April 14, 2017

The Oberlin Review

APRIL 14, 2017 VOLUME 145, NUMBER 21

Local News Bulletin News briefs from the past week College Awards First Nexial Prize at $50,000 College senior Adam Chazin-Gray received the first Nexial Prize, a new annual $50,000 prize awarded to a member of the graduating class who demonstrates excellence both as a science major and as an individual studying culture. The Nexial Prize was established by an alumnus who built his career as a scientist engaged in cultural endeavors. Chazin-Gray was one of 16 applicants reviewed by a faculty committee, winning with his plan to research public health, climatology and microbiology.

Hotel Hosts Easter Brunch The Hotel at Oberlin is holding its first Easter Brunch in the Peter B. Lewis Ballroom.

The Hotel’s Executive Chef Jim Barnhart will prepare an elaborate menu to celebrate the occasion. The brunch will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Sunday. The event is $30 for adults, $28 for seniors, $12 for children and free for children under the age of three. Reservations can be made online or via phone to the hotel.

Oberlin Public Library Holds Genealogy Lock-In The Oberlin Public Library will hold a Genealogy Lock-In, cosponsored by the Oberlin African-American Genealogy & History Group. The library invites community members over the age of 16 to use microfilm readers and databases such as Heritage Quest and Ancestry.com to track their genealogy. There will also be mini-seminars to explain the process, as well as OAAGHG members to assist participants. The lock-in is free to the public and will be held from 5:30 p.m. to midnight May 5. Community members can register on the OAAGHG website or at the library until April 30.

ESTABLISHED 1874 oberlinreview.org

ONLINE & IN PRINT

Course Catalog Unveils Cluster Plans Sydney Allen Production editor Though many of the course clusters slated for next school year are not currently available in the course catalog, they will still launch this fall.

Despite the hiccup in the “soft opening” of the program, as described by Associate Dean of the Curriculum David Kamitsuka, the program will kick off in the Peter B. Lewis Gateway Center's StudiOC classrooms this September.

The courses will incorporate professors across disciplines from both the College and Conservatory in an effort to “encourage integration of learning across disciplines,” as described in the Strategic Plan. Students will be required to take either all or some of the courses in the cluster, depending on respective course requirements.

Faculty involved in next year’s course clusters have chosen themes and drafted their syllabuses, and the classrooms in StudiOC are ready to house the classes. Still, the course clusters remain a mystery to many students due to a lack of accessible information online and sparse communication from the administration. The information deficit has raised concerns about how students will be able to plan for such a complicated scheduling process, as the clusters require students to juggle at least two or three courses with a similar theme.

Despite the choppy start, Kamitsuka says the opening is going according to plan.

“Our major concern was whether or not the StudiOC classrooms would be ready on schedule,” Kamitsuka said, adding that the course clusters are not more explicitly flagged in the catalog

Associate Dean of the Curriculum David Kamitsuka shows the classroom spaces in StudiOC to faculty members participating in the course cluster program this fall. Four course clusters are available next semester, three of which are exclusive to first-years.

Photo by Bryan Rubin, Photo editor

because he did not want to create an additional burden for the Registar's Office, given the cluster proposals were not due until March 10 — shortly before the Fall 2017 course catalogue's release.

Although Oberlin has attempted similar endeavors in the past, creating learning communities based on coordinated-teaching methods, the course clusters are the first program of its kind at the College.

“There have been a few learning communities in the past, but primarily utilizing team-taught courses,” Kamitsuka said. “StudiOC learning

community course clusters involve stand-alone courses that could be taught independently in the future.”

There will be six different learning communities for the 2017–2018 school year, with a total of 16 courses among them, two of which will be debuted next spring. Three of the four courses opening this fall will only be open to first-years, as they are connected to first-year seminars. Because of this, these clusters are not in the current See StudiOC, page 4

Altercation Leads to Arrest in Harassment Case Melissa Harris News editor

Geoffrey George Raymond Basel wields a knife as he approaches three students in the Asia House parking lot. Basel was intoxicated as he shouted racial slurs and threatened students Monday morning, and was subsequently detained.

An intoxicated man verbally harassed three students with racial slurs and threatened them with a knife in the Asia House parking lot Monday morning.

The perpetrator, Geoffrey George Raymond Basel, a 28-year-old white man from Columbia Station, Ohio, was reported to have been under the influence of alcohol when he approached a College junior and Asia House resident around 10:50 a.m. The student was returning from the airport, having just arrived in the parking lot when she encountered Basel, who was in a blue Ford pickup truck. The student said that she was waiting for her boyfriend to come from the Science Center when the man called her over. She initially thought he needed help until he said, “Hi, cute Asian girl.”

The student said that she was afraid and started to walk away. The police report cites that Basel allegedly responded by harassing her with racial

slurs, so she turned on her cellphone and began recording the incident. The student then called someone who was passing Stevenson Dining Hall over to help her. The bystander came over around the time that the student’s boyfriend arrived.

The bystander and the student’s boyfriend approached Basel’s truck — the situation escalating when the student’s boyfriend threw a small pocket Bible he had at Basel. The police report stated that Basel then became outraged, exiting his truck and approaching the three, taking out his knife.

“The man was approaching us, trying to grab something from his pocket, and then it turned out to be a knife,” the Asia House resident said. “He was wielding the knife, saying that he was going to hurt us, was going to cut us.

My friend is actually Hispanic, and [Basel] was calling him a dirty Arabic. ... He was calling me a Chinese b---h. … He kept saying, ‘I’m going to cut you. I’m going to stick you.’”

The student said that Basel’s actions and yelling began attracting by-

Weed and Wealth

Senior Soiree

The city may soon enter the medicinal marijuana business.

The senior members on the track and field teams were honored at the Bob Kahn Invitational.

Sibling Revelry Blackwater Crossing follows dreamworld adventure.

See page 4

See page 15

See page 11

INDEX:

Opinions 5

This Week in Oberlin 8

Arts 10

Sports 16

standers’ attention. She also said that when Basel realized he was beginning to attract the attention of others, he tried to escape the scene in his car, but Safety and Security officers and Oberlin Police Officers Steven Chapman, Matthew Sustarsic and Marc Ellis had already arrived on the scene.

The police report of the incident stated that Chapman was the first to pull up in an OPD vehicile.

“Sgt. Chapman drew his firearm and held Basel at gunpoint until the reporting officer arrived,” the report reads. “The subject replied to Sgt. Chapman's commands ‘if you have a … problem then just shoot me.’”

Basel was then handcuffed and detained. Noticing that Basel’s speech was slurred, the police had him take a Blood Alcohol Content test. The officers found his BAC level to be .227, which is defined as dangerously drunk and nearly three times the legal limit of .08 percent.

Basel said in the police report that See Local, page 4

on the

WEB

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

Visit oberlinreview.org and facebook. com/oberlinreview and follow us on Twitter @oberlinreview and Instagram @ocreview.

News

Page 2

The Oberlin Review, April 14, 2017

Border Patrol Agents Detain Undocumented Man Louis Krauss News editor Federal Border Patrol Agents arrested a man on his way to Oberlin Municipal Court April 5 after learning his visa had expired. Naranbataar Ganbataar, a 30-year-old Mongolian citizen, was charged with felonious assault following an incident on Feb. 15 when he allegedly attacked a bus passenger on the way to Vermillion.

Upon arrival at the Oberlin courthouse for a 2 p.m. hearing, the agents arrested Ganbataar in the parking lot and turned him over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Attempts by the Review to contact ICE for further information on Ganbataar’s status were unsuccessful.

According to interim Oberlin Police Chief Michael McCloskey, around six to eight agents, some of whom were dressed in plain clothes while others were in uniform, arrived in unmarked cars.

Since these were federal officers, the operation did not involve the city police. The agents arranged for two city police cruisers to stand by as backup, but no prior notification was given to the local police of the planned arrest. McCloskey said he wished the agents had given more of a headsup notice, as organizations like the FBI have in the past.

“Normally we do get a heads-up just as a common courtesy,” McCloskey said. “There’s no requirement, but certainly that’s what we’d prefer.

Especially if it’s an undercover operation with officers who may be in town reported as suspicious — maybe they’re staking something out in town — sometimes they’ll give us a heads up that ‘Hey, we’re going to be scouting out this area.’”

Because the border-patrol arrest prevented Ganbataar from being present at his hearing, state prosecutor Frank Carlson prepared a mo-

tion to dismiss the assault charge, which he sent to Oberlin Municipal Court Judge Thomas Januzzi an hour after Ganbataar’s scheduled court appearance.

Although Januzzi said that “the reasons were because the person was going to be unavailable because he was taken away,” the motion only briefly mentions the arrest by federal agents as a reason for dismissing the charge, stating, “It is not clear what will happen at this juncture.”

A larger portion of the motion lists other reasons to dismiss the charge, such as the fact that Ganbataar “suffers from a bipolar condition,” and that he and the victim resided in California and New York, respectively, meaning it would be difficult to bring both to Oberlin.

“The level of his medications was being adjusted at the time,” Carlson wrote. “He has since received lower dosages and is doing better. The State feels that the offense resulted from his bipolar conditions and the medications he was taking at the time.”

Although it’s unconfirmed whether ICE will deport Ganbataar, Customs and Border Patrol Public Affairs Officer Kris Grogan wrote in an email to the Review that he “has been processed for removal proceedings.”

Grogan did not explain how CBP selects undocumented citizens to deport, simply saying they picked Ganbataar because they noticed he had been charged with felonious assault and therefore was “a public safety risk.”

According to McCloskey, city police do not look into a person’s immigration status following calls for assistance, and they always act within the city’s resolution to resist federal inquiries into the immigration status of Oberlin residents.

“Our practices are in alignment with the resolution, so our main focus is to provide people in

Federal Border Patrol Agents arrested a man outside of Oberlin City Hall April 5. Naranbataar Ganbataar, a Mongolian citizen, was apprehended for a visa overstay.

Photo by Rick Yu, Photo editor

the community help and assistance when they call for it,” McCloskey said. “That’s the overall goal of the resolution, that no matter what your immigration status is — whether you’re undocumented or not — you shouldn’t be afraid to call for help. We’re not there to investigate their immigration status. Obviously if there were a criminal matter, we would handle that differently. But enforcing civil immigration law is the federal government’s responsibility. “ Despite President Donald Trump’s repeated calls for increased deportations of undocumented immigrants, Grogan said there have been no new policies on deportation.

“Our mission has not changed since the new administration has taken over,” Grogan wrote.

However, Peace Church Reverend Mary Hammond thought there could be a connection.

“I mean it’s definitely in line with the way things are going already,” Hammond said. “I think

it’s concerning to everyone.”

Members of Obies for Undocumented Inclusion, a group that looks to support fellow undocumented students in the College, declined to comment on the incident.

Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo said she wasn’t sure whether this was a continuing trend of Trump’s agenda, and added that she wanted to avoid adding to any growing anxieties about the issue on campus.

“I believe strongly that educators need to challenge changes to immigration policy and enforcement that harm the learning environment on our campuses and stand up for all students, including undocumented students, as valued members of our communities,” Raimondo said in an email to the Review. “College administrators continue to closely monitor policy and practices related to immigration and proactively communicate with directly impacted students.”

Search Committee Announces Transition Team Formation Johan Cavert The Presidential Search Committee created a transition team at the end of March to help ensure a smooth entry for the College’s next president and their staff. The team is composed of 20 representatives from the faculty, student body, Board of Trustees, staff and the alumni association.

Manish Mehta, Chemistry professor and faculty representative for the transition team, said the group’s main task is to familiarize the next president with the many communities on campus.

“The purpose of the committee will be to aid the new president’s transition to Oberlin,” Mehta wrote in an email to the Review. “Broadly speaking, we will help in two areas: first, to orient the president to the campus and various campus constituencies, and second to arrange a series of introductions to those campus communities.”

There was no formal application to gain a spot on the transition team. Instead, the Presidential Search Committee invited any interested individuals from various Oberlin constituencies to volunteer and participate in the process.

Honorary Trustee and Transition Team Chair Liz Welch, OC ’80, described the decision-making process of forming the team.

“The board decided we needed to pay attention to transition of the outgoing president and the incoming president to make sure it was an organized and supportive leadership transition for everybody in the community,” Welch said.

The current team is divided into two subcommittees, one of which oversees events for the departure of outgoing President Marvin Krislov, while the other is tasked with preparing for the new president’s arrival and orientation.

One task of the outgoing administration transition team has

been to organize events celebrating Krislov’s work at the school over the last 10 years.

“Marvin really is connected with Oberlin students, and we wanted to make sure that students knew that, and that Marvin knew that students appreciated him,” Welch said.

The transition team has organized a series of farewell events and 'thank you' celebrations for Krislov. These included a luncheon last week at The Hotel at Oberlin and various events with alumni.

Upcoming events will include a student “TGIF” event and a panel discussion during Commencement weekend.

The transition team also discussed with Krislov how to best facilitate the incoming president’s arrival.

“We talked to President Krislov about coming into Oberlin 10 years ago and things he particularly appreciated, and we should continue doing,” said Presidential Search Committee Chair Lillie Edwards, OC ’75. “I know the committee did a great job reaching out to new college presidents and head of transition committees at other schools around the country.”

According to Welch, there was not as much of a concrete transition plan in 2006 when Krislov arrived.

“I was on the board at the time, and I’m pretty sure that there wasn’t as formalized a plan as we’re doing now,” she said.

As far as the next president’s arrival, Welch said all groups on campus would have the chance to meet with the new president and to discuss future plans.

“As soon as [the president is] named, we will start producing what we are calling ‘briefing binders,’” Welch said. “They literally get a briefing book that says, ‘Here’s the topic for today.’ It might be fundraising or it might be curriculum or it might be students. … As soon as they come to campus … they will have briefing sessions with various constituents. It’s to give them a flavor of the campus

The Oberlin Review — Established 1874 —

Volume 145, 140, Number 21 2

(ISSN 297–256)

April 14, 2017

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

Advertising rates: $18 per column inch. Second-class postage paid at Oberlin, Ohio.

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

POSTMASTER SEND CHANGES TO: Wilder Box 90, Oberlin, Ohio 44074-1081.

Office of Publication: Burton Basement, Oberlin, Ohio 44074.

Phone: (440) 775-8123 Fax: (440) 775-6733 On theOn web: thehttp://www.oberlinreview.org web: oberlinreview.org

Tyler Liv Combe Sloan Allegra Oliver Kirkland Bok Managing editor Samantha Kiley Petersen Link News editors Rosemary LouisBoeglin Krauss Melissa Alex Howard Harris Opinions editor WillSami Rubenstein Mericle This Week Weekeditor editor Izzy ZoëRosenstein Strassman Arts editors Daniel KaraMarkus Brooks Victoria Georgia Garber Horn Sports editors Jackie McDermott Quinn Hull Madeleine Darren O’Meara Zaslau Layout editors Abigail Tiffany Carlstad Fung Amanda Ben Garfinkel Tennant Alanna TaliaSandoval Rodwin Photo editors Parker OliviaShatkin Gericke Photo editors Brannon Rockwell-Charland Bryan Rubin Online editor Alanna Bennett Rick Yu Editors-in-chief Editors-in-Chief

and what our students care about and who those students are.”

College sophomore and Student Liaison on the transition team Sadie Keller, stressed the importance of face-to-face interaction between the new president and students.

“Ideally, the new president would spend time listening to students,” Keller said. “We don’t want them sitting in an office, going through paperwork. We want them in Mudd, at the [Conservatory], at a co-op, getting to know students. I think that’s our job as student liaisons, is to try to facilitate those conversations as much as possible.”

The exact schedule for events the transition team is organizing largely depends on when the new president is announced. Members hoped that orientation events could begin before the end of the semester but had doubts about such an expedited timeframe.

“We imagine a series of ‘rollout’ meetings and introductions … during the school year, either late this semester or early in the fall semester,” Mehta said. “Given the excitement, we anticipate that many groups will want time with the new president, so one of the things we will have to do in the beginning is to limit that access until the president has had a chance to be oriented and settled in.”

Edwards also used the PSC’s announcement to assure the Oberlin community that the Presidential Search Committee was progressing on schedule. Though information on candidates and a timeframe cannot be verified because of confidentiality, “progress reports let the community know that we are indeed hard at work,” Edwards said. “We have candidates who are the full spectrum of people who have a demonstrated track record in higher education as administrators and who are extremely well qualified and create a very exciting and competitive pool.”

College sophomore Cole Mantrell and College juniors Sally Slade and Jake Berstein are also part of the transition team.

Business manager Maureen CurtisCoffey Cook Business manager Savi Sedlacek Ads manager Caley Watnick Ads manager Reshard el-Shair Online editor Hazel Galloway Production Sophia Bamert Production manager manager Ryanne Berry Production staff Stephanie Bonner Production staff Victoria Albacete Emma Eisenberg Sydney Taylor Allen Field Giselle Glaspie Katherine Hamilton Auden JuliaGranger Hubay Tracey Knott Courtney Loeb Noah Morris Emily Peterson Anna Julia Peckham Peterson Silvia Sheffield KendallDrew Mahavier Wise Distributors Bryan Rubin Distributors Joe Camper Ben Steger Joseph Dilworth Mason JamesBoutis Kuntz

Corrections

Corrections: The Review is not aware of any corrections week.

The Review is not awarethis of any corrections this week.

The Review strives to print all information as accurately asemail possible.

To submt a correction, Ifmanagingeditor@oberlinreview.org. you feel the Review has made an error, please send an e-mail to managingeditor@oberlinreview.org.

News

The Oberlin Review, April 14, 2017

Page 3

Off the Cuff: Teresa Bejan, Professor of Political Theory Teresa Bejan is an Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Oriel College. Before teaching at Oxford, Bejan worked at the University of Toronto and was a Mellon Research Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Columbia University. Bejan’s research brings perspectives from early modern English and American political thought into conversation with contemporary political theory and practice. She has published work in The Journal of Politics, History of Political Thought, Review of Politics and the Oxford Review of Education. Her book, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration seeks contemporary ways of conveying civility in light of 17th-century debates about religious toleration from ideas developed

by Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. She argues that their philosophies behind civility are not superficial calls for politeness, but rather complicated efforts to navigate how people can fundamentally coexist under conditions of conflicting perspectives. Bejan gave a lecture titled “Mere Civility?” at Fairchild Chapel Tuesday evening.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is the crisis of civility?

I’m a political theorist and a historian of political thought by training, so one of the things I’m really interested in is when I see strong echoes of early modern political and religious debates in contemporary discourse. The crisis of civility today is the complaint that there’s a kind of war of words afflicting American democracy and that our words are becoming more and more hateful and violent.

The practice of disagreement [pushes us] farther and farther apart rather than bringing us together. But construing that as a crisis of civility is interesting to me because civility is a vexed concept in the history of political thought, so one of the things I try to argue in [my] book is that the appeal to civility today is a kind of conversational virtue that’s meant to make disagreement less threatening. There are strong similarities between that usage in the 21st century and [that] being used in the 17th century over debates of religious toleration, so talking about a “crisis of civility” is a way of bringing these historical moments into conversation, pointing out the parallels.

In your book, Mere Civility, you bring early-modern politics around religious toleration into conversation with politics today. How does history inform your analysis of contemporary politics?

For me, it’s absolutely essential, and for me that’s because I just happen to be very interested in history. I always want to understand the concepts and categories that we take for granted in political discussion and where they come from, because words have histories, so I’m interested in that. But then I also have a stronger argument, which is that I think that in addition to the kind of intrinsic interest of knowing the histories of words in political debates, there’s actually a lot that history can offer in terms of coming to an understanding of what the challenges we’re confronting actually are — this kind of work of understanding and the follow-up work of then finding prescriptions and solutions. I think that one of the things that I point to in the book is that a lot of favored solutions to our modern crisis of civility have actually been tried before, so some sense of the history is really important here because then you can say “why?” and “how?” Why did we try, and how did it fail?

Teresa Bejan, Associate Professor of Political Theory

Do you see any notable distinctions between the civility of politics between the U.S. and Great Britain, based on your research and experiences in each country?

Well, you can tell from my accent that I’m American, and I actually taught in the U.S. before I taught in Canada, then moved to the U.K. Certainly, my experience of political and academic cultures in all of those three countries have informed my interest in historical trajectories of civility. To me, it’s striking that the terms of debate in all three countries are similar. You hear in public discourse everywhere that liberal democracy as a regime is confronting a crisis of civility — a problem of how we conduct disagreements in these liberal democratic societies that aspire to tolerate lots of kinds of differences. But then how those crises cash out and then what kind of civility is imagined as a solution I think really does differ.

The main difference is that in America, we have this peculiar tradition of what I call in the book “free speech fundamentalism,” where we, uniquely among modern liberal democracies, think it’s essential to a tolerant society to have the freedom to insult each other. The funny thing, though, is that being in the U.K., there’s not [that] tradition. A lot of my colleagues now are appealing to the principle of free speech, but there’s not really a kind of tradition of free speech fundamentalism in the U.K. in the way that there is in the U.S. Nevertheless, in British politics, there is a kind of tradition of a much more indecorous political debate within Parliament than in the American Congress, so actually the relationship between these different spheres of political debate is quite complicated and really interesting. So we might say that there’s quite a lot of incivility in British debate in Parliament, but then that’s compensated by an extreme decorousness in interpersonal disagreements and disputes, whereas in the States, in Congress there’s quite a lot of decorum, but once one leaves, one leaves the chamber and the gloves come off.

There are interesting parallels, and it’s something I do want to think about more.

How have ideas of civility in politics changed over the course of this past year, from attitudes around Brexit to the inauguration of Donald Trump?

The funny thing about the book coming out when it did — so, January 2017 — is that everyone has been congratulating me on how timely the book is. But I also have to remind them that timely academic monographs begin as untimely dissertations, so I started working on this eight years ago. One of the things I want to point out is that there’s a sense of a kind of unprecedentedness to the crisis of civility that’s been declared in response to the election and inauguration of President Trump or in debates about Brexit in the U.K. I see these as symptoms rather than causes. I think we heard very similar complaints eight years ago, and even eight years ago people were saying, “Well actually, people have been complaining about a crisis of civility since the ’90s,” then someone else says, “Actually it was in the 1980s.” Pretty soon, you’re back at the founding of the American Republic in the 1780s, and everyone’s complaining about a crisis of civility.

One of the things I try to do historically is say, “No, our crises of civility have not been unprecedented.” Nevertheless, to say an evil is unprecedented is not to say it’s not an evil, so how should we understand what’s going on? But I do think that informs the kind of solutions one might prescribe in response. If the problem isn’t unprecedented, then I do think history has a lot to offer in thinking about constructive solutions.

Oberlin is overwhelmingly liberal, and has a reputation for refusing to engage with people of differing political views. How would you suggest people of such political stances create productive dialogue with people across the aisle, so to speak?

That’s a really good question, and I think it’s the $64,000 question. The advice comes in only once a community decides it actually wants to have those conversations. I think that in a situation of higher learning in the United States of America, Oberlin and colleges and campuses like it have a duty to make sure that students are being prepared for the difficult work of being citizens in vast multiethnic, multicultural and deeply, deeply diverse societies. And so I do think it’s really important for there to be a space for engaging in quite fundamental and heated disagreements on campus, so my advice there just seems too obvious to say.

In the first place, you have to be willing to have the conversation.

You have to be willing to be in the same room. But what I think is that a lot of times, what happens is [there is a] lack of exposure to people who have, in good faith, come to very different conclusions on questions that we consider to be fundamental. It becomes very easy to kind of demonize them or dehumanize them and imagine them to be an embodiment of every terrible thing that we imagine of our opponents. They’re not only evil; they’re also insane, stupid — pick your pejorative. So I think that there, it becomes really essential to make sure students are exposed to the best of the arguments that the other side has to offer. Because here I am with John Stuart Mill: “He who only knows his side of an argument knows little of that.”

Interview by Melissa Harris, News editor Photo courtesy of Teresa Bejan

Review Security Notebook Thursday, April 6 11:15 a.m. Conservatory staff reported that posters advertising performances were torn down from various areas in the Conservatory. The incident is under investigation.

4:36 p.m. Safety and Security officers assisted an injured staff member at the Philips gym weight room. The individual received a 3–4-inch laceration on their head when a hook fell off a rack, striking them.

The individual went to the emergency room on their own.

Friday, April 7 10:36 a.m. Custodial staff at Langston Hall reported a student near the first floor with what appeared to be graffiti supplies.

The student left the area prior to an officer’s arrival. Graffiti was found in the area, and a work order was filed for cleanup.

1:15 p.m. A custodial staff member reported that their parked vehicle on the south side of Fairchild House was struck

by another vehicle, causing minor damage. There were no injuries. Both parties exchanged information.

1:57 p.m. Officers assisted a student who was struck in the head by ice that had fallen from a tree while walking in Wilder Bowl. The student was transported to the Student Health Center for treatment.

11:36 p.m. Safety and Security officers responded to complaints of loud noise coming from a Village Housing Unit on Pleasant Street. The residents were advised that their party should end. Officers remained in the area until the party attendees dispersed.

Saturday, April 8 7:57 p.m. Safety and Security officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm at a Union Street Housing Complex. Burned cooking oil set off the alarm. The area was cleared and alarm reset.

11:55 p.m. Safety and Security officers responded to a loud noise complaint at a

Union Street Housing Unit. Several apartments were observed to be hosting unauthorized parties. The officers made contact with hosts and attendees, and all parties were dispersed.

Sunday, April 9 12:20 a.m. Safety and Security officers assisted a student ill from alcohol consumption at Kahn Hall. The student was able to respond to all questions and said they would stay with a friend for the night.

8:40 p.m. A resident of Fairchild House reported a burning odor in the basement hallway, near the kitchen. The building was checked and found to be safe. The odor was determined to be coming from a dry grease trap. Water was poured down the trap, which eliminated the odor.

Monday, April 10 5:59 p.m. Safety and Security officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department

responded to a fire alarm at an Elm Street Village Housing Unit. The cause was smoke from overheated oil. The area was cleared and alarm reset.

Tuesday, April 11 3:46 p.m. Staff reported finding contraband while checking on a maintenance issue in a Union Street Housing Unit. Two glass bongs, three grinders containing marijuana residue, an electric vaporizer and a plastic bag containing what appeared to be marijuana were confiscated and turned over to the Oberlin Police Department.

7:25 p.m. An athletic umpire reported the theft of a wooden folding chair that had been left propped against his vehicle.

10:02 p.m. A resident of South Hall reported someone smoking on the first floor.

An officer made contact with the occupant of the room in question, who denied smoking and said they had burned incense. The occupant was advised of the burning and smoking policy.

News

Page 4

The Oberlin Review, April 14, 2017

Council Mulls Bringing Medical Marijuana to Town Jenna Gyimesi City Council is considering bringing the medical marijuana industry to Oberlin in hopes of revitalizing the local economy. Councilmembers in favor of a resolution allowing manufacturers and distributors to set up camp in town are hopeful that others will get on board with the proposal.

A law passed in Columbus last fall legalized medical marijuana in Ohio, making it available to patients with 23 specific conditions including HIV and AIDS, spinal cord disease and injury, Crohn’s disease and posttraumatic stress disorder. According to the Oberlin News-Tribune, this legislation allows the Department of Commerce to issue up to 24 licenses for marijuana cultivation and the State Board of Pharmacy to distribute up to 60 licenses to sell medical marijuana in Ohio.

Now that certain companies are seeking locations for production, distribution and cultivation throughout Ohio, City Council is debating whether Oberlin should open itself up to the medicinal marijuana business. Councilmember Kelley Singleton has been working to bring the issue to council for four months.

“Fourty-seven percent of Oberlin — the College, the churches, Kendal [at Oberlin] — are property-tax exempt,” Singleton said.

“That leaves us a very finite amount of money that we can produce to maintain our services.

The city gets most of its revenue from income tax.”

Singleton said that neighboring communities have seen success in their efforts to integrate medicinal marijuana enterprises into their local economies, adding that Oberlin should also capitalize on the opportunity.

“Norwalk was looking to do something like this,” Singleton said. “The numbers that they put forward were $1.5 million annually in payroll. Our income taxes can come from that

and that would be a nice influx. There would also be sales tax [if we were] to have a dispensary. It would actually help the whole county.

My main thrust is that it is an opportunity.

We have to at least try to position ourselves to benefit from this thing that is legal in this state. The governor assigned it, so it’s the law.”

The city of Elyria is also considering entering the medicinal marijuana business. Councilmember Sharon Pearson said that it would be strategic for Oberlin to take the chance to reel in the medicinal marijuana industry before surrounding communities do.

“There are only a certain amount of these facilities being allowed in Ohio,” Pearson said.

“If we wait too long, it could be an opportunity lost. Economic development is one of our top priorities here at City Council. This would generate income tax for the city. It’s more people spending money at our downtown business, going out for lunch. It’s just like any other business. Whether it’s medical marijuana or not, any business is economically stimulating.”

Councilmember Linda Slocum echoed Pearson’s sentiments.

“We need to be aggressive in bringing industry to Oberlin,” she said. “I like a proactive approach to getting more jobs here in Oberlin.”

Aside from the economic benefits, Slocum also said that producing medical marijuana could have benefits in the health care of chronically ill individuals.

“I have heard enough testimony that it is helpful and beneficial, and I would want it to be available for them,” Slocum added.

Still, council support for attracting medicinal marijuana enterprises is not uniform across the board. While Councilmember Sharon Fairchild-Soucy acknowledged the drug’s medical benefits, she said that making the medicinal marijuana industry more mainstream in Oberlin could risk increasing ado-

Local Hurls Slurs at Students Continued from page 1 he was in Oberlin “looking for a subject to recover $35 that he gave” to an unknown woman, although Basel did not state what the money was for.

In the report, the police on the scene believed that due to the influence of alcohol, Basel may have been lost while trying to locate an Oberlin resident rather than a student.

Following the confrontation, Safety and Security posted notices about the incident throughout campus Tuesday and the Dean of Students Office circulated an email citing measures students can take to protect themselves and to find support, “If you are traveling around campus and feel unsafe, remember that the blue light phones found in numerous spots around campus will connect you immediately to assistance,” the email writes. “The Student Shuttle system can help you travel in the evening hours, and Safety and Security will provide walking escorts to individuals who are concerned about safety — please call ahead if possible as response time will depend on staffing.”

Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo said that based on immediate findings, the campus does not appear to be under threat now that Basel has been taken into custody.

“The Oberlin Police Department immediately took the responsible individual into custody and the available evidence does not suggest that any individual student or that the College as an institution was specifically targeted,” Raimondo wrote in an email to the Review. “Thus, it does not appear that there is a specific or ongoing threat to campus safety at this time.”

Assistant Dean for International Students Dana Hamdan, who has been meeting with the threatened Asia House residents, said that it is important for the campus community to continue protecting one another, especially given the increase in hate crimes after last fall’s presidential election.

“The outcome of the presidential election changed the national climate,” Hamdan said. “As a result, higher education institutions, including Oberlin, need to continue their commitment to their students by providing support and resources that are transferable to the current needs of students. … For positive change to be sustainable and effective, it’s important to be strategic and to think long term so we are being proactive and not reactive."

Basel was charged with operating a vehicle impaired under the influence of alcohol and aggravated menacing. His pre-trial hearing is scheduled at the Oberlin Municipal Court at 2 p.m. April 18.

City Council is considering a plot of land on the corner of East Lorain Street and Oberlin Road as a potential location for medical marijuana businesses. After Ohio authorized the commercialization of the drug for medical purposes last fall, council is discussing benefits to the local economy.

Photo by Rick Yu, Photo editor

lescent substance abuse in the community.

“I am concerned about it being used by young people, as I would be about alcohol, before a necessary maturity is developed,” Fairchild-Soucy said. “However, as an adult drug for medicinal purposes, I am very much in favor because of what it might do to reduce criminality as well as the medical benefit.”

Singleton explained how Oberlin would need to openly advertise itself and identify specifics of where and why the businesses should come here.

“We need to be able to provide these companies with locations,” Singleton said. “We would need to put together almost like a sales brochure, and let them know that Oberlin is open for business.”

The Planning Committee will meet to discuss potential locations Wednesday. However,

Slocum said that this could be difficult with Oberlin’s limited commercial space. Despite this obstacle, Singleton said he wants the city to tackle the challenge.

“I hope they discuss it as soon as possible,” Singleton said. “The law doesn’t take effect until September 2018. It’s important to get it up there now because the people who will be awarded need to put proposals together so they can be accepted by the state. That takes time. Let’s get this moving as fast as possible so people can get started on their development plans, their site plans, their business plans.”

If the Planning Committee is in support of Oberlin becoming a manufacturer or distribution center, the matter will come to a vote at council’s regular meeting May 1.

StudiOC Readies for Cluster Takeover Continued from page 1 course catalogue. Three exclusively first-year clusters include: Arts and the Overlooked: Activism of Access; Sports, Culture, and Society; and Matters of Fact, Matters of Fiction.

The cluster titled No Art, No Voice? Marginalized Cultures and the Arts of Survival, is open to the greater student body and is comprised of two courses: Indigenous Environmentalism, taught by Environmental Studies Professor Chie Sakakibara and Roma, ‘Gypsies,’ Travelers, taught by Russian and Eastern European Studies Professor Ian MacMillen.

While these courses are in the catalogue, it does not explicitly state that they are cluster courses. To register, students must receive faculty consent and apply for both courses individually.

The year will be bookended by Broadway via Berlin: The Political Musical Theater of Kurt Weill and Graphic Accounts: Telling through Pictures.

The cluster Arts and the Overlooked: Activism of Access will be co-led by Professor of German Language and Literatures Elizabeth Hamilton of the College, who will teach a first-year seminar course called Disabilities and Professor of Music Education Jody Kerchner from the Conservatory, who will be teaching Arts Behind Bars.

Although every cluster’s requirements will be different, Arts and the Overlooked will require students to sign up for both courses and could include volunteer activities, such as arts-based programs in the nearby prison.

“This learning community turns the tables on expertise and authority, listening to and learning from the voices of people who speak from first-hand experience,” Hamilton said. “We are planning several shared readings and community-based projects, and we will be thinking hard about effective forms of social justice, activism and advocacy.”

Kerchner explained the perceived benefits of addressing certain issues through a larger, more diverse lens, particularly complex issues like prison justice and re-entry, which will be addressed in her

course cluster.

“The intent is for students to make deep connections between the courses,” Kerchner wrote in an email to the Review. “At times, course instructors might attend each other's course, or there will be planning projects individually, in small groups, and with faculty as related to a larger context. We have been in brainstorming mode in the past weeks.

Now, we will need to refine the details of those idea sketches. I am also excited about [having] a course that draws both College and Conservatory students.

I envision a dedicated learning community, where each person is both teacher and learner.”

Many of the course clusters intend to end the semester with some type of culminating project, performance or fair. For instance, Hamilton and Kerchner suggested students might be assisting with a November resource fair sponsored by the Lorain County Board of Mental Health that will help people re-entering society after incarceration.

Similarly, the professors behind the Spring 2018 course cluster Broadway via Berlin are already coordinating their courses, which will focus on the life of Kurt Weill through a historical, musical and dramatic lens. The course cluster, helmed by Assistant Musicology Professor James O’Leary, Associate Professor of History Annemarie Sammartino and Associate Professor of Opera Theater Jonathon Field, will climax in a cross-divisional performance of one of Weill’s lesser known Broadway pieces, Love Life.

Because of the performative aspect, this cluster will require students to either audition or interview, a practice foreign to many College students. O’Leary said his original skepticism about the program has been alleviated by the final product, highlighting why he thinks it will be valuable for students.

“I have to admit, I was a little skeptical at first,” O’Leary said. “I was worried that no one would want to sign up, … [that] it would feel like one course that’s taking up three slots … But I don’t think it’s that. I think they are all broad enough that it’s three robust courses with parts that interlock.”

Opinions The Oberlin Review

April 14, 2017

Letters to the Editors

Plant-A-Row Fights Food Insecurity To the Editors:

This spring, Oberlin Community Services is sponsoring a project called Plant-A-Row. We are encouraging organizations and individuals to plant an extra row of produce in their gardens to donate to Oberlin Community Services’ food bank.

Hunger is a pressing issue in Lorain County and hundreds of families rely on the pantry to meet their needs.

Plant-A-Row is meant to be a sustainable answer to local food insecurity. Ohio has a higher

rate of food insecurity than much of the rest of the United States as of 2014, and rather than rely on outside sources and corporations for food, the Oberlin community can respond from within.

By planting an extra row, we can alleviate food shortage and make our community stronger.

If you have a garden already, we urge you to plant an extra row of produce to donate to OCS’s food pantry; we can give you some seeds, and we will arrange to pick up your produce when it’s ready to be harvested.

For those who don’t have a garden but are interested in getting one started, we are distrib-

uting gardening materials. We have seeds, cloth planters, information and volunteers ready to get digging.

We will be hosting a kick-off event at the Oberlin Big Parade on April 29 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Stop by our tent to say hi, sign up and get inspired.

To participate or find out more visit facebook.com/PlantARowOberlin, call (206) 6612173 or email mhildret@oberlin.edu.

Oberlin Community Services welcomes you to participate in the 2017 Plant-A-Row program!

– Claudia Baker College sophomore

Students Should Prioritize Anti-War Activism Chloe Vassot Contributing writer President Donald Trump authorized an airstrike against a Syrian airfield in rebel-held town Khan Sheikhoun on April 6, resulting in more than 80 deaths. The strike came in response to a chemical attack two days prior by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As images and videos from the attack circulated, Trump explained his choice to retaliate against Assad by saying, “Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”

Judging by the positive response to the strike from across the political spectrum, it would seem as if Trump suddenly found his moral compass and is now ready to act presidentially. This apparently means bombing the countries and people that both the right and left agree are acceptable to bomb. But the idea that Trump’s heart started beating and that the airstrikes were motivated by ethics or compassion — as New York Times writer Mark Landler suggests in a piece titled “Anguish Sways the Isolationist” — is inaccurate and mistaken. The belief that Trump’s “anguish” for civilians motivated the strike, that the man who ran for president on a platform of demonizing people of color and preventing Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. could change his tune so drastically, is only upheld by those with an interest in maintaining and demonstrating the United States’ international military power and influence — a very bipartisan wish.

The U.S. has never been a humanitarian state, and to pretend that we are becoming one under Trump, of all people, is absurd.

It seems that we need a new way to approach how we can use the power of democratic citizenship to influence U.S. military involvement abroad. Anti-war protest, particularly during the Vietnam War, holds a significant place in the history of student activism that has shaped this nation. Immediately after Trump’s inauguration,

protests around the country and on campuses were loud, dynamic and extremely visible. Antiwar, anti-militaristic protests are always necessary, but perhaps uniquely so at this moment, when state leadership is so dangerously devoted to an increase in militarization, as evidenced by Trump’s proposed $54-billion addition to the defense budget.

We’re in a unique position at Oberlin, especially because the media seems to enjoy making an example of us as a liberal college bubble — coverage which magnifies campus incidents and protests.

What would it take for nationwide collaboration to be sustainable for the duration of Trump’s time in office? How can we act in a way that includes anti-oppression work within the U.S. and an antiwar policy stance as well? These strands of protest and resistance are already being spearheaded by people of color, queer activists and other marginalized folks — how can college campus activism amplify and add to this work? Coalition building between universities should be a method we use to amplify student voices across the country.

The airstrikes undertaken by the Trump administration illustrate the lies that the U.S. has used and will continue to use to justify war in the state’s interest. As White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has said, Trump’s goal is to “root out ISIS out of Syria.” The tangle of outside state actors seeking to influence the outcome of the Syrian conflict is not motivated by human rights, though these violations are used to justify military interventions that kill and injure more Syrian people. As the U.S. has been instrumental in allowing the atrocities in Syria to continue unalleviated, most notably by refusing refugees, it has a responsibility to work toward ensuring that they end. The atrocities committed by Bashar al-Assad should not be ignored by the international community, but anti-war doesn’t mean anti-involvement — it means fighting for an end to using violence to counter violence. Hopefully, student activism can be instrumental again in bringing about this foreign policy change.

Submissions Policy The Oberlin Review appreciates and welcomes letters to the editors and op-ed submissions. All submissions are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. All submissions must be received by Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. at opinions@oberlinreview.org or Wilder Box 90 for inclusion in that week’s issue. Letters may not exceed 600 words and op-eds may not exceed 800 words, except with consent of the Editorial Board. All submissions must include contact information, with full names and any relevant titles, for all signers. All writers must individually confirm authorship on electronic submissions. Op-eds may not have more than two authors.

The Review reserves the right to edit all submissions for clarity, length, grammar, accuracy, strength of argument and in consultation with Review style. Editors will work with contributors to edit pieces and will clear major edits with the authors prior to publication. Editors will contact authors of letters to the editors in the event of edits for anything other than style and grammar.

Headlines are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. Opinions expressed in editorials, letters, op-eds, columns, cartoons or other Opinions pieces do not necessarily reflect those of the staff of the Review. The Review will not print advertisements on its Opinions pages. The Review defines an advertisement as any submission that has the main intent of bringing direct monetary gain to a contributor.

Page 5

The Oberlin Review Publication of Record for Oberlin College

Editors-in-Chief Tyler Sloan Oliver Bok Managing Editor Kiley Petersen Opinions Editor Sami Mericle

Administrative Bloat Evades Real Issue The General Faculty Committee considered recommendations for implementation from the Strategic Plan Implementation Committee for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion working group today, including a suggestion to create a new “Chief Diversity Officer” administrative position. Though well intentioned, adding yet another six-figure administrative job seems like a roundabout way of handling the College’s diversity issues that would ultimately prove ineffective.

SPIDIE’s logic follows that Oberlin has previously experimented with creating leadership roles that address compositional diversity like a special assistant to the president for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and should continue to do so.

Seeking to expand the responsibilities of this role, the plan says that SPIDIE “intends to continue this conversation by reviewing models for staffing a Chief Diversity Officer position to serve as a point person for campus leadership.”

Drawing on comparisons to peer institutions, SPIDIE also writes that these positions are becoming increasingly common in higher education and share several “important features,” including: “an individual is a member of the President’s senior staff, has significant oversight of resources and the authority to shape institutional policy, and is well supported by the administrative infrastructure.”

The question is not so much about whether achieving greater diversity is imperative in higher education — it is — but rather: Does administrative bloat and the addition of positions with fancy titles actually prove effective at the end of the day? Kenyon College, a frequently invoked example when considering Oberlin’s own model, has an entire office with administrators whose chief responsibilities include those similar to what SPIDIE outlined in its suggestions. There is an associate provost for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, an associate dean of Students/ director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and multiple other supporting positions. Yet a New York Times report shows that Kenyon’s student body has more students from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60 percent — 19.8 percent from the top 1 percent versus only 12.2 percent from the bottom 60, putting it in the top-eight worst schools in terms of the student body’s wealth distribution (“Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60,” The New York Times, Jan. 17). The school is also roughly 78-percent white.

Among the plan’s other admirable ambitions, such as strategies to address the North-South campus divide and setting benchmarks and reporting outcomes related to equity, diversity and inclusion, the suggestion of adding an administrative position seems devoid of a national context for the actual effectiveness of this kind of role. Perhaps a more sustainable and effective model for increasing compositional diversity at Oberlin, if it is truly the institution’s foremost goal in line with our “progressive” legacy, lies in the adoption of a need-blind admissions policy and a financial-model overhaul, not another administrator.

Consider the ways in which Vassar College, another small liberal arts college that bears many resemblances to Oberlin, has been so successful in its mission to increase diversity. In former Vassar President Catharine Bond Hill’s tenure, which ended last summer, the following changes took place: “The college’s financial aid budget has more than doubled to over $60 million; about 60 percent of current students receive some scholarship aid. Nearly a quarter of Vassar’s current first-year students are eligible for a Pell grant, which is available to stuSee Oberlin, page 7 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.

Page 6

Opinions

The Oberlin Review, April 14, 2017

Positive Rights, Not Capitalism, Require Violent State Jacob Britton Contributing writer It was only a matter of time before a fellow Oberlin student would respond to my right-leaning op-ed condemning wealth distribution. Jordan Ecker begins his refutation by stating that my article is a mere “rehashing of key libertarian talking points,” then goes on to respond with his own rehashing of leftist talking points (“Libertarian Economics Crudely Misguided,” The Oberlin Review, April 7, 2017). Therefore, it is only appropriate that I disprove his rebuttals one-by-one since it is in this same format that he responded to me.

Ecker opens his response by attempting to refute my argument on how only certain kinds of taxation are justified if the activities of the state being funded by the taxpayer are essential functions of the government. He says my argument is “nonsensical” because I provide no legitimate distinction between essential state activities and non-essential state activities. The distinction I will provide is quite simple: The state can protect rights, but it cannot provide them. This is derived from two very important definitions of rights. The first is positive rights, which Ecker obviously adheres to. Providing services such as welfare and social security are examples of positive rights. Positive rights can only operate by forcing others to give up private property through authoritarian means. No individual has a right to coerce another person into paying for a service. On the flip-side are negative rights. A negative right is a when the government protects your rights from external forces. This is why activities such as peaceful assembly, religion and speech are essential human rights. Such rights exist without the need for coercion. Therefore, taxation used to provide positive rights is immoral, whereas taxation for the sake of protecting negative rights is justified.

In his second refutation, Ecker states that capitalism is naturally coercive due to the relationship between the wealthy and the poor. Ecker states that capitalism promotes the process in which “the worker is faced with the decision to accept a contract or starve.” This argument is completely factitious because it forces the reader to assume that capitalism is inherently violent in nature. It should be noted that free-market capitalism would prevent such acts of coercion due to the fact that job availability as well as strong, private-sector unions are products of what Adam Smith called the “division of labor.” If the marketplace were freer, employees would have more jobs to choose from and unions would provide strong incentives for capitalists to abide by. So it is the constrained marketplace that allows for coercion, not the capitalist system.

Ecker then goes on to question my views on radical equality without providing any moral bases for why radical equality is so important in the first place. As I stated in my previous column, equality is only a coherent goal if it is absolute. Otherwise, it is an ambiguous goal that can be difficult to achieve. In my view, “radical quality” is a meaningless value, particularly in regards to equality of wealth or abolishing money-based hierarchies. If Bill Gates has a net worth of $80 billion and my net worth is $90,000, what moral atrocity has been committed? Why does this inequality need to be rectified through the tyranny of the state? Why should the state and the capitalist system be overthrown in order to remedy this disparity? I am more than happy to agree that poverty is a serious problem. However, such issues are separate from income equality and are more properly addressed when discussing entry barriers for small businesses and consumption taxes that create incentives for investment amongst lower income families.

In his next counterargument, Ecker confuses a supply-driven economy with an economy where supply outweighs demand. This is a false claim. A supply-driven economy is an economy where long-term investment helps to produce entrepreneurship, mass expenditure and widespread employment. According to the Small Business & Entrepreneurship council, 86.2 percent of corporations in the U.S. in 2012 were small businesses with fewer than 20 employees. Long-term investment is essential when establishing and growing these businesses. This simply goes to show that demand comes after supply, not the other way around.

In the same paragraph, Ecker also states that democratic interventionism is essential to the stability of the market. This argument completely ignores the reality of the 2008 boom-and-bust, which was the result of government-insured mortgages offered to low-income investors who couldn’t afford homes. This policy led to high-risk investment among patrons who couldn’t afford to pay back their loans to the banks. Combine this with consequential Wall Street bailouts and the result is mass economic injustice and artificial inequality caused by state intervention. Once again, if the markets were freer and the incentive for low-risk investment was higher, the recession would never have happened.

Lastly, Ecker responds to my hypothetical example about how redistribution of the CEO of Walmart’s wealth would only grant each employee a pay raise of $9 by offering the morally reprehensible solution of not merely expropriating the money of the CEO, but coercing the entire Walden family out of their money through forceful means of the state. I do find it quite comical that the supposedly benign political left is willing to use just about any violent tactic to establish their utopian vision of society.

In total, Jordan Ecker is a good leftist. He would prefer to see certain people’s property arbitrarily taken from them against their consent by the state to satisfy his view of a perfect society rather than accept the fact that economic disparities are the product of individual freedom. It is either that, or he believes in the abolition of the state altogether and advocates the expropriation of all property with help from the violent force of the proletariat. Neither of these scenarios sound very good to me.

Emily Weakley

PRSM Workshops Exacerbate Hierarchy Jackie Brant Columnist It has become common practice for colleges and universities across the U.S. to mandate sexual misconduct workshops for incoming students. At Oberlin, all new students are required to attend the first round of Preventing and Responding to Sexual Misconduct workshops, and all athletes are required to attend the second, which is also open to the entire community. The mandatory first workshop is called The Essentials, and the second workshop is called Bystander Intervention.

Together, these two workshops are meant to inform students about the importance and language of consent.

Overall, the PRSM workshops are crucial to the social atmosphere at Oberlin. I have heard stories and personally experienced instances in which people employed specific strategies learned from the workshops or asked for consent using phrases suggested

by PRSM. The small group style of the workshops is much more successful in encouraging all students to participate and engage with the material than the big lectures that are used at many other colleges and universities.

However, the PRSM curriculum

has an unfortunate practice of ranking various situations dealing with oppression and sexual misconduct as “better” or “worse” than others. Though these activities highlight important examples of sexual misconduct issues that must be recognized and addressed, they also contribute to a hierarchy of victimization.

During one activity in the Bystander Intervention workshop, categories of unacceptable behavior such as “catcalling,” “nonconsensual groping,” “rape” and others were provided, and groups of students were asked to rank these categories in order of “social acceptableness.” Such an activity unnecessarily imposes a hierarchical system into the discussion of sexual misconduct. It is a useless practice that inevitably contributes to the notion that some victims of crimes such as sexual assault are more deserving of sympathy than others, depending on what they experienced.

The ranking of different types of sexual misconduct contributes to the idea that some individuals or groups are less violated than others and can discourage individuals who have experienced “lesser” offenses from speaking up about their experiences.

Further, as Meagen Hildebrand and

Cynthia Najdowski wrote in Albany Law Review, a hierarchy can delegitimize an individual’s trauma or emotions, affecting “the extent to which victims come forward to report their experiences and, subsequently, how their cases are handled in the criminal justice system.” Ultimately, victims can feel silenced and fear that their experiences are not severe enough to warrant attention. This then validates the hierarchy of victimization and contributes to other issues such as victim blaming and the delegation of lesser sentences.

At an institution such as Oberlin, we should be at the forefront of fighting all forms of sexual assault and supporting survivors. While PRSM is necessary and beneficial in many ways, workshop leaders should revise its agenda in a way that addresses the problem of the hierarchy of victimization rather than contributes to it. It is also overly optimistic to think that two workshops are enough to permanently change the ways students look at sexual misconduct and consent. If Oberlin truly cares about these issues, ongoing workshops should be required throughout students’ four years, and should be restructured so as not to belittle any forms of sexual misconduct.

Dialogue Must Acknowledge Israeli Apartheid Tom Cohn Contributing writer For promoting constructive dialogue on the Israel-Palestine conflict via the Thursday, April 6 “Reclaiming Our Narrative” event, Oberlin Zionists and Africans for Peace deserve everyone’s recognition and gratitude. It was edifying and humbling to hear from Tshepo Ndlovu and Neo Mangope about their experiences as students in South Africa confronting the legacy of apartheid in their country. I hope to honor their message by participating in the conversation.

I will focus my response on AFP’s publication “New Perspectives on Israel and Palestine” from February 16, 2017, distributed at Mudd library and available online. In exposing the publication’s inaccuracies, distortions and inconsistencies, by no means do I accuse anyone in AFP of ill intent. Rather I am concerned they’ve bought into a false narrative that seeks to legitimize the brutality, racism and oppressiveness of Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism in the occupied Palestinian territories.

One of the publication’s most glaring errors is its failure to distinguish the State of Israel from the oc-

cupied Palestinian territories. For example, it decries “those who compare the State of Israel to apartheid South Africa” and ubiquitously blames the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement for employing the “analogy of apartheid in Israel.” All of the authors happily report that they visited Israel and witnessed no apartheid, only vibrant democracy, but no one is saying there is apartheid in Israel’s internationally recognized borders. The term is used, however, by Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, many Israeli journalists and even veteran South African anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu to apply to the regime imposed on the occupied Palestinian territories. The AFP publication’s core argument is therefore a straw man.

The publication dangerously legitimizes Israeli claims to territory beyond the state’s internationally recognized borders, on the basis of supposed Jewish indigeneity in Palestine — derived from the “uninterrupted presence” of Jews in Palestine for several thousand years, or the historical connection that European Jewish immigrants have with the land. These See AFP, page 7

Opinions

The Oberlin Review, April 14, 2017

Page 7

AFP Misrepresents Israel-Palestine Conflict Continued from page 6 arguments for Jewish indigeneity, like the entire publication, are replete with ambiguity and hypocrisy. For example, they obviously fail to apply the same criteria for indigeneity to the Muslim and Christian Arabs ethnically cleansed from Palestine.

AFP’s document also claims that “Israel is not a settler state.” Yet former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan claimed to be among a “generation of settlers.” The publication includes the West Bank and Jerusalem as part of Israel and considers even European “descendants of Jewish refugees who were displaced centuries ago” as indigenous to Palestine, claiming they “are back to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination.”

Yet historical connection to land is revealed as a spurious and dangerous justification for territorial conquest in much more extreme examples, including asserted Germanic roots in Slavic territory, Russia and South America among other places, and British pre-colonization claims to North America. Such mythologies are ludicrous and often have deplorable consequences. The same could be said of Zionist settler colonialism.

In this situation, claiming “inalienable right to self-determination” in interna-

tional law is hypocritical because territorial acquisition by force is blatantly illegal.

Moreover, the legitimacy of Israeli claims to occupied Palestinian land is certainly not a question of “fact,” as the publication asserts, and is not recognized as valid by international law or by most of the world.

The publication is also inconsistent in its argument. You cannot both assume the legitimacy of Israel’s territorial conquest while implying the primary driver of the conflict is anti-Semitism. Either the land belongs to the Jewish people and therefore entails displacing the resident Gentile population, or the indigenous Palestinians have no legitimate grievances, only irrational hatred of Jews.

Such inconsistencies are characteristic of Zionist narratives. For example, Israeli diplomat Abba Eban wrote that “one of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all,” while ardent Zionist historian Benny Morris wrote that “the fear of territorial displacement and dispossession was to be the chief motor of Arab antagonism to Zionism.”

Ambiguity, hypocrisy and inconsistency enable the publication to make absurd claims about the “social stability, modern infrastructure, and economic cooperation

between Palestinians and Israelis,” and relative “normalcy of life in the West Bank.” Yet thorough documentation by human rights organizations and the United Nations confirm Morris’ comment that “like all occupations, Israel’s was founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliation, and manipulation.”

The publication complains of the Palestinian Authority’s “many human rights violations” and “economic and social neglect of Palestinians.” Though it is convenient to point fingers at Palestinian organizations to imply equal blame on both sides, the PA was created so Israel could outsource its repression in the occupied Palestinian territories.

All the while, the Gazan economy has been deliberately “kept on the brink of collapse,” according to leaked U.S. State Department cables.

Thus, the PA was never “intended to become a sovereign state” — as the AFP publication states — but a “permanent neocolonial dependency,” as former Israeli diplomat and politician Shlomo Ben-Ami said, and what Yitzhak Rabin called “an entity which is less than a state.” The U.S. and Israel for decades have opposed the international consensus favoring a two-state solution because Palestinian self-determination and

statehood interfere with Zionist territorial ambitions.

Meanwhile, all U.N. member nations other than Israel and the United States, with Honduras abstaining, agreed in a 1987 U.N. General Assembly Resolution that “particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes or other forms of alien domination” may legally struggle for their “inalienable right to self-determination and independence.” Why do we view Palestinian struggle so differently?

Terrorism on both sides is unacceptable, but a study by the National Academy of Sciences concludes that its findings “refute the view that Palestinians are uncontingently violent, showing instead that a significant proportion of Palestinian violence occurs in response to Israeli behavior,” and “suggest that Israeli military actions against Palestinians lead to escalation rather than incapacitation.” The study’s authors also wrote in the Huffington Post that “it is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict.” Re-evaluating responsibility for the conflict is a moral and practical matter. Criticism of Israel’s criminal and discriminatory behavior is not “anti-Israel,” anti-Semitic, or whatsoever opposed to Israel’s right under international law to exist within its own borders. Rather, the Palestinians, like all peoples, deserve to be free.

Branding Masculinity as ‘Bad’ Restricts Change Jack Rockwell Contributing writer Last week, I watched a close friend mediate a discussion between two students. My friend, who I will call Jaime, was doing an excellent job, periodically interjecting with statements that found a middle ground between two opposing viewpoints. Ever cognizant of their role in the discussion, at one point they apologized for taking up too much space in their role as mediator, saying, among other things, “Sorry for being so masculine in the discussion.” My friends and I assured Jaime that they were not taking up too much space, but I was taken aback by the use of the word “masculine.” Why would someone apologize for something that could be an intrinsic part of their identity?

Men frequently take up too much space in discussions. You can see examples of this everywhere. From TV shows to classrooms to dining table conversations, men talk more than people of other genders. I’m not writing to apologize for or on behalf of men, or to suggest that we should hold them any less accountable for how they take up space. But the way my friend used “masculine” raises interesting questions about the way we talk about gender.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “masculine” as “having qualities or appearance traditionally associated with men.” It’s certainly true that disproportionately taking up space is a quality traditionally associated with men.

But by choosing to use the word “masculine” instead of naming the actual transgression of allegedly

Oberlin Should Look to Vassar for Successful Diversity Model Continued from page 5 dents whose annual family income is $40,000 or less. The percentage of American students of color has risen to 33 percent from 20 percent. And Vassar has gone from having few first-generation college students to enrolling from 75 to 100 (out of about 660) in recent freshman classes” (“Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60,” The New York Times, Jan. 17).

The unsustainable price of higher education is no secret to those in the industry, from students and their families to the administrators who make budgetary decisions. The issue certainly doesn’t have an easy fix; but there are sacrifices that come with prioritizing diversity and adding yet another administrative salary to the budget will certainly not alleviate our financial woes or make more funds available for financial aid. Two of the most important administrative positions at the College are currently hiring: the President and the Vice President for Finance and Administration, currently held by interim Alan Norton. Perhaps incoming administrators will consider large-scale, long-run changes like Vassar’s to truly uphold Oberlin’s mission statement of “recruiting a culturally, economically, geographically, and racially diverse group of students.”

taking up too much space, Jaime inadvertently removed the agency from masculine folks to reconstruct themselves as egalitarian listeners and speakers within the bounds of their identities.

This highlights a broader problem about how men and masculinity are conceptualized and discussed at Oberlin. It’s critical to hold people accountable for how they affect others, and for men to educate themselves on how they might have been socialized to act a certain way is a fundamental

step in changing their behavior.

But if men are going to reconstruct their masculinities without the toxicity they embody today, they need to be given a space in language to do so; one that allows them to separate themselves from the negative habits they’ve been socialized into. By avoiding backwards associations like Jaime’s, we can teach men better behavior while still allowing them to embody their masculinity, so that future generations of masculine people have positive examples of

behavior that fall within their conceptions of manhood.

Identities and social constructs are constantly in flux, and ideas about masculinity have been changing as long as they’ve existed. Hopefully, we’re moving in a direction in which men and other masculine people can reconstruct their gender as an identity that encourages sharing discussion space rather than dominating it.

Let’s imagine a new masculinity, in which being a man doesn’t mean being an asshole.

Poetry Picks DeSales Harrison, Associate Professor of English “Philip Larkin, better known in Great Bri tain than in the United States, was a famous gro uch, and certainly wrote many grumpy and disconsolate poems, some of them downri ght misanthropic. But Larkin, like gloom-ad dled A. E. Housman before him, loved the spr ingtime, and some of his most affecting poems are simple celebrations of ‘Earth’s immeasurable sur prise.’

That phrase appears in Larkin’s memorab le (and memorizable!) poem, ‘First Sight.’”

Steven Volk, Emeritus Professor of History

itus Richard Slater, Emer Science er t u p om C of or s es of Pr “Ogden Nash was the greatest writer of his time of humorous light verse. He was best known for surprising, pun-like rhymes, sometimes with words deliberately misspelled for comic effect.

Two examples: ‘The Ostrich’ and ‘The Guppy.’”

April is National Poetry Month, a 30-day celebration of the greatest poets of all time.

“Pablo Neruda, the poet of the people, the Walt Whitman of Chile, the voice of the poor and disenfranchised, who lived for a socialist victory in that countr y, saw it come about, and died (either murdered or of a broken heart) r within days of the coup that overthrew Salvado es Allende on Sept. 11, 1973. He wrote: ‘La tierra tuya, pueblo, la verdad ha nacido contigo, de tu sangre’: ‘The earth is yours, people, the truth has been born with you, your blood.’”

In honor of the month-long celebration, we solicited faculty members for recommendations about their favorite poets and poems.

Barbara Prior, Head of the Clarence Ward Art Library

Oberlin’s slam poetry team, OSLAM, is at CUPSI, the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational.

Julia Christensen, Associate Professor of Integrated Media cky, where “Wendell Berry. Growing up in Kentu s, he has Wendell Berry lives, farms and write . He always been an important voice to me , what was reminds us to question where we are it better for here before us, and how we can make .” those who are here after we are gone

Calendar Jay-Marie & Friends: A Queerfest Event Sunday, April 16, 7–9 p.m.

The Cat in the Cream Oakland-based queer bassist and singer Jay-Marie will perform alongside Britt Baker and Suyá in this free, soulful event empowering everyone, especially POC and trans people, to access their own internal beauty.

Borderlands and Refugee Integration in Mexico: An Intersectional View from the Ground Monday, April 17, 4:30–6 p.m.

King Building, Room 306 Community organizer Daniel Otero will speak about his experiences working in refugee integration and the importance of an intersectional approach to understanding today’s migration dynamics.

Nicholas Jones, Professor of English

gardo “One of my favorite poems is by Ed il artist from Antonio Vigo, a conceptual and ma ‘mathematical Argentina. He created a number of phic art and poems’ that combine typography, gra y nature of mathematics. I love the contradictor ions it raises a mathematical poem and the quest matics.” about the nature of poetr y and mathe

“I am currently reading Ludovico Ariosto’s poetic epic Orlando Furioso, published almost exactly 500 years ago. It’s science fiction, Harr y Potter, chivalric romance and, in David R. Slavitt’s brilliant new translation, possibly the funniest thing I’ve read in years.”

Layout and Text by Izzy Rosenstein, This Week editor Medicare Presentation Tuesday, April 18, Noon–1 p.m.

King Building, Room 106

Cine Debate: Wild Tales Wednesday, April 19, 7:30–9 p.m.

Spanish House, Events Room

Before the Flood Free Screening Wednesday, April 19, 7 p.m.

Apollo Theatre

This Is Our Youth Thursday, April 20–Saturday, April 22, 8 p.m.

Wilder Main

Topics covered in this discussion include medicare costs, applying online, how to get drug coverage, the difference between Part A and B and when to sign up for these.

Wild Tales will tell six short stories that investigate how humans respond to distress and shifting reality. What is the breaking point for people experiencing injustice and overwhelming demands?

Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary Before the Flood discusses climate change, how it affects us and what we can do about it. A discussion on these topics will follow.

This play follows two days in the lives of three misguided youths living in New York as meaningful events turn their worldviews upside down. Free admission Thursday, $3 advance tickets or $5 at the door Friday and Saturday.

Poetry Picks DeSales Harrison, Associate Professor of English “Philip Larkin, better known in Great Bri tain than in the United States, was a famous gro uch, and certainly wrote many grumpy and disconsolate poems, some of them downri ght misanthropic. But Larkin, like gloom-ad dled A. E. Housman before him, loved the spr ingtime, and some of his most affecting poems are simple celebrations of ‘Earth’s immeasurable sur prise.’

That phrase appears in Larkin’s memorab le (and memorizable!) poem, ‘First Sight.’”

Steven Volk, Emeritus Professor of History

itus Richard Slater, Emer Science er t u p om C of or s es of Pr “Ogden Nash was the greatest writer of his time of humorous light verse. He was best known for surprising, pun-like rhymes, sometimes with words deliberately misspelled for comic effect.

Two examples: ‘The Ostrich’ and ‘The Guppy.’”

April is National Poetry Month, a 30-day celebration of the greatest poets of all time.

“Pablo Neruda, the poet of the people, the Walt Whitman of Chile, the voice of the poor and disenfranchised, who lived for a socialist victory in that countr y, saw it come about, and died (either murdered or of a broken heart) r within days of the coup that overthrew Salvado es Allende on Sept. 11, 1973. He wrote: ‘La tierra tuya, pueblo, la verdad ha nacido contigo, de tu sangre’: ‘The earth is yours, people, the truth has been born with you, your blood.’”

In honor of the month-long celebration, we solicited faculty members for recommendations about their favorite poets and poems.

Barbara Prior, Head of the Clarence Ward Art Library

Oberlin’s slam poetry team, OSLAM, is at CUPSI, the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational.

Julia Christensen, Associate Professor of Integrated Media cky, where “Wendell Berry. Growing up in Kentu s, he has Wendell Berry lives, farms and write . He always been an important voice to me , what was reminds us to question where we are it better for here before us, and how we can make .” those who are here after we are gone

Calendar Jay-Marie & Friends: A Queerfest Event Sunday, April 16, 7–9 p.m.

The Cat in the Cream Oakland-based queer bassist and singer Jay-Marie will perform alongside Britt Baker and Suyá in this free, soulful event empowering everyone, especially POC and trans people, to access their own internal beauty.

Borderlands and Refugee Integration in Mexico: An Intersectional View from the Ground Monday, April 17, 4:30–6 p.m.

King Building, Room 306 Community organizer Daniel Otero will speak about his experiences working in refugee integration and the importance of an intersectional approach to understanding today’s migration dynamics.

Nicholas Jones, Professor of English

gardo “One of my favorite poems is by Ed il artist from Antonio Vigo, a conceptual and ma ‘mathematical Argentina. He created a number of phic art and poems’ that combine typography, gra y nature of mathematics. I love the contradictor ions it raises a mathematical poem and the quest matics.” about the nature of poetr y and mathe

“I am currently reading Ludovico Ariosto’s poetic epic Orlando Furioso, published almost exactly 500 years ago. It’s science fiction, Harr y Potter, chivalric romance and, in David R. Slavitt’s brilliant new translation, possibly the funniest thing I’ve read in years.”

Layout and Text by Izzy Rosenstein, This Week editor Medicare Presentation Tuesday, April 18, Noon–1 p.m.

King Building, Room 106

Cine Debate: Wild Tales Wednesday, April 19, 7:30–9 p.m.

Spanish House, Events Room

Before the Flood Free Screening Wednesday, April 19, 7 p.m.

Apollo Theatre

This Is Our Youth Thursday, April 20–Saturday, April 22, 8 p.m.

Wilder Main

Topics covered in this discussion include medicare costs, applying online, how to get drug coverage, the difference between Part A and B and when to sign up for these.

Wild Tales will tell six short stories that investigate how humans respond to distress and shifting reality. What is the breaking point for people experiencing injustice and overwhelming demands?

Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary Before the Flood discusses climate change, how it affects us and what we can do about it. A discussion on these topics will follow.

This play follows two days in the lives of three misguided youths living in New York as meaningful events turn their worldviews upside down. Free admission Thursday, $3 advance tickets or $5 at the door Friday and Saturday.

Page 10

Arts The Oberlin Review

April 14, 2017

for colored girls... Celebrates, Honors Black Women Julia Peterson Production editor

Editor’s note: This article contains references to topics including suicide and sexual assault.

Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, which opened yesterday night in Hall Auditorium, is an evocative production spotlighting the experiences of Black women and femmes in the U.S. The piece is comprised of poetic monologues brought to life and woven together through dance and music. The different modes of performance in the piece make it difficult to categorize.

Shange coined the term “choreopoem” to better encompass the relationship between performance and text, which feels more like choreographed poetry than a traditional theatrical production.

The vibrant cast is made up of characters identified not by name but by the color of their costume — The Lady in Red, The Lady in Blue and so on. Cast members deliver poetic monologues and engage with each other in larger scenes that address the nuances and complexities of subjects including childhood, coming of age, sexual assault, love, sensuality, poverty, oppression and self-realization. There is no single prevailing narrative in the piece; it is constantly moving, never lingering on one emotion or story for too long.

Professor Africana Studies and Chair of the Theater Department Caroline Jackson Smith, the director of for colored girls… describes the production as having a “blues aesthetic,” because the multiple stories and the scenes’ emotional layers turn on a dime, going from tragic to funny to romantic.

“It’s very emotional in a wonderful way,” she said. “It’s a piece of theater to really take a journey with and live with. There are so many serious topics, but to me, it’s fun.

The fun is the sassiness of the women and the dance and the music and the call and response and the storytelling style.”

Because of the many intense topics that this piece addresses in vivid detail onstage, College senior Calypso Simone, who plays The Lady in Green, hopes that people who attend do so with the recognition that these narratives are drawn from the lived experiences of Black women.

“The things that we’ll be talking about in this choreopoem are very triggering things — in the title itself, it says ‘suicide,’” they said. “But for the sake of the spirit of the play ... that Black girls don’t get trigger warnings; we get life. I think that it’s important to try to keep that in mind.”

Jackson Smith has a long history of involvement with this production, having seen one of its earliest performances in 1975. for colored girls… inspired her to become a theater director, and this production marks the fourth time she’s directed it since.

“It ignited my imagination because I had actually never seen any work for stage that seemed to be about my own personal experience,” she said. “I’d grown up going to Broadway plays, I was a lover of theater, but it never occurred to me that both in the style and the content I would see something that was so close to me.”

Jackson Smith shares many experiences with Shange that are reflected in for colored girls....

“It’s sort of the essence of me, this piece,” she said. “Ntozake Shange and I really lived the same experience, being born in the mid-20th century and living through what integration meant, what it meant to shift

The cast of for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf performs a dress rehearsal Wednesday evening. The production opened yesterday at 7:30 p.m.

Photo by Juliette Greene, Staff photographer

through all these different moments of how Black people and Black women were defining themselves. The piece really holds those moments in a way that is so reassuring and valuable to me.”

A generation later, for colored girls... is still inspiring Black women and femmes.

Simone has dreamed of performing in the choreopoem since they were twelve.

“There’s very few staged things that are made specifically for Black girls — made not only to celebrate the lives that we live, but also to honor and recognize our struggles and how they unify and connect us,” they said. “Since the ’70s, not much has changed about the experience of the Black girl, the Black woman. … Something about it hit home for me. I understood where it was coming from, and I wanted to be a part of honoring all those truths and make art out of our truths.” for colored girls... was the second major work by a Black woman to be performed on Broadway, after Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. The production was initially staged in bars and cafés as a series of loosely connected poems and evolved into the particular, intentional series that premiered on Broadway. Shange updated the script again in 2010, adding a poem about HIV and AIDS and referencing the Iraq War and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Jackson Smith said one of the most striking changes over the years has been men’s evolving responses to the choreopoem.

“When it first came out, there was a reaction from men — especially Black men — that this was an attack against them,” she said. “I would say that one of the main changes that I’ve seen over the years is I’ve seen men’s responses to seeing the play change. I’ve seen audiences of men not be defensive and not think it’s an attack on them and really be able to enter the experience and hear it the way it is.”

Although the script has undergone significant changes over the years, Jackson Smith also finds that the original topics raised by the choreopoem remain relevant for today’s audiences and performers.

“I think [today’s young women], for better or worse, are still experiencing the same kinds of things [as they were when the production was first staged] — struggling with relationships and power, finding joy in dance and community, dealing with friends and others who do consider suicide, have been raped, have had abortions. Sadly, these

issues are not different.”

Jackson Smith hopes that this production of for colored girls… will stay with Oberlin audiences and have an influence on the way they see the world.

“I want people to feel like they’ve had an experience that impacts them, that changes something in the way they are thinking or feeling,” she said. “Because this is such a strongly feminist and woman-based experience, that is extremely important to me, that people think more about how the world is seen through women and Black women in particular.”

For College junior Chandler Browne, who plays The Lady in Purple, performing in for colored girls... is “transcendent.”

“I think the unique thing for me in for colored girls... is that I really personally identify ... with the monologues that I have. … It’s just a very personal show. There’s nowhere to hide.”

Browne, along with Simone and doubledegree sophomore Daniella Pruitt, who plays The Lady in Grey, perform the poem “sechita,” which is set in the bayou and references the Egyptian goddess of creativity, love, beauty and filth. “[The scene is about] filth and creativity and disarray, and the beauty and creation in disarray, but also the sadness and anxiety and depression in filth and disarray,” Browne said. “Calypso is the terrestrial representation of Sechita in human form, and I am the spiritual representation of Sechita, and then Daniella is singing. It’s the three of us in this triangular unit of balance.”

Another poem, “latent rapists,” was ahead of its time in addressing date rape and victim blaming. The women talk about being raped not by “the stranger we always thot it wd be” but by acquaintances or friends and state that the “nature of rape has changed.”

For Jackson Smith, a particularly moving part of the production is the “no more love poems” sequence, comprised of four interconnected poems near the center of the choreopoem.

“They are the poems that I think of as where this idea of the women working through relationships starts to take a shift in the way they’re reflecting on their own experience,” she said. “They are so powerful in imagery and in awareness. There’s this line — ‘bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical / dilemma / i haven’t conquered yet.’”

Jackson Smith and the cast have worked

to emphasize the musical elements in this piece beyond what is written in the script and to use live music as much as possible. Pruitt’s character, who is original to Oberlin’s production of for colored girls... performs entirely in song. College senior and saxophone player Zoë Davidson, who plays The Lady in Brown, recorded a solo to accompany one poem. The cast is accompanied on piano by College junior Andre Cardine, the production’s music director.

“There’s a song that was created in the original production that I always use,” Jackson Smith said. “[No one] who picks up the printed version will ... know it; it’s not there, but it’s traditional. And the song is ‘i found god in myself / & i loved her / i loved her fiercely.’”

Jackson Smith described the idea of “finding God in oneself ” as a critical thread woven through the choreopoem. She encouraged the cast to work through what that means to them personally and how they are going to express it on stage at the end of the play.

In a remarkable break from tradition, Jackson Smith decided to introduce two men — Cardine and College senior and choreographer Khalid Taylor — to play the characters of Men in Black for this production.

“This [decision] is controversial,” she said. “[It] was an experiment for me to see, ‘Does that violate in any way the spirit of the choreopoem?’ But I like it. As I’ve watched it more, I like that dynamic.”

College junior Deja Alexander, who plays The Lady in Yellow, hopes that Oberlin audience members will not only connect the production’s themes to the everyday realities of Black women within and outside of Oberlin, but take action in light of that.

“I would like people to think about the issues that we’re talking about and how they’re presented in the Oberlin culture and how they’re also presented in their home communities and the world at large,” she said. “Where do you see these stories, and how can you prevent Black women from going through these certain things? How can you aid us? How can you love us differently?” for colored girls... will be running at Hall Auditorium April 13–15 at 7:30 p.m. and April 16 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $8, available for purchase through CTS online or in Hall.

Arts

The Oberlin Review, April 14, 2017

Page 11

On the Record with Jazz Musician Vijay Iyer Vijay Iyer is a world-renowned jazz pianist and composer who has also written music for various classical and electronic ensembles.

Iyer visited Oberlin last weekend to attend a workshop performance of his new violin concerto, titled Trouble,

by Oberlin Sinfonietta ahead of its worldwide premiere at Ojai Music Festival June 8. The piece featured violin soloist Jennifer Koh, OC ’97. Iyer and Koh also held a residency that included several master classes and discussions.

Iyer graduated from Yale University with degrees in Physics and Mathematics. Iyer soon began playing professionally after moving to California to pursue a doctorate in Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He began his career by playing with Donald Bailey and Steve Coleman, who invited Iyer to join him on tour in 1994. Aside from performing with his trio, Iyer has taught at various schools such as the Manhattan School of Music and New York University.

He is currently the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Is this the first time you composed a piece for a larger classical orchestra in this setting?

Mostly for smaller ensembles like string quartets [and] wind quartets, but I wrote a chamber orchestra piece 10 years ago. That was the first of that size.

What made you want to want to write the violin concerto? Is Jennifer Koh someone who you picked out and wanted to perform it?

She picked me. In all these cases, it’s usually because someone invites me to do it. It’s not because I want to dedicate that many months sweating over my laptop and the details of a score. It’s moreso just a stimulating challenge for me to push myself into a slightly different world and a different way of working. I grew up playing the violin, had classical lessons for 15 years, played in classical orchestras and a lot of solo repertoire. I had a feel for it from that side of things, but I didn’t formally study composition or orchestration.

It kind of came about through my own self-study and explorations,

kind of a learning on the job through trial and error.

You went to Yale but never officially went to school for music.

How did you get started in the jazz scene? Was that when you moved to the Bay Area or had you always been playing?

I was pretty active as a musician in college, I just wasn’t doing it through curricular means. I was making my own path. I grew up playing music and was in the jazz ensemble in high school. That gave me the point of entry into more formal settings for improvisation. I grew up playing piano by ear, and I still basically play by ear. When I moved to Oakland when I was 20, I suddenly found myself playing with elder musicians in the scene around the Bay Area.

One thing led to another, and I think the main catalyst was Steve Coleman. I connected with him in 1994, and shortly after that he asked me to go on the road with him. That’s when I realized that this isn’t just a hobby, it’s probably something I should take seriously.

But before you started playing professionally, were you still transcribing a lot of the older greats like Thelonius Monk or John Coltrane?

Of course — that’s how I studied the music. I couldn’t just waltz in without any knowledge. I’ve been obsessed with Monk since I was 15.

Initially, I was into people like Herbie [Hancock], Keith Jarrett [and] Miles Davis’ recordings. Monk became a touchstone for me. He had just so much to offer and so much creativity and so many ideas. His feel and his sense of time and the way he played with time felt very alive — so much more alive than anything else I’d heard before. I studied his music, Coltrane [and] Duke Ellington.

When I moved to the Bay Area, I became the house pianist for this jam session, so I ended up playing with a lot of singers and backing up a whole line of saxophonists taking chorus after chorus on standards — being able to transpose some standard for a singer to the most distant key, usually, and then just learning not just to be a sensitive accompanist for the other musicians, but also to help communicate to an audience.

The jam session was really good

Jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer visits Oberlin to attend a workshop performance of Trouble, his new violin concerto, ahead of its world premiere in June.

Photo courtesy of Vijay Iyer

for that because there was a crowd there and you were accountable and had to deliver something to them.

It wasn’t just musicians playing for each other.

How do you view that kind of jam session, a natural way of developing your playing versus conservatories like this? Do you think, “What if I’d gone to a conservatory for music like this?”

Do you see value in that way of learning?

I think it’s a little bit of an awkward fit for this area of music — I mean it’s a bit awkward across the board, but particularly in this area — to take the music out of a living context, when we barely understand it as it is. To try and distill it, you’re not even sure what you’re losing in the process [that’s] the main thing I noticed, not only at Oberlin, because I’ve taught at Manhattan School of Music for several years, NYU and The New School. Particularly, when I was on the faculty at MSM, I actually had people come to meet me at my place instead of meeting them on Manhattan School turf because I

felt they needed to get out into the world more. Then we’d be able to talk more artist to artist, and not a teacher to student-type thing. We could just explore ideas together and think more broadly about what we’re doing and what’s happening in the world around us. We could ask deeper questions about the role of an artist and their responsibility — how to challenge yourself, be in service to your community — all these larger questions that a conservatory is not equipped to ask.

I liked in your master class when you suggested to one of the student groups that they do something new with the music and look to more recent improvisational concepts. One thing I sometimes hear about conservatories is there’s a lot of circulating the same history and ways of soloing. Do you have any advice for people who feel like they’re always learning old stuff and want to get to that level of playing?

To relegate ourselves and treat the music like it ended 50–60 years

ago — those people are missing out.

Part of why it feels like you’re tapping into something old that you’re disconnected [ from] is because it is. Even within the so-called “jazz community,” there’s been a lot of new ideas brought to the table in the last half century. The music is only around 100 years old to begin with. If you shut out that half of the history, you’re not really dealing with it.

But do you think you really have to have a good grasp on that first half-century and have the vocabulary under your fingers to really move on to newer work? I feel like a lot of instructors have said things similar to that.

I think there’s a lot of ways to study the past. That’s true in English, for example. If you’re an English major, you’d be able to talk about contemporary literature. You can still read [Geoffrey] Chaucer while reading Colson Whitehead. You could even realize they may have some things in common.

Interview by Louis Krauss, News editor

With Blackwood Crossing, Players Find Beauty in Sadness Avi Vogel Columnist Loss is a difficult concept to grapple with.

We dance around the issue, often refusing to acknowledge it. Even when forced to face it head on, we try to ignore the facts and pretend that whatever is causing the loss we feel never happened. But eventually, we hopefully make a change. This is the central theme behind Blackwood Crossing, a game released April 4 by British developer Paper Seven.

Blackwood Crossing is a “walking simulator” — a form those who have played games like The Stanley Parable and Firewatch will find familiar — in which you take on the role of Scarlett as she accompanies her younger brother, Finn, on a train ride.

Players navigate Scarlett deeper into the game by solving puzzles littered throughout the train, and the game’s implementation of this mechanic

is what ultimately differentiates Blackwood Crossing from other walking simulators. Usually, in games such as these, the puzzles merely exist to explore the world and push you from one end of the game to the other. Blackwood Crossing doesn’t feel that way, as the puzzles are tied thematically to the story, framing the game’s plot and serving as the player’s waypoint to understanding Scarlett and Finn’s lives.

As you come to learn, Scarlett and Finn were orphaned when Finn was very young.

He struggles tremendously with this loss, desperately craving human connection. As a teenager, Scarlett finds it difficult to identify with Finn’s playful nature, which adds complexity to their relationship that the player explores through the game’s puzzles.

As it progresses, the game comes to feel like more than the sum of these small puzzles, as See Blackwood, page 13

In Blackwood Crossing, players follow Scarlett, older sister of Finn (pictured), as they come to terms with the death of their parents.

Photo by Avi Vogel, Columnist

Arts

Page 12

The Oberlin Review, April 14, 2017

AMAM Prepares for Joint Senior Studio Exhibit Quentin Nguyen-duy Victoria Garber Arts editor

Clarkberg’s areas of interest lies in exploring the culture and assumptions of Wall Street, which in many ways shape U.S. Senior Studio art exhibition ––––––––––––––––––––––––––– The Stories We Tell Ourselves

by College seniors Maggie “Our work is about idenMiddleton, Isa Diaz-Barriga tity and society. ... The and Jasper Clarkberg, aimed at challenging assumptions about long name — The Stories identity based on geography, race We Tell Ourselves About and class, opens this evening with Ourselves — is about the a talk by the artists in the Allen formulation of our own Memorial Art Building. Each group member approached the identities and how that idea of cultural geography from relates to society and different angles, drawing directly privilege and oppresand indirectly from personal experience and cultural identity. sion, and there’s a lot of “I know that I definitely take material there.” the stories part a little more literally,” Diaz-Barriga said. “I Jasper Clarkberg know Jasper’s probably working College senior a little bit more [ from] a more ––––––––––––––––––––––––––– business-constructed sense — capitalism and [those] types of economic mindsets and policy, [ideas]. The big thing is location, which in turn shape the means actors and stories that people and experience of citizens. don’t necessarily want to believe “I’m interested in how much about themselves or the places power rests in Wall Street,” they are in.”

Clarkberg said. “They control According to Clarkberg, the where the capital flows in the three artists chose to present U.S. They have all these customs their work jointly in part because and ideas, … and it’s sort of taken of the complementary nature of for granted that this economic their material, which speaks to philosophy is truth. I’m exploring the influence of factors such as that.” location and class on identity.

These themes especially “Our work is about identity intrigue him as someone who, if and society,” Clarkberg said. he chose, could be a part of that “The [unofficial] long name — very culture.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves “[As] an Econ major who could About Ourselves — is about the go into Wall Street and who could formulation of our own identities be recruited by consulting firms and how that relates to society or investment firms, [I’m] feeling and privilege and oppression, and weird about that,” Clarkberg there’s a lot of material there.” said. “Feeling like, ‘How do I fit An Economics major in in? What would it be like to go addition to Studio Art, one of to that?’ That’s not a world that

Senior Studio Art majors Maggie Middleton, Isa Diaz-Barriga and Jasper Clarkberg present their joint exhibit in the Allen Memorial Art Building this evening.

Photo by Bryan Rubin, Photo editor

everybody can see, and I want to open that so that everyone can see.”

Clarkberg has studied environmental economics and worked with the Responsible Investing Organization, looking at Oberlin’s finances through the lens of how they impact social causes. Despite many artists actively incorporating identity and social commentary into their work, he sees the Art department as lacking a solid foundation in political engagement.

“From all of our exhibits, as a whole, maybe the Oberlin Art department doesn’t really know how to explore identity and politics, and I’ve seen a lot of artists struggle with that,” Clarkberg said. “I’m hoping that

our art provides some inspiration — like, ‘This is how you can explore identity through art and get really political without making specific propaganda or event posters.’ And for my art specifically, I wrote about wanting to attract people who are on the econ career path and get them thinking critically about what it will mean for them to work on Wall Street or in finance. And I don’t know if a lot of those people will show up, but [I’m hoping to provoke] those conversations.”

Diaz-Barriga sees the political themes as especially relevant to today’s social and political currents, particularly given the rhetoric characterizing certain communities leading up to the election.

“I think globalization and capitalism play a lot into everybody’s work,” Diaz-Barriga said. “Personally, I am making [art] about the U.S-Mexico borderlands. A lot of my project last semester had to do with the outcome of the election, and then this semester is a continuation of that project, but it’s definitely less overt. It comes directly out of a need to give voice to an area that is not just underrepresented, but misrepresented a lot of the time.”

Middleton’s work also emphasizes Mexico as part of a politicized geographic heritage.

She has endeavored to uncover aspects of her own identity as a Mexican American as well See Student, page 13

Raw Offers Potent Commentary on Sexuality, Sisterhood Christian Bolles Columnist Editor’s Note: This review contains spoilers and mentions of violence, sexual assault, nausea and trauma inflicted on both humans and animals.

When French writer-director Julia Ducournau’s feature-length debut Raw made rounds at film festivals worldwide, paramedics became an occasional fixture of the proceedings as audience members either fainted or left the theater — some without returning, others to empty their stomachs in the nearest bathroom.

Despite being produced on a tight budget and given limited theatrical distribution, these incidents have brought the film a grotesquely alluring reputation since its release a few weeks ago.

Historically, other films have garnered similar reactions — The Exorcist is one famous example — and in the case of Raw, its otherwise low profile made the reputation stick. But beneath this reputation lies a film that deserves to be considered for all its facets. It’s a feminist coming-of-age story with psychosexual overtones that wields cannibalism as a potent metaphor for the most painful stages of puberty. Raw handles femininity with a confidence and abandon that is all too rare in a market oversaturated with male writers and directors and represents the start of what promises to be a great

year for French cinema.

The film follows teenage protagonist Justine (Garance Marillier), the youngest in a family of strict vegetarians, who is sent by her loving parents to join her sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf ) at a veterinary college. Upon arriving, she is subjected to a series of arcane hazing rituals enacted by the older students — or, as the “rookies” are forced to call them, “Great Ones.”

Alexia, a chief Great One, acts as her shy, younger sister’s guide, setting the tone by showing her an array of past first-year class pictures where the faces of those who refused to partake in initiation have been scratched out.

The harshness of the school’s environment directly and intentionally contrasts with the delicacy and compassion required to care for living things, and Ducournau’s screenplay often examines the relationship between humanity and animals. In one scene, Justine faces backlash for claiming that raping a monkey is the same as raping a human; defending herself, she asks her classmates, “Otherwise, why are we in vet school?” It’s an intriguing moral stance for her to adopt, and her reverence for all life seems perfectly tailored to clash with the movie’s most ostentatious plot point: Justine suddenly develops a craving for human flesh.

The dramatic pull of Raw stems from the shocking ways in which Justine’s newfound cannibalism derails her life. After being pressured into eating a questionable

meaty snack, she develops a rash all over her skin that seems to mimic a bad allergic reaction. But in one surprising, arrestingly gory sequence, it becomes clear that this condition is much more. This is a radical shift in the very chemistry of Justine’s body, and it’s no coincidence that these changes come on the cusp of her sexual awakening. The target of her desire is one of the film’s only supporting male characters, and her closest friend besides her sister: Justine’s roommate, Adrien. His homosexuality is established early on, but her lust for him grows unabated, smartly conveyed through quiet looks and charged pauses in his presence.

Unaware of her attraction to him, Adrien is always willing to defend his roommate against hazing, even when her sister will not. He’s a clueless fly trapped in the web of Justine and Alexia’s fraught sisterhood, a dynamic exacerbated by Justine’s unwillingness to become the reckless force of nature that Alexia so desperately wants her to be. Adrien’s companionship is fleeting, but Justine’s relationship with her sister runs far deeper. The culmination of the siblings’ arc is equal parts sweet, horrifying and heartbreaking, displaying a deft understanding of the power dynamic between sisters that other filmmakers — specifically male ones — often struggle to grasp.

This is not to say that Raw’s blunt, authentic writing is only insightful because of Ducournau’s gender; she is a virtuosic

artist in her own right. Every aspect of the film contributes to a consistent vision, the camerawork and tight physical spaces complemented by a jarring soundtrack that punctuates the rare moments of melodrama with staccato strings and aggressive acoustic guitar. The brilliant use of music lends a sort of twisted comedy to otherwise disarming images, showing that the movie is both aware and proud of its own depravity. The more sickening moments are, thankfully, relegated to the most important plot points, of which there are only a handful, but one would be hard pressed to find a showing of Raw without at least one walk-out.

Raw’s power coalesces in Marillier’s intensely physical performance, one that will no doubt catapult her to further success in the near future. Her commitment to selling even her character’s most debasing moments grounds them in reality, albeit one that seems somewhat separate from our own in its strange, collegiate anarchy.

Those with the stomach to handle it will find Raw a deep film that addresses sexual liberation with an all-too-rare feminist sensibility that treats its heroine with care even as her body and her sister seem to turn against her. It paints puberty as an inevitable machination of fate that chews teens up and spits them out — or, in Justine’s case, brings them to chew on others. Though hard to swallow, Raw will sit in the pit of the viewer’s stomach long after its final reveal.

Arts

The Oberlin Review, April 14, 2017

Page 13

Student Exhibit Explores Cultural Geography, Perceptions

Continued from page 12

as society’s perception of her, countering common negative and exoticizing stereotypes about Mexican Americans.

Her portion of the exhibit centers on a large, wallpapered section of wall space hung with luchador masks and family photos as well as screen-printed cloth. Her idea was to portray chosen and hereditary aspects of identity along with outside perceptions in the context of a domestic space.

“There’s a variety of wallpaper patterns that symbolize different things to me all kind of interspersed,” Middleton said. “[It’s] kind of a big jumble of my own understanding of cultural identity and what I’m allowed to take, what I’m not and what’s kind of forced upon me.”

Middleton’s work is influenced by her day-to-day experience of stereotyping and exoticizing remarks, as well as by larger-scale political dynamics.

“Over the years, there’s been small comments where I felt kind

of exotic because I’m mixed,” Middleton said. “My dad’s white, my mom’s Mexican American. So sometimes people are like, ‘Oh! Wait, what?’ and then it’s like, ‘Have you heard of Frida Kahlo?’ and I’m like, ‘No. Who that?’”

Many of Middleton’s experiences involve subtle assumptions and commentary many would not immediately identify as potentially racist, which she feels is part of why it falls to people of color to combat and emphasize the impact of such microaggressions.

“I’m not some exotic being,” Middleton said. “I’m not going to flamenco dance in front of you. And I got to this point where I just got fed up. I was in a critique, and there was this small comment that no one else was going to notice, so I was like, ‘F-- this.’ And so I started making these luchador masks.”

For Middleton, the most important takeaway from the show is that culture and identity are more complex than geography and the famous traditions they become known for.

“I want people to interact with some of the pieces and leave thinking more about stereotyping issues and be like, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be so hyped about Cinco de Mayo,’” Middleton said.

“I want people to have like a small moment of reflection, but I’m not going to force it, that’s fine.”

The exhibition and presentation are open to the public, and scheduled for 8–10 p.m. in Fischer Gallery in the Allen Memorial Art Building.

Kero Kero Bonito Brings Upbeat Pop to ’Sco Performance Samantha Spaccasi Staff writer “I’m having a party / Everyone can come / By the way, you’re invited / You seem pretty fun,” Sarah Midori Perry, frontwoman of Kero Kero Bonito, sings in “My Party,” a track from the group’s first mixtape, Intro Bonito. “My Party” and other songs from the Intro Bonito mixtape, released in August 2014 via Double Denim Records, established Kero Kero Bonito’s reputation for lightheartedness and inclusive fun, which the band will bring to the ’Sco tomorrow night.

The London trio, which also features producers Gus Lobban and Jamie Bulled, started when Bulled and Lobban posted an ad looking for a singer on MixB, an online message board for Japanese expats.

Perry was one of the first respondents.

“Jamie and I were music friends since our school days. We met Sarah in 2013 and have been KKB ever since,” Lobban wrote in an email to the Review.

The group rose to prominence after contributing the track “Flamingo” to producer Ryan Hemsworth’s Secret Songs project and released Intro Bonito shortly after. Their debut album, Bonito Generation, was released last October to critical acclaim, earning a 4.5-star rating

from Tiny Mix Tapes and a listing on Clash Magazine’s top 40 albums of 2016. The album builds on the themes and styles explored on Intro Bonito with maturity, bringing a more polished, cohesive approach to the dancehall, J-pop and 8-bit influenced music on Intro Bonito.

The cover of Bonito Generation features Perry smiling proudly in a bright blue cap and gown against a yellow background, a display of the easily recognizable pop persona — marked by colorful hair, makeup and costumes — that she has cultivated in her time as the group’s leader.

“I’m inspired by punk singers, and I channel my inner punk on stage. Other than that I don’t really think about [my persona] too much,” Perry said.

Kero Kero Bonito’s music, which combines crisp beats, synthesizers and vocals from Perry in both English and Japanese, is unmatched in today’s electronic pop soundscape, something that caught the attention of Student Union Programming Committee booker Andrés González.

“A friend of mine showed [KKB] to me at either the end of freshman year or the beginning of sophomore year,” he said.

“They just sounded so different and silly.

I didn’t know how big they were, so I

Blackwood Crossing Grapples with Issues of Loss, Death Continued from page 11 the player comes to discover more about Scarlett and Finn by piecing together segments of dialogue from the game’s other characters — who wear playful, animal-like masks and reside throughout the train — and discovering their relationships to the game’s principal duo. When put together, these small interactions speak volumes about the world and do well to add to the tension created by the game’s stunning environments.

That said, not all the puzzles in Blackwood Crossing are clever, and at times become tedious. Items hidden in the environment are occasionally too difficult to find because they incidentally blend in with the background or due to mismatched sound cues. Once or twice, I spent 15 minutes or more looping around the environment simply looking for a small puzzle piece that I needed to progress.

Though these instances only happened a couple times, with a game as short as this one, that is a bit of a problem.

That said, the game’s success hinges far more on its story, which is superb outside of its opening stretch. As I began playing, I found I wasn’t drawn in at all, as after developing brilliantly in its first few minutes,the story seemed to stagnate for a

while. About half an hour into this two hour game, I felt bored and ready to be done.

But suddenly, the rest of the game unfolded beautifully. Flaws in the game engine became less noticeable because I was drawn in by the ever-changing environments; I stopped noticing that I was stuck on puzzles for longer than I liked because the puzzles themselves reflected the emotions I was feeling. It was almost as if I had stopped merely playing the game and began to exist within it.

Then, as quickly as it started, it was over. The journey, clocking in at around two hours, is one that’s easy to complete in a single sitting, as the game is so immersive that it’s easy to forget how much time you’ve spent on it until you reach the end.

And while the game has its share of flaws, the way the experience captures loss and subverts expectations is nothing short of a marvel. The writing is succinct and perfect for what it needs to do. The visuals and music also convey immense emotion independent of the writing.

If you come to games looking for a light escape, Blackwood Crossing might not be for you. It delves into the depths of pain and dwells in these emotions. It hurts. But that’s all in service of something greater, something warm and light. It’s about moving on.

wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to bring them. It was kind of like a pipe dream, but it worked out. Even if you’re a fan of Kero Kero Bonito, you don’t imagine them coming [to Oberlin] because they’re so far away. I think it’s a nice surprise for people.”

The group was originally scheduled to play in February, but the show fell through due to scheduling conflicts.

“The planning always takes a long time,” González said. “Because they’re coming from England, they have to figure out when they have other dates in the U.S. We can’t just fly them out for one show.”

Still, despite their inability to make their previous show date, the band still made time for Oberlin in their touring schedule.

“We got the call [to perform at Oberlin] and had to answer since we’re big Cory Arcangel [OC ’00] fans,” Lobban said.

González’s persistence has paid off, as KKB’s performance will be yet another huge show in an already stacked year of concerts put on by SUPC bookers — with Kamaiyah and Japanese Breakfast slated to perform in the next few weeks alone — and hype for Kero Kero Bonito’s performance has been big.

“It’s the kind of music that people like a lot,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s hard to

get Oberlin students visibly excited about anything. It will be nice to have an event where people are excited, where people feel like they can be happy and dance and have a good time together. I think that’s something important.”

One of those visibly excited students is College junior Theodora Lang.

“I love KKB,” she said. “I like that their music is bilingual. I like that it’s funny. I like the aesthetic, and I like their infectious optimism. You can’t be sad when you’re listening to KKB. There are so many artists I love but can’t listen to because I’ll just cry at all their sad music.

Having a band that is always upbeat, cheerful and always fun to dance to is really fresh and nice.”

The evening promises to be an infectiously danceable one, something that González is looking forward to.

“People should be ready to dance,” González said. “They should listen to the songs — they have good lyrics. I always like it when people sing along. It’s something that doesn’t happen enough at Oberlin shows.”

Kero Kero Bonito is scheduled to perform at the ’Sco tomorrow at 10 p.m. Tickets are available at Wilder Desk for $5 with OCID or $15 without.

Sports

Page 14

The Oberlin Review, April 14, 2017

In the Locker Room

Men’s Tennis

This week, the Review sat down with the Gittings brothers to discuss men’s tennis’ 5–0 spring trip to South Carolina, the remaining regular season matchups and their preparations for the North Coast Athletic Conference tournament.

Hailing from Larchmont, NY, Robert, a junior, and Mattie, a sophomore, grew up playing together and have taken their chemistry to the Oberlin courts for multiple seasons now.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

MG: Personally, I have matured a lot as a player this year. I’ve been able to think more critically about the game and about which shots I’m going to hit. In terms of the team, it’s just raising the level of practice. It’s going out there every day knowing everyone is going to be working their hardest.

What is it like playing with your brother on the team?

Robert Gittings: It’s awesome. It’s especially cool in tennis. Growing up, we didn’t play in traditional tennis systems. We didn’t play in a lot of huge clinics with a lot of different people and coaches. A lot of the time we just spent hitting with each other. It’s good because it’s someone who you’re super comfortable with. It’s also a person that I can just find my game when I’m hitting his ball because that’s the ball, that I grew up hitting.

Mattie Gittings: It’s really great that we can be in school together.

We hit a bunch of balls when we go home, and we can continue hitting one or two hours a day. It’s great to have someone who you’re really comfortable with and see all the time to have on your team.

that makes competition for spots really competitive. Practice has been really high quality, and we have seen how good we are, but we haven’t necessarily seen that represented by our results. There are matches that we felt like we could have won had a couple of things gone a little bit differently.

MG: We had two really big weekends the last two weekends, playing three matches each against nationally ranked teams, and then we just couldn’t really put it together completely. We have a hump that we have to come over. It’s like a mental thing as well as a talent and physical thing.

How has the season been going so far?

RG: I think we are in a place where we feel like we haven’t accomplished anything yet that represents how good we are. Team dynamic-wise, we have a really big team. We have 14 people —

How much confidence did the team receive from going 5–0 on the spring trip to Hilton Head, SC? RG: The competition in Hilton Head in the past was better than it was this year, but we haven’t played as many matches. This year

Robert Gittings (left) and Mattie Gittings we played five matches, which was a lot. That was a huge benefit for a team as big and as competitive as ours, because we got to throw a lot of different lineups out there and see who works in what match situation.

MG: That trip is huge for our team confidence. It is just great to go out there and have everyone get really loud and be really excited about the tennis we were playing. It was also really big for team chemistry. It was great to have that week in South Carolina where we were all together.

Have you seen more consistency with the team in singles or doubles play?

RG: There are definitely teams that we see as stronger singles teams than doubles teams [and vice versa]. Last year, we could point to ourselves as a stronger doubles team, but this year there has been a lot of flux. I think we

No. 1 in NCAC East, Yeowomen Ready for Battle with Kenyon Continued from page 16 4–6, 10–8 third-set tiebreaker win.

At No. 3, Rich won 6–0, 6–1 in her tenth-straight singles win, producing results almost unheard of for a rookie. Rich attributed her success against Wooster to the team’s cohesive vibe.

“It definitely felt like the team approached this match with a unified mindset,” she said. “That mentality inspires us to compete harder for the team and not just play for ourselves.”

The previous weekend, the Yeowomen took on tough competition in three home matches in three days. Oberlin started off losing two straight matches, falling to No. 19 Case Western Reserve University in a competitive 6–3 battle Friday, March 31. The next day, Oberlin dropped a disappointing 7–2 bout to the University

of Rochester. Overcoming fatigue, the squad managed to turn it around Sunday, sweeping State University of New York Geneseo 9–0.

Oberlin’s victory over Geneseo was a sneak peek of the team’s upward trajectory. The Yeowomen’s successful day began with an 8–2 doubles victory by Hughes and Brezel, followed by an 8–3 doubles win from McDermott and Audeh. The veteran-rookie combination of senior Olivia Hay and Rich also produced results for the Yeowomen.

Looking forward, the Yeowomen prepare for their final two conference matches against Kenyon College and Allegheny College. The team will travel to Gambier, Ohio, tomorrow to play conference rival the Kenyon College Ladies. Last season, Oberlin fell to Kenyon 6–3 at home on the Yeowomen’s senior day. As the squad

looks to avenge that loss, Hughes said she is optimistic about this weekend and beyond.

“Winning conference is a realistic goal we can accomplish this year,” Hughes said. “If we can beat Kenyon this weekend then I believe this year is our year.”

Ananiadis said the team has its eye on the highest prize in the NCAC Championships, which will be played April 28–30 at Kenyon College.

“Our goal each year in the beginning is to win the conference championship,” he said. “We’ve been so close the last several years starting in 2012 when we lost in the finals.

Last year we lost to Denison, the eventual winner, in the semifinals in a sixhour long marathon, so we’re right there. Will this be our year? It certainly could be!”

are a good doubles and singles team, but we are just waiting for that day when it comes together.

MG: A lot of the reason we have been successful in singles this year is because of the depth of our lineup. It’s been great to have a rotating door, like five and six singles. Doubles is a little trickier because we have teams that we have been running for a long time.

What improvements have you and the team made throughout the season?

RG: We have gotten a lot better at being loud and supportive and having our energy show up during matches, which is really huge.

Tennis can be a really lonely sport sometimes. Personally, the biggest thing I’ve improved is my mental mindset approach to tennis. I’ve been able to be more competitive because I’ve been able to convince myself that it’s life or death out there.

How crucial are the final two matches of the regular season against Kenyon and Allegheny?

RG: Our primary focus is the Kenyon match. It’s all fury for Kenyon. We have something to prove. They have owned the conference for the past 10–15 years.

This year, we really want to bring it to them.

MG: Allegheny is our senior day and our hype game, everyone should come out. That should be a really fun match. Kenyon is a school that has been dominant throughout our coach’s [Eric Ishida] tenure.

What are your goals for the conference tournament?

RG: Ideally, I want to go farther than we have ever gone in this conference tournament. I want to win the second round, but we still need to gear up for that four versus five matchup in the first round because that’s a tight matchup.

You can’t think about the next match until you’ve won that one.

MG: It’s always going to be a tough match in the first round.

It’s always Kenyon who we have to overcome, and this year I think we can do that.

Interview by Darren Zaslau,

Sports editor

Photo by Bryan Rubin,

Photo editor

Editorial: Sponsors Shrug at Doping Continued from page 16 Sharapova. But players like Andy Murray have insinuated that perhaps that standard procedure could stand to be reviewed.

“I think you should really have to work your way back,” Murray said in an interview with The New York Times. “There’s no rule in place, so the tournaments are going to do what they think is best for their event. But should you get a wild card into every event when you come back? I’m not sure about that. That’s something that maybe should be looked at.”

Women’s Tennis Association CEO Steve Simon offered a guiltless shrug in response to Murray’s comments, insisting that Sharapova was sufficiently punished.

“Maria’s had anything but the red carpet,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.

Ironically, during her suspension, Sharapova did just that — literally walked red carpets at events like the Vanity Fair Oscar Party. She sat on a panel at the ANA Inspiring Women in Sports Conference and interned with the likes of NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. She also remained the face of Head Tennis, Evian and Nike (after a brief suspension from her deal). She was hardly shunned from sports.

Her treatment shows the “forgive and forget” mindset that the sports world has adopted. Alex Rodriguez minted a new deal with Fox Sports in March, which will expand his presence as a baseball analyst

on the network. It was just three years ago that Rodriguez sat out the entire 2014 season in the longest non-lifetime suspension in Major League Baseball history because of his steroid use and ensuing cover-up.

The broadcasting world also recently welcomed Jose Canseco, perhaps the most infamous PED user in sports. As if it wasn’t enough that Canseco exposed all of his cohorts in the book Juiced, which made him perhaps the bestselling athlete author of all time, it was announced in late March that he will join NBC Sports California, covering the Oakland Athletics.

There’s no question that the likes of Rodriguez, Canseco and Sharapova will forever have tarnished reputations. Fans will always question which of their accomplishments were the result of PEDs and which came about because of hard work and dedication.

But some of the most powerful corporations in the world are forcing fans to look past their wrongdoing and welcome cheaters back into their living rooms. In Sharapova’s case, sponsors like Porsche and powerful tournament directors are allowing her to do so with wild cards without even proving her worth first.

The message this sends is perhaps best summed up by tennis’ world No. 7 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

“It’s like if you give a sweet to a kid who did bad things,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “He’s going to do it again.”

Sports

The Oberlin Review, April 14, 2017

Page 15

— track and field —

Track and Field Builds on Indoor Season’s Momentum

Senior Bradley Hamilton celebrates by running through a crowd of teammates at the Bob Kahn Invitational last Saturday.

The event honored all senior members of the Yeomen and Yeowomen track and field teams.

Photo courtesy of OC Athletics

Sydney Allen Production editor Both track and field teams honored their seniors in an emotional ceremony last Saturday as they took to their home turf in the annual Bob Kahn Invitational. Though the events were moved back in the day because of rain, the Senior Day festivities stayed on schedule, providing the participants a rare opportunity to celebrate their seniors as a team instead of splitting up at various events.

“It’s the first time since I’ve been here that the entire team was there supporting, and I think for a lot of us

it was very special to be there in support and not have to be doing other things,” said James Tanford, junior jumper and sprinter. “I know that made it really fun for the seniors. It was pretty amazing.”

After the celebration, both teams came out hot, racking up a total of 16 first-place finishes. The women’s team maintained its dominance with a first-place overall finish with 363 points in the five-team meet, while the men’s squad brought in 163 points, landing them in third among the four-team field. Head Track and Field Coach Ray Appenheimer said he has been thrilled with the contributions the senior

class has made.

“It was a beautiful day to honor our seniors and have our track and field team get to compete in front of their families, friends and professors,” Appenheimer said. “I am proud of all of them. They have made this team better, made the people around them better and in so many ways contributed to the community at Oberlin.”

The Yeowomen throwers swept the competition as junior Ana Richardson took two first-place wins in both the hammer and discus events while first-year Naeisha McClain bested the competition in shot put with two first-place wins as well.

NBA Should Shrink Playoff Field, Cut Lesser Teams to Boost Competition Jack Brewster Columnist This past week, the 2016–2017 NBA regular season came to a close. The playoff seeding is now set and the teams who clinched playoff spots are preparing to make a run. Fans are hopeful the 2017 Finals will be as good as last year’s, when the Cleveland Cavaliers rallied back from a 3–1 deficit to defeat the powerhouse Golden State Warriors in seven games.

But while the 2016 NBA Finals were exciting, most NBA playoff series are uncompetitive, lopsided and uninteresting. The playoff format is to blame.

The NBA allots 16 playoff spots overall, eight per conference. This means that more than half of the NBA’s 30 teams make the playoffs every year. In contrast, there are only 10 playoff spots in the MLB (the two Wild Card teams in each league play each other in a best of one play-in game) and 12 playoff spots in the NFL. Because so many teams make the playoffs in the NBA’s playoff format, each year a large number of mediocre teams make the postseason. This season is no different.

The Chicago Bulls made the playoffs with a .500 record, and the Indiana Pacers and Milwaukee Bucks snuck in with records of just two games over .500 as the eighth, seventh and sixth seeds in the Eastern Conference, respectively. In the Western Conference, the Portland Trail Blazers made the playoffs with a record of .500, and the Memphis Grizzlies made it with a record of four games over .500, as the eighth and seventh seeds, respectively.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that most years, one conference is significantly better than the other. In recent years, the Western Conference has been consistently better than the Eastern. For

example, in the 2007–2008 NBA season, the Golden State Warriors missed the playoffs with a solid 48– 34 record in the Western Conference. But the 40–42 Philadelphia 76ers and the 37–45 Atlanta Hawks, both teams in the Eastern Conference, made the playoffs that year.

With so many mediocre teams making the playoffs, series are predictable: the higher seed beating the lower seed until later rounds. Out of the 16 NBA playoff series played last postseason, only two series resulted in the lower seed knocking off the higher seed.

Of course, there are benefits to the current system. The 16-team playoff means more revenue for the league and individual organizations. Fans get to see more playoff basketball, and there is always the possibility of a Cinderella story.

But the league could gain viewers by decreasing in the amount of playoff games with a shorter, more thrilling playoff series. However, there has not been a true “Cinderella” NBA playoff run since the No. 3 seeded 2010–2011 Dallas Mavericks won the championship.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver should look for ways to improve competition in the playoffs and make it more exciting. Silver has commented on the issue in the past, saying he was confident the NBA’s Competition Committee would figure it out.

But this is not something that should be left to a committee to mull over year after year.

The NBA should shrink the number of teams that make the playoffs to a more respectable number, like 10 or 12, and take away the conference playoff system so that the teams with the best record overall make it instead of the top-eight teams in each conference. Until then, the NBA playoffs seeding will continue to lead to unentertaining matchups in the early rounds.

With her performance highlighted by a top distance of 45 feet, 11 1/4 inches, 14.00 meters, in the shot put to move her into second place nationally, McClain was named the NCAC Field Athlete of the Week.

On the track, the Yeowomen continually outran the competition and defended their No. 15 national ranking. The sophomores reigned supreme in the shorter-distance events as Imani Cook-Gist claimed a victory in the 100-meter dash, clocking in at 12.90 seconds, and Ify Ezimora won the 400 meter with a time of 1 minute, 3.3 seconds. In addition, junior Lilah Drafts-Johnson eased through the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 1:01:90, landing her in firstplace and fourth in the nation for the event.

In the distance events, the team remained dominant with firstyear Shannon Wargo front and center in the 1,500 meter, checking in at 4:48.16 and checking off another first-place trophy. Wargo also claimed a first-place win in the 800-meter with a time of 2:24.04 as teammate sophomore Abigail Bellows won the 5,000-meter run with a time of 18:56.79.

For the field events, junior Annie Goodridge triumphed in the triple jump with a mark of 35–8. Senior Ave Spencer nailed the pole vault with a height of 11–5 3/4. Spencer said she has been pleased with the efforts the team has put forth in advance of the conference meet.

“We have tons of talented people in every one of the groups from sprinting to throwing to jumping

to long distance — we have a lot of good people, and it’s a really good place to be in before conference,” Spencer said.

On the men’s side, Tanford led the way for the Yeomen with a triple jump win at 42–3 1/2. Competing in an unusually wide variety of events, Tanford was able to secure a second place victory in the 400-meter at 50.73, a third-place finish in the 200-meter, at 22.90 seconds, and a fourth-place finish in the long jump with 20–3, marking his fourth topfive finish of the meet.

Senior Hannon Ayer scored a second victory for the Yeomen, finishing the 1,500-meter run in 4:11.89 for first place, while senior E.J. Douglass won the 5,000-meter with a time of 15:46.32. In the field, sophomore Daniel Mukasa excelled, topping off the Yeomen’s four wins with a pole vault victory at 12–11 1/2.

With seven meets remaining in the regular season schedule, both teams are looking forward to the conference championships, which take place in Greencastle, IN, on May 5–6.

“We’re looking to follow up the indoor season and win our first outdoor conference championships on the women’s end,” Appenhiemer said. “With the addition of the hammer throw and steeplechase outdoors, the men should improve upon their finish indoors and move into the top half of the conference.”

Tomorrow, both teams will face off in the All-Ohio Championships at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, at 10 a.m.

Yeowomen Eye Kenyon Ladies Continued from page 15 L’Insalata, who won All-NCAC Defense Player of the Year in 2015 and was selected to the All-NCAC First Team in 2016, recorded 13 saves in 52 minutes against the Gators. She echoed Rauchle’s comments, attributing her success to a total team effort.

“I ascribe my individual success this year to the rest of my team, and especially my defense,” L’Instala wrote in an email to the Review. “Without my team constantly challenging me at practice I would not be able to perform the same way. Knowing my defense has my back and I have theirs is a big contributor to my individual success and I believe the overall success of the team.”

Several days earlier against the Big Red, the Yeowomen racked up five early goals as a stand full fan section cheered them on after enjoying a pre-game cookout. But Denison quickly answered with two scores, using momentum to ultimately push through for a 15–12 win.

On the defensive side, L’Insalata tallied a season-high 15 saves in 60 minutes of play, but in the end Oberlin’s mistakes just kept piling up. Four goals for the Big Red in the final 10 minutes sealed the deal in a game in which the Yeowomen were outshot 38–21. L’Insalata said back in the locker room the team was unfazed by its first defeat.

“We [took] our first loss of the season just like how every loss should be taken, as a lesson to learn from and as a stepping stone to push off of for improvement,” L’Insalata said. “While we may have lost we also worked very hard and learned a lot about ourselves and our team.”

The Yeowomen now turn their attention to preparing for the final five games of the season, all of which are conference matchups. Head Coach Lynda McCandlish, who won 2015 NCAC Coach of the Year, is focusing on ensuring the team keeps looking forward and does not get caught up in recent ups and downs.

“I think this team has a lot of potential this year, but the season isn’t over, and we haven’t proven that we are better this year yet,” McCandlish said.

Oberlin’s next game is an away matchup against conference rival Kenyon College, currently 5–5 this season. The teams will take to the field in Gambier, Ohio, tomorrow at 2 p.m.

Sports The Oberlin Review

Page 16

April 14, 2017

— women’s lacrosse —

See You Later, Gators: Lax Wins 14–3 Alex McNicoll Contributing Sports editor

Despite a hot start bolstered by a crowd of boisterous fans, the women’s lacrosse team suffered its first loss of the season 15–12 against the Denison University Big Red in a tense back-and-forth contest last Saturday. Oberlin quickly bounced back though, securing a 14–3 win against the Allegheny College Gators Tuesday night. Now 9–1 overall and 3–1 in conference play, Oberlin sits comfortably in second in the North Coast Athletic Conference.

“The first real competition we saw was Denison, and that was startling for us, as well as a growing point,” said sophomore midfielder Hayley Drapkin, who has already tallied 19 goals in a breakout season this year.

“We need to keep getting better, keep improving for the games to come.”

Drapkin began the scoring barrage against the Gators just three minutes in, and goals soon followed from junior midfielder Natalie Rauchle and first-year midfielder Eliza Amber. Amber would finish the day with a hat trick, and Rauchle, who already had 40 goals this season, finished with seven more. Rauchle’s domi-

Sharapova Returns Unscathed Jackie McDermott Sports editor

Sophomore Hayley Drapkin looks to make a pass in Oberlin’s 14–3 win against Allegheny College Tuesday. The Yeowomen are currently 9–1 overall and 3–1 in conference play.

Photo by Kellianne Doyle, Staff photographer

nating performance this season has already earned her two NCAC Player of the Week honors, and puts her on track to break records.

“My success stems directly from the team chemistry this year,” Rauchle wrote in an email to the Review. “We’ve all been

able to strive off of each other’s support and positivity. Everyone is finding personal success throughout the whole team and unfortunately stats only show the scoring part of it. I wouldn’t be scoring if not for everyone else working just as hard to get the ball up to the attacking side.”

The game included a solid performance from the Yeowomen’s defense, who shut the Gators out until the second half. The defense has held opponents to three goals or less four times this season. Senior goalkeeper Alexa See Yeowomen, page 15

— women’s tennis —

Women’s Tennis Sweeps Wooster Match 9–0

Senior captain Olivia Hay strikes trophy pose in the squad’s match against University of Rochester on April 1. The Yeowomen will travel to Gambier, Ohio, to take on conference rival Kenyon College tomorrow.

Photo by Rick Yu, Photo edtior

Julie Schreiber Staff writer Doling out an emphatic 9–0 sweep to the College of Wooster Fighting Scots, the Yeowomen earned their first North Coast Athletic Conference win of the season last Friday. After an up-and-down March, in which the eight-member squad faced several nationally ranked teams and grueling multimatch weeks, the Yeowomen have emerged fresh and ready to take on NCAC rival the Kenyon College Ladies tomorrow.

“We’ve played arguably one of the toughest schedules in the country,” Head Coach

Constantine Ananiadis said of the season so far. “We’ve seen it all. We have no reason to be intimidated anymore.”

Playing tough competition has paid off so far, as the Yeowomen are currently ranked first in the eastern section of the NCAC and have topped .500. Their spring record stands at 10–8.

Oberlin’s aggressive doubles flourished against Wooster, as the Yeowomen swept all three courts. The first-year pairing of Lena Rich and Delaney Black earned a quick 8–0 win at No. 3.

“Our three first-years are all really athletic, strong, fast and have certainly been a

big part of us playing a very different brand of tennis this year — more attacking, more in-your-face,” Ananiadis said. “This is especially evident in doubles.”

At the second flight, juniors Jackie McDermott and Mayada Audeh quickly racked up a 7–0 lead. The momentum threatened to shift when they dropped one game, but they took back the reigns and notched a break in the next game to win 8–1.

Junior Sarah Hughes and senior captain Emma Brezel also finished on top with a score of 8–3 in the No. 1 spot. The pair enjoyed an 11-match win streak earlier in the season, posting impressive wins against nationally ranked teams including Tufts University, which was ranked No. 9 at the time. Last season, the duo won All-NCAC First-Team honors for their doubles performance, and led the Yeowomen in doubles victories. Hughes also earned an All-NCAC Second-Team accolade for her singles play, as she earned a 3–0 conference record.

“The support from my teammates is what I credit my success to this season,” Hughes said. “We’ve all come to realize that we deserve to win just as much as top teams out there, so that change in perspective has made us more competitive and feisty.”

In singles play, Oberlin swept spots one through six. A highlight came on court two, where Audeh battled it out with Wooster’s Rachel Mole. Mole, a three-time all-conference selection and former NCAC Newcomer of the Year, bested Audeh in last season’s match when both players were playing in the No. 1 spot. This year, at the No. 2 spot, Audeh turned the tide and pulled out a 7–5, See No. 1, page 14

The top search hits for Maria Sharapova have nothing to do with her doping suspension. A Daily Mail article shows fashionista Sharapova sporting a casual and chic Los Angeles look in capris and a pashmina shawl. Forbes touts her success as a businesswoman, featuring her candy company Sugarpova and its recent ventures in the chocolate industry. ESPN pairs her name with Rafael Nadal’s when it lists players to watch this clay court season.

It seems that Sharapova will arrive fresh-faced and unscathed as she steps back on court after a 15-month doping suspension on April 26. The tennis star will compete at a tournament hosted by one of her sponsors, the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix, in Stuttgart, Germany. Back from her 15-month suspension for use of meldonium, Sharapova is sure to receive cold shoulders in the players’ lounge — but she can expect a warm embrace from tournament directors, sponsors and TV networks eager to attract attention and revenue. This reception is emblematic of a new and unsettling propensity to extend second chances to convicted cheaters in the sports world.

On the very first day after her suspension is up, Sharapova will hit the courts in Stuttgart. The 29-year-old slammer returns as a wild card, bypassing the qualifier and earning an automatic berth into the first round of the tournament despite having no ranking. It is standard procedure for tournaments to provide wild cards to previous champions like Sharapova, who won Stuttgart three consecutive times from 2012–14. Madrid and Rome have also already extended wild cards to See Editorial, page 14