Delays in Third-Year Consent Training Send Mixed Messages

Reprint from The Oberlin Review Sept. 10, 1971

Editors’ Note: This article is a reprint commemorating decades of Oberlin students’ participation in the democratic process. The Editorial Board encourages eligible students to excercise this right. While the Review has checked this piece for accuracy, given the amount of time since its original publication, some facts could not be confirmed and have been published in their original form.

Marcie S. Berman OC ’72

Early this year, Congress passed an amendment to the Constitution giving the one-and-a-half million Americans who are between the ages of 18 and 21 the right to vote. Had a well-placed majority of the group been enfranchised in 1968 and voted Democratic, Richard Nixon would have been defeated. However, the question of whether or not the alternative Canada was preferable is not the subject of this discussion. The subject is the power of the student vote.

Prohibition Efforts

Almost immediately following the passage of the 26th amendment, many of the states took action to prohibit campus town voting. Through the use of both legislation and litigation, the precedent was established for requiring students to vote at their home residence or to vote through absentee ballots. The purpose of preventing students from voting on their campuses is quite clear; residents of campus towns often number fewer than the students. In many towns, if a majority of the students voted, they would elect members of their own community to the school board, the city council, and (where they exist) the mayorship.

The first campus to accomplish such a coup was, not unexpectedly, the University of California at Berkeley. A movement guided by the Association of Students (whose president was Oberlin graduate Eric Wollman) succeeded in electing three candidates to the city council and a mayor on a radical slate.

The City Council

The Oberlin City Council is composed of seven members. Of the seven, two are elected at large and the other five are selected by their wards. Since the majority of the campus is located in a single ward, students should theoretically be able to elect three members to the council. In actuality, they cannot even vote in Oberlin, never mind run for office. The law of the state of Ohio read as follows:

“One may register if the residence requirements will be met by the date of the next election. A student at an institution of learning in the state does not get a residence in the state and as such a person shall establish or acquire a home for permanent residence.”

Is the system impervious?

Although the law has a certain ring of finality to it, it would be a mistake to think that the system is impervious to change. Following a series of legislative battles and court cases, 16 states have moved to allow students to vote on their campuses. In one particular situation, eight individuals from the University of Michigan were rejected by the registrars in Ann Arbor. The key phrase when the case was brought to court was a section of the state election code which states that no electorate should be considered to have “gained or lost a residence” by virtue of entering the armed forces or going to college. The court ruled that such a clause, when used to deny the students the option of registering in their college town, violated both the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment and the Michigan constitution.

Registration Details

Registration to vote in Oberlin is being held in the community center on South Main Street on Sept. 11, 15, 18, 20, 21, and 22. A town clerk, when questioned over the telephone, stated that she has been directed not to ask for proof of residence. However, her awareness of the law regarding students and her uneasiness regarding her ability to enforce it would seem to indicate that the situation may change. Any students who are moved to follow the Michigan example will probably find that they will not have any serious trouble in being barred from registering. Unless, of course, the board of elections has decided that by not making an issue of the residency rules, they will prevent a court case. Although a few students may squeak by, the number is not likely to be anywhere near as high as if the law changed with all the attendant hue and cry.

In Sum

So as the solution now stands, students could (and should) move to change the laws, but the likelihood is that we will have the ability to vote by absentee ballot in any elections this year, including presidential primaries and, at least in the Democratic primaries, voting will be more than a symbolic act this time.

Unfortunately, many states have a registration deadline in September, and registration by mail is prohibited. However, for those who 1) are not registered, 2) have a later deadline, or 3) will be going home before that deadline, a trip to the town hall would be a good idea.

Cambodia invasions, John Mitchell, economic game plans, and four more years of Richard Nixon are not necessarily inevitable.

Cecily Miles

One of the barriers to consent taught in the mandatory Consent 301 is the existence of power dynamics between upperclassmen and underclassmen. An underclassmen’s ability to truly consent is complicated, and therefore problematized by the power differential between them and their older counterparts.

This is a problem which the College considers important for upperclassmen to be aware of, apparently so much so that it bears re-teaching. Consent 301, which had previously been piloted as optional, is now mandatory for third-years. The updated consent training workshops beginning this month are being held by the Title IX Office and the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and purport to help third-year students in their new positions as upperclassmen.

I think this is an issue that would benefit from deeper exploration in a series of more specialized or more comprehensive workshops. College consent education has rightly been criticized for operating on a false assumption that the all-too-prevalent violation of consent on campus is predominantly a matter of ignorance. It holds that most potential offenders have no intention of violating consent and will be prevented from doing so if given a more exact understanding of what consent entails, while ignoring the phenomenon of sexual assault as an act that is knowingly and willingly perpetrated.

This latter category should certainly be addressed more. Regarding the former, I think that a useful line of exploration would be into those situations in which consent is freely and actively given, yet, for reasons of which a participant might not be aware, is somehow dubious. While some might purposefully exploit these situations, I think that it is also plausible that a well-intentioned upperclassman might be both aware and respectful of the necessity of consent and that it must be uncoerced, yet ignorant of the ways in which certain other factors might influence potential partners to say yes when they wanted to say no.

The dynamic between upperclassmen and underclassmen could — and I would argue should — be taught thoroughly at the start of Oberlin students’ consent education. By making Consent 301 mandatory, the Title IX office and the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion are suggesting that it is insufficiently addressed in Consent 101. Despite this apparent shortcoming in the introductory course, this problem will not be immediately remedied when students begin their third year, either.

Rather, only half of incoming third years will receive their training in the fall, while the rest will receive it in the spring semester. The Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion even permits some students to defer their training to the first semester of their fourth year in case they are going abroad during the semester in which they are scheduled to attend.

This means that students whose training comes later will have already been upperclassmen for an entire semester or even a year before they receive sufficient training on how to deal with their newfound status. In creating this delay in the rollout of its training sessions, the College sends a conflicting message about their necessity. If Consent 301 is important enough to be mandatory, why allow students to go without it for so long? If it is not important enough to be a priority, why should students be expected to attend?

In the Consent 101 workshop I was required to attend in my first year, I remember a strong sense among students of being inconvenienced by having to take time out of their schedules. However, I never got the feeling that this had devolved — in myself or in my peers — into apathy. Consistent with Oberlin’s reputation as a school that values social justice and which has a student body that cares, we understood the importance of education regarding consent and the barriers that might inhibit it.

If the Title IX office and the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion want third-, fourth- and fifth-years to utilize their education on their unique relation to younger students, then it should be taught earlier: either it should be covered in better detail in Consent 101 or at the beginning of their third year. If Oberlin College wants students to be receptive to the workshops’ material and to take the time to attend the workshops at all, it should be unequivocal in communicating their importance. The school’s current policy detracts from that message.

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