February 27,2015

The Oberlin Review

FEBRUARY 27, 2015 VOLUME 143, NUMBER 15

Local News Bulletin News briefs from the past week Community Member Diagnosed with Tuberculosis The Mercy Tuberculosis Clinic reported an Oberlin community member was diagnosed with an active case of TB. The community member has since been treated and released from the clinic.

All the individuals who may have been in contact with this person were notified earlier this week and asked to go to Student Health for testing on March 3. This service is open to anyone who wants to be tested. However, even those in direct contact with the individual are at a low risk for infection, according to Paul Murry, M.D., Director of the Mercy TB Clinic. TB is not spread through surfaces but instead through close and prolonged contact including coughing, laughing and talking. The Mercy TB Clinic is working with the Ohio Department of Health to control the spread of the disease.

Oberlin Named Peace Corps Top College The Peace Corps ranked Oberlin number 14 among small schools for sending 10 alumni overseas this year. The ranking is seven spots higher than last year’s and marks the 15th year Oberlin has been featured on the list. Since 1961, 546 Oberlin alumni have served in the Peace Corps.

This year, Gonzaga University ranked first with 20 alumni.

Joyce Babyak Named Dean of Studies Joyce Babyak will succeed Kathryn Stuart as the Dean of Studies. Stuart, who has served as the Dean of Studies since 2002, will continue her duties as Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and work with the Steering Committee. Babyak was a faculty member in the Religion department for 11 years before serving as an associate dean, acting-dean and senior associate dean.

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Working Group Prioritzes Mental Health Elizabeth Dobbins News Editor Members of Student Senate’s Student Health Working Group are pushing for a variety of initiatives this semester to improve the accessibility, visibility and quality of student mental health services, which many feel are not serving their needs.

College junior Avalon McKee, co-chair of the Oberlin Mental Health Alliance and member of the Student Health Working Group, said she hopes these initiatives will address both shortterm and long-term concerns.

“In a lot of our initiatives, we have to be thinking short term because we want to help students now, but [we] also [want to think] long term,” McKee said. “So we know there’s a lot of things to work on, [and] a lot of it has to do with funding, but we have to think about and advocate for students now and let them know that if they have a bad experience, that they should tell someone.”

One of the more immediate goals, which the group hopes to acheive within the next few weeks, is to launch a website with a comprehensive list of mental health resources, including support groups and information

Student Senators, College first-year Anjali Kolachalam (left), College junior Rachel Weinstein and College sophomore Cory Ventresca watch as double-degree sophomore Jeremy Poe (center) presents the Student Health Working Group’s plans for this semester at the Senate plenary last Sunday. The group is working on several initiatives to improve mental health services on campus.

Simeon Deutsch

on the College-run Counseling Center.

Jeremy Poe, double-degree sophomore, Senator and Senate Liaison for the Student Health Working Group, said the College’s web sites are confusing and out-

dated, making information on services — and even the number for the emergency hotline — difficult to access.

“There’s a lot of contradictory information because of the slew of web sites Oberlin has, and in-

formation doesn’t always get updated,” Poe said. “Then, as a result, there’s not a lot of student knowledge about the different resources that are offered and the See Students, page 4

Students Promote Inclusivitity in Math, Sciences Emma Paul Staff Writer This semester students created several new groups aimed at providing safe spaces for women, non-binary individuals and minorities navigating certain departments that have been traditionally white and male-dominated, such as math, computer science, philosophy and the natural sciences. Three new groups, Women in Economics, Women in Math and Computer Science and Oberlin Feminist Philosophers, held their first meetings in the early weeks of this semester.

Rudy Boyd, College junior, computer science major and co-chair of WOMACS, said she found many of her courses to be isolating and unnecessarily competitive environments. She hopes that WOMACS will be a source of encouragement for women in a less-than-welcoming atmosphere.

“Our primary focus is to provide a community for Oberlin women in computer science or math,” Boyd said. “I think it can be very alienating to be in a classroom full of men or people you don’t identify with — just to feel like the only woman.

I think that often leads to women not participating and not being an active part of the classroom. … I think it’s really important that women have a

place where they can come talk about their issues and come talk about how they feel in classes or look for advice on how to deal with conflict.”

This month, College sophomore Ariel Miller also started Oberlin Feminist Philosophers, a group for women and people who have been oppressed by sexism and transphobia. “We started Oberlin Feminist Philosophers to give women a safe space to explore philosophic thought,” said Miller in an email. “Philosophy can be a huge boys’ club — out of all the humanities, it has one of the lowest percentages of women and people of color (both professors and students). We want to show people that we belong in philosophy too.”

Studies have shown that some women and minorities suffer from what’s known as imposter syndrome: the feeling that one is incapable or inadequate when compared to “authentic” peers, despite concrete evidence to the contrary. One of the factors that might contribute to this phenomenon occurring in the math and sciences is the lack of representation of minorities, women and nonbinary individuals in those fields, leaving students without many success stories to emulate. Without those examples, some find it more difficult to envision themselves as productive and contributing members of those fields.

College senior Gabriel Moore co-founded the Black Scientists Guild last semester with the aim to combat feelings of imposter syndrome.

“These spaces are needed to show, ‘Look, people before you have done this, done it successfully and are still doing it and you can too,’” said Moore. “So I think these spaces are needed more for younger people to push them into the higher levels.”

WOMACS and Women in Economics similarly intend to tackle underrepresentation. Mimi Stern, College junior, history and economics major and co-founder of Women in Economics, said that she and fellow female students wanted to create a space where junior and senior women in the department could connect with younger female students.

“Ever since we were first-years, we always wished we had more visibility of upper-class women or upper-class non-men in the department, more gender representation on the faculty [and] just a better community in general,” Stern said.

Stern said that as a junior, she now sees a closer community as the solution to underrepresentation. She believes that by validating students’ feelSee Groups, page 4

on the

Mobile Munchies

Bounced!

The City Council is taking steps to allow food trucks in Oberlin.

Men’s basketball team loses in first round of playoffs.

Innovative Installation avaf@AMAM features psychedelic art by a multimedia mastermind.

See page 2

See page 15

See page 12

INDEX:

Opinions 5

This Week in Oberlin 8

Arts 10

Sports 16

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The Oberlin Review, February 27, 2015

Six Students Added to Steering Committee Louie Krauss Staff Writer The student body elected College junior Sophie Umazi Mvurya, College first-year Nina Pulley and College second-year Jasmine Anderson to the Steering Committee last week. In addition, Student Senate selected College junior Avalon McKee, College second-year Sarah Minion, and double-degree second-year Hayden Arp for the committee on Sunday, bringing the total number of students on the panel to nine — the highest ever.

The Steering Committee is a group of administrators, faculty, trustees and students who are meeting several times this school year to write the new Strategic Plan, the document that will codify the College’s long term financial plans regarding areas such as diversity, sustainability and revenue. A new Steering Committee is formed roughly every 10 years.

Prior to last week’s elections, the committee only had three positions for current students. After the events and protests of last semester, Student Senate worked with President Krislov and co-chair Diane Yu, OC ’73, to add six additional student spots, in the hope that the change will allow students to have their voices heard while these important decisions are made.

The first three new members were chosen through an election open to all students. Twentyseven percent of the student body voted in this election, the highest turnout for any kind of student government election in years. The 12 candidates who were not elected then gave speeches and answered questions in front of Student Senate before Senate selected three additional students behind closed doors, bringing the total number of students on the committee to nine.

“Sunday was hard in terms of appointing people, because I feel like everyone who came up

was deserving of being on it,” said College junior Machmud Makhmudov, Senate liaison and one of the three students originally appointed to the committee. “Unfortunately we had to whittle it down to three, and I’m happy with those three we chose.”

However, even after the high turnout election, it’s clear that many Oberlin students still don’t know basic information about the Steering Committee.

“I’m grateful for everyone who voted for me, but I keep thinking about the number of times I had to explain to people what the Steering Committee is, and that we have a Strategic Plan,” said Anderson, one of the new Committee members.

“These plans really make a difference at Oberlin, so hopefully having more students on the Committee will get the word out more.”

Of the several issues new Committee members have with the 2005 Strategic Plan, most of the candidates referenced the old plan’s goal to increase overall revenue for the school while still increasing accessibility to minorities and low-income families. Pulley believes both of these goals can only be acheived if the school invests more in scholarship programs.

“I think if Oberlin needs to find a way to increase revenue and decrease its discount rate, the only way it can increase the number of minorities on campus is by expanding its partnership with scholarship organizations,” Pulley said.

“As a current scholarship student, and now with nine students giving their opinions, I think we’ll be able to steer the Strategic Plan towards improving things like diversity.”

According to Mvurya, another new Steering Committee member, it’s not possible to increase minorities while still maintaining a lot of fullpaying students.

“If you’re trying to retain full-paying students, that will cut your diversity just because of the

Student Senate interviews a prospective Steering Committee candidate, College first-year Joshua Koller. This week, the student body and Senate elected and appointed six new student members to the Strategic Planning Steering Committee.

Simeon Deutsch

makeup of America, since the majority of them are white,” Mvurya said. “I think we need other sources of revenue, so I think focusing on some other projects like my idea to have more efficient recycling, we can start making more money without lowering the amount of minority students every year.”

While some have criticized Student Senate in the past for lacking diversity, the three students elected by the student body were all women of color. According to Pulley, this is due in part to the protests and campus discussion last semester surrounding incidents of police brutality in Ferguson, MO and around the county.

“Following the events of Ferguson and other racially charged events, I think Oberlin was affected in the same emotional way America was,”

Pulley said. “So I think as a school we decided to hop on and say, ‘We support black women and minorities,’ even if it’s lacking in the student body.”

Aside from diversity, one issue several students brought up was that of bringing the campus back to its historic image. According to new Committee member Arp, one of his goals is to change Oberlin’s atmosphere so students aren’t as stressed.

“I just hate that every time I ask someone ‘How’s it going?’ the first thing they say is, ‘I’m so tired.’ Oberlin used to have the reputation as the loose, hippie, intellectual school where really smart people go to not kill themselves like in Yale See New, page 4

Council Considers Creating Food Truck Ordinance Katherine Kingma The City Council is currently refining a potential new ordinance that would allow food trucks to legally operate in Oberlin for the first time.

“The ordinance has to go through three readings by the City Council,” explained City Manager Eric Norenberg.

“It’s already been through its first, and the last time it was tabled for discussion. The next time we’ll look at [it] will be March 2, where we’ll hear from the Planning Commission and the public and give more opportunities for editing.”

If the City Council passes the ordinance after its third reading on March 16, the new ordinance will go into effect on April 14, 30 days after it is passed.

Between now and then, the specifics of the ordinance will be refined to address some of the logistical and economic difficulties that some members of the City Council believe food trucks pose.

“From what I could see at the last City Council meeting, it’s just a mat-

The North Coast Toast Truck serves food outside of Mudd library in the fall of 2013. Oberlin City Council is debating a new ordinance which would establish regulations to allow food trucks in Oberlin.

Courtesy of North Coast Toast

ter of where these food trucks are going to be allowed to park,” said City Council member Sharon Pearson.

“We also want to make sure we’re protecting the regular brick and mortar

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businesses.”

According to Norenberg, as of now the ordinance would prohibit food trucks from operating on Main Street and other high traffic areas. With this

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rule, the City Council seeks to prevent potential traffic and safety problems, as well as any economic detriment to local businesses. Instead, food trucks would be allowed on open public spaces, such as Tappan Square.

In order to get a permit, food truck vendors would have to submit proposals outlining where and when they would sell food. Additionally they would have to get a permit to operate regardless of whether the vendor intends to serve for a special event or for an entire season.

Through these regulations, Norenberg suggested that any detriment to local businesses would be limited.

“There’s a way of marrying these two types of businesses without there being an adverse effect on the community,” he said. According to Norenberg, food trucks will be great for serving foods at special events in public places, while brick-and-mortar businesses can cater to their traditional customers without being affected.

“I will think this will be a great opportunity to get local, healthy food for Oberlin students, while also providing

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an opportunity for economic development,” added Pearson.

College senior Casey Silverstein is also enthusiastic about the impending food truck ordinance. After spending a summer renovating a food trailer, creating a business plan with College seniors Jeremy Reimnitz and Evan Zierk and raising $9,750 on Kickstarter to start a food truck, Silverstein and his friends hit a roadblock: The government of Oberlin wouldn’t allow them to sell food because of the lack of existing regulation and ordinances.

If the ordinance passes, businesssavvy students with culinary passions could have a potentially lucrative new pastime.

“When I tried to launch North Coast Toast, a lot of students were invested in it. They wanted another late-night option besides Agave,” said Silverstein. “Because of the new ordinance, it’s definitely a possibility for students to open food trucks in the future. The groundwork has been laid now. Now that there are laws, you won’t have to go through City Council; you’ll just have to apply for a permit.”

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The Oberlin Review, February 27, 2015

Page 3

Off the Cuff: Fred Kuwornu, filmmaker and activist Fred Kuwornu, an Italian-Ghanaian filmmaker and activist, visited Oberlin earlier this week as a part of Black History Month. His visit included the screening of several of his documentaries and a talk about his upcoming film Blaxploitalian. Kuwornu’s films explore little known histories and political issues surrounding people of African-Italian descent. The Review sat down with Kuwornu to discuss history and race in Italian cinema and politics.

Your documentaries Blaxploitalian and Inside Buffalo focus on uncovering relatively unknown histories. How did you select these subjects?

Just because I became much more [interested in] historical subjects — the historical background of the African Diaspora. I was born and raised in Italy. My father is Ghanaian, and I discovered the story of AfricanAmerican soldiers in World War II [while] working on a film by Spike Lee called Miracle at St. Anna. This film is a film in which [Lee] tries to tell the story of the 92nd Infantry Divison, a segregated African-American combat unit which fought in World War II in Italy.

I was working as a stand-in and assistant in this production, and I discovered this story. It was a story, [at least] for me, unknown in Italy, even though I was born and raised in Italy… [and studied] in the Italian studies program.

So I decided to do a documentary about that.

I came here to America to interview AfricanAmerican veterans. This was 2009, and from 2010, I started to promote this work in many screenings …we did around the U.S. Starting from the distribution and production of this work, I started to learn many things about how the United States is really hoping to talk and speak about diversity to an international filmmaker. …

So this was for me a big encouragement to

Thursday, Feb. 19 11:24 p.m. A resident of a North Pleasant Street village housing unit reported broken water pipes in the utility room. A facilities plumber responded for repairs.

Friday, Feb. 20 12:43 p.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm on the fourth floor of Noah Hall. A rapid temperature spike in the bathroom activated the detector. The alarm was reset with no further problems.

Saturday, Feb. 21 2:47 p.m. A student reported losing a ring with three keys somewhere in Mudd Library, East Hall or Harkness House. A search of these locations was made, but the keys were not located.

3:26 p.m. A student reported

days in the last 10 years, and the problems they are finding in working in the Italian cinema. It’s a part of what many hope: … [to] have much more diversity on screen. So the Italian cinema has diversity on screen just because they have to have actors to [play] the role of the immigrants. The problem we will highlight with this documentary is that we have a lot of Italians [with] an African background, but they are Italian, so they speak Italian. They are born and raised in Italy, but … usually they are used to act[ing] as immigrants or to speak[ing] African. So obviously, we are trying to explain how it is important now for Italian cinema and European cinema to have a more diverse experience.

Fred Kuwornu, who spoke about his new film Blaxploitalian

understand that now in not only the U.S., but also in many other countries, you can try to tell your own story, and maybe this own story can interest many other countries. So I started to exploit the fact that I know … [about] African-Italian backgrounds and have experience in [both]. Now I want to tell stories that are about the African-Italians. [This] is a way also to engage the international audience who are of African descent or Ghanaian descent. That is a huge audience in the world, [including] the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and every place where Italians immigrated [to in] the past.

Blaxploitalian is your upcoming film about the careers of Black actors in Italian cinema. Could you tell me about what you found?

It’s a huge area that we can explore, and so in this documentary, we will show how many African-American actors worked in Italian cinema during the ’40s and ’50s and the ’70s. … [It also shows the] other African actors [who] worked during the ’20s and ’30s and also the ’60s and the ’70s and how many now African-Italian workers are working nowa-

the theft of a long, tan L.L.Bean coat at a party attended at a South Professor Street residence. A wallet, a cell phone, a driver’s license and keys were in the coat pocket at the time of theft.

9:10 p.m. Students reported a suspicious male leaving a practice room on the second floor of Robertson Hall. When confronted, the individual left the area. Upon checking the room, cash was discovered to be missing from a wallet. Officers responded and searched the area, but the person was not located.

10:06 p.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to an activated smoke detector on the first floor of Barrows Hall. Burnt popcorn was the cause of the alarm. The alarm was silenced and reset.

Sunday, Feb. 22 11:26 a.m. A student reported the loss of a wallet while walking from Prospect Street to Wilder Hall. The wallet is navy blue with pink and green polka dots and has a wrist strap. The wallet contained

You also directed 18 Ius Soli: The Right To Be Italian. Could you tell me a little about Italy’s citizenship laws? Have these changed at all since the 2012 release of the documentary?

We have a citizenship law in which you are Italian only if one of your parents is Italian, so it doesn’t matter if you are born in Italy or outside Italy. If you are born in Paris but are Italian, you are Italian; but if your parents are not Italian [and] you are born in Italy, you have to wait [until you are] 18 years old to apply to become a citizen. Unfortunately, this law has not changed in the last year. We did this documentary to make a social campaign to make pressure to change the law, and we hope in 2015, the new Prime Minister will try to make an executive order to change this law to a law that is much more similar to the law that Germany or other countries in Europe have. So it is a mixed way between the American citizenship law that you are American and a citizen simply because you are born in the country. So from the first day that you are born in the country, you are [a] citizen. Maybe we will do a similar law as Germany. Germany has a law in which, in the case [that] your parents are not German, you are not German immediately, but after

numerous cards, a driver’s license and approximately $20.

11:15 a.m. An officer on patrol observed a vehicle with a broken driver’s side rear window in the Woodland Street parking lot. The owner of the vehicle met with an officer and a member of the Oberlin Police Department. Nothing appeared to be missing at the time of report.

1:58 p.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm at Hall Auditorium. After verifying that there was no fire, the officers reset the alarm.

3:19 p.m. A Philips gym staff member reported a large number of players in the gym whom they did not believe to be college students or staff. Those individuals without an Oberlin College ID or membership left the area with the understanding that they were not allowed to return without a membership.

8:51 p.m. A resident of a Woodland Street village house reported the theft of an ornamental goat head from a party the previous

[eight] years… [of] living in the country.

How do documentaries serve as a useful medium for exploring these problems and histories? Can they be a medium for activism?

Documentaries now can be used at different levels. … They can be used as a media for social campaigns, so they can be used in different situations to create a community screening where people can discuss a problem. … [Documentaries can] be on the internet. You can also use it to create a website in which you are allied to a social campaign [or] a social issue that [is] in the documentary. So it’s multiplatform. They become very helpful for people who are also activists or people who want to create a social change about something.

Are there any subjects you would like to make a documentary about in the future?

Yeah. I’m working on a trilogy called Afroitalics, Afropeans and Afropolitan. It is a trilogy about the three different identities that [someone of] African descent can have.

[Afroitalics is about] someone who has Italian and African descendants, and they could be people who are be born in America by [an] Italian-American, [an] African American or [in] Brazil by [an] African-Brazilian and Italian-Brazilian, and people who are born in Europe who have both heritages — so the African-Italian heritage. Afropeans is about the black people who are living in Europe [and we hope] to see if they have something in common or not [with each other]. Afropolitan is a new documentary about people who are of African descent, but sometimes people who are cosmopolitan are living in a place [such as] China, Brazil or not the typical place where you can expect to find people of African descent.

night. The goat head is a traditional piece handed down each year by the men’s rugby team.

9:30 p.m. An individual reported water damage in the women’s visitor locker room on the first floor of Philips gym. An officer responded and observed water coming out of the pipes and several ceiling tiles lying on the floor. The Facilities Manager on call was notified.

Monday, Feb. 23 4:22 p.m. Officers responded to a Goldsmith Street apartment after several smoked marijuana cigarettes, a box with incense, a candle, a bag and container with a substance consistent with marijuana, a grinder and glass pipes were confiscated during a Life Safety inspection. The items were turned over to the Oberlin Police Department. A plastic bag was also removed from the smoke detector.

Tuesday, Feb. 24 3:58 a.m. Officers were requested to assist a student ill from

Elizabeth Dobbins, News editor Photo courtesy of digilander.libero.it

alcohol consumption at Firelands Apartments. An ambulance was requested and the student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

12:12 p.m. Officers were requested to assist with an employee who fell in the Rathskeller in Wilder Hall, injuring her knees. The employee was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

3:51 p.m. An Oberlin College alumnus reported the theft of a debit card from his wallet while playing basketball at Philips gym.

The debit card was canceled.

6:14 p.m. Officers responded to a Life Safety inspection at Firelands Apartments. Two detectors and an air vent were found covered with bags. The officers confiscated a hookah containing a substance that appeared to be tobacco.

9:03 p.m. A resident of Barrows Hall reported a strong odor of cigarette smoke on the second floor. Officers made contact with the occupant of the room in question, who admitted to smoking in the room.

The occupant was advised of College smoking policy.

News

Page 4

The Oberlin Review, February 27, 2015

Students Work to Improve Mental Health Services Accessibility Continued from page 1 specifics of them.”

The new website will also include information on resources for physical wellness. Researchers have found strong links between exercise and decreases in anxiety and depression, according to a 2007 review article in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience.

“When you run and work out, it releases serotonin, which is what people lack typically when they’re depressed or have anxiety,” said College senior and OMHA cochair Christine Antonsen. “It’s a very good way to deal with stress and depression.”

Members of the working group are also looking into ways to improve the Counseling Center, and they hope to implement a feedback form for visitors within the next month.

This will provide a way to gather more feedback on a center where some students reported having negative experiences.

Antonsen said her own experience with the Counseling Center has been alternately both great and unhelpful, and she feels students often only share the problems they’ve had with the service and not the good experiences.

“Not everyone’s experience at the Counseling Center is going to be beneficial, but no one really talks about how great it is,” said Antonsen. “If they have a problem with it, they’re going to talk about it, [but also] I’m not delegitimizing anyone’s problems. They are so real.”

Despite concerns, the Counseling Center is frequently used by students. So far

this academic year, 530 unique students have visited the Center, with many returning multiple times. Between 2008 and 2013, the Counseling Center served on average 21 percent of the student body, according to year-end reports. According to the 2012-2013 Association of University and College Counseling Center Directors’ Survey, the national average for all colleges and universities is far lower at nine percent.

However, the rate of depression is also higher at Oberlin than the national average. According to a 2012 survey by the the American College Health Association, 45.1 percent of Oberlin students — over 15 percent higher than the national average — reported feeling “so depressed it was difficult to function” within the last 12 months.

While the Counseling Center is a resource, it does not provide long-term help, and students in need of these services are asked to seek treatment off-campus. The working group plans to implement a way to gather feedback for off-campus mental health services, as well as work with Rideline and Safety and Security to provide confidential transportation.

“A lot of students, if they’re looking [at] longer than a semester with having a personal therapist, … have to go to outside resources, and then your options become limited to where you can walk,” said Poe. While Safety and Security does offer transportation to CVS and Student Health, if all students knew about these services, Safety and Security wouldn’t have the resources to provide these rides, according

Groups Seek Safe Spaces in “Alienating” Departments Continued from page 1 ings, these safe spaces will provide a nurturing atmosphere within a competitive department.

“The goals aren’t major and lifechanging,” she said. “They’re like, expanding opportunities and networking, meeting other people. We’re not asking for a lot; we’re asking for very little, actually. I think the avenue we’re going is having more of a community network, and having more of a sense of ownership over the department, over the material and over our role.

When you sit in a class and you’re one of four women and there are thirty people in the classroom, you feel like you’re out of place; you feel like you’re not supposed to be there.”

The discrepancies in gender and

to Antonsen.

Poe feels this is an important service to offer and possibly expand.

“It’s also looking forward with the hope that [Safety and Security] can be involved in the discussion of what role they should play in student wellness, whether it’s accessibility and stuff or just giving rides to student health,” said Poe. “Especially if you’re on South Campus, doing that walk this time of the year is a big deterrent and prevents a lot of students from doing that.”

The group is also working on issues of mental and physical wellness including providing free Plan B One-step Contraception over the weekend and transportation to pick it up. Currently, Plan B is free through Student Health but Student Health is closed on the weekends, forcing people in need of free Plan B to wait up to three days during this time.

“It’s at most three days, if you need to get it for free, [of ] being really anxious,” said McKee. Members of the working group also want to provide and promote services beyond Student Health and the Counseling Center. The group has met with students who run a variety of peer support groups for survivors of abuse, self-harm and eating disorders.

Poe supports these groups but also feels it’s important to maintain a balance between providing these services and having institutional structure and consistency.

“Oberlin students are more distrustful of authority than the average college student,” said Poe. “You have students setting out on their own and providing these

really good services, which are really effective. … My concern with them is that when the student who runs it graduates or goes away for a semester to study abroad, it basically either falls apart or becomes something very different. We want immediate help, but we also want to ensure continuity and to ensure that this isn’t just the work of individuals. Then it becomes institutional.”

Partially in response to this concern, students started the board for the Peer Support Center last semester to serve as a governing body for an organization that will help students support each other and provide information on peer support groups as well as other social events happening on campus.

“Our intention is to function as a hub of communication among groups that are doing peer-helping work on our campus and serve for them to communicate with each other,” said Dana Kurzer-Yashin, College sophomore and member of the Student Health Working Group.

The group has not yet started providing services and, while it’s taking longer to set up than originally planned, McKee and Kurzer-Yashin want the Center to be as prepared as possible before they begin interacting with the student body.

“While it’s unfortunate it’s taking such an extended amount of time and longer than it was initially hoped for … ultimately there’s a lot of legal questions about accountability that have to be [answered],” said Poe. “I think it’s a lot better [than] having them just shooting from the hip from the get-go.”

Feature Photo: Regina Benjamin

race in math and science can be credited to more than a competitive environment and underrepresentation. According to Moore, there is less conversation about society and socialization in these fields than in humanities departments, due to the detached, fact-based nature of the subjects.

“Scientists, in general, are typically not as conscious as social sciences and humanity students, which I think is a fault in the field itself. … In a science classroom, you don’t need to talk about social impacts of what you’re talking about, and I think that allows scientists to not be conscious of what is happening on campus or groups trying to promote social change. They stay insular in the science bubble.”

New Students Bring Fresh Ideas to Steering Committee Continued from page 2 or U Chicago,” Arp said. “I fear that Oberlin is heading toward that, and that’s not what produces passionate, creative individuals the school’s known for.”

Along with workload, Arp says one issue the Steering Committee needs to consider is creating a more closely knit community within the student body.

“I think the trick is both inviting students in and giving them a place where they can feel comfortable and also letting them connect with the overall community, because it’s really hard,” Arp said.

One way Arp believes the school can create this togetherness is by improving new student orientation in order to create a better community between older and younger students.

“Orientation is your very first experience at Oberlin, but when you get here you’re just thrown into the wilds with nothing to support you,” Arp said. “I have friends at a bunch of different schools who tell me about their orientation experiences, going on trips and bonding with older students. We just don’t have that here.”

The next Steering Committee meeting will be from March 12–13.

Regina Benjamin, former Surgeon General and current professor of Public Health Sciences at Xavier University of Louisiana, speaks to an audience in Finney Chapel on Wednesday night as part of the Convocation Series. Benjamin talked about her experiences working as a doctor in rural Alabama and how her interactions with patients informed her work in public health. She discussed at length the impact that seemingly unrelated factors can have on health: illiteracy can make taking the correct medication impossible, some hairstyles can lead people to choose not to exercise, and the BP oil spill caused a sharp uptick of mental health problems in Louisiana. More than anything, Benjamin emphasized the deeply negative impact poverty can have on one’s health. “We want to change the way we think about health in this country. We want to take a more holistic and integrated approach to community health,” Benjamin said.

In addition, the former Surgeon General spoke about two of the country’s most pressing public

health problems: smoking and obesity. For Benjamin, tobacco use is a deeply personal issue, as both her mother and uncle died of smoking-related diseases. She also congratulated Oberlin College for recently approving the tobacco ban and underscored the point by saying: “Every single day, in this country, 12,000 Americans die from cigarette smoke. Each of those deaths is being replaced by two new smokers. We call them replacement smokers. 90 percent of all smokers start before the age of 18, and 99 percent before the age of 26.”

However, Benjamin also emphasized the importance of being positive and accepting when relating public health care messages. “We have to stop telling people what they can’t do, and what they can’t have, and what they can’t eat, and we have to start telling them what they can do, what they can eat,” she said.

Oliver Bok, News editor Photo by Eli Steiker-Ginzberg

Opinions The Oberlin Review

February 27, 2015

Letter to the Editors

Katlin Letter Distorts UIUC Motives in Salaita Case

To the Editors: In their letter in last week’s Review, Andrew and Fisher Katlin distorted both my views and the issues at stake in Steven Salaita’s treatment by UIUC. The Katlins are correct that mine was not a balanced argument. I believe UIUC’s handling of the case was unambiguously wrong. Salaita has plenty of critics, and they are free to make their case, as the Katlins have attempted to do. However, I made no implicit or explicit reference to Salaita’s First Amendment rights, as they claim that I did. I don’t see these rights as the source of the controversy at all. No one, to my knowledge, has claimed that Salaita did not have the right to say what he said, however offensive it might be. He was not fired on that basis. Second, I never claimed that Salaita’s appointment was quashed by those who feared “‘anti-Israel’ opinions,” whatever that means. Along with many others, I do think that the tweets led donors to pressure Chancellor Wise. I have no idea how the Board would have responded to more measured criticism, but

there is no reason to think that the fear was of “anti-Israel opinion” as such.

The Katlins make one other important mistake when they conclude that “Clearly, the University of Illinois didn’t want this man to represent them as a professor.” That is far from clear.

The hiring department voted unanimously in favor of Salaita.

It was members of the Board of Trustees who did not want him. I am grateful to the Katlins for the opportunity to clarify this point: It is precisely the confusion of the university as an academic institution with the Board as the holder of the purse strings that threatens public higher education.

One of the wonderful things about Oberlin is that we have multiple fora for these kinds of conversations. If Mr. Katlin chooses to attend Oberlin, I hope that he will enjoy them as well.

–Jade Schiff Politics Department

Lunar New Year Highlights Vietnamese Heritage To the Editors: My son, Minh-Jeffrey Lê, attends Oberlin College, and was

born and raised in San Francisco, CA. I arrived in the United States as a young immigrant child, and grew up mostly in Michigan, and regard myself proudly as a “Midwesterner” and a Vietnamese American.

To celebrate the “Tết” Vietnamese Lunar New Year (Asian Lunar New Year), and to welcome the New Spring Season “mùa xuân,” I attended the wonderful “Tết” Festival held in San Francisco recently. It featured beautiful Vietnamese music and delicious Vietnamese foods.

Since the end of the war in Vietnam in 1975, the Vietnamese American communities throughout the United States have emerged as a vibrant and increasingly prominent group in our nation.

This year’s “Tết” Festival in San Francisco is evidence of both the power and vitality of the Vietnamese American communities in our midst and our pride in our heritage as Vietnamese Americans in the new American society.

My family and I send our warmest wishes to everyone at Oberlin College and all the people of Oberlin, Ohio.

“Chúc mừng năm mới!” (“Happy New Year!”)

–Anh Lê Oberlin parent

Content Warnings Needed as Accomodations Cyrus Eosphoros Contributing Writer Content Warning: This post contains discussion of common triggers, ableism on the part of the Oberlin administration and descriptions of media and conversations containing suicide, rape and parental abuse.

The first movie I had to watch for a literature class this semester contained, among other things, rape, suicide and physical and psychological abuse by a parent. I stopped watching somewhere around 40 minutes in, before the suicide, after everything else, and mentioned none of this in class. Neither did anyone else, setting aside any acknowledgement of these heavy and possibly triggering topics in favor of discussing whether a woman being a chef was sexist.

In theory, this didn’t have to be the case. Last semester, after one of my professors made a joke about child abuse in passing, I emailed Disability Services before the class had even ended and asked what accommodations they had in place for people in need

of content warnings. The fact that the answer was “none” shouldn’t have surprised me at all; it’s been the answer to my questions often before. They said they’d think about it.

That alone is telling. This should have already been their business. Ignored as the fact is, content warnings are an issue of accessibility. They are an accommodation: a modification to the environment a disabled person interacts with, in order to attempt to put them on even footing with their abled peers.

Not only that, but they’re trivially simple. I see no reason why they shouldn’t be as common as wheelchair ramps — although admittedly, ramps are nowhere near ubiquitous on campus either. This absence of accommodation stems from ignorance or cowardice from people unwilling to admit that their actions have consequences and their experiences are not universal.

Then there’s the solution I was offered, after that.

It started, “Please think about exactly what would See Absence, page 6

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Editors-in-Chief Julia Herbst Rose Stoloff Managing Editor Taylor Field Opinions Editors Sam White Kiley Petersen

Feminized Gun Marketing Exacerbates Rape Culture Many women learn early on how to defend themselves in dangerous situations: hold their keys between their knuckles in dark parking garages; keep mini-canisters of pepper spray in their purses. From a young age, just as everyone learns to look both ways before crossing the street, women are taught not to walk home alone if they can help it, not to put their drinks down at parties, not to show too much skin — all for fear of inviting sexual assault. It’s a similar, if violently escalated, vein of logic that Second Amendment activists employ when they tell women on college campuses that the best way to protect themselves against sexual assault is to up the ante: Carry a gun.

The argument, which briefly caught the attention of The New York Times last week, is a predictable step for the ever-powerful gun lobby. On the surface, the idea might seem aimed at empowering women, encouraging them to take matters — and weapons — into their own hands. It might even seem like a much-needed change of pace from the typically masculine gun culture. The importance of this switch in reasoning is that it is obviously dangerous — yet quietly gaining traction in statehouses across the nation.

The desire to arm college women is not a misguided attempt at empowerment; it is a transparent effort by the gun lobby to appeal to a demographic it typically has not been able to reach. The arguments are merely one part of an outrageous marketing scheme: New pink guns are entering production and are advertised as being specifically for women. Interest in firearms has declined in recent years, and it seems the industry has grown desperate, first turning to children with the industry-sponsored magazine Junior Shooters — published with the intent of drawing in future gun enthusiasts. Now, a stereotypically feminine, pastel gun design aims to appeal to women, while the industry’s warnings about the dangers of rape are stale and inaccurate.

Yet the facade of prioritizing self-defense quickly gives way to danger and tragedy. Just last month, a 3-year-old child in Albuquerque, NM, reached into his mother’s purse looking for an iPod and found a loaded handgun instead.

He accidentally fired, shooting his parents; both survived but could face felony charges for criminal negligence. It hardly bears repeating that firearms and children do not mix. And the danger of guns on college campuses has tragically shown itself too many times in the form of mass shootings.

A Time Magazine article, (Ready, Fire, Aim: The Science Behind Police Shooting Bystanders, September 16, 2013) found that trained police officers only hit their targets with a success rate of 18 percent. Civilians, with little to no professional training in firearm usage and under more duress, would be even less accurate.

But the most striking flaw of the argument is the complete ignorance of the gun lobbyists and legislators about what sexual assault looks like and who commits it. The campaign wholeheartedly buys into the trope of “scary rape” — the stranger waiting in the dark alley, the sudden attack. According to a 2005 study by the U.S. Department of Justice, however, 73 percent of sexual assaults were perpetrated by someone the victim knew; 38 percent of rapists were friends with the victim and 28 percent of rapists were their victims’ intimate partners. Where, then, does the NRA expect us to keep our guns? Under our pillows while sleeping next to our partners? In our purses when venturing to the ’Sco or happy hour at the Feve?

Finally, the campaign leaves crucial legal questions unanswered. As it currently stands, sexual assault survivors face immense difficulty in gaining the law’s protection, and prosecutors have dismal track records when it comes to rape convictions. Add guns to the picture, and it becomes nearly impossible to imagine cases where survivors see favorable judicial outcomes. The 2012 case of Marissa Alexander exemplifies the picture that might result. Alexander, an African-American woman, fired a warning shot as her estranged husband attacked her, but injured no one. A jury swiftly rejected her “stand-your-ground” argument — the same self-defense claim that led to George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin — and she was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Given this bleak picture, in which survivors must prove themselves innocent, how can women armed with pink pistols hope to prevail in the See Editorial, page 6 Editorials are the responsibility of the Review Editorial Board — the Editors-in-Chief, managing editor and Opinions editors — and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff of the Review.

Opinions

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The Oberlin Review, February 27, 2015

Conservatives Employ Dated Image of America Machmud Makhmudov Contributing Writer On July 16, 1984, then-Governor of New York Mario Cuomo gave a stirring keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. Though Walter Mondale — the Democratic nominee for President — faced long odds against formidable incumbent President Ronald Reagan, Cuomo brought the crowd to its feet by directly taking on Reagan’s vision of America at the time as a “shining city on a hill.”

Cuomo challenged Reagan’s sunny optimism about America’s trajectory by highlighting the experiences of the marginalized poor all across the country. Citing the crippling effects of rampantly growing social and economic inequality, he likened the American narrative to more of a Tale of Two Cities than a “shining city on a hill.” Cuomo’s understanding of American life as being comprised of multidimensional experiences and unique differences that are bound together by common aspirations still resonates more than 30 years later.

One need not look far to see that the American story remains a tale of two — if not

ten or twelve — cities. While the economy is finally recovering from the Great Recession, real wage growth remains disproportionally slanted toward the extremely wealthy. When asked in a recent survey about citizen-police relations in the context of Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson, MO, 84 percent of Black respondents said that police are more likely to use deadly force against Black people than people of other races. A majority of white people responded that race is not a factor.

From incarceration policy to educational models to even the food that we prefer to eat, numerous polls demonstrate that there are deep rifts in the American population along a number of economic, social and ideological grounds.

Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani (R) tore open one of these rifts last week while speaking about President Obama at a fundraiser for Wisconsin Governor and presumptive GOP presidential candidate Scott Walker.

Speaking freely in front of a crowd of wellheeled conservative donors, Giuliani said, “I do not believe that the president loves America. He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were

brought up and I was brought up; through love of this country.”

Walker chose to remain silent when pressed about Giuliani’s comments. He said, “[Giuliani] can speak for himself. I’m not going to comment on what the president thinks or not.” During an eerily similar moment earlier in the week, when asked whether or not he thought President Obama was a Christian, Walker waffled again. “I don’t know. I’ve actually never talked about it or I haven’t read about it … how [could] I say if I know either of you [reporters] are a Christian?”

Both exchanges are extraordinarily important in understanding both the state of the American populace — specifically within the Republican Party — and Walker’s capabilities as a leader. Both Giuliani and Walker’s comments speak to the political power that a dark subsection of American ideology — the instinctual, primitive fear of “the other” —is still maintained in our national collective consciousness. Most recently, fear and distrust of the other has manifested itself in the controversy over Obama’s birth certificate, the characterization of Seattle Seahawks cornerback Rich-

ard Sherman as a thug and newly inflamed prejudices toward all Muslims in the wake of ISIS’s growth. That which is not white, wealthy and cleanly bound up in a baseball and apple pie-loving nuclear family is quickly cast off as un-American.

While this fear won’t be eliminated in the American population anytime soon, it’s crucial that our political leaders actively shift the national discourse from one of distrust and exclusivity to one that accepts differences between people with unconditional understanding in the name of national unity and empathy.

Walker had two such opportunities but unfortunately chose the more cynical path of playing to the conservative right’s primal instincts.

He’s demonstrated that he’s incapable of being an effective president because he cares more about pandering to win an election than leading the country toward a more enlightened understanding of what it means to live in an America; something that is increasingly a tale of many cities. At a fundamental level, the question facing our nation is not whether Obama or Walker or Giuliani love America, as they all clearly do in one form or another. It’s which vision for America we choose to love.

Running Offers Chance for Catharsis, Contemplation CJ Blair Columnist While daily exercise is universally encouraged, there’s still plenty of trepidation about running. I’ve had 90-pound friends who threw shotput on the track team because they didn’t want to run, and others who look visibly ill when I even mention going for a run. The fact is that people will bend over backwards to avoid running. Many times, if they’re physically capable of doing so, the alternate route they choose is more tumultuous — and certainly less efficient —than just lacing up and hitting the streets.

However, despite widespread skepticism, running is a rare outlet for undisturbed thought.

I’d say running is a love/hate activity, but I know better than that. When I started running with my dad at age

nine, I could barely make it a block through the Kentucky suburbs before my chubby legs burned in agony. My first 5K took 45 minutes, and my dad and I were the last two people to finish, with a police car inching along behind us the whole way. Running was nothing but a chore, and I dreaded going out every time.

But now, things couldn’t be more different. I’m hopelessly addicted to running. I ran cross-country and track for seven years, and now continue to run every morning at Oberlin. I’ll admit to caring about my body, but what I really get out of running is the one aspect I believe to be common among anyone who tries it: The guaranteed sense of isolation that accompanies it. This feeling is considerably diminished if you’re running in a group, but all committed runners will eventually have to go out on their own.

There is nothing to accompany a solo runner except the scenery and their own thoughts. Doctors and fitness magazines will claim that running is a guaranteed morality and confidence booster, but it’s much too individualized for that to always be true. A run is a time in which you’re forced to understand how you see the world, and your feelings about whatever is on your mind are brought to the forefront in a way seldom allowed in the midst of hectic daily schedules.

Depending on your current emotional state and how introspective you are, this opportunity can be the greatest or the worst thing in the world. If I have a confusing situation I’m trying to resolve, running can sometimes provide the isolation I need to find a solution, but that’s not especially common. More often than not, running serves as a sort of catharsis. If I’m

sad or angry, being left alone with my thoughts only augments those feelings. While confronting such anxieties isn’t pretty, doing so while I’m running provides an immediate avenue to purge those emotions. I’m able to release those negative emotions in the form of physical activity before they can get stuck in my head.

If I sound like I’m enjoining you to start running, I’ve done something wrong. Running isn’t for everyone, even those who are physically capable.

What I am encouraging, however, is the absolute isolation and opportunity for unencumbered thought that running provides. Even when running hasn’t provided me with answers, it has given me a chance to know how I feel about the most trying emotional situations I’ve dealt with, while distracting myself with homework or TV has made me feel inexplicably worse.

It’s no mystery to me or anyone else that mental health services on campus have been criticized as lackluster and unsupportive. While I can’t discourage seeking help when needed, I will say that running has afforded me the space to think and release my anxiety that I believe counseling sometimes tries to provide. True mental illness requires professional help, but the cathartic thinking space permitted by running can remedy fleeting depressive thoughts and brief instances of anxiety. This sort of space is becoming too much of an anomaly at a time when stress and distractions have all but eradicated chances for solitary contemplation.

The saying goes that people will avoid their problems by running away from them. Let me be the one to say that, in running away, they may actually be confronting them head-on.

Absence of Content Warning Takes Away Students’ Agency Continued from page 5 trigger your PTSD so we can articulate that well to faculty.”

Upon handing in the resulting scrawled list, shaky penmanship and all, I got to watch someone transcribe it and send it to my professors. Verbatim. With my name attached. “Cyrus Eosphoros, a student in your class, requests warnings for…” (“We would like you to know everything Cyrus Eosphoros, a student in your class, hesitates even to tell close friends and family and await your judgment…”).

Adding insult to injury, after that, the list was relevant enough that someone remembered to warn me just once.

This is so jarring partly because the solution is trivially simple. For one thing, professors only relaying warnings to the single student who asked for them is a waste of ef-

fort. Why not at least give every person access to those warnings?

And what about a completely different system? Consider, for example, always offering warnings to all students for common triggers and allowing students to anonymously submit requests for other warnings as well.

This would offer students — individual adults with minds of their own — the option to make an informed decision about how they interact with the world around them. A few lines of text are utterly ignorable, for anyone who doesn’t want to know.

This shouldn’t have to be a question of luck and willingness to sacrifice, available only to people who can hand in paperwork attesting to their histories and then beg the administration to recognize it as proof. So this

year, when I’ve already had to email professors copies of my medical records to get them to believe that I was in a hospital instead of a classroom, I’m opting not to give near-strangers anything more. I can’t find that in me again, to reveal all this to eight or ten people with power over me year after year at this College. They’ve already decided they have a right and an obligation to know everything that goes on with my body. If I have to choose —since I have to choose — between handing in a summary of the goriest parts of my autobiography or playing Russian roulette with triggering literature content until May, I’ll give up security for privacy, for liberty, for at least an ounce of dignity. And I’ll know, all the while, that it’s a sacrifice that could be avoided with a couple of keystrokes.

Editorial: Guns Inappropriate as Protection Against Sexual Assault Continued from page 5 event that they actually shoot, or even kill, their attackers?

While the case for arming college women might be easily dismissed as a passing trend or a fleeting marketing campaign, it hints at the threat of a dangerous intersection of gun culture and rape culture. This deadly combination places the burden squarely on victims to shoot inevitable attackers and sub-

sequently prove their innocence in a legal system where institutionalized sexism runs rampant. The necessary work of dismantling rape culture takes more than women’s selfdefense. Education is a strong first step, but we need to take the weight off of women’s shoulders, as well as the guns out of their purses, to really fight sexism and rape culture. Feminine firearms are just a distraction from, not a solution to, the violent misogyny of our society.

Student Senate Student Senate Censure Announcement Senator Zachery Crowell has been found to be repeatedly absent from meetings of the General Faculty and late to plenary meetings of the Student Senate. Senators’ failure to perform necessary duties will not be tolerated by the Oberlin College Student Senate.

Opinions

The Oberlin Review, February 27, 2015

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KXL Gives Hope for Further Legislation Just Ask Us: DeCafé Kiley Petersen Opinions Editor

Although I’m not usually a fan of dramatic and symbolic political acts, I couldn’t help but feel pleased on Tuesday night when President Obama kept to his word and vetoed the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would bring oil from Alberta, Canada, to Steele City, NE. Despite the expected outcome, the news still left me feeling cheerful. After just a few months of the new Republicanmajority Congress, I was already down in the dumps about the state of our nation and its grave problems of social and environmental justice.

The vetoing of the pipeline is a symbolic rallying point for moderate Democrats and extreme environmentalists alike, and possibly the first in a wave of environmental reforms that have been lacking in the 21st century.

I have no grand illusions about the actual impact of the pipeline.

Despite the left framing its impact as “the death knoll for climate change,” KXL — just one of several pipelines in the Keystone network — was not going to be the straw that broke the

camel’s back as far as environmental damage goes. However, the pipeline would have had significant local impact, as KXL would have passed through the Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains, potentially leaking into the already-depleted water table. And KXL would have been one of the largest pipelines in our country, transporting oil to the many refineries in the Midwest and South, making the sheer volume of the operation a cause for concern. The veto, therefore, is both a mobilizing event for concerned environmentalists and lawmakers and a victory for the people whose water and land might have been affected by the pipeline.

Immediately after the announcement on Tuesday, the right began publicly organizing for a Congressional override, as predicted. Despite the veto’s political ineffectiveness, KXL has already been widely discussed in the media, and now the conversation about natural gas compared to alternative energy sources can really begin. An official veto from the president gives a backing to environmentalists and a morale boost for the left. I can only hope that moderate Republi-

can legislators will be swayed by the public’s increasing environmental awareness, and with an economy on the upswing, hopefully their constituents will agree. Currently, the Republican majority does not have enough votes to override the veto.

The People’s Climate March in 2014 was the largest environmental demonstration in America since the ’70s, and I’m predicting that the environmental movement will see this resurgence in support continue over the next 10 years. The addition of social media campaigns will only aid in the public’s knowledge about climate change, and hopefully this public support will transfer to real legislation.

By framing KXL as both a national security issue and a moral issue, the left’s agenda has the potential to appeal to both moderate Republicans and Democrats alike. After the failed Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill in 2010, no real climate legislation was attempted in Congress, as immigration took the spotlight. Now KXL will hopefully open the public’s eyes to environmental concern, and I can only hope that our Republicanmajority Congress responds.

Criticisms of Hip-Hop Reflect Misconceptions James Tanford Contributing Writer I see the small, judgmental glint in my friend’s eye as he looks over my music playlist. Common. The Roots.

Kanye West. Joey Bada$$.

Lupe Fiasco. Hopsin. Black Star.

He’s thinking, he listens to rap?

He hands me my phone back, disgusted, and proceeds to lecture me on how this “music” is degrading, unintelligent and how, because I’m white, I shouldn’t really even be listening to it.

Um … excuse me?

In five seconds, he just exemplified every misconception people hold about rap: that it is a skill-less mishmash of sex, drugs and misogyny. This is unfair. Hiphop gets a bad rap; at its best, it’s skillful, poetic and politically aware commentary that has messages for everyone.

Think it doesn’t take skill?

Have you ever tried to rhyme like rappers? Eminem, for example, rhymes nearly every single word with another in “Lose Yourself,” and in “Legacy” the end of almost every line for the entire song sounds the same. He’s not alone: Talib Kweli, Nas, Earl Sweatshirt, Kendrick Lamar, Action Bronson and others all flow entire songs together and leave very few words unmatched. Aesop Rock, famous for his intellectual and sometimes verbose lyricism, drops gems such as “eye for an eye, by the bog life swamps and vines / they get a rise out of frogs and flies / so when a dogfight’s hog-tied prize sort of costs a life / the mouths water on a fork and

a knife.” These lyricists employ rhyme schemes in a way that makes the entire song flow, and this takes immense talent.

Worse still is the belief that all rap music is “club music,” songs with no purpose other than to glorify sex, drugs and women. This is unbelievably wrong. Political commentary has always been a central focus of rap music, often about life in working class neighborhoods (see “Clock with No Hands” by The Roots, “N.Y. State of Mind” by Nas, and “C.R.E.A.M” by Wu-Tang Clan for some classic examples).

Today, it has branched out.

Macklemore talks about his battle with alcoholism and loss of religion in “Neon Cathedral” and the negativities of consumerism in “Wing$.”

J. Cole holds a conversation between two people debating abortion in “Lost Ones.”

Common, in “Testify,” describes a woman committing a crime and then convincing a jury that her husband did it. Lupe Fiasco does a song about his label literally telling him his lyrics and song subjects are too complex in “Dumb it Down.” Heck, even Kanye West, one of the most egotistical, self-centered, and frustrating people on the planet, turns good when he raps, doing songs like “All Falls Down” in which he talks about the relationship between economic standing and insecurities, particularly in the African-American community.

Yes, there are songs like “Pussy, Money, Weed” by Lil Wayne or “Birthday Song” by 2 Chainz, and yes, club bangers are a dime a dozen,

but that is not all of rap by any means.

People occasionally have made it very clear to me that they dislike rap music and, by extension, that they judge me for listening to it. I don’t care if you don’t like rap, but to say that it isn’t “art” and to say that people who enjoy it are lowbrow and “don’t know what real music is” is an unbelievably elitist and condescending thought. I grew up in Indiana. I have plenty of friends who listen to country. I, for one, don’t enjoy it, but I don’t look down upon people who like it. Who cares what music they like?

And my race? Why does that play an issue? Many people have claimed that rap is going through “cultural appropriation,” often pointing out that Eminem and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis won the last two awards for “Best Rap Album” at the Grammys and that many white rappers, such as Iggy Azalea, seem ignorant to the fact that rap has historically been central to African-American culture and aren’t aware of their place in it. J. Cole even addressed it in his song “Fire Squad,” pointing out that “white people have snatched the sound / this year I’ll probably go to the awards dappered down / watch Iggy win a Grammy as I try to crack a smile.”

The insensitivity of white rappers to the history of the rap community and their relatively new place in it — and their attempts to acknowledge it — are sometimes just awkward. Iggy Azalea has been attacked for her lack of involvement with

and insensitivity toward the black community after the Ferguson shootings, and Macklemore was ridiculed by, among others, Ice Cube and Drake after posting on Instagram an “I can’t believe you didn’t win!” text he had sent to Kendrick Lamar after the 2013 Grammys, which merely looked like a shallow attempt to show how aware he is of his cis-whitemale privilege. This insensitivity, however, is not the entire story: For the most part, Macklemore has been very aware of his privilege and has acknowledged how it probably helped him win the Grammy. (His album, by the way, was very good.

It wasn’t that unbelievable that he won.) White rappers and rap groups like Eminem, Atmosphere and Brother Ali have all acknowledged, in interviews and in songs, the difficulties and life of being an outsider in the rap community and how their race might make them more appealing to many consumers.

But as a listener, why play the race card? Who cares what race you are? Yes, I had a priviliged upbringing, two parents in a loving, uppermiddle-class community, and no, I don’t know what is it like to grow up without parents or money or friends and have never experienced many of the things rappers talk about.

But can I not appreciate the poetry, the intricate telling of their lives, their messages of hope, despair, love, greed or confusion? I don’t have to live it to think it’s beautiful.

Listen to rap. Don’t listen to rap. Nobody cares.

But first, you should know what it actually is.

Not Worth Price Jolie De Feis and Mike Plotz Columnists

Disclaimer: “Just Ask Us and We’ll Tell Ya” is a satirical column, and the Review does not condone illegal activity of any kind.

There comes a time in every Oberlin student’s life when a decision must be made: Should I steal that shit from DeCafé? Of course, stealing is wrong when put into simplistic terms, but alas, we do not live in such a black and white world. The real question is whether DeCafé and Campus Dining Services are already stealing from us — and we believe the answer is yes.

Here at “Just Ask Us,” we are 100 percent certain that CDS is stealing from us. Here in the Opinions section, we’re sure you’re used to reading opinions, but first, let’s break down the facts. Everyone knows that it costs $7 to buy a meal at a dining hall. What you don’t know is that you’re paying much more than just $7 for your Stevie diarrhea. Nineteen meals per week, which is the cheapest cost-permeal plan, comes out to $13.08 every time you get your slop on in Stevie. The cheapest overall meal plan is five meals per week — only available to those who are off campus or live in village housing — but this comes out to a whopping $24.19 per meal. We didn’t believe that when we first read it, so here it is again, spelled out: twenty-four dollars and nineteen cents per meal. That’s a $7 value yours for only $24.19, and of course this is all after flex is deducted from the total semester meal plan cost. However, deducting flex dollar for dollar is not the right way to determine the value of your meal plan. Because Jolie is an economist, she knows this to be true. To offer another perspective, seniors, you could go to Feve brunch on both Saturday and Sunday (possibly even get a mimosa), for the amount of one CDS breakfast. Because Jolie loves Feve brunch, she also knows this to be true.

Now, Mike’s not an economist, but he did get a Bin Econ 101, and here’s what he has to say about flex: One flex point does not equal one dollar. Aside from the fact that you can’t buy weed and booze with flex points (we’ve tried), everything you can buy with flex points is inflated way beyond its value. Here at “Just Ask Us and We’ll Tell Ya,” we did the hard-hitting research, so you don’t have to. On a slow Tuesday evening, we actually went inside DeCafé and checked the prices of staple college student goods. What we found was shocking. Read on to find out more.

We looked at the prices of items such as Starbucks Doubleshots, Cocoa Pebbles, little tins of peaches that your mom used to pack you for lunch and you never ate, Naked Juice and of course, tuna fish (we’re eating some right now). We then compared DeCafé’s prices to those of competing companies. We were flabbergasted to discover that the average cost of a DeCafé good is 189 percent higher than other stores and yes, we did the math. To be fair and “transparent,” this was compared to Wal-mart and Amazon prices, but even so, almost two times more expensive is too damn high! Plus, these prices make Gibson’s look like a steal (this is an expression, do not try to steal from Gibson’s or you will be arrested).

Considering the 189 percent inflation of flex points, the true cost per meal on a five meal/week plan is $27.35, almost four times the off-meal-plan cost of a meal, or a mimosa on both Saturday and Sunday.

Now that we have the facts, let’s get back to the opinion. Should you steal from DeCafé? Yes. An unequivocal, enthusiastic, unabashed yes. CDS is a monopoly that forces students to be on a meal plan that artificially inflates the price of goods to almost two times their value for DeCafé, or almost four times for meal plan meals. Their meal plans are getting more and more expensive every year with no recourse or indication of stopping. What are we to do?

We implore you, fellow students, go to DeCafé, keep those IDs in your back pocket (or around your neck, if you’re a first-year), raise your fists in the air and stuff those pockets with Starbucks Doubleshots! Or find a friend with an Amazon Prime account and order a four-pack for $5.28 that arrives on your doorstep in under two days.

Tucked away in the basement of the Wright Laboratory of Physics, Professor FitzGerald’s lab is dominated by a humming tower fed by plastic tubing, compressed gas cylinders and exposed circuit boards that reveal the years of effort invested in this highly specialized spectrophotometer.

FitzGerald’s work pursues the discovery of a material that will enable the storage of hydrogen in efficient, water-powered fuel cells that could power the cars of the future. By using data from the equipment, the properties of small metal-organic molecules can be inferred. “The big problem is that hydrogen is a gas at room temperature,” FitzGerald said. “So what I and lots of other people are after is trying to get a hydrogen sponge.”

STEPHEN FITZGERALD What challenges have you faced trying to find this material?

What we want is a sticky note. You’ve got the sticky note, you put it there, you tug on it a little, off it comes. … What nature has provided us with is super glue — we can get the hydrogen in, [it] sticks incredibly well, then you can never get it out, so it’s not worth it. Or Teflon — the hydrog e n really doesn’t stick [to it] at all.

And there are no known materials that

have the right properties to work under practical conditions. So we need something to store our hydrogen.

Very fortunately for me, about 10 years ago Jesse Rowsell showed up in Oberlin and [made] these materials called metal-organic frame- Above, the cannister of metal-organic frameworks. [These molecules work particles located inside the spectroare like] a chemist’s tinker photometer, far left. Penny shown for scale. toy, where you put differPhoto courtesy of Stephen FitzGerald ent chemical species together and create a gazillion possible structures that are pretty close. They give us some hope that we might be able to store hydrogen that way. The great advantage of these materials is there’s a gazillion possibilities; the great disadvantage is there’s a gazillion possibilities, and it can take six months to a year to make a new one, so there’s no way to systematically go through them all.

How did you come into this field of research?

[My previous work with infrared spectroscopy and cement] had gotten a little boring over the years. And I had done some calculations with the hydrogen, and it’s very, very unusual to use infrared spectroscopy — it’s basically invisible in the infrared unless you do something weird to it. We had equipment around that we were using for the cement. And I basically said to Scott … who [was] my honors student at the time, “You know, you’ve got enough material for your honors project, let’s try this. We’ll probably see nothing, but let’s just try it.”

And so we hooked up a gas line, put it into a sample at room temperature. … And basically, 9 o’clock that morning, I had no idea what I was going to be doing. By lunch time I’m set — [ for] the next 10 years, I am set. And that was sort of my one “Eureka!” moment. … I really didn’t expect to see anything — saw half a dozen different bumps, [and] published it almost immediately afterwards. … It had been almost never done before and the idea that we would see this sort of sample was quite surprising.

WILBURN LAB

FITZGERALD LAB

Interviews with faculty and student researchers from four departments across the natural and social sciences about work currently ongoing at Oberlin.

This Week Editor: Hazel Galloway Contributing Writers: Lydia Moran and Olivia Konuk

For two years, College senior Michelle Johnson has been working in the lab of Neuroscience professor Leslie Kwakye. Now working on an honor thesis, Johnson’s research focuses on the correlation between specific genes and performance on tasks that demand the integration of multiple sensory inputs. This has applications in the understanding of genetic diseases that result in deficits in multi-sensory integration, such as autism.

Unlike Kwakye, who focuses on physical responses as a medium for the understanding of sensory integration, Johnson examines specific neuron responses using a device called an electroencephalogram. Her results thus far have been promising. “I’m finding that you can correlate the autism risk genes to my task,” said Johnson. “Specifically, when I present my stimuli and someone has a specific genotype, … [and] they respond in this way, I can correlate those two things together.”

MICHELLE JOHNSON What is it like to work in this lab?

The lab uses psychophysical tasks. …

Very simply, it would be like we have a participant sitting in a darkened room, sitting in front of a computer, and … there’s a beep — a flash and a beep. Then you ask them which one came first. … So we’re not recording anything from their neurons; we’re really just measuring behavioral features, so how

MIRANDA RUTHERFORD What is it like to work in this lab?

What I’m primarily doing is putting together a database of all the artifacts that were found, so then we can link these to the map, because they are two programs that work together. And then that needs to be implemented with a Javascript app on the website, and we’ve also been setting up a server to host that website since we don’t actually have any servers to host it on now.

It’s a good example of how, even though a lot of departmental work is very codified — Classics need to be separated from Ancient Studies, History, Archeology and Computer Science — that’s not actually how the real world works.

It’s been really nice to see the interdisciplinary process here and how we’ve been consulting people from so many different departments.

What is the most exciting thing about this project?

With the Karanis project, it’s really great because you’re not just cataloguing this basket — it’s a basket that was made by somebody in the past who lived in this house that you’re cataloguing.

And there’s so many generations, because Karanis covers such a wide time span, that you get to see daily life in a place that was impacted by Greece and Rome, but isn’t a place that we always learned about.

Photos courtesy of Miranda Rutherford

they perceive the two stimuli, not necessarily what neuronal activity’s happening.

What is the most exciting thing about this project?

I think all scientists have this — I think everyone has this fundamental questioning nature of needing to understand what’s happening. And that fundamental nature can apply to many different questions. …

Because [any] specific protein is part of a

huge complex of proteins, that’s a part of this huge pathway, that’s a part of what is causing cancer, and ultimately that could be a cure for a specific type of cancer. So while I feel like everyone has these overall questions that they want to know … once you start getting into the complexities of biological systems … it’s fascinating that you could study something as simple as how fast someone pushes a button [and] you can gain so much information from that.

Kristin McFadden Friday, Feb. 27, 8 p.m.

Slow Train Café

The African Way Saturday, Feb. 28. 8 p.m.

Carnegie Building, Root Room

Kid Business: CYCLE Saturday, Feb. 28, 8–9 p.m.

The Cat in the Cream

Featuring OSlam!, Pitch, Please and the Obertones among many others, this showcase brings together some of Oberlin’s most well-loved performing groups. Organizers hope the event will raise awareness about human trafficking in Lorain County.

They will be collecting donations for a local organization working to end this practice.

College sophomore and musician Kristin McFadden will take the stage at the Slow Train Café with a selection of original acoustic tunes.

Her songs are influenced by pop, classic rock and folk and range from emotional ballads to more upbeat selections.

This showcase by the Oberlin African Students Association centers on the theme of challenging Western stereotypes of the African continent.

Tickets are available for $3 in Mudd until 5 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 27, and for $5 at the door; all proceeds will benefit the Yakubu Saaka fund to support financial aid for African students at Oberlin.

Oberlin’s only short-form improv troupe will welcome back a returning member from abroad in their first show of the spring semester. Kid Business will draw inspiration for the show from America’s Next Top Model.

ROLES LAB Professor Angie Roles’ research on crayfish population genetics was born out of a class trip to a local river. “Every year, we’d go out and teach the class how to tell the difference between these two species,” said Roles. “One day, we were out there and I said, ‘This species looks intermediate to me.’” An initial suspicion that there may have been interbreeding occurring between an invasive species of crayfish and its native counterpart grew into years of research on what effect this hybridization might have, not only on the gene pools of each species, but on our basic understanding of the concept of an invasive species.

ANGIE ROLES What kind of work is currently taking place in your lab?

There are actually several fairly different projects that go on in my lab. … My work is with crayfishes, and then I have a student that samples goshawks. The techniques of working with microsatellites is the same, regardless of where we are. We are interested in thinking about genetic variation across space in these sorts of different groups. …

We’re interested in how much [hybridization between the native and invasive crayfish] is going on — how might that be affecting the future trajectory of these species? So in this invaded river, [if] we start out with these two species … are they both going to hang around? Are they going to collapse into one

Navigating Philips Gym: Getting Women Into the Weight Room Monday, March 2, 5–7 p.m.

Philips Gym, Front Desk Softball Coach Mimi Mahon and Volleyball Coach Erica Rau will lead a session geared towards women who feel uncomfortable or unfamiliar with the Philips weight room. After a tour and basic training on correct usage of the exercise equipment, the two coaches will lead a brief workout. This event is open to all; come wearing workout clothes and sneakers.

that is going to be something different as it merges? [Are] one of those two taxa going to disappear as it merges? So that’s kind of the big question that we want to ask right now.

I have a whole bunch of DNA samples we’re going to be genotyping. … We’re looking over time, as well, to get a sense of what might be happening here.

What some of the most exciting parts of this project?

I think it’s really interesting to think [that] the boundaries we think of separating species are full of holes — that we like to define things in such discrete ways in the universe, but then life finds a way to make that not so true. At some point, if they become different enough, then they couldn’t breed … but how different do they have to be? Or is it just [a] chance of

Cleveland International Film Festival Shorts Program Wednesday, March 4, 8–10 p.m.

Apollo Theatre As a break from its usual repertoire, the Apollo will host a night of short films shown at the Cleveland International Film Festival. The Cinema Studies department will follow the screening by leading a discussion with the Festival’s short film programmer, Paul Sloop, about the process of preparing original short films for festivals.

what differences arise, so they could be very, very different [but not] in the ways that matter, so [they could] still breed?

How would you explain the importance of this research to someone outside the field?

Species boundaries aren’t absolute, so what does it mean for an invasive species to come into an area and be able to breed with the other species that are there? And if we’re interested in preserving biodiversity, we have to worry not just about ecological affects of competition and such, but what about something like genetic pollution between genomes? And we’re losing biodiversity potentially in that way, if they collapse into one species, or if hybridization speeds up the process of the invader taking over … then we need to worry about that.

Photo courtesy of Angie Roles

I’m Alive You Bastards and I Always Will Be Thursday, Friday and Saturday, March 6–8, 8 p.m.

Saturday and Sunday, March 8–9, 2 p.m.

Little Theater This student-directed show promises to be every bit as bizarre and evocative as its title. It tells the story of two young girls living feral in the desert. The play examines the price of belonging to someone as the girls’ close relationship is shaken by, among other things, the appearance of a dead dog played by College sophomore Jenna Bellasai.

CALENDAR

Voices Against Human Trafficking Friday, Feb. 27, 8–10 p.m.

The Cat in the Cream

K WA K Y E L A B

Submit entries to thisweek@oberlinreview.org

by Wednesday, March 4 at 5 p.m! Please include photographer’s name, year and the location of photograph.

Below, three pots uncove in a single building in Karanis, dating from the early 200s to early 300s A.D.

RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT

Hazel Galloway

OberlinReview Signs of Spring photo contest

College senior Miranda Rutherford has been working in the lab of Classics Professor Drew Wilburn on the Karanis project since last summer. The lab harnesses modern GIS technology with the ultimate goal of creating an interface that will allow for virtual exploration of an archeological dig at the site of a small agricultural town that was thriving during Egypt’s Greco-Roman period in the first century B.C. The extensive collection of artifacts that were excavated by archeologists in the 1920s are currently warehoused at the University of Michigan.

“We’re trying to put it all together in this interactive database,” Rutherford said. “So you’ll be able to click on a house, or click on a room in the house, and see all the things that were found there … and get a full tour of all the different artifacts that were found in Karanis.”

Tucked away in the basement of the Wright Laboratory of Physics, Professor FitzGerald’s lab is dominated by a humming tower fed by plastic tubing, compressed gas cylinders and exposed circuit boards that reveal the years of effort invested in this highly specialized spectrophotometer.

FitzGerald’s work pursues the discovery of a material that will enable the storage of hydrogen in efficient, water-powered fuel cells that could power the cars of the future. By using data from the equipment, the properties of small metal-organic molecules can be inferred. “The big problem is that hydrogen is a gas at room temperature,” FitzGerald said. “So what I and lots of other people are after is trying to get a hydrogen sponge.”

STEPHEN FITZGERALD What challenges have you faced trying to find this material?

What we want is a sticky note. You’ve got the sticky note, you put it there, you tug on it a little, off it comes. … What nature has provided us with is super glue — we can get the hydrogen in, [it] sticks incredibly well, then you can never get it out, so it’s not worth it. Or Teflon — the hydrog e n really doesn’t stick [to it] at all.

And there are no known materials that

have the right properties to work under practical conditions. So we need something to store our hydrogen.

Very fortunately for me, about 10 years ago Jesse Rowsell showed up in Oberlin and [made] these materials called metal-organic frame- Above, the cannister of metal-organic frameworks. [These molecules work particles located inside the spectroare like] a chemist’s tinker photometer, far left. Penny shown for scale. toy, where you put differPhoto courtesy of Stephen FitzGerald ent chemical species together and create a gazillion possible structures that are pretty close. They give us some hope that we might be able to store hydrogen that way. The great advantage of these materials is there’s a gazillion possibilities; the great disadvantage is there’s a gazillion possibilities, and it can take six months to a year to make a new one, so there’s no way to systematically go through them all.

How did you come into this field of research?

[My previous work with infrared spectroscopy and cement] had gotten a little boring over the years. And I had done some calculations with the hydrogen, and it’s very, very unusual to use infrared spectroscopy — it’s basically invisible in the infrared unless you do something weird to it. We had equipment around that we were using for the cement. And I basically said to Scott … who [was] my honors student at the time, “You know, you’ve got enough material for your honors project, let’s try this. We’ll probably see nothing, but let’s just try it.”

And so we hooked up a gas line, put it into a sample at room temperature. … And basically, 9 o’clock that morning, I had no idea what I was going to be doing. By lunch time I’m set — [ for] the next 10 years, I am set. And that was sort of my one “Eureka!” moment. … I really didn’t expect to see anything — saw half a dozen different bumps, [and] published it almost immediately afterwards. … It had been almost never done before and the idea that we would see this sort of sample was quite surprising.

WILBURN LAB

FITZGERALD LAB

Interviews with faculty and student researchers from four departments across the natural and social sciences about work currently ongoing at Oberlin.

This Week Editor: Hazel Galloway Contributing Writers: Lydia Moran and Olivia Konuk

For two years, College senior Michelle Johnson has been working in the lab of Neuroscience professor Leslie Kwakye. Now working on an honor thesis, Johnson’s research focuses on the correlation between specific genes and performance on tasks that demand the integration of multiple sensory inputs. This has applications in the understanding of genetic diseases that result in deficits in multi-sensory integration, such as autism.

Unlike Kwakye, who focuses on physical responses as a medium for the understanding of sensory integration, Johnson examines specific neuron responses using a device called an electroencephalogram. Her results thus far have been promising. “I’m finding that you can correlate the autism risk genes to my task,” said Johnson. “Specifically, when I present my stimuli and someone has a specific genotype, … [and] they respond in this way, I can correlate those two things together.”

MICHELLE JOHNSON What is it like to work in this lab?

The lab uses psychophysical tasks. …

Very simply, it would be like we have a participant sitting in a darkened room, sitting in front of a computer, and … there’s a beep — a flash and a beep. Then you ask them which one came first. … So we’re not recording anything from their neurons; we’re really just measuring behavioral features, so how

MIRANDA RUTHERFORD What is it like to work in this lab?

What I’m primarily doing is putting together a database of all the artifacts that were found, so then we can link these to the map, because they are two programs that work together. And then that needs to be implemented with a Javascript app on the website, and we’ve also been setting up a server to host that website since we don’t actually have any servers to host it on now.

It’s a good example of how, even though a lot of departmental work is very codified — Classics need to be separated from Ancient Studies, History, Archeology and Computer Science — that’s not actually how the real world works.

It’s been really nice to see the interdisciplinary process here and how we’ve been consulting people from so many different departments.

What is the most exciting thing about this project?

With the Karanis project, it’s really great because you’re not just cataloguing this basket — it’s a basket that was made by somebody in the past who lived in this house that you’re cataloguing.

And there’s so many generations, because Karanis covers such a wide time span, that you get to see daily life in a place that was impacted by Greece and Rome, but isn’t a place that we always learned about.

Photos courtesy of Miranda Rutherford

they perceive the two stimuli, not necessarily what neuronal activity’s happening.

What is the most exciting thing about this project?

I think all scientists have this — I think everyone has this fundamental questioning nature of needing to understand what’s happening. And that fundamental nature can apply to many different questions. …

Because [any] specific protein is part of a

huge complex of proteins, that’s a part of this huge pathway, that’s a part of what is causing cancer, and ultimately that could be a cure for a specific type of cancer. So while I feel like everyone has these overall questions that they want to know … once you start getting into the complexities of biological systems … it’s fascinating that you could study something as simple as how fast someone pushes a button [and] you can gain so much information from that.

Kristin McFadden Friday, Feb. 27, 8 p.m.

Slow Train Café

The African Way Saturday, Feb. 28. 8 p.m.

Carnegie Building, Root Room

Kid Business: CYCLE Saturday, Feb. 28, 8–9 p.m.

The Cat in the Cream

Featuring OSlam!, Pitch, Please and the Obertones among many others, this showcase brings together some of Oberlin’s most well-loved performing groups. Organizers hope the event will raise awareness about human trafficking in Lorain County.

They will be collecting donations for a local organization working to end this practice.

College sophomore and musician Kristin McFadden will take the stage at the Slow Train Café with a selection of original acoustic tunes.

Her songs are influenced by pop, classic rock and folk and range from emotional ballads to more upbeat selections.

This showcase by the Oberlin African Students Association centers on the theme of challenging Western stereotypes of the African continent.

Tickets are available for $3 in Mudd until 5 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 27, and for $5 at the door; all proceeds will benefit the Yakubu Saaka fund to support financial aid for African students at Oberlin.

Oberlin’s only short-form improv troupe will welcome back a returning member from abroad in their first show of the spring semester. Kid Business will draw inspiration for the show from America’s Next Top Model.

ROLES LAB Professor Angie Roles’ research on crayfish population genetics was born out of a class trip to a local river. “Every year, we’d go out and teach the class how to tell the difference between these two species,” said Roles. “One day, we were out there and I said, ‘This species looks intermediate to me.’” An initial suspicion that there may have been interbreeding occurring between an invasive species of crayfish and its native counterpart grew into years of research on what effect this hybridization might have, not only on the gene pools of each species, but on our basic understanding of the concept of an invasive species.

ANGIE ROLES What kind of work is currently taking place in your lab?

There are actually several fairly different projects that go on in my lab. … My work is with crayfishes, and then I have a student that samples goshawks. The techniques of working with microsatellites is the same, regardless of where we are. We are interested in thinking about genetic variation across space in these sorts of different groups. …

We’re interested in how much [hybridization between the native and invasive crayfish] is going on — how might that be affecting the future trajectory of these species? So in this invaded river, [if] we start out with these two species … are they both going to hang around? Are they going to collapse into one

Navigating Philips Gym: Getting Women Into the Weight Room Monday, March 2, 5–7 p.m.

Philips Gym, Front Desk Softball Coach Mimi Mahon and Volleyball Coach Erica Rau will lead a session geared towards women who feel uncomfortable or unfamiliar with the Philips weight room. After a tour and basic training on correct usage of the exercise equipment, the two coaches will lead a brief workout. This event is open to all; come wearing workout clothes and sneakers.

that is going to be something different as it merges? [Are] one of those two taxa going to disappear as it merges? So that’s kind of the big question that we want to ask right now.

I have a whole bunch of DNA samples we’re going to be genotyping. … We’re looking over time, as well, to get a sense of what might be happening here.

What some of the most exciting parts of this project?

I think it’s really interesting to think [that] the boundaries we think of separating species are full of holes — that we like to define things in such discrete ways in the universe, but then life finds a way to make that not so true. At some point, if they become different enough, then they couldn’t breed … but how different do they have to be? Or is it just [a] chance of

Cleveland International Film Festival Shorts Program Wednesday, March 4, 8–10 p.m.

Apollo Theatre As a break from its usual repertoire, the Apollo will host a night of short films shown at the Cleveland International Film Festival. The Cinema Studies department will follow the screening by leading a discussion with the Festival’s short film programmer, Paul Sloop, about the process of preparing original short films for festivals.

what differences arise, so they could be very, very different [but not] in the ways that matter, so [they could] still breed?

How would you explain the importance of this research to someone outside the field?

Species boundaries aren’t absolute, so what does it mean for an invasive species to come into an area and be able to breed with the other species that are there? And if we’re interested in preserving biodiversity, we have to worry not just about ecological affects of competition and such, but what about something like genetic pollution between genomes? And we’re losing biodiversity potentially in that way, if they collapse into one species, or if hybridization speeds up the process of the invader taking over … then we need to worry about that.

Photo courtesy of Angie Roles

I’m Alive You Bastards and I Always Will Be Thursday, Friday and Saturday, March 6–8, 8 p.m.

Saturday and Sunday, March 8–9, 2 p.m.

Little Theater This student-directed show promises to be every bit as bizarre and evocative as its title. It tells the story of two young girls living feral in the desert. The play examines the price of belonging to someone as the girls’ close relationship is shaken by, among other things, the appearance of a dead dog played by College sophomore Jenna Bellasai.

CALENDAR

Voices Against Human Trafficking Friday, Feb. 27, 8–10 p.m.

The Cat in the Cream

K WA K Y E L A B

Submit entries to thisweek@oberlinreview.org

by Wednesday, March 4 at 5 p.m! Please include photographer’s name, year and the location of photograph.

Below, three pots uncove in a single building in Karanis, dating from the early 200s to early 300s A.D.

RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT

Hazel Galloway

OberlinReview Signs of Spring photo contest

College senior Miranda Rutherford has been working in the lab of Classics Professor Drew Wilburn on the Karanis project since last summer. The lab harnesses modern GIS technology with the ultimate goal of creating an interface that will allow for virtual exploration of an archeological dig at the site of a small agricultural town that was thriving during Egypt’s Greco-Roman period in the first century B.C. The extensive collection of artifacts that were excavated by archeologists in the 1920s are currently warehoused at the University of Michigan.

“We’re trying to put it all together in this interactive database,” Rutherford said. “So you’ll be able to click on a house, or click on a room in the house, and see all the things that were found there … and get a full tour of all the different artifacts that were found in Karanis.”

Arts The Oberlin Review

Page 10

February 27, 2015

Art History Department to Add African Art Professor Jake Frankenfield Susan Kane — one of the Art History department’s six art historians and one of the biggest assets of Oberlin’s Art department — has announced she will retire at the end of this semester. The Art History department will use Kane’s retirement as a chance to reflect on the current structure of the department and to determine how it will be shaped in the coming years.

Former department co-chair and current Professor of Art Bonnie Cheng, the only non-Western art historian at Oberlin, went to great pains to stress that this transition has been a long time coming. According to Cheng, Kane’s retirement will mean that the department now has the funding to hire a new professor.

Art History Department Chair Erik Inglis said the department looks forward to their new pro-

fessor’s arrival with “good faith and … excitement.”

Oberlin’s Art History department has always had a Western bent. In 1989 the department boasted six art historians, one of which was a non-Western expert.

In 1997, the department combined two of the Western-focused positions to make room for a professor of modern architecture, who focused primarily on Western architecture.

Cheng said Oberlin’s ratio of Western art historians to nonWestern art historians is “outmoded and doesn’t suit Oberlin at all.” “There’s no question it’s been a Western-based curriculum,” Inglis said. The department has made an active effort in years past to broaden its curriculum.

“At multiple moments we’ve had visiting Islamicists, and we’ve had requests for the College to hire a new person in Islamic art history,” he said. Those requests have been

unsuccessful thus far, but the department will reapply this year.

According to Inglis, the decision to add a professor of African art and the African diaspora is a relatively obvious one, given closer inspection of the department.

Discussions of the evolution of the department arose during intra-department discussions, though very few concrete objectives were explored, aside from altering what material gets covered and how. “We decided to go with African art because we thought that was where the greatest room for growth, both in the material we covered and in the way we covered materials.” Inglis said.

“We thought that the arts of Africa offered the greatest promise and greatest unmet demand on campus, and the collection of art in the museum is pretty good and can expand.” Additionally, African art and diaspora studies offer substantial opportunities for ties

to and collaborations with other departments at Oberlin, such as the Africana Studies department.

The department hopes the new hire will fundamentally shift the department’s focus, but it is unclear what the evolution will look like. “Obviously African Art –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

‘At multiple moments we’ve had visiting Islamicists, and we’ve had requests for the College to hire a new person in Islamic art history.’

ERIK INGLIS Art History Department Chair ––––––––––––––––––––––––––– and African diaspora is a huge field, covering 3,000 years of art from all over the world. … It’s

hard to know how things will change until we’re sitting next to the colleague,” said Inglis.

Nevertheless, the decision is an important development for art history at Oberlin. It could significantly improve the department for the next 20 to 25 years.

The department is not taking its decision lightly, either. “Art history in particular can feel removed from the real world,” said Inglis. “But in many ways, it is one of the most useful and pertinent disciplines in academia. In questions of cultural exchange and contact and communication and power — which are vital political and social questions — art history has a huge amount to say.”

He added: “In a time when many people almost fear that our discourse is dominated by images, when people fear [we lack] a verbal discourse [that] investigates things deeply, art history is the discipline you need to explore.”

Enigmatic Instrumentation, Atmospheric Elements Entrance Crowd Danny Evans Arts Editor From the opening moments of their set at Cleveland’s Beachland Ballroom and Tavern Wednesday night, Swans made it clear that they did not plan on granting their audience a standard concert experience.

The New York post-punk veterans, who performed for nearly three hours but only played six songs, started so quietly that attendees didn’t even register they had begun and utilized everything from a hammer dulcimer to wind chimes to a homemade viola in pursuit of auditory devastation. Clearly, nothing about the set adhered to audience expectations of what a rock show consists of, but despite this, infamously demanding frontman Michael Gira and his five bandmates managed to offer one of the most powerful concerts I’ve ever attended.

Percussionist Thor Harris introduced Swans’ set by himself. He stood near the backstage area, hitting a gong softly. As the gong grew louder, alerting the audience to Harris’ presence, other members of the band joined in. Lap-steel guitarist Christoph Hahn droned forebodingly, and Phil Puleo, the band’s other drummer, complemented Harris’ gong with tasteful cymbal work. The band built up slowly, silencing chatty showgoers. My jaw dropped as Swans’ entrance manifested both sonically and visually. Band member after band member appeared on stage, each time ramping up the intensity of the build, which, like much of Swans’ music, included just a single, repeated chord over steady percussion.

About 10 or 15 minutes into this build, which eventually reached such a monumental volume that I could feel the sound more than I could hear it, I realized that Swans’ increasing age was not going to stop them from playing a monolithic set.

Perhaps they have calmed down a bit, though: The 61-year-old Gira didn’t physically assault headbangers, lock his crowd into the venue or turn the heat up oppressively high Wednesday evening, as he did during Swans’ initial pre-breakup run in the 1980s. Swans even incorporated elements other than the crushing heaviness

they became known for on early records like Filth and Cop, emphasizing meditative droning and other idiosyncratic ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Band member after band member appeared on stage, each time ramping up the intensity of the build, which, like much of Swans’ music, included just a single, repeated chord over steady percussion.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– sounds throughout their set. They didn’t skimp on brutality, though. In fact, Swans’

usage of atmosphere, which has become more central to their sound with each record they’ve released, contrasted with their signature apocalyptic climaxes and thereby imbued these cathartic moments with even more weight.

Swans demonstrated an ability to combine overwhelming noise, fearless experimentation and their recent interest in incorporating funk and blues segments on songs like “A Little God In My Hands,” the lead single from 2014’s universally acclaimed To Be Kind. The song featured a menacing bass groove punctuated by stabs of atonal horns and slurred, abstract lyrics (“Pink little lamb on a granite slab / Black chasm creeping, forever leaking”). Somehow, despite the fact that bassist Christopher Pravdica repeated this riff for more

than twice the length of the album version’s already formidable seven minutes, “A Little God In My Hands” didn’t get boring for a second. Like Swans’ set as a whole, the track held my focus through endless iterations of the same motif via subtle changes in force and texture.

Of the six songs Swans played Wednesday night, three were brand new, and a fourth — “Bring the Sun/Black Hole Man” — included mostly new material in addition to older selections. The band’s most recent record came out under a year ago, and their apparently constant songwriting, ever-expanding musical palette and grueling 10-hour-a-day practice schedule display that Swans are as committed to making their mark as they have always been.

Swans frontman Michael Gira stares down showgoers at the Beachland Ballroom and Tavern in Cleveland. He led his band through a deafening, lengthy set Wednesday night.

Danny Evans

Arts

The Oberlin Review, February 27, 2015

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Feature Photo: Capoeira Angola Retreat

Participants engage in Capoeira Angola games during a workshop last weekend at a “roda” in South Studios. South and Lord-Saunders residencies cohosted a three-day-long retreat centering on the Afro-Brazilian art form, Capoeira, complete with educational workshops, games, training sessions and group discussions. The public event, organized by Oberlin Capoeira Angola, garnered past and present Capoeira students to engage with the dance and cultural elements of the practice. According to the OCA website, Capoeira “draws elements from dance, fight, ritual and musical performance” and is both a means of self-defense and entertainment. Artist-in-residence Adenike Sharpley first introduced Capoeira Angola to the Oberlin community along with Eric “Chicago” Murray, OC ’92. The tradition remains vibrant due to the efforts of Assistant Professor of Theater Justin Emeka and the OCA. Text by Vida Wesiblum, Arts editor Photo by Lulu Jingyuan Huang

The Epicurean: The Greenhouse Tavern Jewel of Cleveland Culinary Scene Matt Segall Columnist I can often be heard saying, “The Greenhouse Tavern is the best restaurant I’ve ever been to,” and I’m not a liar. Local hero Jonathan Sawyer’s flagship establishment tops many locals lists, and after many visits, it remains on the top of mine too. Yes, its food is some of the best I’ve had. Yes, its service is refined. It hit all the marks. But GHT is more than the food on the plate and the attentive people who bring it to you; it is the crown jewel of Cleveland’s celebrated restaurant scene.

One of The Greenhouse Tavern’s main focuses is sourcing ingredients from local producers, at which they succeed wherever they can.

While not the first spot to catch wind of the farm-to-table movement in Cleveland (Iron Chef Michael Symon’s Lola opened back in 1997), The Greenhouse Tavern has been at the center of Cleveland’s recovery since it opened. Chef Sawyer posted on the restaurant’s website: “We opened the Tavern in 2009 at a time when everyone thought we were nuts. Cleveland was getting killed by the economy and our friends in the bigger cities thought we were secretly drunk. We knew something they didn’t. We knew that the spirit of Cleveland was back and bigger than ever. We took the risk on Cleveland.”

As the extreme hardship that affected the area begins to lighten, Clevelanders are understandably proud of their city and what it has to offer. This pride includes the culinary sector, where enthusiastic locals are willing to try anything that comes out of the Greenhouse kitchen.

A roast pig’s head is not something you find on many menus, but it sells out nearly every night at The Greenhouse Tavern. The prized meat remains shielded under a layer of fat as it slowly cooks, naturally basting throughout the cooking process. Finished with a brush of Asian barbeque sauce and crisped under the broiler, this dish is full of contrasts. Placing sweet against rich and crisp against soft, Sawyer See Sawyer, page 12

Organist Transcends Genre Mohit Dubey Last Saturday evening at Cleveland’s Beachland Ballroom and Tavern, gospel organist Cory Henry from the band Snarky Puppy shook a crowd of about 50 showgoers with soul-shivering sounds.

Henry’s budding notoriety may be accredited to his masterful five-minute solo “Lingus,” off of the band’s most recent album We Like It Here; however, Henry’s talent exceeds this single claim to fame. Henry, who also plays piano and Rhodes, fuses his parochial sound with elements of dubstep and trap music, incorporating what College first-year Cody Edgerly, who attended Saturday’s show, described as “previously unmixed genres of gospel, jazz, hip-hop and electronic noise.” Henry’s accompanying band, The Funk Apostles, contributed to this unique sound.

Henry’s deep connection to music was born out of his upbringing in the Church of God in Christ Unity Temple, where he first began playing the organ at age two. The documentary Gotcha Now, available on YouTube, narrates his musical journey and his immersion in Brooklyn’s jazz and gospel scene. Henry credits his early kinship with the organ to listening to a lot of music. “It wasn’t as much hands-on, where somebody was telling me what to play,” Henry said between performances.

“I was just blessed to be in the right place at the right time.” He also praised his mother, herself a multi-instrumentalist, for shaping his musical career and introducing him to New York’s gospel community. The documentary is full of home videos of a young Henry shredding the organ and adorably responding to questions. When asked where he would like to play as an adult — the church or the world — a prepubescent Henry responded “the wooooorld.” From the sounds of Henry’s most recent album, First Steps, and the

spiritual vibe of his live shows, he appears to be bridging the spiritual and secular worlds.

In the documentary, Henry discussed how musicians like Chick Corea and Glen Gould influenced him to “level up his chops” in order to expand upon what other gospel musicians in his direct vicinity were doing. Perhaps his versatility is what inspired multiple Oberlin musicians to show up on Saturday to see his approach to music making.

College first-year Amal Ghulam, who spontaneously decided to attend the show after being convinced by friends in the Jazz department, said she was “surprised by the dynamics and grooves” in Henry’s music. Charles Ryan, a double-degree first-year student also in attendance, said he was awestruck by Henry’s ability to “take something so pure and put a little dirt on it to make a whole new sound and feeling.” Ryan was also impressed at the quality of Henry’s live performance, as compared to his recently released album Gotcha Now Doc, which is more restrained compared to traditional gospel style.

With Snarky Puppy coming to Oberlin in a few weeks, Punch Brothers in residence and a hoard of talented musical students, Oberlin is never short on great live shows. Still the campus misses out on gems like Henry, who only passed through Cleveland and Akron. The students who attended Henry’s show spent multiple days planning rides and almost cancelled the trip due to icy roads and thick fog. Both Ryan and Ghulam agree that Oberlin could do more to make live music outside of Oberlin accessible to students. “Exposure is the best thing,” said Ghulam. “The College should encourage students to participate more in seeing shows in the city to experience music in different environments, not just Finney, Warner and the ’Sco.”

Arts

Page 12

The Oberlin Review, February 27, 2015

Priests Cultivate Crowd-Performer Connection Jessie Gaston

Priests’ musical qualities were less essential to the experience Washington, D.C. punk outfit of their concert than the atmoPriests’ set at the ’Sco on Monsphere they constructed. Style, day was borderline spiritual, expertise and other musical elthough the band isn’t religious. ements are important for the Their music is at times enraged, shaping of any concert experience, though. Musically, Priests sounded similar to many Riot Grrrl bands. The band’s set met expectations, but did not exceed them. The musicians sounded like they knew what they were doing, but their style was not revolutionary. Still, the group gave a successful concert, and their musicality obviously had something to do with that.

At one point during the show, Priests played three or four fast, loud songs in a row, energizing the audience. For the durations of these songs, there were frenetic mosh pits.

Attendees allowed the music to physically move them, not as a means of hurting one another, but as a means of coming together. These songs were musically tight and catchy, but the audience’s reaction to them left a bigger impression than the actual tracks. Igniting and guiding the energy of the room, Priests rev it up with their Riot grrrl-influenced sound. The Washington, D.C. punks performed a handful of energetic the music was fundamental to cuts in addition to slow burners at the ’Sco on Monday.

Simeon Deutsch this moment. absurd and funny, but never overtly rarefied in a traditional sense. Still, Priests forged a transcendent experience for their audience the way any good punk band would. The audience didn’t simply perceive Priests’ music.

Instead, they took part in creating the night’s experience. People danced, moshed and moved as a unit. The band took an active role in controlling the show’s energy, creating a unifying space for their audience.

Art Installation Highlights Important Cultural Themes Bri DiMonda

son are both known for creating multimedia installations that engage with “sexual, geographic, macroeconomic, social and political issues” according to an article in the New York Times titled “Subversive, but Colorfully So.” These two artists often take inspiration from various pop culture sources, but also from their geographic backgrounds. Sudbrack has collaborated with artists of all kinds, including Lady Gaga and Comme des Garçons, and plays with music and lighting to create a multi-sensory experience for viewers.

In an interview, Denise Birkhofer, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the AMAM

and of the installation, described Sudbrack’s work as “psychedelic” and “campy.” Though he is known for collaborating with many other artists, Birkhofer describes Sudbrack, who is based in New York and São Paulo, as the “brain” behind the mastery.

Most of the art on display was already in the museum’s collection, but some was loaned to the college especially for avaf@ AMAM. “The art itself [is] digital files that you can have recreated for any purpose.” Birkhofer said.

“Everything you see in there is an individual element that can be recombined to make an infi-

nite number of installations. We have the file for the wallpaper On Friday, Feb. 20, the Althat belongs to us on a CD, so len Memorial Art Museum and basically then we scale it to fit Oberlin’s Department of Art celthe space that we want to have ebrated their first collaboration covered in the wallpaper. Then with the Richard D. Baron ’64 we have it printed in Florida.”

Art Gallery when they opened Birkhofer said she wanted the a new immersive art gallery installation opening to be ininstallation featuring art by teractive for viewers; the exhibiBrazilian-born installation arttion included music and lights, ist Eli Sudbrack, also known as which were important to avaf ’s assume vivid astro focus. The presentation. To fulfill this goal, installation avaf@AMAM, which Birkhofer hired College thirdthe Gallery will house through year Alisa Yamasaki to DJ the May 1, samples a medley of arevent. tistic media created by both Despite added flair, BirkSudbrack and Paris-based artist hofer’s arrangement of the inChristophe Hamaide-Pierson. stallation resembles previous Sudbrack and Hamaide-PierSudbrack exhibitions.

“Part of the inspiration for the way that I chose to do the installation was based on what they did at the 2004 Whitney Biennial,” Birkhofer said. “In that installation, a couple of our sculptures were used, as well as one of the films. ... In the Whitney installation there were pink and green strobe lights, so it was kind of an overstimulation of the senses. … I tried to make it look like this club aesthetic.” Birkhofer also emphasized the innovation Sudbrack’s work brings to Oberlin’s campus. “Everything about the exhibition is a bit new and a bit of an experiment, so what we wanted to do in terms of the opening was to have a party,” she said.

Birkhofer often hosts similar opening parties at the museum. Given its spectacular elements, the installation itself is a bit of a party and certainly one that Oberlin students Two attendees gaze at installation artist Eli Sudbrack’s work. The Allen Memorial Art Museum premiered its should consider ditching the exhibition of Sudbrack’s art last Friday.

Courtesy of Selina Bartlett ’Sco to attend.

After the last fast song, frontwoman Katie Alice Greer said that they had played those songs together to give people a chance to “really dance,” and that now they were switching to something the audience could “slow dance to.” These remarks were telling in that they emphasized the importance of the flow of energy in the crowd; they hinted at the thoughtfulness that went into the shaping of the concert experience. Priests did not luck into creating a memorable audience experience but formed it intentionally — so intentionally, in fact, that the audience’s response to the music was foremost in Greer’s mind.

When I consider the show as firstly a social event and secondly a musical one, I see it as a great success. However, if I were to consider it on purely musical terms, choosing not to pay attention to the audience or the show as an event, it wasn’t particularly successful. I don’t enjoy the band on their musical merits alone. However, the show was well worth the cost of a ticket because Priests succeeded in crafting an enjoyable and emotionally fulfilling environment.

Sawyer Takes Modern Approach to Food Continued from page 11 exercises true genius in applying traditional techniques — in this case, slowroasting — to unusual ingredients. Confit is an old French technique that was used to preserve leftover duck legs before the luxury of refrigeration. Sawyer applies this method to simple chicken wings, elevating a normal bar snack to praise-worthy heights. Due to the confit process, the meat slides right off the bone, turning a usually messy dish into an almost dainty affair. It’s quite fun.

Conversely, Sawyer also applies modern techniques to conventional ingredients. For example, he serves a typical French dessert, pot de crème, that is essentially a custard. However, instead of using a standard flavor like chocolate, Sawyer decided to attempt a deconstructed caramel corn in the form of custard. He purees real buttered popcorn, which he infuses into the custard, then tops the dish with silky caramel and sea salt. When I first tried this dish, I had an existential crisis. Is this custard? Is it caramel corn? What if my blue is your red? Sawyer used to rotate the flavors of his pot de crème, but this one proved so popular that it earned a permanent spot on the menu.

Other standout dishes include the smoky grilled Caesar salad, unconventionally paired foie gras-steamed clams and the massive yet tender whole short rib. The Greenhouse Tavern also offers a $44 four-course menu, which is easily shareable.

As an Obie, if you are curious what the Cleveland buzz is all about — and you should be — do yourself a favor and get some questions answered at The Greenhouse Tavern.

Arts

The Oberlin Review, February 27, 2015

Page 13

Three Songwriters to Showcase Fresh Talent Daniel Cramer Oberlin’s songwriting scene will take center stage Saturday, March 7 at 8 p.m. during Three Songwriters, when College sophomores Rob Jamner, Kristin McFadden and College first-year Ethan Aronson perform an intimate concert at Slow Train Cafe. All three musical artists are involved in Oberlin Songwriters, a club that Jamner and McFadden started last semester. The duo hopes both to get their group chartered and to teach a songwriting ExCo next semester.

“There’s a lot of great people here,” Jamner said of the songwriting scene at Oberlin. “I think for non-Conservatory people, there aren’t always as many opportunities. You sort of have to make those for yourself, and that’s part of why I’m starting to set up performances like these and why I have been working to create this chartered organization.”

Jamner said he wanted to do a show of this sort for a while.

“I finally found the time and just decided to set it up and pick two people that I’ve had experience playing with. I really like their music, and they’re fun to play with.”

McFadden first performed with Jamner, whom he met in a

first-year seminar, at an open mic early last year. Since then, they have been recruiting songwriters. “We know that there’s a bunch of songwriters at Oberlin just writing songs by themselves in their rooms because they love to do it, and then they perform them usually at open mics. … What I thought would be awesome [would] be talking about these songs. We should be collaborating, not just being alone in our room[s],” said McFadden.

Jamner and McFadden noticed Aronson last semester when he played at the Cat in the Cream. Aronson sings and plays mandolin, adding diversity to a show that will feature more traditional songwriter instrumentation including piano and guitar. Aronson’s Winter Term project this year was writing folk songs about political issues. The first-year, whose biggest influences include Phil Oaks, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Víctor Jara, said that songwriting is an important tool. “The medium of a song can provide a certain emotional resonance to issues that isn’t available through other media,” said Aronson, “It can be a really powerful way for people to learn about an issue or become emotionally invested in an issue.”

Aronson explained that songwriting is a personal experi-

ence. “Songwriting provides a means of self expression and catharsis, a way to say what I want to say in a really powerful and beautiful and meaningful way,” he said. “For other people it could provide resonance, expression, insight and beauty.”

Aronson is not yet sure what he will be performing March 7, but knows his set will definitely include “The Gallows and the Guillotine,” a song he wrote about capital punishment.

Jamner will perform three original songs, “Keeping to Myself,” “Tapestry” and “Serenade.” “I write about all sorts of things,” Jamner said. “Even if it’s a narrative about someone else, it’s got to resonate with me somehow. I like telling stories in my songs.”

McFadden looks forward to showcasing her songs with a fresh perspective. “[My ex-boyfriend] wrote a poem, and I turned it into a song,” said McFadden. “The other song is ‘Sweet Song,’ which I wrote after coming home for the first time after being away.”

Jamner is excited to experience performing alongside fellow songwriters. “I think all of our songs … have grown during the rehearsal process,” he said. “This isn’t the only time I’m going to do a performance like this for sure.”

Professors Shed Light on Chamber Music Experience Colin Roshak As an ensemble, soloists and professors Amir Eldan, Haewon Song and David Bowlin are a force with which to be reckoned. On Wednesday Feb. 18 the Oberlin Trio — comprised of the cellist, pianist and violinist, respectively — offered a dynamic and powerful performance that showcased works by Haydn, Shostakovich and Dvorak. The trio, which performs throughout the year and was included as part of the chamber music intensive during

Winter Term, gives students a fresh perspective on the musical capabilities of their teachers and chamber coaches. Furthermore, students can better grasp what it’s like to perform with a professional chamber ensemble by watching their own instructors cohesively engage in aesthetically unique pieces.

First on the program was Piano Trio No. 39 in G Major by prolific classical composer Joseph Haydn.

Bowlin began with an elegant descending melody — the main motivic idea of the first move-

ment. Eldan provided a bass line and countermelody, atop which Bowlin moved delicately. Song’s playing showcased her especially tasteful touch at the piano, which was well suited to Haydn’s style.

The trio’s balance was flawless.

After accidentally forgetting to remove his mute before beginning the first movement, Bowlin exchanged a smile with Eldar before continuing the program. The small shared moment added a comforting light-heartedness and humor to Haydn’s already playful repertoire. The second movement

was especially touching. Bowlin and Song bore the bulk of the melody while Eldan thickened the sound texture with a low, unhurried bass line. The movement resolved peacefully before the third and final movement erupted enthusiastically. The rondo finale provided a lively and exciting contrast to the gentler first two movements.

In the second piece, the trio jumped forward nearly 150 years to the great Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Shostakovich wrote Trio No. 2 in E Minor in 1944 in memory of a close musician friend named Ivan Sollertinsky who had passed away. The piece began with Eldan playing complex harmonics in the extreme upper range of the cello and developed into a slower, introspective theme. Bowlin soon joined into the fugue, followed

by Song playing in the lowest range of the piano. At first, the contrasting timbre and range was hard on the ear, but the musicians attained musical unity as the piece progressed.

Despite a slow beginning, the increasing tempo empha––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Bowlin and Song bore the bulk of the melody while Eldan thickened the sound texture with a low, unhurried bass line.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––– sized Shostakovich’s Russian style. Bowlin maneuvered the extremely technical passages of the movement with great facility, while Song and Eldan provided a continuously driving eighth-note pattern. Each movement had clear contrasting character: the second movement was jaunty while the third movement was somber, with Eldan and Bowlin exchanging slow melodies amid a constantly driving piano. The final movement introduced a famous Shostakovich theme, which he later quoted in many of his other pieces. The piano began the theme, which the en-

tire ensemble ultimately played in unison. The piece dwindled to a somber and melancholic ending as the texture thinned and the voices grew further apart again. The final chords were reminiscent of the opening to the first movement, and the music slowly died away with delicate pizzicatos and low piano chords.

Antonin Dvorak’s Trio in E Minor, Op. 90, “Dumky Trio,” one of the most well known pieces in the trio’s repertoire, was reserved for the second half of the program. The piece, whose name is derived from a Slavic word referring to epic ballads, is one of Dvorak’s most well-known chamber works. As a form, a dumka — singular of dumky — is a large, introspective composition interspersed with energetic and cheerful sections.

Eldan began dramatically with powerful notes, to which Song responded with a descending motif. The movement alternated moods, from soft and delicate to thrilling and animated. The second movement began with a delightful piano melody, which the strings joined with impeccable intonation and clarity of sound. The music swelled to a dramatic tutti melody before dying away and introducing new melodic ideas. Dvorak’s folk-like musical language was especially evident in this movement and came to a climactic finish with a soft pizzicato from Bowlin.

The final three movements flowed seamlessly and offered stark contrasts in sound and timbre, which the Oberlin Trio handled easily. From the dramatic opening of the first movement to the jubilant final chords, the Oberlin Trio performed admirably, with flawless intonation and communication. The concert offered a variety of musical styles, from Haydn’s lighter style to Shostakovich’s intensely atmospheric sound and finally Dvorak’s melodic work. The Oberlin Trio cemented their stellar reputation with each successive piece and left the audience excited for future performances.

Sports

Page 14

IN THE LOCKER ROOM This week, the Review sat down with senior women’s lacrosse captains Bronwen Schumacher and Kate Hanick to discuss their leadership roles, team traditions and the weirdest things that have happened during their time on the team.

What are your expectations for the team this year?

Bronwen Schumacher: Win. It’s pretty well established that we are now where we were after spring break of last year, and with that power, I think that we can easily beat the people who we lost to last year: DePauw [University], grr.

The confidence is there, and the composure is there. Our attack’s shots are much more precise, and we do a lot better under stress.

Kate Hanick: The difference between this year’s team and last year’s team is that last year’s team thought we could win the [North Coast Athletic Conference], but this year’s team is like, ‘We’re going to win NCACs.’ I think we are a more mature team, and that shows on the field a lot more.

How has the team changed since you first got to Oberlin?

BS: I think that our team now is about lacrosse, whereas before it was more about the indi-

The Oberlin Review, February 27, 2015

Women’s Lacrosse Captains

vidual. Because of better recruitment, people come from similar lacrosse backgrounds. You can see that there is a level of understanding of lacrosse that people bring in from high school that wasn’t there when I came. When I came, there was actually a lack of a fundamental understanding of how to play the sport. There was good skill but no field sense.

KH: We are a more cohesive group, and we all really mesh well, and that’s a great thing.

Injuries always seem to be an issue for your team.

Why do you think that is?

BS: Williams [Field house]! Within one week of playing there, two of our athletes both had their shin splints return.

KH: It used to be a hockey rink, then they put some concrete in place of the ice, then they put a thin layer of turf over that, and they wonder why repeated running for a month and a half causes stress fractures.

Everyone just kind of feels pain everywhere.

Do you approach things differently as team captains?

BS: Kate’s captainship is field captain. It’s always been that way, even when she was a freshman. Everybody — senior, junior, sophomore — looked to Kate. I think that’s just solidified in her captain role.

I think she has an intimidation factor that I don’t have. You want to impress Kate when you step on the field. People who don’t play sports here don’t understand what mental toughness means, especially physically. People just give up, and I don’t because I play lacrosse. You realize how good it feels to not give up, even if you lose.

KH: It kind of sucks having to be the responsible ones. I feel like we have to dictate the tone of each practice because I feel like

What about your time on the lacrosse team will help you after you graduate?

BS: To preface, we had a really tough coaching experience before Lynda McCandlish became our head coach. We learned how to deal with people who abuse power. Also, we learned [to be] able to manage a thing that you do for 25 to 30 to 40 hours a week, depending on the week, when a lot of people here don’t do anything besides school. That’s helped a tremendous amount with time management.

KH: All of the things that we’ve dealt with over the years, learning what it takes to have a really cohesive group of women and people in general, will help. [We’ve also learned] how to deal with really stressful and demeaning

Bronwen Schumacher (left) and Kate Hanick if we are in a goofy mood, the whole team thinks it’s time to be goofy. Bronwen always has a very complete view of the field, and I feel like she articulates it in a really concise way to the team. She also is the spiritual leader of the team.

When we are down in a game or lagging in practice, she always recognizes that and has something motivating to say. For all the injuries that I’ve had, I get this fight-or-flight instinct, but you just have to learn to power through it.

That’s a huge thing for our team, dealing with losses

or whatever comes our way.

Are there any team traditions that have been around your entire time at Oberlin?

BS: We have some secret traditions that always happen before the first home game, but we will not be exposing those.

KH: Every year, we have a stick that has been passed down every year to a younger player. It goes to a person that embodies that spirit and enthusiasm about the sport, no matter the adversity they face.

Editorial: FIFA Faces Criticism Scheduling 2022 World Cup Continued from page 16 in anticipation for the World Cup, human rights violations seem inevitable in Qatar. Even aside from this crisis, FIFA’s decision is shortsighted and faulty at best.

FIFA will be pulling the best players from club leagues around the world during the World Cup without compensation. Not that the soccer world’s elite need much financial fluffing from FIFA, but this decision seems reflective of the organization’s dismissive attitude toward its critics. FIFA continually refuses to take responsibility for its careless decision to give the bid to Qatar.

For as long as the World Cup has existed, the event has taken place over the summer. FIFA’s decision to shrug off Qatar’s climate, which typically averages 105º F in July, was its first fatal move. There was never going to be a feasible way to host the tournament over June and July, de-

spite promises of high-end cooling technology.

On a personal note, a pivotal part of occasions like the World Cup, or even the Olympics, is the tradition that comes with it. With many places experiencing cold weather during November and December, outdoor screenings will most likely be eliminated for viewing parties in the United States. Even further, most employees usually distribute vacations over late December and in the summer months. With the untraditional timing of the events, the Cup will likely draw a smaller viewing crowd from the United States.

Overall, the lack of responsibility that FIFA is taking in its decision to perpetuate a human rights crisis and disrupt club seasons is troubling at best. We can only hope that some of these major issues are ironed out before the tournament and that workers’ rights take priority in future planning.

Home Games This Week Friday, Feb. 27

5 p.m. – Men’s tennis vs. Indiana Institute of Technology in the John W. Heisman Field House

Wednesday, March 4

4:30 p.m. – Men’s lacrosse vs. Medaille College in the Austin E. Knowlton Athletic Complex

environments, how to depend on each other for support and how to find the right resources for that support.

What is the weirdest thing that happened during your time on the team?

BS: We have just created our first annual competition, the Lip-Sync Competition at the ’Sco. Kate sang “Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight and the Pips, and she was wearing a velvet bodysuit with leopard-print bellbottoms and a fur coat.

She pranced around stage lip-syncing.

KH: Bronwen and I were doing a relay race and we were on separate teams up against each other. It was a sprint up and sprint back, and we get to the line at the same time, and then we turn around, and Bronwen is ahead of me.

So I decided to pull her pinny really hard, but she was wearing a not-so-supportive sports bra that day, so her boob just popped out. The whole team was waiting at the finish line and she was completely exposed. Everybody was scarred. We’re also going to miss the old locker rooms and showering naked with the other teams.

Interview by Nate Levinson, Sports editor Photo by Briana Santiago

The Power of the Sweet Potato Isabel Hulkower Columnist Welcome to the hottest new column in the sports section. I have a degree from Internet University in health fads with a minor in home remedies, and I want to put my hard-earned knowledge to use to provide some commentary on all the big and little issues affecting student health.

Of course, it’s important to mention that the concept of “health” is personal, relative, and completely culturally determined. Standards of what is healthy change all the time, and many things are unnecessarily pathologized or go unacknowledged by the medical community. Basically, all mass medical advice is pretty suspect, and this column aims to remind everyone that there isn’t any one proper conceptualization of health.

Now let’s move on to a truly relevant and topical subject: sweet potatoes.

It’s the tail end of Black History Month, and though you might only know BHM all-star George Washington Carver as a guy who loved peanuts a little too much, sweet potatoes were his original foodcrush. During World War I, when there were extreme crop shortages, Carver researched alternative uses for this starchy wonder, subsequently pioneering a massive array of sweet potato-based products. Some standouts include shoe blackener, synthetic silk, chocolate, 73

types of dye, instant coffee, yeast, rubber and something called “breakfast food #5.”

Sweet potatoes are useful even beyond their transformative powers — they are also really healthy. They are comically dense with nutrients, providing vitamins A and C as well as potassium, calcium, copper, dietary fiber, niacin, iron and magnesium. The bright orange color comes from carotenoid beta-carotene, which is a powerful antioxidant that wards off free radicals that damage cells through oxidation. So, sweet potatoes support your immune system and lower your risk of heart disease and cancer.

A study from the Journal of Medicinal Food found that sweet potatoes help reduce inflammation in brain and nerve tissue throughout your body, and a separate study confirmed the anecdotal knowledge that they can also stabilize hormones. On top of all that, they are just so tasty, and that, dear friends, is because they are packed with sugar. However, sweet potatoes are a low-glycemic index food, which means they release glucose very slowly into the bloodstream instead of spiking your blood sugar like cake.

Clearly, sweet potatoes are your buddy, so whether you’re fighting for them in a co-op line or delicately weighing them against some fries in Stevie, please give them the respect they so obviously deserve.

The Oberlin Review, February 27, 2015

Sports

Page 15

— Men’s Basketball —

Battling Bishops Knock Yeomen Out of Playoffs Bob Cornell The men’s basketball team saw its season end in defeat when it fell 83–66 to the No. 1 team in the conference, the Ohio Wesleyan Battling Bishops, last Tuesday.

The Yeomen had previously struggled against the Battling Bishops, falling 86–61 and 106–76 earlier in the season. Tuesday’s contest had the Yeomen struggling again, and though they played it close for much of the game, trailing the Bishops by three points late in the first half, the Bishops’ offensive surges kept the Yeomen at bay.

A 19–7 run in the final seven-and-a-half minutes of the first half pushed the Bishops to a commanding 54–39 lead that they would not let go. After the game, junior center Randy Ollie praised the nationally ranked Bishops’ ability to put up points.

“Ohio Wesleyan is able to put up a lot of points because they are very [effective] at moving the ball to find open shooters and [are] really good at converting off of second chances and turnovers,” he said.

Despite the Bishops’ high-scoring ability, the Yeomen played tough defense in the second half, holding them to just 29 points. The Yeomen also struggled, however, scoring only 27 points of their own on a paltry 7-of-27 from the field.

Head Coach Isaiah Cavaco said that he believes the Yeomen are more than capable of hanging with the Battling Bishops, but need to be more consistent throughout the game.

“In stretches, we can go point for point with them,” he said. “We have to be a little more disciplined. …

Sometimes we get caught up in the pace, and that is when they make their 10–2 runs or 14–5 runs, and then you play them even for another six minutes. It is just a matter of making sure we don’t have mental lapses.”

Ollie led the Yeomen with a strong performance, scoring 20 points, grabbing 8 boards and recording 2 blocks. In their last game as Yeomen, seniors Austin Little and Miles Gueno scored 15 and 9 points, respectively, off the bench.

Still, it was not enough for the team to overcome a sluggish defensive first half.

The men’s basketball regular season ended in defeat last Saturday at home, as the team fell to The College of Wooster Fighting Scots 58–45. The Fighting Scots are currently ranked 24th in the nation.

Plagued by poor shooting throughout, the Yeomen finished 18-of-56 from the floor and 3-of-21 from behind the arc. The shots were available, but the team struggled to connect on a multitude of wideopen looks.

“They are probably the most athletic team in all five positions across the board,” Cavaco said.

“I thought we had good shots; we just didn’t make them.”

Nate Cohen was the only Yeomen player to score in double figures with 10 points, but he finished 4-of-14 from the field in 31 minutes of play. Ollie also had a strong performance in the loss, finishing with seven points and a game-

high eleven rebounds.

Prior to the game, Oberlin honored seniors Miles Gueno, Austin Little, Jesse Neugarten and junior Ian Campbell, who is graduating early this semester.

The Yeomen now turn their attention to the 20152016 season with all five starters returning — big men Ollie and Matthew Walker and guards Jack Poyle, Nate Cohen and Zach Meyers.

Expectations are high

with so much veteran talent returning.

“The goal is to beat Wooster, to beat Ohio Wesleyan and to win the conference championship,” said Cavaco. “Matt and Randy can be a really good one-two punch with Jack and his ability to stretch the floor and Nate with his ability to get to the basket.”

Ollie backed Cavaco’s claims, expressing confidence that the best is yet to come.

“Now that the season is over, I definitely feel as though we fell short of our expectations to host a conference game like the women did, but it’s really cool to have the most overall and conference wins since the early 90s,” Cavaco said. “Next year fans and followers should expect big things from myself, as well as the rest of the team, and I can promise that next season should be a historic season for the program.”

Senior captain Jesse Neugarten hits a layup against a defender from The College of Wooster last Saturday in Philips gym. The Yeomen concluded their season on Tuesday, finishing with an overall record of 10–16 and a conference record of 6–12.

Briana Santiago

Women’s Basketball Falls to Ohio Wesleyan, Season Ends Continued from page 16 we were going to lose that game,” she said.

Though Tuesday was the last time Marquette will step on the floor for the Yeowomen, her influence on the women’s basketball program and the entire athletics department will not soon be forgotten.

“She has really shown people what it means and what it looks like to be committed,” said Delta Lodge Director of Athletics Natalie Winkelfoos. “I think that’s created a model for other student-athletes. … She knows what it means to work hard. She is in the gym constantly, working on her fitness, working on her shot, but she also studies the game. She is quality, and she is a wonderful young woman who is going to go far in this life.”

Going forward, Head Coach Kerry Jenkins knows Marquette’s stellar production won’t be easily replaced.

“There’s going to be a huge, cavernous hole on our team next year with Christina graduating, and that’s not going to be filled by one person,” he said.

Losing Marquette will certainly present a great set of challenges for the Yeowomen, but with Jenkins at the helm, Winkelfoos is confident about the future of the women’s basketball team.

“I think what [ Jenkins] brings to his program is a true sense of consistency,” she said. “He’s a no-nonsense kind of guy, and I think that his players understand that and know when they come to practice that it’s time to go to work.”

Despite the sudden end to the season, that consistency was as evident as ever after the game. Jenkins told the team after the game on Tuesday not to hang their heads and that there are great things ahead of them.

Sports The Oberlin Review

Page 16

February 27, 2015

— Women’s Tennis —

Yeowomen Split Matches in Weekend Play Tyler Sloan Sports Editor The women’s tennis team bested the visiting Baldwin Wallace University Yellow Jackets with a clean 9–0 victory in its first set of matches last Saturday. First-year Mayada Audeh led the Yeowomen in the No. 1 singles spot, breezing past her opponent in two sets with twin scores of 6–1. However, Oberlin saw tougher competition in the Division II Indiana University of Pennsylvania Crimson Hawks later that day, losing in all but one match with a score of 8–1.

Sophomore Emma Brezel, who held the No. 1 doubles spot in Saturday’s contest against the Yellow Jackets, said that the team anticipated weaker competition from Baldwin Wallace, as the team is currently 0–5.

“Baldwin Wallace, historically, is one of the weakest teams that we play,” she said. “But my doubles match ended up being a lot harder than we expected, which is actually good because sometimes it’s nice to create pressure situations that you can’t create in practice.”

Brezel was joined by her teammate, junior Erin Johnson, in the top seed of the doubles matches to push past opponents Kelsey Blatt and Mackenzie Donalson 9–7. For Johnson’s top-notch performance in recent games, the North Coast Athletic Conference tabbed her as Player of the Week last week. She has tallied over 65 career wins for the

Yeowomen.

Following up Brezel and Johnson were junior Ariana Abayomi and sophomore Anna Treidler in the No. 2 double spots. The duo quickly defeated the visiting Yellow Jackets in their match, finishing the game with a score of 8–2. Sophomore Olivia Hay and junior Alex Kahn held their challengers down at the No. 3 spot 8–0. In the singles competition, Brezel won her match in the No. 2 position and Hay followed suit in the No. 3 spot.

Senior captain Grace Porter rested during the matches against the Yellow Jackets in preparation for her contest later in the day against the Crimson Hawks.

Porter’s morning off proved rewarding in her doubles match, where she was joined by first-year Sarah Hughes. The two Yeowomen tallied the sole victory against Indiana University of Pennsylvania, taking the game home 8–4. Porter said the hard-fought victory helped improve the team’s morale and that, overall, her team performed well against the talented competition.

“It was a good improvement because we have played against tough teams like that, that are ranked top 20 in the country,” Porter said. “We haven’t been able to hang with the matches quite as closely, but against this team everyone was competing really well. My doubles partner and I won, which gave us a lot of confidence for how our doubles season might look.”

Brezel compared the Crimson Hawk’s skill level to previous tough competition, like University of Chicago and Case Western University, nationally ranked at No. 12 and 23, respectively.

On Wednesday night, the Yeowomen hosted the Ashland University Eagles in the John W. Heisman Field House. Brezel led the way in the top singles flight, defeating Martina Baca in two sets, 6–1 and 6–2. Audeh and first-year Jackie McDermott also emerged victorious in the No. 1 doubles slot, winning 8–4. Overall, the Yeowomen had a convincing win with a final score of 8–1. Head Coach Constantine Ananiadis said that the victory demonstrates the progress

his team has made since last season.

“Our doubles is continuing to get better every time we step on the court,” Ananiadis said via email.

“Even without our number one doubles team out there, Grace [Porter] and Sarah [Hughes], we handily beat Ashland, which was good to see, as we’ve struggled against them in the past. In singles too, our freshmen are continuing to figure things out and add elements to their game, which will come in handy later in the season when we face some tougher tests.”

Looking forward, the Yeowomen will travel to Lima, Ohio to play the University of Northwestern Ohio this Saturday at 11 a.m.

First-year Mayada Audeh returns a shot in her match against the visiting Ashland University Eagles on Wednesday. Audeh won both her matches in the No. 1 doubles and No. 2 singles slots to bring her total career wins to six.

Effie Kline-Salamon

— Women’s Basketball —

Despite Tough End, Future Bright for Yeowomen Nate Levinson Sports Editor The women’s basketball team saw its recordbreaking season come to an end last Tuesday when the Yeowomen fell to the visiting Ohio Wesleyan University Battling Bishops by a score of 75–58.

A raucous crowd of 456 was in attendance to witness the Yeowomen’s first home playoff game since 1990.

The Yeowomen hung tough with the Battling Bishops for over half the game, as junior Lindsey Bernhardt tied the game at 39 points with 17:53 to go in the second half with a three-pointer. It was all Bishops from there, however, as they capitalized on 13 second-half turnovers by the Yeowomen to earn a 17-point victory.

After the game, Head Coach Kerry Jenkins attributed the sluggish second half to the effects of a long season of hard work.

“Their effort and their investment was extraor-

dinary, and I think at the very end, they just kind of wore down,” he said.

“They still fought to the very end, but we were a team that had to work hard and play really well in order to be successful, and I think that the tank was on ‘E’ at the very end.”

The loss capped a 14–12 season, in which the Yeowomen set a new school record of 10 conference wins.

Star senior forward Christina Marquette said the difference this year from past years was the level of commitment from the team.

“Everybody bought in from the beginning,” she said. “We all sacrificed a lot. Even once classes started, people were coming in throughout the day to get in individual workouts.”

Jenkins acknowledged that setting the record for conference wins was a solid achievement, but that the team’s goals going forward don’t revolve

around regular-season wins.

“We want to advance further within the conference tournament,” he said. “I don’t know that our express goals are ever going to be about how many wins we have.

I think that we’d established a pattern of development that requires us

to drop some games early to develop a bench and develop personnel.”

In her last ever college game, Marquette headlined yet again for the Yeowomen. Scoring 22 points and pulling down seven rebounds, she capped off a historic season with an average of 18.2 points and 8.4 re-

bounds per game.

After seeing the Yeowomen finish well below .500 in each of her previous three seasons with the team, Marquette found the early exit from the playoffs an especially tough pill to swallow.

“None of us thought See Women’s, page 15

Too Hot for Qatar Tyler Sloan Sports Editor The 2022 FIFA World Cup, scheduled to take place in Qatar, has been doomed from the start, and the organization put the final nail in the coffin by likely rescheduling the final match to take place the night before Christmas Eve. With the traditional timing of the World Cup altered due to exceedingly hot temperatures in Qatar, the club season will be interrupted without compensation for many players.

Beyond frustrating a number of organizations with its scheduling choice, including the Barclays Premier League in Europe, FIFA has also mostly turned a blind eye to the impending human rights crisis for migrant workers. Even if employees are not subjected to the unworkable summer weather, there is large-scale global concern regarding the conditions for migrant workers in Qatar.

Recent reports published by whistle-blowers like Human Rights Watch have shown that only 10 percent of the population is comprised of Qatari nationals. Despite laws put in place to prevent the abuse of migrant workers, there is still widespread maltreatment. Employers often confiscate workers’ passports and withhold wages for extended periods of time, in addition to prohibiting employees to change jobs without permission.

The same report from Human Rights Watch also details that employees can have workers’ documentation redacted by reporting that they have absconded. Without the proper documentation, employees risk deportation, arrest and even detention.

Cases of employee abuse or human trafficking are rarely presented in Qatar’s courts despite the existence of such dangerous practices.

With a new stadium, airport and multiple other construction projects underway See Editorial, page 15

Senior guard Christina Marquette dribbles past a defender in an NCAC playoff game against Wittenberg University on Sunday. Marquette finishes her career holding the all-time scoring and rebound record for Oberlin women’s basketball as one of the most decorated players in the program’s history.

Courtesy of Erik Andrews