October 22, 2021

The Oberlin Review October 22, 2021

Established 1874

Volume 151, Number 3

New ALDI Promises More Grocery Options, Economic Growth Ella Moxley News Editor

Members of the Class of 2020 walked for a belated Commencement, which the Office of Alumni Relations hosted during Homecoming weekend.

Photo by Mads Olsen, Photo Editor

Delayed Commencement Ceremony Brings Back Graduates Kush Bulmer News Editor This weekend, 172 recent graduates returned to Oberlin for the Special Class of 2020 Commencement Ceremony after the original ceremony was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Saturday’s ceremony took place at noon in Tappan Square and was followed by various Commencement and Homecoming events, which allowed graduates to celebrate their achievements at the College.

When fourth-years left campus in March 2020, a normal graduation was put on hold. Remote classes ended in May 2020 and the graduating class entered life in a pandemic without any formal recognition. The Special Class of 2020 Commencement Ceremony invited these recent graduates back to campus during a new semester.

According to Assistant Vice President for Alumni Relations and Annual Giving Terry Kurtz, President Carmen Twillie Ambar made a promise at the onset of the pandemic to bring back the class of 2020 for an inperson graduation ceremony. Though students had a virtual senior week and Commencement at the end of May 2020, the College wanted to uphold this promise to the graduates.

“As everything sort of opened up with vaccinations and with our activities, we started to look at Homecoming and we saw that there’s going to be students on campus,” Kurtz said. “There would be a lot of energy on campus.

Some of the alumni would already be coming back … so it was a factor of the earliest possible chance to bring people back per [President Ambar’s] promise, as well as campus having some life, energy, and activity.”

Dizzy Farbanish, OC ’20, reflected on the event and the speeches that acknowledged his and his fellow graduates’ fortitude.

“It was as if it was our actual Commencement,” he said.

“They had some good speeches that were kind of targeted around how everything has sucked for the last year and a half, but now we have more grit. … At the end of the day we got to go to [President] Ambar’s house and she had like

a whole thing — she gave a toast, there was a bunch of champagne and beer and wine and a bunch of cheese and meat and stuff. … Then there was an after-party that was on Wilder [Bowl]. That was a good dinner and also more beer and wine. And then there were fireworks after that.

So honestly a pretty good reunion event.”

Farbanish also expressed his gratitude for the ceremony, which affirmed his love of Oberlin and its community after more than a year and a half away from it.

“It was definitely a classy move,” he said. “I feel like it reignited my support for Oberlin. I mean I always loved Oberlin, but it was nice that they did something special for us, and it just made it feel like we were more of a family.”

Many students were unable to make it back to Oberlin, as they had career commitments and were scattered across the country and world. There were 642 graduates in 2020, yet only 172 were able to return for the festivities.

Will Axelrod, OC ’20, said that he was disappointed he could not return.

“I have a job, cat, car that needs repair etc. and [Los Angeles is] thousands of miles away from Oberlin,” he wrote in a message to the Review. “Some of my best friends attended and offered for me to stay in their apartment in Cleveland, but I just didn’t have the time. I guess life just kept moving on, and I wanted to look forward and I couldn’t really afford to look back at the moment. Really sad I couldn’t go, but I made my peace with that in 2020.”

Class of 2020 Representative and Commencement speaker Naeisha McClain was happy that they were able to reunite with their friends and peers that they hadn’t been able to see since the onset of the pandemic.

“I remember running to one of my friends who was the last person that I saw in March when leaving campus and just like giving her the biggest hug because I had not seen her in so long,” they said. “I saw that a lot with the different interactions that were happening around me — just people being excited to see these individuals who they had not seen since 2020. … There was excitement and happiness and just joy.”

On Sept. 15, the Oberlin Planning Commission approved plans to build a new ALDI grocery store in the City. Two years ago, Oberlin City Council rezoned nearly 28 acres of land at the proposed ALDI site to create a larger retail space called Oberlin Crossing. After several years of delay imposed by COVID-19, ALDI will be the first project built in the area, and some community members hope that it will be the start of greater economic revitalization for the town.

In order to build the Oberlin Crossing shopping center, the group overseeing the project, Carnegie Management and Development Corporation, had to navigate the City’s legislative process.

In 2019, City Council rezoned the land from its original classification as an office space to its new designation as a heavy commercial zone, or C3, which opens the land up to commercial use.

The rezoning opens up the land to developments beyond just the ALDI. “Carnegie had originally proposed a much larger development that would have included the ALDI’s,” said Carrie Handy, director of planning and development. “They’re saying it’s the first phase. So instead of doing it all at once, they’re gonna phase it. The bigger development included more retail space, some restaurant space, and some office space.”

Since the proposed location is officially rezoned, Carnegie Management must simply seek administrative approval from the Planning Commission for each proposed building they want to create in the space. In early September, representatives from the group met with the Commission for approval for the ALDI. When the plans for the Oberlin Crossing area were originally proposed, a few residents expressed concern that inviting large, big-box stores into the City limits would damage Oberlin’s small-town identity. However, Oberlin City Councilmember Kelley Singleton says these concerns are largely overblown.

“People are excited about it,” Singleton said. “[There will be] more options for groceries. There are people that already shop at ALDI’s in Amherst and now don’t have to drive all the way up there to go there. It’s just more choices.”

Mark Chesler is one resident who is less excited about the development. This week, Chesler filed a lawsuit in the Lorain County Court of Common Pleas saying that the site could create an increase in traffic. Chesler has often fought development plans within the City, including changes to food truck zoning rules in 2015 and a proposed O’Reilly Auto Parts in 2016.

Before the plans were originally approved, the Oberlin Planning Commission did a traffic impact study which resulted in the Commission and the Ohio Department of Transportation requesting that Carnegie create northbound and southbound turn lanes, move a driveway, and change the lighting near the development.

See Grocery, page 2

CONTENTS NEWS

OPINIONS

02 SOAR Re-Orients Second-Years to Oberlin

05 Criticism of Oberlin Testament 08–09 Hidden Gems of Oberlin to Care for Community

04 Off the Cuff with Ohio Teacher of the Year Kurt Russell

06 Whiteness Remains Pervasive in Writing

The Oberlin Review | October 22, 2021

THIS WEEK

ARTS & CULTURE

SPORTS

10 Director Ry Russo-Young on Oberlin, Film-making, and Nuclear Family

15 Cross Country Receives Finsih Line Support from Puke Patrol

11 Students Disappointed in ’ Sco Amid COVID-19 Changes

16 Oberlin Volleyball Makes Program History After Beating DePauw on Homecoming

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Ne w s

Grocery Option Coming to Oberlin

SOAR Re-orients SecondYears to Oberlin

Continued from page 1

The new ALDI may also pose some challenges to local businesses that will have to compete with the supermarket.

Yet, according to Executive Director of the Oberlin Business Partnership Janet Haar, it could go the other way too — local businesses may benefit from people coming to Oberlin to shop at the ALDI. “I have conflicting thoughts on that because I know how hard [President at Braido Foods and Owner of Oberlin IGA] Leo Braido and Oberlin IGA have worked to come into this community and build his store to serve the community while also trying to be environmentally conscious,” Haar said. “The other thing I think about … is that more people … will be coming into the Oberlin area and perhaps, if we promote things correctly, would also come downtown and do business with other businesses in downtown [Oberlin].”

Additionally, the proposed ALDI could cause new stores to open up in the Oberlin Crossing area. Singleton hopes that the ALDI will act as an anchor for new businesses and a marker of economic growth.

“We’re trying to signal that Oberlin

Students participating in the Sophomore Opportunities and Academic Resources reorientation program gather for an ice cream social.

Photo courtesy of Nathan Carpenter

Juanita Alabi After completing an unorthodox first year of college due to the COVID-19 pandemic, second-years are back on campus hoping to find their place at Oberlin. In order to support second-years, many of whom have spent an unprecedented four and a half months away from campus this summer, the Sophomore Opportunities and Academic Resources Program is expanding to offer a “re-orientation.”

While the SOAR program has existed for the past three years, this year’s expansion is aimed to help ground second-years who might be less settled at Oberlin than normal.

The program enables second-years to explore opportunities available at Oberlin, build skills, and bond with their peers.

Nathan Carpenter, director of academic peer advising and coordinator for strategic initiatives, stated that the program was restructured and tailored to the specific conditions of this secondyear class.

“This year’s SOAR program evolved to meet the needs of this particular sophomore class,” he said. “It’s a month-long program during which students are grappling with complex problems and exploring learning opportunities, especially those opportunities outside the classroom that weren’t available in their first year. It’s also a program that is meant to build community, because that was also very challenging in the context of COVID-19 last year.”

There are three components to this year’s SOAR program. For

the first four Sundays of the fall semester, second-years enrolled in the program will participate in core sessions to explore opportunities at Oberlin and plan for upcoming semesters. SOAR will also provide a variety of skill-building workshops including Winter Term planning, and résumé and cover letter drafting.

Finally, the program also offers social and community-building activities.

Students that attend the core Sunday sessions along with three skillbuilding workshops of their choosing will receive one co-curricular credit.

The program will welcome various keynote speakers including Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and Susan Glasser, a staff writer for The New Yorker.

Additionally, there will also be presentations from staff members in experiential learning offices, such as the Career Center and the Office of Study Away, to help students explore opportunities available through the College and develop transferable skills such as problem solving and analytical thinking.

SOAR activities commenced on Sunday, Oct. 10. Second-years attended their first core session, which was followed by a “SpeedFriending & Berries and Cream Social.”

College second-year Iago Mendes, who spent his entire first year remote, expressed his excitement about the program.

“The social events are pretty interesting,” he said. “Last Sunday we had an ice cream social and speedfriending, which was cool. Since I wasn’t on campus last semester, it’s a

The Oberlin Planning Commission recently approved plans for an ALDI grocery store, which will be the first retail outlet built in the Oberlin Crossing shopping center.

Illustration by Holly Yelton, Illustrator

See Reorientation, page 4

The Oberlin R eview

P ublication of R ecord for Oberlin College Oct. 22, 2021 Volume 151, Number 3 (ISSN 297–256) 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.

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is open for business,” Singleton said.

“There’s a perception that Oberlin is very hard to work with. … We are trying to change that view and get more businesses in the town, get more local employment, and increase our tax base so we can support our schools and City services.”

Haar agrees that the ALDI could act as a catalyst to increase the prosperity of all businesses in town.

“The more we have, the more people are going to come, and the next time they come, they might eat at a different restaurant,” Haar said. “It’s a fallacy to think if you’ve got one business, you can’t have more than one. So that’s kind of where I come from — the conflicting piece. I don’t want it to adversely affect IGA. And, on the other hand, I think it might positively affect the City of Oberlin.”

The positive effects of the new ALDI counter some residents’ remaining concerns about its potentially negative impact. New opportunities provided by the grocery store could strengthen local economic conditions and provide more competition to pre-existing businesses.

“That’s capitalism, isn’t it?”

Singleton said.

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Security Notebook Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021 12:40 a.m. Campus Safety officers were requested to assist a student ill from alcohol consumption at East Hall.

Officers spoke with the student, who was able to answer all questions asked.

The student stated that they would call Campus Safety if they started to feel worse.

11:18 a.m. Officers were requested to assist an ill employee in Stevenson Dining Hall. An ambulance was requested and the employee was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital’s emergency room for treatment.

3:23 p.m. Officers were requested to transport an ill student from the Student Health Center to Mercy Allen Hospital’s emergency room. The transport was completed.

Friday, Oct. 15, 2021

Departments have worked to expand course offerings in response to a large first-year class.

Photo by Mads Olsen, Photo Editor

Departments Adapt to Accommodate Large Number of First Years Ella Moxley News Editor Last week, Oberlin completed a census of students at the College and Conservatory and found that an especially large number of students are enrolled for the 2021–2022 academic year. The rise in enrollment has required academic departments across campus to adapt, particularly to accommodate the large number of first-year students.

This semester, Oberlin has 2,942 students, including 882 incoming first-years and transfer students who are new to Oberlin. While this is not a record number of students on campus, it is abnormal; in a traditional year Oberlin would likely have around 2,850 students on campus. In addition to a large number of students overall, the large firstyear class has created an imbalance between upperclassmen’s and firstyear students’ class sizes.

One of the reasons behind the large student population is an especially successful recruitment year for admissions. The other reason for the high level of enrollment is that students who took personal leaves returned to campus this semester at a much higher rate than normal.

“Those who took a personal leave last year, which was a lot of students for understandable reasons, returned at a higher rate than normal personal leaves — at about twice the rate,” said Ross Peacock, assistant vice president for Institutional Research and Planning. “In any given fall, we might expect 20 to 25 people who were on personal leave the prior fall to come back. This year there were about 107.”

In addition to people returning from personal leave, the College also had fewer students leaving campus for programs like Study Away.

According to Peacock, close to 100 students normally take academic leave in the fall. This fall, however, only 49 students are studying away.

The Oberlin Review | October 22, 2021

Having such a large number of students on campus meant that academic departments across the College had to stretch to accommodate everyone, especially after running at two-thirds capacity over the previous academic year.

Last year, Oberlin split the academic year into three semesters to dedensify the campus and uphold social distancing.

Various departments adapted their course offerings to accommodate the large number of first-years seeking introductorylevel and survey courses.

“In Politics, we were asked to increase enrollments, especially in 100- and 200-level courses, and we did that to accommodate student demand,” wrote Department Chair and Professor of Politics Kristina Mani in an email to the Review.

“So almost all of our courses at those levels are either full or nearly full. It’s good in terms of exposing more of the first-year class to Politics courses, but it means we’re asking faculty to take on more responsibilities in a situation where it becomes hard to say no.”

The Economics department, which also offers an intro-level course that is popular with firstyear students, had a similar issue.

Former Department Chair and Professor of Economics Ron Cheung was surprised by how much interest first-years had in the course.

“ECON 101 [Principles of Economics] filled up a lot faster than we had actually expected,” Cheung said. “We always knew that it was a popular elective, especially for firstyear students. … We thought that we would have enough capacity for first-year students by offering four sections of ECON 101 in the fall and three sections of it in the spring. As it turns out, it was a little bit difficult for first-year students to get some of those sections.”

Different departments employed various tactics to increase capacity in

order to meet demand. For example, the English department asked a professor to switch from teaching a 300-level course to a 100-level lecture course to accommodate students looking for introductory courses.

“We added one 100-level lecture course, and we did switch out an upper-level course in order to make the change,” said Chair of the English Department Professor Gillian Johns.

“But this professor is also teaching a 300 level course, so students are served at both the introductory and the advanced levels.”

In Economics, Cheung said that because lecture classes are generally large to begin with, faculty members are often reluctant to increase the caps on their class size. Instead, the department asked students to take ECON 101 at a less desirable time and even encouraged some students who had rigorous economics training in high school to start their economics career at Oberlin with a 200-level elective course.

Associate Dean of the College of the Arts and Sciences Elizabeth Hamilton said that department chairs rose to the challenge of making space for the large number of students taking classes this fall­ ­ like they do every year.

“Departments worked very hard to ensure the right number of seats and range of course offerings this fall,” Hamilton said. “We have received positive feedback from faculty and students about access to courses at all levels.”

Despite being forced to make some alterations to their courses this year, faculty and staff are excited to see Oberlin back to running at full capacity.

“It’s more students than we planned for, which is better than fewer students than we planned for,” Peacock said. “I at least let out my breath.”

4:49 p.m. Officers and Oberlin Fire Department members responded to a fire alarm at Wright Laboratory of Physics.

The area was checked and cleared. An electrician responded and resolved the issue. The alarm was reset with no further problem.

6:14 p.m. A resident of Burton Hall reported a gas smell in the building.

Officers, Oberlin Fire Department members, and a maintenance technician responded. OFD members did not detect any gas with their meter and maintenance tech could not find any visible leaks. A work order was filed.

Saturday, Oct. 16, 2021 2:26 a.m. Officers were requested to assist an intoxicated student between Peters Hall and Cox Administration Building. An ambulance was requested.

The student was checked by paramedics and declined transport to the hospital.

11:25 a.m. Officers and Oberlin Fire Department members assisted a student who had passed out at Philips gym. The student was transported by ambulance to Mercy Allen Hospital.

7:43 p.m. Officers were requested to assist an ill student at Noah Hall.

An ambulance was requested and the student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital’s emergency room.

Monday, Oct. 18, 2021 11:37 a.m. Officers, Oberlin Fire Department members, and an electrician responded to a fire alarm at Johnson House. A contractor stated that they were testing the heating system and a buildup of steam activated the alarm.

The alarm was placed on bypass until the testing was completed.

3:30 p.m. A student reported the theft of their bicycle from the bike rack outside of Fairchild House. The bicycle is a gray 10-speed Infinity Superior. The bicycle is valued at $377.

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021 8:18 a.m. Officers were requested to assist an ill student at Dascomb Hall.

The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital’s emergency room for treatment.

Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021 8:51 a.m. Conservatory staff reported damage to a piano in David H. Stull Recital Hall. The finish and wood of the piano’s fallboard was damaged and will cost an estimated $500 or more to fix.

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Ne New wss OFF THE CUFF

Off the Cuff with Ohio Teacher of the Year Kurt Russell This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kurt Russell (left) recieves his award from State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mr. Paolo DeMaria Courtesy of Oberlin City Schools

Walter Thomas-Patterson Senior Staff Writer Kurt Russell is a social studies teacher at Oberlin High School and the 2022 Ohio Teacher of the Year. Russell has been an educator for the last 25 years. After listening to feedback from students about how whitewashed history curricula in the U.S. was, Russell started teaching an African-Amerian History class in the late ’90s. Ten years ago, he also developed a new class called Race, Gender, and Oppression. With Oberlin Professor Emerita Dr. Carol Lasser, Russell developed a course titled Oberlin History is American History.

Besides teaching, Russell is also an advisor for the Black Student Union and the school basketball coach. The Review sat down with Russell to discuss how he became interested in teaching and how current events impact his role as an educator.

Could you explain your backstory about how you got into teaching history?

I became a history teacher because of three simple pictures. Both my parents grew up in segregated Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s with Jim Crow, and all my family members for some odd reason had these three pictures. In the center was a picture of Jesus, on one side was a picture of Martin Luther King Jr., and the other side was a picture of JFK. I grew up in the church, so I knew about Jesus, but I did not know about who the other gentlemen were. My parents purchased a set of encyclopedias when I was maybe 6, 7 years of age, and I used these encyclopedias to start researching. Who was Martin Luther King Jr.? Who was Malcom X? Who was John Lewis? That’s how I fell in love with history.

From there, I had a kindergarten teacher by the name of Ms. Francine Tall, who actually works downtown at the Carlyle Flower Shop. For some reason, when she taught a lesson, it seemed as though I was the only one in the class. My eighth-grade year was the first time I had a Black male teacher, and my eyes lit up because I saw myself in this gentleman. His name was Mr. Larry Thomas.

How does having those powerful first experiences with history connect to your high school teaching today?

I always tell individuals that I see myself not as someone who is trying to make people fall in love with

history, but as someone who is trying to make people feel authentic. I give students the empowerment to be able to think for themselves and to feel comfortable in the way they think about subject matter so that they can stand alone if need be.

There is a lot of discourse around teaching history that incorporates more marginalized perspectives.

Currently, we see this national debate over Critical Race Theory in schools. As a history teacher, how does this impact you?

To be honest, it doesn’t affect me one bit because I know where my values lie. There is no way I could be a history teacher without teaching history. I’ll make this analogy: There would be an uproar if I was a math teacher, and said five plus five equals 13. There is no way I can teach our history without speaking about some of the ills of our country. If I don’t do that, I’m doing a disservice to my kids.

There are values I have as a teacher, and I will not shortchange those.

At the same time, I do not try to change my students’ mindsets or opinions. I say, “This has happened, these are the facts, but what do you think about it?” I’m so shocked to see adults thinking that kids cannot comprehend complexity; trying to shelter kids from the past because it would make them uncomfortable. No, our kids are strong enough to handle that. I think it’s just disrespectful for us, as adults and as history teachers, to not provide true information.

I’d like to talk about the broader era that we live in and what role you see history playing in this

age of layered crises. We have the COVID-19 pandemic, an ongoing reckoning of racial justice protests, families struggling economically, and I am wondering how much thought you give that in the classroom.

I take what’s happening today and base my units on that. That is what my Race, Gender and Oppression class is formed around. This semester, I’m teaching a class on economic oppression that deals with the struggles of individuals in poverty.

We also cannot talk about the formation of the Constitution without talking about what’s happening today.

I have realized this: if you don’t make things relevant, you’re going to lose kids. You’re going to lose the engagement, so you have to make the lesson of the past relevant for today and for the future.

How do you establish trust with students on a personal level, as opposed to simply making the curriculum more inclusive?

My students and myself, we have trust in one another. What they say in the classroom I do not share with other faculty members. We have norms that are non-negotiable; we all abide by them, and it works very well.

Once that trust happens, then those relationships are built, and then you provide equity within the classroom.

I need to make sure that students understand that I’m in the trenches with them. I’m not bigger than they are. I’m not more important. I am willing to fail. I have a degree behind my name, which is why I’m teaching, but at the same time, I’m learning from the students as well.

Re-orientation Program Helps Students Navigate Challenges After Untraditional First Year

Continued from page 2

great opportunity for me to meet new people from my class.”

Throughout the week, there have been workshops geared to help second-years acquire certain skills and to introduce them to internships and research opportunities.

Last year, first-years had a nontraditional Winter Term during the month of August in which they attended a pre-orientation Peer

Advising Leaders program before they even started classes at Oberlin.

According to double-degree secondyear Nathaniel Coben, the Winter Term workshop he attended gave him a better understanding of how Winter Term operates and inspired his project idea.

“I wasn’t sure how Winter Term worked but now I understand, and I have an idea in mind about the project

I want to do,” he said. “I’m actually pretty excited about it because my project is something I’ve wanted to do for a while.”

In an email to the Review, Associate Dean of the College of the Arts and Sciences Laura Baudot described the goals of the restructured SOAR program.

“We want to ensure that sophomores are well prepared to

integrate their interests inside and outside the classroom, a process that will help students make the most of their remaining time at Oberlin and beyond,” she wrote.

The program will run throughout October and will conclude with a two-day retreat during Winter Term.

The retreat will be remote accessible to meet the needs of students who will not be on campus during that time.

Weekly COVID-19 Update Oberlin College Updates On Monday, the College announced that the outdoor mask mandate and restrictions on indoor dining had been lifted after a successful first two weeks of classes. Between Sept. 27 and Oct. 17, Oberlin has had four positive cases. All students were required to receive a COVID-19 test upon their arrival on campus. Since then, only unvaccinated students, faculty, and staff have been tested weekly.

As of Oct. 18, 96.7 percent of students, 93.5 percent of faculty, and 83.1 percent of staff have been vaccinated.

Everyone in the campus community was required to be vaccinated by Oct. 7. The College offered exemptions on the basis of health or religion.

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Lorain County Updates Lorain County’s COVID-19 caseload has been decreasing over the last month. From Sept. 23 to Oct. 21, the county reported 3,334 cases and 147 hospitalizations.

However, local hospitals are still feeling the burden of COVID-19. Last week, according to Mercy Health – Lorain Chief Nursing Officer Charlotte Wray, about 75 percent of people in the Intensive Care Unit in Lorain Hospital had COVID-19.

Lorain County has ordered doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5–11 and started to schedule clinics for them. Health officials estimate that the Food and Drug Administration will make this age group eligible for vaccinations in the next two weeks.

As of yesterday, 58.88 percent of Lorain County residents have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and 51.33 percent have completed the entire vaccination series.

Statewide Updates The Ohio Department of Health reported 124,068 new statewide COVID-19 cases in the last month. Cases in Ohio have been trending downward since midSeptember.

ODH reported last Thursday that while hospitals are overburdened by COVID-19 cases, the incidence of the Delta variant appears to be plateauing in the state.

Ohio is at 419 cases per 100,000 residents, down from last week’s 507. Rates above 100 are considered “high incidence” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of yesterday, 54.9 percent of Ohio residents have started the COVID-19 vaccination process and 51.3 percent have taken both doses of the vaccine.

More information on COVID-19 in Ohio is available through the ODH and Lorain County Public Health websites, where case numbers are updated every weekday at 2 p.m.

OPINIONS

October 22, 2021

Letters to the Editors

I Endorse Farah Emeka for Oberlin City Schools Board of Education I enthusiastically endorse Farah Emeka, OC ’97, for one of the three contested seats on the Oberlin City Schools Board of Education. As a current member of the board, Ms. Emeka understands the board’s policies and the issues facing the schools. As a parent with two sons in the school system, she understands the schools from the viewpoint of parents. She is an attorney for a law firm that represents an area school system, so she brings a valuable perspective to the board on issues of a legal nature. I know from personal experience that she is responsive to citizens’ questions and concerns.

Ms. Emeka was clearly the most informed candidate at the recent Oberlin Community Candidates Night.

Vote for Farah Emeka for the Oberlin City Schools Board of Education on Nov. 2.

– Ray English Oberlin College Director of Libraries Emeritus

College Failure to Recycle Shows Carelessness Eric Schank Senior Staff Writer Rollbacks on recycling during COVID-19 have presented the College with an enormously difficult task: absolving itself of liability for increased pollution while maintaining the appearance of sustainability. The fact that the College is making a remarkable stride toward carbon neutrality via ground-source heating does little to acquit the institution of fervent greenwashing. What is striking is that all too often, the College only puts its money where its mouth is when the change actually saves money — as is the case with the replacement of the disintegrating, century-old steam heating system.

If the College had a real desire to reimplement recycling, there would be an avenue to do so using curbside bins rather than dumpsters. Instead, recycling bins that simply get emptied in the garbage remain conspicuously placed around campus buildings, presumably for no reason other than to assure admissions tours that we are, in fact, recycling.

Still, recycling has only ever been a band-aid solution to the waste stream, a nasty symptom of Oberlin’s addiction to resource consumption. On a surface level, recycling seeks to transform the waste stream — a term used to describe the entire life cycle of garbage — into a closed loop whereby there is no waste. This, of course, has never been the case because of the inability to recycle a significant portion of disposables. Additionally, while recycling See Oberlin, page 7 SUBMISSIONS POLICY

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The Oberlin Review | October 22, 2021

Established 1874

Volume 151, Number 3

Editorial Board Editors-in-Chief

Anisa Curry Vietze

Kushagra Kar

Managing Editor Gigi Ewing

Opinions Editor Arman Luczkow

Criticism of Oberlin Testament to Care for Community There’s a lot of conversation, both on campus and off, about the ways in which Oberlin falls short. From the outside, people claim that Oberlin indoctrinates young students in an ultra-liberal ideology so detached from the “real world” that students emerge too sensitive to function in normal society.

Even among students, this is a fraught debate. Some Obies believe that although Oberlin does not reflect the real world, it remains a better model for a just and equitable society than the one we currently live in. Yet we also recognize that Oberlin is a “fantasy world” where our every need is attended to and millions of dollars are spent to mold us into successful alumni who are supposed to “change the world.” Faculty engage us in discussion and push our thinking. A dedicated staff curates every element of what makes our life outside the classroom so enjoyable, from extracurricular programming to the food on our plates. Meanwhile, the administration works tirelessly to keep it all running.

It’s more than reasonable to argue that this meticulous care for our well-being does not prepare us for the real world. Perhaps the critics are right — we’re shooting ourselves in the foot, and the overwhelming resources dedicated to our success turn us into spoiled snowflakes who melt at the first sign of difficulty.

In the face of this criticism, however, the celebrations on campus last weekend offer what we believe to be the definitive rebuttal.

On Saturday, a couple hundred 2020 graduates returned to campus to celebrate a belated Commencement. Our old friends lined up under an overcast sky, and as the notes of “Pomp and Circumstance” rang out, they made their walk to join the ranks of thousands of Oberlin alumni who came before them — a full year and a half after finishing their degrees.

For current third- and fourth-years, seeing the 2020 graduates in town brings back memories of the mentorship we received from older, now graduated students. Their guidance, provided with care and honesty, fundamentally shaped who we are today.

Seeing Obies who have navigated this “real world” for the past year and a half also reminds us of the value of what we learn here. These recent alums are pursuing careers in environmentalism, journalism, law, medicine, and a multitude of other fields that can contribute to creating a kinder, safer, and more genuine world. They’ve gone out and faced the challenges that await us all, and they returned not out of fear of the unknown, but gratefulness for what readied them to tackle all of it.

Our alumni make it a point to give back to this school, most importantly in the form of their wisdom. To that point, the members of this Editorial Board have each received career advice, support, and direction from Oberlin alumni. We’ve found that alumni are enthusiastic about helping students whenever they can, even if they’ve never met before.

This is not to say that alumni are always ardent supporters of the College. Often, they’re vocal in their criticism of administrative decisions or events on campus. However, for many, this criticism is rooted in a deep care for Oberlin. It would be much easier to graduate and forget about the College, choosing to separate oneself from the goings-on of small-town Ohio. Instead, alumni undertake a process familiar to Obies — they point out flaws, engage in debate, and demand better. Therein lies our strength: everyone can do better, and generations of Obies stand testament to the benefit of demanding more of the people making decisions. The world of Oberlin isn’t idyllic, but there is something powerful in our college’s objective to be a safe space for anyone who asks for it, and it only exists because students worked for it.

So many of our alumni friends remarked how normal and comfortable it felt to be back on campus, and how deeply they missed bumping into friends everywhere they went, as if their whole family lived within five square miles. Their return was special because the people here value each other for who they are. We endeavor to make the rest of the world the same way. This weekend showed us the ways that Obies come together. It proved to us that Obies can do great things, and that we never do them alone.

This doesn’t justify the immense privilege we have as Oberlin students. It doesn’t absolve the institution or its students of error. But at the end of the day, we still believe that Obies are having a net positive impact on the world. We still leave every class, party, or club activity with the sense that anyone there could become a friend. When we graduate, we hope to follow in the steps of current alumni, remaining engaged in the community we care about so much.

Flawed does not mean worthless. Imperfection is only a call to action: a promise to do better.

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

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Opi n ions

Whiteness Remains Pervasive in Writing Elizabeth Aduwo Layout Editor In recent years, a debate has emerged on whether white authors should write characters of color. Some answer with a hard and fast “no” when asked this question, while others say “yes” in certain circumstances. However, what has not been discussed nearly enough is why this is an issue in the first place.

“I had a Creative Writing teacher who was the first person to straight up state that most people — when they’re reading, unless they’re told otherwise — they’re picturing white people,” said Khalid McCalla, OC ’21.

The problem with a lot of white writers is that they write as if people of color don’t exist. Not only are there no main characters of color in their stories, people of color don’t exist in the worlds they create. They create worlds without race or, better yet, worlds where the only race is white. For many white writers, the topic of race is uncomfortable and unattractive. By writing a world without people of color in it, they absolve their white characters of the guilt that they cannot absolve themselves of in the real world. Someone who’s comfortable with the topic of race wouldn’t be afraid to write characters of other races.

“In a perfect world, everyone would write what they know,” McCal-

la said. “But that also comes with everyone having the same opportunities to get their writing published, and in our world, that’s just not the case.

White writers still get published disproportionately more. And because of that, representation is such a big deal.

It needs to happen. You need to be able to see characters like yourself in movies, books, and TV.” Additionally, when characters of color are included in stories by white authors, they function in the same way as talking animals or mystical creatures. These characters tend to distinctly lack the level of depth attributed to white characters. This is likely due to the fact that a lot of white writers simply don’t know how to write characters of color. The task can seem daunting, so rather than try to analyze the complexities that come with writing a character of color, white writers will often write what they know, which, unfortunately, tends to consist of oversimplified stereotypes.

The reality is that at a private, predominantly white institution like Oberlin, many young, white Creative Writing students haven’t engaged with many people of color. On top of that, these white students only read the white authors who don’t write characters of color, taught in classes by white professors who also don’t write characters of color and haven’t engaged with people of color. There’s no space made for writers of color in

these classrooms by the professors or the students. This results in thoughts and ideas circling around in an echo chamber, and it can be a difficult cycle to break.

“White writers can make space for people of color, both in the classroom and in the writing community in general,” said College third-year Reggie Goudeau, a Black poet and columnist for the Review. “I would say, go out of your way to listen whenever talented POC writers are speaking. … Make sure to be on the lookout for more diverse and high-quality books, not just the same handful that are always assigned. Have some intentionality about going to find different, talented people, as well as the classics.”

College second-year and Creative Writing major Tsitsi Zana agrees that white writers and students need to actively seek out writing by people of color, and they need to be willing to listen.

“Put a lot of time and research into it,” Zana said. “Recognize the intentions of what you are trying to do.”

No one is saying that white authors have to write characters of color into every story they write. However, it’s important to examine why the thought of writing characters of color seems so unpleasant. Do you not know how? Are you willing to do research and learn? What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a person of a certain race, a Black per-

son especially? Is it a stereotype?

As a part of the writing process, learn to question your reading habits.

What’s the last story you read with a person of color in it? What’s the last story you read without any people of color in it? Did you notice at the time?

Thoroughly answering all of these questions can help you learn how to authentically include characters of color in your writing.

“They don’t necessarily need to be writing narratives that center on the experiences of racism,” said College fourth-year and Creative Writing major Olivia Huntley. “Someone’s race or culture can be included in a way that’s respectful but is not the only characteristic of their being, and so there has to be study done about what kinds of stereotypes they may or may not be emulating. I think it’s important as a writer to do your due diligence, do your research, and that’s a normal part of the writing process. It’s not something extra. That’s something that you would have been doing anyway.”

Writing characters of color should come naturally, and it shouldn’t be forced. Characters of color should be complex without writing them being overly difficult. Their race should be acknowledged without them being pigeonholed into stereotypes. A truly well-rounded writer should be able and willing to write the world as it is — with everyone in it.

Oberlin Must Find a Way to Help Grieving Students Aniella Day Columnist In spring 2021, Oberlin students and community members engaged in debate after a troop of Girl Scouts painted a rock in Tappan Square, covering a memorial for two College students who had recently passed away. One of the names on the rock was that of my brother, Aiden Day. I joined the discourse, writing an article for the Review that encouraged everyone to consider and respect the complicated process that is grief.

At a young age, grief can be lonely.

In general, we think of grief as something that only older people have to cope with, a feeling and experience that most people don’t have to think about until a later age. When you exist outside of that conception, and when most of the people that you know do not share the intimate and traumatic experience of watching someone you love die, you can begin to feel that you are the only person in the world who has ever felt the way you feel.

But is that really the College’s problem? As much as we’d like to think of the administration as filled with people who genuinely care about the well-being of the students at their school, at the end of the day they’re running a business. Why should I expect that a huge institution would want to support the grieving sister of one of its students?

I am, of course, being a tad facetious here. Truthfully, I am confused and a bit hurt by the fact that there was never an email sent out to the College community about Aiden’s death. I do

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understand that there are thousands of people in the Oberlin community, and I am just one piece of a very large whole. But that doesn’t justify the lack of institutional support for grieving students. The current system is insufficient, and it may even lead to students transferring to another college. That just seems like a bad business model.

Lacking broader support from the College, I found support elsewhere.

To this day, I credit my success and retention at Oberlin to one person — Assistant Dean of Students Monique Burgdorf. I met Monique over Zoom in a job interview in May 2020. In the interview, I brought up the fact that I was able to continue my studies despite my brother’s illness. She immediately empathized with me — not sympathized, there’s a difference — and continued to follow up with me when I decided to take one of her Learning Enhancement Across the Disciplines classes in fall 2020, the semester after my brother passed away.

Monique and I met once a week to talk about how my classes were going, how I was feeling, and what my plans were for the future. The consistent conversations that we had really made me feel like I had an ally on campus, and they made me realize that I always had someone who could advocate for me and explain my situation to people.

Although it is important to learn how to advocate for yourself — I do think that there is a time and place for selfadvocacy — the period right after the death of a loved one might be a time for more support from outside

sources.

College is not a good place for this sort of patience. There seems to be — everywhere I go on this campus — a sense that I am not doing anything fast enough, well enough, or completely enough. If I cannot be patient with myself, how can I expect others in the community to be patient with me?

One space on Oberlin’s campus that actively cultivates patience and encourages conversation is Barefoot Dialogue. Traditionally, Barefoot Dialogue has been a space for students who are interested in seeking ways to negotiate their differences with their peers. I joined a virtual dialogue group in spring 2021. A third-year at Oberlin, I had heard about Barefoot vaguely from people that I knew, but I never considered joining. I filled out the form on a whim and then suddenly I was sitting on my bed in a Zoom meeting full of strangers. Among the students, there were two older folks on the call who introduced themselves as our hosts. They were lovely and sweet, but I had no idea why they were on the call or what a host was.

I also had a hard time connecting with the centerpieces that the facilitators presented for our dialogue sessions. In the Barefoot world, a “centerpiece” — a poem, photo, quote, etc. — is meant to provoke thought and guide the general direction of the conversation. This is not to say anything bad about my facilitators.

They were absolutely excellent, and I really appreciated the effort that they put into our group in the spring. But honestly, I felt a little uncomfortable after my first dialogue session.

We had lots of conversations about ways to reduce anxiety, like taking long walks in nature, birdwatching, laying in bed, and having tea with friends.

While these conversations did not feel completely trivial, they did feel like they existed on a plane that I did not, and still do not, feel that I belong to. I have felt this way often since my brother passed away last year. This is not to discredit conversations about anxiety reduction or to minimize other people’s problems. I just find that the things I am thinking about on a daily basis are very different from the things that an average college student is thinking about.

In the spirit of offering support, and to fill the gap left by the College, Monique and I, along with College fourth-year Emerson Holloway, are facilitating a new Barefoot Dialogue group this fall for Oberlin students who are grieving the loss of a loved one. The group will meet once every other week and any students who are interested in participating can sign up here: shorturl.at/jGUX8 While Monique, Emerson, and I hope that our Barefoot Dialogue group will prove a valuable resource for students coping with grief, it is not a substitute for comprehensive support from the College. It should not take my stumbling randomly into one person who cares enough to help for me to want to stay at this school.

Oberlin must turn its attention to its students. They are suffering, they are angry, they are confused, and they need support to be offered to them, not randomly sprinkled throughout campus.

Dining Is Struggling, But Students Can Help Boo Elliott Remy Gajewski We can all tell that the dining halls are packed and the staff is overwhelmed. It is time for students to take more responsibility for supporting Campus Dining Services in the face of the administration’s shortcomings. Curious about the long lines, empty fridges, and exhausted workers, we set out to unearth the source of the difficulties faced by CDS. We realized there’s a lot that students can do with little effort.

AVI Foodsystems has consistently walked the walk of their purported values. After replacing Bon Appétit Management Company, AVI rehired 90 percent of CDS workers who chose to reapply and made a point to hire custodial staff that were let go with the switch to Scioto Services. While Scioto retained only a single employee and remains nonunion, AVI unionized shortly after their appointment.

In a Review article published April 9, Jake Reed, the union chairperson for negotiations, said that working with AVI was easier than working with the College.

“It went a lot smoother than most negotiations with the College, at least the one that I was in,” Reed said. “It was easier to compromise with them than it was with the College.”

Their dining expansion endeavors have both helped students by providing more options that accommodate dietary and cultural needs and eased the pressure on staff. According to Karena Hill, who has been working for CDS for four years, the new locations have worked well to reduce the number of students coming through Stevenson Dining Hall.

“Now we’re at about 1,500 or 1,600 [students] a day,” Hill said. “When I was here before it was 1,000 students per meal, so that was 3,000 a day instead of just 1,500 a day.”

While new dining locations have eased some of the burden, supply chain and staffing shortages are still a problem.

“We have been combating supply chain shortages and inflated food costs from our vendors due to the economic aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic,” wrote Sarirose Hyldahl, director of retail for AVI, in an email to the Review.

This semester, students have reported that fridges in DeCafé are frequently empty.

Photo courtesy of Sarirose Hyldahl “The issues with supply chain shortages are largely attributed to staffing shortages across all landscapes, something that we are also experiencing within CDS.” The staffing shortage has resulted in extra work days for current staffers.

“We have definitely been shortstaffed,” said Head Cook Geoff Zimmer.

“There is a clause in our contract that says if management has asked everyone to cover an open shift and no one takes it, they can force people in on their days off.”

However, there seems to be recognition among staff that everyone, staff and AVI administrators alike, are not only in the same boat but also working together on it.

“It’s really not fair to judge them over another company when [Bon Appétit] didn’t experience what we’ve had to go through,” said Kimberley Casada, who has worked with CDS for 23 years. “We went through a lot of changes when AVI stepped up, and while they may not be used to handling such a large account, they do very well — they’re nice, and they care.”

It is clear that AVI is working hard in the face of exigent circumstances, and students can help mitigate the challenges facing CDS staff through small, daily practices.

First, students should return the green eco boxes to the correct bins. In

the transition to take-out-only dining, AVI purchased 22,000 green takeout containers, and they estimate only 2,500 of those are still in circulation.

“We have tried moving return bins to high traffic locations, outside of dorms, classroom buildings, student buildings, etc. … with no real improvement in return rates,” wrote Hyldahl.

Zimmer has seen boxes thrown out on campus and in the town, and he has taken it upon himself to retrieve and return them while not on the clock — something we, as students, can also do.

If you see green boxes in trash cans and are comfortable doing so, please retrieve them. We need to be conscious of ensuring the responsibility of eco box return does not fall onto already overwhelmed workers. We also need to ensure that we empty the boxes of food before we return them, and before they mold.

Second, please stop shoplifting. It contributes to higher “Xchange” prices, according to Hyldahl.

“In an average week, we see in the ballpark of thousand[s] of dollars in product being taken from our locations with no monetary exchange,” Hyldahl said.

This is an unacceptable deficit, especially with 60 percent of the student body’s average household income sitting at upwards of $110,000 and 28 percent sitting between $48,000 and $110,000.

When students with the means to pay shoplift anyway, food becomes more financially inaccessible for others.

Hyldahl recognizes that there are sometimes extenuating circumstances.

“I understand food insecurity well from a very personal standpoint, and I never want to see students go hungry,” she wrote. “I want to see a better solution to food insecurity on campus.”

As for lines, we recommend that students explore the expanded dining options and try non-peak times, schedules permitting.

In addition to student actions, we investigated possible budgetary and administrative factors. Unsurprisingly, we hit a dead end. This is not uncommon at Oberlin, as the administration tends to be transparent only about their unwillingness to promote transparency. However, it is no secret that Oberlin has been implementing budget cuts in almost every area, setting intentions to reduce staff and faculty numbers as well as salaries and benefits.

The cuts were part of the College’s promise to reduce “professional staff” by 50 positions, in line with other concerning choices made by the College in regard to staff and unionization. One might wonder why redoing the Robert Carr Pool — which was closed for construction most of the summer despite having been radically renovated in 2018 — was a priority for the College when retaining and fairly paying staff seems to be outside of budget. What does it say about our values when we are able to secure $80 million in funding for our carbon-neutral endeavors, making Oberlin the third recipient in the world of a Certified Climate Bond, but we cannot afford good working conditions for employees?

Regardless of the cause, the administration will not bear the brunt of CDS’s problems. Time and time again the College has demonstrated its willingness to place the desires of their primary source of income — students — over the needs, rights, and wellbeing of its staff. The challenges brought on by a newly full campus and an underprepared dining system has led to the brunt of the burden being carried by the workers. While it remains difficult to hold the College accountable, as students we can at least take responsibility and try to help out.

Oberlin Greenwashes, Continues Wasteful Practices Continued from page 5

drastically reduces carbon emissions associated with production of glass, paper, and plastics, energy input is still required to transport and transform waste into usable materials.

Oberlin has a plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025, but it has no such plan for reducing the usage of disposables, or even just single-use plastics. Plastics and other waste products from Oberlin continue to end up in the Black River, causing the proliferation of microplastics in the very water we drink — a direct impact on our community’s health. Given the current lack of recycling and the impact of plastic pollution on our community, the College had an opportunity to use this moment to commit to plastic bans at an institutional level, rather than shrink back from our values of sustainability.

Instead, the College sits idly by. At the onset of COVID-19, the assumpThe Oberlin Review | October 22, 2021

tion was that plastic, being easy to clean, could cheaply cover everything, from food to your face. During this time, single-use plastics and other disposables proliferated. The College was no exception to this trend, and because of this, personal agency during the pandemic has been severely limited when it comes to the use of disposable plastics. Students were forced into meal plans in which the only option was grab-and-go, making disposable cutlery and containers unavoidable.

Inexplicably, AVI Foodsystems maintains the use of disposables at Clarity, Umami, and other dining locations at which plates or reusable grab-and-go containers could be utilized. Former College Sustainability Manager Bridget Flynn and the Office of Environmental Sustainability worked tirelessly to implement the reusable container programs across

campus in order to combat Oberlin’s pollution relapse, but to little avail.

As community members have limited agency to choose alternatives to disposables, now, more than ever, it is important to demand institutional change. Unfortunately, there is little we can do to eliminate plastics from our waterways, but we can stop normalizing the use of disposables — especially plastics — in our dining facilities.

In an ideal world, recycling embodies one of the core tenets of sustainability: orchestrating a perpetual balance among social, economic, and environmental systems. Every change has an impact on the system that we live in. Some actions, especially those at institutional levels, have more apparent impacts, but even small effects accumulate.

Consider the impact of a single cigarette butt discarded in the street

around campus. It seems miniscule and therefore permissible, so it is rather common to flick it away without a second thought. That simple action and oversight, repeated by any number of the one billion people worldwide who collectively smoke 5.7 trillion cigarettes per year, compounds to become a much larger problem. Rain runoff carries many of these butts to storm drains, from which they flow into streams, rivers, and, ultimately, the ocean — contributing to the single largest source of solid-waste pollution in waterways, according to Ocean Conservancy.

Recycling is not pointless and neither are other efforts to reduce waste.

Actions matter. While these actions are more effective at an institutional level, you, as an individual, are not powerless to make positive changes to the environment or the health of your community.

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T h i s We e k

Hidden Gems of Oberlin Ashley Xu This Week Editor Oberlin students all have their nooks on campus — places where they feel at home. You might make it through your time here thinking you’ve visited every corner of campus. However, there are still hidden places only a few students know of and hold dear. From less-frequented public areas to exclusive student communities, Oberlin offers a seemingly constant supply of undiscovered spots to explore, whether you’re a first-timer or seasoned adventurer.

Oberlin Greenhouse Location: Floor M (top floor) of the Science Center’s biology wing How to access: There are open-houses held once a semester. Events will be posted to Oberlin.edu/events.

The Science Center greenhouse is over 2,500 square feet and has a planting room and three growing bays, each of which are electronically monitored and managed for temperature, humidity, and other essential growing conditions. Bay A is the planting room and Bays B, C, and D hold tropical, temperate, and desert climate plants, respectively. The greenhouse is typically used for faculty work and biology courses and labs.

Letterpress Studio Location: Second floor of Mudd Center How to access: Take part in the Letterpress Winter Term course, student co-op, or ExCo. The Letterpress Studio is a part of the Special Collections in Mudd Center and features cylinder and iron platen presses, book typeworking tools, handpresses, and other typesetting materials. Students have the opportunity to take a Winter Term Intensive Letterpress course where they learn how to make their own prints, with a final project of creating a book.

European Weeping Beech Tree Location: Undisclosed How to access: Venture to the outskirts of campus.

Several of these Beech trees are scattered across campus. On the outside, a Weeping Beech looks like a typical overly-leafy tree. However, a secret many people don’t know is that you can walk through the branches into the inner canopy of the tree. This particular tree features a swing made out of an aluminum trash can lid, a wishing well made out of bike tires, a wooden bench, and a metal windchime.

Panyard Location: Basement of Hales Gymnasium How to access: Join the Steelpan ExCo and audition for Oberlin Steel.

The Panyard, home to Oberlin’s steelpan band OSteel, holds over 40 steelpans, a drum set, an engine room with auxiliary percussion instruments, a music library, and more.

“The Panyard represents our history and our community,” said College third-year Jeremy Wesevich, who is OSteel’s musical director. “Over the last 40 years it’s been transformed by everyone who dedicated themselves to the group. The walls and ceiling are covered with the names of OSteel graduates, along with the names of guest speakers and artists who have shared their knowledge and expertise in the space.”

Cinema Studies Center for Media Education and Production Location: Apollo Theatre, 19 E College St, Oberlin, second floor How to access: Take a Cinema Studies film production course.

The Apollo Theatre holds much of the Cinema Studies department’s essential equipment. On the second floor, you can find a computer editing lab, a Foley studio for sound-making and recording, a shooting studio with greenscreen and lighting equipment, and an animation studio.

Asia House Library Location: Second floor of Asia House How to access: Walk up the stairs in the lobby of Asia House.

The Asia House Library features a selection of Asian literature as well as some artwork. Asia House residents and other students often use the quiet, cozy space to study.

Saturday, Oct. 23

Weekly Events 8

The panyard is home to OSteel.

Faculty Recital: Verona Quartet, 7:30 p.m. // Warner Concert Hall or live webcast Webcast Available Senior Recital: Juntai Huang, piano, 7:30 p.m. // David H. Stull Recital Hall or live webcast Quay Dash Concert, 8–10 p.m. // Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse Quay is a rapper from the Bronx best known for her 2017 EP Transphobic.

Her song “Queen of this Sh*t” was recently featured in season 1 of HBO’s hit show Euphoria.

Plants photosynthesize in the Oberlin Greenhou

Sunday, Oct. 24

Winter Term Slavic Song Recital, 7:30 p.m. // Warner C or live webcast

Monday, Oct. 25

Creative Writing Poetry Reading with Profs. Lynn Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers, 4:30–6 p.m. // Nancy Schrom D Hall

use.

Members of the Pottery Co-Op sit at potters wheels.

Photo courtesy of Yevhen Gulenko

Pottery Coop Location: Pale yellow house, directly behind Mudd Library How to access: Join the co-op and sign up for shifts to use the space.

The pottery co-op offers a small, relaxing space with several pottery wheels as well as a kiln and other tools for clay working and pottery.

Photo Courtesy of Maria Turner

Clarence Ward Art Library Location: 83 North Main Street How to access: Walk to the top floor of the Art Building to find the library.

The Clarence Ward Art Library has an extensive collection of literature on architecture, drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and other arts, spanning a vast range of geographic locations and time periods.

Studio B Location: Third floor of Wilder Hall, next to the WOBC radio studio How to access: Join the Studio B ExCo or apply as a band to be featured on the show.

Lauren Elwood, OC ’21, looks through printer drawers in the Letterpress Studio.

In Studio B, you can find a drum set, portable mixers, records, soundboards, and more filming and audio equipment. Studio B hosts bands every Sunday for a live performance, and records, edits, and produces the music from that session. You can view Studio B recorded performances on YouTube or tune in to the Live From Studio B broadcast every Sunday 2–3 p.m. on WOBC 91.5 FM, Oberlin’s College and Community radio station.

“Studio B is a place where artists who wouldn’t ordinarily have access to professional audio and visual recording supplies can come out with a final product that helps get their work seen and heard,” said College third-year Nico Moreta, who is executive producer of Studio B.

Photo by Anisa Curry Vietze

TIMARA Studio Complex

Photo courtesy of Yevhen Gulenko

Thursday, Oct. 28

Concert Hall

n Powell & Dye Lecture

Location: Basement of Bibbins Hall How to access: All Oberlin students have card-swipe access to the TIMARA basement area.

Visit the TIMARA computer café, where you can use audio and video editing software or listen to vinyl. Only TIMARA majors or students taking TIMARA courses may access the other spaces (e.g. the Makerspace, where students create electronic equipment).

Senior Launch: Grad School Drop-in Session, 12–1 p.m. // register on Handshake (oberlin.joinhandshake.com) to receive the Zoom link Guest Recital: Jean-Louis Haguenauer, piano, 7:30–9:30 p.m. // Warner Concert Hall

The Oberlin Review | October 22, 2021

Mudd Center Rooftop Courtyard Location: Fourth floor of Mudd Center How to access: Walk into the space, if the door to the courtyard is unlocked.

The open-air courtyard on the top floor of Mudd has plenty of light during the day. Walk out the doors to sit outside at several tables and chairs.

Friday, Oct. 29 Conservatory Admissions: Percussion Visit Day, 12:30–9 p.m. // Bibbins Hall Winter Term Spanish Immersion in Guadalajara, México, 4:30–5:30 p.m. // Peters Hall Friday Night Organ Pump, 11:59 p.m. // Finney Chapel

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A r t s & C u ltu r e

October 22, 2021

ARTS & CULTURE Established 1874

Volume 151, Number 3

Director Ry Russo-Young on Oberlin, Film-making, and Nuclear Family Lilyanna D’Amato Arts & Culture Editor This past September, Director Ry Russo-Young, OC ’03, released her threepart HBO documentary film Nuclear Family which follows her groundbreaking custody case in the late 80s. Born to two lesbian mothers, she and her sister Cade were conceived through two separate sperm donors. The family lived idyllically until Russo-Young’s donor filed for filiation in 1986, a time when the concept of an LGBTQ+ family was nearly unimaginable to the American public. When the court denied her biological father’s bid for paternal rights in a landmark decision, her case was thrust into the public eye, and adolescent Russo-Young was left to grapple with the consequences. A project that began during her time as a student at Oberlin, the documentary offered the now 39-year-old director an opportunity to reckon with her past and the unresolved conflict between her moms’ version of events and her father’s, who died of AIDS in 1998. Prior to Nuclear Family, Russo-Young directed indie films like Orphans as well as larger studio dramas like Before I Fall.

Could you walk us through what creating this documentary was like?

Did it start with unearthing your family’s tapes and the movie your father made you?

Well, it didn’t start with the tapes.

It started with really wanting to process the experience of the lawsuit and to figure out the narrative and own it for myself. That process actually started at Oberlin. I did an independent study my junior year, which was called A Middle Ground. It was a multimedia performance piece. A friend of mine, a composer in the Conservatory, composed the music. It had films in it, but it was a live performance about Little Red Riding Hood. I had my moms dress up in red capes. That was really the first creative attempt to understand the story and to understand who my biological father was to me in my life, to try to figure it all out. At that point, I was making a bunch of experimental films and short films at Oberlin. I don’t know why I did a live performance as opposed to a movie, I just wasn’t there yet. It felt right to do it as a live performance and include all of these films at the kitchen sink. That’s just where I was in my creative development.

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Originally, you planned on making the piece a narrative, scripted

Nuclear Family, produced and directed by Ry Russo-Young, OC ’03, follows Russo-Young’s own landmark custody case in the late 80s. It premiered on HBO Sept.

26.

Photo courtesy of HBO

film; what drew you to the documentary medium?

For many years, I was making narrative films, and I thought, “Well, I want to tell this story. I should tell it as a narrative.” So I tried writing many versions of the script, and it just never felt right. It always felt like I had to simplify the narrative too much — there had to be a good and evil — and I had issues with having a 9-year-old as the lead character. There were just certain limitations with the narrative form. When I won a Creative Capital grant in 2015, I used some of the money to start this project as a hybrid film, which was going to include both the tapes and footage that I had but also actors playing out specific scenes.

Eventually I realized that a documentary would allow me to not know the answers to all the questions. Making the documentary itself would be part of actively answering those questions, and I would do that on camera.

I would do it in the making of the film itself. I was looking for a subjective truth because, from the very beginning, I wanted to tell my version of the story. Even now, I have no faith in objectivity. I just don’t really think it’s possible. So from the beginning, I was just trying to find the truth that I was comfortable with, that felt true to me. A huge part of that was hearing the other side of the story, processing it, thinking about it, and allowing myself not to be so dogmatic in believing the version where he’s evil. My moms weren’t perfect, which is the sort of argument or party line I had to follow in order to survive and not be taken away from my family. I don’t blame my

moms for that because I don’t think it was their fault. It was the law’s fault that they weren’t recognized as a family. As a person in the middle of my moms and my father over all these years, that realization was part of my coming to peace and finding my own truth in it. And I guess moving backward a little bit, too.

A lot of your career has been interested in exploring the adolescent experience, which was clearly a very formative time in your own life. What about teenage life has interested you in the context of your other projects?

Well, I think in terms of mainstream narrative, what’s appealing to me is that there’s so much about identity in adolescent and teen films. That time of your life is when you’re asking yourself these huge, monumental questions: “Who am I? How do I survive in the world? What kind of person am I going to be? How am I going to leave my parents and forge my own way in the world?” Those are big questions that I still find myself asking to this day, and I think those are really valid questions, especially for young women. I want to make movies that dignify the young female experience. I felt like so many of the films made for teenage girls would talk down to them or make their problems seem silly or they’re always about boys. They were always gendered in some way. I just felt like there is a nobility in taking that age seriously, especially for young women.

As you look back on your career, what can you share with current See Ry Russo-Young, page 13

COMIC Danny Valero Staff Cartoonist

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Student Burnout

Students Disappointed in ’Sco Amid COVID-19 Changes

Before March 2020, the ’Sco was one of the most popular nightlife hubs, but it has recently seen a decline in attendence following COVID-19 restrictions.

Photo by Yevhen Gulenko Sydney Rosensaft Senior Staff Writer As COVID-19 rates declined on campus in June, a sacred Oberlin tradition was restored: Wednesday night Splitchers at the ’Sco. While the venue is still a beloved staple of College culture, some feel that the event just isn’t the same.

Some students believe that ObieSafe policies, which currently prohibit drink

service, require all ’Sco attendees to be masked, and limit capacity to 200-people have affected attendance.

For College fourth-year Noah Auby, these rules have dramatically shifted the ’Sco’s atmosphere. On the first Wednesday of the semester, he noticed that the ’Sco was less crowded than usual and guests seemed hesitant to dance. Auby was disappointed at the altered setup of Splitchers, which he attributes to the

COVID-19 policies. After attending the first Splitchers of the semester, he decided not to go back.

“I have not been [to Splitchers] more than once this semester — and for good reason,” he said. “With masks and other restrictions, the people are just kind of awkward.”

Auby is not the only student who feels disheartened by the loss of “normal” Splitchers. Kaylyn Ready, College third-year and one of the managers at the ’Sco, addressed this concern.

“We’re really just trying to keep everybody safe in multiple ways, like making sure that people aren’t drinking too much, and monitoring the crowd, and making sure whatever’s going on is keeping people safe,” she said.

The ’Sco’s management team meets regularly to discuss these policies as it tries to navigate the balance between safety and fun. Given the current circumstances, that means temporarily ceasing drink service.

“We don’t want people just getting a drink and chugging it and leaving their masks down,” Ready said. “Also, drunk people tend to forget to put their masks on.”

Most students understand why the policies exist. However, that does not change the dampened feeling of being at Splitchers, and the student body feels frustrated. College fourth-year Zach Bayfield used to attend Splitchers for a mid-week mental recharge. This year, he feels like Splitchers cannot serve that same purpose. Restrictions, although necessary, make the event less relaxing.

“There’s no denying that they’re doing the right thing, but at the same time, it makes it unlikely for people to come to the ’Sco at the same rate they did before,” Bayfield said.

These policies are particularly difficult to accept after this summer, when the indoor mask mandate was lifted entirely and students on campus got a taste of normal Splitchers. In the face of these fresh memories, Obies are finding it difficult to re-adjust. College second-year Ian Watson was a self-described “semi-regular” at summer semester Splitchers. As Watson walked into the first Splitchers this fall, he felt the difference immediately.

“It just kind of felt a little stifled, and it was just a little weirder,” he said.

That sentiment is exactly what Bayfield was expecting from fall semester Splitchers. Last week, Bayfield decided he wouldn’t even check out the scene.

Instead, he opted for a Wednesday night out at The Feve.

Wednesday is Long Island Night at The Feve, where a Long Island iced tea is just $6. Dinner and drinks at the local bar has long been a pre-Splitchers tradition, but recently it has become the only Wednesday destination. Currently, The Feve — without a capacity limit or masking requirement — has much more relaxed COVID-19 policies than the College, so some third- and fourthyears choose to spend their Wednesdays at the bar.

“I think the energy is much better and the atmosphere is great,” Bayfield said about his experience at Long Island Night last week. “It just feels like a much more natural social environment.”

According to Bayfield, the ’Sco is having some difficulty curating its signature fun, carefree environment. He’s not surprised that students have begun to favor The Feve.

“It’s a bit inevitable in a sense.

The ’Sco is going into this situaSee Splitchers, page 13

The Suite Life: College Houses Students in The Hotel at Oberlin Anisa Curry Vietze Editor-in-Chief Any kid growing up in the early 2000s knew the dream. We saw movies like Eloise at The Plaza, in which a six-year-old lives a lavish life, ordering room service every day at The Plaza Hotel in New York City; we saw it in TV shows like The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, in which two twins live in the Tipton Hotel and create chaos, tormenting Mr. Moseby, the hotel manager. Due to complications during the housing assignment process this year, this dream was realized for a handful of Obies when they were assigned to “dorm living” on the top floor of The Hotel at Oberlin.

The College has assigned some students to “transitional housing” for the semester after uncertainty caused by COVID-19 made it difficult to assign all students to dorm rooms.

College first-year Emma Sullivan found out she had been moved to the hotel just days before arriving on campus for the first time. As a first-year, she was initially concerned about the non-traditional college experience.

“I will say it was really tough the first few days, because it was hard to make friends,” Sullivan said. “It’s not a very social environment, … so that was tough at first, but now I’ve gotten adjusted.

I’ve met some really cool people. So I like it now. Plus, it’s nice at the end of the day — like I’ve heard so many horror stories about the dorms — it’s nice just being able to unwind and not having to socialize with people.”

College third-year Olivia Bross was surprised when she was offered the poThe Oberlin Review | October 22, 2021

sition of Resident Assistant of the hotel.

“I was worried there was a possible catch with it,” Bross said. “Because it is transitional housing, eventually the goal is to hopefully place [students] in actual dorms. [But] I was told that I would at least be here for the entire fall semester.

People may be coming and going, but right now it’s been pretty stable with the people that we’ve had here. I like to joke around; I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m the RA of the hotel; I’m practically Mr. Moseby.’”

While some students have been assigned to live in converted lounges, others get their own private bathroom and king-size bed at the hotel.

“Because I’m the RA they gave me a suite setup, so I have a pretty nice bathroom and I have a couch and living room setup,” Bross said. “This feels more like a small apartment for me. I don’t have a kitchenette or anything like that, but it feels like probably just a nicer Firelands type of setup.”

Bross felt, however, that her capacity to build community as the RA was a challenge, but not more so than it has been for many RAs this year.

“I think we’re trying to make it as normal as possible, especially since we have an entire hall to ourselves that we only have access to,” Bross said. “It’s been more difficult for most RAs who are working in traditional housing. In East [Hall], they’re changing a lot of the lounges into dorm rooms, so there’s only one main lounge there. So it’s been an issue everywhere, but especially with the hotel. … It is weird because it’s so much quieter. Usually being in a dorm, most of your community-making is just saying ‘Hi’ to people as you’re walking in the

halls and when you’re in the bathroom, and we don’t have that.”

Still, Bross is hoping to plan some special programs for her residents, like trick-or-treating down their hall or making use of the hotel’s restaurant.

Unlike Eloise, who calls the front desk to order one roast-beef bone, one raisin, and seven spoons — and charge it, please! — the students living in the hotel are not lavished with complimentary room service.

“They kind of are trying to treat you like a normal student and not a hotel guest,” College third-year Salma McLaughlin said. “The first night I came, I didn’t bring my pillows. So I asked for one [at the front desk] and he was like, ‘I can’t give you one, sorry. I have to treat you like any other student.’ But I mean, I also have my own bathroom and a king-size bed and [air conditioning]. So whether it’s like any other student, I’m not quite sure.”

However, the hotel students do get one special perk.

“Every Wednesday at 11 a.m., we can put out our dirty sheets and they’ll drop off clean ones for us,” Bross said.

In The Suite Life, the twins navigate a cast of characters, from the hotel’s candy counter girl, Maddie, to the hotel’s heiress, London, to Mr. Moseby. The fictional Tipton Hotel becomes a kind of haphazard and dysfunctional community. While Sullivan has never seen anyone swinging from a chandelier or any preteens chasing pet rats around The Hotel at Oberlin, she does say that the hotel has its charms.

“I think the hotel people are really nice,” Sullivan said. “So it does feel like

there was a little bit of a sense of community. It’s not as sterile as some hotels, like they know my name and whenever I have a package they’re like, ‘Oh, you have a package!’ So that is really nice.”

A downside of living in the hotel is not being able to decorate. Unlike Eloise’s iconic, perfectly pink room, the students in Oberlin’s hotel have very limited options when it comes to making the space their own.

“Luckily, the decor … in the hotel [is] very nice, but you aren’t allowed to hang up string lights, and you aren’t allowed to put up posters,” Bross said. “There’s different ways of decorating your space even if you can’t put up posters, but it was a real downside, especially for underclassmen. [For] the first-years I’m sure it’s very bizarre, because you have no idea what you’re getting into with college, and people prepare you to decorate your dorm, and then you walk in, and they’re like, ‘Nope, can’t do it.’”

Additionally, according to McLaughlin, the hotel dorms get a room check every other week — much more often than a normal dorm — to make sure the rooms are in good condition.

McLaughlin says that she has mostly adjusted to the hotel, though sometimes she reflects on the absurdity of the experience.

“It’s definitely weird coming back late at night and walking in the hotel,” McLaughlin said. “But it’s kinda nice.

It feels fancy. Oh, and I do have a class [there] — my 9 a.m. class that meets right in StudiOC, so I waltz over there in my pajamas every day.”

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A r t s & C u lt u r e

Squid Game Comparisons Overlook Cultural Nuance Kushagra Kar Editor-in-Chief For the last three weeks, Squid Game has been buzzing on social media.

Netflix is proud to boast the show’s record-breaking ratings, and Western audiences are lapping it up with the same awe and intrigue as Parasite two years ago. Before I’d seen the show myself, I asked someone to describe it to me and was told, “It’s like a South Korean Hunger Games.” I was left apprehensive.

There is a comfortable tendency to compare new ideas to pre-existing and familiar content, and sometimes the comparison is appropriate.

Comparing Divergent to The Hunger Games because both involve a dystopian society divided into specific skill sets and facing an oppressive regime makes sense: the two were designed to pander to the same groups. Compare Game of Thrones to Lord of the Rings and you could make a quality case to draw a parallel between the role of both in the evolution of the fantasy genre and Sean Bean’s inevitable murder. But taking something like Squid Game — set firmly in a very real, capitalist South Korea and nuanced by cultural intricacies — and comparing that to the revolution of an entirely fictional District 12 is doing both a cinematic and cultural disservice to the show.

Squid Game succeeds as a show be-

cause it’s not trying to explain itself.

The games played are Korean kids’ games; the rules are pretty straightforward. The choice of the games aren’t absurd by themselves; it’s the immense cash prize, which grows with each death, that serves to shock. The fact is, the show isn’t about the games or the competition, despite the comparisons being made to battle royale films. The show is about reducing 456 people to a childhood simplicity where everyone has the same dispassionate chance at survival. When the game starts, there is no malice, no competition between players, no stakes, and no rivalry. All this changes only because the game makers encourage competition and make rivalry an increasingly central element of the games as they progress.

The game makers, the faceless regime behind the protagonists’ suffering, are a tongue-in-cheek stand-in for a homogenous capitalist agency, and yet their power isn’t derived from oppression or suspension of freedoms. Instead, the masked and hooded functionaries simply do their job and cull the participants on the simple rubric of winning or losing a game.

What’s more, the players had a choice to compete. Even if their initial entry was due to a lack of information, they made the choice to leave, and almost all of them made the choice to come back. The games might have been hellish, but the world outside — identical

to the real world we inhabit — was worse for these people. That illustration of desperation is what makes the show unique, and what makes it both enthralling and believable even at its most gruesome moments.

Amid the fear and gut-wrenching violence, there are moments of warmth and innocence. Not only were character interactions beautifully written and performed, but the constant return to and reference of Korean culture made the show even deeper and more human. In a pivotal moment of the show, a character uses the phrase gganbu, defining it as two people who share everything. The articulation of gganbu, as opposed to “best friends”, makes the whole relationship personal and infinitely unique. Gganbu, at the very least in this world, is a loaded phrase that encapsulates more than a Western approximation could. Therein lies my biggest concern with comparing Squid Game or any non-English media to Western content — that in the process of comparison, you lose the intricacies and specificities of the original culture. You lose the individuality and identities of the creators, actors, and writers, and participate in the erasure of a unique genre.

The fact is that I haven’t watched enough South Korean cinema to make a true comparison, so I simply won’t.

It is a lot easier for me as a viewer and fan to talk about the show as a singu-

lar entity, and this approach most certainly does it better justice than describing it as “a South Korean Hunger Games.”

Unfortunately, there seems to be an insistence among national media outlets that Squid Game compares comfortably to popular Western titles. Variety ran a review of the show where the writer spends multiple paragraphs drawing unsubstantiated and underdeveloped comparisons to the battle royale genre and Joker.

Ironically, the review acknowledges the show creator’s statement on having written the show in 2008, before Suzanne Collins’ books gained popularity, but powers through to make an obvious contradiction by drawing comparisons with Todd Philips’ character-driven narrative. IGN calls the show battle royale; Rolling Stone alludes to “The Most Dangerous Game”; and, most egregiously, The Atlantic writes that it is “reminiscent of … the video game Fortnite.”

Stop comparing films and television across entirely unrelated cultures and cinematic traditions just because it’s convenient. Enjoy content for what it is, because the alternative is an offense to the genuine value of the work. If you really enjoyed Squid Game, do it justice by representing it accurately.

Cat in the Cream Continues to Propel Small-Town Alt-Rock Scene

Left: Musical artist Squirrel Flower poses with College third-year Emelia Duserick.

Top: Last weekend, the Cat in the Cream brought indie-rock musician Squirrel Flower to perform in Wilder Bowl.

This past weekend, Squirrel Flower — the stage name of indie-rock musician Ella O’Connor Williams — filled Wilder Bowl with sweet, slow melodies. The concert was sponsored by the Cat in the Cream but occurred in the outdoor tent adjacent to Wilder Bowl that has become the new hotspot for campus concerts.

College third-year Emelia Duserick has been working for the Cat since July.

Her favorite part of the job is working with her co-workers, but booking musicians is a close second. She got in contact with Squirrel Flower by happy mistake — she was initially vying for pop-leaning indie-rock artist Soccer Mommy.

“I had reached out to Soccer Mom-

12

my and she was not available,” Duserick said. “Squirrel Flower had been opening for Soccer Mommy on her tour, and their manager reached out to me and was like, ‘Hey, Soccer Mommy can’t come, but would you want Squirrel Flower to come?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, I really love Squirrel Flower. That’d be awesome.’”

According to Duserick, booking artists is a rewarding but intensive process; she and her co-workers have been preparing for Squirrel Flower since August. When Oct. 15 finally arrived, she was buzzing with anticipation. Luckily, the event’s energy and turnout lived up to her expectations. She even got the chance to show Squirrel Flower around the Rathskeller after the show.

“I was kind of nervous about it, but it turned out so well,” she said. “I think we probably had a little over 100 people in attendance, which was really great, and that’s probably the amount we get at the Cat regularly. They played some great songs. They were rocking. … We took them to the [Rathskeller] afterwards. They sold out of all their merch [and] signed a lot of autographs.”

College third-year and concert attendee Dina Nouaime returned from the show with a glowing review.

“It was just a lovely experience,” Nouaime said. “We were all gathered under the tent and spilling out onto Wilder porch and had a lovely view of the band from there. Just the general ambiance was really lovely.”

Nouaime finds that this event is reflective of her larger excitement toward the intimacy and specificity that the Cat facilitates when putting on concerts — an intimacy not often achieved by events and venues in big cities.

“The Cat in the Cream has been amazing and has been really able to draw in a variety of different types of artists into Oberlin, which has been a really great experience to see these bands on such a small scale,” she said.

“As opposed to attending major concerts in huge cities where you don’t really get that intimate, personal level with the artists.”

Text by Maeve Woltring, Arts & Culture Editor Photos courtesy of Emelia Duserick

Interview with Director Ry Russo-Young Continued from page 10

Oberlin students who are aspiring directors and producers?

It’s important to me, as a creative person, to discuss this narrative of instant success, especially now that I’m talking directly to students. We think, “If I’m not instantly successful, I must be a failure,” or that good work comes easily and quickly, just popping out of us. But this project took such a long time — so many forms, so much throwing pizza at the wall and seeing what sticks, trying to do it, and going back and forth on what’s not right. I think it does take a really long time to make good work, both in terms of practicing your craft and just developing the ideas. I’m not saying it always takes 20 years like it did for me, but it’s a lot more work than I thought it would be as a young person. When you start out, you don’t feel like you have a lot of time and you want success immediately. You want to make a living and a name for yourself.

There are so many feelings of anxiety wrapped up in that mindset: “Am I making good work? Am I good enough?” I felt all of those things along the way and made a lot of choices because of them.

This was an example of a project that was not fast, and that was okay, because it was the best thing for the project.

Can you talk a little bit about what your experience at Oberlin was like?

Oh my god, I have so many memories!

I’m still in touch with all my friends from Oberlin, and even with a lot of people who went to Oberlin but I didn’t know during my time there. I’ve gotten jobs through Oberlin; the Oberlin network is really wide and welcoming, even though I didn’t necessarily feel that way while I was there. But those relationships have lasted. I lived in Burton Hall my first year, which wasn’t a super fun experience if I’m going to be honest. Then I was in Keep Cottage for my second year, and that was really fun. I loved it mainly because I lived with all the friends that I’m still friends with — I know their kids and they were all at my wedding. That’s what made it fun — we were all together.

I did a few programs abroad during my third year, but then I lived in a huge Victorian house off campus on East College Street. It was a very filthy house. And then my fourth year, I lived right next to Keep Cottage in a little house with two friends. I was a Cinema Studies and Visual Art major, which basically meant I knew I wanted to do film, but Oberlin didn’t have a film production major. I knew I wanted to go into the film industry, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do experimental film or art film or narrative film or what, so I just sort of took as much in that arena as possible. I had Professor Rian Brown-Orso, and I remember Professor Geoff Pingree — all those guys are still there right? I had so much fun.

Nuclear Family, produced and directed by Ry Russo-Young, OC ’03, follows her own landmark custody case in the late 1980s. It premiered on HBO Sept. 26.

Photo courtesy of HBO

Splitchers Attendance Rates Drop Continued from page 11 tion having everyone wear a mask, have the capacity be at 200, and not let people share drinks. You can do all those things at a bar that is a five-minute walk from campus,” he said.

Ready acknowledges The Feve as competition but also pointed out that the two events are not mutually exclusive — people can filter in and out of both.

“If you are done with Long Island Night, come to the ’Sco, or if you don’t want to go to Long Island Night, go to the ’Sco,” she said. “It’s just like a fun alternative; people are just having fun for the night.”

As Halloween approaches, Ready isn’t worried about the ’Sco’s attendance. She hopes that this year’s Halloween Splitchers can bring back some of the lost energy. On Oct. 19, the ’Sco announced it would raise its capacity to 300 people for the night, so more people can join in on festivities and fill the dance floor.

“It’s so much fun to be with people on Halloween; they’re all dressed up, and dancing with people is one of the best times,” Ready said. “And I really, really hope we can serve [alcohol] for Halloween.”

It’s unclear how things will unfold at the ’Sco throughout the rest of the year. Halloween is normally the biggest night of the year at the ’Sco, and it may be a test of whether a COVID-19 Splitchers can live up to its past reputation.

The Oberlin Review | October 22, 2021

Prior to the pandemic, the ’Sco hosted artists regularly, such as the band Leggy + T-Rextasy, pictured above.

Photo by Yevhen Gulenko

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Homecoming Weekend Welcomes Alumni Back Continued from page 15

could beat them, but I wasn’t sure the rest of my team did.

They rallied together and took care of business.”

Rau thinks the positive attitude her team had that weekend helped the team secure this win. She highlights how fun their practice was the night before game day.

“We had five alums come to practice on Friday, and we played first-years [and] second-years versus third- and fourth-years [and] alums,” she said. “It ended in a tie but it was one of the most fun, competitive practices we have had all year.”

Sammon also thought that the volleyball alumni match was one the best events she participated in this past weekend.

“The volleyball alumni got to play with the current team, which was interesting because the team is so young and so new,” she said. “Me and the other alumni knew less than half the team, but we had a great time rediscovering our volleyball skills and learning more about the new players.”

This weekend was also the 57th annual men’s lacrosse alumni game, a tradition that had been postponed because of COVID-19.

“This year we had almost 40 alumni come back, and although we tried our best, we couldn’t quite keep up with the current team, losing 10–5. I still had so much fun, though,” Carman said.

For Carman, one of the best aspects of the alumni tradition is getting to reunite with teammates whom he hasn’t seen in years.

“The lacrosse alumni match is one of the only times I see most of the people I played with throughout my entire collegiate career,” he said. “I got to see the guys who I only played one year with when I was a first-year, and it was amazing to learn about what they’re doing now and catching up. The alumni network we have is really strong.

My first year as an [alumnus] did not disappoint.”

Sammon also got to see some of her roommates, with whom she lived for three years and said it was heartwarming for them to be back in the same space again.

“A lot of my friends came back for the weekend. We hadn’t gotten to celebrate the end of our time at Oberlin so it felt wonderful to be given that chance,” she said. “My roommates, who also played sports at Oberlin, were here with me this weekend, and when we were living together, I grew close to some of their younger teammates as well, so I got to see those people too.”

Rau believes that overall, it was an unforgettable weekend for the Oberlin athletics community.

“We had a great crowd at the match on Saturday, and all that helped us to be successful in our first program win against DePauw,” she said. “I also really enjoyed watching one of my players, Iyanna Lewis, and the rest of And What?! perform during halftime of the football game.”

The weekend ended with the SAAC yard sale and fireworks show. Rau said there were at least 100 people gathered on Bailey Field to watch the fireworks, and it made her so happy to see everyone together.

“The athletics department is truly a family,” she said.

Oberlin football competing against The College of Wooster in 2019.

Photo courtesy of Matt Kilyard

As Astros Compete for Spot in World Series, 2017 Sign Stealing Scandal Still Looms

Houston Astros players celebrate with their 2017 World Series trophy.

John Elrod Contributing Sports Editor In January 2020, the MLB confirmed that the Houston Astros had engaged in an illegal form of sign stealing during the 2017 season — the postseason in which they secured a World Series championship — and portions of the 2018 season. The team was found to have used outfield cameras in their home ballpark to film opposing catchers’ signs and relay them to the batter using audio cues such as banging on trash cans.

After the scandal made headlines, the baseball community across the United States called for accountability for the players involved in the illegal sign stealing.

However, the only members of the Houston organization to face any type of suspension were Manager A.J. Hinch and General Manager Jeff Luhnow, who each received a one-year ban from the league. Boston Red Sox Manager Alex Cora also received a one-year ban due to his role in the scandal as the Houston bench coach in 2017. There was also a hefty fine against the Astros organization.

Outcry from fans disappointed in the low level of punishment for Houston players has continued since then. Although some players had to face consequences, most of the punishments were disregarded, as

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Photo courtesy of USA Today

players who cooperated with the league were granted immunity.

No fans were allowed in MLB stadiums during the 2020 season due to COVID-19, but the offending Astros players were met with heckling and “boos” this summer when fans were welcomed back into ballparks.

This week, the Astros are competing in their fifth straight American League Championship Series with four of the offensive stars who were on the 2017 team: Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman, and Yuli Gurriel. Many fans feel their continued run of success is undeserved and that the offending players should have had to pay for their actions.

Oberlin third-year pitcher and New York Yankees fan Vince Dolcemaschio was disgusted with the news of the scandal, knowing Houston used their illegal tactics against his favorite team in the regular season and playoffs.

“It is perfectly fine to try and steal signs — it’s a part of the game, but when you are using technology that is only available to you as the home team, that is when it becomes an issue,” Dolcemaschio said.

Dolcemaschio also felt strongly about the lack of punishment for the players and their apparent lack of remorse.

“Their apologies were completely half-assed and clearly not genuine,” he said. “There should have been suspensions for the players. They should have been fined inordinate amounts.”

Chair of Chemistry and Biochemistry and New York Mets fan Jason Belitsky felt empathy for Astros fans when he heard the news of the scandal because the World Series the team had won in 2017 would be forever tainted. However, he still feels the players involved should have been punished.

“I would have liked to see a more severe punishment or significant fines for the entirety of the team,” Belitsky said. “At a minimum, playoff and World Series bonuses could have been stripped.”

Belitsky also believes it is feasible that other teams have used technology to get advantages in recent years and that the MLB’s ban of non-broadcast cameras in the outfield was appropriate. Regarding the current Astros’ postseason run, Belitsky feels there is no reason to feel they do not deserve to be there.

“I don’t think I’d hold the current team accountable.

They did have leadership changes and are — hopefully — the most scrutinized in terms of similar offenses,” Belitsky said.

Oberlin third-year catcher and Astros fan Sean Livingstone was left in disbelief when he heard the news that his favorite team was involved in an illegal sign stealing scandal.

“I’ve been a fan of this team for years now, and hearing the news that there had been a cheating scandal left me with a variety of emotions, anger being the most prevalent,” Livingstone said.

He felt this way due to the fact that the Astros had threatened the integrity of the game at large.

“The reason we watch baseball is because any team can win on any given day,” Livingstone said. “When you do what the Astros do, it eliminates the joy that many of us get out of baseball itself.”

The conflicted feeling would still remain for Livingstone if the Astros win this year’s World Series.

“It would show that these guys didn’t need cheating to win back in 2017, which hurts the most as a fan,” Livingstone said. “This team is solid and obviously I would be ecstatic if they were to win it all this year, but in the back of my mind it would sting as well.”

The Astros will compete against the Boston Red Sox in Game 6 of the ALCS on Friday with a chance to clinch a spot in the World Series. As we see members of the 2017 Houston roster compete, the illegal sign stealing scheme they used to become world champions four years ago still lingers in the minds of MLB fans.

SAAC and BSAG Organize NCAA Diversity and Inclusion Week Continued from page 16

Alyson Jefferson, the BSAG and SAAC liaison, poses in her jersey for media day.

Photo courtesy of GoYeo

“Creating an inclusive athletic environment to me simply means accepting everyone who steps on and off the field for who they are and what they bring to their sport,” wrote Asare. “In my experience competing at Oberlin, I can tell that many student-athletes just want to feel heard and seen for what they do and who they are by their coaches, teammates, and the rest of the Oberlin community. Creating an inclusive environment just means these individuals can continue to do what they love while feeling accepted and valued for being themselves.”

BSAG was formed by Black alumni from the class of 2020 to cultivate a community where Black athletes could connect and feel supported in the athletic community. Kim cited BSAG’s work as an example of how Oberlin students are advocating for more inclusive spaces.

“Creating an inclusive athletic environment starts with making our community diverse and listening to the many minorities we have,” Kim wrote. “Our Black Student-Athlete Group on campus comes to mind because of all the great work they do to make our athletic environment more inclusive. Making everyone feel comfortable within our athletics community is what an inclusive environment looks like to me.”

Asare believes that the social media campaign is a step in the right direction for creating a more welcoming athletic community, but that the campaign should be one of many tools used to provide continued support for athletes.

“I think the campaign is a beneficial way to make strides toward being more inclusive, but the work shouldn’t also just stop here,” Asare wrote. “Our student-athletes are very diverse and have their own unique attributes that they bring to the table and their craft, and I think this is just one of many ways we can provide a platform for their voices to be uplifted.”

Kim added that the influence of the NCAA Diversity and Inclusion Social Media Campaign ensures that conversations about inclusion are happening at a national level. He also emphasized that while the NCAA campaign is effective, it is important that Oberlin athletics make the programming specific to the needs of Oberlin student-athletes.

“I think the NCAA campaign will help because of the national influence they have, but to enact change in Oberlin it must come [from] within,” he wrote.

“Oberlin is a small place compared to all the other schools in the nation, so we must build off of what the NCAA campaign says and make it more focused on our community.”

Asare believes that continued dialogues between student-athletes and the Athletics Department is one way that Oberlin athletics can stay engaged with diversity and inclusion training even after the NCAA Diversity and Inclusion Social Media Campaign is over.

“If diversity and inclusion is only discussed or displayed through the means of Instagram, there’s a larger problem at hand than one might think,” Asare wrote. “Personally, it’s just about creating a balance between having intentional, meaningful conversations while also respecting that not everyone feels comfortable expressing their concerns or thoughts all of the time. Specifically in athletics, I think our administration and coaching staff just have to be cognizant and aware of what their student-athletes’ needs are throughout the year.”

College third-year and women’s tennis team member Dina Nouaime hopes that Oberlin’s social media campaign is a stepping stone toward actionable steps to make athletics a more inclusive environment.

“At a predominantly white institution like Oberlin, it is so incredibly important to have open conversations surrounding diversity and inclusion,” wrote Nouaime. “In even smaller settings, like the team environments within athletics, it is arguably even more important. While athletics can be an outlet, it also has the same capacity to feel stifling without an openly inclusive environment. I am hopeful that Oberlin’s social media approach to Diversity and Inclusion week will be a stepping stone towards concrete, actionable steps spanning beyond social media and a singular week.”

Oberlin Hosts Successful Homecoming Weekend for First Time in Two Years Zoe Kuzbari Sports Editor Last weekend, the class of 2020 was welcomed back to campus for a delayed Commencement after they were sent home in their final semester of college. Many athletes never got to say goodbye to their teammates, so the graduation celebration also served as a long-awaited reunion.

For student-athletes who got sent home without their last collegiate season or proper fourth-year semester, it was refreshing to be back on campus, where they felt welcomed and at home this past weekend.

“It actually felt more normal to be on campus with my teammates and classmates than it feels to live in the post-college world,” said McLean Sammon, OC’ 20, former volleyball player.

“I’ve been living in Pittsburgh post-grad and doing research for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, but it’s been a hard adjustment,” she said. “Especially since the first year and a half I was living there we were in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. I didn’t really have opportunities to make friends or go out to explore the city.”

Former lacrosse player Thomas Berle Carman, OC ’21, said it felt different being back, despite just being on campus in May. The Oberlin Review | October 22, 2021

“Even though I graduated only last spring, it felt so different being back,” he said. “My day-to-day has changed a lot over the past few months and I guess I hadn’t realized how much until I was back.”

Berle Carman has been living in New York City with two other Oberlin lacrosse alumni and has been getting used to the faster paced lifestyle there.

“Without the whole student body being on campus my last year, I was definitely taken back [to] being on campus with everyone and all the first-year students,” he said. “It was super refreshing to see the school have this energy that I haven’t felt since my second year.”

Head Volleyball Coach Erica Rau said that this homecoming felt extremely exhilarating. Seeing her volleyball and Student-Athletic Advisory Committee alumni brought her a lot of joy.

“It feels like the 2019 season was a lifetime ago,” Rau said. “It made my heart so full to see everyone and hear about everything they have been doing over the past two years.”

Coach Rau made history this week by securing Oberlin’s first ever conference win against the DePauw University Tigers in program history on Saturday, Oct. 16.

“We had been steadily improving, and I felt like they were a good matchup for us,” Rau said. “I knew that we See Homecoming, page 14

Cross Country Receives Finish Line Support from Track Team’s Puke Patrol

Members of the track and field team wearing ponchos.

Photo courtesy of Sam Wehr

Gigi Ewing Managing Editor This past weekend, members of the track and field team supported their teammates by working what they affectionately nicknamed “the Puke Patrol” — a group of track athletes who donned ponchos and gloves to protect themselves from the bodily fluids exhausted runners sometimes emit when they finish a race. Last weekend’s meet was the annual InterRegional Rumble, in which Oberlin’s cross country team competed against 44 other schools.

After finishing a race, cross country runners are often too physically exhausted and overwhelmed to step away from the finish line once they cross it.

Stopping right at the line, however, can result in athletes getting trampled by the hundreds of other competitors closing in behind them. To prevent any injuries, track and field athletes who are not competing assist cross country runners as they move away from the rush of athletes at the finish line. Unfortunately, the intensity of the physical exertion during a 6K or 8K also causes many athletes to throw up — and the Puke Patrol is right in the line of fire.

According to College fourth-year Katy Wearing, a member of both the track and field team and Puke Patrol, when members of the track team arrived to help work the meet, their coach instructed them to gear up with protective plastic coverings.

“We got assigned jobs, and one of the jobs was working the finish line, which turns out to be the puke squad,” Wearing said. “We showed up and our coach [was] like, ‘Here’s a plastic bag for you to wear, and gloves, because you might get puked on.’ I don’t think anybody actually got directly puked on — which was good — but there were lots of people passing out so we had to help them get out of the way.

It was very dramatic but kind of fun, in a way.”

Wearing said that, despite the occupational hazards, members of the Puke Patrol found their work rewarding and enjoyed being able to support their fellow athletes. “[It was] just chaos,” Wearing said. “Some people really have fun with it because you’re helping people, and they’re often quite grateful to you even though they’re in a state of physical collapse. Some people were a little iffy about it just because they didn’t want to get gross.”

Third-year distance runner, Chase Sortor, said that the Rumble is his favorite meet of the whole year, noting how exciting it is to have everyone’s family, friends, and alumni come back for the event.

“Everyone is screaming for you the whole way ,and the energy just really pushes you to have a good race,” he said. “The wall of sound leaving the wood chips is insane, and I personally — and I hope everyone else — really feels all the love on Rumble.”

Both the cross country Yeowomen and Yeomen ranked 15th or above. The team will run in the North Coast Athletic Conference Championship meet this Saturday.

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October 22, 2021

SPORTS Established 1874

Volume 151, Number 3

Oberlin Volleyball Makes Program History After Beating DePauw on Homecoming Weekend

Photo courtesy of GoYeo

Oberlin volleyball 2021 team poses for its team photo.

River Schiff Senior Staff Writer Despite the disappointment Oberlin volleyball has faced in conference in its past couple of seasons, the team has proven this year that it is a force to be reckoned with. After beating their rival Kenyon College on Sept. 23 for the first time since 2015, the Yeowomen have entered conference games with a new ferocity.

This Homecoming weekend they secured a win to take down the reigning North Coast Atlantic Conference champions, the DePauw University Tigers.

This win marks the first time in program history that the Yeowomen have beaten DePauw. Fourth-year captain Natasha Radic reminisces on the significance of this moment.

“It was a great feeling to secure this historical win,” she said. “Not only was it a fun game, but the added benefit of it being such a momentous landmark in Oberlin College volleyball history just added to that great feeling of having performed well as a team.”

Radic is ecstatic to leave such an amazing legacy in the future of Oberlin volleyball and is excited to see the presence of such a young driving force in the program.

“Our team has so many young players that all want

to work hard and compete, and bringing that mentality really helped us all blend together so that we could really bring out the best in each other,” she said.

Radic says the team’s last big win was when she was a first-year. Back then, the team had beaten Denison University for the first time in a while, and she feels like things have come full circle.

“As a fourth-year, I really hope to help leave behind a sense of hard work and commitment and lead by example,” she said. “Those are the things I’ve always focused on when it comes to sports, and I think it’s what sets apart athletes from truly great players.”

Seeing the foundation that this year’s team is establishing, first-year Natalie Dufour looks to the future with excitement for the years to come.

“Every single one of my teammates is so talented and so important in our success,” she said, pointing out that most of the team’s starters are experiencing their first collegiate season.

“For the majority of the players, this is our first season playing college sports because there was no season last year,” said Dufour. “I think that we are in a really great place as a team. I honestly just can’t wait to see where we go from here. It’s really special to be part of a team that establishes a winning reputation.”

Head Volleyball Coach Erica Rau cites the support from fans as a huge factor in their success at home.

“The energy in the gym has been electric!” she said.

“We’ve had some really great crowds this year, including Homecoming. We’ve definitely been able to feed off the energy from the crowd, and we’ve been pretty unstoppable at home.”

Despite having struggled on the road, where it remained 0–7, the team hopes to play off of the confidence of the fans in its success.

“I’ve always known there were big things ahead for this team, but I think everyone knows it now,’’ Rau said. “We’ve struggled a bit with our consistency this season, but the plan has not changed. Keep moving forward, keep focusing on us, keep getting a little bit better each day. The plan is to finish out conference play strong and then go into conference playoffs with some additional confidence. We’ll get the opportunity to take on some teams that we lost to the first time around.”

With three games left in the regular season and playoff season right around the corner, the volleyball team continues to push for its newfound success in a conference that is starting to see the Yeowomen’s full potential.

Athletics Department Partakes in NCAA Diversity and Inclusion Social Media Campaign Zoë Martin del Campo Contributing Sports Editor This week is the NCAA’s Diversity and Inclusion Social Media Campaign, with colleges all across the country using social media as a platform to reflect on what diversity and representation means in athletics.

At Oberlin, the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee worked alongside the Black Student-Athlete Group to implement the NCAA’s campaign.

Fourth-year and men’s track and field player Kofi Asare believes that the NCAA campaign is necessary because it highlights the unique backgrounds of Oberlin’s community and who individuals are — not

only as student-athletes but also as people.

“NCAA Diversity and Inclusion week is important for Oberlin athletics because it is a chance for our department and groups, like SAAC, to recognize and highlight the different perspectives and stories of our many student-athletes and their background(s),” Asare wrote in an email to the Review. “It provides an opportunity for our Oberlin community to get a deeper look at our [student-]athletes and who they are both when the jersey is on and off.”

Fourth-year men’s soccer player Ryan Kim shared similar sentiments, adding that the NCAA Diversity and Inclusion Social Media Campaign is unique because it is not Oberlin-specific; discussions regard-

ing these issues of identity take place around the country at various colleges and universities.

“NCAA Diversity and Inclusion week is important to Oberlin athletics because it shows we are always trying to be better [at] diversity and inclusion,” Kim wrote in an email to the Review. “As a Korean and representative of SAAC, I love this week because it embraces diversity not only in Oberlin but throughout the nation. It is important to talk about diversity and inclusion within our community, and this week brings light to these topics.”

For student-athletes, having the space to be their most authentic selves in their respective communities is a significant part of feeling included at Oberlin.

See SAAC, page 15

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