“Review of our academic standing system through a DEI framework is part of the ongoing work of the aca demic standing committee,” Associate Dean for Academ ic Standing Laura Herron wrote in an email to the Review “The committee strives to ensure that benchmarks for progress toward the degree, while applied equally to all students, do not inadvertently disadvantage any individu al or group. Student appeals are reviewed from a holistic perspective with the goal of determining the most ped agogically sound and productive path forward for each student. This process creates opportunities for students to identify their specific needs and challenges and for the
Gigi Ewing Managing Editor
Below are some key recommendations from the 70 page report.
facebook.com/oberlinreviewoberlinreview.org TWITTER @oberlinreview INSTAGRAM @ocreview 02NEWSCONTENTSAnisaCurryVietze and Gigi Ewing, Senior Staff 04 Student Groups Demand Divestment from Fossil Fuels ARTS & CULTURE 06 Big Parade Returns to Oberlin After Two-Year Hiatus 07 Asian Night Market Creates Space to Celebrate THIS WEEK 08 Senior 13CONSERVATORYMemoriesFingernails,FoodBowls, and Fries 09OPINIONSEastAsian Studies Program Needs Reform 11 Failure to Release Title IX Survey Results Silences Survivors 14SPORTSGraduating Athletes Speak on Life After College Sports 16 Oberlin Softball Players Face Racism from Rose-Hulman See Report, page 3 See Mahallati , page 2
Activisits to Protest Mahallati at Commencement
Protesters have planned a highly visual event to draw attention from audience members at the Commencement.“Wewantto walk around and hopefully talk to as many people as possible and embarrass the College as much as possible,” Bazargan said.
Hiring a DEI Officer
Presidential Initiative Report Released, Proposes DEI Recommendations
“I hope that because it’s Commencement, people who aren’t students will pay attention,” Bernstein said. “I think Oberlin College has failed these protestors in a lot of ways. I hope that a broader audience at Commencement would be more sympathetic than people have up until this point.”Bernstein specifically noted the lack of student response to the protest movement.
Academic Discipline
The report also outlines a data-driven finding high lighting the impact of academic standing actions and interventions on students of color. From fall 2017 to fall 2020, Black students made up 27.3 percent of all students who were dismissed and 16.6 percent of students who were suspended, even though only around 5.5 percent of Oberlin’s student population is Black.
tions that don’t really have a lot of ability to make change,” President Ambar said. “I was concerned about that. … So we’re gonna spend our time on that particular role to em bed it in this Human Resources position.”
Photo by Abe Frato, Photo Editor
College fourth-year and Iranian-American student Sophie Bernstein expressed hope that the Commencement protest will attract broader support than the last demonstration, which only drew a small crowd.
Anisa Curry Vietze Kushagra Kar Editors-in-Chief
The Carnegie Building currently houses many adminstrative offices that will work to implement the Presidential Initiative
After nearly two years of data collection, focus groups, and reviews of campus life, the Presidential Initiative on Racial Equity and Diversity committee published a com prehensive report on Wednesday. The report provides rec ommendations to make Oberlin more racially equitable, including hiring a diversity, equity, and inclusion officer; reviewing the Academic Standing process; establishing the Center for Race and Equity throughout a three-year plan; creating more conscious hiring processes, and more.
Since May 12, the AAIRIA has rallied members in the United States and internationally to protest Mahallati’s continued employment at the College. Groups will continue protesting in a few other U.S. cities before culminating their movement at Oberlin early next month.
May 20, 2022 The Oberlin Review | May 20, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 151, Number 22 1
President Carmen Twillie Ambar announced the cre ation of a Presidential Initiative in August 2020 following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin. President Ambar stated that the rele vance and timeliness of the initiative has only grown in the past two years.
The report reflects on the work of each subcommit tee: curriculum and pedagogy, personnel, student life and learning, and student success.
The report also details how the College intends to re vise its hiring practices and standards. Appendix D: Per sonnel Committee: Hiring, Retention, and Promotion lays out a set of strategies and policies the College could employ to facilitate a more diverse workforce with the goal of improving equity and retention. Changes to the hiring structure include asking candidates pre-approved DEI-related questions in an effort to map their previous and planned efforts in workplace equity. Additionally, the appendix recommends considering non-punitive mea sures to address all employee-related interventions. In order to publicize these goals, the College aims to empha size its DEI commitments on its website and social media platforms.Inorder to effectively gauge the efficacy of these hiring measures, the report proposes a “rubric for assessing per sonnel’s awareness, experience and plans to advance DEI efforts at Oberlin College.” The rubric assigns numerical values between one and five that correspond to specific skills or experiences of the candidate in understanding, promoting, and planning DEI work.
After a series of international protests, the Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists will return to Oberlin to protest at the class of 2022 Commencement on June 5. The protest will mark the third time that activists have protested the employment of Professor of Religion Mohammad Jafar Mahallati at Oberlin. Mahallati has been accused of covering up crimes against humanity when he served as Iran’s representative to the U.N. in theAccording1980s. to Lawdan Bazargan, the protest organizer and sister of a 1988 massacre victim, the upcoming protest will be mobile, unlike the more stationary protests they have previously staged.
The group chose locations to target specific individuals, from Board of Trustees members Amy Chen and Chris Canavan to various offices of Greenberg Traurig, the law firm representing Mahallati. Notably, Canavan will also speak at the Commencement. Canavan declined the Review’s request for Bazargancomment.alsocommented on a recently resurfaced 1989 Reuters article in which Mahallati defended the fatwā issued against Salman Rushdie after the publication of his novel, Satanic Verses Although unsurprised that Mahallati supported the fatwā, as his position required that he defend
“There has been a lot of pushback to talk about Professor Mahallati, especially because he’s tenured and he still works here,” Bernstein said. “I think it is concerning when there are such severe allegations against someone, people are not willing to have a conversation … especially because [the protesters] keep coming back — it’s not like the issue is over for the people that are affected. Oberlin prides itself on being a school that’s centered around social justice, but there are people seeking justice and their calls are not being answered.”
“This is ongoing work that never really stops and ends,” President Ambar said. “We have to be committed as an in stitution, as a nation, as a world to this work around inclu sion and diversity. … We have what’s happened in [Laguna Woods,] California or what’s happening in Buffalo, [New York], where we have these explosions of visceral hate and disdain that leads to loss of life in these horrific ways — it reminds us that this work, if we don’t stay committed to it, has consequences that are really unimaginable.”
In order to specifically address issues with personnel and hiring practices, the College will be hiring a DEI offi cer to work in Human Resources. According to the recom mendation, this individual will play a critical role in creat ing the Center for Race, Equity, and Inclusion; lead search committees; write job descriptions using DEI language; and develop recruitment strategies for more diverse ap plicantPresidentpools.Ambar is particularly hopeful that the DEI officer position at Oberlin will be given access to campus resources and granted the authority to make a difference.
“Positions like this oftentimes can be figurehead posi
News 2 The Oberlin r eview To submit a correction, managingeditor@oberlinreview.org.email 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 May 20, 2022 Volume 151, Number 22 (ISSN 297–256) Editors-in-Chief Anisa Curry KashugrVietzeaKarl Managing Editor Gigi Ewing News Editors Ella Moxley Lauren Krainess Cont. News Editor Nikki Keating Opinions Editors EmmaEmilyBenardeteVaughan Arts Editors Lilyanna D’Amato Kathleen Kelleher Sports Editor Zoe Kuzbari Cont. Sports Editors John Elrod Zoë Martin del Campo Conservatory Editor Walter Thomas-Patterson Photo Editors KhadijahAbeHallidayFrato This Week Editor Wiley Smith Senior Staff Writers Adrienne Sato Sofia MeghanJulianaTomasicGasperSierraColbertMcLaughlinMattRudella Web Manager Ada Ates Ads Manager Yuyang Fu Production Manager Lia Fawley Production Staff Claire Brinley SumnerEllaYuhkiWallaceUedaIsaacImasKaylaKimBernsteinTrevorSmith Layout Editors Grace Gao AdrienneMollyErinHooverKooChapin Illustrators Clair HollyWangYelton Distributors Thomas Xu Nondini Nagarwalla
acceptable that somebody who was involved in such atrocity continues teaching students.”
Photo by Ella Moxley
Continued from page 1
GRE: My favorite Review memory was the first party that we ever had at the beginning of my second year. There were just certain vignettes from it that will forever be engraved on my mind. One of them was sticking Swedish Fish up Nathan Carpenter’s nose as he laid passed out on the couch. Another one was playing a very intense game of Jenga and just the general spirit and energy that everyone had. It was the first time in college that I felt like I belonged somewhere.ACV:Mine is everything that happens in the inbetweens when we’re either procrastinating work or there’s a lull in the work we have to do. It’s shooting each other with Nerf guns in the office. It’s playing the same five songs early Friday morning when everyone’s bleary-eyed and tired. It’s people saying unhinged things that we write on the walls in Sharpie. It’s the walks to DeCafé or the times that Katie Lucey, OC ’20, and I would run around North Quad because we’d been sitting in the office for too long and couldn’t read anymore. I think that the community and the fun that comes with the Review is always little moments tucked between stress and work, which almost makes it sweeter.
Kushagra Kar
OFF THE CUFF
Mahallati Protesters Culminate International Protest Series
from when I first visited Oberlin two years before — Devyn Malouf, OC ’20. I really, really liked her when I did the tour with her, and she was actually one of the reasons I came to Oberlin. I am an English major, and I knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I never knew how I wanted to pursue that. I figured that if she was advertising something, it would be good, so I applied for the production job. I got it and started that fall. Then it was love at first production.
Corrections: In the May 13 article “Oberlin to Offer Five New Academic Programs,” the Review mistakenly said that 100- and 200-level classes would not count toward the Spanish minor. Classes at these levels do in fact count toward the minor. The Review apologizes for these errors.
Anisa Curry Vietze and Gigi Ewing, Senior Staff
InEditor-in-Chief2018,twobrilliant and immensely powerful women stepped into an unassuming Oberlin campus. In week one, Anisa Curry Vietze shook the Oberlin journalism scene with her first article: “Lorain, Ohio Misses Deadline on Medical Marijuana Program.” From there, Anisa went on to report on everything from the biggest Gibson’s lawsuit updates, to local business updates, to comedy siblings hosting Shit Pit. Her range and skill as a writer are rivaled only by her wit and candor. In year two, Gigi Ewing made her debut as a Production Editor extraordinaire, serving as a master of both AP Style and everlasting charm. With an iconic first article, “#VotingIsSexy Initiative Hopes to Engage Students,” Gigi soon rose to the role of News Editor, breaking stories on the Professor Mahallati controversy, the College’s COVID-19 responses, and the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association’s resurgence after the pandemic. Gigi and Anisa have matching “TKTK” tattoos, a Review inside joke. For the last two years, Anisa has mentored me and this paper as Editor-in-Chief, and for the past two semesters, Gigi has inspired me through her work as Managing Editor. I have been privileged to work alongside Anisa and Gigi on Senior Staff, and with their departure bid farewell to two hallmarks of the Review
ACV: Like Gigi, I do wanna pursue journalism and the Review definitely got me closer to my 10,000 hours. I’ve done probably hundreds of interviews at this point. I started off as someone who was extremely anxious going into interviews; I’m not inherently the type of person who finds it easy to talk to strangers, and I think that is exactly the reason I wanted to pursue this type of work.
“I think that if Western countries really believe [in] and respect freedom of speech, therefore they should also respect our freedom of speech,” Mahallati told Reuters.
ACV: I joined the Review because I came to college knowing that I wanted to do journalism in some way, although I thought newspapers were boring. I was definitely gonna try writing for a student publication, and during Orientation Week, I met former Editor-in-Chief Nathan Carpenter, OC ’20. He asked me what publication I was interested in writing for, and the only one I could remember was The Oberlin Review. He was like, “I am Editor-in-Chief,” and he really showed me the ropes of the Review. So I started writing in my very first semester and editing in my second semester. While it was honestly kind of a lot for me as a first-year, it gave me access to this whole community of older students who were mentoring me in this way that I never would’ve been mentored in a class, even by the most accessible professors.
GRE: I feel like for me, on a very basic level, it’s given me a career path. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life before the Review. I always felt very behind because I felt like everyone else knew what they wanted to do and who they wanted to be. And I feel like that identity for me really grew out of the Review, both in terms of the career I want to have moving forward and the type of professional I want to be. I feel like I’ve learned a lot working here. I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes and from other people’s mistakes — mostly my own. I’ve learned how to work with people, how to not work with people. I’ve seen the worst parts of myself and the best parts of myself come out in this office. I think that it’s given me a better handle on how I interact with people, how I take care of myself, how I pursue the work that I do, what my motivations and goals are — things like that.
I think the biggest thing the Review taught me about is my relationship to work, this idea that I can find it meaningful. The great thing about the Review is that it sort of exists adjacent to capitalism. No one is profiting off of our labor, everyone is really just doing it because they care about it. When I got to college, I had the sense that the only way that I was gonna find happiness was through working as hard as possible. I think I did find happiness in doing that for a long time — and then I found out that you can’t do that forever. The Review taught me balance, how to do this intense of a job while also giving myself the space to have things outside of work as well. I think one of the great things about this year’s senior staff is that we’ve done a good job between the three of us saying, “Okay, this is the night that this person seems like they’re having a particularly hard time. Maybe you should go home early and we’ll take care of it,” and delegating these tasks among ourselves so that we’re not burning ourselves out and we’re not overwhelmed. I hope that we’re doing that for our staff as well.
As they reflected on the Oberlin community’s response to the Mahallati issue toward the end of their College career, Bernstein described a lack of understanding and compassion for the protesters. They expressed hope that the coming protest would change the tides in the community’s acknowledgement of the allegations against Mahallati.
“We are none of that,” she said. “We are just victims of an Islamic regime, and that’s what we are talking about.”Although the College has yet to formally address the protests, Bazargan’s commitment has not diminished.
At the time, Mahallati defended the fatwā by arguing that other Islamic countries supported Iran’s stance toward Rushdie.
GRE: I joined the Review in fall 2019, which was the beginning of my second year. I saw an ad on Facebook and noticed that the person who posted it was my tour guide
Another way this work has pushed me is in being a leader and in charge of a 40-person staff. Making big, editorial decisions that have real impacts on people’s lives is another component that I particularly struggled with, and also particularly got something out of.
“We certainly use that right in order [to] express ourselves, our religious beliefs, in the case of any
“We are also going after politicians — we have started [reaching out to] some contacts and we are asking some citizens of Cleveland to contact and talk to them,” Bazargan said. “We are trying to organize some other pressures coming directly from the government. But for sure we won’t let this go because it is not
Bazargan also responded to accusations that her protest movement peddles Islamophobia and aligns with pro-Trump politicians.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Which parts of the Review will you take with you in your next steps?
Anisa and Gigi, with a special feature from Ella’s finger, as they reported live from the Trump rally in Wellington, OH in June 2021.
What is your favorite memory at the Review?
What made you both join the Review?
blasphemous statement against sacred Islamic figures.”
“He had said back then that if Westerners believe in freedom of speech — this is our freedom of speech,” Bazargan said. “Can you believe it? Putting a bounty on the head of somebody is freedom of speech — and this guy teaches ethics and morality to you guys.”
the theocratic regime’s dictates, Bazargan expressed shock that the College continued to employ Mahallati.
“I really hope that there’s more attention to this protest,” Bernstein said. “I hope there’s more flyers or publicity or conversations on social media. I don’t know what it will take to get people to care, but the people that are protesting are in mourning for a very real issue. At the very least some support would be awesome.”
1:53 a.m. A resident of a Village Housing Unit on Elm Street requested assistance after falling and injuring their knee while exiting the building during a fire alarm activation. First aid was applied by an officer, and the student was transported to Mercy Health - Allen Hospital for additional treatment.
Friday, May 13, 2022
Saturday, May 14, 2022
On Sunday, Students for a Free Palestine commemorated the 74th anniversary of the Nakba with a vigil on Tappan Square. The Nakba marks the day in 1948 when over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes by Israeli forces. The Oberlin vigil featured a number of student speakers and a candle lighting in honor of murdered and displaced Palestinans.
Center for Race, Equity, and Inclusion
The Oberlin Review | May 20, 2022
College third-year and vigil organizer Osama Abdelrahman also spoke at the event and emphasized the importance of speaking out against the ethnic cleansing and other injustices Palestinians suffer.
11:36 a.m. A resident of South Hall reported a bat in their room. An officer and maintenance technician responded and the bat was removed from the room.
“In a situation of injustice, there is no such thing as ‘I’m not taking sides,’” Abdelrahman said. “You have to take sides; you
In year one, the committee hopes to create an institutional committee for CoRE, find a space for the Center, and hire a director, among other things. Year two will include career de velopment opportunities to support students of color, collabo ration on programming with the Division of Student Life, and the inauguration of a postdoctoral fellows program to be men tored by Oberlin faculty and gain teaching experience while working on research or creative endeavors.
Unlike the 2019 One Oberlin report, the Board of Trust ees will not be required to approve the Presidential Initiative report in order for work to start on the recommendations. In fact, fundraising for the Center has already begun, and various committees have already met to discuss implementation.
“Before going there and speaking, I was actually so nervous, but at the same time I wanted to … talk about my experience living in Gaza my whole life and share it with students here who don’t know anything about Palestine or what’s going on there,” Sabbah said.
7:04 p.m. Officers responding to a call at Talcott Hall observed fresh graffiti painted on the building’s bricks. A maintenance technician responded, and the paint was removed.
Students held a vigil Sunday for the 74th anniversary of the Nakba on Tappan Square
“I would like the recommendations there to be implement ed as soon as possible,” Gadsby said. “I think that there are some items that can be implemented sooner rather than later, because they don’t involve the relocation of resources — that’s not something that we need to spend more money on.”
4:06 a.m. Custodial staff reported a student sleeping on a couch on the third floor of the Science Center. An officer responded; the student was awakened and advised that they were not permitted in the building after closing.
Photo by Abe Frato, Photo Editor
Despite this, the vigil served as an important platform to allow students to grieve for murdered and displaced Palestinians, including Shireen Abu Akleh, a journalist who was shot and killed by Israeli forces last week.
Additionally, Gadsby explained that this work builds on Oberlin’s commitment to a high-quality education with fewer barriers to success.
The report addresses each of the demands that ABUSUA, Oberlin’s Black Student Union, made of the College in June 2020 and later updated in February 2021. The report outlines each demand and the status of the work done to address it.
Security Notebook
Students for a Free Palestine Hosts Nakba Vigil
Many students gathered on the lawn around Memorial Arch to listen to the speakers talk about the need for more active support for Palestine. However, College second-year and vigil organizer Lulu Chebaro noted that there was still more work to be“Itdone.wasa good turnout, and I think people that were there really cared and were really present and listening,” Chebaro said. “But if you look at a lot of other events we have on this campus, ... a shocking amount of people were not there. Honestly, the turnout is really telling of a larger issue on this campus where people just don’t care.”
College first-year, vigil organizer, and international student from Palestine Farah Sabbah spoke about her exposure to violence as a child at Sunday’s vigil.
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Comparative American Studies and Special Assistant to the President for Racial Equity and Diversity Meredith Gadsby considers the recommendations in the review of the academic standing sys tem one of the most important aspects of the report.
7:04 p.m. Officers and Oberlin Fire Department members responded to a fire alarm in the basement of Talcott Hall. Haze from a discharged fire extinguisher had activated the detector. The alarm was reset, an electrician responded for repairs, and a custodian responded for clean up.
Ella Moxley News Editor
9:36 a.m. Staff at Wilder Hall reported that a vehicle had backed into one of the dumpsters in Wilder parking lot and broken some glass on the ground. The vehicle involved was gone upon the officers’ arrival. A work order was filed for clean up of the glass.
8:22 a.m. A faculty member reported that an unknown person had entered their office without permission. Broken chalk was found on the floor, a bottle of water was knocked over, and several other items were moved. The office had been locked when the staff member left for the day on May 12.
“As a child [I] experienced all of this — someone my age shouldn’t experience such things,” Sabbah said. “People should speak up about what is happening there and what’s going on there because it’s worse than you actually would expect.”
“Some of the things will have some ways that are easily implemented and some of the things won’t,” President Ambar said. “This is the type of work that you just have to accept that it is an ongoing, persistent, diligent march toward an unclear destination, meaning you don’t end it. … There can be some things that are depressing about that. But the other side of it is that there’s always good work to do and we all get to have a part in it.”
Report Commits to DEI Improvements
ABUSUA Demands
2:45 p.m. A student reported the loss of their backpack, which contained a laptop, from an unknown location sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning. The student will file a report with the Oberlin Police Department.
7:17 a.m. Officers and Oberlin Fire Department members responded to a fire alarm at Stevenson Dining Hall in the employee restroom. The smoke detector was found to have been activated by hair spray, and the alarm was reset.
College to offer appropriate support resources.”
5:41 a.m. A resident of Langston Hall reported a centipede in their room. A campus safety officer responded and the centipede was removed. A work order was filed for a room inspection.
to the Review. “As someone who was here and on the ABU SUA board when the demands were first released, I am happy that progress has been made and that, especially through the initiative, progress will continue to be made. I would like to add, though, that while this report is a great starting point for change on campus, we, as students, must continue to hold the administration accountable for what we want and hope to see in the coming years!”
Continued from page 1
Sunday, May 15, 2022
9:10 a.m. A student reported that they left behind their tote bag in Stevenson Dining Hall and it was missing when they returned. The bag contained a laptop, Apple Airpods, a wallet containing credit and debit cards, and miscellaneous items. The tote was white and had green lettering in Vietnamese. The incident is under investigation and will be reported to the Oberlin Police Department.
In December, President Ambar announced plans to create a center on campus to synthesize community building, civic engagement, and academic and career-related opportunities, all in pursuit of racial equity and inclusion. Now, the release of the report provides a more in-depth account of CoRE’s goals, as well as a three-year timeline for their implementation.
College third-year and ABUSUA Administrative Chair Jil lian Sanford, and Jasmine Mitchell, ’OC 21, created a living document to keep both ABUSUA leadership and the Presiden tial Initiative committee updated on the demands that were completed, in progress, or revised. Once Mitchell graduated, Gadsby continued to update ABUSUA on progress made on the“Asdemands.astudent leader, I am extremely happy to see the Col lege open to making some changes,” Sanford wrote in an email
3
have to find where the truth is and support it, because if you’re not supporting the truth or if you’re not taking sides, then you are basically on the side of the oppressor.”
“For those people who are kind of dubious and suspicious of this work, and may feel as though it means that we are gonna make changes that have to occur at the expense of excellence: I challenge those people to really reframe their notion of ex cellence and what excellence connotes,” Gadsby said. “If your definition of excellence is connected to exclusion, then that’s not one that I think is a mission-centered approach to the work that we do here at Oberlin.”
Sofia Tomasic Senior Staff Writer
To receive funding, student organizations must submit semester budgets to SFC, which undergo a review and approval process by student leaders on the committee. The Student Activity Fund is a pool of mandatory student activity fees collected from almost every College student each semester. For the 2021–22 academic year, each student paid a total of $556 in student activity fees.
when we won’t have the surplus],” Hidy wrote.
“Global warming exacts a universal yet profoundly unequal toll on humanity,” students and alumni wrote in their letter. “It is the young and the poor, particularly the poor of color, who first lose their futures, homes, and security. Divestment from fossil fuels means taking a moral stand for our planet, all living beings, and our future.”
Student Finance Committee to Return to Pre-COVID Funding Practices
Student Groups Demand Divestment from Fossil Fuels
“Student Senate is an organization formed by the school to give students a spot at the administrative table,” Sanchez-Foster wrote in an email to the Review. “From this, it is abundantly clear that the Student Senate is a school-sponsored group and should therefore be funded by the college’s payroll office.”
In response to these concerns from students and alumni, Board of Trustee Chair Chris Canavan explained that the College is already working to achieve these goals.
“We often get pretty expensive requests for equipment costs that academic departments already have access to like guitars, banjos, microphones, lighting, costumes, cameras, etcetera [sic],” Hidy wrote. “SFC would love to collaborate with academic departments to decrease the burden of equipment costs on the SAF, thus freeing up more funds for student
In their letter, members of campus environmental organizations and alumni also reference a United Nations report from April that warns that greenhouse emissions would need to peak by 2025 to limit warming thereafter to 1.5 degrees celsius.
Within its funding for student organizations, SFC funds some equipment rentals for the Oberlin Musical Theater Association and student performers. According to OMTA co-chair and College third-year Olivia Bross, OMTA is not affiliated with the Theater Department and thus does not have access to the department’s supplies.
Lauren Krainess News Editor
Besides funding student organizations, the SAF also funds the College Lanes, The ’Sco, Cat in the Cream, and some Residential Education expenditures. When asked why the SAF funds the functioning of some facilities that seem to fall outside the category of student activities, Associate Dean of Students Thom Julian clarified that the SAF is meant to not only fund student organizations but also to generally improve student life on campus.
year and Pyle Dining Loose Ends Coordinator Susanne Goldstein wrote in an email to the Review . “However, most of the other co-ops are also thinly spread with their own shifts, so we relied mainly on our own membership.
Co-ops Navigate COVID-19 Cases
... Thanks to how much everyone stepped up, we haven’t had to cancel any meals this week, which has been really great.”
Like Pyle, Harkness House co-op is also grappling with a large number of sick members. In response to the shortage, College first-year and Head Cook Abigail Nordan made a chart to organize the substitute requests in their co-op.
NewsNews 4
The letter points out Oberlin’s history of groundbreaking activism and leadership in environmental issues — such as its early commitment to carbon neutrality in 2006. The writers argue that the board’s response to this issue breaks with Oberlin tradition and goals.
While there is no precedent for such a request in recent OSCA memory, it was urgent to fill the open shifts because there was a possibility that the co-op would have to cancel over six meals a week, which would create an accessibility concern.
“With the large number of empty spots on our work chart, our regular practice of asking for people to fill in for individual shifts became too chaotic and unmanageable,” College first-
Students for Energy Justice, Sunrise Movement, the Green Edge Fund, and a group of alumni have written a letter to the Board of Trustees requesting a pledge to divest Oberlin’s endowment from fossil fuels by 2025, the same year that Oberlin plans to achieve carbon neutrality on campus through the Sustainable Infrastructure Program. The letter, which will formally be sent next week, is an attempt to elicit a response to divestment requests, which have gone largely ignored by the board since 2014.
“The endowment’s exposure to fossil fuels is small and shrinking,” Canavan wrote in an email to the Review . “This is deliberate. We haven’t made any new investments connected to fossil fuels for some time, and we are letting go of legacy investments as fast as we feasibly can. Our legacy exposures are mostly tied up in investments that can’t easily be liquidated overnight.”Despite these efforts, students have still voiced criticism about the lack of transparency as to how the endowment is invested. Earlier this fall, the Student Labor Action Coalition also demanded greater transparency from the board.
“This past round of budget requests for [fall ’22] has seen a huge increase in the amount of funds requested,” Hidy wrote. “Unfortunately, we simply do not have enough in the SAF to fund the growth of all these organizations and also ensure that there are enough funds to support the creation of new organizations.”Accordingto Hidy, SFC seeks to distribute the SAF as equitably as possible, and all organizations large and small will likely face the effects of this change in funding practices.
“It really is the alums who are taking a big role in this, but it’s been very, very collaborative,” College fourth-year and SEJ member RE Kukushkin said.
Anotherorganizations.”groupthat SFC funds is Student Senate’s payroll. College third-year and SLAC treasurer Izzy Sanchez-Foster argues that this should not be funded through the SAF.
The Student Finance Committee was able to fund student organizations in excess through the 2021–22 academic year. SFC manages and distributes the student activity fund, and for the past two years had access to a surplus of funds in the absence of inperson events and organization activities. However, SFC has now spent this budget surplus and will return to distribution practices it utilized before the 2019–20 academic year.
The letter requests that the board not only release a public statement pledging to divest, but also that they board post progress updates in January of 2024 and 2025, along with a plan to fully divest from fossil fuel holdings — including pooled investments — in any of the top 200 fossil fuel corporations by January 2025.
“We take pride in Oberlin’s accomplishments and vision, yet we believe the lack of a clear fossil fuel divestment policy and public statement of commitment is inconsistent with Oberlin’s leadership in sustainability,” the letter stated.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the College’s large, SFC-funded events — such as Solarity and Drag Ball — did not occur during the 2019–20 and 2020–21 academic years. College third-year and SFC co-chair Leo Hidy explained that because SFC did not have to fund these events, the organization entered the 2021–22 academic year with an SAF surplus of over $500,000 and could fund student organizations more liberally than it had in the past.
“All organizations will see a difference in allocation from [2022 — when we had the surplus — to 2023 —
“Right now, we don’t really know where their money is going,” Kukushkin said. “While they may not be directly invested in fossil fuel companies, they may have their holdings in banks that have stakes in fossil fuel companies. It’s important that Oberlin really stick to its mission and ethics in that way.”
“SFC is super happy to have seen all the amazing things student organizers have accomplished this year, and we are proud that each dollar from the SAF was put back into the hands of students,” Hidy wrote in an email to the Review.
However, SFC has now spent the entirety of this surplus. The size of the SAF for the 2022–23 academic year will likely be more consistent with the size of the SAF from the 2019–20 academic years. This means that some organizations will not receive as much funding as they did this past school year or all of the funding they requested for the fall 2022 semester.
Kukushkin argued that the lack of financial transparency makes it challenging to assess the extent of Oberlin’s involvement in fossil fuel investments and the speed at which Oberlin is moving away from these kinds of investments. They hope the formal call to action initiated by the letter will encourage the board to open up more about how Oberlin is involved with the fossil fuel industry.
“The Student Finance Committee allocates money to support student organizations and improve campus life,” Julian wrote in an email to the Review. “To reach this mission, they fund specific programming initiatives on campus that are not official student organizations.”Hidyclarified that although SFC will have a relatively smaller SAF to manage in the 2022–23 school year, SFC has reserves and is not in a budget deficit.
Ella Moxley News Editor
“As a co-chair of OMTA, I’ve been able to see firsthand how much we rely on the SFC for funding,” Bross wrote in an email to the Review. “Our last OMTA show, Chicago, was very successful, but this was only possible with funding from the SFC due to the lack of supplies from the theater department.”
The push for fossil fuel divestment started in 2014, but at that point, the board rejected the student proposals for divestment and student leaders involved in the project graduated soon after. This past semester, alumni behind the 2014 proposals and others from the class of ’64 helped reestablish the movement with a new divestment committee that includes students from campus environmental organizations.
“There’s always times when people are sick and there’s kind of an influx in a need for subs and coverage and stuff like that,” Nordan said. “The reason I made that chart is just because I was having a hard time keeping track of what had been covered and what hadn’t.”
Hidy expressed interest in potentially collaborating with academic departments such as the Theater Department to alleviate some of these concerns.
COVID-19 cases have increased on campus over the last week. Between May 13–19, Oberlin recorded 63 positive COVID cases. As a result, co-ops in the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association have worked to adapt to the increased number of sick students.
Earlier this week, Pyle Inn sent out an emergency request to other co-ops asking for assistance covering the shifts of co-op members with COVID. The co-op has also moved exclusively to grab-and-go to reduce further exposure among the membership.
Lauren Krainess News
I feel like everyone knows that Gigi and I are really close. I’m also really grateful that I got a chance to work with Kush, who was an amazing co-editor and friend, and so many other people that I could mention.
write and its potential consequences. [This is] a classic case of cascading misunderstandings that result from a poorly communicated email.”
I look back fondly on the first story I ever wrote. I reported on a protest, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t know that I was supposed to record people talking. When I got there, I was going up to people and asking them for quotes, and I was trying to write down what they were saying so quickly. My notes just look crazy from those interviews because I was so stressed! I was like, “I guess I’ll take a picture of the protest.” And I think I edited the picture too, because I thought I knew what I was doing. It didn’t look good, and I made all the red accents really bright and it’s really ugly.
According to Burgess, the situation has been resolved, but if the Council decides it necessary, it can take further steps. In his concluding statement for the resolution of the censure, which took place May 16, English questioned if the Council violated the open meetings law by making decisions in closed discussion that excluded him. He also asked whether or not the Council president exceeded the authority that the position has under Oberlin’s charter.
as the Tuesday meeting was the last in relation to this censure. Burgess believes that this situation stresses the Council’s expectations for confidentiality in executive sessions.“The Council speaks as one voice,” Burgess said. “So in an open public meeting, everyone speaks their mind. They represent different constituencies, that’s fully expected, but for the three areas — employees, litigation, and real estate — we speak as one. It would be inappropriate for any one member to voice their opinion.”BothEnglish and the Council will continue their duties while welcoming a new member, McFarlin. Adelman’s departure left a space open for a new president as well as a new member. Bryan Burgess was elected as president, and McFarlin will take Adelman’s open seat.
“I have indicated that I believe any further action on this matter — including the possibility of rescinding the resolution — is up to the five members of Council who voted for it,” English said. “That question is beyond my control. I will remain focused on moving forward in a cooperative way to address the challenges facing our city.”The Council looks to move forward from this situation,
“I’m really looking forward to [McFarlin joining the Council],” Burgess said. “He has a lot of experience in the city. He’s been the chairman of the historic preservation commission, and he worked on the city’s comprehensive plan. I expect that he’ll be able to step into the role and get up to speed pretty quickly.”
Then I went out of town that weekend for a Model UN conference, and as I was sitting in this really boring conference room, my friends texted me a picture of the front page of the Review, and it had my article and the picture I’d taken on the front page. And I was like, “Oh no.” But it felt really good, too. It was such a silly story, but for the first time I had worked so hard on something, and then to see it up there on the front page — even though it was a slow news week — felt really good.
You’ve kind of already touched on this, but what accomplishments during your time at the Review are you most proud of?
Looking back on your time at the Review, what advice would you give your first-year self?
When I became a news editor, two of my main goals were to increase community news coverage and to increase mentorship at the Review. I feel really proud of the way those goals have manifested. Several weeks ago, we published a paper with only community news in the News section, and I feel like that is a really direct manifestation of the goals I set out to accomplish alongside Gigi, Anisa, and Kar, who also feel really strongly about those issues. I think there are definitely other goals to accomplish and things we could do better, but I think we’ve come a long way in the past couple of years.
Ella Fahl Moxley, Review News Editor Extraordinaire
OFF THE CUFF The Oberlin Review Sussy | May 20, 2022 5
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
“I’m looking forward to working with the other members and hearing from the public about what the issues are,” McFarlin said. “There’s always a touch of anxiety going into a new organization, especially something like this … but I feel comfortable with the procedure. … I’m certainly honored to be chosen, — all my thanks to the other councilmembers — and I’m ready to get started.”
It’s hard because a lot of my memories of my time at the Review were working remotely, as three of my six semesters
as news editor were remote. A lot of my memories are not physically at the Review I really cherish the time that I have been able to spend in the office.
Three categories of meetings fall under Oberlin City Council’s executive sessions: employees, litigation, and real estate. The Council believes that English’s emails betrayed the confidentiality of an executive meeting where the Council discussed an annual evaluation of Clark. Although there are no ramifications to censuring and it is largely symbolic, English defended his perspective in his statement to the Council last Monday.
I’m so proud of where the News section stands today. When I first started writing for the Review, I was the only senior staff writer, but now we have a team of three editors, two senior staff writers, and our layout editor. We’re a really cohesive group of six people with a lot of guest stars who come in regularly and work with us. I can’t take credit for all the people who are doing great work, but it’s been really great to see people who came in their first year with no experience with journalism who are now thriving, being so creative, and working so hard to make something that’s really beautiful and exciting. I’m really excited that I was part of making that happen.
Ella Fahl Moxley has been involved with the Review since her first semester at Oberlin and has worked as a News Editor for six semesters. She has contributed to notable coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, racism in STEM, and community news. When she is not editing the News section, she can be found going on runs and avoiding bird attacks, talking to her track star boyfriend Ansel, or doing homework behind the Science Library desk. Next year she plans to move in with her partner, Gigi, in D.C.
I think just to be a little bit more assertive. It took me a really long time to push myself into trying new things, whether that was journalistically or just going to the office or asking for help. Once I started doing those things, I grew so much as a journalist and met these people who are really special and amazing and important to me, so I wish I had done that sooner.
At last Monday’s City Council meeting, Councilmember Ray English read a statement in response to his recent censuring. The censure, the first time City Council has taken this action in 15 years, was a response to an alleged breach in confidentiality during an email exchange between English and Jon Clark, the city’s law director. Seperate from the censure, the City Council appointed Michael McFarlin as the newest member of Council on Monday to replace Heather Adelman, former councilmember and president, who resigned from her position to join Oberlin College as a sustainability manager.“The point of the [email] exchange was to point out something that Mr. Clark had done wrong,” said Bryan Burgess, president of the City Council. “Rather than handling that discreetly, Mr. English copied councilmembers and other City staff. Ultimately in the exchange, he reprimanded Mr. Clark for something that had been mentioned in the Council’s executive session just a few nights before.”
I was feeling a little bit lost my first year, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my free time or how to find my sense of community. I was talking to my advisor at the time — Jan Cooper, the Review’s sponsor — and she was like, “Oh, you should write for the Review. You can do it for credit, and you already know the person you’ll be working with, Anisa.” Anisa was one of my very first friends at Oberlin because she was in my PAL group and first-year seminar. So I started writing, and while there were definitely some messy times in the first year, Anisa was always so supportive and I’ll never forget having her as my first editor. I trusted her so much, and she really brought me into the Review and taught me everything I knew.
that to the attention of the administration. I’m really proud that the Review has such a strong connection to campus that we are aware of stories before they even manifest.
Besides COVID, we did some really important work last spring about racism in the STEM departments on campus. I think that was just a starting point for future work, but that was a really important story to report, a story to be heard and told.
I think probably just a lot of community.
Juliana Gaspar Senior Staff Writer
City Council Censures Ray English, Welcomes New Member
English cast the sole vote against the censuring. All other Council members agreed that English had broken confidentiality regarding an executive meeting held April 11. Although he admitted to his mistake and committed to not making the same error in the future, he also addressed what he believed to be incorrect or unfair in the Council’s decision to censure him. English also pointed to a lack of clarity in policy about how and when councilmembers can speak or share information.
McFarlin is as optimistic as Burgess regarding his new position on the Council. He is confident that he will be able to catch up quickly due to his experience on other boards and committees.
Why did you start working for the Review?
“I believe there is ample evidence indicating that the City Council process leading to the censure resolution was unfair and that the censure resolution itself contained statements that were simply false or that pertained matters where Council policy is unclear,” English said in his statement.
What have been the most important stories in your time as News Editor?
The number-one skill I’ve learned is just staying cool in a crisis. I think there’s always a crisis at Oberlin and the Review. There’s always the story that drops last-minute, or the person who suddenly doesn’t want to talk to the Review anymore, or a COVID outbreak. Sometimes, everyone on senior staff gets sick or you walk in on Friday morning to learn that the lawyer said you can’t run your front-page story and you have to redo the entire layout before noon.
Photo by Kenji Anderson
CollegeEditorfourth-year
I’m honestly really proud of the work that the Review and the News section have done to cover COVID-19. I think the Review is in such a unique position to be aware of what’s going on on campus, sometimes even before people in the administration are. For example, in December, the Review became aware pretty early on that there was an outbreak on campus, and we brought
“I want to say first that I made a mistake,” English said in his statement. “The mistake involved not thinking carefully about an email message that I was about to
I think those things used to freak me out, and now they do so a lot less.
This isn’t very specific, but one of my favorite memories of the Review was last year during COVID when we weren’t printing and weren’t allowed to be in our office. So we worked in Wilder Hall, which was super weird. Thursday nights, Gigi and I had this tradition where halfway through production, we would take a break to go downstairs to DeCafé. They had a special where you could get a cookie and milk for a meal swipe, so that was the thing we always did — our treat for getting through Thursday night. I got really close to Gigi, spending time with her doing that. Working with Gigi has been one of my favorite parts of being on the Review. We grew from baby writers to really confident editors together, and I am so grateful that we were able to do that together and that I could learn from her. So that is a happy memory that stands out.
What do you think you will take away from your time working at the Review and carry with you into your postOberlin life?
What has been your favorite memory during your time with the Review?
Ella Fahl Moxley
College third-years and Big Parade Coordinators Mayu Evans and Audrey Burkey hold up one of their Big Parade floats, a chicken on a silver platter.
College first-year Nova Gomez played Roxie, the show’s murderous protagonist, and she remembers the excitement the cast felt during the surprise open ing night with great fondness.
In ensuring that the team felt comfortable and capa ble of performing in a way that they enjoyed, it seemed that there was greater opportunity for everyone in volved to bond and have fun with the production pro cess.College third-year Anna Jefferis, who played Velma in the show, found that her relationship with and ap preciation for her castmates was the highlight of her experience.“Myfavorite numbers were not the ones I was in,” she said. “I think watching my fellow cast members perform, … it just pushes you to do your very best, but it’s also just awesome to share a performance space with such talented people.”
Sierra Colbert Senior Staff Writer
Smith-Cohen also held a deep sense of admiration for all of the talented people involved in the show’s pro duction.“Itwas a wonderful production to work on,” Smith-Cohen said. “The creative team was great, and we really put on a magnificent show. I’m really grate ful for the actors, the amount of work they put in, and the pit orchestra, I’m really, really happy about. They sounded really good and were honestly the best pit orchestra that I’ve had the pleasure to work with. It was so exciting to learn from them as much as to teach them the Chicago score.”
Lilyanna D’Amato Arts & Culture Editor
Students perform in OMTA’s production of Chicago, which prioritized performers’ comfort over adhering to the sexu alized choreography of the original play.
As a result, the team decided to add an additional performance in the form of an invited dress rehearsal so that friends and family who wanted to attend would have the chance to do so. When all of the tickets for that performance were reserved, they opened it up to the public, resulting in a full house of 100 people — it was an opening night that arrived one day early.
“It made me uncomfortable to think about doing a show that was about sex and the exploitation of female bodies while catering to the original vision of the show that was created by a sexual predator,” Hogan said. “So myself and the rest of the creative team and the cast were having conversations about how to make the re
“I really liked the way that comfort was addressed,” Gomez said. “Every single step of the way, they were making sure that everyone was comfortable with ev erything, and I just think that’s such a better approach to take in life. It’s such a nice thing.”
“The audience was so responsive to everything,” she said. “In between every number, all of us were back stage going, ‘Oh my god, do you hear how loud they are? This is Attendancecrazy!’”wasnot the only special thing about Ho gan’s Chicago. As a part of this production, Hogan and her team sought to steer themselves away from certain unsavory elements of the show’s history and instead toward a piece that could be better appreciated by a modern audience.
Hogan and her team shared an intense bond and love for this project, and as this year of theater comes to a close, she is now looking toward the future and all of the possibilities in store for OMTA and Oberlin student theater more broadly.
This emphasis on the comfort of the performers was greatly appreciated by the cast.
ARTS & CULTURE
OMTA Packs House with Modern Adaptation of Chicago
See Community Tradition, page 8 6
Various community and College organizations, including the Ken dal Precision Lawn Chair Brigade, the Oberlin High School March ing Band, the town’s Cub Scouts, OCircus, WOBC, and the Big Parade ExCo followed Russell’s bright red convertible, dancing and holding up enormous celebratory banners. As the WOBC staff passed by, College fourth-year and WOBC Operations
Arts & Culture May 20, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 151, Number 22
“The theater community — the Oberlin community — has been proving over and over again that student theater is an integral part of art on this campus,” she said. “And the art that we make ourselves as students provokes joy, love, understanding, and community, and it deserves attention, commitment, and celebra tion. We’ve created this momentum that deserves to be upheld by the campus community and by the de partments that we work in so that current and future students can inherit and develop a creative community that is, necessarily, by and for students.”
Last weekend saw the full run of the Oberlin Musical Theater Association’s final musical of the 2021–22 ac ademic year, Chicago. The show ran from Friday, May 13 to Sunday, May 15 in Wilder Main Space, and was met with extreme enthusiasm from the student body, illustrated by the unprecedented turnout.
chicken on it. We made a cute shop ping cart and we constructed a bowl with a bunch of fake spaghetti in it. We had WOBC[-FM] in a big pie. I think what makes the parade so kooky and fun is that even though we do pur chase a lot of materials, we make most of the floats through found objects — things that we’ve had in the Parade Space for the past 20 years that we’ve reused again and again. I think that’s what makes it so exciting.”
hearsal room a safe space for exploration and vulner ability, especially with potentially scary or traumatic issues. We thought about ways to reclaim the source material and make it meaningful for contemporary audiences — specifically, for young, digitally minded, socially aware Oberlin students.”
Courtesy of Clarissa Heart
Courtesy of Mayu Evans
In particular, the group wanted to adapt the chore ography of the production, which was originally di rected and choreographed by Bob Fosse, to better rep resent their own voices as a cast and crew.
Last Saturday, students and commu nity members gathered in and around Tappan Square to celebrate one of Oberlin’s most beloved traditions: Big Parade. For the first time in two years, crowds oohed and aahed as passersby donned festive face paint, sequined costumes, and the parade’s signature outlandish floats to make their way down East College Street, relishing in the arrival of spring and the return of a long-missed community event. With National Teacher of the Year Kurt Russell leading the group, Big Parade coordinators College fourth-year Pri ya Banerjee and College third-years Mayu Evans and Audrey Burkey rev eled in seeing their year’s worth of preparation come to life.
Music director and College third-year Ethan
Though shocking to the team, this reception from the student body was extremely gratifying.
“This year, the theme was ‘feast,’” Evans said. “We had one float that was a silver platter with a giant roast
Director and College third-year Maeve Hogan had low expectations for audience turnout and was far more focused on finding her own satisfaction through the creative process.
“I thought I knew what it was going to look like, and I knew that I needed to find my fulfillment in the work rather than the audience turnout,” she said. “Then, we were selling tickets in Mudd [Center]. We started selling them at 3 p.m. with 100 tickets for each show. I showed up at 4 p.m. the first day, and all but six tickets had been sold. So that kind of shook up my world.”
Big Parade Returns to Oberlin After Two-Year Hiatus
College third-year and Dance and Cre ative Writing major Emmacate Sauer, another dancer in the show, noted how the technology involved in the perfor mance makes it both challenging and unique.“Ifeel like what excites me about it is I’ve done pieces with clear-ish narra tives before, but I think I’ve never been a part of something that’s been as heav ily researched,” Sauer said. “Also, the technology! That’s crazy and I’m still struggling with it.”
“This is a chance for us to showcase the most fun parts of our cultures and also some of the most ac cessible parts of our cultures,” she said. “One of the things about culture is that it’s hard to learn about if you don’t know it’s there. Asian Night Market gives students a chance to get exposed to things.”
Bright, colorful artworks were on dis play in the lobby windows of the Irene and Alan Wurtzel Theater this past week, marking the first part of Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista’s mul tidisciplinary project Somewhere Good. The project is a collaboration between Oberlin’s Dance, Theater, and TIMARA departments as well as a community project between Oberlin dancers, En glish for Speakers of Other Languages, students of the Conservatory, and resi dents of Kendal at Oberlin. This Friday and Saturday, the Wurtzel Theater will host students and community members to view the artwork up close and watch Oberlin Dance Company’s performance of Somewhere Good
Asian Night Market Creates Space to Celebrate
have passed, of histories that have been forgotten, and of voices that have been silenced.Theproject will take place as a set of three exhibitions. The first is a display of art composed of ArtiFACTs made by Oberlin students and Kendal residents.
College fourth-year Sarah Wong performed at Asian Night Market with Oberlin College Taiko. She talked about the festival’s ability to teach others about Asian diasporic cultures.
“There’s just some kind of power and pride in being able to showcase our art form at an event like that,” Wong said. “That we were able to express ourselves
“It’s just a reminder of how much support you can get from the Oberlin community,” she said. “It’s all there — you just kind of have to know where to look.”
“The exhibits are an experiment in the many places we call home, how we remember them, and how we move in them,” Evangelista wrote in his direc tor’s note, which ties into the second exhibit.Asthe display moves from the lobby into the theater, one can see dozens of boxes labeled Balikbayan Cargo
“The last exhibit tonight is a histori cal one,” Evangelista wrote. “An exhibit that is invisible but heard and deeply felt. In 1904, the St. Louis World [Fair’s] main attraction was the ‘human exhib its.’ The largest ‘human zoo’ displays at St. Louis were the 70,000 Philippine exhibits hosting more than 1,200 ‘na tives.’”Evangelista emphasized that while the performance draws attention to for gotten and overshadowed histories like the 1904 “human zoos,” it also acknowl edges people, voices, and stories that cannot be recovered.
The Oberlin Review | May 20, 2022 7
loudly and proudly in this space where we knew we were supported and we knew that we had some thing to contribute was really something that we don’t always get in other performance spaces.”
At its core, Somewhere Good is about double meanings: the queerness of ges tures, the presence of absence, and the reality of loss — of family members that
Good has invited its par ticipants to engage with Filipinx histo ry and the difficulties of loss in diverse, creative, and beautiful ways. Evangelis ta, his creative team, and ODC extend this invitation to their audience.
Courtesy of John Seyfried
Nouaime echoed the sentiment, offering advice to other students who may be struggling to find affinity spaces on campus.
Somewhere Good Fuses Dance, Theater, TIMARA, Community
“[We are] having to enact history as we have to physically press the button on stage,” she said. “As performers, in order to create these new relations be tween the unknown, known, past, and current, we use this ambiguity within space, time, history, and memory as an invitation.”Loss,ambiguity, and fragmentation can, of course, be frustrating, and Some where Good highlights this frustration.
Photo by Abe Frato, Photo Editor
wake of this uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes because of COVID and all this harmful rhetoric that’s going around with our politicians. … It’s really important to bandBothtogether.”Wongand Nouaime agreed that Asian Night Market provided them with a sense of support from the Oberlin community, offering them a space of be longing that isn’t always available on campus.
The disjointedness of loss can be seen when dancers interact with but tons atop the balikbayan boxes in the center of the stage. Pressing different buttons in different ways prompts the
In preparation for the show, Evange lista asked ODC students to reflect on what this performance meant to them. College second-year and Dance major Aimee Watts described her experience as a dancer in the piece.
“It brings all of us together who are part of the community,” she said. “It also allows an opportunity for others outside the community to educate them selves on our cultural traditions, especially in the
College third-year Dina Nouaime sold tote bags adorned with photos of her oil paintings at the event. Nouaime decided to donate the money she earned to Red Canary Song, a grassroots coalition that advo cates for the rights of Asian and migrant sex work ers. The return of the Market this year was particu larly meaningful to her, given harmful rhetoric that emerged during the pandemic.
Sauer also linked the effect of the per formance to the meaning behind it.
“The movement tonight communi cates the words lost, the words in bod ies, and especially the words in motion,” he wrote. “This is not to say this is a project of recovery [or] absolution. In stead, this dance invites the integration of loss, tradition, and community.”
“These boxes, balikbayan boxes, are care packages typically sent by Fili pino/a/x families in the United States to families still in the Philippines,” Evan gelista wrote. “It continues a long tradi tion of sending remittances back to the Philippines.”Inthisway, the stage invokes emo
tions associated with being away from home and family. The boxes signify the complexity of transpacific relationships, geographical separation, and familial love, thereby centering Filipinx and Fil ipinx-American history and culture.
On May 20 and 21, Oberlin’s Dance, Theater, and TIMARA departments will collaborate on Somewhere Good with English for Speakers of Other Languages students of the Conservatory and residents of Kendal at Oberlin.
audio to start, change, stutter, and stop, which in turn, causes dancers to start, change, stutter, and stop as well. Watts remarked on what it feels like to be a part of this fragmentation.
“Having the process and the dissem ination of information near the goals of the work is something I’ve never thought about before,” Sauer said. “I did find it frustrating at times, but it’s kind of crazy and meta to think about. You don’t know this piece of information, because the idea is that you’re search ing for the histories that have been ob scured. As a dancer, you’re supposed to be kind of frustrated, and that’s a part of Somewhereit.”
Adrienne Sato Senior Staff Writer
For the first time since 2019, the campus gathered at Asian Night Market, an event complete with food, art, and performances from a number of Asian dias poric organizations on campus. Asian Night Market was created in 2011 to replicate the kinds of markets common in different parts of Asia. The event strives to give Asian students a chance to engage with their cultural heritage while also providing non-Asian stu dents an opportunity to learn about these traditions.
“I think this performance is about what it means to explore the ambiguity within the past and present of Filipino history and what it means to create a space for this history through all its loss and fragmentation,” Watts said. “When reaching toward an unknown past, it’s important to acknowledge that we do not know all these histories and lie wit ness to its loss and disjointedness.”
Milo Ono
In 16 days, my beloved co-editor, College fourth-year Lilyanna D’Amato, will be graduating with a degree in Comparative American Studies. She laughs at my feeblest jokes and says “slay” when I say “slay.” Some times we match our outfits by accident. She wrote her thesis on One Direction and lives in a house where Love is Blind , Love Island , and Are You the One seem to be playing all the time. I admire her beautiful writing and tireless dedication to making Arts different from all other sections, even when our Editor-in-Chief de
Continued from page 6
In the earliest iteration of the pa rade, the 2001 Eastwood Carnival and Parade, colorfully masked Eastwood Elementary School students frolicked across the school grounds as they car ried a 30-person canvas dragon. By the next year, the event had expand ed to include the rest of Oberlin, in viting community members and stu dents alike to build floats, organize the event, and walk in the parade. In the last two decades, the event has transformed into a town-wide festi val. When the festival was canceled in 2020, the class of 2022 worried this treasured tradition would leave with them.However, thanks to Banerjee, Ev ans, and Burkey, the parade emerged from its two-year hiatus better than ever.“I would consider the parade a massive success,” Burkey said. “I’m trained as the Big Parade treasur er, and at the start of fall semester I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea that there was so much that went into putting on the parade. It felt like when you’re a camp counsel or and you realize that the magic of camp doesn’t just happen for kids — people actually have to put it togeth er. We didn’t know what to do or what the parade was supposed to look like, so we just kind of made it up. That’s
why it was so special on the day of the parade to finally see all that work pay off.”Evans added that the trio’s biggest concern was making sure College stu dents knew about Big Parade. With out new members, Burkey and Ev ans worried the future of the parade would again hang in the balance.
“It’s a very celebrated tradition in the town, but because none of the younger students had been to the last parade, it wasn’t really understood or known among the student body,” Ev ans said. “Now that people have actu ally gone and seen how fun it is, they have a more tangible idea of what Big Parade is all about. They know what to expect for next year and will hope fully come again. That will be helpful for us in terms of planning the next one, but I think that it will also in spire people to join. We want to make the next one even better. But this was a pretty crucial move in terms of pre serving institutional memory and get ting people to care about the cause.”
tor? How did it go?
Parade through the Big Parade ExCo, a for-credit class taught by Baner jee, Evans, and Burkey in an effort to drum up support for the parade.
For Burkey, the parade captures the best of Oberlin’s quirky culture, bringing students and community members together to share in a festi val of silliness, child-like fun, and ca maraderie.“Inthepast couple years, I’ve seen how strong the divide between the College and the town can be,” Burkey said. “This event fills everyone with joy and makes people feel connected to this place that we all love. Up until then, a lot of our friends didn’t really know what Big Parade was because it was canceled our first year [due to] the pandemic. So seeing it all come to fruition, seeing the crowds of peo ple coming, you can tell how much it means to the community. They’ve been waiting for this day to come back, and it made us realize how im portant the parade is. It was honestly very emotional and heartwarming to see.”As Burkey mentioned, most Oberlin students, including two of the event’s organizers, had never been to Big Parade before. Although Burkey and Evans participated in organizing the event’s 20th-anniversary celebration in October, this was the first time they helped plan the parade itself.
Manager Eamon McKeon grinned as he showed off his outfit, a gigantic pa pier mâché cherry pie.
clares “cuteness” is not a valid reason for a journalistic choice. I wish I had met her sooner, and I treasure the time we have had together.
Kathleen Kelleher
This is what I want to do — I just want to do it on a bigger scale. I’m so happy to start at the bottom of the professional world, at an organization that’s publish ing things that I really care about, and moving up. I’m going on a big trip to Italy in June, and then staying in London, and then I’m hoping to move to Los Angeles.
Chessum always thought of the parade as a way to make friends and procrastinate on her schoolwork, but standing amidst the Big Parade crowd on Saturday, she realized the enormi ty of the parade and the extent of its impact.“Ihadn’t been able to visualize the scale of the parade until that mo ment,” she said. “Seeing how many people had gathered around Tappan to dance and sing and jump around, I realized that this event has been a part of the Oberlin community for longer than I’ve been on the planet. I saw the town come alive at that mo ment and it felt really special. That’s what I hope to preserve.”
Do you remember your interview to be arts edi
What do you think we’ve accomplished? Has Arts changed since you’ve been brought on to it?
I really loved your piece that you wrote on winter break and being here for the holidays. Of my own pieces, I cared the most about the Joan Didion arti cle, because I just really liked her, and I kept having this vision of Joan Didion being like, “That sucks!” I also really liked writing this Big Parade article. I got a lot out of that.
I had crazy imposter syndrome about the Review . I was visiting my brother at Indiana University when I did my interview, so I was in a hotel room. I spent the whole day super nervous because I had spent the last three years being like, “You can’t write at the Re view ! The Review is for really smart people!” Hon estly, I think I blacked out for the entire interview. They emailed me the next day, and I screamed in my hotel room.
Lonely Arts & Culture Editor
Photo by Anisa Curry Vietze
“I came to a few of the build days at the Big Parade Space, but I got real ly involved this semester because the ExCo met once a week,” College sec ond-year and Big Parade ExCo stu dent Ava Chessum said. “We would spend time building little sculptures and painting. We had one of the founders of Big Parade come to teach students how to make puppets out of papier mâché. I feel really lucky to be a part of that legacy.”
I think that it has changed. Maeve [Woltring] and I wrote really similarly — talking about what the writing meant or what that was supposed to look like was more of our focus. Now, it’s much more about being creative about what pieces you’re choosing to pitch and the angle. That’s something I’ve really val ued — I got so in the humdrum of doing the same thing every week that when you came in and were like, “What about this!?” I was kind of like, “Oh. That makes sense, I guess.” I feel like we’ve accomplished just being a little bit more creative in the way that we understand what our job is.
Since the parade, Evans and Bur key noted that a slew of College sec ond-years have expressed interest in joining the club, suggesting the event include live performances in Tappan, a bigger food selection, and may be even a petting zoo. Most of these prospective members discovered Big
Slay. Slay.
What are some of your favorite articles that we’ve put out as a section or that you’ve written?
Do you have any advice for future Arts Editors?
ON THE RECORD
I feel like the Review system forces you to have that new perspective all the time. Someone grad uates or leaves, and a new face is there, saying new things.
Community Tradition Returns, Oberlin Celebrates Big Parade
Exactly — and adamantly wanting to do things a new way. I think that’s really good, and it pushed the both of us.
Tell me about your path at the Review
Send out emails right after the pitch meeting. And, I guess don’t put up walls that aren’t there. Really al low yourself to be creative within this medium, be cause a newspaper is really important. It’s supposed to convey information, but it’s also supposed to push boundaries. I think that’s a really important part about Arts & Culture — that it’s supposed to reflect the values of the community, and the community is constantly pushing, especially Oberlin’s community. So maybe just pay attention to things that aren’t on the events calendar.
I just didn’t really know what I wanted to do for a really long time. I always knew that I loved to write, and I knew that I liked school. In every other pro fessional opportunity, I really hadn’t found any sort of drive, and that scared me, you know? You’re like, “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do after I leave and there’s no more academic validation?” But work ing at the Review , I’ve gotten more out of this experi ence than pretty much anything else I’ve ever done. It makes me realize that I want to do this as a career.
I was too nervous to write for the Review for the first three years of college, and I really regret it. I was a staff writer over the summer, and at the beginning of this year, in August, I became arts editor. This is the first job I’ve ever had that’s made me realize what it is to be passionate about something, and I am re ally committed to the Review in a way that I wasn’t expecting to be.
What do you want to do post-grad? What’s your dream?
Lilyanna D’Amato, Review Arts & Culture Editor
Lily and Kathleen unintentionally matched outfits this Wednesday.
Arts & Culture 8
What do you mean by that?
This interview was lovingly edited for length and clar ity.
Jocelyn Blockinger, Cinema Studies major
Senior Memories
“A summer evening walk into town with my roommates :)” Olivia Gregory, Environmental Studies major
“In this photo Gigi Ewing, my favorite human [who] I met in Oberlin, is having a moment with a snowperson. I love the winters in Ohio; the quiet and gray fea tures are melancholy, meditative. Gigi and I went on a long walk down the bike path, and it felt like we were the only people in the world. We had a moment with a cou ple of deer too, but I didn’t capture that on Kushcamera.”Bulmer, Environmental Studies major
This Week 9
Sarah Wong, Musical Studies, Law and Society major with an Education Studies concentration
“A special night in Finney Chapel with great friends :)”
“Hanging out on the first nice day of the spring with my two best friends :)”
“It was so unhinged of Oberlin College to have us stay on campus last summer, but it was also such a magical time! We were all living in our own houses for the first time, there was so much fresh food, we were all finally 21, and I think this picture really encapsulates the energy of that semester.”
Taylor Hoefer, Environmental Studies major
“This is a photo of my first concert as a member of Oberlin College Taiko! I have made many pre cious memories ever since then with OCT, and it was pretty hard to choose just one photo. I con sider this the start of many happy times!”
“After being sent home during the pan demic, I finally got to go on the spring break trip to Niagara Falls that I was look ing forward to [since] sophomore year.”
Eric Schank, Environmental Studies major
Gigi Ewing, English and Politics major
Design by Wiley Smith, This Week Editor
“My ultimate frisbee team going to Christynationals!!!!”Chen, Cinema Studies major
“It was super fun dressing up for this toga party with my friends Derek and Wiley!” Amanda Bloom, Psychology major
Sylvie Weinstein, Psychology major
“This is a pic of the tennis team [in spring 2019] before we competed in our first match at the conference championship my freshman year! I won both my doubles and my sin gles matches that day for the first time all season, lending us two of our five points to win :)”
Hannah Keidan, Economics major
With graduation on the horizon, many seniors are looking back fondly on the past four years. We asked graduating seniors to share some of their favorite memories at Oberlin. Here’s what they said!
“Before the pandemic hit in March 2020 and before it felt like the world turned upside down, I lived with two of my favorite people in the world. This photo is actually a screenshot of a video I took one night in our little quad in South Hall. After we were sent home, I would spend hours looking at this photo and trying to transport myself back to the before times. The look in Kush’s eye when I panned the camera to his face was how I knew I loved him.”
James Dryden, Theater major
“Oberlin Smash! I’ve been involved with the College’s Smash scene since 2017 and spent the last three semesters as the head tourna ment organizer. This photo is from some time in the spring of 2020 before we were all sent home so abruptly … I made so many memories with these people.”
College third-year Kaylyn Ready, an East Asian Studies and Dance major, shared a specific incident. She spoke about a time when a white professor used a slur in her class, and the reaction she and other students had afterward.
The Editorial Board encourgages anyone interested in submitting an Opinions piece to email the Opinions editors at opinions@oberlinre view.org to request a copy of the Opinions primer. Opinions expressed in editorials, letters, op-eds, columns, cartoons, and other Opinions pieces do not necessarily reflect those of The Oberlin Review staff. Sub mission of content to the Review constitutes an understanding of this publication policy. Any content published by The Oberlin Review for ever becomes the property of The Oberlin Review and its administra tors. Content creators retain rights to their content upon publication, but the Review reserves the right to republish and/or refuse to alter or remove any content published by the Review . It is up to Senior Staff’s discretion whether to alter content that has already been published. 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 Wednes day at 4:30 p.m. in the Opinions email for inclusion in that week’s is sue. Full-length pieces should be between 600 and 900 words; letters to the editor should be less than 600 words. All submissions must in clude contact information, with full names and any relevant titles, for all signatories; we do not publish pieces anonymously. All letters from multiple writers should be carbon-copied to all signatories to confirm authorship. The Review reserves the right to edit all submissions for clarity, length, grammar, accuracy, and strength of argument, and in consultation with Review style. Editors work to preserve the voice of the writers and will clear any major edits with authors prior to publi cation. Headlines are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. 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 or otherwise promoting an event, organization, or other entity to which the author has direct ties.
So many of the tacit rules we teach ourselves to follow at Oberlin are based in kindness: we should use whatever pronouns people wish us to, “take space/ make space,” create institutions to pro tect and empower those on the periphery of current society, challenge institutions of exploitation, and center marginalized voices. If we acknowledge that universal kindness is the basis of these claims, it should be easy to see that we must not isolate ourselves in our efforts to bring about a better world. We must bring those who at first disagree with us into the conversation and center their voices so that we do not alienate them further. We must make forgiveness a priority and selfless education a custom. Do not write off those with whom you are seeming ly at odds. This is a plea for you to see beyond the divide that benefits those in power. There is no political correctness in a true working-class movement. Pri oritize kindness, and you will never lose yourYouway.have the power, and you know the stakes. Oberlin has the potential to be a truly radical institution. I feel that my work, as well as that of many other alum ni, is a testament to the consistency with which Oberlin produces graduates ready to serve as counterweights to the insti tutional forces in the larger world. This is one of the things that makes it really hard to understand the issues with Ober lin when you’re inside it: Oberlin teaches us how to be the people capable of cri tiquing it. We are left with a conflicting loyalty. We must not fall prey to the easy way out. We must not allow ourselves to give Oberlin a pass because it opened our eyes. If we wish to preserve Oberlin as a force for radicalism in this country, we must create a renewed commitment and intensity within the student body that will force our school to explore new models of community, resist the creeping influence of globalized neoliberalism on liberal arts education, and preserve the pre-revolutionary thought that lies at the core of Oberlin’s appeal.
While there are plenty of student organizations on campus, such as the Asian-American Alliance and the Asian Diaspora Coalition, affinity spaces for Asian-American students are still limited. Third World House, a safe space for students of color, is at risk of closing for next year, and the Multicultural Resource Center has been facing staffing shortages for years. Additionally, Asia House, the only identity-based housing option specifically for Asian students, is open to any student interested in Asian culture, even if they aren’t Asian themselves.
In light of the lack of designated spaces for Asian Americans on campus, and the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, learning about Asian history and culture matters now more than ever for Asian Americans. However, many have felt unsupported in their endeavors.
It has been almost one year since I grad uated from Oberlin. The Memorial Arch in Tappan Square still looms in my mind, as do the words of many of my profes sors. The Oberlin mindset of aspirational compassion and a commitment to chal lenging the status quo, as well as our in stitution’s quixotic failures, continue to inform my work and life every day.
Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is underway, and I’ve tak en some time to reflect on what it means to be Asian-American at Oberlin. There have been some wonderful events on campus, such as the Japanese Student As sociation’s banquet and Asian Night Market, but academically, I realized there are not many places for Asian Americans to thrive. While there were many is sues I identified in my conversations with different people, it all boiled down to one damning realization: the East Asian Studies department does not support all Asian-American students.
Since graduating, I have had the im mense pleasure of working with the Amazon Labor Union to build a true, worker-led movement and achieve unionization at a United States Amazon facility for the first time in history. It took stepping outside of Oberlin, having countless conversations with Amazon workers, and many conversations with current Oberlin students for me to final ly understand what I had really wanted to say to my fellow Obies when I was a student. It was never about critiquing Oberlin or trying to make people feel bad about their behavior. Rather, it has al ways been about pointing out ways that Oberlin students have power they are unaware of. If they do not use that power, Oberlin is at risk of losing its spirit.
SUBMISSIONS POLICY
10
See Lack, page 12
Almost half of the professors in the East Asian Studies department are white, and there are many white students who are majoring or planning to major in East Asian Studies. I want to make it clear that I respect their scholarship, pas sion, and dedication. However, simply showing an interest in East Asian Studies is not the same as having a cultural connection to Asian-American culture and history. It seems like that has not been acknowledged by everyone, as actions from white students and professors have caused harm to Asian students. For in stance, someone I spoke to praised the East Asian Studies department and pro fessors, but felt frustrated by the number of times they had to censor themself because of white students taking up too much space in their class
Shortly before graduating from Ober lin last year, I wrote a piece on the hy pocrisy of Oberlin’s progressivism, and much of what I wrote then I still hold to be true. Our school administration espouses a commitment to workers, stu dents, equality, and radicalism and then turns around and acts without reserve to crush efforts to actually empower these people. Likewise, the students at Ober lin often care more that their arguments are couched in the right words than that the content is consistent with our values. We prefer to discuss the way capitalism beats down our world instead of doing anything about it. I spent two years try ing to build and rebuild a movement at our school that would connect with the Lorain County community and create real change. Yet, at every turn I was met with resistance from the administra tion, ideological pushback from those I thought were on the same page, and what I can only describe as laziness from the students who could have fueled the movement. At the end of the day, Ober lin students often find it more fulfilling to critique the sociological implications of potential actions than to take action. Perhaps most importantly, we fail to hold kindness as a consistent source of deci sionOberlinmaking.students often consider ac tivism to be staging a protest in Tappan Square, writing a zine, reading some Marx in a dimly lit room, and posting on social media. While these activities are forms of activism, they are not forms of organizing by themselves. Organiz ing must come from relationship build ing and engaging people in service of a communal goal. You must spend time critically analyzing the problem you are facing, identify points of weakness in the institutional structures that govern the outcome, and find ways to put pressure on key players. Oberlin students must
not forget that they have an immense amount of influence. You make Oberlin run. Student workers provide a huge ser vice to the College and community that, if halted, would put economic pressure on those in power. You pay the tuition that keeps the College afloat. You do not have to cooperate with any request the College administration makes. Students have the ability to take truly disruptive collective action. Remember, the power you have is in provoking a reaction from the College and town, then choosing how and where to escalate from that reaction. Take the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association as an example. The College is and has been threatening its existence for years, but OSCA’s existence is not up to them. If students organize well enough internally, they will have the power to control almost every aspect of the co-ops on campus and ensure their continued existence. Occupations, refusals to coop erate, and refusals to pay are only three of many options on the table.
Looking Back at Oberlin Students’ Campus Activism One Year Later
Kayla Kim Production Editor
East Asian Studies Program Needs Reform
“The other Asian students in the class went, ‘What the hell just happened? What the hell?’” Ready said. “And then after I talked to a bunch of white students in that class, they went, ‘I didn’t even notice.’ I worked at an [Asian] grocery store and got harassed with that word that this teacher said with no tact. It hurt. And it still does hurt. If you are a white person taking up space in this department, you at least have to acknowledge that you are teaching something that is not yours. You may think it’s yours after all the time you spent in Japan and after all the Japanese people that have sung your praises in Japan, but … there are separate standards to being Asian in America.”
OPINIONS OPINIONS
Julian Mitchell-Israel, OC ’21
May 20, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 151, Number 22
At the start of spring semester, everything felt super weird and different and scary It took a while before it dawned on me why: my entire first semester at Oberlin had consisted of the same classes, the same ExCos, the same professors, the same extracurriculars, and the same co-ed itor at the Review That was the Oberlin I knew In one fell swoop, all of that changed. I kept only one of the same professors, I started taking entirely different ExCos, and the person I had worked with most closely at the Review left to prioritize his honors thesis.
Despite all this, I cannot deny that I am also a little bit sad and scared. As at the end of the fall semester, there are things that have remained constant throughout my time at Oberlin that will be different next year. Despite my excite ment to become Editor-in-Chief, I will be sad to leave the Opinions section behind. I will miss having my three pages to fill, writing as much for the section as I do now, and working with writers to help them tell the stories that are important to them.
Rainy Day Traffic
Oberlin does hold the Title IX-man dated compulsory consent education and bystander training to aid in minimizing the prevalence of sexual assault on campus, these efforts must continue outside of workshops in order to be effective. How can students under stand the importance of this training if they can’t grasp the scope of the problem itself? Resources like Survivors of Sexual Harm & Al lies and the Counseling Center are available to survivors, however, these outlets are ultimate ly remedial and can only really be utilized after harm has already been done. Oberlin is missing a crucial middle piece that address es sexual harm on a cultural level, and those conversations can’t happen until we have the necessary information about the sexual harm that occurs on Withholdingcampus.thisinformation ignores the problem of sexual assault instead of address ing it and speaks volumes about the College’s priorities. Yes, confidentiality is extremely im portant when it comes to protecting survivors’ identities, but releasing data from an anony mous survey in the form of aggregate statistics would not breach this privacy or reveal any personal information. The only thing this non disclosure protects is the false perception that sexual assault doesn’t happen, when it most certainlyExperiencingdoes. harm is already incredibly isolating. In addition to inhibiting critical conversations on campus, withholding infor mation about the prevalence of this problem furthers feelings of isolation. By failing to speak out against a very real issue on campus, the College fails to acknowledge just how se rious sexual assault is. It sends the message
The Oberlin Review | May 20, 2022 11
Catherine Lee
An article titled “Oberlin Completes 2022 Campus Climate Survey” published in the Re view on April 22 reports on the recent com pletion of Oberlin’s fourth Higher Education Data Sharing Sexual Assault Campus Climate Survey This survey is an important tool for the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion as it provides information about the sexual violence happening on campus and the ways in which students, faculty, and staff must ad dress it. The results from this survey, howev er, are not publicly available. Withholding this information prevents students from knowing exactly what’s happening in their community and inhibits them from having a broader con versation about sexual assault
I will miss my dorm room. I cannot say if it is even a par ticularly good room, but it feels like home. Since I moved in the first day of Orientation, its four walls have been there for me through thick and thin, providing a space to study, sleep, have Zoom meetings, and get away from other people.Iwill miss the people who are graduating. I will miss dancing with our wonderful VIBE directors and attend ing Review pitch meetings with our graduating Edi tor-in-Chief and Managing Editor. I will miss my very first co-editor who, even after leaving the section, has contin ued to provide a listening ear and good advice and has been a friendly face around campus.
This may not be the most massive life change you have ever experienced, but it is not insignificant. It is likely that you, like me, are feeling sad and scared and a whole range of other emotions along with the excitement for the new school year, and that is entirely okay You do not have to be going through some major life crisis or have your world turned entirely upside-down for your feelings of anxiety and sadness to be valid. If there is anything I would hope you would take away from all of this, it is a piece of advice I received from a friend a few weeks ago. We were walk ing home to North Campus one night and they said, “Just let yourself be a freshman ” So, to whatever first-years are reading this: just let yourself be a freshman.
Emma Benardete Opinions Editor
The Review’s news article on the survey highlights the guarded nature of this informa tion. “While students and faculty can request the data for research purposes, they are not allowed to disseminate it,” the article reads. Why can the results of the survey be accessed only under specific circumstances and in the name of research? Why are those who do have
Failure to Release Title IX Survey Results Silences Survivors
Reflections From a Mildly Terrified First-Year
Many colleges and universities utilize the same survey Oberlin administered to assess the prevalence of sexual assault on their re spective campuses. Unlike Oberlin, however, many schools that conduct this survey share the information they collect. Kenyon College, Boston University, Northeastern Universi ty, and Regis College all conducted the same survey and published their results on their websites. Each of these reports includes exact statistics and can be accessed in a matter of minutes. However, the problem doesn’t only lie in the fact that Oberlin won’t release the data from the most recent survey the Col lege hasn’t released information from any of the surveys conducted in years past.
Holly Yelton, Staff Cartoonist
See Title IX, page 12
I suppose all of this is to say, to my fellow first-years — though this may also be applicable to second-, third-, and double-degree fourth-years — even though we are not yet graduating, things are changing whether we like it or not. Find the things that you can hold onto. Make sure you stay in touch with your friends who are graduating. Find ways to stay connected with people who are not graduating but who you got to know this year and may not be interacting with as much come fall — you might learn something new about them too. Go back and visit the clubs that you joined and fell in love with but cannot make the time to continue with regularly I always love when former Review staff members come visit us.
Now, once again, my Oberlin experience will change in both exciting and scary ways. I look forward to lightening my academic load by opting for some easier courses. I am excited to become Editor-in-Chief of the Review and work even more closely with our incredible staff and two amaz ing co-leaders. I am excited by the prospect of spending more time in VIBE Tap, and I hope to perform in a few small group numbers in our showcase next semester
COMIC
access to this information not allowed to share it? The prevalence of sexual assault on campus is something that the student body should be awareWhileof.
When we think about the end of the year, we often think about the graduating seniors. We think about how they will have their last class, last exam, last party, last walk in Tappan Square, and last DeCafé snack run. We antici pate their walk across a stage where they’ll be handed a diploma and then no longer be college students. Of course that transition is huge and scary, and I somewhat dread the emotional rollercoaster that will be my graduation three years from now. However, I also think there is merit in rec ognizing that even smaller changes — the changes between years or even semesters can be nerve-wracking, espe cially for younger students.
Although he is not majoring in East Asian Studies, double-degree third-year Suvan Agarwal has had a pos itive experience with classes in the East Asian Studies department. However, he believes Oberlin could greatly benefit from a South Asian Studies program, and is disap pointed by its exclusion.
“This is the only group I have been in where it hasn’t been chosen by stu dents,” Parks said. “It was a new experi ence of trying to make everything mesh. With this, finding how it meshes was a
Ferrazza explained what made the experience so moving: it was more than just music-making among peers at a prestigious Conservatory.
“The lack of South Asian Studies at Oberlin goes be yond inclusion and representation — it is an institution al weakness,” Agarwal wrote in an email to the Review “South Asia is home to about a quarter of the world’s people and contains the fastest growing economies in the world. Nearly all of the best schools in America have strong South Asian Studies programs, and Oberlin is an exception by choosing to support only East Asian Studies. I think that in time … the school will be wishing they had developed such connections sooner.”
“The year that we went to San Fran cisco and worked with homeless people there, that was a really powerful expe rience,” Ferrazza said. “The first thing we did was we went and played a con cert. Then the next morning we came back, and just served breakfast, cut veg etables, and handed over plates of food. We brought people things that they asked for. There’s a certain thing that happens after that shared experience. You go to the next rehearsal, you go to the next concert that you’re doing with the group. And you’ve had this shared experience where you don’t even have to talk about it. You just have this sense of what’s important in life and how that can impact you. You know, naturally it’s gonna impact you as an artist and how you’re going to express [yourself] as a musician.”
Sonny Rollins Jazz Ensemble
According to third-year Jazz Trum pet Performance major Armen Kra kirian, the chance to collaborate with people he normally wouldn’t work with made the group feel less mechanical.
“The idea of a group is actually way more compelling to me because it gets to the entire department — the idea is impacting everybody on a larger scale,” FerrazzaFerrazzasaid.elaborated that the adop tion of a group framework fit well with
have interrupted the group’s ability to give performances, the memories of outreach performances such as in San Francisco through the SFJAZZ Center has provided a powerful reminder of the group’s potential for service.
Conservatory
The Sonny Rollins Jazz Ensemble, the premier Conservatory Jazz ensemble, played its final concert of the year at the Allen Memorial Art Museum on May 5. The group is named after legendary saxophonist Sonny Rollins, who provid ed the financial support for the group’s creation and a core vision for its focus to center both musical performance and community service.
12 Opinions
Continued from page
Title IX Survey Data Should be Public
10
Walter Thomas-Patterson Conservatory Editor
“We don’t sound like a bunch of peo ple put into a room to play music,” Kra kirian said. “We have developed a cohe siveThesound.”ensemble’s emphasis on giving back to the community has provided a refreshing alternative Conservatory environment that emphasizes personal and artistic development.
In an email I received from Oberlin Title IX Co ordinator Rebecca Mosely, she wrote that some key statistics would be pulled from the most recent data and published in a report this fall. However, she did not say which statistics would be used or why the general data won’t be available, or provide any in formation from previous surveys. I’m not optimis tic, as Oberlin often fails to keep its promises. Hope fully, if the results are released in the fall, next year will be Whiledifferent.Ipersonally believe that this information should be made available on the College’s website so that prospective students know what they’re get ting into, there is a middle ground. Oberlin could disseminate the data internally to students, faculty, and staff without releasing it to the general public. If students had this information, it would encourage us to become more vigilant and learn how to better support our peers.
that they don’t care, that what happened to survi vors doesn’t matter. Inadvertently, this enables a culture of tolerance toward sexual assault, one that lets abusers get away while telling survivors to deal with their problems silently and privately.
in Rollins’ belief in the Golden Rule, a biblical proverb that stipulates “Do unto others as you would do for your self.” The group would be as much about performing as it would be about service to others.
page 11
third-year Jazz Guitar major Archer Parks, who is one of the nine members of this year’s group, the fact that membership was selected by pro fessors proved to be a new challenge in the quest to develop a productive, co hesive working environment. Normally, students are expected to choose their own groups, which creates a degree of preestablished familiarity for ensemble members — they often already know each other before they collaborate.
“I feel like when you’re in a Conser vatory headspace, you’re always think ing, what kind of hip s**t can I put on this thing,” Parks said. “You’re always playing for people, and they don’t want to hear a bunch of s**t all of the time. At the end of your day, you’re trying to give something to somebody, and sometimes when you’re in a Conservatory mode, it’s easy to forget that. It’s easy to lose sight that we’re here to make music for people, to try to deliver a message or in voke a Althoughfeeling.”COVID-19 and the most recent shuttering of many Winter Term activities due to the Omicron variant
Ensemble membership is deter mined by Jazz professors who select students based on a set of four stan dards: an audition for the Jazz facul ty, academic accomplishment, public service, and a written response to a question about jazz and its place in the world.The creation of the Sonny Rollins Jazz Ensemble was a multi-step, multiyear process stretching back to 2018 that involved distinguished author and Oberlin alum James McBride, OC ’79, Professor of Jazz Guitar Bobby Ferraz za, and Sonny Rollins himself. The ini tial plan was for Rollins to donate a sum of money to create a scholarship for an individual student, but due to a change in the amount of money for the scholar ship, a new plan was devised — an idea that reenvisioned the scope and impact of Rollins’ donation.
“What happened originally is that Sonny Rollins was looking for a school to partner with to pass along some of the ideals he thought were really im portant,” Ferrazza said. “We can reduce those ideals down to the importance of helpingFerrazzaothers.”explained that after hear ing about the change in the amount of money being donated, he took a day to rethink how the money could be used. He came up with the idea of using Rol lins’ scholarship to create an endowed ensemble that rotated yearly.
All this being said, I want to reiterate that I respect the time and dedication it takes to study East Asian cul ture. I think it’s important for everyone to take the time to engage with East Asian Studies while they’re at Oberlin. However, I want non-Asian students and professors to think critically about why they’re choosing to study East Asian culture, and how they will continuously support Asian students inside and outside the classroom. Do you see the need for South Asian Studies at Oberlin, or do you only perceive Asia as Japan, Korea, and China? Are you studying East Asian cultures because you are genuinely interested, or because of a sick fetish from your favorite anime or K-pop group? Will you speak out against an ti-Asian racism and orientalism, or will you look the oth er way? Do you recognize the space you’re taking up, or do you talk over Asian Americans advocating for them selves?“You’re studying something that you will never under stand, and that’s fine.” Ready said. “That’s what a lot of academia is. But it’s not just math. It’s not just science and physics. It is a culture. It is where people come from. It is what people feel proud of. It is where people connect and love and speak to their families. It is so much more than just a major. It is home. It is love.”
really fruitful experience.”
Lack of Representation in East Asian Studies Must be Addressed
Illustration by Molly Chapin
Continued from
Sonny Rollins Jazz Ensemble Performs Final Concert
In addition, the East Asian Studies major at Oberlin is quite limited. According to the program website, “Ober lin’s Department of East Asian Studies stands out within a liberal arts context for its faculty expertise in all three ma jor regional areas: China, Korea, and Japan.” That severe ly limits the vast number of Asian cultures one can learn about. South Asian Studies in particular is a program that is long overdue at Oberlin.
“Sonny talks a lot about the Gold en Rule, and he wants young people to know that by helping others you are im proving yourself as a musician,” Ferraz za said. “In Sonny’s experience, you be come a deeper musician, and he wanted a school to partner with to get that idea across.”For
Second-year Classical Piano major Grace Tubbs thinks that the garbage problem can simply be solved by a simple
including information sessions and faculty panels. While the short-no tice change from in-person to remote auditions may not have been the for mat prospective students were hoping for, Weiss noted that the Conservatory saw an increase of campus visits from March to May 1.
second-year and Classical Voice major Benhur Ghezehey has carefully document ed the wide range of waste he has encountered, from leftover food bowls to discarded Amazon boxes.“Ifind stuff and I just write: food and drink waste; coffee spills on the floor, on the piano; wa ter everywhere,” he said.
For Ghezehey and other students, the trashing of Robertson is the most visible scar of a much deeper wound — that some Conservatory students fail to recognize that the rooms and equipment they use are shared among their peers.
This year, the Conservatory planned to have auditions in-person for the first time since January 2020. While audi tions were initially scheduled for the first week of Winter Term, a rise in campus COVID cases in the weeks be fore led to auditions being shifted to a remote format.
“This is more . . . than just smell,” he said. “The point is that the pianos are being destroyed by the students. In short, if students are showing disrespect to the instru ments, then there is less likelihood that the administra tion will do anything, and they will probably make bud get cuts for piano maintenance.”
“There’s a lot less isolation in this school year compared to the prior year,” she said. “The first two years I did [ConPAL], there was no pandemic whatsoever, but now that we’re in this pandemic, people are … designing a place for connection.”
Picture this: toenails on piano keys, wads of gum underneath the piano keybed, rotten food fester ing in discarded food bowls, coffee stains on a pi ano lid, and greasy fries on the floor. While you might think this image comes out of a junior high school band room, it is in fact a description of some of the practice rooms in Robertson Hall, the building that houses practice rooms for Conserva toryConservatorystudents.
Each practice room door contains a small win dow that allows others to peer in and check wheth er the room is available. Students frequently place jackets on raised music stands to obscure an out sider’s view into the room, thus preventing others from being able to determine whether the room is available.Aneerie
In Ghezehey’s view, the trash problem in the Conservatory practice rooms serves as an uncom fortable reminder of the disregard some students have for the labor of Conservatory custodians, who
Ghezehey explained how the tendency of Con servatory students to reserve spaces creates a vi cious cycle. As more and more rooms are reserved, there is a greater demand and students will be more likely to continue to reserve rooms. It should be noted that it is a violation of Conservatory pol icy to reserve rooms in Robertson by simply leav ing your belongings there.
Unfortunately, Ghezehey has also discovered some waste that is not just an eyesore, but is also nauseating.“Thereare toenails and fingernails all over the place,” he said. “There are a lot of hairballs and smelly food bowls that have been there for some time, just on top of the piano. There is food grease on the piano keys and gum under the piano that sticks to your hand or sometimes your trousers.”
While the Conservatory did not meet its goals for enrollment this year and faced difficulties regarding auditions, prospective first-years can once again form connections with each other and the Conservatory that was lost in the early parts of the pandemic thanks to the return of in-person campus visits.
Although students were not able to visit campus for their auditions this year, they had a myriad of virtu al options to connect with the school,
“The shift to virtual auditions did not lead to application withdrawal,” she“Isaid.think virtual in some capacity is here to stay,” Gill said. “If nothing else, it maximizes access.”
Although virtual and recorded events are not always the preferred method of student engagement, they can create even more anticipation for campus visits. The class of 2025 com pleted their auditions virtually last year, and were not able to meet any of their classmates in-person until com
EDITORIAL
Conservatory
Fingernails, Food Bowls, and Fries: Students Trash the Robertson Practice Rooms
work late into the night after many students have left.
Conservatory Meets Class of 2026 Enrollment Goals Despite COVID Challenges
Peer Advising Leader Jane Vourlekis has noticed increased attendance and enthusiasm from first-year students in her ConPAL sessions.
ing to campus in fall 2021. This year, with the additional programming, dou ble-degree fifth-year and Conservatory
In spite of the ongoing challenges posed by COVID-19, the Conservatory nearly met its enrollment goals for the class of 2026. The overall target for the incoming class was set at 135, 85 being Bachelor of Music students and 50 be ing double-degree students. Director of Conservatory Admissions and En rollment Management Beth Weiss ex plained that the enrollment currently falls slightly lower than the original plan.“Since the last few admissions cycles exceeded enrollment targets, we want ed to be mindful of capacity,” she wrote in an email to the Review. “At present, we have enrolled 117, which put us within reach of our net-tuition-reve nue goal.”
“Peoplemantra.should clean up after themselves,” she said.
“The Conservatory students are the ones who have no regard for the working class — if you are leaving food there, if you are leaving trash and garbage there and ex pecting others to come and clean up after you, that is a pattern of disrespect,” he said. “Music belongs to the masses, and if you cannot treat yourself with humility and grace, then you’re not a musician. I think you can never be a musician if you can’t exercise compassion, solidarity, and responsibility toward the custodians.”
“It just creates a positive feedback loop because
Although, from an outsider’s perspective, the be havior of some Conservatory students might simply be a product of absentmindedness mixed with care lessness, Ghezehey noted that students have devel oped creative ways to ensure that rooms they want to use are reserved in their absence.
The Oberlin Review | May 20, 2022 13 May 20, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 151, Number 22
feeling results from the collective action of students who decide to reserve rooms they are not actually using, Ghezehey explained. On a cer tain floor in Robertson, all the practice rooms might be occupied — or appear to be occupied — but there is no audible music. Ghezehey must wait patiently for someone to return to a room and retrieve their belongings.“Thehalls are quiet — no music at all — but the rooms are full and no one is in them,” he said. “I sometimes wait for 15 minutes for someone to come, and I obviously could remove their stuff, but I don’t want to be disrespectful.”
the more they reserve, the more scarcity there is, and the more others suffer,” he said.
“It starts with the obvious problem that people are hoarding the space,” he said. “People will put their scores or their jackets inside a room [to sig nify it is theirs] and then be gone for two hours or an entire class time. When they reserve that space, they don’t give other people a chance to play.”
Courtesy of Benhur Ghezehey
“A lot of students only get to see cam pus in person during their audition,” said Assistant Director of Conservatory Admissions Florence Gill, OC ’03.
Food bowls line the windowsill of Robertson Hall.
For first-year Classical Piano major Victor Shlyakht enko, however, the garbage problem is less of a barrier to practicing and more of a threat to the pianos in the Conservatory, which are at the receiving end of the trash problem and resulting liquid damage.
In-person auditions are often an op portunity for prospective Conservatory students to see Oberlin’s campus and facilities for the first timeand can be vi tal in giving them an impression of the Conservatory environment.
The garbage problem in Robertson is com pounded by warmer air temperatures and greater humidity brought on by the spring weather and by the recent malfunctioning of the Conservatory air conditioning systems. Food that would normally remain fresh for longer periods of time is rotting faster and producing noxious smells, which have proved to be a threat to the health of Conservato ry vocalists like Ghezehey who rely on clean air to breathe.“It’salso a health hazard, especially now that we are in the spring and the rooms are overheated, stuff is going to smell bad [fast and] rot,” he said. “Fungus is going to grow. Bacteria is going to grow. How is it going to be a practice room? It’s going to be garbage. Who goes to [the] garbage and sings? Maybe raccoons.”
CONSERVATORY
Walter Thomas-Patterson Conservatory Editor
Megan McLaughlin Senior Staff Writer
Live in the moment. As I look back on my collegiate, academic, and ath letic career, I always felt the need to stress about my future. I believe that part of that stress stemmed from the fact that I am a first-generation Asian and Latino student. I continuously asked myself: What am I doing right now that will contribute to my career post grad? While it’s important to take the necessary steps to achieve the goals you set for yourself, it’s okay to take a walk and enjoy the scenery. It’s okay to take a break and listen to some music. It’s okay to play a game of cards with your friends. Looking back on my experience, I wish I listened to my desire to live in the moment and enjoy the subtleties of college life instead of stressing solely about my future.
With both athletics and academics, I want you to challenge yourself. Use your curiosity and passion to find what you love, and that is how you will find joy in your pursuits. Listen to others with patience and an open
Kim felt some relief when he completed his career, but nevertheless, he misses the excitement of the com petition.“There definitely was a feeling of relief after ending my college career because I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself to perform well, which has helped motivate me to become a better player,” he said. “On the flip side, this pressure can sometimes be a lot because the upcom ing game can be the only thing on your mind for days as matchday approaches.”
14
Fourth-year jumper on the women’s track and field team Aesha Mokashi went through an array of emotions after completing her college athletics career two weeks ago.“I remember going back to my parents’ Airbnb, remi niscing and getting very emotional about it,” she said. “It hit me that it was the last time I would ever run track. There aren’t that many opportunities to just pick up and go and do track in the way that you can [with other sports].”Formany college athletes, their final event or game for their school is their last opportunity to participate in their sport competitively. For Mokashi, it was the first time something that had been such a major force in her life ended in that way.
Fourth-year Bonnie Wileman appreciates the free time she has had since her field hockey career ended in the fall, but still misses being on the team.
John Elrod Contributing Sports Editor
Wileman, who will work at the Bank of America in Charlotte, North Carolina after graduating, is looking forward to supporting college teams in the city and the rest of the state. She is excited to watch the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s powerhouse field hockey team with Review Contributing Sports Editor Zoë Martin del Campo, who will be attending graduate school there as well.
Sports
All three retired fourth-year athletes have incredibly fond memories of the experiences they had on their teams. Mokashi cherishes the support she got from her teammates while competing in her events.
Express yourself in ways you have not tried. Dress differently — no one but you can decide what is fashion able. Listen to music you don’t nor mally listen to. Read articles that cover a topic you don’t quite under stand. The possibilities are endless. Continue to push the boundaries that society sets on you, and the ones you set on Throughoutyourself.
Graduating Athletes Speak on Life After College Sports
“I don’t think there’s ever been a moment in my life where I’m like, ‘Oh, this is the end of something,’” she said. “There’s always been continuation and it was such a big part of my life. It was kind of overwhelming.”
Mokashi, who is headed for the University of Washington’s School of Public Health to study ecotox icology, is considering signing up for open track meets or finding a way to be involved in the university’s track meets in a non-athlete role.
my life, I have felt a huge lack of self-worth and self-belief.
I know a lot of people have told you what to expect in the next four years. Many people have talked about how college will be the best time of your life, where freedom will bring countless opportunities and new ave nues of exploration. People have also warned you to be prepared for aca demic and athletic challenges, as the hardest obstacles are soon ahead as a college student and athlete. While many aspects of these things are true, I want you to remember how far you haveAlthoughcome. it is hard to reflect on the adversity you have experienced, remember what you have learned. You have the tools to push forward, to find drive and motivation no matter how hard life hits. In these moments, take time and give yourself the attention and care. You deserve to heal and rest. Believe and trust that you can and will continue to thrive, even when the road seems too long and you feel as if life is wearing you down. You’re not a quitter and, believe me, that doesn’t change in the future.
“I was so blown away that every single person on this team cared about me and cared about what I was going to do and wanted to give me that energy,” she said. “They were so loud that the officials of the track meet had to put up a rope to keep them from getting too close.”
mind, and always engage with a goal to understand. Don’t be afraid to fail. If you get lost, lean on the people that bring you peace and comfort in every sector of your Oberlin life. You love helping people, and you will find the same love all around you in your community. Remember that trust is earned, so seek out those who have earned it for support and you will find strength.Iwant
As a student-athlete, I became accustomed to a certain way of life. I would encourage you to attend events outside of athletics and continue to push your boundaries. I recently went to Porchella, where I met so many stu dents from corners of campus I never usually engage with. I loved seeing students dance as they enjoyed the music and one another.
“The fact that I am finished with soccer did not sink in until the start of this semester,” he said. “It was a bit tersweet moment, as I was grateful for everything that soccer has given me, but on the other hand, it was sad that I could not put an Oberlin uniform on again.”
As I look back on my college years, I’m extremely grateful for the people I
Kim looks back fondly on his team making the North Coast Athletic Conference tournament after winning their last regular season game of 2019 as well as his two-goal performance against Wittenberg University last
Althoughseason. they may no longer be able to play compet itively, Mokashi, Wileman, and Kim all intend to stay connected to their sport in the future.
Fourth-year soccer player Ryan Kim also has mixed emotions about his career ending this past fall.
FrancescaLove,
“I have a lot more free time than I previously had,” she said. “Now it’s the offseason, so during previous years, I would still be lifting and conditioning and practicing
As Kim looks forward to a career in software engi neering, he intends to keep playing soccer in some capacity, and may explore coaching. As his time at Oberlin comes to an end, he has some words of encour agement for younger Oberlin athletes.
“Cherish your time as a student-athlete at Oberlin because it is a privilege to be a part of the community,” he said. “You will meet awesome people and make so many memories on and off the field. I would say to never give up on yourself and to push to become the best ath lete you can be.”
Comparing ourselves to others is extremely toxic; understand that everyone is on a different path, and that is okay. Getting caught up in the accomplishments of others, hindered me from recognizing my own. Each and every one of your friends is on a different path in life. You’ll learn dif ferent life lessons at different times, understand material in different ways, and find different professional paths at different rates. Spend less time comparing yourself to others, because you are unique and so is your path. Give yourself grace and, most impor tantly, understand that when one door closes, another one opens.
DearAC10first-year Francesca,
Dear first-year Alex,
The unknown can be intimidating, but so rewarding all at the same time, and you will learn that soon enough. You are going to do great things and accomplish so much on internal and external levels that will lead you to new, exciting opportunities beyond Oberlin. Sometimes, it is easy to feel discouraged. When you feel this way, take a step back and remember all of this, and never sell yourself short. When you are afraid of the future, consider how you have grown, and know that you will continue to grow and realize more about yourself and the world around you.
Fourth-Year Athletes Write to their First-Year Selves
Looking back on my time as a stu dent-athlete, here are five pieces of advice I would give to you as you enter college. Enjoy the ride while it lasts.
You need to speak to yourself as you would like to be spoken to. I know that everyone struggles with this at some point in their lives. You have to speak to yourself with sincerity, kind ness, and compassion. Rather than “I can’t,” say, “I can,” “I am able,” and “I am capable.” This small change in language will really help you, espe cially in moments where you feel lost and unworthy. Try not to be so hard on yourself and recognize that you are here for a reason. You are worthy and you can and will find yourself. Utilize this power in language!
There are moments when you will feel overwhelmed, anxious, and on the verge of tears. It is good to cry. These emotions are normal and healthy. So often you’ll try to repress your emo tions, but it is extremely important to let it all out rather than bottling it up.
–
“I watch the video back so many times,” she said. “I
have met, the moments of euphoria in sport, and the pride in being the first person in my family to graduate from college. I look forward to continuing this journey of life and further under standing myself so that I can share valuable lessons with others. I hope that these points spoke to you and that you truly enjoy your career as a student-athlete. You will continue to get stronger, and influence others for the better.
With the spring sports teams having wrapped up their seasons earlier this month, all Oberlin athletes set to graduate in June have completed their athletic careers. Some of them feel the pressure being lifted and an appreciation for their newfound free time. Still, many look back on their time on an Oberlin sports team nos talgically and want to stay connected to their sport.
you to remember who you are, and what you value. Know what you are worth and how you should be treated, and you will gain the con fidence and positive energy that will provide uplift. College is the best time of your life, but there are still ups and downs. While exploring and push ing yourself, remember that change is inevitable and sometimes you have to ride the wave and take life as it comes. Enjoy the time you have at Oberlin, whether it’s a doubleheader match, going to an amazing jazz performance, or learning something that is exciting and/or confusing. You have so many beautiful people and things to experi ence moving forward, but don’t forget to seek out the unknown.
right now. I miss my team and seeing everyone every day, and I miss the structure of that.”
If you need a shoulder to cry on, call a friend, family member, or even your coach. Go to the coaches’ office to let them know what you’re struggling with — building that type of rela tionship with your coach will really help you. Express every emotion in a healthy manner, and trust that you will feel a lot better afterward.
Wileman values much of the time spent with her team, including the field hockey team’s Teamsgiving celebration where they ate and sang together. She also describes a moment on the field that she will never forget — her team’s 1–0 victory over Transylvania University in the last game of her career.
Alex FrancescaCaceresKern
jump up in the air when [second-year] Susan [RobinsonCloete] scores and then I hug her and pick her up. I have a really sweet screenshot of that moment.”
“As a woman of color, I felt unsupported by Oberlin as an institution,” she said. “As a POC you can expect not to be treated fairly, but I had higher expectations for Oberlin.”Lopez is aware that there might never be a way to ensure racism won’t exist in competition, but they hope that this can be a learning experience and wake-up call for the College so that proper protocols can be put in place for the future.
ZMDC: Serena Williams. I think she’s just had an amaz ing sporting career, has had to endure so much, and has given back so much to her community, both as an advocate and an athlete. She’s definitely an inspirational figure, not only for athletes, but for everyone.
JE:office?
JE: Similar to Zoe K, I would definitely do Arts. I actu ally wrote an Arts piece before I was hired by the Review It was a film review on Nomadland. I’d like to do more stuff like that. I think it would also be really cool to get to know the Oberlin arts scene because I definitely don’t go to enough of those types of events.
College fourth-year Zoë Martin del Campo and College third-years John Elrod and Zoe Kuzbari are the current sports editors for the Review. I sat down with them in the Review’s production room (not the locker room) to reflect on their work and time together. While their time as a trio is coming to an end, they are grateful for the experiences they had together in the office and in the Oberlin community.
ZK: I would have to say Mats Zuccarello. He’s a hockey player in the NHL, and he used to play for the New York Rangers. First of all, I loved him because his last name started with a Z, and I’m Zoe with a Z — when I was little that was awesome. But he’s really short, super feisty, and was known for being one of the most aggressive players on the Rangers at the time. Even though he could probably get himself knocked out if he checked the wrong person, it was always super inspiring and fun to see this little guy skate on the ice super fast and be super fiery. I always wanted to embody that kind of spirit.
“We also do multiple check-in meetings throughout the year to check in [about] softball and everything else,” she wrote. “Once you get to know a player well enough, you can usually tell when something is off. Depending on the severity, that might constitute a casual check-in, a more official check-in, or a [Student Health and Resource
JE: I started working for the Review this fall. I’d written a few times last year during the spring and applied for the staff writer job, but I was approached about an opening in the sports editor role. I knew I wanted to take it because journalism is something I wanted to do. It really wasn’t a hard decision to join.
ZK: I think I would want to work for Arts — I really love what they’ve done with their section. Editors Lily D’Amato and Kathleen Kelleher, especially this semester,
The main thing is walking into their parties unknow ingly. That’s the way we connect outside of the Review
Other than the Review, what are your extracurricu lars at Oberlin?
JE: I mean, this is a common answer, but as a kid I always loved watching LeBron James play. Especially being from Oberlin, I was able to go see him in person a lot in Cleveland. I used to think about how that must have been what it was like for people to watch Michael Jordan, somebody who you could tell in real time was one of the greatest players ever.
Exchange] report.”
“I know it’s impossible to solve global racism from Oberlin, Ohio, but I hope that Oberlin College, as an insti tution, can move forward and help its students of color should another thing like this happen again,” they said.
ZMDC: I’m on the field hockey team. I’m also a student researcher in Associate Professor of Neuroscience Tracie Paine’s behavioral neuroscience lab. I’m a Bonner Scholar and work with America Counts at Oberlin Elementary School as a tutor. I also do some private tutoring on the side in math, science and English.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
ZK: I really like writing about tennis. I don’t really know why — maybe it’s because I like to watch tennis and my first-year roommate is also on the team, so I spent a lot of time going to their games. I like being able to write about it and then having to explain the score to people. It’s always funny to see their reaction to how confusing the score can be and then seeing their face when they finally understand.
have really been able to expand the section and have focused a lot on what they both really want for it. I would just love to write a fun, cutesy piece, maybe something a little bit less serious. John does a really good job of making the sports section funny, but I like the fact that the arts section has more creative liberty.
well-being of both players and coaches is more important than winning any game.”
John Elrod, Zoe Kuzbari, and Zoë Martin del Campo, Review Sports Editors
ZK: I started working for the Review at the beginning of my second year. I was just helping out Khalid McCalla, OC ’21, because he needed an interview and I was like, “Oh I can do it, I know the coach.” Then we got sent home in March 2020, and I continued to write remotely just because I wasn’t really doing much at home. I thought it would be a good way to stay connected with the com munity. I was hired full-time as a senior staff writer that summer, and I’ve been working here ever since.
ZMDC: I don’t know if I have specifically a favorite piece, but I enjoyed writing pieces that sparked conver sation. In my second year, I wrote a piece about changes in the football team and how some of the members of the team felt unsupported. It was really incredible to have people talk about what I wrote and watch it start con versations about how to better support student-athletes. After one piece I wrote about the Inter-Regional Rumble, one of the people I interviewed thanked me and told me that her parents didn’t understand why she decided to do cross country on a collegiate level but understood why after they read my piece. I’ve also written more vulnerable pieces such as the impacts that body image can have on players and pride. Overall, I’m grateful for everyone that I’ve interviewed throughout the years for trusting me with their stories.
The Oberlin Review | May 20, 2022 15 Continued from page 16
JE: I’m involved in club soccer, which is really fun. It’s honestly a really high level of talent, especially compared to what I’ve heard from people talking about other years. The other thing I do is statistics and other types of com munication work for the varsity athletics teams. I work really closely with Mike Mancini, who’s the director of athletics for Communications & Compliance.
IN THE LOCKER ROOM
As a check-in, the Oberlin softball team responds to a question every day before practice. Schoenhoft finds this helpful as a coach, because knowing how everybody is feeling before practice starts might impact how it is run.
Lopez knows that this experience will stick with the players forever, but also says it’s important that it doesn’t define them.
ZMDC: I think I would probably work for Opinions. I love reading their stories every week and I think it’s fun that you can essentially just publish your thoughts.
Who is your favorite athlete?
Despite the department’s best efforts to offer support, Brito was unhappy with how the institution responded to the incident.
ZMDC: Zoe and I also take a running class together, which has been tough but also a rewarding experience. Zoe and I also went to high school together, so overall we spend a lot of time together and have really seen each other grow as individuals throughout college.
“I don’t want mine and my friends’ legacy at this school to be that we were victims of racism,” they said. “I want people to know us for who we actually are: kind, hard working, dedicated, and incredibly smart, among other beautiful things that make each of us great people. The color of our skin doesn’t define us as people.”
sport is just really tough mentally on young women. So I think being able to write about her and her experience and her lack of support was something that I really related to. I like being able to write more editorialized pieces. The Olympics also need to protect their athletes, and talking about how difficult her experience has been in a sport that can be so isolating is so important.
JE: My favorite piece that I’ve written for the Review is actually something I wrote before I worked as an editor. I wrote it about a year ago, and it was about the Oberlin High School sports teams changing their name from the Indians to Phoenix in 2007. I was connecting it to the name change that the Cleveland Guardians were going through at the time. I got to talk to one of the main activ ists who was a part of the name changes in both Oberlin and in Cleveland, and it was just really cool to be able to hear about that firsthand. It was definitely the most mean ingful article I’ve written.
ZK: We run into John at parties all the time. John actu ally walked into our house one time in the fall and had no idea it was our house. We threw a party, and I turned around to see John just standing in the kitchen taking a shot. We were excited to welcome him to our home. Zoë and I live together, so we spend a decent amount of time together outside of the office.
Kayla Kim Production Editor
What’s your favorite piece that you wrote?
Oberlin Softball Players Unsupported After Racist Altercation
ZMDC: I’ve actually been at the Review for some time now and have witnessed a ton of shifts within the sports section since fall of my second-year. The contributing sports editor was a new position for this section when I started, whereas now it’s much more established. I’ve gotten to see the section and the paper change over time, and I’ve also worked with lots of different staff members, including one of my best friends who I met through the Review, Khalid McCalla.
If you did not work as sports editors, what section of the Review would you work in?
Which sport do you enjoy writing about the most?
ZK: I recently wrote a piece on the controversy at the Beijing Winter Olympics about the 15-year-old figure skater Kamila Valieva. I was a competitive figure skater for about 11 years before I started playing volleyball. That
Do the three of you spend any time together outside the
ZK: I’m on the women’s volleyball team and was a cap tain these past fall and spring seasons. I work as the diver sity, equity, and inclusion coordinator for the North Coast Athletic Conference Student Athlete Advisory Council. I’m the co-president of Oberlin’s SAAC, and I’ll be work ing as the athletics representative for Student Senate next year as well.
When did you start working for the Review and why?
JE: It’s something I haven’t covered that much in The Oberlin Review, but growing up as a kid, I was always a huge baseball nerd and read a lot of baseball writing. That’s something I’m getting a chance to do over the sum mer for a job. I think the intricacies of the game and all the advanced statistics are really cool.
Sports editors John Elrod (left), Zoe Martin Del Campo (middle), and Zoe Kuzbari (right) sit on a couch in the Review’s office.
Courtesy of Zoe Kuzbari
ZMDC: I’m a bit biased. I love writing about field hock ey — my teammates are so amazing and accomplished, and I like talking about them every chance I get. I also enjoyed writing about track and field and cross country. Both teams are insanely good, and they’ve accomplished so much during my time at Oberlin. Being able to cover that, especially the individual players, has been such an awesome experience.
Gwynne also believes that events such as “Play Like A Girl” show children that they can be success ful student-athletes both on and off the field.
Photo by Amanda Phillips
In the course of the double-header, fourth-year V Dagnino, third-year Lalli Lopez, and second-year Mia Brito, all athletes of color, were referred to as “monkeys” by Rose-Hulman players, who also made grunting and squeaking sounds.
On April 3, during a double-header against the RoseHulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, IN, members of Oberlin’s softball team were confronted with racial slurs from the opposing team. In the wake of the incident, Oberlin will no longer play against Rose-Hulman in non-conference competitions. Still, the students who faced the racial abuse say they have felt unsupported by the College.
The Oberlin softball team poses for a team photo on Culhane Field at Dolcemaschio Stadium.
protect me.”
Zoe Kuzbari Sports Editor
“I wanted to participate because dreams are built around opportunities like this clinic,” she wrote in an email to the Review . “I’m a football coach today because of many mentors who invested in me instead of telling me why I couldn’t or shouldn’t play or coach football. To teach girls how to hit a bag with power, snap a football, and use their loudest voice to call a cadence is just the beginning because we find our passions and confidence in trying new things.”According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, by age 14, girls will have dropped out of youth sports at twice the rate of boys. This makes the event’s mis sion especially critical. Second-year volleyball setter Taylor Gwynne emphasized the ways in which “Play Like A Girl” creates role models for participants.
“My father started crying on the phone with me,” Dagnino said. “He’s faced an extreme amount of pain and trauma in his life due to being an immigrant. He’s endured so much hate for being a Brown man here in America. He came to this country to make a better life for me and my family, and to hear that I had to go through something like this made him feel like he had failed to
Oberlin Softball Players Face Racism from Rose-Hulman
“Something I realized on the phone with my dad was that this kind of thing is something I might have to get used to — and that’s scary,” they said. “I don’t want to have to live the rest of my life like this, worried that I might get hate crimed or that when I’m doing something I love, like softball, that feeling of safety can just be ripped away from me.”
Like Dagnino, Lopez knows that this is something that will stick with them for the rest of their life.
“Nothing was offered to me,” she said. “I had to do all the research on how to help myself on my own. We, being the victims, were expected to reach out on our own. That burden should not have been put on me. I am a full-time student-athlete with two jobs, yet still was expected to be the one who reaches out for support.”
“Coach Schoenhoft reached out to me immediately after she learned what occurred during their game — she was told after the game what the team had experienced,” Winkelfoos wrote in an email to the Review. “I reached out to the Rose-Hulman [Associate Director] Monday morning to discuss the situation and addressed it with her direct supervisor, the coach, and team.”
“Being a POC comes with an automatic target on your back from the moment you step out into the world,” they said. “You know this, but no matter how hard you try to prepare yourself for anything, it will never prepare you for actually enduring any sort of racist act.”
Brito initially tried to brush off the abuse from the Rose-Hulman offenders, but the taunts did not stop.
“It became increasingly obvious that the racism was directed toward V and I as the [first] game went on,” she said. “The taunts stopped when V and I didn’t start the second game, but once we reentered the field, they immediately started again. I was very aware of what was goingBrito,on.”who typically plays first base, was standing only a few feet away from the dugout. She described being able to clearly see and hear the girls who were directing the hate at “Theyher.made monkey noises and kept yelling, ‘Who let the monkeys out?!’ when I ran onto the field,” she said. “The players on the team made no effort to hide their rac ism, which I guess was the whole point. It was extremely difficult to keep my composure on the field — I had a pit in my chest and had to hold back tears while playing.”
Director of Football Operations and Running Backs Coach Roseanna Smith participated in this year’s in-person “Play Like A Girl” event alongside members of the women’s basketball, lacrosse, soc cer, swimming and diving, track and field, cross country, softball, volleyball, and field hockey teams.
“This event cuts so deep, but I’m still here,” they said. “I’ve never wanted to become stronger because of an experience like this, but it’s something that I’ll have to carry with me for the rest of my life, regardless of what I want.”Upon returning to Oberlin, the three athletes on the softball team sought institutional support but were unable to find any through the College’s resources.
Dagnino, who is a catcher on the team, said that they weren’t able to fully process the experience until many days later when they called their father and explained what had happened.
Zoë Martin del Campo Contributing Sports Editor
Brito said that she ended up having to search for resources on campus on her own, a task that she felt should not have been her responsibility.
With hopes of facilitating a love of sports among girls, Oberlin College Athletics held the eighth annual “Play Like A Girl” event May 15. The event, which was held virtually for the past two years, brings together coaches and players from women’s teams to mentor girls aged 5–12.
In addition to specific measures to address last month’s debacle, Schoenhoft also highlighted that mental health and regular team check-ins are highly important to the program’s
“As [Division III] athletes, we all came to school for academics first, which makes our programming more unique,” Gwynne wrote. “These children get to see what it’s like to be really devoted to your sport but also devoted to school and your future outside of sports as well. The role model athletes I interacted with when I was their age left a lasting impact on how I pursued competition and sports in the future, and I can only hope we are doing the same for these youngAlthoughathletes!”women’s competition in male-domi nated sports like football has historically been overlooked, Smith feels that recently, more ath letes have been getting deserved recognition. Smith hopes that events such as “Play Like A Girl” will inspire the next generation of female athletes in the same way that Smith was inspired by athletes like Jennifer King, Lori Locust, Catherine Raîche and Kim“SportsPegula.are for everyone,” Smith wrote. “Football is no exception. Thousands of women have com peted all over the country for decades … mostly in anonymity. States like Florida and Georgia offer girls high school varsity flag football, which has opened the pathway to college flag football teams and national flag and tackle teams. Girls are also competing for and earning college tackle football scholarships. I played football at a time when many fewer girls were playing, but I love to also see that so many more are finding a home, passion, and career in the game. … I’m grateful to get to do what I love in the footsteps of these women.”
Lopez echoed Brito’s statement, highlighting that being a POC will always come with challenges.
16 May 20, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 151, Number 22 SPORTS
“Play Like A Girl” Inspires AthletesGenerationNextof
“I have always been extra aware of my skin tone while at away games, but it honestly was just shocking that this type of blatant racism is still accepted in 2022,” she said. “Obviously the racial discrimination we faced could have been worse but, for me, it opened the generational wound of racial trauma that my family has faced.”
Since the incident, Dagnino has felt the sense of safety they had previously felt at Oberlin quickly dissipate, and they face daily anxiety attacks.
“I’m really fortunate that I have a therapist outside of Oberlin who has been able to help me work through this,” Dagnino said. “I also am in this line of work since I’m a part of [the Preventing and Responding to Sexual Misconduct program] and have close relationships with administrators in the department. If I didn’t have the privilege of knowing what to do, I don’t know where our mental headspaces would be. I called the Counseling Center a week after things went down and they said they had no availability for three weeks.”
“Protectingvalues.mental health is of the utmost importance,” she wrote in an email to the Review. “As coaches we want to win, but at the end of the day, physical and emotional
“Events like “Play Like a Girl” provide a safe outlet for young athletes to experiment with sports they haven’t had the opportunity to participate in before,” she wrote in an email to the Review . “Not only are they getting new experiences, but they are interacting with role models that show them what they could use their sports to do in the future.”
See Players, page 15
Still, Delta Lodge Director of Athletics & Physical Education Natalie Winkelfoos has worked with the wom en’s head softball coach Sarah Schoenhoft, President Carmen Twillie Ambar, the Title IX office, and the staff at Rose-Hulman to address the racism that the three ath letes experienced there.
As a person of color, Brito has always expected to face racism at some point in her life, but described the event as extremely hurtful nonetheless.