November 2, 2018

The Oberlin Review November 2, 2018

established 1874

Volume 147, Number 7

Student Participation Reconsidered

by College Faculty Nathan Carpenter Editor-in-Chief

The First Church in Oberlin pictured with a sign reading “Inmigrantes y Refugiados Bienvenidos,” which translates to Immigrants and Refugees Welcome. .

Photo by Mallika Pandey, Photo editor

Sanctuary Space Established by First Church Anisa Curry Vietze The First Church in Oberlin United Church of Christ opened a sanctuary space for undocumented immigrants beginning mid-October. It is a space iwhere people in need of shelter who have been marked for deportation can temporarily live while they sort out the legality of their immigration status.

Sanctuary spaces work by deterring Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials because places like churches are considered “sensitive locations.” Immigration agents generally avoid these sensitive locations.

However, if ICE agents get a warrant for a specific individual’s arrest, there is nothing the church could do to mitigate this.

“That’s something that we learned very early on,” said Reverend David Hill. “You cannot tell people that you take in that you have the ability to completely protect them because, legally, you don’t. You’re just making it more inconvenient for ICE to come after them.”

ICE’s official policy states they will not take enforcement actions at sensitive locations unless presented with “exigent circumstances.”

“This church has a long history of being involved in justice issues — that’s a big part of what First Church is — and that goes all the way back to the earliest days of Oberlin,” Rev. Hill said.

“It seems just natural for us to embrace the sanctuary issue.”

John Gates is the chair of First Church’s Sanctuary Task Group. The church has spent months preparing

for the opening of this space, which is at an undisclosed location and maintained by the church “Many of the people who are in danger of being deported have lived in the United States for many years. They have families, and they have work, and some of them even own businesses.

They have demonstrated that they are responsible citizens, good neighbors; they contribute to the community in which they live,” Gates said. “We think that we have a duty to step in [and protect these individuals].”

A number of people came to speak at First Church since April, including representatives of churches already providing sanctuary, a woman at risk of being deported, Professor of History Emeritus Steve Volk, and Professor of Comparative American Studies Gina Pérez.

“Talking to First Church was great,” said Volk, who has been involved in this issue since advocating Oberlin to become a sanctuary city in 2007. “Different [sanctuary] churches do different things, so some just tell the parishioners, ‘by the way, we are a sanctuary church.’ First Church was so amazingly responsible and concerned with the congregation in general that they had a fairly lengthy process of education so that the congregation could be informed enough to vote on it. So I was delighted to be part of what was not just an open and welcoming process, but a very democratic one.”

Hill echoed this and said that because of the thoughtful discussion process, the congregation was able to make the decision and vote on the is-

sue fully informed of the responsibilities and ramifications involved.

“The congregation really had a chance to ask all of their questions,” Hill said. “What sort of legal jeopardy could this put the church in? Who would we take in? Would we just take in anybody? Would they stay here forever? How much is this going to cost?

Will there be enough volunteers in the greater Oberlin/Lorain County area to support this?”

It took about three months of preparation before the task group felt ready to present the plan to the congregation.

“We needed to see if [everyone] would agree that this is an issue in which we should be engaged. It was a long process,” Gates explained. “There was a vote on it, and it was a unanimous vote that yes, we should do this.”

Since the vote in April, the church has been working on the logistics of the housing situation.

“The room is ready; at this point, we’re just waiting for someone to need sheltering in Lorain County,” Hill said.

“I think the church is really blessed to be in this great community because we couldn’t do this on our own. If we end up housing somebody, that is just going to be a lot of volunteer tasks that are involved. But to be in a community that embraces issues like this and is in line with First Church, [...] I think when the time comes that we are sheltering somebody we will be in good shape.”

Rev. Hill also mentioned that once the need is there, there will be plenty of opportunities for Oberlin students to get involved if they wish to.

Editor’s note: Editor-in-Chief Sydney Allen is a member of the Sophomore Experience Advising Task Force. She was uninvolved with the reporting of this story.

Oberlin College faculty will vote next Wednesday on whether to allow student representatives to attend their regular meetings as voting members.

The vote will impact eight students who sit on five different committees. Students have technically been voting members of the committee for over 40 years, though they have rarely attended the meetings in recent years.

The issue was initially raised by Nathan A. Greenberg Professor of Classics and Presiding Officer of the College Faculty Kirk Ormand.

However, according to Ormand, he hadn’t intended to bring the question forward.

“A faculty member asked me about membership at the meetings, and I told him I’d look into it,” Ormand wrote in an email to the Review. “When I did, I discovered — to my surprise — that in 1974 the faculty had passed legislation making various student members of College committees members of the [College Faculty].”

Those committees in question are the Educational Plans and Policies Committee, the Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid, the Advising Committee, the Experimental College Committee, and the Double-Degree Committee, according to the CF motion put forward on the topic. Student representatives on all those bodies are technically currently approved participants of CF meetings.

However, in recent years, these practices had been forgotten, and student representatives were not informed of their ability to attend CF meetings.

“No one seems to remember when the students stopped coming and stopped voting,” said Professor of Mathematics Jeff Witmer. “It was so long ago that no one really even remembered that there were supposed to be students at these meetings.”

This confusion was shared by student representatives.

“I’ve been on EPPC since my sophomore year and didn’t know that I could go to a [CF] meeting until last fall,” said College senior and EPPC student member Meg Parker. Parker said she has attended one CF meeting over her time on EPPC, but was never aware that she could attend more regularly.

After his discovery, Ormand approached Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences David Kamitsuka.

“The Dean and College Faculty Council responded by bringing the CF a motion to ‘present for approval’ the members of the CF at the first meeting of every year, as a way to clarify the issue and make sure that we keep the membership lists current,” Ormand wrote. “So, within the framework of bringing the (techn´ ically existing) student members forward ‘for approval’ this year, the issue came to the floor.”

The vote on student representation nearly took place at the previous CF meeting on Oct. 3 .

See CF, page 2

CONTENTS NEWS

OPINIONS

02 CoWork Oberlin Provides Com- 06 Letters to the Editors: Issue 11 munity Workspace 07 Jewish Trump Voters Have 03 Construction Starts on New Blood on Their Hands Mercy Hospital Wing

The Oberlin Review | November 2, 2018

THIS WEEK

ARTS & CULTURE

SPORTS

08 Everything You Need to Know to Vote on Tuesday

10 Public Art Exhibition Sparks Conversation on Campus

15 Women’s Basketball Opens Difficult Conversations

11 Young Jazz Visionary Performs 16 YeoWomen Dethrown Gators, Original Compositions Capture Coveted NCAC Title

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CF Questions Students’ Role

Candidates Speak at NonPartisan Debate

Continued from page 1

Candidates for State Representative participated in a non-partisan debate, the only Statehouse candidates debate in Lorain County this election cycle, in Dye Lecture Hall Thursday.

The Oberlin College Democrats, Oberlin College Republicans & Libertarians, and Lorain County Rising came across party lines to jointly host the event.

“Planning with the OCDems was easy and fun,” Jacob Britton, a member of the Oberlin College Republicans & Libertarians, wrote in an email to the Review. “The organizers of the event planned this event out very well.”

Candidates in attendance included Republican Rob Weber, Libertarians Daniel Fichtel and Homer Taft, and Democrats Joe Miller, James Johnson, Kelly Kraus Mencke, and Sharon Sweda.

Text by Jenna Gyimesi, News Editor Photo by Mallika Pandey, Photo Editor

Ultimately, the group decided to hold off until student representatives could be made aware of their ability to attend meetings.

“I was very pleased to see that we did put the vote on hold until students were made aware of the fact that they can attend and vote at CF meetings,” said Associate Dean of Students and Interim Director of the Career Development Center Dana Hamdan.

Hamdan is among numerous voting members of the CF who are not part of faculty. The full list of voting members is outlined in the bylaws regarding divisional faculty membership, which also includes the guidelines on student participation.

Some faculty, including Associate Professor and Chair of Geology Zeb Page, were concerned about the haste with which the vote was originally going to take place.

“I don’t think the whole thing came about as a concerted effort on anyone’s part to disenfranchise students,” Page said. “However, I think we were on the verge of doing that. Not only am I opposed to that as a matter of policy, I am opposed to it because it was rash.”

According to Page, the decision to postpone the vote was made after a number of CF members advocated for slowing the process down and including students in the body’s deliberations.

Now, the CF are faced with a vote that has its membership somewhat divided.

Witmer, for one, believes that students should be able to attend CF meetings with a voice but not a vote.

“Having students present to discuss things that affect students directly is important,” Witmer said.

“When it comes to actually voting, I think the faculty should be voting on faculty matters.”

Witmer cited his time as Acting Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, saying that he would attend Student Senate meetings and contribute, but wasn’t given a vote on matters pertaining directly to students.

Page sees things differently.

“I don’t think it makes sense for all students to have a vote,” he said.

“However, there are some students who, by virtue of their positions on different committees, I think they have a reason to vote.”

Parker, who plans to attend the upcoming CF meeting, agrees, saying that the ability of students to work on committees like EPPC could potentially be compromised by the outcome of this vote.

“I’m there in discussions and in meetings with EPPC,” Parker said.

“I do all the same work that the faculty members are doing. And it would mean a lot to my power on that committee if I also lost the same voting privileges.”

Still, Witmer and others aren’t sold.

“Whether or not [students] should vote I’m guessing will be voted down, but maybe that’s just how I think I’m going to vote at this point,” Witmer said. “And it’s dangerous to think everyone else is going to agree with me.”

The CF will make its decision in its upcoming meeting Wednesday, Nov. 7.

CoWork Oberlin Provides Community Workspace Jenna Gyimesi, News Editor Maranda Phillips, Staff Writer

LaunchHouse and the Oberlin Business Partnership are joining forces to open CoWork Oberlin, a coworking space that offers both seasoned and up-and-coming entrepreneurs an area to collaborate on projects in a supportive environment. The workspace, located at 235 Artino Street, will host a grand opening from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. next Thursday, Nov. 8.

LaunchHouse is a coworking community that has already established two successful coworking spaces in Cleveland. “[LaunchHouse was founded with the mission of] bringing people together in one space, and to provide networks, and create a community,” said co-founder of

LaunchHouse Todd Goldstein.

He hopes this new location will help fulfill that mission.

The space will support the many entrepreneurs, small businesses, freelancers, and remote workers in Oberlin and the surrounding areas of Lorain County who need flexible office space and a collaborative environment to grow their businesses.

“By creating a central space like CoWork Oberlin, it allows people to come together, to see new opportunities,” Goldstein said. “You can activate a community and activate small businesses. In the end, it’s not about the space, it’s about creating community.”

The 4,500 square foot facility will offer small and large private offices, an open shared work-

The Oberlin R eview November 2, 2018 Volume 147, Number 7 (ISSN 297–256) 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.

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Editors-in-Chief

space, a dedicated alcove for quiet work, a garden café, a separate room for training and events, a small conference room, and a large conference room furnished with state-of-the-art video conferencing equipment. Members will also have access to printing services, Wi-Fi, and individual phones and mailboxes.

“Here, you can have a space that is your own, but you can think of it like a university library,” said CoWork Oberlin Community and Operations Manager Sarah Fisher. “In that, you get to work collaboratively.

It’s a place for our members to work together and independently,” At CoWork Oberlin, entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to experience the benefits

Sydney Allen Nathan Carpenter Managing Editor Ananya Gupta News Editors Gabby Greene

Jenna Gyimesi Opinions Editor Jackie Brant Cont. Opinions Editor Luce Nguyen This Week Editor Mikaela Fishman Arts Editors Kate Fishman

Katie Lucey Sports Editors Alexis Dill

Ify Ezimora Photo Editors Mallika Pandey Maria Turner Senior Staff Writers Carson Dowhan Roman Broszowski Julie Schreiber

Layout Editors

of working in an innovative and community-based environment.

“A lot of people do not know about what it is like to be a coworker,” said Goldstein. “It can be like a big family that you get to go to work with every day. You work together for a common goal and for success.”

CoWork Oberlin also hopes to integrate Oberlin students into their working community. Students can benefit from the space by being exposed to local entrepreneurs who can help them establish local contacts in their chosen fields.

“We are hoping to create a mutually beneficial set-up [with the College],” said Fisher. “Networking, and getting these types of experience, is how you get the job.”

College senior Jessica Mos-

Anya Louisa Spector Tori Fisher Lila Michaels Lillian Jones Business Manager Jared Steinberg Ads Manager Jabree Hason Web Manager Mikaela Fishman Production Manager Giselle Glaspie Production Staff Olive Hwang Lior Krancer Leo Lasdun Courtney Loeb Devyn Malouf Katherine MacPhail Madi Mettenburg Annie Schoonover

kowitz, the liason for the Oberlin Entrepreneurship Club, agrees that CoWork Oberlin could be a helpful networking platform for students. “[Cowork Oberlin may provide] a lot of opportunities for networking and to form partnerships,” said Moskowitz.

She also hopes that the project will help change the misperception of entrepreneurship on campus by exposing students to successful and impactful entrepreneurs.

“My sense is that students see [entrepreneurs] as evil capitalists,” said Moskowitz. “But at the heart of it, it’s about people taking action to solve a problem. It’s about taking what you are passionate about and turning it into something positive.”

Corrections: The Review is not aware of any corrections this week.

To submit a correction, email managingeditor@ oberlinreview.org.

Construction Starts on New Mercy Hospital Wing Roman Broszkowski Senior Staff Writer Community stakeholders, including Oberlin College President Carmen Twillie Ambar and Mercy Health representatives, broke ground on the construction of a proposed medical office building at a ceremony on Friday, Oct. 12.

The new space will house the existing Mercy Health Oberlin Primary Care and Mercy Health Walk-in Care offices, which currently offer College students access to health care outside of Student Health Services’ open hours.

Mercy will also use the building to invest in new services such as telemedical care and digital check-ins in order to better coordinate existing health care offerings.

“We, as an organization, continue to be responsive to the needs of the communities we serve,” President of Mercy Allen Hospital Ed Ruthin wrote in a press release shared with the Review.

“Community partnerships are what allow us to further strengthen our mission, and this project is another example of collaboration.”

While the new building

The Oberlin Review | November 2, 2018

isn’t scheduled to open until late 2019, the start of its construction marks a milestone in Mercy’s yearslong project to consolidate its services.

This project is one of several recent changes in Oberlin’s health care environment.

Student Health Services — which receives 4,300 visits during the average school year — has altered its hours and policies in the last few years and started the process of moving into a more central space in Dascomb Hall.

These changes include adding an additional registered nurse to its staff and new policies for mental health crisis hospital referrals.

Although the renovations may improve care, Coordinator of Student Health Marilyn Hamel acknowledges that there have been some difficulties with Mercy in the past.

“We had heard some complaints [of gender identity not being respected], but now they have had training,” Hamel said. “[Student Health Services] has also gone through training with Toni [Myers, former director of

Mercy Allen Hospital will be begin construction on a new wing, set to open winter 2019.

Talia Barton, Staff photographer

the Multicultural Resource Center], and can help students administer hormone shots as well.”

These changes mark the College’s efforts to improve student health services.

“The Office of the Dean of Students has been tasked with student retention; student health falls under that,” said Eddie Gisemba, Assistant Dean of Students.

“Some students are forced to leave the College because

of wellness [concerns], and probably close to 50 percent are unable to return. If retention isn’t good, that’s going to affect the budget of everything else.”

The College’s health care strategy emphasizes both diagnostic and preventative care. Student Health Services has been working with Mercy to provide additional resources in areas where existing services might be inadequate.

“I’m very excited for the expansion,” Harshbarger said. “I’m hoping that [Mercy] will also bring in specialists that aren’t around in Oberlin.

We’ve requested that they provide a nutritionist and expand neurological services.”

The hospital’s expansion marks a trend of renovations, as Mercy Health’s 30,000-square-foot medical center opens on Oak Point Road later this fall.

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Security Notebook Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018

2:45 p.m. College staff reported that two posters were cut in half in the Bent Corridor of the Science Center.

Friday, Oct. 26, 2018

7:02 a.m. Custodial staff reported graffiti in the men’s restroom on the main floor of Wilder Hall. A work order was filed for cleanup.

10:41 a.m. College staff reported a double doors leading into the pool area at Hales Gymnasium were tampered with. Screws were taken out of the hasp, disabling the lock. A work order was filed for repair.

5:40 p.m. Student staff at Oberlin College Lanes reported the glass in the door to the bowling lanes was accidentally broken because a visitor fell into it. The glass was cleaned and the door boarded over.

Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018

9:24 a.m. Campus safety officers were called to Zechiel House to assist an ill student. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

Sunday, Oct. 28, 2018

9:07 a.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm in the elevator shaft at Firelands Apartments. An electrician was called for repairs.

Monday, Oct. 29, 2018

10:14 a.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm at a Union Street Housing Unit. Smoke from cooking activated the alarm. The alarm was reset.

8:56 p.m. A student reported the theft of a wallet containing $200 and keys from an unlocked locker at Philips gym. The area was searched but nothing was recovered.

Tueday, Oct. 30, 2018

6:40 p.m. Philips gym staff reported that there was a non-student in the building. Staff attempted to identify the individual, but they walked away. Officers and members of the Oberlin Police Department responded, located the individual, and escorted them from the building.

9:38 p.m. Officers were requested at Philips gym to assist a student who injured their ankle. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

10:12 p.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm at a Goldsmith Village Housing Unit.

Smoke from cooking activated the alarm. The alarm was reset.

Peter Staley, Activist

Peter Staley, OC ’83, is an HIV/AIDS–LGBTQ rights activist who was a prominent member of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and the founder of Treatment Action Group (TAG), which formed and eventually split from the Treatment and Date Committee of ACT UP. Staley is a main figure in the Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague, which details the history of ACT UP and the AIDS crisis.

Staley returned to Oberlin for his talk, “Radical Homosexuals: How ACT UP Changed the World.” Staley continues to fight for HIV/AIDS treatment, awareness, and prevention, and was a founding member of the educational site AIDSmeds.com. At the talk, Staley announced he will be writing a memoir of his life and activism.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Gabby Greene, News Editor In what ways do you think ACT UP is similar to other social movements?

We had this core group of activists, mostly the lesbians who had had quite a bit of experience in other social movements prior to ACT UP, and they brought all that movement memory into the group, so we definitely didn’t create anything new as far as the civil disobedience we engaged in. Die-ins had been done before, the civil disobedience training and how we engaged with police and how we had our own monitors — basically, people who wore special T-shirts at our actions and were the go-between between the demonstrators and the police — all of that stuff is pretty classic and borrowed from protests from the ’70s. The feminist movement of the battle for the equal rights amendment, the pro-choice movement, the anti-war movement, and of course just putting your bodies on the line is very borrowed from the Civil Rights movement. I think every new movement borrows, to an extent, from movements before it and puts a new twist on things.

point where they were able to have this discussion with Tony Fauci [an influential immunologist] about the basic science happening in his laboratory. Some of them became as expert as any Ph.D. out there, including some Nobel Laureates. So that really blew my mind and kind of taught me a lesson, that is there is no learning curve that’s too steep for young people who are very determined to climb, if you have an issue that is complex or involves science or what have you. A young activist should never feel intimidated by that, even if you haven’t studied it, even if you have no degrees in it — you can get the beginning textbooks, you can put together a study group of other like-minded activists, you can self-teach this stuff, and you will learn it faster than anybody who went through any school because you care. I was just amazed at witnessing these activists go from novices to remarkable experts in immunology and virology and pharmacology and statistics, all over the course of about two years. And it just blew my mind.

Speaking of a new twist, is there anything unique about ACT UP? I think we’re known for having combined, what we call the inside-outside gaze, very effectively, where we worked as an organization that protested in the streets, but we also demanded a seat at the table with scientists and government agencies that were making decisions that would affect our lives. And we became as expert as they were in the science and what we knew about HIV/ AIDS, and the drugs that were being developed, and that kind of self-taught patient advocacy where the patient is almost as knowledgeable as the researcher. That was very new, that hadn’t quite been seen before. And the fact that we used those strategies together, demonstrating outside, insisting that we meet inside a week later, was what we were known for, and got the most bang for the buck, I think.

During your talk, you spoke about activists prioritizing self-care to avoid burnout. Just for people who couldn’t attend the talk, how do you recommend doing that?

Basically, what I said yesterday; pace yourself and take care of your mental health. I think this is a requirement for a good activist: somebody who is appropriately selfish about taking care of mental health. You’re really gonna be a lousy activist if you don’t. And that means, taking breaks from it for a while, and looking out for others who are doing the same work and making sure they’re taking care of themselves, too. That kind of bonding with other like-minded friends and activists around an issue — where you know the fight is hard, challenging, is mentally exhausting — but if you have each other’s backs and you don’t feel guilty about taking care of yourselves and laughing and enjoying life, even during very dark times, that’s what you have to do. That’s the only way you’re going to move the ball forward, is if you continue to try to enjoy life while you’re trying to change the world.

GG: What would you say to activists and students trying to educate themselves?

As far as learning your issue, one thing I witnessed right up close and personal [was] marveling at how a core group of the activists in the treatment and data committee of ACT UP self-taught to the

GG: How has AIDS activism changed since the ’80s?

Moving away from community-based

Oberlin Community News Bulletin Heritage Center Hosts Family-Friendly Trivia Put your knowledge to the test at Community Trivia Night Friday, Nov. 2 from 5:30—8:30 p.m. The event is hosted by the Oberlin Heritage Center and will be held at First Church in Oberlin, United Church of Christ. Questions will cover a broad range of topics, including sports, mythology, and pop culture. The event will include games and food. Pre-registration is required and the registration form can be found at oberlinheritagecenter.org.

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Bluegrass Concert Shares Appalachian Narratives Jakob’s Ferry Stragglers, an Appalachian bluegrass group, will perform Sunday, Nov. 4 at 4 p.m. at First Church in Oberlin. Earlier this year, the band was featured in the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Bluegrass Ramble. The Stragglers combine the sounds of harmonious vocals, upright bass, dobro, mandolin, and fiddle to create unique and engaging music. Hear narratives told through sound at this afternoon concert.

Peter Staley

Photo Courtesy of Peter Staley

activism and moving toward a more international scale. It’s definitely been institutionalized; out of what came in the ’80s and ’90s, there were AIDS organizations around the country and around the world. Many not-for-profits and institutions had positions that work in AIDS in some way, and there are community organizations [that] would often hire people to work in HIV/AIDS, so there’s this whole workforce, basically. We’re no longer reliant on a few hundred volunteers to spend obscene amounts of their free time being activists. We now have kind of a paid workforce, and from my perspective, most of them sought out these jobs because they really want to make a difference in HIV/ AIDS. So, the motivation is still there, it’s still very similar, but it’s professionalized. Everyone knows everyone else, it’s international, it’s diverse, it’s finally far more representative of the affected communities that we’re supposed to be fighting for. There are far more people of color involved in fighting HIV/AIDS today and trans activists, which is just night-and-day compared to the ’80s.

And all of that’s a good thing.

GG: I know you are in the process of writing a memoir. What role has Oberlin played in your life?

I’ll have it a bit [about Oberlin] straddling one or two chapters. I certainly developed my love of progressive politics at Oberlin and I honed my debating skills there, which were very helpful later on, on the floor of ACT UP. And just to be in an environment filled with young people that cared about the world. If you compare Oberlin throughout its history to many other colleges, on average, it’s always been a place where the students think about the world, care about the world, and seek to change it for the better, from a progressive perspective. I really honed that and got caught up in it while I was a student there, and it certainly helped me later on.

Food Pantry Helps Fight Food Insecurity The Neighborhood Alliance Senior Enrichment Services of Oberlin opened a new food pantry to help ensure that senior citizens and low-income families have access to nourishing food. The pantry, located at 90 East College St., is open from 9 a.m.–12 p.m. on Thursdays, and is stocked by the Second Harvest Food Bank of North Central Ohio and through donations from community members. Although the pantry officially opened Oct. 18, it has already made an impact on the lives of Oberlin community members.

OPINIONS November 2, 2018

established 1874

Letters to the Editors

Kendal Supports Community with Taxes

First, I want to extend compliments to the students of Oberlin College who invest their time to provide a weekly newspaper offering important communication for students, faculty and staff, but also the larger community. Kendal at Oberlin is fortunate to have The Oberlin Review delivered each week for residents and staff.

In November, citizens will vote on consolidation of the schools, an important issue that could have lasting impact for generations to come. Yes, it will impact taxes, and citizens must weigh the benefits and personal cost. I applaud all those studying the issue thoroughly before voting.

My reason for writing is a quote that was made by a local citizen, stating incorrectly that Kendal at Oberlin is not paying taxes (“Residents to Vote on School Consolidation,” The Oberlin Review, Sept. 28, 2018).

Yes, Kendal is a nonprofit 501(c) (3) organization and is exempt from paying certain taxes. However, in 2017, Kendal paid a total of $505,382 in real estate taxes. Since we opened in 1993, Kendal has paid over $5.3 million, largely benefiting the schools — 75% goes to schools — but also benefiting the City of Oberlin, public parks, emergency services, etc. We are proud to have entered voluntarily into an agreement to pay these taxes before we even opened our doors. We are 25 years old this month and continue to be proud to support our larger community in this way. It is the right thing to do.

Barbara Thomas Chief Executive Officer, Kendal at Oberlin

Voters Should Consider Third Parties As we come closer to the elections, it is with great sorrow we watch as the “corrupt corporate two” censor other viable gubernatorial candidates on the ballot from the debates. Protests against this censorship were held at Dayton University, Marietta College, and Cleveland University. The City Club’s formation of the privately owned Ohio Debate Commission has been petitioned from the onset of their formation to include candidates on the ballot in their debates. Even if the

number of people who do not vote decide to go to the polls and vote for a third party, that party can win. When one feels as if they have no choice, it feeds the greeddriven duopoly, and this is exactly what folks who speak of “spoiler” votes want to happen. We have an obligation to vote for candidates based on issues and answers, not “chance.”

We have experienced a heavy-handed dose of censorship in Ohio. Many people are surprised when they hear there are four candidates running for governor and lieutenant governor in Ohio and three more write-in candidates. Visit https:// www.vote411.org for more info. You can change the fate of our state when you go to the polls Tuesday. There are candidates willing to work hard to serve the people over profit. Demand the media put an end to censorship.

Lisa Kavanaugh Oberlin Resident

Students Can Affect Change Through Voting There are many ways for Oberlin students to affect positive change in this world, and voting this coming Tuesday, Nov. 6 is an important one of these. I’m a permanent resident of this community; I have lived here for more of my life than anywhere else. I want to strongly agree with a recent opinion piece by College junior Ezra Andres-Tysch (“Students Should Vote in Local Elections,” The Oberlin Review, Oct. 12, 2018). Students who are residents of the City of Oberlin and registered in Ohio have a right and, I would say, a responsibility to participate in local and state as well as national elections. Don’t let anyone tell you that you should not be exercising your rights; people have fought and died for these rights!

It is easy to educate yourself. Oberlin’s League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan citizen’s group that promotes active participation in government, has a voters’ guide on their website that summarizes candidates and the pros and cons of local issues (my. lwv.org/ohio/oberlin-area). Many of us feel that the state of politics is at one of its ugliest and darkest moments in recent history.

Voting next Tuesday is one of the most positive, hopeful, and affirmative statements you can make about your commitment to a better future. Vote!

John Petersen Paul Sears Professor of Environmental Studies and Biology

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The Oberlin Review | November 2, 2018

Volume 147, Number 7

Editorial Board Editors-in-Chief

Sydney Allen

Nathan Carpenter

Managing Editor Ananya Gupta

Opinions Editors

Jackie Brant Luce Nguyen

Vote Them Out It’s been nearly two years since the devastation of Election Day 2016, when the American public decided to elevate someone who represents the worst among us in almost every way to the country’s highest office.

In that time, Republicans have been both busy and effective. They’ve laid out an alarming agenda and achieved much of it. The far-right has become emboldened.

The cowards who disguised themselves as moderate conservatives throughout the Obama years have been empowered to let their true colors show.

With Trump at the helm, the GOP has launched attacks on women, people of color, Jewish people, trans people, low-income communities, the press, and countless other constituencies that contribute greatly to this country’s vibrancy and diversity.

They’ve proudly flown a flag of deeply troubling nationalism and used it to distort mainstream rhetoric. Even last week, TIME tweeted an article titled, “How Americans Lost Their National Identity” with the caption, “Nationalism has gotten a bad reputation. But it’s what America needs right now.”

Every single elected Republican who stands by the national party, from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell down to city council members across the country, is complicit in this administration’s hatred and bigotry. And it’s time to vote every single one of them out.

Yes, every single one. The time to look past party differences in local elections is far gone, as is the time for hope in bipartisan cooperation. We’ve played that game too many times, and the conservative strategy has triumphed on almost every occasion. Now is a time for strength, for refusing to tolerate this anymore.

And, as if the election didn’t already feel poignant, last Saturday’s synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, which left 11 people dead in what is believed to be the deadliest attack against the Jewish community in U.S. history, makes this coming Tuesday feel even more urgent.

In the aftermath of the Pittsburgh shooting, Trump — whose administration saw a 57 percent jump in anti-Semitic attacks nationwide in its first year — blamed the media for the murders. In the same week, he launched a number of different attacks on immigrants with his trademark racist and inflammatory rhetoric.

In no way will voting on Tuesday fix all of the issues we face. Trump is merely a representative of this country’s deep evils. But it is nonetheless a necessary step.

When Oberlin students vote, either here or in their home states, they must do so with the atrocities of this president and all who stand by him in mind.

We must also be discerning, and notice when Republican leaders — in Ohio and across the country — weakly admonish Trump and then continue to do his bidding. Voters cannot allow themselves to be swayed by these empty platitudes.

The battles we now face are monumental to the point of being overwhelming.

Climate change is an increasing threat; the balance of the Supreme Court has shifted right and could be cemented as such, should another seat open up. Gun violence continues to claim the lives of tens of thousands of people annually — including the people, predominantly people of color, who are murdered by police officers every year.

Republican leaders and those who stand by them are unwilling to either believe these issues exist or to take them seriously, and are therefore unworthy of a seat at the table.

This is not to say that Democrats have all the answers; they certainly do not, and have shown time and again that they have significant weaknesses of their own.

But we would rather sit down with people who acknowledge that trans people exist, who put things like a higher minimum wage and a compassionate immigration system on the table, and who want to find solution to the crises of police violence and climate change, instead of negotiating with a power-seeking group that has fallen in line behind violence, corruption, and white nationalism in the name of partisan victory. Wouldn’t you?

On Nov. 9, 2016 — the day after Trump was elected — Oberlin’s campus was silent. Something terrible had happened in the world, and its impacts reverberated strongly here. November 2018, our next significant chance to attempt to halt the attack on social justice and our collective values, seemed impossibly far away.

Well, it’s here now, and we have a chance to at least stem some of this country’s collective bleeding, but only if we fight for it. Campus voter turnout needs to be better than it was last time, when we and much of the country were caught unawares by Trump’s victory.

If you are able to vote, remember on Tuesday that this administration’s horrific acts are not made possible by Trump, but by all those who condone and support him — and it’s our responsibility to vote every last one of them out.

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

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Opi n ions

In Favor

Letters To The Editors: Issue 11

While discussion continues about Issue 11, we must remember that we are part of a strong and diverse committee, including many parents of school-aged children who are tired of commonplace argument and committed to action. In this day and age we know that family, school, and community influences on student achievement are great, and that the environmental quality of schools affects educational performance. Study after study demonstrates that facilities themselves have an impact on things such as student behavior, grades, teacher retention, and community satisfaction. Some may think that retrofitting current buildings for present use is the answer. We have done our homework and find the more prudent investment to be the building of a new school.

This new facility will adhere to design standards for teaching and learning, technology, safety, and sustainability, serving Oberlin well into our future.

We encourage you to visit the Yes for Oberlin Schools bond issue committee’s website at oberlinyes.org for more detailed information regarding Issue 11.

Laura Slocum, OHS ’93 Amy (Pechaitis) Burgess, OHS ’98 Chris M. Mason Oberlin Residents and Parents of Future OHS Graduates Oberlin College students who are registered to vote here in Tuesday’s election need to know that the “down-ballot” contests are important. Court and State Board of Education decisions may affect them. And certainly the vote on the Oberlin school improvement levy will have a significant impact on the future of the Oberlin schools and the community as a whole, including Oberlin College. In addition to strongly supporting the Democratic candidates for statewide office at the top of the ballot (Cordray/ Sutton, Dettelbach, Space, Clyde, Richardson), Sherrod Brown for U.S. Senate, Janet Garrett for U.S. House of Representatives, Sharon Sweda for State Senator, Joe Miller for State Representative, and Matt Lundy for County Commissioner, I am urging a vote for Jeanine Donaldson for State Board of Education, Michael Donnelly for Justice of the Supreme Court, Melody Stewart for Justice of the Supreme Court, Diana Colavecchio for Judge of the Court of Appeals, and John Miraldi for Judge in the Court of Common Pleas. I am for the two Lorain county ballot issues (8 and 14) and for the Oberlin City School Bond Issue (11). Don’t forget to vote!

John Elder Oberlin Resident On November 6, we will have the opportunity to shape our community’s shared future.

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Several significant state and local issues come to us. One of these, Issue 11, begins the process of building a single-campus school designed to meet the 21st century needs of our small but special district.

Presented in these pages last week were some inaccurate statements regarding the local schools. I write simply to set the record straight.

On the most recent state report card, the Oberlin City Schools received an overall assessment of ‘C’ not an implied ‘F’ as you may have read. (For more information, please see https://reportcard. education.ohio.gov/district/ overview/044594.) Of the 608 Ohio School Districts, only 28 received an ‘A’, and the majority received a ‘C’. Those districts receiving As exhibit socioeconomic traits very different from our own.

Oberlin is a district of 985 students. During the last school year, Oberlin experienced a net outflow of 101 students (not close to “about 250” as claimed in last week’s letter). Our community recorded home schooled students (39), students that chose charter schools (25) and students that choose private school (31). Last year, 92 students open enrolled out and 86 chose to open enroll in.

Regarding the International Baccalaureate program, indeed, Oberlin spends money on the curriculum and celebrates the fact that 100 percent of students in grades K–10 receive this awardwinning, broadly recognized course of study integrated with their daily lessons. Eleventh and twelfth graders can choose to take IB courses and a smaller subset of those students chooses to take on the added rigor of the IB Diploma program and sit for the exams. IB’s mission statement is “to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.” Who would not want that?

Will a new state-of-theart school cost money? Yes, of course. We were fortunate that our forebears saw fit to provide those that followed them a better opportunity through educational techniques and facilities that were state-of-the-art at the time. With a school system infrastructure comprising four aging buildings — the newest of which is approaching sixty years of age — now is the time to support the next generation, our children, and our future in voting YES on Issue 11.

Michele Andrews Oberlin Resident Teachers of the Oberlin Ohio Education Association are in support of the upcoming Issue 11. The decision to ask taxpayers to support new school buildings for our children came after a number of years of exploring multiple other options, including consolidation and retrofitting of our current buildings. New buildings proved to be the most

cost-effective choice. Retrofitting our current buildings would cost more and leave us with old buildings that were designed to meet the educational needs of previous generations, not current or future generations. Recently, our staff spent the day in North Ridgeville and were able to see firsthand the difference between our old buildings and their new buildings. The learning spaces were beautiful and clearly designed with collaboration, innovation, and safety in mind.

Oberlin is known for being a forward-thinking community.

We have our own power plant, our own hospital, and a wide variety of thriving businesses and community services. Please be forward-thinking when it comes to our schools. Vote “Yes” on Issue 11.

Robin Diedrick OOEA President

Against Please join us in voting “No” on Issue 11 for these reasons.

Oberlin taxes are already high.

Property taxes are average, but Oberlin’s two percent school income tax is tied for the highest in the state. Even without the school levy, property taxes will increase substantially in Oberlin in 2019 due to a reassessment of our property values by the county. A 2016 study done by the city shows that Oberlin is becoming a less economically and racially diverse community as it becomes a more expensive place to live, leading to a more gentrified and aging community.

Many feel the school district has not spent our money wisely.

Top-heavy administration, low state report card grades, and a lack of building upkeep are key concerns. In addition, with student enrollment decreasing we may soon be too small to remain independent without merging with other school districts. New buildings do not mean better education. A new building will also not alter our existing problems with discipline and academics that cause so many to leave the district.

In the age of technology, brick and mortar buildings are likely to play less of a role in education.

It is also not sustainable to build and knock down buildings every 50 years. The greenest buildings are those already built.

Consolidation and renovation have not been adequately explored. Other districts have provided personalized, cost-effective renovations without placing an undue burden on the taxpayer. Please join us in voting “No” on Issue 11, so the district will consider options that better meet the needs of our community.

Judith Poirson Monica Smith Oberlin Residents I write firstly to thank Jackie Brant for the reasoned and dispassionate discussion of Issue 11

presented in “Oberlin Students Must Evaluate Their Place in Local Elections,” (The Oberlin Review, Oct. 5, 2018). Issue 11 concerns the Oberlin school board’s request for a 37-year, 4.8 mill increase in local property taxes to pay for the first phase of the creation of a single-campus school facility for Preschool to Grade 5.

A second 37-year levy will be requested by the Board in 2022 for Phase II to pay for a new grades 6-12 building on the same campus. Brant carefully presented a few of the arguments that have been presented for and against passage of this new tax levy.

Second, I wish to alert readers of the Review to the existence of the group Oberlin Concerned Citizens, formed in opposition to Issue 11. The fact that long-time supporters of the Oberlin City Schools felt the need to create OCC and argue against Issue 11 is, in itself, quite telling. The website, www.oberlinconcernedcitizens.org/, is filled with factual information concerning Issue 11. One can learn, for example, that the school board’s oft-stated claim that consolidating existing buildings through renovation will cost essentially the same as a new building is false; it will cost much more than renovations. I would urge readers of the Review to consult this website for much more well-researched information pertaining to Issue 11.

Passage of Issue 11 would increase Oberlin property taxes in support of city schools to 14.15 mills ($1,415 for every $100,000 of property valuation), well beyond the 10-mill limitation in the Ohio Revised Code. (As such, the wording of Issue 11 must specifically state this new tax levy would place Oberlin’s property taxes outside the 10-mill limitation.) In addition to the proposed increase to a 14.15 mill rate in property taxes, Oberlin residents also pay a 2 percent income tax in support of the Oberlin City Schools. As it stands — prior to next week’s polling — Oberlin residents support the education of our children through taxes at a level well beyond the state and county averages.

Passage of Issue 11 will negatively impact our wonderful community. There are alternatives to Issue 11 that would achieve the same results in a much more fiscally responsible manner. I would urge any interested reader to visit the online version of this letter and use the links posted there to explore Issue 11 further.

I also urge voters to join me in voting “No” on Issue 11.

Jim Walsh Professor of Mathematics Voting “No” on Issue 11 could influence education in Oberlin to be more thoughtful, creative, and community-building.

The schools don’t need a new building in order to be community gathering spaces, agemixing spaces, and teacher collaboration spaces. All of that is a matter of programming and use of our buildings. Buying a new

building, to be delivered four or more years from now, may even be more of a distraction for the school board than a benefit for education.

We can’t just order a new school, or a new planet, from Amazon, and we shouldn’t teach our kids that we can. We need to learn about our resource limits — and how to balance our lives. Other needs in the community, and in the world, are much greater than for a stretch-limousine school, especially when two minivan schools will do just fine, and we can add great sound systems, cargo trailers, and great drivers.

As you may know from the Spanish “SITES” program, and from various math, STEM, and arts programs in Oberlin — or from sending children to private schools and camps — education is about enriching experiences, not about edifices.

So guaranteeing that all Oberlin public school students get individually-chosen, enriching summer camp experiences, paid for by the district, would attract far more students to the district than a new building, would cost far less, and would boost kids’ academic levels much more.

Further, space-sharing just makes sense. Why not be clever and work out a building-sharing deal with the College? Some people complain about the College owning so much tax-free property; I’m not one of these complainers, but why not hack that reality with a clever deal to share the beautiful and bountiful buildings of the College in a way that benefits the College? The College might also find some of the school district’s buildings useful, especially as people express needs for more performance space and startup business/lab space. We are a small community — with lots of buildings. We will continue to need to add specialized facilities and equipment, but not general buildings.

We also need to make at least one of our school buildings selfsufficient for when there is a power outage or different utility disasters. This means adding geothermal heating and cooling, and other systems for water, sanitation, power, and communications.

Voting “No” on Issue 11 will move the school board past this one very expensive and relatively ordinary proposal, to consider the options that are cheaper, more educational, more fairly funded, more moral in the face of climate crisis, faster, and more creative.

Aliza Weidenbaum Oberlin Resident Please join me in voting “No” on Issue 11, phase one of the proposed $43 million new school building. Consolidation and renovations are a more affordable alternative, offering many benefits to our community.

Have pride in restoring See Letters, page 7

Jewish Trump Voters Have In Memory of Adrienne Jones, Pioneer of Africana Studies Blood on Their Hands Daniel Markus Contributing Writer Editor’s note: This article contains mention of anti-Semitism and gun violence.

I have been trying to escape Judaism for a long time. As a child, I hated the services my parents schlepped me along to — they were boring, in a language I didn’t know, and involved a lot of standing. Early in my teens, I braced against my Hebrew school teachers. They all seemed convinced that Israel could not be criticized whatsoever for its violence in retaliation to rocket attacks, no matter how many innocent civilians were killed. Later, in high school, I completely rejected God, identifying passionately as an atheist.

When I got to college, though, it was different. Suddenly, knowledge of the Holocaust was not a given, I encountered open hostility toward Jews, and found the identity I tried so hard to leave behind constantly invalidated at the expense of myself and my loved ones. Instead of fighting my grandmother’s Islamophobia and my synagogue’s ingrained bigotry, my battle in college was against the antiSemitism of my peers and the intolerance of my institution; no matter how hard I tried escaping Judaism, I ended up having to defend it.

So, I’ve lived a double life, one I created for myself to make it easier to get by. At home, I’m an atheist and a “radical” liberal. I advocate for Palestinian liberation, call out my family’s Islamophobia and try to unpack my own, and stay as far away as possible from organized religion. At Oberlin, however, I’m Jewish. I try to explain that yes, it is possible to be a Zionist and also support Palestinian liberation.

I attend community events as much as I feel comfortable, and I vent to my Jewish friends about how we feel on campus.

I wish I didn’t have to do that, but the Jewish people have never had the privilege of escaping their tormentors, and I am no different. Shrugging off my Judaism is a privilege I can never have, and the murders of 11 congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill — 11 of my people — is just another reminder of that.

Depressingly, what shocks and infuriates me about the deaths in Squirrel Hill is not the murders themselves. I have been told stories of death since I was a child, watching elderly men weep as they recounted hearing the gunshots from the SS executing little boys in the woods. Nor am I so shaken by the gun violence, for we live in the midst of so much gun violence and inaction on gun control — after all, this is America, where about 37 Americans are killed with guns each day.

No. The worst thing about these murders is that there are many fellow Jews among us who are responsible; about a quarter of all Jewish voters in fact. They voted for Donald Trump.

He, as Republicans do, promised them unwavering support of the state of Israel and moving the U.S. embassy to the contested area of Jerusalem, and they paid careful attention to those promises. But he also promised a policy of racism, antiSemitism, Islamophobia, and hate, which they blissfully ignored. The Squirrel Hill murders are the result.

If you don’t believe me, you can simply check the shooter’s social media page, where he directly cited the President’s false statements about a migrant caravan as the reason he targeted Tree of Life, which sponsors migrants through an organization called Hebrew Immigrant Aid The Oberlin Review | November 2, 2018

Society. Following Trump’s election in 2016, anti-Semitic attacks increased by 57 percent in 2017.

The funny thing about Judaism is that it is a very small religion — less than two percent of Americans identify as Jewish, and the number is even smaller globally. As a kid, it always seemed to me that the quirks of Judaism were structured around that small size, and there was an intense pressure against leaving the faith.

My parents were strictly cautioned about marrying out of the religion, and my Hebrew school teachers drilled in the same message. But if we are so obsessed with ensuring our own survival, why do some of us support a president who openly endangers it?

Critics will argue that I should not speak so harshly or politicize the dead, that I should not disrupt the grief felt within the Jewish community. That may have been true once.

But the problem is that these murders are political. Being Jewish and supporting the President without being called out for it is a privilege that people don’t get to have anymore. We as a religious community must get over our fear of speaking out if we ever want to end our own persecution and stop enabling it ourselves.

We also cannot ignore that our struggle against persecution is intimately tied up with that of other communities. Just a few days prior to the murders in Pittsburgh, a white supremacist murdered two Black people in a Kentucky Kroger.

I had no idea until after Pittsburgh, and neither did my family. We must do better than that.

Squirrel Hill is not a one-off. Both in terms of guns and anti-Semitism, it is part of a burgeoning phenomenon in America in which violence and hate increasingly combine and result in murders like these.

We saw it in Charleston. We saw it in Charlottesville. And we have seen it so many other times. Undoubtedly, this hate has festered for years, stretching long before 2016. But it was released with the Republican party’s embrace of extremism, and that embrace was led by Donald Trump.

We cannot escape our Judaism, and we cannot escape the fact that some of us now have blood on our hands. Jews cannot keep living double lives in which we allow our conservative peers, relatives, and friends to get away with supporting such a hateful president and party without having to be accountable. We have to do more than hold vigils and be sad — we have to broach the uncomfortable political subjects with our family members, ask them who they voted for, and knock on doors. We have to call our rabbis and pressure them to give sermons about social justice, racial justice, and voting, especially when the congregants don’t want to hear it. We must say the victims’ names, and do all that we can to make sure that the next time this happens to us — it’s only a matter of when — that our president didn’t enable it.

Richard Gottfried Rose Mallinger Jerry Rabinowitz Cecil Rosenthal David Rosenthal Bernice Simon Sylvan Simon Daniel Stein Melvin Wax Irving Younger Joyce Fienberg

James Millette Emeritus Professor of Africana Studies Editor’s note: Adrienne Lash Jones, emerita professor of Africana Studies — formerly known as the Black Studies Department — passed away Aug. 28, 2018 at the age of 83. Her husband, L. Morris Jones, died in 2015. The following was written in their memory.

I was sitting at my desk at Denison University in 1991 when I received a phone call from Adrienne Jones. She identified herself as the chair of the Black Studies Department at Oberlin College and asked me whether I would be interested in paying a visit to the Oberlin campus to consider the possibility of an appointment in Caribbean history. We talked for a bit, and at the end of it all, she told me that we should talk again.

We did, and she informed me that she had spoken with the dean at the time and had his support to invite me to visit the campus and be interviewed for a position. I agreed, and the rest is history. I came to Oberlin for one year, had my stay extended by another, and ended up as a tenured faculty member, teaching Caribbean history in the Black Studies department from 1991–2010.

When I arrived on campus, Adrienne and I talked about the curriculum that was developing in the Black Studies Department and the role that Caribbean history was intended to play in it. She had a vision of the curriculum focused on the African diaspora — particularly on Africa, the United States, and the Caribbean.

My impression was that the department was already teaching courses which impinged on these areas but had not yet formalized an emphasis and a vision targeted on the diaspora as such. Caribbean history, for example, was not taught — though Caribbean literature was interrogated in courses offered by Calvin Hernton, himself a scholar, a diasporic man of diasporic repute. Additionally, Yakubu Saaka touched on African religions in the Caribbean and Brazil, where rituals and their offshoots first took root in the New World.

Adrienne’s vision of the department focused on a mix of courses in history, politics, education, and fine arts. In addition, she was of the opinion that the

curriculum should be bookended by two courses: an existing introductory course and a brand new senior seminar, which majors would complete in the second semester of their last year.

The course was brand-new, not only in the department but in the College as a whole. I well remember the opposition we received and the meetings we had to attend in order to get approval for the course. Many of the best and brightest were at those meetings, and it was only reluctantly — and in the spirit of experimental teaching — that the proposal was accepted. Since then, many other departments and programs have adopted the senior seminar as a closing requirement in their majors.

In the period in which she was chair, Adrienne Jones was foremost in conceptualizing and implementing some of the most important new directions in the department and in the College. To her we owe deep gratitude for shaping the curriculum of the modern AfricanAmerican, and lately christened Africana studies.

But Adrienne wasn’t done yet. She was also instrumental in conceptualizing and establishing the then newly-born feminist studies department. She encouraged students and colleagues to actively participate in the department as well.

Adrienne was the first female African American professor and a formidable presence on the campus. There is reason to believe that deans trembled at the sound of her feet marching into their offices, as she often did. She achieved a lot because of the strong personal influence that she wielded on campus. She was at her best stride with Sister Dolores Nevels at her side. Adrienne would have been delighted by the realization of her longstanding dream of an African American, Carmen Twillie Ambar, as president of Oberlin College.

I suspect that a lot of what she was had to do with the joyful relationship that she shared with her husband, Morris. They were nice people. Morris and I always exchanged stories about Cuba. He loved the island, and so do I. My wife was born there, and Morris learned to speak Spanish on one of his visits to Cuba.

All in all, Adrienne and Morris were wonderful people. We are lucky to have known them and enjoyed their friendship, and we will miss them greatly.

Letters To The Editors: Issue 11 (cont.)

Continued from page 6

Langston Middle School and keeping it as a cornerstone of our school district.

Built in 1923, it is in a central location, has strong architectural stature, “good bones,” and can accommodate our PK–5 students without an addition.

Show our children that we are not part of a “throwaway” society, that it is neither environmentally sound nor sustainable to build and knock down buildings every 50 years, which is the predicted lifespan of the proposed new building.

Complete work incrementally, using some of our permanent improvement levy money ($555,000 annually), combined with a more modest levy, so as not to overtax the community.

Allow the district to remain flexible in uncertain times more so than with a big, expensive building. Nationwide birthrates are at a record low — lower than during

the Depression — which could cause enrollment to erode further. Technology is rapidly changing the face of education, with predictions that schools will be used as “homebases” rather than where all learning occurs.

Realize many of the exact same benefits attributed to the proposed new building: reduced personnel costs, elimination of duplicated services (e.g. food service, libraries), lower building maintenance.

Despite information on the school’s levy site that it would cost between $27–39 million to consolidate two of our schools, we have every reason to believe that it can be done for less than half the cost of the proposed new building. For more information, please visit: www.oberlinconcernedcitizens.org Debbi Walsh Oberlin Resident

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D E E N U O Y G N I H T Y R E EV

T N O E T O V TO EDITOR K E E W S I H ISHMAN , T F A L E A K I EXT BY M T D N A T U LAYO CAN I EVEN

All students with Lorain County addresses (you However, if you aren’t already registered, you c tion deadline has passed. To check if you are re state.oh.us/voterlookup.aspx. If you aren’t alrea absentee in your home state, which you can do if your state’s voter registration deadline has n state). See your home state’s deadline at vote.o

WHAT’S THE MIDTERM ELECTION?

DOES MY VOTE COUNT IN LORAIN COUNTY?

THE BASICS

Yes! Lorain County is a “swing county,” which means that elections are often very close here, so every vote counts. For instance, in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton won the county by an extremely small margin of 131 votes. That’s fewer than all of the graduating seniors at Oberlin College!

IS IT FAIR TO VOTE ON LOCAL ISSUES IN A STATE WHERE I’M ONLY LIVING FOR FOUR YEARS? Some people feel it’s not appropriate for college students to vote on local issues, such as school board issues and judicial seats, because our residence in Oberlin is so temporary. However, other people feel that local issues affect the country as a whole, which makes it OK to vote on them. These are just two of the points that can be made in this delicate debate. The Review has published pieces on multiple sides of this issue which can help you consider carefully whether you want to vote in local Ohio issues or not. See College junior Jackie Brant’s Oct. 5 article “Oberlin Students Must Evaluate Their Place in Local Elections,” as well as College junior Ezra Andres-Tysch’s Oct. 12 article “Students Should Vote in Local Elections.”

WHERE DO I GO TO VOTE?

THE LO GISTICS

The midterm election happens in the middle of every presidential term. This year, it’s happening on Tuesday, Nov. 6. Of the 100 Senate seats, 35 are up for re-election, and all 435 House of Representative seats are up for re-election as well. Additionally, 36 states and three territories will vote on governorships, and many states will re-elect mayors and hold additional local elections. In Ohio, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and Republican Representative Jim Jordan are up for re-election, as well as the governor, attorney general, and secretary of state, among others.

VOTE IN OHIO?

The two voting locations for Oberlin students ar Zion Baptist Church of Oberlin. To find out which vote at, check voterlookup.sos.state.oh.us/voter

WHAT SHOULD I BRING TO THE POLLS?

In order to vote, students from out of state mus proof of address. If you’re from Lorain County yo Ohio driver’s license or state ID. If you live in a dorm or village house: The Co bills in every OCMR which count as proof of addr If you live in a co-op: Ask your Housing Loose If you live off campus: Go to sos.state.oh.us/e requirements for a list of options for providing p

WHAT IF I DON’T HAVE THAT

If you don’t have proof of residence for any reas can either vote early or vote absentee. The only tion you need for either option is the last four di social security number.

Vote early: This involves going to the Lorain Co of Elections and voting there. The address is 198 Ridge Road East, Lorain, OH 44055. To see the ho which the Board of Elections is open, go to sos.s elections/voters/voting-schedule.

Vote absentee: This involves requesting an abs by noon on Saturday, Nov. 3 and then mailing it day, Nov. 5. It’s a bit late to be voting absentee, early is a better option at this point if you can fi tation. For complete instructions on how to vote go to sos.state.oh.us/elections/voters/absentee-

W O N K D TO

?

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sentee ballot in by Monso voting ind transpore absentee, -voting

THE PO LITICS

Y A D S E U T

WHO’S ON THE BALLOT? To see a sample ballot, go to lorain.ohioboe.com/apps/vtrlookup.aspx. The sample ballot looks exactly like the ballot you will see on Election Day. Reading your sample ballot allows you to know exactly what you’ll be voting on so that you can look up information about the candidates and issues before you go to vote.

HOW DO I FIND INFORMATION ABOUT CANDIDATES AND ISSUES? For information on each of the candidates and ballot issues, go to vote411.org and type in your address. Then click the green button that says “Get personalized information on candidates and issues” and click on the individual races to learn about who is running in that race. The League of Women Voters of the Oberlin Area also provides a PDF guide on the candidates, which you can download from my.lwv.org/ohio/ oberlin-area/article/2018-lorain-county-voters-guide. If you have more election-related questions, feel free to contact Alison Ricker, head of the Science Library, either by email at aricker@oberlin.edu or in person at the library.

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A r t s & C u lt u r e

ARTS & CULTURE November 2, 2018

established 1874

Volume 147, Number 7

Art Exhibition Counternarratives Sparks Conversation on Campus Emarie De La Nuez Students walking past Mudd library or the Allen Memorial Art Museum this week may have noticed enlarged markups of The New York Times front pages posted on the buildings’ facades. These works, installed this week by Brooklyn-based artist Alexandra Bell, are meant to showcase the consequences of how news is portrayed by major news and media outlets.

“I first encountered Alexandra Bell’s work on Instagram over a year ago, as I was starting my position at Oberlin,” said Allen Memorial Art Museum Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Andrea Gyorody. “I found her work to be both timely and poignant, and immediately began thinking of ways that her work could appear on campus.”

Bell introduced Oberlin to her Counternarratives project last Monday in a lecture in Hallock Auditorium, which focused on how issues around race and violence are reported in the media. Bell, who holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, confronts the problematic notion of holding media to be an absolute “truth.”

Counternarratives utilizes walls in public locations to mount redacted, annotated, and edited newspaper clippings, alongside versions she creates that provide a different truth and perspective.

“Is there a way something can be factual, but not completely true?” Bell asked the audience during the lecture.

Oberlin is the site of two of Bell’s Counternarratives pieces — the one located at Mudd critiques media coverage of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, while the other, posted at the Allen, evaluates journalistic shortfalls around coverage of the violent far-right protests that erupted in Charlottesville, VA, last year.

Bell’s artistic process begins with transferring articles that appeared in the print version of The New York Times — the artist is a self-proclaimed “news snob” — into Adobe InDesign. In doing so, Bell hopes to glean a more thorough understanding of the article’s content, as well as replicate the arduous process of creating and consuming print

media. From there, she annotates the articles, examining their role in perpetuating dominant narratives.

One facet of media coverage that Bell explores in her work is what she called “the placement of whiteness.” Whiteness is often afforded invisibility — meaning it is uncommon that white people are described by their race — when all other races and ethnicities are almost always pointed out.

Bell often critiques the way information is presented by major news outlets. For example, in the piece on Michael Brown, Bell examines why Michael Brown and Officer Darren Wilson were, in their side-by-side profiling by The New York Times , given a false equivalency. She questioned various facets of the coverage of the fatal shooting, asking why Wilson’s profile — when reading from left to right — is first. Furthermore, Bell tackles the issue of how Black males are often demonized in the news. These portrayals of an entire demographic of people have allowed for discriminatory policies and court rulings that have made Black males five times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts.

Historically, Bell argued, Black people were not allowed to participate in the creation of news narratives — through, for example, objective interviews — but rather, were discussed as chattel. The journalistically-trained artist cross-referenced an article from the 1830s discussing the sale of slaves with more contemporary pieces.

“You can see the reverberation of this animalistic language [today],” Bell stated, referring to the historical use of words such as “demon” or “brute” to describe Black people in the media.

For the Michael Brown piece, entitled “A Teenager with Promise,” Bell replaced the side-by-side profiles and grainy photos of both subjects with a large-scale image of Brown’s graduation photo, with the titular phrase serving as the headline. According to the artist, this was an intentional move to highlight Brown’s age and innocence. Bell said that the ages of Black males are often ignored by the media, in favor of reports of previous criminal acts or negative personality traits. For example, The New York Times infamously referred to Mi-

Alexandra Bell and others install “A Teenager with Promise” outside Mudd library on Tuesday, Oct. 30. The work critiques major media coverage of the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown.

Photo By Maria Turner

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Artist Alexandra Bell spoke about her art series Counternarratives to a full house in Hallock Auditorium last Monday.

Photo By Mikaela Fishman

chael Brown as “no angel.”

“The media [doesn’t] see them as kids,” College senior Hanne Williams-Baron, who attended Bell’s talk, said. “[They] always talk about [Black males] smoking weed or selling drugs, and this takes away their innocence.”

One aspect of printed news that Bell introduced was the significance of being “above the fold.” When the newspaper is folded, the reader only sees the images and headlines above the fold — thus, the layout of print media has exceptional power to define or perpetuate a certain narrative.

Bell’s piece entitled “Charlottesville” depicted the transformation of the headline of The New York Times article by minimizing the original large photo of a young couple and enlarging a poignant photo of the car that rammed into the protestors.

Bell also tackled the importance of layout with her other work “Olympic Threat,” which focused on The New York Times article “Accused of Fabricating Robbery, Swimmers Fuel Tension in Brazil,” which instead of using a photo of the white swimmers used the photo of famed sprinter Usain Bolt, attatched to another article on the page. This allowed for a word-image association between robbery and male Blackness to occur.

“You [can’t] put a headline like that and put a black man there,” College sophomore Ivy Miller said. “People need to watch and think about what they are doing.”

Bell has begun to transition away from Counternarratives . She is currently working on a nonpublic artistic project that focuses on media coverage of the “Central Park Five.” In 1990, five Black teenagers were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park the year prior. There were 28 other assaults that week — two of them on white women, two on Asian women, and 24 on Black and Latina women — yet, according to Bell, print media was utterly captivated by the case in Central Park.

In this endeavor, Bell hopes to evaluate how people with social capital and money “get the top billing” in the media. For example, during the time of the attacks, Donald Trump paid $85,000 to take out a fullpage advertisement calling for the death penalty.

See Counternarratives, page 13

Editorial: Museum Symposium Presents Opportunity to Evaluate Western Canon at Oberlin, Broader Academia Kate Fishman and Katie Lucey Arts & Culture Editors A popular misconception in the art world is the belief that classical Greek and Roman sculptures in museums across the world look the way they’re supposed to. Unpainted, bare, and unmistakably white, these sculptures propagate the false notion that ancient artists meant to showcase the ideal human form in swaths of pale marble.

However, classical sculptures that are white today were originally meant to be seen in color — scientific evidence suggests they were once painted in bright, blazing hues. While a quick Google search of polychrome busts and sculptures may seem hard to believe or even heinous, the reasoning behind this recent discovery is logical. Despite the preciousness of marble, this material was merely a canvas for Greco-Roman artists. Their sculptures were not finished until painted in vibrant shades of blue, red green, and the like.

Even more significant are the assumptions the color of these sculptures breed regarding how we view race in art. According to a New Yorker article on this very subject, reactions to the discovery of painted sculpture reinforce the “tendency to equate whiteness with beauty, taste, and classical ideals, and to see color as alien, sensual, and garish” (“The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture,” Oct. 29, 2018). This ancient art was not meant to be white, and ancient artists were not all white.

Last night, the Allen Memorial Art Museum kicked off Creating Space: Curating Black Art Now, a symposium which will continue today, meant to assess the current state of representation in the fine art world. Specifically, student object talks, an alumni panel, and yesterday’s keynote lecture by Deputy Director of the California African American Museum Naima J. Keith discuss the evolution of museums in the wake of increased

demand for artwork and exhibitions created and curated by people of color.

The self-evaluative nature of such a symposium, especially one hosted by such a prestigious and important institution as the Allen, is necessary and welcomed. Oberlin has long been a nexus for social justice, equity, and inclusion for people of all backgrounds. Nonetheless, it is also a historically white institution and has not always effectively represented all those who enjoy its offerings. This symposium is a prime opportunity to reflect on the College’s strides toward more diverse academics, as well as a time to think about what more can be done.

The Western canon permeates many aspects of academia. People studying humanities in the US have been exposed to the artistic and literary works of Western Europeans, with considerably less core academic instruction focused on the artistic achievements of POC. At schools like Columbia University, where students

are enrolled in a classics-based core curriculum, this long-standing commitment to Western works is especially palpable; after all, Columbia’s library facade is carved with the names Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, and Aristotle.

Some have criticized the pushback against a Western-focused curriculum.

American political commentator Heather MacDonald recently took to The Wall Street Journal to profess that “students increasingly believe that studying the Western canon puts ‘their health, mental safety, and security at risk’ and can be ‘a source of — literally — [a] life threat’” (“The Weekend Interview with Heather Mac Donald: The Scourge of ‘Diversity’” Oct. 13, 2018).

While the Western canon is not necessarily damaging to the physical health and intellect of Oberlin students, its position at the core of academic art study is undoubtedly flawed. Instead, diverse academic offerings should be taught by those

Claire Wang

with the personal and professional experience to provide the necessary context for the subject.

The Review has also struggled to ensure that we effectively represent Oberlin’s student body, both in what stories are told and who is doing the telling. It is work that necessitates thoughtfulness.

With this in mind, we applaud the Allen in its quest to create space for more artists and curators of color. As both a leading collegiate art museum and an institution that must uphold the values of the College and greater community, the Allen has a responsibility to carry out this work — as do all of us with platforms for creative representation and storytelling.

Oberlin’s Arts department has also continuously advocated for a greater breadth and quality of instruction in artfocused disciplines outside of the Western canon. The recent hiring of Assistant Professor of Islamic Art History Farshid Emami and Visiting Assistant Professor of the Arts of Africa and the Black Atlantic Kantara Souffrant, OC ’08, have expanded the department’s culturallydiverse offerings.

If nothing else, these events, new course offerings, and new hires show that the art scene at Oberlin is sensitive to both the ongoing evolution of the field and past representational injustices. Oberlin continues to take intentional steps to expose its students to underrepresented cultures in the art historical lexicon.

Though there is always more to do — Oberlin, as well as the fine arts field in general, remains majority white — institutions and entities that have long focused almost entirely on the Western canon have begun the process of bringing academic discourse to crucial new standards of representation. Recognizing that white marble sculptures were meant to be painted, and making space for conversations like the symposium, represent meaningful steps toward correcting the exclusive narratives that dominate art history.

Young Jazz Visionary Performs Original Compositions Matei Predescu New York-based saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins attracted a sizeable audience Saturday, Oct. 13 for his performance at David H. Stull Recital Hall, kicking off Oberlin’s midterm week. Wilkins’ quartet — featuring Micah Thomas on piano, Daryl Johns on bass, and Kweku Sumbry on drums — performed a complete set of original compositions written by the saxophonist.

Wilkins is currently a senior at The Juilliard School of Music, and his performances are in high demand. He’s a sideman to contemporary New York City jazz visionaries like Harish Raghavan, Gerald Clayton, Joel Ross, and David Weiss, and performs with his quartet of music school colleagues and other young innovators.

Wilkins’ progressive, gospel-inspired compositions push the boundaries of contemporary improvised music while still remaining grounded in the jazz canon. Wilkins is a talented composer who cites influences like Coleman and Bach. His lyrical, hymn-like music induces an intense cathartic response in his audiences.

Wilkins’ melodies aren’t bound to just one time signature; the emotional context or weight of the phrases are what determine the meter. As a result, Wilkins’ pieces contain complex sections with two or three different time signatures — all reflecting the poignancy of his phrases.

Wilkins elaborated on his compositional approach in a masterclass the next day.

“When you play a phrase, figure out where it is [in the overall narrative],” he said. “There are certain phrases that lead you into something else, or that bring you from

The Oberlin Review | November 2, 2018

somewhere else.”

His songwriting strategies may seem complicated and abstract in theory, but the rhythm section’s support revealed the intuitive logic behind his pieces.

Sumbry and Johns’ bass-drum lockup punctuated the soaring themes of the pieces, which were filled in

by Thomas’ lush textural landscapes at the piano. The rhythm section’s cohesive intention in their accompaniment of Wilkins’ melodic narrative has a poignancy reminiscent of film scores, which Wilkins said influence his style.

“I like to use specific compositional techniques that make the audience literally feel something at a point in the song,” Wilkins explained. “Like, how can I induce this particular emotion through what I write? How can I make the audience cry here? I like to think of it like a movie score — you want to cry when the main theme comes back at the end of the movie, but fully fleshed out and orchestrated. By then, that theme has been floating around your head for most of the movie.”

Wilkins’ storyteller-like approach to composition shone through during the performance and certainly transmitted its desired effect to the listeners. The crowd’s rapt attention transformed into an atmosphere of emotional intimacy. Conservatory senior Birsa Chatterjee, who also helms Oberlin Jazz Society — the studentbooking organization responsible for bringing Wilkins to Oberlin — recalled one especially powerful moment of the performance.

“There was one moment at the end of the suite he wrote, where the melody kept coming back and it would

get more and more intense every time,” Chatterjee said.

“There was one peak where I could feel the energy in the room and it made a really big emotional impact.”

“I felt this immediacy of emotion — everything in the present was intense and completely authentic,” said Conservatory sophomore Will Curry after the show. “There was no dressing up of it.”

The band’s young age makes them more relatable to Oberlin students. Chaterjee saw this as one of the most crucial reasons to bring them to campus.

“One of the reasons why I brought them here is because they’re all our age,” he said. “I think we can use that as an inspiration to step up our game and push ourselves further. It’s important to recognize how much we can learn from each other, because even here [at Oberlin], I feel like I learn most from my peers.”

Wilkins’ intentionality is evident in his conceptual approach to performing and songwriting.

“It’s like the audience becomes a part of the work, you know what I mean?” Wilkins said. He spoke about moments in which he’s trying to transmit a specific type of energy to the audience.

“It’s more of a performance art type of thing, and it becomes a question of how is each audience going to react differently,” he said. “It’s usually a positive thing — you feel like a weight has been lifted. We’re trying to shift the atmosphere of the room and set it on fire.”

Wilkins’ raw vulnerability and unique compositional voice have set him and his bandmates on the path toward acclaim. We’ll definitely be hearing more from them as they continue to redefine edges and push boundaries.

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A r t s & C u lt u r e ON THE RECORD

Music Executives and Oberlin Alumni Bruce Lampcov and Jumee Park Oberlin alumni Bruce Lampcov, OC ’77, and Jumee Park, OC ’99, executives at Downtown Music Publishing, gave a talk on their experiences in breaking into the music industry on Tuesday, Oct. 30 in Bibbins Hall. Lampcov has signed esteemed artists like Taylor Swift and Kanye West, and works as the head of West Coast Development for Downtown Music Publishing. Park is the director of Film/TV Music for Downtown Music Publishing. She works in synchronization rights, which allow the holder of a music copyright to grant a license for the synchronization of music to some kind of visual media output.

Park places songs in television, film, and other types of media.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Carson Dowhan, Staff Writer

it down. That is something that has stayed with me to this day. I think that what I realize over the years is that it doesn’t really matter what you study in undergrad, but it matters that you study something and learn how to have a great organizational mind and to be a great communicator.

BL: The first thing that happened to me when I got into studio was I looked around and there were Music executives Bruce Lampcov, OC ’77, and Jumee Park, OC ’99, spoke to students about their experiences breaking into 18-year-olds — I was 28 and felt like the old guy in the room. My first inclination was why didn’t I just the music industry.

Photo By Maria Turner, Photo Editor do this out of high school? I was an assistant to Bob Can you both tell me about your time at Oberlin, later I got a job at a place called PowerStation Stu- Clearmountain — he had already made about every dios as the receptionist answering phones.

Chic record, mixed the Rolling Stones, mixed the and how you broke into the music industry?

Then it was a matter of focusing and learning my Clash. He’d done every Bruce Springsteen record Jumee Park: I graduated in 1999 with an English degree. I always loved music and knew I wanted to trade. I had to go to work at 9 a.m. every morning to and I was just his assistant engineer; why so late, you do something with it. For a split second, I thought I sit at the front desk, but actually got to the office at 6 know? Then I thought about it, and you can’t have would go into a performance of some kind — I have a.m. every morning and I would take tapes down and regrets about everything you do in your life. Then horrible stage fright, so that was not going to happen. learn how to record and mix on my own time. I knew you have to look at it in your own personal development, and look at all the things you’ve done to get So, I started interning at Matador Records [and Beg- I had to do a lot of catch-up.

One day I heard that David Bowie was coming in where you are. I [looked] back and thought, had I not gars Banquet Records] during the summer of [1996] and just grabbed every internship I could. I was basi- to do his next record, and I killed to get into that ses- done my physics degree, I never would have done cally circling the music industry trying to make my sion. It was “Let’s Dance,” and that led to me work- music. It gave me an immense amount of discipline ing with Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie and and focus. You need that sort of thing working in the way in, so I took in any job that was tangential.

I took another internship with a music manager many other artists, first as an assistant engineer and sciences. [And] the key thing about engineering is and waitressed on the side for a while, then got a [then] as an engineer. Eventually I started getting my that whether it’s a technical or creative problem, it’s job at The American Society of Composers, Authors, own clients. I ended up moving to the U.K. because always problem solving.

But I didn’t just do science because it’s a liberal and Publishers. After that, I got a job at a music su- many of the artists I worked with were based there. pervision company called Agoraphone. From there, I worked with The Pretenders, Peter Gabriel, Simple arts college. I studied English as well, I studied poetry, psychology, economics. All of those together — I worked at Domino Records and Publishing, my Minds, Eurythmics, Simply Red. But at some point, the balance between my home it’s very much a cliché — helped me become a more first real publishing job. That’s where I worked with Arctic Monkeys and this band called Caribou, and life and my career was totally skewed the wrong way. well-rounded person. I sit in a room as a producer The Kills. The Kills were amazing for sync, which I had two small children, [and] my wife felt like she with, say, Chrissie Hynde or Matt Johnson or Annie is what really opened the door and my eyes to that was a single mom because I was never home. I made Lennox, and we talk about literature together. If I never had that experience to learn how to relate to world. I’ve been at Downtown Publishing for about the very difficult decision to just stop doing it.

In 2001, I ended up getting headhunted by a new people, talking politics, literature, life, or religion, all ten years, overseeing their sync licensing business publishing company called Kobalt Music. Today, Ko- those things helped the entire process because I’m for film and TV. Bruce Lampcov: I went to Oberlin between balt is the largest independent music publisher in someone in the room they can relate to.

1973 and 1977, graduated in 1977 as a Physics major. the world, and I was the first employee there. They While I did physics, I was a musician. I didn’t go to were looking to create a new tech-driven type of Any tips on getting started out in the music inthe Conservatory but took classes there. I was in a publisher. I knew nothing about publishing, and had dustry?

JP: For anyone starting out in the music industry, couple of bands — a bluegrass band and a rock band. to call a friend of mine to explain what publishing Music was a big part of my life up until then, but so was. I helped build the company without knowing anyone wanting to get involved as a songwriter or much about publishing, and we were very success- artist, is to educate yourself and do your research. was science.

I took science as my path and had an internship ful in a very short period of time. We created a lot of Know what you’re getting into.

If you really want to start out, and you’re not sure with an organization that was called the [National] noise in the industry. how to get noticed, there’s the usual way of putCenter for Appropriate Technology, which had scientists come around the world to do research that How have the degrees you’ve gotten as students ting your stuff out on Soundcloud and playing gigs. focused on creating technology for low-income com- in Oberlin affected your trajectory in the music If you’re an amazing performer but you’re not sure you’re a songwriter yet, I would say one way we’ve munities in the United States. That led to another job industry?

JP: I got my M.B.A. at New York University, but certainly noticed artists and have signed people that in Seattle with a company called Ecotope, where I did very similar things — government projects, cre- I did it part-time. I was working full-time and going way, is [to] cover songs in your own voice.

Collaboration is something too. Our songwriters ating technologies. I did that for a number of years to class and working on the weekends and at night. I don’t really know if my M.B.A. is something the mu- collaborate with other songwriters all the time. We while still playing in bands in Seattle.

It was the wrong time to be in a band — this was sic industry looks at and says it’s very valuable to us. have two songs in A Star is Born, and one of the songs pre-Nirvana, so there wasn’t much of a music scene, It’s not like it’s gotten me head-hunted or anything performed by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper was [but] at that time, I just wanted to be in a band. So, I — it was more to exercise the analytical part of my written by two of our songwriters. Collaboration is brain, and to take that information to contribute to key with anything. took my band to New York from Seattle.

BL: There is a movement toward independence I realized very quickly that I didn’t have what it my role that I felt would be useful. I did it for me, not takes to be an artist. Being in Seattle is one thing, but to say that this is going to be my career path from this now because it is possible to do everything yourself going to New York was a wakeup call. So I thought I point forward, but [to ask], what else can I learn and and just use service providers. It’s possible now because of the internet and services like Songtrust and will just need to meet some people and go back to my do for my life to enhance my skill set?

For me, the English major was so good. Being at TuneCore. It’s possible for artists to own everything old job. I took a recording engineering class at The New School. It was a revelation to me — I was 28 at Oberlin was so great because it was the kind of school and not give anything away.

Don’t grow in a bubble. Find your community and the time and felt like I was very old to be starting I needed. I needed to be in a place where I could mafrom scratch. But I was determined to try to get a job ture, grow up, meet tons of new people, have a whole peers, and work with them. You need to learn from at a recording studio. I didn’t know anything about bunch of life experiences. The English major itself other people and get inspired by them. Become part recording studios and didn’t have any connections. I is lumped into that group of majors like communi- of a scene — going off on your own [it’s] much harder looked at the back of my favorite [albums] of my fa- cation or philosophy, where people say, “What am I to find your audience. The support that artists give vorite artists and where they recorded their records, going to do with an English major?” To me, it was to each other is important not only practically, like getand [I] made a list of 20 studios in New York. Once be able to understand how to interpret texts, to ana- ting gigs and opportunities, but also creative inspiraa week I went to every single one, and three months lyze, and to look at something and be able to break tion.

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Ohio Citizens for the Arts Emphasize Student Role in Supporting the Arts Imani Badillo Effective arts advocacy is essential to enriching Ohio’s artistic and cultural landscape. According to a recent on-campus discussion facilitated by Ohio Citizens for the Arts, Oberlin students have a role to play in speaking up for increased state and federal funding.

Last Tuesday, Bill Behrendt, the executive director of Ohio Citizens for the Arts, gave a talk titled “Arts Advocacy: How Does It Work and What Can I Do?” in which he discussed the function of his organization, the importance of public arts funding, and actions that anyone can take to support the arts.

Ohio Citizens for the Arts works “to increase funding and public support for the arts through advocacy, education, and engagement.” The organization asks Ohioans to demonstrate their support by talking to lawmakers and public officials about arts advocacy.

Partnered with OCA is The Ohio Citizens of the Arts Foundation, which helps provide internships, education, and scholarships for advocacy events and projects. Both of these organizations educate the public about arts funding and provide opportunities to showcase and support the arts.

Behrendt explained that the National Endowment for the Arts is the most well-known organization that provides public arts funding — though most responsibility for funding comes at the state and local levels. Federal budget-makers often propose cuts to arts funding when creating a new budget, including President Donald Trump’s 2018 fiscal year budget outline calling for a total defunding of the NEA. In 2017, the NEA received only about 0.003 percent of the total federal budget; this percentage then must be split between all of the U.S. states and territories. This shows just how little public arts funding impacts federal discretionary spending, an illuminating find when considering how much state and local support matters to the continuation of the arts.

In Ohio, about half of public arts funding goes to cities, and the other half to rural areas. Arts organizations in small towns and villages suffer the most from budget cuts, as they don’t receive nearly as much tourism as urban areas. Many of Ohio’s districts are rural, which makes advocacy for public arts funding even more important.

Gerrymandering remains the greatest obstacle to public arts funding on the part of public officials, whereas taxes are the greatest barrier for citizens. Public officials, in hopes of maintaining their reputations or positions in office, publicly demonstrate a negativity toward the arts regardless of their personal views.

“If you ask the public if they support public funding for the arts, the answer is overwhelmingly yes,” Behrendt said. “If you ask the public if they would pay higher taxes in support of the arts, the answer is not always the same.”

Advocacy can help solve these problems. If the public understands that taxes support organizations and events that they enjoy and take part in all year, the idea of paying a little more may seem less daunting for some. Additionally, if public officials see how important the arts are to the people of their district, they will work to support the arts and to increase public funding for the arts.

What can people do to advocate for the arts? Behrendt stressed the importance of voting for arts funding.

“The easiest thing you can do to be an advocate is to vote,” he said, and reminded the audience that advocacy is a never-ending position. To be a continuous advocate, you can form relationships with public officials and share your connection to the arts through a phone call or social media. Simply telling officials that you want support for the arts is vital advocacy.

For those interested in arts advocacy events in Ohio, Behrendt mentioned National Arts Advocacy Day and Ohio Arts Day. National Arts Advocacy Day, running March 4–5, 2019, will prepare Ohioans for arts lobbying and advocacy. The first day will be spent teaching people how to talk to politicians and the general public about arts funding. On the second day, individuals will travel to Capitol Hill, where arts advocates from across the country will be talking to individuals about funding and trying to gain support for the arts. Ohio Arts Advocacy Day, which will be celebrated May 15, 2019, connects Ohioans to representatives and other key individuals that work to bring in more funding for the arts.

Behrendt’s talk was organized by Director of the Office of Conservatory Professional Development Dana Jessen. When asked about arts advocacy, she highlighted the universal aspect of the arts.

“I believe it is important to bring this topic to Oberlin because public funding for the arts is something that every artist on campus will encounter in one way or another,” she said.

For more information on Ohio Citizens for the Arts, The Ohio Citizens for the Arts Foundation, National Arts Advocacy Day, or Ohio Arts Day, go to www.ohiocitizensforthearts.org or contact Bill Behrendt at bill@ohiocitizensforthearts.org.

The Oberlin Review | November 2, 2018

Counternarratives Critiques Media Coverage of Race and Violence Continued from page 10 Bell’s captivating lecture left the students in attendance with a new analytical lens, one that challenges the “dominant narrative.” “[I am more] aware of potential biases of journalism in the news,” Miller said.

When it comes to a news publication like The New York Times it’s important to recognize its audience — largely composed of upper-class educated people. Ultimately, Bell’s lecture and art presented an opportunity for students and community members to ruminate on the responsibility of major print publications to provide objective news for all people, not just the people who have historically consumed the news.

“Above all else, I knew that [Bell]’s work, being publicly sited on campus, would spark conversations and debate in a way that objects in the museum sometimes fail to do,” Gyorody said. “I trusted that the entire campus community would benefit from the presence of her work, and from her talk and lunch with students.”

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Sp ort s IN THE LOCKER ROOM

In the Locker Room with Grant Sheely, Dylan Caban, and Jackson Daugherty, Men’s XC Captains

College senior and Biology major Dylan Caban came from a New Jersey high school cross country team that at one point consisted of a single person: him. At Oberlin, Caban has found a larger group of people with the same mindset in striving to be the best they can be. Likewise, College senior and Math and Physics double-major Grant Sheely appreciated coming from New York into a community of students who put themselves through intense training every week. College junior Jackson Daugherty, a California native and Cinema Studies Major, confesses that he initially committed to cross country in the hopes it would help him get accepted into college; however, in his third year he reflects on how he loves having somewhere to be every day at 4 p.m. and seeing the empirical results of his and his teammates’ hard work. Together, the three led the men’s cross country team to a fifth-place showing at the North Coast Athletic Conference meet this past weekend.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Ify Ezimora Sports Editor How do you feel about the team’s performance at conference this past weekend?

Grant Sheely: I feel really good about the men’s team performance. I feel like everyone I talked to ... said they didn’t have the best race they wanted to have, and we still placed above our ranking, so that to me is an amazing sign. I’m really looking forward to regionals because of that, because I think that performance is a really good show of what we can do at regionals.

Jackson Daugherty: The whole energy at conference was really good and really positive, and people were doing a great job supporting each other. We had four first-years in our top seven [finishers], which is excellent and means we have a lot of great seasons going forward.

Dylan Caban: I’m really excited to see the newcomers perform in the next couple of years. I’ll definitely be looking at them and really looking forward to seeing what these guys can pull out during regionals. If their performances weren’t as good as they wanted them to be on Saturday, I think we’re going to see some real big things next week.

Grant and Dylan — you two have been on the team for four years now. What has changed throughout your time here?

GS: It’s been a really large transformative time for the team just because when we came [our first year], our team was the best cross country team that [Oberlin]’s ever had. We came, like, fourth at regionals, and it was an unreal team. We had like a phoenix rebirth for the past four years, and now we’re back and it’s like this year with four freshmen in that class — they’re going to be an amazing team in three years; it’s going to be unreal to watch.

What do you think the team is missing? What’s the barrier to winning conference for y’all?

GS: I think our team is missing the large-scale buyin that the women’s team has. The women’s team is huge — they almost double us in size, and they got that size because they were good, and they had that class a few years ago that brought in a lot more people and brought in like 12, 15 recruits every single year, whereas we bring about six recruits every year. ...So if one person is injured, it really affects the whole season. We’re kind of missing that large scale. And I hope that it begins to build as our men’s team is doing better each year, I think we will get more and more athletes, and we’ve already had a better retention rate of our athletes every year. So I do think we’re getting there.

JD: I think experience is probably the number one thing. Like I said, we have four first-years in the top seven, and even the first-years that weren’t in the

top seven have a lot of upside. We had two people on this team that I’m pretty sure it’s their first ever cross country season; they’ve only ever done track before this. So I think we’re on a very good trajectory right now, and once people are more used to racing eight kilometers and going through a whole college cross country season, we’re going to be super good. I don’t know if we’ll pass that barrier to win conference, but I hope so.

What have been the team’s strengths this season?

JD: I think people — especially the first-years — have found a very good balance between supporting each other and being competitive with each other for those spots on the regional and conference meets.

People definitely want to get there, and they know they have to run with each other and beat each other to get there, but they still know, no matter what, that the angle is our whole success.

GS: Yeah, I would say our strength is definitely our tightness. It’s really amazing to see: Everyone really cares. I’ve never had more of a team where, when I finish my race and I wait in that section at the end of a race right by the finish line and the whole team basically waits there until the race is over. ...So I would say we’re close-knit, and that’s one of our strengths.

How has the season gone for you all personally?

JD: I started the season with a knee injury and had a couple bad races, and then I came back from that and had a couple good ones, and then I had a foot injury and had a couple lesser-good ones, so it’s kind of like a bell curve. It was my first season as a captain, and I think I was definitely proud of the way the team bonded, which is something I was really trying to make sure happenned in a good way. As a member of the whole, I think it was a very good season for me.

As a runner, it was whatever.

GS: My season was a little bit less ideal than I wanted it to be. I came with larger hopes to be a dominant force the whole season. That kind of got changed up just by the amount of training that’s been coming through. I worked really hard this past summer, and so I had been working to get back to that level of speed because when you work so hard in stamina, you lose speed. And I’ve been kind of messing up my strategy each race. It’s like firing a bazooka — you can miss a lot. It might be a really powerful impact when it hits, but if you miss by a little bit, it messes it all up.

So it’s been really hard to manage my strategies, just because it’s such a different thing of trying to win a race versus just running as fast as you can. But at the rumble I did a really good job, at conference I did a pretty good job, and I’m looking forward to regionals to do an even better job. I really think I’m getting my strategy right down to pat and doing what I need to be doing.

DC: It’s very funny. My first year I was out all season with injury. And lo and behold, my final year

Dylan Caban, Jackson Daugherty, Grant Sheely Photo by Ify Ezimora, Sports Editor

here, I was out all season with injury. I came in dealing with a little bit of Achilles [tendon] problems for six months and got back onto the horse, and then warming up for the first race, the Achilles [tendon] problem came back, and then my comeback race was going to be the rumble, and then I sprained my ankle during the race, so I did not finish that. But for me, the main goal after realizing my running season wouldn’t be as ideal as I’d want it. I really wanted to be there as much as I could be for the rest of the team.

And I think personally that was the most rewarding thing for me this season, just being able to be there at every race, cheer everyone on, and just be the greatest team member I could be without needing to step on that line.

For the seniors — what’s next in terms of cross country?

DC: Really looking forward to indoor season. We have a really good track squad and we’re really excited to see what we can do in indoor and outdoor season. And for me, I’m going out to Spain to compete at the [ITU] Duathlon World Championships, so that’s what I’ll be doing in April.

GS: Yeah, I’m stoked for indoor and outdoor track.

I’m telling you right now: Men’s team is going to win conference. I said that before; I’ll say it again. That’s going to happen. I am definitely going to keep running after college too. But not racing marathons — not doing that classic cliche. I will be racing local 5ks, that’s my goal. Win money, be the local 5k guy.

Jackson, next year you’ll be the only captain left from this group — how do you think team dynamics are going to change, and what are your hopes and plans for next year?

JD: Um, I’m hoping there’ll be another captain [laughter]. I definitely think in one year, we can’t reach the full potential that this team has. I’m hoping we’ll get more first-years. I think it’s going to be one of those years where you start to see the results, but it’s still technically a rebuilding year. Next year we’re going to have only three fourth-years, only three thirdyears, and maybe like seven second-years. But I think as long as we keep the camaraderie that this season had and the work people have done and the trajectory this season has had, we’ll have a really good year next year, even without these two wonderful people.

Men’s cross country captains Grant Sheely, Dylan Caban, and Jackson Daugherty

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Photos courtesy of OC Athletics

Volleyball’s Mitchell Named DIII HERO of the Week Julie Schreiber Senior Staff Writer College junior and volleyball star Lexi Mitchell was voted the DIII HERO of the Week by HERO Sports for the week of Oct. 23 after collecting 24 kills, 23 digs, and 6 aces against Denison University Oct. 16. In what has been an outstanding collegiate career, Mitchell’s last season for the Yeowomen has been her best.

Mitchell didn’t always see herself as a college volleyball player. When she was a senior in high school, Mitchell’s younger sister was preparing to play Division III volleyball at the University of Chicago. Mitchell, on the other hand, didn’t think she was at the same level as her sister, let alone good enough to play at the collegiate level. Her high school coach thought otherwise.

“I just applied to Oberlin as a regular student,” Mitchell said, “but my high school coach actually sent my tapes to Coach Rau without me even knowing. She wanted me to play in college.”

It’s a good thing she did. Mitchell has been an integral member of the Yeowomen volleyball team for the past three seasons. As an outside hitter, she has led the team two years in a row in kills and ace percentage. Additionally, she has received North Coast Athletic Conference recognition for her two completed seasons, earning NCAC honorable mention in her first year and NCAC second-team recognition in her second.

Although unplanned, Mitchell’s collegiate sports career came as no surprise to those who know her.

She’s been an athlete her entire life, and with two volleyball enthusiasts for parents and four athletic sisters, she was never short of people to practice with growing up.

While at Oberlin, Mitchell’s athletic pursuits have extended beyond volleyball. She joined the softball team in the winter of her first year, playing right field and shortstop until she tore her labrum diving for a ball about halfway through the season. She underwent surgery right before finals, and spent the following summer rehabbing for volleyball.

“It took me the whole summer to recover,” Mitchell recalled. “It was so hard. I couldn’t train, find a job, or do anything, really.”

While many Oberlin athletes spend their athletic tenure building toward their triumphant senior season, this will not be Mitchell’s path. Mitchell’s third volleyball season at Oberlin will also be her last: a 3–2 engineering student, she will finish the final two years of her five-year college career in the engineering program at a large research institution.

While the 3–2 program is a popular path for students who want both a liberal arts experience and an engineering degree, it’s an uncommon choice for athletes, who often don’t want to miss their fourth and final season.

Mitchell, however, is feeling optimistic about both her athletic and academic career after Oberlin. While the applications for her next school don’t open up until December, she has her eyes on engineering programs at Columbia University in New York City and Washington University of St. Louis

— and their volleyball programs, too.

“If I end up at Wash U, I’ll probably try to play on their Division III team,” Mitchell said. “This would be particularly fun because I’d get to play against my sister at Chicago.”

While Columbia’s volleyball program competes at the Division I level, Ivy League sports are often closer in competition to Division III teams than other Division I programs, so Mitchell believes she might have a chance to play there, too.

For someone who never expected to play sports at Oberlin, Mitchell is beginning to realize how much she’ll miss them when they’re over. Not only will she miss the team and the teammates she’s grown close to, but after this weekend’s upcoming tournament, she’ll most likely fall just short of breaking some personal records that she would definitely accomplish in a fourth season.

“Sometimes I wish I could stay at Oberlin,” Mitchell said. “I’m really close to getting 1,000 kills, a goal I’ve always had, and if I had one more season here I’d definitely get there.”

No matter where she ends up next year, Mitchell is confident that sports will be a part of her life.

Although she says she’ll miss the Oberlin volleyball team, her impending departure is already leaving her with the sense that she needs sports to feel whole.

“I’ll play something next year, no matter what,” Mitchell said. “It’ll be different — my classes will be more intense, and I’ll have to make new friends and get oriented at a new place. But I can’t imagine my life without sports.”

Women’s Basketball Opens Difficult Conversations Continued from page 16

agreement. But the unifier was respect.

And so we moved on — sometimes we talk about it, but often times we don’t. As friends and teammates we arrived at a place of mutual understanding, and nothing more was needed.

This wasn’t as easy as it sounds. On my part, it demanded patience and the willingness to revise my decade-old narrative about Christianity. There were multiple times when I was tempted to discount, undermine, or generally disrespect their opinion. And I’m sure there were occasions when I did just that , to some degree. I’m not entirely certain what went through their minds, but I imagine that these talks weren’t the easiest for them either. While we’ve reached a place of relative peace, it remains a work in progress.

Once the team steps on the court, however, the narrative changes. Following our coach’s direction, we shift the focus to finding commonality in our humanity.

The gym sets the boundaries, and basketball is the equalizer.

In Philips gym, we are a unit, monolithic in our desire to win. Identity isn’t insignificant, but it becomes immaterial.

We let the differences go and work hard day in and day out to be the best that we can be — that’s all there is to it. In that space, whatever religion we practice, whatever race, gender, or sexuality we are, it doesn’t matter. We are simply the Oberlin women’s basketball team.

With all that in mind, I have a couple requests for the greater Oberlin student body. The first is to reexamine how athletics and athletes can engage with the Oberlin movement for social progressivism. Not only does isolating our community exclude willing and helpful participants, but it also makes effective models for social change inaccessible. Let’s dismantle those barriers and start an exchange of information.

My second request is to ask and al-

low for potentially offensive questions.

This requires the construction of wellmaintained boundaries — it’s important to establish appropriate timing and context. On our team, we create space for and actively encourage these questions.

The most meaningful changes occurred when teammates have found room to make mistakes, say the wrongs things, and diagnose areas where they might be ill-informed.

My last request is to find spaces where identity can both be discussed and rendered relatively unimportant. Create friendships with people where you can openly debate, converse, and disagree.

Create friendships where the common purpose or source of unity transcends identity or politics.

Finally, I want to extend an invitation.

If you don’t know where to start with all your potentially offensive questions, start with me! Shoot me an email, message me, or preferably, talk to me.

ties and backgrounds, we make it work.

We talk about our differences and simultaneously render them irrelevant. Our team is always finding the middle ground between a colorblind approach and the splintering nature of strict identity politics.

When we are off the court, conversations about religion, marriage, and childhoods are fair game. Whether they arise organically during lunch or intentionally begin out of curiosity, the conversations are a regular part of our interactions.

These discussions provide an opportunity to better understand each other not only as teammates but as people who experience different forms of oppression.

The religious diversity of the women’s basketball team is our most glaring cause of disagreement. Religion is a topic that tends to be deeply personal and normally leaves little room for respectful discourse. In terms of my own religious background, my mother was Jewish and my dad is Christian. Growing up, neither religion was heavily enforced, the exception being time spent with my grandparents, as my grandfather had been a minister for 35 years. In the early stages of adulthood, I’m left with cultural aspects of Judaism, a skepticism for Christianity based on my queer identity, and virtually no connection to spirituality.

Two of my teammates, on the other hand, have a profound relationship with Christianity. It has been a major part of their lives at both the spiritual and community level. Both pray daily and hang Bible verses in their lockers. This was a stark departure from my predominantly secular and Jewish high school and neighborhood.

It took time before I got the courage to ask about their religious practices. Initially, we proceeded with caution. I skittered past my reservations of Christianity as a queer person, and they touched briefly on their powerful connection to it. As we got closer, it came up more. Eventually, so did our disagreements — the biggest over Members of the women’s basketball team take pride in their geographical, racial, ethnic, sexual, and spiritual diversity, but put their differences aside whether we believed in God. No amount when they step on the court, uniting behind their desire to win. The team looks to repeat as North Coast Athletic Conference champions this year, Photo courtesy of OC Athletics of convincing or debating would result in with their first game scheduled for Nov. 10.

The Oberlin Review | November 2, 2018

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SPORTS November 2, 2018

established 1874

Yeowomen Dethrone Gators, Capture Coveted NCAC Title

Volume 147, Number 7

Changing Narratives in Women’s Basketball Leah Ross

The women’s cross country team beat Allegheny College by one point Saturday, Oct. 27 at the North Coast Athletic Conference Championship, and took home the trophy for the first time in three years. Numerous members of the team credit their leadership and discipline for giving them the slight advantage over the Gators.

Photo by Natalie Winkelfoos

Alexis Dill Sports Editor College junior and cross country runner Shannon Wargo immediately noticed the look of disappointment and defeat on the faces of her three teammates who finished before her when she reached the finish line Saturday, Oct. 27 at the North Coast Athletic Conference Championship.

Certain that her team would fall short of winning the conference title for the fourth year in a row, Wargo used positive self-talk to keep her spirits up.

“It’s not the end of the world,” Wargo told herself. “Allegheny was just better. We’ll work harder to win it next year.”

The race wasn’t over, but runners from defending champion Allegheny College placed first, third, and fourth. Wargo, College senior Linnea Halsten, College junior Oona JungBeeman, and College junior Marija Crook — who all finished in the top eight — thought it was unlikely that they would dethrone the Gators, and didn’t want to get their hopes up.

The foursome has consistently led the women’s cross country team the past few years. Halsten became Oberlin’s eighth individual conference champion last year, winning every single race up until nationals. Crook earned first-team honors and competed at nationals a year ago as well, while Jung-Beeman and Wargo earned second-team honors.

However, the heroes of the meet Saturday were College junior Joy Castro-Wehr and College sophomore Corrie Purcell. When Head Cross Country Coach Ray Appenheimer tallied up the Yeowomen’s points at the conclusion of the race, he revealed that Oberlin beat Allegheny by a single point, thanks to Castro-Wehr and Purcell’s efforts to hold off Allegheny first-year Molly Tarvin, who finished in 16th place.

“It was definitely an emotional few minutes as we waited for the official

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results,” Castro-Wehr said. “I guess I erred pessimistically to not get my hopes up, and told myself we hadn’t won. I didn’t know the win would come down to just a point’s difference, and I definitely had no idea that the place I was running in would be the decisive factor.”

Castro-Wehr came in 39th place at last year’s conference meet with a time of 23:57.8. Last weekend, she was the 12th runner to cross the finish line with a time of 23:32.5. Purcell was right behind her, finishing in 23:34.0 minutes, which is a 15-place improvement from last year.

Purcell spent a good portion of the summer treating nerve damage in her hamstring and was forced to miss the team’s first four meets. The conference meet was just her second time competing this year.

“It feels so good to be a part of this team and a part of this win,” Purcell said. “I feel so lucky to be a member of not only a winning, nationally-ranked team but also such a loving, silly group of my closest friends.”

According to several members of the team, what finally gave Oberlin the advantage over Allegheny after being the runner-up for three years in a row was the team’s discipline throughout the summer and fall.

“We were really motivated this year, especially the juniors and seniors,” Wargo said. “We hadn’t won conference in a few years, and it’s been something we’ve lost by just a few points each time, so we knew it would come down to the small things that we do. We’ve always worked hard at practice and been motivated to race hard, but it’s really the small things that can make a big difference in how well we perform on race day.”

Wargo said that she and her teammates spent more time in the training room this year than in years past, rolling out their muscles, taking ice baths, and fostering relationships with the training room staff. In addition, they were also more diligent about consistently cross-training and completing

circuits and lifts after runs.

Appenheimer, who was named the women’s NCAC Coach of the Year for the ninth time in his career, agreed that the team’s exceptional leadership and dedication resulted in the big win.

“This last month I have seen the best workouts, best races, and best team community we’ve had here in a long time,” Appenheimer said. “That is attributable to our seniors and our captains. The team was able to draw upon the wellspring of energy and support these folks bring every day.

You could see it in the performances from Shannon, Joy, and Corrie, who really did a lot to deliver that win.”

Castro-Wehr said that everyone has held each other accountable for the energy that they bring to each practice and meet.

“Our leaders — including our coaches and our captains — are doing a great job of directing the collective team energy toward something that’s uniquely supportive, fun, passionate, and enthusiastic,” she said. “I almost feel like a win was inevitable this season considering all the love, effort, and support people have contributed to the team.”

The team began a new tradition this year of journaling before each practice. Appenheimer and Associate Head Cross Country Coach Izzy Alexander wrote questions on a whiteboard for the team to answer: what they are thankful for, how they can be a better teammate, what went well today, what didn’t go well today, and how they could improve themselves this week.

Purcell said the journal prompts have motivated her and helped her focus throughout the season, and are just one of the many ways Appenheimer has helped bring out the best in his team.

“If I were to shoutout just one person, it would be Ray,” Purcell said. “It is so hard to convey how lucky I feel to be coached by him. He inspires us and pushes us to be so much better than I could ever expect.”

When I first stepped on Oberlin’s campus as a first-year last fall, I could feel the buzz of political activity. It was overwhelming yet thrilling to be a part of a group of students poised to change our social landscape.

What I soon realized was that there are sections of Oberlin that are dogmatic in their liberal ideology. It is a dogmatism that forces political homogeneity without room for mistake or disagreement.

This is fundamentally not what Oberlin stands for. As an institution with a deep commitment to social progressivism, excluding voices on the grounds of inclusivity is highly contradictory. Instead, I firmly believe that, at its core, Oberlin should be a place that fosters difficult conversations and disagreement in the name of advancing inclusivity and diversity. And while athletics is perceived as inconsequential to that mission, I contend that it works as an effective model for such dialogue.

I want to push back against the rhetoric that athletes at Oberlin do not respect the culture and ideals of this school. This is not to say that every team and athlete actively embraces Oberlin’s culture; rather, I argue that there are teams here that provide an excellent framework for practicing Oberlin’s core tenets of inclusivity and diversity. One such team is women’s basketball.

It starts from the top. Our head coach, Kerry Jenkins, is one of two Black head coaches in the athletic department, and our assistant coach, Chanel Green, is the only Black woman in the department. This plays directly into the team’s dynamic and our approach to recruiting.

“I’m a thorough recruiter and I actively seek diverse demographics when I recruit,” Jenkins said. “I think part of my mandate as a coach at a place like Oberlin is to bring disparate groups of players together to find commonality in our humanity.”

It is abundantly clear that he’s followed through on this strategy. The makeup of our team is not only unique to this campus, but to Division III basketball. It shows in our geographical, racial/ethnic, sexual, and spiritual diversity. We have players hailing from major cities like New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Boston, and San Francisco. Others come from rural and suburban settings in places like Michigan, Maryland, and New Jersey. We have one of the most racially/ethnically diverse teams on campus, with nearly half of our team identifying as POC. Furthermore, our team is exceptionally queer (although this wasn’t intentional in recruiting) with over half the team falling under that umbrella.

Finally, we represent a spectrum of religious identities, including Judaism, Catholicism, Christianity, and Agnosticism.

I point this out not to boast or collect “woke points,” but to emphasize that there are a lot of different, intersectional backgrounds on the women’s basketball team. And frankly, this doesn’t encompass all the finer details of difference, such as family structures, academic interests, and fluctuations in personalities.

Despite this intermingling of varying identiSee Women’s, page 15