September 9, 2016

The Oberlin Review

SEPTEMBER 9, 2016 VOLUME 145, NUMBER 2

Local News Bulletin News briefs from the past week Grants to Support Musical Studies, Curricular Revision The College was awarded two grants from the Mellon Foundation on June 13, one to improve the Musical Studies program and the other to improve the College’s overall curriculum.

The grant for the Musical Studies program — which totaled $150,000 — is intended for hiring non-Conservatory faculty for Musical Studies majors. The grant also allows the College to offer a wider array of classes for the major. The other grant, totaling $750,000, will go toward supporting curricular revision.

Pottinger Appointed New Bonner Center Director The College appointed Trecia Pottinger as the new director of the Bonner Center for Service and Learning on Wednesday. Pottinger has worked in the Bonner Center since 2011, serving as both the Scholars Program director and associate director. Previous director Beth Blissman left at the end of May due to organizational restructuring and to explore other opportunities, according to the Source.

Pottinger will continue to oversee the Bonner Scholars program.

City Council to Raise Talarico’s Salary City Council approved a raise for interim City Manager and longtime Finance Director Sal Talarico on Tuesday. Talarico will now make $2,300 every two weeks, as opposed to his previous salary of $1,120.

Talarico said he remains unsure whether he will reapply for the city manager position when a national search begins in mid-September.

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Krislov Bids Farewell After a Decade Louis Krauss, News Editor Tyler Sloan, Editor-in-Chief After nearly a decade of service at Oberlin, President Marvin Krislov announced Tuesday morning that he will end his tenure with the college on June 30, 2017. In an email addressed to the Oberlin community, Krislov said it was the right time for him to seek new professional challenges — although what his next steps are remains unclear.

“I’m very passionate about higher education, particularly access to higher education, and that’s really a life-long passion of mine,” Krislov said. “But the most important thing for me is to feel like I’m making a difference in the world, and I don’t know where that’s going to take me.

I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I’m a little scared because I don’t really know.”

For many in his close circle, Krislov’s departure comes as little surprise. He engaged in a very public campaign for president last year at the University of Iowa, which instead selected former IBM executive J. Bruce Harreld. Krislov added that the average tenure of a college president is typically six or seven years — a median he has dutifully exceeded.

“I was in the search in Iowa, so obviously that raised questions, ‘How long is he staying?’” Krislov said. “The final decision was made over the summer, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

Given campus controversies last year — such as alleged cultural appropriation in dining halls and debate surrounding Professor of Composition and Rhetoric Joy Karega’s

President Marvin Krislov poses in his office in the Cox Administration Building. In an email Tuesday morning, Krislov announced he will conclude his tenure at Oberlin on June 30, 2017.

Photo by Bryan Rubin, Photo editor

future at the College — many wondered whether Krislov already had one foot out the door. While Krislov did not rule out that these issues affected his decision to leave, he said the stories were blown out of proportion by the media, and that he is more interested in promoting the positive qualities of Oberlin.

“Candidly, some of the media stories I don’t think were particularly helpful, but I don’t think they conveyed the real Oberlin,” Krislov said. “So one of my things in this last year is to do everything I can to convey to the broadest possible audience what is the real Oberlin — that is bright, committed, idealistic,

smart young people and engaged, committed faculty who will knock themselves out to help the students as well as staff in incredible things.”

He cited the completion of the new Strategic Plan, the Oberlin Illuminate Campaign and the Peter B. Lewis Gateway Center as an important legacy and an appropriate point in time for him to leave.

In particular, Krislov said that the completion of the Illuminate Campaign — which brought the College’s endowment up to approximately where it was before the 2008 financial crisis — was one of his biggest accomplishments. According to Krislov, the endowment is

See Trustees, page 4

Oil Spill Exacerbates Black River Pollution Mellisa Harris Production Editor Between 600 and 800 gallons of diesel fuel poured into the Black River during a spill Aug. 28, according to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

Although Oberlin’s water supply is not currently contaminated, said Oberlin Water Superintendent Jerry Hade, the city is still reckoning with the aftermath.

Hade said that the spill occurred because of a failure to turn off a fuel-tank value during filling at the Dechant-Notley Farms, near West and Hughes Road in the neighboring Pittsfield Township. While Oberlin regularly uses water from Black River, no water was being pumped at the time of the spill, according to Hade. Still, he added that pumping would be suspended for two weeks “to be sure no diesel

fuel would enter the reservoir, treatment plant or distribution system.”

Since the city’s water supplies remain safe, Oberlin Public Works Director Jeff Baumann went so far as to describe the spill as a “non-issue” to the Oberlin News-Tribune.

However, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund’s Ohio Organizer Tish O’Dell disagreed.

“Saying it’s only six to eight hundred gallons and saying it’s a ‘non issue’ gives the reader the perception it’s no big deal,” O’Dell said, explaining that these spills often accumulate in small amounts and appear harmless at first, but eventually add up and cause significant harm.

“The [Environmental Protection Agency] comes out and estimates the amount of oil spilled and it’s the same thing— ‘no big deal' — but it is a big deal,” O’Dell added. “The Ohio River has been the most

Arson Case Reopened Man awaits trial for 1985 alleged arson.

currently between $750 and $800 million.

Krislov’s replacement remains a question for students, faculty and staff, as well as the Board of Trustees — which is the committee responsible for selecting a successor. In an email to the Review, Board Chair Clyde McGregor said there has yet to be any discussions on how the group will form a search committee, but that the previous two searches consisted of 11-member committees.

Only one student was elected to the search committee for Krislov in

polluted river in the United Sates for seven years in a row. We can’t swim in it, and we have no life in it anymore, and we can’t drink out of it.”

Although Oberlin’s water supply is safe from the oil spill pollution, it’s unclear how the spill is affecting surrounding towns and communities that also source their water from the Black River.

On Tuesday, the river still stank of oil more than a week after the spill, according to College junior Rick Yu. And while the free product recovery was completed by the Ohio EPA on Friday, cleanup crews are continuing “to work on removing residual fuel from the remaining impacted areas,” OEPA spokesperson Lindey Amer said.

“There is still more work to do to address the

Setting Goals Volleyball splits play in Pittsburgh.

Muse of Wildfire Fred Wilson intervenes at the Allen.

See page 4

See page 15

See page 10

INDEX:

Opinions 5

This Week in Oberlin 8

Arts 10

Sports 16

See Hundreds, page 2

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News

Page 2

The Oberlin Review, September 9, 2016

Implementation Committees Address Strategic Plan Eliza Guinn, Staff writer Oliver Bok, News editor Implementation committees for the Strategic Plan have started meeting. That much is clear.

Everything else — from who is on the implementation committees to how the implementation committees will interact — is far more obscure.

The process is byzantine, but the stakes are high. The Strategic Plan is intended to guide the Board of Trustee’s decisions for the next fiveten years. Among other proposals, the plan recommends developing “theme-based course clusters,” creating a new advising system and increasing diversity in both the faculty and student body.

The plan advises “analyzing current operational and capital expenditures, determining appropriate tradeoffs, and reallocating resources.”

Implementation committees will help determine what sentences like that actually mean in practice.

In the spring, the General Faculty Council — including six elected faculty members, the Dean of Arts and Sciences, the Dean of the Conservatory and President Marvin Krislov — established an ad-hoc committee for Strategic Plan Implementation. The ad-hoc committee includes the GFC, two members of staff and two students: double-degree senior Hayden Arp and College junior Jesse Docter.

The ad-hoc committee’s main purpose is to appoint members to

the implementation committees — a function fiercely contested by Student Senators, who believe that student representatives should only be chosen by students.

After negotiations, Student Senate achieved the ability to nominate students to the implementation committees, although the ad-hoc committee still has the final say over the decision.

Last semester, the Student Senate threatened to issue a vote of no confidence in the GFC’s ability to implement the Strategic Plan. Senators were frustrated not only over the perceived lack of student representation, but also by an implementation process that seemed to raise as many questions as it answered in terms of how key issues would finally be resolved — such as what would happen if two of the implementation committees made recommendations directly in conflict with each other.

Several recommendations in the Strategic Plan seem to be in conflict— it’s unclear how the College could simultaneously reduce tuition, increase faculty compensation, reduce the endowment payout and increase diversity. The question of who will make the final decisions is far from academic.

While the plan indicates that “we” as a community will make these tradeoffs, Student Senator and member of the committee for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Thobeka Mnisi questioned what that actually means.

“The point is that the ‘we’ is supposed to be everyone, but it’s not ac-

tually everyone,” Mnisi said. “Defining the ‘we’ is so important, because that means the people who actually make decisions.”

Student Senate liaison and doubledegree senior Jeremy Poe criticized the lack of transparency in the implementation process as a whole.

“Information about the implementation process was different based on which administrators or faculty we spoke to and when,” Poe wrote in an email to the Review. “This conveyed to Senate that this process was not systematic, but rather being improvised based on private conversations between administrators. Absent clear rules for student inclusion, it is easier for students to be tokenized.”

Dean of Arts and Sciences Tim Elgren emphasized that in addition to the implementation committees, there would be subcommittees that would actually perform most of the work, and that student representatives would be extremely important to their functioning.

“The goal is to engage the folks here who have expertise in these various areas to draw them in as subcommittees to work on those things, so the representation happens,” he said.

In addition to choosing members, the ad-hoc committee has created five Strategic Plan implementation teams: Advising; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Resource Management; Curricular and Co-Curricular Innovation and Support; and College Governance.

The ad hoc committee has ap-

pointed the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team, co-chaired by Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo and Associate Dean Pablo Mitchell. Student Senate nominated four student members, three of whom were selected by the ad-hoc committee. It will hold its first full meeting this week.

The Resource Management implementation committee — chaired by Director of Finance Mike Frandsen and Vice President for Devlopment Bill Barlow — has begun to meet. Senate nominated three students, all of whom ad hoc appointed.

According to Elgren, the Curricular group will start this semester, and the co-chairs are Elgren and Dean of the Conservatory Andrea Kalyn.

According to Elgren, the ad hoc committee will continue to play a supervising role throughout implementation.

“The [ad-hoc committee] is part of essentially the stewardship of the implementation process of the Strategic Plan itself,” Elgren said. “The idea is that by creating these implementation groups, all those groups report back to that extended GFC. That group is what is moving all things forward."

A Steering Committee consisting of staff, faculty, administrators, students, trustees and alumni wrote the Strategic Plan over two years.

General Faculty — which includes Student Senate — approved the Plan in early February, followed by the Board of Trustees in early March.

However, approval by the General

Faculty was not unanimous.

“In the General Faculty meeting, Student Senate unanimously opposed the adoption of the Strategic Plan, which does show the limitation of fifteen votes among hundreds,” Poe said.

Members of Student Senate were also concerned about the accountability needed to implement the reforms indicated in the Strategic Plan.

“I do think that the general response to these extreme challenges has been to create a plan and an implementation process that does not hold the administration accountable to the aspirations that they should be chasing,” Docter said.

As of this week, the ad-hoc committee has chosen the members of the advising implementation committee, and meetings of the committee are ongoing. Student Senate nominated three students for the committee, and the ad hoc committee accepted the nominations in the spring.

However, the co-chairs of the committee — Associate Dean David Kamitsuka and Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences OforiMensa — objected to the student nominees out of diversity concerns.

Negotiations between Senate and the co-chairs remain ongoing.

It’s unclear who the co-chairs of the Governance implementation committee will be or when the committee will begin to meet. Student Senate nominated three students including Poe, but have yet to hear whom the ad hoc committee will select.

Hundreds of Gallons of Fuel Leaked Into Black River Continued from page 1 source area of the spill,” Amer said. “Once the work is complete, Ohio EPA’s emergency operations will address cost recovery and violations that occurred.”

Chemtron Corporation, based out of Avon Lake, is providing environmental services for the cleanup, according to Hade. Two types of booms have been used to absorb oil in the river water. One is of floating absorbent material that collects any diesel fuel on the surface of the water. The other is a floating barrier made of plastic material with weights that diverts the spill to an area that can be pumped and hauled away for disposal. These booms were placed in several locations downstream from the spill. There is also one in front of the site of Oberlin’s river water intake.

Hade said that samples of river water will be taken by the OEPA over the next two weeks and will be tested for petroleum hydrocarbons, which will indicate whether oil is still present in the water. Once the OEPA notifies Oberlin’s water treatment plant, the city will be able to pump water from the Black River back into the reservoir.

In the meantime, Oberlin’s water treatment plant will continue to process 2.25 million gallons of water per day with water that comes from Oberlin’s reservoir, serving about 3,000 homes and businesses. The city’s water lines stretch about 40 miles.

An aerial view taken by drone of the Dechant-Notley Farms overlooking the Black River. Between 600 and 800 gallons of fuel poured into the river from the farm on Aug. 28.

Photo by Rick Yu, Photo editor

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September 9, 2016

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Page 3

Off the Cuff: Brett Walker, Montana State University History Professor Brett Walker is a Regents Professor of History at Montana State University with expertise in Japanese health and medicine and its environmental history. After graduating from the College of Idaho in 1989, Walker spent several years traveling and studying Japan before earning his doctorate in Japanese History from the University of Oregon. Walker has written books on a number of topics in Japan such as the indigenous Ainu people, the disappearance of Japanese wolves in the last century and the history of Japan’s industrial-caused diseases. Most recently, Walker has been studying the concerns of asbestos poisoning following the Fukushima triple disaster in 2011, when a tsunami led to the meltdown of the area’s major power plant and raised many questions about the safety of nuclear plants in Japan. Walker gave a talk on the issue Thursday afternoon in Craig Lecture Hall.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Between your specialties in Japanese and environmental history, which interest did you pick up first?

I think it started with Japan. I traveled around Japan and became very interested in it. I went to a liberal arts college as well, and as I began researching the environment for graduate school, that was when I really began looking into environmental topics.

When I first traveled in Japan, I lived in the northern island of Hokkaido, and it fascinated me how much it reminded me of living in the western part of the United States. There was wild country, snow in the winter; skiing was good — it reminded me of home. So when I began studying the Ainu people a little bit, it was pretty natural that I would draw comparisons between the Ainu and the Native Americans of the United States. When I began looking into Ainu more carefully, I noticed that a lot of the same environmental changes that affected Native Americans — like the importation of smallpox — also affected the Ainu.

So it was those comparative elements that drew my attention to the environment.

One of your books is The Lost Wolves of Japan. Can you talk about what it was like to research that topic and go around the wolf villages?

I really enjoyed that topic. It’s kind of a classic second-book project because you get to explore something a little closer to your heart.

In my case, it was fun because I originally had slated funding to go to Japan to work in archives, but I asked my dean if I could use the money to work with wolf biologists in Yellowstone. So I went there instead. Afterwards, they let me go to Japan with the same funding, so instead of the archives, I went to all these upland remote villages. I saw areas where wolves had once lived, as well as the animals wolves interacted with that are currently there. One of the nice things about researching environmental history is it’s a very material subject and not very abstract. These are landscapes that persist in one form or another, and visiting those is an important part of environmental history.

In recent years, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe has stated his desire to reopen Japan’s nuclear power plants despite how devastating the Fukushima disaster was.

What are your thoughts on the government returning to some very environmentally dangerous practices?

Prime Minister Abe is a tricky one because he really cut his teeth in the nuclear industry.

He has very cozy ties with that industry in Japan. So in a political, cronyistic sense, it’s not surprising that he would be so supportive of nuclear power. To his credit, I’d say it’s a complicated issue. As anyone involved in discussions of energy knows, nuclear power is one of the sources of energy that will certainly alleviate a lot of greenhouse emissions from the planet. Japan, since the Kyoto project, has been very committed to reducing greenhouse emissions because of the threat of climate change.

Since Japan is maybe the most prosperous and powerful island-country on the planet, issues like sea-level rise are real issues they need to think about. So the cynical side of me says he’s just doing this because he’s cozy with the nuclear industry, but the less cynical side says I need to be open minded about it, because what are the alternative sources of renewable energy? Are we going to burn coal? Should we dam rivers or build nuclear plants? None of

and a small amount of cash, was left unattended on a couch for a short period of time.

Friday, Sept. 2 9:47 p.m. A Safety and Security officer assisted a student who received a shock while hanging lights in their room at South Hall. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

Saturday, Sept. 3 12:43 a.m. Safety and Security officers were requested to assist an intoxicated student at Fairchild House. Officers spoke with the student before escorting them to their room.

1 p.m. A student reported a missing wallet at a party they attended on Woodland Street. The wallet, a black Hurley bi-fold containing miscellaneous cards

6:20 p.m. Mudd library staff reported the theft of a student’s backpack from the second floor by the west stairwell.

A Safety and Security officer located the backpack, but a pair of sunglasses were missing. Oberlin Police located the suspects, who had the sunglasses in their possession and admitted to taking the backpack.

Monday, Sept. 5 12:53 p.m. Safety and Security officers assisted a student who fell off their bicycle between Barrows Hall and the Science Center. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

7:44 p.m. A resident in East Hall reported a strong odor consistent with

Brett Walker, History professor

the alternatives are particularly good, so all of them need to be weighed. Clearly, regardless of what happens, Japan’s regulatory regime needs to get a handle on safety.

How do you view Japan’s desire to maintain certain criticized traditions such as whaling and dolphin hunting?

Actually, I don’t view whaling as preserving an old tradition. I view it as preserving an invented tradition. Japan has whaled for a long time, but whaling was an incredibly minor part of the economy for a long time. It didn’t pick up until the late 19th century when it began modernizing. So it only really picked up after the Pacific War when there was borderline starvation throughout Japan. My ex-mother-in-law told me she won’t discuss it because it reminds her of school lunches in Japan. What it mainly is, for some communities, is a symbol of defiance and Japanese nationalism. It’s like, “Screw you, we’ll eat whatever we want,” and that’s whales.

What whaling is for Japan is a public-relations nightmare. But for a small handful of people, it does represent this symbol of defiance against the West and nationalism, so that’s why it persists.

I got into a pretty heated argument about whether the Japanese are environmentalists. This guy argued no because the Japanese haven’t set aside its own Yellowstone National Park. Japan has national parks, but they still allow fishing and hunting on them — they have a very different philosophy toward parks. His point was that the Japanese continue to whale, they exploit parks, so they can’t be environmentalists. But I responded by saying that the reason they’re environmentalists is because they have a more efficient automobile fleet, and better recycling and public transportation than we do. When it comes to the efficiency of their communities and cities, they’re much better than we are, which is where the battle needs to be fought. Yellowstone is not the source of our problems, cities are. That being said, it takes a certain amount of ethical strength to set aside lands like Yellowstone, which are powerful expressions of the American belief in wild lands, and I wish the Japanese had a stronger expression of that. On one hand, we have a lot to learn from the Japanese. The new hotel on campus is a good example. It reminds me of a Japanese hotel. You check into your room, you have to place the key into a little tray that turns on the electricity so you don’t use power when you’re out of the room. That’s something Japan has done in their hotels for 30 years.

What is the topic of the recent research you’ve been doing and will be speaking on today?

It’s about natural disasters and asbestos poisoning, particularly focusing on the March 11, 2011 triple disaster and the cleanup effort after that. During the cleanup there was a lot of exposure to asbestos. What I’ve learned is that Japan banned asbestos very late compared to other industrial societies, and there’s a lot of asbestos that persists in Japan’s urban environments. So I’ve looked at what steps Japan has been taking to mitigate that, because many people see asbestos as Japan’s next big health crisis. They used a lot of asbestos, and very recently. The U.S. phased it out in 1980, whereas Japan used it until 2006, so many of the buildings in Japan today still contain asbestos.

Do you view Japan as being a much more environmentally conscious place than the U.S.?

Interview by Louis Krauss, News editor Photo courtesy of Brett Walker

burnt marijuana on the third floor of East Hall. Safety and Security officers arrived and observed a grinder and a plastic bag containing a green leafy substance consistent with marijuana. The officers also observed bagged smoke detectors.

The bags were removed and the plastic bag and grinder were turned over to the Oberlin Police.

officers advised the students of the danger and safety issues of being on the roof and escorted them down.

Tuesday, Sept. 6 8:25 a.m. Campus Dining staff reported a bag containing a green leafy substance on the DeCafé floor. The bag was confiscated and turned over to the Oberlin Police.

5:23 p.m. Safety and Security officers assisted an ill student in Mudd library and transported them to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

7:35 p.m. While on routine patrol, Safety and Security officers observed two students on the roof of Barrows Hall. The

Wednesday, Sept. 7 12 p.m. A resident of Union Street Village Housing reported the theft of a PlayStation 4, a controller and an HDMI cord sometime this past weekend. The items were valued at approximately $380.

Members of the Oberlin Police Department also responded for a report.

4:09 p.m. While on routine patrol, a Safety and Security officer observed a student on the roof of Harkness House.

The officer advised the student to reenter their room via the window and advised them that they are not permitted on the roof according to College policy.

8:51 p.m. Safety and Security officers assisted an ill student in Saunders House and transported them to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

News

Page 4

The Oberlin Review, September 9, 2016

New Ordinance Permits Bicycle Confiscation Oliver Bok News Editor

Chaining a bicycle to a signpost or a fence is about to become a lot more costly in Oberlin.

At a meeting on Tuesday, City Council passed an ordinance allowing the Oberlin Police Department to confiscate bikes that are not parked in bike racks or attached to hitching posts.

The ordinance also increases the fine for leaving a bike in an unauthorized location from $10 to $20. Bikers will have 90 days to pay the fine and pick up their bike before it is disposed of.

“The purpose of the law is to change behavior,” Police Chief Juan Torres said at the meeting. “Taking custody of the bicycle is going to be one of the last resorts.”

Torres added that police officers will confiscate bikes when they become a “nuisance issue” or “block the sidewalk in a manner that might endanger other vehicles or pedestrians.”

The primary motivation for the ordinance is to make the downtown safer for the elderly and disabled people, according to Councilmember Sharon Pearson.

“We had a gentleman named

Marion Parker who came before City Council three or four times,” Pearson said. “He is somebody who has a sight problem — he is partially blind, I believe — so when he is walking in the downtown and there are all these bikes parked all over the place, it’s hazardous for him.”

Pearson also stated that the ordinance would allow police to move bikes left in place for long periods of time.

“Sometimes bicycles can stay chained in places for months, and there was not an ordinance in place for the police department to do anything about it,” Pearson said.

Councilmember Bryan Burgess successfully pushed to amend the ordinance to allow people to leave their bikes on the sidewalk, but only if they leave them unlocked. The aim, Burgess said, is to allow bikers to easily pop into stores downtown while also keeping the sidewalk relatively unobstructed.

“I hope what this might do is cause someone to say, ‘Well, I can’t lock my bike on the sidewalk,’” Burgess said.

“Knowing that their bike isn’t locked on the sidewalk is going to induce them to hurry in the store and then get right back out and move their bike.”

Following the ordinance, the city

Police Chief Juan Torres describes enforcement of the new bike ordinance at the City Council meeting on Tuesday. The ordinance allows police officers to confiscate bikes parked in unauthorized locations. Photo by Bryan Rubin, Photo editor

will try to add more bike racks along Main Street and College Street. The city also wants to work with the College to add bike racks along the edges of Tappan Square.

“We have to add more bike racks, and we have to let people know where the current ones are,” Councilmember Linda Slocum said.

For Slocum, the sidewalk in front of Slow Train is one of the primary problem areas.

“We put [a bike rack] behind Slow Train but I don’t think people parking

out front realize that,” Slocum said.

“Slow Train is, I would say, the main area of concern.”

While the ordinance technically goes into effect 30 days after its enactment on Tuesday, the Police Department plans to have an additional 60day “grace period” before enforcement to educate the public about the new rule.

The Police Department plans to make a web page, print flyers and work with the College to make people aware of both the new ordinance and

the location of all the bike racks in the city.

Councilmembers repeatedly emphasized both at the meeting and to the Review that the ordinance is not meant to discourage cycling in Oberlin in any way.

“I hope that everybody accepts this in the spirit that it’s intended, and that is to make the downtown a safe place for everyone,” Slocum said. “We really do want to encourage bicycle traffic, we just want to make it a good experience.”

Alleged Arsonist Returns to City Trustees Begin Presidential Search Oliver Bok News Editor When a grand jury indicted Robert Coop for arson in 1985, Ronald Reagan occupied the White House, the Soviet Union still existed and Back to the Future topped the box office.

Thirty-one years later, Coop will finally see his day in court.

On Aug. 26, Oberlin resident Doris Jones reported a now 75-year-old Coop for occupying the garage of an abandoned home across the street because she wanted the police to make sure the man was OK. "I knew he couldn't stay out there with no food and no water," Jones said.

What she did not expect was to see police officers lead Coop away in handcuffs. Even more unexpectedly, when the police ran his name through their database, they found a 31-year-old warrant for aggravated arson.

“He was charged 31 years ago,” Lieutenant Michael McCloskey said. “It went to the grand jury. The grand jury indicted him. Then he was scheduled for a pre-trial at Common Pleas Court, and he never showed up to that court date — he fled the state." He added that he believed Coop had spent much of the previous three decades in Georgia.

Coop now sits in county jail for an alleged arson from 1985, when he was accused of setting fire to the house of Anna Moore, his girlfriend at the time.

Jones said she recognized Coop as the son of a longtime resident of 230 Lincoln Street who died last March. Jones added that Coop did not seem to know his mother had died until she told him.

“To me he was a little disoriented,” Jones said. “He didn't seem too clear.”

While Jones said she was disappointed with the police for arresting Coop, McCloskey argued that the officers had no choice.

“Once we run the name and there's an active warrant, we've got obligations to take action on that warrant," McCloskey said.

An unattributed article entitled “Not guilty of arson, man says” published April 25, 1985 in the Oberlin News-Tribune described the circumstances of the alleged arson: “Coop and Ms. Moore argued earlier in the day and Coop tried to gain entry to the Moore residence at 11:39 p.m. Saturday and a short while later at 12:10 a.m. Police were summoned each time by Ms. Moore to remove Coop from the premises, but Coop was gone when officers arrived on the scene on each occasion. Coop is charged with returning to the East Vine residence at 3:18 a.m. Sunday and setting fire to the home with an accelerant.”

The Oberlin Fire Department listed the damage to the house at 29 East Vine Street as “moderate” at the time, according to the article.

Neither Jones nor McCloskey had any idea why Coop returned to Oberlin after so many years.

According to Rob Bennett, the bailiff in this case, Coop’s pretrial will take place next Wednesday at the Lorain County Court of Common Pleas in Elyria.

Coop’s attorney from the 1985 case, John Haynes, and the Lorain County Prosecutor’s office could not be reached for comment by the Review.

For Jones, the whole incident left a bad taste.

"It's sad that it turned out that way," Jones said.

Robert Coop, accused of arson in 1985, was found in a Lincoln Street garage.

Photo by Rick Yu, Photo editor

Continued from page 1 2006, but four others were added fairly late into the search process, according to Review coverage that year. Whatever the composition of the committee, it is likely that “a large part of the process will not be public,” Krislov said.

McGregor also told the Review that if a permanent successor is not agreed upon by June 30, it is “highly likely” that the board will promote an interim president from within the existing administration. Multiple faculty members declined to comment on this issue.

College sophomore Kameron Dunbar, who is a member of the Strategic Planning Implementation Committee for Diversity, Inclusion and Equity — which is chaired by Interim Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo — said he hopes students will have a meaningful role in determining the replacement. “[A faculty member] highlighted pieces of the last search for me, and estimated that there will be a tight, very selective, relatively secretive search process,” Dunbar said in an email to the Review. “I hope that there is a significant role for students during the entire process and that it’s more transparent this time.”

For many students, having the trustees hear their input on Krislov’s successor is crucial. Student Senate liaison and double-degree senior Jeremy Poe said that while he hopes students’ voices will carry weight with the board, he is concerned about the effectiveness of the search process.

“The president is leaving, but you have no guarantee you’re going to get someone better, so I’m cautiously pessimistic,” Poe said. “I’m sure someone will say the search process is a ‘community conversation that needs to happen,’ which will be about as effective as a national conversation on race.”

Poe also praised Krislov for taking a hands-on approach with students, adding that the political structure on cam-

pus sometimes puts an unfair burden on the president.

“Oberlin has created this awful position that is thankless, and no one can really define what the president is supposed to do,” Poe said. “Aside from raising money, the other side of the job is to preside over the school. What that means is not really defined. So in the last year, and really all the years I’ve been here, I’ve noticed that whenever there’s a crisis it’s always a question of ‘What is the president doing?’ What the president does is as much about what they want as it is about what others want of them. So the phrase I always use is: Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

Dunbar elaborated on Poe’s sentiment.

“There are deans, senior staff, senior administrators and others much more well equipped to handle certain issues that arise,” Dunbar said. “In the most basic of senses, the president's job is to assist in fundraising and institutional continuity. I think President Krislov's record will prove that he was successful as both.”

The board will announce its plan in the upcoming weeks. Krislov said he will have little to no involvement in the process, but that he has begun identifying candidates that he thinks would be appropriate for the job. Ultimately, though, it will land in the trustees’ laps to select his predecessor.

McGregor offered nothing but praise for the incumbent president.

“I have enjoyed working with Marvin both as a member of the Board and then as Chair of the Board,” McGregor wrote in an email to the Review. “He is a wonderful person, and I am proud to call him my friend. He has given much of himself to Oberlin College and its students. The Oberlin community will be pulled in two directions this year: to look forward for new leadership and to look backward to celebrate and affirm the 10-year presidency of Marvin Krislov.”

September 9, 2016

Opinions The Oberlin Review

Letters to the Editors

Administration Should Encourage Students to Approach Professors To the Editors:

I took Environmental Studies 101 during my freshman spring. I felt confident in my performance throughout the semester, not only because I had worked hard in the class, but also because I had taken AP Environmental Science in high school. When I saw my final grade, my heart sank; I had gotten a D. I felt so upset and hurt.

Because of the shame I felt, I avoided speaking with anyone about the grade; I bottled up my feelings inside and kept it to myself. I convinced myself that I had not been a good student, that I deserved the D and told myself to soldier on. I didn’t even consider the possibility of approaching my professor or a dean to seek an explanation for the grade. When I reflect on this, I can only think that the bad grade landed like a blow to my already shaky selfconfidence and I retreated into myself, cloaking my shame in a mask of indifference.

A year came and went. During my sophomore spring, I got a call from my mom. She had seen the grade on my Presto account and was concerned.

I had been carrying the feelings of humiliation and hurt around with me for so long that upon hearing my mom’s worry, I broke down and sobbed over the phone. The first thing my mom suggested that I do was contact my class dean to ask about how I might go about seeking an explanation for the grade. After hearing me out, my class dean directed me to the dean of studies. I hemmed and hawed, putting off contacting him.

My sophomore year ended and, partially because of this experience, I decided to take a year off from college. The summer passed and as I was getting ready to go to Israel for three months, my mom continued to pester me about contacting the dean. Shortly before I left

last September, fully 15 months after receiving the D, I spoke to the dean of students. I got the sense that little could be done to change the grade but was nevertheless advised to contact the professor. Shortly thereafter I sent an email to my professor inquiring about the grade. Within an hour, she responded: “I just checked in my records and you have an overall B+ in my personal grade sheet.”

A lump rose in my throat and I felt simultaneously relieved and upset with myself for not pursuing an explanation sooner.

I still do not understand how my grade was recorded as a D. I received no apology for the error, neither from the professor nor from the administration.

I also have no idea how often this kind of mistake occurs, though I tend to think it is not unique.

I acknowledge that I am partially at fault for not having approached the professor upon receiving the D. For the freshman that I was, with a fragile sense of self-esteem, I felt no indignation nor injustice upon receiving the grade that would have spurred me to demand an

received and ensure correct recording of grades so that no one has to suffer in silence like I did.

– Jennifer Feigin College junior

Community Must Acknowledge Anti-Semitism To the Editors:

Kudos to Oliver Bok and the staff of The Oberlin Review for careful and responsible reporting on the ongoing governance process concerning Professor Karega in what is, to put it mildly, a low-information environment (“Karega Governance Process Enters Seventh Month,” Sept. 2, 2016). That confidentiality is necessary makes the lack of information no less frustrating, especially given how long the process is dragging on for reasons that cannot be disclosed.

However, I remain troubled by the equivocation about the substance of the Facebook posts — “many considered” they were anti-Semitic — which I had hoped would have ––––––––––––––––––––––––––– been settled by the many, many interventions about them in Because of the shame I the Review and in campus discussions last year. Clearly, it felt, I avoided speaking has not been settled, so to reitwith anyone about the erate: The content of the posts grade; I bottled up my was anti-Semitic. Period. As a matter of historical and confeelings inside and kept temporary context, as a moral it to myself. I convinced matter and as a matter of intelmyself that I had not lectual honesty, we have got to been a good student, that stop waffling about this. The fact that the posts were antiI deserved the D, and Semitic ought not to dictate told myself to soldier on. any particular outcome of the ––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Professional Conduct Review Committee investigation, but it explanation, but only an over- is a fact nonetheless. whelming sense of shame and This is not the first time that self-blame. I don’t think I am our community has confronted alone, especially among fresh- bigotry and been called upon men, in having that response. to acknowledge it. It has never The administration would do been easy. That we still cannot well to recognize such human do it suggests that we have a lot frailties in students and do to learn. more to both encourage students to approach their profes– Jade Schiff sors promptly if they don’t unAssistant Professor of Politics derstand the grades they have

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

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

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

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

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

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

Page 5

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

Editors-in-Chief Tyler Sloan Vida Weisblum Managing Editor Kiley Petersen Opinions Editor Sami Mericle

Council Needs Quicker Decision on City Manager The city manager search that has now stretched for nine months resembles an episode of Amy Poehler’s Parks and Recreation, except there’s no season finale in sight. Interim City Manager and Finance Director Sal Talarico has stepped up since former City Manager Eric Norenberg resigned last December, but City Council seems at odds and unwilling to permanently appoint Talarico to the post.

In a meeting on Aug. 15, the council had its search narrowed to two candidates: Talarico, who has worked as the finance director for nearly 16 years, and Navy veteran Lowell Crow, who has two years of experience as a city administrator in Monmouth, IL. But the council failed to reach a supermajority, which requires five of the seven voting members to agree on a single candidate. Less than 24 hours after the vote, Crow dropped out of the race and Talarico’s prospects as manager remain up in the air.

“I haven’t decided whether I’ll participate if I’m required to in another whole set of the interviewing process. Bottom line: I haven’t made a decision yet,” Talarico said in the Sept. 2 Review article (“Stalemate Results in Extended City Manager Search”).

When Talarico was appointed in December, he told the Oberlin NewsTribune that he anticipated the search would take four to six months. But nearly a year and $40,000 in search fees later, Talarico is exactly where he was in January, and the council seems nowhere closer to concluding its hunt.

“City council needs to get over itself,” wrote Michael Sigg, former director of Oberlin Public Works, in a Tribune letter to the editor. “The most daunting problem facing a city manager in Oberlin would be dealing with a seemingly dysfunctional city council.”

Although Sigg’s words are certainly sharp, his criticism is not entirely off-base. Oberlin cannot afford to spend exorbitant amounts of money seeking more candidates when capable options have been cast aside due to the council’s discordance. While the Editorial Board does not endorse Talarico, he is certainly qualified for the position and ready and willing to take the job.

Oberlin uses a council-manager form of government with the city manager acting as the head of the administrative branch for the city. The main duties of the position are overseeing all hiring decisions, except for those appointed by the City Council, preparing the city budget, setting the agenda for council meetings and otherwise administering the city’s charter.

Talarico has succeeded in all of these areas so far, which is perhaps what led Council President Ron Rimbert and members Scott Broadwell, Kelley Singleton and Sharon Fairchild-Soucy to vouch for him at the meeting in mid-August. But with dissent from Sharon Pearson, Linda Slocum and Bryan Burgess, council was unable to move forward.

This is hardly the first time that a split council has stunted the governing body’s effectiveness. In January 2015, four of the seven councilmembers — current members Burgess and Pearson and former members Kristen Peterson and Elizabeth Meadows — signed off on a letter that called for Norenberg’s resignation, citing issues with his management style. The letter was the focal point of drama for city government, as half of the council abstained from signing the request and Norenberg decided to stay until December of last year.

But as conflict continues, criticism over the indecision is mounting.

Fairchild-Soucy condemned the council’s failure in an Aug. 22 letter to the editor published in the Oberlin News-Tribune, which highlighted the inability of the council to compromise between the majority and minority factions (“Councilwoman frustrated over lack of hire”).

“I accept the resulting criticism, and I am disappointed that my voice and those of the majority were not sufficient to convince at least one of the minority to support acting city manager Sal Talarico,” Fairchild-Soucy wrote.

It is high time for council to prioritize the public’s voices instead of abiding by its internal conflict, which will require expediting the process for another candidate and — hopefully — prevent a high cost for the manager search.

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, September 9, 2016

Next Oberlin President Must Promote Unity Kameron Dunbar Conributing Writer The angst sweeping the country has trickled down to the microcosm of Oberlin. The year has been divisive for the country as a whole. We have a presidential candidate calling for an entry ban on an entire religious group.

Political polarization is at an all-time high. People are dissatisfied. What we need now, at least at Oberlin, is a unifier.

With President Marvin Krislov’s announcement of his forthcoming departure, the community is thinking about his successor. No matter who they are, there are several qualities they must possess.

Oberlin’s next president must be a unifier. They must be able to unite Oberlin in new ways. They must be able to balance the concerns of students, faculty, staff, alumni and all other pillars of the Oberlin community. They must maneuver strategically while maintaining a level of ethics and decorum essential to running an institution heavily rooted in a commitment to social justice.

Oberlin’s next president must reflect Oberlin’s changing landscape. Oberlin doesn’t look the same as it did when its first acting President Henry Brown was at the helm in 1834. It doesn’t look the same as it did when revivalist Charles Grandison Finney led during the Second Great Awakening in 1851. Nor does it look like it did when President Krislov took hold of the reigns nearly 10 years ago. Oberlin’s next president should look like, think like and reflect the values of a changing America, a changing narrative of higher education and a reconceptualization of how a liberal arts education must function in 2016.

Oberlin’s next president must, in the words of First Lady Michelle Obama at Oberlin’s 2014 Commencement Ceremony, “run toward the noise.” There’s no debating that Oberlin has made a name for itself, though whether its popular image is warranted is highly debatable. However, the First Lady emphasized that graduates should not shy away from contention, iterating, “I want to urge you to actively seek out the most contentious, polarized, gridlocked places you can find, because so often, those have been the places where progress really happens.”

Oberlin faces its own level of contention, polarization and gridlock, and our next president must be willing to take on that weight.

Oberlin’s next president must have a passion for service and a commitment to the disaffected. In the course –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Oberlin’s next president should look like, think like and reflect the values of a changing America, a changing narrative of higher edcation and a reconceptualization of how a liberal arts education must function in 2016.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– of helping many, Oberlin has left some hurt. This has been demonstrated in the cries of various community stakeholders last year in several written declarations, including but not limited to the demands issued by ABUSUA and the letters of concern written by a faction of Jewish alumni. Our next president must acknowledge this grief and work to rebuild parts of our community that have been left in pain.

Oberlin’s next president should be an Obie. Although there’s no requirement for Oberlin’s president to be a graduate, there is one for our Board of Trustees. The relationship established by once being a student at Oberlin offers a unique opportunity for nuanced understandings of what exactly Oberlin needs, how it functions and how you can empower the student body to reach for its maximum potential. Who better to run Oberlin than an Obie?

Finally, Oberlin’s next president must not only see Oberlin for what it is, but for what it can be. I truly believe that Oberlin is great. We don’t need to “make Oberlin great again.” But we must strive for the magis: the more, the better. Here’s to Oberlin’s next president taking us to new heights of academic excellence, promoting healthy, sustainable and inclusive social prosperity, and renewing commitments to the principles that make Oberlin Oberlin.

Nick Endicott

Progressives Should Oppose Gun Control Josh Ashkinaze Contributing Writer While we may associate gun supporters with angry white men in leather jackets and gun control supporters with hippies and peace signs, these stereotypes are only a product of recent times.

Throughout American history, gun control proponents were the powerful and the racist, not liberals and peaceniks.

Recognizing the roots of gun control advocacy — the intentional disarming of a marginalized population and selective enforcement of gun legislation — means opening up a new case against gun control, one based on the systemic discrimination that inevitably comes with arms legislation. The conservative and libertarian case against gun control is a matter of individual liberty. But after recognizing that gun control is consistently used to discriminate against minorities, there’s a case to be made that progressives, too, should be wary of gun control: It’s hypocritical that progressives champion equality while supporting gun laws with consistently discriminatory enforcement.

Let’s look at contemporary gun control. Stop-and-frisk originated as a Supreme Court interpretation of gun control policy, not drug control policy. It’s no surprise, then, that 9 out of 10 of those stopped were Black or Latinx. And there is still extremely selective enforcement of gun control laws. In 2015, 47.5 percent of those convicted of firearms charges were Black. This sentencing disparity is especially important because the average firearms sentence in 2014 was a hefty six years. If we consider the resource-heavy sting operations that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives conducts — these stings being the most advanced and militarized form of gun control — it is telling that over 90 percent of those arrested are ethnic minorities.

This is not just a recent phenomenon.

Since Reconstruction, the enforced control of firearms has resembled a war on minorities not unlike the war on drugs.

Legislation crafted to control and regulate firearms has never outgrown its rac-

ist birth origins.

After the Civil War, southern states passed the Black Codes, a series of laws aimed at restricting freedmen’s social, political and economic freedom. One particularly important part of the Black Codes was essentially banning Black people from owning firearms. This was one of the primary goals of the Ku Klux Klan — to confiscate arms from Black people.

In response to the general degradation of Black people in the South and the overt disarming of Black people in particular, the Reconstruction Congress managed to pass the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1870.

These bills prohibited explicit civil rights violations against Black people, so the South had to get creative with policies to maintain the practice of disarming. They made nominally race-neutral laws that were still designed to disarm minorities, like restricting gun ownership to former Confederate soldier’s weapons and banning cheap guns.

As an illustration of this trend, take the 1941 Florida Supreme Court ruling Watson v. Stone, in which a white man’s conviction for carrying a gun without a license was overturned. Florida Supreme Court Justice Rivers Buford was amazingly candid in his concurring opinion. He wrote that the gun violation in question was never meant to be applied to whites, anyway: “The Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers,” he wrote. “The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied … It is a safe guess to assume that more than 80 percent of the white men living in the rural sections of Florida have violated this statute.”

One of the most major gun control measures in the last 50 years, the Mulford Act, shows equally familiar racial undertones. In the 1960s, the Black Panthers carried legal firearms to “patrol” officers during police stops. The notion of radicalized Black people with weapons scared much of the public. Republican Assem-

blyman Don Mulford channeled that fear to introduce the 1967 Mulford Act, which restricted carrying of loaded weapons.

Reagan, an ostensible champion of individual liberty, signed the Act. Much like the South’s Reconstruction-era decision to ban inexpensive firearms, this was another case of nominally neutral gun control legislation passed in opposition to minorities owning arms.

If conventional gun control measures are largely discriminatory, what can we do about gun violence? There are two measures that would likely make an impact on overall gun violence without having predictably racist effects.

The first is developing a functional federal gun registry. Currently, the gun lobby has impaired the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ National Tracing Center, the agency that traces guns to owners. The Center is barred from using computerized records, and there is no national registration system, only this quaint West Virginia agency. If there was a working registry, it would be easier to trace firearms used in homicides. Additionally, the subsidization of “smart guns” — guns with added technology to prevent another person from using the owner’s weapon — would be non-coercive and effective. Let’s assume people actually used these. It would be harder to steal somebody’s gun, accidentally shoot yourself, accidently shoot others or “accidently” shoot others.

It is deeply ironic that progressives lament that minorities are targeted by law enforcement while supporting a movement that has historically been used by law enforcement to target minorities. From a libertarian or conservative standpoint, opposition to gun control is a simple matter of preserving individual freedom, and gun proponent rhetoric is filled with individuals who do seem to believe that their hunting rifle is a bulwark to tyranny. Progressives don’t usually share this affection, but that’s irrelevant.

You don’t need to be pro-gun to be wary of gun control. You just need to be against state-sponsored systemic discrimination.

Opinions

The Oberlin Review, September 9, 2016

Page 7

Disability Informs Personal Identity, Politics Auden Granger Production Editor

I’m disabled. If this article already makes you feel uncomfortable, you’re not alone.

Disability is the kind of subject you’re expected to deal with privately and secretly. You’re not supposed to talk about it — unless you’re “overcoming” it, preferably in a hyper-visible way that makes for a good motivational poster. Or unless you’re a beautiful, ever-patient, innocent creature who exists to teach a lesson to the nondisabled protagonist about living life to the fullest and appreciating what you have.

This is despite the fact that the 2010 U.S. Census puts about 20 percent of the U.S. population firmly within the category of disabled, making “disabled people” the largest minority group in the U.S. In a recent campus-wide survey on disability and access at Oberlin, 18 percent of respondents identified as having a disability. And those numbers are likely conservative estimates, because even on the census or anonymous surveys, people often aren’t willing to identify themselves as disabled.

It’s hard to claim an identity that you’ve been taught all your life was something you needed to hide, to ignore, to pretend wasn’t there, to pretend didn’t impact you. It’s hard to come into a sense of self as a disabled person when disability is something you’re not supposed to look at; when disabled people are something to be pitied, then ignored; when your aim is to pass for nondisabled as well as you

can at the cost of your health, your happiness, your learning and your safety. Even if you can’t pass, you’re supposed to pretend that being disabled doesn’t impact your ideology, that ultimately you still think and act and interact with your own body and brain like a nondisabled person. Especially if you go to a prestigious college. You’re not like them.

Oh, yes, them. There’s another major media trope of disability besides the inspiration porn, the object of pity and

menacingly toward the protagonist in a high-backed wheelchair. The medical equipment we use only serves to emphasize the physical strength and beauty of the heroes.

In some versions of this trope, it’s our own disabilities that we hate, but mostly it seems like we’re pissed at the society that’s made being a villain feel like our only option.

I claim the supervillains because that’s the representation that I have, because I’m angry and I’m unapologetic. I mark disability as a political identity, as a social identity, ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– and I take up space. When they make me superheroes, I’ll claim them too. It’s why I care about Marvel’s Daredevil It’s hard to come into a sense of self as a so much: not only is Daredevil disabled, but his disability directly informs his heroism, even down to his weapon of disabled person when disability is somechoice, an adapted version of his cane — and you can’t tell thing you’re not supposed to look at; when me that someone who sloughs off his mild-mannered, supdisabled people are something to be pitied, posedly helpless persona to beat criminals nearly to death then ignored; when your aim is to pass for isn’t bitter.

My disability informs my experiences and my perspecnondisabled as well as you can at the cost of tive, my passions and my approaches, my sexuality and your health, your happiness, your learning education and identity. If that means I’m labeled a bitter and your safety. cripple, well, there are worse fates.

If disability makes you uncomfortable, maybe it should.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– That means we’re talking about it. It means we’re doing the human lesson, and this is the one that I eventually sort more than giving furtive stares to people we pass in the of fell into. It’s the bitter cripple trope, and you’ve probably grocery store, doing more than admiring celebrities for takseen it in action. ing pictures with sick kids and using disabled survival as a We’re usually supervillains or grumpy background prop for our own inspiration. It means we’re moving past characters. Frequently, we rage against society. We might simple tropes into recognition and celebration. be awkward, autistic-coded evil geniuses, or we may turn

Political Face-Offs Supersede Philippine Drug Crisis Melissa Harris Production Editor Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte brought his nation into the international spotlight this week by slandering U.S. President Barack Obama, calling him a “son of a whore.” I am hugely disheartened by Duterte’s justification of his attack on the U.S. president, as well as Obama’s response of cancelling his meeting with Duterte.

Obama was supposed to meet with Duterte Tuesday in Laos to discuss drug-related extrajudicial killings in the Philippines.

When Duterte was running for president, he made a promise to eradicate both drug dealers and users in his country. Since his inauguration June 30, over 2,400 people have been killed by extrajudicial means, which means that governmental authorities have killed people without the sanction of any judicial proceeding or legal process. The youngest reported victim of these killings was a 5-year-

old girl, who was eating lunch when gunmen fired into her family’s home. The perpetrators were targeting her grandfather.

Duterte said that he is a president of a sovereign state, one that had long ceased being a colony. “I am not answerable to anyone except the Filipino people,” he said to reporters Monday before flying to Laos.

The irony in his lines is almost as shocking as when he insulted Obama. A little known historical fact is that past presidents of the Philippines were not only friendly with U.S. presidents, but they have all been puppets of U.S. political will, economic intervention and military occupation. Duterte claims that the Filipino people are his master. But he acts like a tyrant with his militarized resolution against drug issues in the Philippines while also denying a history of U.S. imperialist relationships — a relationship that is still very strong today.

U.S. imperialism in the Philippines is often an obscured history. The Philippines became

a U.S. colony after Spain ceded the nation in the 1898 Treaty of Paris. In furtherance of an imperialist agenda, there was significant interaction between U.S. corporations and leaders and those with socioeconomic and political power in the Philippines. As the Philippines still exists as a semi-feudal society, it has been especially easy for such exploitation to occur. In particular, the U.S. has helped increase militarization and military training in the Philippines.

Now, Duterte is taking advantage of that militarization by mobilizing soldiers against the population, whether guilty of drug involvement or not. Meanwhile, Obama has called off his meeting with Duterte. As a Filipino-American woman, I am dispirited by these reactions. Although political and military corruption in the Philippines is nothing new to me, watching Obama turn away from his meeting with Duterte felt like a form of abandonment. I felt betrayed knowing the prospect of this could have sparked a new di-

alogue between the Philippines and the U.S. concerning military use and imperialist relationships. At the same time, I am reluctant to forgive U.S. leaders for giving the Philippines the means to kill its own people.

This story is covered in layer after layer of irony. The Filipinx American Student Association on campus is celebrating Filipino American Heritage Month this October. However, the leaders of the two nations we associate with — the Philippines and America — are ones we are currently critical of and are not celebrating. In the face of political posturing and attempts to one-up each other, Duterte and Obama are only focusing on themselves and not the people who are continual victims of militarization, imperialism and governmental corruption: the Filipinx people.

FASA stands in solidarity with the victims of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines.

Come this October, we will celebrate Philippine heritage and its people, not the leaders who destroy them.

Trump’s Media Monopolgy Siphons Populist Energy From Sanders Campaign Ben Silverman Contributing Writer Republican Nominee Donald Trump’s presidential bid — the biggest political story of the year — has commanded an unprecedented control of the media cycle. By the end of February 2016, Trump had amassed nearly $2 billion in earned media coverage, which includes social media mentions and any appearances on TV, newspapers and radio. This coverage has been a direct boon for Trump’s campaign and was particularly beneficial during the primaries. His message proliferated quickly and thoroughly, allowing him to distinguish himself among the Republican field and reach straight through to the frustrated GOP base. However, the all-Trump media cycle has created a butterfly effect on the rest of the race, with each candidate and each issue getting their coverage re-contextualized or altogether crowded out as time goes on. Even the Democratic primary was not spared from the influence of Trump, par-

ticularly in regard to the fate of fellow populist Bernie Sanders.

Trump’s greatest dominance over the media began shortly after he announced his presidency.

He began climbing the polls just a month after his now infamous announcement speech in June 2015 and saw a 20 point increase through July. In July, according to a New York Times report, he had eclipsed the sum of all media coverage for other candidates — both GOP and Democrat — at $200 million worth of coverage. In the next six months, Trump’s media exposure skyrocketed, reaching nearly $2 billion in total by the night of the Iowa caucus. However, he only rose about five points in polls during that time period, indicating that the media coverage was not due to an actual increase in the appeal of his campaign. As voters headed to the primaries in February, they were subjected to a month of $400 million worth of coverage for a GOP candidate with just over a third of his party’s support, the same amount of support that then-

Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders had amassed at the time. In comparison, Sanders had received scraps of publicity, as his total coverage in a year of campaigning was unable to match Trump’s air time in one month.

Sanders, like Trump, has represented a populist sentiment roaring back into U.S. politics. While it wouldn’t be right to lump him and Trump together as similar candidates, their bond is found in the common ground they both cover.

Both of their successes are based on the contemporary phenomena of rising inequality giving way to anti-establishment sentiment and qualms about the economic or cultural standards emerging in recent decades. For this reason, media coverage becomes all the more important for them as they dust off previously dismissed ideologies and struggle to broach new proposals to the public. In the same way that many Americans would often dismiss Libertarian or Green Party candidates, Trump’s authoritarianism and Sanders’ democratic

socialist positions required a greater effort for familiarization among a public entrenched in a different mode of thinking.

For populists in particular, media coverage can often highlight the political significance of their movement. By definition, the populist is one who fights for the common folk, who believe they have been wronged by an elite class. The more exposure a populist gets — especially exposure of their widespread support — the more people are led to believe that there is a pressing notion of dissatisfaction in the populace. Whether or not they exactly agree with the priorities of the populist, people can be persuaded to vote with their fellow citizens out of a care for general welfare, especially if they find their party’s other choices underwhelming. The imbalance of media coverage by the end of February was almost $2 billion for Trump to Sanders’ $321 million, all while they were polling at equal percentages. Whether it is Trump or the news media to blame, there has

been undeniable damage done to the liberal populist cause by way of egregious misrepresentation of the state of the nation.

In his constant media appearances, Trump has created a pessimistic economic psuedo-reality.

Sanders has been pessimistic as well, but Trump has accomplished it in such a way that paints the solutions offered by Sanders as completely counterintuitive. For example, in a world where economic depression stems from American jobs being taken by immigrants or shipped away to China and Mexico, Sanders’ proposition to raise taxes and make college free is almost incoherent. Translate this dynamic to the large scale of mass media, and everyone’s reality shifts a bit towards Trump’s, even those voting in the Democratic primary. In effect, Donald Trump’s massive media presence has polluted the populist cause, harming Sanders’ image and even diluting the energy of the current populist movement in the U.S. through divisive demagoguery.

Calendar Open Mic Night Friday, Sept. 9, 8–10 p.m.

Cat in the Cream The second Friday of each month is the Cat in the Cream’s open mic. There are only four times a semester to let your talents shine — sign up early when the doors open at 7:30 p.m.

Art Rental Saturday, Sept. 10, 8 a.m.–12 p.m.

Allen Memorial Art Museum Art Rental is probably the closest Oberlin will ever come to the chaos and competition of rush week. Students have been known to line up almost 24 hours in advance for a Monet or Renoir to hang on their dorm wall. The line forms on the north side of the building off of Lorain Street, and groups of students are admitted five at a time.

Notable Oberlin Presidents: Past&Present

Tenure: 1851-1866 Trivia: Finney was a central figure in the religious revival movement of the early 19th century.

Oberlin’s grand chapel on North Professor street bears his name.

Charles GRandison Finney

Tenure: 1866-1889

James Harris FaIRChild

Trivia: A graduate of Oberlin’s inaugural class, Fairchild was fond of traveling and ventured to Europe, Egypt, California and Hawaii.

In 1858 the fugitive slave John Price took refuge in Fairchild’s attic. Fairchild Chapel on Lorain Street was named in his honor.

Breaking the Stigmas of Human Trafficking

Saturday, Sept. 10, 1–2 p.m.

King 241

Project Unbound, an Oberlin student group dedicated to educating students about and fighting against local human trafficking, will kick off its month-long stigma series this weekend.

Moses Sumney in Concert Saturday, Sept. 10, 8–10 p.m.

Cat in the Cream Come to the Cat in the Cream for its first fall concert featuring Moses Sumney, a folk singer/songwriter whose ghostly tunes have taken Los Angeles by storm despite his having only released a 2014 EP, Mid-City Island.

Sumney has played with Sufjan Stevens, Dirty Projectors and Local Natives.

Office of Environmental Sustainability Hangout

Wednesday, Sept. 14, 4:30–5:30 p.m.

Wilder 115

Nancy Dye

Marvin Krislov

Tenure: 1994-2007

Emil Dannenberg Tenure: 1975-1982

Tenure: 2007- Present

Trivia: The first woman to serve as president of Oberlin College, Dye established the Bonner Center, ties with Posse and Questbridge scholarship programs and commissioned the AJLC and Science Center. Formerly a dean at Vassar College, both the CAST and Cinema Studies programs were created during her tenure.

Trivia: A Rhodes Scholar, he’s earned degrees at Oxford and Yale Universities. Prior to his arrival at Oberlin, he served as President of Michigan University, where his legal defense of the school’s admission process influenced an important Supreme Court Decision.

Trivia: Born in Hong Kong, Danenberg made his piano debut at age five. After becoming a professor of pianoforte in 1960, he eventually claimed the role of Dean of the Conservatory and President of Oberlin College. Unsurprisingly, he married a fellow Obie.

Interested in sustainability but missed the Connections Fair? Join the Office of Environmental Sustainability for its monthly potluck. Vegan food will be provided.

The Color Purple Thursday, Sept. 15, 7:30–9:30 p.m.

Apollo Theatre The Apollo will host a special screening of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple this Thursday. The 1985 film directed

by Steven Spielberg and starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey spent 21 weeks in U.S. theaters and was nominated for 11 Academy Awards. Tickets are $2 for students and senior citizens and $4 for the general public.

Design by Vida Weisblum Building Drawings by Caitlin McCuskey Photo by Bryan Rubin

Henry Churchill King

Trivia: King served as Director of the Religious Work Department of the Y.M.C.A. in France during WWI. Later he worked on the InterAllied Commission on Mandates in Turkey. He was declared a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor of France.

Tenure: 1902-1927

Trivia: Barrows made a name for himself as resident of the World’s Parliament of Religions and spent time lecturing in India.Warner Gymnasium and Severence Hall were built during Tenure: his brief tenure.

Hall was 1899-1902 Barrows named after him.

John Henry Barrows

Calendar Open Mic Night Friday, Sept. 9, 8–10 p.m.

Cat in the Cream The second Friday of each month is the Cat in the Cream’s open mic. There are only four times a semester to let your talents shine — sign up early when the doors open at 7:30 p.m.

Art Rental Saturday, Sept. 10, 8 a.m.–12 p.m.

Allen Memorial Art Museum Art Rental is probably the closest Oberlin will ever come to the chaos and competition of rush week. Students have been known to line up almost 24 hours in advance for a Monet or Renoir to hang on their dorm wall. The line forms on the north side of the building off of Lorain Street, and groups of students are admitted five at a time.

Notable Oberlin Presidents: Past&Present

Tenure: 1851-1866 Trivia: Finney was a central figure in the religious revival movement of the early 19th century.

Oberlin’s grand chapel on North Professor street bears his name.

Charles GRandison Finney

Tenure: 1866-1889

James Harris FaIRChild

Trivia: A graduate of Oberlin’s inaugural class, Fairchild was fond of traveling and ventured to Europe, Egypt, California and Hawaii.

In 1858 the fugitive slave John Price took refuge in Fairchild’s attic. Fairchild Chapel on Lorain Street was named in his honor.

Breaking the Stigmas of Human Trafficking

Saturday, Sept. 10, 1–2 p.m.

King 241

Project Unbound, an Oberlin student group dedicated to educating students about and fighting against local human trafficking, will kick off its month-long stigma series this weekend.

Moses Sumney in Concert Saturday, Sept. 10, 8–10 p.m.

Cat in the Cream Come to the Cat in the Cream for its first fall concert featuring Moses Sumney, a folk singer/songwriter whose ghostly tunes have taken Los Angeles by storm despite his having only released a 2014 EP, Mid-City Island.

Sumney has played with Sufjan Stevens, Dirty Projectors and Local Natives.

Office of Environmental Sustainability Hangout

Wednesday, Sept. 14, 4:30–5:30 p.m.

Wilder 115

Nancy Dye

Marvin Krislov

Tenure: 1994-2007

Emil Dannenberg Tenure: 1975-1982

Tenure: 2007- Present

Trivia: The first woman to serve as president of Oberlin College, Dye established the Bonner Center, ties with Posse and Questbridge scholarship programs and commissioned the AJLC and Science Center. Formerly a dean at Vassar College, both the CAST and Cinema Studies programs were created during her tenure.

Trivia: A Rhodes Scholar, he’s earned degrees at Oxford and Yale Universities. Prior to his arrival at Oberlin, he served as President of Michigan University, where his legal defense of the school’s admission process influenced an important Supreme Court Decision.

Trivia: Born in Hong Kong, Danenberg made his piano debut at age five. After becoming a professor of pianoforte in 1960, he eventually claimed the role of Dean of the Conservatory and President of Oberlin College. Unsurprisingly, he married a fellow Obie.

Interested in sustainability but missed the Connections Fair? Join the Office of Environmental Sustainability for its monthly potluck. Vegan food will be provided.

The Color Purple Thursday, Sept. 15, 7:30–9:30 p.m.

Apollo Theatre The Apollo will host a special screening of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple this Thursday. The 1985 film directed

by Steven Spielberg and starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey spent 21 weeks in U.S. theaters and was nominated for 11 Academy Awards. Tickets are $2 for students and senior citizens and $4 for the general public.

Design by Vida Weisblum Building Drawings by Caitlin McCuskey Photo by Bryan Rubin

Henry Churchill King

Trivia: King served as Director of the Religious Work Department of the Y.M.C.A. in France during WWI. Later he worked on the InterAllied Commission on Mandates in Turkey. He was declared a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor of France.

Tenure: 1902-1927

Trivia: Barrows made a name for himself as resident of the World’s Parliament of Religions and spent time lecturing in India.Warner Gymnasium and Severence Hall were built during Tenure: his brief tenure.

Hall was 1899-1902 Barrows named after him.

John Henry Barrows

Arts The Oberlin Review

Page 10

September 9, 2016

Fred Wilson Intervenes at AMAM Sculpture Court Julia Peterson Production Editor This year, everyone who walks through the front doors of the Allen Memorial Art Museum will be confronted by an unexpected sight. The King Sculpture Court is full of imposing, broken statues.

They may look like something from another time and place, but they have really come from nowhere farther than our own town and campus. This collection of sculptures is Wildfire Test Pit, one of the two exhibitions currently on display at the Allen by contemporary artist Fred Wilson set to remain until June 2017.

“Wildfire Test Pit ... is the first thing that you’ll see when you walk in,” said Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Denise Birkhofer. “Visitors might come in expecting [the exhibit] to be one of our typical museum spaces, not realizing at first that it’s actually an artwork put together by a contemporary artist from his perspective … People have to spend time with the spaces to really understand them and think about them from their own perspective without being told what to think about the art ... or the space.”

Wildfire Test Pit is an example of one of Wilson’s famous ‘museum interventions’ — his practice of revamping art and museum spaces and presenting them in new, unexpected ways. His intent is to shine a spotlight on the often-unspoken dominant narratives that are woven through these institutions.

Wilson spoke about the origins of his methods. “When I was young, often I was getting annoyed that [museums] would be talking about people of color or talking about a particular subject that I knew something about as if there was nobody around who would know anything about it and they could make it up if they wanted to,” Wilson said. “I decided to test my theories about

this by making an exhibition and changing the narrative to see how different it would be. And it was very different. … So I made exhibitions, and I made them as subjective as I could from my own perspective and from [the perspectives of ] others who were not being heard in the museum.

I wanted to shake [the museum] up. To say — ‘Listen! Wake up!

You have a specific point of view, and you’re acting like you don’t.’”

Wildfire Test Pit is unique among Wilson’s museum interventions in that it is ostensibly biographical. It engages with the story of Edmonia Lewis, a neoclassical sculptor who studied at Oberlin in the mid-1800s and spent most of her career in Rome.

Lewis’ experiences resonated with Wilson. “Interested in history as I am, and certainly [the history] of people of color and artists, I just knew I had to research something about [Lewis],” Wilson said. “Because of the fact that she was a Native person and –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

His intent is to shine a spotlight on the oftenunspoken dominant narratives that are woven through these institutions.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––– an African-American person, her work was not valued in the same way that other sculptors were ... she struggled in her time.”

The name of the exhibit is a tribute to Lewis in itself, though it references other themes broached by the exhibition.

“It’s called Wildfire Test Pit because Edmonia Lewis’ Chippewa name ... was Wildfire,” Wilson said. He described the term ‘test pit’ as a sort of archaeological litmus test for sites. “You have vinyl texts on the wall, which speak about certain aspects of

Wildfire Test Pit, one of two exhibits by Fred Wilson that opened Thursday, is an homage to Edmonia Lewis, the 19thcentury Oberlin student and neoclassical sculptor.

Photo by Bryan Rubin, Photo editor

the show, you have labels that basically are the notes from various books about Edmonia Lewis and then there’s the artwork from the [AMAM’s] collection that I felt had some importance to the subject. Also, we’re looking at the trauma she went through at Oberlin and generally the traumas of the time before Emancipation, but also the triumph of her and the women who were sculptors in Rome.”

Despite the inspiration that Wilson drew from Edmonia Lewis, to only call Wildfire Test Pit a historical biography would underserve an exhibition that is engaged with modern narratives being grappled with throughout the United States and globally. “[Recent events are] something I was thinking about in Wildfire Test Pit, all the things that have been going on in the last year — the murder and the issues plaguing the United States around violence — but also around the world,” Wilson said.

Black to the Powers of Ten, in its exploration of historical narratives regarding race, looks at Shakespeare’s Othello through the lens of old Venice.

Photo by Bryan Rubin, Photo editor

“I’m feeling these things as I’m making this work. And the fact that so many ancient ruins have been destroyed in this last year alone is just shocking and horrifying. So all these different lines of thinking are put together in a jumble, but they’re all overlaid and overlapping and of interest.”

This exhibition also carries special meaning for the Allen itself, as it will celebrate its centennial in 2017.

“Fred’s shows … different though they are, really relate to the concept of time — memory, nostalgia, history,” said Andria Derstine, director of the Allen.

“It’s been great to have these on view right before the museum’s centennial ... as we’re thinking about the past century of the Allen and what it has meant to so many students and faculty and visitors over the decades. … Both of these exhibitions just fall seamlessly into the trajectory that the Allen has had since it was founded.”

Wilson’s other exhibition currently on display at the Allen — Black to the Powers of Ten, situated in the Ellen Johnson Gallery of Modern Art — is not a museum intervention. The work shown here comes from an entirely different side of Wilson’s practice, consisting of pieces that he has created in his studio rather than unearthed from a preexisting collection. These exhibits mark the first time that both aspects of Wilson’s practice have been showcased in the same place and time.

Birkhofer explained that Wilson’s artwork in Black to the Powers of Ten engages with historic narratives surrounding race and contains a great deal of symbolism.

“The black glass — specifically the ones that are kind of baroque — are all from Venetian style glass-making or mirror-making or chandelier-making,” Wilson said. “I found some interesting corollaries between notions of

empire in historic Venice and notions of empire today. So I began to look at the color black with the context of Venice vis-a-vis Shakespeare’s Othello. I enjoyed unpacking the story over and over again. It seems to be a very powerful metaphor for me. The mirrors and the chandeliers are all [titled with] quotes from Othello and I’m thinking very specifically about what the line is in relationship to the work and my own personal history.”

The glasswork in Black to the Powers of Ten also includes an array of black drops on the far wall of the gallery. Next to them, a different installation covers the wall in black-and-white representations of flags from African and African diaspora countries.

Although Wildfire Test Pit and Black to the Powers of Ten are profoundly different in nature and execution, they share many overarching questions, themes and –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

This exhibition also carries special meaning for the AMAM itself, as it will celebrate its centennial in 2017.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––– challenges. Derstine hopes that Oberlin students will be able to take advantage of the richness of these exhibitions in an academic context.

“I’m ... excited about how [the exhibits] will be used in teaching across the College and across, I hope, the Conservatory. Their themes lend themselves incredibly well to a wide range of disciplines at the College. Obviously, we hope that students in History, in Africana Studies, in art and even in such diverse fields as economics and the humanities and social sciences in general will come and use the works of art in their classes.”

Arts

The Oberlin Review, September 9, 2016

It Takes Two to Tango Brendan Eprile Oberlin is home to a variety of dance scenes from contra to swing, but one style has been conspicuously missing — the tango. On Tuesday, Oberlin College began offering tango lessons at Spanish house, taught by two professional instructors who share a deep history with the art form.

Instructor Micaela Barrett teaches classes through the Cleveland Tango School. Launched in 2015, the school describes itself as “a cultural organization dedicated to preserving the beauty, codes and traditions of Argentine Tango in the Greater Cleveland area.” Barrett hopes to foster a vibrant tango community in the area as well as inspire a new generation of dancers.

Barrett started out swing dancing as a teenager in New York City, but once she discovered the tango, she knew she could never go back.

“It was a feeling unlike any I had ever experienced before,” she said.

“The tango is entrancing and mystifying. I liked how it wasn’t choreographed and [that] it was just two people dancing together with few other visual cues.”

After studying in Buenos Aires for a year under masters of the art, Barrett moved to Cleveland with Alberto Cordero, her teaching partner, to give roots to their craft. Barrett was drawn to the city’s beauty, low cost of living and close proximity to other cities with thriving tango scenes ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

“The tango is entrancing and mystifying.”

Micaela Barrett Tango Instructor –––––––––––––––––––––––––––– such as Chicago, Detroit, Anne Arbor, MI and Buffalo, NY. The latter was especially important to her as her weekends are filled with master class-related travel — she and Cordero will travel to New York City Sept. 24 for a class. Cordero himself worked in New York City as well as the in Caribbean, where he worked with Y Entonces… Tango. The pair’s wide horizons stem largely from Barrett’s love of travel. It allows them to “connect with people all over the world through the tango,” Barrett said.

Barrett and Cordero will be at the helm of two separate tango classes at Oberlin, one tailored for students and another meant for faculty — “Tango @ Oberlin” and “Tango for Adults,” respectively. The pair taught their first class on campus Tuesday.

Barrett stressed that late arrivals are welcome, and that anyone with an interest in the art should give the class a try. She also emphasized that no partners are necessary as classes are not role-specific and experience is not required.

Looking to the future, Barrett hopes that students will catch on to the growing tango scene and start a club of their own at Oberlin. “Maybe some will even want to teach it themselves,” she said.

Page 11

Con Students Fill Music-Education Gap Adriana Teitelbaum Spearheaded by double-degree junior Ben Steger and double-degree senior Tim Fenton, the Music Mentors Program will amp up its operation this semester. Represented by several Oberlin Conservatory students, the program offers students the opportunity to help teach music at Langston Middle School.

Though in the past the program has boasted only a handful of participants helping out at the school a few mornings per week, Steger and Fenton are hoping to expand participation throughout the academic year.

Steger hopes to achieve a more extensive engagement with the middle school this semester, offering private lessons and small group workshops in addition to lending support to school music teachers. A larger body of Conservatory volunteers will allow the program to offer more afternoon classes, with the possible addition of groups such as jazz bands and brass or string quartets, depending on student interest.

According to Steger, one of the main goals of the Music

Mentor Program is to compensate for the budget cuts set forth in recent years by the Ohio School Board that have strained public education throughout the state, particularly school arts programs.

“A law in Ohio basically forces schools to decide which ‘extra’ workers to spend funds [on],” Steger told the Review.

Ever since the Ohio Administrative Code was changed under Governor John Kasich to allow schools to employ fewer non­ core curriculum staff members, school districts are frequently forced to choose, for example, between music teachers and nurses to keep up in the face of increasingly restrictive budget cuts.

“Governor Kasich, along with many other politicians, are drastically cutting funding for public school music education,” Steger said.

These changes have restricted flexibility in programs and classrooms all over the state. At Langston Middle School, cuts have stilted access to music education opportunities, especially to students from lower income families who may not

have access to instruments and lessons outside of school.

“The goal of the Music Mentors Program is to help public schools in Oberlin negate some of these effects by helping with music classes … and running after school programs for students to expand their musical education,” Steger said. Conservatory students involved in mentoring hope to reinvigorate –––––––––––––––––––––––––

Represented by several Oberlin Conservatory students, the program offers students the opportunity to help teach music at Langston Middle School.

––––––––––––––––––––––––– the ailing program and lend more individual attention than even the most dedicated teacher would be able to give in larger classroom situations.

Though conceived mainly to alleviate pressure on Langston Middle School’s dwindling population of music teachers, the Music Mentors Program may

offer benefits far beyond musical skill and experience.

A study by North Carolina State University found that students from disadvantaged backgrounds who have access to any type of mentor during their youth are twice as likely to pursue higher education. Psychology Today reported similar findings.

“Nonparent mentors … [are] highly instrumental in how these teens learned to believe in themselves and tackle challenging goals.”

Mentorship is beneficial not only to the students and staff members of Langston Middle School, but also to the Oberlin Conservatory students who volunteer, allowing them to gain valuable teaching experience they can apply later in their careers.

Steger and Fenton are always looking to expand the program’s offerings and reach, eagerly taking on new volunteers in their effort to reassert the importance of music in the face of a legislative attitude toward education increasingly concerned with teaching to the test.

Stop-Motion Finds its Opus in Kubo and the Two Strings Christian Bolles Arts Editor One of the most fervent debates in the sphere of moviemaking involves the value of film as art. For most, it’s understandably difficult to equate a two-hour long barrage of clichés and explosions like Transformers to, say, a Caravaggio. But then there are the movies that elicit emotion by sheer virtue of design, like Mad Max: Fury Road. Though pumped full of adrenaline and packed from beginning to end with screeching metal and unintelligible shouting, the ingenious design behind every frame makes the glorified chase scene into something special. Seeing a character sporting a flaming guitar on the back of a big rig is one thing; knowing that a real person actually held a physical guitar that spouted flame while riding a painstakingly-designed truck is another. Where some films excel in emotional depth, others excel in visual depth — both of which are valid examples of artists engaging with their craft. Kubo and the Two Strings, the new stop-motion adventure from studio Laika, masters both.

In terms of visual design, few mediums are more respected than stop-motion, but the painstaking art form has a nebulous history. In 1898, when J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith set out to make a movie about children attending a smaller-thanlife circus, practical effects weren’t just a

novelty, but a necessity. Blackton and Smith recognized stop-motion’s efficacy as a form of technical wizardry, guaranteed to wow audiences with surreal tricks of the eye that seemed like magic at the time. Unlike digital special effects and hand-drawn animation, stop-motion’s charm didn’t have the opportunity to tire out from overuse, instead settling into a niche among artists with the patience to use it. Some of this stasis can be attributed to its categorization as a medium for children; in fact, Blackton himself eventually dismissed his forays into animation ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

In terms of visual design, few mediums are more respected than stop-motion, but the painstaking art form has a nebulous history.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– as childish. And yet, the art endured, sometimes spiking with beloved works like Wallace and Gromit and The Nightmare Before Christmas before falling back into seeming obscurity. Stop-motion lacked a consistent advocate, a reliable voice to keep it afloat.

In February 2009, Laika became that voice. Though the studio had been around for four years prior, the release of its first film, Coraline, propelled it onto the world

stage. The film utilized advanced stopmotion techniques, proving Laika’s unmatched skill. Grossing $124.6 million worldwide off an ambitious budget of $60 million, the dark, understated adaptation of the popular children’s novel secured the studio a place among the greats. In the wake of Coraline’s success, the studio released two more films, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls, but neither managed to top the success of their debut feature. Taking solace in the strength of their craft rather than balking at the potential for failure, the dedicated team at Laika poured their next years into the production of a stop-motion feature for a new age of jaded moviegoers, intent on impressing. Having toyed with the dichotomy between the brightness of youth and the darkness of corruption, Laika could have rehashed old stories and leaned on visual flare.

Kubo and the Two Strings, released Aug. 19 nationwide, manages to sustain a well of emotion as deep as the craftsmanship that permeates every shot. Its narrative beautifully sustains a character-driven adventure spanning sun-kissed fields, desolate snowscapes and terrifying seas — all rendered with the beauty one would expect from the world’s premiere stop-motion artists.

In fact, Kubo transcends the art form from which it was born; though everything in the See Kubo, page 13

Comic by Ariel Miller

Arts

Page 12

The Oberlin Review, September 9, 2016

On the Record with La Tanya Hall, Jazz Vocalist World renowned vocalist La Tanya Hall is joining the Oberlin faculty this year to develop the Conservatory’s brand new Jazz Voice program.

A graduate of University of Colorado Boulder, Hall holds degrees in music and journalism. She has collaborated with legendary musicians Diana Ross, Harry Belafonte, Bobby McFerrin, Burt Bacharach, Quincy Jones, Rob Thomas, Steely Dan, Patti LaBelle and Aretha Franklin. She performed in the last road company production of Dreamgirls, and was front and center for ASCAP’s All-Star Tribute performance to Quincy Jones. As a soloist, she appeared with the American Composer’s Orchestra, the Colorado Symphony and the St. Louis Symphony, has performed at festivals around the world and gives frequent master classes with the National YoungArts Foundation.

Her much-lauded debut album It’s About Time was released in 2008. Most recently, Hall played for the critically acclaimed show “Blue Bloods” on CBS. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Oberlin brought you here to develop the Jazz Voice program in the Conservatory. What is your vision for the program?

My goal here is to create a wellrounded, thorough, intensive musical education for the Jazz Vocal majors.

And that will involve a lot of things that have already been addressed in the instrumental side of the jazz program, but now we’re adding that extra thing of the jazz vocal program.

So they’ll be working on theory, … interpretation, … technique when it comes to their voice, and … on improvisation. But we want to give them something that peels away the many layers of the onion so they have a very comprehensive understanding of the idiom of jazz and how the voice fits into that.

Are you going to push your students into being that sort of inquisitive, well-rounded performer?

Very much so! I think I would be doing [them] a disservice if I didn’t push them into that. They need to understand the roots of the music, and they need to understand the business of the music. And sometimes that is as important, if not more important, and a lot harder to learn, than the actual art of singing.

Because if you don’t have your business affairs in order … then it’s very hard to actually build and grow a career.

Do you think Oberlin is unique in musical education?

I’m still learning a lot about Oberlin! But what I’ve found so far — at least from the student population that I’ve been working with — is that it’s a very warm community, and it’s filled with a population of students who are very, very eager to learn, and that makes my job exciting.

How did you get started in music?

My father was a jazz pianist, and my mother was a singer, and from the time I could speak, I began learning and singing this music. As I got older, my interest in it became a lot more academic, because I think I had started at such a young age with the “heart” aspects of the music, learning with my family, and I began to really try to understand the music from a theory standpoint and also understand it from an academic standpoint and a historical standpoint. [That exploration] has been wonderful as far as developing my artistry, it really makes the artistry a lot stronger when you understand the roots and where it came from.

You studied journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Has journalism influenced your

La Tanya Hall, an accomplished jazz vocalist who has soloed for the American Composer’s Orchestra, performed in Dreamgirls, released a critically acclaimed debut album and much more, has joined the Conservatory faculty this year to helm the new Jazz Voice program.

Photo courtesy of La Tanya Hall

musical career in any way?

Well, I worked in the PR business … for five years after I graduated, and there’s a lot of that that goes into the music business. There’s a lot of promoting yourself, there’s a lot of doing the research to find out about different clubs in different areas, and also doing the research within the music so that you understand what it is that you’re singing about, or playing. So there’s a lot of dovetailing that happens between the two businesses.

What has been your favorite moment in your musical life thus far?

There’ve been a lot! I’ve been in this business for a long time, so there’ve been many [memorable moments]. But I’d say probably the most recent one was doing some orchestral gigs, where you have a full symphony orchestra behind you, doing this music … that I’ve known my whole life, but it really gave [the music] a deeper layer, a deeper level

of artistry, to have that kind of instrumentation backing [me] up. I literally sat on stage in awe the entire concert.

You perform quite a bit. What is your favorite part of performing?

My favorite part of the performing is … the storytelling. For me, as a singer, it’s very important that I communicate with my audience, so at this point in my career, it’s less of a technical thing and more of a human-to-human connection, so it’s very important to me that I understand exactly what I’m singing and exactly how I want to honestly communicate that.

You’ve gone on a few very long tours in your career. How do you deal with performance nerves?

Yes, I’ve gone on very, very long tours, and there are times, particularly when I’m not doing a background gig, where I do get nerves. I had pretty severe stage fright when

I was younger, and it took me many years to overcome that. But once you learn how to harness the energy and actually allow it to make your performance stronger, then you’re able to use it to your benefit.

So practice?

Practice! The more you do it, the easier it gets. And I know it sounds trite, but there’s such truth in that.

Are you going to continue touring and performing the same amount now that you’ve taken this job at Oberlin?

I hope so! As long as people keep asking, I’m going to keep going out there and performing. Luckily, I’ve been able to have a really long career doing what I love to do, and I hope to continue that as long as I can.

Interview by Eilish Spear

Arts

The Oberlin Review, September 9, 2016

Page 13

Inside Takes Players on Minimalist Journey Avi Vogel Columnist

In the middle of a dark forest, guided forward only by sparse patches of light, a little boy makes his way toward an uncertain goal. In this beautiful minimalist world, his way is sometimes barred by puzzles — none difficult enough to ever pose a significant barrier. In that sense, Inside is simple in its depiction of its protagonist’s journey through a bleak world; it consists of moving forward and overcoming obstacles. But to fault the game for being so straightforward would be to ignore its tremendous depth.

Released last June by independent

studio Playdead, Inside is a puzzle-platformer that garnered a great deal of prerelease anticipation from the studio’s niche group of fans. Although Playdead is a small developer, it attained recognition in the early days of independent games with the release of Limbo, another puzzle-platformer — like Inside — that has you guide a young boy through a twisted world. Limbo was an industry darling and found great success among general audiences as well, increasing anticipation for their recent release.

One of the greatest things about Inside is its seamless presentation. The game makes sparing use of music, relying instead on ambient noise and the sounds of

Inside, a dark dystopian thriller from independent game studio Playdead, pits the player against anonymous guards, hounds and far stranger horrors.

Photo by Christian Bolles, Arts editor

the world itself to keep you on edge.

The simplicity of the game’s mechanics also bleeds into its art direction. None of the characters have facial features, and the color palette of the game is generally ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The game makes sparing use of music, relying instead on ambient noise and the sounds of the world itself to keep you on edge.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– stark, with rare cases of bright color for emphasis. The minimalist approach to sound and appearance makes the world easy to fall into. There’s no music to pull you out of Inside’s oppressive world, and the expressionless character allows you to project your feelings and unease onto your avatar.

Inside’s world is a gritty, industrialized vision of the future. Parts of the game’s huge laboratory have been abandoned to decay, dead test subjects pepper graywashed landscapes and everything with a mind of its own wants to hunt you down.

This place is hostile, somehow instilling in you a deeper drive to uncover its secrets. Strong connections between you, your character and the science-fiction world are what propel this game to true artfulness.

The game’s sense of immersion, how-

ever, makes failure incredibly jarring. The world seems real, and it wouldn’t make sense for the boy to die, as his journey isn’t over. Yet, when you make a mistake, he pays the price through graphic death sequences. Dogs, water-bound horrors and anonymous guards all haunt the game’s darkest moments. Although the checkpoints are generous and not much progress is ever lost, the visceral nature of the boy’s deaths makes them feel real enough to want to avoid.

Inside shines in both its visual storytelling and its ability to establish a deep connection between you and world. There is no language to speak of — neither spoken nor written — leaving you to pick up fragments of this broken world as they traverse it. Men in trucks with vicious dogs pursue you. You assume control over expressionless, seemingly mindless humanoid bodies with the use of strange devices. You work your way through research facilities in varying states of disrepair and witness the aftermath of gruesome experiments. These are the pieces of Inside that leave you to piece together what has happened. Fortunately, save some intense chase sequences, there’s no rush.

The end of the experience is something to behold — straightforward, touching and deeply thought-provoking in turns.

Without the two-hour buildup to the finale, the sequence would mean little.

But each moment in this game grasps at something just out of reach.

Kubo Highlights Magic of Stop-Motion in Film Continued from page 11

foreground is hand-crafted, its every artistic endeavor, ranging from the design of its sprawling sets to the painstakingly precise rendering of each facial subtlety, succeeds spectacularly. Viewers would be hard-pressed to suppress shock at Kubo’s momentto-moment fidelity, accomplished through Laika’s well-oiled production model: one artist working on each scene at a time. Though accomplished by a patchwork of animators, the consistency of the film’s understanding of the human face impresses up to the last frame.

Kubo is the rare example of an animated film that hinges on great performances, thanks to its pioneering use of 3D printing to generate swappable faces with infinitely nuanced variation.

This new technology necessitates great performers for the sake of on-screen mimickry — though Matthew McConaughey affects the near-unrecognizable cadence of a lovable doofus type, the facial animation of his half-beetle, halfman warrior perfectly suggests the actor behind the character. The same is true for Charlize Theron as Monkey; even in primate form, her performance shines through, delivering her funniest lines with indifferent relish and imbuing sentimental moments with just the right amount of wistfulness.

Fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones might recognize the likeness of Art Parkinson as the titular character, pulling off the arc of a little boy turned jaded wanderer with eloquence and infectious energy.

And energy is exactly what young Kubo needs for the journey

ahead. Sharing a humble seaside cave with his grief-stricken mother, he spends his days entertaining townsfolk who gather to listen to his tales of heroes and monsters, supplemented by his magical ability to manipulate origami figures.

It’s fitting meta-commentary on the nature of storytelling in animation; the boy draws in audiences with visual flourishes while holding them close with powerful mythological rhetoric. He draws

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Viewers would be hard-pressed to suppress shock at Kubo’s moment-to-moment fidelity, accomplished through ... one artist working on each scene at a time.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––– his lifeblood, though, from the rare time of day when his mother comes alive with the very stories he’ll repeat the next day, highlighting the age-old truth that no narrative is original. As a film, Kubo meditates constantly on the nature of endings, such that even when the boy stays out at night despite his mother’s admonitions and is whisked away on an adventure of mythical proportions, the looming question of where it all leads pervades its quieter moments.

These moments are many, as Kubo’s few action sequences are spread thin over an otherwise quiet journey. The narrative instead relies on the animation style’s inherent sense of uncanny mystery.

Much of the danger is spoken of rather than seen, making it all the more effective when those lurking terrors are brought to the foreground. For a movie ostensibly made for children, there are some truly terrifying images and themes; one pair of antagonists in particular is enough to inspire chills even in adult moviegoers.

In all of its design, from the weapons to that creepy duo, Kubo is simply cool. Laika may have taken a risk in playing to a wider audience — Kubo, much more so than their other films, feels like the child of some higher-bar corner of Hollywood — but in doing so, they’ve broached a whole new world of potential for stop-mo-

tion animation. This is a film that anyone could appreciate, from the youngest Saturday-morningcartoon fan to the oldest Godfather aficionado. Kubo and the Two Strings has epitomized Laika’s vision. One can only hope that, like Kubo himself, they’ll keep that magic alive.

Sports

Page 14

In the Locker Room

The Oberlin Review, September 9, 2016

Sally Snover and Devyn Spielvogel

This week, the Review sat down with Assistant Softball Coach Sally Snover and Assistant Women’s Soccer Coach Devyn Spielvogel to discuss the skills they bring to their new positions, their first impressions of Oberlin Athletics and why they love coaching.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What are your backgrounds?

Describe your prior experience in athletics.

Sally Snover: I attended Washington College in Chestertown, MD, for my undergrad — it’s a small Division III private liberal arts college.

I played softball there, and just had an incredible experience. It really kind of shaped who I am. So that made me want to stay in coaching to really help other athletes have that experience as well. I was lucky enough to stay there for the past four years as an assistant coach, and now I’m at Oberlin, and I’m really excited.

Devyn Spielvogel: I grew up in State College, PA, and went to Penn State for undergrad. I didn’t play there, but I did get a very useful experience working with the women’s team — a really high quality Division I program. I was a practice player, so they would have me emulate opposing players that they were going to play in the upcoming week. So I got to play within the team system with a really, really good coaching staff, good people, good environment. Something I took away was, “Oh, this is a great environment. I would like to be part of something like this.”

when we came downstairs for half time, Erica [Dambach], the head coach, looked at me and she said, “What do you see? What changes should we make?” And at the time I was a 22-year-old student-manager.

She was a former national team head coach and national coach of the year, and she asked me personally what I thought of the game. And it was that moment when I realized the reason she is so good at what she does is because she cares about what people think. That just really hit home and I decided I wanted to be like that.

SS: I coached at Washington for four years. So that meant I was with the freshmen that came in my first year of coaching for their entire college careers. I had such a moment when they graduated. Seeing the people that they were then, these wonderful young women who were going off into the world, and then also having seen them as these freshmen who came into our program, that was just so rewarding.

Q: Was there one particular moment you can recall that made you think, “I want to be a coach”?

DS: During that experience at Penn State, I was often sent up to the press box during games to take statistics and to look at the game from a different perspective. In one game,

Q: What were your first impressions of Oberlin Athletics?

DS: I was at The College of Wooster last year and we played against Oberlin. My first impression of the Oberlin team was that they were annoying to play against, which is a good thing. They worked

Sally Snover (left) and Devyn Spielvogel

Editorial: Cleveland Enters Winning Era Continued from page 16 talent on the field has resulted in consistent, exciting, winning baseball. Currently sitting atop the American League Central Division by six games over the Detroit Tigers, Cleveland’s 81–58 overall record is the second best in the American League. As winning has transitioned from becoming a dream to a reality, it is fair to say that the city is more than ready to bring back its first World Series championship since 1948.

After a franchise-record 14-game winning streak that spanned from June 17–July 1, fan support for the club is at its highest.

Immediately after this dominant stretch, Cleveland’s home, Progressive Field, became a coveted venue for the eyes of baseball fans. Fans pack East Fourth Street before and after games sporting their red and white hats, T-shirts and jerseys, illustrating the current city-wide hype associated with the new era in Cleveland baseball.

According to Crain’s Cleveland Busi-

really hard and they competed with us really well. From the outside perspective I was like, I don’t like playing against these guys. But, that being said, that’s the type of [player] that I would want to have on my side.

SS: I was blown away from the minute I stepped on campus for my interview. The campus is beautiful, the athletic facilities are great.

I was really impressed with everything I saw. We’ve had two of our fall practices now and working with our team is just so great. All of my impressions and experiences have been positive so far.

Q: Why do you love sports?

DS: Soccer, specifically, I’ve had a really good experience with just the diversity of the game. I’ve met a lot of different types of people playing soccer and that’s been a really beneficial experience for me, not only as a soccer player and coach, but as a human being.

SS: I think it sounds almost kind of cliché, teaching through sport, but it rings more and more true the older I get and the more experience I have with it. I think that’s the thing I love most about sports. Especially, like [Devyn] mentioned, learning from mistakes. It’s a great arena to learn how to fail.

ness, on July 9, a near-sellout crowd of 32,951 attended as Cleveland hosted the New York Yankees in a pivotal American League clash.

Among all home games thus far, excluding Opening Day, Cleveland has drawn four crowds of at least 30,000 in attendance. Only two games drew those attendance figures in 2015. The average attendance in the home stand directly after the early July win streak was 28,235, a 70 percent increase from the club’s average for the first 35 home games.

Single-game ticket sales are up by 30 percent and season ticket holders are up by 500 since 2015. Stadium renovations that have taken place over the past two years have been a major contributing factor sparking increased attendance.

More fans means more food, and concession purchases are on the rise at the ballpark.

During this season’s July 4 and July 9 games, concession revenues were the second- and third-best for a non-opener since 2001.

But state-of-the-art seats and delicious ballpark food aren’t the only things drawing spectators to the stands. So what has caused this massive uproar in fan support for Cleveland baseball?

The team’s ability to thrive in hair-raising, high-pressure situations is primarily why fans have stayed captivated through all of the

Q: Who are your favorite professional athletes?

DS: One of my favorite soccer players is Aaron Ramsey. He plays on the Welsh national team and he also plays for Arsenal, which is a team I really like. I think he embodies what a player should be. He works really hard, he’s a skilled player, has a really good mentality. He picks up the people around him. I really think that he is the type of player that I would like to have on my team.

SS: Manny Machado, who plays for the Orioles. I love the way he plays the game. Obviously at the professional level I think it’s a little different, but I think he serves as a great example of switching positions and doing what was needed and doing it incredibly well.

Q: What makes you value Division III athletics over Division I or Division II athletics?

DS: I have three words to answer this question: balance of life.

That’s it.

SS: That was my experience, too.

I was a Division III student-athlete and it’s exactly that balance. Getting to compete at a high level athletically — we all still want that. It’s not sacrificing that, per se. It’s doing that and still getting to be strong in the classroom and participating in other activities.

team’s 139 games. Nine walk-off wins by eight different players have brought a new hype that the city has never experienced before.

Having recorded the second-most walk-off wins in Major League Baseball, Cleveland has shown a flair for the dramatic. Perhaps Cleveland’s most exciting win thus far was on Aug. 19 when Tyler Naquin hit a walk-off, insidethe-park home run in a 3-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays.

As the excitement continues to grow with 23 games remaining in the 2016 regular season, fans remain optimistic not only about the team making the playoffs, but also bringing home a World Series title.

Despite the newfound optimism, diehard baseball fans in Cleveland may have a difficult time forgetting devastating playoff losses from 1995–1998. In 1997, the club made it all the way to Game 6 of the World Series just to watch the Florida Marlins come back from trailing 2–1 in the ninth inning to win their first title in franchise history.

But with a new title comes new hope. The Cavaliers’ dominance instilled an expectation for success in the city, and Cleveland baseball has the talent on the field and the support of the fans to make winning a tradition. It’s time for the city to forget the dark times and remember why it is nicknamed “Believeland.”

Q: What are your goals for your first year at Oberlin? Any longterm goals?

DS: Something [Head Women’s Soccer Coach] Dan [Palmer] and I have always agreed upon is having the mentality to compete every game. If you continue to compete through adversity, through difficult situations, you will come out on top.

So our goal is to create an environment in which our players are always switched on to that. That would be a long-term goal for me too — how do I help formulate that environment at each place that I go?

SS: [Head Softball] Coach [Sara] Schoenhoft played a huge role in me wanting to come here. She has such a vision for really turning Oberlin College softball into a really strong competitive program. When I first got to Washington as a player, the program wasn’t that strong. Then over my time as a player there and as an assistant coach, I saw programs grow from [a lower] level to contending for conference championships every year. So that’s definitely a goal at Oberlin starting this year, and a long-term goal.

Q: Are you both still active in playing your sports?

DS: I play with a team in Akron in the Lake Erie Soccer League. It’s pretty competitive. When players are out of season, there are a lot of college guys — Division I, II, III, as well as some former and current professional players. So it’s a good competitive league and I really like to play still. I’m still a player at heart.

SS: I have not in Ohio yet, but since I finished my college career, I definitely have enjoyed playing. It’s slow pitch now, so definitely a little different, but still fun and nice to get out on the field again. So I hope to find that soon in Ohio.

Interview by Jackie McDermott, Sports editor Photo by Bryan Rubin, Photo editor

Yeomen Go 1–1 in Season Kickoff Continued from page 16 scored again, our level dropped a bit and they were able to put a couple more past us.”

First-year midfielders Jack McMillin and Jake Crim both saw considerable action, firing two shots each, along with Williams, classmate Jesse Lauritsen and sophomore Brian James. Though they fought hard, statistically outnumbering their opponent with 9–8 shots and 5–4 corner kicks, none of Oberlin’s attempts were able to hit net.

“I really liked how we rallied at halftime despite being down 3–0,” Williams said of the team’s energy and resolve. “It showed a lot about our growth as a team and our mentality.”

Despite Oberlin’s efforts, the small details dictated the turnout, and the Polar Bears delivered a 4–0 shutout to the Yeomen. Oberlin was simply unable to rival the sweeping power of the 2015 Ohio Athletic Conference Champion Polar Bears, and left Ada, Ohio, with a 1–1 record for the 2016 season thus far.

The Yeomen will head to Pennsylvania for a double-header this weekend, playing starts at Geneva College today at 7 p.m. and Waynesburg University tomorrow at 7 p.m. The team will have to adjust for turf fields, but New said that the team expects to come back with two wins.

Sports

The Oberlin Review, September 9, 2016

Page 15

Cool or Drool: Tebow’s Newfound Baseball Career Dan Bisno Columnist Editor’s Note: At the time this article was written, Tim Tebow was unsigned. On Thursday, Sept.

8, Tebow signed a minor-league contract with the New York Mets.

It’s time for another semester of Cool or Drool. Whether you enjoy spending your weekends watching endless reruns of ESPN’s SportsCenter or prefer to delve into the latest TV obsession like Netflix’s Stranger Things, there’s no denying our society’s fascination with the lives and actions of professional athletes. Their behavior is discussed equally as much as — if not more frequently than — Lena Dunham’s latest verbal slip. Each week in “Cool or Drool” you are asked to be athletes’ harshest critic. Feel free to judge, hate and love the mysterious and exciting world that celebrity athletes now occupy.

With that said, let’s direct our attention to former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow. He is best remembered for becoming the first college sophomore to earn the Heisman Trophy after winning the National Championship with the Florida Gators in 2007. Although his tumultuous NFL career flamed out in 2015, Tebow still seems to be at the center of much media attention.

Tebow first transitioned to a career as an analyst at ESPN and seemed to be doing well.

Among other pursuits, he wrote an autobiography titled Through My Eyes, starred in his own documentary and focused on his charity.

He accomplished so much in his first year of retirement.

But throughout that year, Tebow was also not-so-secretly working on his fielding and batting at training sites throughout Arizona and in Los Angeles. He recently announced that he hopes to make his return to professional sports, this time on the diamond.

Why baseball? For starters, Tebow is no stranger to the sport. He was an All-State player at his Florida high school, batting .494 before he was even a senior. At 29 years old, he is arguably in his athletic prime. Last recorded at 6 foot, 3 inches and 245 pounds, there is little doubt that Tebow is a physical specimen — one that baseball scouts certainly could not ignore.

The thing that is perhaps most important to consider, though, is that this is not Tebow’s first choice career. The NFL does not want him.

Tebow’s 2013 signing with the New England Patriots was the beginning of the end of his NFL career. The Patriots signed Tebow shortly after losing Rob Gronkowski’s sidekick, tight end Aaron Hernandez, who was indicted for murder and eventually sentenced to life in prison.

At the time, there was significant suspicion that the New England coaching staff was interested in converting Tebow to a tight end, while Tebow seemed unwilling to fill anthing other than his beloved quarterback position, where the Patriots comfortably house two-time MVP Tom Brady. Although revenue skyrocketed on Tebow’s jersey sales in the offseason, he never saw a minute of playing time with the Patriots and was eventually cut. Many believe the coaching staff found him too stubborn.

Tebow’s stubbornness shone through once more during his time with the Philadelphia Eagles. Many well-known coaches and commen-

tators asserted that if Tebow wasn’t willing to switch positions, he should humbly leave the Eagles and spend some time playing quarterback in either the Canadian Football League or Arena Football. He refused, simultaneously growing his brand in sports media without earning any significant playing time in three seasons.

The media first obsessed over Tebow’s stubbornness and ego. Then attention turned to his commitment to religion and vow to remain a virgin until marriage. His signature “Tebowing” celebration became so viral that many may not even know its origin as a religious prayer. He became a household name with a fraction of the NFL career that many players have. So if you’re asking yourself why a failed NFL quarterback believes that he can play professional baseball after an 11-year hiatus from his high school career, there’s just one answer: He’s addicted to celebrity. As a player who attained so much fame at such a young age, he is not predisposed to settle for anything less.

Tebow is not going to have an MLB career.

His best-case scenario is to earn a spot on a roster, make some money off the royalties from the inevitable jersey sales to whichever petty Tebow fans would actually purchase a $150 jersey before he has seen any playing time and eventually be cut.

This past week, Tebow held a tryout in which scouts from 28 MLB teams watched him embarrass himself. Some of the offerings from scouts included that he “has a long way to go,” and the tryout “was a complete waste of time. It was like watching an actor trying to portray a baseball player.”

Is it really a surprise, though? In 2011, ESPN

Senior Writer Tim Kurkjian wrote a piece that changed the way many baseball-hating sports fans viewed the American pastime. For his June 1 article “Celebrating baseball player’s athleticism,” he conducted some field research discovering that the number of baseball players that can dunk a basketball is extremely high — probably over 70 percent. But beyond all the numbers, he ventures to say that baseball players “are more well-rounded than the athletes in any of the four major sports.” That’s a pretty bold claim for a sport that allegedly has 18 minutes of action spread out over three hours. Is Tebow in way over his head here?

The evidence all says that Tebow will undeniably fail — unless the goal was to get the attention of a judgmental Review writer. However, the Atlanta Braves are reportedly considering signing him to a minor league contract. While it is unlikely that he will turn that potential contract into an MLB debut — after all, even the basketball GOAT Michael Jordan couldn’t — there is admittedly a chance.

Overall, this chapter in the Tebow Tales looks more like a publicity stunt than a genuine prospect. As cool as it would be to see someone Tebowing on a baseball diamond, we have to be skeptical and realistic. He may be a physical specimen, but he is not Bo Jackson — a former football star who enjoyed a short, successful stint as a power hitter in the MLB while leading the league in strikeouts in 1989. Tebow earns himself a Drool, for as much respect as we can give him for putting in a year’s work towards baseball, the stench of stubbornness and selfrighteousness has grown too foul. We’re on to you, Tebow.

— Volleyball —

Yeowomen Muster Quick Turnaround in Pittsburgh Play

Senior setter Meredith Leung prepares for a rally alongside junior defensive specialist Lola Gatti. After opening their season in a four-game tournament at La Roche College in Pittsburgh, the Yeowomen are 2–2.

Photo courtesy of Kyle Youngblood

Sloane Garelick Jackie McDermott Sports Editor Volleyball split a four-game stretch in Pittsburgh last weekend, putting them at 2–2 early in the season. The Yeowomen dropped the first two matches in close losses, but had a quick turnaround to clinch the latter half of their games against regional rivals Hiram and La Roche Colleges.

The first loss was a tight match against the Washington & Jefferson Presidents on Friday, ending closely at 3–2. Despite the final score, the Yeowomen dominated the majority of the match and battled to keep the games competitive.

“We were actually beating them pretty badly, and I think we were up one or two games,” said Head Coach Erica Rau. During the game against the Presidents, however, junior Claudia

Scott, a starting outside player, went down with a knee injury, weakening the team’s offense.

“We kind of struggled to rebound after that, and we ended up losing that match in five sets,” said Rau. Rau turned to her deep bench for help following Scott’s injury.

“Jill Hostetler, a senior, came off the bench and really stepped up,” Rau said. “Whether we have Claudia or not, I’m really confident that we have a team that’s going to be able to rally around each other.”

The second loss occurred Friday when the York College of Pennsylvania Spartans defeated the Yeowomen, 3–1.

“I think at that point, we were still just mentally and physically exhausted after playing that five setter [against Washington & Jefferson],” Rau said. “So it was definitely a tough first day.”

The Yeowomen mustered the energy to bounce back from Friday’s

setbacks, concluding the weekend with two pivotal wins on Saturday.

The first win was a 3–2 victory over the Hiram College Terriers. While the win was important for the team’s overall record, it did not count as a North Coast Athletic Conference victory because it was part of a tournament, rather than a regularly scheduled conference game.

“This was a really big win for us because we were able to rebound and rally without Claudia, and we’ve never beaten them since I’ve been here,” Rau said.

The Yeowomen closed out the weekend with a 3–0 victory over the La Roche Red Hawks. Ultimately, Rau said she was satisfied with the team’s performance over the weekend.

“I think they were able to see that everything they’ve been doing in practice this week and in preseason was really working,” Rau said.

“When we’re doing it, it’s going to work. We just have to be consistent with it.”

Captain and senior Meredith Leung said she was also excited about what she considered to be a successful start to the season.

“I’m really pleased with beating Hiram and La Roche on Saturday, but I definitely think we could’ve taken games from the other two,” Leung said. “We definitely are off to a better start than we have been in past years, which is really exciting to see.”

This Saturday, the Yeowomen will have an opportunity to rematch La Roche College on their home court, as well as face off against Notre Dame College.

“We’re playing La Roche again, so our goal is to beat them again, but definitely do it a lot more efficiently

and cleaner,” Leung said. “And I think we’re just trying to play more efficiently and making sure that we’re always moving fast and transitioning fast.”

Rau added that the team’s familiarity with La Roche’s playing style will give it an edge in tomorrow’s contest.

“Since we already played [La Roche], [we know] they’re really scrappy and they tip a lot, so we took away one of our blockers and pulled them off of the net to just pick up tips,” Rau said. “When you start playing down is when you make more errors, so we’re mostly just focusing on us and picking up the tips.”

Anticipating what challenges the Division II Notre Dame squad will present to the Yeowomen, Rau said that she expects a tough match from the strong team.

“They’re going to be a little more physical than us,” Rau said. “But I think with them, we’re going to focus on our tough serving and our

offense, which we changed a lot this year.”

After developing a new and improved offense, the team is hopeful for a competitive edge during the remainder of the season.

“Last year we got really predictable and we were getting really easy to block because we were so predictable,” Rau said. “So we took the time in the spring and basically redid everything.”

While the ambitions for this weekend are high, the team also understands the importance of consistent play throughout the 2016 campaign.

“We had a lot of rollercoasters with our playing, so if we can be more consistent, I think it’ll be even better,” said first-year Lexi Mitchell.

“I think our biggest goal is to have more wins than losses,” added Leung.

“I don’t think our program has ever done that and that would be a really good way to end my senior year.”

Sports The Oberlin Review

Page 16

September 9, 2016

— Men’s Soccer —

Men’s Soccer Splits Opening Games Marissa Maxfield Men’s soccer split its season openers against the Heidelberg University Student Princes and the Ohio Northern University Polar Bears last week.

The Yeomen pulled away with a 3–1 victory against the Princes last Saturday at home, but fell short on the road just two days later with a 4–0 loss to the Polar Bears.

In Saturday’s contest against Heidelberg, the Yeomen’s early momentum set the Student Princes back for most of the game.

“After a rough patch in the very beginning, we got in a groove and started playing some really great soccer,” said junior forward Tim Williams, who totaled one shot on goal and one assist.

Only three minutes had passed in the first half of the match when junior midfielder Jonah Blume-Kemkes sent the ball to the back of the goal on a pass from senior forward Sam Weiss.

“We came out strong and were able to net pretty early,” said Weiss, whose coaches identified him as a standout player in games last week. Just three minutes after the first tally, Weiss se-

Junior forward Tim Williams dribbles away from a Heidelberg University defender. Oberlin defeated Heidelberg 3–1 in its season opener. The Yeomen now hold a 1–1 record.

Photo by Rick Yu, Photo editor

cured a two-goal lead over Heidelberg with a sneaky curve from the endline.

“Once it was 2–0, we were really moving the ball well,” Weiss added. “It definitely set the tone for the rest of the match.”

Head Coach Blake New seconded Weiss’ testimony that scoring early set the Yeomen up to sustain momentum for the rest of the match.

“We came out with a lot of energy,” New said. “[It was] key to the game. [It] bolstered us and kept us going.”

With the scoreboard at 2–0 in Oberlin’s favor, the numbers remained stagnant until the 23rd minute of play, when swift passes from Williams and junior defender Matthew Bach-Lombardo allowed senior Adam Chazin-Gray to notch a third goal for the Yeomen.

“We scored three goals in fifteen minutes and we were just balling!”

Williams said enthusiastically, adding that the squad plans to “get better at playing that way for the whole 90 minutes, but it was promising stuff for sure.”

Heidelberg attempted to bounce back in the 53rd minute of the game when opponents Rodrigo Meza and Kyle Diaz worked together to put one past sophomore goalkeeper Koryn Kraemer. However, their first mark on the board would also be their last.

The Student Princes were hoping for

a comeback when, just minutes later, they came close to a second goal that would have shortened the Yeomen lead to a one-goal margin. Before they could get their hopes too high, Kraemer performed a masterful doubleblock after the Heidelberg offense invaded the goalie box in what would prove to be their last big push of the day.

Twenty minutes of playing time still remained in the second half. A setback from the Oberlin defense gifted Heidelberg’s Andres Isea with a penalty kick, but to no avail. Kraemer was ready for the challenge as he tipped the shot over the cross-bar. Finally, the match came to a close with the Yeomen dominating the Princes with a 12–11 shot advantage. The final score was 3–1 Oberlin, and Heidelberg was sent home with its first loss of 2016.

The Ohio Northern game, however, was not exactly smooth sailing for the Yeomen.

Though Williams thought they “were doing all right for most of the first half,” the Yeomen defense couldn’t stave off the Polar Bears’ hungry offense when David Janusz jumped on a rebound in the 26th minute of the game.

“They were fortunate to get their first goal,” Williams said. “Once they See Yeomen, page 14

— Cross Country —

Cross Country Dominates Wooster Meet Julie Schreiber The men’s and women’s cross country teams returned home laden with medals after outstanding showings at the Wooster Invitational in Wooster, Ohio, last Thursday. The invitational, a non-scoring annual meet, featured runners from The College of Wooster, Oberlin and Baldwin Wallace University.

While this is a contest that Oberlin regularly dominates, Head Coach Ray Appenheimer said he believes this year’s success was the “best team performance” at Wooster he had seen in years, referencing both the winning finishes and the team’s communication and cohesion.

“Their positive mentalities and team encourage-

ment allowed them to really dominate the race this time,” Appenheimer said.

Appenheimer and Assistant Coach Izzy Alexander prioritize teamwork and facilitate a team environment that, according to sophomore Zane Markosian, “underlines encouraging each other, pulling each other along and staying strong together in both practices and games.”

That mentality served Oberlin well at the Wooster meet, with the Yeowomen finishing the 5 kilometer sweeping the top nine spots and the Yeomen finishing the four mile with nine runners placing in the top 10. Highlights of the evening included a first-year sweep, with the top three spots in the 5k going to first-years Shannon Wargo at 19 minutes

Senior E.J. Douglass glides past an opponent from Ohio Northern University at the Wooster Invitational Sept. 1. Douglass tied for first in the 4 mile with sophomore Grant Sheely. Both finished in 21:42.1.

Photo courtesy of Kyle Youngblood

and 50 seconds, Marija Crook at 19:54.7 and Oona Jung-Beeman at 19:59.3. Also landing in the top nine was senior captain Emily Curley and sophomore trio Madeleine Weiland, Abigail Bellows and Rosie Kerwin.

“The way we performed at Wooster really set the tone for this season,” Weiland said.

The Yeomen had an equally thrilling evening on the Wooster course, finding success in powerful pairs. The men’s four mile concluded in a dead tie at 21:42.1 between senior E.J. Douglass and sophomore Grant Sheely. Seniors Nick Care and Ben Stassen, teammates for the fourth season in a row, finished the race at 22:35.7 and 22:38.2, respectively. The men’s team also saw successful performances from first-years Julian Guerrieri and Jackson Daugherty, who joined upperclassmen in the top 10.

The rookie success at Wooster made the team’s dominant performance even sweeter for Appenheimer.

“It was really exciting for us to see so many new people handle their first collegiate race so well, as well as the top returners from last year,” Appenheimer said.

The cross country teams will seek to continue their success at the Bethany Bison Invitational Sept.

10. Hosted at Bethany College in Bethany, WV, the event hosts runners from 19 colleges and universities, including 10 NCAA Division II schools.

Appenheimer expects the competition to be fierce, but said he believes “if the mentality is there, both teams will be really close to the top.”

As they trek through their season, Appenheimer said his teams will continue to bond over something more profound than each individual runner.

“Kids come to Oberlin because they want to be a part of a community,” Appenheimer said. “These kids want to give to each other, want the best for each other, and they are going to support each other wholeheartedly.”

Baseball Revitalizes Cleveland Darren Zaslau Sports Editor For 52 years, Cleveland sports fans have agonized over the “Cleveland sports curse” — the city’s inexplicable inability to win a championship in any professional sport. From 1964 to 2016, Cleveland’s baseball, basketball and football teams never reigned supreme in their respective leagues. As a result, a combined 147-season championship drought diminished hope for the city to return to the winning ways that dazzled the sports world in the 1950s.

That all changed June 19.

The Cleveland Cavaliers defeated the Golden State Warriors in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals to win the team’s first title in franchise history, ending Cleveland’s championship drought in an unbelievable fashion. Inside Quicken Loans Arena, tears dripped down LeBron James’ face. On East Fourth Street, fathers discouraged by decades of losing teams embraced sons who would witness a new era of Cleveland sports. The entire city breathed a sigh of relief.

Cleveland sports fans had not reigned supreme since the Cleveland Browns won the NFL Championship in 1964, and they were ready to make up for lost time. When the Cavaliers came home June 22, they paraded through a sea of 1.3 million fans lined along sidewalks, in the windows of street-side buildings and on rooftops, letting the tears flow once more.

While Cleveland got its most recent taste of success on the basketball court, the Browns also delivered victory to the city in the distant past.

The Browns captured four NFL Championships in 1950, 1954, 1955 and 1964.

Some would say it’s baseball that has struggled the most with the city’s sports curse. This year, though, seems to be different, as the See Editorial, page 14