April 10, 2015 by The Oberlin Review

The Oberlin Review

APRIL 10, 2015 VOLUME 143, NUMBER 19

Local News Bulletin News briefs from the past week City Council Passes Food Trucks Ordinance Oberlin City Council passed an ordinance this Monday allowing food trucks to attend festivals and private parties. However, food truck vendors have long attended annual functions, such as the Chalk Walk, and this new ordinance will simply codify what already occurs. After almost a year of discussions and failed proposals, the ordinance passed six to one. Council Vice President Sharon FairchildSoucy said in an interview with The Oberlin News Tribune that, although she had reservations about the ordinance, she voted to pass it in order to move forward on the issue. College Named “Favorite Vegan-Friendly Small School” Students around the nation voted in peta2’s Favorite Vegan-Friendly School Contest, electing Oberlin as the most vegan-friendly small school in the U.S. Oberlin won by a 70-vote margin out of over 13,000 votes cast, edging out 15 other small schools, including runnerup Wesleyan University. Oberlin Trustees Create Dedicated Email Class trustees Inyang Udo-Inyang, OC ’12, Joseph Condon, OC ’13, and Nicholas Loh, OC ’14, announced the creation of an Oberlin trustee email, class.trustee@ oberlin.edu. The alumni said in a statement published in The Source that they hope this will be an accessible way to update trustees about events and concerns on campus. The trustees also introduced a new format for the trustee-student forum at the last meeting where students signed up beforehand and met with trustees in several small groups.

Polarized Council Decides Against Releasing Goals Katherine Kingma City Council decided at Monday’s meeting not to release the projected goals for City Manager Eric Norenberg, whose resignation was requested by four out of the seven City Council members in January. Instead, the Council opted to hold a seventh private executive session to discuss the goals that were brought forward in lieu of a conclusive vote on Norenberg’s dismissal. According to the written agenda for the meeting, the Council had planned to approve the goals and make them public. But when the goals came up in this meeting, Council member Bryan Burgess objected because he felt the goals written down didn’t match the rules agreed upon in the previous meetings. “At the last meeting, we agreed we needed to come together for another executive session,” said Council member Kristin Peterson. In response, several other Council members

Council member Bryan Burgess, Council Vice President Sharon Fairchild-Soucy and Council President Scott Broadwell participate in a Council meeting on Monday. At the meeting, Council, divided between those who think City Manager Eric Norenberg should be replaced and those who believe he should stay, decided not to release its goals for Norenberg. Effie Kline-Salamon

voiced disagreement about whether they had indeed come to a conclusion in the previous meeting or if they had agreed to have another meeting about it. “After six executive sessions and eight and a half hours of discussion, it seems we are not quite done yet,” said Council

President Scott Broadwell, eyes downcast as he lightly massaged his temple. At the meeting, several Oberlin citizens expressed frustration with how the Council was dealing with Norenberg as well as other issues such as local employment. “The Council is crippled

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right now,” Council Vice President Sharon Fairchild-Soucy said later to the Review. “I don’t know what will heal the rift in the Council because it’s strong and it’s deep and it’s not very well understood by us. It seems to me on one side we have all these new [Council members] who

want to get rid of the city manager, but they haven’t really articulated what they’re unhappy about.” When asked if problems about communication and unity within the Council could be rectified, Fairchild-Soucy said, “I don’t think current problems can be rectified with this Council. We have a new election in November, and I’m looking forward to Council changes so the city can be governed more effectively.” Broadwell also seemed to have low expectations about the possibility of reconciliation in this current City Council. “I think it’s ridiculous,” Broadwell said. “We’ve already had six executive sessions. We don’t need a seventh. I think they are hateful and vindictive, and they’re trying to get back at Eric. Why? I’d prefer not to say. … Let’s just say I’m very much looking forward to the new election in November.” See Council, page 4

Student Health Center to Double Number of Psychiatrists Louis Krauss Staff Writer Next year, the student health fee will rise from $200 to $230 in order to hire more psychiatrists in the Student Health Center. The health fee, which was introduced in the 2013–2014 year, pays for the counselors and psychiatrists at the Health Center, who visit a couple of times a week to give free appointments to students. According to Dean Eric Estes, who discussed the fee hike with Student Senate about a month ago, the additional $30 will increase the number of psychiatrists from two to four or five next year and increase the number of available student appointments by 50 percent. Student Senator, Chair of the Student Health Working Group and double-degree sophomore Jeremy Poe believes this cost change will help reduce the long wait times for psychiatric meetings. “My understanding is this $30 increase is in line with something we’ve

been hearing from students for quite a while: asking for more frequent psychiatrist and counselor meetings,” Poe said. “In scheduling a psychiatric appointment, you’re looking at a three- to four-week wait. So what’s great about this is it really functions to collectively better campus with only a modest increase.” Poe said that even though some administrators claim students will always get appointments made the same or the next day, reconciling student schedules with the psychiatrists’ visits makes the process much more complicated. For College sophomore Benjamin Biffis, part of the issue with arranging times to use the Health Center is simply its location and small number of open hours. “For one thing, they’re located in a very inconvenient location — quite a trek, especially when you are really sick,” Biffis said. “Also, they have such limited hours, … which makes it extremely hard to seek care when you need it most.”

Opening Doors Students consider career opportunities after graduation.

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The College has tried to improve the accessibility of the Health Center by providing a 24/7 phone line to talk with a professional counselor, but many students still complain that the Health Center is far away from central campus. As of now, Oberlin’s health fee is significantly lower than that of some liberal arts colleges such as Kenyon College, which charges $1,620. However, part of Kenyon’s fee may be going toward uses other than health care. “My concern was, if we’re going to have a health fee, it should either go into financial aid, so the health fee doesn’t burden students with financial aid, or the money should go into more resources for students’ health needs,” Estes said. According to Estes, the increased cost was already factored into the total costs for students with financial aid, so those who can’t afford it won’t have to pay more. Poe said that even though having more psychiatrists will help reduce the wait time, it’s also important for

Pocket Hit!

Pulitzer Poet Seshadri returns to Oberlin to conclude Convocation Series. See page 13

INDEX:

Opinions 5

This Week in Oberlin 8

This week, the Review sat down with bowling Head Coach Trevor Hagedorn. See page 14

Arts 10

Sports 16

the College to make sure it betters the preparedness of the physicians and accommodates a wide range of students. “I’d say we can always be looking to improve the staff both through hiring new people and having student input and also having professional development programs for staff,” Poe said. “A lot of the concerns we hear in Student Health Working Group are that staff members aren’t equipped to deal with either low-income or nongender-binary students, so I think we should always be looking to better serve students.” Dean Estes added that, aside from the health fee, the College’s health insurance plan will increase next year from $1,023 to $1,075, and that the added cost would help provide insurance for students who require sex-reassignment surgery. Additionally, he believes that by having a wider range of psychiatrists, it will increase the likelihood that students will find a doctor with whom they feel comfortable.

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The Oberlin Review, April 10, 2015

Organization Proposes a Pipeline Reroute Sarah Conner Staff Writer The Coalition to Reroute NEXUS presented an alternate route for the NEXUS Pipeline to the Lorain County Commissioners on April 1, continuing the debate surrounding the path of the pipeline — a 250-mile Spectra Energy project which crosses through Ohio, Michigan and Canada. If NEXUS accepts, the proposal will move the project’s path slightly south of the original expected route and prevent the pipeline from crossing through Oberlin. Paul Gierosky, a member of CORN, said the proposal would minimize the pipeline’s interference with wetlands and structures such as houses and schools. “The proposal that we made used industry standard software — the same software that NEXUS is using — to manage our route,” Gierosky said. “Our goal is to minimize the conflict. The two things we were able to analyze were the conflict with structure, so you’ve got residences, churches, schools; and the other piece was wetlands, acres of wetlands.” The new route would minimize

residential and structure conflicts by 70 percent across all affected counties. In Lorain County alone, the reroute would cause a 50 percent decrease in structural conflicts and a 99 percent decrease of wetland and environmental conflicts. Overall, the pipeline is planned to cost around $1.5 billion. Gierosky explained that at that cost, the pipeline should cost about $6 million per mile to build. The new path would add 9.3 miles to the route, resulting in a $55 million cost increase. However, this figure doesn’t take into account the construction benefits of placing the line in less-populated areas and creating a straighter path, according to Gierosky. “The [current] route would put the pipeline in the city of Green, which is a populated area with extensive numbers of homes and extensive land,” Gierosky said. “Going from a populated area like Medina County, they are going to reduce the costs of acquiring the land they need. We gave them a route [that] is much straighter.” According to Gierosky, a straighter path will make the line easier to build and might even cut back on

costs. “The route they have is constantly making bends because they are going through a populated area, and they are looking for undeveloped land,” Gierosky said. “All of those bends cost money, and they are just harder to build. You can possibly run smaller compressor stations if there are less bends since there is less friction. It might cost them $55 million more, but there are offsets.” Members of the community are concerned about the safety of the pipeline, including the small but potential risk that the pipeline could leak or cause an explosion. Creating a new route and creating a safety corridor would help offset these risks, according to Lorain County Commissioner Lori Kokoski. Kokoski said the reroute would implement a 1,500-foot buffer zone, or a pipeline safety corridor. The blast radius is 1,500 feet so, should the pipeline blow up, everything outside of the safety corridor would be undamaged. Gierosky said creating this safety corridor is CORN’s main goal. “A pipeline safety corridor would be thoroughly engineered and care-

fully located,” Kokoski said. “We would put it in a place that would protect the safety of the public, the pipeline, people’s property values and demonstrate respect of people’s rights. If these pipeline companies had to put these pipelines in designated areas that were already set aside, they wouldn’t have the power to use eminent domain. They wouldn’t choose the route, it would be chosen for them, and the safety standards would be built in. In order to get this, we need some government agency to take action.” Kokoski said that the reroute would mostly affect farmland which, unlike residential land, is still useable even after the construction of a pipeline. “When you put a pipeline of this magnitude in my front yard, you change the value of my property,” Gierosky said. “You change what I can use it for. I cannot build a swimming pool. I can’t build a structure or a parking lot on it. I can’t even plant a tree. That is a change of use, and that changes the value. When you put a pipeline in farmland, you can still grow crops on it … There is not a change of use. We were sensitive to

the safety setback and the property valuation and the ultimate designated use of the land.” Gierosky claims that CORN’s route is better because it is sensitive to the community’s needs and land usage. “Who knows your property better than you?” he said. “[The current] route was designed on a computer in Houston, by a young man in his first job out of college. They told him to start here and get us there in a shorter distance. He had never been to Northeast Ohio. Our route is better because we were being sensitive to the safety issues associated [with] the pipeline and the designated use of the land.” Kokoski said that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has to approve the route, and then NEXUS has to review and accept it. Currently, NEXUS is reviewing the proposal but has not commented on its viability. If the reroute is not accepted, due to eminent domain laws, the land can still be seized. “We can’t stop them from putting it in, but we can try to get them to put it in a place where it has less effect on people’s property,” Kokoski said.

Seniors Contemplate Life After Oberlin, Career Opportunities Oliver Bok News Editor Outside Craig Lecture Hall on Thursday, seniors chatted while waiting for the doors of the lecture hall to open for Zero Bullsh*t: The Truth About Finding a Gig After Oberlin, a talk by Career Center Director Richard Berman, one of multiple talks in the Career Center’s Life After Oberlin series. The series is part of the administration’s increased attempts to connect students with career opportunities and comes as seniors are increasingly preoccupied with figuring out what to do after accepting their diplomas. According to President Marvin Krislov, helping Oberlin students find positions after college is one of the areas the administration and the Strategic Planning Steering Committee is focusing on the most. “We’ve created 51 quality internships this summer at $4,000 and $5,000 each,” Krislov said, referring to the internship funding the College announced last fall. “It’s a big push. We’ve gotten money from a foundation, and we’ve gotten money from some alums. That has been a big concern: that quality internships are available only to those who can afford not to be paid.” Krislov also mentioned his own offer to personally meet with any Oberlin seniors about their post-graduation plans and said that he was willing to help juniors as well. “We’re trying to work really closely with the alumni association to connect alumni with students,” Krislov said. “There are ongoing discussions about how faculty and staff can work with students and help them think about ca-

reer options. But even a lot of our most capable students just don’t want to focus on this. And we don’t want to create anxiety, but avoiding [the issue] is not going to get you a summer job.” According to last spring’s senior survey, a poll sent out to the entire senior class in May 2014 that had a 75 percent response rate, 59 percent of the class of 2014 planned to work full time and 23.6 percent planned to work part time in the fall. Roughly 15 percent planned to attend graduate school full time. For students who reported planning to work full time, 60 percent described themselves as “currently searching” for a full-time gig, 10 percent said they were considering offers and 19 percent said they had already accepted a position. An additional 9 percent said they had not begun their job-search. A Daily Beast article published last year using data from Payscale.com deemed Oberlin College the worst “return on investment” of any college with at least a 75 percent graduation rate. To Berman, the Daily Beast listicle was deeply flawed. “First of all, when you look at the data, their ‘n’ — the number of people they base the survey response on — is pathetically small,” Berman said in an interview with the Review. “But there are greater problems. To do a level playing field in terms of the data they report, they factor out all the alumni who are enrolled in or have completed advanced degrees because they want to just measure people that only got Bachelor’s [degrees]. And for most highly rated liberal arts colleges, you’ll see a correlation with a greater percentage completing advanced degrees. I think at Oberlin, within five

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Richard Berman, director of Career Services, stares contemplatively into the distance during his talk, Zero Bullsh*t: The Truth About Finding a Gig After Oberlin. The administration has recently placed increased emphasis on helping recent Oberlin graduates with their careers. Evan Davies

years, upwards of 60 percent of our graduates report having completed or being enrolled in advanced degrees, and they’re totally factored out of the surveys.” Berman also said many Oberlin students don’t look for jobs in high-paying industries, which meant that sources like Payscale, which use salary as their sole metric, fail to accurately measure Oberlin alums’ post-college satisfaction and success. The data from last spring’s senior survey seem to support Berman’s position, as the two most popular post-graduate professions

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for Oberlin students planning on working full time are teaching and art/performing, in that order. In contrast, the two most popular professions at the most selective private universities are consulting and finance, respectively. Berman also noted how career centers, at Oberlin and nationwide, have grown in importance and resources after the economy crashed. “Career centers went from being marginalized to being kind of in the fishbowl of institu-

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Off the Cuff: Amanda Matos, founder of the WomanHOOD Project Amanda Matos, founder of the WomanHOOD Project and reproductive justice activist, gave a lecture at Oberlin this Wednesday as part of the Sexual Information Center’s Radical Explorations of Sexual Health and Personal Experience week. Matos, originally from the Bronx, graduated from Columbia College in 2013, just over a year after she started the Bronx-based WomanHOOD project, a program that educates high school women of color about intersectional feminism. Matos sat down with the Review to discuss role models, the challenges facing the reproductive rights movement and Nicki Minaj. You started WomanHOOD when you were still a student at Columbia College. What are some of the challenges and advantages of starting a program like this while still an undergrad? The fun fact about WomanHOOD is that we’re completely sustained and run by young women. Even in our by-laws, no person older than 30 [can] work at our organization. That connects to why it was exciting starting this in college. My team and I had a youth perspective on it. We had this novel idea of realizing our lived experiences are just so, so relatable to the women we work with … [and] this organization should always be sustained by young people. Having that mindset really helped shape something that was sustainable and unique in and of itself. Managing a course load, managing other clubs and activities, thinking about the future, thinking about a post-grad job, all of these things add stress to starting an organization and finding the funding [and] the resources for it to last. The WomanHOOD project is a program that focuses on intersectional identities. How can high school students in your program benefit from understanding race and gender through this framework? They benefit in so many ways. Mostly because, oftentimes, it’s outsiders coming into their communities or talking in a condescending way to young people. The way we run our curriculum is that the students are empowering themselves. We’re not empowering them for themselves. They’re doing it. With the skills they’re developing by learning about this analysis at a young age, they’re able to feel equipped as they get older to combat these issues, whether it’s in their communities, in the work place, in college, even, and especially then going outside of the city. It’s very important to have a

grounding in that work at a younger age than what my team and I had because we learned these things while we were in college. If we had learned them in high school we would be very, very different. So that’s one key piece of it. What they’re learning from this program is [that] no matter what career they’re in, no matter what field, no matter how they view leadership, they’ll be bringing this analysis with them no matter where they go. They will be spreading this qualitative impact for all people that are in their lives. WomanHOOD offers workshops on Women of Color Feminism, Media Literacy and Community History. Why did you choose these topics of the many possible topics to approach? It connects to our core values, and it connects to centering ourselves on women of color because often when we’re talking about issues based on gender we’re only thinking about white women, or we’re thinking about white cis women. At the same [time], when we’re thinking about race, we’re just thinking about men of color, and women of color are left out of those conversations. Even the way that feminism is taught in schools, it’s mostly focusing on suffrage, focusing on pro-choice issues and reproductive rights or just focusing on pay-equity and not connecting race into it. Women of Color Feminism addresses the intersections of race. We’re also including a class analysis and a gender expression analysis when we talk about Women of Color Feminism. Then we think about media literacy and using pop culture. High school students, even me, [and] I’m not in high school, I love thinking about what Nicki Minaj represents or what Beyoncé represents. Media literacy is important because the media we’re consuming needs to be analyzed and addressed, but it can also be fun. It could be art. It could be therapeutic, so just having the skills to know when something is being sexist and when it’s just being empowering for the person [is] important. [As for] the community history, we’re Bronx-based. The Bronx has such a bad reputation in terms of crime, in terms of education, in terms of violence, in terms of all of these things. Know[ing] the community’s rich history and things that are there now is so important for young folks, especially when it comes to role models and thinking outside of this box or the way we’re taught in school. Those are the three areas. Of course we could have a curriculum that could go on and on and on, but we want to focus on those three pillars because that’s the most relevant to young women.

a recital. An officer responded, collected all the bottles and disposed of them.

Amanda Matos, reproductive justice advocate and founder of the WomanHOOD Project

What does Nicki Minaj represent in your opinion? We’re all young women running this organization. We don’t agree on everything, so instead we come to a consensus on how we want to teach a topic. When it comes to Nicki Minaj, we came to a consensus on how to teach the topic. We talk about her identity and her art form and the fact that she’s in a male-dominated field and that she’s a successful business woman. That, in and of itself, is incredible. It’s also incredible that she chooses how she wants to represent her body, and she chooses the way she wants to represent her sexuality and her intelligence. There’s a really great Buzzfeed article that shows some incredible quotes of hers. She directly says that she is there to empower young girls, and people think “How is she empowering young girls if she’s sexualizing herself?” but that’s not the case. She’s creating a dialogue for young women to talk about these issues and how they can control their bodies, and that’s incredible. I personally love her and listen to The Pink Print pretty much all the time. I love what she represents. I love that in some of her music videos it’s only women of color in them, and it just shows this autonomy. I think she’s a great role model for people. In your talk you’ll be discussing the impact of mainstream feminism on reproductive justice. What are some of the problems or shortcomings of mainstream feminism, and how do you address them through both the WomanHOOD project and your own work with reproductive justice in New

Thursday, April 2

Friday, April 3

9:53 a.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Police Department responded to a report of a suspicious middle-aged individual wearing a hospital gown and asking for money at the Bonner Center for Service and Learning. The individual was located and assisted by Oberlin Police. 11:42 p.m. A staff member reported several wine bottles left in the main space of Wilder Hall following

12:39 p.m. A staff member reported that a student was stuck in the elevator in Bibbins Hall. Officers responded and an electrician instructed the student on how to release the door. The student exited the elevator unharmed.

assistance of the Oberlin Police Department in dispersing a crowd of 50 to 60 people involved in an altercation on Lorain Street. Those involved dispersed upon the arrival of the Oberlin Police. 11:47 p.m. An officer on routine patrol of East Hall observed the exit sign missing from the west middle entrance way. It is unknown when the damage occurred or who is responsible. A work order was filed.

Saturday, April 4

Sunday, April 5

1 a.m. Officers requested the

1:36 a.m. Officers were re-

York City? It all connects. There’s three frameworks when we think about reproductive health. The first one is reproductive health, the second is reproductive rights and then you have reproductive justice. Reproductive health comes down to just the basic reproductive services that all people deserve to have — just to be healthy and to live just a healthy life style. Reproductive rights comes down to the legally framed rights that people have, whether that’s constitutional, whether that’s through the Supreme Court, whether that’s through human rights doctrine. … Reproductive justice [is] this firm belief in intersectionality that shows that not until all forms of oppression are eliminated can reproductive justice be achieved. Recognizing that it’s more about whether a person should have an abortion or not. It’s about [whether] a person has access to reproductive health services. Does a person have access to motherhood or parenthood? The way mainstream feminism falls into this is that too often dialogues are about being pro-choice or being anti-choice. [The conversation is] not about this access, this race analysis, this class analysis, which is rooted in history even of the forced sterilization of so many women of color in the United States and Puerto Rico. That’s not talked about. Instead what’s talked about on the more mainstream level is abortion, instead of these other issues. What are some of the major issues currently facing reproductive justice in New York City? In the New York City area and also nationwide, there are so many incredible organizations that are reproductive justice organizations, that are run by women of color, focus on LGBTQ folks, focus on low income folks, that are incredible. Because of issues like the nonprofit industrial complex, they’re unable to get the same amount of money or grants. ... Even having that support or that money or the salary to pay your staff, it’s so challenging now to get the work done. So I see this nationally, and I also see this locally — that it’s more mainstream established organizations that are taking the resources. That’s hurting the reproductive justice movement, but there’s a comeback. There are so many people working now together in organizations across the country. I see that very definitely in New York City, especially when it comes down to class issues and race issues throughout all five boroughs.

quested to assist a student ill from alcohol consumption at Kahn Hall. An ambulance was requested and the student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

Monday, April 6 10:40 a.m. A Res Ed staff member reported that a smoke detector was bagged on the third floor of South Hall. Officers responded. The bagged detector was photographed and the bag was removed. 8:23 p.m. A facilities staff member reported vandalism of

Interview by Elizabeth Dobbins, News editor Photo by Eli Steiker-Ginzberg

the wind screening at the tennis courts in the northwest area adjacent to the soccer fields. The graffiti was non-offensive in nature and done in white and yellow paint. A work order was filed for clean up.

Tuesday, April 7 9:34 a.m. Staff from Bosworth Hall reported a suspicious individual in their 40s, wearing khaki pants, a purple shirt and a brown jacket, asking for money. The individual was asked to leave the building and complied.

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The Oberlin Review, April 10, 2015

Administration Focuses on Connecting Graduates with Jobs

Percent of Respondents

tional leadership,” Berman said. “My reaction was: It’s about time. I’ve been making the same argument for 30 years at five different liberal arts colleges that you have to invest in this, and you should look at the career center as a revenue-generating center rather than a cost center.” For many of the seniors standing in front of Craig, the future looked uncertain. “I don’t have plans right now, I’m looking for jobs basically,” said College senior David Lawrence. “I pretty much just want to go to some city, I don’t really know exactly where.” He added that he’s looking for jobs that use Geographical Information System, a system for presenting data in map form. “I have a summer job here, just continuing research in the lab, since I work in the neuro-lab,” said College senior Katie Hirabayashi. “But after that, I don’t know. I’m going to be looking for assistant researcher jobs in neuroscience, but I’m open to other things too.” For others, at least part of life after Oberlin has started to come into focus. “I’m going to be working at this artist residency place in Vermont, I’m going to be a photographervideographer for them,” said College senior Evan Davies, who took the photo for this article. Davies also said that he found out about the organization using ObieOpps.

Expected Sector Employment

Percent of Respondents

Fall Activities

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The data for the above charts come from last year’s senior survey, a poll sent out to the entire senior class in May 2014 that had a 75 percent response rate. Since Oberlin sends out the senior survey in conjunction with other colleges and universities, direct comparisons between institutions can be made. According to Ross Peacock, the director of Oberlin’s Office of Institutional Research, the “Univ 1” category includes “the most selective private universities” while the “Coll 2” category represents small liberal arts colleges similar to Oberlin in terms of financial resources. The chart on the left shows what the Class of 2014 planned to do in the fall of 2014 (“FT” stands for full-time, “PT” stands for part-time). The chart on the right shows the sectors of the economy in which those who planned to work full-time in the fall had decided to work. Sarah Snider

“I’ll be in the Peace Corps next year. I leave in June, and I’ll be in Comoros, Africa, for the next two years,” said College senior Sean Seaman. Some seniors have used the Ca-

reer Center more than others, but everyone the Review talked to had at some point gone to the Career Center for help with resumes, cover letters or applications. Some students

relied on faculty for career help as well. “My advisor has been super helpful,” said Hirabayashi. “She’s really pushed me to look for things,

and I think having someone there to tell me, ‘Oh, here’s a job opening,’ and ‘Have you been doing your job applications lately?’ has been really helpful.”

Council Decides to Enter 7th Private Session Amid Conflict Continued from page 1 When asked about the possibility of repairing the breach on City Council, Council member Sharon Pearson, who signed the request for Norenberg’s resignation, said, “Since the letter requesting Norenberg’s resignation was released, I see an improvement in communication between Council members. … I think we can all move forward if we can believe we can do it. It’s a matter of attitude and belief.” Pearson also said that the causes of this rift between two polarized sides of the City Council were reflected in the disparity in the time served by members — the veterans versus three newly elected members of the council — and their opposing views about how effectively the city was being run. “We have this newer segment of the Council that’s more progressive, and Oberlin is a community that prides itself on innovative and creative change,” Pearson said. “It is my belief we have a status quo way of doing things right now; we’ll only do things if it’s comfortable or if it’s the right time. In my opinion, we should always be working on these things.” Pearson also indicated that another point of contention was what she saw as the older Council members’ inability to communicate effectively with newer Council members about correct City Council procedure. “There’s this thing where people say, ‘That’s the way we’ve always done it.’ Well, I’m new and I don’t know the way we’ve always done it. … It would

be great if we could see some of our City Council members mentoring people.” Pearson also said she would have treated the City Manager issue differently if she had had more guidance and experience. “The way this whole resignation thing played out, we didn’t do it right,” she said. “But as a City Council member, I wish I had a packet or something so I could know how to handle it properly.” Pearson also said that she disagreed with Fairchild-Soucy and Broadwell’s claim that the criticism of Norenberg was vague and unfounded. “Among other problems, Norenberg failed to complete the evaluations of the department heads, and if you look at his job description, that’s part of his job. I think if there were anything essential that we were to do that we chose not to do, we would be called in by our supervisors.” In an interview with the Review, City Manager Norenberg defended his work and emphasized the need for stability during a critical time in city government, citing the important vacancies to fill such as police chief and fire chief. “At the current time, I think I’m the best person here who’s able to be the city manager,” Norenberg said. “We have a lot of projects going on right now, a lot of vacancies to fill. I’m committed to working with Council members and I hope we make progress towards that. There’s been some lack of unity and dysfunction for the Council as a whole, and that’s been evident long before my evaluation started.”

Opinions The Oberlin Review

April 10, 2015

Letters to the Editor

Oberlin Tuition Hike an Injustice To the Editor:

Beginning next year, the cost to attend Oberlin will be a staggering $64,224. This price is $2,436 more than the current $61,788 to attend. This price hike translates into a four percent increase over one year, which is well over twice the current rate of inflation. What can the justification be for raising prices? We are already one of the most expensive institutions in the United States. More precisely, this year we ranked 7th in tuition and 15th in total cost of attendance. Our financial situation has only improved since 2009. In fact, our endowment is currently up at $808 million or $280,000 per student, while we complete a second multi-million dollar construction project in just under two years. Thus, what justification remains for raising prices by so much next year? It’s clear that most students do not pay full price. However, net prices per year were still on average $37,000 for all students and $11,000 for low-income students (i.e. those with family incomes below $30,000). These figures were last published for the 2012–2013 school year and so are undoubtedly higher today. Moreover, both economic and racial diversity at this college are wanting while the abnormally high price to attend Oberlin almost certainly depresses diversity here. Despite the obfuscating nature of college costs, prices have continuously gone up for nearly every student at Oberlin. However, this trend

should surprise no one, as the most recent strategic plan states, “[Oberlin’s] most critical financial priority must be to realize more net tuition revenue per student.” The current lack of financial accessibility and want of diversity belies the history and values of our community. There has to be a time when we come together as a student body and call for a more affordable college that welcomes more low-income and minority students than it does now. Now is that time. This Sunday at 8 p.m., we invite everyone to attend a planning meeting in Wilder 101 and then a general assembly on Saturday the 18, to draft a better direction for Oberlin — an alternative strategic plan. Only when we act as an unshakable union of students will we bring about a better future where higher education becomes accessible to all and we no longer submerge whole generations in a trillion-dollar sea of student debt. –Zachery Crowell SLAC Co-Chair

Jewish Community Must Include Diverse Politics To the Editor: We, the undersigned members of the Oberlin Jewish community and of Oberlin College Hillel, publicly announce our support of the Freedom Summer Veterans panel held on April 8, 2015. Inspired by their deep-seated Jewish values, these three activists have devoted their lives

to social justice. We are grateful to have had them come speak on Oberlin’s campus and had a moving experience listening and learning from Dorothy Zellner, Ira Grupper and Larry Rubin, as well as Professor Pam Brooks, chair of the Africana Studies department here at Oberlin. Some of us disagree with their stated stances on Israel-Palestine, and some of us agree with them. But all of us feel that their voices must be welcome in our Jewish community. As Oberlin students and as Jews, we believe in open dialogue and that these speakers’ voices deserve to be heard and do have a place in our Jewish Community. We reject political litmus tests that police what speakers can and cannot speak in our communities and what opinions Jewish students can and cannot express. No Jewish student should be ostracized from their Jewish community simply because of their political beliefs. Jewish spaces on campus should reflect the diversity of opinions and create a space for all to feel comfortable openly sharing their views. This pluralism is absolutely crucial to a vibrant and meaningful Jewish Community. Signed, –Emily Isaacson College first-year –Jeremy Swack College junior –Mimi Stern College junior, Program Director, Hebrew Heritage House For a full list of signees, please see the Review website.

SUBMISSIONS POLICY The Oberlin Review appreciates and welcomes letters to the editor and column submissions. All submissions are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. All submissions must be received by Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. at opinions@oberlinreview.org or Wilder Box 90 for inclusion in the following Friday’s Review. Letters may not exceed 600 words and columns may not exceed 800 words, except with the consent of the Editorial Board. All submissions must include contact information, with full names, for all signers. All electronic submissions from multiple writers should be carbon-copied to all signers to confirm authorship. The Review reserves the right to edit all submissions for content, space, spelling, grammar and libel. Editors will work with columnists and contributors to edit pieces and will clear major edits with the authors prior to publication. Editors will contact authors of letters to the editors in the event of edits for anything other than style and grammar. In no case will editors change the opinions expressed in any submission. The Opinions section strives to serve as a forum for debate. Review staff will occasionally engage in this debate within the pages of the Review. In these cases, the Review will either seek to create dialogue between the columnist and staff member prior to publication or will wait until the next issue to publish the staff member’s response. The Review will not print advertisements on its Opinions pages. The Review defines an advertisement as any submission that has the main intent of bringing direct monetary gain to the author of a letter to the editors. Opinions expressed in letters, columns, essays, cartoons or other Opinions pieces do not necessarily reflect those of the staff of the Review.

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

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

Columbia’s Review of Rolling Stone Article Promotes Questioning Survivors Beyond Comfort Content Warning: This editorial contains discussion of sexual assault. Six months after the initial publication of Rolling Stone’s exposé “A Rape on Campus,” the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University released a 25-page review detailing the missteps Rolling Stone made in its account of an alleged sexual assault at the University of Virginia. Writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely, her editors and the alleged victim, known as Jackie, all came under fire when evidence surfaced that Jackie’s account was factually inconsistent. Columbia’s review described the story as a “journalistic failure” after The Washington Post published evidence that called the validity of Jackie’s story into question. According to the Post, Jackie’s friends had a much different account of the night on which she was allegedly assaulted and identified a different assailant than the one Jackie had described. Erdely and her editors failed to corroborate sources and published what they thought would be a hard-hitting, revealing account of college rape. Instead, the story blew up as an example of sloppy reporting and improper journalistic techniques. Issues of journalistic integrity aren’t new; the Review’s Editorial Board recently wrote about NBC news anchor Brian Williams’ suspension after it was revealed that he lied about his wartime reporting in Iraq (“Williams Controversy Highlights Perils of Fame in Objective Journalism,” The Oberlin Review, Feb. 20, 2015). Rolling Stone’s mistake, however, was amplified by the fact that the victim, Jackie, accused a fraternity on UVA’s campus, Phi Kappa Psi, of gang rape, raising the stakes for the story. False rape accusations, though rare — according to a psychology study mentioned in the Columbia review, 2–8 percent of reported rapes are false — are often heralded as evidence that rape culture is exaggerated. In her haste to publish a piece that would change the dialogue about rape on college campuses, Erdely failed to follow basic journalistic steps, like corroborating her main source’s account with third parties and fact-checking all details, to ensure the piece was accurate. More significantly, her editor failed to do his primary job: provide guidance. The Columbia review claims that Erdely could have avoided these pitfalls if she had only pushed Jackie harder to divulge more details about the alleged attack. “Sean Woods, Erdely’s primary editor, might have prevented the effective retraction of Jackie’s account by pressing his writer to close the gaps in her reporting. … Investigative reporters working on difficult, emotive or contentious stories often have blind spots. It is up to their editors to insist on more phone calls, more travel, more time, until the reporting is complete. Woods did not do enough.” In actuality, the appropriate editorial decision would have been to go with a different story altogether. Erdely was right in believing Jackie. To do otherwise would have been to play into rape culture, which she was trying to challenge with her article. Moreover, she was right not to push Jackie to recount her story past a point of comfort. Columbia’s review acknowledged that social scientists, psychologists and trauma specialists have stressed the demand for journalists to be sensitive to survivors’ needs in order to avoid re-traumatizing them, yet later the review criticized Erdely for not pushing Jackie harder. However, Erdely and Woods should have known that the story would be viewed under a microscope because so many readers would be looking for a reason to invalidate Jackie’s experience. There were too many holes in Jackie’s story and too many facts that Erdely left uncorroborated, leaving it open to the critique it later received. Woods should have encouraged Erdely to find a survivor who was more willing to divulge sensitive details, while still validating her experience. In hindsight, Erdely herself acknowledged in the report that Jackie’s story was perhaps not the right story to publish at the time. “If this story was going to be about Jackie, I can’t think of many things that we would have been able to do differently. … Maybe the discussion should not have been so much about how to accommodate her but should have been about whether she would be in this story at all.” According to Columbia’s review, Erdely had discovered other stories about See Editorial, page 6 Editorials are the responsibility of the Review Editorial Board — the Editorsin-Chief, managing editor and Opinions editor — and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff of the Review.

Opinions

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Industrialization Affects Global Community, Weather Patterns Sophia Ottoni-Wilhelm Contributing Writer 2014 was the hottest year in recorded history, and scientists are scrambling over one another to attribute the temperature hike to something, or someone in particular. “Over the past 30 years or so, man-made emission centers have shifted from traditional industrialized countries to fast-developing countries in Asia,” NASA physicist Jonathan Jiang said in an interview on NPR last week. China, one of the most populous countries in the world, is predicted to be contributing enough coal waste to affect the severity of winters in the United States. The National Academy of Sciences published a report on the effects of coal-fueled production on the atmosphere. Satellite imagery collected over the course of the past decade showed growing white-colored patches over China, resulting from coal-fueled production. The report stated that the aerosol patches would reach the U.S. and increase the harshness of the winter months. China isn’t the only country contributing to our snowy streets — India, Thailand, Cambodia and many countries throughout Asia are exploding with economic productivity, feeding the consumer culture of the West, and it is undoubtedly unidirectional. Last year, the U.S.’s exports to China ($7 billion) were less than a third of what the U.S. imported ($29 billion), and this year, the gap will likely remain just as large.

The worst part is, those responsible for this mess — many of us here in the United States — aren’t the ones who pay the price. In September of 2014, a team of geologists from a variety of institutions, including Oberlin College, wrote a defense of the poorer nations that bear the brunt of pollution’s environmental fallout. It was published as a Letter to the Editor in Science magazine: “The meteorological instability –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The National Academy of Sciences published a report on the effects of coal-fueled production on the atmosphere. Satellite imagery collected over the course of the past decade showed growing white-colored patches over China, resulting from coal-fueled production. The report stated that the aerosol patches would reach the U.S. and increase the harshness of the winter months. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

that comes with rising temperatures, the likely increase in erosion and storm surge, islands constantly retreating from the sea, dwindling groundwater supplies, decreasing rainfall and rising sea level will all have disproportionate impacts on populations that are least responsible for the global carbon

emissions that are at the heart of these changes” (“Island outlook: Warm and swampy,” Science, Sept. 19, 2014). Politicians in our country question spending millions of taxpayer dollars on the research and prevention of the environmental issues predicted to result from climate change. In 2008, Republican Senator Trent Franks said, “While I am concerned about the potential effects of global warming, I have yet to see clear and convincing evidence that it exists beyond historical fluctuations.” Others have the same view, such as Rep. Senator Devin Nunes, who said, “Scientists admit that they cannot be sure whether the Earth’s temperature is rising due to cyclical warming and cooling processes, or whether and how much humans are influencing it.” While it is generally smart not to waste taxpayer dollars, climate change is not something to mess around with. As the Science article points out, the damage of an ever-growing global economy is felt in peripheral countries first, but my prediction is that it’ll head our way in no time. When the cost is our planet, rivers, oceans and atmosphere, why risk it? The scientific community is in agreement about one thing: The environment reacts variably to stressors. Whether it is sea level rise, depletion of the ocean’s aquatic life due to over-fishing or increased frequency and magnitude seismic activity resulting from hydraulic fracking, humans are acting and the environment is reacting. We should be prepared, whatever the cost.

The Oberlin Review, April 10, 2015

Editorial: Journalistic Self Reflection Essential for Improvement Continued from page 5 rape on UVA’s campus while working on Jackie’s story. Unlike Jackie’s story, these accounts had been adjudicated and would have told a narrative that was similar, though perhaps less likely to make headlines than Jackie’s, according to the Columbia review. Ultimately, this was Woods’ failure as much as Erdely’s. When Erdely first realized there might have been a problem with her exposé, Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana hastily composed an online editor’s note, writing, “In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced.” The Columbia review accurately noted that this decision made a bad situation even worse by blaming Jackie rather than acknowledging that their own “language deflected blame from the magazine to its subject and attracted yet more criticism.” However, the fact remains

that the Columbia review fell into a similar trap of doubting the victim, rather than questioning the narrative’s suitability for publication. Though the review was far from perfect, Rolling Stone’s impulse for selfreflection is a good one. When Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The New York Times, gave a convocation at Oberlin last Tuesday, March 31, he spoke about the selfcritical and reflective nature of journalists. This is a vital characteristic of the press. The stakes are necessarily high in journalism, as a story can potentially have a serious impact on both its subjects and readers. At this point, the damage of “A Rape on Campus” has been done, both (rightfully) to the reputation of Rolling Stone and (unfortunately) to the credibility of rape and assault survivors. Now Rolling Stone, and other journalists dealing with sensitive topics, must put self-reflection into practice and hold themselves to a higher standard.

Opinions

The Oberlin Review, April 10, 2015

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Driscoll Strawberry Boycott Flawed, Harms Laborers, Not Corporation

Subconscious Emotions Reflected in Gait

Cyrus Eosphoros Columnist

CJ Blair Columnist

This is the second part in a three-part series on consumption-centered activism in the U.S. The next section will be published in the April 17 issue of the Review.

the low end of a long-outdated minimum wage. But somehow, American coverage of this issue manages to exotify these things, even the simple economic facts. The news and petition-writers want you to know that we’re looking at people making around $8 a day for double-digit hours of work. Mexican minimum wage is determined

On the way out of the town where I grew up, Todos Santos, the desert ––––––––––––––––––––––––– gives way to vast green fields and barns that are marked with the par- The housing agricultural ent companies’ names. We grow laborers are provided is tomatoes, basil and strawberries. unsanitary and badly mainAnd now, apparently, a new crop of U.S. boycotts against the corpora- tained. Their pay is at the tion Driscoll’s. Workers back on my low end of a long-outdated peninsula are striking for higher minimum wage. But somewages, but that’s less newsworthy than it sounds; strikes are a far more how, American coverage of common element of Mexican busi- this issue manages to exoness than anywhere else in North tify these things, even the America. simple economic facts. The thing that makes this relevant is that people north of the border –––––––––––––––––––––––––– have decided to care. There are petitions against current wage practices, by the day, not the hour; it has also with varying qualities of grammar increased by around a dollar in the and accuracy of information. There’s past half-decade, not accounting also the obligatory protest method for inflation. The minimum wage of making headlines: People are clam- 2010 would have been around $5. Tooring for a boycott of one of the U.S.’s day’s is around $4.60. primary suppliers of fresh fruit. One hundred and twenty pesos go Because decreased revenue is def- a lot further than $8 would in Amerinitely the impetus that will produce ica. Two pounds of tortillas come in the wage hike the workers them- at around 11 pesos, a whole chicken selves are striking for. is 39, light bulbs cost 6. It’s a drasThat kind of nuance is hard, tically inhumane wage and should though. It’s much easier for someone still register as a product of almost to read one article and proceed to cartoonish evil, but it’s far more drop a few more dollars on grocer- complex than what the arbitrary ies, because they can afford to, in American is likely to think when told exchange for the warm, fuzzy feeling “$8 a day.” And yet being able to reof conviction that they’re making a ally picture what that life looks like difference to some faceless brown engenders less sympathy, not more. people they couldn’t find on a map. I have a theory on that count: Not to say that the situation these It stops looking like a tragedy and workers are in isn’t hideous. There’s starts looking like a story. Let me tell tremendous potential for abuse of you the plot. Vast numbers of people authority against people who can’t who qualify as unskilled laborers afford to quit their job and have no- rely on jobs with a single megacorwhere else to go, and it only takes poration. They live in cheap, crumone person to take advantage of bling housing. Teenagers start workthat. The housing agricultural labor- ing early because they can’t afford ers are provided is unsanitary and not to, even when they’re sacrificbadly maintained. Their pay is at ing their schooling to do it. Despite

being paid poverty wages such that they end up needing charity and welfare to get by working full-time, even at more than minimum wage, these workers are in no position to take the risks of leaving that job for a better one. Superiors who know that also know they have a nearly unlimited opportunity to take advantage of any worker. If they strike for higher wages and look for support, they’re instead given calls for boycotts that will only give the parent corporation a new excuse for more layoffs. Does that sound like a reasonable summary of the more detailed story I offered? Have I summarized the living conditions of agricultural workers on the Baja California peninsula adequately? If so, that’s awfully strange. I was talking about Walmart. Looking at the story of this kind of economic oppression, not just the pity-bait blurb, means considering that it’s not anywhere near as foreign as the language a single instance is being carried out in. Boycotts attempting to be civilian sanctions in favor of — against the wishes of — a nebulous concept of foreign lives are easy. All the consequences are neatly sealed off, and the things being protested against are black and white, good and evil. It’s a tremendously appealing narrative: just by shifting around the way you spend money, you’re making a difference to the generically less fortunate. Confronting such issues on your home turf means the immediate consequences of such economic stunts are impossible to avoid. The people you’re supposed to be fixing everything for are speaking your language, walking on your streets. Silencing them on what they actually want and need is much harder if you get involved at all, easier if you ignore from the start; anyway, what if they’re ungrateful? What if they’re doing being poor wrong? Better to think about how tremendously lucky everyone in your line of sight is to be living in the U.S., where they don’t need your help the way generically poor brown people must.

Just Ask Us: Revolutionary Voting Practices Jolie De Feis and Mike Plotz Columnists Welcome to another week of “Just Ask Us and We’ll Tell Ya” with Jolie and Mike. We know you’ve been missing us, but get used to it, because we’re getting ready to leave The Oberlin Review and go out on our own as an independent premiere newspaper in Detroit. You can catch us there this time next year. Speaking of Detroit, Mike is a finalist for a Challenge Detroit Fellowship (yes, that’s right, our very own Mike Plotz is a finalist for the most prestigious post-grad opportunity of all time. You might have heard it referred to as the “New Rhodes”). To make it to the next round, Mike needs to garner a certain number of votes, so we’ve thought a lot about voting and formed some opinions. We believe that voters should be allowed to vote multiple times, with each subsequent vote having half the value of

the previous vote. Think about it. Wait, just take a moment. Really think about it. Get it? No? Okay we’ll explain it. America has a history of vote gaming. Let’s say you have a Republican and a Democrat running, but they both suck. Now let’s say you also have the lead singer of the Dirty Projectors running as an independent, and she’s promising free balloons for everybody. Let’s say you’re okay with the Democrat, really don’t want the Republican, but love the Dirty Projectors and its lead singer. Though you think the independent option is the best choice for America/circus clowns, you also may think that you are throwing away your vote because there’s no chance Amber Coffman is actually going to win, plus it is a vote taken away from Hillary — we mean the Democratic nominee. Now, take another situation where you have unlimited votes of equal weight, something more like

what exists in Oberlin’s Student Senate. In this situation, you vote for the Democrat who you now love, and the lead singer of the Dirty Projectors who is meh, but way better than the Republican. We’ll call him “Jeb.” Supporters of Jeb also vote for the lead singer of the Dirty Projectors because they would be okay with her, and absolutely do not want the Democrat to win. However, overall, they’re still feeling pretty conflicted because the competition consists of powerful, beautiful women. So they both vote for Jeb, who wins, and now we’re stuck with a president that no one even wanted in the first place. Now we have our preferred scenario: One vote, half a vote, quarter of a vote, eighth of a vote, until we’re almost at zero. Ya dig? So now you can vote for your candidate and Jeb, and Jeb will only win if he gets twice as many votes. If you don’t dig, make sure to email us at justaskusandwelltellya@gmail.com.

The single most difficult task for people is trying to figure out what someone else is thinking. If, in our everyday lives, we vocalized every thought we had, society wouldn’t be able to function. So much of what we say is implicit, and for that reason, we have to look at subtext and non-verbal cues to understand what people are actually feeling. There are far too many of these signs to discuss at one time, but one of the most obvious ones is something that is often overlooked yet immensely telling of a person’s mindset: the way they walk. They way that people carry themselves is one of the few instances where internal emotions are physically expressed in a way that is often completely unintentional. In the majority of cases, a person walks in order to get from point A to point B, with little consideration of how their gait reflects their mental state. But think about what you see when people around you are walking: A person overwhelmed with stress and anxiety will walk at a frenetic pace. When I am dealing with an episode of depression, I may walk like I’m bearing a cumbersome weight on my back — with slouched shoulders and a lowered head. Whether it’s elation or morbidity, the unbreakable connection between a person’s mind and body is best illustrated when they are forced to put their physical being on display. Walking also precipitates its own odd set of social principles, distinctly different from the perceived norm. Any college student should know that people walking in a group get to their destination significantly slower than a single person covering the same distance. The per capita politeness of a group of pedestrians also seems to decrease, as if sidewalk etiquette is rationed between them, and each person is a little less considerate of the convenience of passage for those around them. Then there’s the vexing situation of what to do when you walk by someone else. Do you greet them? Do you look away? From what I’ve seen, most people here pick the latter, which I find to be its own small tragedy, but maybe that’s because of a common clique mentality on campus. Even in these group settings, though, the principle remains the same. It’s incredibly hard to keep your mental state from being reflected in your physical actions, and those who try to combat this are bound to find walking much more of a chore than they had previously. By no means am I a kinesiologist, but I know that whenever I experience an episode of depression, my friends and family can immediately tell from my walk that something is wrong. When they’re in a similar state, I’m able to tell the same thing from their movement. This isn’t to say that everyone is going to internalize everything they feel without any verbal confirmation of how happy or sad they are. There are, however, plenty of people who will. I couldn’t be more happy to go to Oberlin, but it is incredibly sad to see so many people on this campus walking around with obvious emotional turmoil that they keep to themselves, maybe because lackluster mental health services leave them feeling like there’s no alternative. By the same token, it affirms the vibrancy of the campus when someone dressed in the Oberlin uniform of a flannel and Birkenstocks strolls along the quad with their head held high and feet lifting off the ground instead of dragging. Writing about the blues, Ralph Ellison called this musical genre “a near-comic, near tragic lyricism” derived from a person’s life experiences. Blues is traditionally seen as a form of catharsis for the musicians who sing it, and maybe this logic can be applied to walking. Though seldom approached as a way to purge emotions, a crowd of people on a sidewalk will demonstrate that such is what it becomes, even if it’s subliminal. Though singing the blues is more easily understood as a means of expression than walking, both are effective means to display complex human emotions. Walking is just one of many cues that reveal how a person feels, but maybe the knowledge that it is a sign at all is enough to promote awareness and sensibility of concealed emotions, and keep people on the lookout not only for the attitudes reflected in the strides of others but in their own as well.

– Louisa Nye (New Jersey)

– Arielle Lyons (Chicago, IL)

511

“prospie”

NORTH PROFESSOR

WEST LORAIN

il b c i g in U.S. hisotry to be co m • a d e p u s c c c es s to ov er 7 0 ,0 0 0 j our n c a first cam is the ch on r a Rese

– Milena Williamson, College sophomore

the jazz buildi tow n hi s tor

– Emily Wilkerson, College senior

– Emily Kuhn, double-degree junior

di n

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I talk about the poop campaign with the living machine. … People always ask, “Is it honor system? How do they keep track of that?”

e a piano •“weird e ra ta i v e As s oci a ti

Recently, we were passing between the AJLC and Harkness and somebody noticed the chickens. I think I was talking about the co-op system, and they were like, “What are the chickens for? Do people cook the chickens in the co-ops?” And I was like, “No …” but I couldn’t really tell them what the chickens were for.

he AJLC

SOUTH PROFESSOR

in all the right ways” on • w al k through Sou th •

Argentinian guitarist and quantum physicist Alberto Rojo will be joined by students in performing a set of Latin American music, including songs by Jorge Luis Borges and others. La Nacion, a leading Argentinian newspaper, has called his music “far from the complexities of the scientific world and closer to the mystery that dwells in the stars.”

I mentioned something about how people of different genders can live in the same room, and so a mom asked, “Okay, so how many people do that?” and I said, “Oh, I don’t know percentage. I can find that out for you if you like, but it’s not particularly high.” And she was like, “Well, if no-one wants to do that, then why even go there?” And I was like, “I don’t know what you mean. Can you explain what you mean to me?” And she was just like, “Just why even go there?” And she said that like three or four times and just never actually articulated her question. So then I basically had to explain gender roles and things to her.

The first night of the annual Improv Conference will feature four professional groups from around the country, who will also lead workshops taking place all day on Saturday. Oberlin’s three resident improv groups — Kid Business, Primitive Streak and The Sunshine Scouts — will perform alongside members of the Advanced Improv ExCo to wrap up the conference with a show on Saturday night.

on some of their most memorable moments with prospies and parents

West Virginia Water Crises: The Chemical Spill and Beyond Monday, April 13, 7 p.m. Hallock Auditorium, AJLC This ecolympics-sponsored event will feature a group of volunteers from the West Virginia Clean Water Hub who will discuss the response efforts to last year’s chemical spill that contaminated the drinking water of over 300,000 West Virginia residents. The discussion will also consider the crisis in light of exploitative practices at the commercial and regulatory levels that perpetuate ongoing water contamination.

EAST LORAIN

r ve ter ne en e c ’r ly solar-powered yo u i c m i l d er b ow l i s a ca d e

WEST COLLEGE

This Week editor: Hazel Galloway Contributing writer: Olivia Konuk

Concierto de Primavera Saturday, April 11, 8 p.m. Third World House Lounge

•

am i n s• n u a t th pu th e a r m e ee nd or a m fc N a ob h o e a

2. (v) the act of spending a day or two among total strangers trying to decide where to spend the next four years of your life.

Oberlin College Improv Conference Friday, April 10, 8 p.m. and Saturday, April 11, 7 p.m. Cat in the Cream

ADMISSIONS

d m foo lf f r o n in w e l p r iz

1. (n) prospective student

TOUR GUIDES

count

The course of a standard admissions tour, led by College senior Ethan Schmitt.

EAST COLLEGE

Daniel Ho Monday, April 13, 8 p.m. Cat in the Cream

Higher Education and Sustainability Monday, April 13, 8 p.m. Dye Lecture Hall, Science Center

Harry and the Potters Concert Tuesday, April 14, 10 p.m.–1 a.m. The ’Sco

Daniel Ho has won six Grammy awards for producing and performing on albums of Hawaiian and Hawaiianinfluenced music. The Hawaii native studied at the Grove Music School in Los Angeles and today performs original songs in English and Hawaiian around the world. He is famous for producing Hawaiian-language covers of Prince’s “Nothing Compares to U” and Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”

Tom Ross, president of the University of North Carolina system, and David Orr, former Environmental Studies professor, will lead a panel discussion on the challenges of sustainability for colleges in an era in which both technology and higher education are rapidly changing. Panelists will take questions from the audience following their remarks.

This Massachusetts-based cult group is the progenitor of the growing genre of “wizard rock,” which now includes bands like The Whomping Willows and The Parselmouths. The band’s best-known songs include “Save Ginny Weasley,” “Voldemort Can’t Stop the Rock” and “Luna Lovegood is Ok.” Proceeds from the concert, sponsored by the Oberlin Harry Potter Alliance, will be donated to charitable causes.

SOUTH MAIN

The different people, and [that] they don’t really care what people think about them.

– Annabelle Caso (New York, NY)

• College - town relations art rental rs l a . • koi p ond a t the Cons erv a tory cu U.S rri cu the tra in ex ge s • le or col in m art s& d or te aj ra m ps • a to acade m i c i s n Obe rli

Everyone seems really genuine, doing their own thing, which is different than coming from high school where people are more concerned with fitting into one specific look.

e of the strong on m 1 di f ferent s p 2

ad e t o l o tuden ok lik t Co-op

– Andrew Cannestra (Greenfield, WI)

est in the orts tea m s

The whole campus seems super self-sufficient. It’s basically like a little town, which is really surprising. Everyone seems really independent, and I think it’s really interesting. … Everything looks like a museum.

• six libraries on campus • science progra e rs • 5 0 0 concerts ev ery y ea r • the ’ S co •

– Naomi Fireman (Chicago, IL)

How nice the campus is, … all the green space there [is]. It’s interesting because it’s right next to the downtown.

Every self-respecting Obie who has ever gone through the admissions process — that is to say, every self-respecting Obie — knows that, in fact, all roads do not lead to Oberlin. The Review can now conclusively narrow the field to two — State Route 58 and State Route 511. Apparently undeterred by the paucity of navigational alternatives, the next three weekends will see the arrival of hundreds of accepted students for the College’s admitted students’ program. This year marks the first time in history that the College received over 7,000 applications, competing for slots in a class that isn’t likely to exceed 750. The number of applicants exceeded last year’s figure by almost 22 percent, which President Krislov attributed in part to the College’s decision to eliminate the $35 application fee previously leveled for all applications. To this day, some still recall their experience visiting Oberlin — “prospie-ing” here — with fondness or irony. This week, the Review talked to prospies and tour guides about the surprises and challenges of visiting Oberlin.

ng was no y • O b e rl i

– Paul Kiefer (Seattle, WA)

on what surprised them about Oberlin

I really thought that the town was going to be really small, rural, and there was not going to be a big connection with the school. … But it just seems like the connection is so much greater than I thought, and the town is so cool even though it’s tiny.

m p s • let e W

I find it interesting that it sounds like your language classes are very intensive, but you don’t have a language requirement.

The Review encourages readers to add their own annotations as appropriate. Portions of the review have been omitted from this selection.

PROSPIES

college guide revisited: Two sophomores and a junior sat down with the Fiske Guide to Colleges, 2015.

CALENDAR Caucasian Chalk Circle Thursday, April 16, Friday, April 17, and Saturday, April 18, 7:30 p.m. Hall Auditorium This play by German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht premiered in the mid-1900s in a student performance at Carleton College and has since then become one of the most-performed German plays. The plotline is framed as a parable-within-a-story, where the misadventures of the main character illuminate the perils of the “temptation to do good.”

– Louisa Nye (New Jersey)

– Arielle Lyons (Chicago, IL)

511

“prospie”

NORTH PROFESSOR

WEST LORAIN

il b c i g in U.S. hisotry to be co m • a d e p u s c c c es s to ov er 7 0 ,0 0 0 j our n c a first cam is the ch on r a Rese

– Milena Williamson, College sophomore

the jazz buildi tow n hi s tor

– Emily Wilkerson, College senior

– Emily Kuhn, double-degree junior

di n

t m n S

I talk about the poop campaign with the living machine. … People always ask, “Is it honor system? How do they keep track of that?”

e a piano •“weird e ra ta i v e As s oci a ti

he AJLC

SOUTH PROFESSOR

in all the right ways” on • w al k through Sou th •

on some of their most memorable moments with prospies and parents

EAST LORAIN

r ve ter ne en e c ’r ly solar-powered yo u i c m i l d er b ow l i s a ca d e

WEST COLLEGE

This Week editor: Hazel Galloway Contributing writer: Olivia Konuk

Concierto de Primavera Saturday, April 11, 8 p.m. Third World House Lounge

•

am i n s• n u a t th pu th e a r m e ee nd or a m fc N a ob h o e a

2. (v) the act of spending a day or two among total strangers trying to decide where to spend the next four years of your life.

Oberlin College Improv Conference Friday, April 10, 8 p.m. and Saturday, April 11, 7 p.m. Cat in the Cream

ADMISSIONS

d m foo lf f r o n in w e l p r iz

1. (n) prospective student

TOUR GUIDES

count

The course of a standard admissions tour, led by College senior Ethan Schmitt.

EAST COLLEGE

Daniel Ho Monday, April 13, 8 p.m. Cat in the Cream

Higher Education and Sustainability Monday, April 13, 8 p.m. Dye Lecture Hall, Science Center

Harry and the Potters Concert Tuesday, April 14, 10 p.m.–1 a.m. The ’Sco

SOUTH MAIN

The different people, and [that] they don’t really care what people think about them.

– Annabelle Caso (New York, NY)

• College - town relations art rental rs l a . • koi p ond a t the Cons erv a tory cu U.S rri cu the tra in ex ge s • le or col in m art s& d or te aj ra m ps • a to acade m i c i s n Obe rli

Everyone seems really genuine, doing their own thing, which is different than coming from high school where people are more concerned with fitting into one specific look.

e of the strong on m 1 di f ferent s p 2

ad e t o l o tuden ok lik t Co-op

– Andrew Cannestra (Greenfield, WI)

est in the orts tea m s

• six libraries on campus • science progra e rs • 5 0 0 concerts ev ery y ea r • the ’ S co •

– Naomi Fireman (Chicago, IL)

How nice the campus is, … all the green space there [is]. It’s interesting because it’s right next to the downtown.

ng was no y • O b e rl i

– Paul Kiefer (Seattle, WA)

on what surprised them about Oberlin

m p s • let e W

I find it interesting that it sounds like your language classes are very intensive, but you don’t have a language requirement.

The Review encourages readers to add their own annotations as appropriate. Portions of the review have been omitted from this selection.

PROSPIES

college guide revisited: Two sophomores and a junior sat down with the Fiske Guide to Colleges, 2015.

Arts The Oberlin Review

Page 10

April 10, 2015

Controversial Band to Combine Disparate Styles Danny Evans Arts Editor “Some people think the record is a joke,” Liturgy frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix said of his band’s just-released third album, The Ark Work, in an email to the Review. “Others describe it using phrases like ‘mad genius,’ ‘masterpiece,’ ‘ahead of its time’ and so on. This is certainly the type of record that is aiming for that type of status, for better or for worse.” Liturgy will likely perform cuts from the album at the ’Sco this Saturday at 10 p.m, giving attendees a chance to decide for themselves what camp they fall into. The Brooklyn-based band will play Oberlin’s third annual Metal Night alongside Sannhet, a like-minded Brooklyn atmospheric metal outfit, and Horse Lords, an experimental rock band from Balti-

more, MD. Liturgy may be headlining Metal Night, but the group has pushed its sound far beyond the confines of heavy metal with The Ark Work. Due to the genre-bending style featured on the LP, Hunt-Hendrix and his bandmates are sure to draw a crowd interested in music both metallic and otherwise. Liturgy’s new record may have received sharply contrasting reactions, but Liturgy is no stranger to this sort of response. The band originally attracted attention — both negative and positive — after the release of Renihilation, its first record, in 2009. Critics reviewed Renihilation favorably, but the same cannot be said of Hunt-Hendrix’s “Transcendental Black Metal Manifesto,” a piece of academic writing, published in 2009, on Liturgy’s sound and its relation to the black metal genre. The manifesto became a point of constant derision for crit-

Liturgy stares contemplatively into the distance. Fresh off the release of their electronic-tinged third album, The Ark Work, the Brooklyn-based black metal outfit will play at the ’Sco this Saturday at 10 p.m. Support will come from Sannhet and Horse Lords. Courtesy of Erez Avissar

ics and metalheads alike. Lampooned as a purposely dense example of pretension in the metal scene, the manifesto became more widely known than Liturgy’s music itself in certain circles. “The writing in the manifesto is presented in an incredibly inaccessible way, effectively alienating anyone who’s not intimate with both black metal and academic writing,” College senior Mark Moritz-Rabson said. Moritz-Rabson, who runs WOBC’s metal workgroup and plays in the technical death metal band Existential Animals, agreed that much of Liturgy’s current prominence can be attributed to its controversial nature. “Liturgy is undoubtedly more renowned for its reputation than for its music. … I’ve probably spent more time reading about than listening to Liturgy,” he said. Listeners and critics have expressed frustration with Liturgy’s role as a band whose fame is based in controversy rather than music. College first-year Andrés González, who enjoys listening to and composing in metal-related genres like hardcore punk, blamed this reality on heavy metal culture rather than on Liturgy itself. “Metal as an institution [dislikes] the idea of progress,” González said. He and Moritz-Rabson both touched on the idea that ignoring the media’s sometimes vitriolic coverage of Liturgy helped them appreciate the band’s music. “Whatever your thoughts about the band’s ideology, you can’t deny that they push boundaries on multiple fronts,” Moritz-Rabson said. Hunt-Hendrix said that he has become less interested in many of the lofty ideas that originally made his band so controversial. “In 2009, it was really exhilarating to discover that there were people who were both interested in contemporary speculative thought and black metal, just like I was,” he said, speaking to the mindset that led him to debut his contentious manifesto

at Hideous Gnosis, a 2009 academic conference. “But since that time … I [have come to] see the band as something more or less separate from a lot of my ideas — as an actual group of four people playing music together,” he said. The Ark Work has done anything but move Liturgy out of the limelight. However, this time around, critics and fans have centered their discussion on the album’s musical content, which has been as divisive as the ideology associated with Liturgy’s previous releases. The Ark Work does indeed feature a polarizing sound. While Renihilation and Liturgy’s second LP, Aesthethica, drew mainly on the black metal genre sonically, The Ark Work shows Liturgy incorporating a number of other diverse influences. Hunt-Hendrix’s formal background in classical music composition seems to have taken a paramount role on the record, which includes horns, bells and other instruments traditionally associated with classical rather than rock music. “Learning the rules for diatonic and chromatic harmony definitely had an effect on my sense of harmonic and melodic flow,” Hunt-Hendrix said. Electronic music and hip-hop also appear to have been important reference points for Liturgy during The Ark Work’s creation; glitchy MIDI instruments and Hunt-Hendrix’s chant-like rapping can be heard throughout the record. Liturgy has gained notoriety for its authoritative live shows. In particular, drummer Greg Fox has become known for his virulent, unrelenting rhythmic sensibility. “Mostly, the live show is about sitting back and letting people watch [Fox] play drums,” Hunt-Hendrix said. Between Fox’s drumming, Hunt-Hendrix’s incorporation of musical influences unheard of for most black metal bands and the band’s overall desire to shed its controversial reputation, Liturgy’s set at the ’Sco looks to be an intriguing one.

Colors of Rhythm Brings Passion, Solidarity to Finney Chapel Annelise Giseburt Production Manager Yesterday evening, Finney Chapel was filled by Colors of Rhythm, marking the show’s 19th consecutive year. The event, which, according to the its mission statement, began as “constructive protest for the visibility, recognition and celebration of certain cultural dance forms and other art forms that aren’t recognized by the mainstream culture and academics on campus,” continues to be a space to celebrate and honor the multitude of cultures, art forms and performers in the community. “We encourage all those involved to recognize how systems of inequality and oppression work to perpetuate racial and cultural invisibility and appropriation and to acknowledge the agency and power that this event stands for,” the mission statement, which was read aloud at the beginning of the program, goes on to emphasize. Colors of Rhythm is bigger than ever. This year’s event featured performances from Oberlin College Taiko, Daniella Pruitt with Andre Cardine, the South Asian Students Association, Soulfege,

Lion Dance Troupe, Voices for Christ, the Filipinx American Students Association Band, Movimiento, Stories Through Movement, Umoja Steppers and the African Students Association. The scale and scope of the event reflects its significance on campus. “The fact that [Colors of Rhythm] is on such a large scale is really meaningful for the performers to show the campus what they’re up to, how their identity is important to them and how that shows through their performance groups,” said College senior, OCT member and Colors of Rhythm performer Chris Nguyen. The event’s central location in Finney, the crowd it draws and number of groups performing all combine to make it one of the largest POC performer-celebrating events of the year. Though Colors of Rhythm is an incredibly positive force on campus, there is still more that could be done. “I would love to see more [events centered around students of color]. As a student of color, that’s my experience: definitely not enough,” Nguyen said. Along with visibility, Colors of Rhythm promotes solidarity between both POC groups and the campus community as a whole.

“Colors of Rhythm is important for the campus because it’s a way of showing support, not only between the POC community within itself but also the entire Oberlin student body,” said College sophomore Mina Huerta, who helped organize the event. College sophomore Emily Bang, College first-year Brian Cabral and Latinx Community Coordinator Julio Reyes worked to organize the event with Huerta. “It’s a way of expanding people’s horizons and showing this is what’s on campus. There are different kinds of groups, and here are all of our talents; come support us,” she said. “Personally I feel that this event is not just exclusive to POC members, but […] [Oberlin] is a predominantly white institution, and there’re not a lot of spaces for POC members, so I feel like we have a time, place and date to just commemorate the different cultures that come together in the performances,” Cabral said, echoing Huerta’s sentiments. He also mentioned that Colors of Rhythm is important in showing prospective students that Oberlin is not completely dominated by white culture. This year, Huerta, Cabral, Bang

and Reyes placed special emphasis on promoting the event and selling tickets to a wider group of students than in previous years. Huerta said, “This year, I think one difference that I’ve been trying to do is to sell tickets to people outside of the POC community to bring them in and expand their knowledge on what Colors of Rhythm is, how students of color on campus are interacting with each other and how they interact with everybody else. [We’re] showing that we’re all people, we all have talents and we all want to have fun.” That’s not to say that Colors of Rhythm doesn’t have huge significance for students-of-color audience members as well. “I wasn’t really involved in [Asian American Alliance] or a lot of organizations last year. But then I went to Colors of Rhythm, and I was like […] ‘Oh, I can be a part of this organization! This is here for me,’” said College junior Dana Fang. “I wasn’t part of the group, and now this year I am, and a lot of it had to do with Colors of Rhythm. […] I think in a lot of ways it reaches a broader audience, but it is also able to reach a very specific audience that may feel too intimidated

or shy to pursue these people and pursue these groups.” Another goal that the event organizers emphasized was raising money for the Undocumented Students’ Scholarship Program and the Yakubu Saaka Scholarship Fund, both of which are in need of financial support. Cabral said that the Colors of Rhythm organizers wanted to show support and solidarity for the scholarships. Huerta added that often, while selling tickets, hearing that the proceeds would go toward these scholarships was a deciding factor in convincing people to purchase them. “Performing in Colors of Rhythm gives you energy because there are more people that you can identify with it. I’m not saying that it’s not appreciated in other spaces and other events, but I feel like there’s more understanding behind this event,” said Huerta, who performed in and choreographed Movimiento’s dance. Last night, Finney was certainly charged. Sitting in a hall that was by turns raucous, hushed and joyous, the passion, respect and support that both performers and audience members brought to Colors of Rhythm was palpable and deeply moving.

Arts

The Oberlin Review, April 10, 2015

Page 11

Ambient Musician Brings Showgoers to Tears Owen Harrington Last Saturday evening at about 8 p.m. I entered Fairchild Chapel, beginning the arduous wait until ambient singer-songwriter Liz Harris, also known as Grouper, arrived onstage. The opening act, cave weta, didn’t come until 8:45 p.m. His performance began with a quiet, high-pitched hum, which served as the basis for the rest of the song, as the manipulation of some pedals and hearty doses of feedback kept the once-feeble sound going for the next 15 minutes. At times, the performance, characterized by deep drones with peculiar textures, was lovely. cave weta shone especially towards the end when vocal loops were incorporated into the mix, adding a more human and melodic element to the formidable wall of sound. At some points, however, when the high-pitched frequencies became the focus of the performance, the piece became a bit irritating. Perhaps I am a purist, but I love my drones deep, loud and conducive to zoning out. When cave weta finished his set, I waited anxiously for Grouper to appear. The Portland-based recording artist has been releasing music for 10 years under this moniker, including her 10th album Ruins, which she

released last year to critical acclaim. Her music manipulates multiple genres but is generally pretty mellow, combining a soft tape hiss, guitar and keyboard soundscapes, soft, layered vocals and a constant stream of reverb to create her unique sound. When an artist of Harris’ notoriety enters a room of such intimate size as Fairchild Chapel, one almost expects a certain amount of fanfare to accompany it, but this was not the case. Harris slipped up to the stage twice, almost unnoticed, before her performance even began, probably mistaken for a student as she was even wearing the official “mitre” of the Oberlin fashion cult: the Carhartt beanie. But once she made her presence known to the audience, sitting cross-legged on the stage and flanked by two candelabras, Harris held everyone’s attention. Much like her arrival at Fairchild, her performance began softly and unobtrusively. Harris’ signature quiet tape hiss graced our ears before any other sound as she entered into “Vanishing Point” from her 2013 album The Man Who Died in His Boat. She subtly manipulated ephemeral keyboard sounds throughout the track. To my surprise, she then layered on her song “Alien Observer” and began to sing along, adding vocal harmonies to the recordings and loops

she had been playing previously. By this point, I was enraptured by Harris’ performance. She sat before us on stage, a small figure beneath tall ceilings and stained glass whose voice, delicate loops and guitar still filled the entire room. She commanded the crowd like a religious leader; each song was a gorgeous litany, exalting a world not quite our own. The songs, while recognizable, began to blend into one dreamy blanket of fog, the sounds intertwining as they bounced off the walls of Fairchild. Perhaps most striking was Harris’ voice, which, though subdued and often soft, was nonetheless always present and filled up an incredible amount of sonic space when combined with her many-layered loops and subtle yet melismatic melodies. Her songs came across as deeply spiritual, almost like meditative chants. This particular quality of her music lent itself perfectly to the environment she was playing in; her cross-legged position in a grotto-like church altar was deeply reminiscent of an oracle cryptically dispensing wisdom from beyond. As Harris’ performance went on, the music became even more meditative and took on a oneiric quality, becoming perhaps even more beautiful and less grounded in melody.

This trend culminated in the final part of the show, when Harris put down her guitar, turned away her microphone and began to work only with her electronics. The result was a beautifully crafted, dream-like wall of sound that undulated and morphed for five or seven minutes before reaching a crescendo and then coming to an abrupt but well-timed end. The show lasted for about an hour, though it felt like it existed somewhere on a different timeline from ours. When Harris stopped playing and uttered her first and only words of the evening, “Thanks, guys,” it seemed as though we listeners had suddenly been snapped back to reality. Many in the audience were almost too moved to speak, and clapping seemed vaguely inappropriate though certainly well deserved. When the lights came back on, and the audience began milling about, I spoke to a handful of people, including Review Arts editor Danny Evans, who said he had been moved to tears by the performance, and rightfully so. If you were lucky enough to attend the show, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. And for those who could not make it, I implore you to keep your eyes open for future Grouper concerts. I assure you, they’re not to be missed.

Vijay Seshadri, OC ’74, Salutes Oberlin in Final Convocation

Student, Faculty Bruch Concert Proves Emphatic

Mohit Dubey

Colin Roshak

This year’s Convocation Series ended on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. with the solemn tones of Vijay Seshadri, OC ’74, reading his Pulitzer Prize– winning poetry. Born in India but raised in nearby Columbus, OH, where his father worked as a chemistry professor at Ohio State, Seshadri showed strong inclinations toward poetry and philosophy at a young age. At 16, he enrolled at Oberlin as a Math major but transitioned into Philosophy after an inspiring encounter with Pultizer Prize–winning poet Galway Kinnell, whom he cites as the “efficient cause” of his poetry. After graduation, he pursued an MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia University, where he delved deeply into tracing his Indian heritage by translating works from Urdu and Hindi into English. His original poems and essays have appeared in countless acclaimed publications,

and he has worked as a reviewer for The New Yorker and The American Scholar. He currently directs the graduate non-fiction writing program at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and has recently published his prose-tinged fourth book of poetry. Seshadri began the convocation on a personal note after being introduced by President Marvin Krislov. He spoke to Oberlin’s “great flowering of poetry” in the 1970s after the founding of Oberlin Press’s yearly poetry journal, FIELD, in 1969. He also described his reverence for his father, who passed away this past February. In his father’s honor, he began by with two poems from his most recent collection, 3 Sections, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013, and which he described as “imbued with his [ father’s] presence.” These poems dealt with the issues of death and the afterlife and drew ideas from the Mahabharata and Aesop’s fables, which, as he

stressed, “originated in India but were popularized in Greece.” From here, Vijay flipped open the pages of his older works and read poems that ranged from descriptions of “three apocalypses occurring before signing for a FedEx package” to the scientific breakthrough of engineering moths with jellyfish genes to produce fluorescent silk. Building on the antiquated and languishing linguistic style of Yeats and Wordsworth, all of his poetry — spoken with the dry and slow articulation one expects from a classical poet — seemed to weave together the intersecting ironies of modern American life. However, hints of riddle and expressionism rang through in his poem “Nursing Home,” which wrestled with the topic of Alzheimer’s disease. He closed the convocation with a poem titled “The People I Know,” which stressed the poetic trope of “sameness” beSee Pulitzer, page 13

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Vijay Seshadri, OC ’74, returned to Oberlin this past Tuesday to present the year’s final convocation. His talk featured selections from his most recent poetry collection, 3 Sections, and older material. Bryan Rubin

It’s not very often that Conservatory faculty members take the stage alongside their students, but when they do, it’s sure to be a memorable concert. This past Saturday, Associate Professor of Viola Michael Strauss and Associate Professor of Clarinet Richard Hawkins joined the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra for a performance of Max Bruch’s Double Concerto for Clarinet, Viola and Orchestra. Alongside Bruch’s piece was Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C major. The two masterpieces proved to be a thrilling combination. Bruch composed the Double Concerto in 1911, and it is one of his only compositions that holds a place in the classical canon. Often, the first movement of a concerto consists of a lengthy introduction by the orchestra before soloists join, but Bruch’s piece instead begins with the soloists. Professor Strauss began with strong chord and a brilliant ascending line. At the peak of the line, various winds joined into the texture to support Strauss as he hinted at the main melody. He played the very beginning of this melody before being interrupted by the clarinet. Professor Hawkins reiterated the ascending motif and then gestured toward the main theme in a similar fashion. After a powerful chord from the orchestra, the two solo lines joined together, further developing the melody. The orchestra played an accompanying role throughout the first movement. Maestro Raphael Jimenéz restrained the group just enough for the soloists to soar overtop with their melancholic, romantic duet. Strauss’ and Hawkins’ playing flowed seamlessly with impeccable intonation and long legato phrasing. The movement ended with an arpeggiated melody in the clarinet that reached a glimmering climax, resting beautifully atop the viola’s lower harmonies and a gentle orchestral foundation. The second movement began almost tentatively, with dissonant and modulating harmonies led by bassoon and oboe solos. As soon as Hawkins joined, however, the more dance-like, active character of the movement became clear. Hawkins and Strauss alternated melodic passages that combined both virtuosic and lyrical elements. After concluding its first phrase, the orchestra reiterated the themes and transitioned into a more somber section piece. The soloists continued their dialogue, this time supported by energetic pizzicatos in the strings. The second theme was much more introspective, contrasting the palatable first theme. The music slowed before the first theme returned, this time imbued with moments from the second theme. The music entered a minor key for a moment before ending with delicate tranquility on a satisfying major chord. The final movement began triumphantly. Blaring trumpets and a rousing fanfare crescendoed unti — l the strings erupted into a flurry of virtuosic sextuplet passages. The orchestra pulled back and Hawkins took over the main theme before passing it back to the orchestra and then to Strauss. Both soloists, as well as the orchestra, handled the swift tempo and treacherous technical passages with great facility and effortless precision. In contrast to the elegance of the first two movements, the final movement exuded aggressive enSee Collaborative, page 12

Arts

Page 12

The Oberlin Review, April 10, 2015

On the Record with Claire Chase, MacArthur Fellow Claire Chase, OC ’01, is a worldrenowned contemporary flautist. The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal have described her as “the young star of the modern flute” and “a rare combination of grace and guts,” respectively. She is a MacArthur Fellow and a cofounder of the International Contemporary Ensemble, a nonprofit collective dedicated to “reshaping the way music is created and experienced.” On Thursday, Chase was part of a panel titled “The Arts, Entrepreneurship and Higher Education.” The Review sat down with Chase to talk about entrepreneurship, the state of contemporary music and Oberlin itself. Can you tell us a little bit about what you’ll be addressing tonight in the talk “The Arts, Entrepreneurship and Higher Education?” Obviously entrepreneurship is the word du jour, and I think it’s become really tired and I’m actually not even sure if the term is useful for us anymore. This thing that was supposed to be about subverting the dominant paradigm and inventing and disrupting and having agency in many ways has been co-opted by the corporate world and, in some ways, by academic

institutions as an agent of conformity, which is not my understanding of what that impulse is. It’s also recently been equated with neoliberalism, which is a very problematic place for the arts and higher education to be in.

sound a human makes as it comes out of the womb, that’s not speech, that’s sound. I would call it music. It’s as necessary as drinking clean water and eating food. For me, sound is the oldest and most elemental art form.

Is the idea of entrepreneurship as it’s understood now stifling? I think it is. The idea of invention has been turned into this thing that you’re supposed to learn like any other set of skills, and I find that very problematic. What I would like to talk about is the distinction between creating a model and nourishing a modality, a way of doing things, a process, because we never have a model. We never have a plan. We are always making things up. I believe that is at the core of any artistic, creative process that has integrity. It is similarly at the core of any organizational model that is going to support that model, and I don’t see those things as different.

In what direction is contemporary music headed? It’s headed in a lot of different directions. I don’t know that there is a singular direction for contemporary music. What very much excites me is that it’s moving in a porous way into other art forms. In 25 to 30 years, we won’t be making the same distinctions between a musical act, an act of performance art, of dance, of visual art or of conceptual art, and that’s very interesting to me. Stylistically, what’s so exciting is that it’s all over the map. ICE has been very committed to not aligning ourselves with one school of compositional thought or one direction. It’s what keeps us challenged. We have to be challenged.

What is it about the musical form of expression that appeals to you? Music is the oldest, most abstract and most necessary form of communication. When you think about the

Could you tell us a little bit more about ICE? What is its purpose? ICE’s purpose is to be an agent of change in the music world and in the musical practice. Ultimately, it’s about

Feature Photo: Falling Up

Claire Chase, who is a flautist, MacArthur Fellow and the co-founder of the International Contemporary Ensemble

the creation of, and hopefully the sustenance of, an organizational model that is driven by artists. Not [one] driven by market forces, not [one] driven by managers, not [one] driven by the industry, but [one] shaped from within by the artists themselves. What was Oberlin like when you were here? How has it changed? I taught for Tim Weiss’ group

[Oberlin’s Contemporary Music Ensemble] about five years ago and loved it. The ethos of it was the same. The one shift I find really encouraging is the idea of “What am I going to do? And what is my path?” becoming integrated into the conversations had here. Interview by Jake Frankenfield Photo courtesy of Michael Chipman

Collaborative Pieces Featured in Rousing Concert Continued from page 11

College first-year Anika Lindsay gracefully suspends herself during an aerial performance at Hales Gymnasium last Sunday, April 5. The show, hosted by Oberlin College Aerialists, was titled “Falling Up” and featured a variety of aerial silk acts inspired by American poet Shel Silverstein’s iconic children’s poems. Best known for his collections Where the Sidewalk Ends and Falling Up, Silverstein proved a charming source of inspiration for the aerialists’ daring routines. Sarah Herdrich

ergy. The music built to a powerful forte as the two soloists exchanged melodies characterized by bouncing intervals and rising scales. The orchestra pulled away dramatically in volume as the third movement theme was stated once more by the soloist and principal flautist. To end the piece, the orchestra regained its momentum and closed with an exultant grouping of final chords. Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C Major filled the second half of the concert. Nicknamed “The Great” to distinguish the piece from his sixth symphony, which is also in the key of C Major, Symphony No. 9 was Schubert’s final completed symphony. The piece follows traditional symphonic form and consists of four movements. The first movement began with a noble french horn soli that was later joined by the entire wind section and accompanied by light pizzicatos in the strings. A conversation between the winds, who provided sweet and flowing melodies, and the strings, who interrupted the melodies with strong forte chords, dominated the slow beginning of the movement. The music hastened after this movement, taking on a militaristic character. The strings navigated treacherous runs, the horns played martial chorales and the winds juxtaposed these elements with light articulation and softer dynamics. The movement ended with a final statement that recalled the original horn soli from the piece’s beginning and powerful tutti chords. The second movement began with ambient strings, providing the foundation for an oboe solo. The principal oboist, Conservatory junior Brooks Fisher, played the solos charmingly; his sound was perfectly suited for the dance-like music. After a short orchestral interlude, the theme returned, this time joined by the bassoon and clarinet. The clarinetist failed to achieve the same light character or sound that Fisher previously had. The timbre of the clarinet did not match the leading oboe voice, and the intonation was very inaccurate on certain notes. The strings took over the melodic line and played with a full legato and romantic phrasing. One particularly lovely moment came when the whole orchestra pulled away and the celli played a very simple but beautiful melody. The oboe eventually rejoined. The music regained momentum and the texture began to thicken as the winds folded into the mix. The movement ended with a long diminuendo and soft chords from the brass and strings. In contrast to the dolce ending of the second movement, the third movement began with bombastic runs in the strings. Much like the first two movements of the symphony, this movement had a clear dialogue between the winds and strings. The strings would have an aggressive and forceful line immediately followed by a lighter or more melodic response from the winds. The movement alternated between a number of main themes and contrasting characters, including jubilant winds, marcato strings and rousing horns. The music ebbed and flowed. Although the movement was very repetitive — a common quality for a scherzo movement — the orchestra never lacked energy or drive. The finale wasn’t much more than an exuberant romp to conclude the lengthy symphony. As expected, the movement shifted between a lighter and a more forceful, commanding character. The music had dramatic swells and just as dramatic subito-pianos during which the winds would play short, amiable melodies. Maestro Jimenez, who conducted the entire symphony from memory, led the ensemble with graceful sweeping motions and absolute precision. From the somber opening runs of the Bruch concerto to the triumphant concluding chords of Schubert’s final symphony, the Chamber Orchestra performed cohesively and with unrivaled verve.

Arts

The Oberlin Review, April 10, 2015

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Pulitzer-Winning Poet Closes Convocation Series Continued from page 11 tween individuals, even within our secular and data-driven American culture. This theme of seeking clarity in our modern world through more classical poetry is no accident. Seshadri views poetry as “an object” and, in turn, sees the poet as a sculptor that fashions the “materials of meaning and feeling into form.” However, these notions are a relatively recent development in Seshadri’s style, which stemmed from the tradition of Midwestern surrealism and deep image poetry, which he claims are “still in [his] genetic code.” He also credits his father’s empirical attitude as a scientist

and his study of mathematics at Oberlin for imparting him with a yearning for elegance and simplicity in his writing, as in the basic proof of a complex theorem. This is not to say that Seshadri’s poetry does not tread in the realm of the political. His poem “The Disappearances,” which describes finding oneself at a cataclysmic point in national history, was published on the back cover of The New Yorker on the day after 9/11. Although one would not describe him as an activist, Seshadri grew up in the era of the Poets Against the War in Vietnam movement and explained that his desire to understand his voice as a person of color partaking in history was what eventually

led him to abandon his early surrealist style. He said that he admires classical poetry, slam poetry and hip-hop alike, in that they are all a “sonic experience” to him. Recounting Bill Murray’s very theatrical reading of American poet Wallace Stevens’ work, Seshadri believes that it is false to distinguish between performed and written poetry, as it is all heard by some voice in the head eventually. He is also a big fan of Odd Future Wolf Gang, but he hasn’t listened to Kendrick Lamar’s new album yet. Seshadri graduated from Oberlin in the same year that Barbara Streisand’s “The Way We Were” was at the top of the charts, and has many thoughts about how the

school has changed. More generally, as the teacher of an undergraduate writing seminar course at Sarah Lawrence University, he complained that “college is getting easier.” In fact, while Seshadri was at Oberlin, he took courses that covered all three of Kant’s dark and dense critiques in a single semester and all of Shakespeare’s plays in a year. He is said to have “a great respect for identity politics” and is happy to see that students are hungry for more rigor in their college experiences. Still, he joked about the irony of Oberlin’s slogan, “Learning and Labor,” as a remnant of the “Calvinistic embrace of labor” in a university that sold its seminary back in 1964. Some things never change.

Standout Gameplay Elements Separate Darkest Dungeon from Crowd Avi Vogel You look at your roster. The last mission you played through wiped out all of your high-leveled heroes. You try to recruit some new ones, but they all have traits that would make them a detriment to any mission you might undertake. With reluctance, you take four level-zero adventurers with you, cross your fingers and hope they all return. In 10 minutes, they’re all dead.

Situations like these are common in Darkest Dungeon, a video game that was released this February on Steam, a prominent platform for releasing independent computer games, via the Early Access program. The developers at Red Hook Studios, who created the currently unfinished game, have released Darkest Dungeon with the aim of getting fans’ reactions in order to improve the finished product. Although this game is unfinished, it

is more polished than many other games that get full commercial releases. The goal of Darkest Dungeon is to venture into the depths of a onceprosperous estate and beat back a dark, supernatural force. The game is separated into two distinct styles of play. The first is at the manor, where you — the player — upgrade buildings, recruit new heroes and increase the abilities of your party. The other part of the game takes place

within the dark area of your estate, where your group of handpicked heroes attempts to fight back the everspreading corruption in hopes of retrieving the resources that you will use back at the manor. It is here that the combat takes place. Each fight is structured in a line format. Your four heroes are lined up from front to back, each of them able to attack an enemy in a designated position; a move will only work in its designated position in line. At the end of

each level, each surviving hero has a chance to develop a quirk. Quirks are changes that affect characters for better or worse. While in the “dungeon,” where battles take place, you will be faced with difficulties that will lead to heroes becoming “stressed.” Stress, a key aspect of the game that differentiates it from others in its genre, is a bar seen underneath the health bar of each individual hero. Stress can be accrued in a number of different ways, like being attacked, not having enough food or letting your torchlight get too low. All of these can push your hero into insanity. When they hit the stress cap, one of two things will happen: The hero will get a huge bonus to all their stats or, more likely, they will become afflicted with some form of insanity that will make them unpredictable. They might pass their turn or increase the stress of your other heroes, making the combat that much more difficult. This effect won’t end after you leave the dungeon, but it will persist until the hero has had an opportunity to rest in town, making them unavailable during your next mission. For a game that prides itself on complex systems and treacherous gameplay, Darkest Dungeon could do more to ease people into the experience. My first time playing, I lost eight heroes in three dungeon runs, making my next foray into the dungeon with only two people an immediate failure. There were also points at which I was forced to start the game over. During one playthrough, I was a little over 10 hours into the game’s campaign. I had just defeated my first “boss” and was about to take on the next. I brought my highest-leveled characters with me but they were promptly defeated. I continued this until I had only level 0 heroes. I put my head down, defeated, but despite this unforgiving learning curve, I found myself ready to start anew. Twenty hours into my next run, I found myself still in love with every aspect of the game. Its art is hand drawn with dark lines and vibrant colors, making it reminiscent of a fairy tale, its music adds tension without overriding the strict focus necessary to play the game and its narration breathes life into dull moments. Each battle fills me with dread, as I know that any battle could decide the fate of my entire run. Darkest Dungeon is a uniquely difficult game, but playing through it is an ultimately satisfying experience.

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IN THE LOCKER ROOM

Sports

The Oberlin Review, April 10, 2015

Trevor Hagedorn

This week, the Review sat down with Head Coach of the Oberlin bowling team Trevor Hagedorn to discuss his first 300 game, his bowling style and how he ended up at Oberlin.

net in terms of marketing for the position. I was also looking for something in the Midwest. I had lived in Kentucky and Indiana before, so Ohio seemed reasonably close.

When did you start bowling and what has kept you interested in the sport? I started bowling when I was 13. As far as keeping me interested, I think that every day is a little bit different. You’re playing on a surface that is continually in a state of flux, so being responsive kind of mimics my personality. Every day I wake up, and I feel a little bit different, and every day I hit the lanes, and it requires a different response.

Having grown up in San Diego, do you miss the West Coast? Absolutely. I still have most of my family living out in San Diego. The culture is very laid back, which isn’t too dissimilar from the people here because a lot of the students are from the coast, so you get a little bit of that. I certainly like the lower cost of living that’s here. I suppose I dislike the absence of really good food. There are few venues here that have my interests but not my heart when it comes to dining. It’s a shame not to find really good Mexican taco shops within walking distance of your house. Obviously the weather is quite a bit different too.

Have you played any other sports competitively? I used to run cross country, and I used to be on a swim team. How much have you learned from Tom Reid as you adjust to a bigger role at the College Lanes and the Student Union? He’s obviously the one who has created the culture of this space, so for me to be mindful and respectful of the history of this institution — not speaking about the College as an institution but literally the Bowling Lanes as an institution — is something that is essential for me to carry forward and continue to cultivate among the bowlers who come in. When did you bowl your first 300 game? That would have been in Louisville, KY. That was my first sanctioned 300 game, which is all that matters. It was just a normal league night. The one thing that was a little different is that I had just gotten a new ball, and I got it about a half an hour before league started, which allowed

Trevor Hagedorn time for practice. I practiced on it, and the ball rolled horribly, absolutely not what I wanted it to do. The pro shop operator was also on my team, so he said, “Why don’t we shine it up?” Then the first game with the shiny, brand new ball was a 300. How would you describe your own bowling style? I think it’s more on the relaxed side. I’m more of a stroker, which is further from the apex of power. Someone who is exceptionally powerful is called a cranker or a power player. I rely more on accuracy and repetition and good spare shooting. How do the lanes at Oberlin compare to others at which you’ve played? The biggest thing that stands out is there aren’t many of them. We only have half a dozen lanes, and there is no electronic scoring, so, in keeping with that in-

stitutional memory that is very nostalgic and respectful of the history of the sport, this place really ties in well with that attitude. From a standpoint of the actual surface, they’re great and wellmaintained. We have a reputation around this region of being more challenging. What do you like to do when you’re away from the lanes? I do a lot of running and, when the weather is nice, I get to run outside. Where I live backs up to the bike trail, so I’m frequently out there going either north or south out of town. I keep busy with little art projects and the like at home. I do a lot of writing — just random creative ventures. I travel around a lot just for fun, too. Do you feel like being younger than many professors and staff at Oberlin helps you connect better with students?

I’d like to think so. I feel like the music that I listen to with students is more or less on the same wavelength. Hopefully the students feel the same way and that they can connect with me. How’d you end up at Oberlin? I ended up at Oberlin because I was out in San Diego, and I was looking for an opportunity to coach a bowling team and manage a bowling center. I had coached before when I lived in Kentucky at a small liberal arts college also, though that was a Catholic institution — so not exactly the vibe I was looking for. So when I was out in San Diego, I put together a list of all the esteemed liberal arts institutions that I might want to work at and that offer bowling programs in some capacity. Then I just watched their HR websites diligently and waited for opportunities to present themselves. For this job, they actually didn’t cast a very wide

Where do you see yourself in 10 years? That’s a challenging question. My professional path has been very non-linear. The fact that I’m in bowling now is still a bit of a surprise. I’d like to continue to grow in the student affairs capacity and stay connected to the sport of bowling somehow. Unfortunately, bowling at the college level is not something you can really make a solid living at. I’m very open to different opportunities, and I try to be responsive to my curiosity and what fascinates me at the moment. Certainly I’d like to be involved in the sport of bowling in 10 years, whether or not that’s in a professional capacity or just an advisory or personal capacity. Interview by Nate Levinson, Sports editor Photo by Effie Kline-Salamon, Photo editor

Home Games This Week Saturday, April 11 11 a.m. – Club soccer vs. Kenyon College at Bailey Field 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. – Baseball vs. Kenyon College at Dill Field 1 p.m. – Men’s rugby vs. Cleveland State University at North Fields

Sunday, April 12 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. – Baseball vs. Kenyon College at Dill Field

Tuesday, April 14 3:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. – Softball vs. Wittenberg University at Culhane Field 7 p.m. – Men’s lacrosse vs. Hiram College at the Austin E. Knowlton Athletic Complex

Thursday, April 16 5 p.m. – Women’s lacrosse vs. Hiram College at the Austin E. Knowlton Athletic Complex

The Oberlin Review, April 10, 2015

Sports

Feature Photo: Track and Field Seniors

Page 15

Editorial: Officials Lose NCAA Final Continued from page 16

Back Row (left to right): Julia Skrovan, Katie Skayhan, Margaret Miller, Conor Narovec, Jerry Choi, Evan Finch, Jeffery Kawahara, Nora Ryan, Miles Gueno and Ashley Parish. Front Row (left to right): Erica Morelli, Carey Lyons, Rose Stoloff (Editor-inChief), Emma Lehmann, Nuria Alishio-Caballero and Sarah Jane Kerwin. The senior members of the men’s and women’s track and field teams pose with flowers after being honored on Saturday, April 4 as part of the Bob Kahn Invitational. The women’s team finished second out of seven teams while the men’s team finished third out of six. The teams head to Delaware, PA, this Saturday to compete in the All-Ohio Championships. Text by Nate Levinson, Sports editor Photo courtesy of Sarah Kaufman

John Adams. In an interview with SiriusXM College Sports on Tuesday, Adams only added fuel to the fire with one of the most absurd statements made by someone who is supposed to be monitoring the officials who hold the power to make or break a game. “I saw it after they had left the monitor and actually thought about: Is it in my prerogative to get up, run over to the table, buzz the buzzer and tell them to come back and look?” Adams said. “That’s how critical I thought the play was, and concluded that this is a job for the guys on the floor and I’ve never done this before, why would I do it tonight and perhaps change the balance of the game?” Adams also said in the same interview that officials did not see the same angle of the play that viewers around the country did. This statement was later corrected on Wednesday in an interview between ESPN and NCAA Vice President Dan Gavitt, who said that officials did indeed see the same footage that was being simultaneously broadcasted. In their attempts to restore fans’ trust in the officiating calls being made about their beloved teams, Gavitt and Adams both failed miserably. Of course, there are those rare calls that could go either way, even with instant replay and a team of analysts. Those 50–50 decisions are part of the nature of playing a sport, and as an athlete you learn to roll with the punches most of the time. But when a national title is on the line and over 28 million people are watching, the officials and analysts need to be willing to take the necessary time to make the right call. Otherwise, teams like Wisconsin will always be left wondering, “What if?”

Fats, Oils Have Benefits Too Isabel Hulkower Columnist This week’s column is devoted to two very special oils in my life. One is a superfood sensation, known to the world over for its crazy benefits and uses, and the other is a personal favorite that I lovingly grab at every opportunity. The first and most vital thing I have to say is that fats and oils are dope. We are currently blessed to be living in an age when the benefits of fat are revered instead of feared. This modern outlook is due to a dramatic cultural shift. From 1980 through the mid2000s, fat was public enemy number one. Facing the enormous heart disease crisis, many national agencies responded by pointing their collective finger at dietary cholesterol. The prevailing wisdom at the time was that cutting fat was the most effective way to battle heart disease and lose weight. Experts advised people to follow diets made up of mostly carbs, as evidenced by the food pyramid. Now, however, this antiquated hypothesis has been overturned. Since the ’80s, the average amount of fat consumed by Americans has increased substantially, and despite a decrease in cholesterol rates and smoking, obesity, heart disease and diabetes rates have all increased. These jarring facts have lead experts to reconceptualize their recommendations, moving us into our current era of Atkins, Paleo and countless other diets that embrace lipids for their true glory, all the while throwing shade on the consumption of carbs and sugar. Nonetheless, all of those years of anti-fat rhetoric are hard to erase from our cultural conscience, and many eaters find it hard to accept that butter is, in fact, a totally admissible thing to consume. So, in order to convey my personal support for fats of all kinds, I’ve compiled some lovely information about

two great oils. I’d be remiss if I didn’t start with the Everest of superfoods: coconut oil. Its benefits were first noted in Ayurvedic medicine texts written about 4,000 years ago, and now a modern Google search will tell you that it is good for seemingly everything. Coconut oil is special because of its chemical properties: it is nearly all saturated fat (about 92 percent), but this saturated fat is predominantly medium chain fatty acids, which are a dream for the body. They lower cholesterol, protect against heart disease and are easily absorbed into the liver, which actually increases metabolism and helps you burn more fat. Further, increased absorption of MCFAs is used to combat seizures in medically resistant children and to help brain function in Alzheimer’s patients. It’s also great for your skin and hair, acts as a five SPF sunscreen and adds a little tropical breeze to your food when you cook with it. In my humble and seriously semi-professional opinion, coconut oil is as good as it gets. My second oil recommendation is emu oil. Yes, rendered fat from emus. Amazingly, a scary, flightless bird has miracle fat that has incredible skin benefits. This oil is special because of its unique ability to access the bottom layers of the skin, and as a result it has incredible healing capabilities. It can be used on anything from burns to scars to stretch marks. Its best use, though, is piercing care. Emu oil has taken some truly angry hoops back from the edge, and many piercers swear by it. It’s useful all over the body for moisturizing and protecting the ski and is apparently odorless, though that seems a little far-fetched because it is bird-based. These two marvelous oils are only the tip of the iceberg. I hope they’ll be gateway oils in your personal lipid journey. This is an open invitation to revel in the glow of fat and embrace healthy oils whenever they cross your path.

Sports The Oberlin Review

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— Women’s Lacrosse —

Tigers Snap Yeowomen’s Streak Randy Ollie After a highly competitive regulation period, the Wittenberg University Tigers snapped the Yeowomen’s six-game win streak in a nail-biting overtime victory on Tuesday, April 7. With less than a minute left in overtime, the Yeowomen and the Tigers remained tied 16–16. But with just 26 seconds remaining on the clock, Tigers’ attacker, sophomore Becca Joseph, netted

the game-winning goal, and Wittenberg walked away with its 26th straight win in North Coast Athletic Conference play. Oberlin and Wittenberg exchanged leads seven times, including when junior Grace Barlow scored her fifth goal of the match to push the Yeowomen to a 16–15 lead in the final minutes of overtime. The Tigers then forced a Yeowomen turnover and answered with a goal to even score before

ultimately pulling away with the victory. Barlow felt that despite the heartbreaker, the game reinforced the Yeowomen’s confidence heading into games with more top-tier competition. “We just need to continue to play with composure and continue minimizing costly turnovers on attack,” Barlow said. “At this point, we need to believe in our abilities and believe that we can win against teams like Denison [University] and

Sophomore attacker Sara Phister works around a defender in a home game against the DePauw University Tigers on March 21. Phister scored six goals in the Yeowomen’s 17–16 overtime loss to the Wittenberg University Tigers on Tuesday. Courtesy of Erik Andrews

[The College of] Wooster. Wittenberg was exactly the game we needed to show us the level we can play at.” The Yeowomen struggled to maintain possession throughout the contest, as they turned over the ball 32 times to Wittenberg’s 23. However, they did come out ahead in draws, holding a 26–10 edge over the Tigers. Sophomore goalkeeper Alexa L’Insalata, who had 13 key saves on a barrage of 30 shots, said that the frequent change of hand in possessions was a major element of the result. “Some key factors of our loss on Tuesday were our own mistakes and turnovers,” L’Insalata said. “If we had cut even just some of those, it could have been a totally different game.” With 20 minutes left in regulation, sophomore Morgan Daruwala led the Yeowomen on a 6–2 run by netting two goals and giving the Yeowomen their first second-half lead. The run also included three goals by sophomore Sara Phister, who led all scorers with six goals in the contest. Phister has already netted 27 goals in 10 games this season. With such a strong perfor-

mance against the Tigers, who are currently 4–0 in the NCAC, Head Coach Lynda McCandlish found her team’s effort and resilience promising. “Going into overtime, our team showed a lot of maturity and composure,” McCandlish said. “We tried our best to control the tempo of the game, but shots just didn’t go our way.’ L’Insalata similarly noted that continuing to play at a high level will be an integral part of the Yeowomen’s success in the coming games. “We plan on taking the intensity of lacrosse we proved we are capable of into our game on Saturday and the rest of our games to come,” L’Insalata said. “I believe that our overtime loss to Wittenberg not only highlighted our strengths that we can capitalize on in future games, but it also sparked a fire within our team.” After suffering their first conference loss of the season, the Yeowomen are currently 8–2 overall and 2–1 in the NCAC. The Yeowomen look to rebound on Saturday when they travel to The College of Wooster to take on the Fighting Scots at 3 p.m.

— Men’s Lacrosse —

Men’s Lacrosse Still Can’t Get by Kenyon Oliver Bok News Editor The men’s lacrosse team started off strong but ultimately fell to Kenyon College 12–6 on Wednesday night, as the Lords put seven unanswered goals past the Yeomen during the middle of the game. The loss extended Oberlin’s 19-year losing streak against Kenyon and effectively ended the Yeomen’s playoff hopes. “I think we were ready for the game, we were well-prepared; we just didn’t perform,” said senior captain and midfielder Sean Seaman. “We didn’t come out with enough energy and we didn’t put together a full sixty minutes of lacrosse.” The first quarter featured exciting, back-and-forth action, as the Yeomen answered each of the Lords’ goals with one of their own. Junior attacker Nick Lobley found the back of the net twice in the first quarter, en route to providing half of the Yeoman’s goals with a hat-trick. Later in the quarter, sophomore midfielder Kinori Rosnow electrified the crowd when he single-handedly won a faceoff, ran up the field and scored a goal just 13 seconds after Kenyon had scored. With approximately a min-

ute remaining in the first quarter, the game was tied at three. But in the second and third quarters, Kenyon’s speedy, counterattacking style proved too much for the Oberlin defense, as the Lords created space for themselves by beating defenders and then immediately capitalizing. “They really took advantage in transition; they’re a good transition team,” Seaman said. “When we were settled, our defense was better than their offense at times, but they just pushed transition so well.” However, even in the second and third quarters the game did not appear one-sided. Oberlin often dominated possession, largely thanks to Rosnow, who won 18 out of 21 face-offs for the Yeomen. “He’s arguably one of our best players this year,” Seaman said of Rosnow. “If you have possession that often, you should win the game. We need to just take care of the ball once we get it — because he’s winning us the ball — and we need to be taking advantage of those opportunities.” In the last quarter, the Yeomen recovered some of their earlygame swagger and laid siege to the Kenyon goal. Oberlin had 20 shots in the final 15 minutes and scored

three goals, one from Lobley and two from junior midfielder Matt Fox. Still, their late game heroics were not enough to make up for the team’s mid-game lapse. “They have a good defense, they have a good goalie, so we knew we needed to generate a lot of shots to try and get as many goal opportunities,” said Head Coach Topher Grossman. “Their goalie made some very good saves. The bulk of our shots came when we really needed them, and that was at the end of the game. We definitely needed to get the ball on cage if we

were going to get any goals out of it.” The Yeomen end their season with a trip to Wabash College this Saturday and home games against Hiram College and DePauw University on Tuesday and next Saturday respectively. For Grossman, the focus is now on finishing the season as strongly as possible. “If we take it one game at a time for the next three games, we’re going to end the third consecutive year above .500, the first time that we’ve done that in Lord knows how long.”

April 10, 2015

Badgers Burned by Refs Tyler Sloan Sports Editor There are few aspects of sporting events as frustrating as a bad referee call that changes the outcome of a crucial game. The University of Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team is now all too familiar with this annoyance following a close 68–63 loss to the Duke University Blue Devils in the NCAA Division I Championship. After the dramatic conclusion to March Madness, sports news outlets flooded with a slow-motion video of a play that sparked controversy and potentially cost Wisconsin the national title. With just one minute and 26 seconds left in the final quarter of the year, the ball flew out of bounds off the hands of the Badger’s Bronson Koenig and forced a turnover — or did it graze the fingertips of the Blue Devil’s Justise Winslow? This has been the source of debate for avid college basketball followers. As the video continues circulating, the general consensus has been that Winslow’s fingertips very clearly skimmed the ball before it went out of bounds. However, after a rushed evaluation of the play, the referees awarded Duke possession, and Tyus Jones proceeded to sink a three-pointer to extend the Blue Devil’s lead to eight points. There is no way to know if this play would have changed the outcome of the game, but that is precisely the reason for frustration. Many sports fans have hoped that in an era of instant replay and high-tech equipment, bad calls would become a thing of the past. Clearly, these followers have their doubts now. A team of four referees reviewed the play for two minutes, watching instant replays and consulting analysts, but somehow came to a different conclusion than almost everyone else watching the game — including the NCAA Supervisor of Officials See Editorial, page 15

Junior midfielder Matt Fox looks upfield during a 12–6 home loss to the Kenyon College Lords on Wednesday. The loss dropped the team’s record to 5–7 and marked the Yeomen’s 19th consecutive loss against the Lords. Evan Davies