September 16, 2022

The Oberlin Review

On Nov. 9, 2016, three Oberlin College students — Eli jah Aladin, Enida Lawrence, and Cecelia Whettstone — were taken into custody by the Oberlin Police Depart ment on charges of shoplifting and assault. Aladin, Law rence, and Whettstone were Black students at Oberlin. The incident took place in Gibson’s Bakery where, ac cording to the police report, Allyn Gibson Jr. confronted the three students for underage purchase of alcohol and shoplifting. Allyn Jr. is the son of the bakery’s former owner David Gibson and grandson of Allyn Gibson Sr.

“Allyn stated Aladin attempted to leave the store, so Allyn took out his phone and attempted to take a picture of Aladin, and that’s when Aladin slapped Allyn’s hand and phone and caused it to strike Allyn in the face,” the report

“The kid is like, ‘Get off me, I’m not doing anything.’ At this point, people in the store are starting to yell, ‘Get off him,’ ‘What are you doing?’’

Photos courtesy of Bryan Rubin

Below: Interior of the bakery

“Today we urge you to shop elsewhere. … A member of our community was assaulted by the owner of this es tablishment yesterday. A nineteen y/o young man was apprehended and choked by Allyn Gibson of Gibson’s Food Mart & Bakery.”

facebook.com/oberlinreviewoberlinreview.org TWITTER @oberlinreview INSTAGRAM @ocreview CONTENTS NEWS 03 OberlinCommunity,College ReflectonTown-GownRelationships PostGibson'sLitigation 04 OCOPE,CollegeUpdate BenefitsinRenewedLaborContract OPINIONS 05 Court Decision on Gibson’s SuitThreatens Student Speech 06 Oberlin Community Should Build Familiarity with One Oberlin Report THISWEEK 08-09 WinterTerm 2023: Projects to Consider ARTS & CULTURE 10Allen MemorialArt Museum HostsBakukun’sBarricade 11 Oberlin StudentsTell Their StoriesThroughTattoos SPORTS 14 NFLFails to Hold Star Players Accountable toTheirActions 15 ITLR: Miguel Siwady,World Junior Swimming Championships Competitor See Gibson’s , page 2

Lawrence and Whettstone for assault and arrested Aladin. Lawrence and Whettstone were charged with misdemeanors and soon released on bail, while Aladin was transferred to Lorain County Jail and charged with robbery, a felony in Ohio. The prosecutor on the case, the three students, and the proprietors of Gibson’s all agreed to a plea bargain that would have re duced all charges to misdemeanors. The judge rejected the deal and forced the case to trial in the County Court. The three students plead guilty to attempted theft and aggravated trespassing, with Aladin also pleading guilty to underage purchase of alcohol. Aladin maintained in nocence of theft and robbery.

Oberlin College Students Protest

Compiled and Edited by Kushagra Kar Editor-in-Chief Additional reporting by Emma Benardete Editor-in-Chief Ava Miller Senior Staff Writer Walter Thomas-Patterson Conservatory Editor

Above: Students protest outside of Gibson’s Bakery in late 2016.

Oberlin Police Lieutenant Michael McCloskey ex plained that store employees are legally allowed to de tain shoplifting suspects if they have probable cause. He added that OPD does not recommend this approach be cause it often leads to situations escalating.

Whettstone and Lawrence were each initially sen tenced to 270 days in prison, and Aladin was sentenced to 300. However, the terms of the final plea deals sus pended prison time in return for one year of good be havior, a fine, restitution payment toward Allyn Jr., and an allocution which read “I believe the employees of Gibson’s actions were not racially motivated. They were merely trying to prevent an underage sale.”

“The police report included only testimonies from

The same day as the protests, Student Senate passed a resolution calling for the College to terminate its contracts with Gibson’s. The resolution also called on then-President Marvin Krislov and then-Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo, as well as other administrators and the general faculty, to con demn Gibson’s treatment of students. Krislov and Rai mondo responded to the resolution in a college-wide email on Nov. 11.

The Original Incident

“[Aladin] was literally just standing there, and Al lyn Gibson comes running from the back of the store screaming, ‘Shoplifter!’ and grabs him,” Goelzer said.

Oberlin College’s Gibson’s Litigation FAQ page ex plains that some members of the College administration considered the police report to be problematic.

Accordingreads. to eye-witness testimony and the police report, the students and Allyn Jr. were then involved in an altercation, though the report and some testimonies differ on the original aggressor. Allyn Jr. is quoted in the police report as claiming not to have thrown punches at Aladin — instead he grabbed Aladin to stop his aggres sion. Andy Goelzer, OC ’18, was quoted in the Review as a witness to the incident, and claimed that Allyn Jr. es calated the physical conflict.

“This is a racist establishment with a long account of racial profiling and discrimination,” the flyers read.

September 16, 2022 The Oberlin Review | September 16, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 152, Number 2 1

On Nov. 10, students gathered outside the bakery in protest of the incident. Students accused the Gibsons of having racially profiled the three students and hand ed out flyers that claimed the establishment had a long history of racist behavior. Allyn Jr., who was involved in the altercation, was not an owner of the bakery.

members of the Gibson family and employees,” the page reads. “Testimonies from the three students involved in the altercation were not included, nor were narratives from multiple witnesses who provided written state ments to the police.”

Oberlin COllege v. gibsOns brOs., inC.

“The Ohio Revised Code does allow store proprietors or employees of those stores to detain and arrest shop lifters,” McCloskey said. “If they have probable cause to believe that someone is trying to take items from the store, they can legally, in a reasonable manner, detain them for a length of time until police get there to arrest thePolicesuspect.”detained

“1) We are grateful for the determination of our stu dents and for the leadership demonstrated by Student Senate. Dean Meredith Raimondo and her team have worked to support students and families affected by these events, and will continue to do so. 2) Tita Reed,

diately, its business relationships with Gibson’s Bakery until such a time as a mutually productive relationship may be re-established.”

On Nov. 7, 2017, Gibson’s Bros., Inc., David R. Gibson, and Allyn W. Gibson (commonly known as Allyn Sr.) filed a lawsuit against Oberlin College and Conservatory and former Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo. The suit was filed in the Court of Common Pleas in Lorain Coun ty. The Plaintiffs alleged eight counts against Oberlin College and Conservatory including libel, slander, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Each count carried a minimum penalty of $25,000. Included in the Gibsons’ rationale for filing the suit was consideration to an alleged persistence of defamation by the College.

Bon Appetit Management Company, the former managers of Campus Dining Services, suspended its catering contract with Gibson’s on Nov. 14, allegedly at Raimondo’s instruction. Gibson’s had, up to that point, provided the dining halls with certain baked goods. The contract was reinstated on Feb. 2, 2017.

The first and second counts of libel and slander, re spectively, accused Oberlin College representatives such as former President Marvin Krislov and other unnamed defendants of defamatory conduct against Gibson’s. The Plaintiffs stated that as a result of the defendants’ mal ice, they suffered “injury to their personal and business reputations, and mental anguish.” The Gibsons argued that the contents of an Oberlin College Student Senate resolution and a separate flyer, distributed by Raimon do, damaged their reputation.

In response, the College and Raimondo rejected the claims and planned to be represented by the same counsel in defense of the allegations. The Director of Media Relations Scott Wargo wrote to the Review that the allegations were false and stated the College’s intent to defend against them in court. Wargo added that the College would once again end its business relationship with the bakery.

Another key part of the suit is the Plaintiff’s accusa tion of Tortious Interference with Business Relation ships, constituting elements of Count three.

The Gibsons’ appeal argued that their constitutional rights were violated when Judge Miraldi implemented a cap on punitive damages. The appeal placed the amount awarded in contrast to the College’s endowment, and made the claim that a cap on punitive damages would not sufficiently deter future behavior. The Gibsons also alleged the judge improperly denied them an expert witness, and incorrectly ruled on summary judgements.

“Oberlin College’s guides advise prospective and fu ture students and their families not to shop at Gibson’’s Bakery because it is a “racist establishment” that “as saults students,” the document reads.

Illustrators Holly

Count six of the complaint alleged that the College intentionally inflicted emotional distress on the Plain tiffs.“As a direct and proximate result of Defendants’ con duct, these Plaintiffs have suffered great distress con cerning the damage to their reputation, economic wel fare, community standing, ability to continue to employ hard-working members of the community, and fear of physical harm.”

Manager Lia Fawley Production Staff Addie SumnerEllaDelaneyBreenFoxBernsteinIsaacImasOwenDoWallaceTrevorSmithYuhkiUeda Layout Editors Erin Koo Grace Gao Ginger Kohn Molly

“Upon information and belief, Oberlin College and Dean Raimondo intentionally and improperly inter fered with the contractual and business relationship between Gibson’s Bakery and Bon Appetit Management Company, causing such relationship to cease.”

Distributors Leah

Production Chapin Yelton Potoff

News 2 The Oberlin r eview To submit a correction, managingeditor@oberlinreview.org.email Published by the students of Oberlin College every Friday during the fall and spring semesters, except holidays and examination periods. Advertising rates: $18 per column inch. Second-class postage paid at Oberlin, Ohio. Entered as second-class matter at the Oberlin, Ohio post office April 2, 1911. POSTMASTER SEND CHANGES TO: Wilder Box 90, Oberlin, Ohio 44074-1081. Office of Publication: Burton Basement, Oberlin, Ohio 44074. Phone: (440) 775-8123 September 16, 2022 Volume 152, Number 2 (ISSN 297–256) Editors-in-Chief Kushagra Kar Emma Benardete Managing Editor Lauren Krainess News Editors Nikki Keating Alexa Stevens Opinions Editors Emily Vaughan Elle Giannandrea Arts & Culture Editors Juliana Gasper Malcolm Bamba Sports Editor Andrea Nguyen Cont. Sports Editors ZoeKaKuzbariylaKim Conservatory Editor Walter Thomas-Patterson Photo Editors Erin Koo Abe Frato This Week Editor Cal Ransom Senior Staff Writers Adrienne Sato Sofia ChrisGracieAvaTomasicMillerMcFallsStoneman Web Manager Ada Ates

The College and Gibson’s Appeal Judge Miraldi’s Ruling

Gibson’s in Review: Chronicling Five Years of Litigation

“We are saddened that the Gibson family has chosen to pursue litigation,” Wargo wrote. “As this is now a le gal matter, the College will suspend, effectively imme

Gibson’s Bros., Inc., David Gibson, and Allyn W. Gibson have been awarded damages amounting to $25.049 million in their lawsuit against the College.

Though it was not known to the public at the time, the College had submitted evidence before the trial court that represented Allyn Jr.’s opinions on Black peo ple. The trial judge excluded this evidence from being presented to the jury during the trial. Allyn Jr. had post ed a series of Facebook posts between 2012 and 2017. The evidence was sealed and only made available to the public in September 2021. Allyn Jr. was not a party to the defamation suit, which is why the evidence was sealed and did not weigh on the jury’s decision.

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“The sole focus of this appeal is on the separate con duct of Oberlin and Raimondo that allegedly caused damage to the Gibsons, not on the First Amendment rights of individuals to voice opinions or protest,” Carr wrote.OnMay 13 of this year, the College submitted an ap peal to the lower court’s decision to the Ohio Supreme Court. On Aug. 30, the Supreme Court denied hearing the appeal. The College announced its decision to pay the Gibsons the full sum of $36.59 million last Thursday. For more detailed coverage of the final stages of this lit igation, read “College to Pay $36M, Concluding Gibson’s Litigation,” published in the Review last week.

On March 31, 2022, the Court of Appeals of Ohio Ninth Appellate District rejected both Oberlin’s and the Gibsons’ appeals. Judge Donna J. Carr wrote an opinion for the appellate court upholding the trial court. Carr’s opinion explained that the flier distributed during the protests proved to be “an actionable state of fact,” not a constitutionally protected opinion, and was therefore subject to libel laws. Carr’s opinion also referenced the significant media attention around this case, and em phasized that the court would not be examining the broader question of how this ruling might affect First Amendment rights.

In June 2019, a Lorain County jury ruled in the bak ery’s favor, announcing $11 million in compensatory damages and an additional $33.2 million in punitive damages. The jury found Oberlin College and Raimon do guilty of libel (Count one), improper interference between Gibson’s and Bon Appetit (Count three), and intentional infliction of emotional distress (Count six). Judge James Miraldi capped the total award at $25.049 million, citing precedent that punitive damages could not exceed double the amount of compensatory dam ages. Miraldi assigned an additional $6.565 million in attorney fees owed to the Gibsons.

Photo by Lucie Weismueller

“I wasn’t racist ever … but this **** and the way peo ple treat me now because I am “white” is racist and is making me racist,” Allyn Jr. wrote. “I don’t owe a damn person a damn thing. If these lazy ***** want to start working then they could earn their own money. That’s what my family does for money … work.”

Gibson’s Bros., Inc., David and Allyn Sr. File Lawsuit

Oberlin College submitted an appeal Oct. 8, 2019 to the Lorain County Court of Common Pleas’ June verdict. Gibson’s Bakery filed a cross-appeal later that month challenging the final cap on damages awarded. Both ap peals were filed with the Ninth District Court of Ohio in Akron.Oberlin’s appeal was divided into three separate points of contention: that the Gibson team had failed to prove that the College met the standards for libel; that there were irregularities with the trial including the alleged erroneous omission of certain testimony; and that the damages awarded were exorbitant in relation to proof of harm provided by the Plaintiffs.

In late April 2019, it was announced that the lawsuit would go to trial on May 9. Shortly after the trial began, the College gave a statement reaffirming its belief that neither Defendant had defamed the Gibsons.

On Dec 6, 2017, Oberlin College filed a motion to dis miss counts seven and eight in the suit: negligent hiring, retention, or supervision; and trespass respectively. The College and Raimondo’s lawyers argued that the Plain tiffs had no evidence of negligence on Raimondo or the College’s end. They also pointed out that Gibson’s claim of Oberlin protesters trespassing in the parking lot be hind the bakery fails because the Plaintiffs do not own that property. While David Gibson has a majority stake in Off Street Parking Inc., neither David nor his son Al lyn Jr. own property under Off Street Parking. On Jan 5, 2018, Judge John R. Miraldi granted the Defendants motion to dismiss the two counts.

Continued from page 1

Special assistant for government and community rela tions, has reached out to Mr. Gibson to engage in dia logue that will ensure that our broader community can work and learn together in an environment of mutual respect free of discrimination.”

Schaefer also commented on the distinct nature of the events as they related to the 2016 presidential election. Former President Donald Trump was elected Nov. 8, and students began protesting Nov. 10.

On Wednesday, Judge Christian A. Jenkins of the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas in Cincinnati temporarily blocked the ban placed on abortions after six weeks by Governor Mike DeWine. The ban was passed in April 2019 and went into effect following the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling. Wednesday’s restraining order permits abortions up to the 22nd week of pregnancy, which will remain in effect for at least 14 days. In his ruling, Jenkins referred to the Ohio State Constitution, citing the “health care freedom amendment” passed in 2011, in his“Noruling.great stretch is required to find that Ohio law recognizes a fundamental right to privacy, procreation, bodily integrity and freedom of choice in health care decision making,” the lower court judge’s rulingStudentsreads. are reflecting on this restraining order within the broader context of reproductive rights in the country.“Ithink we are at a scary tipping point where these cases are just going to keep going through the courts, and being stalled and then enacted again,” College fourthyear Eli Butler said. “Nothing is going to happen that will be permanent until the federal government makes a decision about it.”

not taught to most people. And then to get morning-after pills, to get medical abortion, get surgical abortion, you have to have money to be able to travel … to do theseAccordingthings.”

“I think that it’s definitely not fair that people who are pregnant have to be forced to carry their child to term,” College firstyear Jaena Bethea said. “I think that there are many factors that go into a person’s decision to say that they don’t wanna carry their baby to term. Why are we forcing them to keep their children when they cannot even afford simple things? How are they going to take care of their children? How are they gonna buy diapers? How are they gonna afford hospital bills? How are they gonna afford to feed themselves, to feed their children?”

to a statistics report by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services from May 2021, Ohio has more than one million children in the child support system, and a study conducted in 2010 showed that 55 percent of all pregnancies in Ohio were unintended.

“What I discovered when I went downtown was that there were literally hundreds of students, first in front of Gibson’s, and then the police moved them across the street to the south side of Tappan Square, and none of them would talk to me ,” Schaefer said. “Eventually, I went into Gibson’s to find out something from them. They had nothing to say at that point. And so I left, but I left with a distinct impression that this was a different kind of protest than I’d ever seen before.”

“You have to remember that this was the night after the election of 2016 had occurred,” Schaefer continued “I think everybody in this town, which is mostly liberal, was feeling pretty strongly about the outcome of the election. Pretty disappointed. ... I wonder if this protest would’ve gotten so large if it hadn’t come at the particular time...that it did, but who knows? That’s not a question we can answer now.”

Last week, Oberlin College announced it would pay Gibson’s Bakery the sum of $36.59 million in damages and attorney’s fees. With litigation now concluded, members of the community are reflecting on the circumstances of the original incident and the culmination of five years of litigation.

Peterson also commented on the tone of the College’s announcement informing the community they would pay the “Well,Gibsons.theymade a point of saying they were disappointed and it’s not gonna affect our endowment and we’re gonna move forward,” Peterson said. “I think they could have said something that might have opened the door to a more positive relationship with Gibson’s. ... I don’t think that addressed town-gown relations at all. I think they did have a sentence saying we hope that we can move forward, but it didn’t say anything that was really inviting to bring people together, in the way I read

When the CFO is on the business partnership, and we rotate going to those various meetings each month or so, that’s Oberlin’s presence. The idea here is that every time Oberlin’s students, faculty and staff, and alumni are out engaged in this work, that is Oberlin’s presence. And so it’s not just the President that does this work of town-gown relationships, it is the entire institution.”

“It’s really interesting to see this happening, as a lot of things are in the news nowadays,” College first-year Mia Elkins said. “I think also coming from [Los Angeles], it’s a really strange thing to see just how completely different two states canOberlinbe.”

The Dayton Daily News reports that the Women’s Med Center in Kettering, Ohio, a city only a couple of hours away from Oberlin, saw a surge of patients in their clinic on Thursday, more than 30 of whom sought abortion care and support. Political candidates — particularly Tim Ryan, a prochoice candidate for U.S. Senate — are also increasingly urging their supporters to take to the polls.

Ohio’s original Senate Bill 23, enacted in 2019, banned abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy — around the time cardiac activity is first detected. But the new ruling invalidates the bill, and in his decision, Jenkins stated that S.B. 23 constitutionally disadvantaged pregnant women.“S.B. 23 clearly discriminates against pregnant women and places an enormous burden on them to secure safe and effective health care such that it violates Ohio equal protection and benefit clause and is therefore unconstitutional,” Jenkins wrote.Results from a poll conducted by The Suffolk University/Cincinnati Enquirer in June 2022 showed that 53 perent of respondents wanted protection for abortion rights in Ohio codified into law.

Karen Schaefer is an Oberlin resident who has worked as a freelance public radio journalist for the last 20 years and has written about the College on a number of occasions. Referencing her years of engagement with the College, she highlighted the unique attitude of students during the 2016 protests.

“When our students are out volunteering in the Oberlin School District, that is Oberlin’s presence,” Ambar said. “When our faculty is engaged in community based research, that’s Oberlin’s presence. When I am out talking to City Council, that’s Oberlin’s presence.

Oberlin College has made no announcement regarding plans for any future business with Gibson’s Bakery.

an abortion, contacting an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist to seek advice and refuge from the ban.

Oberlin Community, College Reflect on Town-Gown Relationships Post Gibson’s Litigation

“I just don’t like the fact that as humans, we have to fight for human rights,” College first-year Mia Knox said. “It doesn’t sit right with me that someone else who doesn’t even know me personally feels the right to say what I can do with my body — or any other [person with a uterus], for that matter. I can’t even imagine people who are actually here right now going through unwanted pregnancies or things like sexual assault, and they feel like they’re powerless. It makes me a little angry that we still have to go through this. It feels like there’s always something.”

Kristin Peterson, OC ’72, a fourth generation College student and current City Council member, echoed Schaefer’s sentiments about the position of the protests within the broader political context. She also expressed her dissatisfaction with the manner in which the College handled the protests and pursuant litigation.

“We always want to create the positive impact because we are inextricably intertwined — both the College and the city,” she said. “So that’s been my message from the beginning: that we want our students to shop downtown, be engaged downtown, volunteer downtown, be good citizens downtown. And we want our colleagues in the city to recognize and value our students.”President Ambar also contextualized the many forms of Oberlin’s presence in the community. Highlighting the impact of the College in Northeast Ohio, Columbus, and nationally, President Ambar spoke about students, faculty and staff, and alumni as extensions of Oberlin’s work across various communities.

3The Oberlin Review | September 16, 2022

the College basically helping to support the protest, which is how I saw it with them being physically present and printing things. ... Even if you just move it forward from the first court decision had they accepted the first decision, it would’ve been behind us sooner and it would’ve cost the College a lot less.”

Peterson added that her outlook toward financially supporting the College has changed since the start of the Gibson’s trial. Following Oberlin’s response to incidents at the bakery, Peterson feels she no longer donates as much as she would have under different circumstances.“WhenIwas

Now that the active litigation is over, the Gibson family and legal team are grateful that the community can move forward. The Gibsons’ legal team shared the family’s hopes for the continued patronage of Oberlin community“Gibson’smembers.Bakeryand the Gibson Family cherish their historic 137 year collegial relationship with the entire Oberlin Community, including its residents, Oberlin College’s students and alumni, and Oberlin College itself,” the Gibsons’ legal team wrote to the Review “The Gibson Family and Gibson’s Bakery are thankful the litigation is over and that this chapter in Oberlin’s history is behind everyone. We believe our bakery has contributed to the wonderful tapestry of memories of Oberlin for thousands of alumni, residents and visitors to our wonderful city. The Gibsons welcome everyone from the College and town to patronize their store and begin to make new friends and memories which will create tasty smiles forever.”

students have expressed concern over how abortion restrictions impact people of different socioeconomic backgrounds.“Abortion access is a class issue,” College first-year Lotus Lloyd said. “You have to, one, [have] the ability to afford good tracking and also be able to tap into fertility awareness strategies, which are

Carmen Twillie Ambar spoke to the Review about the College’s ongoing commitment to town-gown relations, highlighting initiatives such as the Community 101 course for first-years and Taste of Oberlin that were started during her tenure. At the conclusion of the litigation, President Ambar would reiterate her message to students on the quality of their impact on the town.

“I have not been a happy camper from the beginning,” Peterson said. “I don’t think the College handled it well. The students obviously acted the way they acted based on their perceptions at the time. ... I was not happy with

Kushagra Kar Editor-in-Chief

Nikki Keating Alexa Stevens News Editors

Cincinnati Judge Temporarily Blocks Ohio Abortion Ban

a kid, my parents would sit at the table every month and write the bills, and I would say, ‘Why are you giving money to Oberlin College?’” Peterson recalled. “And they said, ‘Because it’s a private college and they count on donations from their alumni, and we are alumni, and we are gonna support the college.’ So I grew up doing that, modestly at the beginning, obviously. And when I got to the point where I could give more, never millions the way some have done and are able to do, I found myself donating significantly less than I would have.”

Ohio has become an epicenter of new abortion laws, specifically after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. There are already multiple reports of individuals with unwanted pregnancies having to cross state lines in order to gain abortion access and care. In recent news, a 10-yearold girl who was six weeks and three days pregnant reportedly had to leave Ohio following S.B. 23’s passage in order to get

“I’m proud to have the support of @ NARAL, and to be an ally in the fight to protect abortion rights and reproductive freedom,” Ryan wrote in a Twitter statement in February. “In the Senate, I’ll keep working to #PassWHPA and codify Roe, and to keep the heavy hand of government out of Ohioans’ health care decisions.”

Presidentit.”

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OCOPE, founded in 1970, is the union that represents clerical and paraprofessional workers. Photo courtesy of OCOPE

When writing this story, did you draw connections to your previous publication, Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction?

I was familiar with the Boxer Uprising and the story of the missionaries, but I didn’t know what the Arch was. When Professor Ann Sherif reached out to me about the talk, she said, “We want to orient it around this arch,” so I did some digging on the interwebs just to see what I could find. I’m not gonna go into depth about the history of the arch itself, because I’m sure people here know more about that than I do. Although I’ve been interested to hear that students were saying that they haven’t looked at the inscriptions. I think that the professors who organized this lecture series really want the Arch to become something that people talk about again. series really want the Arch to become something that people talk about again.

OCOPE, College Update Benefits in Renewed Labor Contract

SLAC members and other students have expressed concerns about the College’s motives in its union negotiations following the College’s early 2020 decision to outsource 108 members of College staff who were part of the United Automobile Workers union.

I think any academic, if you dig, has a personal reason for why we do what we do. I write about this a little bit in the beginning of the book, but I was raised in a pretty conservative denomination, and my family members are immigrants from China and

Can you discuss your recently published book, Heathen: Religion and Race in American History, and why you traveled to present it in Oberlin?

You mentioned this in the beginning of our interview, but what impact does the Oberlin Memorial Arch have on your presentation?

Further, SLAC members also expressed concern about Lahey’s role in the contract negotiation, “who on his LinkedIn touts his union-busting abilities,” Beesley said. Lahey has since amended the language in his LinkedIn profile to remove any explicit mention of union-busting.

The talk was framed as part of a new lecture series on race and religion, oriented around the Memorial Arch in particular, which was built to commemorate the deaths of missionaries and the Boxer Uprising. From what I understood from the invitation, my talk is trying to help contextualize the missionary outlook and think about the relationship between religious othering and racism. The talk is essentially an overview of the book, trying to understand the various arguments that I make in the book and how they connect this kind of outlook to a racial one.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kathryn Gin Lum

Alexa Stevens News Editor

“There’s this really complex nuance to what you’re talking about, what you’re asking, what information you’re supposed to have access to,” Maiville said. “I’m really proud of what our team did and also grateful that we were able to accomplish what we accomplished.”

“I think that’s completely ridiculous and is just a way for the College to withhold information and use it as leverage in the future,” he said.

Some students expressed discontent with OCOPE’s new contract. College fourth-year and Student Labor Action Coalition Student Worker and Unions Liaison Sam Beesley, while glad that OCOPE has reached a resolution, takes issue with the health care plan. He referenced the plan’s high deductible and the College’s alleged refusal to forecast costs past the plan’s first year.

Lahey expressed satisfaction with the results of the contract negotiation.

“I was extremely happy that on September 6, 2022, Oberlin College’s Office and Professional Employees union (OCOPE) members voted to ratify the most recent contract proposal submitted by the College and recommended by the OCOPE leadership team,” Lahey wrote in an email to the Review. “The result of this process is an agreement that will continue the College’s commitment to offering competitive pay and benefits.”

Did anything throughout your life inspire you to write this book?

The 2022 contract will be published online pending official review by both parties.

the teams negotiating on behalf of the College and OCOPE would meet for multiple hours once or twice a week. The OCOPE team was elected by OCOPE members and typically consisted of four or five primary officers, two additional members, and a hired representative.

Weir also described the new contract’s impact on wages for OCOPE members. In the first year, OCOPE members will receive a retroactive two-percent raise on pay since July 1. They will also receive a one-percent raise in January and a two-percent raise in the next two years, in addition to a few bonuses.

OFF THE CUFF

Photo courtesy of Oberlin College

Gin Lum is an associate professor visiting from Stanford University with a focus in Religious Studies and History. This Wednesday, as a part of the College’s Race and Religion Lecture Series, Gin Lum gave a presentation to Oberlin students on her book, Heathen: Religion and Race in American History, published May 2022 by Harvard University Press. The lecture series aims to expand the dialogue about the roles race and religion play in Oberlin’s history, and how this history impacts Oberlin’s position in broader society.

Daytime Desk Supervisor for Mary Church Terrell Main Library and Fifth Steward for OCOPE Joseph Maiville was present for negotiations.

Hong Kong. I was born here. I grew up here, but I was always raised to believe I was blessed, particularly blessed to be born in the United States into a Christian family. I grew up wondering about ancestors and relatives that I didn’t know in Hong Kong and China. I grew up thinking people who were not Christian were damned, feeling guilt and responsibility around that and wondering why I was so lucky to have been born here. What if my family hadn’t come — what would’ve happened to me? So I say in the book that childhood me could have been like a primary source for historian me. The kinds of questions that I grew up with are what I write about.

The contract also presents increased retirement benefits for OCOPE members.

Kathryn Gin Lum, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and History at Stanford University

In your book, you explore how the idea of the “heathen” has persisted in religious and secular discourse around race, from the colonial era to the present day. Are certain racial groups more connected to the idea of the “heathen” than others?

KathrynEditor

Over the summer, Oberlin College Office and Professional Employees union negotiated and ratified a three-year contract with the College. This contract puts into effect several changes: health care, retirement contribution, holiday, and remote work policies have been amended for OCOPEOCOPEmembers.wasfounded in 1970 in response to inconsistent employee rights among the College’s clerical and paraprofessional staff. OCOPE currently has 125 members from a wide variety of positions and departments, such as the Center for Information Technology, departmental secretaries, library reference and instruction, and clerical workers.Priorto this summer’s negotiations, OCOPE’s contract with the College was most recently updated in 2019. The 2019 negotiation resulted in increased wages in the second and third years of the contract but also decreased retirement benefits and raised out-of-pocket health care costs.Similar areas of the contract were again amended during summer negotiations. Reference & Academic Commons Assistant for Mary Church Terrell Main Library Julie Weir, who serves as chief steward of OCOPE, described the contract’s changes regarding health care.

According to Beesley, he and other SLAC members sought to aid OCOPE in its negotiations. They were able to provide some support remotely but were ultimately hindered by the fact that the process occurred over the summer when school was no longer in session and very few students were present on campus.

NewsNews 4

“The College loves having these negotiations over the summer because they know that students can’t actually be there physically to support,” Beesley said. “It’s very, actually, quite convenient for them that just a couple days before classes started, … they went to a mediator and got everything worked out, which is one of my worries.”

Yes, definitely. The first book was really focused on just one century between the Revolution and Reconstruction in America. It was more like a domestic story within the boundaries of the nation-state. But in thinking about hell, I was like, a huge proportion of the people expected to go to hell in this period of time were socalled heathens. That book touches on it, but it doesn’t do as much of it as I ended up doing in the second book. Part of that is just the constraints of the first book being

a graduate dissertation, and I just couldn’t do a book of the scope at that point. This one is more synthetic, so it covers centuries and tries to look at the global outlook.

That’s such a good question. One of the main claims that the book tries to make is that the category is this broad, encompassing umbrella, so it sweeps all sorts of different racial groups under the heading of heathen. So what the term does is it creates a kind of binary between the heathen and the white Christian. It’s not that this binary is more important than racial hierarchies, but that we have to look at both ways of rationalizing what we understand about how race works in America. Racial hierarchies can work like a divide-and-conquer strategy, pitting different groups against each other, but this binary, I argue, basically just works to set up the white savior. To create the savior of the white savior against all of these others.

According to Weir, the team negotiating on behalf of the College during the nearly two-month-long negotiations process consisted of College Vice President and General Counsel and Secretary Matthew Lahey and various College Human Resources employees. During this period,

“There weren’t a lot of changes, but they do have major impacts,” Weir said. “The College is very set on having everybody under one health care plan. And so our membership has lost choice in health care and is going to a high deductible plan, which is already the same health care plan that faculty and professional staff are under.”

social media apps, these glimpses into others’ lives are not really glimpses at all, but curated montages of share able moments deemed worthy of being incorporated into an on line persona. What we choose to post online defines who we are and significantly impacts others’ perceptions of us. These layers allow us to project idealized versions of ourselves.

SUBMISSIONS POLICY

Court Decision on Gibson’s Suit Threatens Student Speech

As a politically active community that prides itself in holding problematic actors accountable, it should worry us that aca demic institutions can be held responsible for students’ declarations of protest. Going forward, these institutions will be forced to protect their own legal interests above the free speech of their students. If there were previously concerns that the College wasn’t hearing student demands, we are now enter ing territory where the College may be legal ly obligated to silence those thoughts before they are even voiced. In its appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court, the College’s lawyers placed significant emphasis on the dangers of this precedent to First Amendment protections, as reported in the Review last week.

The Editorial Board encourgages anyone interested in submitting an Opinions piece to email the Opinions editors at opinions@ober linreview.org to request a copy of the Opinions primer. Opinions expressed in editorials, letters, op-eds, columns, cartoons, and oth er Opinions pieces do not necessarily reflect those of The Oberlin Review staff. Submission of content to the Review constitutes an understanding of this publication policy. Any content published by The Oberlin Review forever becomes the property of The Ober lin Review and its administrators. Content creators retain rights to their content upon publication, but the Review reserves the right to republish and/or refuse to alter or remove any content published by the Review. It is up to Senior Staff’s discretion whether to alter content that has already been published. The Oberlin Review appre ciates and welcomes letters to the editors and op-ed submissions. All submissions are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. All submissions must be received by Wednesday at 4:00 p.m. in the Opinions email for inclusion in that week’s issue. Full-length pieces should be between 800 and 900 words; letters to the editor should be less than 600 words. All submissions must include contact infor mation, with full names and any relevant titles, for all signatories; we do not publish pieces anonymously. All letters from multiple writers should be carbon-copied to all signatories to confirm au thorship. The Review reserves the right to edit all submissions for clarity, length, grammar, accuracy, and strength of argument, and in consultation with Review style. Editors work to preserve the voice of the writers and will clear any major edits with authors prior to publication. Headlines are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. The Review will not print advertisements on its Opinions pages. The Review defines an advertisement as any submission that has the main intent of bringing direct monetary gain to a contribu tor or otherwise promoting an event, organization, or other entity to which the author has direct ties.

OPINIONS EdItOrS Elle Giannandrea Emily Vaughan

Part of the justification for holding the College responsible for Student Senate’s res olution on the Gibson’s, as stated in the 9th District Court of Appeals’ Decision, was that “Oberlin assisted the student senate in its activities by providing it with financial sup port; a faculty advisor, [Meredith] Raimondo; an office in the student center; and a nearby glass display case within which it could post announcements.”Manyorganizations that colleges gen erally consider to be independent entities, including student press and government, still receive some extent of support, finan cial or otherwise, from their institutions. If any speech that an academic institution fa cilitates in any way is considered to be the responsibility of the institution, then col

While this Editorial Board wishes to highlight the precarious nature of express ing opinions going forward, we do not wish to create a sense of hopelessness. Given the newly set precedent that institutions can be held liable for their students’ words, it is imperative that students remain informed and ensure that we have our facts straight when we protest or disseminate literature. It goes without saying, but accuracy in both the facts and the manner in which they are presented can make or break any accusations of libel. It is important to frame those claims as disagreement in opinion, not statements of fact. Both documents held as libelous by the courts asserted that the owners of Gib son’s were “racist” and “assaulted” students. The original altercation was subject to ongo ing litigation that later concluded that Allyn Gibson Jr. was not racially motivated in his actions and did not assault the students. Fur thermore, he was not an owner of the bakery, and the actual owners of the bakery could not be proven to be racist. Thus, neither of these claims reflected indisputable fact in the eyes of the court. Rather, they were one of many possible perspectives on the totality of facts in the case. What is essentially a technicality in the difference between opinion and repre sentation of fact formed the basis for a mas sive defamation suit.

Taking these precautions will general ly protect student activists from being ac cused of defamation. Students will need to take steps to steer clear of College interfer ence. As is policy with the Review , and over the course of this trial has become the case with Student Senate, it is important to clear ly state which parties are represented by an opinion. If the College remains assured of legal immunity from the articles of protest, it will have no incentive nor grounds to med dle with those comments. At the same time, clear and deliberate statements of owner ship encourage accountability, which will result in greater engagement and courage from potential supporters. Demonstrating clear ownership over thoroughly researched claims is the best chance we have at ensuring the effectiveness of our future activism.

I am trying to break my habit of checking Instagram every morn ing. I know I do it not because I want to know what has changed between 1 and 7 a.m., but because my morning scroll has become a ritual. There is something comforting about sifting through the remnants of others’ lives and keeping subconscious mental notes on people you haven’t seen or heard from for years but with whom you still share your biggest accomplishments and aspirations.

EdItOr I al BOard

leges and universities will be forced to more closely control the speech of every chartered student organization. Beyond just chartered groups, this ruling also has disconcerting im plications for individual speech. In the ruling against the College, the courts have affirmed that institutions are responsible not only for the speech of established organizations, but also that of individual students. The fliers were not created by a chartered student or ganization; rather, they were conceived by an anonymous group of students with shared aims. Their collaboration was not sponsored by the College, yet the College was found re sponsible for their product.

A new social media platform called BeReal claims to be the an tithesis of everything wrong with social media. Every day, at an unspecified time, users receive a notification that “it’s time to Be Real,” and are prompted to take two photos of whatever they are doing at the time: one with their front camera, one with the back. BeReal users have followers just like other social media platforms, except for one important caveat: until you have posted your own BeReal, you cannot see others’. Its design mitigates any effort you might make to curate your own experiences. The goal is to show your life as it is, without any false pretenses or manipulations. It also curtails the endless scrolling many social media apps rely on to draw users in. You can see your followers’ BeReals for the day,

See Social, Page 7

Our ability to manipulate our online presence is a new phe nomenon that has changed the way we interact with ourselves and one another. We are treated to a constant barrage of others’ highlights, making it easy to compare our worst, most intimate selves with others’ best. Numerous studies have linked high levels of anxiety and depression with consistent social media use. School assemblies warning against the dangers of too much screen time are presented to us from a young age. The app store has become crowded with apps ironically intended to limit screen time. These are Band-Aid solutions. They don’t get to the heart of the issue, which is not the amount of time we spend online, but the way we spend it.

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

OPINIONS

The Oberlin Review | September 16, 2022 September 16, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 152, Number 2 OPINIONS

Hanna Alwine

After five years of litigation, Oberlin College v. Gibsons Bros., Inc. drew to a definitive close with the College’s announcement of its intent to pay the bakery $36.59 million. With Gibson’s naturally glad to move forward from trial and the College committed to its ongoing mission of academic excellence, the only missing piece of the puzzle is how Col lege students are feeling. At this point, no students on campus have a direct connection to the original incidents at the bakery, and even this Editorial Board finds itself distant from this critical moment in the College’s re centThehistory.factis, however, that our disconnect from past Oberlin students’ protests doesn’t mean we’re unaffected by this litigation coming to an end. In fact, the conversation is now more pressing than ever — the uphold ing of the Lorain County Court of Common Pleas’ ruling sets the precedent that aca demic institutions are liable for the written comments of their students. According to the courts, opinions, if asserted as facts in a writ ten form, do not fall under First Amendment protections of free speech. That means every protest, op-ed, or written assertion of any kind, if it qualifies under that definition of li bel, may compromise not only the producers of the content, but the College itself.

A girl who moved away in seventh grade now goes to college in Michigan; a boy you met at summer camp is standing among the ruins of Pompeii. Is he studying abroad or are his parents filthy rich? There’s no way to know. What you do know is that the gelato looksWithheavenly.typical

EdItOrS IN-ChIEf Kushagra Kar Emma Benardete MaNagINg EdItOr Lauren Krainess

5

BeReal Can’t Save Social Media

For me, and for many members of my now second-largest-in-record class, it was difficult to understand why the community we had joined felt so little like what we had expected as applicants. I frequently heard comments such as, “I feel like I’ve gone back to high school again,” or “I really don’t know anyone in my classes.” I know that when I considered what aspects of Oberlin I considered central in my decision to apply, I made specific note of what I saw as an opportunity to be a part of a closeknit community— one bolstered by a low student-to-faculty ratio and small class sizes.

As a student, reading this report was somewhat jarring. As I moved from one page to the next, I couldn’t help but feel that I was looking at my experience at Oberlin through a viewfinder while focusing the lens. The vague suspicions I had in my first year that the Oberlin I was attending was somewhat altered from the Oberlin I had expected — regardless of what disarray was caused by the COVID-19 pandemic — were validated.

COMIC

Oberlin Community Should Build Familiarity with One Oberlin Report

It’s no secret that there is a large dis crepancy in the quality of different first-year dorms at Oberlin. While some have air conditioning, several lounges, and pool tables, others have hot, sticky rooms, broken toilets, and clogged shower drains.

Holly Yelton, Illustrator

Elle Giannandrea Opinions Editor

The Longest Week

The lack of AC in dorms like Barrows has contributed heavily to the fostering of a strong community. On particularly hot days, residents like myself convene in the cool lobby or on North Quad to es cape the heat of our stuffy rooms. This forced socialization means that friend ships have developed quickly among first-years living in Barrows.

Ultimately,them.what really matters in a dorm? I’ve been living in Barrows for two weeks now, and I think of my dorm, however grimy and humid, as my home. It’s where my stuff is, and it’s where my friends are. However irritating it may be to wake up covered in layers of sweat or to be unable to shower because of mas sive balls of hair in the drains, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

The lengthy One Oberlin report details what elements of the College’s expenses and modes of operation were, in 2018, considered pertinent threats to Oberlin’s economic well-being, as well as multiple proposed strategies to increase the College’s appeal and competence within the marketplace of higher learning. The report focuses largely on the unsus tainability of Oberlin’s financial model prior to 2018. It cites concerning figures regarding fiscal reliance on Oberlin’s endowment, revealing that, “Annual extraordinary draws on the endowment have occurred for more than two decades, in some years pushing the annual draw as high as 8 percent of the endowment’s value.”

knowing where they would be staying.

This year’s first-year class is the largest in Oberlin history. This has cre ated an evident housing crisis on cam pus. Rooms meant to house two people sometimes house three, former lounges are now makeshift living spaces, and some students arrived on campus not

There are many amenities featured in current dorms that should be incor porated into the new dorm. The Das comb ceiling fans are more sustainable than AC and can create a cool breeze in the room rather than simply making the room cold. The wide, open lobby in Barrows has made for many a late-night meet-and-greet with residents from oth er halls. Each hall has its perks, and the new building should draw inspiration from all of

The spring of 2018 marked the second semester of my freshman year of high school. At the time, I was 14 years old, and I was starting to hear discussion among my peers regarding their exhaustive, and often daunt ingly complex, plans for college. They set goals, applied for summer pro grams, volunteered for hours on the weekends, and began to enter into the harsh realities of competition within standardized testing and the financial burdens of a college tuition.

“I often go to other dorms for social events, and other people come here for AC,” Cove said.

Most other dorms on campus have similarly varying levels of quality. For example, Dascomb Hall has some re cently installed amenities, including an air conditioning system and ceiling fans, but some residents still wish that there were more washing machines.

At the same time, Oberlin College began its own project of what it considered to be self-improvement: a yearlong strategic review of its fi nancial future and survival strategy in the face of massive budget defi cits. This is known as the Academic and Administrative Program Review, which culminated in a final report known as the One Oberlin report.

Therefore, it is worrying to me that the broad outline of the One Ober lin report commands a fundamental shift away from this. The report does note “a few key areas the committee considered carefully but will not recommend changing at this time” which “go to the heart of Oberlin’s mission and values,” including the preservation of student financial aid, “the liberal arts college, the Conservatory of Music, the art museum, … a comprehensive residential experience,” “the breadth and depth of Oberlin’s current educational offerings,” and “maintaining the capacity of [Oberlin] faculty to be scholar-teachers.” However, none of these take into account the importance of the student body itself, regardless of what opportunities they are afforded by “a more robust set of Winter Term options” or “the presence of a Business concentration.”

Sahil Novetzke Columnist

Discrepencies in Quality Between First-Year Dorms Need to be Addressed

6 Opinions

“Out of the six sinks on my floor, only three of them currently work,” College first-year Margot Jones, a resident of Barrows Hall, explained. She went on to describe other faulty facilities, includ ing clogged shower drains and scarce washing machines. Another Barrows resident, College first-year Anjali Black er, summarized the residence hall in a single word: Conversely,“Dingy.”College first-year Sylvie Cove, a resident of Kahn Hall, described her dorm as “beautiful and modern.” While Cove enjoys the luxury dorm life Kahn provides her, she admires Barrows and other second-rate dorms for their well-established communities.

There has been talk of constructing a new first-year residence hall within the next few years, which could easily be a solution to the housing crisis, particu larly if a high rate of enrollment contin ues to be an issue in the following years.

The One Oberlin report seeks to remedy a problem that I can offer no possible solution to — the financial concerns Oberlin is currently facing. I can’t pretend to believe that maintaining the image of a small liberal arts college and ensuring an institution’s survival can always be compatible. Oberlin is, for better or for worse, an entity beholden to financial con straints. My concern is that the damage done by meeting our financial obligations as outlined in the One Oberlin report is not being fully con sidered by those in charge.

It’s about the community, and it’s about the people. And your college ex perience is only going to be as good as you make it. So, to all my fellow Barrows residents and anyone else who may be struggling with their dorms: they may have AC, but we have character.

To a member of the Oberlin community, many of the strategies out lined in the report should be patently familiar. The scope of One Oberlin includes jurisdiction over expenses such as faculty pay, housing and din ing, and what AAPR refers to in a section heading as “Improved Usage of Space and Facilities.”

Over the past two years, the massive uptick in enrollment to the Col lege of Arts and Sciences appears to correlate with the report’s observa tion that “Arts & Sciences students bring in, on average, $10,000 more in tuition revenue per year than Conservatory students.”

One of the main cultural attributes of any liberal arts college is exclu sivity without elitism. Part of that exclusivity comes from the fact that not everyone wants to go to a school like Oberlin. In the absence of oth er traditional markers of higher education, such as Greek life, athletic prominence, party culture, or proximity to home for the student body — the majority of whom are not from Ohio — Oberlin relies on the existing culture of its campus and of its student body to maintain its reputation.

“We bonded over the heat and the poor ventilation,” College first-year Luke Dodson explained.

In all fairness, the pandemic and the mass deferral of student admissions in the past few years likely contributed to this crisis, but it is the responsibility of the school to provide safe, comfortable, and clean housing for all students. After all, many of us are paying tens of thou sands of dollars to attend Oberlin. While it is upsetting for there to be such major differences in facilities and living situ ations, more upsetting is the fact that all students living in traditional housing pay the same rate. This means that stu dents living in small, hot rooms with no real amenities besides the bare necessi ties still pay the large housing fee that students living with pool tables, music practice rooms, functional vending ma chines, and robust kitchens are paying.

To give a concrete piece of advice: I would recommend that anyone unfamiliar with the One Oberlin report build that familiarity. I can’t in good conscience recommend that you pore over all 42 pages, but I do urge you to, at the very least, skim it for relevant information. While its language is understandably coated in a corporate veneer, it is an interest ing document and, by the look of these past two years, is well on its way to taking full effect.

Not everyone is writing about air planes or dividing by zero, but we are writing in the context of our world, which is rigorously theorized by sci entists and mathematicians. While some background is needed to un derstand everything properly, STEM can sometimes offer writers just the right metaphor or word. Scientists and mathematicians have some hilarious words—quark is one of my favorites.

The Oberlin Review | September 16, 2022 7

Social Media Users Seek Better Experience with BeReal

In his collection of short stories, Sto ries of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang

found myself waiting to take my BeReal until I was doing something I felt was worthy of posting. Though the idea behind the app is to take the picture imme diately when you get the notification, I sometimes found myself unable to accomplish this task because I would be in class, at work, or in the shower, so I would wait, and the spontaneity would be ruined.

At Oberlin and across higher educa tion in general, those studying STEM and those studying humanities rarely branch out toward their disciplinary other. By extension, the practice of glorifying hyper-specialization within institutions is encouraged by capital ism. It’s not uncommon to hear, “I can’t stand STEM classes,” “Keep me away from those humanities majors,” or the rather sad “I think it’s interesting, but I refuse to do math.” In my Creative Writing major, I meet very few fellow students with an interest in math or physics, and conversely, I’ve met a fair number of STEM majors who, despite their commitment to consumption of the arts, have some aversion to taking art classes themselves. We tend to stay on our own side of this particular disci plinary chasm. However, it’s important for arts and humanities majors to take some STEM classes and for STEM ma jors to take arts and humanities classes. In service of this, STEM classes should work to be more accommodating of people coming in from outside STEM fields, and arts and humanities classes should work to be similarly accommo dating.When I first arrived at Oberlin, I was finishing Everything and More, a book by David Foster Wallace about the history of the mathematical con cept of infinity. That book inspired me to take a course in the Mathematics de partment called Discrete Mathematics, which is, to date, one of the most inter esting courses I’ve taken at Oberlin. I did worse in Discrete than I did in any other class that semester — a trend that continued when I took Calculus II later on (making it difficult to justify taking further math classes when faced with my GPA). However, something inter esting happened while I was taking cal culus: the math I was learning started to seep into my poetry. Calculus deals with integrals, derivatives, and repeat ed sums, which involve ways of making something smooth, continuous, and unified out of infinitely smaller, jagged pieces. I found deep aesthetic motiva tion here, and I started thinking about other things as made up of infinite parts coming together into smooth wholes.

jors may not want to spend their time learning concepts that will only be use ful in other STEM classes.

Interdisciplinary Study Essential to Liberal Arts Education, Should Be Encouraged

Continued from Page 5

but that number is finite as opposed to other apps’ never-ending feeds.

On the other side of things, STEM majors generally don’t engage with non-scientific writing. As a result, sci entific papers tend to be dense, difficult to understand, and clunkily written,

In finding inspiration from the sci ences, I seek to emulate authors as well.

Oberlin is a liberal arts school, which means it provides flexibility in what classes students can take outside of their major and when they can declare or change their majors. In general, this freedom aims to give students a broad, multifaceted education. However, in the professional sphere, fixation on one subject is becoming increasingly the norm. We hear stories about math prod igies or pianists who started practicing at younger and younger ages. One story that gets told often in creative writing circles is a writer describing themselves as a child who always loved writing and knew they wanted to be a writer when they grew up. The normative moral here is the successful professionalization of children. We are not writers, just as we are not scientists or athletes. Although these are all roles we play, we cannot and should not mistake ourselves for them. Especially during our short time at Oberlin, we should look to explore new and scary things, stretch ourselves, and grow, and our institution should support that.

The Research Center, located in Mudd Center, provides students with resources to support their interdisciplinary studies.

Photo by Erin Koo, Photo Editor

Recently, the app has gained international atten tion. Released in 2020, BeReal rose in popularity in 2022, obtaining a cult-like following of 10 million dai ly users by August. Will BeReal change the way that we interact with others online for good? Or will the trend be over and done within the next few months? I would argue the latter. Although this movement to a less filtered, more spontaneous online presence is an improvement over the way social media has been used previously, it may not have a lasting effect. It’s hard to tell if these high-minded concepts fit the real ity of BeReal usage.

One of the most interesting aspects of BeReal’s sudden rise to popularity is its reliance on limits. The choice to download the app and adhere to these lim its is optional, yet BeReal’s popularity has grown ex ponentially in recent times. Maybe this is because of the endless warnings about the dangers of social me dia or dissatisfaction in the way we interact with one another online, but there seems to be a push to move away from the heavily manufactured world promoted by other social media and toward spontaneity.

making them inaccessible to the general public. Political divisions surrounding climate change and vaccines are both scientific nonissues. The scientific writ ing on these subjects can be difficult to access and understand, meaning that those without the proper background are left to trust the media and politi cians, who themselves may misunder stand the science or spread false infor mation. Practice in writing in narrative and prose can help scientists make their work more accessible. It’s easier to con vince a skeptic using a narrative than an appeal to authority or through con fusing data. What if there were creative writing courses that focused on scien tific nonfiction or popular science writ ing? What can a literary analysis of the way publishing brings power to certain ideas tell us about patterns of scientific publishing?It’snot hard to understand why STEM majors don’t frequent poetry classes. They’re difficult to get into, and it takes some work and creativity to connect what they might teach you to your more familiar area of study. Con versely, STEM classes tend to be very technically oriented, with a focus on memorization of concepts that will be important later. Art and humanities ma

Despite my belief that BeReal is not the saving grace of social media it bills itself as, its widespread popularity has shed light on a large demographic of teenagers and young adults who want an alternative to traditional social media’s emphasis on curated perfection. While BeReal may not be the app to fill this void, the market is out there. It’s just waiting for someone to fill it.

I have since abandoned BeReal, partly because the service in Oberlin makes it impossible for me to up load, but also because, in practice, BeReal didn’t feel that different from other social media. Rather than subverting a curated social media presence, BeReal adheres to a different type of image. As opposed to the perfect, poreless, sepia-toned, beach-pic aesthet ic of the 2010s, BeReal is all about looking like you don’t care. The popular rise of “photodumps” on In stagram is another example of social media users at tempting to curate their content to look like they’re not curating their content.

About two months ago, I downloaded the app. At first, I liked it. It was fun to be prompted to upload pictures at a random time every day, to see what my friends were up to, and to have a compilation of my past week in random stills. But as time wore on, I

Desmond Hearne Morrey

writes about a fictional proof that one equals two (without sneakily dividing by zero). He uses this proof as a device to destabilize the characters andto ex plore what happens when a fundamen tal fact of life is turned on its head. Peter Watts’ science fiction novel Blindsight includes a bibliography at the end, with extensive notes on the world in which the book takes place. Watts uses Blind sight to ask questions about whether or not our conscious awareness of the world is evolutionarily advantageous or even desirable through rigorously exploring all the ways the brain can be fiddled with.

Cal Ransom This Week Editor

“Artists were reacting negatively to the commercialization of art, and the fact that they couldn’t get their art out unless the gallery, museum, or collec tor said, ‘Okay.’ They decided that they would do their own way of distributing art, so they started mailing art to each other.”

The Clarence Ward Art Library hosts two collections of over 20,000 pieces of mail art from over 1,800 artists. In this project, stu dents will process pieces of the collection and have the opportunity to create their own mail art.

Mail art is as diverse as the people in the network. All kinds of strange things have been sent out as mail art. I know there was a dried squid that was sent, and we actually have in our collection an industrial size can of tomatoes that is sealed, but inside of it is an origami orna ment. And you have to figure [it] out — it’s like a puzzle. It’s very open ended; whatever you [can] mail, you can do. And in fact, that’s the whole point of the movement [it] is for people to express themselves, however they need to, or want to without people telling them what they can and can’t do.”

Winter Term 2023 Projects To Consider

Courtesy of Oberlin College Archives

Courtesy of Oberlin College Archives

students in the world of papermak ing through an intensive studio art experience and visits to papermaking studios and presses.

She expanded on the connection to her heritage, say ing, “These techniques that have been developed and handed down over hundreds of years, even if I don’t know the names of all the papermakers that have come before me — and usually they were from very low classes, so … no one cared about them — it’s something that I can stay connected to through the labor.”

8 This Week

Aimee Lee, OC ’99, works with fiber.

“I’m happy to provide an intensive, hands-on studio expe rience because otherwise you can’t have this experience during the rest of the semester,” Lee said. “It’s kind of perfect for what Winter Term is built to do.” “It’s not just like a sheet of paper and a blank note book,” she said. “It’s my life’s work. I’m a papermaking artist, and my focus is on Korean papermaking. And so that links into my heritage as a Korean American. It’s about a lot of strands being pulled together into one place, which would be working sustainably, work ing ethically, working with the seasons, working with nature, working with plants, and then working with material fiber.”

“Mail art is an underground art movement that started in the ’60s and ’70s,” Barbara Prior, head of the Clarence Ward Art Library, said.

Courtesy of Oberlin College Archives

Courtesy of Oberlin College Libraries

Courtesy of Oberlin College Libraries

According to artist and author Aimee Lee, OC ’99, pa permaking and book art, though it can appear simple at a glance, brings together elements of citizenship and Thisstewardship.projectimmerses

Sundance and Professor Fraser chat at the Winter Term Fair

“Newspapers historically kind of give us an insight into what society is thinking,” Stephanie Bohnak, museum education and tour manager at the Oberlin Heritage Center, said. “As many know, different news sites and newspapers can fall differently on the political spectrum, which also gives insight as well into what the politics are, societal expectations, as well as what is deemed big news in the City, which can also give a lot of insight into just local history.”

Executive Director of the Oberlin Heritage Center, Liz Schultz, offered a different perspective, saying some newspapers may not have reported on the events at all in some cases.

“One of the things that we are looking to highlight with this is that every Indigenous person’s oral history is the authentic native experience.”

Stories of Indigenous Oberlin, led by Executive Director of the Cleveland American Indian Movement Sundance and Professor of Ethnomusicology and Anthro pology Jennifer Fraser, will compile oral histories of the Indigenous community in

The Oberlin Review | September 16th, 2022 9

Courtesy of Oberlin College Archives

“IOberlin.wasteaching

“I think acknowledging the fact that [some events] may be aren’t in papers can tell us a lot as well about what was actually happening with civil rights and segregation,” Schultz said. “The fact that maybe it wasn’’t reported on is something that could also be contextualized as well, so thats something to keep in mind.”

Courtesy of Oberlin Heritage Center

Oberlin Heritage Center’s project compiles clips from archives of The Oberlin Review, The Oberlin News-Tribune, The Chronicle-Telegram, and the NAACP’s The Crisis. Students working on this project will research protests that occurred due to segregation at a bowling alley in town in the 1930s, as well as the decision to allow the sale of liquor in Oberlin in the 1980s.

Photo by Erin Koo, Photo Editor

“I think that there is … a lot of confusion really, about who is ‘legitimate’ and whose stories are legitimate, not only from settlers, but also from some Indig enous people.” Sundance said. “There is often the question … whether or not a person is full blood... as far as I know, most people’s blood goes all the way to the top, but what I have determined that means is that people are trying to figure out whether or not they’re getting the ‘legitimate native experience’ when all native experience is a legitimate native ex perience.”

a class last semester in which Sun dance was a guest and a community partner, … and [he was] talking about [his] project and the history of Indigenous folks in Oberlin, … and even going back to when the College was founded,” Fraser said. “We got thinking about [how] nobody has col lectively made an effort to start telling the story in a public way, and it seems long overdue. I remember when I first taught that course, and [Sundance] said part of the problem in decolonizing is the issue of people feeling comfortable identifying themselves as Indigenous.”

Courtesy of Oberlin College Archives

Darling, page 11 Arts & Culture

Dlisah Lapidus

This concept of leveraging art for polit ical action can be compared to the climate activists in the Italian group Ultima Gener

FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art is a contemporary art exhibition connecting local, national, and international artists with institutions across northeast Ohio. The 2022 edition, Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, presents art as a possible catalyst for healing. As a part of FRONT International 2022, the Ellen Johnson Gallery at the Allen Memorial Art Museum now hosts Bakunin’s Barricade by Ahmet Öğüt, a Kurdish-born conceptual artist currently living and working across Amsterdam, Berlin, and Istanbul.

“Ahmet was really inspired by the 2013 Gezi Park protests in Istanbul, as well as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Mat ter, and all of the protests on any number of tragic and important issues in recent years,” Derstine said.

Don’t Worry Darling was first announced in 2019, and the spectacle behind the scenes began not long after. In September 2020, Shia LaBeouf left the cast, citing “scheduling conflicts,” and megastar Harry Styles swiftly stepped into the leading male role. The glam-rock-adjacent ex-boyband member was to star alongside powerhouse actress Florence Pugh, while Chris Pine, Dakota Johnson, and Nick Kroll took on supporting roles.

dissuade the troops from their attack.

To the Oberlin community, the AMAM is a resource, a space for education and inspiration. The connection between the artwork and the museum’s legal process is an illuminating and topical component of the installation. In an era of digital con tracts and digital art, a physical contract hung before a physical artwork is worth while subversion.

Olivia Wilde’s second-ever directorial project, Don’t Worry Darling , is scheduled to be released in the aters later this month. However, D on’t Worry Dar ling ’s recent press coverage has had little to do with the film itself and much more to do with the ever-es calating conflict among the production team, cast members, and former cast members.

“The Allen has been one of the key part ners since the start of FRONT Internation al,” Director of the AMAM Andria Derstine said. “In terms of this particular presenta tion, Ahmet Öğüt’s work was suggested to us by the artistic director of FRONT. I loved the fact that it dealt with historical and con temporary ideas about protest. I also loved that it involved original artworks from our collection interspersed within the barri cade.”AMAM Curator Sam Adams comment ed that FRONT selected Oberlin as the site for this piece “because of Oberlin’s history of counter-culture and political justice and the strength of our collection to be able to sustain a project like this.”

Bakunin’s Barricade poses the question, “Can art defend society?” and prompts re flection on the value of art as protest.

Face-spitting allegations, social media slights, publicly delivered custody paperwork, age-gap re lationships, and musicians-turned-actors — not to mention the peripheral involvement of the al ways-inflammatory Shia LaBeouf — have crescen doed into a PR nightmare of impressive proportions.

Photo by Ettore Ferrari Don’t Worry

Of course, the current installation and unsigned contract for Bakunin’s Barricade poses no threat to the AMAM’s collection, but a museum setting can have a deep con nection to protest movements. Art insti tutions are often platforms for works that challenge political systems and social in equalities. Protests have also been direct ed towards art institutions in recent years, demanding systemic reform and increased diversity in creative spaces.

“Art museums as institutions tend to be risk averse because it is part of our mandate to protect and serve our art collection in perpetuity for future generations,” Adams said. “A museum has to walk a fine line to be able to meet its moment and participate in the forward drive for social justice.”

Photo by Abe Frato, Photo Editor azione (Last Generation) who have glued their hands to acclaimed works of art in recent months. Their hope is that the rad ical action of putting valuable works of art at risk may catch the attention of policy makers. Similar to Bakunin and Öğüt, they seem to believe that revered art is often held in higher regard than the livelihood of human beings.

Leela Miller Senior Staff Writer

September 16, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 152, Number 2 10

Although this concept was never real ized by Bakunin, over 150 years later Öğüt was inspired by the idea and began creat ing barricade installations reinforced with works from each museum’s collections. Öğüt uses found objects including fencing, cars, construction materials, and signs to build up his site-specific barricades. At the AMAM, an Oberlin street sign is one of the many items that comprise the expansive installation.Placedthroughout the barricade are 13 works selected from the museum’s collec tion, including recognizable Andy Warhol, Barbara Kruger prints hanging on a fence, and even a Nisse Zetterberg portrait of the gallery’s namesake, Ellen Johnson. The presentation of the barricade is accompa nied by a framed, unsigned contract stip ulating that, if signed, the art dispersed throughout the assemblage may be de ployed by the public, if needed, to form a barricade during a social protest.

See

Olivia Wilde’s Second Directorial Feature Receives Lukewarm Reviews Ahead of Theatrical Opening

Ahmet Öğüt’s installation Bakunin’s Barricade is a work of protest.

In a time of digital activism with grow ing desire to take discourse online, many argue that the intangibility of the internet dampens the effects of protests. Bring ing an exploratory artwork into physical spaces is effective in fostering dialogue in communities where protest is often mis understood and misrepresented — and for Bakunin’s Barricade, the installation is a cross-generational triumph of art as pro test.

It seemed like Don’t Worry Darling would be a sure-fire hit thanks to its celebrity-studded cast and the acclaim and commercial success of Olivia Wil de’s directorial debut Booksmart in 2019. However, drama surrounding the film’s production began to

Öğüt has been creating and presenting Bakunin’s Barricade works in various inter national museums since 2015. The project is based on a concept introduced in 1849 by revolutionary anarchist Mikhail Bakun in. As Prussian troops threatened to attack socialist groups in Dresden, Bakunin pro posed enforcing their barricades with art works from the National Museum. He the orized that the value of the paintings would

Allen Memorial Art Museum Hosts Bakukun’s Barricade ARTS & CULTURE

The cast of Don’t Worry Darling on the red carpet.

The Oberlin Review September 16, 2022 11

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

this is really fun.” So then I just kept going. I used to only go once or twice a week, and now I go to open mics pret ty much every day of the week.

Yeah, I would like to. Honestly, this is probably my favorite artistic endeav or that I’ve done because it’s very inde pendent. You get to be your own man ager, essentially, and I really like that aspect of it. It makes it easier to do it as a career. Not money-wise, obviously — it’s difficult to make a living off of, but it’s a good thing if you have a day job and then you go do comedy and then you hopefully make your way into be ing able to live off of that. It definitely will take a while, but hopefully I can do it as a career at some point.

than having my feelings overtake my day to Millerday.”also explained a tattoo on his“It’sbicep.ehyeh-asher-ehyeh, which is ‘I am what I am,’ but because of the complexity of Hebrew grammar, there’s no present tense of the verb ‘to be,’ so it can also be ‘I was who I was’ and ‘I will be who I will be’. …

See Students, page 12

Is there anything in particular that when you go to a show you want au diences to take away?

Miller doesn’t want to stop his tat too collection there. He plans to get more, and this time he wants some thing visual rather than another quote.“Iconstantly think of getting more,” he said. “One of the ones that I want is more picturesque, rather than the text that I have right now, but I think that’s where the Hebrew works well because … it is somewhat picturesque in a way. Other people can’t necessar Miller’s tattoo (top left), Friedman-Park’s tattoo (top right), Taylor’s tattoo (bottom left), Sach’s tattoo (bottom right)

Yeah, there’s been a couple chal lenges. Specifically with being a young woman, you have to prove yourself more. You can’t just be funny, you have to be significantly funnier than other people or otherwise people wouldn’t take you seriously. A lot of the time,

College third-year Hannah Belmont is a Theater major from Chicago. She has been performing stand-up comedy for a little over a year, and in that time she has hosted and performed in countless shows and events around Ohio. Last semester, she led a stand-up comedy ExCo and formed the Stand Up Comedy Coalition, a group of Oberlin students who host comedy shows on campus throughout the semester. Last week end, they hosted “Laughin’ in Tappan,” a standup show in Tappan Square.

people are very excited with a young comedian. They either get excited or competitive. Thankfully, I’ve interact ed more with the excited people.

Adrienne Sato Senior Staff Writer

I’ll say a really outlandish joke about something that’s weird. I like when people are like, “I wasn’t expecting that.” I want people to be confused and surprised, in a good way.

The Stand Up Comedy Coalition will put on three shows at Oberlin throughout the semester. The Coali tion will host a comedy variety show on Oct. 27, which will be open to student performers, and a show over Oberlin parents weekend that will feature a student opener and a guest perform er. Lastly, on Dec. 2, the Coalition will host a variety of Chicago comedians at Oberlin, including many of Belmont’s close friends.

It is a thousand percent me kind of coming to terms with things. A lot of people joke, and a lot of people were saying this on YikYak too — they were like, “That comedy show was just a bunch of comedians trauma dump ing.” I’m like, yeah, that’s a lot of what it is initially. Most people don’t know that I’m bisexual until they see my stand-up because that’s just when I talk about it. Most people don’t know I’m Jewish until I talk about it in my stand-up. I feel like for a lot of peo ple and for me, standup feels more comfortable because it’s like you’re making fun of yourself for things that you’re kind of insecure about, but you’re beating other people to the punch. So it’s definitely got a lot to do withStand-upidentity.can be very personal, and people who don’t really do [standup] don’t see it as that. They’re just like, “Oh, this is a stupid joke,” but a lot of people use humor to cope with things that happen. So yeah, I definitely feel like it’s very connected to identity.

When walking through campus in the warmer months, students can be seen showing off their tattoos. Tattoos are often meaningful; they may give in sight into a person’s hobbies, inter ests, and experiences. They may also just look cool. Either way, many stu dents on campus have stories to tell through their tattoos.

I usually go into a show thinking that I want people to be surprised. When I do stand-up, I dress purpose fully incredibly girly. I don’t look like I do stand-up. Most people, when I go to an open mic, are like, “Oh, are you singing? What are you doing here?” So I like when people are confused by me, which sounds weird. But I look very girly, and then I’ll go on stage, and

I started standup specifically a lit tle over a year ago. It was like June of 2021 — I’d been meaning to go to open mics, but COVID happened right after high school, so I couldn’t immediate ly. I did my first open mic at this place called The Comedy Shrine, which is now closed, sadly, but I was like, “Oh,

Comedy is really tied to identity in some regards because it’s reveal ing your personal experience, and I know that some artists and comedi ans like to use performance as a way to express themselves or to process things. Would you say that comedy functions in that way at all for you?

Yeah, I would say it’s definitely helped me. It’s helped me socially a lot. I used to be super shy and ner vous about talking to new people, and standup has definitely helped me get to know new people. It’s definitely helped me learn also how to interact with adults. I’m the youngest one in most scenes — in Cleveland, I’m the youngest that I’ve met at least — so I’ve definitely learned how to inter act more with adults, specifically men, which is interesting. Like kind of as serting myself in social situations.

Juliana Gaspar Arts & Culture Editor

Hannah Belmont, College Third-Year and Comedian

The meaning of it is to remind myself that whoever I was in the past was enough to get me to where I am today, who I am today is enough to get me to where I’m gonna be in the future, and all those versions of myself are equal ly valid and equally helpful.”

ON THE RECORD

College third-year Finn Miller shared his personal stories behind his two tattoos. Taking inspiration from his connection to Judaism, Miller ap plied religious phrases to his own ex periences.“Oneof them is on my thigh, and it’s the Hebrew word hineni, which means ‘I am here’ or ‘I am ready,’” he explained. “But for me it doesn’t have that much of a religious meaning. It’s more that I reached a point in my life with my gender transition and also with my mental health where I finally felt like I was showing up authenti cally as myself, as a trans man. Feeling male and also feeling like I was more in charge of my day-to-day life, rather

I do it mainly spontaneously. In comedy, there are two main kinds of writing: passive and active. Passive just comes to you. Like you’re just walking down the street and a joke will go into your head and then you just write it down from there. That’s typi cally what I do. I have a hard time with active writing, which is where you sit down and just write jokes. Like, “I’m gonna come up with them right now.” I don’t know how people do that. I’ve done that maybe once or twice, and the jokes are never as good as when I just spontaneously come up with them.

So is comedy something that you’re interested in doing in the future as a career?

Have you gained anything in partic ular from your experience in stand up or in comedy in general?

Photo Courtesey of Hannah Belmont

How is it that you come up with your content? Is it spontaneous, or do you have a running list?

Seeing that this is typically a some what older field, have there been specific challenges or benefits of being younger?

In a previous interview, you said you started doing comedy in high school with the speech team. How did you get from there to here, where you’re doing all these shows and going to all these open mics?

Oberlin Students Tell Their Stories Through Tattoos

College third-year Claire Schmel zer also has a tattoo of a quote that not everyone can decipher at first glance. It’s her only tattoo, and it’s written in Elvish.“The meaning of the tattoo is, ‘This too shall pass,’ and it’s writ ten in Sindarin, which is the Elvish language that J. R. R. Tolkien came up with when he was writing the lore behind [The] Lord of the Rings ,” Schmelzer said. “The quote is said by Gandalf. … It’s something that my par ents heard in [The] Lord of the Rings and it’s something that they would say to me pretty much any time that I was having an emotional breakdown in front of them. ‘Claire, this too shall pass.’ It was something that I heard a lot growing up and also would try to keep in mind for myself.”

“One of [my tattoos] is a quote on my arm, and it says ‘words, words, words,’ because I wanted a quote to encompass all possible quotes. Then there’s a little ‘1’ on it, and there’s a footnote on my ankle with the source,” Sachs said. “I thought of that when I was 18 and I thought it was the funni est thing in the world. So I got it. It’s a footnote. I looked it up and I hadn’t seen anyone doing it.”

Continued from page 11

Tattoos may have meaning or they can be more spur-of-the-moment, but either way, they are art as self expres sion.“Get tattoos? I advise it,” Rothstein said. “Do it. Even if your parents hate ’em, get ’em. That’s my statement. Your money, your body, who cares? Unless it’s gonna be you in 20 years … but then that’s you in 20 years. You deal with that.”

The tattoo serves as a constant re minder for Schmelzer that everything will eventually be okay.

“I really like my nipple tattoos,” she said. “I’m not gonna lie. Those are my favorite. It hurt, like, a lot. They’re stick and pokes. Using a machine would be crazy … I had already kind of stopped wearing bras, and now I

stir after Wilde split from her loveable, mustachioed fiancé, Jason Sudeikis, in November 2020. The pair released a statement that they had separated ami cably and would continue to co-parent their two children. Two months later, Wilde and Styles were spotted acting like a couple at a wedding, and their relationship was quickly confirmed to be romantic. Some Styles fans criticized Wilde because of the 10year age gap and because of Wilde’s role as Styles’ director, while others labeled these criticisms as un fair, remarking that countless male directors have engaged in similar relationships. Still other fans dis missed the pairing of Wilde and Styles as an elabo rate PR stunt. Needless to say, the couple attracted abundant media attention — Styles’ dating life is a popular subject of scrutiny for Twitter and tabloids alike.In April 2022, a year after Sudeikis and Wilde split up, Wilde was delivered custody papers from Sudeikis while delivering a speech about Don’t Wor ry Darling at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, and the bad blood became obvious.

Students Embrace Tattoos as Self Expression

Schmelzer’s tattoo (left), Rothstein’s tattoo (right)

ily tell what it is from the outside. I like that kind of mystery. I get to de cide what’s on my body, and I get to decide the meaning without people assuming from sight.”

Not all of Sachs’ tattoos have senti mental meanings. He is most proud of two tattoos that form a pun.

“When it’s reduced to your sex scenes, or to watch the most famous man in the world go down on someone, it’s not why we do it,” Pugh said. “It’s not why I’m in this industry. Obviously, the nature of hiring the most famous pop star in the world, you’re going to have conversations like that. That’s just not what I’m going to be discussing because [this movie

is] bigger and better than that. And the people who made it are bigger and better than that.”

College third-year Martina Tay lor’s first tattoo also helped them feel more in control of their emotions in a broader way. Although their first tattoo doesn’t carry specific meaning, the reasoning behind their decision to get the tattoo does.

“The first one I got was a light house, and it’s the lighthouse I went to as a child,” he said. “My family is from the north of Germany — I grew

The legitimacy of this claim would soon be called into question. In August 2022, LaBeouf told Variety that he wasn’t fired at all; he actually “quit the film due to lack of rehearsal time.” LaBeouf substanti ated his version of the story with texts and videos from Wilde attempting to convince him to stay in spite of Pugh’s uncertainties about him. So, was Wil de actually protecting her female lead from a vola tile and unpleasant costar? Or was she simply trying to safeguard her own image by retelling the story of LaBeouf’s departure to make herself look like the good guy in the eyes of the press?

In the midst of all this scrutiny and hullabaloo, critics have called the movie visually stunning yet conceptually uninspired. Will all of this media at tention make Don’t Worry Darling a more successful piece of media than it would be otherwise?

Don’t Worry Darling Release Overshadowed by Controversy

Fast forward to present day: the cast of Don’t Worry Darling had a tumultuous press panel early this month. Pugh was a no-show. Styles, perhaps one of the most extensively media-trained celeb rities in recent history, said ridiculous, ineloquent things about Don’t Worry Darling during interviews, one example being, “My favorite thing about this movie is, like, it feels like a movie.”

12 Arts & Culture

Continued from page 10

At around the same time LaBeouf was removed from the project, he was also making disturbing headlines. His former partner FKA twigs filed a law suit against him, citing “relentless abuse” and sexual battery. He had also recently admitted to lying about childhood abuse in his semi-autobiographical film Honey Boy . A month after the news of LaBeouf’s

up in the south, though — and the lighthouse is like a very Northern thing. So, it’s home.”

“My second one I got this summer,” they explained. “I moved to New York for a job that I got myself. So there were a lot of big changes in indepen dence. My bug is my little guide, be cause it wasn’t a very fun summer. So the bug was a little guy to keep me company.”Whenchoosing a tattoo artist, some pick those with a clear vision and good technique. Others choose the artist based on their art. Both of Tay lor’s tattoos have been done freehand, giving the artists creative license.

Pugh did little to defend Wilde against character assassination. She also did little to promote Don’t Worry Darling on her social media, leading many to believe that there had been a falling out between Pugh and Wilde, blossoming into a cold war of sorts. One of the few statements that Pugh made about the film was a complaint about the outsized attention given to her and Styles’ sex scenes.

“All of mine are freehand, so I want to continue that,” Taylor said. “They draw on you and they’re really com municative. I feel like it’s almost less of a scary commitment to me, because I’m really, really present with it be ing made. Whereas if it was just like a piece of flash or something they made beforehand, I think I would spend hours deliberating on how I felt about it.”College third-year Shira Fried man-Parks has five tattoos: one on her thigh, one on her ankle, one on her arm, and two nipple tattoos.

er, did not faze Taylor when getting their second tattoo. Instead, the per manence of a bug on their leg holding a magic wand was a source of comfort.

Don’t Worry Darling is a superficially disastrous project, but it’s sensational, and therefore has a kind of twisted success regardless of its quality. In our attention economy where mental focus equals capi tal, a movie doesn’t have to be good. It just has to be talked about.

“None of my tattoos have mean ing,” Friedman-Parks said. “None of them have really been planned. I follow a lot of tattoo artists. I really like the idea of collecting art on your body over time, which is why I wan na spread it out. I’m really into flash. I really, really like flash as a concept. So I follow artists I like, and if I see something that they post that I really like, I’ll save it. If I feel so inclined, I’ll make an Friedman-Parksappointment.”explained how her favorite tattoos have helped her feel more comfortable in her body.

Meanwhile, Chris Pine seemed to dissociate as he sported, according to Twitter, a “first female prime minister for a European nation” style bleach-blond bob. Styles and Wilde appeared to keep their dis tance on the red carpet, which stirred up rumors of a breakup. And, of course, there was “Spitgate,” a video clip in which Styles appeared to spit on Pine, which was dissected to no end on social media. The film festival was an absolute PR disaster.

“I designed [my tattoo] myself, but it’s a Hanafuda card, which is a Japa nese card game that I grew up playing, and it’s this specific card with grass and then the moon over it,” Rothstein explained. “It’s one of the higher ranking cards in the game. I always felt really disconnected from my Jap anese heritage, and it was important for me to have something that shows that I am Japanese. It took me a re ally long time to feel comfortable and know enough about my culture and my history and my family’s history. It was important for me to have that on myCollegebody.” third-year Robbin Sachs also has a tattoo that represents a memory from childhood.

lawsuit, Variety reported that LaBeouf was, in fact, “dropped from the film” due to “poor behavior,” stat ing that “his style clashed with the cast and crew,” including Wilde, who ultimately fired him.

“In the books, it is literally the end of the world,” she said. “It’s an issue so big that I cannot even comprehend the problems that they were facing, and it really did pass, they were right. I think it’s just a good thing to remem ber, and it looks dope.”

never do because [the tattoos] are just so Tattoosgreat.” can not only improve one’s connection to their body, but also to their culture and heritage, according to College third-year Claire Rothstein.

“The first one is a snake on my right arm,” Taylor said. “I got it when I turned 18. It was COVID summer, and I was in a very conservative school for 13 years. I needed to do something bold and something I [was] a little bit scaredOftenof.”when advising against get ting a tattoo, people warn that it will be on your body forever. This, howev

Ethnomusicology is the study of cultures in society through the exploration of their musical expression. As musicologists, we go about un derstanding their social context by using ethnog raphy as our methodology. So that means being among the people and learning from them about their existence and expression. You’re not stuck in the archives. You work on field sites. You have to work out your insider outsider context. You have to learn how to properly engage with peo ple. And it’s culturally specific.

From 2009–2012, she served as a Fulbright Fellow in New Zealand where she researched and taught classes on ethnomusicology. Outside of academia, Andrews has worked with the Seattle Opera as a collaborative pianist, and as a church musician and leader in Auckland, New Zealand.

What was your journey from being a dou ble-degree student at Oberlin to becoming a professor?

PerformancesConservatory to Honor Nathaniel Dett

There is a research project that I’m really ex cited about that students do in second semester that was inspired by the lockdown. Every stu dent researches a figure, band, or particular subgenre of Black music coming from their exact neighborhood.Ididthisto

The types of courses that were offered then al lowed me to not only express my African-Amer ican heritage through my music, but to also start to see connections to my Pacific Islander identi ty. My professors, especially Professor Caroline Jackson-Smith and Dr. Wendell Logan, were re ally supportive of me exploring both of my iden tities in conversation with one another.

What’s been the biggest lesson you’ve learned from being an ethnomusicologist?

Do you have a favorite part about teaching this course or teaching in general?

IN THE PRACTICE ROOM

Do you have a favorite definition of ethno musicology that you like to use?

Gracie McFalls Senior Staff

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I was musical director for many of Caroline Jackson-Smith’s theater productions in the The ater department and was also a musical direc tor for five Black churches in Lorain County by the time I graduated from Oberlin. I come out of the Black Baptist church, and playing gospel and Negro spirituals in those particular contexts is where I would bring what I was learning in Oberlin to the real world.

13 September 16, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 152, Number 2

After leaving Oberlin, I went to Arizona State University for my master’s and doctorate and then to New Zealand on a Fulbright to study Sa moan opera singers coming out of New Zealand. That Fulbright turned into a Ph.D., and that’s when I realized what I was doing was musicol ogy. It took me six or seven years in my program to even admit that.

CONSERVATORY

After graduating from Oberlin in 1908, Dett took up a post at Lane College in Jackson, TN. Three years later, Dett became the music director of Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, MO. In 1913, he moved to the Hampton Institute, becoming the institu tion’s first Black director of music. During his 19 years teaching there, Dett founded the Hampton Choral Union, the Musical Arts Society, and the Hampton Institute Choir and School of Music. He also continued his education at Harvard University with Arthur Foote from 1920–21, and then in 1929, he studied under Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory in Fon tainebleau, France. In 1932, Dett received a master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music.

Dett continued to compose pieces throughout his career, in cluding his influential Chariot Jubilee (1919), an extended mo tet for tenor, chorus, and orchestra. After receiving his Master of Music degree from Eastman, Dett took up a post as the cho ral conductor at Bennett College in Greensboro, NC. In 1942, Dett returned to Rochester, NY, and worked at a local church while contributing to the United Service Organizations to sup port the U.S. efforts during World War II. While serving as a music advisor for the USO, Dett suffered a heart attack and passed away Oct. 2, 1943.

How does it feel to be teaching the class that you took as a student, especially one that Dr. Logan taught for so many years?

Q&A with CourtneySavali Andrews, Professor of Ethnomusicology

I do that every spring. It’s challenging, but it gets to the heart of the music, the people, and identifying your relationship to it.

The time that Dett spent at the Conservatory deeply influ enced his composing style and aspirations. In a written in terview for The Black Perspective in Music journal, Dett men tioned that over the course of his studies at Oberlin, he became motivated to compose and perform music inspired by spirituals that were sung to him by his family growing up.

My father is African American from Alabama, and my mother is of Samoan heritage from American Samoa. My father is a musician. He’s a jazz Hammond B-3 organist. I grew up in the jazz and blues clubs with him, and my siblings and I are trained conservatory musicians, but we were the only Samoans I was aware of in the U.S.

“[T]he most vivid and far reaching memory I have of Oberlin was the result of a visit of the famous Kneisel String Quartet, who played as part of one of their programs a slow movement by Dvořák, based on traditional airs,” Dett wrote. “Suddenly, it seemed I heard again the frail sweet voice of my long departed grandmother, calling across the years; and, in a rush of emotion which stirred my spirit to its very center, the meaning of the songs which had given her soul such peace was revealed to me.”

I have also learned to take into account that I am a Black- and Brown-presenting person that is engaging with other Black and Brown peoples, and there are very specific pivots and protocols that make that relational space mean different things.

I learn all the time, every day. This work makes you very sensitive to how you engage with people. You are researching facets of their life while also learning how to do what it is that you’re researching. Even when I’m teaching, I’m always trying to figure out what the best ap proach is going to be to get the best questions out of the students.

It’s trippy because I can remember what it was like to sit in class and learn African Amer ican history, and American history in general, through this lens of Black music. There was a lot of unlearning that happened there. Now I’m on the other side, looking into the eyes of confu sion, pressing up against students’ understand ing of history. It’s really rewarding, but it’s also very challenging. I’ve revamped the class to an swer issues that we’re constantly facing with the pandemic and George Floyd, and still within the context of Black Lives Matter, so that when stu dents crash into whatever the news cycle is tell ing us, there’s a way that the course has already addressed that.

“For the Oberlin ensembles, bringing to life the oratorio The Ordering of Moses has a special significance,” Jiménez said. “It is impossible not to think that Nathaniel Dett was walking around this campus in the early 20th century. He would go to his piano and composition lessons passing by Finney Chapel as it was being built. Dett graduated in 1908, precisely the year that Finney Chapel opened. Playing his music in this building feels very special indeed. By incorporating African-American musical traditions into his music, Nathaniel Dett most defi nitely answered the challenge that Antonin Dvořák presented to American composers in the 1890s by asking them to find a distinctive American musical voice.”

I arrived here at Oberlin as a Classical Piano major, which is an instrument of the European tradition, and an Africana Studies major. Once coming to Oberlin, I learned about Black clas sical composers and the long legacy that is at tached to Oberlin Conservatory, and that started to come through in my playing.

illuminate a couple of different things. One is to bring together their experience of having an immediate threat to their life. Two is that all of these different reactions to that pro cess reminded me of the ways that Black peoples have come through the Middle Ages, have come through transatlantic slave trade, and have navi gated their lives over generations. The goal is for the students to identify figures that have always had to do that in places that they call home and to identify whether Black and Brown people are still in their neighborhoods.

So for 13 years, I would come from New Zea land to the Samoan Islands through Hawaii, stop in Seattle to visit family, and then back to Ober lin. I’m very connected to the community in the town and the College here, and I think that’s what allowed me to be top of mind when there was a vacancy for someone to come and teach Intro to African American Music.

In 1900, Dett composed his first piece: After the Cake Walk, a ragtime characteristic march. Dett then enrolled in Oliver Wil lis Halsted’s Conservatory of Music located in Lockport, NY, where he composed his second piece, a piano march and twostep titled The Cave of the Winds. In 1903, Dett began his studies at Oberlin Conservatory, where he took a five-year double-ma jor track. In the summer after his first year at Oberlin, a patron at the Cataract House in Niagara Falls, NY, noticed Dett’s talent during a performance, and provided financial support for him until he graduated.

Ginger Deppman

R. Nathaniel Dett’s extraordinary accomplishments have left a deep imprint on Oberlin Conservatory. The Oberlin Orches tra, Oberlin College Choir, and Musical Union are honoring his legacy by performing his composition The Ordering of Moses in the upcoming months three times — twice in Finney Chapel, on Oct. 13 and Jan. 17, and once at Carnegie Hall on Jan. 20. When asked about the importance of these performances, the Conser vatory’s current Orchestra Director Raphael Jiménez spoke of Dett’s experiences as a student at Oberlin.

Courtney-SavaliWriterAndrews, OC ’06, is the newly appointed assistant professor of African American and African Diasporic Musics in the Conservato ry. This semester, her courses include Introduction to African American Music, an interdisciplinary course that blends music history, ethnomusicolo gy, and Africana Studies.

In addition to her degrees from Oberlin in Af ricana Studies and Piano Performance, Andrews holds a masters degree from Arizona State Uni versity in Musical Direction, and a Ph.D. in Eth nomusicology from the University of Wellington.

The music always keeps score as to what is going on between Black people’s overall exis tence and their context in America.

In 1908, Robert Nathaniel Dett (1882–1943) graduated from Oberlin College and Conservatory with a double major in Pi ano Performance and Composition. The first Black student to graduate from Oberlin Conservatory, and he went on to become an influential teacher, composer, and performer throughout his life. His numerous achievements have only recently begun to receive acclaim in the Conservatory community.

Fans who root passionately for any NFL team should carefully consider whether the star player and general cul ture they support reflect their personal values.

Zoe Kuzbari Contributing Sports Editor Walter Thomas-Patterson Conservatory Editor

Courtesy of Amanda Phillips Chris Stoneman Senior Staff Writer

This cycle, in which star athletes who have allegedly done bad things are rewarded with “second chances,”

I’m proud of the flashes of individual brilliance and moments of great team chemistry we’ve shown thus far,” Wells-Zimmerman said.

However, the winning streak ended the next day against Bethany. Though the Yeomen were hot coming into the game — with Pacewicz named NCAC player of the week for his stellar perfor mance — the Bisons shut them out 2–0 in a difficult loss. Despite the scoreboard, the team did show a great amount of promise going forward. The Yeomen defense played well, with three saves and solid defensive play in the first half. In the offense,

As “punishment” for his alleged crimes, Watson and the NFL, along with the NFL Players Association, reached a settlement in his disciplinary matter where they agreed he would serve an 11-game suspension without pay and pay a fine of $5 million. He is also required to undergo mandatory evaluation by behavioral experts and follow a “rigorous” treatment program.

Watson is guaranteed to be paid over the next five years. When the Browns signed Watson earlier this year, they had agreed to a fully guaranteed fiveyear contract of $230 million. This was the largest contract in the NFL — and it was agreed upon even after some alle gations against Watson became public.

The message from this is clear: pro fessional athletes can still participate in and profit from sports despite allegedly being sexual assailants. But where do we draw the line? Should Watson never be allowed to participate in the NFL again?Co-owner of the Cleveland Browns Jimmy Haslam believes everyone should get a second chance in life.

NFL Fails to Hold Star Players Accountable to Their Actions

Another famous NFL player, Ray Rice, was caught on video punching his fian cée and knocking her out in an elevator in 2014. Due to public backlash after the video went viral, the NFL changed its policy regarding how it handles domes tic violence cases. Somehow though, it feels as if nothing has changed.

Men’s soccer had a tough road laid out for them last weekend. Facing Grove City College, Chatham University, and Bethany College all in rapid succes sion, the table was set for a massive triple-header for the Yeomen. Coming off of an initial two-game losing streak, everyone was wondering if the team could correct its course and get the season back on track.The weekend started off well with Thursday’s game against Grove City. The Yeomen won 3–2 in a dominant defensive performance, marking their first win of the season. Second-year goalkeeper Colvin Iorio proved indispensable that afternoon, blocking a career high of 10 shots to secure the victory. Additionally, second-year scorers Xander Francoeur, Toby Wells-Zimmerman, and team cap tain Anthony Pacewicz were definite standouts of the game, delivering the team a great win.

Adrian Peterson was first indicted by a grand jury in 2014 on charges of reck less or negligent injury to a child which occurred earlier that year. He was sus pended for the rest of the 2014 season but then signed contracts in 2017 and 2018 and was able to elevate his career and record his eighth 1,000-yard sea son, tying for sixth-most of all-time. He is regarded as one of the greatest run ning backs in football history.

This begs the question: if athletes live up to their expectations on the field, what immunity does this give them to stay accountable for off-thefield issues? For the NFL in particu lar, recent cases have illustrated that stardom affords you a relative level of immunity from accountability. What expectation do we hold professional athletes to when they commit acts that violate our conscience, and what does that reveal about the league and its fans?Take Deshaun Watson, for example. A quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, he has been accused by 24 women — all of whom served as his personal massage therapists — of coercive sexual behavior during massage therapy sessions. The accusations include two allegations of sexual assault. These alleged instances took place while Watson was on the Houston Texans from March 2020–21. During this time, Watson met with 66 women over the course of 17 months

In spite of some losses, the Yeomen have shown a great deal of potential across their first five games. True to Pacewicz’s words, the team is sure to be a formidable conference mainstay once they iron out the kinks. In addition, Head Coach Blake New is looking forward to the team’s development throughout the season.

Watson’s case especially interesting is what it reveals about the amount of behavioral leeway NFL stars, especially quarterbacks, are given in the league. They are typically viewed as the backbone of the team, the sig nal-caller, and the paragon of the fran chise. Yet time and time again, NFL teams appear willing to look past his tory of sexual misconduct — including Saints quarterback Jameis Winston and recently retired Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger — if the player helps them win games.

“In this country, and hopefully in the world, people deserve second chances,” Haslam said to the NY Post. “Does he get no chance to rehabilitate himself? That’s what we’re gonna do.”

“You can say that’s because he’s a star quarterback,” Haslam said. “But if he was Joe Smith he wouldn’t be [in] the headlines everyday. We think people deserve a second chance. We gave Kareem Hunt a second chance and that’s worked out pretty well.”

“I am excited for what this team can accomplish as long as the lessons we are learning become cemented into our team psyche,” New wrote in an email to the Review . “We have some big tests com ing up, and I am eager to see how we respond.”

is one that the NFL knows all too well.

“It hasn’t been the start we were looking for, but there are many positives to take from our first few games,” Pacewicz said. “We have a young group with a lot of talent which we are still trying to piece together. There is still [much] to learn as a team and as individuals, but I see it starting to come together. When it does, we will be very tough to beat.”

A new football season has arrived and with that, an acknowledgement that athletes face considerable scrutiny nowadays. Football, baseball, soccer, basketball — these sports and many oth ers put their players on a pedestal, only for them to be torn down by millions of fans if they fail to match the hype.

Men’s Soccer Season Kicks Into Action

multiple Oberlin players had their chance to find the back of the net, but a sound Bethany defense shut them down.

Well, Haslam should have added a qualifier to that statement; if an ath lete helps a team win games and make money, then of course, they “deserve second chances.”

The men’s soccer team and staff pose on Fred Shults Field.

How are fans supposed to cheer for their team and its quarterback knowing in the back of their heads that the team platformed players who allegedly did reprehensible things?

Although $5 million seems like a hefty fine, that’s only two percent of what

14

Sports

“We still have a lot of work to do as a team, but

The team gained further momentum the fol lowing Saturday in their game against Chatham University in a dominant weekend performance. Defensively the team was sound, holding the Cougars to a single goal and maintaining ball con trol throughout all 90 minutes. First-year Louis Berger aided defense with his first career save. Offensively, captains Pacewicz and fourth-year Jon Schafer both went to work, scoring a goal each to win the game 2–1.

forWhatmassages.makes

So far, Watson has settled or agreed to settle all but one of the remaining lawsuits, while the Texans administra tion has reached settlements with 30 women who claimed they would sue the NFL for enabling Watson’s actions.

Powerful men in the NFL have com mitted heinous crimes for decades. If they serve the team’s bottom line — to sell tickets and win games — they often face little to no consequence. Whether it’s Kareem Hunt, Ben Roethlisberger, or Jameis Winston, these athletes have been elevated to an elite status in the professional athletic hierarchy — they serve as idols for millions of fans. If the allegations against Deshaun Watson are true, then he fits into this list as well.

One of the recreation centers on the south side of the town of Oberlin, Splash Zone, is home to four pickleball courts. Ann McDonald, the front desk worker at Splash Zone, noted that most of the people who come in and play pickleball are 50 and older. However, there have recently been more people 30 and older who are coming to learn

ago, he broke the world record. He’s only 18 years old, so it was really cool.

The beginning of the competition was at the same time as the international students’ orientation. I had to train here for a few days, even though the season hadn’t started. Coach Alex and Coach Ben Corley opened up the pool at 6 a.m. and guided me throughout my last week of training before the world championships. It was really important because it gave me a few pointers on what I needed to do to improve my technique and be fast overall.

Pickleball Popularity Grows at Oberlin

How was the adjustment to college after attend ing World Juniors?

I was there Sept. 3–5. My most memorable expe riences were getting to know all these different swimmers from different parts of the world, as well as getting to swim in the biggest stage for the age group that I’m in. I got to see the best hundred freestyle swimmer in the world. His name is David Popovici and watching him swim was incredible, like a different experience. Recently, like a month

My specialty event is the 1,500-meter freestyle. In Honduras, not many people swim at that event, so when I was little, I decided that I was going to be good in that event because no one else was. My older brother helped with that because he also swam in that event. He was a role model to me.

While most first-years were adjusting to classes and attending meetings with their Peer Advising Leaders at the beginning of the school year, Miguel Siwady was swimming at the 2022 FINA World Junior Championships in Lima, Peru where he placed 22nd in the 1,500-meter finals. He represented Honduras, where he currently has the three fastest 1,500 meter times out of anyone in the country for 2022 according to Swimcloud. Siwady is excited to study in the 3-2 engineering program, and hopes to make an impact on the swim team’s season, which officially started this Thisweek.interview

My school didn’t have a swim team, so I most ly did club swimming. It was called Delfines Sampedranos, one of the best teams in Honduras. I trained two times a day, three times a week. It was a really big team, but I was one of the oldest, so I had a sort of captain role in my team along with one of my training partners, who’s also my age. I heard of Oberlin because of a recruitment email from Coach Alex de la Peña. When I got that email, I researched the school. I liked its engineering program and how I could also study liberal arts here.

to play pickleball with her grandpar ents and their friends at a retirement home.“Growing up playing a lot of sports, it was cool to be able to play one with my grandparents,” O’Reilly said. “It’s a very easy sport to learn, so even if peo ple don’t see themselves as athletic, pickleball is something they can enjoy.”

The Oberlin Review | September 16, 2022 15

IN THE LOCKER ROOM

What is your specialty event and why?

How has Oberlin supported you in your training for the World Junior Championships?

What was swimming in high school like, and how did you hear about Oberlin?

How long were you in Peru for World Juniors, and what were the most memorable experienc es?

Have you thought of any potential majors or minors?

What else have you done this summer?

Miguel Siwady in Lane 7 swimming at the FINA World Junior Swimming Championships.

After I graduated, I traveled to Florida and swam, swam, swam there with the swim team for a month and a half. While I was not swimming, I was spend ing time with my father and having some time together with my family before I went to school here.

and play the game. Oberlin’s pickle ball community has grown to the point where these players interact off the court.“We get a large number of people who come and play,” McDonald said. “[Pick leball players] mingle with and look out for each other. Sometimes they’ll even do a potluck, and they do this on their own, not with Splash Zone.”

Kayla Kim Contributing Sports Editor

Students like College second-year Sam Brady have also started to gain ex posure to the sport. He learned how to play for the first time while at home on break.“Itwas fun and low-key,” Brady said. “I just played with friends at the begin ning of winter break last year on some

has been edited for length and clarity.

Other than engineering, I’m interested in the Cinema Studies department of Oberlin. I know it’s very broad — there’s even a class dedicated to Hong Kong cinema, which is very interesting.

Courtesy of Oberlin Athletics

It’s been easy because the swim team is very wel coming and very big. The captains are nice people and they will help if you have a problem. We always have these Stevie sit-downs. After training, we all go to Stevie as a team and eat, and we have get-to gethers to get to know each other. It’s a pretty open team, almost like a family. My goal is to have a posi tive impact on the team and help overall, especially in the championships. The first practice in the pool yesterday was nice because we got a feeling of the pool and swimming together for the first time.

leading by only one point, the game continues until a team pulls two points ahead. Serving the ball is similar to ten nis — the only two serves are volley and drop, and the serve must reach the op posite side of the court. To serve, one or both feet must be behind the baseline of the Thoughcourt.the leading demographic of “core” pickleball players — people who play the sport eight or more times a year — are those 65 and older, the pandem ic has brought an increase in younger players who appreciate the sport and play with family, friends, neighbors, and strangers. Third-year women’s basketball guard Jaedyn O’Reilly used

Miguel Siwady, World Junior Swimming Championships Competitor

tennis courts. It was 60 degrees and sunny that day in Santa Fe. I felt like an investment banker enjoying retire ment.”Major cities, such as Chicago and Houston, are building more pickle ball courts as more people pick up the sport. There’s even a pickleball sum mer camp in Huntsville, AL set to open in 2024 called “Camp Pickle.” As of today, over 60 countries have joined the International Federation of Pickle ball. Because 75 countries are required to make a sport part of the Olympics, pickleball players are optimistic about the sport being included in the 2024 or 2028 Summer Olympics as a demon stration sport.

Continued from page 16

Andrea Nguyen Sports Editor

“Brittney is stressed and very much concerned with the future,” Blagovolia said in her most recent update to PEOPLE on Sept. 13. “We need to use every legal opportunity that we have, and appeal is one of these opportunities.”

Last February, WNBA player Brittney Griner was detained in Russia for possession of marijuana. She had flown into Russia to play for the UMMC Ekaterinburg, the overseas women’s basketball team she plays for during her offseason. While going through customs, officials found a vape pen with less than a gram of hash oil, a concentrated form of cannabis, stored in cartridges. A week after her detention was announced, Russia started its invasion of Ukraine. In the months following, the Russian Federation extended Griner’s pretrial detention in March, May, and June.

See Beginner’s, page 15

The U.S. State Department has classified Griner as being “wrongfully detained.” According to Griner’s wife Cherelle, the New York Times , and

“Nine years, it’s pretty unusual and it contra dicts the existing court practice in Russia,” Maria Blagovolia, one of Griner’s lawyers, said in an interview with PEOPLE . “That’s why we are really disappointed and very much surprised by this deci sion of the court.”

The Biden administration has proposed a prison er swap under the mounting pressure for Griner’s release. The last swap occurred April 27, 2022, when the U.S. Government traded Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko for U.S. Marine Trevor Reed. The proposal also expresses a desire to bring back Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine. Whelan was accused of spying and was arrested Dec. 28, 2018 while getting ready for a friend’s wedding. The U.S. State Department also believes Whelan’s charges are false.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in late July for negotiations — the U.S. would swap Griner and Whelan for Viktor Bout, an illegal arms deal er and former Soviet military translator. He was accused of not only smuggling arms but also con spiring to kill Americans, and is currently serving a 25-year sentence.

The game, which can be played as either a sin gles or doubles game, is best described as a mixture of ping-pong, tennis, and badminton. A pickleball court looks like a tennis court but is the size of a badminton court, though a lot of people use ten nis or badminton courts for pickleball. The area within seven feet on both sides of the net is called the non-volley zone, also known as the “kitchen.” Coming in contact with the non-volley zone when hitting a volley, whether it is the player themselves or anything they might be wearing or carrying, is considered a fault. Only the team that is serving can earn points, but once this team loses a rally or commits a fault, it becomes the opponent’s turn to serve. Faults include failing to hit the ball, not passing the ball over the net, or volleying within the non-volley zone, among other things.

Pickleball Fandom Grows 40 Percent During Pandemic

Invented in 1965, pickleball is a relatively young sport. For most of its 57 years of existence it was rather niche, but its popularity has recently sky rocketed. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of players has grown by over 40 percent, and within the last six years, there has been a 650-percent surge.

Courtesy of Getty Images

Pickleball is played using a paddle and ball.

Griner will stay in a penal colony to serve her sentence. She may be offered an opportunity to work as a basketball coach for inmates rather than cleaning or cooking, depending on the penal colony she’s placed in. On Aug. 15, 11 days after the verdict, Griner’s attorneys filed an appeal to her sentence. No new significant updates have occurred since they requested the appeal.

Andrea Nguyen Sports Editor

Her trial finally began July 1. Only U.S. repre sentatives from the Embassy and two press rep resentatives were allowed in the courtroom. The hearings occurred throughout the month — Griner pleaded guilty and claimed that the cartridges were left in the bag unintentionally, as she was in a hurry to pack. Additionally, she presented a note from her medical doctor stating her need to pos sess marijuana in order to ease her chronic pain. During her trial period, she sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden pleading for his help.

Holding a sign in court behind a defendant’s cage, he wrote that this was a “sham trial.” Similar to Griner’s situation, the Russian Federation extend ed his detention period to June 15, 2020, when he was found guilty of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Almost all of the trial was conduct ed behind closed doors.

“I sit here in a Russian prison, alone with my thoughts and without the protection of my wife, family, friends, Olympic jersey, or any accomplish ments,” Griner wrote. “I’m terrified I might be here forever.”OnAug. 4, a jury found Griner guilty and sen tenced her to nine years in prison for drug smug gling and possession; the maximum allotted time for a minor charge is 10 years. Griner’s WNBA team, the Phoenix Mercury, delayed their game against the Connecticut Suns to watch her trial in the locker room before going out onto the court.

Courtesy of Andrej Cukic

the Atlantic , many suspect that she is being held as a political pawn in response to the United States’ involvement with Ukraine as tensions between the U.S. and Russia heighten.

SPORTS

“Russia says it caught James Bond on a spy mis sion,” Whelan said in court in 2018. “In reality they abducted Mr. Bean on holiday.”

There are three hypotheses of how the name pickleball came to be. Pritchard’s wife, Joan, claimed that the sport reminded her of a pickle boat, which in rowing refers to a boat filled with last-minute random rowers. There is also a rumor that the sport was named after the Pritchards’ fam ily dog, Pickles, but Pickles was born after 1965; the dog was actually named after the sport. Decades later, Bell stated that the name originated from the fact that Pritchard liked to put his opponent in a difficult situation — also known as a pickle — during the game.

Biden Administration Negotiates Britney Griner Release

Pickleball originated in Bainbridge Island, Washington, located west of Seattle. Joel Pritchard and his friends, Bill Bell and Barney McCallum, were about to play badminton with their children while on vacation but couldn’t find enough rack ets to play with. Rather than continuing the search, they instead tried to play a game with what they had — ping-pong paddles, a net, and a wiffle ball. With these paddles and a perforated plastic ball, along with more experimenting in the later days and months, the game of pickleball was born.

Each match consists of three games, and each game is played until a player or team scores 11 points with at least a two-point lead. If the team is

Britney Griner reacts during a game.

16 September 16, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 152, Number 2