October 10, 2014

The Oberlin Review

OCTOBER 10, 2014 VOLUME 143, NUMBER 5

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Local News Bulletin News briefs from the past week New Bakery to Open Downtown The Blue Rooster Bakery is scheduled to open later this month on 38 South Main Street, the former location of B. McK’s Bar. The owners of the bakery, former Fairlawn, Ohio residents Wendy and Leo Boes, plan to offer homemade baked goods, including pies, brownies, cupcakes, bread and gluten-free baked goods. Wendy, a former preschool teacher, said she hopes the space will also act as a place where the community can socialize and study.

Students to Reflect on Racial Climates on College Campuses The Oberlin Multicultural Center will host an event titled “Hands Up: Reflections on Ferguson and Racial Climates on College Campuses” on Monday in Lord Lounge at 7 p.m. The discussion will be spearheaded by Dr. Edward Pittman, associate dean of Campus Life and Diversity at Vassar College. According to the event page, he specializes in the intersections of external racial events with the campus experiences of black and Latinx students within a liberal college environment. He has worked extensively with campuses and community organizations to assess and develop diversity and community initiatives and has published a number of academic papers on racial climates on college campuses. His most recent paper examined the experiences of black students at selective liberal arts colleges.

Local Restaurants Host OCS Fundraiser Molly Brand Oberlin Community Services will be partnering with WOBC next week to host Oberlin’s first-ever Restaurant Week. This event will be a fundraiser for OCS to help the organization keep up with increasing demand for its services, which include programs such as food distribution and mentoring in support of those without financial resources.

Five local businesses and organizations will be participating: The Feve, Slow Train Cafe, Lorenzo’s Pizzeria, Burgermeister food truck and the Rotary Club.

Slow Train co-owner Jessa New, OC ’01, said that although the coffee shop has hosted fundraisers for the Zion Community Development Corporation and Providing Oberlin With Efficiency Responsibly, it has never worked directly with OCS. “It’s nice that we have an opportunity to work with another group that’s looking to make an impact in Oberlin,” said New. Restaurant Week will kick off this Sunday with an event at The Feve. Throughout the following week, the five participating businesses will host fundraiser events including the dog-friendly “Paws on the Patio” at Lorenzo’s Pizzeria and a Paris-themed auction at the Rotary Club.

College first-year Brandi Metzger, an Oberlin Community Services social justice intern, and volunteer Alexandria Zimmerman handle produce for the OCS farmers market. This coming week, members of OCS are hosting the first-ever “Restaurant Week,” where local restaurants will donate a portion of their profits to support OCS’s efforts to fight food insecurity in Ohio.

Effie Kline-Salamon

During the week, WOBC will be airing audio pieces that provide community perspectives, including interviews with staff members from OCS, as well as restaurants and student groups.

The idea for Restaurant Week originated in a conversation be-

See page 2

tween OCS volunteer and community liaison Margaret Swendseid and WOBC staffer and College senior Sophie Hess. Although the discussion started as a pitch for a radio segment that was ultimately never produced, Hess said the conversation was fruitful in other ways.

“We were talking about how some cities do restaurant weeks, and then the idea came about that it could actually be a really useful and innovative way to fundraise for OCS,” said Hess.

See Restaurant, page 4

College Allocates $5 Million To New Initiative Oliver Bok Staff Writer Two new policies concerning the College’s investments may make Oberlin finances more reflective of the ideals pushed by the faculty and student body.

The College recently announced a new divestment policy through which members of the Oberlin community can request that the College divest from holdings in corporations that “shock the conscience.” In addition to the new divestment policy, the Board of Trustees has set aside $5 million from the endowment to be invested in “socially responsible” investments over the next five years as part of the Impact Investment Platform.

According to the resolution adopted by the Board in June, all divestment requests will be assessed according to three criteria. First, divestments must “support activities that materially contribute to conditions that shock the conscience.”

The list of actions that may qualify as sufficiently extreme include “genocide, ethnic cleansing, unjustified disregard of profound environmental degradation and other wide-scale acts of injustice.”

Secondly, divesting has to be “likely to have significant financial, reputational or other adverse impacts on the target of the divestment that may

influence its behavior or the behavior of other similarly situated entities.”

Lastly, “the proposed divestment (or decision not to divest) will be generally understood by and acceptable to the great[er] Oberlin community.”

While any student, employee or alumnum may make a divestment request, any divestment proposal needs to be approved by two-thirds of the Board to come to fruition.

“It’s a strange process,” said Jasper Clarkberg, College sophomore and member of the Responsible Investing Organization, a student group that calls for investing the endowment ethically.

“There’s no timeline, it appears to be entirely behind closed doors, there’s no implementation specifics, and then there’s kind of a little notice about if we’re invested in things that are in a larger fund, then they throw their hands up and say, ‘Well, we’re going to pretty much give up on that.’ Our next campaign is a transparency campaign to say, ‘How can we know what to divest from if we don’t know what the problem is?’”

For members of Students for a Free Palestine, the new policy presents an opportunity to encourage divestment from Israel.

“As a Palestine solidarity organization, we are calling for divestment in accordance with the glob-

al anti-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement called for by Palestinian civil society in 2005,” SFP said in an email to the Review. “It is unacceptable to remain invested in these corporations any longer, and Oberlin has an opportunity here to set a precedent for other universities across the country.”

Professor of Politics Chris Howell said that, regardless of the outcome of the new policy, it was “as good as [one] could hope for, because it doesn’t close off options.”

Professor Howell is also a member of the Impact Investment Platform, the subcommittee of the Investment Committee charged with making recommendations to the Committee and the Board on how the school should invest $5 million over the next five years in a “socially responsible” manner.

According to Howell, the list of factors that are qualified under “shocking the conscience” include things like environmental degradation.

“If it had just talked about genocide, then you’ve got a pretty small pool,” Howell said. “But environmental degradation as something that shocks the conscience strikes me as opening a barn door to walk through on issues of fossil fuel and carbon diSee Students, page 4

on the

Early Voting Begins Oberlin citizens register to vote at the Lorain Board of Elections.

ESTABLISHED 1874 oberlinreview.org

ONLINE & IN PRINT

Crunch Time

Creative Convocation Art Spiegelman and Phillip Johnston collaborated in an artful performance titled“Wordless!”

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INDEX:

Opinions 5

This Week in Oberlin 8

The men’s soccer team will begin a stretch of seven NCAC games on Saturday.

See page 15

Arts 10

Sports 16

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All of the content you see here is also available on our website. Check back for the latest stories and interactive polls.

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The Oberlin Review, October 10, 2014

College Launches Crowdfunding Website Elizabeth Dobbins News Editor

The Oberlin Annual Fund launched Oberlin’s crowdfunding platform last week, marking the College’s first entry into crowdfunding. The site, still in its pilot launch phase, will feature a changing selection of student and faculty projects each month.

Tip Hosack, director of the Oberlin Annual Fund, said he hopes the new platform will encourage donations from alumni by focusing on specific projects with clear results.

“It’s almost meeting the expectations of the alumni,” said Hosack. “Why aren’t we doing this already? Other higher [education institutions are] also going to this type of fundraising as well and utilizing this platform, and this goes in line with the other philanthropic interests of our alumni, whether it’s Kickstarter or funding small specific projects [so] that they can really see their money going to work right away.”

Jessica Stewart, assistant director of the Oberlin Annual Fund, said this platform is a way

to target younger alumni for donations.

“We’ve noticed that a lot of young people are really familiar with that model — using Kickstarter, Indiegogo — so we felt that it was the natural progression of philanthropy in Oberlin,” said Stewart.

In order to be considered, fundraising proposals must fall within the site’s project guidelines. The project must fit with Oberlin’s missions and policies, propose a feasible strategy and display a strong plan that is beneficial to the Oberlin community.

As th sit is in its pilot launch phase, project applications won’t be opened up to the entire campus community until March. The projects approved in March will be posted on the site as part of April’s “I Like Oberlin Month” fundraising campaign.

Though still in pilot launch phase, the platform will feature new projects every month leading up to April. Within the next few weeks, the Oberlin Annual Fund plans to elect a committee made up of students, faculty and staff to select the proposals.

College junior Maya Zeemont rehearses alongside fellow OSteel members. OSteel is currently part of the College’s new crowdfunding project, which offers student and faculty groups a way to fund their projects.

Simeon Deutsch

“It’s going to try to be … a cross section of the campus community,” said Hosack.

This month, the Annual Fund chose the projects of people with

Feature Photo: Early Voting

An Ohio resident checks in before voting early at the Lorain County Board of Elections. Early voting began this Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Ohio bill which shortened the early voting period in the state from 35 to 28 days. Shortening the early voting period eliminated “Golden Week,” the period of time when people can both register to vote and cast their ballots. “Early voting is about more than just convenience. Golden

Week is the only time in Ohio in which voters can both register and vote on the same day. Normally, community organizations like churches will bus people to the polls during this week. That option was eliminated this year.

Voting is a right, not a privilege, and it should be the goal of the state to facilitate the ability of as many people as possible to go vote, instead of using a thinly veiled excuse of ‘fraud prevention’ in order to disenfranchise

The Oberlin Review — Established 1874 —

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October 10, 2014

Published by the students of Oberlin College every Friday during the fall and spring semesters, except holidays and examination periods.

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demographics of people who tend to vote Democratic,” said Madeline Peltz, College junior and OC Democrats co-chair, in an email to the Review. In addition to the county, state and federal races, Oberlin residents will be voting on several local issues, including a tax levy renewal for the Oberlin Public Library and a Lorain County sales and use tax increase.

Photo by Mike Plotz, photo editor

Julia Liv Combe Herbst Allegra RoseKirkland Stoloff Managing editor Samantha Julian Ring Link News editors Elizabeth RosemaryDobbins Boeglin Madeline Alex Howard Stocker Opinions editor Will Rubenstein Sam White This Week Weekeditor editor Hazel Zoë Strassman Galloway Arts editors Jeremy Kara Reynolds Brooks Vida Georgia Weisblum Horn Sports editors Nate Quinn Levinson Hull Madeleine Tyler O’Meara Sloan Layout manager editors Tiffany Taylor Fung Field Layout editors Abigail Ben Garfinkel Carlstad Alanna TaliaSandoval Rodwin Photo editors Sarah Olivia Gericke Snider Photo editors Brannon Rockwell-Charland Mike Plotz Online editor Effie Alanna Kline-Salamon Bennett Editors-in-chief Editors-in-Chief

whom it had already formed connections. Currently, information about this fundraising platform is being spread largely through word of mouth, but according to Stewart, the Annual Fund hopes to do more advertising in the coming weeks.

“Since we just launched it, we picked people we’ve been working with closely and already have a connection established, and so it’s easy for us to kind of reach out to them and have them come on to the site. … That’s just because it’s the first time. We hope to open it to the community and encourage people to approach us,” said Stewart.

This month, the site is featuring the Undocumented Students’ Scholarship, OSteel’s Trip to Trinidad and the Allen Memorial Art Museum’s ceiling conservation project. The crowdfunding platform is just one venue of each of these organization’s fundraising efforts.

College senior and OSteel Band Co-Director Monica Hunter-Hart said OSteel has already raised enough money through grants and other crowdfunding campaigns to allow the band to travel to Trinidad. She said she hopes to use this platform to gather funds for master classes and side trips during its stay in Trinidad.

“We were really hoping this could be sort of a cultural learning experience [and a] historical learning experience about Trinidad and also about the steel pan in general,” said Hunter-Hart.

OSteel raised some of its funds through an Indiegogo campaign.

Business manager JesseCurtis Neugarten Cook Ads manager JuliaSedlacek Skrovan Business manager Savi Online editor Taylor Field Ads manager Reshard el-Shair Technician WillaBamert Rubin Production manager Sophia Production manager Alice Fine staff Stephanie Bonner Production staff Abbey Bisesi Emma Eisenberg Julia Davis Taylor Field LouiseHamilton Edwards Katherine Lya Finston Julia Hubay Joseph Kenshur Tracey Knott Anna Menta Noah Morris OliviaPeckham Pandolfi Anna Kiley Sheffield Petersen Silvia Michael Swantek Drew Wise Emma Charno Distributors Joe Camper Edmund Metzold Joseph Dilworth Rachel JamesYoung Kuntz

Hunter-Hart says this platform took a percentage of its funding, but the College crowdfunding site allows organizations to keep all of the money they raise. “[Oberlin’s crowdfunding platform] is really nice,” said HunterHart. “It’s not like Indiegogo or Kickstarter. … You get to keep all the money that you make [through the College platform].

[With] Kickstarter, if you don’t make your goal, then you will get your money rescinded from you.”

Andria Derstine, director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, is using the crowdfunding site as a way to raise money for the museum’s $500,000 ceiling conservation project. She says the platform is ideal because it allows donors to “purchase” small sections of the ceiling that their donations can be put towards restoring.

The museum has been raising money for the ceiling conservation project since 2011 and started the physical work on the ceiling this June. Approximately $120,000 is still needed, and Derstine said she is hopeful this crowdfunding platform will provide access to new donors. “[The crowdfunding platform] enables us to reach a really broad swath of people,” said Derstine. “Of course, we can link to the crowdfunding site through our own Facebook pages and our blog, and I think this is a way that will enable us to reach literally thousands of people that we would not have otherwise been able to reach through the normal venues.”

Corrections: In “Art Library Displays Selections from Vast Corrections Mail Art Collection” (Oct. 3), an observation made by writeriswas Thethe Review notincorrectly aware of attributed to Barbara any corrections thisPrior. week.

InThe “Student Innovators Review strives toBridge print Digital all Divide” (Sept.as26), the BrightasOrange Box information accurately possible. was built, andhas piloted in an sumIf you feeldelivered the Review made mererror, 2014, not summer 2013.

Additionally, please send an e-mail to LumenEd received a $600 initial grant from managingeditor@oberlinreview.org. the Creativity and Leadership Program, not $1,500 as initially reported.

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The Oberlin Review, October 10, 2014

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Off the Cuff: Michael Dirda, OC ’70, Pulitzer Prize–winning literary critic Michael Dirda OC ’70 is a Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic for The Washington Post, and a published author. Dirda will give two public talks this coming Thursday: one at the Oberlin Public Library at 4 p.m. and another in the Kendal at Oberlin Haiser Auditorium at 7 p.m. He sat down with the Review to discuss his tumultuous academic career, feelings of inadequacy and how life in Lorain inspired him to become a literary journalist.

Can you tell me about growing up in Lorain, and about your time at Oberlin?

I grew up in Lorain. I came from a workingclass family; no one in my family had ever been to college. I graduated from high school, and in those days, very few of the graduates did anything beyond high school. When I was a senior, I was a real cut-up of a high school student. I got a D in English the first grading period when I was a senior. I was supposed to be applying to college. But I remember I wrote Oberlin a letter saying that if they let me in and gave me some money and a job and a loan, I’d work really hard and they’d be proud of me one day, and they bought it.

I had to do a little more extra stuff. I had very uneven grades, but I got through. I talk about all of that in An Open Book; the first two-thirds are about growing up in Lorain and about how books shaped my life and eventually took me out of the town. The last part is about coming to Oberlin in the ’60s and the culture shock I went through and how much I came to love the place. Because I grew up there, I do come back to northern Ohio pretty often to see my family, and occasionally I swing by and look over the old books [in Ben Franklin’s]. My book is really a love letter to Oberlin — it changed my life.

I was going to drop out as a freshman; the best grade I could get in English when I was actually trying my hardest was a D+. I was doing

Thursday, Oct. 2 3:07 p.m. An officer on patrol near Harkness bowl reported witnessing a Grounds employee strike a light pole and knock it over. There were no injuries, and an electrician responded to cap the wires.

9:24 p.m. Officers were requested to assist with a Life Safety inspection in a room on the third floor of Talcott Hall. A glass pipe containing a substance consistent with marijuana and a grinder containing the same substance were both found in plain view.

The items were confiscated and turned over to the Oberlin Police Department.

9:33 p.m. Student staff members conducting Life Safety inspections at South Hall reported observing a burnt marijuana cigarette on the windowsill of a second

for a while for a computer company and began to write critiques on the side. The [Washington] Post liked my views, and asked if I’d be interested in a job. I could see that computers were going nowhere and that newspapers were reliable … so I started there, long ago in 1978.

Michael Dirda, OC ’70, a Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic.

miserably in other classes, and I sort of just turned myself around and felt that this was my one chance and that I had to make a go of it. So I turned around and became a grind, what we called in those days, which I guess is what you would call a nerd or a geek. So I gave up all extracurricular activities and just studied all the time, went to the Conservatory and listened to a lot of classical music. I had a girlfriend and I went to school — that was all I did.

How did you transition into life after Oberlin and later become a literary critic for The Washington Post?

Once I graduated from Oberlin, there was nothing I wanted to do but get back there and teach. I went to France for a year on a Fulbright [scholarship], and then I went to graduate school in comparative literature at Cornell [University], and came to Washington because my wife was working there as a paper conservator at the Library of Congress. I stayed in D.C. and became a technical writer

You mentioned that books shaped your life and your future adulthood. How did that come to be?

It’s partly a mystery why anything becomes a passion for any of us. Why do we fall in love with that woman or that man rather than another? It’s sometimes hard to say.

My family didn’t read books, but my mother taught me to read when I was very young, before I started kindergarten. She would look at these picture books with me, and I eventually figured out how to read. I wasn’t a particularly good reader in elementary school, and I probably would’ve been diagnosed with some psychological quirk; I didn’t pay much attention to my teachers. I read Hardy Boys and Tarzan, and eventually started Sherlock Holmes.

From there I went on to Agatha Christie and Crime and Punishment, which I loved. And then I really started reading grown-up books.

But I’ve always continued to love science fiction. My closest friends are in [that industry], and some have gone on to become quite famous. Neil Gaiman or George R.R. Martin — we go way back. Eventually I joined the Baker Street Regulars, which is this Sherlock Holmes group that started in the 1930s, and it plays this game that Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson actually lived, and pretends that the books are records of their lives. And I write pretty often; I’m coming out with [my next book] soon … and I also do my weekly review for The Washington Post, and I write pretty often for the New York Review of Books and half a dozen other places. And there I write about more mainstream things, but not always. I try and vary it.

floor room. The staff members also found a glass pipe containing a substance consistent with burnt marijuana in plain view. The items were confiscated and turned over to the Oberlin Police Department.

9:38 p.m. Student staff conducting Life Safety inspections on the second floor of East Hall reported observing a glass pipe containing a substance consistent with burnt marijuana residue and two glass jars containing a green leafy material. The items were confiscated and turned over to the Oberlin Police Department.

ment responded to a fire alarm at Union Street apartments. The alarm, which was activated by cooking smoke, was silenced and reset.

9 p.m. A resident of Barrows Hall reported that, at approximately 2 a.m., an individual urinated on a chair in a room on the third floor. The chair was taken to a custodial supply room on the first floor and left with a note. Attempts are being made to identify the person responsible.

Saturday, Oct. 4

12:04 a.m. Officers responded to a report of an individual with an orange shirt kicking over light poles in the North Quad area. An individual fitting the description was located but denied creating any damage. The incident is under investigation.

9:51 a.m. An officer responded to a report of broken glass on the third floor of Fairchild Hall, where a full-length mirror in a hall was found shattered and splintered.

1:07 a.m. Student staff members reported a strong odor of burnt marijuana on the first floor of Asia House. The staff member made contact with the occupant of the room in question, who admitted to both smoking marijuana and burning a candle. The candle was confiscated.

6:41 p.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Depart-

Sunday, Oct. 5

You said that Oberlin was a culture shock for you. Why was that?

I grew up in this blue-collar world. … I had never heard classical music, I had never seen a painting. It was a very insular environment — books were my only knowledge of the greater world. My education was very spotty; my parents didn’t really care much about my schooling. So I got to Oberlin, and my freshman roommate was the son of an Oklahoma oil millionaire, and one of my best friends could whistle Mozart operas from beginning to end; the other was the chess champion of Ohio. I felt incredibly inferior. … I signed up for 17th-century metaphysical poetry, and we had a legendary professor. He was incredibly daunting to me, and we had to write these weekly short papers, these poems, and I got a B+. And all this time I was in this French class where my teacher was telling me that a C+ was the worst grade you could get, because it meant you were average, and I kept getting C+’s. On top of all this I fell in love with a girl from the South, I thought she was Scarlett O’Hara, and that was fairly tempestuous.

It was a combination of struggling with all of my classes, having a high-maintenance girlfriend, having these incredibly gifted friends that made me feel inferior.

The upshot to this was that I really felt that I should go back to Lorain, and my father, who never had a kind word for me or anyone else, came to me and said something like, “A lot of kids here have had advantages you haven’t had. But, if you work harder than everybody else, you’ll be fine.” I had worked all sorts of jobs ever since I was little — I knew how to work. I applied that energy to Oberlin.

I wanted to feel at home in the world, wanted to feel cosmopolitan. I didn’t want to ever feel afraid of the people that I was around. I wanted to be able to move from the working-class ranks I knew to the highest society.

Interview by Madeline Stocker, News editor Photo courtesy of Larry Moore

A caution sign was placed in the area and a work order was filed to remove the mirror and clean up the glass.

10:11 p.m. A student reported that an individual wearing a red hooded sweatshirt had just taken the student’s bicycle from Mudd library. The individual left on the bike and headed toward Dascomb Hall, where they were stopped by members of the Oberlin Police Department. The officers confirmed that the bike belonged to the complainant and then returned it to them.

Monday, Oct. 6 1:07 p.m. A staff member reported witnessing two individuals skateboarding outside of Warner Center and claimed that they were interrupting a class. Officers responded and told the individuals that skateboarding was not permitted on campus. The individuals left the area.

Tuesday, Oct. 7

9:37 a.m. A staff member reported witnessing an individual walking on the east side of the Service Building and possibly smoking marijuana. An officer responded and located the student, who then admitted that they were smoking marijuana. The remaining “joint” was confiscated and turned over to the Oberlin Police Department.

9:37 a.m. An officer on routine patrol in Tank Hall noticed a five-gallon jug filled with a brown liquid that was bubbling, along with a large box marked Northern Brewer, Brewery, in a box. The contents of the jug were disposed of and the box and contents were transported to the Security Office and placed in evidence.

2:24 p.m. Officers confiscated two empty beer kegs and a beer keg tapas a result of Life Safety inspections. The items were transported to Safety and Security for safekeeping. Two parking signs belonging to the Athletics department were also confiscated.

News

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The Oberlin Review, October 10, 2014

Solarity Aims for Organizational Accessibility Sarah Conner and Madeline Stocker Contributing Writer and News Editor In response to a recent increase in membership, the student leaders of Solarity, an organization that strives to unify the student body through large-scale music and dance productions, have made a number of structural and aspirational changes to their organization.

Solarity’s co-chairs, College seniors McKenzie Smith and Juliana Ruoff and College junior Ben Lebovic, hope that these changes, which include the division of labor among a larger number of student members, will improve the overall appeal and accessibility of their biannual events.

According to Smith, Ruoff and Lebovic, the organization’s largest goal is to become accessible to a greater partition of both the campus and the Oberlin community.

“We want everyone in the community to be brought together; we really want to emphasize accessibility,” Smith said. “We don’t want to be just a party. We want to be a place where people can go and have fun, but we also want to be a place that people can go and see what other really awesome things people are up to.”

The co-chairs went on to say that, while they did not want to completely sever themselves from what many consider to be their current “party image,” they did want to take steps to ensure that future Solarity events will include more diverse performance groups, showcase more student art-

work and foster a more welcoming environment.

According to Smith and Lebovic, the influx of student interest in Solarity has given them the opportunity to create what they believe to be positive structural changes. This year will be the first that the organization, which originally operated under the authority of several student managers, will now divide the workload among student subcommittees.

The co-chairs said that they were able to alter the structure because they gained 15 new members this year, bringing their total membership to 40.

While the previous structure put most of the decision-making in the hands of the managers, the new structure will give all members a chance to participate as much or as little as they choose, according to the co-chairs.

“It’s really taken a lot of the workload and stress and spread it out among these creative groups that each give as much as they are willing to give and come up with some great ideas,” Lebovic said. “It’s a much more collectivist kind of thing now.”

Smith agreed, and added that the new delegation of power opens the doors to students who previously found the time commitment to be a problem.

“It makes it a lot more accessible,” Smith said. “One of the things we heard from people a lot was ‘Oh, I’d love to get involved, but I don’t want to devote 15 hours a week I see you devoting.’ I think this really solves this problem.”

Looking forward, Lebovic said

that both he and the other co-chairs had several goals for the future of Solarity, such as holding events that are zero-waste, occur more than once per semester, have unlimited capacity and focus more on student and community art and performance.

“Maybe it’ll be next semester, maybe it’ll be next fall, maybe it’ll be next spring, but we want to bring student artists to a new audience that they might not originally get,” Lebovic said.

“The student art showcases might not have the budget to support it, but we could create a space around it.”

While the organization is only five years old, there have been several changes in how the leaders allocated both its time and its budget. Last year, the previous co-chairs instituted peacekeeping trainings, wherein all members learned how to intervene during Solarity events if necessary. Over time, the organization has also allocated more portions of its budget toward employing unionized workers, like Safety and Security officers, electricians and custodial staff.

According to one of the founders of Solarity, Timothy Patch, OC ’13, these changes, along with Solarity’s overall movement away from the image of a party-oriented organization, are largely the results of a turnover in management and have little to do with the organization’s original intent.

“We founded Solarity as sophomores when the only campus-wide parties were Safer Sex Night and Drag Ball, both of which were being reined in by the administration,” Patch said in an email to the Review. “We

Students celebrate last fall’s Solarity event “Toxicity.” The current cochairs of Solarity said that, although they still want to retain aspects of their “party image,” they are looking to move toward a future of more accessible events.

Courtesy of Ben Garfinkel

wanted a bigger and more accessible alternative, i.e. an event three times the ’Sco’s capacity where you won’t stand out if you’re fully clothed or not in drag. We wanted more student art, student performances, student production and more dancing.”

Asked whether or not he felt that the organization should one day sacrifice its “party image” in favor of wider accessibility, Patch said that he considered the current model “very accessible.”

Many students disagreed about the accessibility of Solarity’s past events, citing the events’ perpetuation of alcohol and drug abuse as major deterrents to comfort and accommodation. An even more widely publicized complaint is that the organization is over-funded.

When Solarity was originally founded, the Student Finance Committee, along with the Oberlin Mock

Trial Team, allocated $2,000 toward the first event. Since then, Solarity’s budget has increased overall; this year the SFC will allocate $24,806 to Solarity’s fall event, with $22,635 going toward production, $368 toward publicity, $841 toward design, $9,560 toward facilities and services and a deduction of $8,600.

For Lebovic, Smith and Ruoff the focus remains on how their organization can keep criticism in mind while simultaneously upholding the entertainment factor of their events.

“We’ve always [been] about uniting the campus and having a fun time, and about taking advantage of cool stuff that Oberlin has to offer,” Smith said. “What’s changed is the way in which we’re trying to do that, which emphasizes discrete student productions. [We want to] see what students can bring to the table outside of music and dance and the facilities.”

Restaurant Week to Address Local Food Insecurity Continued from page 1 Currently, food distribution makes up the core of OCS’s work, and the organization is struggling to keep up with increasing demand, given its limited budget.

“If you don’t have food, if you can’t feed your family, it doesn’t matter [what else] you’ve got going on,” said Executive Director of OCS Cindy Andrews.

Restaurant Week is a part of ongoing fundraising efforts to ensure that OCS has enough resources to avoid turning anyone away.

In 2013, OCS provided food to an average of 1,800 clients every month. This year, it is feeding about 1,000 additional people every month, according to Andrews. Although OCS officially services residents of Oberlin, its surrounding towns and southern Lorain County, it accepts anyone who is in need of food.

“If you are from Elyria or Lorain, and you

show up for food, we will not turn you away.

Likewise, if you’re driving across Interstate 80, and you stop in Oberlin, and you need food, we will provide you with food,” said Andrews.

OCS’s main goal is to increase financial and economic stability in the community.

According to Andrews, its primary methods for achieving this are by providing food and mentoring services — which it calls mutual aid — to those who need it in a dignified and accessible way.

Andrews joined OCS as executive director in January of 2014 and has been working since then on OCS’s new strategic plan, titled “Planting Seeds for Sustainability and Growth.” The plan will expand OCS’s offered programs to include financial management classes, GED training through Junior Vocational School and Lorain County Community College and a nursing aide training program.

“Those opportunities allow us to come

together as a community and coordinate our services and learn from each other,” said Andrews. “Because we don’t have all of this figured out, we need partners to do this.”

OCS gets most of its food from Second Harvest Food Bank of Northern Ohio, with supplements from the USDA and private donations. Proceeds from fundraisers are often used to purchase food to supplement the food pantry; this way OCS is able to get more food inexpensively compared to the cost of individuals’ food donations.

“We’ve got a challenge feeding our families, and … every dollar that you give me, I can then provide meals for a family of four, because I’m able to leverage that money through [buying food at low prices from] Second Harvest,” said Andrews.

Income from fundraising is also used to improve infrastructure, such as through a plan to increase cold food storage. The OCS food pantry currently has only residential-

grade refrigerators and freezers and would like to purchase commercial walk-in refrigerators and freezers, which have a larger capacity and are more energy-efficient.

“If we had more refrigeration, then we could keep produce longer. The amount of produce that we’re asking people to grow [in our community gardens] could be processed in some way and distributed when it’s not garden season,” said Alan Mitchell, food distribution coordinator at OCS. “If you can freeze some peas, corn, peppers and onions, and then use them in a recipe later, it extends capacity.”

Mitchell also emphasized the importance not only of providing food, but also of making sure that food is fresh and healthy.

“We’re trying to increase the amount of fresh produce that people are including in their diets and [make] the healthier choice the easier choice by having it available here in the pantry,” said Mitchell.

Students, Faculty to Decide Future of College’s Investments Continued from page 1 vestment. It’s very general, but I think general is better for a divestment policy. I think specific and narrow means it’s much harder to push for divestment.”

Howell went on to say that the institution of the policy is an important step for the College.

“We need a divestment policy. We can’t go without having one at all, which is what the situation was before,” he added.

According to Howell, the IIP was formed in the spring, met twice last semester and has yet to meet for this

semester.

“Impact investing essentially means identifying investment vehicles that match particular values, social justice values … for each of five years. Starting this past year, $1 million would be transferred from the full endowment to this impact investment fund, and this committee would get to identify appropriate investment funds and vehicles that respond to these social justice values,” said Howell.

“The committee, with a lot of advice from consultants and trustees, identified three funds that particularly focused on environmental

sustainability and local community development, and identified those as funds that this first $1 million dollars would go into,” he said.

According to the resolution on impact investing that was approved by the Board in October 2013, the investments made by the IIP must earn “a competitive rate of return relative to assets held in the endowment.” But, according to Howell, the committee recognized that the kinds of investment vehicles the IIP was recommending might not make as high a return as stocks and other high-return type investments would.

The entire endowment was

roughly $714 million as of June 2013, according to the Investment Office.

“This platform is [a] super small fund compared to the size of the endowment, so it’s really not as radical as they say it is,” said Clarkberg.

For Howell, the committee is still in its infancy.

“This is clearly an experiment. It was set up to see how successful this kind of socially responsible investing could be,” said Howell.

The IIP has students, faculty, alumni, trustees and staff as members. The subcommittee is co-chaired by trustee Tom Kutzen, OC ’76, and Jainen Thayer, the chief investment

officer for the College.

Thayer did not respond to multiple requests to be interviewed by the Review for this story. College senior Anaïs Stewart, one of the students on the IIP, also declined to be interviewed, as did Hirschel Kasper, a member of the Investment Committee and a professor in the Economics department.

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Opinions The Oberlin Review

October 10, 2014

Letters to the Editors False Science Hurts College Reputation To the Editors: We are writing this letter because we are disturbed, upset and above all embarrassed by an event that took place at Oberlin College last Wednesday. As part of the Oberlin Illuminate Debate Series, two of America’s most widely recognized climate change skeptics came to “debate” the state of the climate. Dr. Judith Curry and Dr. Patrick Michaels, both climatologists who each receive significant amounts of funding from the fossil fuel industry, stood before us and presented poor scientific evidence to argue against the widely recognized scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change is a severe problem that must be addressed.

As a college that considers itself at the forefront of campus sustainability and environmental citizenship, this event severely damaged Oberlin’s credibility. College President Marvin Krislov introduced both speakers and announced that this was an important debate for us to be having at Oberlin College. We can hope that President Krislov, the Oberlin administration and whoever was involved in bringing these climate change deniers to our “progressive” campus have since realized their mistake; regardless, that does not change the fact that Oberlin College invited Dr. Curry and Dr. Michaels to speak here. How is it possible that no administrators or professors organizing this “debate” took the time to research how these speakers address the issue of climate change?

Perhaps even more distressing than the fact that Oberlin College funded these people to speak at our campus is that Dr. Curry and Dr. Michaels confidently addressed an audience of over 100 people and faced little to no opposition. Several students asked pointed questions, but in a room full of scientists and faculty, no one stood before the microphone when it was time for questions and called out their research for what it was: a sham.

Here we ask the Oberlin faculty and administration: If you are unwilling to stand up and argue for this most basic thing, the reality of anthropogenic climate change, what will you stand up for? Why was no one willing to stand up in the face of lies and insults to science and education? We urge you to think about what kind of message this sends to students.

In preparation for this event, the authors of this letter produced a fact sheet with information about climate change and both speakers to distribute at the door. We are grateful to those faculty and staff who supported us; however, the majority of the people that we contacted were unwilling to endorse or support our document on the basis that it engaged in political discussion of a topic that is “strictly scientific.” Regardless of whether or not we want climate change — or anything, for that matter — to be apolitical, if a group of people, however small, declares an issue to be political, it becomes so. Silence is not neutrality.

Silence does not make us apolitical. If we say nothing, they win.

Furthermore, we should not avoid confrontation under the guise of being respectful. When controversial speakers are invited to speak at Oberlin, we are constantly reminded to maintain “civil discourse” and “healthy debate” by the administration and many of our professors. This is why we chose to produce a fact sheet rather than incite a more direct course of action Wednesday. It was the wrong choice.

We must acknowledge that when Oberlin gives credibility to people like Dr. Curry and Dr. Michaels, it is disrespectful to the student body and our education. When it comes to events like the “climate debate,” student and faculty dissent must be welcomed and encouraged. Dissent is productive and educational. We exist in a campus culture that discourages and pacifies public protest, and because of that, we all missed an opportunity Wednesday night. Let us, as the Oberlin community, take this event and use it as a chance to re-evaluate the way we discuss and engage in political confrontation.

–Rachel Berkrot, Zia Kandler and Mae Kate Campbell College students

Intent of Racial Slur Can Be Changed Content Warning: The following letter responds to our editorial (“Journalists Must Remove Racial Slurs from Lexicon,” The Oberlin Review, Sept. 26, 2014), and it includes a word that the Editorial Board considers a racial slur.

To the Editors: I think the word “redskins” has been rehabilitated and no longer can

be considered a racial slur. When used as a mascot name, it presents Native Americans in a positive way. Look at the Washington, D.C. professional football team: Native Americans are not depicted scalping white settlers, and the cheerleaders are not represented as squaws. Instead, a noble image of Native Americans is portrayed by the Washington pro football team.

A reasonable person might even come to the conclusion that the use of the term “redskins” by the Washington pro football team is something that should be looked on as admirable.

The connotations associated with a word can change over time — for example, the word “vikings.” Vikings are used as mascots by numerous teams, but the term originally referred to a group of brutal Scandinavian mass murderers, pillagers and rapists.

However, the term presently denotes a band of rugged, courageous Norse conquerors.

Maybe it’s time to take a more objective look at the use of Native American images as mascots.

–Bob Gross

OARE Commends Divestment Policy To the Editors: Last week, the Oberlin College Board of Trustees released a groundbreaking policy for divestment. In a statement, the Office of Communications said: “In accordance with the College’s history of action in response to ‘instances of human suffering, natural calamity and injustice,’ the Board will consider proposals for divestment from entities that contribute to activities that ‘shock the conscience.’” In addition, the policy states that divestment proposals must cause “significant financial, reputational or other adverse impacts on the target of the divestment that may influence its behavior or the behavior of other similarly situated entities;” and that “the proposed divestment … will be generally understood by and acceptable to the greater Oberlin community.”

We applaud the Board of Trustees for acknowledging that human suffering, natural calamity and injustice should be taken into account when considering investment policy. With this move towards responsible investing, Oberlin is poised to strengthen its See Letters, page 6

SUBMISSIONS POLICY The Oberlin Review appreciates and welcomes letters to the editors and column 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 the following Friday’s Review. Letters may not exceed 600 words and columns may not exceed 800 words, except with the consent of the Editorial Board. All submissions must include contact information, with full names, for all signers. All electronic submissions from multiple writers should be carbon-copied to all signers to confirm authorship.

The Review reserves the right to edit all submissions for content, space, spelling, grammar and libel. Editors will work with columnists and 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. In no case will editors change the opinions expressed in any submission.

The Opinions section strives to serve as a forum for debate. Review staff will occasionally engage in this debate within the pages of the Review. In these cases, the Review will either seek to create dialogue between the columnist and staff member prior to publication or will wait until the next issue to publish the staff member’s response.

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 the author of a letter to the editors.

Opinions expressed in letters, columns, essays, cartoons or other Opinions pieces do not necessarily reflect those of the staff of the Review.

Page 5

The Oberlin Review Publication of Record for Oberlin College — Established 1874 —

Editors-in-Chief Julia Herbst Rose Stoloff Managing Editor Julian Ring Opinions Editor Sam White

Voting Measures Further Disenfranchise Minorities In a three-sentence order handed down last Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court further disenfranchised Ohio’s minority voters by upholding sweeping new limitations on the state’s early voting period.

The order, a temporary stay granted by the Court’s conservative majority which suspends two lower court rulings, upheld Republican-backed voting restrictions signed into law by Governor John Kasich in February. The law specifically eliminated the early in-person voting period known as “Golden Week,” during which Ohio residents could register to vote and cast early ballots on the same day. These restrictions coincide with further measures enacted by Secretary of State Jon Husted just days later, which slashed Sundays and select weeknights from the early voting schedule. While proponents argue that the new policies will simplify voting and decrease alleged voter fraud, history and context provide a disturbingly different picture of the intentional disenfranchisement of marginalized voters — all in a year when both Husted and Kasich are up for re-election.

Ohio has a history of Election Day controversy. During the 2004 presidential election, waiting times at some Ohio polling stations topped 12 hours, bringing concerns of voting accessibility to the forefront. As a direct response, the state implemented a 35-day early voting period. Since citizens must register to vote at least 30 days prior to election day, Golden Week, at the outset of the early voting window, afforded those with limited access to polling stations the opportunity to register and vote concurrently. The new restrictions eliminate this valuable option.

The NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union jointly filed the federal case against Husted in May on the grounds that the Ohio law infringes upon the constitutional rights of voters with limited access, including people with disabilities, seniors lacking transportation, blue-collar workers with inflexible schedules and several other blocs of voters. “Early voting is not a social luxury,” said NAACP President Cornell William Brooks in a statement. “It’s a civic essential, particularly for citizens working long hours on the job or in the home.”

Furthermore, Husted’s decision to eliminate Sunday voting disproportionately affects black voters, many of whom have, in recent elections, participated in a unique “Souls to Polls” program that bussed churchgoers to polling locations after Sunday services. Given the program’s well-documented success in boosting voter turnout in the black community, it is unlikely this targeted disenfranchisement went unnoticed at the time of Husted’s decision.

Since black voters and other groups hurt most by these restrictions tend to vote for Democratic candidates, the political motivation behind this legislation is crystal clear. It’s no secret that political motivations will at times influence policy, but it is unacceptable for these calculations to come at the expense of already marginalized communities.

It’s an unfortunate reality, of course, that many would-be voters have grown disillusioned with the political system. When politicians act outside the best interests of their constituents, citizens have reason to feel that their grievances are being ignored and that their government does not accurately represent them. Voter turnout, one of the principal measures of the vitality of democratic government, suffers as a result. The detrimental effects that restrictions like Ohio’s have upon American democracy, therefore, are twofold, reducing electoral participation through both disenfranchisement and disenchantment.

Yet the frustrating reality is that only by voting can we effect the change we need to see. We’ve seen heartening trends elsewhere indicating that this year, marginalized and disillusioned voices will be heard. Following the national outrage over the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, the city of Ferguson, MO — a city whose population is over two-thirds black but largely governed and policed by white officials — has seen a sharp increase in its residents’ voter registration. The real test is whether or not these newly registered voters turn out to cast their ballots. For them, as with Ohio voters, unimpeded access to the polls is absolutely critical, and ample early voting opportunities are necessary to ensure this access.

Though the process is flawed in many ways, voting — for those of us able to exercise our right to do so — remains an essential step toward creating a government that we believe represents our views. Our elected officials have demonstrated, however, that this right is no longer something we can take for granted.

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.

Opinions

Page 6

The Oberlin Review, October 10, 2014

ISIS Fears Prevent Sound Strategy Dylan Tencic Contributing Writer At an Aug. 28 news conference, President Barack Obama made the mistake of being honest with America. Asked to explain what steps the country would take to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, he conceded: “We do not have a strategy yet.” Given the deep-rooted complexities of the controversy, the president had reason to appear indecisive, but the public has clamored around his lack of conviction.

The president responded to these criticisms roughly two weeks later, presenting to the nation an exaggerated four-point plan to expand U.S. military involvement in the Middle East and combat ISIS. He asserted that ISIS “is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. It has no vision other than the slaughter of those who stand in its way,” and he assured the public that the United States would “degrade and ultimately destroy” the militant group. He called upon Congress to authorize funds to train and equip oppositional forces, and he spearheaded an international predator drone campaign that has resulted in over 250 airstrikes. In doing so, President Obama dismissed any doubts surrounding his commitment to protecting the home front — but at what cost will these measures come?

Our political leadership has too long made the war on terror a fight of good versus evil. We must end the rhetoric that terrorists possess some sort of inhuman psychology that instills in them an unrelenting desire for murder and may-

hem. We must not confuse their desperation with evil. The primary vision of even the most bloodthirsty and savage terror organizations, ISIS included, is not to destroy Westerners’ way of life; it is to prevent Westerners from destroying their way of life.

Since the U.S. began its military campaign in Iraq in 2003, more terrorists have emerged, equipped with more resources and willing to employ more gruesome measures to achieve their ends in Iraq. Furthermore, U.S. policies during and following the war have left a power vacuum in the region, providing conditions conducive to ISIS’s rise to prominence. The government that the U.S. set up in Iraq did not properly represent the Sunni population in the north of the country, giving groups like ISIS an opportunity to claim legitimacy and “liberate” Sunni-dominated cities such as Mosul. Due to these misguided policies and the legacy of U.S. intervention, it is difficult to imagine an Iraq that can function without continued U.S. interference in the future.

According to a CNN/ORC International poll from Sept. 8, a full 90 percent of Americans believe ISIS is a threat to the United States. Given the vast territory ISIS has gained in northern Iraq and Syria, the murders of American journalists abroad and the massive amounts of revenue the group is acquiring through illegal oil trade and racketeering, I would be naïve to deviate from this majority. Where I part with the majority, however, is with the 71 percent of Americans who believe that ISIS currently has terrorist insurgents on U.S. soil planning imminent attacks.

It’s this fear, not talk of human rights violations or genocide against Middle Eastern groups, which drives Americans to demand a “plan” from Obama. It should be no surprise to us that we, the citizens of a nation that has amassed a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the entire planet countless times over, are willing to throw away more money and resources on a conflict that we cannot solve. When we see radicals perpetrating atrocities in the Middle East and hear them expressing their intent to harm the American way of life, we feel we need to do something.

But fear is not a legitimate justification for war.

And yet here we are again, ready to fight the latest iteration of jihadis.

As military actions progress, we will hear about the capture of cities we’ve never heard of and be assured that they’re strategic checkpoints. We will hear of the deaths of people whose names we can’t pronounce and be told that they’re military leaders. We will be promised things are getting better and that our advanced military technologies and strategies are overpowering their barbaric knife-in-hand killings. All of this will help us deal with our fear, but it will not stop the perpetuation of antiAmerican sentiment in the Middle East — it will enhance it.

Supporters of this war will tell you that a band of savages like ISIS understand only force.

Perhaps they are right. But while bombs might destroy ISIS, they will not bring stability to the Middle East, and they will never destroy the conditions and ideologies that nourish terrorism.

Maher’s Islam Comments Divisive, Misguided Machmud Makhmudov Columnist

The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria over the summer has drawn global attention to the world’s Muslim population and, in some cases, resulted in flagrant displays of Islamophobia. Currently, no nation recognizes the group as a legitimate and autonomous entity because of the far-reaching spiritual and political implications of doing so. Barbaric murders by ISIS, including the beheading of several journalists and humanitarian workers from various countries, have triggered visceral reactions against Muslims worldwide in much the same manner as did the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Several moments during a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher clearly displayed this trend of fear-driven prejudice.

In the episode, featuring a debate that included actor Ben

Affleck and writer Sam Harris, comedian Bill Maher discussed the value of criticizing radical Islamist groups such as ISIS individually versus that of critiquing Islam generally. Affleck argued that generalizations about Islam and its adherents amounted to bigotry, while Harris and Maher argued that he was mistaken about Muslims’ true beliefs. Harris cited a statistic stating that 78 percent of British Muslims would support the persecution of a Danish cartoonist who penned a controversial image of the prophet Muhammad. In doing so, he attempted to make the case that while the majority of Muslims are not violent, they do hold — in Maher’s words — “pernicious beliefs.”

No matter what percentage of Muslims do or do not support a particular political position or group, casting the debate in these terms is a fundamental mistake. Islam is simply a religion, and its ad-

herents represent a wide variety of individuals and personalities. Accordingly, it is impossible to make an objective and rigid claim about any religious group’s beliefs without falling into troubling and potentially dangerous generalizations.

Though many violent groups like ISIS commit atrocious acts in the name of Islam, groups in recent history have committed comparable actions while claiming to represent various other religions and ideologies.

In the mid-19th century, the Ku Klux Klan terrorized AfricanAmericans, Jews and Catholics, among other groups, in the name of Christianity. During the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Eric Rudolph detonated explosives in the name of a crusade against socialism. Even in light of these attacks, it’s still ridiculous to claim that all Christians or all individuals who oppose socialism are violent and barbaric.

Similarly, it’s inappropriate and discriminatory to make judgments about all Muslims based only on ISIS’s actions. In fact, Indonesia — the nation with the largest Muslim population, accounting for approximately 10 percent of Muslims worldwide — has banned support for ISIS in response to the group’s international recruiting efforts.

Turkey, a mostly Islamic country, is more progressive than even the United States in terms of the number of female heads of state that it has elected.

Instead of using fear as a catalyst to spew hateful and divisive rhetoric, we should use this opportunity to highlight peaceful Muslim voices — which represent, in fact, the majority of Muslims — as a counter to the misleading image put forth by ISIS. Doing so is the only way that we can ensure true freedom of religious expression and combat fears of backlash, persecution and discrimination.

We are excited that this divestment policy sets the stage for Oberlin to become a leader in the movement to fight climate change.

Our consciences have also recently been shocked by the Israeli attacks on Gaza that killed thousands of innocent civilians, many of them children. We are pleased that the Board of Trustees is now accepting proposals to divest from companies that cause significant human suffering through profiting from the Israeli occupation. Moreover, considering the recent news coverage of divestment campaigns and the Oberlin Divestment Resolution that overwhelmingly passed the Student Senate in 2013, it is clear that divestment would cause “reputational” harm to companies and be understood as acceptable by the Oberlin community.

While we are excited by the possibilities for divestment that this policy opens up, we understand that policies are different than actions, and there is much to be done.

The policy includes the stipulation that any divestment “will be generally understood by and acceptable to the greater Oberlin community, based on the Board’s best understanding of the community’s opinion.” We are concerned about the ambiguity of this statement and how the Board intends to gauge what is acceptable to the Oberlin Community. We are hopeful that this policy will lead to a truly transparent process that seriously considers student, faculty and alumni demands for a responsible endowment. If not, this policy will just be one in a long line of College policies meant to placate student, faculty

and alumni concerns without taking real action.

This divestment policy speaks to Oberlin’s unified voice. Oberlin now has a clear path for concerns of the community to be addressed by the Board of Trustees and can become a leader in the movement for responsible investing. We look forward to working with the trustees on implementing this divestment policy and moving toward an endowment that is invested in ways that live up to the College’s stated commitment to social justice.

Those interested in finding out more about Oberlin Alumni for a Responsible Endowment can contact us at oare.oberlin@gmail.com.

Letters to the Editors, Cont.

Continued from page 5 stance as a leader for social justice.

As alumni who have been fighting for a socially responsibly invested endowment, we are excited to work with the Board of Trustees to divest from companies that “shock the conscience.”

Our consciences have been shocked by natural disasters resulting from climate change. We are glad the Board has listed “disregard of profound environmental degradation” as grounds to divest from a company. Fossil fuel companies have been degrading the environment for years, and in light of the national news coverage of Stanford University’s decision to divest from fossil fuels, it is hard to argue that divestment would not cause “reputational” harm to these companies.

–Oberlin Alumni for a Responsible Endowment

Misconceptions Delegitimize Seasonal Depression CJ Blair Columnist This week not only ushers in a slew of students stressing over midterms but also signals that Oberlin is about to begin its annual descent into the unending bleakness of winter. Especially at a college with such a geographically diverse student body, the emotional shock of this cold can be unforgiving to those unaccustomed to it.

While many may feel affected by the change in weather, most of them will grow used to it after a while. Some of them, however, will not. These students suffer from seasonal affective disorder, also known as seasonal depression, a very real condition that most people don’t realize or believe exists.

Attitudes toward seasonal depression — and depression in general — often reflect indifference because it can be difficult to draw a line between what constitutes depression and what does not.

The true distinction is that depression involves an unshakable feeling, something you can’t just get through with a pep talk or by watching an inspirational movie. Mental illness runs quite strongly in my family, and the general consensus is that a main symptom of depression is the feeling of being tormented to a debilitating extent by the worst imaginable thoughts, eliminating the ability to think of anything else. This turmoil seldom stays internal, and it can impact the way a person eats, sleeps and goes about daily life in mild or significant ways.

A person truly afflicted by depression isn’t going to flaunt it around like a badge of honor.

Instead, they’ll probably assume that this new feeling is just as unfixable as it feels, and they’ll consequently become more withdrawn. Winter is a prime breeding ground for depressive tendencies because it is the perfect embodiment of depression: a bleak, dead landscape entirely devoid of any beauty or distraction from inner unrest.

That may sound melodramatic, but I assure you, that’s what winter looks like with seasonal depression — it’s hell.

I realize I’ve done little here other than emphasize that seasonal depression is real, but for those afflicted with it, myself included, what really counts is some sort of assurance that this condition can be overcome. As with any form of depression, the efficacy of such an assurance is not really quantifiable. It’s an introspective art of learning what specific components of winter bring you down and what real, tangible things in your life can bring you up and prevent the fall.

Of course, I’m not able to say what makes other people feel good, but in my experience, it needs to be something personal. A song that everyone claims will “get you through a rough spell” probably won’t cut it. It has to be something specific to you, and it must ensure that you in particular will feel better because of it.

This could be a favorite comic book, a call to your parents or a favorite food, even if it’s something that everyone else hates. Whatever it may be, it has to become part of your routine so that it’s constantly present and working to keep you afloat. And there’s also something to be said for just trying to embrace winter. If it’s 8 degrees below zero outside, it’s time to bundle up inside in your most comfortable sweater and pajama pants. Don’t even think about having to go outside when you don’t need to.

Depression is different from other illnesses, of course, because it deals more with emotions than with tangible physiological problems. But if it didn’t deal with emotions, it wouldn’t be depression and couldn’t be helped by anything I’ve suggested. I won’t try to overstate what I’ve mentioned as being effective for clinical depression.

But for the purposes of seasonal depression and lesser forms of winter sluggishness, my family and I have found these methods quite helpful. I certainly hope that some readers can, too.

Opinions

The Oberlin Review, October 10, 2014

Page 7

Immigration Coverage Ignores Racialized History Sam White Opinions Editor In the time since August, when 18-year-old Michael Brown joined the rapidly growing ranks of Black men unlawfully killed by police, several long-overdue discussion topics have graced the media’s spotlight: police brutality, institutional diversity and representation, officer accountability and, above all, the prevalence of systemic racism in 21st-century America.

When a disturbingly similar shooting in nearby St. Louis took the life of Vonderrit Myers on Wednesday, many news outlets were quick off the mark in continuing these crucial conversations. Yet the mainstream media has largely failed to extend these analytical frameworks to another primetime news context where they’re no less necessary: immigration reform.

For many Americans, the term “immigration” likely conjures up images of unaccompanied, dark-skinned children flooding en masse over the United States’ southern border; these racialized scenes are the ones the media has planted in our imagination. Accompanying these televised images, beneath crisis-professing headlines and security-oriented narration, are depictions of lighter-skinned Border Patrol agents

and detention center administrators presiding over — and speaking to cameras on behalf of — visibly helpless Latinx children. Policy experts, almost all of them white, give interviews rationalizing deportation by discussing it in dehumanizing terms of accommodation shortages, disease threats, drug trafficking and crime statistics.

This is the immigration at the heart of public discourse. However, while it’s true that tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors have crossed the border in the past year, this is by no means the only form of immigration occurring in the United States.

Census data indicate that only around half of America’s foreign-born population migrated from Latin American countries, including South American and Caribbean nations, with the remainder coming from elsewhere in the world.

Rarely does the word “immigration” invoke images of these other immigrants. Almost never does it connote immigration paths like the one my parents (then an up-and-coming, married, white, British couple) took.

The reason, conveniently omitted from political discussion, is simple: These immigrants from overseas — many white, educated or both — are deemed desirable; the mass media’s

immigrant stereotype, the brownskinned Central American youth, is not.

American immigration policy is, and always was, deeply racialized.

From the nation’s earliest days, no factor determined the degree of nativism various immigrant groups would face upon arrival more accurately than their ethnicity — specifically in terms of perceived racial differences from the white Anglo-Saxon mainstream.

Even darker-skinned subgroups of people who would today be considered “white” faced harsh, racialized prejudice in the decades following their arrival.

Immigration rates peaked shortly before the turn of the 20th century, and nativist sentiment rose to meet it. In the name of security, national identity and representative democracy (as determined by Anglo-Saxon men), racialized anti-immigrant prejudices soon seeped into law and policy. In the Naturalization Act of 1870, Congress first framed eligibility for naturalization in terms of whiteness, sparking decades of cultural and judicial debates over what exactly made a person “white.” Congress went further in 1882 when it passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which effectively barred almost groups of Chinese immigrants from citizenship on grounds

Just Ask Us: Favored Fir Finds Fresh Frontier in Front of Oberlin Inn Jolie De Feis and Mike Plotz Columnists We are here to introduce our biweekly column in the Review! Rose Stoloff, Editor-inChief and part-time dog owner, is so excited about this project that she is willing to advocate on our behalf — just ask her! We even have an official email so that you can send us compliments and Gchat us during your classes. Our reporting style is unique and follows the philosophy that facts plus fiction equals truth. Don’t believe us? Just ask New York Times staff writer Paul Krugman, who has called us “remarkably original and fun.”

For our first installment, we are here to inform you about the Oberlin Inn tree. We know you’re thinking: “But the Oberlin Inn project knocked down all of the trees.” Wrong!

Oberlin College is paying a mere $15,000 to save one tree and relocate it to a new spot on the Oberlin Inn property. Though this may look like your average Pseudotsuga menziesii, or Douglas fir, we are of the opinion that it is anything but average and that it deserves to be saved. Unlike common Douglas firs, this beauty has droopy, weeping branches that resemble both an adult version of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree and the iconic trees in the hit TV series Twin Peaks.

Douglas firs have been granted the prestigious Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit. In addition to having a potential lifespan of over 500 years, Douglas firs provide seeds that are one of the main sources of food for small mammals. In a community that cares so deeply about its albino squirrel population, it would be deplorable to do anything but keep this tree alive. Our tree was the first tree planted in America using European seeds that came over on the Mayflower (though some sources claim it was planted there in 1980; this is debatable). It is also the tree that dropped the apple that fell on Newton’s head.

This, if you’ll refer back to our introduction, falls under the “facts” category.

Wait, did we say $15,000?! That’s a metric f---ton of dough. (Can we say that here?) For

that amount of moolah, we could pay tuition for exactly one third of an Oberlin student for a year or give the entire school a smoothie from DeCafé. We say, “Where will it stop?”

Where was the student input? Is horticulture a popular cause among the students at Oberlin or just an elite few? Did the oligarchy even ask us for our feelings? Hello, Krislov! We exist! You know what we would pay $15,000 for? The preservation of albino squirrels. Seriously, where the heck did those go — did they all die over the summer? Oh, right, the $15,000 we needed to save them was spent on preserving a tree. QED. (By the way, have you seen the tree? It’s very sad-looking. There’s a picture in the online version of this article.)

Have an opinion on something you think needs to be shared with the world? Hit us up on justaskusandwelltellya@gmail.com.

Here’s a preview of what we have planned for future installments: “What’s Up with Asparagus Pee? Is It A Social Construct?” (Be on the lookout for our survey, comin’ atcha soon!)

“Who’s That Dog? An Interactive Guessing Game!” (Send us a pic of your dog along with a fun — but not too fun — fact!)

“CDS Tasers” “Interview with the Hardest-Working and Most Beautiful, Ideal and Perfect Woman in Oberlin” Aside from investigative reporting, we have experience in writing, photography, movie ticket sales, cross country driving, vegetables, Snapchat, snapbacks, snappeas and snappea crisps from Trader Joe’s and Mandarin (Fluent in the restaurant, proficient in the language).

Readers, we promise we won’t let you down. If you feel let down, you can blame Rose. If you don’t, you can thank her. And us.

And Sam White, the Opinions editor. Deal?

Thanks so much for reading what we have to say! We’ll close with our fortunes from Mandarin: “Avoid compulsively making things worse.”

“You will share great news with all the people you love.”

of racial inferiority.

The exclusion framework the law established was far-reaching. It almost certainly helped to set the stage for the census-derived quota system of the Johnson-Reed Act, enacted after the first World War with the unabashed purpose of stemming the flow of immigration both from other parts of Asia and from Jewish populations in southern and eastern Europe. Ardent –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Immigration policy is, and always was, deeply racialized … in terms of perceived racial differences from the white Anglo-Saxon mainstream.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––– supporters of this exclusionary system, which remained in effect until 1965, included the Ku Klux Klan.

Media coverage of events like the shootings of Vonderrit Myers and Michael Brown help to remind white America that, as ever, systemic racism still runs rampant. It would be foolish, then, to suggest that in this same timeframe race has faded from rel-

evance in the immigration arena.

And the immigration arena — just like St. Louis County — has its own militarized law enforcement. Since World War II, the United States Border Patrol, previously a ragtag collection of localized police agencies, has grown into an expansive and heavilyfunded militia. With this expansion, campaigns like Operation Gatekeeper in 1994 have left behind military-like hierarchical command chains that make accountability and oversight ever more challenging. Today, surveillance drones loom over the borderlands, completing a warlike picture that dodges media scrutiny. Those targeted, of course, are exclusively the immigrants stereotyped in the news.

President Obama vowed last week to take executive action on the crisis before the end of the year, but the prospects of comprehensive reform remain bleak as congressional Republicans determinedly block the topic from reaching the House floor. Their motives, though the pundits may disagree, are no mystery; the status quo, to these Republicans, defends America from a racialized, dehumanized other. To them, that status quo is acceptable. With midterm elections approaching, it’s time to show them we disagree.

Laws Against Hitchhiking Reflect Misguided Fears Andrew Fedorov Contributing Writer

Hitchhiking, as both an activity and a means of travel, fills you with a sense of liberation.

Once you’ve done it, you know that any day, you can leave your present situation behind and just step out, stick out your thumb and go anywhere you can think of. While traveling, I spent a couple days in Paris with a girl from Scandinavia; at home, she told me, whenever she felt trapped, she would hitchhike cross-country and would then feel free again. However, this kind of liberation is hard to come by in a society that regulates behavior based on irrational fear.

Last weekend, my friend Tim and I attempted to hitchhike to Detroit for a little place-hacking. After multiple gas station employees threatened to call the police on us, two cops picked us up. The second cop made us wait in a Taco Bell (where we were made to purchase something because we weren’t allowed to loiter) and then take a taxi to the Greyhound station in Toledo, Ohio. The taxi driver was surprised when he found relatively normal guys sitting in the Taco Bell waiting for him because the people at the gas station had told him that “some nutcases were asking people for rides.” This was the only time I’ve experienced these kinds of setbacks while hitchhiking.

I spent most of last summer hitchhiking across Europe. I met a French Foreign Legionnaire who spent a decade as a parachutist in the Congo; a Dutch carpenter who showed me parts of Holland I never would have seen otherwise; and countless other fascinating people. In all that time, my only interaction with the police was when officers offered to drive me from the side of a highway to a gas station where I would have better luck. Even when hitchhiking around the Northeast, the only time a cop bothered me was when I had to hitch a ride after getting dropped on the highway. (Disconcertingly, he told me he did this because it was “his highway.”)

The resistance to hitchhiking in the U.S., and particularly in Ohio, is based largely on an irrational miscalculation of risk. If we pause and think for a moment, we will notice that most of the people involved in hitchhiking are good people. Hitchhiking requires a great deal of faith

in the good of humanity, and since we tend to base our views of humanity upon ourselves, most hitchhikers are good people. Furthermore, many of the people who pick up hitchhikers were once hitchhikers themselves, meaning that they are likely to be good people as well.

Interestingly enough, this systemic fear did not always dominate American life. Today, most people who pick up hitchhikers are doing it partly out of nostalgia and partly to pay back time they spent on the road with only their thumbs. They, however, can remember a time when it took five minutes to get a ride, a time when all sorts of people picked up hitchhikers without concern and without questions like “Are you crazy?” ever coming up.

Even before that time, there was a time when people could go across the country hopping trains. Oscar, a resident of the Detroit anarchist squatter commune where Tim and I stayed last weekend, recounted stories of train-hopping his way from Canada to Panama. He told us that every time he’s tried to hop a train in the U.S., he’s been arrested, but that he’s had great success with it in Mexico. Another resident of the commune, Scarecrow, had some success on U.S. trains, but he also had to serve a nine-day sentence after being found on one.

I can’t tell you what’s caused these changes, but something certainly has. America has abandoned the spirit of free exploration, with all its risks and romanticism, in favor of strict conformity. While waiting for our bus, Tim and I talked to Kingsley, a Ghanaian man employed at the Greyhound station. After hearing of our troubles, he drove this point home: “Everyone has to do the same thing, and if you’re not doing the same thing, you’re somehow bad.” He told us that in Ghana, where people don’t cling so hard to the status quo, people are not only more willing to accept strangeness, but also more willing to help strangers.

That’s the most painful thing about the resistance to hitchhiking. We’ve come to the point where it is considered both unusual and criminal to ask for help. Hitchhiking is a victimless crime.

This activity is banned through legislation only because the people who partake in it, whatever they may or may not contribute to mainstream society, are not afraid to ask for help.

Who was Mudd?

The legacy of Seeley G. Mudd has been cemented in buildings on the campuses of at least 30 colleges and universities across the country. Mudd, a 19th-century philanthropist who started his career as a cardiologist before joining the faculty at the California Institute of Technology, contributed more than $10 million for new collegiate building projects over the course of his lifetime. In his will, he established the Seeley G. Mudd fund for American college and university buildings, which totaled $44 million at the time of his death. Colleges seeking money from the fund were required to contribute at least half of the cost of the new building. Pictured here are some of Mudd’s sister buildings.

Mudd for midterms

Love it?

Hate it?

Chances are you’ve been in

Hanging out in Mudd 1997: Two students suspended themselves from the roof of Mudd in hammock chairs, stringing a large banner between them which read “Changing the World Starts Here, Stop Live Animal Experimentation.” Then-junior Joshua Raisler-Cohn and senior Kimberly DeFeo announced in a press release that they would remain there for at least 10 hours or until the Neuroscience department agreed to phase out vivisection in the introductory Neuroscience class. After 9 1/2 hours suspended in midair, DeFeo lowered herself to the ground while Raisler-Cohn was raised up to the roof with the help of security personel. Oberlin Animal Rights, which was not officially linked to the aerial protest, staged a simultaneous demonstration in front of the Mudd ramp. Newspapers and television stations came from the town and Elyria to cover the protest and conducted interviews with the dangling students by cell phone and walkie-talkie.

1985: The Mudd ramp was lined with corn stalks as part of an honors art project, giving the brief illusion of a pastoral approach to Mudd.

1995: It was never clear who actually stole the womb chair from the fourth floor of Mudd or how it was removed from the building.

All that is known is that one morning during commencement week in 1995, a womb chair startled residents of 283 N. Main Street (Track House) by appearing in the building. Meanwhile, then-senior Avi Brisman and junior Tim Learmonth had caught wind of the vagrant womb chair and headed over to prank the house residents by taking it off their hands. The Review picks up with the report of the theft.

1998: Three students in an advanced silk screening class hung 13 70-foot-long banners across the front of Mudd in a temporary art installation. The work was the final stage in a four-part project that featured screen prints of a telegraph on a backdrop of Morse code, a radio tower on a backdrop of radio waves, a telephone on the backdrop of a switchboard and, finally, binary code on the backdrop of a library. Each iteration of the project grew successively larger and appeared without explanation in various places on campus in the week preceding the final installation.

Seeley G. Mudd Math and Computer Science Building at Amherst College.

Courtesy of amherstiana.org

The year after Mudd’s 1974 dedication, it was described in Interiors magazine as a “highly humanistic building with interiors that sing with light.”

Seeley G. Mudd Library at Yale University

Courtesy of archrecords.construction.com

Over the course of a typical week in the spring of 2013, the main door of Mudd was opened 16,414 times.

Oberlin Library Collections: * 1,378,785 131,050 497,808

books & periodicals music scores government documents

2,481,513

total library holdings

Total library expenditure (including grants and gifts): $6,823,389 *

Building footprint: 4.59 acres (200,000 square feet)

2007: Then-senior and Studio Art major Julia Vogl filled the windows of the scholar studies with colored panels, giving the impression of stained glass as light shone through at night.

“[Track House resident] Brodsky phoned the Mudd Circulation desk and told Head of Circulation Allison Gould that she had found a womb chair. Gould informed Ray English, director of libraries. Security was also called.

“English, accompanied by three other library staffers, drove to Track House in English’s car with the intention of retrieving it. Security followed behind.

“When English and crew pulled into the driveway, they saw Brisman’s car pulling out — with the womb chair stowed in the back. The van was heading out of town on Route 58.

“Because the van was leaving town, English said he assumed whoever was in the van had stolen the womb chair. English and security took off after the van. ‘I’m told I left a lot of rubber,’ said English. After passing a couple cars, English got Brisman to pull over. Security pulled up and called the city police.”

Mid-1960s: Aerial view shows Wilder Bowl before Mudd’s 1974 construction.

By the 1960s, the College was contemplating a new building to replace the aging Carnegie Library. In a model based on a 1914 plan, New York architectural firm Warner, Burns, Toan and Lundy proposed to connect Hall Auditorium to a grand new library located across Tappan Square, with a single east-west line of sight between the two monuments. Trustees had already approved the demolition of Warner Gym, with Peters Hall soon to follow, when the administration conceded to defenders of the historic buildings and agreed to build Mudd in its present-day location.

Seeley G. Mudd Library at Northwestern University

Courtesy of Brian Keegan

Seeley G. Mudd Library at Lawrence University.

Courtesy of archives.lawrence.edu

* Figures reflect the 2012– 2013 fiscal year

Seeley Mudd Hall at Cornell University

Courtesy of events.cornell.edu

CALENDAR The Rocky Horror Picture Show Friday, Oct. 10 at midnight Apollo Theatre

Transitions of a Nuyorican Cinderella: The Musical Friday, Oct. 10 from 7–10 p.m.

Afrikan Heritage House, Lord Lounge

SPOKE Sunday, Oct. 12 at 8 p.m.

The Cat in the Cream

Opening Reception for BYWAY: An Exhibition of Studio Art Faculty Work Friday, Oct. 10 from 5–7 p.m.

Richard D. Baron ’64 Art Gallery (65 E. College St. Suite 5)

One night every semester, the Apollo Theatre brims with a sultry sea of corsets, eyeshadow and bathrobes at the twice-yearly screening of the cult classic film The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A live cast performs before and during the show, which begins at midnight.

Performance artist and author Maria Aponte grew up in New York City’s East Harlem neighborhood and has worked extensively in Latin theater productions, videos concerning racial discrimination and women’s rights-centered theater and film. OSlam! will also perform at this talk and poetry performance.

This four-piece jazz group will come to Oberlin at the outset of a tour promoting its new album, (r)anthems.

Since the band’s formation in 2006, the musicians have combined their diverse musical experiences to create critically acclaimed albums. Trombonist Andy Hunter is an alumnus of the College.

This public reception celebrates the end of the first week of a month-long exhibition of the work of six professors in the Studio Art department. The hung works span a variety of media, including printmaking, photography, 3-D-printed sculpture and design, digital prints, drawing and painting.

Why Does a Conservative / Moderate Supreme Court on a Conservative Age Expand Individual Rights?: Same-Sex Marriage, Guns and Obamacare Monday, Oct. 13 at 4:30 p.m.

Hallock Auditorium, Adam Joseph Lewis Center James Monroe Professor of Politics and Law Ronald Kahn will speak in honor of the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution. Along with how the legal process of the Supreme Court differs from other political institutions, Professor Kahn will speak on his own research area — the evolution of individual rights in the Constitution.

Guest Recital: Anton Baranov, Classical Guitar Tuesday, Oct. 14 from 8–10 p.m.

Kulas Recital Hall, Conservatory Central Unit

The Game is Always Afoot: A Talk by Michael Dirda, OC ’70 Thursday, Oct. 16 at 4 p.m.

Oberlin Public Library

Celebrated guitarist Anton Baranov has won a number of prestigious prizes over the course of his young career and has toured far from his native northwest Russia. His program features a number of selections, including Spanish, Italian and Russian-influenced works.

Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The Washington Post and Lorain native Michael Dirda will give a lecture on the undying appeal of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes, the subject of Dirda’s latest book.

This Week Editor: Hazel Galloway

Who was Mudd?

The legacy of Seeley G. Mudd has been cemented in buildings on the campuses of at least 30 colleges and universities across the country. Mudd, a 19th-century philanthropist who started his career as a cardiologist before joining the faculty at the California Institute of Technology, contributed more than $10 million for new collegiate building projects over the course of his lifetime. In his will, he established the Seeley G. Mudd fund for American college and university buildings, which totaled $44 million at the time of his death. Colleges seeking money from the fund were required to contribute at least half of the cost of the new building. Pictured here are some of Mudd’s sister buildings.

Mudd for midterms

Love it?

Hate it?

Chances are you’ve been in

Hanging out in Mudd 1997: Two students suspended themselves from the roof of Mudd in hammock chairs, stringing a large banner between them which read “Changing the World Starts Here, Stop Live Animal Experimentation.” Then-junior Joshua Raisler-Cohn and senior Kimberly DeFeo announced in a press release that they would remain there for at least 10 hours or until the Neuroscience department agreed to phase out vivisection in the introductory Neuroscience class. After 9 1/2 hours suspended in midair, DeFeo lowered herself to the ground while Raisler-Cohn was raised up to the roof with the help of security personel. Oberlin Animal Rights, which was not officially linked to the aerial protest, staged a simultaneous demonstration in front of the Mudd ramp. Newspapers and television stations came from the town and Elyria to cover the protest and conducted interviews with the dangling students by cell phone and walkie-talkie.

1985: The Mudd ramp was lined with corn stalks as part of an honors art project, giving the brief illusion of a pastoral approach to Mudd.

1995: It was never clear who actually stole the womb chair from the fourth floor of Mudd or how it was removed from the building.

All that is known is that one morning during commencement week in 1995, a womb chair startled residents of 283 N. Main Street (Track House) by appearing in the building. Meanwhile, then-senior Avi Brisman and junior Tim Learmonth had caught wind of the vagrant womb chair and headed over to prank the house residents by taking it off their hands. The Review picks up with the report of the theft.

1998: Three students in an advanced silk screening class hung 13 70-foot-long banners across the front of Mudd in a temporary art installation. The work was the final stage in a four-part project that featured screen prints of a telegraph on a backdrop of Morse code, a radio tower on a backdrop of radio waves, a telephone on the backdrop of a switchboard and, finally, binary code on the backdrop of a library. Each iteration of the project grew successively larger and appeared without explanation in various places on campus in the week preceding the final installation.

Seeley G. Mudd Math and Computer Science Building at Amherst College.

Courtesy of amherstiana.org

The year after Mudd’s 1974 dedication, it was described in Interiors magazine as a “highly humanistic building with interiors that sing with light.”

Seeley G. Mudd Library at Yale University

Courtesy of archrecords.construction.com

Over the course of a typical week in the spring of 2013, the main door of Mudd was opened 16,414 times.

Oberlin Library Collections: * 1,378,785 131,050 497,808

books & periodicals music scores government documents

2,481,513

total library holdings

Total library expenditure (including grants and gifts): $6,823,389 *

Building footprint: 4.59 acres (200,000 square feet)

2007: Then-senior and Studio Art major Julia Vogl filled the windows of the scholar studies with colored panels, giving the impression of stained glass as light shone through at night.

“[Track House resident] Brodsky phoned the Mudd Circulation desk and told Head of Circulation Allison Gould that she had found a womb chair. Gould informed Ray English, director of libraries. Security was also called.

“English, accompanied by three other library staffers, drove to Track House in English’s car with the intention of retrieving it. Security followed behind.

“When English and crew pulled into the driveway, they saw Brisman’s car pulling out — with the womb chair stowed in the back. The van was heading out of town on Route 58.

“Because the van was leaving town, English said he assumed whoever was in the van had stolen the womb chair. English and security took off after the van. ‘I’m told I left a lot of rubber,’ said English. After passing a couple cars, English got Brisman to pull over. Security pulled up and called the city police.”

Mid-1960s: Aerial view shows Wilder Bowl before Mudd’s 1974 construction.

By the 1960s, the College was contemplating a new building to replace the aging Carnegie Library. In a model based on a 1914 plan, New York architectural firm Warner, Burns, Toan and Lundy proposed to connect Hall Auditorium to a grand new library located across Tappan Square, with a single east-west line of sight between the two monuments. Trustees had already approved the demolition of Warner Gym, with Peters Hall soon to follow, when the administration conceded to defenders of the historic buildings and agreed to build Mudd in its present-day location.

Seeley G. Mudd Library at Northwestern University

Courtesy of Brian Keegan

Seeley G. Mudd Library at Lawrence University.

Courtesy of archives.lawrence.edu

* Figures reflect the 2012– 2013 fiscal year

Seeley Mudd Hall at Cornell University

Courtesy of events.cornell.edu

CALENDAR The Rocky Horror Picture Show Friday, Oct. 10 at midnight Apollo Theatre

Transitions of a Nuyorican Cinderella: The Musical Friday, Oct. 10 from 7–10 p.m.

Afrikan Heritage House, Lord Lounge

SPOKE Sunday, Oct. 12 at 8 p.m.

The Cat in the Cream

Opening Reception for BYWAY: An Exhibition of Studio Art Faculty Work Friday, Oct. 10 from 5–7 p.m.

Richard D. Baron ’64 Art Gallery (65 E. College St. Suite 5)

One night every semester, the Apollo Theatre brims with a sultry sea of corsets, eyeshadow and bathrobes at the twice-yearly screening of the cult classic film The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A live cast performs before and during the show, which begins at midnight.

Performance artist and author Maria Aponte grew up in New York City’s East Harlem neighborhood and has worked extensively in Latin theater productions, videos concerning racial discrimination and women’s rights-centered theater and film. OSlam! will also perform at this talk and poetry performance.

This four-piece jazz group will come to Oberlin at the outset of a tour promoting its new album, (r)anthems.

Since the band’s formation in 2006, the musicians have combined their diverse musical experiences to create critically acclaimed albums. Trombonist Andy Hunter is an alumnus of the College.

This public reception celebrates the end of the first week of a month-long exhibition of the work of six professors in the Studio Art department. The hung works span a variety of media, including printmaking, photography, 3-D-printed sculpture and design, digital prints, drawing and painting.

Why Does a Conservative / Moderate Supreme Court on a Conservative Age Expand Individual Rights?: Same-Sex Marriage, Guns and Obamacare Monday, Oct. 13 at 4:30 p.m.

Hallock Auditorium, Adam Joseph Lewis Center James Monroe Professor of Politics and Law Ronald Kahn will speak in honor of the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution. Along with how the legal process of the Supreme Court differs from other political institutions, Professor Kahn will speak on his own research area — the evolution of individual rights in the Constitution.

Guest Recital: Anton Baranov, Classical Guitar Tuesday, Oct. 14 from 8–10 p.m.

Kulas Recital Hall, Conservatory Central Unit

The Game is Always Afoot: A Talk by Michael Dirda, OC ’70 Thursday, Oct. 16 at 4 p.m.

Oberlin Public Library

Celebrated guitarist Anton Baranov has won a number of prestigious prizes over the course of his young career and has toured far from his native northwest Russia. His program features a number of selections, including Spanish, Italian and Russian-influenced works.

Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The Washington Post and Lorain native Michael Dirda will give a lecture on the undying appeal of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes, the subject of Dirda’s latest book.

This Week Editor: Hazel Galloway

Arts The Oberlin Review

Page 10

October 10, 2014

Slam Poetry Gains Momentum on Campus Vida Weisblum Arts Editor Oberlin’s student-run slam poetry organization, known as OSlam!, is undergoing a critical transformation to manage an overwhelming interest in slam poetry on campus. Last year’s OSlam! participants began auditions Thursday to select finalists for eight additional spots on their performance team, and will continue the process tonight. While the OSlam! club, which meets on Monday evenings to workshop poems and performance, will remain open to all writers, this exclusive performance team will appear at events on campus, collaborate with other student organizations and travel to the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational.

OSlam! is involved in the slam poetry movement, which first became popular in the 1990s.

The term “slam” refers to a type of competition in which poets recite original work with social justice-related themes. Slam poets are crafts-people of meticulously metered and passionate verse, and seasoned performers

typically write about vulnerable topics, often recounting highly personal stories to large audiences. Slam poetry is a performance art and is intended to be delivered orally in the same deliberate manner an actor would perform an impassioned Shakespearean monologue.

OSlam!, which just two years ago consisted of six poets who would convene weekly at one student’s house, faced a challenge this fall when more than 60 students showed up unexpectedly at their general interest meeting. With so many prospective members, the team had difficulty achieving the acute vulnerability that is so crucial to OSlam’s existence, and so found auditions to be their only option.

For College sophomore, Creative Writing major and OSlam!

Treasurer Zachariah ClaypoleWhite, OSlam! was a perfect fit. “I wanted a space to write in, and I wanted to work on bringing more aspects of performance into my poetry,” he said. Claypole-White’s intro to poetry T.A. introduced him to the club at the beginning of his freshman year, and he soon became part of a close-knit com-

munity of fellow writers and performers through his involvement with OSlam! “I think OSlam! is an amazing community, and I love everyone who’s involved with it,” he said, later describing OSlam! as being “like a family.”

OSlam! founder and College junior Alison Kronstadt, who currently co-chairs the group alongside College junior B.J. Tindal, was the president of her high school slam poetry club and wanted to continue writing and performing on campus. As a first-year at Oberlin last fall, she had heard rumors that there was a slam poetry club, but when no actual group emerged, she and College junior Hannah Rosenberg, a fellow poet, decided to start one of their own.

Claypole-White said OSlam! has since its inception striven to uphold a spirit of inclusivity and celebrate individual uniqueness; these qualities have strengthened the bond between its members and driven the creation of poetic content. “Everyone came into OSlam! with different backgrounds — people who’ve been involved [with slam poetry] for a long time and people who

are just getting into it,” he said.

Tindal, too, commented on the openness of the OSlam! environment. “Every time you sit down to write, it is coming from a very personal place inside of you, so you have to take that and speak it in front of whoever is in the room,” he said. “What we do our best to do is create a space that is open and allows for people to make mistakes.”

Kronstadt said that the unique vulnerability of being immersed –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

“Slam is to me, first and foremost, a medium for people who have not been allowed to tell their stories.”

ALISON KRONSTADT Co-chair, OSlam!

––––––––––––––––––––––––––– in an OSlam! workshop is satisfying and cathartic. “Mondays are hard days,” she said. “I go [into our Monday club meetings] feeling like, ‘Ugh, college,’ and leave feeling like I am the luckiest per-

Feature Photo: Art Spiegelman at Convocation

Cartoonist Art Spiegelman peers over the shoulder of saxophonist Phillip Johnston during their joint convocation, titled “Wordless!”, in Finney Chapel Wednesday. Despite technical difficulties, the pair combined their respective art forms in a display of collaborative mastery.

Spiegelman is best known for his graphic novel Maus, a lengthy retelling of his father’s life as a Holocaust survivor that earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Maus is often cited as the work that first drew scholarly interest to comics as an art form. Spiegelman’s initially brief, experimental writing rose to prominence in the 1970s, and he has since enjoyed a prolific career

as a cartoonist, editor and teacher.

A respected jazz composer and performer, Johnston is a New York native currently based in Sydney, Australia. During the 1980s, Johnston founded and led The Microscopic Septet and toured around the United States and Europe. He maintains an active interest in composing for the concert hall, theatrical productions, dance and silent films.

Text by Jeremy Reynolds, Arts editor Photo by Rachel Dan

son in the world that I get to be here listening to these people be so brave and say such beautiful things, and that I’m helping to make that happen.”

Tindal said he plays a lot with sound in his work and talked about poetry as a narrative art form. “I’m just inspired by this idea of storytelling,” said Tindal, “and that very small moments can spark an entire poem or an entire story ... and getting to play with your own story is very fun and empowering.”

“Slam is to me, first and foremost, a medium for people who have not been allowed to tell their stories,” said Kronstadt.

She emphasized the importance of “fostering an environment where all levels of storytelling are accepted.”

According to Kronstadt, the vulnerability she witnesses in writers’ work is not exclusive to Oberlin slam poets but “comes with the territory of the art form,” which is why OSlam!’s leaders are doing their best to preserve the intimacy of last year’s experience. “I think [with the influx of applicants] we would be doing everybody a disservice to keep things going the way they were,” she said.

“OSlam! is definitely going through growing pains because ... last year ... we played [our meetings and programming] by ear,” Claypole-White said. He added that, because of increased interest, OSlam! will “structure their organization a bit more formally.”

“I am a really big believer that learning how to hear a poem and give good, smart, kind, constructive feedback makes you a better poet and better person,” Kronstadt said, which may explain why OSlam! has decided to make the team more selective. “You can’t give good, compassionate feedback to really personal poetry in a room full of strangers,” she said.

Those who audition for the troupe will be able to write about what OSlam! means to them and perform one poem for a panel of current OSlam! members. “I’m looking forward to getting to be blown away,” Kronstadt said. “I just wanna be like, ‘I am a canvas! Write some poetry on me!’”

Tindal’s hope for OSlam! is not to “just have a presence on [Oberlin’s] campus, but a purpose on campus of starting dialogue. I think poetry is a really great avenue and venue to do that.”

“Getting to work with other artists — that is the dream,” Kronstadt said. “When I work with the people I’ve worked with since last year ... when things are going well, we’re in the same headspace, but still bringing different thoughts to that — but we’re thinking about the work so intensely that we’re inside of it and able to make it better, because it is the house that we live in.”

Arts

The Oberlin Review, October 10, 2014

Page 11

BYWAY Highlights Cohesive Array of Faculty Art Sophie Kemp “The Future is in the Lobby” is an appropriate title for the first piece of art to welcome visitors into the Richard D. Baron ’64 Art Gallery for the faculty exhibit BYWAY. Assistant Professor of integrated media Julia Christensen’s 3-D printed sculpture exemplifies the innovative talent of Oberlin’s own professors.

The exhibition, which features Christensen’s work and that of other Art professors Don Harvey, Pipo Nguyen-duy, Kristina Paabus, Donna Coleman, Sarah Schuster, Susan Umbenhour and Nanette Yannuzzi, discusses political and ideological subjects through various media.

Nguyen-duy, Art department co-chair and professor of Studio Art and Photography, submitted three large photographs of Vietnam, where he lived as a child, depicting schoolchildren playing in bright blue and stark white school uniforms. The vast flora-laden landscape that provides the backdrop bursts with saturated colors and lifelike-textures that appear unnatural, almost staged. The juxtaposition between the children, who appear strangely posed, and their oddly intense green surroundings appears to be a commentary on children within the lush green landscape Nguyen-duy remembers as a warzone from his childhood, during which he lived only 30 kilometers away from the DMZ of the

18th Parallel .

Coleman, a visiting painting instructor, depicts women as grotesque rather than idealized in her politically intriguing and subversive “Gentleman’s Club.” The painting portrays a male space diluted with images of women. In her other painting, “Girl Crazy,” Coleman portrays women with varied body types, ethnic backgrounds and ages. The painting’s border is adorned with labels notoriously associated with women, ranging from “slut” to “spinster” to “girl next door.” The women portrayed are far from picturesque, and are painful to look at, only strengthening Coleman’s artistic statement of solidarity among women.

Assistant Professor of Studio Art Yannuzzi’s somewhat Selections of art hang in the lobby of the Richard D. Baron ’64 Art Gallery as a part of the faculty exhibit titled jarring mixed-media piece BYWAY. The artists employed various media to comment on contemporary political and ideological ideas.

“What the Water Told Me” pays Yu Yue homage to the Frida Kahlo painting “What the Water Gave Me.” The tom of the piece, and a vague white image litical and ideological concepts that reprework includes abstract images and an un- of a water lily appears in the bottom right- sent a departure from what one might exlikely combination of colors. Several paint- hand corner. Yannuzzi’s two other mixed pect. Though the diverse ideas manifest in ed brown “x” marks slash over the rest of media pieces “Frack Fuck” and “River Bed different aspects of the artwork, BYWAY is the work, which is water-like in texture. 1” are also on display in the gallery. ultimately cohesive. The exhibition is satSeveral small doodle-like images appear in BYWAY is the road less traveled. The isfyingly complete and exemplifies the provarious areas of the duck’s head at the bot- faculty artists radically incorporate po- found talent within the Studio Art faculty.

Art Conservation Class Emphasizes Analytical Processes Aviva Blonder Staff Writer A team of art conservators is currently working meticulously to clean and conserve Frederick J. Wiley’s 1917 painting of a mass, known as “King Sculpture Court,” which completely covers the Allen Memorial Art Muesum’s main ceiling. Heather Galloway, visiting professor of Art History and one of the chief painting conservators involved, is incorporating the project into her art conservation class, ensuring that museum visitors and Oberlin students alike will benefit from the improvement.

Named after the AMAM’s first curator, Hazel B. King, “King Sculpture Court” emulates 16th century French style in its isolated depictions of foliage and animal designs, and includes 19th century text from verses by the transcendentalist Christopher Pearse Cranch. Conservation

efforts to prevent deterioration of the large painting began in 1998, but have intensified since then.

The AMAM approached Galloway to teach the class three years ago with the intention of bringing together students from art and science departments. “Most of us have a background as historians — art history in my case — all of us have backgrounds in studio art, and we have to take science classes in order to get to graduate school,” said Galloway.

Because students in the class are prohibited from mounting the scaffolding to see the ceiling directly, they spend an hour and 15 minutes each week in the museum discussing other paintings. The curriculum includes learning how paint chemically ages, examining objects and learning about the general cleaning and reconstruction process.

Students work with the museum’s staff

of professional historians who have been researching the space, as well as conservation scientists who have done crosssectional analysis. “No one of us can come up with all the right answers, which I personally enjoy,” Galloway said. “One of the things I like about my job is working with other experts.”

College junior and Chemistry and Art History major Liora Mael is one of three students currently in the class who is interested in entering the field of art conservation.

“I wanted to be a doctor for a very long time, and then I started making books in high school in one of my art classes,” she said.

“One of my sisters said, ‘Liora, why don’t you become a book doctor?’”

Mael, who claims to rarely listen to her sister, decided to explore the path of art conservation in response to her suggestion. She emailed experts in the field and

visited Galloway and her colleagues at the Intermuseum Conservation Association in Cleveland. “[Art conservation is] an evolving field, so we’ve been doing a lot of historical readings, and also preservation briefs and case studies of what people have done,” said Mael. “We’ve been looking at a lot of different works, especially in the Allen — what’s happening with them and what they have had done and what could be done in the future.”

Galloway outlined one of her goals for the class: “[I hope students will] recognize that there are multiple people involved [in art conservation] and that they all have different strengths that have to rely on each other for decision making,” she said.

One of Galloway’s favorite aspects of teaching the class is when her students point out aspects of paintings she had never explored. “I love looking at art with students to see where my field succeeds

‘My Miles’ to Marry Jazz Standards, African-American Dance Liam McLean Staff Writer Though he says he is no longer religious, trumpet player Kevin Louis, OC ’99, cannot help but liken the upcoming Dance Diaspora concert, “My Miles: My Lullaby in Retrospect,” to the experience of going to church.

The New Orleans native, who has produced more than 10 recordings since 1997 and embarked on multiple international tours, will perform alongside other alumni and student musicians and the Dance Diaspora troupe in Warner Main Space at 8 p.m. tonight and Saturday. The show will feature the music of jazz legend Miles Davis alongside vernacular African-American jazz dance.

Professor Adenike Sharpley, artist-in-residence in the Africana Studies department and Dance Diaspora’s director, es-

tablished the troupe in 1992, shortly after she began teaching at the College. The troupe’s mission statement expresses its goal to “maintain traditional West African dance forms and other African Diasporic forms by acknowledging the spirituality, philosophy and diversity of African culture and its global presence.” Exploring a diasporic heritage is fundamental to the troupe; both Louis and Sharpley said personal experiences are at the heart of this broader exploration, as well.

“I always go back to [church], because that’s what I was raised in,” said Louis. “When you go to church, people go there looking for what they need. It’s a very personal thing.” His intention when performing this weekend, he said, is not to communicate any single message, but to transmit an energy in which each

spectator can find individual meaning.

For Sharpley, the entire production has personal significance; her family was especially passionate about jazz while she –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

“When you go to church, people go there looking for what they need. It’s a very personal thing.”

KEVIN LOUIS, OC ‘99 Trumpet player ––––––––––––––––––––––––––– was growing up. The Cleveland native said in a press release that she only recently realized the effect that her early exposure to jazz had on her life. She told the story of how she found herself at work one day absently-mindedly

humming a tune; former Afrikan Heritage House Director and Sharpley’s then-colleague Ralph Jones informed her that, unbeknownst to her, the song was “Flamenco Sketches” from Davis’s album Kind of Blue.

“When I was small, [jazz] was my lullaby music,” Sharpley said, pointing to a picture of her and her father while she reclined behind the counter of Ade’s Place, the local store she manages. “I know the tunes not by the names; I know them by the music. That’s why it’s personal for me.”

Sharpley said she decided to produce “My Miles” to communicate the importance of jazz within her family and the African-American community. She dedicated the show to her father, who she said was an enthusiastic jazz fan with a record collection that was the envy of Cleveland’s east side.

Sophie Umazi Mvurya, a College junior majoring in Law and Society, Politics and Economics, has been a member of Dance Diaspora since her first year at Oberlin and is performing in tonight’s show. She said the opportunity to interpret Sharpley’s musical memoirs through dance has been the most exciting element of the production.

“We’re there to express that story from her perspective,” Mvurya said. She said this task requires connecting with Sharpley’s story on a personal level without losing the director’s original narrative intent. Mvurya went on to say that her relationship with her mother has been an emotional access point to her mentor’s memoirs as she strives to express them through dance.

Sharpley said that the dances See Sharpley, page 13

Arts

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The Oberlin Review, October 10, 2014

Argentine Trio Performs Cohesive, Expressive Set Chen Liang The Tami Tango Trio shattered expectations the moment it walked off the stage at the Cat in the Cream to roam through the audience while performing. This was just one in a series of spectacles that blended theatricality, expressive dance and traditional tango music during the Argentine ensemble’s Sunday night show.

The trio is named after founding member Eduardo Tami, a distinguished flutist and composer. Pianist Leandro Marquesano has been playing with the group since 2010 and teaches piano in the “National 17” high school in Buenos Aires. Guitarist Emiliano Ferrer is marking his first year with the ensemble. Although the three musicians, all from Argentina, have not played as a trio for long, their clean performance demonstrat-

ed a highly cohesive interpretation of the music.

There were no programs; Tami simply introduced the title and discussed the elements of each piece before diving in. The trio played the first work without dancers, building a rapport with the audience and setting the intense rhythms of the tango.

The interplay between the piano and guitar created a stable grounding for Tami’s virtuosic flute solos, which he played with a fierce precision.

As the musicians began the second piece, professional dancers Claudia Marciano and Facundo Barrionuevo stepped onstage hand in hand and began to tango.

Their movements complemented the angular characteristics of the music, and their elegance and enthusiasm enhanced the energy of the concert. After the piece finished, the dancers left the stage and the trio

performed the next several selections alone. The alternation of music and dance allowed the ensemble to showcase the music as an essential aspect of the traditional tango.

Tami performed two of his own compositions during the course of the evening, “La Mina de Valle” and “El Orientalito.” During the former, he wandered out into the audience, bending to aggressively play in the face of various listeners.

The show reached its peak during the trio’s performance of Astor Piazzolla’s “Oblivion.” The music was hauntingly beautiful, and the ensemble performed it with exceptional delicacy and spirit.

The dancers returned to the stage from opposite sides of the room to intensify the atmosphere in a poignant performance that symbolically demonstrated the heartrending

The Tami Tango Trio — Leandro Marquesano (left), Eduardo Tami and Emiliano Ferrer — performs Astor Piazzolla’s “Oblivion” while the Argentine duo Claudia Marciano and Facundo Barrionuevo dance onstage. The trio presented a concert of traditional tango music at the Cat in the Cream Sunday night.

Sarah Herdrich

separation of the music.

The duo moved as if it were their last dance before an eternal parting; their gestures and facial

expressions suggested a passionate intimacy and impending estrangement.

Audience members joined Marciano and Bar-

rionuevo in dancing to the trio’s fervent finale, rounding out the evening with a sense of exhilaration.

The Epicurean: Education Wins, As Does Killer Lobster Bisque Matt Segal Columnist This is a biweekly column highlighting our local culinary scene. Restaurant reviews, research, interviews, recipes and more will all come together in order to identify what makes the Cleveland experience unique.

I am not fond of lengthy menus. I would rather know that the kitchen staff is putting its efforts into a few excellent dishes as opposed to offering a greater range of items of lesser quality. A smaller menu is often evidence that a chef is restricting themselves to the best and freshest ingredients. Ideally, they will understand cookery and their ingredients well enough to know exactly how they should be prepared.

So, when making reservations for EDWINS, a restaurant in Cleveland’s Shaker Square, I inquired about tasting options. I said that I was interested in trying whatever was freshest and most representative of the restaurant’s character. While a tasting menu was not normally available, the staff was happy to accommodate my request and craft one especially for me. Personal attention is not something one often finds at a typical fine dining establishment, even in hospitable Cleveland.

In fact, EDWINS’s first priority is not to cook delicious food — although the kitchen staff excels in that regard — but to provide a mentoring program in fine dining and hospitality for previously incarcerated adults. Formally called EDWINS Leadership & Restaurant Institute (EDWINS stands for “education wins”), its mission statement reads: “EDWINS Leadership & Restaurant Institute is a unique approach at giving formerly incarcerated adults a foundation in the hospitality industry while providing a support network necessary for a successful re-entry. [EDWINS’s goal] is to enhance the community of Cleveland’s vulnerable neighborhoods by providing its future leaders. Our mission is to teach a skilled trade in the culinary arts, empower willing minds through passion for the hospitality industry and prepare students for a successful transition into the world of business professionals.”

Even with a humanitarian program

like EDWINS, the food must stand on its own. My meal began with a smooth lobster bisque. Many bisques I’ve tasted have been unappealingly gritty or chunky, but EDWINS was pleasantly even — undoubtedly finished with a healthy dollop of cream. A luxurious prize in the form of a perfectly cooked bite of lobster tail hid just under the surface of the bisque. The bisque was a bit heavy for a first course; nonetheless, it was perfectly executed. For my second course, I was presented with a slice of rabbit pie, one of EDWINS’s signature dishes. Accompanied by tartly dressed greens and unnecessary tomato slices, the pie was nicely seasoned, with generous strands of slow-cooked rabbit. The perfectly golden and flaky crust was spiked with salty prosciutto, which held up nicely against the subtle flavor of the pie’s interior. My main course was grouper paupiette, a fish preparation originating from Normandy. In paupiette, the grouper filet is wrapped in thinly sliced potatoes and pan-fried so it achieves a crispy –––––––––––––––––––––––––

The perfectly golden and flaky crust was spiked with salty prosciutto, which held up nicely against the subtle flavor of the pie’s interior.

––––––––––––––––––––––––– exterior while maintaining tender, delicate flesh.

EDWINS struggles with its service. My server did not know the menu very well and was awkward at the table. The bread guy stopped by religiously every three minutes, even after everyone at my table had refused another slice. It was very good bread, I’ll admit.

Given the nature of ED-

WINS’s goal, it is unfair to hold them to the same standard as a fine dining establishment with a well-paid and experienced staff. Yet at many of those very restaurants, the service is snobby. I prefer EDWINS’s well-meaning but unrefined

hospitality to a fleet of high-nosed waiters.

If you enjoy food that supports businesses with a social justice bent as most Obies do, then you can’t do better than EDWINS.

The Oberlin Review, October 10, 2014

Arts

Page 13

Conservatory Hires Jessen to Aid in Career Development Colin Roshak Ready and willing to help prepare Conservatory students for their professional careers, bassoonist Dana Jessen assumed the position of director of professional development at the Conservatory on Oct. 1.

Jessen views her job as a resource for students looking to begin to cultivate their professional image. “The Office of Professional Development at the Conservatory exists to support students through advising, through classes and through talks from outside artists or professionals in the music field. … Basically, how to take an active approach to their career development,” she said.

She also explained that although Conservatory students may have a strong work ethic, in the world of professional music, there’s much more involved in being successful than just spending time in the practice room. Jessen says she will encourage students to take the approach they have with their instrument or voice and apply it to their career development.

Jessen agreed that these days, winning a job in a major symphony or signing on with the Metropolitan Opera isn’t just about how well someone performs. It is also about how well an individual has networked, publicized and promoted themself. Jessen hopes to help students improve in these areas and to develop a

Bassoonist Dana Jessen recently assumed the role of director of professional development at the Conservatory. She plans on helping students build résumés, create websites and network with alumni to get a head start on their musical careers.

Courtesy of Philip Fortin

better understanding of “how the music world works.”

Jessen grew up in Michigan and studied bassoon performance at the New England Conservatory before going on to study contemporary music in Amsterdam through a Fulbright Fellowship. “The Conservatory students have different needs than the College students,” said Jessen, as she explained her plans to help students prepare for their careers in the music industry.

Although there is a focus on preparing upperclassmen for their impending graduation and the next step, Jessen said that an important aspect of successful preparation is starting early. “My whole mantra about taking an active approach to your own professional development … [is to] start as freshmen,” she said. She explained that she intends to help students find internships, develop Winter Term projects and create websites or résumés.

Jessen wants to help students find a job in the music world and also to be artistically satisfied in everything that they do.

Before starting her work at Oberlin, Jessen became familiar with the Oberlin alumni network. “I run into more Oberlin alumni than anyone else,” she said. Jessen said she hopes to tap into that resource to help students network with Oberlin graduates who have already established themselves in the music world. “The Oberlin community is massive, and the more you can reach out to people, the better,” Jessen said.

Placed in the path from the Conservatory lockers to the practice rooms in Robertson, Jessen’s office is hard to miss; she hopes that more students will take

advantage of the resources available to them. According to Jessen, the first fulltime director since 2012, the Office of Professional Development has been in a state of transition for the past three years. The ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

“The Oberlin community is massive, and the more you can reach out to people, the better.”

DANA JESSEN Director of Professional Development at the Conservatory –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– OPD was once a department within the Career Center, meaning the office was located further from the Conservatory and more was difficult for Conservatory students to access. In 2012, the director of the OPD moved the office to its current location in Bibbins Hall to make the resources more accessible to students.

Only a week into her new job, Jessen has high hopes and aspirations. She plans on collaborating with other offices like the Career Center and the Alumni Office to provide Conservatory students with additional opportunities to ensure their success as professionals. She also seeks to provide classes and lectures specifically focused on professional development.

Above all, Jessen said that she wants to make sure that students know that the Office of Professional Development is up and running and ready to help. “I’m trying to get people into the office from day one,” she said.

Sharpley Dedicates Show to Her Father Continued from page 11 she chose are not those typically associated with theatrical jazz choreography. “When I say jazz dance, I’m talking about the music that black people do when they’re alone in their little juke-joints, in their little bars, and they’re dancing together,” Sharpley said. She learned this style of dance from Margaret Christian, OC ’74, with whom Sharpley studied. According to Sharpley, vernacular dances, which are specific to particular black communities, are central to the style. Sharpley said that these dances often feature motifs that are repeated across the African diaspora and which can ultimately be traced to African continental heritage.

To Louis, this marriage of colloquial dance styles with jazz music is refreshing. “I’m from New Orleans. That’s where the music is the dance music all the time,” he said. “There was a period where jazz left the dance floor and became the sit-down-and-look-at-it kind of music.” He is eager to see jazz return to the dance floor in the concert. He is especially enthusiastic to witness how Sharpley choreographs certain musical selections, particularly “Concierto de Aranjuez” from Sketches of Spain, “My Funny Valentine” and “Half Nelson,” which he does not consider traditional dance songs.

In selecting music with Louis for the concert, Sharpley said that she looked for tunes with which she personally connected to African diasporic genres, including, funk, hip-hop and rap. She sought to balance solemn pieces, such as “My Funny Valentine,” with more lighthearted tunes. The latter are especially important to her because she believes her students can connect with them more easily.

“Trying to get emotion from young people is sometimes hard,” she said. In light of this issue, the troupe will be dancing to more upbeat pieces, such as Davis’s “Right Off ” from his Jack Johnson album and selections from On the Corner, while Sharpley herself will perform the final solo to “My Funny Valentine.” Che Gonzalez, OC ’96, will provide the vocals for this jazz standard.

For Mvurya, the most important element that she hopes to impart through the performance is the importance of forging and maintaining close relationships, like the familial connections that inspired the production. “As human beings, we’re not meant to live alone. We’re meant to live together and form close relationships together.” She said that if she can convey this message and an appreciation for Miles Davis’s genius to the audience, she will be satisfied.

Sports

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The Oberlin Review, October 10, 2014

IN THE LOCKER ROOM

Field Hockey Seniors

This week the Review sat down with senior field hockey players Megan Bautista and Rachel Zuckerman to discuss their return to the team after a year away, the team’s win over Earlham College and concerns with the new Austin E. Knowlton Athletics Complex.

Neither of you played field hockey last year. What has it been like coming back to the team this season?

Megan Bautista: I think what’s really unique about our positions on the field hockey team and the field hockey program in general is just how accommodating they have been thus far. That is something that is completely unorthodox within athletics. For once, I don’t feel like I have to apologize for being involved in other areas of campus and for putting my priorities out there clearly.

I’m an athlete, but I’m also a student, an organizer, a senator; I’m also doing all this other stuff. Coming back to field hockey and having that kind of freedom has been really exciting for me.

Rachel Zuckerman: We really have the ability to express our concerns in an environment that accommodates us. The relationship between the coach and the players is improving. We talk about things that really need to be talked about.

Did you struggle at all with conditioning at the beginning of the season?

MB: [Laughs.] I think I’m the most fit person on the team. On a serious note, there’s no amount of preseason or training or conditioning that could prepare us for the position we’re in right now. It’s constant sprinting. I’m playing 70-minute games as a center-forward and I’m all over the field. I’ve gone from around four minutes of play [as a first-year and sophomore] to 70 as a senior with no subs.

got cleared to play, including myself, so that’s exciting.

Rachel Zuckerman (left) and Megan Bautista RZ: We actually have extremely high physical capabilities, and we’re able to adjust extremely quickly to athletic conditioning. [Laughs.] We not only bring the game, we bring the pain.

Do you feel like you’re back to playing as well as you were when you played your sophomore years?

MB: I feel like field hockey is kind of like riding a bike as far as stick skills go. It’s even more so like a fine wine — it gets better with time. I think all of our skills have only continued to improve. Now it’s just an issue of working together as a unit.

RZ: The senior thing gives a nice little confidence boost, and it shows on the field.

really beautiful hockey as a unit — and we’ve been giving every team in the conference a run for their money — but by the time the second half rolls around, we’re really exhausted.

It’s the same group of girls playing the whole game. Normally you’d split 50 yards between 11 players, and we’re doing it between seven. There’s a lot of room for error there. Also, it’s just so physically taxing.

RZ: Hydration is really difficult.

We’ve been facing some really adverse conditions with the amounts of subs we have, which is zero. We’ve been playing three down constantly, so that means we’re playing 11 versus 7. By the second half, the other teams realize our game, and they have a fresh set of legs to throw in.

There are only 14 players on your active roster. Tell me about the difficulties playing with such a low number.

MB: I would have to start an itemized list. It’s dangerous, first of all. I think the challenges are that we can go into a game playing

As seniors, do you feel compelled to be leaders on the team?

MB: I don’t think compelled is the right word. I think that if I wasn’t a leader on the team, our needs would be met anyway. [Senior] Hannah Christiansen and [junior] Taylor Swift have been phenomenal in com-

municating the needs of the team.

It’s been a dream having them as captains, and I do not feel compelled to step up and assume that position at all. I think it’s amazing that as someone who has felt compelled to step up in literally every other part of my life, I don’t feel that way on this team.

RZ: We started the season with the mentality that we were going to understand what we needed as individuals to make ourselves a stronger unit, and I think that that shows that each of us can be a leader in our own way. There are a lot of really strong women on this team. The two of us like to be a comedic interlude to any stressors that are being created. We also try to do a lot of on-field communication that might not be so comfortable for underclassmen.

How have injuries affected the team this season?

MB: We have six injured players right now, and that’s as a result of having no subs, I’d say.

RZ: We have two people who just

Editorial: Club Sports Fund- Women’s Soccer Looks to Stay Hot ing Limits Participation Continued from page 16 funded, but I do think that the way in which club sports are funded limits their accessibility to students who cannot afford to pay such hefty fees out of pocket.

When team captains are being forced to pay such expensive fees for their sports, it deters team members from stepping into leadership positions or even joining a team in the first place. This unfortunate situation makes sports about something that shouldn’t be their focus: money.

In general, competitive sports tend to favor a privileged crowd.

Competitive teams, trainers, tournaments and transportation are all part of the costly reality of growing up playing a competitive sport.

This already gives those from families with the means to pay for all of these activities a leg up on the competition. This is not to say that all successful athletes come from privileged backgrounds, because

that is certainly not the case, but having the means to pay for these amenities definitely helps.

That’s why club sports at Oberlin should not favor those who can afford to front the fees and exclude those who cannot. Club sports should offer another outlet for students to compete on a sports team that neither entails the same level of commitment as a varsity sport nor requires students to bear the burden of cost.

Again, club sports cannot, realistically, be funded as much as varsity sports are, nor should they necessarily be funded in the same way, but they can certainly be funded in a better way.

If the College allocated a budget to club sports that did not require team captains to wait until the end of the academic year to be reimbursed, it would allow for a larger percentage of the student body to participate freely in these important extracurricular activities.

Continued from page 16 this season, both with Palmer and each other.

“Our coach is definitely adapting what we’ve been doing to mistakes we make in games, and therefore we work on those things, and we’re working hard, not just passively,” said Gardiner.

Heading into a stretch of seven conference games to end the season, the Yeowomen are confident in their ability to sustain their recent success.

“At this point, anything’s possible,” said Gardiner. “We have any option open to us if we keep pushing hard and working hard.”

Palmer also noted that the team’s preseason conference placement might play to its advantage.

“We were picked eighth in the conference, so the expectation of the other teams is that they probably think they can beat us,” he said. “We have a little bit [of a] different perspective on things.”

He added that while other teams in the North Coast Athletic Conference look better on paper, the team’s performance indicates otherwise. “[The Yeowomen] have been playing extremely well, playing without fear and with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm, and just playing good soccer.”

After an eight-day break, the Yeowomen will face the Hiram College Terriers at home in their second NCAC game of the season tonight at 7:30 p.m. on Fred Shults Field.

Tell me about the win against Earlham.

MB: In the past, we’ve pretty much walloped Earlham. The other schools in the conference view Oberlin the way that Oberlin views Earlham. Earlham is the absolute scum of the earth in athletics. They can’t get their shit together. But we actually went into overtime in this game.

Again, it comes down to numbers.

We had played DePauw the day before, and DePauw is No. 1 in the conference, so our legs were sore heading into the game against Earlham. Earlham scored first and we were like, “We can’t be losing to Earlham right now!” All of the sudden [sophomore] Maureen [Coffey] and [sophomore] Ari [Enzerink] had a beautiful pair of goals and then we won on a golden goal. [Sophomore] Maggie Gossiaux also played an amazing game.

What’s it like playing at the new Austin E. Knowlton Complex?

MB: It feels good to finally have home field advantage. Before this, we were the only team [in our conference] that played on grass. We are a better team on turf. What’s really kind of frustrating is that it’s been brought to our attention that the men’s football locker room has two 60-inch TVs and beautiful chairs and it’s a good space for studying and we definitely don’t have that.

RZ: I think there [are] definitely some [attempts by] small liberal arts schools to appeal to a certain audience of athletes that they’re looking for, and that involves putting a lot of money into something that a lot of people on this campus wouldn’t support.

Interview by Nate Levinson, Sports editor Photo by Effie Kline-Salamon, Photo editor

XC Team Produces State Champions Continued from page 16 everyone ran.”

Geno Arthur placed seventh overall for the men on his way to becoming the first Oberlin College athlete ever to run under 25 minutes in an 8000-meter race.

Kyle Neal also placed well, coming in third with a time of 22:03.90.

“I don’t really remember [the race], which I guess is a good thing,” Neal said. “Usually if I don’t remember a race it means I was running well. It was different because I was running alone. Usually I’m with a teammate or a group of people.”

Although Lehmann had hoped the women’s team would win first place for Division III, she was happy with how the team ran overall.

“This is a good time in the season to get second.

It keeps us on our toes and keeps us really trying. But yeah, a lot of people on the team did really well,” she said.

As the season progresses, the men’s and women’s teams hope to continue running well, and they have set lofty objectives for themselves for the rest of the fall season.

“The women’s team has big goals,” Appenheimer said. “They want to finish top five in the nation, and the men want to qualify for nationals. I think both goals are certainly within our grasp this year.”

Both teams will compete next in the Inter-Regional Rumble at home on Saturday, Oct. 18 at 11 a.m.

Sports

The Oberlin Review, October 10, 2014

Page 15

— Men’s Soccer —

Yeomen Fall in Second Conference Match Abby Weiss After making the trek to Crawfordsville, IN to play the Wabash College Little Giants, the men’s soccer team returned with its first North Coast Athletic Conference loss last Sunday, Oct. 5. The physical contest resulted in a 1–0 victory for the Little Giants, ultimately setting the Yeomen back to 1–1 in NCAC play and 4–5 overall.

An early goal shook Oberlin’s rhythm in the 21st minute, and that was all it took for an undefeated Wabash to finish off the contest. The lone goal came from the foot of forward Riley Pelton as he neatly tucked away an assist from midfielder Zach Woloshin.

“We started very slowly.

Wabash was very disruptive and very physical, and it really threw us off,” said Head Coach Blake New. “They are 10–0–2 for a reason, and they are tough to play against, even though it isn’t a style that we like to play. I wouldn’t say there was much soccer being played by Wabash.”

By the end of the game, Wabash had collected a total of three yellow cards and 13 fouls to the Yeomen’s eight fouls and zero yellow cards. Despite the physical nature of Sunday’s contest, first-year forward Tim Williams commended his team for maintaining its composure.

“They were taunting us and being jerks, and we didn’t get into it. They were trying to get at us the whole time and we kept our heads really well,” said Williams.

Senior midfielder Sam Winward also commented on the physicality of the match but added that he thought the Yeomen could have held the Little Giants off better than they did.

“They outplayed us and had a very physical side.

They also worked harder than us, especially in the beginning of the game,” said Winward. “Wabash is just a lot of big, feisty guys that are trying to get into fights, and we are just kind of wimpy. We need to be stronger, and we need to toughen up a little bit.”

By the end of the second half Oberlin had stepped up its play and had outshot Wabash 6–5, but the effort wasn’t enough to tally a score against sophomore goalkeeper Dayton Jennings. Jennings maintains an impressive .897 save percentage, and the NCAC honored him as the Men’s Soccer Player of the Week on Tuesday, Oct. 7.

“As we got into the second half and we made some adjustments, I thought we did a good job of fighting when we needed to fight,” said Coach New. “We created some chances, and in the end we just were not able to capitalize.”

Sophomore Nick Wertman also thought his team improved its play in the second half of the game.

“I thought in the second half we did a much better job of creating chances and also of handling the physicality of the game,” he said.

“We got used to the dirty side of it and kept up with them.”

Junior John Ingham and senior goalkeeper Oidie

Kuijpers were instrumental players in the contest.

Ingham led the Yeomen in shots on goal, and Kuijpers tallied eight saves.

“Johnny was really dangerous up top,” said Winward. “You only need one chance. He had a great shot on goal at the end that almost went in, and we would have been right back in it.”

Praise was also heaped on Kuijpers.

“Oidie played great,” said Wertman. “He made some huge saves and really kept us in the game. The man of the match for me was definitely Oidie, because they had a lot of opportunities and he turned them away.”

The Yeomen will now close out their season with eight consecutive confer-

ence games and a golden opportunity to make some noise before the start of the playoffs.

“We need to realize that this is not the end of the season and we have a lot of time left,” said Wertman.

“The sky hasn’t fallen.”

Coach New says the team has been in a similar position before and was able to succeed.

“This happened to us back in 2005,” he said. “We came back from Brazil and we went 3–5–1 in non-conference play, and then in conference we went 6–2–1 and ended up being second place and hosted a playoff game. I think we can definitely do it again.”

Williams also seemed confident that the team is

capable of turning things around.

“I think that for the coming into conference play we need to start every game with a high work rate and intensity,” he said. “We have had a few unlucky games where we have let some wins go, but we are just as talented as any team that we play. If we put in the work, then we will get the results we want.”

Putting the tough loss to Wabash behind them, the Yeomen took on the Case Western Reserve University Spartans on Wednesday, Oct. 8 at home. The match remained scoreless until the second half, when the two teams went tit for tat on goals, bringing the

game to a tense 2–2 draw that took the teams into overtime. Sophomore Nick Wertman tallied his fifth goal of the season off an assist from first-year Matthew Bach-Lombardo, who would also move to set up the next goal for the Yeomen as junior Slade Gottlieb tucked away the fourth goal of the match.

Despite numerous dangerous scoring opportunities, neither team managed to score during overtime and the game concluded in a 2–2 draw.

The tie puts the Yeomen at 4–5–1 overall.

The Yeomen will go on the road to face the Hiram College Terriers, an NCAC foe, at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 11.

First-year Matthew Bach-Lombardo rears back to kick the ball at a home game this season. The Yeomen are heading into a stretch of seven consecutive conference games with a record of 4–5–1.

Courtesy of Erik Andrews

— Women’s Volleyball —

Yeowomen Fall in Straight Sets, Move to 6–14 Nate Levinson and Tyler Sloan Sports Editors The women’s volleyball team fell in consecutive sets to the Denison University Big Red on Wednesday, snapping its two-game winning streak and pushing its record to 6–14.

Fresh off of hard-fought wins against the Penn St.-Behrend Lions and the La Roche College Redhawks, the Yeowomen were unable to continue their momentum against Denison, falling 25–17, 25–11, 26–24. Despite the team’s less than stellar record, junior captain Molly Powers says that the statistics do not represent how the Yeowomen have performed.

“I think in general we probably had some higher expectations [ for] the season, but I definitely don’t think our record has been a reflection of how we’ve been playing on the court,” she said.

Both Powers and Head Coach Erica Rau said that the team’s offense grappled with establishing a dominant presence on the court against the Big Red. “Our offense struggled to terminate the

ball,” said Rau via email correspondence with the Review. “Denison is a very aggressive team with a physical block. Our hitters had trouble scoring.”

Despite the loss, Rau said she was pleased with the way the team fought until the end, almost overcoming a large deficit in the third set.

“In set three we were down 9–0, and we came back to almost win the set, [before] losing 24–26,” she said. “I think that shows that the team still has a lot of fight in them and that the talent is there.”

Powers, who played in all 114 games last year, said she agreed with Rau’s commentary regarding the third set of the contest against Denison.

“I think if we play the way that we played at the very end, we can come away with wins this weekend. We were right there and just didn’t pull through at the end. We were definitely the more talented team,” she said.

Currently in her fourth year as head coach, Rau said she is pleased with the advances the team has made in improving its consistency. The young class leaves much room for improvement, with only three ju-

niors leading a team of underclassmen.

“We’ve made a lot of progress this year,” she said. “The focus of this season has been to go from being a competitive team to a team that is consistently winning. That’s a big jump to take and it takes time. To get there we’ve had to focus on becoming less predictable as a team.”

Going forward, Rau said she hopes that changes the team has made to its practice regimen will lead to more success.

“The last few weeks, we’ve stepped up our intensity in practices and our accountability off the court,” she said. “We’ve been working a lot on our mental game too. I think we just need to keep pushing forward and focusing on the little things. If we can consistently do the little things well, the wins are going to come.”

Sophomore Maggie Middleton expressed a perspective akin to Rau’s. The Reston, VA native said that she hopes to continue progressing and have fun with the rest of the season.

“I want us to go out there and be really confident. I want us to go out with a lot of enthusiasm and play how I know we

can,” she said. “I want it to look like we are having fun and like we enjoy our sport, because that is why we’re here.”

Looking forward, the Yeowomen will host the Albion College Britons this Saturday at 11 a.m. They will also honor Christine Antonsen, the lone senior on the team this year. She has sat out the majority of this season due to injury but has been a significant contributor for Oberlin for the past three years.

The Yeowomen last faced the Britons in September 2012 when they were able to come away with a convincing 3–1 victory.

Sophomore Meredith Leung, who earned North Coast Athletic Coast accolades last year in making the Honorable Mention list, spoke confidently of her team’s ability to leave the weekend with a pair of wins added to its record.

“We are just young and inconsistent, but we still have the chance to turn our season around. This team has gotten a lot better and we can go a lot farther,” she said. “I think we definitely should win, and going 2–0 over the weekend would make senior night great.”

The Oberlin Review

October 10, 2014

The women’s soccer team defeated the visiting Baldwin Wallace University Yellow Jackets last Thursday, finishing the last of its non-conference games with a vic-

tory and giving the team an eightgame winning streak.

The Yeowomen came out strong against the Yellow Jackets, as firstyear midfielder Gwennie Gardiner and sophomore forward Megan Herrmann quickly took advantage of a two-on-one situation and

First-year Josie Marshall goes up for a header against an opposing defender.

The Yeowomen are currently on an eight-game winning streak.

Courtesy of Erik Andrews

notched the game’s first goal just over eight minutes in. The goal came courtesy of Gardiner, with the assist going to Herrmann.

The Yeowomen added to their lead in the game’s 23rd minute when junior midfielder Ellie Huizenga headed a corner kick from first-year Elyse Douglas into the back of the net, bringing the team’s lead up to 2–0.

The Yellow Jackets were able to cut the Yeowomen’s lead to one with a goal at the game’s 36-minute mark, but the Yeowomen came back in the 70th minute when sophomore midfielder Kate Mercer-Taylor crossed the ball to Gardiner, bringing the score to 3–1.

The goal was Gardiner’s sixth of the season, making her the team’s top goal scorer.

The Yellow Jackets beat the Yeowomen soundly by a score of 5–0 when the two teams did battle last year; Head Coach Dan Palmer was pleased with how his team handled the Yellow Jackets’ talented squad in this match.

“Baldwin Wallace was a very physical, very athletic team,” he said. “The pace of the game was very fast — we just needed to make sure that we stayed disciplined and organized, which we did.”

Palmer added that because of their direct and aggressive style of play, the Yellow Jackets spread the field wide. This allowed the Yeowomen to capitalize on their strat-

egy of “playing through the spaces they create.”

Players also found this strategy effective, as sophomore defender Casey McGuire noted that the plan worked in spite of the Yellow Jackets’ superior size.

“They were more physical and bigger than we are, but we weren’t intimidated and played around them a lot,” she said.

Thursday’s win brought the Yeowomen’s record to 8–3 this season, their largest single-season total since finishing 8–11 in 1997 and twice the number from last year’s 4–14 season.

“We’ve already exceeded so many goals this season, [including] winning more than four games and winning more conference games than last year,” said McGuire. “Last year we didn’t even win a single conference game.”

This season is only Palmer’s second as head coach, and the team’s improvement is indicative of his impact on the program.

“It’s been a process that started last year,” he said. “Returning players have made a big jump in understanding what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to play. That, combined with a talented group of freshmen, has led to the success that we’re having.”

Gardiner said she agreed that the Yeowomen are working well together See Women’s, page 14

— Cross Country —

Lehmann Breaks Course Record at All-Ohio Bri Di Monda

women’s race, setting a course record of 21:41.55 and beating the next runner by 12 seconds.

“It just kind of happened,” Lehmann said. “I knew a mile from the finish that I would win, but I definitely didn’t go into the race thinking that would happen. I feel like I ran a smart race. I was good about being patient early on. I didn’t make any stupid moves. It’s mostly about reading your competition and knowing when people are getting tired and when it’s important to stick with someone who’s

running ahead.”

Although the race marked the end of the women’s three-year winning streak at the All-Ohio race, both the men’s and women’s teams ran phenomenal individual times.

“Individual performances were fine; we’re just missing two big guns,” said Cross Country Coach Ray Appenheimer. “If you look at individual performances throughout, I was so happy with how

Financial support is an issue that club sport athletes must face almost daily, and the lack of funding they receive limits the accessibility of these organizations.

Although the Student Finance Committee finances the teams somewhat generously each year, with 18 percent of the Student Activity Fund dedicated to the 21 club sports teams via the Club Sports Council, the funding mechanism isn’t exactly functional.

For example, each year the women’s Ultimate Frisbee team, the Preying Manti, is given its percentage of that 18 percent of the Student Activity Fund. Yet, when it comes down to it, captains are forced to front money for a substantial portion of the team’s expenses. While the College covers expenses for transportation and lodging for tournaments, the team does not receive any assistance in paying for food or other extraneous costs, including tournament admission fees.

The College does not reimburse captains for costs such as meals, but eventually it will compensate for all the other expenses. However, in the meantime, sophomore captains Maya Gillett and Caela Brodigan are forced to front approximately $200 per tournament. This money won’t make its way back to either of their wallets until the end of the academic year when the College assesses their expenses and pays them back.

The Preying Manti attend approximately nine tournaments a year, which means that by the end of the spring the captains have paid a combined $1,800 up front. This is a problem.

To clarify, I am not advocating that club sports should be funded the same way that varsity sports are See Editorial, page 14

the trash — r in e r p

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The men’s and women’s cross country teams competed in the All-Ohio Collegiate Championship on Friday, Oct. 3 in Cedarville, Ohio, where the teams finished in first and second place in Division III respectively.

Individually, senior Emma Lehmann came in first place, beating out competitors from Division I and Division II programs. This significant achievement makes Lehmann the top runner in See X-Country, page 14 the entire state of Ohio. Senior captain Kyle Neal was not far behind, coming in at third place.

On the men’s side, junior Geno Arthur finished seventh and junior Rob Morten finished in 10th place. Both are notable accomplishments in the competitive race, as the race drew competition from across the entire state.

Every collegiate cross country team in Ohio competes in the All-Ohio race, with a total of about 1,000 runners competing from all three collegiate divisions. As the first large meet of the season, it’s an important race for Oberlin each year.

This year the varsity and regular races had to be combined due to the possibility of rain, doubling the number of runners in each race.

“Usually there’s a varsity race where the top seven runners all compete, but because of the weather, we all raced together,” said Neal. “There were about 500 people running.”

Both the men’s and women’s teams placed well despite the last-minute change in race size and a series of injuries. Junior Sam Coates-Finke couldn’t run for the Yeomen, and the Yeowomen were also down two of their top five runners. Senior Emma Lehmann crosses the finish line at last Friday’s All-Ohio Championships. Lehmann finished Lehmann came in first place overall in the first in the race, making her the top female runner in Ohio.

Courtesy of Scott Huck

Tyler Sloan Sports Editor

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Sarena Malsin Staff Writer

Funding Favors Privilege

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Yeowomen Streak Into Conference Play

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— Women’s Soccer —

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Sports