WOBC Staff, Board Hope to Revive Station Engagement

Love Island is a popular British reality show that brings attractive singles hoping to find love to Mallorca.

Courtesy of ITV-01

Lilyanna D’Amato Arts & Culture Editor

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 contestants have no access to the outside world, the producers have to find creative 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 customary on the show, there was one particular incident that completely changed the way I think about my engagement with the genre.

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 her long-time partner, Teddy Soares, got into an uncomfortably one-sided screaming match. That night, the producers had set up the Islanders with bags of popcorn and a projector, treating them to a movie night in which clandestine indiscretions would be aired for all to see, revealing potential betrayals. After a clip was shown of Soares calling another woman attractive, 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 paranoia.

Following the episode’s release, Ofcom, a government-approved regulatory authority for broadcasting in the UK, received an unprecedented number 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 Caroline Flack have put the show under an especially intense microscope.

Many former contestants have accused the show of “brainwashing” and have talked openly about their struggles to cope with increased media attention, the isolating environment 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.

While the early 2000s may have brought us unabashedly ruthless shows like 16 and Pregnant and America’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.

According to a New York Times article by Mark Andrejevic, author of Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, “Reality TV is not going away any time soon [because] its production fits neatly with the logic of the emerging surveillance economy. It provides relatively cheap and flexible programming for a massively multichannel era by inviting cast members to submit to monitoring as a form of participation, self-expression and even therapy.”

Reality television has sanitized the vision of the panopticon, a sophisticated system of surveillance which uses control to placate its victims. As a result, the appeal of the show becomes much more about the exertion of authority over contestants than the plot of the show itself. Seeing contestants freak out over contrived situations, like Faye and Teddy’s fight, satisfies the viewer’s need for drama but also creates an oppressive scrutiny directed toward the televised, coerced behavior of real human beings.

As popular YouTuber Broey Deschanel discusses in her video “Love Island: A Flirtation with Surveillance,” 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. … Love Island has raised very serious questions about the nature of reality TV and its duty of care to the real people who participate in it.”

While the experiences of contestants worry me, it is the viewers’ appetite for this type of media that concerns me most — a group that includes myself. Especially in light of the internet’s recent obsession with shows like Love is Blind and The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On, I keep asking myself: Why do I enjoy watching television that manipulates people; purposefully isolates them from the outside world; deprives them of adequate 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?

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.

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

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

Adrienne Sato

Senior Staff Writer

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 wishes 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. Artists 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.

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

“I think that mutual aid is potentially better than donating to the non-profit industrial complex because 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 people that he supports, too. … I am protecting his anonymity, but it’s someone that I had been working with to raise funds to support his livelihood.”

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

“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,” Musgrove said. “Artists really show up, and it’s really wonderful.”

They eventually had to close the application due to concerns about table and space availability.

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 community.

“I have relative class privilege, but I’m still low-income, so at a certain point, I couldn’t donate 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 potentially donate.”

White talked about a similar drive to help out and also spoke on what they find appealing about mutual aid.

“I don’t feel like I have a lot of money to consistently be donating, so I can donate time,” White said. “It makes me feel really connected to a place and the people.”

Musgrove 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 interested in getting involved or is in need.

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

Continued from page 10 forms on campus after two years of relative silence due to the COVID-19 shutdown.

College fourth-year Ryo Adachi was introduced to Colors of Rhythm as a first-year in 2019, the last year it was produced before the pandemic.

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

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

“[I heard] a lot of upperclassmen talking about the event, even from Orientation actually, and they were really excited,” she said. “I think that was definitely 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 celebrate it.”

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

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

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

“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 significance 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 outside of that, so it’s nice to have this event that centers and celebrates the global majority.”

Conservatory fourth-year Gabriel Morales, who also performed at the showcase, shares a similar view.

“In my case, as a child of Venezuelan 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.

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

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

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 event.

“As someone who’s in the Conservatory, 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.”

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

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.

“I think it’ll be nice to play for an audience that is more open and accepting,” they said. “[And] it’s not just about accepting people of color, it’s also about celebrating them.”

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.

“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. “Support 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 public 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.”

Amid Station Move, WOBC Combats Institutional Memory Loss

Continued from page 11

to sort through music, there is little that groups can accomplish.

“That’s been an issue forever with work groups — DJs just not showing up, because there is no punishment,” DeRogatis-Frilingos said. “We’re not going to take away someone’s show because they’re not showing up to a work group; that’s just not sustainable. 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 going to happen?”

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 reviving institutional memory. The board and staff have found creative ways to bring DJs and staff together, even reintroducing their intramural softball team, a tradition from years past.

Pranger is helping organize an Amoeba Music-inspired “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.

“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.”

Such events are glimmers of hope in the face of the pitfalls of institutional forgetfulness. Younger WOBC staff members like Pranger have little 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 because 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 setting 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 coming,’ 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.”

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

“I do think there was a lot more excitement about WOBC in general and bonding between the staff members and board [in past years],” Duserick 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.”

Even with the recent announcement of the station’s move, DeRogatis-Frilingos remains optimistic.

“Things are getting better,” she said. “This semester, I’ve been impressed with the staff’s enthusiasm 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.”

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

Andrea Nguyen

Staff Writer

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. 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.

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.

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.

“Tom is a joy to watch and coach; he’s a natural goal scorer and has solidified his name in the history 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 the game.”

Indeed, Decker cites his teammates as an essential 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 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.”

Tom’s teammates, second-years John McDonell and Aidan Loh, both look up to Decker’s achievements.

“Decker is a phenomenal player but an even better teammate [who] cares about every single member of the team,” McDonell said.

“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 obviously one of the best in the program’s history.”

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.

“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 program,” 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.”

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

Matt Rudella

Senior Staff Writer

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 championship in 2020 and a 22–10 conference 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.

“I am very excited to get on campus and start building this tremendous program,” Senthil said. “I cannot wait to spend time with the team as we look to lead this program to the top of the North Coast Athletic Conference.”

Senthil comes 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 championship season, they were at the top of the field in many defensive metrics, including fifth in Division III men’s basketball at field goal percentage 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.

“He detailed wanting us to pressure 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 identity that we seemed to lack last year.”

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

“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 defenders 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.”

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.

College third-year and forward Đorđe Otašević also echoes these sentiments as a point of emphasis for next season, and believes that Coach Senthil can clean up these issues.

“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.

“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.”

Otašević also emphasized the importance that offseason training will have to ensure that the team is prepared when the season arrives.

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

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

offseason.”

For some 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.

“I believe 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.”

Otašević 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.

“We have a very young team, and 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.” Otašević 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.