La Alianza Hosts Start-of-year Bonfire

La Alianza Latinx will host their next interest meeting in Latinx Heritage House, officially called Zechiel House.

Leela Miller

Senior Staff Writer

La Alianza Latinx, Oberlin’s campus-wide Latinx Alliance, welcomed new and returning members at a bonfire chat on Saturday.

According to College fourth-year Haley Sablay, who sits on the LAL Bort (the organization’s board) as both an interim co-chair and program coordinator, the event was publicized via weekly emails and the first-year orientation schedule. From there, the information quickly spread via word of mouth, and the event saw an impressive turnout.

The bonfire’s popularity highlights LAL’s important cultural role on Oberlin’s campus. The group functions as a support system for Latinx students in a college environment with a Latinx population hovering at just around 8 percent and also serves as a nucleus of Latinx cultural programming and celebration.

“LAL’s presence on campus is part of a wider network of Latinx-identifying organizations that do extraordinary work to ensure folks in our community feel affirmed in their identity and that they have a space on Oberlin’s campus,” Sablay said. “At a predominantly white institution that regularly caters to the needs and concerns of white, middle-to-upper-class students, LAL is important to serving the interests of Latinx students and helping folks build support systems.”

Like many student organizations, LAL struggled with a loss of institutional memory during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, executive board members feel that the organization has found its footing once again, bringing a renewed sense of energy and unity within LAL.

College third-year Cristal Ramos serves as co-chair and program coordinator for LAL along with Sablay, who joined the LAL Bort during her second year at Oberlin. Ramos has noticed that the organization is running especially smoothly this year, and she is confident that LAL is now well equipped to organize large-scale events that are fun, thought-provoking and valuable to Latinx students.

“I want to see as many events happen as possible, but I especially want to see more informational events,” Ramos said. “That’s something that Photo by Juliana Gaspar La Alianza was great at in the past, and it’s something we want to recommit to, especially because I know many students feel disconnected from their culture or just want to learn as much as they can about it.”

Ramos’ expansive vision for LAL breaks barriers that exist for students not only at Oberlin but in their own homes as well.

“I want to arrange more guest speakers talking about topics that we as Latinx students don’t always have a chance to talk about with our own families due to cultural taboos, such as mental health and the intersection of Latinx identity with issues of gender, race, sexuality, and class,” Ramos said. “La Alianza is a social organization, and we definitely have a good time, but it’s also meant to be a resource for students.”

Now that LAL is gaining momentum and growing in size, members of the Bort are enthusiastic about recruiting new members and getting them involved in holding positions for planning events.

They were excited to see a large number of new students at the bonfire.

“Some of us who planned the bonfire were expecting more returners than first-years, but we were pleasantly surprised at the amount of firstyears and newcomers,” Sablay said.

In addition to new members, Ramos emphasized a desire to attract students from a range of Latinx backgrounds to leadership positions so that LAL’s programming can be as diverse as possible.

“The Latinx community is so broad and diverse. It can be hard to represent everyone because we come from everywhere. We’re encouraging more people of different Latinx identities to join our executive board and our programming committees.” If you’re interested in learning more about LAL, contact lal@oberlin. edu or @oc_laalianzalatinx on Instagram. A total of eight open positions on the LAL Bort will be announced at the next interest meeting taking place at Zechiel House. An in-depth overview of LAL’s structure and hopes for the upcoming academic year will also be discussed.

Zechiel House is located at 207 Woodland Street, Oberlin, OH 44074.

Cancel Culture Promotes Public Figure Accountability

Continued from page 9 sider the importance of politics in her own community?

Of course, it is ridiculous for a social media post to warrant threats and aggression, and were Sweeney to show signs of growth from the online experience, perhaps the controversy could have died down sooner. Instead, some of her fan accounts were pushed to the point of leaving the fanbase. This was in part attributed to Sweeney’s response, which, instead of an apology, was a slightly defensive tweet in which she said, “You guys this is wild. An innocent celebration for my mom’s milestone 60th birthday has turned into an absurd political statement, which was not the intention. Please stop making assumptions. Much love to everyone and Happy Birthday Mom!” Many fans were unsatisfied with the defensive and dismissive nature of the tweet.

Feeling let down by someone you respect, even idolize, is certainly justifiable. Many people do feel interpersonally connected to celebrities, despite their faults. In this instance, what started as a realization of the values of a celebrity became a display of reactionary internet vitriol, which then devolved even further. What was initially a push to hold an influential person responsible has now transformed into a politicized attack on the elusive cancel culture — a contemporary term used to describe some degree of digital, social, or professional ostracism following a celebrity’s unacceptable behavior.

While Sweeney’s fans took to Twitter to share feelings of disappointment and betrayal by the situation, many others, including news sources, chose to highlight the controversy as another example of the left-wing “woke” mentality and obsession with “canceling.”

The act of “canceling” has lost meaning over time. What etymologically began in the 1980s as a reference comparing the end of a relationship to the cancellation of a TV show was adopted into African-American vernacular as a way to casually call out a person who had stepped out of line. As with much of our digital vocabulary, this term was eventually appropriated the white, mainstream media, and while the trend of calling out celebrities for unbecoming behavior on the internet has been around since the early 2010s, the term “cancel culture” only entered these spaces recently.

With movements like #MeToo and the public outcry after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, the social media atmosphere changed, and this term became associated with more urgent situations warranting serious action.

Yet, as the phrase has become more prominent, it has started to be used to describe both major and minor offenders, leading to widespread paranoia over being “canceled” and unease over shifting power dynamics. In a space where everyone is able to have a voice, and everyone is willing to listen, who’s to say that you won’t be affected? The weaponization of this terminology invokes fear that a simple mistake could cost any innocent person their private and professional life, which empowers the free-speech counterculture, moving us further from digital safety and equality. The fear of ostracism is enough to push impressionable people away from safer, more open platforms and into the more nefarious alt-right pipeline, which promises an anti-cancel culture atmosphere.

For all of its pitfalls, the internet is a tool. It allows us to contextualize and assemble our collective consciousness. Like any movement or organization, there are sure to be mistakes from which we, as patrons of these systems, can learn from and grow. Maybe one day, if we have not already, we will reflect on “cancel culture” as having gone too far, but isn’t that the formula for a successful movement? Is it really so terrible for young people to enter digital spaces knowing that actions — even virtual ones — have consequences?