.

They always say that we’re a family, and it’s not just something that they say. It’s actually happening, which is really cool and something I haven’t experienced on a track team before. So I really like that I have this opportunity to be close with so many people that are also my teammates.

I think that us being close certainly does help with the women’s team’s success. There’s just something about being at the line or about to jump and hearing

College first-year Chilly Wallace.

your teammates cheer you on. It motivates you to jump farther and run faster or get over the bar.

Has it been difficult balancing your academics with your athletics?

It’s surprisingly easier in college than in high school. In high school, I was a cheerleader and on the track team, so I would go from school to track at 3 p.m. to cheer at 5:30 p.m. until 8 or 9 p.m., and then I’d have to do my homework.

Here it’s much easier, especially since there’s time in between classes and time between school and track for me to nap or do homework. Having my classmates around 24/7, so I can just ask for help on something, is definitely a useful resource that I didn’t have in high school.

In addition to track, you are also a member of Oberlin’s dance group And What!? — what is that like?

Surprisingly, I’ve never been part of a dance group before. I was always a cheerleader since I was five years old, and I heard about And What!? from my RA, [College second-year] Iesha [Phillips], because she’s on AndWhat!? She said, “I want you guys to try out,” especially to all of us Black girls in A-House.

How did you come across the dance group?

Iesha wanted all of us to try out for the Black hip-hop group. So that’s basically how I found out about AndWhat!? Then I made it. I do a lot of flips,

Photo by Jane Agler, Sports Editor

which is really cool. And I’m pretty flexible, which I think is helpful. I know how to dance on my own, not professionally or anything, but it’s easy for me to pick up things. That’s why I think And What!? was a good fit, because some of the skills I learned in cheer are applicable.

What are you looking to major in?

I know I want to do something in the sciences. I am following the pre-med track, but I’m not really sure what I want to major in. I will say that this week has been really hectic considering I’ve had some exams and track, and then I have And What!? rehearsals all week and then final papers due. So it’s a lot. But now that the week is coming to an end, everything’s coming into place. It’s going to be a lot of weight lifted off my shoulders.

Has living in Afrikan Heritage House influenced your introduction to Oberlin at all?

My top two schools were Oberlin and Howard [University], which is a HBCU [Historically Black College or University]. But I chose Oberlin because I knew I wanted to run track in college. Coming to Oberlin, I found out about A-House, and I realized I wanted to live there and be able to surround myself with other Black people. It’s really made such a big difference. I know there’s some Black kids who don’t live in A-House, and they say, “Wow, you guys are really close over there.” And we invite them too.

It’s our own little community where I know I’m in a safe space and can be myself, which is really nice.

Women’s Fencing Team Hopes to Attract More Members Continued from page 16

so important, and they work shifts every week to make sure that they’re repairing all the gear.”

While the team has made strides to make the fencing community more representative of the Oberlin College student body, they were surprised to find that fewer members that identify as female joined this year. This has been an obstacle in at competitions, where the team is separated into men’s and women’s squads in order to compete.

Each weapon — saber, épée, and foil — requires a different set of skills when teams travel for tournaments; three players are needed for each specific weapon to form a squad that can compete. Currently, Zhang is the only member who fences in saber, leaving her without a squad.

“I feel lonely because I can’t have a squad in tournaments,” Zhang said. “So basically I’m fencing other blades in the tournament, which is very sad. I wish there are more female fencers, but I’m also trying to do more épée and foil.”

14

Even though Zhang is disappointed to be the only saber that is currently competing for the team, she noted that this year has the highest club attendance that she has seen since in her time on the team.

Pelkey and Luczkow are aware of the gender skew of the current roster. Pelkey mentioned that it is particularly challenging to find people to fill the roster because members have to be highly specific.

“Even though we have over four females in épée, you can’t transfer them over to another weapon easily because the whole team is very specialized, which makes it hard to fill out,” he said.

However, both are hopeful that more female-identifying players that are interested in saber will join through FenceCo. “We’re hoping that after the ExCo, we manage to fill the women’s saber squad, which should be possible,” said Pelkey. “There are people who are interested, and we’re always trying to recruit everyone. The more people we can get, the better.”

Fencers practice in Hales Gymnasium.

Photo courtesy of Valentina Zhang

Fourth-Year Josh Friedkin Joins Oberlin’s 1,000 Club Khalid McCalla Contributing Sports Editor Reaching 1,000 career points is one of the most exclusive milestones a college basketball player can achieve.

Over the course of Oberlin men’s basketball history, only 26 players have accomplished this impressive feat. Last year, Eli Silverman-Lloyd, OC ’19, became the 25th player to hit 1,000 career points. College fourthyear Dre Campbell is looking to be the 27th player to reach this mark. His teammate, College fourth-year Josh Friedkin, became the 26th member of this exclusive club last Tuesday night in the Yeomen’s thrilling 70–69 win over Defiance College.

“Just seeing that number with my name next to it is truly something special,” Friedkin said. “I think that more than anything, it confirms my belief that if you work hard enough at anything, you can accomplish more than you ever thought you could. A lot of guys are bigger and stronger than me, but few — if any — work as hard. And I think that’s the most rewarding part.”

Campbell sees the work ethic that Friedkin displays, and is equally impressed with his teammate’s meticulous preparation for games.

“Josh is a critical player that critiques every play,” said Campbell. “This helps when approaching competition and playing against new opponents because he is able to dissect [a] player’s weakness well. [Also] he has every type of foam roller and basketball accessory.

The man stays ready with game-time essentials.”

Friedkin’s work ethic and preparation aren’t the only parts of his game that led him to this incredible milestone.

“Josh has a fearless approach to the game,” Silverman-Lloyd said. “It allows him to make great plays on both ends of the floor. It’s allowed him to hit multiple game-winners.”

While Silverman-Lloyd may see

game-winners as part of Friedkin’s style, now, they are part of his legacy.

With 25 seconds left and the Yeomen down by two, Friedkin knocked down a three-pointer, securing a 70–69 win for the Yeomen and pushing his career point total to 1,001 right before the holiday break.

“You grow up dreaming of hitting game-winning shots, and that is something I will never shy away from,” said Friedkin. “When the game is on the line, I want to be the one to decide the game.”

Hitting 1,000 career points means something different to everyone. The one constant is all the hard work that each player puts into their craft.

“It was a special moment,” said Silverman-Lloyd, whose 1,099 career points rank 20th overall at Oberlin.

Campbell’s career total currently sits at 969 points, but, with over half the season left and his 12.3 points-per-game average, he is almost guaranteed to eclipse the 1,000 point threshold before he graduates in May. “I have no clue when it will happen,” said Campbell. “I just want to win and have fun on the journey to a championship. Whenever it happens, I will be grateful.”

While Friedkin, Silverman-Lloyd, and Campbell all have different playing styles, the three prolific scorers have a similar philosophy when it comes to playing basketball. In their eyes, individual accolades come second to team success.

“To be honest, the point total itself never really crossed my mind before this year,” Friedkin said. “As satisfying as individual statistics are, doing whatever it takes to help the team win is priority number one for me. I was mostly concerned with finding my place within the game of collegiate basketball.

It turned out that the ability to score the ball ended up being a part of that place.”

Another consistent trait that all three players possess is their competitive

College fourth-year varsity basketball player Josh Friedkin.

Photo courtesy of OC Athletics

drive. “[Friedkin] has a fierce, competitive spirit and the will to get things done,” said Silverman-Lloyd. “We share [that] and a willingness to treat basketball as a lifestyle. It was only a matter of time [before he reached 1,000 career points].”

Sometimes that competitive spirit can spill over into their relationships with each other.

“Our current [one-on-one] record is Eli — 57 wins, Josh — 2 wins,” said Silverman-Lloyd, jokingly.

Becoming a 1,000 point scorer requires a lot of people pushing you to become your best. For many players, this list consists of family, friends, and coaches they’ve had along the way. For Campbell, his list includes Friedkin.

“I tend to be a person who wants everybody to push themselves and enjoy playing basketball,” said Campbell. “[Josh] and I help each other. He helps

me with understanding play calls and I help by staying positive.

For Friedkin, this respect is mutual.

“Dre has exemplified the gold standard of consistency from day one,” Friedkin said. “He’s the kind of guy you want on your side. As long as we win games, I couldn’t care less who finishes with more points.”

Campbell’s record-setting moment is surely coming. Silverman-Lloyd’s has passed. For now, the spotlight belongs to Friedkin, Oberlin’s newest 1,000 point scorer.

“The team success we are enjoying right now has been phenomenal and is worth just as much to me as the individual accolades I have collected along the way,” said Friedkin. “I’m truly grateful to Oberlin for everything it has done for me and I intend on continuing to give my best effort each and every day.”

Varsity Basketball Teams Celebrate Holiday Hoops YeoFit To

Restructure Classes Continued from page 16

This past Saturday, both the men’s and women’s basketball teams ushered in the holiday season with their annual Holiday Hoops double-header, which featured back-to-back face-offs against the Tigers of DePauw University. College second-year Sammy Spanier, pictured above, led the Yeowomen’s effort with 15 points, but both men’s and women’s teams left with losses. However, spirits remained high due to a number of holiday-themed festivities, such as cookie decorating, an ugly sweater picture with Oberlin’s albino squirrel mascot Yeobie, gift wrapping for Helping Hands Donations, and knockout games during halftime.

“Being able to play in such an exciting and fun atmosphere is always one of the best experiences a student-athlete can have,” College fourth-year and women’s basketball player Cheyanne Arthur said.

Text by Jane Agler, Sports Editor Photos courtesy of OC Athletics

The Oberlin Review | December 13, 2019

She said she thinks of YeoFit as an introduction to fitness, as it provides for a variety of interests.

Herzog also values the fact that classes are free to students and other gym members, thus promoting its accessibility.

Ambar enjoyed the activities so much that, according to Herzog, she purchased the YeoFit program’s first jump rope set herself.

With all of the program’s restructuring considered, according to Schoenhoft, YeoFit program-goers cannot expect to see much widespread change, but slight schedule changes that are based on instructor availability and the previous semester class attendances. She attributed these changes to the fact that YeoFit is still such a new program and is constantly evolving, with its threesemester age contributing to its relative room for establishment on campus.

15

SPORTS December 13, 2019

Established 1874

Volume 148, Number 12

YeoFit Undergoes Schedule Changes Alexis Dill Alexa Stevens

Oberlin Fencing Club practice.

Photo courtesy of Valentina Zhang

Oberlin’s Oldest Club Sport Sees Arrival of New Members Zoë Martin del Campo Contributing Sports Editor

The Oberlin Fencing Club, also known as the Oberlin College Flaming Blades, is the oldest club sport at Oberlin. Since its founding in 1929, the club has attracted fencers of all skill levels to join its growing community. Several members grew up fencing, while others were introduced to the sport through the fencing ExCo. In addition to traveling around Ohio to compete, the team hosts its annual United States Fencing Association tournament in Hales Gym. College third-year and president of the fencing club Silas Pelkey began fencing when he was eight years old. He and his brother used to sword fight, creating weapons from sticks. Pelkey’s mother decided to sign him up for a fencing club out of concern that the two would accidentally injure each other, and he fell in love with the sport. At Oberlin, Pelkey organizes the fencing ExCo, FenceCo, with the club’s vice president, College second-year Arman Luczkow.

Pelkey was drawn to the idea of teaching a fencing ExCo because of his previous experience teaching friends and family how to fence. ”I’ve been teaching fencing to random people and friends for a long time,” Pelkey said. “So it felt like the most natural step to go on and teach an ExCo about it. The fencing ExCo is a long-running tradition, and it’s actually how we get a lot of our members. About half the team, maybe even more, [is] former ExCo students. We try to create a pretty chill and relaxed environment to just have fun and explore.”

College third-year Valentina Zhang was one of these recruits. She described her introduction to fencing as a spontaneous first-year decision.

“It was very random,” she said. “I was walking on the street one day, and my friend was like, ‘Hey, I’m going to this fencing ExCo, do you want to go?’

And I was like, ‘Oh, fancy; I’ve never done that before, let’s go.’”

Zhang is currently in the process of becoming a fencing referee. She completed a two-day exam on fencing rules and attended a seven-hour seminar where she learned the ins and outs of the job. Do-

16

ing the classes improved her fencing abilities and opened the opportunity for her to help referee the Oberlin tournament.

“Becoming a referee would help me know a lot more about the rules and then help me become a better fencer,” she said. “Also, sometimes at our home tournament, we don’t have enough referees, so I thought if I could get this done, then why not?”

To be on the team, members are required to either have previous fencing experience or to take part in the ExCo. Both Pelkey and Luczkow acknowledge the privilege of being able to fence growing up.

“Fencing is a very expensive sport,” Luczkow said. “Unless a club provides you gear, you can’t fence if you don’t have the money. Especially if you’re fencing on your own and you’re not at a club, you also have to pay for tournaments. And you’ll probably have to travel, which is also even more money. And if your gear breaks on-site, then you have to buy it immediately, or all your costs are wasted because then you can’t fence.”

The fencing ExCo serves as a way to bridge the gap between students that grow up fencing and students that are interested in learning but have not had the opportunity to do so. The fencing ExCo provides all the gear except for shoes and covers travel and registration costs for tournaments.

“One of the goals of the ExCo is to offer an introductory course so that everyone can experience the sport meaningfully without having to actually invest actual money into it,” Pelkey said. “It’s a lot easier now for new fencers to get involved with the sport because the threshold can be a real barrier.”

The fencing ExCo and team even have an armory in Hales Gymnasium, where they can repair weapons instead of having to purchase new ones each time one breaks.

“One of our officer positions is armor, and we hold an armory space where we store all our gear and equipment,” Luczkow said. “The armors repair all our gear and put weapons together. It’s a position that we train people for because it’s See Women’s Fencing, page 14

The now three-semester-old YeoFit program is being assessed by program leadership to determine the best model to both encourage attendance and minimize cost moving forward. The program offers a variety of free fitness classes — including yoga, cardio boxing, spinning, and more — throughout the week at the Shanks Health and Wellness Center.

These offerings are prone to change, though.

YeoFit classes have led to structural changes evaluated by attendance and advertising initiatives throughout the Athletics department in an attempt to better establish the program on campus. One such advertising initiative occurred throughout the first module: Students who attended a specified number of YeoFit classes were rewarded with hats, headbands, or shirts emblazoned with the program’s logo.

“Everything we do with YeoFit is aimed at increasing student attendance,” said Wellness Coordinator and Head Softball Coach Sara Schoenhoft. She also takes to social media to engage with students, keeping them up-to-date of changes in the schedule and new contests via Instagram posts.

Schoenhoft also listens to and implements student suggestions. Recently, this strategy has involved adding evening classes to the schedule and increasing the number of student instructors on staff. One such student, College third-year and yoga instructor Lucy Kaminsky, has taught yoga since high school. During her first year, Kaminsky renewed the charter for the Oberlin Yoga Club and taught classes through the program. In her second year, when YeoFit was founded, she began teaching through that program. Kaminsky’s classes drew massive crowds, and her Monday evening class was consistently one of the most-attended of any YeoFit program last semester.

However, Kaminsky also teaches classes to smaller audiences, with some classes consisting of as few as two students. Small classes, such as these, are in danger of being eliminated. According to Schoenhoft, the program will examine and potentially eliminate classes with low attendance.

For now, this won’t impact very many offerings.

“We will offer all the same classes, just one less Zumba and AquaFit because those classes weren’t very highly attended,” she said.

Kaminsky sees both pros and cons to this practice.

“I think if there are a lot of people coming, it means that it is at a time that works for the most people,” she said. “But also I think that attendance doesn’t necessarily correlate to the value of the class.”

YeoFit coordinators determine class sizes based on sign-in sheets presented at each session. However, according to Kaminsky, these sheets are not entirely accurate — she claimed that approximately 10 percent of class-goers do not sign in. This establishes an error margin for the reforms, as they neglect that 10 percent attributable to human error.

“It’s interesting because this isn’t a yoga studio, so classes aren’t driven by profit, but rather, they’re driven by cost,” Kaminsky said.

In this mentality, the YeoFit coordinators arrange their program reforms based on the most effective allocation of funds, as profits are consistent regardless of attendance, because classes are free for all students, faculty, and others who have access to the Shanks Health and Wellness Center.

Debra Herzog, jump rope class instructor and personal trainer to President Carmen Twillie Ambar, lauds YeoFit for “the way it brings people who otherwise wouldn’t be coming to the gym and working on their fitness — be it emotional fitness or physical fitness — to the gym in a way that makes them feel comfortable.”

See YeoFit, page 15