The Oberlin Review Oct. 28, 2022

City Partners with Lorain County Community College To Provide Industry Certificates to Residents

Ava Miller Senior Staff Writer

In an emergency vote on Sept 19, Oberlin City Council al-located $51,000 to provide Oberlin residents with access to educational opportunities at Lorain County Community College, located in Elyria The funds were acquired from the $429,427 the City received from the American Rescue Plan Act Through the Oberlin Social Equity and Skill Develop-ment Promise, the tuition and additional costs of the Fast-Track program at LCCC are completely covered for Ober-lin residents accepted into the program Residents have the ability to complete 16- and 32 week courses in high-demand fields Once completed, residents will be given industry cer-tificates in sectors such as health care, engineering, manu-facturing, and business.

Applicants need to be at least 17 years of age, have earned a high school diploma or GED equivalent, and reside in Ober-lin to enter the program. The majority of students enrolled are women between the ages of 24–35, with many students being Black and Latinx. More than half of the students in the FastTrack program stay after their first semester. City Coun-cilmember Eboni Johnson feels that the program is a positive developmentforthecommunity.

“I think this is a unique opportunity for Oberlin residents to gain skills for great, in demand jobs in far less time than a traditional certificate- or degree-granting program, while also reducing the cost to the students,” Johnson wrote in an email to the Review

The FastTrack program offers courses online, in person, and in a hybrid format, and most courses don’t require allday attendance. Additionally, many employers are transi tioning to work-from-home models. These features allow for flexibility for Oberlin residents with busy schedules, and for those who live in more rural areas. Oberlin City Manager Rob Hillard expressed excitement about the partnership.

“The City of Oberlin is pleased to be able to participate with LCCC on the program,” Hillard wrote. “We believe this partnership will be able to impact Oberlin citizens in advanc-ingeconomicopportunities.”

LCCC will create a program team to provide personal ized attention to students and ensure that 100 percent of the Oberlin Social Equity and Skill Development Promise funds are used to cover tuition and fees for participants. The City of Oberlin has also promised to connect students with Oberlin employers.

The program allows students to earn a living wage in their chosen field while completing coursework, providing them with opportunities to create industry connections. For students who want to continue their education, the certifi cates build into associate’s and bachelor’s degrees. LCCC Di rector of School and Community Partnerships Cindy Kush ner notes the effect of the partnership between Oberlin and LCCC on students’ long-term goals.

“It’s uplifting to see the City joining with LCCC to reach residents to ensure they are supported and connected to these career-launching opportunities,” Kushner wrote. “While these programs are designed to get individuals enough training to get them started in their field, the goal is to keep them engaged in learning ... while setting themselves up for advancement in their industry.”

City Councilmember Kristin Peterson believes the pro gram comes at an important time.

“Even though employment numbers have increased sig nificantly, there are a lot of jobs that are vacant and need em ployees,” Peterson said. “This gives people a broad spectrum of opportunity. If there are folks in town who are able to take advantage of this, they will be able to get certifications in a variety of fields.”

Kushner looks forward to the future of the program.

“We have additional information sessions coming up that we are confirming right now,” Kushner wrote. “Our first two were well-attended and people are so excited and grateful for the new opportunities that the Oberlin Social Equity and Skill Development Promise brings to residents. We are excit ed to get started!”

Registration is currently open for the programs. For more information, visit https://ww.lorainccc.edu/pro grams-and-careers or call 440-366-4856.

Title IX Office Begins Third-Year Consent Training

Emma Benardete Editor-in-Chief James McCreary

Starting this November, the Title IX office and the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion will be holding mandatory consent training sessions for all third-years. While the College already requires consent training for new students, this is the first year that it is also required for returning students.

The new workshop, called Consent 301, was piloted as an optional workshop during Consent Month programming in April.

According to Title IX Coordinator Rebecca Mosely, the course will help third-years learn about navigating consent in changing positions of power in relation to younger students on campus.

“We’ve been training the people who don’t have the power on campus, and then we haven’t been doing as much with those folks once they get into those positions,” Mosely said. “The twist on it is to think about it from the perspective of the person who’s in that power position versus the position of the first-year who’s new to campus.”

College fourth-year and Preventing and Responding to Sexual Misconduct trainer Chase Sortor helped design the new program and emphasized the focus on power dynamics in the course. He specifically mentioned that the program will focus on teaching students to hold both themselves and their peers accountable.

“Everyone who is in any position of power or authority should know how to hold themselves and act appropriately,” Sortor said. “And then, I think, it becomes your responsibility to hold others accountable.”

Sortor also spoke about his role as a leader in student athletics. Last year, as captain of the men’s cross country team, he led workshops surrounding consent in athletics. He said that the importance of being a respected figure on a sports team and leading by example sparked his interest in educating future classes about the importance of consent.

“Being in that role, I ran into situations where I was like, ‘Okay, nobody else is gonna say something, so it’s actually in fact my job now,’ and I want everyone else to feel capable of doing those things,” Sortor said.

Sortor said that the program will specifically review factors of consent and barriers to consent from Consent 101.

According to College third-year PRSM trainer and Survivors of Sexual Harm and Allies Officer Margo Lee, the workshops will

Lorain County Community College is working with the City of Oberlin to offer certificates for residents.

Photo courtesy of Lorain County Community College

Jewish Studies Department Commemorates 50 Years at Oberlin

Alexa Stevens News Editor

The Jewish Studies department is celebrating its 50th anniversary at the College this week. The celebration will feature events Sunday evening and all day Monday.

The commemorative events begin at 5 p.m. Sunday with a talk in StudiOC titled “Jewish Studies at Oberlin: Alumni Perspectives” featuring David Eaton, OC ’71, Amalia Haas, OC ’91, and Kendell Pinkney, OC ’09.

As his project for the College’s first-ever Winter Term in 1969, Eaton created Hebrew Heritage House — now Johnson House — to study Hebrew for a month alongside fellow students in a communal living environment. This initiative directly led to the College’s establishment of the Judaic and Near Eastern Studies department, now called Jewish Studies.

As Chair of Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and Religion Shari Rabin puts it, the Jewish Studies department came about as a result of student activism.

“There were Jewish students at Oberlin throughout the 20th century, and at various points there were different Jewish student groups on campus,” Rabin said. “It was those students sort of gathering together to create community and to study Hebrew who really started the push for there to be a Jewish Studies faculty on campus. And so they really took initiative and advocated with the College and with outside Jewish organizations to get together funding to hire the first Jewish Studies professor, who started in 1971.”

Photos courtesy of Catherine Horowitz College fourth-year Catherine Horowitz learned about the House’s origins through a Jewish Studies project researching the history of the department.

“I actually interviewed the guy who started Hebrew House,” Horowitz said. “So that was pretty cool. But basically, there weren’t a lot, but there were some Jewish organizations at Oberlin before 1969. … But none of them really lasted that long.”

The research project will take the form of an exhibit in Mudd Center titled, “‘To Find it Again’: The Quest for Jewish Life and Jewish Studies at Oberlin College.” There will be an open house Monday from 1–3 p.m. during which visitors can explore the exhibit.

According to Rabin, some of the researchers will act as exhibit docents during the open house.

“One of the things that the student researchers really noticed in looking into the program’s history is that it was not at all obvious that the program would make it 50 years,” Rabin said. “There were various ups and downs over its history. But what you see consistently is the determination of Jewish students and faculty and staff, and also community members, to make sure that Jewish Studies had a presence.”

When the College hired its first Judaic and Near Eastern Studies faculty member 51 years ago, the program looked significantly different. According to Horowitz, the department was called Judaic and Near Eastern Studies because the founding faculty member specialized in Middle Eastern Studies and the Hebrew language, and this specialty determined the focus of the program under his direction until his departure about 10 years later.

“So, they changed the name in the ’90s to Jewish Studies,” Horowitz said. “But when that happened

they shifted it more to like a literature history, like a cultural sort of thing, as opposed to just something that was based on Hebrew.”

Cultural and literary history are integral aspects of this week’s commemorative events. College fourthyear Theo Kanter will be performing on Sunday with his band Shtick-and-Poke — a band that came about as a result of tradition within the Jewish Studies department.

“Actually there was a lecture that happened last year by the Jewish Studies and the German department together about the history of klezmer music,” Kanter said. “A bunch of us in the audience just got talking with one another because the professor had gone here — it was Gabriel Cooper [OC ’04], he teaches German. He had ... made a klezmer band while he was here.”

Of his own band now, Kanter said, “We’ve had people come and people go. So it’s a nice, big family.”

Sato

The 1969 designation of Hebrew Heritage House laid the groundwork for the Jewish Studies

Now Johnson House, Hebrew Heritage House fostered Jewish community.

Students gathered in Hebrew Heritage House to play music, converse, and learn Hebrew.

Dr. Mary James, Physics Professor at Reed College

Jackie Brick

This Wednesday, the Oberlin Physics and Astronomy department hosted two talks by Dr. Mary James. Dr. James is the distinguished A.A. Knowlton Professor of Physics at Reed College and Co-Chair of The American Institute of Physics’s TEAM-UP task force — a task force aimed at identifying challenges and finding solutions to the systematic underrepresentation of African-American students earning bachelor’s degrees in physics and astronomy. Dr. James’ first talk focused on the ways that physics departments can change their culture and climate to better support African-American students in physics as well as other underrepresented groups. The second talk later that day focused on recontextualizing what access to a college education means, not only in terms of college admissions but also the barriers that stand between underrepresented students and a successful education once on campus.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you tell me a bit about the findings of the The Time is Now: Systemic Changes to Increase African Americans with Bachelor’s Degrees in Physics and Astronomy American Institute of Physics’s TEAM-UP report?

Even among STEM disciplines, physics has a very poor record in supporting underrepresented students in persisting through the major to graduation. In many cases we cannot blame students’ prior preparation or lack of interest in physics for these poor outcomes — the TEAMUP study controlled for these factors — but rather aspects of the culture of physics are driving them away. One of the things we emphasized in our report was that the student experience is the data. Physicists are really good at collecting and analyzing quantitative data, but they’re not trained in collecting and analyzing qualitative data. So, our social science colleagues on the task force helped us physicists learn how to collect, analyze, and then use our qualitative data.

We collected a lot of qualitative data and found that students needed four things to persist in the discipline. The first is a sense of belonging. This means that

they feel that they’re a valued member of the physics community in terms of their relationships to their peers, their relationships to faculty and staff, and to those more advanced in the field. The second is a sense of physics identity, or scientist identity — that they feel they are physicists in the making . The third is that academic courses are taught in an inclusive manner that is appropriate, culturally responsive, and has supplemental support, including culturally responsive advising and mentoring.

The fourth is that they are seen as whole people who are studying physics rather than a brain on a stick. The kinds of things that students said were, “I feel like when I walk into the physics building, I have to hide everything else about myself,” because if they bring any of those other aspects of themselves or their identities into the physics building, they are seen as not serious about physics. It’s important that we as faculty and staff honor students’ commitments, both their commitments to their education and their commitments to family and community.

Those diversity aspects that students feel are less valued and that they have less space for — is this the reason for the specific discrepancy in AfricanAmerican representation?

Yes, it’s one of the reasons for the significant discrepancy. I’m not saying that these challenges are exclusive to African Americans, but what we found in talking to African-American students were these are the things that they identified as barriers. I think the culture within physics is very hierarchical and individualistic. Many African-American students don’t see themselves in this way, as separate from their families and communities.

I’m a college professor, and when my daughter went to college, I said, “You go to college and you do you. We’ll take care of everything back here.” When I reflected on that later, I was in a sense saying, go be an individual, you have permission to disconnect from the family, from the community back home. But in many African-American households and communities, they’re just not set up that way at all, you don’t have an identity separate from your family and your community. Then you go into a college

Security Notebook

Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022

Campus Safety officers transported an ill student from Dascomb Hall to Mercy HealthAllen Hospital.

An officer on routine patrol of Mudd Center found an insecure mechanical room door. The door was secured.

Officers transported an ill student from Kahn Hall to Mercy Health - Allen Hospital.

Monday, Oct. 24, 2022

Officers and Oberlin Fire Department members responded to a fire alarm in the kitchen area of Baldwin Cottage.

Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022

Officers responded to a fire alarm at the Cox Administration Building. Contractors were working in the area.

Campus Dining Services staff reported that an unknown person keyed their vehicle while it was parked in the lot behind Stevenson Dining Hall.

Officers responded to a report of two suspicious individuals in the Carnegie Building Root Room.

Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022

An officer transported an ill student from Baldwin Cottage to the Student Health Center.

environment that is telling you “Oh, no, you leave all that behind and you come in here and you do this” — that’s very alienating.

Oberlin is described by students as a very white institution. In your time as Dean for Institutional Diversity at Reed, what changes that benefit students and the institution as a whole have you learned from and would recommend?

One of the things that I try to do is to help faculty become students again. We have to think more broadly about our disciplines: what we teach and why, who the seminal thinkers are in our discipline and why we hold those people up, who is excluded in what we teach and why, and how can we expand our syllabuses and course offerings to think more broadly about the experiences of historically marginalized and underrepresented populations.

That leads, also, into pedagogy. We need to ask ourselves; Who does our existing pedagogy serve well and who does it serve most poorly? We then need to think about the fact that the students who are served well by our existing pedagogy become our best students and are rewarded in all kinds of ways and the students who are served most poorly by our pedagogy are not. How can we make pedagogical practices that serve all students in a way that gives them a sense of belonging, a sense of themselves as emerging scientists, the academic support that they need, and that sees them as a whole person?

Third-Year Students to Attend Mandatory Consent Training

Continued

also provide a review and check-in surrounding the topics covered in new student consent training and provide students the opportunity to reflect on their engagement with the material from that training.

“[It’s] not only a check-in on ‘Do you remember the basics of consent and bystander intervention?’ but also, ‘Are you actively practicing what you learned? Are you having those conversations about consent and boundaries and are you practicing what you learned in bystander intervention to be a good friend and a good community member?’” Lee said.

According to Sortor, the effort to introduce the new program was spearheaded by Mosely, Maddie

Van Houten, OC ’22, and Maggie Crain, OC ’22. Van Houten and Crain were PRSM trainers last year, and Sortor shared that one of their major goals had been to establish a program for third-year students before they graduated. According to Mosely, while not federally mandated like new student training is, it is considered best practice to provide consent training again in students’ third year.

In an email to the third-year class, Suzanne Denneen, program coordinator for the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, wrote that half of the third-years will complete their training in the fall semester, while the other half will complete it in the spring. The class will be divided based on

T-numbers, with even-numbered students being trained this fall and odd numbers in the spring. Mosely said that students in the spring cohort who will be abroad next semester will be permitted to attend a fall workshop instead or defer their training until the fall semester of their fourth year. As with new student consent training, individual sessions will be offered in addition to group workshops.

“We’re just really excited about this and we hope students will embrace it in the way that Obies always do around things that are intended to make campus a safer and more just space,” Mosely said.

Photo courtesy of Reed College

Dr. Mary James

AVI Partners with Local Farms to Supply Fresh Produce

Nikki Keating

Editor

AVI Foodsystems has worked to create supply routes with local farms to provide fresh ingredients in campus dining halls. Sourcing from the region allows farms to drop off and provide supplies to Oberlin students directly. For example, Stevenson Dining Hall and DeCafé receive ice cream and milk from Hartzler Family Dairy, a farm in Wooster, OH.

“We provide bag milk to Stevenson [Dining Hall] and 2 percent and chocolate milk in five-gallon bags,” James Maibach, client relations manager for Hartzler Family Dairy, said. “We provide a bunch of the 12-ounce mini, different flavors, to Wilder Hall in the shop there, and then we also deliver about every third or fourth week a bunch of ice cream to Stevenson Hall. We are providing the three-gallon tubs.”

Another local supplier is Bowman and Landes, a turkey farm dedicated to selling non-GMO turkeys. The farm is working to set up solar arrays to power 50 percent of their annual energy usage. Bowman and Landes has supplied turkey to Oberlin since 2009, when Bon Appetit Management Company managed dining services.

“They had a program called Farm to Fork, and essentially the program sourced local farmers to the Oberlin food supply system,” Drew Bowman, a sales representative for Bowman and Landes, said. “And so they reached out to us at that point in time and found out that we were a good fit for one another.”

Other local suppliers include Tyler’s farm in Lorain, which provides Oberlin with lettuce for sandwiches and salads, and Miller Orchards which supplies dining halls

with cider and apples.

“Self-sufficient communities are always better in the long run, and I do really like that getting food from locally sourced farms kind of builds a relationship with the surrounding towns with Oberlin College,” Erika Scharf, second-year College student, said. “I feel like a lot of times, there’s not a good relationship between Oberlin College and Ohio, and we’re all in this space together, so it’s kind of nice that they help us out. And fresh food is always better.”

The proximity of these farms to the College reduces the need for thirdparty delivery services and allows Oberlin to work more closely with its suppliers.

“So we’re about roughly … 45 minutes to an hour away, but we have a pretty good reach across Ohio,” Maibach said. “We cover the majority of the state except for the southeastern part. We will run up and do some stops in Cleveland, then swing out toward Oberlin, and come back down through Wellington. So it is our truck that brings the delivery and our people.”

Depending on the season, farms work with Oberlin to meet the changing demands and needs of the College, keeping up with increased requests for certain products during specific months or adding entirely different products at other times. AVI hosts and sponsors more catering events over certain holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. Students are also provided with a variety of seasonal items throughout the year.

“I would say there probably is a little pick up with Oberlin in advance of Thanksgiving, especially since that is traditionally a turkey-focused protein holiday,” Bowman said. “I

know they do some special holiday meals and some catering events, so there would probably be a little increase in volume around that time of year. But to be honest, Oberlin is a great customer, and they buy a lot

of our various turkey products yearround for their dining halls.”

Students can look forward to new food options as AVI expands its partnerships with local farms.

Mercy Health - Allen Hospital Holds Free Mammogram Clinic for College Faculty and Staff

technology and genetic testing available to identify high-risk patients.

“[People] who do not have a family history and no other identified high-risk factors … should start getting mammograms at the age of 40 and every single year after,” Patel said.

Patel also offered clarifications to common misconceptions. For example, breast cancer risk factors can actually come from both sides of the family, though many overlook their fathers’ side. Patel further highlighted that people without a family history of breast cancer are still susceptible to it..

“Most [people] who do get breast cancer, upwards of 80 percent, do not have a family history,” Patel said.

Recently, the College switched to a new highdeductible health care plan under Medical Mutual of Ohio for its non-union employees.

Sofia Tomasic Senior Staff Writer

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week, Mercy Health - Allen Hospital offered scheduled mammograms to both current and former Oberlin College faculty and staff and their spouses. These slots were reserved by the Oberlin Department of Human Resources.

According to Oberlin’s Chief Human Resources Officer Joe Vitale, this scheduled mammogram clinic happens annually during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but Oberlin faculty and staff always have access to these services, which are covered by the school’s employee insurance plan.

“For preventative mammograms, there is no cost for our employees or their dependents who are covered

under our health care plan,” Vitale wrote in an email to the Review

According to Dr. Mita Patel, surgical oncologist and medical director of the Mercy Health Breast Program, the difference between the event this week and normal care is the specific appointment slots, which decrease wait times. With the usual walk-in services, the wait time can be unpredictable.

Patel stressed the importance of mammograms as preventative care.

“Mammograms save lives,” Patel said. “Early-caught breast cancers are treatable and most likely curable. So the reason to get a mammogram … once a year is to hopefully find a cancer before it’s gotten into its advanced stages.”

Mercy Health - Allen Hospital is well equipped to help those at risk of breast cancer with new 3D imaging

Associate Professor of Sociology and Comparative American Studies and Director of Accreditation and Assessment Daphne John, who has been at Oberlin for 31 years feels that the new plan is comparable in cost to the last plan, the most notable difference being that patients now have to pay for services upfront.

John feels that while the Oberlin faculty and staff health care plan might be marginally more expensive than the previous system, the problem is more nationwide than anything else.

“When we look at health care and the cost of health care in the United States, and we compare ourselves to other countries, the United States really is relatively draconian,” John said. “We treat health — well, we don’t treat it as human. We treat it as a commodity market. That’s the larger problem. And Oberlin as an employer has to make sense of that.”

Stevenson Dining Hall serves food from local vendors such as Hartzler Family Dairy.

Photo by Abe Frato

Mercy Health - Allen Hospital held a mammogram clinic for faculty and staff and their spouses.

Photo by Abe Frato

Ohio Politics Are Not “Lost Causes”

Emily Vaughan Opinions Editor Jack Egan

Several months ago, we were having dinner with a friend and discussing Oberlin’s politics when they said, “You’re never go ing to vote out Jim Jordan. It’s a lost cause.” This isn’t an un common sentiment among Oberlin students who are familiar with the political circumstances of Oberlin and the surround ing area. To a certain extent, we agree. It can be hard to feel even a little bit optimistic about changing policies and repre sentatives when you live in a small blue dot in a sea of red.

The congressional district that Oberlin is located in, Ohio’s 4th district, is so gerrymandered that it has been named the “duck district” for its shape resembling the silhouette of a duck. Jim Jordan has been the district’s representative in Congress for nearly fifteen years, which by many standards is not very long — especially when compared to the tenures of some other members of Congress — yet feels like a very long time nonetheless. In 2020, Jim Jordan won 67.9 percent of the popular vote in this district. Lorain County makes up a part of Jordan’s district and was the only county to have a majority of the votes cast be for the Democratic candidate, but even that majority was very slim, with Jordan still receiving 47.4 percent of the ballots cast. Realistically, Oberlin will not be able to vote out Jordan, and unless the congressional districts are drastically changed, Oberlin will likely remain drawn into solid red districts.

Jordan’s incumbency depends on gerrymandering inten tionally designed to keep Republicans in power. But casting this district and the many others like it across the country as “lost causes” glosses over the political realities faced by many Americans. We need to dedicate our time and effort to listen ing to voters in these areas and their concerns. If we don’t, these voters will resent the left and the ideas that it stands for.

Aside from ignoring the ideas and needs of these voters, thinking of the places they live as “lost causes” shows a clear lack of respect that these individuals can easily pick up on. Calling something or somewhere a lost cause implies that it is not worth spending time, effort, or resources on. People also tend to associate where they are from closely with their personal identities, so by calling places lost causes, we are also calling people lost causes. We are telling them that they don’t matter and that any time spent in such an area would be a waste of time. This alienates these individuals, leaving

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EdItOr I al BOard

EdItOrS IN-ChIEf Kushagra Kar Emma Benardete

OPINIONS EdItOrS Elle Giannandrea Emily Vaughan

Student Protest of Bylaws Revision Favored Animosity Over Message

It has been a few weeks since the communi ty gathered to protest the Board of Trustees’ plan to revise the College bylaws. Since then, the board has voted to approve those changes, and through a confluence of midterms and fall break, the uproar surrounding this decision has disappeared. Lest the silence send the wrong message, the board should know that while the vote to amend the bylaws may have passed, this community remains dissapointed and angered by that choice. Let that message resound through the next board meetings and hold a refrain in classrooms and conversa tions around campus.

We stand united in that message, but this Editorial Board wishes to step back to consid er some of the choices that students made to voice their concerns. A few weeks before the Oct. 6 protest, we wrote that we were disap pointed by the lack of fervor in student activ ism on campus post-pandemic. At that point, the issue seemed to be faltering long term engagement with issues and minimal cam pus-wide organizing. As the crowds gathered in Wilder Bowl that afternoon, we thought both of our prior concerns would be disprov en, only to be met with something altogether more concerning.

At the beginning of the protest, attendees stood outside Wilder Hall as faculty, staff, and students shared opinions and voiced concerns about the management of Oberlin and the im pact the proposed amendments would have on our institution. As the hour progressed, the tone of the protest started to change — the crowd’s attention shifted to the trustees standing by Mudd Center, who had come to observe the protests. One student protester with a bullhorn led a group into Mudd and down the staircase toward the Center for En gaged Liberal Arts in an effort to confront the trustees, though Campus Safety ultimately blocked their path.

We believe that the conduct of these stu dent protesters detracted from the message they were trying to communicate. The hostile attention of the crowd was directed toward a few dozen individuals congregating to do their jobs. Whatever else we may think about the board’s decisions, they remain hardwork ing people deserving of our decorum and re spect, especially if we expect any in return. When protesters’ actions compel the people they’re addressing to physically barricade themselves, they have not created a success ful protest. Instead, they have created a hos tile situation that encourages defensiveness over concerns for mutual benefit. We’re not saying a different approach to protest would have borne a different outcome in the vote, but in the very least this community would have held together its sense of good faith.

Something largely ignored by the force of bodies and chants that afternoon is that trust

ees weren’t the only ones in the CELA at the time. Several administrative staff, advisors, and professionals who work every day to sup port students sat through that chaos. As stu dents knocked on CELA windows and rushed down elevators and stairs, individuals going about their days found themselves surround ed by anger that wasn’t meant for them. In the heat of protest, whatever message could have been received was replaced by confusion.

In an ideal world, the message of protest ers would hold weight even when brimming with anger. The focus would be on what they are saying, instead of how they are saying it. However, the unfortunate reality is that the validity of protests is going to be judged based on the cumulative impact of the protest, which includes conduct of the protesters. It doesn’t make sense for this to be the stan dard, and it isn’t fair. But that doesn’t negate the fact that if we want to make a difference, we have to remove every obstacle and every remotely conceivable reason to be discredited and dismissed. Protesters must take this into consideration in order to be effective.

Oberlin students are capable of protesting in a peaceful and effective manner. In March, students joined the faculty to protest for fair pay after the board declined to recommit to its promises regarding faculty compensa tion. They stood outside, held signs, and gave speeches. There was no direct confronta tion with administrators, and campus safety didn’t need to get involved. In this instance, the focus remained on the intent behind the protests. The campus community was able to put 100 percent of its energy into discussion of the matter at hand: that employees don’t receive the support and credence they’re due, and their voices are continually ignored. Voices from that day echo even now, and the message remains ever clear. Further, protests tend to be more effective when they pertain to a specific issue, rather than a general an imosity toward a group of people. While we acknowledge and believe that the Board of Trustees and the administration have made several decisions in recent history that were detrimental to the well-being of the College and broader community, we also must rec ognize that they appreciate their personal responsibility toward Oberlin. Chanting to “abolish the trustees” is not an effective way to impel positive change toward shared gov ernance and better conditions for the people working at this College.

We stood beside faculty in matters of pay, and we marched again to support the author ity of faculty governance. If our goal is to sup port our professors, then the responsibility falls on us to represent the good our profes sors enable in us. If we wish to fight the good fight, it remains our duty to fight in a way that credits the genuine good we’re capable of.

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

Republican Critiques of Student Loan Relief Lack Merit

Neva Tayler

Columnist

On Aug. 24, President Biden an nounced his three step plan for stu dent loan relief, fulfilling his prom ise to cancel $10,000 of student debt for low to middle income borrowers. Biden believes higher education is a main gateway to the middle class, but explains that the cost of borrowing has deprived people of this opportuni ty for social mobility. Considering the effects of the pandemic, the demand to expand social mobility has only further increased. Today, there is no doubt that Biden’s plan will help give breathing room to those struggling to financially recover from the cost of their education and bring many people a significant step closer to the middle class.

To be specific, the first part of Biden’s plan will target debt relief that will help address the financial harms of the pandemic. Those who are bor rowers with an individual income of less than $125,000, or $250,000 for married couples, are eligible to receive relief. Through the Department of Ed ucation, students who received Pell Grants, federal financial aid that does not need to be repaid, can receive up to $20,000 in debt cancellation, and nonPell Grant recipients can receive up to $10,000. The second part of the plan consists of making the current student loan system easier to navigate and more manageable by cutting monthly payments in half for undergraduate loans, fixing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and the proposal by the Department of Education for a new income-driven repayment plan that provides protection from making any payments for low-income borrowers, as well as capping monthly payments for undergraduate loans at five per cent. Finally, the plan will reportedly hold colleges accountable for tuition increases and protect future students and taxpayers from unaffordable pric es.

Even those who wish Biden’s plan would have given larger amounts of relief acknowledge that it is effec tively addressing real and significant needs. According to estimates made by the the Department of Education, nearly 90 percent of relief dollars will go to those earning less than $75,000 per year. The plan could also help ad vance racial equity, given that Black students are likely to have to borrow and take out larger loans, and receive Pell Grants at a much higher rate com pared to their white peers. Finally, the plan will make a difference in the real estate market, given the number of potential homebuyers who have re ported through numerous surveys that student loan debt of less than $20,000 was the barrier to purchasing a home.

Even with these significant bene fits, it’s relatively clear that there’s a politically self-serving component to this plan, especially with its roll out coming right before the midterms. While Democrats worry about losing the congressional majority, motivating turnout for the midterms is crucial. Politicians have been strategically unveiling and advancing programs in their most strenuous moments of po litical necessity for years. But even if this policy shows that the Biden ad ministration is acting in its own self interest, the good that is coming from

the politicization of student debt re lief somewhat justifies the cause.

Ironically, the same can’t be said on the other side of the aisle. When you analyze Republican critiques of the student debt relief plan, their logic falls apart. The arguments reveal in consistency and the facts are manipu lated, all revealing a response that is entirely motivated by political gain.

One of the major critiques of the plan is that it’s simply unfair. Mitch McConnell voiced this by calling the plan “socialist” and saying it’s “a slap in the face to every family who sacri ficed to save for college, every grad uate who paid their debt, and every American who chose a certain career path or volunteered to serve in our Armed Forces in order to avoid taking on debt.” Essentially what McConnell is arguing is that if the program can’t benefit everyone, it might as well not exist — a position in complete opposi tion to progress. It’s not a mark of trea son that many government programs were not intended to help every group — it’s in the nature of governmental legislation. Money may go to different programs that do not directly benefit every American, but in no way does that mean we should cease to provide these programs if we can afford the immediate cost.

A critique that has been paired with the one above is that loan relief is go ing to those who don’t need it. The hypocrisy of this is stunning. Speaking against student loan forgiveness, Con gresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene said, “For our government just to say okay your debt is completely forgiven. Well obviously they have an agenda for that, they need votes in November so the timing is pure coincidence there as well, but it’s completely unfair.”

However, as the White House pointed out on Twitter, Greene had $183,504 in COVID-19 relief loans forgiven through the Paycheck Protection Pro gram. When these loans were forgiv en, even for companies with huge as sets and executives making millions a year, no complaints were offered by the GOP about unfairness and the un deserving rich.

Besides the hypocrisy, the claim that these loans are going to undeserving wealthy individuals is blatantly false.

By framing the relief as such, Republi cans are knowingly leaving out the fact that, as stated above, the majority of federal student loan forgiveness — 90 percent — will be given to people who make $75,000 a year or less.

With inflation being a major con cern, we also hear the claim that this relief plan will only increase inflation. In actuality, this plan will have only a relatively small impact on inflation, if any at all. Goldman Sachs did a prelim inary analysis of its impacts and found that debt payments as a percentage of income will fall by 0.1 percent.

So where does all of this leave us?

While it is undeniably true that, like most political initiatives, this relief program is influenced by the Biden ad ministration’s motivation for political gain, the GOP’s response has had little logical merit outside of partisanship.

In the end, this is just another remind er of just how divided Americans are and how facts are cast aside for politi cal gain. It’s also a frightening remind er that if we don’t disregard our politi cal differences, we will never reap the benefits of the other side’s merit.

Democrats’ Rhetoric Alienates Rural Voters

Continued from page 5

the door wide open for deceptive right-wing rhetoric to distract them from issues Democratic politicians are focused on, like rising health care costs, increasing economic inequality, climate change, and failing infrastructure.

Right-wing rhetoric and media thrives off of the frustration the left caus es when they overlook voters. The right especially thrives off of fear and anger. One of the most pressing issues in contemporary American politics is economic inequality. When the right-wing media talks about income in equality, they paint it as “the left” trying to steal from you. They talk about student loan forgiveness, tax increases brought on by strengthening social services, etc. But they fail to mention how their tax breaks allow the very rich to steal millions from American taxpayers. Instead, they blame the problems on immigrants, young people, and people of color. These lies are so much easier to believe than the harsh reality that stark inequality is wo ven into the current system of American capitalism. When these pundits rail against the liberal elites that don’t care about “the folks,” they say it with a hint of truth. For example, you’ve probably been bombarded with at least one “Taxing Tim Ryan” attack advertisement. Dramatic strings start playing, angry-looking pictures of Tim Ryan appear on the screen, and a smoldering voice tells you that Tim Ryan helped Biden pass millions in new taxes that will harm Ohio manufacturing. Of course, these ads don’t men tion that these taxes will increase funding for social programs that almost all voters will benefit from. Ryan is responding to these ads, but he could be doing more to address the positives of his policies. In one of his response ads, he throws a football at a TV displaying an attack ad and says, “That’s from the people who push bad trade deals with China.” Voters are capable of understanding why tax increases can be positive, but it’s on us to reach out to them and make these connections. So why aren’t we trying harder in Ohio? It’s because we’ve already given up.

While thinking of areas as lost causes is ignorant and misguided at best — and we feel that even this may be a somewhat generous description — what it really comes across as is classist. Those of us who have grown up in liberal bubbles such as cities our whole lives often fail to understand why people with liberal ideas would want to live in rural, mostly Republican areas. However, urban areas are significantly more expensive to live in, and there are plenty of other reasons why people don’t want to live in cities that have nothing to do with cost of living, like more privacy and space and less air pollution.

We frequently say that people live “way out” in the country, when in re ality they simply live far away from a city. Saying “way out” centers urban areas as places to live, implying that the closer to one, the better. But many people choose to live in more rural areas in part because they are far away from cities or urban areas. When urban liberals or leftists think and speak like this, they communicate the opinion that they are better than people who live in more rural areas, where people are more likely to vote Repub lican. The reality is that neither place is truly better than the other. Where someone lives is dependent on a whole host of factors. A person’s loca tion does not determine if they are a good person. All people, regardless of where they live, are worthy of respect and kindness. No one is a lost cause.

Comic: Halloweekend

Holly Yelton Illustrator

Automated Ordering Systems Don’t Improve Workers’ Conditions

Emily Amenda

As someone who’s been here for less than two years, I’ve already seen a lot of changes in my time at Oberlin. My friends and I discuss these changes con stantly — it seems as though the com parisons to our first year are endless. Lately, the change we’ve been talking about the most has been the new au tomation systems in the dining venues on campus. The new automation has had some positive effects — a few of my more introverted friends find the new system much less stressful, and I per sonally prefer the new system in Biggs because shouting over three running blenders at once last year was difficult. However, the persistence of lines at din ing locations with automated ordering has been a prominent issue for all of us. The overcrowding of these spaces has lead me and my friends to avoid getting food at times we know there’s going to be a rush, shifting our eating schedule to unusual hours.

However, most of our discussion of these new changes is less focused on the impacts they have on us as stu dents and more about why the College chose to switch to automation and what it means for workers whose jobs have been altered or replaced. One could ar gue, from the College’s perspective, that this change has been positive. You could frame it as an attempt to reduce long lines, improve efficiency, and reduce workloads of AVI Foodsystems staff. While this may be a part of the story, Oberlin, like any college, has to think about cost, and I don’t think automation would have been introduced if it wasn’t expected to save the school money.

The rhetoric of this automation being good for workers interests me because

I’ve observed long lines at all of the new ly automated facilities, orders coming in faster than ever, and AVI workers still struggling to keep up. In my opinion, what could actually help both students and staff would be increasing the num ber of workers at these sites. I believe things would run more efficiently if peo ple were not constantly overworked and dining locations were not understaffed. This would be a way for Oberlin to fo cus on genuinely improving labor con ditions.

I want to clarify that I’m not saying all automation is terrible; it often does make ordering more efficient. The most significant issues with automation exist when the profit motive comes before one’s consideration for workers. Auto mation frequently leads to fewer jobs and more tenuous worker positions. A lot of students like the new automation and it could be helpful in the long run. It’s not the automation itself that I have a problem with. I’d only like to point out that this recent automation is a notice able symptom of how Oberlin treats its workers.

This has been a relevant issue since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandem ic, as the College’s outsourcing to AVI received heavy criticism from students for the way the College put money ahead of workers and labor values. The College outsourced the jobs of 108 unionized workers mid-2020, many of whom had been at Oberlin since the early ’90s, and decided to contract with AVI as a new dining provider. This, for me, indicates a history of cost-cutting, which is why I doubt Oberlin would automate without a solid financial incentive. Automation almost always saves money by reducing the number of workers needed, and I ex pect that it has done this for the College.

It would not surprise me if Oberlin were continuing to cut down on workers, mainly because the College has received criticism for laying off dining and custo dial workers for the past several years.

In the past, multiple student work ers have given us insight into how AVI functions and what it’s like to work in Campus Dining Services. In his piece, “We Must Take Action to Protect AVI Workers,” Gabe Stefanides, OC ’22, wrote about his experience with a pol icy of termination after six missed days of work and complete ambivalence from higher-ups. The policies Stefanides de scribes emphasize that AVI is, of course, a corporation and may not put workers’ best interests first. “AVI Student Staff Overworked, Undertrained” by College fourth-year Desmond Hearne-Morrey described a lack of training and long

work hours with very few breaks, as well as instances of student employees being encouraged to work more than their reg ular hours, especially when their shifts suffered from a shortage of staff mem bers, to finish tasks like cleaning dishes.

It’s dubious that the shift to auto mation will bring better conditions for workers, and it also isn’t doing much for students. I have not noticed much of a decrease in wait times since last year, and I think a big part of that is that these changes weren’t paired with better labor practices. AVI workers are still over whelmed, and the best ways to change that would likely not save the College money. Thus, it is now more critical than ever that Oberlin students support the AVI labor union and stay mindful of la bor issues at Oberlin.

Discourse, Disagreement Central to Truly Liberal Thought

Sahil Novetzke Columnist

Two weekends ago, I took a short trip to Cincinnati to visit my grandmother. While driving through the rural farmlands and small towns of suburban Ohio, I came to the realization that I, a person born and raised in Seat tle, was studying at a college with sensibilities that ef fectively mirrored that of my hometown and that these farmlands and small towns were far more reflective of Ohio than anything I would witness in Oberlin. Oberlin, the isolated, liberal bubble in the middle of Ohio, is not a good representation of the larger community itself.

One of the main reasons I chose to attend Oberlin was its distance from my home state. Although I knew that Oberlin had a fairly large liberal demographic, I made the assumption that the farther I was from my home, the more politically diverse my community would be. And yet somehow, I ended up right back in Seattle.

But is Oberlin truly a liberal space? I believe so. Lib eralism has a funny way of preaching inclusion but remaining extraordinarily exclusionary to other cat egories of political thought. I do believe the Oberlin community could benefit from an opening of minds and a broadening of theoretical political horizons. I am not suggesting that Oberlin needs to start accepting more conservative students, nor am I promoting conserva tism on campus. I am merely suggesting that Oberlin offer more opportunities for students to broaden their intellectual horizons through offering a large range of lectures, dialogues, and courses. It is my opinion that in order to be a true liberal, one must understand other families of political thought on a deep level.

Oberlin College was founded as a Christian college, but its political origins are distinctly liberal. It was the first American institute of higher learning to make ra cial colorblindness a written aspect of College policy, and thus was the first to admit Black students in 1835. It

was also the first college to offer bachelor’s degree pro grams to women beginning in 1837. Since then, Oberlin has prided itself on its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, social justice-oriented campus life, and com mitment to environmental justice.

However, with the recent intensification of political discourse, particularly its rapid diffusion on social me dia, the very definitions of and ways of practicing liber alism have been changing. Today, it’s common to read a short blurb or graphic on social media and repost it, contributing to a phenomenon known as “social media activism.” It’s an opportunity for information to become easily accessible and widely dispersed but also a way for people to become complacent with inequality under the guise of reposting and sharing media.

This contemporary form of liberalism is especial ly prevalent for young people, and I’ve noticed this at Oberlin. Students feel more comfortable regurgitating information they’ve already heard than critically ana lyzing social issues and forming their own opinions. While this isn’t necessarily an issue, and rather a form of privilege, it does become a problem when people claim to be “activists” or “allies.” Activism and allyship involve much more than reiterating information. They involve active engagement, critical thought, and sacri fice.

While I believe Oberlin does provide opportunities for students to understand forms of non-liberal polit ical thought to a certain degree, there’s still work to be done. At the start of the year, I remember being told that making mistakes was a part of Oberlin culture. It’s important to take risks and be unafraid to say things that may be “incorrect,” because making mistakes is an integral part of learning. However, since orientation, I have yet to see a single person “make a mistake” in class, during casual conversations, or online. And while this could be chalked up to first-year nervousness about participating in class, I also think the rigidity of liber

al values at this school, along with the intense pressure that students may feel to conform to the majority, may discourage students from speaking candidly and with out fear of making a mistake.

I’ll be the first to admit that, like most people, I take a sort of subconscious comfort in knowing that everyone around me shares my values. Yet I know that this struc ture is not conducive to a functioning and ultimately progressive society. The competition of different polit ical ideologies is what inspires our democratic process — the basis for our country’s political system. It’s im portant that we not only amplify all voices but also work to critically analyze and understand other perspectives.

While I have spent most of my life in Seattle, I’ve also spent a lot of time among both conservative Amer icans and Indians in my family. Though it’s difficult to have conversations about politics with people who have completely opposite views as you, I have learned to find merit in open, respectful dialogue. Understand ing where other people are coming from, what moti vates their political beliefs, and what they like or dis like about conservatism, liberalism, and other groups of thought can be eye-opening.

Typically, liberals want to remain in liberal spaces, and conservatives want to remain in conservative spac es. It’s an innate human inclination to be with people who are similar and like-minded. However, closing yourself off to new people means closing yourself off to a host of experiences. Higher education is an opportu nity to not only meet new people but also gain the tools for understanding and engaging with advanced politi cal thought. My advice is not necessarily to move to a conservative area or forcefully seek out conversations and interactions with conservatives. I am merely sug gesting that research and critical thinking can go a long way. It can rip you from the binds of homogeneous lib eral theory and force you to be your own person with your own values.

Photo by Abe Frato, Photo Editor

Students wait in line to use the kiosk at the Rathskeller.

Oberlin Residents Continue to Give Out

Though we can’t predict how many Reese’s cups or Dots will land in your child’s Halloween bucket this year, you’re not likely to find as many fruit-fla vored candies like Starbursts and Skittles com pared to chocolate candies.

Sixty-one percent of respondents said they only buy chocolate varieties such as Twix, Reese’s, and Kit Kats, while 39 percent said they buy a mix of chocolate and fruit-flavored candies.

For those who typically give out candy, a price in crease is not likely to deter them from buying candy this year. Consumers are expected to spend $30 per family on candy this year, according to the National Retail Federation’s Spending Survey. Respondents to our survey reported expecting to spend anywhere between ten and 75 dollars on candy, with an aver age of $32 – just over the national average.

When speaking about why she would continue to buy candy despite price increases, Judy Lin, an Oberlin-based writer and editor, said, “You know, I’m harkening back to my youth. I’m paying back, and that’s a lot of it.”

Oberlin

Consumers prioritize kids’ trick-or-treat experi ence when deciding which candies to buy.

Chocolate candies have seen a 10 percent price increase nationally and average 65-cent price increase per bag since last year. On average, prices of fruit-flavored candies have increased by nearly a dollar.

ARTS & CULTURE

Electrophonics Ensemble Showcases Experimental Musicians

Dlisah Lapidus Arts & Culture Editor

On Tuesday, Oct. 25, the Electrophonics ensemble from the TIMARA department hosted their first con cert at the Cat in the Cream. Electrophonics is an elec tronic ensemble that combines visual arts, experimen tal music, and live performance.

The show consisted of eight stereo fixed audio piec es, which ranged from ambient noise to sample-based hyperpop to synthesized singer song-writer composi tions. The works featured in this show were all prere corded, and the artists went behind the sound booth to manage audio output as their music played at the Cat in the Cream. Two performers, double-degree firstyear Oliver Harlan and double-degree third-year Or son Abram, concluded the ensemble performance with their individual audio visual experiences, in which their visual art merged with experimental sound design.

The TIMARA department, a unique staple of Ober lin, draws experimental musicians from all over the world to study under the experience and resources of an established electronic arts program. Students are able to learn and practice with different instruments and music-making technologies.

The artists who shared their work at Electropho nics worked with a wide range of electronic tools, from the synthesizers in TIMARA to softwares like Ableton, Logic, and Bitwig.

Harlan created a sample-based audiovisual expe rience named “ephemerate” using recordings from NASA’s sample library. The raw audio files recorded by the Perseverance Mars Rover were accompanied by video art Harlan created.

“I used visuals because, if I am making something for a concert to show to people, I just want it to be the most engaging experience possible,” Harlan said. “The content was mostly recorded on my phone. I approach

visuals in a way similar to how I sample, edit, and manipulate music, but with footage. I also used the DALL-E AI generator. I uploaded a photo I took and then created AI variations of that, then I took one of those images and made AI variations of that, and kept doing that over and over. It started as an image of a museum in [Los Angeles], and the final image was just a square.”

Sometimes, there is a hierarchical relationship be tween music and visuals, with one providing support for the other This shifts in different contexts, from film to music video. Musicians may set scores for films, in which the video is highlighted, and some visual art ists work in designing music videos, which revolve around the music. However, engaging with experi mental sound and visuals might allow for even more collaboration between the mediums.

Plumbing the Mysterious Depths of Oberlin Students’ Bags

Leela Miller Senior Staff Writer

What’s lurking at the bottom of Oberlin students’ bags? What surprises hide away in brown Carhartt crossbodies? What horrors await in the unplumbed depths of New Yorker totes?

I took to the Clarence Ward Art Li brary to solve this mystery because every one loves being pulled away from a quiet study session to answer questions about their personal belongings. The first vic tim of my nosiness was College first-year Maya Miller.

“I have a lot of trash in here,” Miller said in a library-appropriate whisper. They

proceeded to pull a half-dozen crumpled wrappers out of their super-stylish, blue tie-dye sling bag.

“I don’t really keep anything in here because it’s tiny,” Miller said. “My com puter fits in here perfectly, though.”

They told me that the most interest ing thing in their bag had tragically gone missing, and they suspected theft.

“I used to have a lip balm in here, but it disappeared,” they said. “It was five years old. I found it when I went home, and I thought, ‘You’re coming with me,’ … It was Nivea, ‘Strawberry Shine’ flavor. It tasted so good. I guess now the most interesting thing in here is my journal,” they contin ued, sighing.

They flipped through their journal to show me a page covered in scribbles and seemingly random words. The only things I could make out were “lemon” and “Ben Platt.”

Bag-sharer number two, College sec ond-year Annika Lindholm, had a spa cious black backpack but little to fill it with.

“Right now, I’ve got some Goldfish and … birth control,” she announced after a bit of rummaging.

Beaming, she held the two objects up, The Lion King style. I asked her if she had anything else in her bag. She said, “Not re ally.”

“I’m a big online textbook pirater, so my backpack is very empty. But some times there’s dance clothes in here be cause I be dancin’ all the time. I always need to leave room for my hobbies — and room for a snack.”

Lindholm then opened up to me about a troubling experience that considerably strained her relationship with her back pack.

“Can I tell you something? I spilled chocolate milk on it right before fall break, and I put it through the wash four times, but it still smells like spoiled chocolate milk,” she said. “It makes me really upset every time I get too close to it.”

I asked Lindholm if the smell had been affecting her studies. Thankfully, it hadn’t.

The third bag I investigated was Col lege second-year Bizzy Seay’s bright or ange North Face backpack. As we talked, she excitedly dug through the bag’s many pockets to find knickknacks.

“These are my tiny green scissors,” Seay said, proudly snipping them through the air. “They broke, so I superglued them

back together.”

Seay graciously gave me a tour of her pins, which included a few from her high school orchestra and one from her yearly country dancing camp. Then, she showed me her pens, pencils, and teeny-tiny ruler. I asked her when, if ever, she uses the little ruler.

“Not very often,” Seay said. “I used to be big into making things look perfect — then, I used it a lot. Now, I don’t care as much.”

College fourth-year and art library em ployee Hannah Schorr was my grand-fi nale interviewee. Right off the bat, Schorr admitted to having some “great stuff” in her bag. She plopped the crossbody down in front of me and began matter-of-factly listing its contents as she scattered them across the library table.

“Laptop, iPad, accessories, Biscoff cookies from my flight, some loose change, my wallet, an empty pill bottle, five lipsticks,” she said.

She looked admiringly at her collection of stuff, arms crossed.

“The five lipsticks are important to note,” she said. “The best one is … well, it depends on what you need. But my favor ite shade is Rum Raisin from Revlon.”

Cool and collected, yet also insistent, Schorr recommended that readers of the Review buy the same shade.

“I want people to buy it — I’ve gotten people to buy it before!” she said, laugh ing. “I’m a micro-influencer. I wish I was joking, but people always buy the makeup that I recommend.”

As for why people trust her advice, she told me, “I have a lot of makeup … I’m an expert, duh.”

Miller holds open a journal.

Photo by Leela Miller

Biscoff gives a tour of the contents of her bag which are dumped on the table.

Photo by Leela Miller

Lindholm holds up essential items.

Photo by Leela Miller

Seay holds up her prized green scissors.

Photo by Leela Miller

Schorr displays a collection of lipsticks.

Photo by Leela Miller

Navigating Dance at Oberlin Outside of Academic Spaces

Juju Gaspar Arts & Culture Editor

There are over 17 student-led dance groups at Oberlin, including troupes like VIBE Dance Company, Kinetik Hip Hop Crew, AndWhat?!, Capoeira Angola, and more. That’s not to men tion that Fall Forward and Student Showcase: Dance Umbrella are com ing up. These groups offer a diverse spectrum of dance styles and many opportunities for those interested in dance to get involved.

Yet despite the large number of groups, there are far more students wanting to get involved in dance on campus than already participating in dance classes or clubs.

By virtue of being a conservatory school, Oberlin tends to position mu sic in higher demand than the other performance arts. The extensive ac cess to music performances, classes, and practice rooms makes dance and other performance art seem insig nificant in comparison. There aren’t

many dance studios, and we aren’t a school recognized for dance. Al though Oberlin does have a Dance department and many student orga nizations and clubs, some students feel unable to explore their identities as dancers.

In terms of academic dance spaces and class structure, there seems to be exclusivity among Dance majors. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Stu dents who spend the majority of their time together in classes are bound to have closer connections, and cliques are created regardless of the inten tions of these artistic spaces. There is also an academic culture surrounding dance. A non-dance major looking to participate in dance may be discour aged by the idea that if they’re not pursuing dance academically, they can’t be that serious about it.

“The fact that I’m not a Dance ma jor or minor, but am still a dancer, is baffling to some people,” Sophia Steckler, a College third-year trained in classical Indian dance, said. “If

you’re not a Dance major or minor, you’re not a dancer to them.”

Some dance classes and organiza tions do not require prior experience, yet students with limited dance expe rience sometimes feel left behind or lost.

“I think at times, there is kind of an expectation or divide in most of the dance classes,” Steckler said. “Even though it’s open to everyone, you still need some basic understanding of dance technique depending on the style: jazz, improvisation, whatever.”

This perceived lack of opportu nities doesn’t come from an actual absence of resources in the form of clubs, classes, or organizations. It comes from a perceived monopoly over claiming the dancer identity. The opportunities to get involved in dance on campus do not negate the work one must do to break into these groups — especially when, before arriving at Oberlin, one has already dedicated a significant amount of time to a craft and built a community elsewhere.

“I’m a classical Indian dancer … [and] at home I would do it multiple times a week,” Steckler said. “I live near my dance studio and my dance teachers, so I felt very connected to them through being in the physical space together. Here, I still take dance classes, but it’s still very different. I consider myself a dancer, but I don’t go to a dance class for the majority of the year, so do I call myself a dancer? I’m not even dancing, I’m not even practicing my technique even once a week.”

As a beginner dancer, the desire to join a dance space is fueled by the ea gerness to learn dance, whatever style it may be. However, when one is an es tablished dancer, the appeal becomes less about learning and more about building community. Oberlin and other academic institutions should consciously create spaces where the people dancing are valued as much as dance itself, and where talents are re spected outside of academic settings.

Midnights Features Taylor Swift’s Classic Sound, Stellar Lyrics

Erika Scharf

On Friday, Oct. 21, at midnight sharp, Taylor Swift released her 10th studio album Midnights. I, like many fellow fans and eager listeners, went to Spoti fy as soon as the clock struck midnight, only to find that we had crashed the site in anticipation. Once the platform was back up and running, the listening party commenced.

Midnights is a dream pop album that centers 13 sto ries of 13 sleepless nights in Swift’s life. Swift opens the album with the high of falling in love in the song “Lavender Haze.” The story travels to the feeling of deep insecurity (“Anti-Hero”), to the sacrifice of love for prioritizing your own dreams (“Midnight Rain”), and even to the malefic desire to enact revenge (“Vig ilante Sh*t”). Three hours after its release, Midnights was followed by Midnights (3am edition), featuring seven bonus songs, and, like most of Swift’s bonus tracks, many of them are just as good, if not better, than the songs on the main tracklist. These addition al songs explore a unique perspective of cheating (“High Infidelity”) and retrospection on misunder stood past trauma (“Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve”).

Midnights’ sound is similar to 1989 and Lover, but it feels like a more mature version of pop, mirroring Swifts’ growth as a person since her past releases. Midnights contains songs that are airy and fun, with synth beats and catchy melodies, but that still delve into some of the darkest periods in her life. In “You’re on Your Own, Kid” Swift says “I hosted parties and starved my body / Like I’d be saved by a perfect kiss.” You don’t need to be a Swiftie or know the inner de tails of Swift’s life to appreciate what she shares in songs like this, nor do you even have to be a fan to enjoy the album — it mirrors the likes of Lana Del Rey and Lorde. The sounds of both of these artists seeped into Midnights with the help of mutual collaborator Jack Antonoff, Swift’s main accomplice on this al bum.

A lot of complaints about the album stem from the fact that it doesn’t match the same sound aesthetic of Folklore or Evermore. Despite her change in genre –or rather her return to pop – Swift has always proven that she never stays in one era for too long, always innovating and changing the style of her music from album to album.

Another complaint is that the album showcas es musical production more than Swift’s songwrit ing, arguably her best quality as an artist. Sure, she may have some weaker lyrics like “everybody is a sexy baby” and “weird but f**king beautiful,” but the strange, cringey one-off lines are contrasted by the el oquent, clever, and interesting lyrics we have grown to love and expect from her. Lines like “I’m only cryp tic and Machiavellian ’cause I care” and “do I real ly have to chart the constellations in his eyes” prove that she will always redeem herself with stellar and poetic lyrics.

Although many of the songs follow the same synthpop style, the musical styles of some of her old al bums bleed into these songs as well. “Sweet Nothing” and “Bejeweled” could easily have been a part of the Lover era, “Maroon” would fit in beautifully on Rep utation, “Labyrinth” is a remnant of Folklore, “Paris” might as well have been a 1989 vault track, and “High Infidelity” is exactly the style of Evermore. Even a song like “You’re on Your Own, Kid” is one that could easily blend with Red.

My only real complaint is how Lana Del Rey’s fea ture is almost nonexistent in the vocals on the fourth track, “Snow on the Beach.” Although I have come to expect that from Swift, who has repeatedly placed featured artists on backing vocals beginning with

Colbie Caillat’s “duet” on “Breathe” in 2008, I was still hopeful that I would hear more from Del Rey, es pecially after Swift proved it was possible with her Phoebe Bridgers feature in “Nothing New” on Red (Taylor’s Version).

Personally, I love this album. To me, Midnights is exactly what we would expect from Taylor Swift, good or bad. As much as she is sometimes painfully cringey and millennial, we as fans shouldn’t expect anything less from her than what she has given to us with every release since her debut album nearly 20 years ago: a mixture of songs that are fun for danc ing and ones you can listen to as you sob in your bed alone — the two ways a Taylor Swift album should al ways be listened to.

Taylor Swift holds up a lighter on the Midnights album cover.

Photo Courtesy of Taylor Swift via Instagram

TIMARA Majors Engage Audience in Multidisciplinary Concert

“By engaging with multiple mediums, you can create something that might not otherwise make sense,” Harlan said. “The audio or the visuals alone might not make sense, but together, as one piece, it does. I was a little worried that the video might take away from the audio, that people would focus more on the visuals. I have done a little bit of film scoring and it is fun, but for that, the music is not the main focus so people don’t really pay attention to it. It’s interesting to do it the other way around, with music as the focus. I think that making visuals to accompa ny music can enhance it.”

The audience consisted not only of other elec tronic musicians and experimenters but also of oth er students who take interest in electronic experi mental music.

“I have two friends who had pieces that were played at the show, so I went partially for them and partially because I love everything happening in the TIMARA department,” College first-year Danilo Vu jacic said. “I’m really interested in the music that they perform and curious to explore the classes in the department soon. I like noise music, I find it fas cinating, and being at a place like Oberlin, there are a lot of great opportunities and people to meet who are interested in that sort of stuff.”

To members of the audience, the multidisci plinary experimentation was effective in connecting with the soundscapes.

“There is definitely an interesting relationship between experimental noise music and its transla tion into film,” Vujacic said. “We saw that with some of the pieces at the concert. The visuals enhance the experience and elevate the atmosphere that mu sic creates. I think that interplay is interesting and valuable. It adds another dimension to the music.”

Other audience members included visual artists, some of whom had not encountered electronic mu sic before coming to Oberlin.

“I think it’s so cool to have art being made in a place where there are so many different people do ing so many different things, because you natural ly combine different ideas and mediums,” College first-year and visual artist Frances McFetridge said. “This performance was a good example of that — of technology and art and visuals and music coming to gether. It felt like a broadening of the artistic mind into other mediums that make it more interesting and nuanced.”

Presentations like the Electrophonics concert allow TIMARA students, electronic musicians, and visual artists to connect with a diverse audience to connect through technology and multidisciplinary arts.

Behind the scenes of the electrophonics show, students make the magic happen.

Photo Courtesy of Joshua Reinier

An electrophonics art piece is displayed in front of the audience.

Photo Courtesy of Abby Aresty

Dreary House of the Dragon Season Redeemed by Finale

Kushagra Kar Editor-in-Chief

Yes, it is a show about incest. No, it’s not only about incest, but you would be forgiven for believing that. House of the Dragon chronicles the stories of the Targaryen family 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones , and if we’ve learned anything from the time we’ve already spent in Westeros, in cest is surprisingly commonplace. While too much focus on incest would deter much of the potential viewership, House of the Dragon presents a rare instance where incest isn’t the biggest issue on screen. Bustling with stylish sets, ornate costumes, and intricately designed and rendered dragons, HBO’s latest adventure in Westeros presents a vi sually spectacular story mired in an ironically soul less first season.

The problem with this first season is the sheer span of time it attempts to cover in the first five episodes. The first eight episodes each feature significant time jumps, and by episode six, the two main characters have aged into entirely different actors. Besides losing the charm and chemistry of Milly Alcock and Emily Carey, the uneven pacing of the season bars it from building any momentum or actual attachment to these characters. Immensely important events happen off screen while characters make complete turnarounds in their motivations and behaviors, making the start of each episode almost impossible to follow. As a re sult, I found very little motivation to keep up week to week, becoming so utterly bemused after episode four that I restarted Game of Thrones … from the lackluster season seven.

By rapidly progressing through the decades, the show attempts to give the audience a crash course in

the long and peaceful rule of King Viserys I of House Targaryen. Paddy Considine brings Viserys to life with a tragic but passionate rendition of the character, conjuring a man so uninspired to rule that the Iron Throne physically rejects him each time he sits on it. It was genuinely a feast of theatrical plenty to watch this patriarch of the kingdoms age and fall into de crepitude as the years passed, never once losing his spirit even as he was plagued by pain and anxiety. He doesn’t carry the solemn gravity of Ned Stark or the rambunctious callousness of Robert Baratheon, nor is he cruel like Joffrey or fiercely intelligent like Cersei Lannister — he just is, and that simplicity works for him. Considine leaves a deep emotional impression on the audience and delivers a regal performance that is the only true benefactor of the regular time jumps.

Poor plot development aside, the core premise of the series is, once again, a war for the Iron Throne. Pol iticking over some ultimate seat of power as a genre of television has been overcooked to a crisp by the 2010s obsession with shows like Game of Thrones, House of Cards, and Scandal, just to name a few. Those shows were gripping and tense, steadily paced to effectively uncover secrets even as new mysteries were revealed. House of the Dragon enters into the same genre with out any of the intrigue or unique style that made its predecessors watchable, leaving the audience to rely solely on the sunk cost of having watched Game of Thrones. For eight long weeks, the viewing experience was dreary, formulaic, uninspired, and disappointing.

Then episodes nine and 10 rolled out. For the first time, I set aside my phone and sat glued to the screen as the stakes suddenly became personal and the pot finally came to a boil. By the end of the finale, fire and blood had spilled into Westeros and left me en raptured. The stars aligned as all of the best elements of the show rallied on center stage and pulled to gether some of the highest quality Thrones universe content. The drama, tension, grandeur, pacing, and editing synced up in impeccable fashion and final ly gave me what I’d been waiting for. Ramin Djawa di’s soundtrack also reared its fiery head in full force in the finale, both calling back to Danaerys’ theme and introducing something altogether new that was equally iconic. Without giving too much away, I would argue that these two episodes set up a second season of the show that genuinely excites me.

Despite the promise of a second, assuredly bet ter season if showrunner Ryan Condal manages to stick the landing, the largely disappointing nature of three-quarters of the first season cannot be ignored. My advice to interested but somewhat apprehensive viewers is to skip ahead to episode six and catch up on the rest through Google, unless you are particular ly intrepid and willing to commit to the long haul. I can’t in good conscience encourage you to watch this show for just two episodes, so I won’t. Instead I’d rec ommend rewatching Game of Thrones from the begin ning, and pacing yourself so well that by the time you finish season five of the original, all seasons of House of the Dragon are ready to binge — approximately six years from now.

Obies Answer Question: What’s Up with Fourth Meal?

Dlisah Lapidus Arts & Culture Editor

What usually brings you to Fourth Meal?

Double-degree first-year Max Kassoy: Sometimes I come when I’m with friends and they’re like, ‘I’m hit ting up the [Rathskeller].’ And then I get here and I’m like, ‘Well, I’ve got a meal swipe; I might as well eat.’ But other times I come because I’m just hungry. I often eat dinner really ear ly if I have a rehearsal and then I’m hungry after the rehearsal, so it’s kind of perfect. I’ll come and hit up Fourth Meal, and I feel like a happy man.

What would you do without Fourth Meal?

MK : I would be forced to eat really s**tty boxed DeCafé food, which I re ally don’t want to do.

Do you prefer DeCafé over the Rat for a late night meal?

College second-year Johnny Ragsdale: If I’ve got a meal swipe to spend, yeah. Last year, I would go to the Rat. If I was peckish, the Rat was my number one. The Impossible Burger was my go-to. I actually hav en’t gone to Fourth Meal yet this year; I’m protesting.

Why did you prefer a late night meal at the Rat last year?

JR : Last year, the Rat had every op tion available until 11:30 p.m. It was great because you could get a veggie option, you could get anything you wanted, every single day. Now, they try to communicate what Fourth Meal has, but it is generally not su per well communicated, and also it only has one option, which is not very inclusive of people who might want

something vegetarian. It is nice to have options.

What are your thoughts on Fourth Meal?

Conservatory fourth-year Daniel Karnaukh: The food, most of the time, is pretty much what the menu says it is. If there are gyros offered, you’ll most like ly get gyros, unless it’s that one Monday where they had avocado toast instead. Whether or not you will get your food at a hot temperature is much more of a gamble. I typically tend to come at ear lier times, as there is a higher chance of the food being fresh and warm. I’ve seen stories on Instagram of undercooked wings, but I personally haven’t run into that.

I like Fourth Meal now. It’s not per fect — the line is long, the food isn’t always hot, and they took away almost all of the seats and replaced them with

lockers, but to be completely blunt, it’s the only thing we’ve got. And all of the people who work at the Rat are abso lutely wonderful and are working super hard, so we can’t acknowledge Fourth Meal without mentioning the people that actually make it happen for us hun gry students. It may be imperfect, but I’m grateful for Fourth Meal.

What is your favorite Fourth Meal meal?

Conservatory second-year Chris Leimgruber: “The gyros.”

Conservatory second-year Bradley Boatright: Really? Hm, okay.

CL: Yeah, I think so. I forget which other ones there are.

Do you disagree?

BB: I think so. I think I like the wings.

CL: OHH, the wings, the wings!

BB: There we go.

CL: “Yeah the wings, that’s true.”

Olivia Cooke and Emma D’arcy pose in character in a poster for the new series House of the Dragon.

Photo Courtesy of HBO through IMDb

Sehréa N’Dayu, Jazz Vocalist and Multi-Genre Composer

Walter Thomas-Patterson Conservatory Editor

Sehréa N’Dayu is a third-year Conservatory Jazz Vocal Major, Multi-Genre Composer, and found ing member of MNGLW, a jazz group that regu larly performs at Oberlin and beyond.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Could you tell me a little bit about your early life and how you were introduced to classical music? How much formal study did you have as a child?

I grew up in a very musical family. My moth er is a full-time artist. She’s a singer, she’s a pianist, she’s a visionary. She put together just really amazing performances. She travels all around the world doing that. I have two fathers. My birth father is a musical engineer, a singer, a songwriter, a playwright, and so forth, and then my stepfather is a poet, a rapper. He was signed to Ruff Ryders, which is the label that birthed DMX.

I grew up watching my mom in particular, just singing, and it’s always been something that’s resonated with me. So even before I could talk, I was singing, and that led me to eventually start writing my own songs. I was always very creative — I loved writing songs, stories, poet ry, all of that. I taught myself how to play the guitar at one point, then I moved to the piano, and then I was put into a performing arts high school. I nurtured what was always brewing in side of me. That eventually led me to be here studying vocal jazz and ultimately just trying to perfect my craft and nurture my artistry.

At Oberlin, I understand you’re a jazz vocal major, but given your family background, do you see yourself as more than just a jazz vo calist?

I’m here studying jazz, but I never want to be considered as just a jazz singer. I actually would prefer to not be tied to any genre. I would say I’m influenced by R&B, hip-hop, soul, jazz, etc. I’m not just one thing, you know, music is mu sic.

With that medley of influences, I’m wonder ing what it’s like to pursue the songwriting process when you’re working with so much?

It really just depends on where I’m in at the moment. There’s been times when I’ve tried to intentionally write a song, and sometimes that works. It is different every time, but one of the things that I love to do is go on YouTube and search up different kinds of beats that are as sociated with whatever I’m feeling. If I’m feel ing really nostalgic, I might put on a lo-fi hiphop beat or just any instrumental music. If I’m going through something at the moment, I try to write about that at first and then try to find creative ways of talking about what I’m going through.

Other times it could be just like something where I’m purely inspired. I’ve had times where I’ve one particular melody, just one short phrase that’s been looping in my mind for weeks at a time. I don’t realize that it’s happening until I start singing it out loud, and then I have to rush to the piano and put on my recorder.

I think a lot of the time, I write just from improvising, just from free styling — if it’s just playing random chords and that becomes a pro gression. I just allow myself to see whatever, kind of like a brain dump, but that’s like free styling to me. And from that I can kind of sift through the recording and write based off of what I was like free styling about. But a lot of

times, it’s up to chance, you know?

That process must give you a fair amount of uncertainty, and I’m wondering how you give yourself that peace, that tranquility of mind as you’re composing.

I’m a big person when it comes to manifesta tion. I’ve seen it work in my life so many times at this point. And it’s something that we all do, whether we’re conscious of it or not, but what ever thoughts that you’re repeating are going to be reflected in your outer reality. And so when I was young, I was always really positive. I did have times where I was really negative and not really conscious about what I saying. As human beings, we go through so many emotions in just one day.

I’m wondering if you could talk about some of the specific affirmations you tell yourself?

They change all of the time. But I would say some of the most basic affirmations that you could start saying are as simple as “I love my self,” “I’m here for myself,” “I accept myself.”

What I’m saying now is, “I am powerful. I am a light to every room that I walk in, I’m uplift ing. I’m very supportive of others and their suc cess.” I like saying “I’m irresistible.”

Something that I like to think about is that it’s not always easy to be really kind to yourself. I think we’re so programmed to be negative and self-deprecating and to expect that out of life. You’ve ever heard people say, “It’s too good to be true.”? That’s a commonly used phrase that’s just embedded in our everyday language, and so many other things that we say just like that. And so sometimes it really just takes work to be kind to yourself. So keep that in mind.

An exercise you can do is imagine a young child, a younger you standing in front of you, and I would dare you to say all of the bad things you tell yourself now to that younger you. And most people, unless they are a psychopath, wouldn’t do that. If you wanna start getting into it, maybe find a baby picture of yourself. Put it on your wallpaper or put it on your mirror if you have a physical copy of it. That’ll be what can inspire you to speak kindly; or just be more conscious about how you talk to yourself.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

There’s people out there who will celebrate you, and you will come across those people and have those people close to you. But at the end of the day, everyone’s really just thinking about their own life, their own stories, their own problems. So if you just keep in mind, like, “I am the only person who truly understands me, I am my closest, most intimate relation ship. I have to be the one to get myself out of bed every day. I’m the only one who can do it.

I am the only one who can tell me what I need to hear. I know myself in and out, so I’m gonna be my biggest supporter.” Otherwise who will?

If you don’t believe in yourself, you may have people who do, but eventually, if you keep being self-deprecating, you keep saying to yourself, “I don’t believe in myself,” or “What about this, what about that?” then eventually even the peo ple who did believe in you are gonna start not to, because why should they if you don’t even believe in you?

The other thing is: fake it until you make it. No one knows if your confidence is real or not. Especially being in the Conservatory, which is highly competitive, you have to also understand there’s only one you in this entire world who has your exact experiences, your exact thoughts. No one else in this entire universe can ever be you at this very time, this very point in reality.

Self Affirmation Essential to Musicians

Gracie McFalls Senior Staff Writer

The first time I played the viola was in the fourth grade. As I eagerly unclasped the bow from my school-rented viola case, I felt proud. I remember gingerly pulling the bow across the strings of the instrument, careful to not hurt it but eager to make a sound, any sound. “Look at me go,” I told myself in the mirror as I played my first notes.

Quickly though, I learned to be critical of myself and my playing. Any mistake was a sign of more grueling prac tice to come, another blight on my existence, and an indi cation of my own shortcomings as a musician.

I began to see just how frequently musicians are cri tiqued. I would work and work on a piece to prepare for a lesson, only to be told the numerous ways in which it really wasn’t as good as I thought it was.

In middle and high school, I, along with many of my peers in my respective orchestras, learned that complain ing about how “bad” we sounded led to an influx of reas suring compliments from others. I would complain about my self-perceived flaws while making steady improve ments, passing seating tests and auditions with ease. I was unable to accept the fact that I was doing well. Be hind the scenes I was my own worst critic, criticizing my playing every chance I got. Why did the validation of my friends and teachers mean so much to me?

In my experience, it is rare for someone to outwardly admit to feeling proud of a performance or a recording before someone else compliments them. It is uncomfort able and vulnerable, and foreign to the classical music community. Maybe some of that reluctance stems from humility. But when you spend so much of your time lis tening to feedback, waiting for someone to give the next critique, and learning how to critique yourself, I tend to think that this reluctance to show ourselves pride and validation stems not from humility but from fear. The fear of being seen as less of a musician for not hearing flaws in our own playing influences so much in what we see in ourselves. Thus, we wait for other people to give us compliments before we feel deserving enough to give ourselves any credit.

This reliance on others for validation can be danger ous. To start, it puts one’s emotional well-being at risk, thereby giving other people the power to dictate wheth er or not someone sees themselves as having value as an artist. This can lead to lowered self-esteem, which can cause overall unhappiness and chronic self-dissatisfac tion. This is the very same dissatisfaction that can then drive people to push themselves harder and subsequently injure themselves in the process.

Most people, when they hear the phrase “self-valida tion,” roll their eyes. It seems too soft, too touchy-feely, too likely to be used as an excuse for slacking off. And yet self-validation is one of the most useful skills a musician can acquire. In a culture where there is constantly more to be learned and in a profession where there is no final des tination, self-validation along the way is essential. Oth erwise, how can anyone ever appreciate their successes? Who doesn’t want to feel proud of the work they’ve done, especially when the work is so incredibly difficult?

Even at Oberlin, a school known for its friendly, non-competitive environment, phrases like “I only prac ticed x amount of hours today,” or “I should be practicing right now,” run rampant up and down Conservatory hall ways. And while there is no harm in being ambitious and working toward those goals, this kind of rhetoric wor ries me. I feel that sometimes ambition gets mixed with self-deprecation.

With such a poor physical and mental state, how can anyone expect to have an impact on classical music or lead a meaningful career?

I feel it’s important to acknowledge my own journey with this process. I am still learning how to not belittle my own accomplishments and how to validate my work, even as I write this. Learning to self-validate is a process I believe should be talked about more within the classical music community and normalized as part of the work a modern-day musician must do in order to lead a success ful and healthy career.

James Dill, Men’s Tennis Player Walking Across the Country For Charity

James Dill is a fourth-year Economics major and a member of the men’s tennis team. This summer, he and his friend Sam Rezaei, a recent graduate of Northwestern University, started a 2,800 mile walk from the Coney Island Boardwalk in NY all the way to the Santa Monica Pier in CA. Throughout their journey, which consists of 25 miles of walking per day, they persevere through fatigue, inclement weather, and many meals of hot dogs. In addition, the two have raised over $10,000 for The Night Ministry, an organization that helps unhoused peo ple in their home city of Chicago. Dill and Rezaei are currently in Fence Lake, NM and have less than 700 miles until they reach their destination. You can find their most recent updates on Instagram @theamer icantrail.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What inspired you to walk across the country?

The original inspiration for our walk was the adventure and the physical and mental challenge that would come from a 2,800 mile trek across the country. We also thought it would be a great way to see and learn about the country first-hand. We have also both grown up in cities, so we thought that spending time in rural America and meeting the people there would be a valuable experience.

We began our walk on June 17. At the moment, we are walking through cold and windy conditions and approaching the New Mexico-Arizona border. We look forward to the rise in temperature as we start getting closer to Phoenix. Our diet consists mostly of hot dogs and candy, as that is often all that is available when we do have the opportunity to get food.

How did your time at Oberlin propel you to go on this trip?

I don’t think any experience could fully prepare someone for a trip like this. I will say that my time at Oberlin, where I’ve lived on my own for the first time and learned many lessons in the classroom and on the tennis team, has allowed me to grow and mature as a person. I think that if I had attempted a

trip like this in high school, I would not have been ready and it would’ve been a disaster.

What is the purpose of this journey?

The purpose of our walk is to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone and learn to be tough and deal with adversity. Even now that we are over 2,000 miles in, walking 25 miles each day is still very challenging. We have dealt with all sorts of adversity, whether it be weather related, broken equipment, or general fatigue.

Along our journey, we also decided to attach a charitable cause to our walk. Several conver sations with formerly homeless individuals who described the hardships that they faced inspired us to raise money for The Night Ministry. The Night Ministry is an organization in Chicago, our home town, that provides a variety of services to people who are homeless or struggling with poverty. Our GoFundMe page is called Coast2Coast, and this is the link: https://gofund.me/7a8d999a

What do you hope to gain from this experience, and what have you learned?

The ability to deal with adversity is one thing that I would highlight. It is impossible to run from it out on the road, so we’ve had to learn to deal with it head on and solve the problem at hand. I also hope that I will return to “normal” life with a new sense of appreci ation for things like a balanced diet, heating and air conditioning, and a bed to sleep on. I’ve grown to appreciate the freedom I have to spend my time as I wish, while right now we basically just have to walk all day.

I have learned that there are a lot of kind people out there, and specifically in small town America. People have stopped by in their cars to give us food and water, or just to ask if we are okay. We have also been invited to several church services on Sunday after being found camping on their lawns. These people have wished us safety on our trip, taken us out to lunch, and even gave us money for the road when we didn’t ask for any. In general, people acting kindly to us and doing us favors without asking for anything in return has been very touching. I think it is important to have adventures while you’re young, and this has certainly been a great one.

Oberlin Competes in Second Swim Meet of the Season

personal record of 10:00.16 in the 1,000yard freestyle event. Fendorf also fol lowed up his initial relay performance with fantastic showings in both the 200yard freestyle (1:50.16) and 500-yard freestyle (5:04.19).

The diving team also had strong per formances across the board. Fourth-year diver Lucas Draper recorded two career bests in both the 1-meter dive and the 3-meter dive with scores of 151.35 and 159.6 respectively. Second-year Helene Prince also set a personal record on the 1-meter, with a score of 141.35.

Chris Stoneman Senior Staff Writer

Last weekend, the men’s and women’s Swim and Dive teams traveled to Canton, Ohio to take on the Malone University Pioneers.

Both teams started off the meet extremely strong, beating the Pioneers in the 200-yard medley relay. The wom en’s team, consisting of second-years Bella Sites, Skye Slade, Elinor Frost, and fourth-year Elisabeth Ragone, recorded an impressive time of 1 minute and 57.74 seconds, while the men’s team, com

prising of second-years Isaac Viviano, Myles Felt, Erik Fendorf and first-year Leo Powers, set an equally high standard for the rest of the meet with their time of 1:38.70.

The successes set by the medley teams put the Yeowomen and Yeowomen in full speed for the rest of the meet. They lead in practically every event and mul tiple members of both teams set person al records.

Most notably for the Yeowomen, firstyear Celia Perks recorded her fastest time in the 200-yard individual medley of 2:36.90. Second-year Rosalie Baron

and third-year Lily Azaran also set per sonal records in the 100-yard breast stroke event, with Baron setting a time of 1:18.08, and Azaran with a time of 1:22.95.

“Some of us, like myself, swam events that we don’t normally train for,” Azaran said. “So for me it was really fun to swim a 100 breaststroke, an event that I hav en’t before swam at Oberlin. Obviously getting wins on both sides is great for a dual meet, so I’m really proud of the team for that.”

For the Yeomen, first-year Miguel Siwady was able to set an impressive

Both Oberlin teams were able to cap off the meet with yet another pair of impres sive medleys in the 200-yd. freestyle. Ragone, along with third-year Hannah Hale, and second-years Charlotte Hantus and Izzy Pfaff, won in the women’s event with a time of 1:44.27. The Yeomen were able to win in a similar fashion, with first-years Siwady, Daniel Bosci, and Tyler Wang, along with second-year Jack Stewart, putting up a strong perfor mance with a time of 1:32.35.

“So much training goes into these races, and I’m grateful to be able to swim with a team that supports and push es each other every single day,” Hale said. “Getting to celebrate a win that we accomplished as a team of four is one of the best parts of this sport.”

The team will compete against the University of Mount Union this Saturday.

Celia Perks

The Yeomen dive into the second meet of the season.

Sam Rezaei (left) and James Dill (right) in a recent interview

Courtesy of Lucas Draper

Courtesy of Albuquerque News

Taiko Narrates Artistry Through Athleticism

Kayla Kim Contributing Sports Editor Adrienne Sato Senior Staff Writer

On a cold Wednesday night in October, 12 Oberlin students, dressed in various forms of athletic attire, circle around in the dusty basement of First United Methodist Church. After a few minutes of chattering about their week, classes, and favorite kinds of soup, one of them looks around the circle and asks, “Ready?”

The group proceeds to complete a plethora of jump ing jacks, arm circles, push-ups, planks, and Russian twists. It’s important for the students to be prepared, as this is one of three two-and-a-half hour weekly practices required to excel at their craft. However, they aren’t getting their bodies prepared for a sport, but rather to rehearse for an upcoming show as mem bers of Oberlin College Taiko.

A style of Japanese drumming, taiko combines aspects of dance, music, martial arts, and theater. It has evolved into an art form, a pathway for self expres sion, and, what may be surprising to some, a type of athleticism.

Before an actual taiko practice can begin, 12 drums, approximately 30 pounds each, need to be brought down from a storage closet to the basement, carried precariously down three narrow flights of stairs. In order to hit the drums, players need to stay in a lunge position for the entirety of the piece, gripping wooden bachi, or drumsticks. Bachi are held in various posi tions such as overhead, at a 45-degree angle, or even with both arms making counterclockwise circles.

Different pieces can require even more extreme positions. O-daiko, a drum the size of a hay bale, has players consistently raising their arms above their heads in order to hit the drum with incredible amounts of force. To play “Tatsumaki,” players must

switch between 90-degree side lunges for six minutes of the rapid-fire song. And the notoriously challeng ing “Yatai” requires players to go from laying on the ground to the curl up position multiple times.

Harper Ross, OC ’22, noted that the unexpected physical demand taiko had on them.

“When you start learning how to stand properly in taiko, it’s kind of like doing an extended wall sit for hours each weekend,” Ross said. “It definitely adds up … I know for me personally, the shape that I’m in at the beginning of the semester is vastly different than the shape I’m in at the end of the semester.”

In addition to physicality, players must tell a story through their movement just like dancers narrate with their bodies. Taiko pieces are stories of time, identity, celebration, and change. For instance, “Noon” has players raise both hands up at the end of the piece to signify the hour and minute hand on the clock, and “Matsuri,” a festival piece, slowly builds up tempo, with everyone joyfully shouting “Matsuri Daiko!” before the speed-up. Every song features kiais, various shouts that build energy and demonstrate power.

College second-year Bennett Elder commented on how fitness is required to narrate such stories with care.

“You have to produce a sound that really reverber ates,” he said. “[There’s] really dramatic and energetic movements that you try to make as graceful as possi ble, [really emphasized by] the shape that our arms trace.”

OCT also has a history of supporting Oberlin ath letes. So far, the group has performed at two athletics events this year: the women’s soccer game against Denison University on Homecoming Weekend and the cross country Inter-Regional Rumble. For both performances, OCT played various songs and back beats to motivate players and excite the crowd.

College fourth-year Megan Reilly, who also serves as an OCT co-chair and co-instructor for the Introduction to Taiko ExCo, said that the Rumble specifically was a memorable experience and hopes to perform more for athletics in the future.

“There’s a lot more interaction with the crowd because the runners can come up to you and talk to you about it,” Reilly said. “It’s a lot less formal, but also a lot more rewarding in that we’re doing something impact ful for them. … It’s a lot of fun to feed off of the energy of the players and the crowd and just do whatever comes to mind that we think would hype everyone up.”

Taiko is an extreme example of music overlapping with athletics because of the dedication, memory, and physical and mental demands required. For College second-year Ollie Elgison, finding the delicate balance between the two is something that makes taiko invalu able to them.

“I’ve never really considered myself an athletic per son,” they said. “I’ve tried a bunch of different sports, and I’ve just never really enjoyed any of them that much. … I feel like something almost clicked when I did [taiko] … Putting that movement into sound and making it something productive is kind of the thing that I was missing from the different sports and something that formed meaning for me.”

Because of the disparate aspects it embodies, taiko itself has a bit of an identity crisis. Not included as a club sport or in traditional Conservatory pedagogy, it’s hard to sort it into one group and define its players. For instance, Elder noted that while taiko is a physically taxing activity, he does not consider himself to be an athlete.

“I would say [I’m] more of a performer because per formance is still a term that encompasses activity and athleticism,” he said. “But I feel that [the term] performer connects more with the idea of art.”

Additionally, taiko has been historically reported in the Arts & Culture Section of the Review, whether that be about involvement through Colors of Rhythm or Asian Night Market. While this coverage is important, physical movement and strength is also an integral yet underrepresented component of taiko. Taiko’s relation ship to athleticism can give insight into how we define an athlete or artist and the subjectivity behind those terms.

Celebratory Post-Game Property Destruction Unnecessary

in the last few seasons of college foot ball. These riots are seen as the ulti mate fan support, and the euphoria that courses through the fans supposedly justifies the destruction and havoc they cause. Their enthusiasm and constant, fervid support is perceived to negate the monetary cost the college accrues.

In 2002, riots after Ohio State’s 14–9 victory over the University of Michi gan resulted in cars being flipped and burned. When the University of Mary land defeated Indiana University in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship on April Fools Day 2002, Maryland fans

ate glass, lit fires, and damaged emer gency vehicles in their victory riot.

However, riots have ignited over more than big wins. After Joe Paterno, Penn State’s head football coach, was fired in 2011 for purposefully overlook ing Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky’s role in the Penn State child sex abuse scandal, fans got together and chanted in protest of Paterno’s dismissal. They flipped over a media van and caused im mense damage before police dispersed the crowd.

One fan, Andrew Ezzart, explained the reasoning of the crowd to ESPN.

“People on the outside probably think we’re just a bunch of crazy kids acting stupid,” Ezzart said. “But for us, it’s so much more than that. We definite ly don’t like the way they handled the situation. Everybody thinks they made Joe a scapegoat and this was all pinned on him.”

These riots, taking place at many col leges and universities, raise a concern about Oberlin: does the culture of riot ing apply here? Some teams, such as the women’s basketball and track and field teams, have excelled recently, but great ness rarely falls upon Oberlin athletics.

Nonetheless, Oberlin sports fans are passionate and unwavering in their support. The student body regularly turns out for football and soccer games, especially when Oberlin is playing a di vision rival. Although the football team has had little success in recent history, they still manage to accumulate a large group of fans every week.

Even though Oberlin fans are pas sionate, their glee in victory does not translate into violence or chaos, with games seen as light-hearted entertain ment instead of life-or-death battles, as they should be.

Adrienne Sato performs during the women’s soccer game against Denison University during Homecoming Weekend.

Courtesy of Lex Escobedo

Editor’s note: Both authors are members of Oberlin College Taiko, with Sato serving as co-chair. All inter viewees are current members.

Conservatory-Athletes Share Their Stories

Andrea Nguyen Sports Editor

At one practice, they’re stretching their legs, shoot ing goals, or running laps. At another, they’re tuning instruments, perfecting scales, or studying music the ory. Oberlin has a unique population of Conservatory and double-degree students who also compete as varsity athletes, polishing both their sport and art while balancing the time commitments that come with both.

Double-degree second-year Ethan Long is current ly a right-back defender for the men’s soccer team. He first started playing the sport when he was five years old, later playing for his high school in the fall as well as with a club team year-round. At the age of eight, he was introduced to the guitar and dabbled in upright bass and piano. However, it wasn’t until freshman year of high school that Long began pro ducing music, starting with his own instrumental album.

After soccer practice, Long can be found producing songs in the TIMARA studios. Though undecided in the College, he is interested in Sociology or Africana Studies. Although Long has to be on top of time man agement, he enjoys what he studies and performs.

“I’m doing stuff that I like to do already ... it just always feels like free time,” Long said. “I enjoy my major in the Conservatory, and I just enjoy what I like. This is the first semester where I have to deal with all three at the same time. Everything … is just more efficient. I’m studying when I’m supposed to, and it’s like I have everything mapped out. Because of the season, I was just so strict with what time I get everything done. There’s no procrastination; I try to get all my homework done before practice and stuff, so I’m not cramming up late at night.”

Lately, Long has been turning jazz samples into cinematic pieces and producing R&B music. He also regularly collaborates with fellow teammates, mak ing beats with fourth-year midfielder AJ Gembala as well as jamming with second-year goalkeeper Colvin Iorio.

Conservatory second-year Emily Bergin has played the upright bass since second grade. In high school, Bergin played in the Metropolitan Youth and Long Island Orchestras, as well as All-State and AllEastern Ensembles. Growing up in an Irish house hold, she played in an Irish music group for years and learned a variety of instruments including the accordion, harmonica, tin whistle, Irish flute, and mandolin. In congruence to her music education, Bergin has also been swimming since she was eight years old and currently competes the 50-, 100-, and 200-yard freestyle.

As both a swimmer and a double bassist taking part

in the large ensemble on campus, Bergin has a lot of events that overlap, splitting most of her time in the Conservatory and Phillips Gym.

“It’s definitely really hard, and sometimes there’s a lot of things that the schedules overlap with for swim and all of the different music things I have,” Bergin said. “So on a Tuesday, it’s the worst day of that because I’ll usually have to go to swim at 12 right after my class. I can’t make the practice later because I have my studio class. If I’m in the rotation for orchestra, I would have to go to rehearsal right after swimming. But usually I manage to push it all together, and my coaches work with me to let me go in [to the pool] on my own time if I can’t make the team stuff.”

Sam Goetz is a double-degree fourth-year on the cross country and track team. He plays Jazz Percussion in the Conservatory and studies Environmental Studies in the College. Although he initially started playing violin, Goetz convinced his parents to let him switch to drums in fifth grade. In between practices and performances with the Minnesota Youth Jazz Band and the concert and pep bands offered at school, he played school and club soccer and ran track throughout high school.

Initially recruited for the track team, Goetz first started running cross country in college, and cur rently runs the 8-kilometer event, a far cry from the 800-meter and mile track and field events he nor mally runs.

This adaptivity and flexibility has pushed him to pursue other musical endeavors — for one Winter Term, he learned and practiced marimba. Goetz has played everything from classical to rock, but he’s gravitated toward jazz.

“As I started listening to and playing more music, jazz became the most fun for me to learn,” Goetz said. “And as I got more serious with [drumming] in high school, I was like, [jazz] is the music I want to study.”

There are also a number of other Conservatory students on the cross country team, including fourthyears Matthew Walton, Jerry Achterman, and Kenny Schafer, and second-year Marisa Tayal. Goetz also plays in a New Orleans brass band with his fourthyear teammate Sam Russ, a double-degree Tuba Performance and Classics student.

Despite the challenges of balancing meets, per formances, practices, and everything in between, Conservatory and double-degree musician-athletes have found ways to creatively blend both of their pas sions together. And for those like Goetz, the physical demand for his sport gives him confidence for his academic and musical studies.

“If I can run the 8K, then I can do anything else,” he said.

Gameday Riots Reflect Poorly on Athletic Culture

James Foster Staff Writer

On Oct. 15, University of Tennessee fans stormed Neyland Stadium in celebration when the Volunteers ended a 16-year drought and took down the Alabama Crimson Tide in a close 52–49. The contagious, over whelming joy quickly transformed into a riot, with fans removing the Volunteers’ goalposts and throw ing them in the Tennessee River. One fan was caught removing a square of the checkerboard pattern in the endzones, while many more left broken glass and burnt cigar ends littered on the turf.

Despite this destruction, the general reaction from the media and fans was incredibly positive, with many celebrating the destructive and costly acts of jubila tion.

“Here comes everybody, joining in the celebration,” commentator Bob Kesling said. “The student section mobbing the field! What jubilation in Big Orange Country!”

What many fans and media outlets did not take into consideration were the effects of removing the goalposts, tearing up the grass, and leaving shattered glass strewn across the field. It took the field crew until 2 a.m. to clean up the mess left behind. Darren Seybold, University of Tennessee’s director of sports surface management, had quite the task ahead of him: perfecting the field, missing goalposts and all, before Tennessee’s home game the following Saturday. How ever, even he found the actions of fans to be condon able.

“You figure, bud, in ’98 and 2022, I mean, that’s what, a 24-year difference?” Seybold said in an in terview with ESPN’s Dave Wilson, alluding to the last time these fans stormed the field. “We’ll take the $100,000 fine and move on. … The goalposts coming down, you kind of expect it.”

Seybold’s comments beg the question: are illegal ac tions justifiable with time? Sure, this was Tennessee’s most important win since 1998, but storming the field has become increasingly popular and more frequent

Ethan Long, Emily Bergin, and Sam Goetz are Conservatory and double-degree athletes.

University of Tennessee football fans ride atop a goalpost after an upset against the University of Alabama.

Courtesy of Oberlin Athletics and Amanda Phillips

Courtesy of Wade Payne