October 9, 2015

The Oberlin Review

OCTOBER 9, 2015 VOLUME 144, NUMBER 6

Local News Bulletin News briefs from the past week Conservancy Purchases 63 Acres The Western Reserve Land Conservancy, the largest land trust in Ohio, recently bought 63 acres of the Oberlin Great South Woods.

According to a press release, “the parcel, which has forests, wetlands and a sedge meadow, will be used for passive outdoor recreation, including walking, jogging, birdwatching, picnicking and nature study.”

City to Order Exercise Equipment Oberlin will purchase six pieces of outdoor equipment and three hydration stations for use by the general public after receiving a $50,000 grant from the Lorain County General Health District. The city has already installed one hydration station in Depot Park; another will be installed this week on West Hamilton Street, and a third will be installed downtown. The city will purchase a reverse fly, a chest press, a cross-trainer, a stair climber and a two-person back and arm combination machine.

Exhibit Celebrates Black Students at Oberlin A special exhibit, “Celebrating the Legacy,” highlighting 180 years of Black students at Oberlin College is currently on display on the fourth floor of Mudd library. As part of the Oberlin Alumni Association of African Ancestry 2015 Reunion last weekend, the exhibit features a number of historic documents from Oberlin’s archives pertaining to Black life at the College. Other events that took place over the reunion weekend include Wedding Band, a Dance Diaspora performance, a professional networking lunch with students and more. The exhibit will remain on display until Oct. 17.

Third World Co-op: 21 Years of Solidarity Melissa Harris Staff Writer The Oberlin Alumni Association of African Ancestry commemorated the 180th anniversary of Oberlin’s decision to adopt a non-discriminatory admissions policy for African American students and other people of color at its reunion last weekend. Perhaps overlooked, however, is one of the most vibrant spaces for students of color on campus: Third World Co-op.

Although not the largest cooperative in Oberlin, TWC has developed a powerful presence with its small dining hall and kitchen, tucked away in the back of Baldwin Cottage. With a mural full of some of the world’s most influential people of color and figures of social justice, TWC has stood for over 20 years in resistance to racism, classism, sexism and marginalization.

Founded in 1994, TWC has served as both a safe space and an organizing avenue for marginalized students.

Doctor Genji Terasaki, OC ’95, was one of the founders of TWC. “Two years before the TWC started in Baldwin, there was a Winter Term People of Color Co-op,” Terasaki said. “It was just for Winter Term. This was the first time I was part of something like that.”

Before coming to Oberlin in 1991, Terasaki recalled there being two other cooperatives on campus for people

Students at Third World Co-op eat lunch on Thursday. The co-op has served as a safe space for marginalized students for more than 20 years.

Bryan Rubin, Photo editor

of color, neither of which were technically official. He noted that the need partially stemmed from an awareness of the Los Angeles riots, racial divisions and the Crown Heights riot.

As a result of the political turmoil, students dining in the POC Co-op proposed permanently merging with OSCA. Terasaki explained how, while trying to establish the co-op, he and the other students advocating for the space had two main purposes: a safe space for people of color and a mission for coalescing marginalized students.

After sitting in OSCA Board meetings, a group of students including

Terasaki, Kaho Abe, OC ’95, Anne Katahira, OC ’95, Naeem Mohaiemen, OC ’93, Theo Copley, OC ’96, Carmen Mitchell, OC ’96, and Jeffrey Cabusao OC ’97 engaged in 18 months of organizing. TWC was eventually established in the fall of 1994.

According to the OSCA website, the co-op’s new name came from The Third World Liberation Front, a student movement at San Francisco State University in the late 1960s that demanded the creation of a school for ethnic studies and a larger percentage of students of color be admitted.

However, the name change from

People of Color Co-op to Third World Co-op created tension among the group of students, according to Terasaki. Some students found the name Third World Co-op to be more inclusive to a greater number of identities of people on campus. At the same time, many students still wanted the space to remain only for students of color. Terasaki explained the complexity of the dilemma.

“If a person identifies as a person of color who is Jewish, [who were] we to say that they [weren’t]?” Terasaki See Third, page 2

Oberlin Least Financially Accessible Among Peers Oliver Bok News Editor A recent analysis by The New York Times ranked Oberlin the least financially accessible among its 16 peer schools and 132nd overall.

The Sept. 16 article, “Top Colleges Doing the Most for Low-Income Students,” used the share of students on Pell Grants and the net tuition charged to both middle and low-income students to rank 179 elite colleges and universities.

Administrators in the past have defended Oberlin’s tuition rates by noting that the College has a significantly smaller endowment than peer schools and thus relies heavily on tuition revenue. The Times ranking shows that Oberlin’s endowment-per-student ratio is lower than 13 of 16 elite small liberal arts schools — the so-called “Sweet 16” — that the College considers its peers. To take the most extreme case, Pomona College has an endowment-per-student ratio more than four times that of Oberlin.

However, all three peer schools with lower endowment-per-student ratios than Oberlin — Kenyon College, Connecticut College and Wesleyan University — rank higher than Oberlin in the Times’ analysis, scoring 120, 115 and 38 respectively. Kenyon’s endowment-per-student ratio is just 41 percent

of the size of Oberlin’s, Connecticut College’s ratio is 44 percent of Oberlin’s and Wesleyan’s endowmentper-student ratio is 80 percent of Oberlin’s.

According to the Times, Pell Grant recipients constitute 17 percent of Wesleyan graduates and eight percent of Oberlin graduates. From 2011 to 2014, Wesleyan charged an average net tuition of roughly $16,000 to students from households that make $48,000 to $75,000 annually. Oberlin charged around $19,000 in net tuition to the same group of students over the same time period.

In an email to the Review, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Debra Chermonte objected to the use of Pell Grants as an indicator of how many low-income students attend various colleges and universities.

“While it is understandable why Pell is used publicly to measure an institution’s commitment to educating low-income students, measuring financial need by Pell eligibility only is problematic in that there are families with significant need above the Pell threshold,” Chermonte wrote. “With specific regard to Pell it is important to remember that income is only one factor.”

Chermonte warned against reading too much into averages, as a small number of data points can distort the situation substantially. Chermonte

Later, Gators

Rolling High ResponsibleOhio’s Green Rush tour bus traveled to Oberlin in hopes of gaining support for marijuana legalization.

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Yeomen dominate in record-setting homecoming.

Dreamy Dens Lower Dens showcased their new album at the ’Sco.

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INDEX:

Opinions 5

This Week in Oberlin 8

Arts 10

Sports 16

pointed to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, in which Phillip Levine, an economist at Wellesley College, shows how just a handful of unusual cases made it seem like Wellesley had tripled tuition for low income students when, according to Levine, nothing had changed at all (“What’s Wrong with the Government’s College Cost Information — and How to Fix It,” Nov. 21, 2014).

“When dealing with averages, you must remember that just two people with unusual circumstances can skew data when numbers are small,” wrote Chermonte.

Chermonte also noted that Wesleyan’s total revenue is roughly $13 million higher than Oberlin’s.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the median federal debt of undergraduates who completed their Oberlin degree is $25,217. For Wesleyan, the figure is $18,633.

From 2011 to 2014, Oberlin charged an average net tuition of $12,740 to students from households that make $30,000 to $48,000 and $11,158 to students from households that make less than $30,000 a year, according to Chermonte.

See Accessibility, page 4

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The Oberlin Review, October 9, 2015

Students Seek Transparency at Trustee Forum Tyler Sloan News Editor The Board of Trustees scattered among five classrooms in King Hall for its first student forum of the school year last Thursday.

Despite the fragmented format, students voiced unified concerns regarding endowment payout cuts, the status of divestment proposals from Students for a Free Palestine and Oberlin Fossil Fuel Divestment and increased transparency in the Board’s deliberation processes.

Student attendees in each of the five groups pressed Board members about potential cuts to the College’s $800-million endowment payout and how they would impact tuition and student services. All trustees at the forum stated that there had been no official decision about cutting the payout.

“The amount that’s paid out under the endowment is a topic of constant conversation,” Board of Trustees member David Krischer, OC ’78, said in one of the meetings.

“The endowment looks like a huge amount of money — and for real people, it is — but compared to a lot of our peer institutions it’s relatively small.”

Still, some students pushed back and asked for trustees to think critically about which programs would suffer if it ultimately did decide to cut the endowment’s payout.

“When you cut from the endowment [payout], that means less money for certain things on campus,” College sophomore and Student Senator Anjali Kolachalam said in the same meeting. “I think I can speak for a lot of people in this room when I say that they don’t want that sacrifice.”

Some members of Students for a Free Palestine and Oberlin Fossil Fuel Divestment requested updates about the status of their proposals. College junior and SFP member Dana Colihan said that the group submitted its divestment proposal in February and that the Board has consistently delayed making a decision.

Board of Trustees Member Joe Condon, OC ’13, said that the Board is continuing to

deliberate both the SFP and fossil fuel divestment proposals. Condon added that he appreciated the quality of the proposals and students’ continued interest in these topics.

The Board’s alleged lack of transparency was called to attention in relationship to both the potential endowment payout cuts and student proposal deliberations.

Students requested further insight into the Board’s decision-making process and asked why they are excluded from conversations behind closed doors. Board members mostly cited issues of legal liability in response to students’ concerns about being left in the dark.

“The Board is listening, and the fact that there isn’t a final decision and the fact that we’re not able to divulge the process of the debate does not mean we aren’t listening,” Krischer said. “I don’t think any of us genuinely know what the decision will be. It’s a vigorous debate. My thinking on a number of issues has changed as a result of a lot of these kinds of conversations.”

Another issue that came to the forefront

of conversations in each of the groups included a six-point proposal from a body of international students. The group requested the creation of an international alumni database and network and an on-campus cultural ambassador, among other programs.

The forum’s new format divided attendees into groups of approximately 20 students and three trustees, as opposed to past years when meetings were held in larger spaces like Stevenson Dining Hall and the Science Center.

“The breakout rooms were Senate’s way of [dividing the issues],” said College fifthyear and Student Senate Liasion Megs Bautista. “Last semester, the rooms had themes and this year we didn’t get enough feedback from students to do that.”

The College’s Steering Committee — comprised of trustees, faculty, students, staff, administrators and alumni — is expected to announce its strategic plan in December. The plan will likely address issues of endowment cuts and student divestment proposals.

World Co-op a Historic Feature Photo: Green Rush Hits Oberlin Third Safe Space for Students Continued from page 1

ResponsibleOhio spokesperson Michael McGovern speaks with Oberlin residents as part of the Green Rush Bus Tour to garner support for Issue 3, the ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana in Ohio and grant a handful of companies control over growing the substance in the state. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.

“We’re taking this thing to all the counties and about 25 to 30 college campuses to spread awareness about Issue 3, and talk to people,” McGovern said. “I know we were really focused on getting students registered to vote the last couple weeks, and now it’s [time to] get out the vote.”

ResponsibleOhio has garnered criticism from those who oppose the group’s push for a stategranted monopoly in growing marijuana. To Mc-

Govern, however, the monopoly is the best way to safely regulate the substance and keep the state in compliance with the federal government. McGovern added that in his opinion, anyone who opposes the monopoly but supports marijuana legalization in general should vote yes on Issue 3.

“Even if you don’t like some piece of this, isn’t it better to start somewhere? Get it legal, stop arresting people, get it in the hands of sick people, and then if we need to, go back and tweak it and stuff. It’s better to tweak a system then to say, ‘nah, forget it’ and start from scratch.”

If Issue 3 passes, ResponsibleOhio plans to open a testing facility in Oberlin.

Text by Oliver Bok, News editor Photo by Bryan Rubin, Photo editor

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October 9, 2015

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said. “If somebody is white … with European ancestry but were born in Brazil, speaking Spanish, should they not be in the co-op? At some point, it just wasn’t in our interest to make it exclusive to people of color.”

After the first few years of running on a lottery system like the rest of OSCA, TWC decided to adopt an application-based system. Today, TWC still takes in new members through this process.

Since then, the co-op has developed into a space that helps its members grow and understand a variety of issues — from structural racism to classism, sexism and others — through discussion. In the TWC journal archives, Kirti Baranwal, OC ’98, wrote about the importance of the co-op in her personal development.

“It was people in this space, TWC, that kicked my butt and seriously started challenging my views,” wrote Baranwal. “And I fought back and started thinking about why the conflict was going on. … It didn’t lead to immediate revelation or anything, but involved a lot of tears, reflection, hurt and a process which began then.”

While challenging its members on issues of oppression throughout its 21 years of existence, TWC has also served as a place of solace for many students of color.

“I think TWC has been a safe space for me and that there are so many micro-aggressions that I have faced from small things, like being the only person of color in a class,” Business manager Maureen CurtisCoffey Cook Business manager Savi Sedlacek Ads manager Caley Watnick Ads manager Reshard el-Shair Online editor Cyrus Eosphoros Production Sophia Bamert Production manager manager Hazel Galloway Production staff Stephanie Bonner Production staff Ryanne Berry Emma Eisenberg Julia Davis Taylor Field KiraHamilton Findling Katherine Lya Finston Julia Hubay Tracey Knott Annelise Giseburt Noah Morris Auden Granger Anna Peckham Jennifer Jimenez Silvia Sheffield Sami Mericle Drew Wise Distributors Anne Buckwalter Distributors Joe Camper Natalie Rathgeber Joseph Dilworth KylaJames Van Gelder Kuntz

College senior and TWC member Anders Villalta said. “When I come to co-op meals, I feel like I can retreat into a space where I won’t feel microaggressions based on my ethnicity, my race or background.”

As the OA4 commemorates the 180th anniversary of the admission of people of color this weekend, members of TWC spoke about how much further Oberlin still has to grow to be more aware and to fight structural racism and discrimination.

“I think that, apart from TWC, there are so many ways in which the College needs to grow to better serve its communities of color, in particular the Black community and the Latinx community,” College senior and TWC member Lisa MacDonald said. “I think that the continued need for TWC within OSCA is also a symbol of the fact that the dominant narrative at Oberlin is not one that is accommodating or comfortable to certain students of color.”

Looking into the future, MacDonald proposed that it would be better for TWC to become more open to the Oberlin city community in order to further the original intentions of the space.

“I think it would be good for TWC and OSCA [to integrate] the [city] community into our meals, like inviting the kids you tutor to cook a shift,” MacDonald said.

She said that the cooperative movement, especially in TWC, is one that advocates sharing resources with people in non-discriminatory ways.

Corrections

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The Oberlin Review, October 9, 2015

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Off the Cuff: Marcus Rediker, author of Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom Marcus Rediker is a professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh and an author of many books relating to maritime history, including Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age and The Slave Ship: A Human History, which won the George Washington Book Prize in 2008. Rediker’s last book, The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom, inspired him to collaborate with director Tony Buba to make a prizewinning follow-up documentary titled Ghosts of Amistad. The History department and the Bonner Center for Service and Learning invited Rediker to screen the documentary last Monday night and to give a lecture on the Amistad Rebellion on Tuesday.

For readers who aren’t familiar with the history of the Amistad Rebellion, can you give a brief overview of the event?

The Amistad Rebellion took place in 1839.

Fifty three Africans captured a slave schooner off the north coast of Cuba [and] sailed it all the way north to the upper end of Long Island, where they were captured by the U.S. government, thrown in jail [and] charged with piracy and murder. There began a tremendous legal struggle for their freedom. Abolitionists flocked to the jail, and this combination of African insurrectionists and mostly white middle-class antislavery activists built together a campaign, which resulted over 19 months [later] in a successful verdict from the United States Supreme Court. Several months after that, the Amistad Africans — the survivors — were able to return home to their native Sierra Leone. The most important thing about it is that this was a very important event in the struggle against slavery in the United States and around the Atlantic.

Was it important in the sense that it changed people’s minds about slavery or rather that it gave abolitionists a symbolic victory?

It was probably the first great victory of the abolitionist movement. So they actually

Thursday, Oct. 1 5:53 p.m. Facilities staff reported the theft of copper piping from a College-owned house on East Lorain Street. Members of the Oberlin Police Department also responded.

8:15 p.m. Officers were requested to assist with a safety inspection at Saunders House. A plastic shopping bag was covering a smoke detector in a room on the second floor. The officers removed the bag and checked the detector, which was in working condition.

Saturday, Oct. 3 12:14 a.m. Officers were requested to assist with a student ill from alcohol consumption at South Hall. An ambulance was requested

were able to free some people [and] generated tremendous publicity. The abolitionist movement grew, and the abolitionist movement became more radical because the example of a group of people emancipating themselves under arms inflamed the imagination of some abolitionists, including Henry Highland Garnet and John Brown.

So it not only expanded the movement — it pushed it in a more militant direction.

You went to Sierra Leone to make your documentary about the rebellion. What did you find there?

We went to Sierra Leone in May 2013 as a spinoff project from the book, which was published in 2012. We had two objectives. One was to see what we could find out about local memory in the Amistad case. I had found in my research which villages the Amistad Africans came from, so we went to 10 villages, gathered up the elders — the keepers of the stories in the village — and, through an interpreter, talked with them about their history, but also about what was remembered there about the Amistad case. The results were mixed. In some villages, they remembered nothing; in other villages, they remembered quite a lot. In fact, [they] had some facts that were not known to historians beforehand, some local knowledge. That was our first objective.

The second was to find this slavetrading factory — that’s what they were called — on the Gallinas coast [of ] southern Sierra Leone, where all of the Amistad Africans were held before they were shipped across the Atlantic on a slave ship, and we found it. People had been looking for it for about half a century, and with the help of some fishermen who put us in their canoes and paddled us through a crocodile-infested swamp, we found it. The place is called Lomboko. So those two things — the talks with the elders and the search for Lomboko — were the central parts of the film.

and the student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

9:22 a.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm at a Village Housing unit on Elm Street.

There was no fire or smoke, and responders were unable to find the cause of the alarm, which was reset with no further problems.

9:05 p.m. Officers were requested to assist with a student who was ill at Kade House. The student was transported to Mercy for treatment.

10:37 p.m. Officers responded to an unauthorized party on the third floor of Burton Hall. The officers observed alcohol in plain view when they entered the room.

The alcohol was confiscated and disposed of.

Sunday, Oct. 4 12:54 a.m. Officers were requested to assist a student ill from

Well, here’s what actually happened: They kept two Cuban slave owners alive. One of them was actually a ship captain, so he did know navigation, and they told him to sail the vessel towards the rising sun. Since the rising sun had been at their back when they had crossed the Atlantic, this was the best way of instructing him. So what he would do is, during the daytime, he would sail east, but he kept the sails loose and flapping in the wind so he wouldn’t make too much progress. Then, in the night, he would reverse course and sail back towards the west in the hope that by staying in the busier sea lanes up and down the coast of America and the Caribbean, someone would find him and save him. And that’s what happened — the U.S. navy captured the ship in August 1839.

Marcus Rediker, professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh

How common were slave ship uprisings at this time?

Slave ship uprisings were fairly common, but successful slave ship uprisings were extremely rare because a whole series of things had to happen for this to work out. Of course, the last and most challenging thing was, could you sail the ship? It turns out the Amistad Africans could; they sailed it 1,400 miles. One of the things that scholarship has revealed overthe last 20 years or so is that revolts were more common than we thought, but still it was very hard to gain control over the slave ship and somehow make your way to freedom. The other case in which it tended to happen was right on the coast of Africa; if people could rise up and seize the ship and then get ashore, they might escape. Once you’ve crossed the Middle Passage — once you’ve crossed the Atlantic — it’s very hard to win your freedom. So in that sense, the Amistad case was an unusual but especially important symbolic example.

I know that the Cuban navigator deceived the Africans and steered the ship toward the U.S. instead of Africa. What does that say about how the navigator thought the U.S. would handle the situation?

alcohol consumption in front of Noah Hall. An ambulance was requested and the student was transported to Mercy for treatment.

12:34 a.m. An officer was requested to assist a student who cut their leg on a piece of glass while at an off-campus residence. The student was transported to Mercy for treatment.

Monday, Oct. 5 12:08 a.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm at South Hall, which was activated when a birthday cake box caught fire. There was no damage and the fire was immediately extinguished.

7:40 a.m. Custodial staff reported a broken glass window on the second floor stairwell landing of Talcott Hall. A staff member cleaned up the glass and filed a work order for repair.

Is it fair to say that a lot of your work involves refocusing attention on the rebellion itself as opposed to the abolitionists?

While the history of the event is concentrated overwhelmingly on the court case — and the court case was important, no question about it — I think the most important thing was the rebellion. So my work is focused on the African rebels and how they managed to do this most unusual thing- make a revolt and actually win their freedom.

Did those in favor of slavery place the same symbolic significance on the Amistad case that the abolitionists did?

This was out viciously in the press; the pro and antislavery newspapers and individuals fought over this. Some of the coverage of the Amistad case in the proslavery press was really quite extraordinary. I mean it was just pure racist invective: ‘These people are savages; they’re built like monkeys; send them to Cuba; execute them; they’re nothing but slaves.’ But the abolitionists are saying, ‘These people are freedom fighters. They were illegally enslaved, and you need to free them.’ The debate was fierce.

11:27 a.m. An officer on patrol observed a large broken window on the ground outside of a Village Housing Unit on Cedar Street.

The officer checked the rest of the house and secured a window and two doors. The officer then filed a work order for repair.

1:08 p.m. Officers were requested to assist with a safety inspection at a Village Housing Unit on Cedar Street. The officers observed a bagged smoke detector in the dining room and contacted Facilities Operations to remove the bag.

1:25 p.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm on the second floor of South Hall.

The alarm had been activated by a blowdryer and was then reset.

4:41 p.m. Officers were requested to assist with a safety inspection at the Union Street Housing Complex. A bagged smoke

Interview by Oliver Bok, News editor Photo courtesy of Marcus Rediker

detector, multi-colored pipe, silver grinder, a baggie and several small containers of marijuana were in plain view. The bag was removed from the detector by Facilities Operations staff and all other items were turned over to the Oberlin Police Department.

Tuesday, Oct. 6 2:26 p.m. Officers were requested to assist with a safety inspection at an Elm Street apartment. A strong odor of burnt marijuana was detected in the apartment. The occupant denied smoking anything in the apartment and was advised of the College’s smoking policy.

11:25 p.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm in the kitchen area of the Asia House basement. The alarm was checked and reset with no further problems.

News

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The Oberlin Review, October 9, 2015

Faculty Weigh Revisions to Advising System Jack Rockwell The Faculty Advising Committee is currently in the early stages of reviewing the student advising system, a process that may lead to greater adviser involvement.

The committee is arranging focus groups to determine what kinds of changes the College should consider.

“The General Faculty Advising Committee is developing focus groups to talk with students about academic advising in Arts and Sciences,” Dean of Studies Joyce Babyak wrote in an email to the Review. “We expect to work with Senate when we are ready to set the groups up. What we learn from these focus groups will inform thinking about academic advising going forward.”

College senior Robert Bonfiglio, the only student member of the Faculty Advising Committee, described

the current state of operations as a sort of routine check-up.

“Right now, there’s no plan to change the advising system,” Bonfiglio said. “It’s a preliminary movement to create focus groups to check out how the advising system is operating, just because it’s good to check on these things.”

However, to Dean of Arts and Sciences Tim Elgren, the review of the advising system goes handin-hand with a broader review of the curriculum as a whole, as the College attempts to integrate students’ academic and extracurricular experiences.

“We have in mind a broader relationship, a bigger impact, that advising could play in your life as a student and help you to think about how to move beyond your Oberlin experience: in terms of internships, in terms of how you spend your winter,

how you spend your summer, using your time here as effectively and courageously as possible and engaging in new ways that you hadn’t imagined,” Elgren said.

Elgren envisions a two-year process: a year of exploration followed by a year of implementation, with a potentially altered advising system ready by fall 2017. The review will draw on student input and look at other colleges’ advising systems. According to Elgren, the key is creating an advising system that transcends the course catalog.

“There will be a lot of what happens now built into it, but it will, I hope, be available to broader conversations than just course selection, and helping students think about the ways in which their development takes place on many fronts.”

This discussion comes on the heels of broader efforts from the Stra-

tegic Planning Steering Committee to assess the direction Oberlin should move toward in the coming years.

“Effective holistic advising and support are foundational to a successful connected learning experience tailored to the individual needs and aspirations of students for academic, artistic, personal and professional growth,” according to the Strategic Plan draft published this past spring. The draft also recommends making connections between premajor and major advising, as well as integrating the advising system with student support services and the Career Center.

However, the Steering Committee will probably not decide the details behind any new advising system, leaving it to the Faculty Advising Committee to decide what any changes might look like and how they would be implemented.

The Faculty Advising Committee is still at the beginning of this process.

“Right now what’s happening is brainstorming questions to ask faculty and later on with students, to see how people operate within the advising system,” Bonfiglio said. “It’s to find out if people think there needs to be a change.”

However, some committee members echo Elgren’s desire to have the advising system cover a broader spectrum of students’ lives.

“There have been discussions about the kind of advising we want … a sense of connected and integrated learning,” said Director of the Division of Music Theory and Faculty Advising Committee member Brian Alegant. “How do we take all of the different strands of one’s learning, and how do we tighten them and strengthen them and create a more holistic learning experience?”

Senate Assures Free Fall Break Meals for Students Eliza Guinn Though the funding previously reserved for providing free meals to students during school breaks has been cut this semester, the program will go ahead as planned by the Office of Community and Government Relations, Student Senate and various Oberlin faith communities.

Last March, the nascent program provided free meals to students who stayed on campus for spring break, some of whom may not have been able to afford to buy food for a week while Campus Dining Services was closed.

The current funding plan is to take money from the Student Support Initiative Fund and then pay back into it from other sources later on.

The Student Support Initiatives Fund was created to provide support services for students needing additional assistance once they are on campus.

“The only problem with funding at this point is that it’s coming from a source that is not replenishable, in that it is not endowed,” said College fifth-year and Student Senator Megs Bautista. “There is no money going in unless people

donate to it, and so that source is not meant to sustain programs like this over the long term.”

There is hope in the future to institutionalize this budget, although there is not yet a permanent source to fund this program.

About 200 people took advantage of the meals during last spring break’s pilot program, and Student Senate expects a similar number this year.

They have sent out a survey to assess interest in the meals and expect a turnout of anywhere from from 100 to 170 students, according to College sophomore and Student Senator Anjali Kolachalam.

First Church in Oberlin Pastor David Hill, who has been involved with this program since it began last semester, said that several faith communities might be participating — some by expanding their pre-existing scheduled meals.

Organizers of Community Meals, which are held at Christ Episcopal Church, will provide a dinner, and First Church in Oberlin will also expand its Wednesday night supper to accommodate extra students. The faith communities will likely provide a lunch or dinner for every weekday of break.

In addition to the weekday meals, Assistant to the President for Community and Government Relations Tita Reed and Dean of Students Eric Estes will host a dinner on the second weekend at Estes’ house. According to Bautista, he will be serving chili dogs.

“I still feel quite confident that for the vast majority of days during that recess there will be at least one meal for free that students can go to,” Hill said.

But the fact that some of the churches are so far from campus may pose an accessibility issue.

Bautista is looking for people available over break to volunteer their vehicles and provide a shuttle service for students who may not be able to get to the different locations otherwise.

Hill also said that this provided a good place for the College and town community to meet and interact in ways that they normally would not.

“I saw what happened at the meals,” Hill said.

“There were great conversations that were going on, either between students and non-students, with students saying, ‘Wow, I don’t get to have these conversations on campus. This is a different

Issue 1 Tackles Ohio Gerrymandering Haley Johnson This Election Day’s ballot only includes three issues, but all of them have the potential to significantly alter Ohio. Aside from potentially legalizing marijuana and halting market monopolies, voters will have the opportunity to resolve many of the gerrymandering issues that have plagued Ohio’s government in the past.

Issue 1, or the Bipartisan Redistricting Commission Amendment, will create a bipartisan commission to determine state legislative districts. The amendment, which both the Republican and Democratic parties have endorsed, is expected to alleviate some concerns over boundaries that have heavily favored Republicans in the past.

“Both parties have recognized that citizens are increasingly unhappy with the way the system is working and feel that their votes don’t count, which is largely true under gerrymandering,” said Co-President of the League of Women Voters of Ohio Mary Kirtz Van Nortwick. “They have realized that gerrymandering is becoming so extreme that lawsuits are likely.”

Both Lorain County and Oberlin have suffered from gerrymandering in the past by having their votes mixed with outlier populations. Many hope the creation of new districts will allow for fairer representation if Issue 1 is passed. Ohio currently has seven counties that are divided into three or more districts. Lorain County alone is divided into three separate districts, Kirtz Van Nortwock said.

“Our representative lives at the opposite end of the district from us,” Kirtz Van Nortwock said. “Although he won only 9 percent of Oberlin’s vote and lost the vote in the part of Lorain County that is in his district, he easily won by over 60 percent [overall]. Thus, Oberlin and Lorain County have virtually no

chance of voting in a different candidate unless the district lines are redrawn.”

The new commission charged with redistricting will have seven members: two members of the majority party, two members of the minority party, the governor, the state auditor and the secretary of state. The body that currently controls congressional district lines is only comprised of five members and requires only one member of the minority party.

Under Issue 1’s regulations, two members of the commission from each major political party would need to approve a 10-year redistricting plan for it to go into effect. A four-year plan would be implemented with a simple majority vote if a bipartisan vote fails.

Ohio State University Political Science Professor Richard Gunther, an expert on voting districts in Ohio and an Issue 1 advocate, said that Ohio’s current state legislative district map is the third worst in the world. “[Gerrymandering] breaks up communities and swamps voter’s preferences with outskirt voters,” said Gunther, who worked with the League of Women Voters of Ohio to draft Issue 1 and has been attempting to amend redistricting laws in Ohio since 2005.

Still, Issue 1 advocates have their sights set on more redistricting laws that will enforce fairer national congressional districts instead of improving only state legislative lines. The amendment calls for public hearings that will allow voters to give input into drafting district lines. “[Issue 1] is a first step in that it addresses drawing state legislative, but not congressional, district boundaries,” League of Women Voters Board Member Ellen Mavrich said. “Righting congressional district mapping is still on the horizon.”

Ohioans will have the opportunity vote on Issue 1 and other ballot initiatives on Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

type of conversation: I’m really enjoying this,’ but also students, because they eat in separate dining halls, were getting to eat with people they don’t normally eat with. So they were meeting people they weren’t otherwise meeting at times because it was a common dining hall.”

Leo Braido, the owner and manager of IGA, is also participating. Hill added that this year, Braido went a step further by drawing up an actual meal plan that fits within the confines of the budget.

Still, people are questioning whether food should be provided for students staying on campus for break.

“Maybe people need to be reminded why this is important,” Hill said. “I went to a Student Senate meeting when this was being talked about.

I mean, there are students who live far away …

You have students who can’t afford to go home, and you have students who just don’t want to go home. To me, it doesn’t matter what the resources are. If we can help out in the faith community, that’s a great thing.”

Accessibility Issues Edge Out Low-Income Students Continued from page 1 To College senior and Student Labor Action Coalition liaison Omar Hurtado, the fact that students have no access to the College budget itself makes it much harder for student voices on financial accessibility to be heard.

“We don’t even know what the budget looks like,” Hurtado said. “If we had some kind of transparency about what our finances looked like, then maybe we could work with trustees.”

To some students, the disparity in financial accessibility is clearly reflected in the makeup of the student body.

“If you look at Wesleyan and Vassar [College], [which] have comparable endowments, they have a much lower average total cost of tuition, and as a result of that, the percentage of low-income students is twice at Vassar what it is at Oberlin and

a little bit under twice at Wesleyan,” said College sophomore, Student Senator and Chair of the Financial Accessibility Working Group Jesse Docter.

Docter said he thinks the difference between Wesleyan and Oberlin is mostly a matter of institutional priorities, not a matter of resources. He also emphasized that the College is at an important crossroads on this issue, as the Board of Trustees meets this weekend to make crucial financial decisions.

“I think we should await judgment on the Strategic Planning process,” Docter said.

“I think there’s reason to believe the administration may be taking financial accessibility more seriously than they have in the past, but also the budget is going to be reduced this year because of the endowment payout, and financial aid is a common target of that process.”

Opinions The Oberlin Review

October 9, 2015

Letters to the Editors Board of Trustees Condones Violence To the Editors: It has now been two and a half years since Student Senate, reflecting the will of the Oberlin student body, passed a resolution to divest from six companies that profit from and perpetuate Israel’s occupation of Palestine. For a year and a half, the response from the Board of Trustees to this divestment resolution was one of silence and inaction. In that time, Israeli forces killed over 2,100 Palestinians — including 1,500 civilians and 500 children — during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014.

During the 51-day assault, Israeli forces targeted Gaza’s schools, hospitals, factories, mosques and water and power plants. Whole neighborhoods, such as Shuja’iyya, were destroyed; generations of families murdered. The Board of Trustees remains silent on the issue.

In the fall of 2014, it adopted a formal process by which it would consider a divestment resolution.

This decision came after calls by the student body for increased transparency of the College’s endowment portfolio, more dialogue between the student body and the Board of Trustees and a larger role for student voices in determining what our tuition was being used to fund. While we greeted the formalization of a divestment process with optimism, we have since been forced to question the true purpose of it.

After submitting a divestment proposal to the Board in February 2015 and a revised version with a list of organizations supporting it in April, the result has not varied: silence and inaction. We have been told that an answer will come by a certain deadline, and each time, the deadline is pushed back. We are forced to ask: Is this transparency? How can this silence be called “dialogue”?

While the Board continues to deliberate, Palestinians in Gaza face ongoing occupation and the aftermath of Operation Protective Edge. Israel’s blockade of Gaza restricts the import of food, medicine, electricity, fuel and, most recently, the cement and steel critical to the rebuilding process. As

of May, 100,000 out of the 1.8 million inhabitants of Gaza remain homeless. As of July, none of the 19,075 homes and 20 schools destroyed had begun to be rebuilt. In the West Bank, Israel raises walls intended to protect illegal Israeli settlements, limits Palestinians’ freedom of movement and detains, tortures, even kills protesters on a regular basis. Homes are demolished and hundreds evicted without prior notice, as in the Negev, where Israel continues to raze the “unrecognized villages” of Bedouin Palestinians.

In the face of these developments, Oberlin College’s lack of response marks its complacency in the face of daily violence committed against Palestinians. We need to question the efficacy of a divestment application process as proposed by the Board of Trustees, a Board that does not seem to feel the urgency to act demanded by Israeli occupation. The responsibility falls on us, the student body, to pressure them into action. Join us on Wilder Bowl for the International Day of Solidarity with Palestine on Wednesday, Oct. 14, to push for divestment and concrete action.

In struggle, Students for a Free Palestine – Alessandro Mondelli College sophomore – Wyatt Kroopf College senior – Jacob Firman College senior – Alexandra Smith double-degree first-year

GSFS Majors Need Permanent Faculty, Intro Course To the Editors: Oberlin’s Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies majors, minors and allies are asking for student support of our petition to the Dean’s office to hire a faculty member for the GSFS Institute (we currently do not have the status of a department or even a program).

Oberlin College prides itself on the history of its stance on gender issues, and we believe that this legacy is not currently being maintained academically. Oberlin’s peer institutions have wellestablished Gender Studies departments, while Oberlin’s GSFS Institute has neither a permanent faculty nor enough institutional continuity for students or faculty.

We believe that the appointment of a faculty member specifically trained in GSFS and centrally appointed for the GSFS Institute would be an important first step in the journey toward the creation of a Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies program that can stand on its own, compete with other institutions, provide students with solid foundations for careers pertaining to Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, and flourish.

The support of GSFS from the administration is one of many ways that Oberlin can show that it is congruent with its history and its social and academic values.

Issues of gender, sexuality and feminism are deeply important to Oberlin students, regardless of their fields of study. We are requesting at least one continuing, full-time and full status faculty member centrally appointed in GSFS to teach an intro course and the Feminist Research Methodologies course, as well as coordinate courses in the department and advise students completing a capstone.

The Dean’s office needs to hear a student voice to make this change, and we need to gather signatures on our petition. To access the petition, check out our post on the Oberlin Underground Facebook page or email tsparks@ oberlin.edu, tnadel@oberlin.edu or amoaton@oberlin.edu.

Thank You, – Tory Sparks College junior and GSFS Major – Talia Nadel College junior and GSFS Major Representative – Tony Moaton College junior and GSFS Major Representative See Letters, page 7

SUBMISSIONS POLICY The Oberlin Review appreciates and welcomes letters to the editors and column submissions. All submissions are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board.

All submissions must be received by Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. at opinions@oberlinreview.org or Wilder Box 90 for inclusion in the following Friday’s Review. Letters may not exceed 600 words and columns may not exceed 800 words, except with the consent of the Editorial Board. All submissions must include contact information, with full names, for all signers. All electronic submissions from multiple writers should be carbon-copied to all signers to confirm authorship.

The Review reserves the right to edit all submissions for content, space, spelling, grammar and libel. Editors will work with columnists and contributors to edit pieces and will clear major edits with the authors prior to publication. Editors will contact authors of letters to the editors in the event of edits for anything other than style and grammar. In no case will editors change the opinions expressed in any submission.

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

The Review will not print advertisements on its Opinions pages. The Review defines an advertisement as any submission that has the main intent of bringing direct monetary gain to the author of a letter to the editors.

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

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

Editors-in-Chief Julian Ring Madeline Stocker Managing Editor Vida Weisblum Opinions Editor Kiley Petersen

BuzzFeed, Startups Leading Shift Toward Curated Journalism Scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed, you might find a BuzzFeed article about kittens above an update on Shaun King and racial injustice — two posts that are seemingly unrelated. But as social media has helped bring millennial culture to the forefront, journalism itself has begun to change in both definition and function.

In her keynote speech last Friday during the Review’s journalism symposium “Breaking News: Reimagining Journalism for a Digital Age,” Fusion Pop and Culture Director and former Jezebel Deputy Editor Dodai Stewart claimed that consumers of online journalism are exhibiting an unprecedented shift away from traditional news outlets like The New York Times and toward a curated feed of individual voices. The public has the ability to select which writers they want to read, no matter which publication they write for or on which platform they use — a newspaper, a personal blog, Twitter or a Tumblr account. Silly Harry Potter GIFs can coexist with investigative journalism without detracting from or delegitimizing the latter, Stewart said; in some cases, the combination of socalled highbrow journalism and lowbrow entertainment can even increase the quality of both.

Journalism’s old guard has been resistant to this type of change. Not a week goes by without a think piece or op-ed lambasting the inherent laziness of Generations Y and Z. But as many traditional papers continue their slow demise, it has become clear that the internet is the future home of journalism. BuzzFeed’s attention-grabbing headlines, snarky commentary on pop culture and “Which Disney Princess Are You?” quizzes juxtaposed with its own investigative pieces have succeeded in garnering the site a massive following. Other media organizations are following suit: Upworthy, Gawker and even Rolling Stone have all adopted headlines and listicle-style content reminiscent of BuzzFeed.

What separates BuzzFeed from run-of-the-mill entertainment sites, however, is its commitment to promoting journalism abroad and tackling tough exposés.

BuzzFeed has used some of the profits from popular articles to hire journalists from around the world. While often criticized for its lack of serious content, there’s no doubt that the site has done well for itself: From Aug. 2012 to 2015, views jumped from 1.1 to 5.7 billion per year. But BuzzFeed, as with any media conglomerate, is still a single source. It offers a variety of voices but all under a corporate umbrella. It may one day rival traditional sources, but in some ways, it may one day find itself behind companies thinking even further ahead.

Citizen journalism has created greater incentives for keeping the power close to the source, giving those breaking stories the opportunity to control their own voices. This emphasis on editorial independence at organizations like First Look Media might eclipse BuzzFeed’s tried-and-true content model. Established in 2013 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, First Look de-emphasizes top-down management, placing editorial control firmly in the hands of journalists and minimizing the ideological influence of advertisers and investors. Snowden leakers Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras helm The Intercept, one standalone site of a proposed group that hopes to foster original independent voices and build the company’s journalistic credibility. It’s unclear if First Look’s idea of a personality-driven, walled garden of journalism will be successful in the 21st century; the startup has gotten off to a rocky start thanks to budgeting issues and, ironically, a lack of coherent management. But perhaps if it were in better hands, the site could succeed in its mission: investigative, confrontational journalism without complicated ties to advertisers or political interests.

In an age where everything is changing — cultural tastes, smartphone apps, trending hashtags — journalism’s next step is still being developed by the best and brightest. Millennials have the opportunity to shape the field’s future, whether that will be prioritizing individual voices over whole websites or reacting to Donald Trump quotes with cat videos. But just as our thirst for the latest technology and craft beers has driven the release of software updates and microbrews, our consumption of news and other media will eventually shape the malleable future of journalism. The cumulative click-power of our generation will determine who the next crop of journalistic in novators are. Our clicks, after all, are our currency, and when somebody strikes gold, their traffic will show it.

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

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Opinions

Appalachian Stereotypes Ignore Region’s Complex Social History CJ Blair Columnist Being a Kentuckian at Oberlin puts me in a strange position. While my home state is only four hours away, every day quietly affirms that it’s farther than anywhere else in the country. This feeling stems from my ties to Kentucky’s Appalachian region, one of the most enigmatic places on Earth. Though I wasn’t directly raised in Appalachia, generations of my family on both sides have lived there, and I’ve come to accept it as a permanent part of my identity. As one of only a handful of Kentuckians at Oberlin, I quickly realized that almost no one here understands what Appalachia is, and any opinions they have fail to account for the complexity of the region.

Appalachia is a place known for its stereotypes, and it’s because of these hackneyed impressions that the rest of the country turns a blind eye to it. The rest of the U.S. sees Appalachia as a land of crippling poverty, poor education and endless drug use. While these are blunt generalizations, the statistics make it easy to see how such perceptions could arise. My mother’s tiny hometown of Middlesboro, KY, is one of the top 10 cities in the country for drug-related deaths. Fifteen to twenty-five percent of Appalachians live below the poverty line, and only 15 percent of adults re-

ceive a bachelor’s degree, seven points lower than the national average.

The causes of these problems aren’t easy to pinpoint, but the coal industry certainly deserves part of the blame.

While advocates of mining point to the jobs the industry creates, they neglect to mention that mining towns in eastern Kentucky have a poverty rate that’s twice the national average. Mining provides work for only a fraction of a town’s working class while monopolizing the local economy so that no other industries can be successful. It also permanently destroys the soil, water and air quality.

This explanation homes in on specific causes, but the crux of Appalachia’s identity comes from its effects — these injustices shape the attitudes of many Appalachians today. It would be wrong to speak on their behalf, but based on what I’ve learned from my family, I can offer an informed guess as to why some Appalachians refuse to leave the region and secure a better life: They might not know anything else.

A few weeks ago, my mom spoke with an old friend from her hometown whose brother had just died. He sustained a cut on his little finger at work that became infected, and because his employers said they wouldn’t cover the medical expenses, he never received treatment and died in his 40s. Through the whole incident, he said that whatever hap-

pened was God’s will and he just had to be thankful for what he had.

There’s something to be said for being grateful, but when gratitude leads a person to die young from a small injury, something is seriously wrong. Cubans have made their way to Florida in homemade rafts and Cambodians have travelled across the Pacific to California, but some Appalachians won’t drive two hours from Pineville to Louisville. It seems nonsensical but given the circumstances of the region, it might be easier to see why this is the case.

If many Appalachians live their lives surrounded by friends and family who dropped out of high school, got hooked on drugs and were screwed over by corporations, then it may appear as though no other options are available. Appalachia is one of the only places where families have fallen victim to the same injustices for so many generations, and yet many do not consider any alternatives.

It’s easy to view Appalachia as a melting pot of ignorance, but this narrow idea fails to explain why this has happened and presupposes that it’s not a region worth helping, which is simply not the case. For the sake of the land and its people, I suggest trying to view Appalachia through a wider frame, one that displays a panorama of gorgeous land whose residents are deprived of its beauty and their livelihoods, and are still trying to move on in spite of what they’ve lost.

The Oberlin Review, October 9, 2015

Capitalist Demands Limit Growth Jasper Clarkberg Contributing Writer Last week Student Senate Liaisons College fifth-year Megs Bautista and double-degree junior Jeremy Poe announced the possibility of the Board of Trustees reducing the College’s endowment payout. This move would solidify Oberlin’s overall long-term financial position while gutting its short-term budget.

By opting to save more and spend less, Oberlin would be cutting its operating budget by millions of dollars.

It’s no secret that Oberlin cannot sustain its current path. Colleges and universities across the country are struggling with rising costs and an increasing need for financial aid. I understand that the demands pouring in from all sides are likely making the administration feel claustrophobic. Making more revenue through tuition hikes is problematic, as is cutting financial aid for OSCA members.

It’s also problematic for the administration to raise revenue by buying up town property and overcharging for Village Housing.

Cutting costs by reducing student services is problematic. Cutting costs by dropping academic majors is problematic. Cutting costs by relying on adjunct professors and overworking food services staff is problematic.

Budget constraints are scary. This change will influence almost every student activist demand we’ve seen in the past few years. As the budget tightens further, something will have to break. I think we know this intuitiveSee Oberlin, page 7

Mental Illness Comprises Part of My Personality Cyrus Eosphoros Online Editor Erin Jones sparked the #MedicatedAndMighty hashtag after she decided to resume psychiatric treatment and posted a photo on Facebook: The selfie of her with her new prescriptions spread to Twitter and the phrase took on a life of its own. The hashtag has expanded beyond people taking photos with blue slips and pill bottles to become a space for people to talk about their experiences with psychiatric medication, their current situations and their illnesses.

People daring enough to talk about their experiences with mental illness in public have, of course, drawn others who are angry at this trend. Some criticisms are obvious: telling people who’ve been on psychiatric medication for years that they’ll soon get sick and regret medication. Others are a bit subtler, such as “You shouldn’t take medication you don’t need,” “What if those symptoms are just withdrawal?” or “Do you really want to be on medication for the rest of your life?”

I first saw a psychiatrist on Oct. 1, 2013. I walked out with my first antipsychotic prescription soon after. Within a month of beginning medication, I stopped having manic episodes. I’ve whittled down other symptoms since then, one by one.

My current psychiatrist isn’t bad. The first time I saw him, I texted all my friends, “I think I actually like my doctor.” But when I met with him last, I matter-of-factly told him that I was doing well enough in other areas that OCD treatment had become nonoptional. I gave him an example I thought was kind of funny: Stevenson Dining Hall keeps cups in five-by-five grids, and whenever I walk past I rearrange them until they’re symmetrical. But it means I lose time off lunch, and I’m sick of being late to class.

He looked worried, tried to smile. “But aren’t you being too hard on yourself ?” he

said. “That might just be, you know, you, not necessarily a symptom.”

No, I said, I didn’t think bursting into tears in public because I couldn’t move until I made an arrangement of plastic cups make sense was a quirk of my personality.

There are still people who want to reassure themselves by telling me, “That’s not a symptom, that’s who you are.” I cannot speak to how pathetic they must feel that my disability threatens them personally, but I have two truths to offer them.

I am the utmost authority on myself. I have 20 years of experience under my belt.

Being disabled does not revoke my basic human right of identity. I am the world’s most reliable witness on the subject of “I started crying because I didn’t want to do it.” I have seizures regularly; involuntary compulsions are just another form of my body acting against my will. Neither are a feature of my personality.

At the same time, taking medication has allowed me to form a coherent idea of who I am. Previous questions about being human, let alone being myself, are ones I’m beginning to answer. What is it like being sad in response to external stimuli? What kinds of things make me sad? What is forming friendships like when I’m not convinced my friends hate me? What makes me angry?

What makes me happy? Do I believe in God? What does it feel like to fall in love?

I’d be late to class in elementary school because I was trying to put cups in ROYGBIV order. Now I’m late to class because of Stevenson’s glasses. There is an infinite gulf between being the kind of person who likes arranging things symmetrically and being held hostage by your own body.

Adding stigma to being medicated also makes it harder for people to find a set of drugs that work for them. Our understanding of how brains work is incomplete, and even within those with a given diagnosis, there is huge variance. People claiming

“concern” try to convince anyone seeking treatment that their symptoms are a feature of their medication or a feature of themselves. If people have to muster a huge amount of courage in order to get on their first antidepressant or antipsychotic, it’s infinitely harder for them to find that drug not working and say “Okay, we need to try something else” instead of blaming themselves or giving up on medication entirely.

Sometimes people are misdiagnosed.

Sometimes a dose that’s been stable for years stops working; sometimes it’s just the wrong drug. Sometimes, as with me, relieving the most obvious symptoms allows problems that have been festering for a while to

sode. Now, for the first time, my doctors and I can move to talking about “quality of life” as opposed to “continued existence of life.”

I’ve had people complain that I’ve sprouted disabilities out of nowhere. Since when do I have OCD, what’s this ADHD diagnosis, don’t these doctors just want to feed me drugs? Not being suicidal is important, they’ll concede, but now I’m just nitpicking.

Can’t I just be normal?

Throughout all this, I knew that it was possible to not be suicidal, that other people didn’t believe cats could read their minds. I knew I could aspire to live long enough to be one of them. But no one had told me that I could grow up to be anything more than “alive.”

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– “Recovery” is the wrong word. When Oberlin’s insurance falters and I’m forced I am the utmost authority on off my antipsychotics, I still have manic epimyself. I have 20 years of exsodes. A year ago I was hospitalized for attempting suicide. I need to be able to say: perience under my belt. Being That was a bad year, that was a bad set of disabled does not revoke my drugs. I can get better, I got better. But “rebasic human right of identity. covery” implies that someday I won’t need ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– treatment, that my illnesses will magically disappear. I will probably be on psychiatric come to light — no one would’ve been able medication for the rest of my life. I don’t see to diagnose me with ADHD while I was on why I should mind. suicide watch. I have severe, chronic depresBeing able to feel real emotions in resion, but the typical treatment for it, SSRIs, sponse to real stimuli and being able to get doesn’t work well for me, a fact that I’ve only to know myself and the people around me been able to determine because I’ve been has made me an objectively better person. on and off three of them. For people with Imagine what I’ll be capable of when I can schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, it’s even devote the brainpower and energy I use to more of a roulette, since no antipsychotics manage untreated symptoms of OCD, ADHD work the same way. and anxiety to my work, my life, my writing.

By the time that I was 15, I knew schizo#MedicatedAndMighty is right. If this is phrenia, bipolar disorder and depression all what I can do when I have to fight myself existed. I knew that there had to be states every step of the way, what will I be able to of being that were “not depressed,” “neither do when I can bring all of myself to bear? manic nor depressed,” “not hallucinating.” People want to consign me to an existence Over the past two years, medication has in the darkest shadows that my mind can given me steadily longer tastes of each of create, with only occasional glimmers of those states: my first week without suicidal who I am, and tell me that’s living. I’m not ideation, my first year without a manic epi- going to listen any longer.

Opinions

The Oberlin Review, October 9, 2015

Page 7

Letters to the Editors, cont.

Continued from page 5

Student Activism Leads to Undocumented Scholarship To the Editors: On Monday, Sept. 28, 2015, Oberlin announced a new partnership with Golden Door Scholars. Golden Door Scholars is an organization that partners with undergraduate schools to provide scholarships for students eligible for Deferred Action Childhood Arrival. It connects with schools in the 32 states, including Ohio, that do not allow DACA students to receive instate tuition. These scholarships help DACA students overcome financial barriers to higher education, as all undocumented students (in every state and regardless of DACA status) are not eligible for federal financial aid.

However, many undocumented students are not DACAeligible. The $465 application fee is one of many factors that make DACA status difficult to receive. We commend Oberlin College for accepting this partnership, but need to recognize that this scholarship is accessible to only a limited group of undocumented students. We would also like to clarify that GDS reached out to Oberlin College. Though in February of 2014, the College began to consider undocumented students as domestic applicants, this partnership with GDS was not the result of the administration’s initiative.

A brief history of Oberlin student activism around undocumented students’ rights and access to higher education is necessary to understand the GDS partnership. This can be traced back to 2009 with the onset of Oberlin’s DREAM Act Week (now Immigration Action Now! Week). Every year, IAN Week organizes events addressing issues of im/migration. In the fall of 2012, members of the IAN Committee collected 607 signatures calling Oberlin College President Marvin Krislov to publicly endorse the national DREAM Act. He never released a statement.

At the Oct. 10, 2013 Board of Trustees forum, a coalition of students consisting of members of Asian American Alliance, La Alianza Latinx, Students for a Free Palestine, Student Labor Action Coalition, Anti-Frack and many others organized over 100 students and took over the meeting to demonstrate support for student demands. This included a letter calling for Oberlin College to institutionalize support for undocumented students.

Students proposed several financial plans for a scholarship program similar to Posse, Bonner and Questbridge. While some follow-up meetings occurred with the admissions, financial aid and development offices, a concrete plan was not created for a scholarship program or fund. Instead, the responsibility and labor was placed on student organizers.

On Feb. 26, 2014, Oberlin College’s General Faculty Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid passed an admissions policy allowing undocumented student applicants to be considered domestic candidates instead of international. Few U.S. colleges and universities have this policy, and Oberlin followed the footsteps of schools like Pomona College. The announcement on Oberlin’s website attributed this action to “support from the senior staff and the Board of Trustees” which “led members of the admissions staff and the General Faculty Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid to begin working to codify Oberlin’s policy.”

We want to be very clear: this policy reform happened because of student activism, specifically from Ana Robelo, OC ’15, Joelle Lingat, OC ’14, and other students, because of the 607 signatures collected by students in support of the DREAM Act in 2012 and because of direct action and demands to the Board of Trustees. Similarly, the new partnership with GDS is the result of the efforts of students of color, immigrant students, lowincome students, undocumented students and the IAN 2015 events that brought representatives from the Undocumented Students Project at Northeastern Illinois University to meet with Oberlin administrators and students.

There are several concerns regarding scholarship implementation. First, Oberlin cannot bring in undocumented students, who are often low-income due to job inaccessibility, without providing sufficient financial aid beyond explicit tuition costs.

Additionally, Oberlin must take steps to provide a supportive atmosphere. This support should account for the fact that students should not have to disclose their immigration status in order to obtain assistance, that undocumented students are often first generation and that Oberlin needs to be prepared to help students when a non-financial problem arises. For example, if a student’s family member is deported, will Oberlin step in to make sure that the student stays in school or provide legal support? GDS provides scholarship, mentorship and professional development for students, but where will students access this support on Oberlin’s campus? Are there trained staff to provide the necessary help? Will all faculty be aware of the challenges that undocumented students face?

We are glad that Oberlin has taken the first step toward institutionalizing support for undocumented students, and

grateful for the leadership of students who have come before us. We request that the administration announce a plan for the GDS partnership implementation which outlines how they will support undocumented students financially, legally and otherwise. We also request continued action to support undocumented students who are not eligible for GDS. Obies for Undocumented Inclusion – Zury Gutierrez-Avila College sophomore and OUI co-chair – Ellie Lindberg College sophomore and OUI co-chair – Della Kurzer-Zlotnick College sophomore and OUI co-chair

Marijuana Legalization Initiative Will Create Monopoly To the Editors: Aaron Pressman’s article in the Sept. 25 edition of the Review, “Issue 3 Will Boost Ohio’s Economy,” failed to take full consideration of the ballot initiative’s many negative qualities.

While it is true that the drug war has failed, a broken ballot initiative is not the solution. Contrary to what was claimed in the column, Issue 3 is not “a fairly straightforward marijuana legalization measure similar to those of Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C.” In those states and the District, the ballot initiatives came from the people through committed non-profits.

Ohio’s Issue 3 is coming to the ballot through the work of a Political Action Committee called ResponsibleOhio, which was only successful in putting the initiative forward after spending nearly $2.5 million in signature collection efforts.

That alone wouldn’t be so bad, but as a PAC, ResponsibleOhio isn’t in the public interest. Instead, it’s in the private interest of a select few investors who paid $2 million each to get a piece of the eventual profits. Investors include, among others, Woody Taft, heir to Ohio’s most successful political dynasty.

Another difference that separates Issue 3 from successful legalization measures put forward in other states is that Issue 3 has no support among current government officials. If Issue 3 were to pass, state officials with no impetus to proceed with all deliberative speed could easily derail the implementation process, which would be a waste of taxpayers’ time and money. It’s also worth noting that it isn’t just state officials who oppose Issue 3. Pro-legalization groups Ohioans to End Prohibition, Ohio Families CANN and the Ohio Rights Group all oppose ResponsibleOhio’s initiative for creating a monopoly in the state constitution.

Unfortunately, constitutional monopolies are something that Ohioans have become increasingly familiar with in recent years. Ian James, ResponsibleOhio’s Executive Director, has done this all before. In 2009, James bankrolled a constitutional amendment that legalized casino gambling in almost the exact same way. When moneyed interest groups are able to take over the initiative process from everyday citizens, our system is being corrupted.

Some may make the case that the good outweighs the bad, so long as Issue 3 curbs racially disparate incarceration rates.

I would normally agree, but possession of up to 100 grams of marijuana is already decriminalized with a maximum fine of $150 and no jail time. If students are concerned about racial justice in drug sentencing, they should look toward Ohio’s rampant heroin epidemic to see where a much larger problem lies.

Like many at Oberlin, I support marijuana legalization. But as an Ohio native, I find the idea of a monopoly in my state’s constitution unconscionable. I cannot tell others how to vote, nor do I want to. However, I urge everyone to strongly consider the implications of voting yes on Issue 3 this November.

If it were anything else, would you still be voting in favor of a monopoly? If not, is it really worth making an exception when better alternatives exist?

– Cory Ventresca College junior

Gateway Hotel Project a Fire Hazard To the Editors: After attending a recent special meeting called to discuss the Gateway Hotel project, it became very clear that Oberlin College and the city Planning Commission appear to be totally indifferent in regard to local safety or the high fire insurance rates that the city and homeowners pay in this community.

The new facility is over four stories high and plans to have a jazz club bar in the basement storage area with no direct ingress/egress to a narrow sidewalk on East College Street. Most fire deaths are not caused by burns, but by smoke inhalation of vapors and toxic gases which are lethal.

Having built to the right-of-way, the developer eliminated parking on the south side of the building. In plain English, the code reads: “Fire apparatus access roads shall not be obstructed in any manner, including the parking of vehicles.”

There are over 70 on-street parking spaces on North Main Street that are rarely used during business hours downtown and over 240 off-street parking spaces behind the new hotel.

Rather than talking around and avoiding the fire code dictates for hours, the Planning Commission should have spent the time deciding where the new crosswalks and bicycle parking should be placed to best accommodate pedestrian traffic.

October is National Fire Prevention Month, except, evidently, in the city of Oberlin, where we can expect constant request sfor higher taxes, increased utility rates and elevated home insurance costs. When will our city leaders start following our professional staff recommendations and take personal responsibility for their bad and ill-considered choices?

The inferno a year and a half ago destroying Oberlin’s allmetal, fireproof Public Works garage and destroying all six of the city’s garbage trucks at a cost of more that $2 million did not help.

I need not mention the six sleeping children that died in the fire of February 1960 at 235 West Lincoln Street, wherein the call to the Oberlin Fire Department was held up by a busy party line. The fire was extinguished within ten minutes of the arrival of OFD, but the children were all dead from asphyxiation.

Sincerely, – Tony Mealy Oberlin citizen

Oberlin Austerity Threatens School Ideals Continued from page 6 ly. I see a tired look in the eyes of everyone who has worked on the problem.

The model of higher education has changed in the last 40 years. Nationally, we have lost interest in teaching critical thinking; now the narrative revolves around preparing students for high-paying jobs in the workforce. This shift was recently codified by Barack Obama in his new College Scorecard system.

Students are beginning to see their education only in terms of how it will benefit them financially.

At the same time, college administrations are starting to run their schools as if their financial positions are prized above all else. This dynamic is difficult for everyone, as liberal arts priorities fall to the wayside and free-market priorities enter higher education.

Oberlin has fallen into this trap. It is difficult for the College to solve capitalist problems while it exists within a capitalist society. In the long run, we need to change or we risk losing our hold on the progressive values that make us Oberlin.

We’re fighting a losing battle trying to conform to standards that don’t fit our socially-minded ideals.

Trustees have the responsibility to protect Oberlin and its endowment in perpetuity, and this responsibility makes sense. But is it still Oberlin if we destroy our own financial accessibility in the name of financial security? Is it still Oberlin if we can’t afford to support marginalized students?

It’s difficult to imagine an alternative solution to the current financial problem, but I believe the first step is to disavow the traditional model of higher education. Reject the lecturer-student model and the producer-consumer dichotomy of education.

Reject hierarchies of prestige and the artificial and classist division between the town and College. Instead of monetary relationships, rely on human relationships. Adopt the OSCA model of student selfsufficiency. Bring back “labor and learning” in a way that works for everyone.

It won’t be easy. But if we keep thinking critically about how the College is run, we can preserve its ethical and idealistic credo for another 150 years.

To Try Out A New Look?

Just started at Oberlin and feel like you just don’t fit in?

Why wait to go bald when you can go bald now! Forget the Oberlin fade, go straight for that Mr. Clean swoop and shave only the top. Then for the final step, sweep the remaining hair into one of those greasy buns you people are so into all of a sudden. It’s like all your hair made the exodus down your head to get closer to the ambient chords of your softcore acoustic guitar.

Tired of fading trends and ready to take your popularity and fashion to the next level?

Birkentans

OBERLIN FAShION STARTer KIT

back to basics: lanyards

Getting hot has never been so cool! This is a tan that you will only *occasionally* regret, but trust us, it’ll be worth it. Love the look of Birkenstocks but hate having to wear shoes? This look is for you!

Just think of all the money you’ll save on shoes! The only downside? No longer getting to tell everyone about your vegan faux-leather footware. But enough is enough — let those pale flabs of feet fly free, my friends.

Babier Bangs Here’s an easy thing to add to your starter kit: the next trend in bang shortening! Just start cutting at the ends of where your bangs are now and don’t stop until you feel skin. Do you see them? Right there, under my PBR Trucker hat? Just... no, just come a little closer... bada-bada-babier bangs! The closer they have to get to see your new ’do, the hipper it is.

Maybe you can even start carrying around a sign.

Two trends in one!

SHAMIR

Friday, Oct. 9, 10 p.m.

The ’Sco

Saturday, Oct. 10, 10 p.m.

The ’Sco

Here’s a great thing to do with your Friday night! Get your dance on with the fun all-girl bands T-Rextasy and Girlpool.

Come listen to this dance-pop artist from Las Vegas. Don’t forget to YouTube him beforehand so you can sing along!

Forget mom jeans. Where did that term even come from? Moms don’t wear jeans. But these bad boys will make you forget all that. Worried the fickle beast of mortality will rear it’s ugly head before the true evolution of skinny jeans? Worry not! For now, gentle soul, we give you Younger Brother jeans. Jeans that, when you uncuff them, let sand, dirt and Cheeto dust burst from the folds like the colored powder that bursts from cannons at your post-punk revival warehouse raves. Want a younger brother-themed rave inside your pants? A monster truck rave? A puberty rave? Just do it.

Text by Hannah Berk and Madeline Stocker Drawings by Hannah Cook

Grab the fashion industry where it hurts — by the bills! Stop throwing your bucks at a cold-hearted capitalist regime that has no love for your lentils! Quit buying clothes, ditch your wardrobe and go full birthday suit with this bad boy. But college is a professional environment after all, and we all have to survive in the system. So go slap on a lanyard and give your inner infant what it wants — the slow and steady rise of aesthetic Marxism. With landyards. Go Yeomen!

GIRLPOOL and T-REXTASY

Younger brother jeans

Is It Time

Calendar FIELD HOCKEY vs. Kenyon College

Truthworker Presents: Barcode

Sunday, Oct. 11, 12-3 p.m.

Bailey Field

Sunday, Oct. 11, 8 p.m.

Cat in the Cream

Never go to sports games and need an escape from your daily routine? Always go to sports games and want to know about more? You are in luck! Come watch the Oberlin women’s team play Kenyon this Sunday.

Are schools really freeing us? Come watch Truthworker, a social justice based hip-hop theatre company for high school and college aged youth in Brooklyn, NY, give a performative analysis of the school-to-prison pipeline.

OES Hangout: Fall Festival

Tuesday, Oct.13, 5:30 p.m.

Wilder Hall 115

Have an idea for something you want to see on

Come bring some vegan food to this fun fall potluck.

Nothing says autumn like spending time with the Office of Environmental Sustainability!

the spread? Email thisweek@oberlinreview.org

To Try Out A New Look?

Just started at Oberlin and feel like you just don’t fit in?

Why wait to go bald when you can go bald now! Forget the Oberlin fade, go straight for that Mr. Clean swoop and shave only the top. Then for the final step, sweep the remaining hair into one of those greasy buns you people are so into all of a sudden. It’s like all your hair made the exodus down your head to get closer to the ambient chords of your softcore acoustic guitar.

Tired of fading trends and ready to take your popularity and fashion to the next level?

Birkentans

OBERLIN FAShION STARTer KIT

back to basics: lanyards

Getting hot has never been so cool! This is a tan that you will only *occasionally* regret, but trust us, it’ll be worth it. Love the look of Birkenstocks but hate having to wear shoes? This look is for you!

Just think of all the money you’ll save on shoes! The only downside? No longer getting to tell everyone about your vegan faux-leather footware. But enough is enough — let those pale flabs of feet fly free, my friends.

Babier Bangs Here’s an easy thing to add to your starter kit: the next trend in bang shortening! Just start cutting at the ends of where your bangs are now and don’t stop until you feel skin. Do you see them? Right there, under my PBR Trucker hat? Just... no, just come a little closer... bada-bada-babier bangs! The closer they have to get to see your new ’do, the hipper it is.

Maybe you can even start carrying around a sign.

Two trends in one!

SHAMIR

Friday, Oct. 9, 10 p.m.

The ’Sco

Saturday, Oct. 10, 10 p.m.

The ’Sco

Here’s a great thing to do with your Friday night! Get your dance on with the fun all-girl bands T-Rextasy and Girlpool.

Come listen to this dance-pop artist from Las Vegas. Don’t forget to YouTube him beforehand so you can sing along!

Forget mom jeans. Where did that term even come from? Moms don’t wear jeans. But these bad boys will make you forget all that. Worried the fickle beast of mortality will rear it’s ugly head before the true evolution of skinny jeans? Worry not! For now, gentle soul, we give you Younger Brother jeans. Jeans that, when you uncuff them, let sand, dirt and Cheeto dust burst from the folds like the colored powder that bursts from cannons at your post-punk revival warehouse raves. Want a younger brother-themed rave inside your pants? A monster truck rave? A puberty rave? Just do it.

Text by Hannah Berk and Madeline Stocker Drawings by Hannah Cook

Grab the fashion industry where it hurts — by the bills! Stop throwing your bucks at a cold-hearted capitalist regime that has no love for your lentils! Quit buying clothes, ditch your wardrobe and go full birthday suit with this bad boy. But college is a professional environment after all, and we all have to survive in the system. So go slap on a lanyard and give your inner infant what it wants — the slow and steady rise of aesthetic Marxism. With landyards. Go Yeomen!

GIRLPOOL and T-REXTASY

Younger brother jeans

Is It Time

Calendar FIELD HOCKEY vs. Kenyon College

Truthworker Presents: Barcode

Sunday, Oct. 11, 12-3 p.m.

Bailey Field

Sunday, Oct. 11, 8 p.m.

Cat in the Cream

Never go to sports games and need an escape from your daily routine? Always go to sports games and want to know about more? You are in luck! Come watch the Oberlin women’s team play Kenyon this Sunday.

Are schools really freeing us? Come watch Truthworker, a social justice based hip-hop theatre company for high school and college aged youth in Brooklyn, NY, give a performative analysis of the school-to-prison pipeline.

OES Hangout: Fall Festival

Tuesday, Oct.13, 5:30 p.m.

Wilder Hall 115

Have an idea for something you want to see on

Come bring some vegan food to this fun fall potluck.

Nothing says autumn like spending time with the Office of Environmental Sustainability!

the spread? Email thisweek@oberlinreview.org

Arts The Oberlin Review

Page 10

October 9, 2015

Hong’s Language Gives Poetic Sound New Meaning Louise Edwards Arts Editor Cathy Park Hong, OC ’98, opened the first poetry reading sponsored by the Creative Writing department last Friday with “Roles,” the first piece from her book Dance Dance Revolution. “Opal o opus, / behole, neon hibiscus bloom beacons! / ‘Tan Lotion Tanya’ billboard . . . she / your lucent Virgil, den I’s taka ova / as talky Virgil . . . want some tea? Some pelehuu?” she read. In a foreword to the book, Hong writes in the voice of one of her characters, a historian, who explains the context of the following poems, which are written in a new creole language created by Hong. The historian says, “In the Desert, the language is an amalgam of some three hundred languages and dialects imported into this city, a rapidly evolving lingua franca. The language, while borrowing the inner structures of English grammar, also borrows from existing and extinct English dialects. Here, new faces pour in and civilian accents morph so quickly that their accents betray who they talked to that day rather than their cultural roots.”

In addition to a new language, Hong creates an alternative history for the world the characters inhabit. The poems in the book are snippets from interviews of a tour guide that the historian has recorded on tapes damaged by rain. The poems tell how the tour guide, a former revolutionary from South Korea, helped stir unrest against a military coup and later moved to “the Desert” to work as a housekeeper and tour guide at various hotels. While the tour guide speaks Hong’s language, the historian speaks “standard” English, grounding the book with their explanatory notes and short memoirs.

Hong’s work is ingenious. Despite the amalgamated language, it is not hard to understand.

The poems rely heavily on sound, which is intrigu-

ing to hear aloud and helps to create nuanced meaning. In “Services,” part of the “St. Petersburg Hotel Series,” Hong describes one of the hotels the tour guide works at. “See radish turrets stuck wit tumor lights around hotel / lika glassblown Russki castles sans Pinko plight, / only Ebsolute voodka fountains. Gaggle fo drink?” The hard “t” and “k” consonants create a short, clipped cadence that reflects the precise and tidy hotel environment Hong illustrates. Additionally, the unique wording creates an aura of wonder that a tourist might feel –––––––––––––––––––––––––––———

“Certain cultural references are considered accessible over other cultural references.”

CATHY PARK HONG OC ’98 –––––––––––––––––––––––––––——— when visiting a new place for the first time. It also highlights the grandiose and surreal space that tourists inhabit through consuming goods like vodka and living in luxurious hotels. Hong clearly has a deep understanding of how to elicit emotions in readers through sound and syntax, and it was exciting to hear Hong read her own language with her own inflections.

Yet her choice to construct a character that speaks in an amalgamation of languages is also a political statement. In her poem “Toast to the Grove of Proposals,” which Hong introduced as an “ode to interracial marriage,” Hong uses the refrain, “les’ toast to bountiful gene pool, / to intramarry couple breedim beige population!” Here, her syntax shapes a celebratory atmosphere, yet the clinical and cold word choice creates a humorous tone, mocking how people often exoticize interracial couples. Since the character speaks in

Hong’s amalgamation of language, this highlights the irony in the character’s statement — they stereotype interracial couples, yet use an amalgamation of languages, a common practice for some interracial families.

In a question and answer session after the poetry reading, Hong explained that she had been writing two separate pieces — one in Korean and one in English — before the conception of Dance Dance Revolution. Hong noted that this involved a lot of code switching. “I just wanted something that unified all these different voices,” she said.

That is how the idea of creating a new combined language came about.

The work also challenges ideas about cultural and linguistic accessibility. “Certain cultural references are considered accessible over other cultural references,” Hong said. By creating a new language, Hong navigates this problem in an insightful way, since there will be some part of the language that every reader doesn’t understand.

While this lack of familiarity may make some readers uncomfortable, it forces them to acknowledge that some things are simply unknowable.

Linda Gregerson, OC ’71, and Director of the M.F.A. program at University of Michigan, read after Hong. While Gregerson’s poems were much more traditional than Hong’s, the two poets’ works complemented one another. Gregerson’s work highlighted varied voices and her pieces made connections across time and place. “I’ve always liked multi-vocality in the lyric,” she said.

“I like making it porous so other voices can come in.” Her poem “Salt” included voices from various generations. She introduced the poem by explaining that her grandfather, who lived in Newport Township, was the justice of the peace, the sole elected official for many small rural communities at the time. The poem describes a depressed and abusive father: “Because my father hated his life, / my sister, / with her collarbone broken,

was spanked / and sent to bed for the night, to shiver / through the August / heat and cry her way through sleep.” While the roles of justice of the peace and an abusive father seem contrasting, Gregerson’s piece finds the similarities: Both are the official arbiters of justice within their spheres.

Another layer of complexity comes toward the end of the piece, when the narrator notes that they couldn’t understand why their sister enjoyed swinging on the hammock that eventually caused her to break her collarbone. Gregerson cleverly ends the piece by writing, “Some children are like that. … I had one myself.” This brings the story full-circle, demonstrating how actions of older generations in families still influence younger generations, even after older generations have passed away.

Another multi-layered poem by Gregerson titled “Ceres Lamenting” uses the Roman myth of Proserpina to talk about current events. In the myth, Proserpina was raped by Dis, the god of the underworld, and forced to live with him for half of the year — the reason that it is winter during those months. Gregerson uses this story to reflect on the 2012 gang rape and fatal assault of Jyoti Singh Pandey on a Delhi bus. “The crowbar, / the bus, the whole / ungodly mess of it lit and scripted on a / stage,” she writes. While the classical allusions could have come off as remote and stuffy, Gregerson’s contemporary imagery brought a fresh and dynamic twist to the age-old tale. Both gruesome stories highlight how rape culture has infiltrated societies across time and place. The poem continued, asking “do all / of our stories begin with rape?” This line not only expresses frustration about rape culture, but also about how women’s stories that garner the most media attention are often those concerning violent sexual crimes. Both Gregerson’s and Hong’s work pushes readers to think about how language and the way that stories are told privilege certain voices.

Lower Dens Impress with New Cuts Despite Small Crowd Paul Mehnert When Baltimore’s Lower Dens released their second record Nootropics back in 2012, Pitchfork writer Joe Colly wrote, “There are bands who arrive fully formed and there are those who take a little while to find their footing.

Here’s a band you can’t ignore anymore.” If that album demonstrated the band finding their sound, their new release, Escape From Evil, sees them perfecting it.

The album, which was released in March of this year, has garnered wide-reaching acclaim, earning the band a “best new music” tag and numerous positive reviews on Pitchfork and Rolling Stone. It was strange, then, to see the band play for such a modest crowd at the ’Sco on Monday night.

Despite their newfound popularity, Lower Dens are not new to the music scene. Bandleader Jana Hunter made her name as an experimental folk artist in the early 2000s, collaborating with prominent acts like Devendra Banhart, Vetiver and Sharon Van Etten.

With Lower Dens, however, Hunter has abandoned the sparseness of her earlier material in favor of a much lusher, dreamier indie rock sound in the same vein as groups like Beach House and Wild Nothing.

The night began with opening

sets by Cleveland post-punk outfit Pleasure Leftists and Baltimore rapper Abdu Ali. The crowds for both performances were measly and, for the most part, quiet, but both acts made up for the lack of energy in the room with their own onstage intensity. One major highlight occurred when Ali invited a group of about 10 students onstage with him and insisted they dance as hard as they possibly could. Pleasure Leftists and Ali were slightly strange choices for openers, as their loud, abrasive styles stood in stark contrast to the bright, dreamy music of Lower Dens, but both acts gave impressive performances nonetheless.

It was nearly midnight by the time Lower Dens took the stage.

The band walked out quietly and confidently. Their setup was simple, consisting of Geoff Graham, OC ’04, on bass, Nate Nelson on drums, Walker Teret on guitar and Hunter, who sang and occasionally played guitar. Hunter was soft-spoken and endearingly awkward as she introduced the band members. The group then kicked off their set with the song “Quo Vadis” from Escape From Evil, and the energy in the room immediately livened. Hunter showed off her excellent vocal range, sounding even more emotive in person than on the record. Next, the

band transitioned into “To Die In L.A.,” Escape from Evil’s lead single and one of the band’s most recognizable songs. As soon as audience members heard the opening drum fill, they started reaching for their phones to capture the moment on video.

The set continued in a similar fashion: mostly new tracks with a

few older favorites thrown in. Toward the end of the performance, the crowd had severely thinned out. However, those who stuck around maintained the energy level with ease. The band ended their set in a similarly exciting fashion, with Hunter dramatically walking off stage while Teret held his guitar up to the ampli-

fier to create blaring feedback.

They didn’t play an encore, but they didn’t need to; their stellar live performance was satisfying enough. Lower Dens has gained a new level of popularity this year, and with that has come a new level of confidence and a feeling of raw excitement that was evident in their Oberlin debut.

Geoff Graham, OC ’04, of Lower Dens cradles his bass guitar while bandleader Jana Hunter sings material from the band’s new release, Escape From Evil. The band has recently gained popularity and received numerous positive reviews, yet few attended their performance last Monday at the ’Sco. Benjamin Shepherd, Photo editor

Arts

The Oberlin Review, October 9, 2015

Girlpool to Bring Female Voices to ’Sco Sophie Kemp “I thought I found myself today/ No one noticed / Things are ok,” are the opening lyrics to punk rock band Girlpool’s song “Ideal World” from its eponymous new album, which explores intimate experiences of girlhood: an existence that is often messy and terrifying but also beautiful. Started in 2013 by guitarist Cleo Tucker and bassist Harmony Tividad, Girlpool will make its ’Sco debut this Friday, Oct. 9, with an opener by fivepiece New York riot grrrl act T-Rextasy. The double bill is indicative of an increased effort by concert organizers to sign non-cisgender, non-male bands to play at the ’Sco. At present, conventional male artists who frequently bring expensive noise-distorting equipment to the stage continually dominate the venue. Just this week, a total of four almost entirely all-male acts dominated bills: Ought and Mannequin Pussy are all-male, while Lower Dens and Pleasure Leftists have only one non-male-identifying member. T-Rextasy and Girlpool will hopefully bring a needed change of pace.

In the song “Chinatown,” Girlpool explores themes of self-doubt, loves past and present and mortality with lines like, “If I loved myself, would I take it the wrong way?” Its first LP, Before the World Was Big, is filled with tracks that question the audacity of youth and what being a woman means. Before the World Was Big has received positive critical reception on music sites like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone.

Girlpool’s appearance is timely, coming not long after the release of the group’s second EP Ideal World, released on Wichita Recordings — the same label to which Waxahatchee and Cloud Nothings are signed.

Tucker and Tividad, both vocalists, are known for crafting intimate and relatable lyrics, which makes sense given that they are college-aged.

Girlpool is one of the first shows College sophomore Lyris Schulman

Page 11

The Martian Gives Space a Human Face Christian Bolles Columnist Humankind’s fascination with space has always existed on the boundary between two intellectual spheres. One conjures the image of a flag-toting pioneer standing on the edge of a vast cosmic horizon, ready to leap off the planetary surface into infinity.

The other hits closer to home, focusing on the tangible landscapes of human accomplishment and innovation. Before we were able to leave Earth, literature and cinema painted space — sometimes literally, as with George Melies’ feverish lunar landscapes — as an untamed frontier ripe for exploration.

We looked to the future with hope but, more importantly, with ambition, a mindset that ultimately landed Armstrong’s foot on the moon.

The Martian, Ridley Scott’s most recent filmic endeavor and his best work since Blade Runner, stands as an ode to the limitless potential of human innovation in the face of impossible odds, while juggling a sizable supporting cast with a keen sense of both wondrous scope and intimate heart.

The performances at its center — including an infectious turn by Matt Damon as the titular stranded astronaut and an authoritative yet compassionate performance from Chiwetel Ejiofor as a chief engineer at NASA — help to focus its sprawling array of characters, rendering The Martian a space drama for the ages.

A stirring opening sequence instantly focuses the narrative: a handful of scientists sent to Mars on the Ares III mission are caught in a torrential dust storm with nowhere to go but up. When one of the mission’s colleagues, Mark Watney, (Damon) is hit by stray debris and lost in the dark, the

mission’s commander, Lewis (imbued with a simple manner, ensuring that anyone willplayful conviction by Jessica Chastain), is ing to try to understand won’t have a hard forced to make the difficult decision to leave time following along. him behind. As they depart into the atmoOnce the film’s scope broadens and the sphere, his empty seat in the shuttle makes narrative extends its branches both to NASA the commander’s profound guilt clear. This and the returning crew of the Ares III, a less isn’t just a team of scientists — this is a competent director, a vaguer script and a group of friends. worse cast might have caused the movie to Mark Watney, the stranded botanist, buckle under the weight of its own ambition. wakes up on the surface of Mars with a pole However, The Martian is blessed with the in his stomach, a failing oxygen supply and holy trinity of golden filmmaking. All three no help in sight. Left without any way to components align so effectively that the latcommunicate with Earth, he is forced to –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– rely on the scant supplies available to him to scrounge out a living on the face of a deso- [Damon’s] everyman sensibility late planet. Scott’s directing brings home just how alone this man is, taking every beat and calm, wisecracking charm in the storytelling to frame hauntingly stun- give his seemingly never-ending ning shots of Mars’ impeccably rendered days of isolation a welcome sense surface. Once the film gets going, it’s hard of progress, warmth and sizzling to believe that the crew didn’t actually shoot it on the planet itself. The focus the first act energy. holds on Watney’s personal struggle helps to –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– illustrate the nature of his plight, but Scott’s directing would have been for nothing if the ter part of the narrative actually strengthens character’s airtight boots weren’t filled by the film as a whole. Scott introduces a slew an actor of Damon’s caliber. His everyman of compelling characters, a handful of sursensibility and calm, wisecracking charm prising twists and turns and enough hilarigive his seemingly never-ending days of iso- ous one-liners to keep the audience engaged lation a welcome sense of progress, warmth right up to the explosive finale. and sizzling energy. The script, written with When Vincent Kapoor, an engineer at a deft hand by The Cabin in the Woods writer NASA, learns of Watney’s survival, he springs Drew Goddard, gives Damon plenty to chew into action, setting into motion a movieon. All of this, combined with Scott’s often length domino effect in which interns, tech strikingly intimate camera, makes Watney’s geniuses and engineers all topple in a chaotevery small accomplishment feel like a great ic circle around an overwhelmed, apathetic victory; I could feel relief washing over the director named Teddy Sanders (played by an audience whenever one of the botanist’s appropriately cold Jeff Daniels). The tight wildly innovative solutions actually worked. writing keeps the interplay between these Furthermore, the script — along with Da- constantly shifting players witty, funny and mon’s natural pull as an actor — effectively communicates often complicated science in See Ridley, page 13

Feature Photo: Wedding Band

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––

“I like that they’re not dudes, and I can relate to their experiences.”

LYRIS SCHULMAN T-Rextasy vocalist ––––––––––––––––––––––––––– has booked, and it’s one of the acts she says she is most excited about. A member of Oberlin’s Concert Board, the organization responsible for bringing artists to the ’Sco, Schulman also performs vocals and writes songs for T-Rextasy. Schulman contacted Girlpool over the summer with fellow Concert Board member and College senior Ivan Krasnov, and the band accepted.

“I feel really proud,” Schulman said. “I think they’re really refreshing from the bands that come here; I think they’re more emotional than what we see. I like that they’re not dudes, and I can relate to their experiences.”

Annie Fidoten (bass), Schulman (vocals), Vera Kahn (guitar), Ebun See Feminist Punk, page 12

In Alice Childress’ Wedding Band, set in 1918 during World War I, College sophomore Chandler Browne plays Julia Augustine, a Black woman who has recently moved to a South Carolinian neighborhood with Herman, her white, German significant other, played by College junior Shane Lonergan. Their landlady, Fanny, played by College junior Tiffany Ames, looks on, while Julia’s new neighbors Lula and Mattie, played by College sophomores Deja Alexander and Daniella Pruitt, respectively, discuss her interracial relationship. An influenza outbreak overtakes the community, and Herman catches the flu, forcing him to reveal his relationship with Julia to his ignorant family, further increasing the already palpable tension. The play, directed by Assistant Professor of Theater and Africana Studies Justin Emeka and performed last weekend, deals with themes of prejudice, dignity and race relations. The actors’ performances were impressive, especially the gospel singing showcased by the community of Black women.

Text by Louise Edwards, Arts editor Photo by Aaron Cohen

Arts

Page 12

The Oberlin Review, October 9, 2015

Dance Diaspora Perform to Horace Silver Michelle Chu During Alumni Reunion Weekend, Dance Diaspora performers and jazz musicians showed off their creative skills with their performance of Horace Silver: Song For My Father & Other Matters Pertaining to the Heart. Alumni Kevin Louis, OC ’99, on trumpet, Shea Pierre, OC ’14, on piano, Josh Moton, OC ’13, on cello and Malachi Thomas, OC ’14, on tenor sax returned to Oberlin to play Horace Silver’s music alongside current students of Oberlin’s Jazz department. Horace Silver, a renowned jazz pianist and composer whose upbeat compositions accompanied the dancers, is famous for emphasizing a return to the fundamentals of jazz. His simple and accessible style was later labeled “hard bop.” He drew inspiration from his musician father, who hails from Cape Verde, and also quoted from jazz greats in his own compositions as a form of tribute.

Appropriately, Dance Diaspora also paid tribute to Black history as well as victims and survivors of recent police brutality. Choreographer and Artistic Director of Dance Diaspora Adenike Sharpley said the intent of the show was to push against systems of oppression through creativity. “I was taught that an artist pushes the agenda of the everyday people who don’t have time to see or change their circumstance,” she said.

Furthermore, she said she wanted audience members to understand that “Black people have a very pungent history in America.”

Silver’s music was chosen not only to give context to Black culture but also, naturally, to guide the dance.

“The music is the feel of what we’re doing. It sets the tone, the pace — everything,” Sharpley said.

The performance was centered on the Black Lives Matter movement, and for College junior, Stage Manager and Dance Diaspora performer Cassandra Brown, celebrating one’s humanity was central to the pieces. “We do have fathers,” she said. “We are human. … Black Lives Matter is about showing the craziness of not treating people like people. … We have culture and lives.” The now familiar faces of Michael Brown and Sandra Bland, both victims of recent police brutality, were pictured on a screen behind the dancers, bringing the audience’s attention to how the music and dance were connected to the reality of race relations in the U.S. “It’s that juxtaposition of a full life,” Brown said. “This is what a full life is. We may be shucking and driving and dancing around and doing what you expect Black performers to do, but look what’s behind it, literally behind us.” The slides were graphic at times, but as Sharpley pointed out, “For this in historical context, I don’t think you needed a disclaimer. It [illustrates the similarity between] all the church bombings of the ’50s and the recent church bombing.” Even though these images are disturbing and emotionally charged, the juxtaposition of jazz and vernacular dance — creative forms that have historically facilitated survival and

Conservatory jazz musicians and alumni play Horace Silver compositions to accompany Dance Diaspora’s performance. The show paid tribute to victims and survivors of recent police brutality and illustrated how jazz and vernacular dance serve as means of empowerment.

Benjamin Shepherd, Photo editor

empowerment within Black communities — aided in facing the painful images and acknowledging systems of oppression.

However, Sharpley lamented that to get students to attend performances dealing with heavy yet important histories such as those highlighted in Horace Silver, Dance Diaspora had to work hard to promote the shows. “Our attendance for the more historical shows is always lower,” she said. “The West African Dance Diaspora performances, you can’t get in.” She remembers a student who approached her and said they’d rather not see a show

about Black people’s problems; they just wanted to see students dance.

Sharpley said, “Often, people feel as though Black people should entertain them.” When Zadie Smith visited on Sept. 29, she highlighted the history of the U.S. viewing Black performances as spectacles for white consumption in her Convocation speech. She compared an image of Katy Perry accompanying Snoop Dogg’s rap to an older photograph of Shirley Temple and her tap-dancing companion, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, reminding us that Black artists are still seen as

Roots Residency Brings Punch Brothers Back to Campus Sam Rueckert Staff Writer In a Bibbins Hall classroom, Punch Brothers banjoist Noam Pikelny and singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan sat amid the muffled sounds of various instruments and voices echoing through the hallway. “[There’s] something very inspiring about being in the confines of a building like this [and] seeing everybody working with such focus on furthering themselves as artists and as people,” Pikelny said. “I have this real sense of jealousy that that wasn’t what my college experience was like.”

Given that Pikelny completed his sixth visit to campus in the last three years with the band last week, it seems like he may be getting a taste of that experience anyway. Punch Brothers and O’Donovan began their residency on Monday with a listening party where the band and O’Donovan discussed their favorite music. They also gave a professional development talk and held workshops in songwriting, chamber music, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, guitar, ear training and bluegrass. The band and O’Donovan also led a packed room of musicians and music lovers in a jam session in the Conservatory lounge on Tuesday night.

O’Donovan, who visited Oberlin as a guest artist with the Punch Brothers, agreed with Pikelny, saying that the group’s continued residencies are beneficial to everyone involved. “My best teachers were the ones that came in with the approach that [growing as a musician] is a collaborative thing,” O’Donovan said. “I think that being in an academic environment is just really special.”

Punch Brothers’ repeated visits, along with O’Donovan’s guest feature last week, are thanks to the American Roots Residency Fund, founded by bluegrass musician and actor Ed Helms, OC ’96. “Ed donated with the hope of this program getting started, [and] he gave [the College] a list

of various people to contact, and we were the first people that came as part of the program,” Pikelny said. “As it … expanded, one of [Oberlin’s] … goals was to bring in new people, and Aoife was the first person outside of Punch Brothers to be here as a guest of the American Roots [Residency] program.”

O’Donovan, whom Pikelny described as a “natural choice” for a guest musician, is best known for her role as lead singer of the bluegrassfolk band Crooked Still. A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, O’Donovan’s musical career expands beyond that band. However, she has also enjoyed a fruitful solo career and collaborated with well-known artists like Sara Watkins and Yo-Yo Ma, not to mention Punch Brothers, of which she is the self-described “annoying little sister.” Despite having already established herself as an artist, her visits to Oberlin have played a valuable role in the evolution of her flourishing career. “I’m just so excited to be here,” she said. “Maybe [Oberlin is] just an environment of positivity, which is … something I really enjoy, living in a world I [often] find to be way overly negative.”

Students across departments said they have benefited from the Punch Brothers’ residencies.

In an email to the Review, College junior and singer-songwriter Rob Jamner said the residencies “have given [him] a lot of new strategies for approaching songwriting and performance.” As one of many serious musicians at Oberlin but one whose aesthetic does not fit into a standard musical category, Jamner cited jam sessions with the ensemble as motivation to practice guitar regularly and to actively seek out collaborators at Oberlin.

Double-degree senior Emily Kuhn also said that she appreciates how Helm’s funding has allowed Punch Brothers to return over the past few years, allowing students to create long-term connections with them. “This time they came,

they were able to coach all the classical chamber groups, which is something that they probably wouldn’t do if they just came and did a master class once and left,” she said. “So I think a really beneficial part of their residency is that they’ve been able to have a continued presence. They’re also really good at giving master classes that are aimed at a wide audience. I think Chris Thile especially is just very good at communicating, but really all of them are just really good at communicating and getting their point across in a way that people can understand it.”

Pikelny said that in the future he hopes the College will continue to bring in musicians from diverse music genres. “I think looking down the road, at least from the conversations I’ve had with the administration, [one] of their ultimate goals is for Oberlin to be a welcoming place … [to] great musicians … that don’t fall neatly into one of [their] programs,” he said. That idea was set into motion this week: Musical Studies majors met with Punch Brothers guitarist Chris Eldridge to discuss how to improve as musicians.

Additionally, Punch Brothers had the opportunity to work with the Conservatory’s Performance and Improvisation groups led by Professor of Advanced Improvisation and Percussion Jamey Haddad. “The PI ensembles try to reinforce that … great music is more similar than dissimilar,” Pikelny said.

Kuhn also said Punch Brothers have brought students together from the Conservatory’s classical and jazz performance departments. “There’s the classical Con, and then there’s the Kohl building, and they’re just these separate universes,” she said. “So I think it’s nice for everyone to be exposed to different things. I think it’s good for classical majors because they do play this style of music that’s very improvisatory. It’s very spontaneous, and it’s great for jazz musicians to hear improvising in a very different context from what they’re used to.”

props for white musicians.

Sharpley described how audience expectations often undermine her artistic expression. “Once you see me, you already have a feeling about me,” she said. “No matter how beautiful my music is or how beautifully I dance or sing or play, how intricately or ingenious it is … when you look at me, there’s your problem.” The view of Black lives within this performance was meant to expose audience members to these problems that tend to be ignored and celebrate Black history and culture through creativity.

Feminist Punk Comes to ’Sco Continued from page 11 Nazon-Power (drums) and Lena Abraham (guitar) — the members of T-Rextasy — met while in high school in New York City and shared a desire to make music in a male-dominated scene.

College sophomore Moira Peterson recalls seeing the band play in Brooklyn.

She said she was in awe of Schulman’s stage presence and thought the sight of a female drummer was rare and exciting. T-Rextasy went on to play some of the biggest DIY venues in the city, including Citi Field, ABC No Rio and Silent Barn.

Fidoten said that she is proud of a lot of the shows T-Rextasy has played.

“Last year, we got to be a part of Grrrl Fest, which is this amazing music festival all about empowering musicians and performers,” she said. Fidoten’s songs will be featured on the band’s upcoming album, which is scheduled to come out sometime this winter.

T-Rextasy’s recent success is unsurprising. The band’s lyrics are emotional but often hilarious. In the song “I Wanna Be A Punk Rocker,” the lyrics lament marrying a man named David Cohen and having a future on the Upper East Side. Much of the DIY scene is populated by low-energy acts, but TRextasy’s music is meant for dancing.

With two acts so driven by female experience, it is difficult to imagine any other alternative.

Arts

The Oberlin Review, October 9, 2015

Page 13

On the Record with Peter Swendsen, assistant professor of Computer Music and Digital Arts Peter Swendsen joined Oberlin’s TIMARA faculty in 2007 as assistant professor of Computer Music and Digital Arts. Last year he released an album titled Allusions to Seasons and Weather, in which he captured his experiences in Norway almost 10 years ago. Currently serving as the chair of the TIMARA department, Swendsen gave a talk this past Tuesday about his soundscape compositions in relation to the field of ecoacoustics.

You released your album Allusions to Seasons and Weather a year ago around this time, right?

It came out about a year ago, yes. But it’s work that spans a pretty big range, from 2006 to 2012. But the core of it is this set of four pieces that are more or less based on the year I lived in Norway, which was just before I came [to Oberlin].

You lived in Norway in 2006?

Yes, 2006 to 2007.

And where?

I had a Fulbright Fellowship, which is how I was able to be there. The reason I chose Norway was because I was very interested in finding a place where I could have easy access to a lot of different kinds of environments, primarily natural environments … urban environments too, and the threshold where urban and natural meet. There is a wonderful electronic music studio in Oslo called NoTAM, which is sort of the national center for what we do here in TIMARA, so that was where I was based for the year, and I was doing these trips to do field recordings in different places.

I think my goal in going there was to gather a bunch of different material, and … I did gather a lot of material, but being in such a new place was such an important experience to me and my senses as a whole … I became much more interested in trying to translate those experiences into music regardless of whether I was using the particular content or not.

Assistant Professor of Computer Music and Digital Art and TIMARA Chair Peter Swendsen, who discussed his soundscape compositions last Tuesday.

Courtesy of John Seyfried

Ridley Scott Transforms Red Planet into Golden Cinema Continued from page 11 logical — though if all the engineers at NASA were actually this hilarious, we probably wouldn’t have a space program. As the battle to bring Mark Watney home is waged both on Earth and on Mars, Watney’s character is expertly revealed through his actions, relying on more than just wisecracks to make him likeable. The way that NASA has to piece together what Watney’s next move is at the same time as the audience is indescribably satisfying; somehow, it feels like we’re both down on Earth with NASA and sharing that desolate outpost with Watney. Ejiofor’s relatable portrayal of Kapoor helps to ground the NASA narrative, and Benedict Wong consistently steals the screen as the hilariously exasperated engineer Bruce Ng. To avoid taking the edge off the narrative, I’ll leave the rest to the film itself. Suffice to say that The Martian should be seen by everyone and not just because it’s a great movie. We live in a time where space travel, just like every other horizon of human progress, hinges on the interest of the public. That means you. We’ve crowdfunded spaceships, scouted distant galaxies through citizen science and made leaps only possible through the kinds of insane ideas one finds at a science fair. The Martian represents a new breed of popular science that seeks in turns to entertain, educate and inspire. Films like this shape the future. As a species, we can’t afford to lose the monumental cultural spark that The Martian provides because it will help propel us into the next generation of popular ambition.

Which is difficult, it means you really have to sort through a lot of your own emotions…

Yes, right, but also liberating. It allowed me to think about what these experiences were and not feel like I was trying to recreate them verbatim.

Who were you collaborating with for the album?

There are seven pieces on the disk. Four of those are a set of works that are about the seasons in Norway. There is a fall, a winter, a spring and a summer piece. The other three pieces are thematically related but are of a separate set. Six of the seven pieces have acoustic instrument performers, and then the seventh piece has another collaborator, a writer, and was actually written for a choreographer. So the collaborative process was very much working with these musicians to tease out what these experiences were for me and how to use their instruments as another sound source for presenting those places and experiences I had in Norway. And then combining those instrumental sounds with recordings I made in those places or electronic processing that helped evoke the sensibility of those places.

So each piece has a … different combination of instrumentals, electronics and field recordings. And it was definitively a collaborative process to develop those.

What do you think someone will hear in your album if they do not know that you went to Norway? Did you ever talk to any listeners about how much of your experiences come across? For instance, did you ask someone if they heard the seasons in the four pieces?

I mean, again, for me, at that point I was so much more comfortable with the fact that the listener was going to have his or her own experience from my music. Ultimately, I was creating the pieces for them to have the opportunity to [experience the environment of

Norway], but whether for them it ended up being about a season, or being cold, an emotion or a place, all of that was fine. … That being said, there are some references in the pieces to pretty specific events or locations.

For instance, [on the album] there are … some recordings in which you can clearly hear ice breaking or birds or the wind. I do think there is some commonality in how they are received.

I have only been to Iceland and Sweden, and I actually remember silence as being something very present and special. I was wondering if you had a similar experience in Norway? Do you think you can capture nonsound to represent that silence?

That is a great question. I think the experience of that silence is actually what flipped the switch for me from thinking about this project as … some gathering of material versus experiencing those places regardless of whether there was material or not. When you are in this mountain landscape above the tree line, … there is really no wind, there are no planes overhead and animals are widely scattered. The only thing you might hear is a waterfall that is really far away, [but] that is not a lot of sound, right? Yet the experience for me of being in that place is very sonic.

That relative absence of sound is really meaningful. As a composer it is an interesting challenge to create a piece of music that is dealing with an experience that hinges on a lack of sound.

Then it becomes about trying to contextualize that for a listener. Maybe you have material that is very slow and very unchanging for a long time that provides a kind of stasis, an environment where even though you are hearing sound, there is so little change that you are kind of lulled into thinking of it as a kind of a blank environment. And if you then interject particular sound events, those events take on a lot of meaning.

Or maybe it is about making sound that is a lot [quieter] so that the audience has to kind of lean in and enter it.

Interview by Mary Fischer

Sports

Page 14

IN THE LOCKER ROOM

The Oberlin Review, October 9, 2015

Women’s Ultimate Frisbee

This week, the Review sat down with members of the Preying Manti, Oberlin’s competitive women’s Ultimate Frisbee club team. Seniors Zoe Bluffstone, Jessica Hubert and Jackie Milestone (not pictured) discussed going to Nationals their freshman year, memorable moments and expectations for their last season.

Did you know that you were going to play Ultimate at Oberlin before you came here?

Zoe Bluffstone: Yes! I specifically knew that I wanted to find a school that had a strong women’s Ultimate program, and I found it!

Jackie Milestone: I figured I would check out the team and see what it was about, but I wasn’t set on it.

Jessica Hubert: I actually did, although it wasn’t really for the sport. I randomly came in knowing I wanted to do Ultimate because I figured it would be chill and I’d make friends quick. I ended up making some of the best friendships that I now have and ended up falling in love with the sport while at it.

Can you describe what it was like going to Nationals your freshman year?

ZB: It was incredible to go to Nationals as a freshman on the A-team.

We were undefeated at Regionals, which meant that if we beat the last team at the tournament, Swarthmore [College], we would automatically qualify. The Manti played with such intensity and focus, it felt like I held my breath for the entire game.

When we finally scored the winning point, we all rushed the field cheering and crying. The seniors that year had really wanted to go to Nationals for their last year at Oberlin, and now we want to get back there.

JM: Well, I was on B-team my freshman year, so I didn’t play at Nationals, but I still went to support the team. It was pretty incredible.

First of all, I just felt really cool to be there, and watching Ultimate at that level and knowing that the Manti, our team, was also at that level was pretty amazing. It was also just a lot of fun team-bonding-wise, because we stayed at the house of one of our seniors and just all hung out a lot, as always happens on tournament weekends.

JH: I wasn’t on the A-team that year, but I did tag along just to watch.

It was so incredible watching my teammates ball out and play Frisbee with some of the best teams in the nation. I’ve never been so anxious and in such a nerve-wracking situa-

for the team to grow and improve together, since we also travel long distances in cars, it’s also a great opportunity to really get to know the people on your team that are in your car.

JM: I regret not going back to McDougal’s a second time on our Nashville tournament freshman year. There was this incredible fried chicken place called McDougal’s that we went to for dinner one night, and then one of the juniors vetoed my vote to go back the next day! I’ll never get over it.

JH: No regrets!

Zoe Bluffstone (left) and Jessica Hubert tion for such an extended period of time, but we ended up placing 11th in the country, I think, and it was just such happy moment for everyone!

What are your expectations for this season?

ZB: As a captain, I’m hoping to lead the team to play at a really high level and to continually push ourselves to find solutions to our problems on the field through careful training, mental focus and strategic leadership. Underlying all of that, I want there to be a foundation of support and community that makes practices, gym sessions and tournaments fun while simultaneously competitive. By attending appropriate tournaments later this fall and definitely in the spring, we will put all of our hard work into practice and develop a team chemistry for both Aand B-teams.

JM: My expectations are definitely high. I think the team looks stronger than I’ve ever seen it since my freshman year when we went to Nationals, which is huge since it’s so early in the season. Most of the beginners are just really good and seem really committed and picked up the basics so fast. I think we definitely have a good shot for Nationals.

JH: As captain, my expectations are that everyone will work super hard, fall in love with the game and make tons of friends. Will we go to Nationals? Who knows. All I want is for us to build a strong team that I feel good passing on to the next captains when I graduate.

Wooster Shuts Out Oberlin Continued from page 16 other hand, Wooster was an offensive machine, launching 21 shots at Oberlin’s net.

However, Oberlin’s sturdy defense ensured that these offensive drives were largely misdirected, as Wooster only found its target seven times.

Senior defender Sarah Willette attributed this shot differential more to Oberlin’s errors than to Wooster’s defensive strength.

“I’d attribute this [shot differential] to us not being able to generate a lot of offensive opportunities and possess well,” Willette

What is your pregame ritual?

ZB: I definitely try to sleep a lot before a tournament! We dance on the sideline, but I mostly lead the warm-ups and drills for the team to get ready for the game. I also try to think about what I know about the team from previous matchups so that I can give helpful insight to the team in our pregame huddle.

JM: That depends on how early the game is. Usually it’s roll out of bed, layer up if it’s cold out, which it usually is, stumble to someone’s hotel room to pound about three bagels before hopping in a car and blasting pump-up jams. Honestly, the thing that pumps me up the most in getting ready for a game is just being around the team.

JH: One thing we always do before our first game of a tournament is sing the national anthem. I have no idea why we do that, but it gets us pumped and it’s something that no other team does.

Do you listen to music before games? If so, give me three songs that absolutely have to be on any playlist you listen to.

ZB: When we unload out of the cars at a tournament someone usually bumps the music from a car, and we all dance as we put on our cleats and gather our stuff. “Doses and Mimosas” by Cherub has got to be one of them.

JM: “Stuntin’ Like Mufasa” by Birdman and Lil Wayne plus The Lion King — unreal mashup. It’s tradition.

“My House” [by] Flo Rida — a Frisbee classic as of the spring break trip

said. “Wooster’s back line is one of the best in the country right now, but we could have done a better job maintaining possession in their half of the field.”

Willette had two shots, both on goal, while sophomore and junior midfielders Josie Marshall and Rose Guardino each took one.

While Wooster controlled the majority of offensive play, their attack proved more reckless. For example, the Scots managed to get more corner kicks — they had four to the Yeowomen’s two — but their play also led to more offsides and fouls, netting six to Oberlin’s one and 10 to Oberlin’s six, respectively.

Junior forward Taylor French chalked this up to Wooster’s aggression, but was happy with the way her team played in the first half.

last year. And “All I Do is Win” [by DJ Khaled feat. T-Pain, Ludacris, Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross] — classic.

JH: I’m not really a music person before games. I actually just like to picture how I’m going to play and what I want to do — just kind of run things through my head.

What has been your favorite part of playing Frisbee at Oberlin?

ZB: One of my favorite parts about playing Ultimate at Oberlin has been playing with the same players for three or four years. I think that’s one awesome thing about Ultimate: Wherever you find an ultimate community, you can also find friends. I even made friends through the Ultimate community that I found in Hanoi, Vietnam while I was abroad.

JM: My favorite part of Frisbee is definitely the team. I’ve made my best friends through the team.

There’s just nothing better than heading out for a weekend scrimmage, where we practice by playing ourselves for two hours on a beautiful fall day, and just running around and throwing discs with your buddies. It’s just a great group of people to be a part of. We all bring a lot of passion and love for the sport and for each other.

Do you have any regrets about your time playing Ultimate at Oberlin?

ZB: I wish that I had decided to go on the spring break tournament trip before my junior year. Along with being two important tournaments

“They are an aggressive team and have a lot of speed, which are two things that we struggle to defend,” said French. “I thought

If you had to pitch playing Ultimate Frisbee to an incoming firstyear, how would you describe it?

ZB: Ultimate is centered on the concept of the “spirit of the game,” which gives trust and respect to all of the players to self-officiate. From this aspect of the game comes the goofy, close-knit and spirited community that definitely defines the Preying Manti. By playing Ultimate, you join a community that supports and loves each other on and off the field.

JM: I would say whether or not you’ve ever played the sport, if it seems like fun to you, we can totally teach you. All you need is a passion for wanting to learn Frisbee and an enthusiasm for being on a team. It’s a great way to get exercise that isn’t nearly as intense as playing a varsity sport but still at a high level. You’ll also be part of a fantastic group of people that will always have your back. There’s a pretty wide range of feelings on competitiveness, and so far captains past and present have done a pretty good job of providing some sort of middle ground, or options between A- and B-teams that can accommodate that. It is definitely a big time commitment, but if you’re ready for that, I don’t think I’ve found anything that’s given back as much as being a part of the Preying Manti has.

JH: If I had to pitch it, I’d say, “Come play Ultimate! It doesn’t matter if you know what it is or even consider yourself athletic. All skill levels and interest levels welcome!” I joined randomly my freshman year, and it was probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made at Oberlin. It’s a healthy mix of love of the sport and love for the people you’re around. So if either of those things interest you, I’d give it a try.

Interview by Randy Ollie, Sports editor Photo by Benjamin Shepherd, Photo editor

games strong and prevent teams from going up early, I think we’ll see more success.”

This game marked the Yeowomen’s second conference game. Conference play al––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ways brings a heightened sense of urgency and pressure, and while Oberlin has lost its “We could have done a better first two games, the team is staying positive and driven as it looks to the future. job maintaining possession in “Conference comes during a pretty tricky their half of the field.” time with midterms and anticipation of fall break, but as a team we have really focused SARAH WILLETTE on coming to practice ready to train and Senior defender maintain our focus,” senior defender Tricia ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Souza said. “Conference is challenging, but as a team we enjoying taking on challenges.” we came out in the first half with intensity Oberlin’s next game brings them back and almost held them scoreless for the en- home to face Rochester College in a nontire half, something that we’ve struggled to conference match set to kick off at 7 p.m. do this season. If we can continue to start this Friday.

Sports

The Oberlin Review, October 9, 2015

Editorial: Change Takes Time

Page 15

Feature Photo: Baseball Champs

Members of the 2014-2015 baseball team unveil their North Coast Athletic Conference Championship banner alongside College President Marvin Krislov and Director of Athletics Natalie Winkelfoos. The baseball team defeated The College of Wooster in the NCAC championship tournament to earn both their first NCAC championship title and Oberlin’s first NCAC championship title for a men’s team. The Yeomen finished last season 21–28 overall and 3–2 in the NCAA Championships.

Automatically qualifying for the NCAA tournament, Oberlin was eventually eliminated 5–4 after a hard-fought game against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Their other loss of the tournament came at the hands of the eventual national champions, State University of New York at Cortland.

Continued from page 16 competition and politics that is fueling the league’s demise.

Club owners are nixing their managers and leadership at the slightest sign of faltering or failure without allowing for any meaningful results.

According to the League Managers Association, the average period of employment for a Barclays Premier League manager is 1.23 years; in the Champions League, it’s 0.86 years. Neither of these represent a realistic time period to reshape and galvanize a demoralized team, a sentiment that is shared by Rodgers’ colleagues and many soccer analysts.

This impatience, the increasing amount of responsibilities allocated to club managers and the aggressive shaming of clubs who underperform in English leagues all put an inordinate amount of pressure on club managers. Essentially, club owners are calling upon one individual to handle a job that should be relegated to at least three other people. But it isn’t just the managers suffering from these demands. Rodgers’ termination represents two critical ways in which Premier League impatience negatively impacts professional players — giving players less power over their own fates to make managers’ jobs easier, and ensuring the instability of teams by constantly switching the staff.

These decisions rob players of a consistent career and in-game mindset, as managerial staff seem to have a role in crafting strategy for their teams.

Rodgers’ position was in jeopardy because he failed to change Liverpool’s fortunes since his start

Courtesy of Erik Andrew

in 2012. To accomplish this, he was expected to enact a complete overhaul of the coaching staff and player roster after losing two critical Liverpool players: the powerful offensive and shoulder-chomping force Luis Suárez and the young midfielder Raheem Sterling.

Both of these players exerted some of their own agency by leaving Liverpool.

Suárez participated in negotiations with FC Barcelona, triggering a buyout clause in his contract following the 2013-2014 season, and Sterling twisted Liverpool’s arm to initiate his transfer to Manchester City FC. Their actions have spurred speculation that it may be more efficient to allot even more power to club managers in order to stabilize team ros-

ters and prevent players from leaving of their own volition, effectively scaling back some of the basic rights and freedoms players have as employees. Luis Suárez isn’t really a victim of the European soccer scene — he ranks in the top 20 highest-paid soccer players in the world — but his departure does spotlight the blatant mishandling of managerial issues in clubs. The main problem here is that the weight of a team’s success has become the burden of club managers alone, but club owners seem like they are planning to circumvent this issue at the expense of professional players, reducing their ability to control job security, salary and personal employment preferences to

simplify managerial responsibilities.

Another concerning side effect of trading players like game pieces is that the age limit of the recruiting pool gets lower and lower, intensifying youth academies’ standards to the point where lines between junior and professional leagues begin to blur. There’s a disconnect within the organization and the hyper-competitive mentality of Premier League soccer clubs in general; the Barclays Premier League is just a glaring example.

While most of the blame falls on management and supervisory personnel, in an effort for these men to keep their jobs with frantic shuffling, firing and power grabs, it’s the players who stand to bear most of the burden.

Cool or Drool: Durant, Smith Square Off in Exaggerated Feud Dan Bisno Columnist National sports nowadays are 80 percent reality TV show and 20 percent actual sports game. With the endless sports commentary shows, Twitter feuds and general gossip, many sports fans have become more enamored with the players’ personal lives than with their game performance. Amid all this excitement, sports stars are under more media scrutiny than ever before.

Rarely are players described as anything other than victims of the scandalizing media, consistently ripped apart by the ruthless mass of camera-toting individuals known as sports reporters.

This brings us to the most recent NBA media feud: Kevin Durant versus Stephen A. Smith. For those of you who don’t know, Durant is the star small forward for the Oklahoma City Thunder and arguably one of the best basketball players in the world. He earned the Most Valuable Player award in 2014 before a serious foot injury benched him during the 2014-2015 campaign.

Durant’s contract with the Thunder is set to end after the upcoming season, when he will become the most soughtafter free agent, able to sign with any team that can afford the hefty max

contract price he will likely demand.

Smith, on the other hand, is one of the most successful and publicized sports reporters of the last two decades. Every basketball fan recognizes his face and distinct voice; he currently reports on ESPN’s First Take, where he frequently plants seeds for his future feuds to grow.

Smith recently reported that inside sources close to Durant have suggested that the superstar is likely to sign with the Los Angeles Lakers once his contract with the Thunder expires. Durant was not happy about this revelation, so he did what he had to do: call out Smith for this harmless piece of gossip. He bluntly explained to reporters, “I don’t talk to Stephen A. Smith at all. Nobody in my family, my friends, they don’t talk to Stephen A. Smith, so he’s lying.”

Full disclosure — I have been a little hard on Durant in the past. After all, like all sports stars, he undergoes constant criticism for every mildly contentious word that leaves his mouth. But while guys like Smith are fit for the spotlight and bask in it, relatively quiet guys like Durant don’t. However, as a basketball phenom he is constantly pressured to be a major philanthropist and answer every ridiculous question the media throws at him, no matter how infuri-

ating or irritating. So understandably, when a seemingly respectable reporter like Smith — who doesn’t need the trivial brownie points of an outlandish rumor to help him advance his standing within ESPN — made an unfounded claim about Durant’s free agency agenda, Durant retaliated.

In response, Smith provided his spin on his journalistic ethics to First Take viewers a few days later. “We don’t have to talk to you to talk about you,” he argued. Truthfully, while Durant felt that Smith’s free agency propaganda was false, it was realistically more benign than most assumptions reporters make about players. Smith was fully within his jurisdiction to make a statement about Durant’s supposed landing spot after free agency.

Smith also recalled the words Durant used to describe the media after the 2015 NBA All-Star game: “I really don’t care. Y’all not my friends. You’re going to write what you want to write.”

Undoubtedly, Smith was trying to portray himself as the victim in this conflict by highlighting Durant’s past resentment of the media. For example, Durant’s best friend and teammate, Russell Westbrook, has been the subject of countless feuds with the media.

After Durant told his mother, “You

the real MVP,” in his MVP acceptance speech, the media helped the phrase go viral, and even non-basketball fans began to use it as a joke. Durant later made it clear that he found this offensive and that he believed the media was directly to blame for turning what was meant to be a heartfelt moment into online entertainment. The superstar greatly disapproves of the misguided intentions of the media, steadfast in his belief that they scavenge for entertaining news stories rather than reporting on true ones.

It’s unfortunate that this was a huge news story this week, and that The New York Times, The Washington Post and others all tried to pitch in their own opinions in order to fuel the feud.

This story is emblematic of another issue: that reporters sometimes lie and harass players, selfishly abusing their rights to speak with a player to expedite their success. Just because it’s within their jurisdiction doesn’t make it right, because in many cases no one really cares who starts a story, but rather who the story is about. Journalists have unlimited freedom to describe athletes in whatever light that they see fit regardless of the context, whereas athletes bear all the responsibility of stories in which they have no say in, true or not.

It is understandable why an increasing number of athletes are getting fed up. I would argue that Durant has been the subject of this far too many times, and that he unfortunately blew up at the wrong time over the wrong story.

It doesn’t help that Smith is notorious for making snarky comments about players’ personalities and their athletic skill, like telling NFL wide receiver Josh Gordon that he was done with him after Gordon’s marijuana suspension, or his famous Kwame Brown rant, where he called out the then-Lakers center as being a “bona fide scrub.” Maybe Smith was just trying to bait a feud or spark a news story. Regardless, this feud represents a rare example of a dispute between a player and the media that became more personal than professional.

Ultimately, both men received negative attention due to the expansive reach of their fan bases.

Both of these men are role models and leaders in their respective organizations, which rely heavily on each other for their success. It is disheartening to see such beloved men squabble over a trivial disagreement on the public stage. But still, the NBA is America’s favorite soap opera, and fans are having a field day with this story. Therefore, both Smith and Durant are a drool this week.

Home Games This Week Friday, October 9 7 p.m.

Women’s Soccer vs. Rochester College Fred Shults Field

Saturday, October 10 11 a.m.

Women’s Tennis vs.

Carnegie Mellon University Tennis courts

12 p.m.

1 p.m.

2 p.m.

Women’s Volleyball vs. Ohio Wesleyan University Tennis courts Football vs. Wabash College Knowlton Athletics Complex Men’s Soccer vs. Wabash College Fred Shults Field

2 p.m.

Men’s Tennis vs. Wittenberg University Tennis courts

2 p.m.

Women’s Tennis vs. Wittenberg University Philips gym

Sunday, October 11 12 p.m.

Field Hockey vs. Kenyon College Bailey Field

Sports The Oberlin Review

Page 16

October 9, 2015

— Football —

Yeomen Triumphant in Historic Homecoming One Man’s ThreeMan Job Jack Brewster

A bitter, rain-soaked October atmosphere could not slow the offensive barrage that the Oberlin College football team brought to the Knowlton Athletics Complex this past Saturday when the Yeomen skinned the Allegheny College Gators 48–9.

The Yeomen signed themselves into the school record books, landing with a score of historical statistical highs in the game.

Senior quarterback Lucas Poggiali set the school record for most passing yards in a game, throwing

for 506. The Yeomen offense also set a school record for total yardage in a game with 690 total yards.

“Breaking both records was very exciting,” Poggiali said. “We set out to do something special at the beginning of the week, and we knew if we played to our potential, we could get that done.”

The quarterback was only one yard away from breaking the North Coast Athletic Conference record for most passing yards in a game when he was taken out about midway through the fourth quarter. Despite this, Pog-

giali remained positive about the missed opportunity, insisting that it will always be nothing more than one of those “‘What if ?’ scenarios.”

“I had no idea what my passing stats were until we had already taken the starters out,” Poggiali said. “My coaches weren’t aware of the records either. The whole offense was just focused on that single game total offense record, and that’s all we were concerned about.”

Despite finishing short of the conference record, Poggiali received a number of accolades for his

First-year wide receiver Jabari Clemons charges through the rain in the Yeomen’s homecoming game against the Allegheny College Gators this past Saturday. The Yeomen beat the Gators 48–9.

Courtesy of Erik Andrew

performance, including NCAC Offensive Player of the Week. He was also named on the roster of the D3football.com Team of the Week.

Head Coach Jay Anderson asserted that while the Yeomen’s record-breaking win was impressive, it was not surprising in the least. “If you play the game the right way, you can do some great things,” Anderson said. “I didn’t know that Lucas was one yard shy of the record, but if I had, then I would have allowed him to continue to let it rip.”

The Yeomen dominated from the start of the game and never looked back. Senior runningback Blake Buckhannon, sophomore wide receiver Corey Fussinger and firstyear wide receiver Robby Reinheimer all scored touchdowns in the first quarter. By the end of the first 15 minutes of play, Oberlin had jumped to a commanding 24–2.

In the second quarter, Buckhannon added another touchdown to his season total on a one-yard run, and first-year wide receiver Jabari Clemons caught a 13-yard pass from Poggiali to bring the Yeomen to 36–2.

After Poggali connected with senior tight-end

Thomas Firl for Oberlin’s sixth touchdown, Allegheny responded with its first and only score of the afternoon, a 67-yard run that brought them to 42–9. But this would be the last taste of the endzone for the Gators, as the Yeomen sealed the win with junior quarterback Chris Herman’s pass to sophomore wide receiver Jackson Moore.

The touchdown was the first collegiate score for both Herman and Moore.

The Yeomen’s offensive explosion purged from their mouths the bitter taste of last year’s homecoming, the inaugural game on Bailey Field in which Oberlin fell to The College of Wooster by a final score of 63–10.

“I think this game was really good for the team as a whole,” said junior wide receiver Justin Cruz. “Not only was it good for the team in terms of momentum, but it was also good for all the people who came out for the game. It felt great for everyone to finally get a homecoming win after so long.”

The Yeomen hope to capitalize on the momentum from their historic win when they face nationally ranked Wabash College at home on Saturday at 1 p.m.

— Women’s Soccer —

Fighting Scots Seal Yeowomen’s 2–0 Defeat at Wooster Sam Kreisberg The Oberlin women’s soccer team traveled to Wooster, Ohio, in the wind and rain last Saturday night to face The College of Wooster but failed to find the back of its opponent’s net, losing to the tune of 2–0. This moves the Yeowomen to 5–4–1 for the season and 0–2 in league play.

The Yeowomen held the Fighting Scots scoreless for most of the first half, but eventually yielded with two seconds left to Wooster’s junior midfielder Liz Kantra, who capitalized on a powerful cross into the box and shot one past Oberlin first-year keeper Jordyn Morris.

Wooster scored again in the 68th minute off of another wellplaced service, but this time it was junior forward Kennedy Payne on the receiving end. Payne hit a deliberate header that passed just inside the right post, impossible for Morris to get a hand on. Morris had five saves that day, bump-

ing her season total up to 24.

The Yeowomen have been battling injuries all season. Head Coach Dan Palmer believes this put Oberlin at a serious disadvantage during the game, especially in conjunction with the bad weather conditions.

“They were bigger and more athletic than us, and the wet weather and field conditions played to those strengths of theirs,” Palmer said. “We have so many players hurt; we’ve had 10 players miss at least two games.

We’re having to tweak the lineup and ask people to take on different responsibilities. So that’s a challenge, but the team is doing as well as it can under the circumstances and competing. That’s been our biggest challenge this year.”

Oberlin struggled offensively for all 90 minutes, only managing to get off four shots all game, though three were on goal. On the See Wooster, page 14

Player of the Week: Lucas Poggiali Senior quarterback Lucas Poggiali scans the field to connect with one of his teammates. In Oberlin’s homecoming game against Allegheny College, Poggiali personally shattered a school record and helped the Yeomen offense break another one of their own. Poggiali broke the Yeomen record for yards thrown with 506 yards, a title previously held by Josh Mandel, OC ’13, with 454 yards. In doing so, he also became the first player in Yeomen history to pass the 500-yard benchmark.

As a team, the Yeomen set a new school record for yards of offense in a single game with 690.

Poggiali was named North Coast Athletic Conference Offensive Player of the Week for his performance and was named to the D3football.com Team of the Week as the team’s only quarterback, a national honor.

Photo Courtesy of Erik Andrew

Sarena Malsin Sports Editor European professional soccer leagues are cutthroat, with each team constantly jockeying for higher rankings and greater popularity on and off the field. But the ball definitely isn’t the only thing being passed around. Aside from the actual game of soccer, there is also a game of strategy constantly in play within these leagues, one which involves the movement of money, players and staff to build the most successful team.

Teams in crisis are most guilty of these shadow games, as they are constantly struggling to stay relevant in the competitive atmosphere of European professional soccer.

Liverpool F.C. recently shouldered its way to the forefront when it fired its manager Brendan Rodgers and replaced him with Jurgen Klopp. The reshuffling of staff among floundering teams isn’t an uncommon situation in England’s Barclays Premier League at the moment: Rodgers’ termination is likely to precede that of Manchester United Manager Louis van Gaal after the team was embarrassingly defeated by Arsenal F.C. at home, and that of Arsenal’s seemingly tenured manager Arsène Wenger after Arsenal lost in the Champions League, the second-tier English premier league.

Rodgers’ termination has sparked a resurgence in criticisms of Barclays Premier League, which has underperformed in the last decade in comparison to its European counterparts, such as Spain’s La Liga and Germany’s Bundesliga. The reasons for these clubs’ disappointing performances are somewhat of a mystery, as England, with all of its wealth, should have the resources and capital to cultivate at least one successful squad. However, it is this sense of urgency and frustration inherent in See Editorial, page 15