Febrary 16, 2018

The Oberlin Review February 16, 2018

established 1874

Volume 146, Number 14

Senate Survey Reveals Student Dissatisfaction Roman Broszkowski News Editor

President Carmen Ambar speaks during Thursday’s General Faculty Compensation Committee forum. The committee held the forum to address questions about the changes to salary increases and benefits.

Photo courtesy of Sydney Allen, News Editor

Ambar Announces Budget Plans to Faculty, Staff Sydney Allen News Editor

President Carmen Ambar and other senior administrators have launched an 11-day presentation campaign in which all College and Conservatory faculty, administrative and professional staff, Student Senate, student media, and other constituencies will see the largest overview of Oberlin’s financial situation to date, along with Ambar’s proposed plan to rectify Oberlin’s ever-worsening deficit.

The College managed to reduce its deficit from $5 million to $3 million this year, largely due to a last-minute admissions push that secured an additional 27 students at the beginning of the academic year. Unexpectedly high investment returns after a market uptick also contributed to the decrease.

Despite the unexpected financial pickup, the College’s current structural model still yields a bleak future, as the deficit is projected to rise to about $9 million next year — and that’s if the market stays consistent.

According to senior administrators, if the College’s current budgetary model remains unchanged, within a few years the deficit could easily reach $52 million.

This would be the maximum amount the College could feasibly or legally take from the endowment, and would essentially lead to financial ruin.

Given this concerning model, Ambar has proposed hiring an outside consulting firm — Stevens Strategy — to evaluate every academic and administrative department on campus in a data-centered review. The Board of Trustees will ultimately decide on Ambar’s proposal during their March quarterly meeting.

“We haven’t selected Stevens Strategy yet,” Ambar said. “This is really a board decision, and so I think the board will take this up this discussion in the March board meeting, and I think we’ll have some clarity about the way forward.

Certainly, I’ve worked with them before; I think they’re the right group ... [The Financial Sustainability task force] has seen them present, but they will be at the full board meeting in March.”

Stevens Strategy is the same company Ambar used when she was president of Cedar Crest College, as they worked through the same process. The group’s mission statement describes its work as “managing the process of strategic change in colleges, universities, and schools.”

“What I like about Stevens Strategy is that I think the way they approach this challenge is very Oberlin,” Ambar said.

“It has a lot of open forums. All the data is shared campus-wide. The process of thinking about the types of data you’ll consider is not imposed from the outside.

The committee and their groups make that determination and try to figure out what types of data points we’ll use for — academic quality, let’s say.”

The New Hampshire-based group has consulted with nearby schools such as Hiram College, Tiffin University, and John Carroll University, to name a few.

Despite Ambar’s confidence in the group, some faculty members aren’t as optimistic about appointing an external organization to assess the value of an academic institution.

“Frankly, consulting companies are not competent to make judgments about the quality of academic departments,” said James Monroe Professor of Politics Chris Howell. “We all have program re-

views, every single academic program at Oberlin undergoes a program review where outside academics — leaders in their field — come in and evaluate the program. Those are the people who can evaluate your program, not a consulting company.”

According to the presentation, the review will assess all College expenditures, programs, and departments on four parameters: quality, mission centeredness, marketability, and financial viability. It will be spearheaded by a group of College and Conservatory faculty, administrative and professional staff, and potentially Board of Trustee members and students.

Though the particular makeup of the group is currently unknown, it will be the driving force behind the process, which could take between 18 months and two years to complete. The finalized data will be the primary basis for future budgetary and structural changes within the College.

A crucial component of the review will be campus-wide transparency, as all College constituencies will have access to the data as the committee works through it — although Ambar said this may be difficult once the data starts rolling out.

“When you see in stark reality that this unit has 10 majors but 11 faculty and one unit has six faculty but 80 majors, everybody has to see that,” she said. “The data gets laid bare and that also can be uncomfortable despite the fact that people want transparency, so it does test the community’s ability to practice what they preach about that.”

In the meantime, the College will be further tightening its purse strings to combat the creeping deficit. College

After receiving over 1,100 responses to their fall 2017 survey on student satisfaction at Oberlin, Student Senate has found that students are dissatisfied with current campus resources and services, but are invested in seeking improvements.

Senate’s survey covered a range of issues on student life, including retention, the Office of Disability Resources, housing, the quality of Senate’s work, campus climate, and the Student Finance Committee.

The survey found that close to 49 percent of students had either previously or recently considered leaving Oberlin. A minority of students also voiced significant support for improvements to the ODR, but were split almost evenly about where the office should be located. 40 percent listed transportation, both around campus and to Cleveland, as a primary concern. Many students also expressed interest in the College’s carbon neutrality commitment.

College junior and Student Senator Cecilia Wallace, who has been reviewing the survey results, said that she was only slightly surprised about the widespread feeling of isolation on campus.

“I understand that people feel trapped, but that’s really doable to change,” she said.

Both Wallace and fellow College junior and Student Senator Kameron Dunbar felt that a shuttle system between Oberlin and Cleveland would help facilitate greater connectivity between students and the greater Cleveland area.

Dunbar said that he plans to present the findings across campus and that the Office of the President has directed Student Senate to “cultivate three to five well articulated goals” for how to respond to student complaints. “Senate is working toward developing those goals,” Dunbar said.

Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo echoed that the survey would provide an impetus for campus change.

“I think that the survey results definitely will have an effect on campus,” she said. “ It creates a really strong basis for student cooperation with senior administration.”

Raimondo added that she wasn’t surprised by the initial survey results, although she did say that she hadn’t yet seen all of the data. Senior administration routinely conducts campus-wide surveys, and such surveys

see Administration, page 3

see Student, page 4

CONTENTS NEWS

OPINIONS

THIS WEEK

ARTS & CULTURE

SPORTS

02 Office of Disability Resources Prepares to Hire New Full-Time Director 03 Professor Brian Doan Passes Away at 44

05 Editorial: City Must Improve Traffic Safety

08 Oberlin Black Student Excellence

10 Soul Session Kicks Off Celebration of Black HIstory Month

15 Athletic Programs Must Open Dialogue on Eating Disorders

11 OTR: Chris Jenkins, Associate Dean

16 Men’s. Women’s Tennis Begin Spring Seasons

06 “Mexicocoa” Shows Need For Journalistic Diversity

The Oberlin Review | February 16, 2018

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Oberlin Bystander Intervention Finds New Home

Gabby Greene Staff Writer

The Oberlin Bystander Intervention Program, which aims to train students to be active bystanders at large events as well as educate about substance abuse safety measures, becomes fully operational this semester.

Founded in 2016 by College junior Kirsten Mojziszek and senior Deborah Johnson, OBI originally addressed bystander intervention in the cases of sexual misconduct. Mojziszek and Johnson, then Student Senators, formed OBI based on the Senate’s sexual misconduct working group.

“I think Kirsten and I both wanted a project to do, just because we felt like Student Senate is most effective when there are little task forces,” Johnson said.

While on the task force, Johnson also worked for Oberlin’s Preventing and Responding to Sexual Misconduct program. PRSM offers bystander intervention training aimed at recognizing and preventing sexual misconduct. Johnson said she

felt OBI would complement PRSM’s bystander workshops well.

The working group found examples of intervention measures at other universities in the hopes that similar ideas could be used at Oberlin.

“The whole concept of OBI had come out of a student government conference I went to my second semester freshman year,” Mojziszek said.

“There [were] different topic conversation rooms, and I went to one that was about sexual assault on campus and like, what are students doing and what can we do more.”

At the conference, Mojziszek learned about Denison University’s Sexual Harassment and Assault Resources and Education program. SHARE is a student organization that offers confidential support to sexual misconduct survivors at Denison.

“What [Denison] had — it was very similar to the [Sexual Harm Information Liaison] that we have with [the Oberlin Student Cooperative Assocciation] — and it was this confidential student resource and advocate, and that was

something I really wanted to bring here to make it more widespread,” Mojziszek said.

Aspects of SHARE’s program could not be replicated, however, due to issues with confidentiality, according to Mojziszek. Johnson added that OBI’s status as an institutional program has limited some of its functions.

“One of the things we wanted to implement was having students at parties which we couldn’t do due to legal things, just because that would mean the school would recognize that there were parties where there is underage drinking, versus us being at the ’Sco,” Johnson said.

OBI was originally affiliated with the Office of Title IX, but has since moved to the College’s Center for Student Success.

Director of Health Promotion for Students and Assistant Dean of Students Edward Gisemba is OBI’s new supervisor. She said she aims to direct OBI to more substance-oriented education measures.

“I was approached by Kirsten [Mojziszek] as a student org to help staff better address situations in which alcohol was being used,” Gisemba said.

“So [OBI] worked directly with staff at the ’Sco — they provided water bottles and things like that to students to try to better manage their alcohol use.”

OBI’s platform has shifted to focus more on substance abuse than sexual misconduct and to aim for education more than implementing bystanders.

Voluntary workshops will be offered to students.

“PRSM has a couple of workshops for [substance abuse], but that’s not what they focus on, because they have responsibilities with making sure they do the bystander training and that it happens for all of the first-years that come through,” Mojziszek said.

“We’re just trying to offer extra opportunities for it to happen later in the year.”

The emphasis on education emerged in the hopes that students will use what they have learned to become active bystanders themselves in social situations, both to increase the overall feeling of safety and also to lessen the demand on OBI volunteers. According to Gisemba, an average of possibly five OBI bystanders could be expected at each ’Sco event.

For a space that, according to the ’Sco’s website, has a room capacity of 450 people, the task at hand for bystanders can be daunting.

“It’s a lot of physical and emotional work to be a bystander,” Mojziszek said.

While being a bystander for OBI is currently a voluntary position, Mojziszek and Johnson agree that finding resources to pay bystanders is a priority.

“I think it’s really important to pay people for the labor they do, and in this case, we want everyone to be bystanders, but on top of that it ensures a different level of safety and care that is around the campus,” Johnson said.

In the future, OBI intends to expand its education on alcohol and misconduct to include other substances, as well.

“Folks in student affairs pride themselves in providing this education outside of the classroom,” Gisemba said.

“But thinking about health in college...is understated in its importance.”

Applications to be a bystander for OBI are still open on a rolling basis.

Office of Disability Resources Prepares to Hire New Full-Time Director

The Office of Disability Resources’ new office in Peters Hall, part of the Center for Student Success. The ODR is currently under interim management as the College searches for a new director.

Photo by Christian Bolles, Editor-in-Chief

Devyn Malouf Staff Writer A number of disabilitycentered initiatives have arisen after a semester of dysfunction from the Office of Disability Resources, including the creation of a Disability Solidarity Theme Hall, a series of forums as the ODR searches for a permanent Director, and a proposed student organization meant to

create a sense of community among disabled students on campus.

The Office of Disability Resources is in a period of adjustment as it copes with numerous staff changes, including the sudden October departure of former ODR Director Isabella Moreno.

The office is also adjusting to being merged into the Center for Student Success, while simultaneously searching for a

full-time director, which is set to be complete by the first week in April.

The Center for Student Success was created this year to reorganize staff members with overlapping roles in student life to provide students easy access to a range of academic support services.

“I can see why [the transition] might be jolting to students who are used to a particular framework in terms of which office does what,” said Toni Myers, assistant dean of students, director of the Multicultural Resource Center, and chair of the search committee for the new ODR Director. “But I can see why the centralized model makes perfect sense for Oberlin, because it provides an opportunity for students to engage in a range of services in case they might need any or all of them.”

Interim ODR Director Monique Burgdorf said the ODR provides the same services as it did when it was a separate office and continues to seek

and implement improvements to student life. “[Some changes include] trying to create more of a student community,” Burgdorf said. “... one thing that I’ve heard from students is that they could go downstairs and they felt like they could be part of a community. So, we’re trying to start an Executive Functioning Group to see if we can get some folks to come sit in a community and work on some things together.”

The office is also working to correct some issues that arose last semester, such as a delayed notetaking process and a back-log of appointments.

“This semester, [Disability resource Coordinator] Maria [Maclay] has worked so hard to streamline the notetaking process, and it has gone so much more smoothly than it did fall semester.”

Additionally Myers has been working to launch the Disability Solidarity Theme Hall, which was recently approved for next semester.

“The new disabilitysolidarity hall came out of conversations with two amazing students, and we have had conversations about what it means to place the work on the institution to provide a set of resources, and also to hold the agency of you, as a student, to create a community for yourself,” Myers said. “This hall is going to be a really cool place to have the conversation about disability as identity that maybe the office could learn, from students, how to facilitate.”

The ODR and the search committee for its new director are also holding a series of forums for students to voice their thoughts and opinions about what they hope to see in a new director; the next listening session will take place be in Wilder Hall Tuesday from 4:30-6 p.m. in rooms 112 and 115.

“The point of the student forum is that it should be for the committee to understand what the students want and need, what is important for see ODR, page 4

The Oberlin R eview February 16, 2018 Volume 146, Number 14 (ISSN 297–256) Published by the students of Oberlin College every Friday during the fall and spring semesters, except holidays and examination periods. Advertising rates: $18 per column inch.

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Editors-in-Chief

Melissa Harris Christian Bolles Managing Editor Daniel Markus News Editors Sydney Allen

Roman Broszkowski Opinions Editors Jackie Brant

El Wilson This Week Editor Lucy Martin Arts Editors Julia Peterson

Ananya Gupta Sports Editors Alex McNicoll

Alexis Dill Layout Editors Hannah Robinson

Amanda Tennant Parker Shatkin Elena Hartley Photo Editors Bryan Rubin Hugh Newcomb Business Manager Monique Newton

Ads Manager

Madison Kimball

Online Editor

Mikaela Fishman

Production Manager Victoria Albacete Production Staff Gwennie Gardiner Giselle Glaspie Eliza Guinn

Corrections: In “College Projects Enrollment Rebound,” (Feb. 9,2018), Manuel Carballo was incorrectly identified as the Interim Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. He is actually Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid.

Willa Hart Kaitlyn Lucey Kendall Mahavier Brittany Mendez Madi Mettenburg Distributors

Yonce Hitt Krisen Mayhew Leo Hochberg

To submit a correction, email managingeditor@oberlinreview.org

Professor Brian Doan Passes Away at 44 Alex Davies Staff Writer Oberlin community members, family, and friends suffered the unexpected loss of Visiting Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition Brian Doan, 44. Doan died of a heart attack Sunday, Dec. 17, 2017. The Oberlin community was informed of his passing in a Dec. 19 email sent by Dean of Arts and Sciences Tim Elgren.

After earning an undergraduate comparative literature and political science degree from Indiana University, Doan went on to earn an M.A. and Ph.D. in English with a concentration in film studies from the University of Florida.

Over the course of nine years there, he won two prestigious awards for his teaching before accepting his first faculty job at Oberlin College in 2006.

“I know that he really valued the ways he could teach here,” Doan’s wife and Visiting Professor of Rhetoric and Composition Susan Guidry said. “He had taught in a big state school and the approaches were very different. I think the class sizes were comparable, but the kinds of teaching you could do here gave room for innovation and flexibility. You have resources that you wouldn’t have in other schools and I think that was something he really appreciated. He put so much of himself into his teaching.”

Doan brought his passion and knowledge for classic Hollywood movies and pop culture to the Oberlin classroom, where he devoted his time to teaching students in the Cinema Studies department until 2011.

Grace An, a colleague of Doan’s in cinema, spoke at the Feb. 4 campus memorial about the substantial mark he left on the department over the course of five years.

“I got to see up close how Brian was received as a teacher by the numerous students who filled his classroom for the many courses he invented for our program: 10 whole new courses in five years — that may be a program record,” An said.

After teaching in Cinema Studies,

Doan went on to assume administrative roles on campus. Meanwhile, as a selfproclaimed cinephile, Doan continued critiquing films on his blog, called Bubblegum Aesthetics. He started the blog in the summer of 2007 at the now-defunct Java Zone — since replaced by Aladdin’s Eatery — and it developed from a casual pastime into a serious passion.

Doan further immersed himself in the cinematic community in 2013 by diving into the world of freelance publishing and opening his first Twitter account. In his spare time, Doan published freelance media critiques for PopMatters, Bright Wall/Dark Room, rogerebert.com, and Cinespect.

For the last year and a half, Doan worked in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition, where he taught media writing and first-year seminar courses. Two students in his newly-developed first-year seminar “Imagining Hollywood” — College first-years Natalie Zoltners and Shivani Singh — reflected on their memories of Professor Doan.

“Brian was a very genuinely nice man, which is the thing that I liked most about him,” Zoltners said, “The classes were good because he wanted to get to know his students as people and he let that reflect in his teaching. He was very passionate about his subject and he wanted to share what made cinema exciting for [him.]”

Singh spoke about the impact Doan had on her life.

“He was my favorite professor,” Singh said. “When he said that he was socially anxious — I was like ‘me too.’ He was very kind and sweet, and everybody could connect with him in some way.”

Singh recounted Doan’s compassion and his ability to make students comfortable.

“I ended up missing a lot of class because of my grandmother who was very sick, and so I went to explain that to him, and he had said that he lost his grandmother a couple months ago,” she said. “He would say, ‘I know how this feels, so please take your time.’ And that was a lot more understanding than a lot

of people. He’s done a lot, but he never put it in your face to make him seem better than you. He really tried to make him and his students seem equal so you wouldn’t feel afraid to talk in class.”

Guidry recounted a fond memory of her husband from the end of last semester.

“We both taught at 1:30 p.m. in the fall, and I was running late for my last class, and I was walking by his class and I stopped — and there was a window in the door — and I watched him setting up for his last day,” Guidry said. “This would have been two Fridays before he died, and he was so happy, he was just so content. He was sitting there with his laptop, probably checking email and just finalizing things for class, and his students were coming in and they were chatting and happy and everything. That’s such a wonderful moment to have, because up until pretty much the very end — he was here Friday night getting final exams from his students from that class as well — he was so happy to be working with students and excited about the work they were going to be turning in and the connections they’d made and all that. It was a real privilege to see that moment, I’m really glad that I was running late in the ways that I was, that I just happened to stand there and catch that because I had no idea … what was going to happen.”

Guidry has developed a memorial website in her husband’s honor, containing his life’s work in cinema as well as remarks from his memorial. There is also a memorial page set up in his honor by rogerebert.com, where he contributed articles on topics ranging from Joss Whedon to The Twilight Zone.

“He so wanted to do a good job,” Guidry said. “He would say, ‘I just want [my students] to feel like they’re getting something out of [the course].’ And they were, it sounds like, they really were, so all that worry [was], maybe, misplaced.

He succeeded at what he wanted to do.”

He is survived by Guidry; Doan’s parents, David and Susan Doan; two siblings, six nieces and nephews, and four god-nieces and nephews.

Administration to Roll Out Budget Solutions Continued from page 1

faculty will see another salary freeze for the 2018–19 school year, after which time they will have a 2 percent increase in their salaries per year, a move some faculty members say puts Oberlin far behind our peer liberal arts schools such as Swarthmore and Amherst. There will also be changes to employee benefits.

“It’s terrifying because Oberlin faculty salaries are already well below the median of our peer group,” Howell said. “They are actually building a budget model, stretching out indefinitely, in which every year our salaries will be lower than those of our peers.”

The General Faculty Council, the College Faculty, the Conservatory Faculty, and administrative and professional staff have seen the announcement. Ambar will hold a media session Monday and present to Student Senate Tuesday.

“I’m looking forward to seeing a comprehensive budget plan from the President to address the long-term financial issues facing this school and its students,” said College junior and Student Senator León Pescador.

Oberlin is not alone in this deficit, as the pool of high schoolers looking for college education continues to shrink.

High school seniors are also increasingThe Oberlin Review | February 16, 2018

ly questioning the value of a liberal arts education, as data shows more and more parents and prospective students seeking out concrete avenues to employment from their college degrees.

According to reports by Inside Higher Ed., for the 2017–18 school year only 34 percent of private colleges nationwide met their admissions goals. Oberlin generates over 80 percent of its income through student admissions, making the College’s financial security difficult, given the stark, competitive landscape of prospective students.

Although Oberlin has had an official admissions target of 2,950 per year, it has only reached this twice in the last decade, hinting at the antiquated way the College has approached an ever-evolving higher education market.

Vice President of Admissions and Financial Aid Manuel Carballo stressed the need for Oberlin to change its tactics, given Oberlin’s high price tag, the recent waves of bad press, and a general demographic shift from our student body.

“Demographic shifts have been a common topic of conversation among colleges and universities,” he said. “As the population of high school graduates evens out after years of increases and we see [population] declines in areas of

the country that have been traditional feeders for us, we are having to adjust to these changes. We are also seeing more students applying for financial aid each year, which has a direct effect on schools like Oberlin who commit to meeting the full demonstrated need for all of its students.”

Donald R. Longman Professor of English Sandra Zagarell left Wednesday’s College Faculty meeting with a renewed commitment to resolving the overall budgetary issues.

“I was very impressed with the thoroughness and granularity of President Ambar’s presentation and with her commitment to transparency and to Oberlin,” Zagarell said. “One of my many takeaways from her presentation is that for employees, thinking institutionally and self-interest are intertwined. As a faculty member, for example, it is in my interest, both financial and professional, and in keeping with my commitment to higher education, that Oberlin College thrive.”

There will be a student forum Wednesday, Feb. 28 at 8:00 p.m. in room 306 in the King Building, which will give students the opportunity to see the presentation and ask questions about the financial situation and the proposed solution.

Security Notebook Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018 5:46 p.m. A student reported that they were approached and punched by an unknown man while walking through Tappan Square at approximately 1:30 a.m. The man then ran in an unknown direction.

The incident is under investigation.

6:00 p.m.

While patrolling the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, a Safety and Security officer found an expended fire extinguisher near an electrical transformer. The extinguisher was taken to the Safety and Security Office.

8:18 p.m. A student reported the loss or possible theft of their laptop computer from the Rathskellar.

Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018 1:34 a.m. Officers responded to a report of an intoxicated student laying in the hallway on the first floor of Kahn Hall. The student was assisted to a security vehicle and transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

Sunday, Feb. 11, 2018 12:36 a.m. Officers assisted with an ill student at the corner of Forest and Cedar Streets. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

3:00 p.m. A student reported the theft of their bicycle from a Village Housing Unit on Elm Street. The bicycle is an orange Specialize, with 26” tires. The bicycle was left unattended for a short period of time and was not locked.

10:24 p.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm caused by burnt food in a microwave on the first floor of Asia House. The area was cleared and the alarm reset.

10:41 p.m. A student reported the theft of their wallet and book bag from a desk on the third floor of Mudd library. The wallet was turned in to the circulation desk, but $60 cash was missing. Nothing was missing from the book bag, which was found on the floor by the bookshelves.

Monday, Feb. 12, 2018 6:40 p.m. A student reported the theft of their unattended backpack from the third floor of Mudd library.

The backpack was found shortly after on the third floor with all pockets opened. Nothing appeared to be missing.

7:40 p.m. Staff at Mudd library reported a wallet, belonging to a student, turned in to the Circulation Desk. The student was contacted and said the wallet was taken from her book bag, which was left unattended for a short period of time on the second floor. $40 cash was missing from the wallet.

Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018 1:49 p.m. A student reported the theft of their wallet from the secondfloor stacks area of Mudd library. The brown wallet contained $15 cash, debit cards, a driver’s license, and miscellaneous items.

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Ne w s OFF THE CUFF

Clarence “Ryan” Warfield, Oberlin Police Chief Chief Clarence “Ryan” Warfield is the recently appointed city of Oberlin Chief of Police. A native of northeast Ohio, Warfield, a former sergeant from the city of Elyria, brings an impressive skill set to the position including specialties in interrogation, voice analysis, body language study, youth violence training, and death scene investigative skills. He also served as a police academy instructor in the martial art of Krav Maga and worked with the Lorain County Drug Task Force. Although his hiring was not without controversy, the new chief expressed optimism in the progress of his new role.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview by Justin Godfrey How do you feel you are adjusting after being the Oberlin police chief for a few months?

I went from a 100-guy department to an 18-guy department, so there are some adjustments. I went from a place where we had about 47,000 calls a year, and we are well under that here. I’m at that age now where I’m looking forward to that adjustment. I needed that adjustment — I didn’t know I needed it, but I need it.

Every day I learn something new here.

What are your plans as police chief that are maybe different from your predecessors or different from the norms that we expect?

I don’t know if there’s any difference — police work is police work is police work. But I do have different philosophies: more community-oriented, more transparent to the public, more hands-on as a chief. I’ve said it a thousand times — I want to get everyone in the department to treat others how they want to be treated. Treat people how you want your mom or dad to be treated. If I can do that, I’ve done what I set out to do. I also want to

do some upgrades for the guys, get them new equipment and some new training.

So what are your biggest priorities and challenges as the new police chief?

One challenge is always the budget, making sure we are keeping on a budget. Priorities are giving the guys schools, different schools, and showing the public who I am.

After the Gibson’s incident, what are your feelings on the movement to end police brutality and racial profiling?

That’s a great question. I have three young African-American sons that are all in college. If they have been in a traffic stop, it’s not always been positive. It’s a difficult question. I think any policeman that has signed up to help people wants to see an end to racial profiling and an end to police brutality. However, as a policeman, there are things we do that the average citizen doesn’t understand. My wife and my kids are pro-police, but there are some things that I can’t explain to them as to what we do and why we do what we do, just because of the profession. Getting back to what I

said earlier, I would like to see us all treat one another as you would like to be treated. We have a profession where we are supposed to protect people and keep our citizens safe, and I believe that.

You said earlier that there is a culture change for you personally, going from a bigger department to a smaller one.

Have your interactions with the Oberlin Safety and Security affected that? Have you had positive interactions with their department? Has it affected the efficiency of your department?

We are coming along with efficiency. My relationship with the College is in progress, and we are building. I go to church in Oberlin, and there are Oberlin students who go to my church, so I am familiar with those guys. As we go on, I would like to be more involved in orientation. I’ve met the Safety and Security Director.

There are no schisms or anything like that; we’ve met twice. He’s a former Cincinnati policeman, he was at Ohio University and Wright State, and he’s a good guy.

He, like me, came from a larger department and coming, to Oberlin has been a change. We are able to get along.

What are three things you would like the Oberlin student body to know about you?

One, I’ve been a college student myself, and I know that we are not always perfect, and that we make mistakes. Two, I have three sons who are all in college. I respect the time in your life that you are in right now; you are in a point in your life where you can do anything you want to do. And three, I am the chief law enforcement officer in this city and I would like to get to know the students better. Just because of what’s happening nationally doesn’t mean that all of us are that way, and all I’m asking for is a fair shot in getting to know me.

There was some controversy over your hiring; three of your sergeants wrote a letter saying they didn’t think you were the right choice. But they were kept on the force nonetheless.

Can you break down your insight over that controversy and why you felt these sergeant’s comments were not worth firing?

When you search for a job, and you covet a job like this, you are always going to come over some hard feelings. My job as the chief in the building is to look

Clarence “Ryan” Warfield Photo Courtesy of Elyria Police Department

above that. I need to be more mature than what took place. I can’t blame those guys because they had hurt feelings. Would they do it again? I don’t think so, if they would I think that would be an issue. But you get some hurt feelings when you are in competition for a job so I get it. I hate to use a cliché, but when people take the low road, you have to take the high road. Being a senior officer in this building, I had to take the high road, and our relationship is getting better.

So you don’t feel that there is any existing tension between the officers in the department?

Realistically, there may be, but no one has shown that to me. It appears everyone has let bygones be bygones and has shown some true professionalism.

Student Senate Analyzes Survey Results ODR Nears Hiring New Director

Continued from page 1

have previously brought student feelings of isolation to the administration’s attention.

Raimondo said that it is not the structure of the College itself that contributes to a lack of community, but rather that students aren’t exposed enough to friendship-forming tools to socially acclimate to college.

Senior administration’s solution was to institute the Peer Advising Leaders, or PAL program.

“PALs made a big difference for first year students,” Raimondo said.

PALs aren’t currently paid, but that might change. The survey results indicated that 95 percent of students support continuing to pay Student Senators for their work, and Raimondo signaled an openness to paying students in similar roles, like

PALs. “Although that is a budgetary question, I think spending money on students is great,” Raimondo said. “It supports students and is a good use of our finances.”

Students also suggested in the survey that while Senate’s emails are effective for outreach, Senate’s Azariah’s Café office hours are not especially productive.

Wallace said that the Senate has been brainstorming additional ideas, including that orientation may need to change to prevent first-years from feeling isolated.

Raimondo said she hopes to learn how campus culture factored into a lack of communal feeling. “How widespread is call-out culture and how do people feel about it?” she said.

“Is there a judgemental political climate on campus?”

Dunbar and Wallace regretted that the survey didn’t ask what students liked about campus.

“I wish the survey had asked what helped make Oberlin a better place for them — like a co-op, club sports, or OWLS sessions,” Wallace said. “I think we missed a place where we could have learned what makes people want to stay.”

Despite some of the survey’s more negative statistics, Dunbar, Wallace, and Raimondo expressed optimism. Neither Dunbar nor Wallace thought that the survey would impact enrollment or how prospective students understood Oberlin, while Raimondo added that she hopes the results will lead to positive change.

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the students, and a check-in for where we’re at with how the search is going, how we feel about the process, and how students feel about the process,” College senior Alison Cameron said.

Cameron added that the forum discussion will focus on the different ways the search committee will select a candidate, including what students want in an ODR director and how student involvement will be maintained in the search.

Myers said that intersectionality is an integral characteristic they want to see in director candidates.

“I think that now that [intersectionality] is a buzzword in higher education and in our culture, that it is not

Oberlin Community News Bulletin

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Thefts Occur in Mudd Library

500 Years: Life in Resistance Will Screen

Director of Libraries Alexia Hudson-Ward announced a string of recent thefts at Mudd library in an email Tuesday. In response to the thefts, library staffers have asked all students and visitors to not leave any belongings unattended and will be posting reminders throughout the library. Visitors can check out locker keys from the main circulation desk if they intend to leave their belongings for an extended period of time.

The film 500 Years: Life in Resistance will screen from 1–4 p.m. in King Building, room 106, tomorrow. The film chronicles Guatemala’s 36-year conflict, the genocide trial of former dictator Rîos Montt, and the current struggle for sovereignty and resources. A discussion will follow the film. The event is co-hosted by Oberlin Students in Solidarity with Guatemala and College seniors Tal Netter-Sweet and Olivia Pandolfi.

always fully considered — how queerness can impact a person’s disability or their relationship to it, how class can impact their relationship to it, how race can impact their relationship to it,” Myers said. “I think that person also needs to be really adept at understanding disability as identity, and I think that’s what we’re seeing at Oberlin, as opposed to disability as simply a way to receive a set of specific services.”

A consulting firm hired by the College is currently recruiting candidates. Myers said students can expect to see the final round of candidates on campus for interviews before spring break. Myers does not anticipate that the financial deficit will impede the College’s ability to hire a suitable candidate.

NEXUS Demands Settlement NEXUS — the company set to build a natural gas pipeline from Ohio to Ontario, Canada, that would pass through Oberlin — is pushing City Council to settle all outstanding legal action in exchange for $100,000 from the pipeline’s parent company, Enbridge. Oberlin has spent about $50,000 fighting to have the pipeline stopped through legal means, though all attempts have thus far been unsuccessful. City Council is scheduled to vote on whether to accept the settlement Feb. 19.

OPINIONS February 16, 2018

established 1874

Letters to the Editors

Interaction Outside Classroom Not Always Abusive

On Feb. 9, 2018, The Oberlin Review published Emily Clarke’s Letter to the Editors (“Matambo’s Mentorship Lacked Boundaries”), which describes interactions that Clarke had with former professor of Creative Writing Bernard Farai Matambo. Matambo recently resigned from Oberlin College due to sexual misconduct allegations. From Clarke’s perspective, the interactions described in the letter made their student-teacher relationship “insidious.”

I understand that all of Matambo’s students had different experiences with him; however, to me, the actions described in the third paragraph of Clarke’s letter do not seem like boundaries crossed, with the exception of showing up to Clarke’s house at 10:30 p.m.

As an English teacher at a Chinese university, I do many of these actions. Sometimes I invite my students out for lunch or tea, we have long conversations, and I may ask them to help me run errands. While Matambo certainly crossed boundaries in relation to sexual misconduct, I do not think students’ interactions with professors that extend beyond the classroom have to be abusive or automatically devalue students’ academic work. Because of the allegations of sexual misconduct against Matambo, many students and alumni are questioning his relationships and actions, and I appreciate this as part of a healing process. However, I think it’s important to make distinctions about what actions constitute or lead to misconduct and what actions do not.

– Louise Edwards OC ’16

Repairs of Campus Crucial for Enrollment, Retention Among Oberlin’s new efforts to increase enrollment and retention rates are some much-needed renovations of Oberlin’s buildings. A key example of this is Wilder Hall lobby. The administration decided to begin these renovations after Student Senate conducted a survey that revealed that Oberlin students want far more accessible and communal spaces on campus.

Oberlin is in desperate need of more communal spaces and major building

renovations. However, the administration’s priorities are out of order. I am on the management team of SWAP: The Book Co-Op, which is located in the basement of Harkness House. SWAP is an amazing place where students can exchange textbooks without exchanging money. The co-op’s main goal is to make Oberlin a more financially accessible place. Unfortunately, over the past week, our mission has been to clean mold.

SWAP’s headquarters is located in the room that contains much of the See Oberlin, page 7

SUBMISSIONS POLICY

The Oberlin Review appreciates and welcomes letters to the editors and op-ed submissions. All submissions are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. All submissions must be received by Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. at opinions@oberlinreview. org or Wilder Box 90 for inclusion in that week’s issue. Letters may not exceed 600 words and op-eds may not exceed 800 words, except with consent of the Editorial Board. All submissions must include contact information, with full names and any relevant titles, for all signers. All writers must individually confirm authorship on electronic submissions. The Review reserves the right to edit all submissions for clarity, length, grammar, accuracy, strength of argument and in consultation with Review style. Editors will work with contributors to edit pieces and will clear major edits with the authors prior to publication. Editors will contact authors of letters to the editors in the event of edits for anything other than style and grammar.

Headlines are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board.

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

The Oberlin Review | February 16, 2018

Editorial Board Editors-in-Chief Melissa Harris

Christian Bolles

Managing Editor Daniel Markus

Opinions Editors

El Wilson

To the Editors:

El Wilson Opinions Editor

Volume 146, Number 14

Jackie Brant

City Must Improve Traffic Safety As the snow and ice that has covered city streets and sidewalks this winter begins to melt away and Oberlin experiences its first real doses of warmth in 2018, it’s a sure bet that bicycles will soon begin clogging those same areas, much to the chagrin of drivers.

For many, the thought of getting on a bike again after a long winter is delightful. But after the deaths of Oberlin resident Kyle Gutierrez, 22, last week and Jason Baird, 26, last semester, the Editorial Board is gravely concerned about pedestrian safety in the coming warmer months. Though those two incidents ended in tragedy, near-misses with pedestrians and vehicles are a frequent sight, occurring all over Oberlin.

Every morning, droves of students cross West Lorain Street in transit between Wilder Bowl and the Science Center, evoking the ire of drivers who know that, officially, the path has not been designated as a crosswalk. Cars and even eighteen-wheelers speed down South Main Street, often ignoring people waiting to enter the pedestrian crossing between Blue Rooster and Firelands Association for the Visual Arts and frightening those that dare to try. Student cyclists who ride down Main Street instead of the sidewalk, as they are meant to, risk being hit by any one of the litany of parked cars in the downtown area as it pulls out of a parking space.

These specific areas represent part of a much larger problem of pedestrian safety in Oberlin that is not an easy one to solve. We are doubtful that student bicyclists will lose their penchant for riding without helmets any time soon, and aggressive drivers are, unfortunately, all too common. Furthermore, Ohio law states that “pedestrians must yield the right-of-way to vehicles … when crossing outside of a marked crosswalk or an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection.”

Because two state routes run through Oberlin, adding crosswalks and other pedestrian safety features along major roadways is not so simple. City Council previously attempted to designate the segment of Lorain Street between Park and Pleasant Streets as a school zone to circumvent laws prohibiting installment of crosswalks on state roads. This would have allowed for a formal crosswalk to be installed between Wilder Bowl and the Science Center, but the effort was unsuccessful.

Regardless of urban planning limitations and the tendencies of students, cyclists, and drivers, enough is enough. An article from The Chronicle-Telegram noted that Lt. Mike McCloskey of the Oberlin Police Department mentioned that the area of Main Street where Gutierrez was killed is poorly-lit, as if such a detail were a mere afterthought. Similarly, some might argue that Oberlin’s compliance with pedestrian safety and urban planning regulations is sufficient, and that such accidents can’t be avoided if pedestrians are careless in moving through town.

Those cannot be our excuses. Safety can be improved, and we believe that whatever measures necessary should be taken to do so. If poorly-lit areas prove unsafe, lighting should be installed. If crosswalks are lacking in places where students and town residents frequently cross roadways, they should be added.

Thankfully, City Council has and will continue to make improvements to pedestrian safety in Oberlin. According to City Council President Bryan Burgess, this summer, for example, the pedestrian crossing next to Blue Rooster will be upgraded with warning lights and driveways from Tappan Square onto Professor Street will be removed to discourage illegal crossings between the square and campus buildings. In past years, sharrows — signals painted on the roadway to indicate that bikes and cars must share the space — have been added to numerous streets throughout town. Further, improvements that have been made for bike riders on sections of Professor Street will be expanded, and the city will continue to connect unlinked segments of sidewalks.

The Editorial Board is optimistic that these efforts will be successful, but we feel that there are other improvements that would have an impact. The corners of the intersection of Lorain and Professor Streets could benefit greatly from additions of auditory and lighted walk signals similar to those that appear at the corners of College and Main Streets. Additionally, Main Street must be made safer for cyclists beyond existing sharrows; currently, the prospect of riding bicycles there is nightmarish, regardless of whether drivers are legally obligated to share the road. Finally, lighting should be assessed across the city and improved where necessary, especially along state routes with high speed limits.

We also feel strongly that Oberlin should conduct the necessary traffic study to designate the crossing between the Science Center and Wilder as an educational zone, allowing a crosswalk to be installed there.

For that to happen, collaboration between state and municipal interests will be necessary. We call on our elected officials — State Senator Gayle Manning, State Representative Dan Ramos, and Lorain County Commissioners Ted Kalo, Lori Kokoski, and Tom Williams — to collaborate with City Council to help make these changes happen. While we recognize the important precedence of state regulations, the law must adapt to the habits of the citizens that governments serve.

As a student publication, we also understand that many may feel that the instigators of dangers to pedestrians are the pedestrians themselves, specifically students. While student influence in city governance is often controversial due to our transience, this is not such a case — we have a vested interest in improving safety for pedestrians and cyclists both on campus and in town, and such changes will be crucial for future generations of students.

We also realize that the ideas outlined here cannot and should not be all that is proposed. For this reason, we call on City Council to hold forums on pedestrian safety and solicit ideas and complaints from all members of our community in the hopes of making us all safer.

If our community puts in genuine effort, pedestrian safety will improve, and Oberlin will be better for it.

When our friends, family, and coworkers leave the house, office, or classroom, we all want to be certain that they are safe, and we should do everything we can to ensure that. The loss of any friend or loved one is unthinkable, and even more so when that loss could have been avoided. For the sake of the safety of Oberlin — and in memory of Kyle Gutierrez and Jason Baird — we must take all measures necessary to ensure that this never happens again.

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

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Opi n ions

“Mexicocoa” Shows Need for Journalistic Diversity Kameron Dunbar Columnist

My mom taught me never to say “I told you so.” But, if there was ever a time to say it, that time would be now.

Just two weeks after I called for greater diversity in campus journalism, The Grape, Oberlin’s edgiest news magazine, published a piece titled “Spicy Mexicocoa.”

In short, the article was a disaster. It centered around a recipe for a “spicy” mixed drink composed of only hot cocoa, milk, a shot of tequila, and a half shot of honey or maple syrup.

Though the ingredients list was brief, there’s nothing on the list that would make the beverage “spicy” to anyone with a palate that can handle even the weakest chai tea brew. Beyond the absence of spice, the beverage referenced was a “Mexicocoa.”

It’s a fair inference to assume that the drink was called “Mexicocoa” for no other reason than the presence of tequila. There

was no indication that the drink was of Mexican origin; it just had a shot of tequila in it.

The piece was published in the “Bad Habits” section, a section well-known and beloved by some for its cheeky humor.

The community response to “Spicy Mexicocoa” was far from cheeky. Many were hurt, angry, and upset. Frankly, there was a lot to be upset about, and there is blame to be had.

For starters, somebody actually thought this story was OK to write. Now, I’m sure the author didn’t mean to cause harm or impose strife on those impacted. Oberlin, however, probably understands better than most campuses the idea of intent versus impact. While it may not have been purposeful, the piece reduced Mexico and Mexican culture down to a shot of tequila. It played on a caricature of a community already maligned by a gross history of subjugation by the U.S. In this national climate, where leaders in the highest branches of government con-

tinue to make gross generalizations on the morality and character of Mexicans, the piece was profoundly inappropriate. The article was also founded on the fact that many perceive Latinx cultures as “exotic,” so it’s not unheard of to see someone automatically associate anything they perceive to be Mexican as “spicy” and vice versa.

Modern editorial processes have several safety mechanisms in place to ensure that these sorts of callous and puerile mistakes don’t happen. After the piece was written, an editor should have raised concerns at the very least. The editorial staff has the responsibility to protect the integrity of its sections and publications. A good editor would not have published this feature. But they did. And they thought it was fine to publish.

Then two editors-in-chief read through the magazine. They also thought it was OK to publish.

The editorial processes and safeguards in place are clearly not infallible, and this piece rep-

resents supreme negligence or sad ignorance by the editorial staff. These types of journalistic safeguards work best when applied by a diverse staff that represents a potpourri of racial and ethnic backgrounds, gender expressions, geography, sexual orientation, and other defining identities. This may sound like a broken record, but diversity is good. Diversity is vital.

To avoid generic claims of bias, I’ll point out, once again, that the Review is not without its fair share of blame. Just last week, it published an eye-rollingly simple take conflating anti-racists who advocated for the removal of the Indians’ Chief Wahoo with avid sports fans clinging to their beloved mascot (“Chief Wahoo Logo Overhaul Long Overdue, Despite Fan Disappointment,” The Oberlin Review, Feb. 9, 2018). The piece, seemingly well-intentioned, argues that “neither side is more correct.” Vague and vacuous centrism may not be adjacent to overt bigotry, but it’s cer-

tainly akin to the ignorance and complicity at the core of both conceptions. “Both sides” arguments usually seek to silence or numb the oppressed and exonerate those responsible for harm.

Some would say I’m just bitter. Others might say I’m taking a cute, harmless joke and turning it into a raucous incident.

But I really just think we can do better. Is this what passes for humor on this campus? Is this all we can get from our campus media? Really? There are way too many talented content creators of color to publish such mediocre and absent-minded pieces throughout our campus outlets.

There are too many socially conscious individuals on this campus for us to consistently allow these lapses in judgement. Obviously, people will make mistakes — that’s inevitable. With this in mind, doing the same things over and over again and expecting things to change is absurd.

We have to do better. We have to change.

Opioid Epidemic Cannot Be Fought Through War on Drugs

Administration Has Duty to Provide Legal Aid to Students

Jackie Brant Opinions Editor

Henry DuBeau Contributing Writer

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a piece for The Oberlin Review about the opioid epidemic, specifically in Ohio, and what could be done about it. Since then, there has been no significant reduction in opioid-related deaths in the state or in the nation. According to The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio’s drug overdose rate increased to 39 percent from mid-2016 to mid-2017; the national average is 13.3 percent.

Ohio’s 2017 opioid-related data looks bleak. The state had the third most opioid-related overdoses and the third highest overdose rate increase out of any other state in 2017, totaling 5,200 deaths. Montgomery County in southern Ohio reached 800 overdose deaths in 2017 and had to expand its morgue to accommodate the drastic increase.

Out of the 4,329 overdose-related deaths in Ohio in 2017, 83 percent were due to opioid overdoses.

Thus far, attempts to mitigate the damage have led to unintended side effects, both in the state and nationally. The higher prices and heightened difficulty of obtaining prescription opioids, though successful in decreasing the overdose rate of prescriptions, have only led to the substitution of other types of opioids that are cheaper and easier to obtain illegally than prescription opioids — namely heroin and, more recently, the synthetic opioid fentanyl. The overdose rate from fentanyl has doubled since 2015. A major reason why fentanyl usage has made a huge jump in recent years is that individuals need much less of the substance than heroin or prescription drugs to achieve the same high, making it cheaper for users and easier to smuggle for the cartels. It is also

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easier to produce — it does not require a specific plant like heroin does to manufacture — and is 40 to 100 times stronger than morphine and 10 times stronger than heroin. This makes fentanyl users more likely to overdose than users of heroin and other opioids.

Furthermore, individuals seeking heroin often mistakenly buy fentanyl, and end up taking too much because they think they are using a weaker drug.

Despite well-intended efforts, we continue to fail in dealing with this epidemic. If anything, this failure proves that we, as a country, cannot continue to fight this opioid abuse by simply proceeding with the War on Drugs. When we make policies that attempt to suppress the smuggling of prescription opioids and punish those with substance abuse disorders, the overdose rate of prescription opioids may go down, but that is counteracted by a spike in heroin.

This same phenomenon takes place with policies regarding heroin, only with the backlash being a jump in the even stronger fentanyl. Each time we single out a drug to eradicate, producers and cartels develop and cater a new one that is even stronger, cheaper, and easier to smuggle than the last. If we continue to fight the opioid epidemic in the same way, we will get the same results as always — even bigger spikes in opioid-related deaths than the year before.

For my 2016 Winter Term project, I had the privilege of interning with Judge Denise Bradley, who presides over a criminal courthouse of Harris County in Houston, Texas. During my time there, I was introduced to a nationwide program that Judge Bradley volunteered to helm — the Drug Court system. Nonviolent drug offenders can apply to Drug Courts when available, where they are

required to complete a rehabilitation program under the supervision of a judge. Although the program is lengthy, individuals who enter the Drug Court system receive substance abuse and other mental health treatments, social services, and employment assistance. However, they are also held accountable for being productive members of society and staying clean. Failure to do so results in a mandated sentence from the judge.

The Drug Court system is successful in several ways. The program’s supervision is close enough that its participants are six times more likely than those in unsupervised programs to be in treatment long enough to actually produce results, and they have a lower rate of relapse after graduation. Out of 2,000 graduates, only 16 percent of individuals were arrested for drug-related crimes after the first year and 27 percent after the second year, compared to 60–80 percent of those who were arrested but not a part of Drug Court.

The system also saves taxpayers a substantial amount of money and could help in lowering the national incarceration rate in America. One study showed that the average savings per individual in Drug Court ranged between $4,000 and $12,000. Furthermore, studies consistently show that Drug Courts play a direct part in lowering the national crime rate.

Thus, individuals who complete the program are very likely to stay out of jail long-term — inevitably leading to less spending — unlike those who receive jail time or unsupervised rehab and probation.

Finally, though there have been no studies on the relationship between opioids and Drug Courts, a study conducted on methamphetamines showed that compared to See Drug, page 7

This article is part of the Review’s Student Senate column. In an effort to increase communication and transparency, Student Senators will provide personal perspectives on recent events on campus and in the community.

When Student Senate first included questions about legal aid in our spring 2016 referendum, we found that about one in seven students has required some form of legal assistance during their time at Oberlin.

Given that even “minor” legal issues can have a devastating impact on a student’s academic performance and mental health, this data gave us senators cause for concern. For a few years now, Student Senate has advocated for the establishment of a student legal aid office at Oberlin to account for this largely unseen hindrance to student success.

Currently, there are about 350 colleges nationwide that offer some form of legal aid. The push for student legal services began in the 1960s as part of the larger students’ rights movement. Since then, the scope of student legal aid has expanded dramatically because of the changing demographics of college campuses. Student bodies have diversified by almost every metric, and with these changes comes a wider range of legal needs.

As it stands, Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo has maintained a referral list of attorneys in the Northeast Ohio region for students seeking counsel. While this is certainly helpful, we want to build on this work to create a more accessible model for ac-

tual legal services on campus.

Because of the lack of reliable transportation to anywhere outside the city of Oberlin, as well as the considerable financial barriers to obtaining legal assistance, we believe it is the responsibility of the college administration to provide such services where they are lacking, for both ethical and practical reasons.

Typical services that these offices cover at other schools include landlord-tenant disputes, criminal misdemeanor cases, representation in county courts, uncontested domestic matters — such as legal name changes — document drafting and review, and notary services. The greatest benefit of student legal aid offices is that they operate using a financially accessible model that costs significantly less than seeking counsel on one’s own.

Students usually pay a semesterly fee as part of their tuition with the ability to opt-out if they so choose. For example, the fees at Ohio University, Bowling Green State University, and Kent State University are $12, $9, and $10, respectively, per semester.

Another advantage to a legal aid office is that it can help improve the relationship between the College and greater Lorain County community. Such offices frequently hire and rely on local attorneys, and they establish working relationships with local bar associations. This would also be an ideal opportunity for students enrolled in the College’s Law Scholars Program to gain meaningful work experience as part of the curriculum.

Oberlin is an institution that prides itself on its legacy of social justice, diversity, and inclusion, and we believe that legal aid is a significant, tangible, and productive way that we can further that mission.

City Should Continue Fight Against NEXUS Pipeline Nathan Carpenter Columnist

When I first arrived at Oberlin in fall 2016, I learned that the impending construction of the NEXUS pipeline was a key community issue that much of the city firmly opposed.

I also learned that Oberlin had a silver bullet that would stop the pipeline from being constructed within city limits: its Community Bill of Rights and Obligations.

The CBRO unequivocally states that, following its codification, new gas and oil pipelines cannot be built within the city of Oberlin — without exception. It is a powerful document expressing our community’s commitment to self-determination and affirming Oberlin’s ongoing leadership in combating climate change.

For some time, the outlook for the antiNEXUS camp was hopeful — particularly after a request from Green, Ohio, to at least temporarily block the construction of the pipeline was upheld in court last November. The prospect that Oberlin, buttressed by its legal prohibition against pipeline construction, would be able to more permanently stop NEXUS’ progress didn’t seem out of reach.

Now, just a year and a half later, all of that optimism has evaporated as City Council appears prepared to accept a $100,000 settlement in exchange for allowing NEXUS construction in Oberlin, despite the clear language prohibiting its development in our CBRO. According to Council President Bryan Burgess, a court recently ruled that NEXUS has the “right of eminent domain to condemn an easement,” and there is no longer any legal path for Oberlin to oppose the pipeline. Given this reality, Burgess supports negotiating a settlement.

Burgess’ position makes a lot of sense from a certain perspective — and it appears that much of City Council more or less agrees with him. I do not doubt that Burgess proposed the course of action that he believes to be the most beneficial for Oberlin, and I know that he is deeply saddened by the reality that the city can no longer hold NEXUS off.

In my mind, however, a stronger argument can be made for the city’s continued support of CBRO and opposition to the construction of NEXUS — the potential of a settlement is ominous because it seems to compromise Oberlin’s core values, the safety of its residents, and the CBRO itself.

It goes without saying that the construction of NEXUS will not be beneficial to Oberlin.

The pipeline — which will transport 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas destined for Canada, not Ohio, every day — will cut through the city, at one point passing next to Splash Zone, a common recreation spot for families and the current practice location for the College’s swimming and diving team. NEXUS will also travel within 500 meters of the Oberlin Reservoir and other bodies of water in the area, increasing the impact of any potential pipeline-related disaster.

The bottom line is that pipelines break, leak, and spill all the time. Spectra Energy, the parent company behind NEXUS, has a history of such incidents, which is not uncommon for similar companies. If NEXUS is ultimately built through Oberlin, which seems overwhelmingly likely, the question of when a problem or crisis will arise seems more pertinent than the question of if one will.

Resistance to oil and gas pipelines like NEXUS is much more urgent than this country’s political and economic elite would have us believe. Any economic benefit created by employing workers to build pipelines is outweighed by the negative impact that pipelines have had, and will continue to have, on communities and natural spaces. City Council clearly understands this, which is why they The Oberlin Review | February 16, 2018

have fought NEXUS with such strength in recent years — and they should not lose that commitment now.

Continuing to oppose NEXUS is also philosophically urgent. I fear that accepting this infringement on Oberlin’s autonomy and community space without further investment in the CBRO will compromise any future resistance to industrial encroachment and environmental threats. How can we continue to resist pipelines or other infringements if we have already shown ourselves willing to reach a settlement rather than stand firmly by our shared — and voted-upon — community rights and values?

Councilmember Heather Adelman hit the nail right on the head with her comments at the most recent council meeting, the first at which the proposed NEXUS settlement was discussed. She said that negotiating a settlement would mean that council would violate the city’s own law, which was initiated and passed by a significant majority of Oberlin voters. She also emphasized that agreeing to no longer pursue litigation against NEXUS would have consequences for potential litigation in the future, particularly with respect to defending and upholding the CBRO. At this point, it appears more or less certain that NEXUS will be built through Oberlin.

The manner in which the city chooses to respond is the key remaining variable, and whatever course of action City Council settles on will have sweeping implications.

I certainly understand and empathize with the dilemma that council faces, and do not envy them for the decision now in front of them. I also believe that pursuing a settlement is the wrong answer and I agree with Adelman’s argument that it is better to reinforce our commitment to Oberlin’s CBRO and take a stand, however symbolic it may be, against an instance of environmental infringement that will undoubtedly threaten Oberlin’s future safety and sustainability.

Students should become active in pushing City Council in this direction. As with any community issue, student involvement will likely be questioned by some and perhaps even dismissed with others. It is certainly important for students to consider the role they should play in a place they will likely only live for four years, and perspectives for and against college activism in town affairs should all be considered.

Last semester, the Review’s editorial board wrote about student participation in local Oberlin elections. The piece encouraged participation by well-informed students on issues that pertain to them — the same principle should apply here. If disaster were to strike as a result of this pipeline, it will impact everybody in both the College and town communities — so I see great value in students advocating for City Council to take this opportunity to strengthen its commitment to the CBRO and affirm its values as a city that has been on the frontlines of the ongoing struggle against climate change.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of how City Council chooses to address the construction of NEXUS — the future of environmental activism and community-based leadership in the city hangs in the balance. Negotiating a settlement — and thereby violating the CBRO — means that not only will NEXUS be built, but also that the city will be much more directionless the next time a battle like this comes to its doors.

We must stand by the CBRO and identify the legal and political circumstances that led to its failure to keep NEXUS at bay in order to ensure a different outcome in the future. We must state clearly that, even though we have lost the battle over NEXUS, Oberlin remains a steadfast advocate for the environment and for justice in the war to come.

CARTOON OF THE WEEK Janie Chang-Weinberg

Oberlin Should Prioritize Cleaning Mold Rather Than Space Renovations Continued from page 5

piping and heating for the building. Toward the end of Winter Term, one of our management team members opened the co-op to find that the heating system was leaking large amounts of water onto the floor and our English books. We’ve had to throw out at least 20 books and will most likely have to buy a new bookshelf due to water damage and mold. Furthermore, more examination of the area around the leak revealed that the entire wall behind the bookshelf was moldy, and another wall was covered in bubbling paint.

To renovate perfectly functional and safe spaces such as Wilder and Philips gym is uncalled for when other buildings are struggling with mold and the college faces a financial crisis. Mold is an allergen and can be toxic, and is therefore a danger to students. Luckily, Facilities is going to fix the leak, and Harkness House is being renovated this summer. However, I’ve heard from other students that there is mold in village housing and other structural issues in dorms.

I am glad that the administration listened to student concerns and responded by renovating Wilder Hall. However, Wilder is a very visible space on campus and is often featured on campus tours. That fact could have motivated the renovation as much as the student survey did. We all know that enrollment is down and the College needs to do more to attract prospective students, but retention rates have also decreased. Students are far more likely to stay at Oberlin if they have safe living spaces. Plus, prospective students often spend the night in dorms and will be equally unlikely to enroll if water drips on their face as they sleep or the book co-op they visit has bubbling paint.

The administration needs to address the physical condition of the school as they strategize ways to improve the College’s financial situation. Yet simply making the school look better won’t solve the underlying problems. Prioritizing student health and safety is not only the most effective solution but also the only truly ethical one.

Drug Courts Necessary Tool in Successfully Fighting Opioid Epidemic Continued from page 6

eight other treatment programs, Drug Courts produced the highest and longest rates of abstinence for methamphetamine users. These facts provide strong evidence that Drug Courts could be a successful, long-term approach in battling the opioid epidemic in this country.

Action must be taken, and soon.

The collateral damage of opioid abuse is beginning to pile up.

Our incarceration rate is out of control; one in 115 U.S. citizens is confined.

Labor force participation has fallen drastically in states with higher opioid usage. People suffering from addiction who want help are forced to wait weeks or even months for admittance to treatment centers. The number of children who have been removed from a home involving substance abuse has quadrupled since 2010, leaving the foster care system overcrowded. Those forced into treatment by criminal courts receive unsubstantial, shortterm treatment and relapse 95 percent

of the time. Something must change.

Not only are we failing to lower the crime rate and rehabilitate offenders, but we are also failing to protect individuals and families from the threat and consequences of the opioid epidemic.

It is our government’s duty to protect its citizens. It is therefore also its duty to take quick and thorough action in fighting this epidemic, especially as its effects are spreading to so many aspects of American life. Drug Courts are proven to be highly successful, but there are simply not enough in existence. This system must be expanded so that individuals seeking rehabilitation treatment will not be forced to wait more than a couple days to be placed into a program. So long as we continue the War on Drugs, stronger drugs will continue to surface, and the direct effects and side effects of the opioid epidemic will continue to take lives, families will continue to be torn apart, and death and imprisonment rates will continue to skyrocket.

7

Black History at Oberlin In 1835, Oberlin College was the first predominantly white institution to accept Black male students, welcoming all female students just two years later. Although other Black women had graduated from the College, Mary Jane Patterson was the first to earn a Bachelor’s Degree from a college in the United States in 1862. As of 1900, Oberlin had given one-third of all Black professionals in the United States their undergraduate degrees. While the College played an important part in Black history, Black students were still not allowed to live on campus in the dorms and instead lived in apartments with other members of the Oberlin Black community. As a result, there was a strong sense of community among Oberlin’s Black residents.

Oberlin was a key stop on the Underground Railroad on the way to Canada, and both the College and the town were involved directly with helping runaway slaves to safety. In one case, Oberlin College and residents rescued a runaway slave from United States marshals and brought him to freedom in Canada using Oberlin’s network of back roads and safe houses. Just a year later, Shields Green, Lewis Sheridan Leary, and John Anthony Copeland — Black residents of the town — participated in the raid on Harpers Ferry.

Oberlin College’s NAACP chapter participated in sit-ins and boycotts with other activists in Cleveland during the Civil Rights Movement. It also invited civil rights leaders to speak at the College. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the College multiple times and was even the commencement speaker in 1965. Distinguished Black leaders from the 19th and 20th centuries, such as scholar William Sanders Scarborough and activists Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell, also graduated from Oberlin.

February 16

February 17

Oberlin Black Student Excellence Oberlin College Black Musicians Guild

Black Scientists Guild

The Oberlin College Black Musicians Guild was founded in 2001 and began in the Conservatory. The group consisted of Black voice majors seeking a space to give voice to Black musicians and celebrate their culture. The OCBMG advocated for Master classes with Black musicians as well as for Black art songs, since many of the musical pieces are European. In the future, the organization hopes to continue promoting diversity and inclusion in the Conservatory such that the OCBMG becomes solely a place for solidarity with other Black musicians.

The Black Scientists Guild was re-established this school year and has already accomplished much for students of color in the sciences. Their goal is to create a community for Black students in STEM that provides them with solidarity and the resources they need to be productive and effective in their fields. BSG provides a space for collaboration, homework, and connecting with fellow Black students. Last fall, BSG sent students to a physics conference where they were given the opportunity to network as well as find research experiences. In March, BSG is hosting Dr. Tamika Cross, a Black doctor, to discuss her experiences and facilitate a workshop focusing on medical professions.

ABUSUA ABUSUA was founded as a Pan-Africanist and Black Nationalist organization in 1968. They wanted to increase cultural and political awareness regarding Black students at Oberlin and their experiences. ABUSUA has now expanded to serve as a support system for the emotional, mental, and physical well-being of Oberlin’s Africana community.

They are currently working on programming for Black History Month with a number of events throughout the month of February. The theme for this year’s Black History Month is Sankofa: “Go Back and Get It,” and ABUSUA has cooperated with other prominent Black student organizations for many of the month’s events.

February 17

In celebration of Black History Atiya McGhee, the senior area The founder of DapperQ, Anita Month and the premiere of Black coordinator for Multicultural and Dolce Vita, presents “My Name is My Panther, the Multicultural Resource Identity-Based Communities at Own: Queer Style as Visual Activism” Center, Black History Month Oberlin College, will facilitate as part of the Multicultural Resource Committee, African Students a student panel discussion Center’s annual QTPOC speaker Association, and ABUSUA are hosting titled “Black and Q(T): Student series. Dolce Vita has been featured a Winter in Wakanda Masquerade Conservations on Black Queer in prominent newspapers such as The Ball. They invite you to wear your and Trans Identities.”

New York Times and Huffington Post best Wakanda-inspired costume.

Afrikan Heritage House for her fashion and culture blog.

Carnegie Building 2 p.m.

Wilder 101 9 p.m.

4:30–6 p.m.

February 18

Associate Professor of Africana Studies Charles Peterson’s lecture “Dreams of a Future Home: Black Panther and the African American Imaginary” covers the cultural significance of the new Marvel Black Panther movie.

Afrikan Heritage House 4:30 p.m.

February 20

Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology Fredara Hadley presents “The Black History of the Oberlin Conservatory.”

Bibbins Hall (Conservatory of Music) 223 7 p.m.

February 22

Moses Hogan was a pianist and composer of spirituals and choral music. In honor of Black History Month, the Oberlin College Black Musicians Guild has cosponsored a Moses Hogan Sing-Along.

Warner Concert Hall 7 p.m.

Main Spread Photo is of A Mural From Afrikan Heritage House Layout and Text by This Week Editor, Lucy Martin

Black History at Oberlin In 1835, Oberlin College was the first predominantly white institution to accept Black male students, welcoming all female students just two years later. Although other Black women had graduated from the College, Mary Jane Patterson was the first to earn a Bachelor’s Degree from a college in the United States in 1862. As of 1900, Oberlin had given one-third of all Black professionals in the United States their undergraduate degrees. While the College played an important part in Black history, Black students were still not allowed to live on campus in the dorms and instead lived in apartments with other members of the Oberlin Black community. As a result, there was a strong sense of community among Oberlin’s Black residents.

Oberlin was a key stop on the Underground Railroad on the way to Canada, and both the College and the town were involved directly with helping runaway slaves to safety. In one case, Oberlin College and residents rescued a runaway slave from United States marshals and brought him to freedom in Canada using Oberlin’s network of back roads and safe houses. Just a year later, Shields Green, Lewis Sheridan Leary, and John Anthony Copeland — Black residents of the town — participated in the raid on Harpers Ferry.

Oberlin College’s NAACP chapter participated in sit-ins and boycotts with other activists in Cleveland during the Civil Rights Movement. It also invited civil rights leaders to speak at the College. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the College multiple times and was even the commencement speaker in 1965. Distinguished Black leaders from the 19th and 20th centuries, such as scholar William Sanders Scarborough and activists Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell, also graduated from Oberlin.

February 16

February 17

Oberlin Black Student Excellence Oberlin College Black Musicians Guild

Black Scientists Guild

The Oberlin College Black Musicians Guild was founded in 2001 and began in the Conservatory. The group consisted of Black voice majors seeking a space to give voice to Black musicians and celebrate their culture. The OCBMG advocated for Master classes with Black musicians as well as for Black art songs, since many of the musical pieces are European. In the future, the organization hopes to continue promoting diversity and inclusion in the Conservatory such that the OCBMG becomes solely a place for solidarity with other Black musicians.

The Black Scientists Guild was re-established this school year and has already accomplished much for students of color in the sciences. Their goal is to create a community for Black students in STEM that provides them with solidarity and the resources they need to be productive and effective in their fields. BSG provides a space for collaboration, homework, and connecting with fellow Black students. Last fall, BSG sent students to a physics conference where they were given the opportunity to network as well as find research experiences. In March, BSG is hosting Dr. Tamika Cross, a Black doctor, to discuss her experiences and facilitate a workshop focusing on medical professions.

ABUSUA ABUSUA was founded as a Pan-Africanist and Black Nationalist organization in 1968. They wanted to increase cultural and political awareness regarding Black students at Oberlin and their experiences. ABUSUA has now expanded to serve as a support system for the emotional, mental, and physical well-being of Oberlin’s Africana community.

They are currently working on programming for Black History Month with a number of events throughout the month of February. The theme for this year’s Black History Month is Sankofa: “Go Back and Get It,” and ABUSUA has cooperated with other prominent Black student organizations for many of the month’s events.

February 17

In celebration of Black History Atiya McGhee, the senior area The founder of DapperQ, Anita Month and the premiere of Black coordinator for Multicultural and Dolce Vita, presents “My Name is My Panther, the Multicultural Resource Identity-Based Communities at Own: Queer Style as Visual Activism” Center, Black History Month Oberlin College, will facilitate as part of the Multicultural Resource Committee, African Students a student panel discussion Center’s annual QTPOC speaker Association, and ABUSUA are hosting titled “Black and Q(T): Student series. Dolce Vita has been featured a Winter in Wakanda Masquerade Conservations on Black Queer in prominent newspapers such as The Ball. They invite you to wear your and Trans Identities.”

New York Times and Huffington Post best Wakanda-inspired costume.

Afrikan Heritage House for her fashion and culture blog.

Carnegie Building 2 p.m.

Wilder 101 9 p.m.

4:30–6 p.m.

February 18

Associate Professor of Africana Studies Charles Peterson’s lecture “Dreams of a Future Home: Black Panther and the African American Imaginary” covers the cultural significance of the new Marvel Black Panther movie.

Afrikan Heritage House 4:30 p.m.

February 20

Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology Fredara Hadley presents “The Black History of the Oberlin Conservatory.”

Bibbins Hall (Conservatory of Music) 223 7 p.m.

February 22

Moses Hogan was a pianist and composer of spirituals and choral music. In honor of Black History Month, the Oberlin College Black Musicians Guild has cosponsored a Moses Hogan Sing-Along.

Warner Concert Hall 7 p.m.

Main Spread Photo is of A Mural From Afrikan Heritage House Layout and Text by This Week Editor, Lucy Martin

A r t s & C u lt u r e

ARTS & CULTURE February 16, 2018

established 1874

Volume 146, Number 14

Soul Session Kicks Off Celebration of Black History Month Ananya Gupta Arts & Culture Editor

“A talent show with much more soul.”

So described by College sophomore and organizer DaQuan Williams, Soul Sessions is an ABUSUA, Oberlin’s Black Student Union, initiative held in the Lord Lounge of Afrikan Heritage House on select Friday nights. These sessions are a significant part of A-House’s cultural tradition and involve a night of showcasing talent — Black talent in particular. It is a time for the Africana community to gather and celebrate their culture through any medium of their choosing, including music, poetry, and dance, in an intimate, informal setting.

“It’s called Soul Session because usually that creative expression is seen as soulful,” Soul Session All-Stars: The Alumni Edition. Justin Emeka, OC ’95, not pictured. said Khalid Taylor, OC ’17, program Photo courtesy of Candice Raynor coordinator at the Multicultural Resource Center. “There are traditions where if you about pursuing their dreams despite major Andre Cardine. “Oftentimes POCs on campus have to blend in with white think someone is really displaying soul, hardships. “[The alumni] were really amazed at students on campus and with the culture. then you throw your shoes because the how talented everyone was and at the At Soul Sessions specifically, you don’t have bottom of the shoe is called the sole.” same time didn’t expect anything less,” to blend in. You can be yourself, and there Last Friday was a particularly special Soul Session, hosted by several Black Taylor said. “[They] wanted to reassure us are other Black people who have relatable alumni of Oberlin College who are now that we are on our way to becoming who or the same experiences that you do.”

Many of the performances were professional artists in New York City. we want to be and to know that we have them as a support.

[It] was really nice to see reminiscent of Black church culture, and Tamara Jade, OC ’12, emceed the event and demonstrated her extraordinary musical people who had been in similar situations, featured songs related to the Christian talents throughout the night alongside had also doubted themselves or weren’t faith.

“It’s not necessarily about the words, several other musicians, thus earning certain about what the next steps were, [who have now] found their way and are or who exactly is being prayed to,” Taylor the name for this special edition of Soul doing really well.” said. “[It’s about] the intention, energy, Sessions: “All-Star: The Alumni Edition.”

All performances were highly community ... and comfort that it can bring “Having outside energy was a lot better,” interactive and engaged the audience. in moments of difficulty, struggle, doubt, College sophomore Darian Gray said. “A Practices such as call-and-response, shoe and lack of clarity.” lot of people who are up there and host do Some performers identified with other it every time, and so having someone new throwing, and particular hand movements broke down the barriers between faiths, or even mentioned that they didn’t come in and give it a new breath of life was performer and audience member, while really believe in God, yet felt connected to really great.” creating a safe environment for POCs at — and loved singing — gospel music.

Not only did the alumni showcase “[Within] the whole Africana their proficiency with their piano and Oberlin.

“I had never gone to a predominantly community, music has meant something percussion performances, but they also provided Black students in the arts with white school before I came here,” said different to us than it has to other cultures,” advice, encouragement, and inspiration College senior and Musical Studies Gray said. “Music is therapeutic for some

people, and is just an outlet for releasing feelings, whether that’s anger, sadness, happiness, it’s just a way to express how you’re feeling, and I think it’s beautiful.”

This Soul Session kicked off Black History Month, which has been themed this year as Sankofa, meaning “Go back and get it.”

“The concept of going back and getting is a matter of understanding what has come before, how that informs the present and also, in some ways, sets the precedent for the future,” Taylor explained.

Black History Month is an opportunity for members of the Black community to use their culture as a means of selfdeclaration, and a way to own personal stories which are often ignored, unvoiced, or unappreciated in predominantly white spaces.

All people are welcome and encouraged to attend Soul Sessions, and anyone can sign up to perform impromptu. However, as Soul Sessions are a safe space for Black students, many performances are emotional and release some of the frustration experienced by POCs due to the circumstances they’ve endured in the U.S., globally, and across generations.

“The few spaces that Black folks do have are seen as sacred, and so if you come into this space, it is a matter of humbling of yourself, recognizing that this is out of your comfort zone, and that’s OK,” Taylor said. “Recognize that you should listen and participate wisely, but also leave space for Black people to exist as they do.”

Soul Sessions provide POCs an opportunity to express themselves without fear of judgement, and to be heard uncensored and free of societal constraints.

“Whatever happens happens,” Gray said. “Wherever the energy is flowing, wherever it’s going, it just goes that way.

There’s no stopping it, there’s no time limits … Everything just [goes] organically.”

Duterte, Sridharan Perform Innovative Indie Pop Tunes

California pop singer-songwriter Melina Duterte performs as Jay Som at the Cat in the Cream Saturday night.

Photo by Hugh Newcomb, Photo Editor

Russell Jaffe Staff Writer The Cat in the Cream hosted California-based pop singer-songwriter Melina Duterte, performing as Jay Som, Saturday night. Duterte is known for kaleidoscopic dream pop and personally crafting all the sounds on her records.

She has been featured on Pitchfork, NPR, and Rookie. Out Magazine described Jay Som as “the New Queer Voice of Indie Rock,” and Vice featured Duterte in a 2017 article titled “The Defiant Sound of Asian-American Women in Indie Rock.” Her Oberlin performance, which was co-

10

sponsored by the Filipinx American Student Association and the Asian American Alliance, shone a spotlight on Duterte’s cool, ethereal musical style. In anticipation of Jay Som’s wide appeal for the Oberlin community, most of the tables in the space had been cleared away in advance of the performance to make room for a standing audience. Given that hundreds of students confirmed their attendance at the show or expressed their interest on Facebook, the Cat in the Cream was right to predict that this would be a popular event.

The lights around the packed room faded out as College first-year Keerthi Sridharan opened the show. Stepping up with her guitar in hand, she took her place at the lone microphone in the center of the stage, immediately capturing the attention of the crowd. If this had any effect on her at all, she learned to disregard it, as she gradually strengthened her voice with each song until her whole body was an expression of the music. She swayed with her guitar, smiling and changing her expression at just the right times in a way that could make one almost believe that it was as spontaneous as it looked. By the time she played her last song, the whole crowd had begun to snap along to the beat.

Sridharan’s style, described by Cat in the Cream employees in advance of the event as “sweet queer indie,” could easily be compared to artists like Ingrid Michaelson or Corinne Bailey Rae. Flowing and calm, the songs themselves gave off an acoustic feel, even though her instrument clearly was not. The organic nature of this music was perhaps its greatest strength, and the performance itself felt reminiscent of informal musical gatherings, like small basement jam sessions. Between each song, a few especially enthusiastic voices could be heard shouting out encouragement above the cheering crowd.

After a brief interlude, Duterte took the stage, strumming a single chord on her guitar to catch the audience’s attention before greeting us with a flat “hey.”

From the beginning, she brought a very distinct vocal style to her performance, intentionally overemphasizing the end of each line and generally finishing the songs with an abrupt halt at the final note. When paired with her guitar instrumentation, this created an excellent effect that added emphasis and drama to the tone of her music.

Duterte’s finest song of the night was “Ticket,” where the strength of both her vocals and guitar seemed to peak. This was a song full of powerful emotion, and her skill in performance was particularly evident in how she could convey what she was feeling as easily as if she were having a conversation with everyone in the room, and the last notes of the song lingered in the air like the heat of a doused flame.

Appropriately for a show taking place the weekend before Valentine’s Day, many of Duterte’s songs thematically focused on love and romance. While some of her songs drew on broad ideas like passion or infatuation, it was the way she drew on small, specific, tender moments that really made her lyrics come to life. In her song “SLOW,” she sings “Show me which way to go / Lead me and we’ll take it slow / Sneaking in your parents’ bed / Laughing ‘til our faces turn red,” weaving images through her music for the audience to enjoy. As the Cat in the Cream described in their event posting, “this show is for LOVERS,” and Duterte more than delivered on this promise. If Saturday night’s show was any indication, then Oberlin students should look forward to more great songwriting and clever instrumentation from Jay Som as she continues her artistic career.

One of the highlights of the evening was how well Duterte and Sridharan’s music complimented each other.

The two artists shared enough traits to hold common ground, and it would have been difficult to draw any sort of line that could separate the genres of one performer from the other. However, their stylistic contrasts contributed to a whole that was even greater than the sum of its two excellent parts.

ON THE RECORD

Chris Jenkins, Associate Dean

Chris Jenkins is Oberlin Conservatory’s Associate Dean for Academic Support; liaison to the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; and the deputy Title IX coordinator. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University in 2001 and went on to receive his Master’s in Music from the New England Conservatory in 2003. Jenkins plays the viola and was granted a Performance Certificate from the Manhattan School of Music. He also holds a deep interest in human rights, and earned a Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University in 2011.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Chris Jenkins Photo by Matt Payne, Staff Photographer Interview by Julia Peterson Arts & Culture Editor

What does equal access to music and education look like to you?

When we’re talking about equal access, we’re usually talking about reducing — or ideally, eliminating — economic barriers. And those would be economic barriers to both the type of music education and performance that one might want to enjoy, and also, particularly, music education that can lead you somewhere. And you might not have a vision for where that is when you’re younger, because it’s hard to do that before you know where you can actually go, right?

But I would say, making sure that people have equal access to things like instruments, lessons, enrollment in large group music programs, and also the ability to attend concerts and things like that of whatever genre one might be into.

Music education and appreciation has really been an elite form of art for a long time, and finding ways to break down those barriers is really important if we’re going to actually diversify musical fields in general.

What do you wish that more Conservatory musicians and more College students knew about African-American classical music?

I think that it’s really a shame that there’s so much really cool music out there

by African Americans that can fit into the classical realm that doesn’t get much exposure. By “cool,” I mean not just good or interesting or theoretically profound, but cool. Things that you would want to listen to, and that you would want to buy or download or put on Spotify if you knew about it. And these pieces tend not to get that much exposure for a variety of reasons, but most of all because there are people who have difficulty fitting some of these works firmly into the classical canon.

The great irony is that Black culture is popular all over the world. Black music is everywhere, because the elements of Black music that are cool, that are interesting, that everybody likes, have proven so durable and popular that they’ve gotten inside everything. Pieces that have some element of that aesthetic in classical music are also really cool and interesting, but because of the field’s historic need to keep itself really narrow, we have trouble expanding the definition to allow those works to be representative, so they don’t get much exposure or airplay. So I wish people just were able to hear more of that music and see more of that music live. And in fact, on Sunday, there’s a really great concert that our professor of flute Alexa Still is arranging for Black History Month where she and some of her colleagues are going to perform a lot of music by Black composers that is like that.

As associate dean, you’ve focused a lot on wellness initiatives in the Conservatory. What sort of projects of that nature are you working on now?

I started the Conservatory Wellness Workshops several years ago, and the idea was to promote programming that would help ensure a Conservatory student community that was more physically, mentally, and socially healthy. So to that end, I was promoting things like social justice programming with the MRC and helping to facilitate those events. We had a Beyond the Binary training last year; I’m hoping we’ll have that again this semester.

I brought performance psychologists —

Noa Kageyama, a performance psychologist on faculty at Juilliard, came last year.

We actually had a screening of a really cool documentary called “Composed” last year ... followed by some workshops with Noa. He’s coming again this March, for workshops around performance anxiety.

We have a clinician working on Alexander Technique workshops, which is for people in theater, dance, music, and a variety of disciplines where it really helps with body posture and alignment. The idea is to promote a higher level of performance through body posture and to reduce pain and injury, which is really important to Conservatory students. The Counseling Center [came] and I helped them get set up and table for two hours for students so they could talk about their resources.

We’ve had workshops on mindfulness, nonviolent communication, a whole variety of things. Mostly what I do is try to set these workshops up and make sure students are aware of them. Students are asking for these things, especially at Oberlin — we have a particular kind of music student who is more interested in those offerings than I think is the case at most conservatories. People come here in part because they want to take part in social justice programming and they want to know more about things like … performance anxiety and want to think about how they and their peers can be healthier, which is definitely not the case at all conservatories. Many conservatories have environments that are perhaps not that supportive, and that’s one of the really nice things about ours. People do generally support one another and care about each other.

What impact do you find that these wellness projects have been having in the Conservatory community and what impacts do you hope that they’ll have or continue to have in the future?

The most challenging thing for Conservatory students is how busy they are, and as much as people may want to take part in a workshop, they often can’t because they have rehearsal or lessons and

are busy 24/7. The biggest impact, I think, that can change the tune of the community is awareness among students that these kinds of programs are normalized — that to have Beyond the Binary training is normal here, is what we do, and these are concepts that we want everyone to encounter over the year. That everyone should be thinking about mental health and it’s OK to think about mental health, that everyone should be thinking about taking care of their body because that’s a natural and normal and healthy thing to do.

You’ve done some cross-disciplinary work with Professor Cindy Frantz in the Psychology department, looking at stereotypes within classical music performance. Can you tell me a bit about that project?

The basic concept is that stereotype threat is a very fascinating phenomenon that Dr. Claude Steele coined in 1995 with Josh Aronson, where they basically demonstrated their theory that Black students would underperform on tests of cognitive ability because of a fear of confirming a negative stereotype, that being that they were not as able. So since they first did this research and coined this term, there have been literally tons of studies that have replicated this effect across multiple domains and multiple populations; so this effect has been tested, for example, on white men playing basketball. Their performance will degrade if you remind them that they are white before they play basketball because the stereotype is that white athletes are not as proficient at basketball as Black athletes. All kinds of domains — math performance, golf performance, for female identifying people, Asian populations, Hispanic populations, different age groups — but it has not been tested, as far as I’m aware, for classical music. So the idea is to actually test whether or not African-American classical musicians are subject to the same kind of performance degradation when they play classical music as has been found across a variety of cognitive tests for African Americans.

Winter Term Playwriting Project Ends with Varied Performance at Cat Kate Fishman Staff Writer

A student returns to her room with a body bag, having accidentally killed a professor as a result of her plan to get expelled from school. Divine beings or “winds” commiserate, as they recount their stories of human beings from their heavenly vantage point, or “views from above.” An elderly woman tricks a young volunteer into aiding her to plan a crime, hoping to get caught and incarcerated in order to escape a nursing home.

These are three of the scenes that played out on stage at the Cat in the Cream on Sunday night, in a reading of projects created through Oberlin Student Theater Assocation’s Winter Term Playwriting Workshop.

The brainchild of OSTA co-chair College senior Callie Harlow, College senior Max The Oberlin Review | February 16, 2018

Freiman, and College sophomore Kathryn Blessington, the Winter Term workshop was designed to provide an opportunity for students who were interested in writing plays or movies to have an outlet for feedback and to set clear goals.

Blessington, College sophomores Maddie Henke and Amelia Knopf, and College first-year Maeve Greising shared scenes from their work, read by College first-year Anna Heubert-Aubry, College sophomores Grace Bohlsen and Johnson Liu, and College junior Margaret Michael. They each gave brief introductions to their pieces, and from there, the scenes spoke for themselves.

A primary goal of OSTA, according to Harlow, is to provide a resource for theater productions beyond the shows put on by the department.

“If you’re not a theater major or you’re not willing to devote

a really significant amount of your time to theater on campus, it [can be] really hard to participate at all,” Harlow said. “I wanted there to be little opportunities for people to act or direct without giving up so much of their time.”

Sunday night’s reading, facilitated by College first-year Emma Wehrman, was their most casual event yet, with actors and writers meeting just an hour before to go over the scenes and talk about what they should look like. After that, the writers were given the invaluable chance to watch pieces of their projects come to life — and the actors were able to practice their craft in a fun, low-stakes setting.

“Working with published playwrights is awesome and we want to continue to do that, but we’d love to have as many student-written plays as possible,” Harlow said of OSTA’s work.

Students present scenes from original student plays written during Winter Term at the Cat in the Cream Sunday night.

Photo by Justin Bank, Staff Photographer

This semester, OSTA will be presenting “Marzipan and Bunko Go to New Jerk City,” a play written by College sophomore Hartley Wise and directed by College junior Jackson ZinnRowthorn. But they wanted to facilitate even greater involve-

ment, and the Playwriting Winter Term Workshop was the solution.

“Oberlin has a really fantastic Creative Writing department, but it’s definitely more focused on poetry and prose,” Harlow See OSTA, page 12

11

A r t s & C u lt u r e

Mardi Gras Party at the ’Sco

OSTA Presents Playwrights Continued from page 11

The ’Sco hosted a Mardi Gras party starring two-time Grammy-nominated guitarist Roy Rogers and the Delta Rhythm Kings Tuesday night. Fat Tuesday treats were on the house, including packzis and jambalaya and rice. Participating in Mardi Gras mask-making from 4–6 p.m. earlier that day allowed partygoers free entry, and ’Sco staff dressed for the occasion.

Text by Ananya Gupta, Arts & Culture Editor Photo by Devin Cowen, Staff Photographer

said. “Even though there are great screenwriting and playwriting classes, they’re hard to get into and they’re kind of designed for upper-level majors.”

After sending out an email last year asking what resources people wanted more of on campus, she and her colleagues realized that holding workshops would help.

“A lot of younger playwrights were interested in having opportunities to write,” Harlow said.

“We were excited about having Winter Term be an opportunity for people to have a little bit of structure.”

The workshop was primarily digital so that people could participate from home, away, or on campus. Freiman, who was working on a screenplay himself, facilitated from Oberlin.

“For people who had never written any plays or any type of screenplay, I did a little bit of teaching [of ] act structure and characters, how to write properly,” Freiman said. “They joined because they wanted to write a play, so I didn’t have to force them to do anything they didn’t want to do.”

Given varying deadlines, they would meet via Skype, split into small groups, read work out loud, and give feedback.

“Having those weekly meetings makes such a big difference,” Harlow reflected. “If you have all of January to write, that’s such a vague goal.”

For Henke, who detailed the story of an accidentally-murderous college student, writing a play turned out to be a much easier goal than she’d expected — especially given a diverse circle of peers to help her out.

“Honestly, I’d wanted to try writing a play for so long, and all I had to do was sit down to make it happen,” Henke wrote in an email to the Review. “I think if I had known how doable it would be and how supportive other people would be, I would’ve written a play much sooner.”

The workshop allowed Blessington to test a bold new idea and come away with a two-act play.

She both wrote the play — which centers on a zany old woman trying to escape her senior home by going to prison — and helped organize the event on campus.

“It was a challenging task, but I learned a lot from it,” Blessington said in an email to the Review.

“It’s known that you have to fail first to succeed, and the OSTA playwriting group gives you the chance to try without worrying about the result being great.”

Tamora Pierce Pens Triumphant Return to Tortall Universe Julia Peterson Arts & Culture Editor

After a long hiatus and much anticipation, acclaimed fantasy author Tamora Pierce has finally released a new book set in her Tortall universe, Tempests and Slaughter. The book is the first in her longawaited new series, The Numair Chronicles. Pierce, whose books in the Tortall universe have frequently enjoyed long stays on New York Times bestseller lists and have earned a wide variety of prestigious awards, has proven time and again that her imagination is bound only by the careful structure that she weaves through her writing. Each of her many series is cohesive with and enriched by every other. With Tempests and Slaughter, she breaks away from a number of the patterns that she set in her previous works, offering challenges for new and familiar readers alike.

Readers who begin their journey into the Tortall universe with Tempests and Slaughter need not fear that they will be lost — in fact, the very first page in the book after the dedication is a map of the portion of the medieval fantasy universe that Pierce has previously explored in varying levels of detail.

Tempests and Slaughter is set in the southern country of Carthak, which is ruled by an absolute monarch and has a rich history and religious culture to explore. Longtime Tamora Pierce fans will already have some familiarity

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with the setting, as Pierce’s previous novel from the Immortals series, Emperor Mage, was also set in Carthak, and featured characters Numair Salmalín and his student Daine entering into complex dealings with its emperor, Ozorne. Though it is the first in a separate series, Tempests and Slaughter is a prequel to Emperor Mage, as it focuses on Numair’s (then called Arram) character as a child and his friendship with not-yet-Emperor Ozorne during their student days at the Imperial University of Carthak — before their friendship soured in ways that Pierce has promised will be explored in more detail throughout the rest of this series.

Pierce’s decision to write a prequel featuring characters already well-known to her fans forces deviations from the tried-and-true structure of her previous work. A hallmark of a Tamora Pierce novel is that it tells the story a young person who, by some combination of choice and fortune, is faced with extraordinary circumstances, and somehow learns to rise to meet them. Previous Tortallan heroes have succeeded because of their compassion, their knowledge of and knack for spycraft, or sheer stubbornness, but there was never a guarantee of who they might turn into by the end of their respective stories. Tempests and Slaughter is different because we already know that Arram will emerge from his experiences as Numair, the

most powerful living mage in the Tortall universe. I admit I was a little nervous about this premise — would knowing the outcome rob the story of its thrill? It did nothing of the sort. In fact, it might be even more enjoyable to see the extremely powerful, scatterbrained mage depicted as a child precisely because I know how he will turn out. As an adult, Numair is respected, even feared. As a ten-yearold just barely learning how to control his magic, Arram Draper is a pest, and it’s fun to see him taken down off his pedestal. It makes me want to reread the books that feature him as an adult, this time with the knowledge of all the trouble he caused when he was an awkward child who was far too clever, powerful, and bored for his own good.

It humanizes him.

The early chapters of Tempests and Slaughter have moments that will frustrate new and returning readers alike — new readers may be overwhelmed by the rapidfire flow of names, places, and cultural details being thrown at them all at once, and returning readers may experience a few moments of boredom because many of these details were wellestablished in Emperor Mage.

But there is no perfect way to thread that needle, and once Pierce has her groundwork fully established, she begins to work her craft in earnest.

Her unparalleled ability to create an intricate world with complex politics, cultures, and magical systems, color it with vivid details, then

ground it in a relatable, welldeveloped young narrator is why I have been a fan of her books since the very first one I read, and in that sense, Tempests and Slaughter is true to form.

Another choice that Pierce made for Tempests and Slaughter is that — unusually for her — she wrote a male protagonist; almost all of her previous heroes have been female. When I first discovered Pierce’s books when I was ten years old, I was thrilled seeing girls like me becoming knights and spies, leading armies, and discovering the extent of their magical powers. I wanted to be Alanna, Keladry, Aly, and Daine. I read her books to tatters, living out the dreams she offered me time and time again. I even tried to learn to fight like Alanna did — only I used a garden stake instead of a sword, and instead of defeating monsters, all I managed to do was take out my bedroom light in nonetheless spectacular fashion. When I read all these stories of girls growing up to be heroes, I believed without a doubt that I could do the same, and the importance of Pierce’s diverse complement of female heroes and her fiercely feminist writing cannot be overstated. To my delight, Pierce’s feminism is, for the most part, as sharp as ever in Tempests and Slaughter, even as it is related through a very different perspective. It does not take away from any of the important work that she has done, especially since

we are able to watch Numair grow into a feminist himself, Tempests only diversifies her explanation of those ideas.

I could recommend Tempests and Slaughter for its clever, quick-witted plot. I could point out its fascinating complement of young characters. I could talk at length about its rich additions to the already expansive Tortall universe, its delicious prose, and the care and thoughtfulness that has been poured into every line. I could say that it is so engaging that I forgot I only meant to read the first chapter and ended up well into the heart of the book before I remembered to look up and breathe. I could celebrate because it gives depth to minor characters whose previous appearances in Pierce’s canon barely scratched the surface of what they had to offer to the world. Pierce pushed the limits of her style and it paid off in spectacular fashion, offering thrills and surprises even for a reader who has read all her books and is intimately familiar with her usual tricks. For all these reasons and more, I’ll call it a great fantasy book, and I give it my wholehearted recommendation. But in all honesty, I knew that I loved Tempests and Slaughter from the moment that I flipped past the map and turned to the first page. From the opening lines, I was once again so immersed in Pierce’s world that it was like I had never left at all.

CROSSWORD

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32. 37. Across, 8. Down, and 10. Down 35. Chance occurence 36. Counterpart to Cupid 37. Beethoven is buried there 38. “_____ the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?”

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64. Makes a mistake while tallying 65. Facile 69. Japanese Prime Minister 72. Get metal from ore, again 73. O•, for example 75. Arizona and Colorado use it (abbr.)

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The Oberlin Review | February 16, 2018

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12. Condone 13. Structures used for building underwater 14. May engage in tautomerization with a ketone 15. South Korean pop star 16. Covers with frosting 17. “Whoa!”

18. Comedian and actor Kevin 28. Prix fixe, for example 30. Goal for many startups 31. Epoch 32. Largest pharmacy chain in the United States 33. Henry _____, last monarch of the House of Valois 34. Educator and entrepreneur Khan 39. Vox editor-at-large Klein 40. Romulus’ twin 42. Pakistani intelligence agency, abbr.

43. Fee 44. Tax collecting org.

45. Secure 46. North American org. for LGBTQIA youth 48. Perspicacious 49. Destroy 51. Seaweed 54. % 55. Canon lens mount 56. Hebrew letter 58. Sonata, for example 59. Taxonomic class containing chickens and flamingos 60. Home for 59. Down, perhaps 61. The first three initials of a popular MSNBC show 62. Taiwanese electronics company 63. What a cobbler might replace 66. Paid for with tickets 67. Tardy 68. Emend 69. Teenager’s bane 70. Bleats 71. Cubits 74. K+, for example 77. Joan of _____ 78. Something hilarious 79. Drug class that includes ibuprofen 80. As opposed to nay 81. Units of volume, abbr.

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97. Said after a sigh 98. Sets of exclusive rights granted to inventors 99. “Sign here and _____ here” 100. One of 100, abbr.

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128. Two hrs. ahead of 75. Across Editor’s Note: Solutions to this crossword will run at oberlinreview.org.

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Sp ort s IN THE LOCKER ROOM

Lilah Drafts-Johnson, All-American Hurdler College senior Lilah Drafts-Johnson is a two-time All-American and was the NCAC Indoor and Outdoor Sprints/Hurdle Athlete of the Year as a junior. Drafts-Johnson does more than just dominate on the track; she plays music, teaches Spanish, and looks for ways to bring the female athlete community together, as well as decrease the athlete/non-athlete divide.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview by Alex McNicoll and Alexis Dill Sports Editors

Last Sunday you helped put together an event called “Stronger Together,” the first of its kind. What was this event, and how did it come into being?

Last semester I was the teaching assistant for the Sports, Culture, and Society cluster, and part of my role in that was being a mentor for the first-year students who were in the cluster. One of my mentees was [College first-year] Leah Ross, and a question Leah asked me was, “What is the Oberlin female athlete community like?” I didn’t really know how to answer. I know very well what my team’s community and culture is like, but there are so many teams and so many athletes. It made me realize that I don’t really know what our overall community is like. Leah also had this idea for a survey for members of the women’s teams, asking what they thought were common experiences or shared struggles. She wanted to find out what the needs were for the female athlete community, and we wanted to get the community together in the same space and get to know people across teams better so we can be more supportive at team events.

In 13 Ways of Looking at Sports, students focused on the ways that sports are viewed across campus. Why do you think it’s important we work to decrease the divide that exists between athletes and non-athletes?

The reason I’m so invested [in decreasing the divide] is because I feel like I’ve straddled the divide very well. I’ve seen a lot of teammates or people on other teams go through all four years at Oberlin and never really step outside certain spaces on

our campus. Having lived on South campus for all four years, and participated in the [Oberlin Student Cooperative Association] at one point, and just generally stepped outside of the athletics bubble, I really feel like there’s a lot of benefits to going and doing those things — then also being on the other side of the divide, participating in athletics and seeing what I can take away from my team community and my coaches. I don’t want others to miss out on that. I think there’s no point in living in this binary, and so by closing the divide, I’m hoping that people will get to have experiences on both ends of the spectrum, whether that’s more traditional “Obie” or getting to use Philips gym and understanding the resources that are available there.

Outside of track, what are some things you do?

The thing that takes up the most of my time at Oberlin is the Spanish in the elementary school program, called SITES, which is basically this emerging teaching program where we send college students into the elementary schools twice a week and teach 30-minute sessions to kindergarten through second graders. That’s run by [Instructor of Spanish & Language Teacher Training] Kim Faber in the Hispanic Studies department. I’m a grade-level coordinator for that, so I manage first- and second-grade level teachers. I’ve done that since my sophomore year. In the past I’ve also worked for [Preventing and Responding to Sexual Misconduct], which I did for four semesters.

It’s kind of hard because I feel like my musicianship is something that has really

fallen to the wayside at Oberlin, but I sing and write music and play the piano. I think I deliberately chose not to take a musician’s path, which is sort of why I chose Oberlin. I wanted to have access to doing those things without it becoming my whole life.

I think I’ll go back to doing it for my own enjoyment [once I graduate].

You’re an All-American hurdler and a major component of a team that won two conference titles last year. What are your goals for this season?

This year as a whole, the track team has really focused on getting back-to-back conference championships, so winning the indoor and outdoor championships, like we did last year. We’ve also been in the national rankings for the entire indoor season, so we’re also really pushing to have our highest placing that we’ve had yet at the national meet.

Personally I really want to get an AllAmerican award for the 400 [meters] for indoors, which I’ve never done before. And I’m just trying to win the 400 meter-hurdles outdoors.

Do you have any advice for other female athletes at Oberlin who may look up to you?

Balancing my two worlds has been really difficult throughout my time at Oberlin. There have been a lot of sacrifices made to maintain both my athletic endeavors and also academic. I would say the advice I would give not just to athletes but in general, is setting really strong boundaries and understanding what your priorities are in all realms of your life. Don’t expect your lives to be separated. When I’m having a bad day on the track, it flows over to when I’m trying to get my homework done for the night.

I also think we have such strong women’s programs at Oberlin and that not being afraid to celebrate that is important. I think often it’s uncomfortable to talk about your achievements, especially for women, and I think we should be celebrating them.

Do you have any role models or mentors who have shaped you throughout your four years here?

I think the senior class when I was a first-year, definitely. A lot of my closest friends in my first year of college were seniors on the track team. Now, as a senior captain, I’m really trying to embody what

College senior Lilah Drafts-Johnson, wellknown across campus for her accomplishments on the track, hopes to return to Chile after she graduates to conduct research with the Ministry of Sport.

Photo courtesy of Lilah Drafts-Johnson

they left for me. Other role models I have are my coaches: my coach my freshman year, Jason Hudson, and now Alisha Samuel.

What do you plan on doing once you graduate?

I’m working on an honors thesis about different moments in Chilean history and what was going on in sporting competitions and how they reflected what was going on in the country. I’m looking at different sociological and political ideologies that were happening at the time. Part of my thesis is meant to be a basis for a research project I’m hoping to do in Chile after graduation.

I recently heard back from the Fulbright Committee, and I’m a semifinalist for a research grant. Now I just need to wait another two months to figure out if that settles. I would be working with the Ministry of Sport there and looking to see how their sport policies affect athletes’ abilities to be professional athletes and how people are getting into sports in general.

Will you continue to run?

I think if I get the Fulbright I definitely will, because it’s born out of my experience with training with the team while I was abroad in Chile. Having that legitimacy of being able to actually to compete with the people I’d be interviewing and interacting with would be really useful. I haven’t really figured it out. If I have a really good season and feel like I can run even faster, then I’ll keep doing it.

Yeomen Look to Quadruple Wins From Previous Season

College sophomore guard Josh Friedkin drives the ball to the hoop in a 59–52 win against Denison University Jan. 24.

Photo Courtesy of OC Athletics Jason Hewitt Staff Writer

As the men’s basketball season comes to a close, players and coaches in the program have enjoyed reflecting on a season in which they defied the odds. Last winter the Yeomen won just three games and graduated five seniors — including one of the best hoopers in Oberlin basketball history, Jack Poyle. With just one game left tomorrow, the Yeomen have

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collected eight more wins than the 2016-17 season — without any senior leadership.

Sophomore forward Andre Campbell, who started in 23 of 25 contests last year, tempered his expectations going into the year but has been elated with the team’s results.

“Coming from a 3–22 record, I was worried about having the same thing happen,” Campbell said. “But having a 3–22 season, you can only really go up. The

growth has been great. We are young, so we have a lot of growing to do, but we are making strides in the right direction. We just need guys to continue to buy into the program.”

The Yeomen came back from their Feb. 10 loss to Wabash College by completing a season sweep of Allegheny College Wednesday. Junior Eli Silverman-Lloyd and sophomore Josh Friedkin led the way in the 65–53 win with 21 and 20 points, respectively. Sophomore Christian Fioretti controlled the boards with a game-high 13 rebounds.

Head Coach Isaiah Cavaco said he has focused on development from day one, considering his team consists of six first-years, seven sophomores, and just two juniors.

“With our youth, I can’t assume anything when we’re in practice or in games,” Cavaco said.

“It seems repetitive at times for our few older guys, but we make a real effort to explain everything, demonstrate everything, and reinforce the things we want to

identify as staples in how we play.

It’s also taken some trial and error to figure out what things work for all of our individual strengths, especially when we continue to evolve throughout the year.”

Cavaco’s underclassmen displayed a brilliant effort in Gambier, Ohio, Feb. 7 in a 78–63 victory against archrival Kenyon College. Fioretti led the way with 14 points, Campbell contributed 13, and Friedkin and first-year Ben Rosow added nine apiece.

The Yeomen only needed one half to pull away from the Lords, as they entered the break with a 12-point lead. Oberlin continued its dominance in the second half, up by as many as 28 points at one point.

Junior guard Nile Godfrey is in the top five on the team for several categories, including assists (29), steals (14), blocks (6), and minutes (442). He said that as one of the older and more experienced players in the program, he has enjoyed watching his teammates grow.

“I feel like we’ve grown a lot

this season,” Godfrey said. “Having a team with no seniors is cool because we’ll have everyone back next year, but it also meant that we had to grow up quickly, and I think we’ve done a good job with that. We have a lot more growing to do as well, and I’m excited to see how good we can become.”

In the points category, Friedkin has led the way with 324 overall points, 14.1 points per game. Silverman-Lloyd is next with 291 points, a 14.6 scoring average per game — highest on the team. Campell and Fioretti have contributed 284 and 204 points, respectively. Fioretti proved he is a well-rounded player, collecting 145 rebounds, 103 assists, and 31 steals, all team bests. First-year Jordan Armstrong has put together a solid rookie season with 123 points and 36 blocks.

The Yeomen will look to quadruple last year’s wins column tomorrow against the DePauw University Tigers, who are 11–13 overall and 7–10 in NCAC play.

The tipoff is at 1 p.m. in Greencastle, IN.

Perspective: Oberlin Track Teams Take On All-Ohio

Senior distance runner Owen Mittenthal places ninth in the 800m at the DIII All-Ohio Indoor Track & Field Championships Feb. 10.

Photo courtesy of Scott Wargo Owen Mittenthal Contributing Writer and Senior Distance Runner for the Yeomen

On Saturday, the men’s and women’s track and field teams loaded up the turtle tops and drove down to Otterbein University to take on the best Division III competition in the state at the All-Ohio Indoor Championships. Simply qualifying for the meet was a challenge in itself, as entries were limited to the top sixteen athletes in each event.

At the end of the day, the Yeowomen placed fifth in Ohio with 66 points, while the Yeomen took seventeenth with seven points.

Otterbein and Mount Union won the meet on each side respectively.

As usual, the Yeowomen were

led by their dominant throws squad, which features three AllAmericans, including shot put national champion and senior Monique Newton. Newton won her signature event by nearly four feet with a toss of 14.46 meters, and also placed third in the weight throw. Senior Ana Richardson, who was second in weight, and sophomore Naeisha McClain, who was third in shot, each added podium finishes inside the throwing circle.

The five Oberlin throwers at the meet earned 38 points altogether, accounting for over half of the team’s total. This elite group was recently ranked the best throwing unit in the country by the National Coaches Association, and will continue to make its presence felt at future meets.

“Our performances this past weekend were another step in the right direction,” Newton said.

“Each day we’re getting closer and closer to where we want to be at conference. There’s no way I would be where I am today without [my teammates] pushing me every day. We each have our strengths and weaknesses. We do a great job of pushing each other in practice.”

On the track, the lone individual championship came courtesy of senior Lilah Drafts-Johnson, who bested the field in the 400m with a time of 58.65. Running her first 400 since suffering a hamstring injury in December, the All-American had enough in the tank to hold off a spirited challenge from a Heidelberg runner, dipping at the line to win by just 0.01 seconds. Going forward, Drafts-Johnson will look to defend her conference title in this event before turning her attention to the 400m hurdles during the outdoor season.

Other strong performances came from junior Imani CookGist, who finished third in the 60m; sophomore Grace Finney, who finished sixth in the pole vault; and sophomore Shannon Wargo, who was fourth in the mile. Wargo is the defending North Coast Athletic Conference champion in the mile and qualified for nationals in the 1500m outdoors. Saturday was a return to form for the runner, who put herself in contention to win until late in the race, and her time of 5:09.58 was an improvement on her time at last year’s All-Ohio meet. Wargo looks poised to lead the formidable Yeowomen distance squad into the conference meet at Wabash in three weeks.

The Yeomen took a smaller squad down to Otterbein. The

nine of us who made the trip were led by James Tanford, who competed in four events: long jump, triple jump, 400m, and the 4x400m relay. Tanford had a disappointing day in his individual events, falling well short of his standards across the board.

Still, he dug deep to deliver the relay’s fastest split, helping the team of himself, first-year Malachi Clemons, junior John Olsen, and sophomore Dylan Rogers to a sixth place finish. However, this quartet has its sights set on bigger goals.

“This is the best and deepest 4x400 team I’ve ever run with,” Tanford said. “We’re currently ranked first in conference and we’re still getting stronger and faster, and I think this relay is going to be a force in our conference for the next few years. We essentially are racing each other in practice every single day, and that kind of constant competition has made us all so much faster.”

Tanford also picked up two points with his seventh-place finish in the triple jump, as did Grant Sheely, who placed seventh in the mile as well. I competed in the 800m, finishing ninth with a time of 2:01.15, which is the fastest I have ever run indoors, and is just a quarter of a second off my overall personal best. This race was a great opportunity to test myself against a more intense level of competition than we have seen in previous weeks, and the result was an encouraging sign that I am on pace to both achieve my personal goals and be a factor for the team at the conference meet.

I know that many of my teammates have similar perspectives about their performances as well.

It is exciting to race at big, competitive meets such as All-Ohio, but the ultimate team standings

on both sides are less meaningful than continually progressing throughout the season and being ready to peak at the right time at conference. Generally speaking, that is the only meet where we are overtly concerned about team placing. Regular season meets allow us to chase personal bests and put the pieces together for conference.

The Yeowomen swept the indoor and outdoor championships last year, but Ohio Wesleyan, who placed third on Saturday, is a serious threat. The silver lining of losing to the Battling Bishops could be that it shakes the women’s team out of any sense of complacency about repeating.

They will certainly be hungry to prove once again that they are the best team in the conference come March. On the men’s end, we know that we are much stronger than last year, when we were sixth in the NCAC. While Ohio Wesleyan and Wabash have the rest of the conference gapped by a significant margin, we believe that we have the pieces to contend with any other team.

Reflecting on the weekend, Head Coach Ray Appenheimer was optimistic about both teams’ outlooks moving forward.

“I always love watching our student-athletes compete on the biggest stages,” he said. “Regardless of the outcome, what you want to see, particularly indoors, are the student-athletes taking their best shot, making positive, aggressive decisions that have both short-and-long term benefits. If you have the confidence to do it on the [All-Ohio] stage, when the next, bigger stage comes around, you’ll be even more likely. These are the habits we want to build, and are seeing across event groups this year.”

Athletic Programs Must Open Dialogue on Eating Disorders Melissa Harris Editor-in-Chief

I told myself that less was more.

As a swimmer, you always try to shave off time. Downsizing the time stamp in the pool is the mark of success for a swimmer — looking at the score board after a race and finding that I dropped time certainly made the endless hours and laps and exhaustion well worth it. But living by the doctrine of “less is more” is dangerous. It ruined my student-athlete career.

I had been a competitive swimmer since I was 10 years old. I made my way to becoming captain of my high school and club teams before college, and the growth, values, and community I found in swimming are things I still consider integral to who I am today.

I continued swimming at Oberlin, racing some lifetime best swims and training harder than ever before. During my freshman year — the only year I swam at Oberlin — I was the fittest I had ever been. My body toned up, I lost some weight but gained muscle, and my performance in the pool was one of the few things I felt going for me amid my insecurity and trouble acclimating to college life. The idea of less is more started permeating into the rest of my life outside the pool — after all, if it gave me the high of self confidence in my sport, wouldn’t it work if I made it a general lifestyle?

You can only lose so much, however, before you become a shell. This way of living quickly ate at me in every way. By the time Winter Term training began, I was tired. I developed depression, I stopped taking care of myself, I got the flu and an upper respiratory infection, and I stopped eating. But I refused to believe that anything was wrong with me.

When I started feeling too weak to swim my best, I told myself my body was just fatigued from the long season. I didn’t see myself disappearing.

The term “eating disorder” was always something foreign to me. When a teammate of mine approached me a couple of weeks before spring break — about a month after our season ended — she told me that she and some other swimmers were concerned about my health. She said that eating disorders were common in our sport and that if I needed anything the team was there for me. My denial was, in retrospect, terrifying. I thought I was perfectly healthy, that I was just trying to stay fit when, now looking back, working out became an unhealthy obsession, and the limitations I put on my eating became extreme.

Spring break reinforced the reality my teammate showed me, however. My mom saw me when I got home, and she immediately gasped, holding in tears after seeing how small I had become. She forced me onto the scale. I had lost about a fourth of my body weight The Oberlin Review | February 16, 2018

since the beginning of the school year. I wasn’t aiming to lose weight, to have my bones poke out like I was a skeleton, or to constantly look and feel gaunt and haggard. I just thought that what I was doing was normal.

It’s been three years, and after forcing myself to quit competitive swimming, then enduring intensive treatment and receiving endless support from my family, I’ve rebounded significantly. It would be inaccurate to say I’ve completely recovered; I still struggle to take care of myself on some days and the obsessive, compulsive components eat at my brain on others. Rebuilding my relationship with food got me into cooking and started to appreciate the nourishment food gives me. And working out is no longer an obsession and need for control but is now a tool for realizing that I am strong, and that there’s always room to become stronger.

Mental health is something most students at Oberlin grapple with, but while I feel like it’s normal to discuss my struggles with depression and OCD openly, I’ve always been reluctant to reveal my history of disordered eating — the stigma and taboo nature we carry around eating disorders has made me reluctant to open up. But I see people around me engage in behaviors that led me to my eating disorders — whether folks say they haven’t eaten anything but a granola bar all day or if they comment on their dissatisfaction with their bodies. Although it may be paranoia on my part, I fear that a culture of silence about disordered eating will only lead more individuals to fall into it.

The Multi-Service Eating Disorders Association found that 15 percent of women between the ages of 17 and 24 have eating disorders and that 20 percent of college students said they have or previously have had eating disorders. Awareness and dialogue are critical in preventing and combatting eating disorders. Although I was in denial when my teammate approached me with concerns about my weight loss, I reflect upon that moment now and see that it forced me to confront my unhealthy realities.

In light of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee’s mental health initiative and National Eating Disorder Awareness Week approaching the week after next, I encourage students — both athletes and non-athlete — to welcome discussion about eating disorders and mental health more generally. I encourage this community to support individuals struggling with body image and health and to approach friends, teammates, and peers if they indicate early signs of disordered eating. The National Eating Disorders Association has a helpline, and NEDA’s website has information about treatment facilities all over the U.S. Don’t be afraid to reach out.

Most of all, remember that your body does not define your worth. You are loved. You are precious. You have the world to hold you up. Less is not more.

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SPORTS February 16, 2018

established 1874

Volume 146, Number 14

Vegas Golden Knights Change NHL, Expansion In First Year Alex McNicoll Sports Editor

College first-year Maja Shaw Todorovic prepares a serve. The women’s tennis team, which is currently 3–3 overall, looks to continue their undefeated play at home tomorrow at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Photo courtesy of OC Athletics

Men’s, Women’s Tennis Begin Spring Seasons Jane Agler Staff Writer

Last week brought starkly different results for the men’s and women’s tennis teams.

The Yeowomen earned back-to-back 9–0 wins against the Baldwin Wallace University Yellow Jackets and the Otterbein University Cardinals, while the Yeomen fell to the Case Western Reserve University Spartans and University of Chicago Maroons 1–8 and 0–9, respectively.

“We felt good [going into the matches],” Men’s Tennis Head Coach Eric Ishida said.

“There were definitely some positives to take away. … It’s all part of the growing process.

We definitely had a wake-up call. It is a high level, and we have a lot of work to do to get there.”

Against Case Western, the Yeomen fell 1–8, but showed a valiant effort during both doubles and singles. Seniors Manickam Manickam and Robert Gittings stole a few points in the doubles matches but ultimately lost 8–4, which was the result for senior Michael Drougas and sophomore Stephen Gruppuso in the second doubles as well.

First-year Elliot Nuss saw success in his singles match, where he ousted the competition 6–4, 5–7, and 10–4. His first win would be the sole point for the Yeomen that day. “[I think] let’s just keep learning and growing and getting better, because this is a long season,” Ishida said. “We just have to let it sink in and come out with better next time.”

The Yeomen met a similar outcome against No. 9 ranked University of Chicago Sunday. Gittings and Nuss paired up to face the nation’s top-ranked doubles pairing Tyler Raclin and Jeremy Yuan from the Hyde Park University, but were unable to come away with a win. Manickam later drew the ranked competition for his singles match and was able to notch in three games in the two sets, but ultimately fell 6–3 in both. Gruppuso, who sat out in the singles lineup against Case Western, returned to face the Maroons and came away with a 6–2 and 6–1 loss.

“We are currently 1–6 and we’ve placed five nationally ranked teams,” Ishida said. “I didn’t mean to set the schedule up this way, but when great teams can play I say ‘yes’ and

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we adjust. But the benefit is that we can see our weaknesses in February and work on them in March and April. I definitely think we’ve been able to raise our level.”

The Yeowomen had an electric start to their matchup against Baldwin Wallace last Friday, winning all three doubles matches.

Sophomore Lena Rich and senior Sarah Hughes’ doubles partnership marked the beginning of the successful weekend, winning their doubles match 8–1. Sophomore Delaney Black in particular brought on the heat, winning both her doubles matches with fellow sophomore Rainie Heck 8–3 and her singles flight in two sets of 6–0 and 6–2.

Black, who won North Coast Athletic Conference Player of the Week, was one of five on her team to win their singles matches in only two sets. First-year Maja Shaw Todorovic also enjoyed singles success, yielding no points to her opponent.

“Cheering for each other and having a presence [is something] we are working on,” Rich wrote in an email to the Review. “I would say it’s both a challenge and a positive thing to have so many matches every week because you can’t dwell on the results — good or bad — for too long. During the week in practice, we just really focused in on what we can improve on and [hope] to go from there.”

Against Otterbein, the Yeowomen mirrored their performance in their previous match. Senior Jackie McDermott and Hughes partnered up to win their doubles match 8–1, launching yet another dominating day. Hughes eventually went on to win her singles set-up 6–1 and 6–0, winning in two straight sets. McDermott shined later in the day when she achieved her 90th combined victory by holding her opponent to zero points in both sets of her singles match.

While the numbers on paper make the Yeowomen’s success seem dominating, McDermott is hesitant to refer to the wins as such.

“I don’t think either match was a staggering win,” she said in an email to the Review.

“The score would seem like that, but Baldwin Wallace played us really tight and Otterbein played us tight.”

Both women’s and men’s tennis will be facing Centre College tomorrow.

The Vegas Golden Knights scored four third-period goals Tuesday, erasing a 2–1 deficit against the Chicago Blackhawks on their way to a 5–2 victory in their brand-new T-Mobile Arena. The win gave the Golden Knights the second-highest point total in the NHL with 78. As an expansion team comprised of the other 30 NHL teams’ castaways, the Golden Knights have already shattered expectations for their inaugural season and look like serious contenders for the Stanley Cup. With just 25 games left in the regular season, Vegas has already proven to be the most successful first-year expansion franchise throughout the history of not just hockey, but basketball, baseball, and football as well.

Vegas put the odds of their team winning a Stanley Cup at 500–1 at the start of the season, so it’s safe to say that no one expected the Golden Knights to be good, let alone right away. This offseason, the NHL held an expansion draft, where each of the previously-existing NHL teams were allowed to protect either seven forwards, three defensemen, and one goaltender, or eight skaters — forwards or defensemen — and one goaltender. After that, the Golden Knights selected 30 players, one from each existing franchise. However, teams were allowed to trade the Golden Knights draft picks in exchange for choosing who the Golden Knights would take from them, so Vegas ended up gaining much more value in future picks than current players. Their draft was headlined by 33¬year-old former Pittsburgh Penguins and Stanley Cup-winning goalie Marc-Andre Fleury and former two-time All-Star James Neal, but no one thought they came away with a championship roster.

The draft picks didn’t stop the Golden Knights from dominating right out of the gate, winning eight of their first nine games as an NHL franchise. Even more remarkable is that well-past-his-prime Fleury — who was supposed to be the face of the franchise from the get-go and help them get on their feet before he retired — wasn’t even there for much of their success. Due to injuries, Fleury has only played in 25 of his team’s 57 games. Instead, the Golden Knights have had a carousel of five starting goalies, including highly-inexperienced Malcolm Subban, Oscar Dansk, and Maxime Lagace, all of whom were injured. At one point, they even turned to 19-year-old rookie Dylan Ferguson, who was drafted 194th by the Dallas Stars before being traded to the Golden Knights. Despite unprecedented injuries to their goalies, the Golden Knights still only trailed the Los Angeles Kings by four points when Fleury eventually returned.

Throughout the history of the four major sports, expansion teams have been built modestly, hoping for long-term success. Of the 63 other expansion teams, none have had better than .500 records in their inaugural year, while 21 actually had the worst record in the league. Only five have made the playoffs in their first season, but that includes teams from the NHL’s original expansion from six teams to twelve — with all six expansion teams being placed in the same division — and teams from the NBA-ABA merger, who already had Hall of Fame caliber players on their rosters upon entry into the league.

With their headline player not even playing half of the season, and no solid defensemen to speak of, it seems like a miracle that Vegas has been able to perform as well as they have. Fleury and Neal — who earned the only two All-Star nods for the Golden Knights — definitely have had a hand in their team’s success.

However, it’s almost unheard of that two great players result in being consistently rated number one in ESPN.com’s weekly power rankings. It all started with how the team was initially stationed in Vegas. Bill Foley, the outspoken owner, dropped a $500 million check to bring professional sports to Vegas, but none of the players planned on relocating there. As a team comprised of players that their own teams didn’t want, each and every player began the year with a chip on their shoulder.

Even the head coach, Gerard Gallant, was fired by the Florida Panthers mid-season last year. They immediately had something to prove, and so far they’ve done a phenomenal job.

While expansion teams are usually conservative on the field, diamond, court, or ice, the Golden Knights have been anything but. From the first game, they appealed to Sin City fans by playing a fast, flashy, and almost reckless game. The Golden Knights begin each period in their home games by marching through a tunnel lined with mirrors. To fans and opposing teams, it gives the appearance of dozens of players running onto the ice, and their playing style isn’t much different.

The Golden Knights’ 20–4–2 home record can’t only be attributed to good play or faithful fans. Most teams arrive in Vegas a couple days before their game and usually play with what Foley describes as “Vegas flu.” After enjoying the Las Vegas strip, teams aren’t always feeling their best when they play against the Golden Knights, and they’ve regretted it. With the Oakland Raiders relocating to Vegas for the 2020 season, it will be interesting to watch how NFL teams adjust to this unique advantage, but what the Golden Knights have accomplished is less about sports in Vegas and more about leagues expanding.

When a league takes on more teams, it disperses the talent pool, making teams a little weaker. The NBA has felt the effects of this the most. While in the 1960s nearly all of the 12 teams had at least one Hall of Fame player, nowadays it’s impossible to find a franchise cornerstone, let alone build around him enough so that he won’t leave in free agency. In fact, the years leading up to and after the NBA-ABA expansion were some of the least competitive in history. The Golden Knights are an anomaly, so with billionaires lining up to start teams in the NFL, NBA, and MLB, the Golden Knights should not be used as an example of why there should be more league expansion. Throughout history, reckless expansion has hurt competitiveness in each of the four major sports, and the Golden Knights don’t change anything.