Israel-Palestine Winter Term Trip Creates Opportunities, Sparks Controversies

Protesters Travel to Oberlin to Demand Justice

Continued from page 1 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

The Oberlin review

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Published by the students of Oberlin College every Friday during the fall and spring semesters, except holidays and examination periods. Advertising rates: $18 per column inch. Second-class postage paid at Oberlin, Ohio. Entered as second-class matter at the Oberlin, Ohio post office April 2, 1911. POSTMASTER SEND CHANGES TO: Wilder Box 90, Oberlin, Ohio 44074-1081. Office of Publication: Burton Basement, Oberlin, Ohio 44074. Phone: (440) 775-8123 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 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 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.”

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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.

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

SLAC Hosts Endowment Talk

Eric Schank Senior Staff Writer

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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

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.