April 29, 2022

“There’s so much talent at the Conservatory [and] at the College, and the kids need another venue to play outside of the College,” Smith said.

Oberlin will also offer several community events with the start of the warmer season. During the sum mer, Second Saturdays will provide music, art, and ac tivities in the park on East College Street. Chalk Walk will allow community members and artists to make art on the sidewalk. Finally, Big Parade is currently sched uled for May 14 and will be opened by National Teacher of the Year Kurt Russell. According to Janet Haar, exec utive director of the Oberlin Business Partnership, the City wants to invigorate community life to increase en gagement with local businesses.

In addition to the arrival of the wine bar, a couple of established Oberlin businesses are moving and expand ing. The Arb at Tappan Square and Doobie’s Smoke Shop, both owned by Henry Smith, recently moved lo cations. The Arb has moved two units down the street into the former location of Agave Burritory, and Doo bie’s has moved from the basement to the main floor

“Of just those 10 people, they’ve used 14,000 miles out of 41,000 miles,” he said. “It was originally sold to us as something that would help the community, and right now, it doesn’t seem to be doing that.”

The City originally implemented the program April 1, 2021, after Oberlin City Council voted to approve it in 2020. At the time of the program’s approval, the City set up a payment plan of $223,000 to Sway over the course of five years.

“For the most part, our businesses are doing okay,” Haar said. “You know, it’s gonna take a while for them to completely recover and it has been fairly slow. We’re hoping, because there’s so much planned … in May and June downtown, that it’ll bring more people downtown and they’ll see more business.”

facebook.com/oberlinreviewoberlinreview.org TWITTER @oberlinreview INSTAGRAM @ocreview 02NEWSCONTENTSOTCwithOSCA Business Director Sundance 03 Oberlin City Schools Preschool Program Increases to Five Days a Week 05OPINIONSOberlinStudents Must Do More to Engage With Community 07 Oberlin’s Mask Policy Out of Touch, Losing Authority 08CONSERVATORYMusikosCollective Melds Art and 08THISMythWEEKFashionat Oberlin ARTS & CULTURE 10 Return of Colors of Rhythm Revitalizes Cherished Tradition 12 WOBC Staff, Board Hope to Revive Station Engagement 15SPORTSLucas Draper, Oberlin Diver Making a Name For Himself 16 Mr. Kurt Russell, More Than Just a History Teacher See Electric , page 3

The Oberlin Review

Nikki Keating Contributing News Editor

The Arb at Tappan Square and Doobies Smoke Shop have recently moved locations.

Sofia Tomasic Senior Staff Writer

Spring Brings Changes to Oberlin Business Scene, Community Events

Although he remains uncertain on some details, Waltzer plans for the wine bar to feature local foods and ingredients, starting with lighter items like cheese plates. Later on, he hopes to have a full kitchen staff ca pable of serving an expanded menu. Waltzer also wants to incorporate his extensive collection of cookbooks into the wine bar to inspire people to cook recipes that would pair well with the wine they purchase or to cook recipes originating from the same region as their wine.

Last week, Michael Peters, cofounder of electric carshare service Sway Mobility, presented data on the program’s use to the Oberlin City Council. The data revealed that the program has experienced low usage since its establishment in 2021 and that more College students than Oberlin residents have used the service, even though the program was intended to primarily support residents.

Since its move, The Arb has expanded its menu to include french fries, onion rings, mozzarella sticks, and fried chicken, and Smith plans to add weekly menus such as Fish Fridays and Taco Tuesdays later on. Addi tionally, The Arb has expanded its seating area since the move and is planning on opening an outdoor patio for the summer and hosting live music on the weekends.

April 29, 2022 The Oberlin Review | April 29, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 151, Number 19 1

The data also revealed that College students have made up the majority of program participants in the last year. Despite a survey prior to the program’s approval showing that 52 percent of Oberlin residents would be interested in using Sway, since the service’s implementation, 280 of the 339 total users are students while only 59 are community members. This disparity has sparked concern that the City is effectively subsidizing the program to the benefit of College students rather than the largerHowever,community.therecent data also appears to show that although more students have used the program, some Oberlin residents might use the program more consistently. 10 Oberlin residents are responsible for over 33 percent of the total miles driven on the cars in the past year. Still, Oberlin City Council Vice President Kelley Singleton, who voted against the implementation of the car service in 2020, does not feel that the program has serviced the broader community.

As Oberlin settles into spring, patrons at local business es can expect several changes downtown. A new busi ness will open soon in the former Black River Cafe, and The Arb at Tappan Square has changed locations and expanded its menu.

Waltzer’s liquor license application for the new es tablishment was presented to the Oberlin City Council earlier this month. He plans to open the wine bar once the license is approved, which he hopes will be before Commencement this year.

of the building it formerly shared with The Arb. This change helped facilitate an expansion of The Arb’s din ing“Theopportunities.inspiration behind the move for The Arb was because we were limited as far as kitchen space,” Smith said. “Now we have more amenities including a walk-in freezer, a hood with fryers, and a stove.”

Council Assesses Electric ProgramCarshare

Joe Waltzer, OC ’98, plans to open a wine bar estab lishment in the storefront that previously housed the Black River Cafe. Waltzer founded the Black River Cafe in 1998 after graduating from the College. In 2016, he leased the business to Michael Joseph, who ran the cafe until shutting it down in 2020.

“I’m gonna open up in a month or two, doing what will mostly resemble a wine shop where we’ll be having wine to go,” Waltzer said. “We’ll also serve wine by the glass on premise. … My hope is by the end of the summer to have more of a fuller concept of what I’m looking to do. . . . I’m not even sure exactly what it’s gonna look like. I’m giving it space to kind of grow.”

Peters’ update to the Council on how the program has fared over the past year demonstrated that the carshare program, which intended to cut down on carbon dioxide emissions as part of the City’s Climate Action Plan, has prevented 27,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

Smith hopes that The Arb can serve as a meeting place for students and community members, and he hopes to promote unity and vibrancy within the Oberlin community.“I’mfrom Oberlin and I’m proud to be from Oberlin and I just want to continue to make downtown a more peaceful and presentable place,” he said. “So that’s basi cally our focus as far as these businesses and Oberlin.”

“I saw the service as a way for Oberlin to reduce its carbon emissions while also providing affordable, flexible transportation for Oberlin residents who do not own or have access to a car,” Ray English, an Oberlin City Councilmember who voted in favor of the program in 2020, wrote in an email to the Review . “I was initially concerned that the service would not be workable for lower income residents because of high insurance deductibles. We were able to resolve that issue by increasing the amount of subsidy the city provided for the service.”

To use the car service, residents and students of Oberlin must schedule a time to use the car and pay $8 an hour. Most use the car to conduct

Photo by Abe Frato, Photo Editor

When we talk about the lack of understanding of Indigenous history in Ohio and how it is not really being taught, that is convenient for settlers. You hear people talk and say, “Well, you know, the Natives here gave up these lands by treaty,” as if they wanted to do so. Yes, they gave them up by treaty, under duress and after a century of fighting the British, the French, and the Americans. I don’t believe people put it in that context. It cannot be said that they gave up Ohio under any circumstance other than a forcible one, but when you maintain that mythology, it is convenient. It allows people in Ohio to say, “Well, we didn’t do anything wrong.” Oftentimes in the history book, there are no Native people in Ohio. They were all run out of Ohio. How convenient is that? Settlers move into a place where all Native people have already been run out by, let’s say, other Native people. So that’s one mythology, and then there’s a second mythology that goes

supervisors are the [OSCA] officers, the chair of the board, the membership secretary, and the president. My job is to work with them to help them do their jobs more efficiently and conveniently.

The Cleveland baseball team changed its name from the Indians to the Guardians last season. How is AIM moving forward from this victory?

I went to your presentation on the Indigenous History of Ohio a few weeks ago — how does your work at AIM influence these educational workshops and what do you hope they accomplish?

I help the students coordinate the business services of OSCA. I’m in an administrative position. My direct

Sundance, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) people, is the executive director of the Cleveland American Indian Movement and the business coordinator for the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association. On April 14, he was a panelist for a talk at the Allen Memorial Art Museum titled “Acknowledging the Land” in which he discussed the saliency of land acknowledgements for institutions that are located and operate on Indigenous land. In this conversation, Sundance talked about his activism against racist caricatures of Native people — such as the Cleveland baseball team’s former logo and mascot Chief Wahoo — as well as education about their history.

When did you start working for OSCA?

The Ohio Department of Education, back in July 2020, passed a resolution calling for equal opportunity for people of color and to get rid of discrimination in the school system. Nowhere in that resolution did they address the mascot issues. Last year, in 2021 in June or July, I think there was a resolution introduced at the state house to encourage school systems to transition away from these Nativereferenced sports teams. There was no teeth to that resolution, and as far as I know, it has not really gone anywhere. It took them several months just to get a cosponsor. So there’s a lot of work to be done. People in Ohio are under a number of illusions when it comes to Indigenous people. Conveniently enough for them, these illusions allow them to continue to practice the traditions that they have practiced for quite a while that have been discriminatory or harmful toward Indigenous people, and it allows them to do that with impunity.

Kush Bulmer News Editor Emeritus

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I was doing this type of work before I started working for OSCA. I’ve been in the role of executive director of AIM since 2007. It’s my 15th year. I like working with the students at Oberlin. I do a lot of work with students at a number of colleges, because there’s no real place where a person — educated or otherwise — can go to get a concise and thorough picture of what this place was like before settlers. As I said in my talk, there’s a lot of information out there and some of it is contradictory. Some of it only appears so because the context is not presented, or not presented appropriately. So basically college students, just like anybody else in Ohio, trying to get an understanding of the history of Indigenous people here can easily be misinformed.

It is a victory after approximately 50 years of demonstration. I am confident when I say it did not happen a moment too soon. How does that inform our work? Well, you know, there’s still a lot of work to be done in Ohio around sports mascots. Almost every county in Ohio has at least one

school district that has a secondary school with an “Indian” head mascot or logo or some name or some sort of symbol that references Indigenous people. So there’s a lot of work to be done. I am hoping that in the next few years or so we will be able to have our concerns addressed and taken seriously by the institutions in power in Ohio, which are ostensibly there to serve and protect us.

We did our first land acknowledgement at Oberlin—I am going to say that might have been 2004. I think it was the last time that the College had a functioning Native American Alliance on campus. I think at that point it became apparent that the Native people on campus really wanted to connect with Native people in the community. And so, we’d been trying to do that for Native people who come through all the way simply because we understand how difficult it is to be here and not have a community around you.

Courtesy of Sundance

OSCA Business Director Sundance Discusses His Role in OSCA, Oberlin Indigenous History

Sundance

Yeah. Not very much credence has been given to that story, although the person who related that to the Board of Trustees—I believe it was in 1845—has a building named after him. We’re talking about John Keep. So, the fact that he is honored in every other respect, but that respect remains hidden, calls into question the basis of the founding of Oberlin. When you put it into the context of the surrounding area, Lorain County had a lot of Indigenous people. There were people who came every spring through fall from Sandusky to hunt in this area. Many of them were driven out of this area by settlers who said that they were taking too many deer, hunting too much, thinking that this stuff just belongs to them and they can do whatever they want to. It is not a stretch of the imagination to think that Native people run out of one area, knowing that there is a road going to this area — what is now Oberlin — that no one is occupying. The predominance of historians who

See Sundance , page 4

I’ve been with OSCA for a long time. I believe I started working with OSCA in 2004 as a system administrator. I was in that role for quite some time. When the business coordinator position became available in 2016 I stepped into that role, and that’s where I’ve been ever since.

There’s this myth that Oberlin, from its founding, has been a sort of racial utopia. Works such as “Elusive Utopia” by former professors Carol Lasser and Gary John Kornblith have shown that really it wasn’t, despite the fact that the College began admitting Black students and women in its early years. In your talk you mentioned that during Oberlin’s founding there were peripheral accounts that somewhere on the southwest corner of Tappan Square — probably where King Building is now located — there was evidence of Indigenous presence?

along with that: these sports teams are somehow honoring us because there happened to be at one point in time, back in the late 1800s, a Native person who played baseball in Cleveland. I’m sure there were other ethnicities that played baseball in Cleveland, but you don’t hear that as an excuse for saying the Cleveland Jews or the Cleveland Italians or any sort of other ethnicity, because of course when you put it in that perspective, that’s completely ridiculous. But somehow ridiculousness is the norm when it comes to talking about Indigenous people.

News 2 The Oberlin r eview To submit a correction, managingeditor@oberlinreview.org.email Published by the students of Oberlin College every Friday during the fall and spring semesters, except holidays and examination periods. Advertising rates: $18 per column inch. Second-class postage paid at Oberlin, Ohio. Entered as second-class matter at the Oberlin, Ohio post office April 2, 1911. POSTMASTER SEND CHANGES TO: Wilder Box 90, Oberlin, Ohio 44074-1081. Office of Publication: Burton Basement, Oberlin, Ohio 44074. Phone: (440) 775-8123 April 29, 2022 Volume 151, Number 19 (ISSN 297–256) Editors-in-Chief Anisa Curry KushagraVietzeKar Managing Editor Gigi Ewing News Editors Ella Moxley Lauren Krainess Cont. News Editor Nikki Keating Opinions Editors EmmaEmilyBenardeteVaughan Arts Editors Lilyanna D’Amato Kathleen Kelleher Sports Editor Zoe Kuzbari Cont. Sports Editors John Elrod Zoë Martin del Campo Conservatory Editor Walter Thomas-Patterson Photo Editors KhadijahAbeHallidayFrato This Week Editor Wiley Smith Senior Staff Writers Adrienne Sato Sofia MeganJulianaTomasicGasparMattRudellaMcLaughlin Sierra Colbert Web Manager Ada Ates Production Manager Lia Fawley Production Staff Katie Kunka Claire Brinley SumnerEllaYuhkiWallaceUedaIsaacImasKaylaKimBernsteinTrevorSmith Layout Editors Grace Gao AdrienneMollyErinHooverKooChapin Illustrators Clair Wang Holly Yelton Distributor Thomas Xu

OFF THE CUFF

According to Robert Rinehart, OCS treasurer and chief financial officer, OCS hopes that the additional day of preschool will better complement working parents’

3

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

College second-year Emma Rekate also believes she suffered an unjust penalty when she used the carshare service.“There was one time I rented it out ’cause me and my friends wanted to go thrifting for a couple hours,” she

Despite the increased cost associated with expanding the program, Rinehart also stated that he has no concerns for OCS financing the program’s increase.“Currently, the district is doing well [financially],” he said. “The community has been very supported by renewing our income tax and our tech levy.”

errands or short drives, and users who damage the car or use the car past their scheduled time incur penalties.Forstudents, many of whom do not own cars, temporary access to a vehicle allows for the opportunity to run errands that fall outside of walking distance or explore northeastern Ohio, potentially explaining why so many students have used the carshare program. This service might be especially enticing for students since the College’s ride-sharing service shut down during the pandemic and has not reopened since. However, although a significant number of students have used the program, some have encountered issues with the service.“We ended up getting to the car and [had] some difficulty trying to get into the car,” College firstyear Calvin McMurtrey said. “Once we got it finally set up and ready to go, it said that the car only had 45 miles left on it. … We were planning on taking it into Cleveland, which would’ve been a 55-mile round trip. [The car] just wasn’t provided with the charge to get where we needed to go.”

7:20 a.m. An officer unlocking the Wright Laboratory of Physics heard alarms sounding in the building, which were confirmed to be from an activated smoke detector. An employee working in the area activated the alarm from dust while working on a rusty metal pipe. Oberlin Fire Department members responded and the alarm was reset.

“A few of the parents wanted to be part of our preschool program but they said that the schedule hindered that,” Baker said. “We are not a childcare facility — we’re a preschool. However, we have to realize that by being a preschool, [we] do allow for parents to be able to work. … So, we had to really start thinking about it this year.”

“The thing with Oberlin is yes, we’re a city, but we’re barely a city… it’s not a bustling metropolis, so yes… this to me seems like it’s a nice idea and it’d probably work in a bigger place,” Singleton. “We just don’t have the population to back a program like this.”

“We just felt that it was the right thing to do to help out families,” Rinehart said.

1:51 p.m. Campus Safety officers observed that the lettering on the “Welcome to Campus Safety” sign located in the lobby of the Campus Safety Office displayed profanity. Officers removed the profanity.

Sunday, April 24, 2022

said. “When we got in the car, I noticed there was sand on the ground from whoever was there previously. I returned the car in the exact way [we found it] and they … charged me $50. They’re like, ‘Oh, you left this car dirty and everything.’ But I’m like, ‘We didn’t even go to a place where there was sand.’”

10:19 a.m. A student who was not feeling well requested transport from Bailey House to Mercy Allen Hospital. The student was later transported back to their dorm.

9:01 p.m. A custodial manager reported that four individuals in a white Nissan Versa were shouting obscenities and firing paintballs at the Kohl Building and Conservatory areas. The vehicle left the area and headed southbound from the parking lot. Officers and the Oberlin Police Department responded and searched the area, but could not locate the individuals. There were no injuries reported.

Even though the City has a five year agreement with SWAY, the contract renews every year, so the City has an option to end the program early if the Council agrees to reevaluate its involvement with SWAY. At this time there are no official plans to re-evaluate the program.

Juliana Gaspar Senior Staff Writer

12:09 a.m. Students walking on Elm Street near South Hall reported to Campus Safety that a suspicious vehicle possibly followed them before entering South Hall. An officer responded and met with the students while a second officer searched the area and located a vehicle matching the description belonging to a delivery person. The officers transported the students to their residence.

OCS will offer two programs five days a week. The Integrated Preschool Program offers half day programs for students on Individualized Education Plans, and the Early Childhood Education Grant Program offers a full day program with class sizes of up to 20 students.

4:41 a.m. The Oberlin Police Department called Campus Safety, informing them of a request they received for an ambulance to South Hall. Officers responded and a student who was not feeling well was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment. The student was later transported back to their dorm.

Oberlin City Schools Preschool Program Increases to Five Day Week

According to Baker, OCS will continue to cover the majority of the preschool program’s cost for lowincome families who apply for the Early Childhood Education Grant, despite the additional day.

Security Notebook

Continued from page 1

“We have two preschool teachers [and] we have part-time paraprofessionals,” Baker said. “So by doing this [new schedule], hopefully we’ll be able to have full-time paraprofessionals. They’ll be able to stay with the classrooms Monday through Friday for the fullParentsday.” interested in the five-day program can look on the OCS website or attend OCS family literacy night May 12 for more information. Parents can also register their children for the preschool program at this event.

Electric Carshare Program Fails to Generate Community Ridership

8:02 p.m. Officers and Oberlin Fire Department members responded to a reported smell of smoke at Barnard House. Officers, Oberlin Fire Department members, and an electrician responded and detected an electrical burning smell, at which time the pull station was activated. The cause of the odor was found to be a melted electronic men’s shaving razor. The alarm was silenced and reset.

schedules and make up for the in-person experiences students lost due to the pandemic.

After reevaluating, OCS has decided to add an additional day of preschool to meet demand this year.

The Oberlin Review | April 29, 2022

“[The ECE Grant will] probably stay the same,” she said. “We offer … the grants that parents need.”

11:03 a.m. Mercy Allen Hospital staff requested a transport for a student from the hospital to their offcampus residence on Lorain Street. The student was transported back to their residence.

Thursday, April 21, 2022

The program’s additional day also will require OCS to hire more staff members, opening up the opportunity for OCS to hire full-time paraprofessionals and support staff. OCS Preschool currently only has parttime paraprofessionals, and according to Baker, the hiring of full-time paraprofessionals would provide more support for full-time teachers and more learning experiences for the children.

Oberlin City Schools recently announced that it would expand its preschool program from four to five days a week.

Baker echoed Rinehart, expressing hopes that the program’s increase to five days a week will offer OCS students greater educational and social opportunities and give children a better foundation to prepare for kindergarten.“Aswelook at some of our students who are coming into kindergarten, some of them did not have preschool,” she said. “[This program] helps build that social-emotional part, the taking turns, and the schedule. So this [increase] will allow us to build a little bit of that stamina, like getting their schedule acclimated to that five days a week.”

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

11:05 a.m. A student reported the theft of the catalytic converter from their vehicle which was parked in Woodland Street parking lot. The Oberlin Police Department was informed.

Monday, April 25, 2022

Last week, Oberlin City Schools announced that it will expand its preschool program from four days a week to five for the 2022–23 academic year. OCS officials hope this decision will grant children greater educational opportunities and offer parents increased timeAccordingflexibility.to Oberlin Elementary School Principal Meisha Baker, when preschool registration for the 2021–22 school year began last year, some families questioned why OCS did not offer a five-day program. These concerns prompted OCS to reevaluate community needs regarding its preschool program.

Illustration by Holly Yelton

Given that the program does not appear to serve the Oberlin community holistically, Singleton believes that the City could make better use of its Sustainable Reserve Fund, which funds the carshare program, to improve transit options or decrease carbon emissions. Suggestions for redirecting these funds include funding programs like the Oberlin Connector, which provides transit services to Cleveland or replacing city vehicles with electric cars.

Burgess is already thinking about specific proposals to rezone properties in Oberlin based on recommendations from the Oberlin Planning Commission. He also mentioned proposals to rezone Eastwood Elementary School to allow Oberlin College to use the building for academicBurgesspurposes.isalso

Continued 2

“I’m hoping that we can get more public involvement again,” he said. “Prior to COVID-19, it was common to have a full audience in the council chambers. … It’s very helpful to have public feedback, and Council has had hardly any in the past two years.”

Adelman has previously promoted sustainability at the College as the cofounder of The Oberlin Project, which focused on conservation and education in both the College and the community. With this knowledge of both Oberlin’s town and College communities, Adelman hopes to help College students create projects and pursue passions within sustainability that will benefit the larger community.

COVID-19 cases are slowly rising again in Ohio. Between April 1 and April 28, the state recorded 20,759 new cases, 585 hospitalizations, and 55 deaths. There has been a daily average of 1,247 cases. Lorain County has reported 808 cases, 17 hospitalizations, and no deaths. More Ohioans are getting vaccinated — 63 percent of residents have received their first dose and 58 percent are fully vaccinated.

Since Singleton could not fill the position, the council held an election during its meeting last week, unanimously electing former City Council President Bryan Burgess into the position. However, Burgess

COVID-19 Update

As of April 19, 95.5 percent of students, 97 percent of faculty, and 91.1 percent of staff have received their booster.

Adelman Leaves City Council, Transitions to College

Adelman had served as a member of the council since 2018 and as president of the council since January. Every two years, the City Council elects seven members who internally elect the Council’s leadership for that term. Adelman resigned in the middle of her two-year term, leaving the Council to find a new member and elect a new president. Traditionally, when the Council’s president resigns, the vice president serves as president until the next election. However, according to current City Council Vice President Kelley Singleton, he did not feel he had enough time to take on the position.

optimistic about facilitating more interaction between College students and the Council.

cover the founding of the College do not mention that. I mean, that’s typical. I found this fact in two places. One was in Historical Collections of Ohio , written by Henry Howe in 1847. The book quoted a Cleveland newspaper clipping which mentioned the Indian encampment in Oberlin. The only other place that I have found it in the histories I have read is in a footnote. So it seems to me that it is likely not apocryphal, as so many stories happen to be — including some about Oberlin — especially because John Keep was very specific about where everything was.

It raises some questions as to why the people involved early on would go so far as to cover it up. And perhaps that’s too strong of a word. Perhaps they weren’t covering up — perhaps they just didn’t care. Nothing to cover up if you don’t care. Easy enough not to mention if you don’t really put any credence in the fact that there is evidence here.

After Adelman’s arrival, OES will have one remaining vacancy in the assistant vice president of energy management and sustainability role last held by Meghan Riesterer.

Campus Energy & Resource Manager Joel Baetens is looking forward to the new perspectives that Adelman, along with other future hires, will bring.

Another thing that I find interesting is that they use the phrase “unbroken wilderness” repeatedly, and in almost all their accounts. To me, that always

that to the Paiute prophet Wovoka, who invented the ghost dance back in the 1800s. He had grown up in some respects with a white family and had a lot of peers who were settlers when he was in his teen years, who knew him into his adulthood. What I found when I was looking at the notes taken by the author of the biography of Wovoka was that the people who “knew” him were trying to defame him. They all used basically the same words; these common phrases keep popping out. And to me, that marked a concerted effort to construct a narrative that might not otherwise exist, or perhaps to reinforce a narrative that does exist. When a person wants to reinforce a narrative that does exist, in my experience, they tend to do that in their own words. When they are trying to construct a narrative that does not exist, you pick up on the knee-jerk phrases. So, you know, “unbroken forest” is not a knee-jerk

Sundance on Indigenous Historical Narratives, Cleveland Baseball Name Change, and Future Activism

Ihere.compare

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Adelman obtained a B.A. in Environmental Studies at San Jose State University and has worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco, where she focused on waste management

“Yes, traditionally or by rule, I would normally have taken that position, but I cannot,” Singleton said. “I don’t have the time to do it. I have a full-time job and a family, two young boys. I do not have the time that the City deserves and that the Council [deserves].”

Between April 10 and April 28, the College administered 950 PCR tests and 170 rapid tests. There were two positive PCR tests, 49 positive rapid tests, and 134 positive self-reported tests.

Kayla Kim Production Editor Ella Moxley News Editor

“Heather will be filling the position that was last held by Bridget Flynn — Campus Sustainability Manager,” Baetens wrote in an email to the Review. “Structurally, not much is changing. However, with fresh faces and new perspectives, there are great benefits.”

On April 21, ObieSafe removed the mask mandate in residence halls. One day later, they reinstated the mask mandate due to a rise in cases following spring break trips and “at least one social event hosted in a student apartment.” Under the revised guidelines, indoor dining is still allowed and student-athletes can practice as a team without masks.OnApril 27, ObieSafe announced that due to “dramatically fewer cases being reported,” it would provide two exemptions from the mask mandates. Conservatory brass and wind instrument players can use performance masks with daily rapid testing, and Theater students can perform maskless, also with daily rapid testing.

Juliana Gaspar Senior Staff Writer

“My understanding is that I’ll be working with and mentoring a number of interns,” Adelman said. “I am really excited to work with students not just on what the Office of Environmental Sustainability wants, but what [the students themselves] want and how those two priorities can mesh together to really come up with some powerful projects.”

phrase, but it is a phrase that was used repeatedly by people describing Oberlin and its founding, which in my mind raises some questions at the very least.

Former Oberlin City Council President Heather Adelman joined Oberlin College as its new sustainability manager Monday. To avoid a conflict of interest, Adelman announced her resignation from City Council April 6 and formally left her role April 24. Last week, the council elected Bryan Burgess to assume the presidency and fulfill Adelman’s previous role.

NewsNews 4

On March 10, the Ohio Department of Health announced that it would end daily reporting of COVID-19 cases and move to weekly reporting every Thursday. On April 15, Governor Mike DeWine tested positive for COVID-19. DeWine experienced mild symptoms and was treated with a monoclonal antibody treatment.

Moderna announced Thursday that it was seeking emergency authorization for a vaccine for children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years. There is currently no COVID-19 vaccine available for this age group. If approved by the FDA, 18 million children would become eligible for a vaccine.

explained that he is uncertain how long he will remain in the role because he is running for the State House in the fall. He is set to compete in the Democratic primary for Ohio’s 56th district’s house seat May 3.

and building community. As she transitions into her new position, Adelman is looking forward to reentering the sustainability field.

We are discussing whether or not to have a demonstration down at Progressive Field on opening day. The Cleveland baseball team is no longer the Indians; they are officially the Guardians. The question is whether or not people want to continue that as sort of a bully pulpit, to inform people of issues that Indigenous people face, or whether we should focus on other avenues. On our website, there is a letter that people can sign to send to their state representative or state senator asking them to support legislation to remove Indigenous sports mascots from the school systems. We’re beginning to prepare for Indigenous People’s day, but that’s not for another few months. I’m talking at the Massillon Museum April 28, which is in tandem with poet laureate Joy Harjo’s visit.

raised suspicions. When historians choose a term that they all just repeat ad nauseam, that’s another indication that maybe there’s a little cover-up going on

Ohio Updates

“I’m running for the Ohio State House, and depending on how the mapping process goes … I may or may not be elected this fall,” Burgess said. “I couldn’t tell you if I’m going to be council president for the next eight months or the next 20. The City has lots of projects going on that I will gladly shepherd for the next few months.”

Are there any upcoming demonstrations or events that people should know about?

Oberlin College Updates

While Burgess has started his new position as president, Adelman has entered her new role as sustainability manager at the College.

There are, of course, passive benefits of having approximately 3,000 excited young adults in the community. For example, students contribute to the economy when they purchase from local businesses and pay the sales tax on their purchases, some of which goes to the town. Every student worker pays Ohio income tax — while that doesn’t go toward the City, it certainly makes us active participants in the state economy. The College is an important local employer, and our administrators consider that a major enough responsibility to document and emphasize in the One Oberlin report. A byproduct of having a thriving Conservatory is the year-round concerts that students and community members alike can attend, not to mention plays, festivals, dance showcases, and a variety of other cultural events. While it is true that most, if not all, of these events occur for the sake of the College, everyone in the community can derive benefit.

Ohio’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill Highlights Ideological Tensions

Forneeds.some City Council representatives, this fact stands to reason that the College should carry the financial burden of the program. This issue is a microcosm of a broader pattern in Oberlin’s internal dynamics — the more the College takes from the local community, the less it gives in return. As with any debate of this sort, people aren’t just thinking about the imme diate conflict: they’re thinking about decades of context.

Lebowitz. During the Q&A session, someone asked her about her opinion on the growing number of “Don’t Say Gay” bills being introduced around the country. In response, she recount ed a story from her life as a teenager growing up in the ’60s. She told us that she had a high school English teach er who assigned her class The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. She read the book in one sitting that night, only to come to school the next day to find that the teacher had been fired for his choice of curriculum. She said that there was no question that the school had fired him because he chose to teach Wilde and was consequently assumed to be gay. On one hand, her story made me consider the extent of the progress that has been made in less than a century, and on the other, it made me realize how much we have to lose. If there’s one thing I hope will result from this wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, it’s that young people will see how dangerous it can be to take progress for granted.

OPINIONS EdItOrS

Emma Benardete Emily Vaughan

SUBMISSIONS POLICY

5 OPINIONS The Oberlin Review | April 29, 2022 April 29, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 151, Number 19 OPINIONS

See Progress, page 7

Oberlin Students Must Do More to Engage With Community

Insteadbetter.of settling for the passive benefit that we expect to have on the community, we can and should exert intentional effort to listen to the needs of our neighbors and work to ameliorate them. We need to organize around this community that supports and welcomes us through the years we spend here.

EdItOr I al BOard

Elle Giannandrea Columnist

Anisa Curry Vietze Kushagra Kar MaNagINg EdItOr Gigi Ewing

Like most legislative responses to the culture war, Bill 616 is an expression of fear and a feeling of loss of control. Giv en the historical assumption that the American education system would cater to an American sensibility — a conserva tive American sensibility — the notion that students might be asked to consider the flaws of their country is deeply dis turbing and threatening.

Earlier this month, Ohio Republican representatives Mike Loychik and Jean Schmidt introduced House Bill 616, broadly known as Ohio’s own version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. The bill would ban “any curriculum or instruc tional materials on sexual orientation or gender identity” as well as scholas tic material “that promotes any divisive or inherently racist concept,” including “Critical race theory, Intersectional the ory, the 1619 project, diversity, equity, and inclusion learning outcomes, and inherited racial guilt.” This move follows in the steps of a series of anti-LGBTQ+ educational legislation being introduced in states across the country.

In a statement regarding the bill, Schmidt argued that “parents deserve and should be provided a say in what is taught to their children in schools. The intent of this bill is to provide them with the tools to be able to see what their child is being taught.” Obviously, I dis agree with this. Not just because I be lieve the intent of this bill has more to do with censorship than transparency, but also because I do not believe that “par ents deserve and should be provided a say in what is taught to their children in schools.” In fact, I believe that this senti ment completely negates one of the pri mary functions of education: progress.

As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the College is not required to pay property taxes on the huge swathes of land that it owns. Sprawled over more than two million square feet of land, the physical footprint of Oberlin College is undeniably large for an institution of its size. Without a doubt, that also makes Oberlin the largest landowner in the City. According to a 2015 article published in the Review, then-City Council member Kristin Peterson claimed that the College would pay roughly $4.4 million in property taxes each year were it not for this exemption. When that article was written, student activists were pushing for the College to make a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with the City, essentially with the aim of pay ing back to the City what the College would otherwise save. No such agreement was made.

The Monday after spring break, I went into Cleveland with a couple of friends to see a talk by author Fran

EdItOrS IN-ChIEf

Conversations around “town-gown” relationships in Oberlin resurface every few years — most recently in the form of the carshare program paid for by the City. As reported in the Review this week, the ratio of College students to community members using the program is heavily unbalanced. Of the 339 total users, 280 are students while only 59 are community members. City Council decided to subsidize the service specifically so that it would be more accessible for low-income residents. Two years later, however, some members feel that the demographics of carshare use mean that the City is essentially financing students’ transpor tation

The Editorial Board encourgages anyone interested in submitting an Opinions piece to email the Opinions editors at opinions@oberlinreview.org to request a copy of the Opinions primer. Opinions expressed in editorials, letters, op-eds, columns, car toons, and other Opinions pieces do not necessarily reflect those of The Oberlin Re view staff. Submission of content to the Review constitutes an understanding of this publication policy. Any content published by The Oberlin Review forever becomes the property of The Oberlin Review and its administrators. Content creators retain rights to their content upon publication, but the Review reserves the right to repub lish and/or refuse to alter or remove any content published by the Review. It is up to Senior Staff’s discretion whether to alter content that has already been published. The Oberlin Review appreciates and welcomes letters to the editors and op-ed sub missions. All submissions are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. All submissions must be received by Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. in the Opinions email for inclusion in that week’s issue. Full-length pieces should be between 600 and 900 words; letters to the editor should be less than 600 words. All submissions must in clude contact information, with full names and any relevant titles, for all signato ries; we do not publish pieces anonymously. All letters from multiple writers should be carbon-copied to all signatories to confirm authorship. The Review reserves the right to edit all submissions for clarity, length, grammar, accuracy, and strength of argument, and in consultation with Review style. Editors work to preserve the voice of the writers and will clear any major edits with authors prior to publication. Head lines are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. The Review will not print advertisements on its Opinions pages. The Review defines an advertisement as any submission that has the main intent of bringing direct monetary gain to a contrib utor or otherwise promoting an event, organization, or other entity to which the author has direct ties.

I would, however, like to consider at least one comforting thought. I believe the very fact that these bills are being put forward across the country means that there already exists a cultural force to push back against. Bill 616 is an expression of fearful ignorance. The fact that legislators feel that their ide ology needs to be put into law in order to take effect in society means that we are witnessing a culture attempting to resist the ideology of bigotry. This isn’t to say that bills like 616 aren’t cause for concern — on the contrary, what we face now is the beginning of a battle against right-wing propaganda and its followers.Luckily, there are plenty of people already fighting the good fight. An ABC News/Ipsos poll found that “more than 6 in 10 Americans oppose legislation

What we need now are more active measures that can be taken to support and give back to the community. There are a few ways in which we’re already doing this. For example, Ober lin High School students are eligible for College courses and scholarships, and the Bonner Center for Service and Learning has a number of community based work-study programs that assign College students as tutors in the high school. A number of students also work for local businesses or volunteer their time for various cleanup, charity, and educational events. These are just a handful of ways that we engage with the community directly, and we want to encourage students to explore more of these opportunities. Students can volunteer with Oberlin Community Services, an organization that provides food, financial assistance, and other resources to low-income and vulnerable people in the Oberlin community. Students who speak Spanish can participate in the Spanish in the Elementary Schools program by teaching kids introductory-level Spanish. Really, the potential for community work is limit less in our little town.

Then there is the undeniable burden of the College on municipal resources. For example, every fire alarm set off because of a burnt bag of popcorn, callously cooked piece of meat, or faulty smoke detector results in a strain on the Oberlin Fire Department. Fuel and labor hours aside, the inherent inability of the fire brigade to tend to everything at once means that every bit of attention directed toward students is attention taken away from the City. Consid er also that the College doesn’t participate in the opt-in recycling program offered by the City. Aside from institutional burdens on the municipality of Oberlin, the student community also does its fair share of disruption in local life. From loud parties in residential neighborhoods to shoplifting from local stores — and no, we’re not referring to the whole Gibson’s fiasco — students can demonstrate a lack of consideration for the rest of the Oberlin community. Between the long-standing institution of the College and the changing whims of its student body, we are impacting the operations of the municipality in negative ways, and it’s about time we confront that truth.

The fact is, by virtue of migrating to this town from all over the country and the world, some part of us belongs here. As students, we’re welcomed, celebrated, and cherished by this community, and that alone means we have a responsibility to its people. Yes, we carry a legacy of a less-than-helpful impact on the town, but that only means we should try harder to do

Nan Whaley Should Be Ohio’s Next Governor I Endorse Tim Ryan and John Cranley for Senate and Governor

For example, Whaley’s 21st Century Jobs Plan includes policy points like increasing state minimum wage to $15 per hour, banning non-compete clauses in employment con tracts, and increasing penalties for wage theft. These poli cies will move power into the hands of everyday Ohioans to ensure that they are being paid a fair, livable wage.

Among Cranley’s proposals is the legalization of mar ijuana and the use of resulting tax revenue to invest in 30,000 well-paying jobs in roads, broadband, and energy. While it is unclear whether such a proposal would pass through the Ohio legislature, given the popularity of the policy among Ohio voters (50.4 percent approved and 39.7 percent were opposed or undecided as of February 2022), it is possible that the policy might be adopted via direct ballot.Moreover, as Republicans fight against expansions on the success of the Affordable Care Act, John Cranley is proposing bringing a federally qualified health center to each of Ohio’s 88 counties, an act that would help to curb Ohio’s opioid crisis and mental health challenges within the population.

Any of the Democrats running to succeed Senator Port man would vote in alignment with the Democratic Party’s substantive agenda and would vote to confirm the Biden administration’s judicial nominees. Tim Ryan is best posi tioned to have the opportunity to do so.

Whaley comes into the race with a record of enacting strong liberal policies during her time as mayor of Dayton. In 2016, under her leadership, Dayton began offering uni versal free pre-K, which was later touted as a possible mod el for the Biden administration. Whaley has pledged that, if elected, she will expand the program to include all Ohio families. Besides preparing kids for kindergarten in a state where almost 60 percent of students do not demonstrate preparedness, the program would also give parents with preschool-age children the option to return to work after the pandemic. While Cranley’s running mate, State Sena tor Teresa Fedor, introduced legislation in the statehouse to provide universal pre-K, Cranley has yet to say whether he supports the initiative.

Congressman Ryan was unsuccessful in con veying his blue-collar message to voters in the 2020 presidential primary, on his Senate campaign he has traveled to all 88 counties of Ohio, talking at length about the importance of wages and job creation, a fo cus that has earned him the support of Senator Sherrod Brown. Indeed, Senator Brown said, “With Tim Ryan and I in the Senate, we’ll be the most pro-worker team in the United States Senate, bar none.”

The Senate vacancy created by the surprise retirement of Senator Rob Portman creates a vital opportunity for the Democratic Party to gain a majority in the senate. However, Democrats face an uphill battle in doing so: inflation concerns, a longstanding national trend against the incumbent party in midterm elections, and the increasingly red state of Ohio.

Courtesy of The San Diego Union-Tribune

This campaign thus demands a candidate who can speak to blue-collar workers whose economic security has been compromised amid the unemployment and underemployment associated with the COVID-19 pan demic. It demands a Senate candidate who can speak to the bread-and-butter issues facing Ohioans across the state, rather than one who will to right-wing attempts to dominate the discourse with fabricated culture wars.

majority. And while Senator Portman has certainly toed the party line, the winner of the Republican Senate prima ry will likely be someone who still, well over a year later, refuses to accept the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.Thiselection

Nan Whaley has a chance to make history in this battle over the governorship. Neither major party has ever nom inated a woman for governor. She has already obtained the coveted endorsement from Senator Sherrod Brown, as well as from Planned Parenthood. One question though is whether Ohio, in this time of hyperpartisanship and heightened conservatism, is ready for an all-female Demo cratic ticket. It might well be, but it may not be worth tak ing the chance.

Gubernatorial candidates Nan Whaley and John Cranley appear onstage during a primary debate

One of the most critical things that can come out of this race, especially given the likely overturn of Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court, is having a governor who is entirely sup portive of reproductive freedoms. While Cranley has come under fire for only recently becoming pro-choice, Whaley has supported reproductive freedoms her entire political career. She has pledged to veto any anti-abortion legislation that may land on her desk and to appoint a pro-choice direc tor to the Ohio Department of Public Health.

Not only does Whaley have a solid track record and for ward-looking policy plans for the state, but she has also managed to garner an impressive list of endorsements. She has secured the endorsements of Senator Sherrod Brown, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, Dayton Mayor Jeffrey J. Mims Jr., former Cincinnati Mayor Dwight Tillery, 27 cur rent and former state representatives, and four state senators, amounting to more than half of the Democrats in the Ohio legislature. She has also been endorsed by a number of local, statewide, and national organizations, including Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, EMILY’s List, the Matriots PAC, Cleveland Heights Democrats, Cleveland Stonewall Democrats, and Cincinnati Women’s Political Caucus. Here in Lorain County, she has secured the endorsement of the County Democratic Chair Anthony Giardini. And speaking of endorsements — or lack thereof — Whaley boasts an F rating from the National Rifle Association.

Whoever wins the gubernatorial primary will face an uphill battle in securing the governorship, which has been controlled by the Republican Party since 2011. The task at hand is to choose the most electable candidate who will have the opportunity to either advance their progressive agenda or, more realistically, effectively put the brakes on an extremist agenda working its way through the legisla ture. That candidate is John Cranley.

Whaley has presented sensible and progressive policy plans, and she has demonstrated strong leadership and a willingness to work across the aisle in her time as the mayor of Dayton and in her gubernatorial campaign. It is for these reasons that I urge you to vote Nan Whaley for governor in Tuesday’s primary.

Emma Benardete Opinions Editor

That candidate is Congressman Tim Ryan, the Dem ocratic representative of Ohio’s 13th congressional dis trict.While

Miranda Yaver Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics

Ohio’s elections this year will largely depend on which candidates can best appeal to working- and middle-class constituents. The child of a middle-class family from Indi ana and the only non-millionaire in the gubernatorial race on either side of the aisle, Whaley has made this a top pri ority in her campaign. One of the catchphrases of her cam paign is “I want your pay to go up, your bills to go down, and your government to work for you.” Whaley has released de tailed plans across a variety of policy areas, all of which will immensely benefit working-class families in Ohio.

On the other side of the Senate election is a prima ry filled with candidates aiming first and foremost to out-MAGA one another, with J.D. Vance claiming the coveted endorsement of former president Donald Trump and while also clinching the lead in the polls from Josh Mandel. Both candidates would pose a set back not just for the state of Ohio as they prioritize manufactured crises over real-world problems, but also to the nation as President Biden pursues his social and economic agendas and seeks to fill judicial vacancies that will likely remain empty with a Republican Senate

But ultimately, this Senate race is not about a sevenyear-old stance on abortion or guns (in a state that likes its guns). It is about who can win in November.

Ohioans are also faced with a hotly contested guberna torial primary in the effort to unseat Republican Governor Mike DeWine, who is also facing challenges from the right, in large part in response to his public health measures to curb the spread of COVID-19. Democrats have before them two highly qualified candidates: John Cranley, for mer mayor of Cincinnati and co-founder of the Ohio Inno cence Project, and Nan Whaley, former mayor of Dayton.

is not about policy. It is about democracy.

6 Opinions

Whaley has also built strong relationships with local, state, and national leaders during her tenure as the presi dent of the United States Conference of Mayors, a bipartisan coalition of mayors of cities with populations over 30,000. During her year-long term, she helped to organize mayors across the country to lobby for President Joe Biden’s bipar tisan infrastructure bill and represented the conference at the bill’s signing in November.

Editors’ Note: The author of this op-ed completed an intern ship for Nan Whaley’s Gubernatorial Campaign over Winter Term.

To be sure, Congressman Ryan was not always aligned with some issues central to the Democratic Party, namely abortion. Ryan stated that, growing up Catholic, he initially identified as a pro-life Democrat. But having listened to pro-choice women in the Demo cratic caucus and Ohio, he changed his tune, ultimately characterizing abortion as an “issue of freedom,” with positions that have earned him the endorsement of the National Abortion Rights Action League and a 100 per cent rating on Planned Parenthood’s most recent con gressionalSimilarly,scorecard.whilepreviously boasting an “A” rat ing from the National Rifle Association, Ryan has since called out Republicans’ intransigence on com mon-sense gun control measures, especially in the face of deadly mass shootings.

With Ohio’s open senatorial and gubernatorial primaries imminently approaching on Tuesday, May 3, many Ohioans will be doing some last-minute research to decide which candidates they will vote for. On the Democratic side, the race for the gubernatorial nomination is between John Cranley, the former mayor of Cincinnati, and Nan Whaley, the former mayor of Dayton.

As we look ahead to the Supreme Court’s likely over turning, or at least evisceration, of Roe v. Wade, the ques tion is less what the respective candidates’ records were years ago and more how they will work in a bipartisan manner with the Republican-controlled legislature and prevent the adoption of regressive policies. Although Cranley was not historically pro-choice, he currently maintains that he would veto anti-abortion legislation put forward by the Ohio legislature.

touch. These unrealistic guidelines also discourage students from follow ing more legitimate mandates. Rather than maintaining the mask require ment for casual gatherings, Oberlin should implement an education and awareness initiative that encourages students to focus on communicating with each other and making smart decisions based on the situation. We should treat masking like any other issue that concerns respect and con sent. A shift like this probably won’t change student behavior, but it would make ObieSafe strategies more in tune with reality.

Oberlin’s masking habits are slowly starting to catch up with the rest of the country even though the rules aren’t. Some Oberlin students have gotten comfortable forgoing masks in public areas like libraries, restrooms, and food lines. While our rates of masking are still much higher than most places, I expect that this pattern will accelerate for the rest of the se mester.Despite this shift, masks are still important. We’ve all heard it a million times, but there are at-risk people all around us — immunocompromised people and parents of children under 5 don’t want our germs. COVID-19 also has the potential to cause con siderable illness for anybody, even those of us who are vaccinated and

that would prohibit classroom lessons about sexual orientation or gender identity in elementary school.” And although the term ‘critical race theory’ has proven itself to be a deeply unpopular one outside of a solidly left-leaning group of Americans, 75 percent of us approve of “teaching ‘the history of racism’ in public schools,” including 54 percent of Republicans, according to a Monmouth University poll. When I say that we shouldn’t take progress for granted, this is the progress I’m optimistic about — the progress that we should all have in the back of our minds when we are tempted to see politics entirely through a haze of despair and division.

This Week: Fashion at Oberlin Through the Decades

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This Week

However,exist.masks should not be in stitutionally required for more pri vate settings, such as small gatherings among close friends in dorm rooms. Currently, the College’s guidelines re quire students to wear masks during any gathering with those they don’t live with. Nobody adheres to this rule. ObieSafe’s mask mandates regarding small, informal gatherings do noth ing to change student behavior and make the administration seem out of

Marbled sheer shirts photo courtesy of Sylvie Weinstein. Monochrome black outfit photo cour tesy of Khadijah Halliday. Tan vest, floral skirt photo courtesy of Rachel Wolchok. Blue eyeliner photo courtesy of Cecelia Blake. See page 9 for de cade lookbook.

When considering how to advise Oberlin students specifically on this issue, I found myself thinking principally of language. I don’t want to end on a self-evident message such as “vote blue.” Instead, I’d do better to remind you to express your political opin ions as beliefs rather than slogans. A fundamental conviction I have about politics is that about 90 percent of the decisions made in poll booths are directly related to the desire to protect one’s money and one’s children. In this case, people really just want the best for their kids. So the next time you find yourself talking to someone who agrees with Mike Loychik or Jean Schmidt, think of them as someone misguidedly trying to protect something defective rather than attacking something just.

ion” has created an ethical problem, generating waste and environmental strain and employing exploitative labor practices. Thankfully, many stu dents opt for cost-effective, “zero waste” options such as thrifting at Volunteers in North Olmsted or the Oberlin Free Store. Those who can afford it may attempt to buy from sustainable brands.

Currently, Oberlin still requires masks in all public and indoor spac es, including among small groups of friends, even though most local gov ernments around the country have stopped requiring them anywhere.

It’s telling that when presented with concepts like “teaching racism” rather than “teaching critical race theory,” public opinion starts to shift. Unfortunately, I think that there’s a common sentiment on the left, especially one that I often see expressed

from

Zoey Birdsong Columnist

Leaving Oberlin can often feel like en tering another dimension. In the rest of the world, most people don’t intro duce themselves with their pronouns or use phrases like “aural skills” and “head cook” as part of their vernac ular. And, for the most part, people outside of Oberlin don’t wear masks. When I went home for spring break, the near complete absence of masks in my hometown surprised me. I fig ured that a good percentage of peo ple had stopped wearing them in the grocery store by now, but I began to question my habits when I saw people I respect going without masks.

Wiley Smith This Week Editor

Progress on LGBTQ+ Issues Must Not Be Taken For Granted

By now, most of us know that Ober lin tends to fall on the cautious side when it comes to COVID-19 mitiga tion policies. Oberlin required out door masks last fall long after the world agreed that outdoor masking wasn’t necessary. Many people have had to perform masked when they probably didn’t need to. Some of these policies, along with the admin istration’s vague messaging around them, have been a source of legiti mate frustration for many students.

Solarity photo courtesy of Ben Garfinkel. Band photo courtesy of Jake Rivas. Remaining photos courtesy of Kaïa Austin. See page 9 for decade lookbook.

liner, earth tone cargo pants, and long flowing skirts. This era is all about layering: corset crop over long-sleeve button-up, crew neck under a short-sleeve collar, and necklace after necklace

Although it does not seem like many Obies were actually serving Y2K Paris Hilton at the time, is it more fun to embody history or a glossy retelling? Personally, there is a special place in my heart for the long point-collared shirt. However, I am drawn to the allure of tank tops and low-rise jeans, where a belt is the only statement piece I need.

amongst people of my age group, that if people are unable to look past the technicalities of language, they aren’t worth inviting into the cause.

These guidelines have been criticized for being more performative than they are effective. Many times over the past two years, ObieSafe has made itself the butt of the joke for being too strict and out of touch with reality.

The Oberlin Review | April 29, 2022 7

The decade of Converse, checker plaid, and sleeve less zip-up hoodies. Where we’ve advanced in pho to quality, we’ve backtracked in cringe. Personally, this was the fashion era that made me recoil the most, simply because I associate these looks with my time in middle school. In the archives, I found shameless combinations of patterns — stripes with plaid — serving very much Disney Channel origi nal cast. To its credit, this was quite a relaxed era of fashion. When you grew too hot in your buffalo plaid flannel, you tied it around your waist. Maybe if you wanted to dress up, you switched out your Low Top Converse for a chunky heel. My expec tations were low for the “rawr XD” era of fashion, although to Oberlin’s credit I didn’t see a single mustache-print T-shirt — for that, I’m thankful.

I’m not here to propose a compre hensive plan that pleases all parties involved because I don’t think one exists. I merely wish to point out that cracks are starting to emerge in our current system, and we need to start thinking about a different plan.

Many of us, although morally embarrassed to admit it, have probably had a SHEIN moment. In the digital sphere, microtrends rise and fade with in weeks. Sometimes you buy the waist chain from SHEIN because it’s only $1.50 and you pretend to be shocked when it turns your skin green and breaks a month later. We live and we learn.

Like most issues, the issue of mask mandates is complex. Mask man dates need to exist in Oberlin because their absence will hurt people in our community. It’s equally true that the Oberlin administration can’t expect unrealistic, far-reaching mask man dates to be sustainable if the world continues to move away from masks.

around campus today. The early 2000s have made a comeback, recalling the simplicity of retro style, dominated by color blocking and secondary colors — green, orange, and purple — paired with creme. The more glamorized revival of this era, dubbed the “Y2K aesthetic,” leans into bubblegum pink and baby blue. You may have seen the butterfly hair clips, fuzzy purses, and platform sandals and felt the urge to set the ringtone on your BlackBerry phone to “Bye Bye Bye.”

Oberlin’s Mask Policy Out of Touch, Losing Authority

boosted. At the very least, wearing a mask is good manners, just like saying “please” and “thank you.” We can’t control what the rest of the country is doing, but we still have a chance to make a difference for at-risk people in Oberlin.Ifanarea is open to anyone, masks should be required in that space so it remains accessible to truly everyone. This includes areas such as class rooms, libraries, and food lines, as well as those that have been subject to recent policy shifts such as dorm bathrooms and athletic facilities. I have faith that most Oberlin students will follow these rules. There will be more and more people that ignore them, but that doesn’t mean the rules shouldn’t

All photos in this section are courtesy of the In stagram archive @oberlin_in_the_00s. See page 9 for decade lookbook.

This Week The Oberlin Review | April 29, 2022 8

Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and co-chair of Musical Studies, Peter Swendsen, OC ’99, says that in the past two years, the major has changed to offer more flexibility for students to tailor classes to their interests.

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CONSERVATORY

According to Lieberman, the creation of this collective can provide students with a unique experience they could not recieve in a traditional classroom setting.

While many ensembles are open to all students, auditioned ensembles can frequently be difficult to get into. Some students audition multiple times and still do not get in — an especially large issue for Musical Studies majors and Music minors who need an ensemble to fulfill their curriculum requirements. While there are non-auditioned ensembles students may participate in, some find those opportunities to be limiting. It can take several semesters of auditioning for anything to come to fruition.

College StudiesFlourishMusiciansAsMusicalMajorEvolvesArt and Myth Meld in Musikos Collective

Walter Thomas-Patterson Conservatory Editor

concerts,” Knapp said. “It doesn’t exactly make sense to have another organization that just puts on concerts. There is a very large gap between the College and Conser vatory. Our goal is to be an interdisciplinary bridge between the [two].”

This eventual College-Conservatory col laboration can foreground the introduction of the concert narrative, an idea that Reid said she struggled to find in the classical format. A collaboration involving dance and music could serve as an appropriate exam ple.“As much as I love going to symphony concerts and hearing such a carefully cu rated art form, I always leave wishing there was a story attached, an adventure,” Reid said. “We want to explore this idea of nar rative concert programming that draws the audience in, where there isn’t a separation between performers and listeners.”

One of the group’s main goals is to facilitate collaboration between Conservatory musi cians and College departments in an effort to promote concert-going to a broader range of audiences. Part of the inspiration for this new collective stemmed from what Knapp identi fied as an oversaturation of musical concerts in the“ThereConservatory.arewaytoo many presenting orga nizations here already on campus that put on

Conservatory

“Students have a wider variety of paths through the major,” he said. “Students do it for a wide variety of reasons, and we tried to reflect this in the new requirements that better support that kind of journey and discovery.”

Photo by Abe Frato, Photo Editor

“The collaboration is what I love about it,” Lieberman said. “It is a way for students to work with others in ways they could never in a traditional college education. What we’re trying to do is to create concerts that are more than just pieces of music — we’re thinking of program ideas that tie into something else.”

Now with a completed minor, McQuilken beatboxes in her aca pella group Nothing But Treble and arranges songs with skills from the Composition for Non-Majors class she took. In addition to her minor, she finds other extracurricular opportunities to perform and engage with music.

Each of the nine muses can be under stood to embody forms of creative expres sion, from the metered lyricism found with in poetry, to the dramatic narratives found in history, to the movements of a play — these forms can be transplanted into a mu sical context to create a layered effect for the“Theaudience.[muses] each have an artful and more academic side,” Reid said. “What we want to try and do in Musikos is pair music of any kind, from any part of the world, with some other discipline.”

The Musical Studies major — an option for non-Conservatory students to pursue music at a college level — has been steadily increasing in popularity for the past several years. The major has undergone numerous changes over the decades, in part to make the program more customizable.

This expansion of College music possibilities creates a plethora of possibilities, Swendsen explained. It allows students to sample a few classes initially and then add more depending on their interest level.College musicians pursue a myriad of paths and degrees of com mitment in their musical endeavors. Third-year Computer Science major and Musical Studies minor Becky McQuilken originally intended on completing the Musical Studies major, but between having difficulty registering for courses and fitting them into her schedule, as well as the curriculum alterations, her plans changed.

“I just kind of hit a stopping point where [I thought], ‘I don’t really think I want to take this much farther, and it’d be a lot more effort and time away from something I’m really passionate about — computer science,” McQuilken said. “I just decided I have enough for a minor right now, and I’m kind of happy with that.”

“We’re hoping to schedule concerts in the future that involve Conservatory students and Oberlin College departments. Whether it’s German, East Asian Studies, or the Dance de partment, there are so many departments that could open us up to a larger audience,” Knapp said.The group name comes from the Greek root “muse,” which refers to the nine Greek mus es — goddesses who represent various art and academic forms including poetry, history, and music.“Musikos forms the etymological origin of music,” said Knapp, who serves as director for the collective. “It describes originally the nine muses in Greece, which were super interdisci plinary. There is a muse of guitar and poetry, dancing and theater, and they all have differ ent [arts] they specialize in.”

Cellists perform in an ensemble at First United Methodist Church.

While students majoring in Musical Studies are required to complete some basic music theory and music history courses, they are free to pursue their electives, ensembles, and upper-level requirements in a variety of ways. Conservatory and double-degree students have specific requirements that are tied to their perfor mance, composition, or other major, but Musical Studies students have more flexibility. The major allows students to informally concentrate on areas that may not be offered as majors, such as conducting or music education.

Megan McLaughlin Senior Staff Writer

The collective not only strives to create interdisciplinary performances but also to highlight the work of student composers. Their debut performance last week featured the work of three student composers as well as a 14-person cello piece that encompassed all of Professor Dmitry Kouzov’s cello stu dio. Titled Polyhymnia, meaning many voic es, the performance was an ode to the muse of sacred poetry of the same name.

The Musikos Collective, a new student-run group, burst onto the College and Conservato ry arts scene with a debut performance at First United Methodist Church this past Sunday. Founded by a trio of double-degree cellists — second-years Daniel Knapp and Aaron Lieb erman and first-year Diana Reid — the collec tive aims to feature musicians and performing artists in concerts that highlight the interdis ciplinary nature of art forms that are so often kept in separate spaces.

“Oberlin advertises the Conservatory as a way for College stu dents to involve themselves in music,” Perry said. “That’s a big pull for a lot of College students, and the programming in the Conservatory is not always set up to let College students be a part of it.”Perry points out that many of the recent projects by the Oberlin Arts & Sciences Orchestra, including adding the Music minor in the fall 2020 semester, are both steps in fulfilling the promises that prospective students are given.

Since the recent changes in the major, the number of declared Musical Studies majors has increased dramatically: from 23 in fall 2019 to 49 currently. About half of the current 49 are double-ma jors, representing 18 other departments across the College and opening doors for interdisciplinary study and performance.

For those interested in attending their next concert, the Musikos Collective will be collaborating with the Sacred Heart Con cert series Thursday, May 15 for a feature performance of the Knapp twins, Amina andTheDan.collective is also interested in re cieving collaborative concert ideas from students in any field of study at Oberlin. If interested, please message their instagram @musikosco.

In addition to making changes to the Musical Studies program to make declared majors’ lives easier, the College began offering a Music minor in fall 2020, as well as encouraging College stu dents who are not majors or minors to participate in music classes, ensembles, and lessons at the Conservatory.

Fourth-year Musical Studies and History major Vikram Perry notes that while the Musical Studies major is undergoing many positive changes, College musicians still face some challenges nav igating the Conservatory.

“I was reading Charlotte Brontë’s letters and was very taken with the isolation against which her life played out,” Silverman wrote in an email to the Review “I was struck by the way in which the isolation made her perceive her family, her landscape, and the land scape of her internal life.”

The closeness of the actors has resulted in a mean ingful final production at the College in which they are able to be creative and explore the characters and setting.“There’s a dog, there’s a hen, there’s gay people, there’s music, and that’s all you could ever want,” Frie demannTicketssaid.are available at oberlin.edu/tickets.

The energy in the chapel was palpable as Conservatory third-year Rachel Yee took the stage for the first act to cheers and applause, which grew louder with each performance. Throughout the night, students sitting shoulder to shoul der in the crowded pews relished in the sheer magnitude of talent on display.

Courtesy of Gwen Gemmell

Colors of Rhythm, one of the Multicul tural Resource Center’s most celebrated annual events, returned to the Finney Chapel stage for the first time in two years. Colors of Rhythm was founded in 1997 by Oberlin students in conjunction with the MRC, and seeks to highlight and celebrate the talent of student-art ists and performers of color.

Arts & Culture April 29, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 151, Number 19

The stage design pays homage to the art of Edward Gorey with Gothic, macabre visuals mostly in black and white, capturing Silverman’s poetic writing about nature.“Ithink one of the most exciting elements about this production is all of the design elements,” Wright said. “[They’re] highly anachronistic but also in keeping with Edward Gorey’s vision.”

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ARTS & CULTURE

Sierra Colbert Senior Staff Writer

“Everything’s so sharp and gray, and the wind is so powerful, and the trees grow sideways,” she said. “There’s something just so unnerving about it, but it’s a literal force of nature. There’s no way to change it, so for these people that are on these moors, you live with the chaos.”

Photo by Khadijah Halliday

Worth also plays the role of the mastiff who has a complex and intimate relationship with one of the hens on the moor.

Emerald Goldbaum Staff Writer

“You very rarely see the real her; she’s always put ting something on,” Friedemann said. “It’s been so cool to construct the layers of [the character], and then to figure out at what moments there’s the actual person.”

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According to Silverman, inspiration for the play came from the lives and works of the Brontë sisters, who lived on the English moors.

“The English moors, as they’re presented in this play, are just a kind of sweeping wasteland where con nection is almost impossible, and the scale and size of things is easily warped,” they said. “I wanted to make something that was at once disorienting but also rhythmically compelling.”

See OSLAM, page 13

The actors are all graduating fourth-year students, which has resulted in a very tight-knit group that has

given them a place to become closer with each other as they’ve prepared for some of their last performances at the “TheCollege.castare exclusively people I was already friends with,” Worth said. “It’s been a great space for us to share with each other and be earnestly vulner able with each other but in a way that has a sense of humor and a little bit of bite to it.”

To help visualize the setting, Wright showed the cast images of the English moors. Cast member and College fourth-year Katie Friedemann says this influenced her understanding of the lives of the characters.

The Moors is a biting satire but very loving take down of Gothic romance,” he said. “It explores gender identity, sexuality, isolation, and the ways that our cul ture can be isolating for people because of their iden tities.”Forexample, Friedemann, who plays Marjory/Mal lory, a maid whose name changes depending on which room she’s in, explained how the name changes repre sent changes in her character’s portrayal.

The Moors, a play set in the 18th-century English coun tryside, will run in the Irene and Alan Wurtzel Theater May 5–8. Written by American playwright Jen Silver man and directed by Professor of Theater Matthew Wright, the show follows an impressionable governess as she begins working for two sisters in their isolated countryside manor. Grappling with mounting jealousy and its inevitable consequences, the play explodes as deeply held resentments come to a head.

“It sounds a lot sillier than it actually is,” they said. “I mean, it is quite silly, but I think there is a reason for it in the play that’s maybe a little hard to explain in a quick conversation. So that’s been a source of joyful embarrassment for me in conversations with my par ents.”Wright has been interested in Silverman’s work since Oberlin put on their play Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties in 2020 — the last production run by the Theater department before COVID-19. Wright high lighted aspects of the play’s connection to works such as Jane Eyre. He was interested in The Moors because he wanted to put on a show that expressed a broad range of identities.

Students involved in the production had the oppor tunity to meet with Silverman over Zoom to discuss their work and vision for the play.

Return of Colors of Rhythm Revitalizes Cherished Tradition

Students rehearse for the premiere of The Moors, set to run in the Irene and Alan Wurtzel Theater May 5–8.

Gothic Satire The Moors Brings English Countryside to Stage

“Hearing what they were thinking when they were writing it opened so many doors, and we were all just kind of freaking out about meeting them,” Friedemann said. “It was just one of those weird high energy mo ments where everyone’s going a little feral.”

Colors of Rhythm, one of the Multicultural Resource Center’s most anticipated events, returned to campus for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.

The Moors also features original music composed by College fourth-year Juli Worth. Their composition work was influenced primarily by the dark setting and tone of the play, featuring mostly vocal pieces with some lute and percussion.

This year’s show saw performances from a wide range of students and stu dent organizations including OSLAM, African Students Association, And What!?, South Asian Students Associa tion, and Oberlin College Taiko.

The event has served as a sanctum for Oberlin students of color for the last quarter of a century, but what made this year’s show stand out was its role in re introducing many younger Obies to the massive expanse of multicultural art

Despite the decades of history scrawled on the station’s aqua-blue walls, Oberlin’s College and commu nity radio station is far from immune to the epidemic of institutional mem ory loss. Fanning these worries even further, WOBC announced yesterday that the station was going to be disas sembled and moved to a different part of Wilder Hall as a result of the up coming renovations to the building.

College second-year Imogen Prang er, who co-directs the traffic work group alongside College third-year Ish Houle, hopes that revitalizing workgroups can help recover a sense of community within WOBC.

As College fourth-year and musician Sofia Zarzu ela gets ready to graduate in June, she also plans to make concerts and touring a large part of her in come.“I’m trying to book my own DIY tour for Octo ber … by talking to everyone I know who goes to a

After releasing an album in March 2021 and mov ing to Durham, NC, Calcagno has been spending much of his time playing concerts, as other sources of revenue for new musicians are often not as fruit ful.“It’s just wild how many streams you have to have to make any money, especially if a record label is getting the first cut,” Calcagno said. “So, getting out there and playing shows has been so good. [Before,] it was trying to figure out any other avenue to be creative and also get paid for it. The other ways to make money were teaching, so I did that, and we did some song commissions, which is really fun.”

Kathleen Kelleher Arts & Culture Editor

“I think I’m around the place with Spotify streams where one would get a booking agent,” Zarzuela said. “I would do this thing last year where I would get drunk and I would make TikToks in the bath room of Harkness [House] … One of them kind of blew up, and then it led to one of my songs getting put on the Spotify algorithm — I wound up getting 10,000 more monthly listeners from it, which is re allyOtherscool.”leave

Zucker feels that his time at Oberlin prepared him well to work in the music industry. For exam ple, if one of RCA’s artists is planning to release a song that sounds very similar to an existing song, the label might need to approach the artist of the original song to get their permission to use a bit of the composition in the new recording.

leaders, who coordinate groups of DJs. These groups accomplish tasks like listening to new music sent to the station by indie artists hoping to receive radio play, brainstorming sta tion-wide merch, or recording PSAs. The music is listened to and sorted by the traffic workgroup into genre box es, which are then assessed by genrebased workgroups that decide wheth er music should be placed in WOBC’s vault. Other workgroups, like out reach and promotion, focus more on management of and publicity for the station. After years of pandemic in terruptions, these workgroups have

Zucker encourages any young Obies interested in being musicians to use the tools available to them.

Oberlin with a love of music but no clear plan to work in the industry. When Dan Zuck er, OC ’81, graduated from Oberlin, he didn’t envi sion himself pursuing a job related to music at all. His time at Oberlin informed his interest in music, and he ultimately found his way to RCA Records, a label within Sony Music Entertainment, where he now works as the executive vice president of busi ness and legal affairs.

“I think it’s easy to get kind of caught up with the business side of it, and I think that it’s been more gratifying just to make music and see what hap pens,” he said. “Just [by] following your creative vi sion and trusting that if you [create] what you like to listen to and make connections with people that you admire, … you’ll find some making music mode that feels right and is original.”

The Oberlin Review | April 29, 2022 11

“I can evaluate whether we need to clear some thing or not because I went to Oberlin and I have some understanding of music theory,” Zucker ex plained. “It’s not always obvious, and the artist or the producer who put it in might not even know that other song. ... We have a sample team, and when it’s close, they’ll come to me. And I literally pull up Garage Band, work out the cords and stuff, and say, ‘Oh, this is different’ or, ‘Oh, no, it’s not different, I think we need to clear it.’ … Sometimes I feel like, oh my gosh, am I showing off?”

WOBC Staff, Board Hope to Revive Station Engagement

Besides a lack of community, there are very real stakes to maintaining a functioning station. A failure to com plete small tasks could result in the station losing its decades-long con nections with record labels and other stations. One major issue preventing workgroups from functioning proper ly has been attendance. Without DJs

WOBC 91.5 FM runs, in part, by delegating station tasks to workgroup

college [and] getting booked through colleges be cause they pay you much better than other venues,” Zarzuela explained. “I just played a show with Kenyon and they paid us $700.”

As spring flowers bloom across campus and this year’s seniors look toward graduation, many plan to follow a classic Oberlin path: pursuing a career in the music industry.

“Since COVID, workgroups and staff positions have been forgot ten and fallen under the radar,” said WOBC Music Director and College fourth-year Emma DeRogatis-Frilin gos. “It’s no fault to the staff, no fault to the station — that’s just COVID. There’s been a campus-wide forget fulness; clubs and traditions have been disappearing. … There’s been a complete and utter disruption, and it’s hard to focus on little things like tradition and consistency.”

Obies Pursue Careers in All Corners of Music Industry

Anisa Curry Vietze Editor-in-Chief

The College’s recent announcement of the Wilder Hall renovation will result in the relocation of the WOBC 91.5 FM studio, fanning preexistent fears of the disappearance of institutional memory in the wake of COVID-19.

Ultimately, Zarzuela hopes to sign a record deal with a smaller, independent label. In the immedi ate future, though, she is considering trying to get a booking agent to help plan future tours.

See Amid, page 13

fallen by the wayside, facing issues with attendance and lack of engage ment with the campus as a whole.

Photo by Abe Frato

Even though the prospect of a career in music can be intimidating, Calcagno hopes that new Obie musicians don’t lose sight of why they’re pursuing music in the first place.

“I didn’t know I wanted to be in the music indus try,” Zucker said. “I knew I loved music — grew up surrounded by it, obviously went to a college where it’s infused in everything that happens on campus — but I wasn’t thinking that that would be a career.”

“The industry is changing,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for a long time, and it’s changed a lot. And mostly for the benefit of young artists. The good news is that, unlike when I started, artists can re lease music on their own and make it available. Be fore iTunes came along, major record companies like Sony, Universal [Music Group], and Warner [Music Group] effectively controlled the distribu tion channels. And that’s just not the case anymore. You can go to an aggregator … and make your music available. You put it up, and you get paid for it for whatever it streams. Small pennies at first, but you get paid for it.”

“It can feel very isolating to just go do your show, and only ever speak to the people before and after you on the show schedule,” she said. “You never get a sense of the larger scope of the people that are involved in WOBC, and how amazing all the other DJs are, how interesting and how much history the station has as a whole. I think workgroups can be a really im portant vehicle for cultivating that sense of community and purpose within the station.”

As WOBC’s music director, DeRo gatis-Frilingos oversees the staff, and noted that her goal this year has been to create as much community as pos sible in hopes of reviving institutional memory.“Mygoal was to create a strong foundation specifically with the staff who oversee the work groups, so when we leave, people know the ba sics of what running a station looks like and how a functioning station happens,” she said. “What I’ve been doing … has been to try to cultivate more community. I don’t know how successful it’s been.”

When Riley Calcagno, OC ’20, graduated in the midst of the first wave of COVID-19, he knew he wanted to continue making music — both through his stringband The Onlies and his duo with Vivian Leva — but the pandemic made the logistics un clear.“It was kind of a shock, as I think for everyone who graduated in that year,” Calcagno said. “These days, things are getting back to normal and I’m ... kind of chugging away and just finding moments to play music when I can and little opportunities to connect with people and find new collaborations and a community of music making.”

Arts & Culture 12

cause you know exactly where the money is going,” Musgrove said. “I know that this money is going to support not just one person but all of the other peo ple that he supports, too. … I am protecting his an onymity, but it’s someone that I had been working with to raise funds to support his livelihood.”

“I have relative class privilege, but I’m still low-income, so at a certain point, I couldn’t do nate more of my money because I had to sustain myself,” Musgrove said. “This is what I can do to help. I can organize people that maybe have more relative class privilege than I do that can potential ly Whitedonate.”talked about a similar drive to help out and also spoke on what they find appealing about mu tual aid.

In the past year, my housemates and I have watched nearly five seasons of Love Island , a popular British dating show in which an array of attractive singles search for love while living in a secluded Spanish villa for an entire summer. The show plays out in real time five nights a week, as the show is filmed, edited, and released in the span of 24 hours. Because the con testants have no access to the outside world, the producers have to find cre ative ways to drum up entertainment — throughout the season, they have contestants play games like “Snog, Marry, Pie” or “Truth or Dare,” which stir up the kind of dramatic scenes typical on reality television. While this sort of devious plotting is cus tomary on the show, there was one particular incident that completely changed the way I think about my en gagement with the genre.

“We’re working together to sustain the commu nity,” Musgrove said. “If someone was interested or knows someone with need, reach out to me.”

The event in question occurred in the show’s latest season when Faye Winter, a contestant who had been on since the start of the season, and

Love Island has raised very serious questions about the nature of reali ty TV and its duty of care to the real people who participate in it.”

A host of Oberlin student-artists will participate in a mutual-aid craft fair this Saturday to raise money for a member of the Oberlin community who wish es to remain anonymous. Attendees will have the opportunity to donate either directly to the mutual aid fund or to purchase art from students who will donate a portion of their revenue to the fund. Art ists can choose what percentage of their revenue they donate to the community member based on their own needs. The craft fair will take place at Harkness Bowl from 1:30–3:30 p.m.

From these considerations, the craft fair was born. Musgrove and White distributed a Google Forms application on social media, calling for art ists to participate. They received a number of re sponses exceeding what they expected.

Lilyanna D’Amato Arts & Culture Editor

Love Island is a popular British reality show that brings attractive singles hoping to find love to Mallorca. Courtesy of ITV-01

While the experiences of contes tants worry me, it is the viewers’ appetite for this type of media that concerns me most — a group that in cludes myself. Especially in light of the internet’s recent obsession with shows like Love is Blind and The Ulti matum: Marry or Move On , I keep ask ing myself: Why do I enjoy watching television that manipulates people; purposefully isolates them from the outside world; deprives them of ad equate mental health care; and spies on them for long, harrowing periods of time? Lily, I mean, really? Isn’t that sort of depraved and perverse?

Many former contestants have ac cused the show of “brainwashing”

her long-time partner, Teddy Soares, got into an uncomfortably one-sided screaming match. That night, the pro ducers had set up the Islanders with bags of popcorn and a projector, treat ing them to a movie night in which clandestine indiscretions would be aired for all to see, revealing poten tial betrayals. After a clip was shown of Soares calling another woman at tractive, Winter, who had mentioned frequently that past heartbreaks left her with serious trust issues and had been noticeably struggling with her mental health, flew into a fit of para noia.Following the episode’s release, Of com, a government-approved regula tory authority for broadcasting in the UK, received an unprecedented num ber of complaints about the show’s ethics. While these kinds of outbursts are standard practice on shows like Love Island , the three recent suicides of former contestants Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis and host Caro line Flack have put the show under an especially intense microscope.

Students Organize Mutual Aid Craft Fair to Raise Money for Oberlin Community Member

Even though I know my house mates and I will assuredly start a new season soon, I can’t seem to shake the feeling that I’m playing into some thing crooked — maybe that’s the rea son it’s so hard to look away.

“I’m just really grateful to the entire Oberlin community for reacting the way that [it has] — it is really more than I ever could have expected,” Mus grove said. “Artists really show up, and it’s really wonderful.”Theyeventually had to close the application due to concerns about table and space availability.

and have talked openly about their struggles to cope with increased me dia attention, the isolating environ ment of the villa, and the pressures of having cameras follow their every move for ten weeks straight. Perhaps these experiences reveal that we have entered a new, darker era of reality television.Whilethe early 2000s may have brought us unabashedly ruthless shows like 16 and Pregnant and Amer ica’s Next Top Model , the producers of those shows flagrantly admitted to manipulating vulnerable people for ratings. And while there are certainly problems with that, what we seem to be moving towards now — an era in which producers and networks have developed far more surreptitious and successful surveillance tactics — seems much scarier.

Both White and Musgrove also talked about the value of mutual aid in providing a way for people to come together to provide support to the commu nity.

Love Island, an Experiment with Control, Surveillance

College third-years Basil Musgrove and Elliot White worked together with the Student Labor Ac tion Coalition to organize the event. The idea orig inally came from Musgrove, who had been working closely with the mutual aid fund and noticed that the donations were slowing down.

“I don’t feel like I have a lot of money to consis tently be donating, so I can donate time,” White said. “It makes me feel really connected to a place and the Musgrovepeople.”made sure to emphasize that although they don’t identify as an authority on mutual aid, they are willing to work with anyone who is inter ested in getting involved or is in need.

As popular YouTuber Broey De schanel discusses in her video “Love Island: A Flirtation with Surveil lance,” numerous “former contestants have criticized the show for its failure to provide substantial psychological support or any sort of media training that would protect them from abuse.

programming for a massively multi channel era by inviting cast members to submit to monitoring as a form of participation, self-expression and evenRealitytherapy.”television has sanitized the vision of the panopticon, a sophisti cated system of surveillance which uses control to placate its victims. As a result, the appeal of the show be comes much more about the exertion of authority over contestants than the plot of the show itself. Seeing con testants freak out over contrived sit uations, like Faye and Teddy’s fight, satisfies the viewer’s need for drama but also creates an oppressive scruti ny directed toward the televised, co erced behavior of real human beings.

I’m not sure I know the answer, but at the end of his article, Andrejevic asks: “So is reality TV lowering the bar or is it as worthwhile as anything that’s been on TV?” On both accounts, he says yes.

According to a New York Times arti cle by Mark Andrejevic, author of Re ality TV: The Work of Being Watched , “Reality TV is not going away any time soon [because] its produc tion fits neatly with the logic of the emerging surveillance economy. It provides relatively cheap and flexible

Adrienne Sato Senior Staff Writer

“I think that mutual aid is potentially better than donating to the non-profit industrial complex be

“[I heard] a lot of upperclassmen talking about the event, even from Ori entation actually, and they were really excited,” she said. “I think that was defi nitely a shift on campus over the past two years where it didn’t happen and not many people now know about it, so hopefully we can bring back the tradition so that people know about it and cele brate it.”

“In my case, as a child of Venezue lan parents, I don’t often have a space to include influences from my family’s culture in the styles of music I normally perform in an overt way,” Morales wrote in an email to the Review

to sort through music, there is little that groups can accomplish.“That’sbeen an issue forever with work groups — DJs just not showing up, because there is no pun ishment,” DeRogatis-Frilingos said. “We’re not go ing to take away someone’s show because they’re not showing up to a work group; that’s just not sus tainable. It’s supposed to be for fun, but that affects the entire station. We were brainstorming ideas of how to get people to show up, aside from being threatening. I felt like people were tossing up some really good ideas, but … I needed to ask: is this go ing to happen?”

Amid Station Move, WOBC Combats Institutional Memory Loss

Continued from page 11

“I remember participating in the 2019 one,” she said. “It really was a nice plat form for students to share and celebrate the different kinds of cultures and cre ativity on campus.”

OSLAM, AndWhat!?, OC Taiko Perform at Colors of Rhythm

Adachi described the buzz about the event she heard as a first-year, which made her want to get involved.

College third-year and Vault Workgroup Direc tor Emelia Duserick echoed DeRogatis-Frilingos’ statement, and noted her hope for the future.

“It’s a song that has a place in the hearts of a lot of Bollywood dancers,” Parmar said. “I remember being obsessed with the song when I was like four years old and wanting to dance like them, and now I’m actually doing it.”

In spite of the long hiatus, the signif icance of Colors of Rhythm to Oberlin students of color has certainly not been lost.“The default in Oberlin tends to be white,” Parmar said. “You have to go out of your way to find cultural diversity classes to learn from perspectives out side of that, so it’s nice to have this event that centers and celebrates the global majority.”Conservatory fourth-year Gabriel Mo rales, who also performed at the show case, shares a similar view.

forms on campus after two years of rel ative silence due to the COVID-19 shut down.College fourth-year Ryo Adachi was introduced to Colors of Rhythm as a first-year in 2019, the last year it was pro duced before the pandemic.

College dance group AndWhat!? performs at Colors of Rhythm, an annual performance which celebrates people of color. Photo by Khadijah Halliday.

In the hope of cultivating community, the station has dedicated more attention to staff meetings, which allow the staff members to get to know each other and discuss their common problems with re viving institutional memory. The board and staff have found creative ways to bring DJs and staff to gether, even reintroducing their intramural softball team, a tradition from years past.

Adachi’s eagerness to bring Colors of Rhythm back to the student body was a sentiment shared by College sec ond-year Arohi Dandawate, who danced on Thursday both with the Bollywood/ Bhangra ExCo and in a duet with College third-year Aiesha Parmar.

Continued from page 10

Morales performed with College thirdyear Bianca Berger as they played “Gade Papi” by Emeline Michel, a Hatian vocal ist and songwriter, and recited an origi nal poem by Berger titled “To Dream.”

Pranger is helping organize an Amoeba Music-in spired “What’s In My Bag”-style video hosted by the traffic workgroup. The event will create space for WOBC DJs to share music that they particularly enjoy.

“As we start to bring back these perfor mances, I get that feeling of, ‘This is why I’m doing this,’” Dandawate said. “Prac ticing alone is really meditative and awe some, but doing things as a group, doing things for other people to enjoy and to learn, is just such an uplifting feeling.”

The Oberlin Review | April 29, 2022 13

Such events are glimmers of hope in the face of the pitfalls of institutional forgetfulness. Young er WOBC staff members like Pranger have lit tle knowledge of what the station was like before COVID-19. DeRogatis-Frilingos noted that there used to be frequent engagement events hosted by WOBC.“When I was a freshman and sophomore, events with WOBC were happening all the time, just be cause the staff wanted to do it,” she said. “There needs to be that want, that initiative. Without it, it’s not going to happen, and if it doesn’t happen now, it’s never going to happen because they’re set ting the precedent for the next group coming in. … Before, I remember there always being like … ‘Oh, there’s gonna be a show this week,’ or, ‘Oh, there’s gonna be a party,’ or, ‘Oh, there’s a performer com

In the week leading up to Colors of Rhythm, Chan looked forward to the opportunity to perform in a space that placed much more value on artforms like Taiko.“Ithink it’ll be nice to play for an au dience that is more open and accept ing,” they said. “[And] it’s not just about accepting people of color, it’s also about celebrating them.”

“It goes without saying that BIPOC art and stories are so important and it’s great that we are able to share that in such a big way through Colors of Rhythm,” Berger wrote in an email to the Review. “Sup port doesn’t stop at coming to see the show, however. It looks like going to and supporting BIPOC events that orgs put on themselves. It looks like supporting and being an ally in classes and in pub lic spaces like the ’Sco. Allyship comes in many forms and people across the board should really sit with and reflect on how they can be in physical space with those they want to support without centering themselves.”

“I do think there was a lot more excitement about WOBC in general and bonding between the staff members and board [in past years],” Duser ick wrote in an email to the Review . “I think it can feel disjointed at times now, and getting that level of excitement and engagement back is something we’re all actively working on. I think that it can come back, it’s just going to take work. I’ve already seen a big difference this semester though, which keeps me hopeful.”

For Morales, the song signifies a call to follow your passions and ignore anyone’s threats to your inner fire. That message seems particularly relevant to students like double-degree fifth-year Morgan Chan, who performed with OC Taiko at the“Asevent.someone who’s in the Conservato ry, I do sometimes feel a little bit closeted about also playing Taiko,” Chan said. “It tends to be viewed as a hobby, … which made me feel discouraged about being more open about what I cared about and who I was.”

She and Parmar danced together to a popular song from the Bollywood movie Devdas, which Parmar explained was a very important experience for them.

Even with the recent announcement of the sta tion’s move, DeRogatis-Frilingos remains optimis tic.“Things are getting better,” she said. “This se mester, I’ve been impressed with the staff’s enthu siasm and creativity, and concrete events are being planned. That’s all I care about — people having fun. It should not be a stressful environment at all.”

ing,’ or, ‘We’re tie-dying in someone’s backyard.’ You can’t do that with COVID — you can’t gather. It’s hard to be present when you have to wear a mask, and it’s not as fun.”

“It’s an event to help publicize all the amazing music that we are getting submitted to the station,” Pranger said. “That’s my real joy in doing traffic: finding all this music that sometimes doesn’t have a lot of streams and is really underground, that is really amazing and needs to be shared, needs to be played, needs to be listened to. We just want to share the love of that music and what traffic is all about with this event.”

The goal of the event is, of course, to provide a space for performers of color, but the main hope of the students and the MRC is that it will be just one of many spaces that open up as students’ talents and voices are seen and heard on a larger scale.

OC Taiko performed two pieces at the event, an arrangement of a specific stance and form taught by Oedo Suker oku Daiko called “Many-Sided” and a piece first written by Hiroshi Tanaka called “Tatsumaki.” The crowd erupt ed as soon as the performers took their places, staring in awe as they masterfully flew across the stage in perfect time.

after this year, where we’ve been through a lot, I think we gained good experience which we’ll use to do better in the future.” Otaševi ć said.Last year’s record certainly left a lot to be desired for the Yeomen, but there is still a lot of hope to bring into next season, including a win and a one-point loss against Wabash College, a team that won the NCAC tournament and went to the NCAA Final Four. Considering that 10 of their losses were decided by less than eight points, this team is very close to being dangerous, especially as its young core matures. The hope is for the team to score a winning record next year, as they went 16–12 in the 2019–20 season.

Sports

“One of our biggest struggles this past season was rebounding and closing out games,” he said. “I think developing a defensive mentality will definitely make us better as a team, but also as individuals. It makes us more accountable and builds the trust between the players.”

It often takes more than a new coach to have a bounce-back season.

Shiva can help us in all of these aspects,” he said. “His coaching smarts, accountability, and demand of respect and excellence makes me believe he is the coach for us.”

Snipes-Rea also hopes to evolve his offensive game and become a more confident shooter in order to make his game well-rounded. Building a strong offense is important to Snipes-Rea, as the Yeomen ranked last in the NCAC in points per game this season.

“Tom is a joy to watch and coach; he’s a natural goal scorer and has solidified his name in the histo ry books this spring,” Polak said. “He currently sits at sixth all-time in career goals, ninth all-time in career assists, and eighth all-time in career points. But while these are great individual achievements, Tom would tell you that he could not have done it without his teammates. Tom takes the field each day looking to compete with his teammates and have fun; you can tell by the way he plays he loves theIndeed,game.”Decker cites his teammates as an essen tial part of his career. During his first two years on the team, he looked up to the seniors as role models. Now a senior himself, he hopes to fulfill that same role for the underclassmen. Decker sees himself as a leader by example, bringing intensity

Although Decker may stay humble about his remarkable athletics career, Polak speaks highly of Decker’s admirable character and knows that he’s an irreplacable player for his crew.

Andrea Nguyen Staff Writer

Coach Senthil Looks to Shake Things up with Men’s Basketball

Tom Decker Scores 100th Goal for Oberlin Lacrosse Team

Matt Rudella Senior Staff Writer

Photo by Maggie Balderstone

Tom’s teammates, second-years John McDonell and Aidan Loh, both look up to Decker’s achieve ments.“Decker is a phenomenal player but an even bet ter teammate [who] cares about every single mem ber of the team,” McDonell said.

Courtesy of SUNY Canton Athletics

“I am very excited to get on cam pus and start building this tremen dous program,” Senthil said. “I can not wait to spend time with the team as we look to lead this program to the top of the North Coast Athletic Conference.”Senthilcomes to Oberlin with a lot of experience on how to build a strong defense, which will be useful for the squad’s upcoming season. In the Roos’ 2020 conference cham pionship season, they were at the top of the field in many defensive metrics, including fifth in Division III men’s basketball at field goal per centage made (.425) and blocks per game (5.5), along with being sixth in defensive rebounds per game (31.6). College first-year guard Asaan Snipes-Rea believes coach Senthil will have an immediate impact on that end of the court.

Despite having one season cut short due to COVID19, his 100th goal was made against Allegheny College Wednesday, April 20. Only six alumni have ever reached this milestone.

“I think we need everybody to understand and accept their roles and hold themselves accountable,” Snipes-Rea said. “Sometimes we need to change to better ourselves. If we can become more deliberate about our actions, all of us will eventually become the solution to become a great team.”Otaševi ć also emphasized the importance that offseason training will have to ensure that the team is prepared when the season arrives.

This year, Decker has proven himself to be a powerhouse for the Yeomen, helping them achieve a 5–3 standing in the conference and an 11–4 record overall; the last time the Yeomen performed this well was back in the ’80s. This season, Decker has already scored 33 goals and at an away game against DePauw University earlier this month, he scored 5 out of the 14 goals. He’s already catching up to his statistics from 2018 and 2019 and is on a trajectory to break his personal records.

14

College third-year and forward Đor đ e Otaševi ć also echoes these sen timents as a point of emphasis for next season, and believes that Coach Senthil can clean up these issues.

“Tom has made one of the greatest positive impacts on the culture as well as on the field for our team,” said Loh. “He’s a great player and obvi ously one of the best in the program’s history.”

and lightheartedness to the game. This season, he’s glad to have others besides himself scoring for the team.“We got guys like [first-year] Niko Maheras, [fourth-year] Michael Muldoon, [and third-year] Max Cha who will also put up huge numbers for us and be really great guys at the same time,” Decker said. “It’s not [just] one or two guys on the team who are really scoring a lot of goals, which has kind of been the case in the past.”

Snipes-Rea said he already prides himself as a defensive player, so a defensive coach is a perfect match for him.

Men’s lacrosse Head Coach Ryan Polak belives that Decker is a standout player not only because of his achievements on the field, but also because of the positive attitude that he brings to the team.

Last week, Oberlin hired former SUNY Canton Head Coach Shiva Senthil to lay the groundwork for the men’s basketball team. In his two years of coaching at SUNY Canton, the Roos gained a conference cham pionship in 2020 and a 22–10 con ference record. Before his time at Canton, he had many stops as an assistant coach, with the University of Chicago and Clarkson University being his most recent.

Scoring more than 100 goals in his time at Oberlin, fourth-year men’s lacrosse player Tom Decker is nearing the end of an incredible college career.

“I want to continue being assigned to guard the other team’s best player, and I want to get to the point where I’m seen as one of the best defend ers in our league,” he said. “I’m very excited to see how he will be able to help me reach my full potential on that side of the ball.”

“We’ll have to keep working on our individual game, team game, get strong and stay healthy,” Otaševi ć said. “Focusing more on defense will be very demanding, so we’ll have to work even harder than before this

“We have a very young team, and

Coach Shiva Senthil draws up a play for his previous basketball team at SUNY Canton.

“He detailed wanting us to pres sure the ball more, creating more havoc on the defensive end, and becoming a much better rebounding team,” he said. “I think specifically, Shiva will be able to give us an iden tity that we seemed to lack last year.”

offseason.”Forsome players, the transition to a new coach can be difficult. However, Senthil has already begun capturing the spirit of the team and has them in his corner before he’s even stepped on campus, which Snipes-Rea has noticed.“Ibelieve

Otaševi ć is especially excited for his younger teammates and the recruits Senthil brings in. Senthil has only been a head coach for two seasons, so there is some time for him to develop as a coach alongside his new team and continue to recruit new talent.

“Oberlin lacrosse will miss Tom dearly — he is a once-in-a-lifetime type player, and we’d like to thank him for everything he has given to the pro gram,” Polak said. “Off the field as a person, Tom is one of the most genuine people I have met. Tom always makes time for others, he shows kindness and compassion to all on campus. It’s the way Tom carries himself each day that impresses you as he is showing our team — especially the younger players — what it takes to be a successful student-athlete at Oberlin. We all need to be a little more like Tom.”

Tom Decker takes a shot on Bailey Field against Allegheny College to earn his 100th college career goal.

I have to wear a women’s suit because I haven’t had top surgery, so there are situations where I go to meets and people look at me and are like, “Oh, a women’s suit — must be a woman.” There was one

“We will not be doing any addition al testing, ... staying the course with the guidelines that are in place today,” Winkelfoos wrote in an email to the Review . “Whether games are post poned/canceled due to weather or COVID-19, we always do our best to reschedule games.”

“We know things can change at any given moment, so we gotta play every moment as if it were our last,” he said. “All we can do is hope for the best, knowing that things could change right away. Cherishing the time that we have together is what keeps us going.”

I haven’t had anybody try to stop me from compet ing, but I carry around all the documentation I have in a little plastic pocket — every letter I’ve received from the NCAA, every blood test I’ve ever had — in case anyone ever questions me.

Swimming World is one of the main swimming news outlets. I wasn’t expecting a response to the op-ed I wrote, but I was expecting the comments

Kayla Kim Production Editor

Athletically, I’m going to keep diving and be the best diver that I can be. Academically, I’m an honors student. I’m starting my Computer Science honors project this semester and I’m finishing it next semes ter. Finally, I want to be a resource for people who are still coming to terms with their identity, continue to be a positive role model, and help continue the fight of trans athletes to get equality.

Lucas Draper takes a breath during a race at Robert Carr Pool.

I was a journalism intern for Swimming World before. When the Lia Thomas situation happened, I reached out to the editor-in-chief to ask if I could write something. He agreed because he wanted an article written by somebody in the trans commu nity. I wanted to publish it because while I know I can’t necessarily change the minds of people who are transphobic, I wanted to give them a bit of the information on where the legislation comes from and remind them that it’s not right to take it out on Lia. Dawn Ennis, a journalist and a trans woman, also reached out to me. She wanted to interview me about my perspectives as a trans athlete because she’d seen what I’d done for Swimming World and she wrote the Forbes article afterward.

What are your goals for the future, activism-wise as well as athletically and academically?

to be negative. When I saw those comments, I told myself that the people who agree with me aren’t going to be the ones commenting. It’s the people who disagree, so there’s going to be a disproportionate amount of negative responses to what I wrote simply because of the nature of people.

Courtesy of Oberlin Athletics

I’m not a trans woman, so I can only understand parts of what they experience as transgender ath letes. Their struggle is a lot greater than mine. I want to recognize that and not take the spotlight away from trans women because they are the ones at the center of this controversy. I just want to spread awareness and be someone who can advocate for those who don’t feel confident advocating for themselves.

What has been your experience on the Oberlin swim and dive team?

instance at a meet where a diving coach came up to me and two other Oberlin divers. Before the meet, you have to write down what dives you’re going to do and give it to them. He was like, “I’m missing one of your women’s dive sheets.” They assumed that they were missing a dive sheet when they weren’t. I said to the coach, “I’m Lucas, I’m the male diver.” He looked confused and walked away, but there wasn’t any con frontation there.

“Our team knows best the sharp adjustments that come with the pan demic,” Blevins wrote. “In 2020, the lacrosse season was cut short when Oberlin students got sent home. In 2021, we only got to play four games and wore masks while playing. I think this

The Oberlin Review | April 29, 2022 15 Continued from page 16

has made my team even more grateful for the times we do get to be together. Before every game, we remind ourselves that we never know what could happen tomorrow, so we have to give everything we have Similarly,today.”Stone knows what it’s like to have to navigate the pandemic with sports and emphasizes the importance of valuing your time with your team mates. Stone was sent home in March 2020 along with the rest of campus,

Anything else you’d like to add?

IN THE LOCKER ROOM

Oberlin Athletics Adjusts in Response to Increased COVID-19 Cases

resulting in his season being cut short. He also only got to play half of a regular season in 2021 when the College rein stated athletic competition.

What compelled you to write the op-ed for Swimming World Magazine ?

At this point, the women’s lacrosse team is used to being flexible regarding

changes due to the pandemic. After experiencing a season cancellation fol lowed by a shortened season the next year, members are grateful for any day they get to play the game that they love.

Did you expect the reaction that the piece got?

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

weather or COVID-19.

The main thing that people are arguing about is the concept of fairness. Sports are not inherently about fairness, they’re about who’s the best, and it’s difficult to determine a fair playing field. There was an article last week in the Review that Leo Ross, OC ’21, wrote. They mentioned many cisgender athletes who have inherent advantages. So the concept of fair ness is not something that we can necessarily argue, and that’s something I think is very important to this discussion.

Oberlin itself is very accepting and it’s one of the best places to be a trans athlete. I feel like there are not a lot of places where it would be this accept ed, and I have been helped and supported through this process. The NCAA’s regulations can be tricky to understand and there are a lot of hurdles to go through to be able to compete. I think that going from female to male in this process is the “easier” tran sition. Not that it is in any way, but logistically and through the world’s perspective, it is less stigmatized and criticized. There is less of a concern about the level of hormones that I’m on, whereas the other way around, male to female, they care a lot more about what your levels are.

Third-year Lucas Draper is a diver on the men’s swimming and diving team. Although he originally competed as a swimmer on the women’s team, Lucas started to compete for the men’s team after he broke his hand in 2021 and began transitioning as a male athlete. Out of the pool, Draper gained national atten tion after publishing an op-ed in Swimming World Magazine defending Lia Thomas and other trans athletes in sports. He’s been featured on OutSports, Forbes, and most recently appeared on a CBS News Sunday Morning segment.

Lucas Draper, Oberlin Diver Making a Name For Himself

Zoë Martin del Campo Contributing Sports Editor

See Oberlin, page 15

Although I have a lot of good things to say about Russell, I need to point out that he has the most ques tionable combinations of favorite sports teams I have ever heard of. He cheers for the University of Alabama’s football team, the Dallas Cowboys, the Oklahoma City Thunder (at least when Russell Westbrook played for them), and for some reason, the Baltimore Orioles. My friends and I all supported the local Ohio teams and we had to constantly defend them from Russell’s trash talk. We responded by hounding him about any losses the Cowboys and Alabama suffered. He did not hear the end of it when Alabama lost by 28 points

The College reinstated the indoor mask mandate last week in response to increased COVID-19 cases on campus. While this has not been the first COVID-19 wave to hit the College community, the jump in cases has presented unique challenges for spring teams that have had to navigate smaller rosters and canceled games.College second-year on the lacrosse and soccer teams Maya Blevins explained that team activities had to be adjusted in accordance with ObieSafe regula tions. Specifically, the women’s lacrosse team had to forfeit a game this past week due to an abnormally low number of field players, as some players were in isola tion for COVID-19 exposure and others had injuries.

As a sports writer, it is not surprising that I have a love for sports and stories. Much of this love was cultivat ed at Oberlin High School in 2022 National Teacher of the Year Kurt Russell’s classroom. All throughout the past week, his work as a history teacher has been deservedly praised. I took Russell’s classes in all but one semester during my four years at OHS, and I learned so much along the way. It was also Russell’s support of sports that helped me grow as a student and into the person I am today.

Spring RemainAthletesFlexible in

One day, when I was a freshman, and it was a few hours before I was about to play in my first playoff game, he could tell I was zoning out during class. Instead of embarrassing me or asking for my attention in front of the class, he just talked to me afterward. He wasn’t mad at all and wanted to make sure my lack of focus was about the big game instead of a bigger issue.

“We had to cancel a game this past Saturday against DePauw,” Blevins wrote in an email to the Review. “We also had to miss two days of practice and made lift optional. Usually, we do film all together in the gym classroom, but instead, we were sent times to watch individually. Of course it has been very disappointing to lose time to be together, especially so close to the end of our season, but fortunately, the majority of our season was unaffected by COVID-19.”

Interactions like this in a classroom weren’t distrac tions. I felt that the breaking of social barriers between student and teacher in his classroom lessened my own participation anxiety, which led to positive academic outcomes. Hearing him give credit to the Cleveland Browns for a rare win in the moments before class began gave me a better attitude about learning about the Treaty of Versailles. The power of sports is that it creates something that people of all ages and back grounds can talk about and it knocks down any dis connects.Itwasn’t

Russell is certainly known as a big part of the local sports community as the longtime coach of OHS boys’ basketball team. His team is often known for being some of the few successful athletic teams at the school, and he won Lorain County Coach of the Year twice in the last three years. When I’ve talked to him about his role as a coach in the past, including an article I wrote for the Review in March, he has always emphasized how important basketball can be as an opportunity to teach students things they cannot learn in the Thereclassroom.isnodoubt he makes a huge impact on the boys he coaches. I didn’t play basketball, so it was the other ways in which Russell emphasized sports that stuck with me. Not only did he discuss professional and collegiate sports in class, but he also made an effort to attend my soccer games and rehash them with me the next day.

Illustration by Clair Wang

just making small talk about professional and collegiate sports that made an impact on me. I was also impressed with Russell’s effort to support Oberlin High School’s sports teams from a financial standpoint, often volunteering at the concession stand at football games. For most of us, seeing Russell serv ing pretzels and nachos on Friday nights was the only time we saw him wearing something other than a suit and tie. It set a good example for me to see someone put in the time after a long school week to give back to the school’s sports programs.

to Clemson University in the 2019 College Football Playoff National Championship.

Face of COVID-19

Mr. Kurt Russell, More Than Just a History Teacher

Fourth-year lacrosse player Kiernan Stone believes that his team hasn’t been extremely affected by the rise in COVID-19 cases on campus, though a couple players on the roster tested positive.

Kurt Russell smiles in front of Oberlin High School’s Phoenix backdrop.

16 April 29, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 151, Number 19 SPORTS

John Elrod Contributing Sports Editor

In response to the rise in cases, Oberlin Athletics will continue to uphold the ObieSafe regulations imple mented April 21, keeping athletic facilities open with social distancing. The mask requirements from earlier this year were put back in place, with student-athletes required to wear masks during indoor meetings and in the weight room. However, student-athletes are still exempt from wearing masks during practice and competition.DeltaLodge Director of Athletics & Physical Education Natalie Winkelfoos added that Oberlin Athletics will not be adding additional testing and will try to reschedule games that are canceled as a result of

“COVID’s affected our season a little bit this semes ter, but we’ve been pretty lucky so far,” he said. “We’ve only had a couple cases recently, so we missed a couple guys here and there, but we’ve been fortunate enough to not have widespread numbers throughout ourInteam.”December 2021, when cases were rising on cam pus due to the Omicron variant, the team was worried that they wouldn’t be able to start their preseason practices. Fortunately, by the time the squad returned to campus in January, the numbers had dissipated.

In addition to volunteering, Russell took it upon himself to be a spectator at his students’ sports games. He would also stay up to date on what happened in everyone’s games, and during class the next day he would talk to them about upcoming games. I actually think he would make a damn good sports journalist.

Seeing teachers have that attitude about sports affirmed to me that sports are something worth caring about. It’s something I think about now as I’m writing for the sports section of the Review and also when I think about what I want to do with the rest of my life as I pursue journalism.

Courtesy of Cleveland.com