November 5, 2021

The Oberlin Review November 5, 2021

Established 1874

Volume 151, Number 5

SOSHA Forum Sparks Dialogue on Campus Culture Surrounding Sexual Harm Lauren Krainess

Editor’s note: This article mentions sexual harm.

However, activists and members of the Iranian diaspora feel that the College’s investigation did not effectively probe Mahallati’s past. The protesters who took to Tappan on Tuesday included many Iranian Americans who lost loved ones in the 1988 massacre or who have otherwise been affected by the crimes perpetrated by the Iranian government.

Mehdi Keshavarz traveled to Oberlin from California for the day just to participate in the protest. Keshavarz spoke about how he came to the U.S. with very little means in order to escape Iran’s regime.

“A lot of people here came from around the country because everybody lost one of [their] close family members or friends,” he said. “Me, I lost six of my roommates, my friends, … my cousins. Everybody has pain from this regime. We don’t want this guy, Mr. Mahallati, to come freely here and they hire him [at the] College in the United States. They have to see what happened to us — what’s happening right now. This [does] not just belong to the past. It belongs to right now, too. So I hope they can change their minds and make the right decision.”

Bazargan said that the College’s investigation into Mahallati was insufficient. She demanded transparency and called on the institution to delve further into the historical record and publicize its findings.

“It was a sham investigation,” Bazargan said.

“How can you investigate like that? Of course they don’t want to get to the bottom of the truth. Nobody wants to accept that they made mistakes. But … we are not going to go away, and time is not on their side. If they think that, by giving us the runaround, they’re going to make us tired — for 43 years we’ve been fighting the tyranny, so we are not going to back off.”

However, Mahallati believes the evidence presented by the protesters does not accurately reflect the context in which his actions took

Oberlin student group Survivors of Sexual Harm & Allies hosted a forum on Thursday, Oct. 28 to address sexual violence in light of recent Yik Yak posts that directly named and accused specific individuals of sexual assult. The forum began with an overview of sexual harm resources on campus and was followed by a discussion of potential action items that SOSHA could send to the College.

According to College third-year Emma Hart, a SOSHA leader and forum organizer, the group planned the forum quickly in response to the increased discussion around sexual violence on campus stemming from the posts made a few days prior. Hart stated that despite the quick planning process, the event had a good turnout.

The forum included discussions of Oberlin’s current policy and culture surrounding sexual harm and ways to better support survivors. Hart stated that believing survivors and recognizing that sexual violence occurs at Oberlin are the most important first steps the administration and students can take.

“We definitely got into a really abstract discussion about cancel culture and what survivors and abusers both deserve, and what you do if your friend is an abuser, and all these really large questions which are really important to talk about,” Hart said.

The group discussed some specific potential actions, including asking the administration to issue an official statement standing with survivors of sexual harm and to create a rehabilitation program for assailants. Students also thought about their own behavior in relation to Oberlin’s culture surrounding sexual violence.

“Students asked questions about how to do better on campus, which is something that everyone should be asking themselves right now,” wrote College thirdyear Jenna Frizzell, another forum organizer, in an email to the Review.

Riley Hall, Oberlin’s confidential student advocate also attended the event but stayed upstairs in a separate room as a resource for students who wanted to speak individually. Hall works for The Nord Center as an advocate for sexual assault services. She provides Oberlin students with confidential services such as emotional support, sexual education, legal advocacy, and crisis intervention. She also provides resources on intimate partner violence, self-care, healthy boundaries, coping mechanisms, and relationship dynamics.

“I really like the place we’re in right now where people are talking more about sexual harm on campus,” Hall said. “Sexual harm and sexual violence are topics that are always clouded in shame, and it’s very difficult to talk about. Survivors are silenced a lot of the time.”

College second-year Kendall Heldt, who attended the event, expressed cautious optimism about whether the administration would be receptive to SOSHA’s

See Protesters, page 2

See SOSHA, page 3

Protesters gathered by the Memorial Arch in Tappan Square on Tuesday to protest against Professor of Religion Mohammad Jafar Mahallati for alleged complicity in 1988 mass killings of political and religious prisoners in Iran.

Photo by Khadijah Halliday, Photo Editor

Protesters Call for Firing of Professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati Gigi Ewing Managing Editor Protesters from across the country gathered at the Memorial Arch in Tappan Square on Tuesday to call for action against a College professor accused of involvement in covering up 1988 mass political killings in Iran during his time as Iran’s United Nations representative. The protesters called on the College to conduct a transparent investigation on the allegations made against Professor of Religion and Nancy Schrom Dye Chair in Middle East and North African Studies Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, and ultimately, to fire him.

Tuesday’s protest included 16 guest speakers who discussed their personal experiences of abuse and loss at the hands of the Iranian government and a skit that portrayed the executions conducted

by Iran’s 1988 “Death Commission.” Protest organizers estimate that the event was attended by roughly 150–200 people in-person, as well as 100 people over Zoom. Lawdan Bazargan, the protest’s organizer and the sister of a 1988 massacre victim, has been vocal in her opposition to the College’s employment of Mahallati since bringing forward allegations against him in October 2020.

Last month, Director of Media Relations Scott Wargo sent a statement to the Review, which stated that Oberlin had concluded an investigation into the allegations against Mahallati and found no evidence to support the claims.

“Oberlin deeply empathizes with the pain and suffering caused by the executions in Iran,” the statement read. “After becoming aware of the allegations against Professor Mahallati, Oberlin initiated its own process to determine their validity. After consulting a number of sources and evaluating the public record, the College could find no evidence to corroborate the allegations against Professor Mahallati, including that he had specific knowledge of the murders taking place in Iran.”

CONTENTS NEWS

OPINIONS

THIS WEEK

ARTS & CULTURE

SPORTS

02 Israel-Palestine Winter Term Trip Creates Opportunities, Sparks Controversies

05 Evidence Against Mahallati Irrefutable

08–09 Crash Course: Mohammad Jafar Mahallati

10 The Future of the Oberlin Music Scene

14 Yeomen Basketball Looks Ahead to 2021–2022 Season

11 WOBC Community DJs Discuss Station’s Future

16 Oberlin Baseball Acknowledges Negative Reputation

04 Letter from Mahallati to Dean Kamitsuka

06 Bridging the Gap Could Provide Valuable Experience for Students

The Oberlin Review | November 5, 2021

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Protesters Travel to Oberlin to Demand Justice

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place. The Review obtained a letter that Mahallati wrote to Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences David Kamitsuka on Monday, in which Mahallati argues that the protests against him are politically motivated.

“Now, 30 years after I left a governmental post, the present campaign against me is politically motivated and is a designed, well-orchestrated character attack using abusive propaganda literature,” Mahallati wrote.

Iranian-American College fourth-year Sophie Bernstein expressed frustration about the College’s response to the allegations against Mahallati.

“I think that it’s very unreasonable that the administration has not seen the organizers of this event and I think that [it] is trying to cover up something that is undoubtedly true,” Bernstein said.

“I think it’s not correct for him to teach specifically ethics and morals as a professor here, especially when he did cover up mass murderings of political activists. I think that a lot of Oberlin students here, we take for granted the freedoms that we have — for example, questioning authority, questioning the government, being gay, being a communist, ... but our people were murdered for that.”

Bernstein was also frustrated that student turnout was underwhelming.

“The student turnout is pretty disappointing, especially because we are practicing liberties that Iranian people don’t have to this day,” Bernstein said. “It’s important to note that although we’re talking about the 1980s, this is still happening to this day with the new election of the president Ebrahim Raisi — he also has been found guilty of killing political prisoners and other people that oppose the Islamic Republic.”

Conservatory first-year Max Stuart said he had heard about the allegations against Mahallati before arriving at Oberlin, and echoed Bernstein’s sentiment regarding the number of students who came to the protest.

“I hope not only does he get fired, but he gets in prison,” Stuart said. “I’m encouraged to see a couple students coming here, but it’s not as much as [it] should be.”

This fall, Mahallati is teaching Muslim Oral Culture: Persian Poetry in Translation, Music, and Calligraphy; Islam; and Forgiveness in the Islamic and Christian Tradition remotely.

Protesters hold signs of loved ones who died in the 1988 mass killings in Iran.

Photo by Khadijah Halliday, Photo Editor

Israel-Palestine Winter Term Trip Creates Opportunities, Sparks Controversies Walter Thomas-Patterson Senior Staff Writer Over the last two weeks, controversy has developed over a Winter Term trip originally titled “Bridging the Gap: Israel.” In response to a petition with nearly 600 signatures created

by Students for a Free Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, the Bridging the Gap committee issued a response and hosted a forum on Tuesday to address student concerns.

On Oct. 18, Oberlin College released its 2022 Winter Term catalog. The catalog lists a description of the project which will be led by Bridging the Gap Founder Simon Greer, Western States Common Good Program Chair Megan Black, and College fourth-year Havi CarrilloKlein.

“This project encourages participants to take on the challenge of engaging the deep divides that plague American democracy by thinking deeply about Israel,” the description in the catalog reads.

In response to the Winter Term catalog description, SFP and JVP started a petition calling on the College to condemn the project. In their petition, the organizers noted that the title of the project and the description found in the Winter Term

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catalog did not make any reference to Palestine or Palestinians.

In order to combat this perceived erasure of Palestine from the project’s goals, SFP and JVP included in their petition a brief overview of the history of Palestine and expressed its concerns with the trip.

“The Winter Term project puts the needs of a predominately wealthy, privileged Oberlin student population above the rights and realities of Palestinians experiencing genocide and ethnic cleansing,” the petition reads. “Many Palestinians are barred from returning to Palestine because of Israel’s discriminatory laws and policies, so why should nonPalestinian Oberlin students have the right to take a school-sponsored trip?”

The petition characterized the College’s promotion and endorsement of the eight-day visit to cultural and religious sites in the Israel-Palestine region as an oppressive stance because the initial framing depicts the situation in the region as the IsraeliPalestine conflict with two sides of equal power and responsibility, and not as a settler-colonial project, as the petition states.

In response to the petition, the founding members of the trip released a statement acknowledging that Editors-in-Chief

Anisa Curry Vietze Kushagra Kar Managing Editor Gigi Ewing News Editors Ella Moxley

Kush Bulmer Opinions Editor Arman Luczkow Cont. Opinions Editors

Emma Benardete Arts Editors Maeve Woltring Lilyanna D’Amato Sports Editor Zoe Kuzbari Cont. Sports Editors

John Elrod Zoë Martin del Campo Photo Editors Mads Olsen Khadijah Halliday Senior Staff Writers Eric Schank

Walter Thomas-Patterson Sydney Rosensaft River Schiff Web Manager Ada Ates

they made a mistake when initially advertising the program.

“The original program description, which has now been modified, didn’t reflect the full scope and nuance of the project’s design,” the statement reads.

“We apologize for the oversight.”

A new project description was released at the end of their response, and the project was renamed “Bridging the Gap: Israel, Palestine, and the Politics of Division Here at Home.”

Yet for both the organizers of the Winter Term and SFP and JVP, the establishment of the program has meant addressing a deeper question of how Israel-Palestine should be addressed in the Oberlin community.

For Black, the project’s goals address what she, Greer, and CarrilloKlein see as a major issue: the current discourse surrounding Israel and Palestine has fractured progressive grassroots movements and made countering rising authoritarianism on the far right difficult.

“We’re really concerned that the left and the progressive movement don’t know how to talk about and don’t take antisemitism seriously,” Black said. “We want to use this project to also invite people into a more intentional conversation about antisemitism as a form of racialized Ads Manager Production Manager Production Staff

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oppression that sits alongside other similar things like anti-Asian sentiment and Islamophobia.”

For SFP and JVP, engagement with the Israeli side of the conflict is a tacit endorsement of the Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the region.

“The program justifies itself by stating that ‘the situation’ is ‘complex,’ and that the program ‘bridges the gap’ and emphasizes ‘different perspectives,’” their petition reads.

“The use of ideological ‘both sidesisms’ frames the Occupation of Palestine as a conflict and not a settler colonial project carrying out genocide.”

However, for Carrillo-Klein, the program is an opportunity to hold a more complex conversation about a multifaceted and personal issue.

“I grew up in a mixed-race household,” she said. “I’m Mexican and I’m Jewish. My whole life I have had two really important issues that were very personal, which were immigration reform and antisemitism.

One issue in particular that came up for me as soon as I got to … Oberlin’s campus was that the conversation around Israel and Palestine lacked nuance. Students didn’t have the chance … to be able to voice their opinions freely.”

Corrections: In “Off the Cuff with Ohio Teacher of the Year Kurt Russell” published on Oct. 22, 2021, Francine Toss is named “Ms. Francine Tall,” and it is stated that she works at the Carlyle Flower Shop. This was an incorrect characterization. Toss is the co-owner of the Carlyle Flower Shop. The Review regrets this error.

In “Education on the Ballot for 2021” published on Oct. 29, 2021, City Councilmember Ronnie Rimbert is described as a “Lorain County commissioner.”

However, Rimbert never served as a Lorain County commissioner. The Review regrets this error.

SOSHA Discusses Action Plan to Combat Sexual Violence Continued from page 1

action list.

“I do feel hopeful with the action plan, and I think that SOSHA is reacting pretty immediately to things that are happening,” she said. “I think they’re doing a great job.”

Heldt also expressed disappointment upon learning about the current state of sexual violence on campus at the forum.

“I did not realize how prevalent sexual assault was on this campus,” she said. “I think that there’s this misconception that Oberlin is such a progressive school and that everybody is so good to each other. We do this consent training, and everyone should understand … consent. But, unfortunately, even at a place like Oberlin, [sexual assault is] still really, really prevalent.”

SOSHA leadership plans on holding a follow-up forum within the next week to solidify a specific action list that the organization can pass on to the administration.

“I really want this momentum to keep going,” Hart said. “I don’t want it to stop with just this initial forum. I know these conversations are really difficult to have — and nuanced and complicated — but we have to have them regardless.”

Students can contact Oberlin’s Confidential Student Advocate Riley Hall via email at college_advocate@nordcenter. org or the Nord Center 24/7 Sexual Assault Services Hotline at 440-204-4359.

This past Tuesday, the Student Labor Action Coalition invited two financial experts and members of the 1833 Just Transition Fund, Kelly Grotke, OC ’89 and Kris Raab, OC ’89, to present research from their ongoing investigations on the Oberlin College endowment. The talk was titled “The Million Dollar Question: What’s Really Going on with Oberlin’s Endowment?” SLAC hosted the event in Dye Lecture Hall, where both students and community members gathered to hear Grotke and Raab discuss the College’s $1 billion endowment and recent budget cuts.

This semester SLAC has made an effort to increase their political engagement after the bulk of their organizing, which began when Oberlin outsourced dining and custodial workers in the Spring of 2020, was sidetracked by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the past month, SLAC members have been tabling outside of Stevenson Dining Hall, organizing with United Auto Workers, and generating momentum via outreach on campus and in town.

College third-year Wilson Crook attended the event and expressed their support of the speakers’ efforts to shed light on the College’s financial actions.

“We definitely needed to get the student body talking again,” they said. “I feel like the last year really derailed a lot of action. [It] really showed me how much we need financial transparency from the trustees and also just how much we don’t know about where our money goes.”

College third-year and SOSHA leader Jenna Frizzell poses in front of a chalkboard that has the guiding questions for last Thursday’s Survivors of Sexual Harm & Allies forum.

Photo by Ella Moxley, News Editor

In their talk, Grotke and Raab attributed the majority of financial responsibility to the Board of Trustees, whose financial decisions often seem opaque to the students and faculty.

Grotke says the board controls appointments to their membership and is largely composed of people with backgrounds in law or finance and who are otherwise unaffiliated with the College.

“No one is in a position to know what has been going on with the money, which is … the motivating force behind all the disappointing and damaging austerity measures,” Grotke said. “To justify the sacrifices that have been demanded of Oberlin students and employees, and before they demand more — which they most assuredly will — the administration and trustees owe you, the Oberlin stakeholders, an independent audit.”

However, Chair of the Board of Trustees Chris Canavan, OC ’84, disputes this claim, stating that information about the endowment performance, the asset allocation policy, the investment policy, and Oberlin’s Financial Report is available on Oberlin’s website.

“We have held at least two campuswide webinars on endowment management,’’ Canavan wrote in an email to the Review. “The Investment Committee, which oversees the endowment, has faculty representatives, who report regularly to the General Faculty. It is the only board committee with non-trustee members. Plenty of issues merit debate in connection with our endowment. Transparency isn’t one of them.”

COVID-19 Update

Lorain County Updates Lorain County’s COVID-19 caseload has been decreasing over the last month. From Oct. 7 to Nov. 4, the county reported 2,698 positive cases and 131 hospitalizations.

Lorain County opened vaccination clinics this week to children ages 5 to 11. On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially announced that it would recommend pediatric vaccinations for this age group.

As of yesterday, 59.33 percent of Lorain County residents have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and 56.08 percent have been fully vaccinated.

The Oberlin Review | November 5, 2021

Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021 11:02 a.m. A student reported the theft of their bicycle from the bike rack north of Fairchild House. The bicycle, a men’s silver 21-speed Giant, was secured at the time of theft. It is unregistered and of unknown value.

12:58 p.m. The Student Health Center requested a Campus Safety officer to assist a student involved in a bicycle/vehicle accident on West Lorain Street at Wilder Hall. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital’s emergency room.

Friday, Oct. 29, 2021

SLAC Hosts Endowment Talk Eric Schank Senior Staff Writer

Security Notebook

According to Grotke, the measures enacted by the College — primarily those of outsourcing union labor, eliminating 25 faculty lines, and making cuts to coops and benefits — can be attributed to their positive effects on Oberlin’s bond credit rating. Moody’s, a company that rates institutions like Oberlin, classified the College’s outlook as negative in 2019. Following the implementation of a number of cost-cutting measures under One Oberlin, this rating was revised to a positive outlook.

Grotke, however, explains that the annual $2 million in savings created by outsourcing custodial and dining services is likely overshadowed by the amount of investment management fees paid to financial managers.

“If Oberlin is paying anywhere near $15 million a year or even $10 million a year, this makes all the austerity measures and [money] saved by firing and outsourcing union workers even more horrible, and that [$10–15 million] fee goes directly to Wall Street,” she said.

Grotke and Raab, who, as students, were heavily involved in activism for divestment from South Africa, suggest that the most effective way to combat austerity is to demand transparency. This would allow stakeholders at the College to have leverage in negotiating where money is spent and where budgets are cut.

“I think you, as students, are also exceedingly powerful, because you’re here now; this is your institution,” Grotke said. “You have a voice in this.”

Oberlin College Updates Between Oct. 25 and Oct. 31, the College’s internal testing documented one student COVID-19 case. However, between Oct. 21 and Nov. 1, the College was alerted of 16 additional cases from students who received tests off campus.

“Without direct access to validate these tests or their results, we cannot incorporate this data into our statistics,” wrote the ObieSafe team in a Nov. 4 Campus Digest.

As of Nov. 1, 98.8 percent of students, 96 percent of faculty, and 88 percent of staff have been fully vaccinated.

The deadline for faculty and staff to submit proof of vaccination was Nov. 1.

1:47 a.m. A resident of Keep Cottage reported a large hole in the north entrance door to the building. An officer responded and photographed the damage. The Oberlin Student Cooperative Association Housing Manager will file a work order for repair.

5:08 p.m. Officers and Oberlin Fire Department members responded to a fire alarm on the first floor of Langston Hall. Charred paper was located inside the microwave and sink. A maintenance technician also responded and removed the damaged microwave.

10:59 p.m. A student using a blue emergency light phone near Hales Gymnasium requested assistance as they were having an allergic reaction.

Officers responded and escorted the student to Mercy Allen Hospital.

Sunday, Oct. 31, 2021 2:32 a.m. Officers were requested to assist with a possible intoxicated student on the bathroom floor at Barrows Hall. An ambulance was requested. The student declined medical treatment and was escorted to their room for the night.

5:21 a.m. Officers were requested to assist with an intoxicated student on the second floor at Burton Hall.

The student was coherent and able to answer all questions asked by officers.

The student was able to walk to their room without assistance from officers.

6:20 a.m. Officers and Oberlin Fire Department members responded to a fire alarm at Barnard House. The alarm was caused by a faulty detector.

An electrician responded; the detector was changed and the alarm reset.

Monday, Nov. 1, 2021 10:55 a.m. Officers were requested to assist an injured student in Tappan Square. The student stated they were skateboarding and fell, causing their leg to bend. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

12:02 p.m. Officers were informed that an individual rode their bicycle into the street near Wilder Hall and was struck by a vehicle. An officer responded to the area; Oberlin Police, Oberlin Fire Department members, and paramedics were on scene. The student declined medical treatment at the time of the incident.

Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021 1:49 p.m. A student reported the theft of their bicycle, a black and blue Specialized bike, from the rear of Keep Cottage. The bicycle is registered and was unlocked at the time of theft.

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Letter from Professor Mahallati to Dean Kamitsuka Editor’s note: The following is a letter that Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, professor of Religion and Nancy Schrom Dye Chair in Middle East and North African Studies, wrote to Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences David Kamitsuka. The Review obtained this letter and is publishing it in full and unedited. Mahallati wrote the letter in the wake of allegations that he helped to cover up killings of political dissidents in Iran in the 1980s and made antisemestic and anti-Baha’i statements. For more context on these allegations see the Review’s reported news piece on the recent protest on page 1 of this week’s issue and fact sheet and timeline of events on page 8.

Nov. 1, 2021 Dear Dean Kamitsuka, Greetings! I would like to take this opportunity to address the accusations of anti-Semitism and anti-Baha’i postures attributed to me during my years of service at the United Nations.

The accusations have been reported out of context. All governmental officials representing countries in the United Nations, by definition, have no authority to convey or pursue their personal views. Rather, they are obliged to deliver official positions and statements of the government they represent, regardless of the topic. Iran is no exception to this international rule and therefore, Iranian envoys cannot be and are not accountable in conveying governmental/official positions/ statements to their diplomatic counterparts.

That is why the concept of diplomatic immunity is internationally recognized and respected.

Since its creation, the United Nations forums have witnessed a whole range of controversial issues between countries who were engaged in war, human rights issues, mass atrocities, and other conflicting questions. In fact, the U.N.’s very raison d’etre is to provide opportunities for countries and governments to express their controversies and disagreements before they get engaged in war.

All this means that governmental U.N. envoys cannot defy their official mandates to pursue their personal agendas and opinions. In the rare cases that they do, they get fired from their positions if not labeled as political traitors.

As my attorney’s letter to you indicates, I am one of the rare U.N. envoys who went beyond my mandate to expedite peace between Iran and Iraq, countries that suffered from one of the longest and

OFF THE CUFF

most devastating wars in recent history. Equally important, I am the first Iranian U.N. envoy to facilitate the first official visit of U.N. human rights officials to Iran for in-person inspections.

I implemented both actions at great personal risk.

Both have historic significance.

The official positions I took at the United Nations during the time I served do not portray my personal views. I was doing my job, delivering the official statements of Iran to the U.N. On a regular basis, hundreds of diplomats around the world cautiously exchange governmental positions and statements that may not meet ideal human rights standards.

My personal views are well portrayed in all my published books, articles and teachings during the course of the last 30 years since I left the U.N. post.

It is important to note that my accusers have not found a single statement from me that is remotely consistent with their unfounded accusations.

- I firmly believe that all human beings including Muslims, Jews, Bahais and others must be free and fully respected in choosing their faith whatsoever and must enjoy religious freedom irrespective of their ethnicity, nationality and other identity factors. No moral values can be produced under compulsion.

- I firmly believe in the liberties granted by the U.S. Constitution, including freedom of religion, speech and academic liberties. By the same token, I believe that no people or state should be exempt from academic criticism.

- I fully sympathize with all people who have suffered from human rights abuses in any country based on political, religious, or ethnic orientations.

I am against all kinds of capital punishment being summary or other types, because, based on Abrahamic teachings, even in the extreme cases of proven murder, there must be a chance for apology and forgiveness.

Now, 30 years after I left a governmental post, the present campaign against me is politically motivated and is a designed, well-orchestrated character attack using abusive propaganda literature. Both before and after my U.N. years I have enjoyed friendships with many Jewish and non-Muslim colleagues and students. Accusing a person of “anti-Semitism” when he has published many articles solicited from Jewish Rabbis and scholars in more than one language, and himself coming from Semitic ethnicity, is at least illogical if not ridiculous and vicious. Like many American scholars, I have legitimate liberties to criticize

All best, M. Jafar Mahallati

Eboni Johnson, College Librarian, Enters City Council This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Eboni Johnson

Isaac Kucher Production Editor

Photo by Tanya Rosen-Jones

On Tuesday, Eboni A. Johnson, outreach and programming librarian at Oberlin College Libraries, was elected to Oberlin City Council in an uncontested election, winning a narrow plurality of the vote.

Johnson is one of two new members of City Council, and the only one with no former Council experience.

She is the current chair of Oberlin City Council’s Human Relations Commission, where she has served for three years. We sat down with Johnson to discuss her experience running for Council during a pandemic and the areas in which she hopes to effect change once she is elected.

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any government based on its policies. When it comes to the state of Israel, I believe in the twostate solution as the only viable approach that can guarantee peaceful coexistence between Jews and Palestinians, as both deserve a secure life.

Presently, in the greater Middle East, from Afghanistan to Nigeria, there are close to eight ongoing wars that together, serve war and weapon industries with no benefits for any nation. As an Iranian-American anti-war teacher, I have been targeted by an Iranian opposition group that feels people like me are an impediment to an additional Middle East war that I believe would be disastrous for the entire region. I know from personal experience that wars are easy to begin and hard to end. I will maintain my anti-war position between any and all countries in the Middle East and beyond.

When my father Ayatollah Mahallati passed away in Shiraz in June 2000, the head of the Shiraz Jewish community attended the funeral, brought the largest flower rack to the procession and in expressing his sincere condolence, said, “You must not feel alone in losing your father, because he was our father as well.” This statement refers not only to how my father protected the Jewish community in Shiraz during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, but also to the legacy of the family in doing so during the 19th and 20th centuries since they began their religious leadership in Shiraz, Iran.

The Bahai community must also remember that it was Ayatollah Mahallati in Shiraz who risked his life to protect them and save their lives against mobs in the Sa’di village of Shiraz in the early revolutionary days of 1980s.

The MEK [also known as Mujahedeen Khalq] organization must also remember that my father was condemned to exile in early 1970s because he protested against the execution of MEK member Mr. Meshkinfam by the Iranian monarchy regime.

For those who are familiar with Shiraz history (one of Iran’s oldest and largest cities), the efforts of the Mahallati family to protect religious minorities is exemplary in the history of modern Iran. Fortunately, this contribution is well published in Persian. It is this long-lived moral and humanitarian legacy that I have promoted and will promote in my publications and teachings wherever I live and work so long as I have the physical and mental ability to do so.

What do you hope to accomplish on City Council?

Environmental sustainability and climate change — that’s a thing we have to deal with and figure out how to prepare for. Another one would be housing. I just bought a house in Oberlin — I feel really lucky to have been able to do that — but I think having enough affordable, appropriate housing for people is just lacking here.

Another point is transportation — thinking about safe and reliable transportation options. I’ve seen people just recently walking or biking that stretch of Route 58 between town and Walmart. Walking or biking there is dangerous; I’ve even seen it happen at night, and when they’re wearing dark colors, it’s hard to see them. Can we figure out how we can not only make a safe passageway down there, but also north, if you’re going up to Drug Mart? There are lots of resources in town that people might not be able to access by car, so can we make it as safe as possible if they want to bike, or have to walk, or whatever the case may be?

The other thing that is really important to me is representation on the City Council, the boards, and commissions from people all over the city. Most of the people currently on the Council, boards, and commissions live on the west side of town, and most of those people on the West Side live in the Northwest Quadrant.

And what are the demographics of those areas?

I don’t have the exact demographics in front of me, but I think in general, Oberlin is kind of a segregated city. Most of your poor people and people of color live in the South and Southeast.

And mostly people who are the opposite of that live on the Northwest Side. That’s my impression.

I’ve heard from people who live on the Southeast side that they feel unheard and uncared about — an afterthought, as far as City government goes.

So I really want to figure out how to encourage participation from people all around the City. I’m not sure how to do that, but it’s a thing that I really care about doing.

Do you see your upcoming tenure on City Council as a venture into the political sphere, or is it just a natural next step in the work you’ve been doing to help the community?

I think it’s a next step. My mother thinks that my next step is running for Congress, and I’m like, “Hang on, I’m running for Oberlin City Council right now!” I never envisioned myself as a politician, or even doing anything remotely like this, so I’m completely out of my comfort zone. But it’s fun, and I think it’s rewarding, and I’m enjoying it. Well, I’m not actually on the Council yet, but I’m enjoying the process of running for a seat and seeing what happens. I’m hoping I can really make a difference, and I think in a town like this, I can.

November 5, 2021

Students Move into Uncleaned Homes, Causing Concern Ava Miller Columnist Torn-apart furniture, chipped paint, and 30–40 poop pellets from an unknown animal. That was the first impression College third-year Jack Povilaitis got of his Union Street house while moving in early this August. Povilaitis remembers the dismay he felt the first time he saw his bedroom.

“The room was very dirty,” he said. “It clearly hadn’t been cleaned.”

He later learned of another issue with the house: mold in the air conditioning ducts. Over the summer, Povilaitis’ roommate developed a wet cough. After the College hired an outside company to remove the mold, she started feeling better. While a little bit of dust is understandable, the filthiness of their house made it uninhabitable and dangerous to live in. Students shouldn’t have to physically suffer from the College’s negligence.

Given the messy state of his house, Povilaitis reached out to an independent cleaner, who helped improve the condition of the space. While Povilaitis was able to find a solution to this issue, it should have been the College’s job to take care of this living space. No student should feel that they have to resort to a private cleaning service when they are paying not to be burdened with such uncleanliness in the first place.

For an institution that boasts 87 percent of students living on campus, there need to be better housing options. Oberlin College shouldn’t market required on-campus housing to prospective students if this is the type of living environment being provided.

College fourth-year Aesha Mokashi experienced similar issues before moving into a house on West College Street at the start of summer semester. Before arriving on campus, she received conflicting emails from Residential Education telling her to move into Fairchild House instead of her home on West College Street.

Upon moving in, Mokashi and her housemates discovered that the house was not ready for them to move in.

See Uncleaned, page 6 SUBMISSIONS POLICY

The Oberlin Review appreciates and welcomes letters to the editors and op-ed submissions. All submissions are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. All submissions must be received

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

The Review defines an advertisement as any submission that has the main intent of bringing direct monetary gain to a contributor.

The Oberlin Review | November 5, 2021

OPINIONS Established 1874

Volume 151, Number 5

Editorial Board Editors-in-Chief

Anisa Curry Vietze

Kushagra Kar

Managing Editor Gigi Ewing

Opinions Editor Arman Luczkow

Evidence Against Mahallati Irrefutable Since Oct. 9, 2020, the Review has published seven articles addressing allegations against Professor of Religion and Nancy Schrom Dye Chair in Middle East and North African Studies Mohammad Jafar Mahallati. The first piece we published, on Oct. 9, 2020, detailed allegations that Mahallati assisted the Islamic Republic of Iran in covering up the mass execution of Iranian citizens in 1988. On April 30, 2021, he was also accused of making antisemitic and anti-Baha’i statements.

The College has released a statement that it conducted an investigation into Mahallati’s past regarding allegations that he participated in a cover-up of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s mass killings of members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran. The investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing. However, journalists at the Review have been reporting on this issue since the allegations first came to light, and this Editorial Board has found the evidence against Mahallati to be overwhelming.

In the summer of 1988, Iran tortured and executed 3,800 political prisoners and dissidents — killings that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Iran Tribunal, and Canada’s parliament have labeled crimes against humanity.

Mahallati was Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations between 1987 and 1989.

Mahallati claims that, since he was in New York during that summer, he did not know about the killings as they were happening. This could very well be true. However, within a few months of the executions, there were several instances where Mahallati was confronted about the killings. Instead of publicly calling for a detailed investigation or speaking out against his own government, he insisted on an alternate narrative of events and denied that the executions took place. This is not the conduct of an innocent or ignorant official — rather, it points to deliberate actions taken to hide the atrocities committed by Iran from the world.

Even if Mahallati did not hear from his own government about the executions, he could not have remained ignorant for long. Between August and December 1988, Amnesty International sent 16 Urgent Action notices, calling for activists to protest the unjust executions of political dissidents. These activists relentlessly sent letters to the head of Iran’s Supreme Court, Iran’s Minister of Justice, and diplomatic representatives of Iran, demanding that Iran cease the executions.

Furthermore, on Nov. 9, 1988, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions S. Amos Wako wrote and published reports of Iranian prisoners being executed, detailing the transfer of their corpses.

Similar reports were sent by Reynaldo Galindo Pohl, U.N. special representative on the human rights situation in Iran. Mahallati met with Pohl on Nov. 29, 1988.

This Editorial Board believes the evidence proves that, within a matter of months, Mahallati was aware of the killings.

And yet, in his Nov. 29 meeting with Pohl, he claimed that the victims were killed in battle, rather than executed.

In his official capacity as ambassador, he never backtracked this claim, even though human rights agencies have proven it to be false.

Mahallati’s letter indicates that while he was serving as Ambassador to the U.N., any public statements he made conveyed the official positions of the Iranian government, not his personal views. Yet in the same letter, he talks about opposing his government’s wishes “at great personal risk” to aid the anti-war effort, successfully helping to broker peace with Iraq and allowing U.N. officials to inspect

human rights conditions in person in Iran. If these acts were indeed motivated by his conscience, why didn’t he make the same efforts to protest the unjust executions of citizens of his country?

The conclusion to all of this is that Oberlin College, an institution we hold dear, is employing and defending someone likely responsible for covering up crimes against humanity. The College claims that it exonerated Mahallati in an internal investigation, yet it refuses to release any details of the investigation, including who the investigating party was, which materials they looked at, and what would constitute a “guilty” verdict. The College also refuses to speak with the activists and family members decrying Mahallati’s employment at the College. Many activists assert that they have been blocked by President Carmen Twillie Ambar on Twitter after attempting to bring her attention to this issue by tagging her.

The single public statement that the College has made regarding its investigation into Mahallati only mentions Iran’s killings of members of the People’s Mujahedin Party of Iran. This statement is a blatant omission of multiple other groups that were — and continue to be — persecuted in Iran, including leftists, LGBTQ+ individuals, and Baha’is.

Iran has so successfully obfuscated its crimes against humanity — through mouthpieces like Mahallati and many others — that it has been able to continue perpetrating such crimes to the present day. Most egregiously, Mahallati’s rhetoric about the Baha’is laid the groundwork for Iran to commit genocide against the Baha’i community. To this day, Baha’is are systematically persecuted, tortured, and killed in Iran.

The College’s failure to mention whether it included other persecuted groups in its investigation — and to address Mahallati’s anti-Baha’i statements — means that it is participating in the erasure of history. The College’s actions inadvertently aid Iran in its efforts to conceal its decades-long record of crimes against humanity.

We ask that the College demonstrate that it followed its due diligence to examine every piece of evidence regarding Mahallati’s involvement in covering up Iran’s crimes. We ask that the College enters into conversation with the activists who have bared their hearts to our community and who are seeking our solidarity and kindness. We ask that, after the College engages in a fair and comprehensive investigation into the allegations that have been presented, it pursues just and swift action proportionate to the investigation’s findings.

For Oberlin faculty, many of whom know Mahallati personally, we ask that you remember that your individual judgement of his character does not absolve him of his past.

You’re all researchers. Look at the facts. Read the records.

Ask yourself, if Mahallati was a professor at a different university — one you had no connection to — would you support further investigation? Would you give him the benefit of the doubt, against all available evidence?

We have also been disappointed to see the lack of student engagement on this issue. While student groups mobilize at the drop of a hat for other causes they deem worthy of fighting for, not one student or organization on campus has made this issue a priority. Students, you speak so much about allyship and activism — where is your solidarity for your Iranian friends?

This Editorial Board harbors no hatred for Professor Mahallati, nor do we wish him any ill will. We merely ask that the College acts in good faith and is transparent with the student body about its ongoing justice process.

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

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Opi n ions

We Must Take Action to Protect AVI Workers Gabe Stefanides We are failing. AVI Foodsystems is violating the rights of people working for them on campus, and we are not protecting the workers. Our collective privilege has made us blind to the hooks of capitalism present and persistent here on campus.

The disruption of my ignorance began in the spring when I started working for AVI. Before my first shift, I signed a contract that stated that, as a temporary employee of AVI, I would receive no more than six days off over the entirety of my time with the company. Gravely misunderstanding this policy at first, I left halfway through my first shift — one I had picked up voluntarily — because of a splitting headache.

Strike one, I guess. I then called off for a mental health day when I was scheduled to work a night shift and an early morning shift back to back, which I had explicitly told them that I couldn’t do because of my diagnosed insomnia from anxiety. Strike two. When I called out sick after getting my second COVID-19 vaccine dose, I was promptly terminated.

Even though I didn’t take off all six days, AVI was still able to fire me. Ohio is an “employment at will” state, so employers can fire you for basically whatever they want.

I fought like hell to get my job back. I contacted my immediate supervisor, and when she didn’t respond, I contacted Resident Director Caleb Crandall. I emailed him, called him, and met with him in person.

He offered me my job back, and I accepted. I didn’t realize he meant I would still be subject to their six-days-off policy.

Shortly after that conversation, I realized I couldn’t work for a company that didn’t give me the support I needed when I poured my everything into my work. A company that pays only wages with no benefits is not a company that is concerned about its people. Making $13.50 per hour to be belittled, manipulated, and gaslit is not what I nor any of the other employees working for AVI had signed up for.

I refused to compromise my values and stop taking care of myself and my fellow employees. Why should I have had to prove that I deserved basic dignity?

So I quit. I acknowledge that my privilege allowed me to quit, and I recognize that many people cannot do the same.

It is a crucible in which to create space for privilege to exist for all people.

We can no longer feign blindness or ignorance when we look upon the plight of those working for AVI. We must acknowledge our privilege and act to influence change. We need to call on AVI to abolish its ableist and discriminatory practice of allowing only six days of excused absence and protect the unionized and student workers alike. We must pursue radical change and justice so that those people are protected here on campus.

I call on President Carmen Twillie Ambar and the College to affirm that we will not operate with a company that harms its students and staff. The College loves to tout its motto: “Think one person can change the world? So do we.” How can the College promote leaders if suffering is the modus operandi and students have no safe space to call “home?”

I also call on the student body to act. We like to think that Oberlin is a bubble, but we cannot avoid politics; we cannot avoid capitalism. AVI is a company that reflects corporate America, and it cannot have a place here in our world if we genuinely care about changing it.

No longer can we perform half-actions. We must make hard choices. We cannot fight for the world’s people if we don’t fight for the ones right here on campus. We must act now.

First, we need to open our eyes and understand the problem. If you feel so inclined, ask a staff member if they are experiencing any issues with AVI. Take the time to listen to them and then report back to your friends and colleagues.

Information is the ammunition that we can use to fight our battles. Knowing themes of abuse is the first step in stopping that abuse.

Second, we need change. Do research and support local businesses that provide adequate time off. Tell your friends to do the same. We will buy from AVI again when they have removed their ableist and discriminatory policy of only six days of call-off, issued a formal apology admitting fault, and implemented strategies to prevent disabled or ill students from being penalized in the future. Do not support AVI until they change their problematic policies.

Lastly and most importantly, support AVI’s union and unions in general. Vote to keep unions expansive and healthy.

We must first create positive change in the space immediately around us and then let that momentum flow forward. We can change the world, but it must be done one step at a time, little by little, each weary step after the other fraught with blood, sweat, and tears from all of us. The hard work begins now.

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Uncleaned Houses Sign of Administrative Disorganization Continued from page 5

“There was definitely some extra cleaning we had to do once we got into the house,” she said.

Mokashi and her roommates found coffee grounds on the floor of the kitchen, as well as several structural problems. The floor of the upstairs bathroom was entirely rotted through, and gutter leaks caused the downstairs ceiling to mold.

“When it would rain, we could see the ceiling bulging in,” Mokashi said.

Mokashi and Povilaitis’ complicated move-in processes reflect a larger issue of disorganization in ResEd. The transition between the summer and fall semesters gave the administration less than enough time to prepare for students’ arrival. This caused a strange limbo period. Students living on campus in-between semesters, including athletes, moved in at staggered times and often had to live in temporary housing.

“I can sympathize with the College and understand that it was really difficult to turn things around quickly from the summer term,” Povilaitis said. “There’s only a month, and then athletes stay for preseason.”

Another impediment to ResEd’s organization was the number of first-year students arriving in the fall.

With a class size of 871 students, adjustments had to be made. Fairchild House was turned into first-year housing, and mostly first-years moved into mixedyear housing like Burton Hall. It’s possible that this resulted in ResEd’s attention being scattered across campus, forcing Village Housing students like Povilaitis and Mokashi to be ignored.

As a first-year student myself, I can say that I had a relatively easy experience moving into my traditional dorm. No first-years I know walked into an unclean room on move-in day. ResEd has clearly put more energy into certain buildings and living spaces than others.

Oberlin students, regardless of their class year or where they live on campus, shouldn’t be forced to take on the responsibilities of ResEd and Facilities Operations. It is on the College to provide us with adequate living situations and to take on issues such as mold and leaking before we move in.

When planning the summer term, the administration should have considered the impact it would have on housing. After all, according to the ResEd website, Oberlin is a “residential” college that believes “that living and eating together fosters a strong community.”

Bridging the Gap Could Provide Valuable Experience for Students Emma Sullivan “If you truly wish to carry on the Oberlin legacy of service and social justice, then you need to run to — and not away from — the noise,” said former First Lady Michelle Obama in her 2015 Commencement address.

“Today, I want to urge you to actively seek out the most contentious, polarized, gridlocked places you can find.

Because so often, throughout our history, those have been the places where progress really happens.”

Being an activist means engaging in hard conversations. However, right now, several Oberlin students are protesting a Winter Term project — Bridging the Gap: Israel, Palestine, and the Politics of Division Here at Home — under the guise of social justice, ultimately discounting Obama’s words on genuine advocacy. It is time we remind ourselves that social progress can only be achieved by facing the noise, not fleeing it.

The Bridging the Gap Winter Term project, which is being planned in partnership with the national civil rights organization Western States Center, is providing Oberlin students with an opportunity to visit Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories for eight days in hopes of better understanding the situation.

“The program is intended to cultivate participants’ ability to listen, understand, be heard, and seek common ground solutions as we build movements towards our shared goals of democracy and social justice,” the program description read.

Two student organizations at Oberlin, Students for a Free Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, recently put out a joint petition condemning the Bridging the Gap Winter Term project.

“The genocide occurring in Palestine is ongoing, and to take a trip to Palestine under any circumstance other than working towards Palestinian liberation is grossly inappropriate and directly supports apartheid,” the petition read.

The Bridging the Gap program coordinators responded to the petition in a public statement, defending the purpose of the trip.

“Those who participate in this trip will directly engage Palestinian, Israeli, and East Jerusalemite activists, politicians, and community leaders, as well as Ethiopian Jewish Israelis, Palestinian citizens of Israel, Christian Palestinians, and members of migrant communities trying to find footing and safety in Israel,” the statement read.

It would be nearly impossible for Oberlin students to grasp the intricacies of the Israel-Palestine conflict and achieve social change without first immersing themselves in the two nations’ cultures. Oberlin’s motto is, “Think one person can change the world? So do we.” If Oberlin students really want to change the world, they need to learn about it first.

Protesters need to ask themselves what their goal is.

Is it to simply remain angry about a perceived injustice or to create peace in the region? If they desire meaningful change, they need to stop boycotting. A boycott will not only be fruitless, it will stunt any potential progress.

We would never tell diplomats not to visit the countries for which they are trying to broker a peace agreement, so why are we trying to bar Oberlin students — perhaps our future leaders, ambassadors, and negotiators — from having this valuable experience?

The petition against Bridging the Gap argues that Oberlin students should not visit Palestine.

“Many Palestinians are barred from returning to Palestine because of Israel’s discriminatory laws and policies, so why should non-Palestinian Oberlin students have the right to take a school-sponsored trip?” the petition read.

However, in their response to the petition, the Bridging the Gap coordinators disagree that refusing to travel to Palestine is the solution.

“The Palestinian rights activists (including both Palestinians and Israelis) with whom we are engaged in Israel/Palestine are deeply concerned with the outsized influence that the United States wields in the region and welcome open-minded American visitors interested in hearing their perspectives, witnessing their struggles, and bringing those lessons home,” the statement read.

It is therefore hypocritical to imply that students who visit Israel and Palestine “support apartheid.”

Does this mean that students should never visit a nation that has committed human rights abuses? Should we not study Russian culture in Moscow because of the government’s continued violations against Jehovah’s Witnesses or the LGBTQ+ community? Should people from other countries refuse to come here because our government forced Japanese Americans to live in internment camps during WWII? If so, we’d be living in an incredibly isolationist and divided world.

The brutal truth is that we live in an unjust world.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a nation that hasn’t committed human rights abuses. We shouldn’t prohibit individuals from traveling to countries that are accused of committing injustices. Rather, we need to travel to these countries to learn more about the people, the culture, and their history so that we can hopefully reverse the injustices and enact change.

As Obama said in her commencement speech, “If you want to change [people’s] minds, if you want to work with them to move this country forward, you can’t just shut them out.”

If Oberlin students are truly intent on changing the world, they should adhere to Obama’s inspirational words and start running toward the noise.

Oberlin’s Dining Services Letting Down Students Zach Bayfield Columnist It’s no secret that over the past few years, the quality of Oberlin’s dining services has been consistently declining. I’m a fourth-year, and every year that I’ve been on this campus, meal plans have become more and more overpriced while the food quality has worsened. This semester, the situation has reached a breaking point.

The poor nutritional quality of our meals makes it difficult for all students to maintain healthy eating habits. At DeCafé and the Rathskeller, meals tend to be 400–600 calories per meal swipe, in addition to a side. Recommended calorie intake varies based on factors such as age, weight, height, lifestyle, and overall health, but, regardless, the recommended daily calorie intakes in the US are around 2,500 for men and 2,000 for women. So, even after getting three full meals from either of these locations, most students would still fall short of their recommended daily intake. It is even worse for people who are more physically active; for many athletes, the daily requirement just to maintain muscle mass is at least 2,500–3,000 calories.

Even if you do manage to get the requisite number of calories, healthy options that actually satisfy students’ hunger are so limited that most of the calories consumed come from unhealthy foods.

“Especially late at night, the most substance you can get is from the Rat, which is such greasy food,” said College thirdyear and track and field athlete Emma Hart. “I’m never energized with the food that I eat from there.”

Combined with the lack of sustainable food options, the excess costs of the meal plans this year are forcing some students to go without food entirely. Depending on their plan, students are expected to pay $10.30–24.00 per meal swipe.

However, after reviewing the AVI Foodsytems menus at all dining locations, I estimated that the cost of ingredients for these meals is substantially below their listed prices. I would assume the remainder of meal plan payments goes into wages and capital expenses, which makes sense— what doesn’t make sense is charging extra Flex Points for meals.

One meal swipe should be able to cover a full meal since we already pay so much per swipe. There is absolutely no explanation for why the school is charging additional Flex Points — other than a blatant prioritization of profits.

In addition to overcharging on meal swipes, students have also complained about overpriced grocery options in DeCafé. College second-year Maya Yin Fahrer, who started a petition to raise awareness about the shortcomings of our dining services, was shocked when she first saw the inflated prices.

“People were talking a lot about how grocery items are four times the amount that they would be in a grocery store,” she said. “I didn’t even know that until recently, but after hearing about it, I went down and looked, and a cup of ramen, which is like … 50 cents [in a grocery store], is $5 [in DeCafé]. It’s insane.”

For low-income students, this could be detrimental.

“Seeing the people who have health issues or people who are low-income students saying, ‘I haven’t eaten in three days’ — it’s eye-opening,” Yin Fahrer said. “When people say that to you, I think it’s much harder to ignore.”

Oberlin is compromising accessibilThe Oberlin Review | November 5, 2021

ity for an entire demographic of students, which is directly at odds with the school’s intended mission.

As if high costs weren’t enough, long wait times for food are making the meal plan even less accessible. From personal experience, I’ve found that the wait during mealtimes at most dining locations is approximately 15–45 minutes.

“At most dining locations, you have to wait an astronomical amount of time to get your food,” Hart said. “The workers are doing their best, but there is just not enough being done to cover the understaffing issues.”

For students who are working through hectic, fast-paced daily schedules, spending the better part of an hour waiting for a flavorless chicken bowl is simply not a reasonable option. Yet, AVI appears to be so understaffed right now that this seems unlikely to change anytime soon.

Solutions to this problem have been introduced, but it is still not enough.

AVI previously required student workers to work a minimum of 12 hours per week, an arbitrary policy that did not exist when Bon Appétit Management Company ran dining services. That policy has since been reduced to four hours per week. While this is a significant improvement, most students at Oberlin simply do not have the time to work this many hours. It is extremely difficult for students to work this much while balancing classes on top of clubs and extracurricular activities.

Yin Fahrer says that things ran much more smoothly when Bon Appétit ran dining services.

“There were four or five students working per hour, and people were picking up the slack left and right,” Yin Fahrer said. “I think reducing the hour requirement would fix a lot.”

While the wait times are a significant inconvenience for all students, the way AVI manages student workers is creating further consequences for low-income students. Because AVI is a private, non-unionized company, campus dining jobs are no longer considered a part of the Community-Based Work-Study Program. This program is meant to give students requiring financial aid the opportunity to work on-campus jobs with flexible hours to help pay their tuition.

Because dining services are no longer a part of this program, there is a shortage of CBWSP jobs on campus.

“The people who work on campus here usually are the people who need money, and they fill their needs by working for them,” Yin Fahrer. “Because of this, [low-income students] can’t work for campus dining services, which previously has been a place where most kids got their work-study.”

If these policies were changed, AVI could tap into a plethora of willing, capable workers that could help improve wait times while making on-campus jobs more viable for low-income students.

Though AVI claims that our complaints and suggestions are being heard, it is clear that nothing will substantially change unless more students speak up about this issue. Oberlin’s administration may be actively choosing profits over the well-being of the student body, but it doesn’t have to be this way. For those involved in running Oberlin’s dining services, I implore you to consider some of the changes mentioned in this article, in addition to suggestions from students.

There is no doubt in my mind that campus dining can be made more accessible for everyone.

Comic: Shhh, Go Back to Sleep

Holly Yelton, Staff Cartoonist

College Doesn’t Value Student Feedback Reginald Goudeau Columnist I feel like a broken record when discussing mental health at Oberlin. But then again, each week, there are always new things that have gone wrong. While I believe that the school values feedback in some capacity, after two public forums were scheduled for inconvenient times last week, I’m no longer sure that is the case.

The first of these critical forums was an open event to discuss dining concerns on Oct. 21. I would not blame you for missing this event, since much of the advertising was very last-minute. Someone placed flyers around campus a day or two before it happened, and there was a single announcement in the Campus Digest, posted on the same day as the forum. Even if AVI foodsystems had advertised earlier, the event was from 3–4 p.m. that day, when many students — myself included — had class. This behavior is the first in a string of similar actions that make me feel that AVI does not value feedback as much as it claims.

Otherwise, why would it be so hard to give feedback in the first place?

I would have attended the Mental Health Coalition forum scheduled later the same day, but I had to work in the Writing Center instead. The panel happened from 7–9 p.m., and even putting my conflicts aside, it occurred at the same time as many Oberlin Workshop and Learning Sessions. As a former premed student, I can attest that STEM majors who attend these sessions frequently have to endure the most challenging courses and have the worst mental health on campus. Perhaps the College could not schedule these events at any other time, but regardless, the scheduling was highly inaccessible. Even though the pandemic has encouraged people to make in-person events remotely accessible, I did not see a Zoom link, audio recording, or transcript for either forum.

This makes it even more difficult for students to provide feedback.

I also have criticisms of the existing mental health resources on campus.

First, the wait times for therapy and psychiatrist appointments are horrendous.

When I contacted the local CVS to refill my antidepressants, they told me to contact my psychiatrist in Oberlin for a refill. I called the Counseling Center on Oct. 19, soon after speaking with CVS, to set up therapy and psychiatrist appointments. They told me I could see a psychiatrist on Oct. 28 and my therapist on Nov. 2. On top of this, my psychiatrist said I only needed to email her about refills after my appointment. I did all of that work for nothing. Juggling this delay, classwork, writing articles, and play rehearsal gets exhausting. I’ve already had to miss work twice for mental health reasons over the past few weeks, and the pattern worsened until I finally got my

medication back last week. It may be easier said than done to hire more people, but if the alternative is failing students like me, Oberlin needs to do more.

Food accessibility is also essential to mental health. The other day, I went to the Rathskeller before class and received a breakfast burrito with toppings different from what I ordered. With only 15 minutes before my class, I simply had to take a few bites and leave it at home while I went to class on an empty stomach. My partner experienced a similar mistake a few days ago.

It’s challenging to have enough to eat when you don’t receive the food you ordered. At most times, DeCafé is nearly a food desert.

Whenever I try to go, I usually leave with two Pop-Tarts and a drink — I may get a banana if I’m feeling spicy that day. I don’t want to overstate the obvious, but a lack of food can worsen mental health. This makes me irritable, unfocused, and even depressed on the worst days. AVI recently provided a survey for students to give feedback, but it includes a measly five questions that aren’t very in-depth. Student Senate has already recommended that students fill out a separate form to file grievances against AVI, which tells me enough.

I do see one effort on Oberlin’s part to improve mental health, but I’m still skeptical.

When I checked the Campus Digest on Oct. 25, I saw a new application for students to become Mental Health Ambassadors. To no surprise, I was immediately disappointed.

The position only pays $10 per hour, and it requires students to work four hours a week (with some weekends), attend meetings, organize monthly events, and possibly facilitate listening sessions. This pay is insulting for the importance of the job and its many listed and unlisted requirements. Beyond this, the position also requires a cover letter, résumé, and three references. I would hesitate to apply even if the pay were $12 per hour with half of the requirements. As a Black individual who has tried and failed to implement policies to improve mental health while on Student Senate, this position seems like a burden on Black people and POC. Improving campus mental health should not worsen the mental health of those already struggling.

When the College makes it difficult for students to provide feedback, it makes me feel that administrators do not care. One person can change the world, but only if given the proper support and resources. $10 an hour is not sufficient to support anyone, especially already marginalized groups who would take on that work. Minimal food availability does not give students the tools to study and succeed. Disorganization within vital resources like the Counseling Center is inconvenient and dangerous. It is disappointing that things are still this way after all this time, but I hope they can get better.

I want Oberlin to change, but I’m not sure that the administrators with influence here want the same. I hope that the good people working at this school are not in the minority, but these trends do not give me faith.

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ALLEGATIONS & DENIAL MOHAMMAD JAFAR MAHALLATI Written by

Anisa Curry Vietze and Kushagra Kar Editors-in-Chief Additional Reporting by

Gigi Ewing Managing Editor On Oct. 8, 2020, allegations brought against Professor of Religion and Nancy Schrom Dye Chair in Middle East and North African Studies Mohammad Jafar Mahallati claimed that he helped cover up mass killings of political dissidents in Iran in 1988. A year after the initial allegations, activists and family members of the victims came to campus this Tuesday to protest, demanding to know why the College’s internal investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing. In his time at Oberlin, Mahallati has been known for his work in peace and friendship studies, earning him the unofficial title, “Professor of Peace.”

Professor of Religion and Nancy Schrom Dye Chair of Middle East and North African Studies Mohammad Jafar Mahallati.

Courtesy of Jennifer Manna

Historical Context Members of the Baha’i Faith have been persecuted since the faith’s inception in Iran in 1844. However, conditions worsened after the 1978–79 Islamic Revolution. Amnesty International has reported that 202 Baha’is have been killed since the revolution. Hundreds more have been imprisoned or tortured, and over ten thousand have been banned from schools and jobs.

1983

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights discussed the death sentences on 22 Baha’is for practicing their faith. While Mahallati was not yet the ambassador, he served as a representative of Iran in this commission.

In notes from the U.N. report on the commission, Mahallati is quoted comparing the activities of Baha’is to acts of immorality, sexual abuse, and murder. He also questioned why, in Europe and the U.S., such acts were punishable by execution, while Iran was held to different standards regarding executing the Baha’is.

“It would also be interesting to know why the European Parliament had the right to restrain the activities of the followers of certain sects and, for example, to prevent sexual abuses committed by those sects whereas his country was required to tolerate all immoral behaviour or sexual abuse, sometimes advisable according to groups such as the Baha’is, why some countries such as the United States had the right to execute murderers, while his country could not punish terrorists who burned schoolchildren and, finally, what was the definition of religion and in what way a religion differed from a sect,” the report read.

1987

Four years after that commission, Mahallati was appointed as Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the U.N. as the Iran-Iraq conflict entered its seventh year. Mahallati played a prominent role in brokering peace between Iran and Iraq during his tenure as ambassador.

NOVEMBER

1988

Former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions S. Amos Wako submitted a report to the Commission on Human Rights on the situation in Iran. A Nov. 3, 1988 New York Times article on the report reads, “200 Mujahedeen supporters were believed to have been killed in Evin Prison in Teheran [sic] on July 28. The bodies of 860 more ‘executed political prisoners’ were reported to have been taken from the same prison to the Behesht Zahra cemetery from Aug. 14 to 16. The report lists numerous other executions of Government opponents in the summer.”

Mahallati agreed to respond to these allegations against Iran in a meeting with U.N. Special Representative on the Human Rights Situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran Reynaldo Galindo Pohl. “[Mahallati] indicated that he intended to present a procedural decision under which the Iranian Government would express its commitment to co-operate with the Special Representative in all respects before the end of 1988,” reads a Jan. 26, 1989 Commission on Human Rights report.

Yet nine days after the initial meeting, on Nov. 29, 1988, Mahallati met with Pohl again denying allegations of the killings.

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“[Mahallati] referred to the alleged wave of executions mentioned in the interim report and denied the allegations,” reads the same 1989 report. “He indicated that many killings had in fact occurred on the battlefield, in the context of the war, following the invasion of the Islamic Republic of Iran by the organization called the National Liberation Army (NLA). The Permanent Representative showed the Special Representative a videotape produced by NLA, which he qualified as political and propaganda material, indicating that films of that nature were regularly being broadcast into the Islamic Republic of Iran from the NLA headquarters in Iraq.”

L: A HISTORY OBSCURED THE PAST

15 YEARS

In 2007, Mahallati joined the Oberlin College Religion Department. Four years later, in 2011, Mahallati’s initiatives on campus resulted in the official chartering of the Oberlin Friendship Circle as a student organization.

Protesters set out portraits of their family and friends who were persecuted in the ongoing political killings in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Photo by Khadijah Halliday, Photo Editor

The Allegations A year ago, on Oct. 8, 2020, family members of the victims and former political prisoners wrote a letter to President Carmen Twillie Ambar leveling accusations against Mahallati for being complicit in covering up mass killings in Iran in 1988. The letter called for a review of the process behind the decision to hire and give tenure to Mahallati, his removal from office, and an apology from the College to families of the victims “for hiring and promoting a person who … was involved in hiding crimes against humanity perpetrated against them.”

The next day, on Oct. 9, 2020, Mahallati submitted a letter to the Review responding to the allegations.

“I categorically deny any knowledge and therefore responsibility regarding mass executions in Iran when I was serving at the United Nations,” Mahallati wrote. “I was in New York the entire summer of 1988, focusing on peacemaking between Iran and Iraq, and I did not receive any briefing regarding executions. There was not a single communication from Tehran to Iran’s U.N. embassy informing Iranian diplomats of those incidents.”

However, Director of Iranian Refugees Alliance Inc. Deljou Abadi wrote to President Ambar arguing that Mahallati’s claim that he did not know about the executions at the time was not substantiated.

“The allegations that Mr. Mahallati must answer are the following: that he took a key role in obstructing the U.N.’s investigation of these executions after they took place; that to this end he fed the U.N. misleading information; that he likely would have known of the executions by November or December 1988, as both the families of the executed and key Tehran officials were aware of the executions by that time; that later, when Mr. Mahallati acknowledged the executions in Feb. 1989, he continued to fend off a U.N. investigation by spreading untruthful and insulting characterizations of the victims,” Abadi’s letter reads.

In 2021, Oberlin College hired an unnamed third-party to investigate allegations against Mahallati. On Oct. 12 of this year, Director of Media Relations Scott Wargo shared a press release with the College’s conclusions from the investigation.

“After consulting a number of sources, and evaluating the public record, the College could find no evidence to corroborate the allegations against Professor Mahallati, including that he had specific knowledge of the murders taking place in Iran,” the College’s press release reads.

After activists’ demands for information into the details of the College’s investigation were not addressed, protesters led by Iranian human rights activist Lawdan Bazargan gathered at the Tappan Square Memorial Arch on Nov. 2. The protesters object to the College’s continued employment of Mahallati and lack of transparency around the investigation.

On Nov. 1, the College released a fact sheet on Mahallati and the situation to the Review. The sheet includes background on Mahallati’s time as a professor, statements from Mahallati and his lawyer, and the College’s response.

The College responds to the allegations of antisemitic behavior and about the executions of People’s Mujahedin of Iran members. It does not address the allegations about the Baha’is or details about the investigation.

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A r t s & C u ltu r e

November 5, 2021

ARTS & CULTURE Established 1874

Volume 151, Number 5

Oberlin Bands Look to Campus Revive Music Scene Lilyanna D’Amato Arts & Culture Editor In the decades prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Oberlin cultivated a thriving student music scene, one spanning genres, class years, and friend groups.

Campus bands were plentiful, venues were easy to come by, and audiences flocked from show to show every Friday and Saturday night; artistic inspiration and musical experimentation seemed to be at the heart of the student experience. With acts like garage-style rock band The Del Fuegos in the ’80s, solo singer-songwriter Liz Phair in the ’90s, Karen O’s indie rock trio, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, in the early ’00s, and bands like Julian Kaufman’s The Booyah! Kids and Julia Julian as recently as 2019, Oberlin’s stellar reputation of unbounded creativity made its music scene seem nearly invincible.

But, as students quarantined thousands of miles apart and returned to campus at different times during the pandemic, campus bands drifted apart and the once dynamic, exuberant musical culture began to dwindle.

This semester marks the first time the entire student body is on campus since March 2020, and the scene seems to be on the mend. Only a handful of bands play regularly, hoping to preserve a quintessential Oberlin institution: the house show.

When Dan Zanes, vocalist and guitarist for the Boston-based rock band The Del Fuegos and front man of Grammy-winning Dan Zanes and Friends, arrived at Oberlin in 1981, he was solely focused on music.

“I came to college to start a band,” he said. “I really wasn’t interested in higher education, as bad as that sounds. I was invested in meeting like-minded people that I could play music with.”

On the first day of his first and only year on campus, Zanes met his bandmate Tom Lloyd in the old Dascomb Dining Hall breakfast line. The pair

College fourth-year and bassist Tim Husemoller performs in Oberlin band Boxed Whine.

was heavily involved in orchestrating the College’s music scene. They helped to book Muddy Waters for his famous performance at Finney Chapel — a concert where the Social Committee ironically passed on the then up-andcoming Irish rock band U2 — and performed weekly at campus houses and local bars.

“The best word to describe the scene back then would have to be kaleidoscopic,” Zanes said. “There were just so many people that were really dedicated not just to listening to music but to exploring and sharing. That’s really what

made the impact. There were so many older students who recognized that we wanted to learn. They would invite us over to listen to 45s and play music. I learned more about music in my one year at Oberlin than any other period of my life.”

For many College musicians, the need to revitalize the scene is based in this desire to belong to an inclusive, campus-wide, flourishing music community. However, most of the bands currently active on campus are entirely comprised of fourth-years. College fourth-year Eamon McKeon is the lead

Courtesy of Natan Oster.

guitarist of the beloved band Boxed Whine, one of the upperclassmen bands revitalizing the music community. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, he has noticed a dramatic decrease in inter-grade musical collaboration.

“A lot of it has to do with how COVID and its adjacent health protocols basically put a grinding halt to meeting new people and getting together to play,” he wrote in an email to the Review. “Current second-years have had little to no time to seek out and engage in spaces See Revitalizing, page 12

Book Nook: Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes and Other COVID-19 Lessons Serena Zets As an avid reader and writer, I have been wondering how the COVID-19 pandemic will be immortalized in literature, poetry, film, art, and other creative forms. How will artists and writers depict this time of communal grief and trauma? Who will emerge as storytellers and orators during this time?

Luckily, Phoebe Robinson, best-selling memoirist, stand-up comedian, and most famously, the co-host of 2 Dope Queens with Jessica Williams, has swooped in to begin to answer some of these questions in her newest collection of essays, Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes. This funny title sets the tone for a collection tackling everything: from living through the 2020 quarantine, starting a new job, deciding to not have children, traveling as a Black woman, finding your soulmate, surviving quarantine with said soulmate, navigating the entertainment industry as a Black woman, and so much more. While many of these experiences are unique to Robinson and the communities she’s a part of, her conversational and approachable tone — along with her compelling pop culture references

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— help universalize her experiences for the reader.

Her book reads less as a serious account of the past couple years and more as a phone call with a friend you haven’t talked to in a while. Robinson might not have intended this, but after reading her book or seeing her stand-up specials, you’ll be desperate to befriend her.

Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes is the first book I’ve read published during the COVID-19 pandemic that directly addresses the topic. It is a strange sensation to read thoughts on COVID-19 written in 2020 that are even more resonant as 2021 comes to a close. The book’s introduction, “2020 Was Gonna Be My Year! (LOL),” reads like many of my journal entries; 2020 was supposed to be my year but, of course, it ended up not being my year in any of the ways I had anticipated. Robinson captures this sensation of loss, regret, and missed opportunity beautifully and in a way that comforted me. Knowing that a badass writer and comedian in the prime of her career also feels this way is a reminder that COVID-19 has affected all of us in both public and private ways. Her writing is inspirational in a realistic and genuine, not-self-help,

way. At the end of the introductory essay she writes, “Truthfully, there is no ‘right’ year or moment. We know this now. Actually, we’ve been knowing this.

All we have, in many ways, is the knowledge that we don’t know how much time we have left in our lives. So let’s keep rolling up our sleeves and continue writing and revising and enacting new plans on how we can make this the best life of our lives.”

Throughout the collection, Robinson asserts herself as a fresh voice whose hot takes and quips land both on stage and on the page. In my opinion, anything Robinson produces is worth consuming. Her 2016 debut book, You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain, is incredibly insightful and funny — though I don’t know how it holds up in COVID-19 times. Also, if you haven’t listened to the 2 Dope Queens podcast or watched the HBO special, you must do so as soon as possible to enjoy two of the funniest comedians of our time.

If Robinson’s account of the COVID-19 pandemic is any indicator of narratives to come, we’re in good hands. Telling stories of the pandemic will require vulnerability, empathy, honesty, and humor, all of which Robinson has mastered.

WOBC Community DJs Discuss Station’s Future Kushagra Kar Editor-in-Chief For just over 70 years, WOBC 91.5 FM has served as a platform for students and community members alike to share the music they love with local radio listeners. While students are generally limited to a four-year career, some community members have been hosting shows for decades.

Cleveland resident and longtime WOBC host John Pais has been working with the station since fall 1988.

Pais returned to the station after a brief hiatus between 2004 and 2011 and has continued to host Hard Day on the Planet from 12–2 p.m. every Thursday since then.

“Back in 1988, … [my co-host and Comunity member] John Katko and I started a show called Hard Day on the Planet,” Pais said. “We also think that it was one of the first true environ-

mental radio programs that was out there. … As time went on, I felt like one of the things that I really, truly wanted to do all along was to have my own music show. So about a year or so after that in 1989, we were still doing Hard Day on the Planet, but I put up an application to do a country-folk and bluegrass show, and I got approved to do that. And the name of that show was Hearts and Minds.”

While Pais’ first introduction to radio was through WOBC, the station has featured longtime radio journalists as well. Karen Schaefer, currently a freelance journalist, has been in the radio industry since 1979. Schaefer worked at a radio station in Indiana for nine years before moving to Oberlin in 1988, where she joined WOBC. In 1988 she joined WCPN Cleveland in a staff job.

See WOBC, page 11

Students await their radio show timeslot in the WOBC studio lounge.

Courtesy of Yana Levy

On the Record with Master Bassoonist Martin Garcia What are your plans for the master class?

I’m always interested to hear young players and see what they’re working on and how they’re approaching music. My plan for them is the plan I have anytime I hear someone: I want to make astute observations that have immediate effects. I feel often that when I’m listening to someone, either for the first and only time or on a weekly basis, I’m almost like a doctor that writes a prescription.

I look at what they’re doing and analyze what’s successful and what isn’t, and then I try to get a very clear and efficient strategy for improvement. I think that my approach is to try as much as I can to demystify the bassoon. With any double-reed instrument, there are these two pieces of cane that we string together to produce the vibrating mouthpiece that sometimes work against us, depending on the weather. It’s hard enough from that perspective because every time you open the case and go to practice, the reed is a little bit different. The work that I can do is toward clarifying the rest of it so that a student can eliminate obstacles and just do efficient work — focus on the stuff that’s important, like music making.

Associate principal bassoonist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Martin Garcia.

Martin Garcia, associate principal bassoon in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra since 2011, will host a master class for Oberlin College and Conservatory Students Monday, Nov. 8. Garcia, a Fulbright grant recipient from Donna, Texas, has played with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and The Knights in New York. Garcia also serves on the bassoon faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and maintains a studio of private bassoon students. Garcia has played on tour in Europe, North America, and Asia.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kathleen Kelleher Production Editor Could you tell me a bit about your career and how you got into bassoon?

I chose the bassoon because it was unusual, and I thought that no one else would choose that funny-looking instrument. I really loved it. The bassoon is known as the clown of the orchestra in the old orchestration books, and in more recent musical history, it has been exploited for its more tragic qualities. If you think of the symphonies of Shostakovich or Tchaikovsky, there’s really an element of pathos. I found that those two sides of the same coin really fit my personality — a little bit of a clown but also prone to introspection.

The Oberlin Review | November 5, 2021

Courtesy of Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

When I graduated from high school, I went to study in Philadelphia with the principal of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Bernard Garfield. It was a recording of Mr. Garfield’s that made me fall in love with the bassoon when I was 13 and convinced me that I wanted to have a career in music as a bassoonist. I was really glad and felt very lucky.

After four years in Philadelphia, I applied for the Fulbright grant to go to Vienna and study music with Milan Turković, who was another one of my heroes. It was in Vienna that I got to hear a lot of orchestras because, along with the European orchestras, most orchestras that tour in Europe go through Vienna. On average, the statistic at that time was that there were three live music events a day... It really was an embarrassment of riches. After Vienna, I came to the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music to get a master’s degree with William Winstead.

After that, I thought I might like to become a conductor for a while. I spent a little bit of time looking into that, but I had to make a living. I started freelancing as a bassoon player. But I got to a certain age where “the hustle,” if you will, got a little bit tiring. To my surprise and delight, I got a job with the Milwaukee Symphony, which was my first major job. I was there for six years.

Since then, I’ve been with the Cincinnati Symphony for 10 years. My job here is associate principal bassoon.

You teach quite a bit. Do you find personal value in teaching courses like these, for yourself as a player or a person?

Absolutely. I find it really inspiring to hear people. I think that it’s important as a performing artist to remain inspired. It becomes easy to stop going to concerts. It becomes easy to stop seeking out new pieces. Regardless of the pursuit, it’s important to have a change of scenery, to remain stimulated and seek out new things. That way we can all avoid falling into a rut. So, yes, I will say that, when you teach as much as I do, things become a good deal clearer, and it’s my aim to pass those moments of clarity on to students.

Do you have any advice for Oberlin’s aspiring classical musicians, bassoon or otherwise?

I think it would be to seek out a mastery of the craft that enables us to express ourselves and to be honest with ourselves about our shortcomings. Trust the process, because if we wait until we’re inspired to practice, the inspiration doesn’t often come as we would like it to. It’s important to have a routine where you put in the work and you’re honest with yourself and really listen to what it is you’re doing.

I remember, once, I worked for a composer named George Rochberg. He lived outside of Philadelphia, and we were assembling his archives for transport. I was there as a secretary taking notes. What I learned from him is that he would work every morning at the same hours and take a break for lunch and come back and work. Once his work was done for the day, it was done.

He said that having that routine enabled his creative muscle to get accustomed to working when he needed it. Choreographer Twyla Tharp calls this “keeping the tools oiled.” When you have a regular routine, your muse knows to show up. With bassoon, so much is technically oriented when it comes to reed-making. Once you have a good reed, so much is possible. It’s just getting there and trusting the process.

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A r t s & C u lt u r e

Revitalizing Campus Music Culture Continued from page 10

that facilitate making music communally since socialization was so limited and littered with caution signs — and the same basically goes for third-years.”

According to McKeon, things would have been completely different for Boxed Whine had they not had their first year to write original songs and experiment with their set.

“If COVID had hit in 2019 instead of 2020, it’s very likely we wouldn’t have been able to get situated enough to be where we’re at now,” McKeon wrote.

“We had laid down a lot of groundwork in that first year of playing that made it possible for us to keep sharing and working on stuff throughout the pandemic.”

Jane Hobson, College fourth-year, solo artist, and lead vocalist for Oberlin band Jane Hobson and the Hobgoblins, agreed. During her time away from campus, all of the students in her favorite campus bands graduated and the younger groups fell apart, leaving only a few bands to revitalize the scene.

“I just feel like I see the same three or four bands in rotation,” Hobson said.

“There are some jazz bands here and there, [and] people from the Conservatory, but I don’t necessarily know those bands as well. Mostly, it just feels like my band, Boxed Whine, and Hotspur Johnny all the time. It just feels like it’s gotten smaller.”

When Zanes came to Oberlin, it was this sense of band comradery that defined his participation in the music scene; he was amazed at how welcoming older students were.

“There were juniors and seniors that took an interest in us and wanted to see us learn,” Zanes said. “That just made all the difference because if it had just been us hanging around with freshmen, our experience would have been radically different. It was the older folks passing on whatever they knew that made the difference. Those interactions were defined by a kind of open-mindedness; there was no snobbery at all.”

As a first-year, McKeon remembers seeing and interacting with upperclassmen in bands. While he’s noticed a sharp contrast this year in comparison to years past, he says that Oberlin music culture isn’t fundamentally different than it used to be.

“It’s so weird because I feel like the general attitude about music, both playing it and seeing it, hasn’t really changed — just our access to and time with it has,” McKeon wrote. “Hopefully some of the younger grades are now also able to find solid footing with making and playing music here with others, because I’d love for things to get back to the way they were pre-COVID by the time I graduate in June.”

Hobson feels that upperclassmen are always inherently at an advantage because they have houses to rehearse and perform in, larger networks of student musicians, and experience playing at and organizing shows on campus. As she thinks about how to reinvigorate the house show scene, she says it’s most important to make participation in the scene less daunting.

“I think there has always been some level of intimidation,” Hobson said.

“That’s always been the Oberlin music scene. We have all these amazing musicians at the Conservatory but it also feels like every College student has some level of music proficiency. Especially as a girl, it can be intimidating.

It’s a pretty male-dominated music scene and I always got nervous to join because I don’t play jazz. So then you keep asking yourself, ‘Where do I fit into this?’”

McKeon remembers feeling apprehensive, too, and anxious about finding a space for himself amidst all of the campus’ other talented musicians.

“I was super cautious about engaging with music here because of the existence of the Conservatory and didn’t know what kind of music scene existed here outside of it,” McKeon wrote.

“During my accepted students day, I went to the spring 2018 Coverband Showcase, and seeing the myriad of

non-Conservatory students putting together such a great set of performances genuinely had a massive impact on pushing me out of that overly-cautious, imposter-syndrome-y mindset. I think the existence of this scene makes it so much easier for students to feel like their desired musical exploits aren’t just wishful thinking or bound to be unrecognized.”

Especially as the gap between upperclassmen and underclassmen bands widens, Hobson and McKeon recognize the need to reinvent Oberlin’s music tradition. College fourth-year and bassist for Boxed Whine Tim Husemoller emphasizes the importance of preserving the College’s music scene.

“This tradition brings people from all over campus together and provides a really great outlet for both performers and audience members to appreciate the creative projects people are working on,” Husemoller said. “It’s about having fun. We will definitely be providing more house shows this year and would highly encourage newer students to form bands and perform!

People with houses would probably be happy to host you and we would love to hear what you’ve got. Everyone benefits when students are able to play with new groups of people and hear new performers. It helps us all to improve and feel inspired.”

OSCA Celebrates Halloweekend with Liquor Treat Sydney Rosensaft Senior Staff Writer For each night of Halloweekend, the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association hosted OSCAns for a festive Oberlin tradition: Liquor Treat. Tank Hall hosted their event Friday, followed by Harkness House on Saturday and Keep Cottage on Sunday. On their respective nights, students living in the co-ops brewed alcoholic and non-alcoholic concoctions to serve to their costumed guests, chatted, and danced the night away.

For College second-year Ruby Martinez, the event showcased OSCA’s broad reach across campus. In addition to seeing everyone in Keep co-op, she enjoyed seeing students from the other co-ops come together. Each of the coops has created a community within their halls, so this event was a joint celebration of their work.

“We all live together and do this thing where we all cook and take care of each other and live in cooperation,” Martinez said. “This is a chance to all get together to have fun and celebrate each other.”

College second-year Leela Miller appreciated how creative everyone got with their costumes and drinks. She believes Liquor Treat was an opportunity for everyone to express their kookiest selves.

“I loved seeing everyone dressed up in bizarre costumes and getting to try the occasionally weird, occasionally gross, occasionally delicious drinks that they made,” she said. “It was such

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a great opportunity for people to put their creativity on display!”

OSCA’s welcoming attitude and tight-knit environment allowed Liquor Treat participants to lean into their quirkiness. In true OSCA fashion, Miller dressed up as a bulb of garlic.

“I just wanted a large, ridiculous, vegetable-shaped costume,” she said.

“So that’s what I made. The muses compelled me!”

Among others, Martinez served as a “vibes watcher,” continuously checking in to make sure attendees were safe and having a good time. Through this work, Martinez realized how much everyone in a co-op values one another.

“All night, everyone was looking out for each other and taking care of each other,” she said.

Miller did not take on any specific role this past weekend, but she still felt involved in the whole process.

“We discussed all of our party policies beforehand,” she said. “We voted on how many people would be invited, how we would label and serve our drinks, and when we would start asking people to leave. We tried to plan out the night in a way that made every coop member feel comfortable, and we all cleaned up our gross, sticky hallways together the next day. Very cooperative of us!”

Martinez and Miller both say they had fantastic Halloweekends. They loved the originality and community warmth that came with Liquor Treat and appreciated the safety and comfort of knowing who they were living, eating, and dancing with.

Photo by Dina Nouaime

WOBC Offers Space for Community, Student Connection Continued from page 10 “I was really missing a microphone; I’d done nine years in radio,” Schaefer said. “I used to take my still-nursing daughter with me to the radio station in Indiana, nurse her on the air while flipping records over, trying to make sure that the mic pot was down while she was making funny noises right under the microphone. I just realized that I could have a show again, and I thought, ‘I don’t even care what music I play; I just want to have a voice again.’”

A distinguishing factor for the station is its mix of student and community hosts, which often comes as a surprise to people unfamiliar with the station’s structure. Last spring, Chuck Ryals was elected to the role of community representative to advocate for non-student hosts and do outreach on behalf of the station. As community representative, Ryals makes sure community members get their shows on time, has weekly meetings with the

WOBC board, and addresses any other community concerns.

For many, a passion for music drives their shows, but some hosts take this a step further by analyzing and talking about all of the context behind the songs they choose. Kendal at Oberlin residents Dennis and Judy Cook have hosted a show since January 2014, just five months after retiring and moving to town. Their show, Glad4Trad, airs every Wednesday at 3 p.m. and explores a variety of traditional music.

“What we do is Anglo and American traditional music and things in that tradition with a bit of mild erudition,” Dennis said. “So we talk about things that are in the songs or the history behind them. I mean, some of the songs go back to the 14th century.”

For Judy, the choice of genre is more than a passion — it’s something she has been involved with her whole life.

“I’ve always been a singer,” Judy said. “I didn’t think of it as folk songs;

I just thought of it as singing. We were both active in the folklore society of greater Washington, which is where our home was before we moved here.

I started professionally touring folk music — I got paid $25 once. It turned into a hobby that paid for itself. In 1998 is when I did my first tour in England and my first tour in the United States, and until 2020 I was touring every year in both countries.”

Despite all of the incredible energy and experience pouring in from the community, WOBC finds itself at an interesting point in its history, especially in light of COVID-19. According to Ryals, the station is receiving significantly fewer applications to host shows than when he first joined.

“When I first started, we used to turn away 30 to 40 applications per semester,” he said. “We filled out a 24/7 schedule like nothing, but in the last four or five years we’ve had trouble filling up a 24/7 schedule. So I don’t

know why the decline is [happening].

I don’t know if there’s a lack of interest in radio now or if everybody’s listening to Spotify or iTunes on their own personal devices.”

With streaming and podcasts to contend with, finding ways to engage students with radio journalism is a difficult task. However, Schaefer offers an insight into what makes radio so different from other forms of journalism.

“Believe me, it takes four times as long to produce a radio story as it does to produce a print story,” Schaefer said. “But at the same time, it takes you to a place; it requires imagination; it requires listening and hearing; and it gives you the actual sound of human voices. Something that print journalism just can’t duplicate. So, obviously, I love radio.”

For a full schedule of WOBC shows and to listen live over the internet, visit wobc.org

The Magic of the Oberlin Observatory

The Oberlin Observatory, erected in 1929, is open to the public after sunset on the first and third Fridays of the month during the academic year.

Photo by Mads Olsen Photo Editor.

Maeve Woltring Arts & Culture Editor Anyone who has wandered under the high ceilings of Peters Hall can attest to the building’s Hogwarts-esque mystique that so many of us secretly idealized in our search for the perfect liberal arts college. This Gothic grandeur sits in historical context; completed in 1887, Peters, which is home to world language classrooms and offices for academic services, is the fourth-oldest building on campus. The charm of the building can be attributed to a unique resource, The Oberlin Review | November 5, 2021

established at a much later date in 1929, when Peters gained its observatory. Culminating in a high dome and outfitted with a wide deck, the Observatory provides a space for astronomy students, the Oberlin Astronomy Club, and the public alike to gaze through a 14-inch aperture telescope into the planetary movements visible in our corner of the Ohio sky. Below the Observatory deck sits the Taylor Planetarium which projects the 1,000 brightest stars and the planets onto a dome 4 meters in diameter.

“I have two memories at the Obser-

vatory, and both are my favorite,” said College third-year Mo Singletary. “The first time, the sky was as clear as it had been in a minute, and we got up there and it felt like we could see all of Ohio.

The second time I went was recently and it was a full moon, and I looked in the telescope and saw Saturn and Jupiter and learned about how they change locations in the sky — it was so cool.”

If, like Singletary, you’re hungry for supplemental knowledge, a trip to the Observatory may result in an encounter with Observatory & Planetarium Coordinator Dave Lengyel and his powerful laser pointer. Lengyel has been working at the Observatory since 2010, but his astronomical wisdom long predates this position. He taught AP Chemistry and Astronomy at Marion L. Steele High School in Amherst, OH, for 35 years before retiring from full-time teaching.

Lengyel says that in his experience, astronomy is the type of subject that all kinds of learners approach with enthusiasm.

“In fact, I instituted the astronomy program,” Lengyel said. “We wanted to put in a new elective, and I said, ‘Hey, I’d love to do astronomy.’ And it became very popular. ... I do a very similar thing here as to what I did in high school, because the Introductory Astronomy class, [ASTR] 100, is on a little bit [of a] higher level, but it’s basically the same material. ... I didn’t wanna teach fulltime anymore, but this keeps me in the game. And plus I just really love working with Oberlin students. ... The really cool thing is that most of our students in the introductory courses — and those are the ones that I interact with the most — are not science people. They’re usually Conservatory majors; they might be Oboe majors, [and] we’ve had a lot of Creative Writing majors. In every other discipline there are some that are in science, but the class is taught in such a way that it is very easy to deal with a heterogeneous group in terms of their background. You don’t have to have a strong science background to do [ASTR] 100.”

Lengyel doesn’t give the secrets of the sky to just Oberlin students; he also hosts a number of special groups, including community groups, Cub Scouts, and local second graders. He employs a variety of tools to impart his celestial

knowledge during his teaching sessions.

“The laser pointer is great,” he said.

“We point out things and then we have about a dozen pairs of binoculars here.

Sometimes what we’ll do is we’ll point out objects, like the Andromeda galaxy, and I’ll use the pointer and then everybody brings their binoculars to where we’re pointing and then they can see the object that way; it really works out well.

Then we set up telescopes; we usually have three or four that we set up on the deck.”

College third-year Sam Frank is one of those students mentioned earlier — not a “science person,” but enthralled by space nonetheless. After a single encounter with the Observatory, Frank knew he wanted to work there.

COVID-19 briefly delayed Frank’s ambitions, but this semester he shot Lengyel an email. Lengyel quickly invited Frank over to his office to discuss an open position at the Observatory. Frank is still not completely sure what this job will entail, other than manipulation of “the big telescope,” but he has a rapturous image of his future holding down the deck.

“I’m definitely wearing a long cloak,” Frank said. “That’s the main thing that comes to mind; maybe a cup of hot tea, binoculars on hand just in case. I love space. Space is cool, it’s inspiring, it’s beautiful. ... We learn about ourselves while we learn about space.”

Though any astrological conversation with Lengyel is an inspiring learning opportunity in itself, there are some notable opportunities to interact with astrological phenomena over Ohio coming up in the near — and slightly distant — future.

“One of the many cool things about astronomy is there’s always something different going on in the sky — different planets at different times of the year,” Lengyel said. “We have a lunar eclipse coming up on Nov. 19 at 4 in the morning, and right here in Oberlin, April 8, 2024, we have a total solar eclipse, which is a big deal.”

The Observatory is open to the public after sunset on the first and third Fridays of the month during the academic year.

You can find additional information and events on the Oberlin Events Calendar, and on the Observatory Facebook page, which Lengyel regularly updates.

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S p or t s

Yeomen Basketball Looks Ahead to 2021–22 Season

Fourth-year men’s basketball player Wolf Moser dribbles up the court.

John Elrod Contributing Sports Editor On Tuesday, Nov. 9, the Oberlin men’s basketball team will play their first game of the season against Waynesburg University. The Yeomen are coming off a successful 2019–20 season where they went 15–12 overall — the team’s first winning season since 1992 — but the squad has seen significant turnover since then. Players have transferred in and out of Oberlin and many first- and second-years will begin their College basketball careers this year. Out of the 20 players on the team, only four were on the 2019–20 team.

The team has just two fourth-years, Wolf Moser and Darien Knowles, both of whom were not originally in the class of 2022. Moser changed classes after taking a gap year and Knowles transferred to Oberlin in 2020. Head Coach Isaiah Cavaco recognizes the work Moser and Knowles have put in to be leaders for the young team.

“They have done a great job being positive role models for our younger players,” Cavaco said.

“Their approach to practice has been a great example to follow, and their attention to detail will prove to be extremely valuable.”

Knowles, a local of Amherst, Ohio, embraces the challenge of being one of the few experienced players on the team.

“I feel very comfortable stepping up to lead this year,” Knowles said. “We have a lot of young guys who are eager and hungry to learn and grow as players, and I feel like I have the knowledge and experience to help guide that process.”

Moser gives credit to all of his team members for their strong display of leadership during preseason and emphasizes the squad’s team-centric attitude and will to win.

“We want to be the best team in the conference and we want to win the conference championship,” he said. “That is where our heads are at as a team.

We don’t care about personal accomplishments.

We want to win as a unit and we want to win every time we step on the court.”

Cavaco echoed the importance of this mindset.

“For a lot of the players, it’s easy to feel like you have to prove something as an individual at this time of year, but we’re trying to redirect that focus

14

Courtesy of GoYeo

to be a dependable part of a greater group,” he said.

Cavaco, whose basketball résumé includes four years as a player for Yale University, will enter his 17th season as head coach of the Yeomen. He is excited to continue helping players lead successful lives while they are at Oberlin and after they leave.

“It’s great to see their hard work be rewarded on and off the court, and even though we don’t always get to see the results on campus, [hearing] the stories of how being here at Oberlin helped former players down the road is the best form of winning,” he said.

Cavaco is looking forward to the Nov. 20 home game where the College will recognize Oberlin High School Boys’ Basketball Coach and 2022 Ohio Teacher of the Year Kurt Russell. Cavaco also noted the Nov. 30 game against North Coast Athletic Conference rival, The College of Wooster.

The team will give away t-shirts to the first 100 Oberlin students who show up to cheer them on.

The Wooster game will likely be a tough, competitive matchup for Oberlin. The Fighting Scots have won 18 NCAC championships since the conference’s inception in 1983, most recently in 2019.

On Jan. 3 and Jan. 29, the Yeomen will play Wittenberg University, another team that will be a challenge for Oberlin. The Tigers, ranked 22nd for NCAC Division III this season by d3hoops.com, have won a total of 13 NCAC titles and are the defending champions of the conference.

Moser is looking forward to playing these tough conference opponents.

“It is always fun to play Wittenberg and Wooster because they are usually nationally ranked, so it’s fun to get a chance to knock off a ranked team, but all of our conference games are equally important to us,” he said.

This week, the focus is on the first game at Waynesburg. The team is looking forward to the return of competition in front of a crowded gym.

“It doesn’t even seem real that we are less than a week away from our season opener,” Knowles said. “We are excited, though! The crowds bring so much energy and life into the game that we’ll be able to feed off of.”

Oberlin Baseball on Team Culture Continued from page 16

surrounding it a more positive and inclusive one, even though this may not be the perception of other students on campus. He says taking accountability is key in this process.

“Accountability allows individuals to learn from their actions and grow as a result,” he said. “This involves having the individuals understand the consequences of their actions and working to ensure there are no repeats, as well as making space for those who have been harmed by players on this team. It’s important we acknowledge the survivors and understand their emotions.”

Anastasio says that as the team moves forward in trying to repair its reputation on campus, it’s important to note that the team has been having this conversation since he got to Oberlin in 2018.

“We’ve known our reputation has been a problem for years now,” he said. “We’ve always addressed it; even three years ago when I was a first-year, this was something we talked about actively and often.

That being said, it shouldn’t take getting blasted on social media for us to want to make a change and hold each other accountable.”

Norris says that in an unofficial capacity, the team is working on building trust in the community each day and interacting with those outside of the athletic sphere.

“The actions of the few cannot outweigh the many, and it is our goal to repair and build on relationships with the student body at large,” he said.

“This year Yianni and I were Title IX ambassadors for our team, and as a group they showed great engagement and willingness to learn about how to reduce harm in this community. I was very encouraged by their responses.”

Gardner points out, however, that due to the Title IX process and constraints, the team is not allowed to take any action against individuals who have perpetuated harm unless a formal process ends in the office stating an individual deserves consequences.

Gardner promises the team is working hard and diligently to make sure violence is not tolerated or perpetuated within the baseball team.

“The Title IX office definitely limits what we can do as players, which is frustrating because we want to do everything we can to resolve situations and hold people accountable,” he said.

When a report is filed against a player, the team is not made aware of the allegations as per Title IX regulations and the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion website reads, “The Title IX team handles all matters professionally and discreetly by sharing information only with those who need to know and by informing participants of those disclosures.

The Title IX team maintains the privacy of student records in compliance with the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.” College third-year Emma Hart, one of the leaders of Survivors of Sexual Harm & Allies, believes that the most important thing for players to do is to support survivors.

“We need to believe survivors, and the default should be to believe survivors,” she said. “It should not be to make excuses or question a survivor’s story. The focus should be to believe and reflect on what the survivor needs.”

While Hart is encouraged by the recent dialogue by the baseball team, she asserts that accountability should always be about the survivor and not the team image.

“I’m glad that [the baseball] team is talking about it, but it’s less so about the team’s image and more so that [the players] should be asking themselves the question, ‘How have we enabled harm?’” Hart said.

Norris shares similar sentiments with Gardner and says due to the fact that the team has been given minimal power to enact consequences, it is doing its very best to ensure that anyone on the team who perpetuates harm goes through a process in which they will grow and acknowledge their actions.

“From that process, we hope to ensure that no further harm is caused here at Oberlin or in the world beyond,” he said.

Susan Robinson-Cloete, Field Hockey Forward and Student-Researcher IN THE LOCKER ROOM

Susan Robinson-Cloete is a second-year forward on the field hockey team and scored the winning goal in the last game of the season.

After playing goalie her entire career before Oberlin, Susan was moved to forward, a field position. The game against Transylvania University was the team’s first win this year. Off the field, Susan is interested in studying Neuroscience and Spanish. Whether she’s volunteering in labs, playing as a forward on the field, or spending time with the team, Robinson-Cloete balances it all.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kayla Kim Congratulations on your first win!

How did that feel, and what role did you play?

I scored the goal, which was a really exciting moment, but I think a large part of it was our defense. I named them “the brick wall” — second-year Abby Patchen and fourth-years Julia [Vincent] and Lea [Watkins-Chow].

They just held it down there for us, and they’ve always been like a back support. We’ve had a really good season, but we hadn’t won any games before this one. Winning a game just made it that much better and that much sweeter. Getting to be in the middle and all the way up there when everybody started to jump up and hug was a really exciting moment.

How did your losses before this motivate you guys to do better?

I think, from each loss, we learned how we need to get better as a team and identified places where we were struggling or didn’t have support for each other. I think for this last game, we all knew what we needed to do. If we really wanted this, then this was the time to listen to all the things that we’ve been learning from each loss and put them all together. If you saw the game or saw clips of it, there was a high level of communication, trust, and cohesiveness between all of us on the field. It was like a synthesis of all of our losses. I think that it’s corny, but we learned a lot from losing games and learned a lot about the level of play. At this game, we played to our fullest potential.

How have your captains been guiding you through all this?

They all just work so well together.

They’ve been really good at giving pregame talks, making sure that our heads are in the right space before we

Second-year field hockey player Susan Robinson-Cloete competes on Oberlin’s home turf.

go on the field, and just being there to support us. Lea has always been a force of nature on the field, and just as a defensive player, she’s always been really supportive. She makes sure that the back is taken care of because they do so much work, and she makes sure that they’re being respected. This was my first season on the field and third-year Vanessa Baker’s too — we were both goalies before playing field positions — and we had a lot of really new movement up there. I think that fourth-year Bonnie Wileman, a senior member of this team, just gave us a sense of calmness up there, and she provided a really cool presence.

How was the adjustment from not having a season last year?

It was interesting. In the past season, we had only ever been practicing.

So for a lot of us, the main exposure we had to this sport was playing our own team. When we started playing actual games — I won’t speak for the whole team but for me personally — I was like, “Whoa, there is a different level of play out there.” Our team is fantastic, but there’s a different type of energy when you’re trying to beat somebody versus when you pass together. This season, I got to spend time with the team in a really different way — in the locker room and on buses together. My favorite part of the transition from practice to an

actual season was getting to know my team and feeling like I actually have a lot of friends.

How have you guys been bonding off the field?

Well, I think a lot of the bonding happens in the locker room after practice. We’re so chatty. I like to joke all the time, “We need to talk on the field — think about how chatty we are in the locker room or during practice.” When Stevenson Dining Hall was open during preseason, that was a really big thing. We would have team dinners after every single practice. You’d just change, shower, go with a group of people to Stevie, and know that there was gonna be a big field hockey table sitting there. In those first few weeks, we got to talk as a team more than we ever did over the entirety of last year. We do other things like trips to Volunteers of America, which is a thrift store in the area, and we’ve planned some apple picking, a team Thanksgiving, and a team dinner at our coach’s house.

But we don’t just bond through organized team events. I love this team so much, and they have been incredibly supportive through some tough times in my life. They are some of my best friends, and I’m very lucky to have them in my life.

What other extracurriculars are you doing at Oberlin right now?

Courtesy of Amanda Phillips

I’m the art coordinator for The Synapse, the science magazine. Right

now we’re in the middle of issue 30 and wrapping up issue 29. I just recently started working in Associate Professor of Neuroscience Gunnar Kwakye’s lab, which has been quite interesting. I like being exposed to all these different opportunities. I was doing some work with El Centro Volunteer Initiative, which is part of the reason why I’m taking Spanish this year. I would like to come back in the spring, once I have a little bit more free time, and be a really competent English tutor. Coach [Jess West] has always encouraged us to find things that are outside of field hockey and be well rounded.

How do you manage all of the extracurriculars and your time as a student-athlete?

I’ve had to be really, really honest with myself this year about things that I wanna do, and if I have time to do it. Google Calendar has been really important. I have a terrible memory, so whenever I get something, I just throw it in the calendar. I think about doing things that I really, really love doing. I love The Synapse, and I love spending time in Kwakye’s lab. I haven’t signed up for anything that I wanna do begrudgingly, and I invest time in making sure that I can do each of my extracurriculars well.

Students Conceal Athletic Identity Continued from page 16

was nice for a change.”

Second-year women’s soccer player Mattie Rie feels similarly about the misconceptions about athletes, noting how they’ve found it discouraging at times to feel the need to hide their identity as a soccer player.

Rie says they do not present much as an athlete, but recently they’ve finally felt comfortable showing their pride.

“I consider it a big part of who I am and who I’ve been,” they said, looking to the welcoming environment at Oberlin as a source for this strength. “The sports teams at Oberlin, especially on the women’s The Oberlin Review | November 5, 2021

side, are unlike any other sports team I’ve been on — in the best way possible. I don’t mind being perceived as an athlete because I love this team so much.”

Payne added that athletes should learn from the stigma that does exist and work to continue to change the image of athletics on campus.

“My team takes steps to ensure that we create a good environment on our team that will benefit us and others,” she wrote to the Review. “As a women’s team on campus, it feels that we are lumped with the men’s teams, and we try so hard to create our own identity as a team and create change on this campus.

I know a lot of really great athletes that are trying

to change the reputation of the Oberlin Athletic Department, and my team fully supports this and needs more people to be a part of the change.”

For the most part, the athletic and non-athletic communities of Oberlin remain profoundly separated by their own stigmas of each other, but by opening the door to conversation, there is hope that each will see that there is so much more to a person than their outward identity, whatever that may be. Some athletes remain harmful propagators of the stigmas of athletics and the complexes it brings, but it’s clear that the majority in Division III participate in sports out of love, making academics and athletics a priority.

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November 5, 2021

SPORTS Established 1874

Oberlin Baseball Acknowledges Negative Reputation

A pitcher for the baseball team takes the mound during the 2021 season.

Zoe Kuzbari Sports Editor Zoe Martin del Campo Contributing Sports Editor Editor’s note: This article mentions sexual assault and rape culture.

The reputations of Oberlin men’s sports teams vary greatly on campus. Recently, the baseball team has come under the spotlight for their team culture after Yik Yak posts directly named and accused specific individuals on the team of sexual assault and rape.

Fourth-year baseball player Zander Norris says that he knows his team has developed a negative reputation at Oberlin.

“We are reviled for being an unpassionate group of frat-like individuals with no regard for the rest of the student body and are only really here to play baseball and have a good time at other people’s expense,” he said. “I would vehemently disagree with that thought.”

Norris acknowledges that it’s true that there have been people on his team who have been more representative of a “frat boy” lifestyle, but he believes that they are a small minority of the 57-person team. He speaks highly of most of his team and says his current teammates are some of the best people he’s had the privilege of meeting, and most reflect the ideals of the larger student body.

Third-year on the baseball team Max Anastasio says that baseball is notorious for being a sport with a lot of toxic masculinity and “locker room talk.”

“We’ve been taught that that kind of behavior and that kind of way to talk about people is not appropriate or acceptable,” he said. “We should be above that, and it definitely contributes to rape culture. And although my team isn’t as bad or toxic as some other schools, we are nowhere near the standard that we should be.”

Third-year on the baseball team Yianni Gardner is the Title IX compliance trainer for the team along with Norris and believes that the team’s negative reputation is definitely warranted.

“There have been situations in the past, both while I’ve been a student and before my time here at Oberlin, where harm has been caused by players on this team,” said Gardner. “This being said, we are taking all steps that the Title IX office has told us to follow, and we are doing our best to act within our boundaries.”

Gardner feels the players on his team are taking this topic very seriously and are focused on taking the necessary steps to change the team’s reputation on campus and ensure no future harm is caused by players.

Norris points out that his teammates are certainly

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Courtesy of GoYeo

aware that harm has been perpetuated within their community in the past and that it continues to be an issue today. He notes that harm does not come out of nowhere; rather, it arises from a sustained lack of accountability.

“It was in the everyday interactions we had with each other and the interactions we had with the larger student body,” Norris said. “I think that was most explicitly expressed through the numerous problems arising from Saturday nights of drunken stupor, but the grounds were laid through a general disregard for how we acted in the public sphere.”

Norris says that there was an ignorance toward the feelings of those the team interacted with, which inevitably ended in harm to others. He says those problems are by no means a thing of the past, but it’s been their goal this semester to buckle down on harmful or toxic behavior.

Second-year baseball player Jay Aghanya describes the steps his team is taking to prevent any further harm to others. He highlights that the team has been working with the College’s resources and that before the fall semester started, they had meetings with the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion to talk about what the team can do to stop perpetuating harm.

“Our first action was to keep each other in check: in public, in our day-to-day lives, and especially during the weekends,” he said. “If we keep doing that as a team, I think this would take us in the right direction while cases are dealt with legally and confidentially.”

Aghanya mentions that the older members on his team have been dealing with issues about their reputation and have had to deal with problematic players on the team in the past, so he looks to them for some guidance.

“The upperclassmen have been constantly keeping the underclassmen in check so that these issues don’t start back up in the future,” Aghanya said.

“The most important thing that we can all do now is ensure we’re doing our very best to prevent future harm.”

Norris says that he’s aware his team has had a poor reputation on Oberlin’s campus for years, and the interactions the team has had with the larger community has done nothing to detract from that.

“I like to encourage people to think of individual baseball players they know personally and how they think of them,” he said. “A lot of the time, it is in a favorable light. We as a group have no room to ask for favor, but the individuals that have personal relationships with baseball players I think directly contrasts that thought.”

Gardner says that the team is trying to repair its reputation and striving to make the atmosphere See Team Culture, pg 14

Volume 151, Number 5

Student-Athletes Face Stigma at Oberlin

Illustration by Clair Wang, Staff Cartoonist

RiverSchiff Senior Staff Writer Many athletes take pride in their sports; for many, being recruited and meeting their team was a crucial factor in their decision to come to Oberlin. But for some athletes, all of the cheers and crowded bleachers don’t appear to go much past the field or court for them.

Some athletes feel their fellow students appear to look down on them, as if they’ve taken an easy entry into the prestigious institution and don’t have the academic capabilities of their peers. This stigma leads some student-athletes to keep quiet about their sport, out of fear they’re being viewed as less than or representative of the stereotypes attached to athletes.

Second-year on the women’s soccer team Adrienne Sato feels especially torn on the subject. Sato believes that due to the stigma around being a student-athlete, she puts extra pressure on herself to conform in an academic setting, fearing ostracism should she not prove herself.

“When in a context where I’m the only athlete, I feel more pressure to speak up, which leads to less productive conversation because I’m constantly thinking about everything I say,” she said. “But when I’m with other athletes, I don’t have that pressure as much, and instead I worry about seeming too excited about the schoolwork.”

Additionally, Sato looks to athletics as a source of pride, emphasizing how presenting as a student athlete makes her feel powerful and capable. However, the stigma around athletes being disrespectful invalidates those feelings.

“I feel like a lot of the students at Oberlin, myself included, kind of rebel against things that are more mainstream and popular, and athletics and people associated with athletics have been popular our whole lives,” she said. “People get really invested in sports, and the Oberlin student body doesn’t have a positive view of [athletes], so I always have to make sure I don’t seem like I care too much about the sport even if I do.”

College fourth-year on the women’s soccer team Sophie Payne believes that the perception of athletics has changed during her time at Oberlin in a positive way.

“As a first-year at Oberlin, I was definitely excited to tell people that I was on a sports team because it has been a big part of who I am for most of my life,” she wrote in an email to the Review. “After learning how some people on this campus perceive athletes, I was a little more timid in announcing that I was an athlete. Recently, however, I received a positive reaction in the classroom because people were genuinely interested in how my team was doing which See Students, pg 15