A Sort-Of Detailed Guide to Doing Laundry at Oberlin College

The Pandemic Has Worsened Anti-Asian Sentiment, But it Isn’t New

Charlotte Glesner-Fischer

Last year, after the March 16 Atlanta spa shootings, I called my moms, two lovely white women living in a New Jersey suburb of New York. My voice breaking, I told them that I wasn’t sure that I wanted to come home because I feared being a victim of a hate crime. I admitted feeling both guilty and thankful that I had the privilege of being able to make choices to help protect my safety. When former President Donald Trump repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the “Chinese flu,” the “Chinese virus,” and “Kung flu,” he gave bigoted Americans the green light to spew horrible sentiments and physically attack the unluckiest among us. Both the media and our institutions seemed shocked at this rise in anti-Asian hatred. The AAPI community in the U.S. was not.

The first time I realized being Asian was more than just a difference in ethnicity was in kindergarten. A friend casually told me how thankful she was to not have a flat face like mine and I must feel lucky not to need glasses because if I did, they would just slide off my face as my nose was flat: “Omg, just like Voldemort’s!” I started wearing glasses less than two years later and chose transition lenses. They stayed on my nose and reduced the jokes about my thin, squinty eyes. In middle school, teachers would often call the Asian girls by each other’s names and, when the mistake was pointed out, brush it off. “Sorry, you two look alike.” We didn’t. Middle school and high school were a series of, “Of course you’re in advanced math, it comes naturally to Asians,” and “I should’ve known you play the violin.” Otherwise intelligent, liberal people seemed to believe that my life decisions and values were evident and predetermined simply because I was Asian.

As I grew older, interactions became more verbally intense, but thankfully never physically violent. I heard, “Go back to where you came from!” and I always wanted to reply, “I’m from New Jersey. Are Jersey people not welcome here because of the Jersey Shore show? If so, I get it, I really do.” But I was too afraid or embarrassed to do so. I eat my egg-bacon-and-cheese-on-a-bagelwith-salt-pepper-and-ketchup. I love pork roll (not Taylor ham). I support the Philadelphia Eagles and Phillies, never the New York Yankees but maybe sometimes the Mets. I love to go “down the shore,” and I can’t pump my own gas. In many ways, I’m a classic Jersey girl, so I am baffled by the focus on my appearance and the stereotypes that come along with that.

The United States is a country of immigrants, yet I have been asked countless times, “Where are you really from?” Every time, I hear, “You look Japanese or Chinese or Korean — I don’t know which — you basically all look the same.” The fact is that although I was born in China and lived there for nine months, I have lived in New Jersey for 20 years. I arrived with nothing but my birth certificate, a cow onesie, and the videos my mom filmed on an old camcorder. I want to say — but I don’t — that I am as American as you, who have given yourself the authority to call me out. Maybe I was not born here but I was definitely raised here; required to stand every morning for the Pledge of Allegiance and getting days off from school for President’s Day and Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. I don’t want to hear that you are “very into Asian women,” or that I am “really pretty for an Asian.” I find it annoying when you coo, “Come be my lil’ dumpling, my lil’ bowl of rice!” I hate it when you ask, “Do you eat dog? Are you going to eat your dog?”

I know that prejudice against Asians is not a new phenomenon in the United States. It is ingrained in the stereotype that Asians are the “model minority” and lousy at athletics and driving. It is heard in the fake accents used by comedians, employers, politicians, classmates, and strangers. It is seen when you enter an Asian neighborhood and walk through a gate of outdated “orientalist” decor. The difference today is that anti-Asian sentiment can be recorded on our phones and shared through social media and news outlets. This documentation and recognition of the prevalence of anti-Asian sentiment seems to have awakened in many Asian Americans and their allies the refusal to brush aside the hateful and hurtful comments and abuses and the heartbreaking acts of violence.

The reported 150–164 percent increase in reported hate incidents reveals that prejudice against Asians has become more prevalent and more public. Responding to the recent increase in recorded violent attacks, Congress passed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. However, this legislation is only a step in the action needed to combat anti-Asian sentiment, especially since it does not cover any incidents that do not classify as severe hate crimes.

The U.S. has an incredibly diverse Asian community, each with different countries of origin, family dynamics, immigration stories, involvement in ethnic culture, and more. This wide range of personal narratives should be celebrated and validated. Instead, individual experiences are lumped together. Asians outside of Asian countries have become the perfect chameleons. First-generation immigrants often do not teach their kids their native languages, preferring to focus on English. Asians have gotten too good at blending in and hiding — at not being seen for what they are in these environments: a minority. In China, parents want their kids to grow into dragons and phoenixes, not chameleons. It is time for Asians in America to strive to be dragons and phoenixes, to stand out and shine in their individuality. Hopefully, then, this prejudice and bias against Asians in the U.S. will come to an end.

A Sort-Of Detailed Guide to Doing Laundry at Oberlin College

Elle Giannandrea Columnist

I know laundry is a chore. I know that for most college students, doing laundry is at best, mundane, and at worst, a hassle. And I especially know that no matter what I write here, most people will go on using whatever laundry room was conveniently provided in their halls. I accept all of this, but I can’t help but feel as though something needs to be said.

There are laundry rooms on this campus that I consider disgusting. There are also laundry rooms on this campus that I really quite like. In the past two months, I have sampled a variety of facilities across campus and made note of which ones I consider superior. So, without further ado, here is a comprehensive summary of the laundry experience in Barrows, Noah, Kahn, Talcott, and South Halls.

My first foray into campus laundry was in Barrows, where I live. Our laundry room consists of three washers and dryers, which serve about 130 students. At first, I took no issue with this, and it wasn’t until I made the cataclysmic error of pulling back the black rubber gasket around the door of one of the washing machines that my troubles began. Lying in the chasm between the drum and door of the washer was a mat of hair bound together by the deformed remnants of lint, soap, and deteriorating bits of whatever it was students had forgotten to take out of their trouser pockets. I dealt with this on a psychological level by observing that when I ran the machine, my clothes rarely came close to the rubber band, and I dealt with this on a practical level by buying a big jar of sanitary wipes and wiping down the band and the inside of the door each time I put on a wash. About a month later though, I walked into the laundry room to find the radiator torn partially off the wall and a line of cigarette butts strewn across the floor. Thus began my journey to seek a better place to wash my clothes.

I first landed in Noah, where I happily did my laundry for the rest of the semester. Coming from Barrows, it was nice to have a larger array of washers and dryers, and even nicer to have a little sitting room in which to wait. Unfortunately, a friend of mine who lives in Noah eventually informed me that he wasn’t sure those washing machines were running hot water. I mentioned this to my mother one night on the phone, and she told me that if this was the case then the soap in my clothes probably wasn’t getting properly washed out. I tested her theory by taking a load of towels I had just washed and running them under some tap water. Sure enough, each towel rinse revealed a stream of water so soapy you could probably have used it to wash another batch of clothes. I haven’t been back since.

Kahn is the Four Seasons of firstyear, on-campus housing — the Ritz Carlton of Oberlin College. Although most of Kahn’s amenities are locked behind doors requiring Kahn-specific key cards, the door to the laundry room is, oddly, always propped open. Kahn is home to five dryers and four washers, all of which run warm water. As an

Illustration by Holly Yelton, Staff Cartoonist

added bonus, Kahn also has two metal poles on which you can hang your more delicate ensemble pieces to air-dry. The only issue with Kahn’s laundry room is that, due to the dorm’s rather large student population, it’s almost always full by midday. Sundays seem to be the busiest, with Saturday afternoons being the next-most popular time slot. However, if you are willing to start your laundry at some obscene hour of the day, it will be well worth it.

Talcott’s laundry room has the aura of a homey bomb shelter. The peeling yellow paint, withering sink bowl, and six-foot door frame all served to remind me of those shelters in people’s back gardens during WWII. Everything works, though. The room is surprisingly clean, as are the machines. Although the floor is made of concrete, the space didn’t feel damp or dusty, meaning that the only real issues with the room were aesthetic. If I can’t live in Talcott next year, I might still visit once or twice to wash my clothes.

I would rather eat dryer lint than do my laundry in South again. A strange smell hit me on the way down the basement stairs, then I found myself a souvenir in one of the washing machines: a Whip-It! whipped cream charger lodged firmly in the dreaded rubber gasket. Classy. The paint peeling at the walls and the slanted tile — slick with barely dried puddles forcing their way into swollen grout — made the space look like the bathroom in Saw. Apart from the cream charger, my second-favorite find was an unusable condom dispenser which had a single quarter stuck firmly in the top slot. I don’t think I will be returning any time soon, but if there are any budding microbiologists out there, I highly recommend swabbing one of the South Hall washers.

I know that it can be frustrating to deal with the monotony of a chore like laundry, especially when life demands your time and energy for a seemingly endless list of other things that need to be done first. I also know that making demands for the school to change the infrastructure of our laundry systems on campus would be laughable. So instead I encourage you to do something else: shop around. Take advantage of the numerous laundry facilities on this campus. Make laundry a routine that you enjoy. Keep the laundry rooms that you use clean and free of abandoned clothes. Seek inner peace. Write to your local congressperson. Become a martyr of your own deliverance. And for God’s sake, please remember to clean out the lint tray.