February 21, 2014

The Oberlin Review

FEBRUARY 21, 2014 VOLUME 142, NUMBER 15

Outside the Bubble

ESTABLISHED 1874 oberlinreview.org

ONLINE & IN PRINT

Brief: Fire at Oberlin Recycling Complex

News highlights from the past week Facebook to Buy WhatsApp for $19 Billion On Wednesday, Facebook announced that it would purchase WhatsApp for a staggering $19 billion. Despite the company’s failure to buy Snapchat last year, it has continued to express interest in gaining monopoly on mobile messaging apps. WhatsApp is a mobile application that allows its 450 million international users to send messages using a WiFi connection. In the last four months of 2013, WhatsApp added more than 100 million new users and is currently growing at a rate of 1 million new members each day.

Ancient Town Discovered in Israel Just outside of Jerusalem, archeologists found the remains of a 2,300-year-old village that dates back to the Second Temple period (538 B.C. to A.D. 70), according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. Archeologists have found 8,000 square feet of narrow alleys and several single-family homes made of stone. Excavators also discovered dozens of coins, cooking pots, tools and jars for storing oil and wine. This discovery occurred during a salvage excavation ahead of a construction project that began last year.

Hot Pocket Recall Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture suspended a California meat company due to unsanitary factory conditions.

The Central Valley Meat Co. took corrective actions to lift the suspension. The company supplies 21 million pounds of beef to federal nutrition programs for schools and products of Nestlé USA. The two brands recalled are Hot Pockets brand Philly Steak and Cheese in three different sizes and Hot Pockets brand Croissant Crust Philly Steak and Cheese in the two-pack box.

Sources: CNN and The Huffington Post

A fire broke out at Oberlin’s Public Works Complex Saturday, destroying all six of the city’s garbage trucks and temporarily suspending all residential recycling. According to City Manager Eric Norenburg, this week’s recyclables will be combined with the rest of the city’s garbage and transported to the local landfill. The fire, which completely consumed the garage at 528 Hillcreek Drive, is believed to have caused between $1.5 and $2 million worth of damages. Along with the trucks and the building itself, the fire also destroyed the city’s forklift. Over a dozen firefighters reported to the scene, though none sustained injuries. The cause of the fire remains unknown; arson is not suspected.

Photo courtesy of the City of Oberlin

Lawmakers Increase Security in Public Schools Louie Krauss Staff Writer

With a reported 61 school shootings since 1982, educational administrators and public safety officials across the country have come together to ensure the safety of their schools. Last week, Ohio State Representative John Rogers introduced the Student Safety Act,, which requires newly constructed Ohio public school buildings to install a number of security devices, including surveillance cameras, metal detectors and radios that communicate directly with law enforcement.

In a press release from the Ohio Representatives website, Rogers explained the bill.

“We are all aware of the dangerous — and often tragic — situations that arise due to security breaches in our schools,” Rogers said. “The Student Safety Act would address root building security problems by requiring some basic security features in new buildings. Doing so will save money in the long run, as these features are much more expensive to retrofit in existing school facilities.”

The bill itself states that new school buildings must meet a minimum of two new

security features; the bill was made in part as a response to the Sandy Hook shooting.

“I decided to introduce this bill a number of months ago,” Rogers said. “I talked with a couple of retired police chiefs, school superintendents and teachers, including my wife, who is an elementary school principal. My thought process was that there are a number of initiatives being presented to the legislature to address potential school violence.”

Oberlin superintendent John Schroth claimed that these new measures might affect the Oberlin public school system.

“We applied for a grant a few months back; it let us either apply for MARCS radios, which allow you to interface with safety forces [or for new cameras],” Schroth said.

One of the larger contentions of the bill is the belief that more energy should be focused on preventing mentally ill youth from carrying guns in the first place.

“Technology is something that we have to have, but in reality is it going to stop someone who really wants to get into the building? Probably not,” Schroth said. “I think a much more appropriate approach would be to increase funding for mental health services and early detection, something that our country is sorely lacking in, especially here

Senior Send-Off

Welcome Back The College lifted its decade-long ban on Coca-Cola products last week.

See page 2

True Believers OMTA’s production of Godspell brings the New Testament into the new millennium.

See page 11

INDEX:

Opinions 5

This Week in Oberlin 8

Seniors help the Yeomen win big against the Terriers.

See page 16

Arts 10

Sports 16

in Lorain County.” Schroth said.

Representative Rogers noted that both the Sandy Hook shooter and the Lake County shooters were mentally ill teenagers.

While these measures have the potential to prevent future school shootings, they do nothing to protect unstable children from hurting themselves, Schroth said. In Lorain County, while there haven’t been any shootings, the number of suicides has risen in recent years.

“In our county, no [shootings have occurred]. Sometimes you hear about someone bringing a knife to school, but that’s about it,” Schroth said. “What we have seen more of are more teen suicides, and that goes back to mental health issues.”

Many schools have successfully applied for grants that offset costs of cameras and radios, which can amount to thousands of dollars. In wealthier neighborhoods, police departments are able to assign a member of the force to the school without any cost to the school itself.

“Some of the discussions have been, ‘Can communities afford whether or not to put a school resource officer into a building?’ Oftentimes a school system subsidizes the police See OCS, page 4

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The Oberlin Review, February 21, 2014

The Grape Looks Inward after Editorial Resignations Rosemary Boeglin Editor-in-Chief This is part one of a series exploring the role and reputations of campus publications.

This week’s installment focuses on The Grape and the recent resignation letters of two editors that prompted the remaining staff to re-examine their publication. In next week’s issue, the Review will shift the critical lens onto its own journalistic and organizational practices, as well as those of other student publications.

The Grape has no mission statement.

When asked about the publication’s purpose, the two current editors-in-chief of the satirical rag looked at each other, scrambling for an answer. After a brief pause, College senior Max Cohn looked up in a moment of clarity.

“I think The Grape is, at its best, a Ror-

schach. … It relies on being a clusterfuck of different things and seeming a different way to every person that comes in contact with it.”

Cohn’s next metaphor describing The Grape as a “warm ball of wax” — constantly changing shape depending on its handlers — is, at its core, true of the 15-year-old paper. With its lascivious center spread and wry humor, the mutable paper has maintained one constant: its reputation for provocative content.

But the resignation letters of two editors published in the fall semester’s final edition — which criticized the paper for marginalizing voices and publishing offensive content — have prompted a re-examination of the mutable paper’s role and reputation in the Oberlin community by the remaining staff members.

Former Editor-in-Chief Nina Paroff, OC ’12, said that the paper’s apolitical, contrar-

Voegel Resigns from Student Senate

ian reputation was well-entrenched before her arrival on campus; despite concerted efforts on the part of a small yet dedicated staff, she failed to alter its public image.

“I came in hearing seniors talk about how different the paper was when they started, I did the same when I was a senior, and I’m sure the people I hired as freshmen are doing it now,” Paroff said. “But [in my four years on staff ] we failed to overcome The Grape’s reputation … and that reputation functioned as a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Those who filled Paroff ’s editorial position said that they experienced a similar decline in enthusiasm for Oberlin’s “alternative” paper. College juniors Jacob Ertel, former features editor, and Editor-in-Chief Victoria Velasco said they joined The Grape as eager first-years but later questioned their work on the publication.

“When I was a first-year, I was really into it,” Ertel said. “I was probably just excited to

be in college. I wrote a bunch of articles my first semester that now I really regret writing. It’s kind of bizarre for me to think back on it now.”

For Velasco, it wasn’t until the bias incidents last spring that she began to view The Grape through a more critical lens, not only in terms of the paper’s reputation but of its homogeneity.

“Up until my second semester sophomore year, around the time of March 4, I had a relatively pleasant relationship with the staff and was almost never made to feel uncomfortable at staff meetings,” Velasco said in an email. “I attribute this partially to my significantly less critical way of thinking for much of my first two years at Oberlin — as I began to become involved in more political campus organizing and develop close relationships with communities of color, See Grape, page 4

A Decade Later, Coke Ban Fizzles Kristopher Fraser

Elizabeth Kuhr Staff Writer Oberlin College Student Senate’s lengthy, back-to-back plenary meetings and the resignation of a prominent student senator this week highlighted potential gaps in the board’s ability to effectively collaborate.

After electing seven new student representatives last week, Senate held its first meeting of the semester Sunday, during which well-known College senior Senator Jesse Vogel resigned.

“I hope that [the new senators] push this body to focus on making progress just, inclusive and effective ... [and] making collaboration amongst senators a new norm,” Vogel, who served for two semesters, wrote in his resignation letter.

Because the hefty agenda at Sunday’s meeting had senators debating for over three hours, those present voted under majority rules to close discussion for the evening and continue committee elections and assignments on Monday. This was due in part to Senate’s lengthy conversation on the potential decision to add $10 to student term bills in support of the carbon offset project under the Green EDGE fund.

“We had externally imposed deadlines, and there’s a lot of work that goes into it,” said Machmud Makhmudov, College sophomore and Student Senate liaison. “The [committee] position deciding process takes an hour and a half, and we needed to get it done.”

Makhmudov said Sunday evening’s plenary meetings generally span two and a half to three and a half hours on average, for which senators are paid $7.90 per hour from the stu-

dent activity fee. Committee appointing at Monday’s paid “special plenary,” the first since former Student Senator Eli Diop’s timecard scandal last April, took over an hour.

“There’s an issue of representation; each senator has his or her own thing,” said Vogel. “Meetings are tense.

People yell and little gets done.”

Senate has several procedures in place to maintain order during plenary. A student representative volunteers each week to oversee the Sunday meeting, ensuring attendees speak in turn and that hostilities are kept at bay.

However, representatives lose their facilitating powers rapidly when students talk over one another and do not collaborate. “[It] doesn’t do justice to the vast thought on campus,” said Vogel.

College first-year Emma Snape, newly elected Senate operations manager, said she occasionally reminds senators during plenary to adhere to stack.

“Last semester, the group got into disagreements about important things,” said Snape. “I want to make sure we don’t argue but that we discuss.”

At the beginning of every plenary, senators shuffle the agenda, compiled over the prior week, based on priority.

Although student representatives can leave the meeting after 9:30 p.m. without penalty, the committee has internal voting power to extend the meeting into the evening or, in some cases, even the next day. The extra hours are added to each senator’s timecard.

“Last semester, multiple meetings were extended but we try not to,” said Snape. “It’s inconvenient and [takes] money from the student activity fee.”

The Oberlin Review — Established 1874 —

Volume 142, 140, Number 15 2

(ISSN 297–256)

February 21, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ten years ago, College President Nancy Dye wrote a letter to Coca-Cola, severing ties with the corporation. Dye’s letter referenced CocaCola’s ongoing violations of human rights and its dubious business practices. “Oberlin joined a host of other colleges and universities that were working, in coordination with the Workers Rights Consortium [of which Oberlin is a member], to boycott Coke products because the company was not, in our opinion, investigating sufficiently the possible complicity of local management in Colombia in the murder of a union activist in one of its plants there,” said Associate Professor of Politics Marc Blecher.

In response to student outcry, Oberlin banned Coca-Cola products from campus in 2004. Several organizations, most notably the Student Labor Action Coalition, opposed CocaCola’s corporate malfeasance: The company has been linked to the deaths of trade unionists and accused of contaminating water in India.

While Coca-Cola has been absent from campus shelves for the past 10 years, the College carries Seagram’s Ginger Ale, which has been owned by Coca-Cola since 2002. In an article on “The Source,” the administration revealed to College and community members that the ban on Coca-Cola products would be lifted beginning this spring.

The College claims that it will continue to monitor Coca-Cola’s business practices. Students from SLAC have not made any official statement on this issue. In fact, the majority of students on campus were not even aware there was a ban in place.

“One of the things [we] looked at in 2013 was [whether to keep] the ban on Coca-Cola, [but] we ultimately were not the ones responsible for the final decision,” College senior Izzy Esler, a member of Oberlin’s Sweatshop Committee said. The Committee primarily reviews the apparel the College buys for various sports teams.

“But if we saw any violations, we would have let the College know.”

Despite the ban on Coca-Cola products, the prohibition never prevented students from con-

Rosemary Liv Boeglin Combe Allegra JuliaKirkland Herbst Samantha Julian Ring Link Rosemary Madeline Boeglin Stocker Rachel Alex Weinstein Howard Opinions editor SophiaWill Ottoni-Wilhelm Rubenstein This Week Weekeditor editor Zoë Sarah Strassman Snider Arts editors Kara NoraBrooks Kipnis Anne Georgia Pride-Wilt Horn Sports editors Nate Quinn Levinson Hull Madeleine SarahO’Meara Orbuch Layout editors Abby Tiffany Carlstad Fung Ben TaliaGarfinkel Rodwin Alanna Sarah Sandoval Snider Photo editors Effie Kline-Salamon Olivia Gericke BrannonRachel Rockwell-Charland Grossman Online editor Business manager Jesse Alanna Neugarten Bennett Editors-in-chief Editors-in-Chief

Managing editor News editors

Pictured above are the College’s last few bottles of Coca-Cola, before the ban on the company’s products was enacted in 2005. The ban, originally instituted following reports of Coca-Cola’s human rights violations, is set to be repealed in the fall of this year. The Oberlin Review

suming Coca-Cola products that they purchased elsewhere. Coca-Cola products are readily available at local establishments, such as Agave Burrito Bar & Tequileria and Gibson’s Bakery. Despite SLAC’s efforts 10 years ago, current students seem fairly indifferent about the ban. Few student organizations have commented on this issue, or indicated whether they believe that CocaCola has ended its violent anti-union business practices.

“I haven’t heard almost anyone really discussing the end to the ban,” Esler said. “Our generation of Oberlin students doesn’t seem to take this issue as passionately as Oberlin students 10 years ago, but every generation has its major issue that it cares about. Remember with college there is a four year turnover, and this was 10 years ago.

There have been about two four-year turnovers since this happened.”

Ads manager Alex Abromowitz Curtis Cook Business Online editor manager Simeon Savi Sedlacek Deutsch Ads manager Technician Mischa Reshard Lewis-Norelle el-Shair Production manager Sophia Rosalind Bamert Black Production staff Stephanie DanaBonner Belott Emma Abigail Eisenberg Bisesi Louise Taylor Edwards Field Katherine Alice Hamilton Fine Hazel Julia Galloway Hubay Annelise Tracey Giseburt Knott Noah ElizaMorris Kirby Anna Kiley Peckham Petersen Silvia Lydia Sheffield Smith Bennett DrewWalls Wise Distributors Joe Eliza Camper Kirby Edmund Joseph Dilworth Metzold James Sam White Kuntz

Corrections “Tensions High at Divestment Corrections Symposium” (Feb. 14) misrepresented the Responsible Investing Organization’s The Review is not of on role in the event. Feb. 9’saware symposium any corrections this week. divestment was exclusively planned and administered by the College.

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

Alan Mitchell, Food Coordinator at Oberlin If you feelServices, the Review made an in Community washas misidentified error, please send an e-mail to Local the “SNAP Cuts Increase Demand on managingeditor@oberlinreview.org.

Pantries” (Feb. 14) caption. He was stocking produce and nonperishable items at Oberlin Community Services.

The Oberlin Review, February 21, 2014

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Off the Cuff: Lara Friedman, former foreign service officer and director of Policy and Government Relations with Americans for Peace Now Lara Friedman is the director of Policy and Government Relations for Americans for Peace Now, a leading authority on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. A former foreign service officer, Friedman frequently briefs U.S. Congress, U.S. Admistration officials and diplomats on policy in the Middle East.

it was deemed a forbidden word. We have been pushing for two states. We have been pushing for two capitals, with a Palestinian capital and an Israeli capital in Jerusalem, and we have been saying since the beginning of the settlement movement that the settlements are bad for Israel and bad for Israel’s future. They have all become very mainstream positions, and now Can you first talk about Americans we are pushing for policies that will for Peace Now? promote these positions.

Americans for Peace Now is the American sister organization of Sha- How does the change in the publom Achshav, which translates to lic’s perception of the conflict and “peace now” and is an Israeli grass- the deterioration of polarized roots movement. My organization de- opinions change your organizaveloped in the early ’80s as a fundrais- tion’s initiatives? ing arm for Peace Now in Israel and That’s a really good question, and over time developed into its own orga- I think it’s not just how it affects our nization. So we mirror, in a way, Peace organization, it’s how it affects the Now. Their mission is to educate Israe- issue. On the one hand, it’s an incredlis on peace and to mobilize Israelis to ible feat to have all of these principles action and to press their government more or less adopted as the mainto action. Our mission is to educate stream view. If you think about years Americans — mostly American Jews, ago, when Hamas was elected into but not exclusively — and we want to the parliament and the Quartet put mobilize them to action to press our down these conditions for Hamas government to take on policies that to be considered a party that could we think are best for Israel. come to the table, the conditions were basically accepting the two-state soWhat specific actions does your lution, forswearing violence and acorganization take to advocate for cepting Israel. Those were more or policy and education? less the core of the peace movement, We have been on the forefront so that’s extraordinary. I don’t think of calling for two states, as well as it’s something that can easily be rolled our partner organization in Israel. back, so that’s very good, and it sort of We have been the leading voice, for gives you the direction things have to instance, on settlements. It’s very in- go in. On the other hand, the part that teresting that if you look at the arc of I think is somewhat troubling is that history, the positions that we were tak- over the years, almost everyone now ing 10 to 15 years ago were outlier po- says that they accept the two-state sitions. People forget that at the time solution. But a lot of people are sayof the start of the peace process, one ing that, and they are stripping it of could not say “Palestinian State,” and meaning. If what you mean when you say “I accept the two-state solution” is accepting a solution in which the Palestinians end up with a disjointed

Thursday, Feb. 13 2:10 p.m. Staff members at Wilder Hall reported seeing three bottles of beer in a student mailbox. Safety and Security officers confiscated the beer, which was then disposed of.

3:30 p.m. Officers responded to the report of a suspicious person in the Cox Administration Building and Peters Hall.

The individual was approached and identified as visiting a faculty member regarding a book she wrote.

Friday, Feb. 14 1:23 a.m. A student staff member reported an ill student at Kahn Hall. An ambulance

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

11:30 a.m. An Audio-Visual staff member reported that unknown person(s) attempted to gain entry to a video cabinet in King Building. Cables in the cabinet were disconnected, but equipment was intact.

10:11 p.m. Officers responded to a possible unauthorized party on the third floor of Langston Hall. Student attendees were asked to leave, and the alcohol was confiscated and disposed of.

10:53 p.m. Officers responded to an unauthorized party at Fairchild House. The student attendees were asked to leave.

11:27 p.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm on the second floor of South Hall. Students had extinguished the fire, which

if I wanted peace to happen right now, I would say that I would have liked peace to happen 20 years ago. I think it would be easier if it happened 20 years ago, both politically and in terms of facts on the ground. I think every day we wait it gets harder. In terms of my faith in the final outcome being a twostate solution, that hasn’t changed because there is no other solution.

Your alternative to a two-state solution is continued fighting until people come back to the table because they don’t want to fight anymore. When we talk now about the Lara Friedman, who is the director of Policy and Government Relations window closing on the two-state for Americans for Peace Now, and a leading authority on U.S. foreign solution, what we’re talking about policy in the Middle East is that you look at the ground and say, “If there were the political will to reach agreement today, it could territory, which is not contiguous, ment issue, and settlements are the be implemented on the ground and which doesn’t have access to Jerusa- issue, to a great extent. What we’re we could have two states.” If we wait lem, which doesn’t have control over debating about largely is the dispo- much longer, even if the political will its borders, what you’re really saying sition of land, and settlements are is there, we will have to undo so much is that you don’t support a two-state about trying to predetermine the more. That doesn’t mean it goes away, solution, because no party is ever go- predisposition of land. So settlements and the window closing on the twoing to accept that. I think that really are the issue in many ways. We’re state solution doesn’t mean we have has become a problem, because for a educating constantly, along with our another option. It just means we have lot of the world, it’s now really [about] colleagues in Israel who are on the to wait until the parties decide again reciting the mantra of “I accept the ground doing the legwork, putting that this is the only solution. There are two-state solution” and not recog- themselves in danger, and we are get- folks on both sides, on the Israeli and nizing what that means in terms ting the information out and making Palestinian side and in the U.S., who of policies. You cannot support the sure people understand. And we are want a zero-sum solution and who two-state solution and also say, “But I then taking that education, and along are happy to see this thing drag out, don’t support a Palestinian capital in with J Street on the scene — which is either hoping that God will work it East Jerusalem.” You cannot support an amazing thing that has developed out in their benefit, or something else a two-state solution and not also sup- in recent years — we are seeking to re- will happen and change the ground. port a Palestine that has contiguous ally change the public discourse and But I think for those of us who work territory and a viable political and let policy makers in Congress and the on this issue, including my colleagues economic foundation.

White House understand that there at J Street, that that is an intolerable is broad support for U.S. policies that way of looking at it, because we love What peace policy is your organi- will get us to peace. people on both sides and care deeply zation advocating for? about the future of Israel.

There are three pieces of it. We Would you say that you have more spend a lot of our energy educating. faith in a resolution now than you Interview by Rachel Weinstein We are seen widely, and I think cor- did 20 years ago?

Photo Courtesy of Americans rectly, as the authority on the settleNo. I mean, if someone asked me for Peace Now

was caused by disposed candles igniting loose paper in a trashcan, prior to the officers’ arrival. All candles were confiscated.

Saturday, Feb. 15 4:14 p.m. Officers were requested to assist a student who passed out at Robertson Hall.

The student was conscious when the officers arrived and said that she was feeling better. The student declined medical attention.

9:50 p.m. Officers responded to a report of an odor consistent with burnt marijuana on the third floor of Dascomb Hall. The occupants of the room were contacted and admitted to smoking marijuana in the room. A student turned over a plastic bag containing a green leafy substance consistent with marijuana to the officers, which was then picked

up by members of the Oberlin Police Department.

Tuesday, Feb. 18 2:14 p.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm at the Union Street Housing Complex. A pot left burning on the stove created smoke and activated the alarm. The smoke was cleared, and the alarm was reset.

2:20 p.m. A student reported that unauthorized funds were removed from her account while she was using an ATM in Wilder Hall. The incident was reported to the Oberlin Police Department, and a call was made to the ATM company to have the machines checked.

3:45 p.m. Officers responded to Dascomb Hall to assist an ill student. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

Wednesday, Feb. 19 12:50 a.m. An officer on patrol of Hall Auditorium and the Allen Memorial Art Museum reported graffiti done in black paint on the front of the building. A work order was filed for cleanup.

1:23 a.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Police Department investigated a report of a missing vehicle, which had gone missing from East Hall drive. It was located on the sidewalk on North Professor Street in front of the Admissions Office. There was no visible damage, and the keys were in the vehicle at the time it was taken.

6:09 a.m. Officers responded to Kahn Hall to assist a student experiencing severe pain from a broken ankle sustained the previous evening. An ambulance was requested, and the student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

News

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The Oberlin Review, February 21, 2014

Task Force to Finalize Equity Director Selection, New Sexual Offense Policy Waylon Cunningham Over the past two weeks, the Oberlin Sexual Offense Policy Task Force examined three candidates to fill the open position for the director of Equity Affairs after former director Camille Allen resigned over the summer.

The position opening coincides with the organization’s attempt to finalize and adopt a new sexual offense policy.

“There are a lot of proposed changes that we are very excited about,” senior Samantha Paltrow-Krulwich, an OSCA Sexual Offence Policy Advocate and member of the Sexual Information Center, said in an email to the Review. “Besides the new title, there is a stricter time frame on investigations, prohibited behavior has been expanded to include stalking and intimate partner violence in accordance with the campus SaVE Act, the policy uses gender neutral language, and has more emphasis on a title IX team instead of just an individual coordinator, among other things.”

The new director will be responsible for training, education, communication and implementation concerning equity policy on campus. They will also function as the chair of the Title IX review team, which oversees the College’s compliance with Title IX — the federal statute that prohibits educational institutions from gender-based discrimination.

Each lunch forum was split into two parts. In the first section, candidates responded to questions generated by the official search committee, which include two students.

“We consider student participation in this search as crucial,” said Dean Eric Estes.

Faculty and staff were asked to leave at the start of the second section.

“The idea was to help students to feel comfortable asking whatever questions they might have,” PaltrowKrulwich said. “Especially since the Title IX coordinator is in a position where they might have to deal with stu-

dents who are experiencing a crisis, being able to talk with the candidates in this more intimate and safe environment was really valuable.”

A draft of the new Sexual Misconduct Policy (previously referred to as the Sexual Offense Policy) was produced last December at the request of College President Marvin Krislov. The newly commissioned Sexual Offense Policy Task Force brought in national experts, compared Oberlin’s policies to similar policies at peer institutions and held several forums to get feedback from students and alumni.

“The work of the task force, which includes significant student membership, has been a very inclusive and transparent process, including a lot of outreach to our community,” Estes said.

Like the search committee, the task force includes several student members to communicate with other students in order to provide a student perspective.

“The task force has been really great about reaching out to students,” said Paltrow-Krulwich.

The draft of the new policy has been substantially revised from the old policy. The definition of consent is expanded on, as is the concept of inebriation. The requirement to report has been changed from a blanket requirement to a more precise one. Only those with a supervisory position, like RAs, have the explicit requirement to report a sexual offense. All other employees are expected to report, and students are strongly encouraged.

“We’re looking to make reporting put you with support and resources instead of putting you in the middle of something that’s out of your control, unless there is a danger to the person or community. That balance wasn’t good in the old policy,” said Meredith Raimondo, cochair of the task force.

Student feedback will continue to be accepted at a Student Senate hearing on the proposed new policy on Feb. 25.

OCS Contemplates Merits of Safety Act Continued from page 1 department for that expense,” Rogers said. “Or if the police department is wealthy enough, they’ll just put a police officer in the school. For instance, I’m back in the school in Lake County.”

In addition to lending police officers, Rogers said that police departments training public school teachers in the use of firearms would be an efficient way to lower security costs. He believes giving guns to teachers would allow them to better defend their classes from an attack.

“Not all communities have the ability to put a uniformed officer in the building. There’s been discussion about arming teachers. There’s nothing currently in the law that prohibits teachers from carrying guns into the school,” Rogers said. “The legislature just passed a bill — which I agree with in part and disagree with in another part — but the bill indicates that if a school system wants to do this, then the individual has to have that type of training. It really teaches you how to handle a gun, but it still doesn’t make you always hit your target.”

Rogers also mentioned an incident in which an individual wielding a firearm was able to kill the gunman at a school shooting, but shot others in the process due to lack of training.

College first-year Emma Snape said she believes that training teachers to use guns would cause more harm than good.

“Yes, teachers as American citizens have the right to own a gun. But they shouldn’t be able to bring guns into school,” Snape said. “By bringing a whole bunch of guns in, the chances [of ] something bad happening just goes up. The whole point of gun safety is to not go near guns, so that doesn’t make sense to me.”

Grape Resignations Highlight Flaws in Campus Publications Continued from page 2 I felt more and more frustrated with the newspaper I had initially felt so honored to work for.”

Carolyn Burnham, College sophomore and Grape Editorin-Chief, also acknowledged the impact of March 4 on the paper and its staff members. “It kind of worked in a strange way in that people were more afraid of talking about issues related to the March 4 events,” she said. Instead of wanting to talk about issues, people were afraid of saying the wrong thing or hurting another person.

It’s still kind of hard to reconcile that, because you do need to be educated about a wide array of issues in order to really speak correctly about those events, but at the same time it’s sort of frustrating that we couldn’t have that be part of the paper, because it was an incredible part of last year.”

The bias incidents surrounding March 4 enabled Velasco to identify the problematic nature of Grape staff dynamics and content.

“After March 4, a lot more attention was paid to the ways in which students themselves were participating in the structural oppression of historically marginalized groups,” Velasco said. “I think I saw it as a sign that I should challenge myself even more to educate myself and act in solidarity in the ways in which it’s possible for me to do so with others.”

The former Editor-in-Chief said that The Grape tended to disenfranchise communities on and off campus and consistently failed to address issues of homogeneity

and marginalization within the organization itself. Cohn said that although Velasco did raise these concerns via email, he was never able to address the matter directly with his co-Editor. For her part, Velasco claims otherwise. Whether or not they explicitly broached their concerns to the staff, Velasco and Ertel were able to shift the tone of staff meetings, according to College junior and three-year Grape staffer Eve Peyser-Sappol.

“I think having people like Victoria and Jacob on staff, who are very political people, definitely changed [the dynamic]. Victoria didn’t really write articles that much, but her presence definitely changed the tones of the meetings more, especially when she was Editor-in-Chief because [she] and Jacob were very outspoken about their beliefs.”

Velasco said that despite her efforts to alter the tenor of staff meetings, other voices dominated the space. “It was difficult for some people on staff — who were content with the reputation our paper continued to uphold as an insensitive, unfiltered platform for mostly white, cis men — to feel inclined to change its course.”

Other Grape staff members of color echoed Velasco’s frustrations with the resistance of the staff to incorporate their criticisms.

“A lot of things get said at meetings that are racist or otherwise offensive that don’t necessarily get called out and are difficult to call out as a person of color, just because of how white the space is and how not receptive a lot of people are, which is also the case in

a lot of other spaces on campus,” said College senior and Grape Production Editor Ale Requena Ruiz.

“It would be nice if the burden weren’t entirely on me or entirely on the shoulders of the handful of people of color on staff or someone who is otherwise affected by issues.”

Tanya Tran, College junior, said that although she is new to The Grape, she has already witnessed the source of Velasco and Requena Ruiz’s complaints.

“I have been to one staff meeting and also the Lena Dunham meet-and-greet, and I definitely have already heard things that I don’t want to hear, in terms of microaggressions and things that are racist,” Tran said.

Burnham largely attributed the publication’s failure to broaden content to the unwillingness of its writers to undertake more serious projects.

“It’s difficult because I think a lot of the really excited staff and the excited writers want to write these fun articles, and I think we should keep that as part of this paper since it is a forum for that type of article,” Burnham said. “But at the same time, I’d really love the for The Grape to be a positive force and to write articles that matter, and to cover events that matter, and to have more voices heard, and to say things in a powerful way and not in an offensive way.”

Last semester, a misogynistic crossword puzzle led to a Facebook hailstorm and a public letter of apology from Cohn.

“There was obviously the crossword debacle, which was

something like the skin around the vagina [being the] woman,” Peyser-Sappol recalled. “I think that making off-color jokes often doesn’t work, and when it works, it’s funny. And that just wasn’t funny and was offensive to me.”

Although he acknowledged his error, Cohn still hopes that the controversy surrounding his puzzle — and other complaints about the offensive nature of Grape content — can lead to a critical conversation within the publication itself. “[College junior] Sophie Hess [who posted about the offensive puzzle clue on Facebook] could’ve written a wonderful article on how much my crossword puzzle sucked. I would’ve been happy to print that. That would’ve been great, because then it would’ve made our paper more diverse, but instead she saved it for Facebook, and you know, there was nothing to be said from her angle,” Cohn said. “But at the same time, it’s not our responsibility to attack after people and say, ‘You need to write for us and make us diverse.’

It should be the wish of Oberlin to make the paper more diverse; it should be the wish of Jacob Ertel, when someone isn’t writing an important article, to write it himself.”

But according to former Editor-in-Chief Paroff, it’s not that simple.

“It was, in retrospect, astoundingly naïve, but I genuinely thought my staff and I would be able to convince the campus at large to embrace the open format of the publication and contribute

worthwhile writing that wouldn’t otherwise find a publisher,” Paroff said. “We advertised the best we knew how. I would ask people who sent me angry emails about fucked-up articles to submit editorials; they rarely did. I would approach strangers in DeCafé and the library who were complaining about The Grape and ask them to submit their own work; they rarely did. And who could blame them?”

“I realize now why so few people with something to say that wasn’t sexually violent, racist or otherwise horrifically ignorant wanted to be associated with the publication. I realize that any notion that those voices were ‘welcome’ in our ‘open’ publication was bogus when so much of the campus felt so very unwelcome,” Paroff said.

Requena Ruiz noted that the work The Grape plans to embark on this semester shouldn’t be limited to the publication. “I wouldn’t frame them as issues that solely The Grape needs to address, but certainly yes, The Grape definitely needs to address [them].”

The new senior editorial team said that they intend to do just that this semester by addressing the concerns Ertel and Velasco raised in their resignation letters.

“I think it was hard for Victoria if she felt like there were so many changes to be made to do everything in one semester,” Burnham said. “I think it’s great that she brought all of these issues up, and I think it’s our responsibility to take them and try and change the paper, since I think there’s really no other option.”

February 21, 2014

Opinions The Oberlin Review

Letters to the Editors RIO Sets the Record Straight on Symposium To the Editor: The Responsible Investing Organization would like to first congratulate the administration on their recent “Symposium on Divestment.”

This marks a shift in their thinking on the College’s endowment — specifically, a recognition that our investments have moral implications. In talking with the administration just a year ago, this would not have been acknowledged, and we’re very happy to see the discussion is headed in the right direction.

That being said, we were disappointed with the way this symposium was organized and executed. When we reached out to the administration in early October, we had high hopes for collaboration. We met a number of times, and while they continued to express interest in working with us, they would immediately stop returning emails once we had left their office. That

is, not until four days before the event, when we, along with the rest of the student body, were invited to attend. The feigned interest in collaboration followed by definitively anti-collaborative action is nothing new for this administration, and we (along with many other campus groups familiar with this) are beginning to have less patience for it.

The symposium itself housed a number of voices from around the country to discuss the issue of divestment in front of a silent audience. Students and community members were invited to attend but not to speak. This was coupled with an inaccurate portrayal of impact investing and a complete omission of community investing as a strategy towards socially responsible investing. To bring in speakers to talk at a group of Obies about their endowment is patronizing and unproductive. We believe that for an endowment to be representative of a community, that community needs to be involved in the discussions surrounding that endowment, and their opinions

should equally be taken into account when decisions must be made.

On March 8 and 9 Oberlin’s Responsible Investing Organization will be hosting its own “Responsible Investing Policy Symposium.” It will feature speakers to discuss socially responsible investing, as well as numerous workshops and working groups in which the entire Oberlin community will be invited to create a vision for how we’d like our endowment to look over the coming years. We have built this symposium around collaboration, and we so look forward to the conversation that’s to come.

The RIO Policy Symposium will take place March 8 and 9 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the AJLC. Students, professors, community members, alumni, administration, trustees and all other Obies are invited to attend. If you’d like to collaborate with RIO on the planning of workshops, event-running logistics or any other part of the symposium, please email us at rio.oberlin@gmail.com.

–Jasper Clarkberg and Hayden Arp

Just let it out.

Submit an op-ed or write a weekly column All contributors welcome! contact: opinions@oberlinreview.org SUBMISSIONS POLICY The Oberlin Review appreciates and welcomes letters to the editors and column submissions. All submissions are printed at the discretion of the editorial board.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editors-in-Chief Rosemary Boeglin Julia Herbst Managing Editor Julian Ring Opinions Editor Sophia Ottoni-Wilhelm

As the Review Nears a Milestone, Some Thoughts on Diversity and Improvement This April will mark The Oberlin Review’s 140th birthday. As one of the nation’s oldest college newspapers, the Review has a long and fruitful history as the publication of record for Oberlin College and the city of Oberlin. Though the Review of today appears different than it did in its original incarnation — The Oberlin College Review, a twice monthly, letter-sized journal — we pride ourselves on the same in-depth coverage of campus events and community issues, as well as incisive commentary on local and national debates. Given the College’s historic lack of a formal journalism program, the Review has also served as an outlet for student voices, giving aspiring journalists an opportunity to hone their reporting, writing, editing and photography skills.

But despite its legacy and the valuable service it provides to this campus, the Review is not perfect. In fact, it’s far from it. The editorial board has identified a few key areas in which, as a publication and an organization, there is still work to be done. We hope that by acknowledging and addressing these concerns, we may better serve our readership and our staff.

At its core, the Review is little more than a weekly series of articles, letters and photographs — we have always worked with the same journalistic media spread across a relatively constant number of pages. That won’t change, but what those media depict is ours to decide. All of our sections, but in particular our News section, regularly report on College- and state-level stories as best they can.

However, the board feels that city-specific issues have not received the attention they deserve. The same goes for Conservatory events in our Arts section, whether they be classical concerts or jazz master classes. On the whole, the Review has tended to prefer College-sponsored events while often ignoring those put on by independent organizations and collectives. This is something we aim to change as we move forward.

Part of rethinking what we cover involves re-examining who we consult. We acknowledge that a bit of factual stagnation can occur when it comes to the Review’s reliance on the same voices for quotes and facts time and time again.

Oberlin is home to many experts in numerous fields — professors and, in many cases, students. But by repeatedly turning to the same key individuals, we reinforce their authority while failing to legitimize and give credence to the voices of many others.

Additionally, we must re-evaluate who we are as a publication — a collection of writers and editors with a variety of interests and experiences. Last semester, journalist and immigration activist Jose Antonio Vargas noted that the Review has a serious diversity problem. He’s right. Though in some ways we are progressive for a college paper — our editorial staff hails from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds and consists largely of female students — it is a fact that white, cisgender students comprise the vast majority of the Review staff. If one of our goals is diversity of content, this must stem from a diversity of contributors. The only way for us to ensure that a wider assortment of topics and events appear on the pages of this publication is to bring aboard students who are knowledgeable about them — writers who can adequately report on issues relevant to people of color, the LGBTQ community and other historically underrepresented groups — and the best way to do that is to welcome those people to our ranks.

Of course, diversity extends beyond race and sexuality. We want to encourage contributions from those students who may not reflect the intellectual, ideological or experiential majority at Oberlin but whose ideas and voices are just as critical to the ongoing conversation we seek to sustain in the Review. Without them, we are failing to do our job.

The board understands that addressing these select few concerns will not serve to redress all of the Review’s problems. We would, however, like to continue the conversation. That is why, in the coming weeks, the senior staff will be instituting weekly office hours. Anyone, staff and non-staff alike, is welcome to attend and engage in dialogue with us. We may oversee the production process and make executive decisions, but at the end of the day, the Review is your paper.

By making ourselves available, we hope to gain a more concrete understanding of what you, our readers, would like to see from us.

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

Opinions

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The Oberlin Review, February 21, 2014

Monumental Misfire: New Film Disappoints Jesse Kohler Student Senate Liaison Student Senate is excited to start off the new semester with the addition of seven newly elected Senators: College junior Peter Arden, College junior Hope Kassen, College sophomore Jesse Kohler, College junior Rachel Manning, College first-year Emma Snape, College sophomore Mia Wallace and College sophomore Harrison Wollman. Congratulations to all of the candidates for participating in a very competitive race, and thank you to everyone who voted. Total voter turnout reached 806 voters.

In its first meeting, the new Senate passed a resolu-

Ruby Saha Contributing Writer tion supporting a $10 annual increase to the Green EDGE Fund. The proposed increase will go toward the creation of a Carbon Management Fund that has already begun implementing projects that will help the College reach carbon neutrality by 2025.

Just as in previous years, the Green Fee is not a mandatory payment and can be waived if any student chooses to do so.

Senate is excited to promote three events during the upcoming week. First, Koffee with Krislov will be taking place on Monday, Feb. 24 at 10 p.m. in Azariah’s Café.

This is an opportunity for students to come and have an informal conversation

with President Krislov while enjoying free coffee and cookies.

Two open forums will be held to allow students to discuss the newly proposed Sexual Misconduct Policy.

These forums will take place Feb. 25 and Feb. 27 at 12:20 p.m. in Dye Lecture Hall ( formerly known as West Lecture Hall).

We’re excited for the new semester! Please make sure to check the Senate website to see every senator’s office hours. We also invite you to attend our plenary sessions, which are open to the public and held every Sunday; the first will be at 7 p.m. on Feb. 22 in Wilder Hall 215.

Longstanding Historical Problems Fuel Ongoing Syrian Civil War Sean Para Columnist The international community has played a prominent role in the Syrian Civil War thus far, and only with the continued help of the international community will the wretched conflict be brought to a close. The Syrian Civil War has many traits in common with previous conflicts of its kind. It has taken on international dimensions and drawn in the world’s great powers.

Internal disputes often fall prey to geopolitics. The pattern goes back at least to the Middle Ages and has antecedents in the Castilian Civil War of the mid-14th century and, to use a more recent example, the Korean War. Although it is not a proxy war, Russian and Iranian backing of the Assad government is crucial, as is the Saudi Arabian, Qatari, American and European sup-

port for the rebel groups. The conflict is spinning out of control in Syria, as the opposition becomes increasingly fractured and radicalized and begins to turn on itself.

Although the civil war started as an attempt to displace the Assad government — similar to the other revolutions of the Arab Spring — the regime’s tenacity allowed it to survive. Rebel groups sprang up across the country to fight the government.

However, as the war dragged on year after year and the Assad government clung to power yet lost control of much of the country, various rebel groups became increasingly radicalized and many committed to establishing an Islamic state in Syria. The opposition groups have begun to fight each other, falling out over religious See Syrian, page 7

There’s hardly a more fascinating story than the tale of the socalled Monuments Men. At the end of World War II, a team of American and European art experts — among them former chair of the Fine Arts Department and director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum Charles P. Parkhurst, OC ’38 — tracked down thousands of stolen works of art looted by the Nazis for Hitler’s utopian Führermuseum. Working alone and at great personal risk, they chased after some of Europe’s greatest cultural treasures at a time when few people saw the value of risking lives to save paintings.

And yet, despite a compelling story of love (of art) and war and a stellar cast in every sense of the word, I was quite disappointed by The Monuments Men. Don’t get me wrong: It’s a thoroughly entertaining movie, filled with a stream of schmaltzy Clooney one-liners, an appropriate number of large explosions, and oh, so much art. The Vermeers, the Michelangelos, the Ghent Altarpiece — be still my beating Art History major heart.

There is a refreshingly human core to every character, emphasizing their families, their backgrounds and their deep commitment to recovering Europe’s cultural heritage. And there were many quietly emotional scenes to counterbalance the humor, like when the Nazis torch stacks of paintings, or when the team finds barrels of gold wedding bands and tooth fillings.

But for a movie that is essentially a story about individual and collective heroism, the abundance of lighthearted scenes comes at the expense of any real character development, giving only the most shallow sense of an extraordinary group of people.

The movie feels an awful lot like Ocean’s Eleven, not helped by the

presence of George Clooney and Matt Damon: the video montage introducing each character and their role in the heist (the curator, the professor, the architect, et cetera), the clashing personalities and the charmingly silly vignettes. At the same time, it also tries to be a throwback to that classic post-World War II genre of morally uplifting, jingoistic cinema that celebrated America’s role in ending German tyranny, a reference that could have been ironically enjoyable but instead drags the movie down with bulky, clumsy monologues about –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

And yet, despite a compelling story of love (of art) and war and a stellar cast in every sense of the word, I was quite disappointed by The Monuments Men. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––– sticking it to the Nazis and a climax that wasn’t.

I think what bothered me the most about the movie was that it was eminently forgettable, with a neatlywrapped up storyline about what a great job America did, without commenting on how the search for looted treasure continues to this day, or even giving a quick slideshow honoring the people it portrays. During his talk last year at the Allen, Robert Edsel, author of the book on which the movie was based, stressed the importance of bringing to light and remembering the incredible work carried out by the women and men involved in recovering Europe’s most precious cultural treasures. It’s disappointing that a movie as enormous and star-studded as The Monuments Men could fall so flat in this regard.

Culture Clash: Intersection of the Political and Apolitical Ike Hollander McCreery Columnist This past Saturday afternoon, when asked about his time in school, director Ryan Coogler emphasized several times that the reason we are in school is to “understand how we relate” to what we love and what we study. When he was younger, he said, it wasn’t that he didn’t know anything about film; it was that he didn’t understand anything about himself.

For many of us at Oberlin, how we relate to our work is intimately political.

As I wrote last week, the infamous rhetoric still lingers in Oberlin: “Think one person can change the world? So do we.”

But we know, perhaps intuitively, that a beautiful piece of work is one that stands at the intimate intersection of the political and the apolitical. Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station does exactly that.

On Saturday — the day after Valentine’s Day — a few hundred students and other members of the Oberlin and larger Ohio community gathered at the Apollo Theatre for a screening and discussion

with Coogler, the 27-year-old director of Fruitvale Station, a film about the last day in the life of Oscar Grant III. Oscar, as he was fraternally called during the discussion this weekend, was lying face down, restrained and unarmed, on the Fruitvale Station BART train platform in Oakland, CA, when he was shot to death by police officer Johannes Mehserle in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day 2009. Detailed footage of the murder was caught by bystanders using their phones and was released publicly soon thereafter.

Neither the film nor the discussion dwelled much on the murder itself. The film is undoubtedly about Oscar’s “relationships with who mattered most,” as Coogler said on Saturday. “The last day of his life was really domestic.” He was facing “challenges to his masculinity,” he was unemployed and spent much of his day grocery shopping for his mother’s birthday and driving his daughter and girlfriend to and from school and work.

He was “still learning what kind of man he was going to be.” Coogler said it was

important to him to capture Oscar’s youth in the film.

The question of politics inevitably came up in the post-screening discussion. At first, Coogler said straight-up that Fruitvale Station is not a political film. To him, politics indicates things that are “polar,” either on one side or the other. Fruitvale Station deals with the “gray area” of being a person. He described how his inspiration for making the film was largely due to Oscar’s relatability: Oscar looked like him, dressed like him, talked like him. They were both from Oakland.

But as Associate Professor of Africana Studies Pam Brooks, who moderated the discussion, said, there’s no denying that Fruitvale Station is a political film, because it deals with such political issues: police brutality, race, class and gender.

Coogler agreed. Someone mentioned during the discussion that the first time they paid attention to politics was when the story of Oscar Grant was released.

When a student asked Coogler to comment on telling stories from our own

communities, he said it is “incredibly important” to do so because if we don’t, then either an outsider tells them or no one does. Coogler said there was “incredible pressure” in dealing with such a big issue. He described having to “boil down” the story so that it reflected the larger issues.

Everything is political. But all political things are grounded in the non-political. Politics is just a cauldron in which all intimately human things, like family and love and identity and coming of age, get mixed up into something so complex, inflammatory and important that we call political. Heed Coogler’s advice: Learn how you relate to what you love and what you study. And look to Fruitvale Station as an exceptional example of the beautiful work that can be done when we understand that relationship and allow ourselves to stand at the intimate intersection of the political and the apolitical.

When asked about his success, Coogler simply replied, “At the end of the day, I wish I wasn’t here. I wish Oscar was still here.”

Opinions

The Oberlin Review, February 21, 2014

Page 7

Kiss My Sass: Singing the Valentine’s Day Blues Sophia Ottoni-Wilhelm Opinions Editor Valentine’s Day has come and gone, thank goodness. It’s a day when the happily coupled among us cook meals and stare deeply into each other’s eyes with Peter Gabriel playing softly in the background. Ugh, I just made myself throw up. No, seriously, congrats if this is you. I’m as much a fan of over-sized teddy bears as anyone.

For the rest of us, Valentine’s Day is always kind of a weird day. If you’re lucky, your mom sent you some candy. If you’re less lucky, she told you finding a mature guy or gal probably won’t happen until grad school. How wonderful. There’s only one solution: We round up our single friends — the ones who are similarly grumpy about being forced to think about their aloneness all day — uncork a bottle of wine (or seven) and play Cards Against Humanity until the butt crack of dawn. There’s nothing like a good dead baby joke to make things better.

Throughout the course of the night, everyone becomes progressively worse at pretending they’re down with their singleness.

Don’t get me wrong, I am super down with being on my own. Yes, I really do mean that. I don’t have it all figured out by any means, but I do know how important it is to devote yourself to what you love. Right now I can’t imag-

ine anything that could possibly excite and scare me more than climbing in the Himalayas and working for a nonprofit that rescues girls from the sex trade. Unsurprisingly, doing these things isn’t conducive to having your mind blown by college-aged boys. There certainly are a couple of incredible ones out there, but they have all either dated your best friend, are dating your best friend or they are your best friend.

The latter definitely works for some people, like my housemate Megan, who casually discusses having the children of her equally-brilliant partner over breakfast. The exciting thing about our generation is that we don’t have to worry about finding someone to marry. My grandma went straight from being a daughter to being a wife at the age of 20 — this simply isn’t the case anymore. The Institute for American Values reported that the median age of women marrying for the first time increased from 20 to 25 between the years 1970 and 2000.

I’m a huge supporter of this change: It gives us more freedom to travel and take career risks in the five years following college.

Ernest Hemingway wrote in For Whom the Bell Tolls that “the Earth moves” for the lead character Robert Jordan when he is with his love interest Maria. When I woke up with the sun at Everest base camp, I knew exactly what this meant. I saw the snow-capped mountains glow orange and pink, and the Earth moved

for me. It seems so simple — wait for someone who makes the Earth move for you. But the college environment does its best to throw us off. The stress of balancing classes and extracurriculars while trying to have a social life and get a full night’s sleep is overwhelming. It’s hard to keep yourself healthy and happy under these circumstances, not to mention someone else. Then there’s timing, personal lives, future plans and discrepancies in interest to further throw a wrench in the mix. No wonder so many of us are failing so spectacularly at being with someone.

As if these things weren’t working against us enough, we don’t even know how to go about getting to know someone romantically. Do you ask the person you’re interested in on a date?

To hang out and “watch” House of Cards? Do you make out with them at the ’Sco? Ask them to dance? That would certainly be the classy route. I’ve seen all these go down successfully and, more often, I’ve seen them fail. The aforementioned report states that fewer than one third of college seniors have been on two dates throughout their college career, while 72 percent have “hooked up.” Ah, hooking up — the appropriately vague term our generation uses to encompass a number of sexual activities while conveying a relative lack of seriousness.

Hookups are common everywhere, but I believe that at Oberlin they are caused by the

number of strong, outgoing women on campus and the length of summer and winter breaks. The first explanation is obvious — just look around you. I have had so many female friends who throw down and make the first move on people they like. After talking to my friends at other colleges, I’ve learned how rare this is elsewhere.

The second explanation has to do with the fluctuation of relationships throughout the course of the semester. At the beginning of the semester, people arrive back on campus excited to see all their friends and get a little crazy. It’s simply impractical to start a serious relationship at this point, so everyone sticks to hooking up. Near the middle of the semester dates happen, people have settled into their schedules and have gotten the chance to become friends with whomever catches their eye. As finals approach, hookups start happening again because people aren’t interested in getting seriously involved with someone before peacing out for months on end.

So there you have it — my post-Valentine’s Day musings on relationships in college, for better or for worse. I hate that there is a holiday that forces you to think about these things. I might eat my words one day when I receive baskets of puppies from the love of my life, but probably not.

Greed, Money and Deceit: Another Wall Street Story

Syrian Civil War Rages On

Aidan Apel Contributing Writer

Continued from page 6

Last week, the Justice Department closed a particularly significant case that has rippled through the business and finance world: the conviction of Mathew Martoma in the most lucrative insider trading scheme in U.S. history. The case is significant for the amount of money inappropriately gained — $300 million — but the story behind the case is captivating the financial community. The scale of greed, impropriety and deceit Martoma exhibited has even shocked Wall Street.

The story begins in 1999 at Harvard Law School, where Ajai Mathew Mariamdani Thomas was applying for prestigious clerkships. His transcript didn’t particularly stand out, even with Harvard’s name on it. So Thomas decided to make a few cosmetic alterations — namely, changing several Bs to As. And it worked. Thomas received multiple interviews with prestigious judges. However, a clerk for one of the judges grew suspicious of Thomas and called Harvard Law, asking if Thomas’s transcript was correct.

Harvard discovered the inconsistency, and Thomas was called in for judicial hearings. If convicted he would face expulsion. Thomas claimed these changes were “a joke” intended to be used “only for his parents” and had “by mistake” been sent as part of his clerkship applications. His story changed back and forth; at first he claimed he didn’t know about the forgery. Then he did, but wasn’t serious about clerkships, so he intentionally performed poorly in interviews to sabotage his own success. Judges quickly testified against this idea. Even as co-founder of the Harvard Society of Law and Ethics club, Thomas was convicted by the

Harvard review board and expelled from law school.

But Thomas didn’t stop there. He then secretly formed a computer forensics company, which he used to try to trick Harvard Law into letting him back in. He appealed his case to the Harvard review board, where he argued that the “mix-up” in transcript changes could be proven to be a sincere mistake, verifiable by backdating emails he sent. Thomas’s computer forensics company submitted a report on Thomas’s behalf. Harvard somehow found out about Thomas’s connection to the computer forensics company and decided, all things considered, not to let him back in.

Thomas then changed his name to Mathew Martoma. He also convinced his brothers to change their last names to Martoma as well, thus leaving Mathew Thomas behind permanently. Martoma applied to Stanford’s MBA program. It is still unclear if Stanford knew who Mathew Martoma was, though Martoma would have had to lie about his history of judicial action at another institution. He was accepted and graduated without incident.

After bouncing around in the hedge fund world for a while, he landed a job at one of the largest, most successful, most publicly prominent hedge funds in the world, SAC Capital.

While at SAC Capital, Martoma arranged consulting agreements with researchers working on an experimental Alzheimer’s drug. Martoma paid $70,000 to Sidney Gilman, a leading project researcher, for privileged information regarding the effectiveness of the drug before it was announced. SAC Capital traded on that information in a move that made the company just under $300 million and won Martoma a personal $9 million year-end bonus.

The FBI discovered the connection, which Martoma tried to obfuscate.

Lies continued throughout the case; the FBI’s lead witness in the Martoma case, Sidney Gilman, tried to lie his way through the FBI’s investigation.

Eventually he turned against Martoma and Martoma’s defense collapsed.

Interestingly enough, Martoma isn’t the big fish in the eyes of the Justice Department. The Justice Department has been trying to nail SAC Capital’s founder, Steven Cohen, for years now. Many presume that Martoma was offered a good deal to roll over on Cohen, raising questions as to why Martoma wouldn’t take that deal.

While he could be trying to stay in Cohen’s good graces, perhaps for employment after jail, people have been quick to speculate that Cohen holds a significant amount of dirt on Martoma to keep him quiet. Could Martoma’s scandal go deeper? Even though Martoma isn’t the Justice Department’s big fish, his story has shocked the world because of the scale of its deception.

He lied his way through law school, business school and the hedge fund world, only to go on to lead the largest case of insider trading in U.S. history.

Where opportunity exists, greed, corruption and deceit follow. Look at any highly competitive and lucrative industry around the world. There is very little room for error and unimaginable wealth to those who get to the top by any means necessary. There is no way to stop the liars and cheaters from entering the crowd, so we should be cautious when vilifying an industry.

Instead, we should advocate resources for the Justice Department and changes to incentive structures.

This story has a happy ending, as Martoma was sentenced to 20 years in prison last week.

policies and goals for the war.

The world’s great powers were drawn into the conflict about a year after its onset.

This gave the civil war another level of complexity. The United States soon backed the rebels, while Russia backed the Syrian government, its traditional ally.

American and Russian arms provided to the two sides have aggravated the conflict.

The Assad regime remains entrenched in many parts of –––––––––––––––––––––––

Approximately 130,000 Syrians have died. The economy has been ruined; cities have been destroyed and the government has ceased to effectively exist.

––––––––––––––––––––––– Syria, yet has lost effective control of much of the country. Russian arms flow into government hands even as they are used to attack civilians. The U.S. is backing some vetted rebel groups with no ties to terrorist organizations, yet this has not been enough to turn the conflict in their favor. U.N.-backed talks have been initiated several times, yet each time they faltered

on preliminary issues. No significant progress has been made.

As all this politicking takes place, the Syrian people continue to suffer. Approximately 130,000 Syrians have died. The economy has been ruined; cities have been destroyed. The government has ceased to effectively exist, concerned not with the welfare of its people, but only with survival.

Strong international pressure, mostly on the part of the United States and Russia, is one of the only foreseeable ways to end the conflict.

The world’s great powers must exert their influence to bring the two sides back to the table and create a lasting peace. Without this pressure, the conflict will continue unabated.

Syria’s problems date back to its origins as a nation-state. It was created in the aftermath of World War I as a French protectorate (or mandate, to use the official term at the time of its creation) with no respect to ethnic boundaries.

The Alawites, a mystical and syncretic sect of Shia Islam, have backed the Assad regime from its foundation.

The civil war has inflamed smoldering sectarian conflicts between different elements of Syrian society. Islamic radicalism has taken hold so quickly as a result of the decidedly secular nature of the brutal regime.

In 1996, Lisa Jervis, OC ’93, founded Bitch magazine and focused on responding to pop culture through a lens of feminism. The magazine is still running and has become an influential voice on the topic in today’s culture.

Developer of early telephone prototypes, Elisha Gray lost out to Alexander Graham Bell in the patent race.

In addition, he made many advances in electronic music technology. He did not graduate, but went on to teach at Oberlin later.

1889 graduate Thaddeus Cahill invented the Telharmonium, widely recognized as one of the first electric instruments invented, which transmitted tones through the phone lines.

A screenwriter best known for Jurassic Park III, Peter Buchman, OC ’89, also wrote the screenplays for Eragon and Che.

Aside from acting in various TV shows and Hollywood films, Edward Everett Horton, graduated in 1909, was well known for his characteristic voice as the narrator of “Fractured Fairy Tales” in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (originally Rocky and His Friends).

In ad tions is be char

CALENDAR

After working his way up through government positions in pre-Communist China, H. H. Kung, who graduated in 1906, served as Premier of the Republic of China from 1938-39. Although criticized for contributing to corruption, he strived to strengthen and modernize China’s financial system.

Archie Pelago at the ’Sco Friday, Feb. 21 at 10 p.m.

Formed in 2010, Archie Pelago is a trumpet, saxophone and cello trio from Brooklyn, NY, that combines electronics with jazz and classical influences, resulting in a unique style of dance music. Free with student I.D. until 11 p.m. ($3 after), $7 without.

Aside from writing the Academy Awardwinning screenplays for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men, William Goldman, OC ’52, wrote the novel The Princess Bride, as well as the screenplay for the film adaptation.

Convocation: An Evening With Avery Brooks, OC ’70 Saturday, Feb. 22 at 7:30 p.m.

Accomplished actor, director, musician and professor of theater at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Avery Brooks will be giving a talk in Finney Chapel. He is widely known as Captain Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, as well as the lead in many plays and operas. The event is free and no tickets are required.

Soundfarm no. 4: Circles Saturday, Feb. 22 at 8:30 p.m.

This event, which is a part of the Soundfarm concert series, will feature surround sound solo electronic performances by current students in Central 25 in the Conservatory. Free and open to the public.

Sugarcane Wr Onakeme Etag Monday, Feb. 2

Ijaw and Nigerian activist and visua will be hosting Su LGBTQ persons o for addressing iss and sexuality in h

Megan McDonald, OC ’81, is an author of children’s literature, well-known for her Judy Moody and Stink series, as well as many American Girl stories.

Joani Blank, OC ’51, opened one of the first feminist, sexpositive adult stores in the U.S. and is an active voice in the field of sexuality. She also invented the Butterfly vibrator and is an author of children’s sex ed books for youth under the age of 8.

addeus Cahill invented the dely recognized as one of nstruments invented, which through the phone lines.

wardssidy the , OC Bride, film

undfarm concert series, ctronic performances by e Conservatory. Free and

Director, producer and writer James Burrows, OC ’62, is best known for directing episodes of Will & Grace, Cheers, Friends, Frasier and pilots for The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men.

Although he only attended Oberlin for one term in 1835, Lorenzo Snow would later become the fifth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1898. He also fathered 42 children with nine wives.

In addition to multiple Tony Award nominations, actress and singer Judy Kuhn, OC ’81, is best known as the singing voice of the title character in Disney’s Pocahontas.

After meeting in 2003, Jad Abumrad, OC ’95, and Robert Krulwich, OC ’69, decided to collaborate and in 2005 became cohosts of Radiolab, a New York City radio show focused on science, philosophy and the human experience. The show is also influenced by their backgrounds in experimental music technology and audio production.

Sugarcane Writers Workshop with Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene, OC ’02 Monday, Feb. 24 at 1 p.m.

Ijaw and Nigerian poet, dancer, playwright, performance activist and visual artist Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene will be hosting Sugarcane, a writing workshop focused on LGBTQ persons of color in Third World House. She is known for addressing issues such as race, ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality in her work.

John Kander, OC ’51, composed many well-known musicals, the most famous being Chicago and Cabaret.

Meals, Mood and Mindfulness Tuesday, Feb. 25 at 5 p.m.

Senior Night at the ’Sco Thursday, Feb. 27 at 10 p.m.

Explore issues in awareness and acceptance through mindful eating and breathing exercises in Wilder 112. On-campus and self-help resources will be provided, as will raisins and M&Ms.

Celebrate our seniors with a night of dancing! Free for seniors, $3 for non-seniors.

Page 10

Arts The Oberlin Review

February 21, 2014

Danenberg Recital Showcases Conservatory’s Best Clara Shannon It’s not easy to nab a spot in the Conservatory’s annual Danenberg Honors Recital. First, Conservatory faculty members recommend particular student musicians, and then those students must undergo a rigorous, competitive audition process before the best are selected to perform in the recital. The series is intended to acquaint the student body with the best of student performance, so the bar for performers is necessarily set extremely high. As a result of this selectivity, it was a coalition of the Conservatory’s finest musicians that captivated a nearly full Warner Concert Hall Saturday night for the second part of the yearly recital. The concert, free of charge, showcased student musicians of every division of the Conservatory from historical performance to jazz and highlighted works by a range of musicians from Liszt to Debussy.

Carl Abel’s Sonata in C Minor kicked off the recital, played by senior Joseph Monticello on traverso, a kind of flute, senior Alana Youssefian on baroque violin, master’s student Juliana Soltis on baroque cello and double-degree fifth-year Justin Murphy-Mancini on harpsichord. The energetic, thought-provoking performance beautifully articulated the delicate and intricate details of the piece. The next performance, a presentation of Maurice Ravel’s Sonatine Pour Piano arranged by David Walter for oboe, played by senior Virginia McDowell and staff accompanist Yuying Allie Su, maintained the first’s exacting quality. Fast- From left: Conservatory senior Shea Pierre on the piano, double-degree fifth-year Daniel Pappalardo on bass and Conservatory serunning notes on the piano contrasted with soaring nior Miles Labat on drums perform Pappalardo’s original composition Over the Curve. Their performance was part of the Danenberg oboe melodies in a contemplative performance that Honors Recital, which showcased the top talent from the Conservatory.

Courtesy of Dale Preston resonated throughout the hall.

After the Ravel, the program shifted briefly to feaand forth between the musicians like knives. The trio Rigoletto Paraphrase with the ease of his execution, ture the strings with violin master’s student Mari-Liis displayed a strong musical unity and gave a fascinating elevating the performance with glittery technique, Uibo’s solo performance of Heino Eller’s Fantasy in G performance. crowd-pleasing flourishes and powerful virtuosity. The Minor for violin. Uibo navigated Fantasy’s technical A quick foray into vocal performance provided a recital concluded with double-degree fifth-year Daniel pleasant break from the instrumental block. A duo of Pappalardo’s original piece Over the Curve, performed ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– seniors, soprano Heidi Middendorf and pianist Joseph by senior Shea Pierre on piano, Pappalardo on bass Williams, executed a beautiful and high-strung rendi- and senior Miles Labat on the drums. As the only stuAs a result of this selectivity, it was a cotion of Quatres Chansons de Jeunesse by Claude Debussy. dent piece in an evening of older compositions, the trio alition of the Conservatory’s finest musiMiddendorf ’s voice resonated with poise and grandeur, closed the recital with particular freshness and chariscians that captivated a nearly full Warmer excellently complemented by the sensitive and flowing ma, cultivating a charming and uplifting atmosphere. voice of the piano. The duo’s chemistry was matched in The Danenberg Honors Recital is named in memory Concert Recital Hall Saturday night for the the next performance, the second movement of Ernest of Emil Charles Danenberg, the eleventh president of second part of the yearly recital.

Chausson’s Quartet for Piano and Strings in A Major the College, a dean of the Conservatory and a member ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– presented by senior violinist Lyly Li, double-degree se- of the Conservatory’s piano faculty for 30 years — a nior cellist Jennifer Carpenter, senior violist Jeff Girton suitably important tribute for such an outstanding complexity with full force and intensity, her dexterity and double-degree junior pianist Rachael Shapiro. The contributor to Oberlin. This year’s recital particularly evident in the eeriness of the haunting piece. Wedge quartet moved as one in an alluring, elegant and heart- exemplified the Conservatory’s talent with a full range ( for three flutes), a contemporary piece by Peter breaking performance that showcased each perform- of undeniable musical excellence. The road to perforKramer, OC ’14, followed, performed by Conservatory er’s technical and musical ability without diminishing mance in the Danenberg Recital may be grueling, but seniors Hannah Hammel and Candy Chang and return- the unity of the whole. the payoff is well worth it. ing performer Joseph Monticello. The peculiar piece In the last solo act of the night, master’s piano stucentered around unique, complex rhythms tossed back dent Nicholas King masked the difficulty of Liszt’s

Kidjo’s Showmanship, Musicality Rouses Crowd to Dance Ava Bravata-Keating

Beninese singer-activist Angélique Kidjo must have set a record — barely 15 minutes into her performance, everyone in the audience was on their feet dancing.

More surprisingly, this feat was accomplished in Finney Chapel, a formal venue with full seating accustomed to classical music concerts and distinguished convocation speakers.

With her multi-national band in tow, Kidjo emerged on stage dressed in an attention-grabbing ensemble of a multicolored dress with a matching headdress and sparkly tights. Needless to say, Kidjo commanded the stage, and Oberlin was not the first to notice this Grammy Award winner’s dazzling presence. The singer has received numerous accolades: Time dubbed her “Africa’s premier [sic] diva,” while The Guardian placed her on its list of the “Top 100 Most Inspiring Women in the World.” The list goes on, and with all

these titles comes responsibility, according to Kidjo. “It puts more pressure on me to be better all the time. Everything I say, everything I do, it has to be done properly.”

Born Angélique Kpasseloko Hinto Hounsinou Kandjo Manta Zogbin Kidjo, she is fluent in Fon, French, Yorùbá and English. Growing up, she created her own personal language in order to claim individuality as the seventh of ten children.

Batonga, a word from this tongue, serves as a title for one of her songs, as well as the name of her foundation that promotes education for girls in Africa.

Kidjo crooned melodies that spanned genres, though much of the music she performed could be classified as “Afropop.” Her songs were sung in all of the aforementioned languages, including the Africa-wide anthem “Malaika,” meaning “angel” in Swahili. Kidjo’s two percussionists gave the majority of her songs a driving, dance-worthy beat. Meanwhile,

her voice was a major highlight of the performance. Sometimes she would pull back and deliver a soulful ballad. Other times, she would wow her audience with her voice by singing completely a cappella or dropping the mic from her mouth and relying completely on the natural projection of her voice. She gave a versatile performance in terms of style and genre, but all of her music had one thing in common: engulfing vocals that were commanding, yet nuanced. It seemed fitting that such a voice matched her magnetic stage presence, as the two played into each other.

Kidjo’s singing voice is undeniably powerful. It clearly draws from a mixture of innate talent and charismatic spirit.

But perhaps even more powerful is Kidjo’s graceful marriage of singing and activism. She opened the majority of her songs with some sort of dedication, such as, “Women have been the backbone of [Africa] for centuries. But women and

children are the first victims. They don’t get to sit at the United Nation’s table with the men come peace negotiations.” She spoke often of Africa’s youth, declaring, “Let the younger generation dream big!” and “A teenager is not ready to start a ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

She gave a versatile performance in terms of style and genre, but all of her music had one thing in common: engulfing vocals that were commanding yet nuanced.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– family. Who will get her out of this misery?

No silence, we have to protect our children and speak up,” and “No little girl goes to bed with tears in her eyes due to rape, domestic abuse.” The audience applauded See Grammy, page 12

Arts

The Oberlin Review, February 21, 2014

Page 11

Urban Apiary to Serve as Community Model Michelle Polyak Staff Writer What can humans learn from the social practices of bugs? A lot, according to educator and cultural activist Juan William Chávez. This past Tuesday, Chávez delivered a lecture titled “The PruittIgoe Bee Sanctuary” as part of the Ellen Johnson guest lecture series sponsored

by Oberlin’s Art History department. The talk centered around his proposed project to create a bee sanctuary in the abandoned Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis.

Chávez describes himself as an artist who works in the public realm. In an attempt to move out of the commercialization of the art world, Chávez began working within the nonprofit arts sector. He described driving to work and passing a mysterious urban forest daily — a forest which became the catalyst for the project he described in the lecture. “The beginning of my project was … my ignorance,” Chávez explained. With further investigation, he learned that this 33-acre urban forest was the remnants of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project.

The Pruitt-Igoe housing project began in the mid-1950s as an effort to deal with the rapid population growth in St. Louis

during the postwar era. The 33-acre modernist housing complex was an extravagant project with a $30 million budget, but soon after construction was completed, tenants began moving out. Since its abandonment, the complex has become notorious for being one of the biggest failures in urban development and design. In 1972, the buildings were imploded — a spectacle that was widely broadcast on television. Schools were built on parts of the empty plot, and the rest was overtaken by the urban forest Chávez used to pass.

The urban forest boasts a myriad of wildlife, ranging from invasive plants to wild turkeys to bees. Chávez was particularly interested in the bees because of the metaphor for the city of St. Louis that they provide. The bees in the Pruitt-Igoe site experienced what is called colony collapse disorder, which mirrors the history of the city of St. Louis and the Pruitt-Igoe housing project. Colony collapse occurs when a beehive or bee colony abruptly disappears for mysterious reasons, but the queen remains. Chávez stressed the importance of bees in our daily life because of their essential role in pollinating fruits and vegetables. Due in part to modern agricultural practices, the population of bees is dying out and colony collapse is

increasingly common. wAs he delved into his research on bees, Chávez came to realize that Americans are fearful of bees in public spaces.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

outdoor classroom in a nearby empty lot that emphasizes experiential learning by teaching kids how bees work — that is, by helping each other. Chávez described the beehive as a super-organism that works to create a final product, similar to a cooperative community, a workplace or a The urban forest boasts a myriad city. He explained how this kind of collabof wildlife, ranging from invasive orative process can be applied to the complants to wild turkeys to bees. munity stregnthening he aims to achieve Chávez was particularly interthrough the Pruitt-Igoe bee sanctuary.

Chávez writes on the sanctuary’s website ested in the bees because of the that he wants his apiary “to redirect the metaphor that they provide for conversation surrounding Pruitt-Igoe by the city of St. Louis. developing creative strategies that both ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– memorialize the past and provide economic opportunity for the future.” With He contrasted this fear with European at- the success of his outdoor classroom, titudes, which celebrate the insects. One Chávez has founded the BEEHIVE: Food of the most famous public spaces in Paris, Incubator, which combines the classroom the Luxembourg Gardens, boasts an api- with a modified grocery store. ary as well as a beekeeping school foundThe continued support from commued in 1856. nity members for his project has allowed With the Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary Chávez to teach artistic skills to a larger project, Chávez aims to incorporate ur- audience, which can easily be applied to ban agriculture and beekeeping in the new collaborative projects. Ultimately, abandoned space. He wants to include a the bee sanctuary will teach the commemorial sculpture within the site that munity of St. Louis the ways of a superechoes the original architecture of Minoru organism, which can cooperate to transYamasaki, who designed the infamous form the derelict spaces that surround its housing project. While the apiary has not citizens into places of public worth and yet been realized, Chávez has created an socioeconomic support.

Quirky Charm Redeems OMTA’s Godspell Andrea Goltz Conversations about faith can be risky at Oberlin. Beliefs vary widely, and many students completely reject organized religion. Considering this sometimes uncertain religious climate, the high attendance at the Oberlin Musical Theater Association’s production of Godspell, a musical based entirely on New Testament gospels, was unexpected but not undeserved. Regardless of belief, the energetic but sometimes overpowered cast successfully staged a play

that left most members of the audience with smiles on their faces.

The stage presence of the charismatic disciples indisputably brought this production of Godspell to the next level. Each of the seven disciples was featured in his or her own song and acted as a backup dancer and singer when out of the spotlight.

All seven hit most of their notes and danced their hearts out on stage with versatility and talent. College sophomore Elizabeth Gobbo deserves particular attention for her solo “Turn

Back, O Man,” which was a joy to watch and listen to. Another standout was College first-year Zoë DePreta for her flawless, passionate rendition of “Day by Day.” In contrast to the strong and impressive ensemble, the central character of Jesus, played

by College first-year Shane Lonergan, was somewhat lacking.

While Lonergan has a lovely voice and an impressive range, his interpretation of the role left something to be desired. Godspell’s Jesus is predictably loving and righteous, but still demon-

strates plenty of quirky personality. Lonergan chose not to emphasize the latter. Instead, his Jesus was like a child’s blanket left in the rain: cute, heavy and a little sad. On the other hand, Conservatory first-year Billy Krager’s multi-character performance was more versatile.

Especially when playing Judas, Krager kept a straight face and milked the drama of the betrayal for all it was worth, but also managed to be fun when the script demanded it.

This production of Godspell also played around with the

From left: College junior Mike Sederquist as a Disciple, Conservatory first-year Billy Krager as John the Baptist and College first-year Jenny Kneebone, and College sophomores Ariana Silvan-Grau, Colin Anderson and Elizabeth Gobbo as Disciples leave it all on the stage during Godspell. The musical retold the story of Jesus with plenty of modern-day twists and turns.

Courtesy of Adina Katz

script, transporting it to the present day and tampering with jokes to make them Oberlin-specific. While it is true that Godspell, written in 1971, might be a little outdated, the script changes distracted the audience more than they benefited the production. For example, the cell phones the performers carried during the first number situated the play in “modern times,” but also made it look like the actors were constantly about to run into each other. A reference to Obamacare was thrown in for no good reason. A play on American Idol used to demonstrate one of Jesus’s parables worked well, but the rest fell flat.

The haphazard musical balance also detracted from the production — the small orchestra completely overpowered the singers almost every time they played. To compound the problem, the actors often struggled with the enunciation of their lyrics; it’s hard to say whether or not the audience would have been able to understand the words even if the orchestra hadn’t been playing. It’s all very well that the singers could hit their high notes, but attention should have also been directed at ensuring the lyrics were comprehensible. If Godspell were an opera, this neglect of articulation would have been fine, since the audience would have subtitles. Sadly, this was not the case.

Even in spite of its technical shortcomings, OMTA’s Godspell still managed to be charming and quirky. As a whole, the production’s infectious energy emulated Jesus himself in redeeming its faults. And besides, when it comes to musical theater, what more can you ask for than to be humming show tunes on your way out?

Arts

Page 12

The Oberlin Review, February 21, 2014

McCrae Includes Personal Struggles in Poetry Vida Weisblum Shane McCrae’s poetry captures one of Oberlin’s most vital aspirations: to explore the ways in which one can find commonality among heterogeneity. Born and raised in Texas by parents he described as racially prejudiced, McCrae, who is biracial, is naturally intrigued by the “joining together of various opposites” and the “forming of things that don’t seem to go together.”

A graduate of the celebrated Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Harvard Law School, McCrae is an award-winning poet who currently teaches at the Low-Residency MFA program at Spalding University in Kentucky. In 2011 he was granted the Whiting Writer’s Award and was chosen for the NEA Creative Writing fellowship in 2013. McCrae’s first collection, Mule, was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award as well as a PEN Center USA Literary Award in 2012. McCrae is also the author of the poetry anthology, Blood and is expected to release a third anthology titled Forgiveness, Forgiveness in September 2014. His poems have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, including Best American

Poetry 2010, American Poetry Review, African American Review, Fence and AGNI. McCrae’s desire to create harmony amongst dissonant ideas or objects serves as the impetus for his work at every level, from subject matter to structure to meter. McCrae sticks to a consistent meter through all of his poems — “nothing that Sir Philip [Sidney] wouldn’t recognize,” as he said — while simultaneously using free verse structure and experimenting with the use of spacing on the page. According to McCrae, his fascination with making unlikely connections can be traced back to complications with his birth, during which he almost died. His transformation from death to life is a powerful symbol that instills a sense of curiosity in his language that is reflected throughout his work.

McCrae chose not to read works from his first two books but instead to give his audience a taste of the work that would appear in his new anthology Forgiveness, Forgiveness. The new collection reflects upon and questions McCrae’s personal encounters with racism as a young boy. The book contains two sections. The first is called “The Vis-

ible Boy,” which is comprised of poems that are technically sonnets, but not intended to sound as such when read aloud. The second section, also titled “The Visible Boy,” contains revisions of the sonnets in the first section. The title of both sections references a racist children’s book McCrae had encountered on the bookshelf of grandparents’ home about a boy named “little brown

ems appear to place a magnifying glass over how the children’s book expressed the many stereotypes of what it means to be black. In the first sonnet of “Visible Boy,” called “The Subject,” McCrae writes: “even without the illustrations the Reader would know he’s black Because his name is Little first then Brown.”

While McCrae’s speaking voice is ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– humble and bare, the construction of his poems reveals him as a frustrated His transformation from death anti-architect whose strengths lie in to life is a powerful symbol that tearing down the “picket fences” he deinstills a sense of curiosity in scribes in his second poem “The Empty Spaces.” For example, he writes: his language that is reflected “Soon as I saw a white one throughout his work. all the picket fences on my street ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– were brown.”

McCrae’s poetry revisits images that Koko.” This book has been a constant represent a sense of division between source of discomfort and question- diverse groups of individuals, in order ing for the author since his childhood. to make sense of how those divisions McCrae described “The Visible Boy” as can actually turn into connections. This “poems about trying to remember the is certainly an important reading in book without wanting to look at it,” and the context of the Oberlin community, memory is evident through his frequent where the most unexpected combinause of repetition. Though McCrae had tions are often the best. no desire to look at the book, his po-

Sundance Film Humanizes Late-Term Abortion Providers Logan Buckley Staff Writer Too often, the heated debate over abortion policies focuses on ambiguous medical arguments about fetal pain or sweeping declarations about morality that ignore the stories of individuals who choose to have abortions. In an effort to combat this, Students United for Reproductive Freedom and the Oberlin College Democrats screened the documentary After Tiller in Dye Lecture Hall on the night of Feb. 13. Martha Shane and Lana Wilson’s documentary, a 2013 Sundance Film Festival selection, works to redress imbalance in the public conversation about abortion with a powerful, tragic and

Grammy W i n n e r Wows Crowd

moving look at the doctors who perform late-term abortions and the people who undergo them.

The film’s title refers to George Tiller, a doctor who performed late-term abortions in Kansas and was murdered by an anti-abortion activist while attending church in 2009. Since his death, there are now only four doctors in the United States who perform the controversial late-term abortion, most of whom are former colleagues of Dr. Tiller. Over the course of the documentary, the four doctors — LeRoy Carhart, Shelley Sella, Susan Robinson and Warren Hern — describe the realities of their day-to-day practice and their reasons for continuing to provide late-term abortions in the face of so much controversy and hate.

Central among their reasons for persevering is the conviction that each woman knows better than anyone else what is right for her. One doctor met Tiller at a conference where Tiller said in a speech that “the woman’s body is smarter than the doctor.” She recognized that this idea came from a midwifery perspective, having started in midwifery herself; when she told Tiller as much, he hired her almost immediately.

The film shows the process that another doctor, Susan Robinson, goes through as she evaluates patients who are requesting abortions. Though she is not required to perform abortions when she feels the procedure is the See Film, page 13

Feature Photo: Waxahatchee and Swearin’ at Cat

Continued from page 10 and cheered both before and after her songs.

Kidjo was utterly confident in her ability to get her audience up and moving. Motioning to the first pew, she declared, “Pretty soon we all will be up dancing.” In between her second and third songs, she demanded, “Those benches and chairs — forget them!” Her predictive powers proved spot-on. For the last third of Kidjo’s performance, audience members were up on their feet, turning the chapel into a pulsating dance floor. She even came down into the aisles, high-fiving everyone within reach. After she had meandered through the crowd, performing melodic gymnastics all the while, she invited the spectators onstage to dance with her. Her band must have jammed for twenty minutes straight as the audience members took center stage, dancing their hearts out. The picture of artist sharing the stage with her audience highlighted the philosophy of Kidjo’s entire performance: that a single musician is less important than the power music has to transform.

Members of Waxahatchee — Keith Spencer on drums alongside singer/guitarist Katie Crutchfield, guitarist Kyle Gilbride and bassist Sam Cook-Parrott (not pictured) — treat the Cat in the Cream audience to their folk-punk sound. The band came to Oberlin last Saturday night with sister act Swearin’, a hardcore punk band fronted by Katie’s twin sister Allison. Both Crutchfields excelled at delivering straightforward, emotive vocals over raw blasts of distortion. Waxahatchee released its first album, American Weekend, on Don Giovanni Records in 2012; its sophomore effort, Cerulean Salt, came out a year later on the same label, topping the Official Record Store Chart in mid-July. Both albums have attracted the group a growing fan base drawn by their raw sound, which Pitchfork described as having “the lo-fi lyrical appeal of early Elliott Smith or Cat Power.”

Perry Maybrown

Arts

The Oberlin Review, February 21, 2014

Page 13

On the Record: Joel Ginn, Sound Tech Engineer for The Dead Hear Footsteps Joel Ginn, a College senior, is the sound tech engineer for The Dead Hear Footsteps, a weekly noir-comedy radio show created in 2000. Having worked on the show for five semesters, Joel knows the ins and outs of creating a serial radio drama. The show will air this semester on WOBC 91.5 FM at 5 p.m. every Sunday, and a live finale will be performed at the Cat in the Cream at the end of the semester.

From what I’ve heard, The Dead Hear Footsteps is now something of an institution. Can you tell me about its history?

We are in season 25 right now. The Dead Hear Footsteps was started as a Winter Term project by [Ben Rubin, OC ’94]. … Each season is a semester, so there’s some math there. I joined around season 20, I guess. …

We follow the adventures of Hardin Lovelace, private eye, in the city of Bayside. The show’s gone through its different cycles of being more serious and dramatic to what it has become today … more light-hearted, a little more of a parody of itself than what it once was. But [the show] still retains the same characters, a lot of the same feelings and writing style.

It sounds like it’s kind of a niche project. How did you get involved with the program?

Yeah, it’s not as well-publicized as we’d like it to be. … I was brought in by [College senior] Charlie Cohen, who was the editor until this last year. He lived on the same hall as me in Dascomb. They needed voice actors for one episode. He knew I did acting once upon a time and pulled me in. [Once] most people are in, they just find their niche in the program, figuring out what they want to do by trying out everything.

There must be a lot of turnover among participants. How does that affect the quality and content of the show?

I think the quality of the show has more or less remained constant. It’s people who are donating their time freely to a college-access radio show, so it can’t

be as high-quality as we’d like it all the time, but it definitely has remained pretty good. The biggest change I’d see with turnover is just the flavor of the series, which happens when we have different editors, different writers and just different things like that.

What are the program’s creative goals?

I don’t think we have many end goals, other than just having fun with it. We know that we have some listeners and we aren’t really doing this for an academic project or anything. It’s just that the people who are involved are passionate about it … it’s just for their own personal gain, for their experience doing something that they love, and if other people get enjoyment out of it, it’s just a bonus.

What goes into writing and producing an episode of The Dead Hear Footsteps?

It’s a complicated two-week kind of thing. One week we’ll have an interest meeting … to plan … who’s going to be the crook for the week, what are they doing, how does Hardin find out what they’re doing. We create a “beat sheet,” which is splitting the episode up into four parts. … Those four parts are called by people who are interested for writing that week, so if someone sees part two and thinks, “Oh, there’s an interesting car chase scene there, I want to write that,” then they call that and they write that part. … Once all four parts are done, they’re sent to the editor, who is currently [College sophomore] James Beech, and he compiles them to make sure there’s continuity, that the little old lady who hired Hardin in part one is the same little old lady who finds out who the crook was in part four. … Then we do a read-through to practice at 3 p.m. … until 5 p.m., when we go out live. At the same time as people are doing the read-through for voice acting, tech-side we are also getting there, sitting at the microphones, making sure everything is working in the studio as it should, so that by the time 5 comes around, everyone’s ready, we all come together and put out an episode, which generally lasts until about 5:30. So all in all, it

Film Offers Moving Portrait of Late-Term Abortion Continued from page 12 wrong choice, she emphasizes throughout the process that she will defer to the patient whenever possible. Regarding women who have trouble articulating their reasons for wanting an abortion or whose stories are not as compelling, she says, “Is that OK for me to say, ‘That’s not a good enough story, I’m not doing an abortion for you’?” According to Robinson, such an approach would be presumptuous and disrespectful of the woman’s agency; while there are occasionally patients whom she decides the clinic cannot help, she strives to respect the patients’ ability to make such an important life decision for themselves.

Though the filmmakers spend most of the documentary following the four doctors, it is at its most compelling when the patients speak for themselves about why they are considering or have chosen abortion. Late-term abortion in particular seems to be widely misunderstood, and it is invaluable for audiences to understand why women choose to undergo the procedure — whether their reasons involve fetal defects, sexual assault, difficulties in getting an abortion earlier in the pregnancy or any of a multitude of other personal reasons. A viewer of the film may agree or disagree with individual women about their choices, but it is impossible to walk away thinking that any of the women have made their decisions lightly.

This context, while probably not surprising to those who support a woman’s right to choose, represents an invaluable contribution to the debates surrounding abortion in general and late-term abortion in particular.

Documentaries sometimes place blinders on their viewers, forcing opinions rather than presenting situations and allowing viewers to reach their own conclusions. By necessity, the film only follows doctors who care enough about the importance of late-term abortions to put themselves and their families at risk, and regrettably little time is spent characterizing opponents of abortion. But for the most part, the film resists binaries and doesn’t shy away from portraying the most controversial sides of the issue — the difficult questions that inevitably come up in these doctor’s offices. For that honest approach, plus the value of hearing from women about why they are choosing to get abortions, After Tiller is a must-see.

takes about a week and a half for each episode to be produced and go live, so there’s generally two episodes going on at once.

Wow. It takes a lot of work to put together a half-hour program. That must require a lot of coordination.

Yeah, it’s a lot of people. We definitely don’t have a consistent “these four people write” every week. …

And that’s one thing I’ve always appreciated about The Dead, is the people who want to write can have the opportunity to write, because there’s so many opportunities for it. … For example, I definitely don’t consider myself a writer, but there have been weeks when no one’s been writing. I had time, so I was able to pick it up and get some practice writing and have fun with something that I hadn’t done before.

What makes The Dead different from other theatrical productions on campus?

It’s very distinct from anything else in this campus. There are theatrical performances that happen on campus, but those are generally high-production.

They go up once and it’s a lot of effort put into them, and then they’re done. People remember them and talk about them, but it’s done at that point. Radio shows are a thing that is happening all the time. WOBC has new radio shows every semester, and there are ones that do carry over. On the air before us — for I don’t even know how many years — has been The World Famous Meeko Show, but that one’s still generally just music and talking about what [Meeko Israel] wants to talk about on the air. This is just something that’s been going on … so when you go into an episode you can remember and be a part of this thing that has just been continuing for so long. So with me being on there for five semesters, we can see a character that I haven’t seen for two seasons, and I can remember, “Oh yeah, Clystrum, he’s a character. He’s fun.”

Interview by Anne Pride-Wilt, Arts editor

Sports

Page 14

The Oberlin Review, February 21, 2014

IN THE LOCKER ROOM

Men’s Bowling

This week, the Review sat down with senior bowling members Johnnie Kallas, Eastman Presser, Griffin Sabelli and David Morris to discuss their first bowling experiences, Tom Reid and the challenges of mental preparation.

When did you first learn to bowl?

Eastman Presser: I think I had a different experience than the three of these guys, because I did not bowl seriously before I came to Oberlin at all. If you told me that I was going to be on the bowling team, really at any point in my life, until I committed to being on the bowling team, I would not believe you. I bowled at birthday parties for friends as a kid.

Johnnie Kallas: I got into bowling in seventh or eighth grade. I started taking it seriously right away. I joined my high school varsity team in eighth grade. I bowled throughout high school, and I really, really took it seriously towards the end of high school. I met [Bowling Coach] Tom Reid when I was applying here, and I will say that played a fairly large role in my decision to come here.

EP: And you, [Griffin Sabelli] you were born in College Lanes basically.

Griffin Sabelli: We’ll let David tell his story first.

man eye. There is oil laid out on the lane and depending on how the oil is laid out, the ball will hook in different places. We all have individual things we do to adapt to different situations.

EP: Learning to bowl is not about learning how to make your body do a certain thing; it’s about learning how a certain thing works for you.

Seniors Johnnie Kallas, Eastman Presser, Griffin Sabelli and David Morris David Morris: I did not ever step into a bowling alley until my sophomore year of high school. From the first moment I stepped into the bowling alley, I was captivated by it.

It’s a pretty cool place, and the people you find there are the most interesting people in the world.

GS: I started bowling probably when I was four or five in bumper bowling in College Lanes. My mom was in a league at the lanes, and she

signed both my brother and I up for bowling when we were young. That’s when we met Tom. Tell me about Tom Reid.

EP: He teaches the bowling classes and coaches the bowling team. He manages the bowling alley and the Cat in the Cream. He is the associate director of the student union as well.

He has really been a huge mentor to all of us in several different ways. He

is a very knowledgeable man and one of the best bowling coaches that’s around today. I don’t even know a single other bowling coach, but I still feel comfortable saying that.

Do you have any specific technique that you use?

JK: Bowling is a very misunderstood game. I think one of the reasons it’s misunderstood is because the obstacle is invisible to the hu-

What‘s one piece of advice you could give to noncompetitive bowlers?

EP: If you are in Oberlin, go talk to Tom Reid. Take a bowling class, get involved.

GS: I think there are a lot of different skill levels on the team. I come across people who don’t think they’re good enough to join our team, when there’s really no level you need to be to join the team.

JK: Take a deep breath, find a target and keep your eye on it.

What’s one word to describe OC bowling?

GS: Frustrating.

EP: Transcendental, almost.

What I have learned from Tom is that bowling is life and life is bowling.

DM: Simply unconventional.

JK: Thoughtful.

Interview by Sarah Orbuch, Sports Editor Photo by Zach Harvey

Lacrosse Heads into Season Looking to Set Record Highs Continued from page 16 Cool, OC ’13, to transfer and graduation respectively.

“Our returning players fill in the offense and defense, but we are lacking some depth in the midfield. I do see Kinori [Rosnow] as a great role-player; he’s really for the boys at the moment and he works very hard at practice. [John] Firestone has been hurt for a while, so he hasn’t gotten to perform as much as I would like to see in practice, but he definitely has a lot of potential, too.”

Coach Topher Grossman has similarly big goals for his team. “We have a great opportunity to mature as a program, mentally, physically and emotionally,” he said. “We had a lot of freshmen and sophomores contribute on the field last year, and we hope they can continue to develop and take that next step. One of our major goals is to earn a place in the conference tournament. It will be a big step, but it will be a step that places us two wins from the NCAA Tournament.”

There are fewer first-years on the team than in years past, but the talent of this year’s crop has given Grossman a lot of confidence.

“Our freshman class is not deep from a numbers standpoint, but I think we have a lot of talent and a tremendous amount of potential in key spots. We are definitely pleased with what we have seen to this point,” he said.

The men’s team starts its season on the road against the University of Mount Union Raiders on Feb. 26. Their home opener is against the Albion College Britons on March 5 and their first conference game will be at home versus the Ohio Wesleyan University Battling Bishops on March 22.

Yeowomen Net Impressive Win Over Hiram Terriers Continued from page 16 Yeowomen’s win on Saturday came at the end of an unusually busy three-game week.

Lucaites, who tore her ACL in early January, spoke to the unifying nature that the huge number of injuries brought to the team.

“We have created such a great network of support off the court, and I think that leads to better team chemistry on the court,” she said.

However, the team’s strong 5–4 start early in the season has left them with a solidified place in this season’s North Coast Athletic Conference tournament. One of these first winter wins was against Kenyon College, the team who knocked the Yeowomen out of the conference tournament last year.

Hoak said she is anticipating a strong end to the season. “I’m looking forward to seeing what we’re capable of when we all play our best.”

The Yeowomen honored their seniors Hoak, Jahan and Allison Gannon Wednesday night before their game against the visiting Ohio Wesleyan University.

With one regular season game left, the Yeowomen’s spirits are high.

“Our record doesn’t reflect it, but we’ve had a good year,” said Marquette. “We’ve been playing with really good teams,” said Marquette.

Even with their midseason lull, the team is closing in on 10 wins this season, a record women’s basketball has not reached in years.

The team currently has nine wins.

The team’s competitive attitude will stay with them until the season comes to an end. “We’re looking to win. We’re not going to just roll over and die for any team,” said Marquette.

The Oberlin Review, Febrary 21, 2014

Sports

Page 15

— Swimming and Diving —

Successful Swimming and Diving Season Comes to an End who led both the Yeomen and Yeowomen to winning seasons this year.

However, Brabson acknowledges that there is room for improvement. “On the women’s side we were hoping to finish a little bit better at the conference level,” he said.

He feels a lot can be learned from the team’s performance at Conference. “[Conference is] a good indicator of what we need to do differently during our rest period, as well as what other people might need to focus on in training, whether it’s a different event to train for or just a different philosophy for training in general,” he said.

The men’s team exceeded expectations with its fifth place finish, three places higher than its finish last season.

Sophomore Aaron Frederick calls the jump in rankings “absolutely massive” and accredits their success to Brabson, saying, “Andy has done a lot of stuff that I had never done before, and that made me a better swimmer.”

Sophomore Samma Regan and first-years Vera Hutchinson, Madeleine Prangley and Nora Cooper made school history in the 800-meter freestyle relay with a time of 7 minutes, 49.50 seconds.

“I didn’t know that we were going for the record because it required a huge time drop for all of us, but right before we went up our coach gave us a time to beat. I only found out after I swam that we set a school record,” Prangley said. The 7:49.50 timestamp resulted in fifth place overall in the 800 freestyle relay.

Although no members of either team qualified for Nationals at the conference meet, they will have another chance this From left: Seniors Jordan Attwood, Luke Harrison, Kelin Michael, Isaac Bacon, Robert McConkey, Katie Dunn, Chris Pickens and weekend at Kenyon College.

Rhys Hertafeld celebrate senior night at their final home meet. The Yeowomen finished seventh, while the Yeomen finished fifth First-year Liam Oznowich explained his decision to swim at last weekend’s NCAC championships.

Amanda Regan this weekend. “Coach [Brabson] and I decided that since I wasn’t totally satisfied with my performance at conferences, Hannah Heinke-Green The Yeowomen ended their regular season without a loss, a another week of rest may be beneficial.” remarkable feat considering that their former coach, Mark Fino, Brabson is excited and optimistic about the future of swimAfter successful seasons, the swimming and diving teams unexpectedly left Oberlin in August to coach at John Carroll Uni- ming and diving. “The mission is always to move up and do bettraveled to Denison University this past weekend for the North versity. In January, both the men and women’s teams managed ter than the previous year,” he said.

Coast Athletic Conference Swimming and Diving Champion- to beat their former coach at his new school. “[With] a strong base of younger swimmers I think we can reships. The Yeomen finished fifth with a total of 683 points, while “The women finishing the regular season undefeated was a ally improve. My expectations for next year are going to be pretty the Yeowomen finished seventh with a total of 772 points. highlight for the year,” said new head coach Andrew Brabson, high,” he added.

Editorial: Jeter to Don Uniform for Last Time in Spring Season Continued from page 16 of my life and there’s a good chance I mention the Captain’s name more than a couple times.

The Yankees are one of, if not the most, hated teams in sports, but even in acknowledging my bias, I find it hard to believe that this dislike extends to Jeter. He’s a class act on and off the field, and it’s difficult to think of a player, past or present, that better exemplifies “playing the game the right way.”

In an era of Major League Baseball tainted by steroid use, Jeter has stood as a model citizen. Often juxtaposed with fellow superstar teammate Alex Rodriguez, Jeter is known for his uncanny ability to stay out of the spotlight. Like A-Rod, Jeter has dated a laundry list of Hollywood actresses, but none of his relationships have endured the public ups and downs that his steroid-using teammates have.

Only a few instances come to mind when I think of Jeter’s public missteps. One came in 2002 when Yankee owner George Steinbrenner criticized Jeter for staying out late partying. The two resolved the minor feud by appearing in a Visa commercial together that concluded with the two doing the conga at a New York night club. The day A-Rod makes light of his errors in that fashion will be a sure sign of the apocalypse.

The fact that the man who may be the most popular person in New York City has almost entirely avoided controversy is mind-boggling.

With hundreds of millions of dollars and a gaggle of cameramen following me everywhere I go, I’d be on the back page of the New York Post every Sunday morning.

Following Jeter’s retirement announcement, dozens of current and former professional athletes sang his praises, thanking him not only for his play on the field, but his attitude and hard work off of it. “Always aspired to be the player he was on and off the field,” superstar outfielder Mike Trout tweeted. Judging by the 3,058 retweets, that’s a sentiment shared by many.

Jeter enters this season with 3,316 career hits, good for 10th on the all-time list, and even a mediocre season should catapult him into sixth place. He’s a first ballot hall of famer, and if there was ever going to be a unanimous selection, it’d be him.

Seeing long-time Yankee closer Mariano Rivera pitch his last game in 2013 was hard. Watching Derek Jeter’s last time in a Yankee uniform will be even tougher. There will never be another player like him, and all that’s left to do is sit back and enjoy the precious few games he has left.

Sports The Oberlin Review

Page 16

February 21, 2014

— Men’s Basketball —

Yeomen Trump Hiram for NCAC Spot Goodbye,

— Men’s Lacrosse —

Men’s Lacrosse Hopeful About Young Squad Bronwen Schumacher After a successful season last year that included a 3–4 North Coast Athletic Conference record and an 8–6 record overall, the men’s lacrosse team is heading into its season stronger than ever. Its roster includes 25 returning players, including three of the four top scorers from last season and its entire starting defense from 2013.

Sophomore Nick Lobley, the Yeomen’s Freshman of the Year for the 2013 spring season, feels optimistic about the upcoming season. “Our major goal is to make the NCAC tournament. We think we can realistically go 14–2 this season,” he said.

Lobley has lofty goals for himself, too. “Last

year, I ended the season with 46 points, and I would like to score 75 points this year,” he said. Lobley was a major contributor to the Yeomen’s success last year. Although he only played in 12 games, he garnered a team high of 24 goals and 22 assists, leading the NCAC with 3.83 points per game.

Adding to Lobley’s high hopes for the season are first-years Eric Hager and Jake Miller.

“Eric is a quick, versatile guy, he will be a good feeder. Jake [a long-stick midfielder], I think he’s going to have a good season, as well,” he said.

Sophomore Matt Fox, who battled injuries last year, is looking forward to this season and hopes to average two points a game.

“Last year, we weren’t good at clearing, which showed significantly versus Adrian College. We also couldn’t finish. Going into the Kenyon College third quarter last year we were up 5–1, but we choked at the end. We wanted the game to end because we were up [in points], instead of finishing through,” he said. “We will play first quarter through fourth quarter this year.”

Fox, like Lobley, looks forward to seeing the first-years’ contributions this season and knows they’ll be sorely needed after losing midfielder Sean Higgins and defender Thomas See Lacrosse, page 14

— Women’s Basketball —

Yeowomen Ready for Conference Tournament Sarena Malsin

this late in the season, but I’m proud of them for pulling out a much-needed victory,” said Head Coach Kerry Jenkins. Saturday’s win broke a nine-game losing streak.

This mid-season struggle could be attributed to the “injury bug,” as Jenkins described it, which significantly cut down the team’s numbers. With three players lost to season-ending injuries, two of them starters, the squad was left with only eight active players, Lucaites explained.

“We oftentimes go up against teams with 12 to 15 players, so we have to play without rest just because we don’t have that many,” Lucaites said.

The team worked hard to overcome this adversity, though.

“The most difficult challenge is that [multiple injuries] change the way you practice,” Jenkins said. “You have to be creative and condition more. It’s an uphill battle.” The conditioning seems to have paid off, as the See Yeowomen, page 14

Nate Levinson Sports Editor On Feb. 12, Derek Jeter announced that the upcoming season will be his last in the MLB. For over three-quarters of my life, Derek has manned the shortstop position for the New York Yankees. There, he has made one clutch play after another, run out every routine groundball to second base and served as the de facto favorite player for every young Yankees fan.

It’s difficult to quantify just how much Derek has meant to me over the years. I refer to him by first name as if we’re old friends, recall plays he’s made as if I was on the field with him and have narrowly avoided speeding tickets on more than a few occasions in order to make it home to see his late-game at bats. Although I’ve seen him play hundreds of times, I appreciate the Yankee shortstop more and more every time he takes the field.

Yankee fans my age have lived through five Yankee World Series wins and seven American League pennants, and it’s hard to imagine any of it without the Yankees’ alltime hits leader.

Six-year-old me watched in awe as Jeter helped the Yankees sweep the Braves to claim their third World Series title in four years; eight-year-old me sat on the edge of my seat at Yankee Stadium in 2001 when he hit a walk-off home run to win game four of the World Series, making him Mr. November; and three years ago I cheered as he became the second player in MLB history to record his 3000th hit on a home run. Ask me about the most memorable moments See Editorial, page 15

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After a strenuous first half, the women’s basketball team achieved a satisfying 58–45 victory against Hiram College on Saturday afternoon.

“Both teams started out slow,” said sophomore Katie Lucaites.

“But by the second half we were definitely capitalizing on Hiram’s sluggishness.”

The Yeowomen were trailing by one point at halftime, the score left at 24–23 in Hiram’s favor. Oberlin soon found a com-

fortable lead of 38–47, further extended by 11 points after two consecutive free throws by senior Lillian Jahan.

“We were able to keep the game close enough so it didn’t get away from us,” said junior Christina Marquette, who finished with 12 points. Other major scorers were senior Malisa Hoak with 10 points and sophomore Lindsey Bernhardt with an impressive 19-point contribution — the result of five 3-pointers throughout the game.

“Motivation can be a problem

Derek Jeter

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against the Terriers. Teammates senior Emmanuel Lewis, and firstyear Jack Poyle also contributed 12 points each, in what led to the eventual Yeomen victory. Coming off the bench, junior Miles Gueno added 10 to the scoreboard, but he attributed the win to a total team effort.

“The most exciting part [of the game] was the comeback. We had great chemistry together, and the bench really stepped up and made contributions,” Gueno said.

Last week, the Yeomen only made 60 percent of their free throws against Wittenberg University. The team dramatically improved that percentage by hitting 78.1 percent of their foul shots against Hiram.

Capitalizing on those scoring opportunities made all the difference for Oberlin. Even Cavaco credited this as the principal distinction between the two games.

“We had a greater focus on defense, even after Hiram jumped out to an early lead. Most importantly, and it sounds simple, we made shots,” Cavaco said.

Oberlin hosted its final home game on Wednesday, Feb. 19 against second-place Ohio Wesleyan University. The team celebrated Senior Night for the four graduating Yeomen, including Simpson, Lewis, Trey Levy and Derrick Sant. The Yeomen will conclude their regular season at The College of Wooster on Saturday, Feb. 22.

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Senior guard Emmanuel Lewis calls a play against the Ohio Wesleyan University Battling Bishops. Lewis has been a force for the Yeomen this season, starting in all 24 games and averaging 7.7 points per game.

Erik Andrews

Oberlin dominated both possession and the scoreboard in the second half, trumping Hiram’s 30 points with 52 of its own. Head Coach Isiah Cavaco called the second half fun to watch as the pace increased and Oberlin took control of the court and the game.

“I was happy about the way we handled an early deficit on the road. I was also happy to see the way we continued to shoot the ball with confidence and get rewarded by scoring 52 points in the second half,” Cavaco said.

Senior captain Geoff Simpson led this effort by tallying 33 points and an assist. Simpson, who has been on fire the past few games despite overall poor results, was honored as NCAC Player of the Week on Monday, Feb. 17. In recent games against tough competition such as Denison University and Allegheny College, Simpson put up 28 and 24 points respectively. Both Simpson’s and fellow classmates’ leadership has inspired better play from the Yeomen.

“The seniors really picked up the slack. They picked up their level of play and set an example of how the rest of us should be playing as well,” said second-year center Randy Ollie.

The Yeomen saw a relatively equal distribution of points from other key players as well. Ollie netted 12 points in Saturday’s contest

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The men’s basketball team defeated Hiram College in a stirring turnaround of events, breaking their three-game losing streak last weekend. The Yeomen, now 7–16 overall, secured the final spot in the

North Coast Athletic Conference tournament with a decisive 91–79 victory over the Terriers.

Although the first half did not look promising for the Yeomen, who entered the second half of the game down 49–39, the players managed to pull off a crucial comeback with NCAC playoffs on the line.

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Tyler Sloan Staff Writer