October 11, 2013 by The Oberlin Review

The Oberlin Review

OCTOBER 11, 2013 VOLUME 142, NUMBER 6

Outside the Bubble

ESTABLISHED 1874 www.oberlinreview.org

ONLINE & IN PRINT

News Brief: Trustee Forum Crowded, Lively

News highlights from the past week Members of Congress Rally For Immigration: Eight members of Congress were arrested Tuesday while rallying for immigration reform. Joe Crowley (D-NY), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Al Green (DTX), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), John Lewis (D-GA), Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) were apprehended when they refused to leave a street outside of the Capitol. According to protestors, the purpose of the rally — which was just one of 160 protests held over the course of last week — was to demonstrate that, although House Republicans might continue to stall the reform bill, the immigration issue will not be forgotten. House Republicans Propose to Raise Debt Ceiling: A compromise regarding the recent government shutdown arose Thursday, when House Republicans announced their proposal to temporarily raise the debt ceiling. According to Speaker of the House John Boehner, the proposal will only be put into action if President Obama agrees to pursue further compromise regarding the possibility of dismantling Obamacare. Although the measure could serve to potentially restart the government, it will allow for a partial shutdown to continue until it is put to vote within the upcoming week. President Obama is quoted as being appreciative that “cooler heads” are now willing to compromise. Sources: The Huffington Post and CNN.

Last night’s Board of Trustees Open Forum was the site of debate regarding student concerns about the allocation of funding on campus. Craig Lecture Hall reached capacity as students wearing red monopolized the meeting in order to advocate for various proposals, reportedly created by a broad range of student groups. Although there were a bevy of items on the agenda for the night and trustees extended the meeting until 11 p.m., only one item was addressed in addition to the student demands. Students raised their grievances with the board, referencing construction in the Conservatory, a greater emphasis on diversity in the classroom and more sustainable energy solutions. One of the more ambitious demands was a proposal to admit undocumented students to the College, and several trustees demonstrated their support for the proposition by standing alongside students. The trustees convene four times per year in Oberlin, and when classes are in session, invite students to directly address the board. Rachel Grossman

ODE Grant Bridges District Funding Gaps Willa Rubin Staff Writer Balancing the needs of students with the steep costs to the state of a public education has continued to prove troublesome for educators nationwide. The Ohio Department of Education is hoping to ameliorate this difficulty by allocating $250 million to schools that present innovative and sustainable educational programs This grant, called the “Straight A Fund,” is working to bridge the gap in funding between districts. According to EdSource, the national average spent on educating an individual student during the 2010-2011 school year was

just under $12,000. In 2011, Orange County — a region nearby Cuyahoga County — spent the most in the state educating its students, with overall total expenditures per pupil amounting to $21,463. On the other end of that spectrum is Avon, in Lorain County, at $7,181 in overall total expenditures per student. According to EdSource, the City of Oberlin spent $12,218 in the 2010-2011 school year — an amount that only slightly deviates from the state average of $10,616. According to John Schroth, Superintendent of Oberlin Public Schools, approximately 1500 applications were sent in across the state. “Oberlin is involved with

two different applications; one is a part of a consortium [that was] initiated through [the Tri-Rivers Computer Association], our application service provider down in Marion, OH. There are a number of school district centers [that want to] improve internet bandwidth.” Although agreeing that program itself may have potential to help Ohio schools over time, Schroth admits the application process has been trying. “They want you to show in a 5-year forecast that this money will not raise your expenditures at all, and that it’ll reduce your total spending in your 5-year forecast. But it can’t be used to buy something or hire somebody,

He Shoots, He Scores

Goodbye Coal Oberlin College will switch to natural gas this Monday, ending a decade-long tradition of powering the campus through use of coal-fired machinery. See page 4

because that’s only a one-time infusion of dollars. You really have to work hard to document this [in your forecast] because of this initial spending. I’ve never seen that in a grant application before,” said Schroth. While the purpose of the Straight A Fund is to expand educational programs/ initiatives given the available resources, the ultimate objective is the sustainability of any new program implemented by a teacher, school, or district. According to John Charlton, the associate director for media relations of the Ohio Department of Education, the allocation of funds is contingent upon the applicant pool and the nature of the pro-

Apocalypse Now Radiolab brought their live show to Cleveland as part of their “Apocalyptical” tour.

See page 15

See page 13

INDEX:

Opinions 5

Men’s soccer is off to its best start in over 25 years.

This Week in Oberlin 8

Arts 10

Sports 16

from the

posed program. “[This fund] could go to a school, to a district, to [an] individual teacher. What’ll happen is no one will get [the] entire $250 million — there will be several awards given out. School districts can receive up to $5 million, where a collaboration that has a school district [with] a university can receive up to $15 million,” said Charlton. According to Charlton, the main goal of the project is to “driv[e] more dollars to the classroom.” The founders hope that the implementation of a sustainable program that enhances outlets for education will soon replace similar See Straight, page 4

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Conservatory Opens New Performance Space Oliver Bok The David H. Stull Recital Hall, a new performance space located on the third floor of Bibbins Hall, continues to spark discussion on how the allocation of Oberlin’s budget has a reputation for disregarding student needs. The performance space, which opened its doors to students and faculty on Oct. 1, will function as an additional site for performances and educational opportunities within the Conservatory. “We combined two classrooms to turn it into a hall that’s very different from any other hall we’ve got,” said Andrea Kalyn, the acting dean of the Conservatory. “It’s not as big as Kulas [Hall] … this is a really flexible space. We can do classes in there, performances, ensembles, chamber music, master classes, recitals, studio classes,” she said. According to Dean Kalyn, the creation of a new performance space become a priority when a classroom on the second floor that previously functioned as a mini-performance space was “compromised” after being renovated to make it compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. “The need for performance spaces is always increasing,” Dean Kalyn asserted. “Students are always wanting more performance spaces.” However, some student activists are displeased with the Conservatory allocating money

to a project they see as nonessential. “There are already a lot of performance spaces on campus; what there really aren’t are students and faculty of color and low-income students in the Conservatory program,” said double-degree junior Arianna Gil, a member of the Conservatory Student Working Group. Two of the most substantive proposals put forth by the working group were the creation of a Multicultural Resource Center outpost in the Conservatory and a “strategic plan … to significantly improve our admissions yield and retention of students of color, as well as first-generation, LGBTQ and low income students.” Gil said that the latter proposal “implies allocation of funds” for scholarships aimed at making the Conservatory more accessible to low-income students. Dean Kalyn said that the Conservatory was working with the MRC on having MRC office hours in the Conservatory, but Gil said she hadn’t seen any funds allocated for the permanent outpost that the student proposals envisioned. “We know this school has so much money,” said Gil. “And whenever they say ‘We don’t have the money,’ that’s their way of saying ‘This isn’t important to us.’ ” Gil said that a contractor who worked on the project told her that the performance space cost $2.5 million; Dean Kalyn said that that figure was

The David H. Stull Recital Hall was installed on the third floor of Bibbins Hall this summer. Although many students and faculty members are excited about the new space, some believe that the money would have been better spent on other projects. Erich Burnett

incorrect. While Dean Kalyn said she didn’t know the cost of the performance space by itself, she did say that starting in 2011, the Conservatory has received approximately $2 million every summer to renovate Bibbins floor by floor. According

to Dean Kalyn, the money for the performance space came out of that budget. “This isn’t money that was funneled away See Stull, page 4

Economists Debate Policy, Put Aside Partisanship Kate Gill and Rosemary Boeglin News Editor and Editor-in-Chief Before economists Arthur Laffer and Jared Bernstein began to debate on Tuesday evening, they amicably shook hands. Laffer and Bernstein, who share a long friendship, sat atop a small stage in West Lecture Hall and engaged students, faculty and community members in a dialogue about economic policy. After a long-winded introduction by College President Marvin Krislov — which detailed the economists’ credentials and career highs — the debate commenced, moderated by Department Chair and Professor of Economics Barbara Craig. Craig launched the discussion, asking each economist about the role of government in ameliorating weak economies. Bernstein and Laffer took fundamentally different tacks: Bernstein framed the issue in terms of “market failures,” which he deems worthy of government intervention. Adopting a traditionally Keynesian approach, Bernstein defended stimulus in response to these failures, using the Great Recession of 2008 and health care as examples. Laffer emphasized that “prosperity is written into the tax code.” Instead of advocating for government participation in the form of stimulus, Laffer proposed a very simple 12 percent flat tax, dismissing all federal tax — save sin taxes, which he considers effective in regulating the behavior of the citizenry — and taxing unrealized capital gains. This stems from Laffer’s understanding of an economic system based on incentives and

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October 11, 2013

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Rosemary Liv Boeglin Combe Allegra JuliaKirkland Herbst Managing editor Samantha Taylor Field Link News editors RosemaryKate Boeglin Gill Madeline Alex Howard Stocker Opinions editor SophiaWill Ottoni-Wilhelm Rubenstein This Week Weekeditor editor Zoë Olivia Strassman Gericke Arts editors Dessane Kara Cassell Brooks Georgia Julian Horn Ring Sports editors Nate Quinn Levinson Hull Madeleine Rose O’Meara Stoloff Layout editors Tiffany MiraFung Fein Ben DanGarfinkel Quigley Alanna Sarah Sandoval Snider Photo editors Olivia Yvette Gericke Chen Brannon Rockwell-Charland Rachel Grossman Online editor Business manager Alanna Cecilia Bennett Xu Editors-in-chief

deterrents. Essentially, Laffer holds that if the product of an individual’s labor is redistributed to an unemployed person, the result will yield a huge population of non-workers. This logic informed Laffer’s impactful contribution to President Ronald Reagan’s economic policy, the implementation of trickle-down economics and the basis for Laffer’s nickname, “The Father of Supply-Side Economics.” “Imagine we have a two-person world, Farmer A and Farmer B; that’s it,” Laffer posited during the debate. “If Farmer B gets unemployment benefits, who do [you] think pays for it? Am I going way over your heads on this one? Government spending is taxation.” The debate was sponsored by the Office of Public Programs and spearheaded by the Oberlin College Republicans and Libertarians. According to Conservatory senior Taylor Reiners, president of the OCRL, the event came to fruition through the efforts of Steve Shapiro, OC ’83, a principal donor to the club. “The event came about because we, for a long time, wanted to create a debate series,” Reiners explained. “Mr. Steve Shapiro, one of the donors to the club, said ‘Hey, I know Art Laffer, he’s a good friend of mine, why don’t we put him up for a debate?’ ” Reiners noted that he and his fellow Republicans coordinated with the Oberlin College Democrats and did not intend for the debate to rouse any political tension. “[Laffer and Bernstein] weren’t speaking past each other,” Reiners noted. “They don’t hold any animosity toward each other.”

Ads manager Julia Curtis Skrovan Cook Business manager Technical support Mischa Savi Lewis-Norelle Sedlacek Ads manager Online editor Simeon ReshardDeutsch el-Shair Production manager Sarah Sophia Westbrook Bamert Production staff Stephanie Rosie Bonner Black Emma Eisenberg Alice Fine Annelise Taylor Giseburt Field Katherine Nat Hamilton Marcus Anna Julia Hubay Menta Kiley Tracey Petersen Knott Noah RubyMorris Saha Anna Lydia Peckham Smith SilviaErin Sheffield Tesny Drew Wise Distributors Joe Eliza Camper Kirby Edmund Joseph Dilworth Metzold James Sam White Kuntz

See OCRL, page 4

Corrections The Review is not aware of any corrections this week. The Review strives to print all information as accurately as possible. If you feel the Review has made an error, please send an e-mail to managingeditor@oberlinreview.org.

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The Oberlin Review, October 11, 2013

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Off the Cuff: Kelly Brown Douglas, priest and “womanist” scholar Kelly Brown Douglas is a priest and a professor of religion at Goucher College. She specializes in womanist theology and the black church. She spoke with the Review about her faith, Alice Walker and communities of support. How did you first become acquainted with theology, sexuality and the black church? What specifically attracted you to this field of study? There are two sort of prongs [to] that. One, being aware, even [while] growing up, of who I was as a black person in a society that was very racist [and] segregated, in which being a black body meant that you were a marginalized, oppressed body. Having that sensibility of what it meant to be different, what it meant to be marginalized. I didn’t grow up as meeting certain gender stereotypes — that is, I liked sports and all of that, which of course then [said] to me that I never wanted to treat anyone else in such a way that they felt like an outsider … just having this notion that God loves everybody. As I grew up, [I asked myself], how do you reconcile this notion of a God that loves everybody with one’s own understanding of what it feels like to be on the outside? Just bringing all those things together. You wrote a book titled Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective. How would you classify or distinguish a “womanist” perspective? How does that differ from a feminist perspective? Yes, it does differ. The term “womanist” was coined by Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist of The Color Purple. She did a book of prose and she called it a womanist prose, and in 1982–83 this book came out, called In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: A Womanist Prose … and on the inside flap of this book she has this four-part definition of womanist, and she says that a womanist is a

Wednesday, Oct. 2 12:08 p.m. A student reported the theft of her bicycle from the northeast side of the Science Center. The bicycle is a women’s 26” Trek with yellow tape on the handlebars and an approximate value of $500. The bicycle was locked to itself at the time of the theft. 9:40 p.m. Staff members conducting Life Safety inspections located a glass bong with an odor of burnt marijuana in plain view in a room on the second floor of Talcott Hall. The bong was confiscated and turned over to the Oberlin Police Department. 10:10 p.m. Staff members conducting Life Safety inspections in Talcott Hall located a large sword and dagger in plain view in a room on the third floor of Talcott Hall. The items were

Kelly Brown Douglas, professor of religion at Goucher College, who gave a lecture on sexuality in the black church on Sunday.

feminist of color. She coins it from the term in the African-American community, you’re acting womanish, which is serious, in charge, not girlish, not frivolous. When that definition emerged, it took off. Black women began to pick that definition up, relate to that definition. It says [that] a womanist is for survival … and so it provided black women with this space to be black and female — for our entire community, for our own freedom as well as the freedom of our sons and our husbands and our brothers to have both this sort of feminist analysis as well as this race analysis. Early feminist movements — and some feminist movements still do — ignored issues of race. It helps to identify black women’s struggle. You are both a priest and an academic. Has this been a complicated or difficult balance? How does your faith complicate your work as an academic and vice versa, if at all? It’s not been a complicated balance for me, maybe because I’m in the Episcopal Church.

transported to the Safety and Security Office. 10:16 p.m. Staff members conducting Life Safety inspections located a knife in plain view in a room on the second floor of Fairchild House. The item was transported to the Safety and Security Office.

Thursday, Oct. 3 1:15 p.m. A student reported that an unknown juvenile robbed him of his backpack in the area of North Pleasant and East Lorain Streets. The individual stole a black Patagonia backpack, a MacBook Pro computer, an American musical history book and a book on African art. The Oberlin Police Department was alerted and a “Special Alert” was issued by the Safety and Security Office. 7:45 p.m. Staff members conducting Life Safety inspections located a grinder and a small plastic bottle containing a green leafy substance consistent with marijuana in plain view in a room

Theology is about faith and understanding; how we understand the faith claims that we make. If we say that God is love, we say that God is justice, we say that God is all of this, how do we understand the meaning of that in a world that is unjust, unloving etc., etc.? Those questions emerged from the church. So for me, as a theologian, you always have to be a part of a community of faith. And so, I see no other place to be but in the church. Now what you’re getting at is that sometimes people say — particularly in the black faith tradition — all of that study and intellectual stuff, you take my Jesus and you take my God. There’s this conflict. In my own personal church I have not had to experience this conflict. One thing I always say is that any faith worth having is a faith worth examining. And I often say to people, if [the Bible] is so sacred as you say it is, then you need to study it as you would a text that is not so sacred. If what I’m saying doesn’t ring true to the people who sit in the pews, then I will say things that challenge them, but at least I have to be raising questions that make sense to the life they live. The harder issue for me is trying to raise the issue of sexuality in the black church. How can the church be more inclusive? How can the highly institutionalized, traditionalist nature of religion accommodate the more unconventional? More specifically, queer-identifying persons? It needs to be called back to its own center. And that’s the job of the theologian. The job of the theologian is a self-test of the church. Are you living into your faith? And for the Christian church, that’s a critical question because who is this center of your church? This incarnate, this sensuous, sexual God. For me, it’s about calling the church back to its radical center. On a more personal level, how do you maintain your faith in religion during times of frustration? As in, how do you tolerate churchgoers and members who want to deny religious access to queer people?

on the first floor of Dascomb Hall. The items were confiscated and turned over to the Oberlin Police Department. 8:33 p.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Police Department responded to a report of a fight in Tappan Square near the Clark Bandstand. Two juveniles — a brother and sister — were arguing about school events. They were sent on their way.

Friday, Oct. 4 8:40 p.m. Officers were requested to assist a student at Dascomb, who, after smoking marijuana, fell and bloodied his nose. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

Saturday, Oct. 5 11:38 p.m. An officer on patrol observed over 200 students at a party on Woodland Street that was authorized for only 25 students. Members of the Oberlin

Good question. They don’t shape my belief. I don’t want to say this in a dogmatic way, because there’s always room to learn, but I always say to myself: [If] I’m going to err, then I want to err on the side of inclusion, not exclusion. Maybe I don’t have all the answers — I don’t. Maybe I’m wrong on this. So here’s what we’re going to do, I say. We’re going to include. Everybody, until I can be shown otherwise, that has breath is a child of God. Period. When people act otherwise, that doesn’t shake the foundation of my faith. What it does is it challenges me. Yes, sometimes I’m dispirited. But what it does is it energizes me. What is the window into the black church? How can I break open this discourse? How can I help them to see? But it doesn’t shake my faith that God is a god of the oppressed and of justice. How can women — and people of all identifications, orientations and genders — sustain or wield their sexuality in the church and still garner respect from their peers, male or otherwise? You have to just claim your voice. I’ve never known a lived reality — as a black person [and] as a black woman — where I’ve not had to claim who I am in a society that opposes who I am, so you just have to find a way to claim your voice. And claim who you are and affirm who you are in a society or institution that says otherwise. You are very vocal, strong-minded and explicit in your papers. How would you advise young women who are struggling with identity politics and their faith to proceed? Find a community of support; it’s hard to do it alone. In short, that’s what I would say.

Police Department responded to assist in dispersing the crowd. 11:58 p.m. Members of the Oberlin Police Department reported receiving a noise complaint for an Elmwood Place residence. A large crowd was observed at the residence upon arrival. Contact was made with the host, music was turned down, and attendees were asked to leave.

Monday, Oct. 7 10:01 a.m. Staff members conducting Life Safety inspections located contraband in plain view in a Village House. A glass pipe with suspected burnt marijuana residue was confiscated, and a cup with ashes, a wooden incense holder with partially burnt incense sticks and a glass ashtray containing ashes were found. The glass pipe was turned over to the Oberlin Police Department. 7:47 p.m. A student reported the theft of her locked bicycle from Noah Hall. The bicycle is a purple and silver 7-speed Trek

Interview by Kate Gill, News editor Photo courtesy of Kelly Douglas

820 with blue-gray handlebars and a metal rack on the back. 8:36 p.m. Officers and members of the Oberlin Fire Department responded to a fire alarm at Goldsmith apartments. The cause of the alarm was a smoking tortilla located on the electric stove. The area was cleared, and the alarm was reset.

Tuesday, Oct. 8 11:30 a.m. Staff members conducting Life Safety inspections reported a hookah in plain view in a room on the first floor of Allencroft House. The hookah was transported to the Safety and Security Office and placed in the property room. 2:10 p.m. Staff members conducting Life Safety inspections located a multicolored pipe containing a residue consistent with burnt marijuana in plain view on a table of a Village House on Lorain Street. The item was turned over to the Oberlin Police.

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The Oberlin Review, October 11, 2013

Benefits of Transition to Natural Gas Questioned Rachel Weinstein Staff Writer Oberlin College is currently gearing up for a new sustainable installment — the replacement of the central heating plant’s coal boilers with new natural gas-fueled tanks. For years, the College has been dependent on a central coal burning plant to heat academic and residential buildings on campus — a solution that only some find acceptable. Separated into multiple zones, buildings on the northeast side of campus will be the first to utilize the new natural gas energy. The initiative will officially break ground next Monday, beginning with the construction of the site for the new boilers. “[Rob Lampaa, director of sustainability] put forward a plan in the last year and the Board of Trustees voted to approve of the overall concept,” explained Associate Professor of Psychology Cindy Frantz, chair of the Committee on Environmental Sustainability. The decision to shift to

natural gas is just a small step in the College’s long-term commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025. “A long term solution for making all of our buildings efficient is something we’re chipping away at slowly but surely,” explains Frantz. “With the exception of a few, everyone involved would really like to not be using natural gas or any fossil fuels.” In the next several years, the College plans to take the next step in their 2025 initiative — the switch from natural gas to ground source heat pumps, a method already utilized in the Bertram and Judith Kohl Building and the Adam Joseph Lewis Center. While many argue for the immediate implementation of ground source heating pumps, the Board of Trustees are uncertain of the quality of the heat pumps currently installed in the Kohl Building and Lewis Center and claim that the campus’s soil quality is not sufficient for geothermal energy. “Many students argue that we should install the ground source heat

pumps now instead of natural gas, but there are reasons we can’t,” said Frantz. Even with a commitment to move forward, many members of the community are dissatisfied with the new energy initiatives. “It just makes little sense to invest a lot of money in a new system that you plan to replace five to ten years later. I’m skeptical we will be able to reach our 2025 commitment,” said David Roswell, OC ’13, a student representative on the Committee on Environmental Sustainability. Students of various organizations, such as Oberlin’s Anti-Frack initiative, have followed the Board of Trustees’s decision to find alternative energy solutions very closely and many share Roswell’s sentiments. “There’s little transparency in regard to the Board of Trustees,” says Anti-Frack member, College senior and Politics and Creative Writing major Alice Beecher. “Students are given little opportunity to work with the Board and reach these decisions.”

In addition to a lack of transparency on behalf of the Board of Trustees, many campus environmentalists take issue with the 2025 operation as a whole. “Switching from coal to natural gas decreases our carbon emission by 50 percent. While that seems to be a big improvement, this number only tells us about the emission of carbon,” said Beecher. She explained that although the implementation of natural gas would drop carbon emission substantially, the Board fails to address issues of water and air pollution. “They’re only showing some of the statistics. There are a lot of numbers that are not shared when presenting the data and these numbers are just as important,” explained College junior Emma Charno. Beecher, Charno and many other students of the AntiFrack organization believe the Board undermines the effect that the burning of natural gas will have on communities outside of Oberlin where the gas is produced.

Straight A Fund Finances New Programs Continued from page 1 programs and therefore lower the opportunity cost of the program. The grant will also provide funds to programs in their beginning stages. “If there is an innovative program that’s already in existence and they’re duplicating it, it might help them when they apply, but the fund’s objective is to give schools the financial leeway to discover if their new ideas are working,” said Charlton. “It’s possible that we’ll try something out and figure out it needs some adjustments, and we want them to be successful, so we’ll provide some leeway for an entity to say ‘We’re going to try this out and we think it’s going to work, but we think this other success is really great too,’ so you adjust the program. That’s OK too. Or if it’s [a] total bust, stop it and start something new. Once they receive the money they have the money,” Charlton said. While schools will need to provide the Department of Education with prog-

ress reports, institutions that choose to delay the submission process will still be able to apply. “Of the $250 million, $100 [million] will be awarded this year, $150 [million] next year, so it’s already in a two-year working period,” said Charlton. Two major concerns among Ohio educators are a student’s access to technology and their ability to read from an early age. The state can currently guarantee a third-grade reading level for students in the third grade — a measurement that many educators find inadequate. Because of this, Charlton hopes that many applications will address the issue of kindergarten preparation. “[The Department of Education] wants to [do] a better job making sure they’re prepared, so they’re not behind on their first day of school,” said Charlton. According to Charlton, the Straight A Fund will also work towards improving education for students with learning disabilities.

Stull Hall under Scrutiny Continued from page 2 from anything else into facilities; that’s a wholly separate budgeting process,” said Dean Kalyn. “You have to have facilities in which to teach, and this is a core teaching thing.” She also said that most of the $2 million budget to renovate Bibbins went to replacing the inefficient and outdated windows and not to the performance space. The hall is named after David Stull, the former dean of the Conservatory who left last year to become president of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. According to Dean Kalyn, “[the space was] really kind of his idea … so when he announced he was leaving, the faculty knew they wanted to do something to honor him, and they wanted to name a space, but they wanted a space that was really part of the core of what we do and reflected his work … so the faculty asked

that it be named after him.” Because the space has only been open for a very short time, not many Conservatory students have yet had an opportunity to use it. Double-degree first-year Ellyn Butler, a student in Prima Vista, a class for first-year woodwind students, said she had used the space with her class. “It’s really beautiful,” Butler said. “It has nice acoustics and really good lighting — it has tons of natural sunlight. The only problem is that because there is so much natural light in there, when it’s hot out it’s really hot in there.” Butler said that she thinks the small space will be useful for student recitals, as Kulas Hall is often too big for the audience that attends recitals. “It does serve a purpose that they didn’t have before,” she said. “They didn’t have that size performance space before. So was it worth it? I don’t know, but it’s nice.”

“A device that fits around [the] throat and [the] head of [a] teacher [who] helps students with hearing disabilities hear better ... might be $20,000, but it would be funded because it’s innovative. It would absolutely help teach and help students learn proper pronunciations and things like that.” Although the Ohio Department of Education defines the fund as an “unprecedented” project that will “give creative and cost-effective solutions the seed funding they need to get off the ground,” Schroth argues that the grant money could potentially be better spent on other aspects of education. “My personal belief is that instead of taking this money out of the state budget, they should have just put that $250 million into district funding. It would have given another $100 to spend per student, rather than making it so specific to the grant,” said Schroth. “[Oberlin schools are] “also working on our own application focusing on developing a technology upgrade to improve equipment we purchase.”

“While this cause may seem cleaner for our immediate community, we are destroying others. This is more than an environmental issue. This is actually an issue of social justice,” said Charno. When asked about ideal solutions for the future, Roswell remained skeptical. “The problem is not even the solutions we have, but root much deeper into institutional flaws,” he argued. “The Committee on Environmental Sustainability is just a hub for people who care about the environment to hold discussions. The power we have over the Board is not very strong.” Even with a number of raised brows, Frantz remains hopeful. “Students need to understand and trust that this is an intermediary step. We discussed many solutions, and for now, the natural gas system will allow us to be a lot more responsible and a lot less wasteful,” said Frantz. Depending on weather conditions, Oberlin’s campus could be deemed “coal free” as early as March 2014.

OCRL Hosts Economists from Left, Right Continued from page 2 Bernstein seemed to think that Laffer, who vacillated between over-simplified analogies and esoteric terminology, was relying on theory to support his claims, while the data showed something very different. “Art Laffer — hate the curve, love the man — puts so much emphasis on the tax system,” Bernstein remarked during the event. “While a lot of it makes sense, if you look at it in the real world you simply cannot find these kinds of relationships.” According to Bernstein, income inequality is directly linked to economic prosperity. For Laffer, the data demonstrated something very different. Ultimately, Laffer stated, the goal

is not to make the rich poorer, but rather to make the poor richer. Visiting Professor of Economics Edward McKelvey, OC ’68, framed the issue in terms of a private-public distinction. “The quick answer is that Laffer [maintains] a much stronger faith in the private sector to function properly and get the right outcome. Bernstein has much more skepticism on that. Laffer never answered anything about market failure because he doesn’t really believe in market failure,” McKelvey said. Disagreements aside, the debate seemed to strike an affable chord. “A lot of people reacted positively,” McKelvey added. “Any time you can put humor into economics it’s a good thing.”

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THE OBERLIN REVIEW, October 11, 2013

Ban Fracking on College Lands

As members of an educational institution, it is essential that we support the desires of our community in regards to this issue. We can accomplish this To the Editors: in part by pressuring our administraMany of us chose to attend Ober- tion to take a definitive stance toward lin College based on its reputation protecting the well-being of our town for promoting social justice and envi- and environment. ronmental sustainability. In the spirit The movement to ban fracking on of this commitment, we encourage Oberlin’s lands formed in response students, faculty and community to requests for demonstrations of members to join in efforts to explic- solidarity from folks living in regional itly prohibit natural gas development communities already affected by naton College-owned property, including ural gas extraction. While it might be the immediate campus and acreage difficult to imagine an injection well in surrounding areas. or drilling rig in Tappan Square, it is Natural gas extraction in this re- important to realize that this hypogion often involves the process of hy- thetical situation is a reality for studraulic fracturing, with the potential dents and communities across Ohio. for contamination of local waterways The administrations of Ohio State and and hugely detrimental human health Youngstown State Universities have already begun the process of leasing –––––––––––––––––––––––-——— their lands to natural gas companies; meanwhile, fracking infrastructure Natural gas extraction in is currently being built at Hiram this region often involves College. the process of hydraulic Oberlin would be the first college in Ohio to articulate a policy prohibfracturing, with the poiting fracking and related infrastructential for contamination ture on its property. This would set of local waterways and an important precedent for other hugely detrimental human schools and land-owning institutions in Ohio, in a gesture of solidarhealth effects in nearby ity with students and citizens across communities. the state who are fighting to preserve –––––––––––––––––––––––—— the integrity of their communities. To sign the petition, please visit effects in nearby communities. With our website at oberlinantifrack.com/ these dangers in mind, it is imperaindexcentralheatingplant.html (no tive that we adopt a proactive stance hyphen). to ban fracking infrastructure on College lands. In recognition of the hazards posed –Rhys Hertafeld and Emily Belle by fracking, the Oberlin City CounOberlin College Anti-Frack cil unanimously passed two resolutions last year: one asking Governor Kasich’s office for a moratorium on horizontal hydraulic fracturing and injection wells until further research is completed, and the other asking for the return of local control of the permitting and zoning of natural gas. To the Editors:

Petition Aims to Restrict Right to Carry Arms

For reasons I cannot fathom, Ohioans for Concealed Carry sued the city of Oberlin concerning its legislation designed to eliminate the blanket prohibition of the possession of firearms in municipal parks before that ordinance went into effect. At its Oct. 7 meeting, one of the four Council members who had voted for the ordinance could have moved for its reconsideration, and if four Council members approved, the members could reconsider their votes of Sept. 16th. They could have taken another vote to table the measure... or they could have voted it down. Again, for reasons of their own, they did not accept OFCC’s “get-out-of-this-lawsuit-free” card. (And the shorthand on the four codified ordinances being challenged is three not-yet-updated sections and one significant but probably inadvertent omission.) Citizens in Oberlin have taken matters into their own hands, as they have notably done in the past with good results. Petitions are circulating to put Ordinance 13-44 on the ballot in the next available general election, which will be Nov. 4, 2014. In the meantime, our 1998 law regarding park conduct will stay unmodified, though the tiny portion of it OFCC detests will remain as extinguished as it has been since 2004. Also in the meantime, the entire Oberlin community will have time to discuss alternative governance models for the parks that might permit local control and local community standards to prevail. So voter registration is over, and the next Election Day is less than a month off. But please take a moment to sign a petition one more time: this in order to let Ordinance 13-44 “be submitted to the electors ... for their approval or rejection” late next year. Sincerely, –David R. Ashenhurst Community member

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Publication of Record for Oberlin College — Established 1874 —

Editors-in-Chief Rosemary Boeglin Julia Herbst Managing Editor Taylor Field Opinions Editor Sophia Ottoni-Wilhelm

Review Moves Boldly into 21st Century with Relaunch of Website After years of struggling with a finicky, and at times downright defunct, website, the Review received word this week that the Student Finance Committee has allocated funds for the rebirth of oberlinreview.org. Although we indeed ad hoc’d for these funds, it was hardly out of a burning desire to focus on innovative media; and though we’re pleased to have received them, the task of reconstructing our online presence is more of a slow, painful push into the 21st century than an excited leap. Our website’s current state of disrepair has given all of us on senior staff the chance to have a necessary — and long overdue — conversation about the role that technology should play in the production of the paper. Improving our print edition has always been and continues to be our top priority. In the past few years, we’ve focused our energy on increasing the quality of our content through expanding our types of coverage, as well as improving writing and the paper’s design. And we’re perhaps more cognizant than anyone that we have much more work to do to create the type of newspaper that meets these goals each week. The root of our resistance to employing newfangled strategies is the attachment on the part of many Review staffers to a decidedly romantic ideal of print journalism. After all, it’s our love for the elegance of language and a powerful nostalgia for newsprint-stained fingers that initially drew us to spend an unhealthy share of our college careers in the basement of Burton Hall. Because of these sentimental attachments to a trope of journalism that initiated its descent before most of our births, charting our online path has felt like an unwelcome chore and distraction. But in recognizing that these attachments are incongruous with the state of modern journalism — which generally prioritizes pithy tweets and up-to-the-second coverage over the in-depth news writing of yesteryear — we have made a small step forward. By incorporating some of the positive aspects, of technology we can gain a broader presence and be more accountable to our readers while staying true to our ultimate commitment to informing our community.

SUBMISSIONS POLICY The Oberlin Review appreciates and welcomes letters to the editors and column submissions. All submissions are printed at the discretion of the editorial board. All submissions must be received by Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. at opinions@oberlinreview.org or Wilder Box 90 for inclusion in the following Friday’s Review. Letters may not exceed 600 words and columns may not exceed 800 words, except with the consent of the editorial board. All submissions must include contact information, with full names, for all signers. All electronic submissions from multiple writers should be carbon-copied to all signers to confirm authorship. The Review reserves the right to edit all submissions for content, space, spelling, grammar and libel. Editors will work with columnists and contributors to edit pieces and will clear major edits with the authors prior to publication. Editors will contact authors of letters to the editors in the event of edits for anything other than style and grammar. In no case will editors change the opinions expressed in any submission. The Opinions section strives to serve as a forum for debate. Review staff will occasionally engage in this debate within the pages of the Review. In these cases, the Review will either seek to create dialogue between the columnist and staff member prior to publication or will wait until the next issue to publish the staff member’s response. The Review will not print advertisements on its Opinions pages. The Review defines an advertisement as any submission that has the main intent of bringing direct monetary gain to the author of a letter to the editors. Opinions expressed in letters, columns, essays, cartoons or other Opinions pieces do not necessarily reflect those of the staff of the Review.

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.

Opinions

Page 6

The Oberlin Review, October 11, 2013

Sunny with a Chance of Cynicism: Midterms Week Libby Salemi Columnist If the rest of this campus is feeling anything like I am at this moment in time, we might be having a problem with extreme ADHD and complete boredom. From my three fall semesters at this school, I’ve noticed this to be a trend around this time. Everyone’s a little more fidgety, but at the same time we’re all exhausted. We’re stressed about midterms, but no one wants to do anything except maybe split a pitcher with some friends and dance or sit around all day watching Netflix and playing Minecraft (or LoL or Magic or whatever typical nerdy game; feel free to pick your poison). Unfortunately, as much as I want to, I can’t sit around all day playing video games, and I really can’t afford to dance around drunk every night, either. I’m a busy lady, and I’m assuming the rest of the campus is just as busy. But here are some important things I’ve learned to keep in mind over the mind-

numbing experience that is Oberlin College midterms. For starters, I’ve learned that the best route for midterms success is to be the least amount of organized as possible. Just wing everything. You think you could benefit from getting started on your work early? Clearly you’re wrong. You need to take a little time as possible on your work and spend all the rest of your time on Facebook. Think about it: This week is the perfect time to see what your old high school crush is up to. I know you don’t care about them the other 350 days of the year, but you really need to start caring now. And when you get to the final hours of midterms, that is the time to panic, cry and sweat out a 10-page paper without sleeping for two days. And don’t forget to keep Facebooking intermittently throughout those last few hours. I also give myself enough leisure time to not go crazy during the next couple of weeks. For a lot of people, this might feel like the wrong approach, but god dam-

Larger U.N. Weaknesses Revealed in Spread of Cholera Sean Para Columnist On Wednesday, advocates for the victims of the Haitian cholera epidemic filed a formal lawsuit against the United Nations in New York. They blame Nepali U.N. workers for bringing cholera, absent from Haiti for a century, to the country and contaminating the water supply. The United Nations, in response, will claim diplomatic immunity from the allegations. This episode, along with the multifarious other failures of the U.N., brings the organization’s gross inadequacies to the fore. In the Syrian civil war, in the continued strife in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Egypt, U.N. principles and humans rights have been continually violated, and it has done practically nothing in response. Faced with these continued crises and conflicts around the world, the United Nations’s total failure to achieve the goals for which it was created is a sad but inescapable truth. Created in the aftermath of the Second World War, the U.N. sought to promote peace and stability and to prevent the mass slaughter of civilians that the war had seen. However, human rights are continually violated around the world, and the U.N. cannot stop these crimes. The U.N.’s failings as an institution are only a reflection of the lack of support it gets from people around the world to achieve its intended goals. This is part of a larger issue. The international community supports the United Nations financially, and for its human resources, the U.N. is entirely a creation of the Great Powers. Despite its many resolutions and extensive body of human rights laws, very little has been achieved on the ground by the U.N. in the many regions of conflict and disaster it operates in around the world. This is largely the result of a lack of funding and impetus from the international community to act on these issues. The U.N. is entirely a creation of the international system as it has developed since the Second World War; its lack of efficacy is a problem that needs to be solved by countries all around the world. Complacency with the world’s many problems by so many people in developed countries is what allows the U.N. to continually fail to reach its objectives. For the U.N. to be truly effective in achieving the alleviation of poverty, disease and armed conflict, it must be given the money it needs. People around the world are too apt to write the U.N. off as a failure without understanding that the lack of capital or attention from the global community is the reason for its many shortcomings. I am not writing this article to utterly denounce the United Nations as an institution. It does achieve a significant amount of progress against poverty and disease through many of its initiatives. It simply needs to be pointed out that the organization has many inadequacies and often does not achieve its intended goals when responding to various crises such as the earthquake in Haiti or the civil war in Syria. These insufficiencies are falsely attributed to the organization itself, when their real cause is the global community’s apathy toward the many people around the world who live in suffering. Until we all decide to take more action as a whole, nothing will change.

mit, I need something to look forward to each day that isn’t work plus more work. If I don’t spend almost all of my time each day hanging out with someone or doing tasks that I could definitely save until fall break to do, I might actually go insane. Personally I’ve never been one to trust institutionalized living, so giving myself almost the entire two weeks of freedom from it all gives me some joy in each of my days. Maybe that’s just me, but I’ll still put it down as one of my tips for life success. Another thing to remember is how important sleep is. And by that I mean it’s no longer important. You’re an adult now. It’s not like you’re growing anymore. It’s just not something you need. Get as little sleep as possible. All that time you’d be using sleeping is precious Facebook and YouTube time. Utilize that time correctly. Also, don’t forget to stop eating like a normal human being. Your diet should only consist of Oreos, ramen and Agave supreme nachos, which you make the girl who’s been pining after

your body for a month get you at one in the morning. These are the things a body needs to function during these stressful times. Finally, it’s important to remember the people in your life at this time. Remember all the wonderful traits that attracted you to them in the first place. And remember that thing they did that really pissed you off recently? It’s time to forget that you forgave them and bring that argument to the foreground again. Heck, bring the rest of your friends into that argument, too. This is the perfect time to start drama. Everyone’s stressed and hungry and tired; it’s time to bring in a little extra to keep them going. Some yelling and awkward tension could really be beneficial to your friend group in these times. So set your boiling point a little lower and get ready for the fun. Anyway, this is my advice for a successful midterm season. Hopefully they’re somewhat helpful to the student body. I know I’ll be keeping it real with these steps.

Attention to Food’s Origins is Critical in Light of Outbreak Sam White Contributing Writer

USDA announced on Thursday that it would shut down the contaminated facilities unless Foster Farms produced clear plans for halting the outbreak. On the negative side is the distressing reality that we are highly dependent on our dysfunctional government to keep our food safe. Even when the government and its oversight agencies are functioning up to speed, outbreaks can still occur. Just this summer, reports NPR, a parasite on a certain brand of bagged lettuce made as many as 400 people in 15 states ill as the CDC and PulseNet raced to identify the pathogen to prevent further cases. Other potential food safety threats remain mysteries, such as a case this past spring where a cluster of genetically modified, pesticide-resistant wheat — a crop engineered by agribusiness giant Monsanto a decade ago but never approved for production or consumption by the USDA — inexplicably began growing in an Oregon farmer’s field without his knowledge. The case remains unresolved, raising questions regarding the possibility of other

We shouldn’t have to care about what’s in our food: Simply “eating a balanced diet,” complete with proteins, fats, greens and carbohydrates, should suffice. Today, however, it’s becoming increasingly difficult — and dangerous — not to care. Recent events bring this to light. The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a health alert this week regarding an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant salmonella, responsible for at least 270 cases of the severe foodborne illness. According to the USDA, the source of the illness has been traced to poultry products produced by Foster Farms in California at three of the company’s four facilities. While the majority of reported cases have been in California, the contaminated chicken has been found responsible for illness in at least 16 other states — hospitalizing around 42 percent of those affected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of the reasons for the outbreak’s severity, as far-fetched as it may seem, is the same hot top––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ic dominating the nation’s media: the shutdown of the United One of the reasons for States Federal Government. The CDC is among the many gov- the outbreak’s severernment agencies forced by the ity, as far-fetched as shutdown to furlough huge num- it may seem, is the bers of employees, including five same hot topic domiof the eight members tracking foodborne illness clusters at the nating the nation’s agency’s PulseNet database. As media: the shutdown NPR reported last week, an out- of the United States break — such as the one going on now — would leave the short- Federal Government. –––––––––––––––––––––––– staffed CDC scrambling. There is good and bad news resulting from this situation. On unapproved GMO crops, whose the positive side, the CDC has safety for consumption may resuccessfully pinpointed this par- quire further research, growing ticular outbreak, despite delays elsewhere without farmers’ or and drawbacks. In response, the consumers’ knowledge.

Looking at the big picture, it seems that nothing is safe. Genetically modified organisms exist in as much as an estimated 75 percent of food products found in supermarkets. Their safety — affirmed by Monsanto and the various government agencies to which representatives of the corporation are a party and rejected by skeptical food safety advocates as well as a handful of other governments — is a contentious issue, at the very least. The inundation of most commerciallyproduced meat and animal products with antibiotics, even when the animals are healthy, has been proven to lead to antibiotic resistance, which makes cases like the current salmonella outbreak so virulent. The nature of our food system pits the powerful, such as Monsanto, against the local farmer; the industrial, antibiotic-pumping giant, like the 10,000-employee-strong Foster Farms, against the smaller, safer, antibiotic-free business. The result is common knowledge: Healthier food comes at a price. Fortunately, however, we as consumers are not powerless, and awareness is the key to change. Regardless of our individual means, it’s important to remember — and take advantage of — the fact that we are all in the same food market, whether we like it or not. By buying organic, local and GMO-free foods if and when we are able, we are creating demand and sending producers the message that we want safer and healthier food. Not everyone has the time or the resources to care about these issues. Even fewer want to care about them. But if we each do what we can to change the status quo — and urge our peers, co-ops, restaurants and supermarkets to do the same — then, in the long run, we won’t have to care.

Opinions

The Oberlin Review, October 11, 2013

Page 7

Conference Creates Middle Ground in Israel-Palestine Debate Ruby Saha Contributing Writer

I’ve identified as proPalestine for most of my life. Despite my passion for Middle Eastern art, history and politics, I’ve been reluctant to join any of the various Israel-Palestine advocacy groups on campus, feeling unqualified to enter such a contentious and complex debate. Sometime in my sophomore year, I heard someone mention Oberlin’s J Street chapter. J Street’s slogan indicates itself as “The Political Home for Pro-Israel, Pro-peace Americans.” The words “pro-Israel” instilled no desire in me to find out about the organization or to attend meetings throughout the last three years I’ve been at Oberlin, and that probably would have been the end of that. And yet, to my surprise, I found myself attending the national J Street Conference in D.C. earlier this month. Being a senior, I’ve found, is a bit of a paradigm shift. My time left at college feels like a rapidly dwindling hourglass, with opportunities rushing past me before I have time to blink. I signed myself up for the conference without really thinking about it, attracted by the words “Israel,” “Palestine” and

“the Middle East” without paying much attention to the fine print. Later, having to explain myself to friends and family, I started to look deeper into J Street’s platform. I became curious to see what a pro-Israel twostate solution could look like, and whether that could be a viable solution to the conflict. I saw this as an opportunity to challenge my opinions and viewed my discomfort as a potentially constructive learning process. Until quite recently, my knowledge of the conflict was peripheral and vague. For most of my education, I attended an international school that champions several human rights causes and is part of a global movement that participated in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and attempts to foster dialogue in conflict areas like the Balkans. Our focus often found its roots in the social rather than the political, helping grassroots foundations raise funds and awareness and building infrastructures for smaller communities in problem areas around the world. As such, the narrative I was exposed to regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict focused on Palestinian victimhood, pointing to the

ways in which the Israeli government continues to encroach on Palestinian sovereignty through the settlements, its military presence in Palestinian territory and its policies of racial segregation, which have been compared to the South African apartheid. When I attended the conference, however, I was surprised to hear the opposite story from many of the Jewish students present. Most of the students I talked to had grown up hearing a very different narrative of Israeli-Jewish victimhood, emphasizing the constant threats to Israel’s existence, its encirclement by Muslim countries that seek to destroy it, the Palestinian campaign of terror and the Palestinian Authority’s repeated rejections of Israeli peace offers. This “pro-Israel or proPalestine” binary of victimhood has framed the way people view and talk about the Israel-Palestine conflict for so long, defining it in zero-sum terms. There’s never a middle ground; no matter how distant your allegiances are to the conflict, you’re either in one camp or the other. (I am neither Jewish nor Palestinian; as an Indian, my only tenuous connection lies in its many parallels with the India-Pakistan

divide.) Although I wasn’t here to see it because I was studying abroad, the Oberlin Divest campaign last spring made the dichotomy on this campus more visible and visceral than ever. In May, the Student Senate endorsed Students for a Free Palestine’s proposal calling for the College to divest from six multinational companies who profit from Israeli occupation of the West Bank. The campaign, while wellintentioned, divided the Oberlin community into camps, obscuring the wider social justice issues and alienating many students who would otherwise support Palestinian sovereignty but felt uncomfortable with the broader goals and definitions of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Attending the conference, I saw for the first time the possibility of an open dialogue that prioritizes peace over ideology. J Street’s approach to a two-state solution views the future of a secure state of Israel as being inextricably intertwined with the foundation of a Palestinian state. In doing so, we move away from the dichotomy that has paralyzed any possibility of a constructive conversation into a

nuanced debate that looks critically at both parties’ demands and attempts to broker a real and viable peace. One can, and should, support Israel’s right to a safe and secure state while being critical of the policies that threaten or encroach on Palestinian sovereignty. I don’t mean to imply that the conference was perfect or that J Street’s platform is unproblematic. While it was fascinating and challenging to hear from the many Israeli Parliament members that attended the conference, the Palestinian contingent was frustratingly small. Nevertheless, to have the opportunity to hear from prominent Palestinian leaders like Fatah’s Husam Zomlot at a pro-Israel conference in D.C. indicates a genuine turning of the tides; I doubt this would have been possible even 10 years ago. But there’s a subtle slippage that occurs in J Street’s platform, which proclaims it “proIsrael” and “pro-Palestinian,” not “pro-Palestine.” While I understand that J Street’s political focus is to address the AmericanJewish constituency, I think there needs to be a more visible focus on the recognition of Palestinian sovereignty.

This was only one of many challenges that I faced during the conference, which I had expected. What I didn’t anticipate, however, were the supportive and open discussions I had with other students — both from Oberlin and not — after these sessions that helped me come to terms with my discomfort and challenged me to engage with these issues in a more nuanced way. The diversity of opinions displayed by both the speakers at the conference as well as the people who attended startled and delighted me. What I want is for this to be the case at Oberlin. We as a community need to be more willing to engage in critical and constructive dialogue over key Israel-Palestine issues in a way that does not divide us. There can and must be a more unified open forum that allows us to bring peace and justice to the region and ensure the sovereignty of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. We need to change the way we view and speak about the conflict, not as a dichotomy but as a challenging and nuanced process toward a viable and sustainable future in the Middle East.

Kiss My Sass: Lessons Learned in College Sophia Ottoni-Wilhelm Opinions Editor This time of year it’s completely normal to feel totally fried. With everyone on campus desperately trying to cram all the information they possibly can into their brains, the result is often that you start to feel dumber. This column provides some hope in these dark times. Here are a few things I actually have learned through the years… 1. Wear comfortable shoes. One June night, during the summer of 2012, a girl was stomping around Oslo at midnight, angry and sore-footed in fiveinch heels. Who was this stupid person? Unfortunately, it was me. As a raging feminist and generally intelligent person, I choose to wear heels very rarely. In fact, if I’m going to an event that doesn’t allow a dress with Chucks, there is a 99 percent chance I’m going to hate whatever it is. But this night in Oslo, when I was visiting my friend from high school for her graduation, was an exception. I learned my lesson. The troop of super sexy, super tan and superhumanly attractive people I was with were definitely not having

similar troubles. Perhaps it’s my rural Indiana breeding, I don’t know. I just don’t see the point. I remembered something that a girl I knew in high school once told me: “You’re not a woman if you can’t wear stilettos for a day.” To which I respond, “Go fuck yourself.” Wear comfortable shoes. Just do it. If you ever have to wear shoes that aren’t comfortable, pack a pair of Keds or orthos and whip ’em out at the earliest possible convenience. 2. Drink water. Like all the time. I remember when I made the transition from a couple of cups a day to about 17; it rocked my world. It’s great for your skin, helps with weight, fuels your muscles and improves nerve and brain function. Also, there’s nothing quite as satisfying as clear pee. 3. Washing the dishes is fun. It doesn’t have to suck. Seriously, it doesn’t. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it can even be enjoyable. If you don’t feel the same way, try making a doing-the-dishes playlist. Don’t forget to put “Motivation” by Kelly Rowland on that bad boy (pay close attention to Lil Wayne’s contribution). My re-

alization that doing the dishes doesn’t suck came about during college. Doing something that you don’t have to engage with analytically feels so damn good. I’m sorry, Stevie dishwashers or co-op crew-haters. It’s totally understandable if you don’t feel the same. Don’t forget the soap because cholera is a real thing, especially in developing countries, and I once got it because my roommate didn’t use soap. 4. Old friends are the best. By this I mean friends you’ve been close with for a while and not literally friends who need a walker (although the latter can be super cool, too). You know what they’re about, they know what you’re about. You know they’ll be honest no matter what because you’ve been friends for so long that they give zero fucks about hurting your feelings once in a while. When hanging out with an old friend you regularly get up to all sorts of weird activities (e.g., trading massages in public, examining weird growths, reading Cosmo out loud). The best part is that you don’t have to give them background information when you tell them a story because they already know everything about your life. Your

dad’s college job, your sister’s affinity toward unicorns, the weird grandma socks you love to wear — none of it comes as a surprise. It’s the perfect relationship since they’ve had years to acclimate to your crazy. 5. Basic math is difficult. Good news! You’re not alone; we’ve all forgotten how to do basic math. Unless you’re a math major, chances are you struggle with basic division, multiplication, addition and subtraction. Just the other day I was stumped by “300 divided by 50” for a good 10 seconds. Not to worry, I eventually figured it out. It’s five, duh. 6. Professors are people. Recently I’ve started feeling calm when meeting with professors. I used to do this thing freshman year where I’d go into office hours, nervous and a little sweaty, so eager to learn but completely unable to speak in succinct, comprehensible sentences. Both of my parents are professors (religion and economics) so I grew up with great dinner time conversations. Aside from that, they’re pretty much normal people — they go on bike rides, nap a ton, make horrible puns and struggle with cell

phones. Bottom line, professors are just people. Talk to them just like you would talk to a stranger you’re getting to know. And here’s a little secret — they want to get to know you, too. 7. You don’t know much. The more you read and learn, the more you realize how little you know. Enough said. 8. Fretting about life passing you by is super common. A central part of getting older is freaking out about it. This year I cut up a copy of Where The Wild Things Are and put it on my bedroom wall. Sometimes I lie in my bed with a cup of tea and think about reading the book when I was younger and how I found some of the wild things really terrifying, how I loved how Max’s onesie looked with the crown and how sad I was when he left home on his boat. Thinking about younger versions of one’s self is a thing that literally everyone on Earth does. Like Max, we’ve all gotten on the boat and realized how the other side (sometimes) sucks. But it’s going to be OK. Just take the time to smile at some people, do the things you love, run around once in a while and eat some good food whenever you get home.

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Instructions 1SFIFBU B MBSHF TLJMMFU PS XPL UP NFEJVN heat. Pour in oil and add onion, garlic, carrots and pepper. Cook until tender. .PWF UIPTF JOHSFEJFOUT UP UIF TJEF PG UIF XPL and add the eggs to the center. Once cooked, mix the eggs with the vegetables. "EE BOZ BEEJUJPOBM JOHSFEJFOUT BOE DPPL GPS a minute. Then add the rice and pour the soy sauce on top. Stir fry the mixture until heated through.

Feeding oneself can be a daunting task. CDS can have long lines full of students you have never seen before and going out to eat in town can really put a dent in your wallet. Many college students are so busy that they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think of cooking for themselves. However, there are fast and easy ways to cook meals within the closet-sized kitchens of the dorms and college homes.

Frittata

Think of cooking as a fun break from your workload â&#x20AC;&#x201D; an edible art form, if you will. Get into the chef spirit and start whipping up delicious recipes. Invite a friend or create a cooking group of hallmates to help pool ingredients and shorten the preparation process. The company will make the entire process more enjoyable, especially if you get bored when cooking. Open up a bottle of cheap wine, blast some tunes, and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll love chopping those vegetables in no time.

Ingredients r FHHT r UCTQ NJML r DVQ HSBUFE QBSNFTBO DIFFTF r 4BMU r 1FQQFS r 4VHHFTUFE GJMMJOHT NVTISPPNT BTQBSBHVT IBN PS bacon, spinach, onions, peppers r 0MJWF PJM PS DBOPMB PJM

When creating a dish, it is important to consider what flavor to bring to your ingredients. Adding a dash of rosemary, curry powder, sugar or salt will give your food more depth in taste and variability. However, if you are cooking a small dish make sure not to add more than a pinch of any particular spice â&#x20AC;&#x201D; it might overwhelm the dish. Try to avoid creating a distasteful concoction of spices, known as a cement mixer. Cooking requires some planning. First, pick a group of recipes you would like to make that week and create a shopping list. While there is no main grocery store in Oberlin, there are many options to gather every ingredient you may need â&#x20AC;&#x201D; even if you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a car. If you are in need of star anise, seaweed, rice vinegar or canned eel, Kimâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Grocery, located behind the Slow Train Cafe, is the place to find it. Fresh, expensive and high-quality produce and meat can be purchased at the Oberlin Market, behind the storefronts on College Street and Main Street. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re looking for items right from the farm such as corn, tomatoes and cheese, check out the farmersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; market, open every Saturday morning in the parking lot near Main Street Diner (formerly Fresh Start). Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t overlook DeCafĂŠ and Gibsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s; both have cooking aids and ingredients to help create a great dish. Plus you can charge them on ObieDollars or Flex. The concept of cooking in a dorm may be complicated, especially when it is very easy to just swipe a card to have a plate of food in CDS. However, a small time investment and effort will produce great and healthy meals.

Instructions 1SFIFBU PWFO UP EFHSFFT 'BISFOIFJU .JY FHHT NJML BOE DIFFTF JO B TNBMM CPXM "EE B QJODI PG salt and pepper. 4BVUĂ&#x160; EFTJSFE GJMMJOHT JO B TLJMMFU XJUI PJM 1PVS FHH NJYUVSF BOE GJMMJOHT JOUP B HSFBTFE QBO $PPL GPS m NJOVUFT JO UIF PWFO

Hummus Ingredients r QPVOE PG TMPX DPPLFE DIJDLQFBT NBTIFE r DMPWF PG NJODFE HBSMJD r UCTQ PG PMJWF PJM r DVQ PG MFNPO KVJDF r DVQ PG UBIJOJ BWBJMBCMF BU UIF 0CFSMJO .BSLFU

r UCTQ PG XBUFS r UCTQ PG TBMU

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Instructions "EE BMM JOHSFEJFOUT CFTJEFT DIJDLQFBT JOUP CMFOEFS .JY PO MPX TQFFE 5IFO BEE DIJDLQFBT BOE NJY VOUJM TNPPUI Dance Diaspora presents â&#x20AC;&#x153;I Wanna Get My Praise On IIâ&#x20AC;? Oct. 11â&#x20AC;&#x201C;12 at 8 p.m.

Romulus Linneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Legacy: A Symposium Saturday, Oct. 12 at 3 p.m.

Dance Diaspora will present the sequel to the 2007 show â&#x20AC;&#x153;I Wanna Get My Praise Onâ&#x20AC;? in the main space of Warner Gymnasium. The show follows the story of slaves in America who fought to survive.

A panel of theater professionals will discuss the late playwright and authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work in West Lecture Hall in the Science Center. The event is part of a weekend-long celebration of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Drama in Every Human Life: The Art of Romulus Linney â&#x20AC;&#x2122;53.â&#x20AC;?

This Week Editor: Olivia Gericke Writer: James Koblenzer

Wilder Maker and PEAKS Saturday, Oct. 12 at 8 p.m.

OSwing Late Night Blues Dance Saturday, Oct. 12 at 12 a.m.

Bookbinding Workshop Sunday, Oct. 13 at 3 p.m.

Gender and the Physical Sciences Sunday, Oct. 13 at 7:30 p.m.

Off-Campus Housing Resource Fair Monday, Oct. 14 at 6 p.m.

Medical Marijuana in Ohio? Thursday, Oct. 17 at 4:30 p.m

Wilder Maker will be performing a series of three-part harmonies on love and death. PEAKS will be opening at the Cat in the Cream.

Get down and dance the night away with OSwing at the Cat in the Cream.

Join the Recycled Products Co-op for their first workshop in Wilder 211. Learn how to make notebooks, journals, bound manifestos and more, all out of repurposed materials.

Amy Graves, physics and astronomy professor at Swarthmore College, will give a talk in the West Lecture Hall on how physical science can become more inclusive to all genders and minorities.

ResEd will be hosting a resource fair for students interested in living off campus next year in the Science Center Commons. During the fair you can meet with landlords and community members. Good luck getting off campus.

Cheryl Shuman, the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Martha Stewart of Marijuana,â&#x20AC;? and John Pardee, president of the Ohio Rights Group, will lead an open discussion on medical marijuana in the state of Ohio in West Lecture Hall in the Science Center.

Arts The Oberlin Review

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October 11, 2013

Despite Talented Performances, OSTA’s Fall Showcase Proves Disappointing Anne Pride-Wilt Staff Writer

This year’s Oberlin Student Theater Association Fall Showcase, which ran from Oct. 3–5 at the Cat in the Cream, was disadvantaged in design. As the showcase consisted of a series of six short scenes written, directed and performed by Oberlin students, no one was expecting a professional production, but the patchwork sensibility — or rather, the lack of any unifying sensibility whatsoever — left the audience reeling from the disorienting inconsistency in the quality of writing and performance. While a valiant effort appears to have been exerted by all involved, the showcase’s strengths could not overcome its weak foundation, resulting in a production that was intriguing and occasionally excellent but frustratingly uneven. The performance began with a skit called “Midlife Couplet” written by College first-year Harley Foos. The scene, a representation of a flailing poetry reading that quickly derails into marital crisis, was fascinatingly staged. Part of the action took place in the audience, with College first-year Artie Octavio performing his role from a table in front of the platform. The scene was earnestly acted by College first-years Michael Jappe and Rita Grosbard in the roles of the unhappy couple, but the writing suffered from an excess of Revolutionary Road-style suburban angst, eliciting more eye rolls than would be ideal at the beginning of any performance.

College first-year Michael Jappe, playing an aspiring poet, is derided by College first-year Rita Grosbard in “Midlife Couplet.” The scene was one of six included in OSTA’s Fall Showcase. Shi Shi

Unfortunately, the second scene, “On Pain of Memory” by College sophomore Amelia Durham, did nothing to cut the melodrama. Grosbard filled in admirably for a sick performer Saturday night, although her reading from the script did not diminish the scene at all. While the dialogue was competently written, the plot reached semi-ridiculous levels of tragedy, as the short scene segued from cancer, to divorce, to vehicular manslaughter to alcoholism in the span of 10 minutes, rendering any non-ironic emotional response impossible in its excess.

The latter part of the show was mercifully lighter in tone, although darker themes never entirely receded. In the whimsical “Guidance” by College senior Zach Weinberg, a deluded, mouthwash-chugging guidance counselor, played to humorous effect by College first-year Zoë Davidson, waylays an unsuspecting student into serving, in an amusing, if predictable, role reversal as a source of guidance for the counselor herself. Following hot on its heels was the surreal but strangely entertaining “In the Garden” by College junior Madeline Cline, featuring excellent performances from

Budding Poet Demonstrates True Talent at Joint Reading Logan Buckley Staff Writer “I’ve been walking south for many nights now, / Heading south in Bangladesh / Where the sea churns / Into a hundred deltas / And the landscape looks like a rotting nail.” So begins Zubair Ahmed’s debut poetry collection, City of Rivers. That poem was also the one he chose to open the reading he gave last Thursday in Wilder 101 alongside fellow poet Jean Valentine, telling that audience that the poem “encompasses what [the] book is about… a journey to find home.” The poem is characteristic of the book in other ways, too — the quiet tone and pastoral imagery interrupted and disturbed by the carefully selected image of “a rotting nail” introduce a technique used throughout the book wherein familiar landscapes are made strange and unfamiliar ones feel intimate. Another poem, “On the Night Train to Munich, the Spirit Asks

Me a Simple Question,” begins with the image of lights that are “yellow, / Dead and slow, / Trying to make each town we pass / Their home,” and throughout the poem, this image moves from the European countryside back to “the banks / Of the Brahmaputra River,” where “My break / Will turn to snow / And fall over / My family cemetery.” Ahmed’s poems are infused with an accumulation of places, stories of family and travel, displacement and home, and in reading them he sounded both heartfelt and musical. Though it is impossible to do Valentine and Ahmed’s poetry justice in such a short review, the two were well-matched for the reading. Valentine published her first book of poems in 1965, and her book Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems won the National Book Award for poetry in 2004. The two poets presented both contrasts and similarities: Though Valentine is wellestablished in her career and Ahmed at the outset of his, both poets tend

toward short, sharp poems that trade in quiet, devastating imagery. Ahmed was born in 1988 in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh and the “city of rivers” to which the title of his collection refers. Though English is Ahmed’s second language, it could be called his first love. In third grade, he and his fellow students were given readings in both Bengali — works by Rabindranath Tagore, the first Nobel laureate in Literature from Asia — and in English. “And then, on the side, we were given The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare,” Ahmed said. “I enjoyed The Merchant of Venice exponentially more.” The next stage in his love for the English language came in 2005, when Ahmed came to the United States with his family. He went to high school in Texas, where he transitioned from speaking a mixture of English and Bengali to speaking English full-time. “Transitioning to English really made me fall for it, fall See Engineer, page 13

Jappe and College sophomore Greer Jansen. Once the scene played out the charm of its childlike naivety, however, it became clear that the script was trying to manufacture profundity where it didn’t really exist. The highlight of the show was College senior Colin Wulff ’s “The Martyr Matters,” which drew on some of the same elements of surrealism as “Guidance,” but with more narrative drive and thus ultimate success. Wulff ’s premise concerned five robed individuals squabbling sophistically over which of them ought to suck it up and allow them-

selves to be ritually slaughtered for the pleasure of their pretzel-based deity. The bright spots of the effective ensemble cast were the hilarious College first-years Jacob Baron and Romina Nemaei, the latter of whom was also featured in “On Pain of Memory.” While the skit began to drag after a while and eventually exhausted its premise, it culminated in a surprising, thoughtful ending, one of the few in the showcase. The final skit, College sophomore Maggie Bussard’s “Loner Joe’s Bar and Grill,” set itself, unsurprisingly, in a creepy loner’s bar and meandered aimlessly for a while before ending with no resolution. Although College first-year Jenny Kneebone’s performance was a bright spot, overall the skit served as an unsatisfactory ending to the showcase, as it barely managed to end itself in a creative way. Unfortunately, the scene recalled the less effective sketches instead of the best, reducing the impact of the showcase on the audience and leaving viewers dissatisfied during the final bows. The OSTA showcase had many promising scripts and performances, but it never quite managed to come together. The structure of simply sewing together unaffiliated and radically different sketches into one show requires a solid resolution, which the audience of the showcase never got. However, the many bright spots apparent in the writing and cast bode well for this year’s OSTA performances. There is plenty of talent available — it just wasn’t fully utilized in this showcase.

Apocalyptical: NPR’s Radiolab Live in Cleveland Matthew Sprung Staff Writer In a world inundated with media, NPR’s popular program Radiolab offers something different. Whereas experts on television and the internet provide only ambiguous answers to our questions about science and technology, Radiolab presents us with clear answers by both highlighting and dissecting these big questions. Hosted by Jad Abumrad, OC ‘95, and Robert Krulwich, OC ‘69, the show has won a Peabody Award and earned Abumrad a MacArthur “Genius” Grant — not bad for a pair of Oberlin alumni. Radiolab’s live performance at the State Theater in Cleveland last Friday proved entertaining but failed to live up to the radio version. This is understandable, as Abumrad is notorious for his heavy editing of the radio version’s final product. Intricate music samples dance precisely around interviews as the hosts chime in at just the right moment, building a smooth narrative. The live shows try their best, and succeed in some ways to capture the succinctness of the edited versions by featuring a live band and on-stage editing with prerecorded voiceovers. Yet the effect doesn’t quite match up to the meticulous standard Abumrad has set for himself. Titled “Apocalyptical,” the show explored the concept of “endings” — where and when specific endings began, how they ended and our understanding of them since that point of finality. The first topic they discussed was dinosaurs, for whom the end began (and ended) 66 million years ago when a meteor wiped them out in only two hours. See Radiolab, page 13

The Oberlin Review, October 11, 2013

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Diverse Repertoire Aids CME Performance Meridian ExOdette Chalandon Staff Writer If the electric atmosphere before the Contemporary Music Ensemble’s performance with eighth blackbird was any indication of what was to come, it was thanks to the preconcert enthusiasm of the audience. Students, alumni, professors and community members filled Warner Concert Hall with energy that was palpable and directed squarely at the joint per-formers. Eighth blackbird, a three-time Grammy-winning sextet founded at Oberlin in 1996, was a highlight on its own, as were the featured compositions they helped bring to life. What unfolded was an incredible performance that reaffirmed one’s faith in the future of contemporary music. From the minute CME appeared on stage with eighth blackbird, it was evident this concert was going to be extraordinary. What gave Members of eighth blackbird strut across the Warner Concert Hall stage during their concert with the performance its magic was not only the CME. The majority of the pieces performed were composed by Oberlin faculty and alumni. skill of the musicians or the beauty of the Simeon Deutsch pieces they were performing, but the connections among the performers. Eighth blackbird performed pieces commissioned for them as let go of its physical awareness and allowing ing, Oberlin composer-in-residence, titled well as pieces composed by Oberlin profes- the cello to guide them. What the Light Was Like and inspired by Amy sors. The majority of these pieces, including Quickly pulling us back into the moment Clampitt’s poem of the same name. The piece Skipping Stones by Professor of TIMARA Tom was Kaplan’s piece whirligig, described as “for was elegant, subtle and lingering, placed perLopez, OC ’89; whirligig by Lisa Kaplan, OC ’96; piano four hands.” Each of the three move- fectly in the concert. Unlike the other pieces, What the Light Was Like by Benjamin Broening ments presented its audience with a new rela- it crept up and filled the space slowly, and and Six Ways Through a Glass of Absinthe by tionship between Kaplan and three different before they knew it, the audience found itself Professor of TIMARA Peter Swendsen, OC ’98, musicians, who all shared the same piano. The completely surrounded by the music. This was were composed in the last year. first movement, “off-kilter,” was reminiscent of a piece that, as Kaplan said, left “the music to The concert began with the aptly titled Skip- a friendship with a competitive edge with its speak for itself.” ping Stones. Lopez created what can only be playful, hyperactive melody and increasingly The last ripple of the stone brought the perthought of as a musical stone for the players of insistent tempo. In the end, Kaplan’s sparring formance full circle. Six Ways Through a Glass eighth blackbird to throw into the water, to be partner was chased quite literally off the piano. of Absinthe makes into music the mood of the repeated and evolved through ripples by CME’s The second movement, “Merry-go-round,” was painting on which it was based, Pablo Picasso’s musicians. It featured traditional instrumenta- incredibly intimate. The two hands glided past 1911 “Glass of Absinthe,” which is currently in tion employed by both ensembles: flute, violin, one another the way two secret lovers might the collection of the Allen Memorial Art Musepiano, clarinet, cello and viola, as well as pic- interact with each other in a public setting. The um. Swendsen seamlessly blended music with colo and electronics. Non-traditional instru- third movement, played with Kaplan’s former the recorded sounds of Paris, incorporating a ments such as a kazoo and a toy train whistle Professor of Piano Sanford Margolis, was loud, carousel, café noises and bells from an opera were also featured. This composition was the passionate and energetic, and ended the piece house. The tones of the instruments aligned musical equivalent of passing the torch from on a high note. perfectly with the recorded sounds of city life, one generation of contemporary musicians Fortunately, Derek Bermel’s Tied Shifts reminding the audience that it was in a pubto the next. It seemed to suggest a strong re- picked up exactly where whirligig left off. The lic music space while simultaneously carrying lationship between the ensembles that rippled feel of the piece is best explained by Bermel’s them away to a far-off locale. This duality of throughout the rest of the CME’s performance. eclectic musical background, but more specifi- experience was emphasized by the appearance The next piece, Amers by Finnish composer cally his visit to Bulgaria and study of Bulgarian of six CME musicians whose instruments corKaija Saariaho, featured the cello prominent- folk music. This performance was a fascinating responded directly to each eighth blackbird ly. The music evoked images of a journey, ex- interplay of visual and audio components. The member, so that there were two of each of the pressed concretely by Nicholas Photinos, OC musicians involved created multiple stories: flutists, clarinetists, violinists, cellists, percus’96, eighth blackbird’s cellist. The CME musi- romances, first encounters and aggression sionists and pianists. cians supplemented his rich, low notes. The both playful and serious. It was a brilliant exThe complexity of CME and eighth blackcomposer himself describes the cello as being ample of what is called gesamtkunstwerk, or bird’s performance was due not only to the in“a kind of boat moving in different directions in “total work of art,” surrounding our senses in tricacies of the music, but also to the relationthis sea of sound of electronics and ensemble.” both sight and sound. ships shared by the composers and musicians, The combination of elements created a hypAfter the intermission, the performance as mentors and students in both the visual and notic atmosphere, compelling the audience to resumed with a piece by Benjamin Broen- sonic arts.

Oberlin Film Co-op’s First Event Draws a Crowd Nora Kipnis Staff Writer College senior Taylor Stanton has been collecting poor-quality YouTube videos for a few years, and on Saturday evening the Oberlin Film Co-operative gave him an opportunity to present his findings. The videos, each a few minutes in length, give a glimpse into the lives of the makers and are seemingly unrelated: a boy demonstrating how he’s “mastered the art of walking on water” by stepping in slow motion into a pool; a series of near-misses with death titled “La Chance;” and P!nk falling off stage with a giant harness affixed around her waist. But each explore the effects of degeneration through compression or conversion to analogue on image quality, and, by extension, how they have affected our shared memory of

the videos. “Each of them has their own distinct charm,” Stanton said. About 30 viewers spread out on oriental rugs in the high-windowed living room of the apartment above Ade’s Place to observe the silliness of what we watch, record and feel the need to share on the internet. The film lasted about half an hour and gave small snapshots of life from the past 20 years. Each film was blurred, and their titles included more than a few exclamation points. The titles themselves serve as a commentary on what we expect from these media. A video evokes some kind of excitement we fail to extract from simply viewing it only when it is slowed down, sped up, chopped and spliced to make a point. A VHS-recorded interview with director Harmony Korine on the Late Show about his 1998 novel, A Crackup at the Race Riots, in which he wryly refuses to

endorse his own book, did have a specific connection to his most recent and most successful movie, Spring Breakers. The noise of the VHS and the pixilation resulting from compression made the video seem that much older. Another highlight was a film of Japanese punks getting ready for a concert, waving at the camera and explaining how 15 people can pack into one white van. The date of the recording — March 21, 1997 — was visible in the lower right corner, and the white outlines around each brightly colored mohawk and studded leather jacket showed the film’s true age. The audience couldn’t help laughing at the extended ridiculousness of an enormous and fantastic setup of dominos falling, combined with the commentary from the creator and heavy metal playing in the background. At the end of the

sequence, a happy-faced balloon slowly rises up and a man gazes at it with a grimace. It’s then shown in fast motion, then again in slow motion. The end of the film says, “Sorry for bad quality :/” and reminds the viewer that the director’s YouTube account, “MrFunnyProducti0ns,” has a “0” instead of an “O.” The films were entertaining but left one curious as to why poorly recorded home videos are so gripping to our generation. Is it our obsession with analogue? An obsession with memory in general? A backlash against all the amazingly, sharply recorded dramatic sequences we see on television and the silver screen? The desire to be reminded that life is often far simpler? Perhaps these poorly recorded media are most similar to the way we remember things as they happened but blurred and cut to only show the highlights.

periments with Percussion Katherine Dye Staff Writer Experimental percussion trio Meridian played to a small but engaged audience last Thursday in Fairchild Chapel. The group, comprised of University of Alabama faculty member Tim Feeney and UA students Nick Hennies and Greg Stuart, experimented with the boundaries of traditional percussive music by using unconventional methods to create otherworldly soundscapes. The trio employs traditional percussive instruments in their work but relies on unusual techniques such as tapping on the underside of a drum or rubbing the rim of a bell with the strings of a violin bow to create bizarre and intriguing sounds that one would not usually associate with percussion music. The songs were slow — almost painfully so — but in their best moments this aesthetic created a transcendent, meditative atmosphere. This atmosphere was enhanced by the venue itself. Fairchild Chapel has superb acoustics due to its small size and high ceilings, creating the ideal environment for such a performance. The small audience and the beautiful but somberly ecclesiastical interior added a monastic flair to the evening. The performers themselves, as a result of their intense focus and simple mode of performance, contributed to this impression; after speaking familiarly with a few members of the audience, they sat down to their instruments and looked down in unison, as if entering a trance. The music itself was tranceinducing as well, beginning on a single tone that resonated throughout the chapel for what seemed like minutes before being joined by equally uncanny sounds. The trio continued in this vein for about 15 minutes, each sound building on the other to create a pleasant sort of background noise. The music had no discernible melody, which was not altogether unpleasant for the first half of the performance but made it more difficult to listen to during the latter half. This growing inaccessibility in the last 15 minutes of the half-hour performance had much to do with a change in tempo and sound. Instead of staying in a slower, calmer vein, the tempo picked up and the tones became more sudden and dissonant, increasing to an almost danceable rhythm. This felt incongruous with the pace of the music that came before. The abrupt screeching sounds and loud bursts of noise seemed gratuitous and bordered on unlistenable. Meridian also made creative use of silence in their performance, oftentimes playing a note and letting it ring to a waning See Trio, page 13

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The Oberlin Review, October 11, 2013

On the Record: Roy Abramsohn Discusses His Mid-College Crisis, Film Debut Roy Abramsohn, star of the upcoming film Escape from Tomorrow, has a lot to say about his experiences since leaving Oberlin. After spending two years in the Conservatory, Abramsohn decided to abandon his classical piano studies to pursue a career in acting. Since then, he has appeared in high-profile series and films such as Glee, Desperate Housewives, Monk and Oren Peli’s (of Paranormal Activity fame) newest film, Area 51, which opens in theaters in Brazil this November. Escape from Tomorrow is Abramsohn’s first lead role in a feature-length film. Directed by Randy Moore, the film follows the main character, Jim — played by Abramsohn — on an ill-fated family vacation to Disneyworld. Between tidying around the house and running off to a press event, Abramsohn took some time to speak with the Review about his mid-college crisis and his controversial film debut. I understand that your first passion was music. As a former Conservatory student, could you tell me a bit about how you first got involved with acting? I was planning my winter term [as a sophomore], and I had a friend over at Johns Hopkins University. They had a famous playwright in residency during that period named Edward Albee. He wrote Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Zoo Story; he’s one of the greatest American playwrights of this whole century, I think. So I kind of snuck my way into Johns Hopkins.

I wasn’t really supposed to partake in the program. But I went to Baltimore anyway and got to meet Edward Albee and do some scenes. Really, just being in the same room with this playwright as he taught, that changed things for me. When they found out I wasn’t a student at Johns Hopkins, they got a little mad, but eh. So where did you go from there? I went to New York for a few years. I left Oberlin because I realized I wanted to be an actor. I knew that was my destiny. But acting is a very scary thing. [At Oberlin] I was just this little classical pianist, and I really wasn’t on the same track as my peers. I just didn’t have that spirit in me. Let’s just say that when it came to college, I was a little confused. When I came back, I did this children’s play that actually toured the Oberlin-area schools. I played a beggar who turned into a king, which was really a metaphor for what was happening to me then. I was this scared, young guy, but in the space of that class, I had this moment that just felt real. And that’s what you’re constantly searching for the rest of your career: that one moment back in acting class at Oberlin when you have things spelled out. It was almost an out of body thing, and I just knew. Let’s talk a little bit about the film, Escape from Tomorrow. How did you first get involved with it? I was taking [acting] classes

Roy Abramsohn, a former Conservatory student, stars in the controversial new film Escape from Tomorrow, which will have a limited release today.

at this place called Groundlings — a pretty famous comedy place in L.A. where people like Will Ferrell and Lisa Kudrow and a lot of people from Saturday Night Live went. There was a guy from my class who I’d kept in touch with for a few years after. He’d auditioned for the role and said he thought I’d be right for the lead. So I went in for it [and got it]. At first I was kind of confused. Initially, I didn’t really understand what happened at the end, but that didn’t matter to me because the role just affected me in a way that made me think I could really do well with it. How did you manage to film at the Disney parks without official permission? Any close calls with security?

We just walked in. We bought everyone yearlong passes, including the kids and their mothers. We had wired mics under our clothes that we’d put on in our hotel rooms in the morning. The cameramen checked in their bags, and since everyone had cameras [at the theme park] no one knew that we were also going to be filming for the movie. There was one time we almost got caught by security. We walked in and the security guy asked why we’d entered the park twice in seven minutes. We’d just done a shot where we walked into the park and then left again, and it looked pretty suspicious to them. So I said, ‘Oh, I left the sunscreen outside, and I need it for the kids.’ He asked me why there were paparazzi following me around and asked if I was a celebrity. For a second my selfish actor brain thought, ‘Hey, maybe he saw me as the reporter on CSI.‘ That was pretty funny then. The security guy made us all wait there, and I realized I had my sound recording stuff on. So I asked to take one of the kids to the bathroom, and who’s going to say no to that? We went in to the bathroom, and I took the equipment off, and I was about to throw it in the garbage when I realized that doing so could ruin the movie — we probably had weeks of sounds recorded on there. So I put it in my sock — I had these big dad tube socks on — thinking that would maybe be the last place he looked. And then we left the bathroom. [The security guard’s] back was turned, and a parade was coming

by as one of our [production assistants] walked by, sort of like a spy, and just said, ‘Get out of the park, go, get in the van.’ Then we just ran into the car and got away. You can’t do everything legally in life. Sometimes you have to break a few rules, you know what I mean? And I think the Disney Corporation will be just fine. Now that filming is behind you, how would you describe the movie in your own words? I would say it’s an art film, with elements of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick. I think one review described it as David Lynch if he’d made National Lampoon’s Vacation. It’s dark, and it’s about loss, especially loss of youth, I think. It’s about losing your imagination, and a guy who’s having a very bad last day. So he starts doing what most men do: he fantasizes to try to feel better. It’s really not about punking Disney. It’s more about this guy’s mental breakdown, what he’s going through as a character in this Twilight Zone sort of way. [Disney’s] more just the backdrop of the film. Any advice for Obies hoping to pursue a career in acting? [Laughs.] I’ll give them the advice that someone gave me: Only become an actor if you want it as badly as you’d want to get out of a burning house. And if you don’t want it that much, then don’t do it. Interview by Dessane Cassell Photo courtesy of Sharp & Associates

Arts

The Oberlin Review, October 11, 2013

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NPR’s Radiolab Hosts Bid Farewell to Dinosaurs Continued from page 10 Yet, as the audience learned from their discussion, the meteors only hit one side of the earth, prompting another question: Why didn’t the dinosaurs on the other side of the earth survive? According to Krulwich, Abumrad and the experts they enlisted, the meteor struck with such force that pieces of glass from within it backfired into space and spread around the entire globe. These pieces of glass fell back to earth from all sides, apparently creating such intense heat in the process that “the blood inside the dinosaurs would have literally boiled,” causing instant death for all of them. At that point, a giant dinosaur puppet appeared on stage to receive a sympathetic embrace from Krulwich. Yet there was a single species that managed to survive the meteor shower. This shrew-like animal, nicknamed the “hypothetical placental mammal” by sci-

entists, was the oldest ancestor of humanity. Looking to choose a less scientific term for our distant ancestor, Radiolab polled listeners for a new name back in February. Much to the hosts’ dismay, listeners came up with “Schrëwdinger.” Krulwich and Abumrad were so disappointed with the choice that they gave the audience in Cleveland the chance to come up with a new name. At one point an audience member yelled out, “dark ninja dinosaur,” prompting Abumrad to comment, “that must be an Obie out there.” Radiolab considered the concept of the “origin of endings” from a cosmological standpoint. Technically, the two assessed, the universe has always existed through creation and growth and the recycling of matter. From this perspective, the concrete definition of an “ending” becomes obscured and reality can instead be seen as a series of continuous beginnings. Their explora-

tion of this topic highlights what Radiolab does so well: placing apparent answers under a microscope of questions to reveal the existence of new and unexpected possibilities. The closing segment of the show highlighted the power of personal conviction in overcoming perceived endings. Abumrad and Krulwich focused on the experiences of an actor whose career came to a halt after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Yet in reading Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame, he found inspiration in the quote, “You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” His decision was to challenge the disease that could prove so crippling to his movement and speech by staging and acting in a onenight performance of the play in New York — a task many thought would be impossible. After nearly breaking down in fear just before the curtain rose, the actor managed to solicit a laugh

Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich discuss the apocalypse with Schrëndinger, humanity’s oldest ancestor. The live performance of their “Apocalyptical” show explored our understanding of endings by discussing topics like the extinction of dinosaurs and terminal illness. Yvette Chen

from the audience in the first scene, which helped to spur him forward. At a high point of the play’s debut, the actor recounted a sensation of warmth and a moment in

which he felt like he could finally control his own body again. Through incorporating emotional audio from the actor himself, Radiolab demonstrated that while some end-

ings may be defined for us, we also have the power to reject them through our courage and perception. As for the actor, his successful performance was just a beginning.

Iris Captures Intimacy, Subjectivity with Ultra-Short Films Matthew Sprung Staff Writer Minimentals, Denise Iris’s collection of more than 60 ultra-short films, provided an experience that was simultaneously ephemeral, erratic, and highly resonant. Screened in classroom 1 of Oberlin’s 1937 art building addition last Thursday, the films, which ranged from 30 seconds to just over a minute, explored the internal and external components of an individual’s perception of reality. Rendered in a highly subjective manner, the complex materials presented allowed for infinite possibilities of perception. In broaching this dilemma of subjectivity, Iris incorporated footage that could prompt aesthetic appreciation, the recalling of childhood memories, or even fears of mortality. In one clip, she held the translucent wings of a

dragonfly up to camera’s lens, illuminating the fantastical properties that could be contained in such a mundane subject. Some of the films were shot in Iris’s home, while others were shot outside in city settings or in nature. Many had a distinctly home-video feel due to the slightly shaky first-person cinematography. In a few clips, an alien-sounding voice narrates trippy images of trees, close-ups of eyes — both animal and human — and the sky. Footage of waves is reflected in the clouds, overlapping and slowed down to produce the desired contemplative and otherworldly effect. The films were unified by the artist’s underlying intention to convey the importance of considering the world around us as a source of constant inspiration and even anxiety, depending on one’s perspective.

During the Thursday evening screening, Iris directed the audience to move from the back of the room to the front because she “needed their energy” to help her decide which film to show. At the suggestion from an audience member, the artist directed the next volunteer to respond to the preceding video in order to start a “dialogue between the films and [their] reactions to them.” Romania, Iris’s home country, was a recurring theme throughout the films, and was represented in sweet and funny moments she shared with her vivacious grandmother. In one of these candid moments, Iris secretly filmed her grandmother as the elderly matron spoke about her late husband’s mistress, and admitted to defecating over his grave in retaliation. When Iris presses her about the act, her grandmother responds by

saying, “He deserved it.” This candid moment provides the audience with a deeply private, yet familiar moment of intimacy. This shift into Iris’ personal world emphasized the intimate quality of seemingly esoteric, philosophical films that depicted nature. The thoughts presented in video and narration stem from a genuinely curious mind that observes the physical world around her in light of her own perceptions. In discussing her film, “Urorganismus” she explains that it came from the notion that “all species originated from one species, this one organism.” When asked what she thought of her audience’s relationship to her work, Iris responded that the films were generally “made for an audience of one, specifically made for online or to be seen on a phone.” The strange videos, with their low-

fi effects mixed with personal connections, are an offshoot of the artist’s calculated openness. In speaking about her technique, Iris spoke of her affinity for spontaneous creativity in order to tie the world together through myriad moments caught on film, enabling her subconscious to manifest itself directly in the sounds and images she presents. The resulting films are held together by their reach into the artist’s past and into the unknown future, and invite the audience to react by engaging their immediate senses in viewing them. Iris finished the screening by showing a small diagram she had written on the board which read, “observation equals imagination,” In commenting about the words, she said, “this is my main process. It starts with this tension. It is a process of focusing that gets my imagination going, a cycle, that feeds each other.”

Trio Introduces Experimental Engineer-turned-Poet Crafts Sensitive Verses Perspective on Percussion Continued from page 10

Continued from page 11 echo before playing another sound. This added an interesting dynamic to the performance wherein the silences in between sounds were just as important as the sounds themselves. The performance ended with an overwhelming silence, as one member of the trio made one last, incredibly drawn-out sound and let it fade away while the group remained still, with their heads bowed. It is doubtful that one could ever encounter a situation in which the cliché “deafening silence” was more appropriate. The trio remained with their heads bowed for about a minute, letting the silence absorb the space before acknowledging the audience’s applause.

Meridian’s performance was a fascinating experimental exercise that had far more of an impact as a live event than it would have as a recording. The music itself would be suitable as background music or perhaps even as a film soundtrack, but difficult to listen to on its own. What makes Meridian’s music stand out is their unique method of playing their instruments and the unusual sounds they produce. This music in particular belongs to the time and place where it is performed, as the performance of it is so integral to the experience in its entirety. Whether or not their music is successful on its own terms is debatable, but the performance itself was powerful.

for the language,” he said. After high school, Ahmed moved to California to study mechanical engineering at Stanford University, where he earned first a bachelor’s degree and then a master’s. While studying engineering, Ahmed wrote poetry as a part of a system of “productive procrastination”; when he didn’t want to continue working on something, he would stop and do something from a todo list of fun things instead. “The easiest and most fun thing to do was poetry,” said Ahmed. “I never procrastinated on it.” The poems in City of Rivers came about through a close collaboration between Ahmed and a professor of his at Stanford, Michael McGriff, “without whom,” he writes in the acknowledgements of his book, “I wouldn’t be a poet.” The two met when Ahmed took an introductory poetry class taught by McGriff and continued working together in more advanced and independent research classes. “We just sat down and wrote poetry, one-on-one, and that was where my book came from. Just one-on-one interaction from a professor who really believed in me.” The world of poetry turned out to be a refreshing shift from the stress and competition of studying engineering for Ahmed. McGriff, Ahmed said, “intro-

duced me to a world that doesn’t even know the word ‘compete.’” Ahmed wrote what he estimates to be 200 or more poems and showed them to McGriff. From those, McGriff helped him compile a manuscript to submit to the publisher McSweeney’s. Skeptical of the odds of publication, Ahmed was surprised when, several months later, McSweeney’s wrote to him accepting the manuscript for publication. The book came out in December 2012. Ahmed ended the reading on Thursday with three new poems. The new material is quite different from the poems in his book — “There are no people in my writing at all… no extensive family,” he said, but the sensitivity to imagery and the importance of place remain. Though he was unsure after the publication of City of Rivers whether he would even continue writing poetry, Ahmed, who now lives in Seattle and works for Boeing, was inspired by the response he’s gotten from readers. “I feel very blessed,” Ahmed said, describing the joy of hearing from people who had encountered his work. “What people forget is that even one person is this whole entire existence that has gone from age zero untill however old they become, and in the process affected however many lives… if even one person like that writes me an email, I can just sense that life.”

Sports

Page 14

IN THE LOCKER ROOM

The Oberlin Review, October 11 , 2013

Jodi Helsel and Claire Yeske

This week the Review sat down with junior field hockey players Jodi Helsel and Claire Yeske to discuss the team’s season, the dangers of playing field hockey and Beyoncé’s importance to the team.

brought in this year. We played in Boston earlier in the season, and my aunt gave me this block robot thing. She gave it to me and said, ‘This will help you in your soccer game today.’ I was like, ‘Thanks, I play field hockey.’ My aunt named it Sweet Patootie. Sweet Patootie’s PGPs [prefered gender pronouns] are they, them and theirs. We pass Sweet Patootie before every game in our Flocka (the field hockey locker room), and we tell Sweet Patootie our goals. Sometimes, Sweet Patootie has feedback. They’ve given us some magic. I also wanted to go pet the Ginko cats before every game, but who has time for that?

What are your thoughts on the season so far? Claire Yeske: It’s going really well so far. We’ve made significant progress, both [ from] last season to this season and also from the beginning of the season to this point. Our record doesn’t necessarily reflect the strides that we’ve made, but I think we’ve made progress in some really big games. In our DePauw [University] game and our game against Bentley [University], we really stepped it up. Are you looking forward to the games in Indiana and West Virginia over fall break? CY: We’re going the NCAA Hall of Fame in Indianapolis. It’s going to be great. I can’t wait. Jodi Helsel: I am ecstatic. We also are going to Tennessee. Now I’m looking for fun things for the team to do in Indiana, which is actually pretty challenging. I found a really cool vice presidents museum, but it’s unfortunately not open when we’re there. How do you think the team has changed since your first years? CY: Even from last year to this year, it’s changed a lot. We have eight first-years this year, which is almost half of our roster, and they’re really good. They’ve made the returners step their game up for sure. We’ve always had a small team, so I think the one

In the Locker Room with Claire Yeske (left) and Jodi Helsel thing that’s remained consistent throughout the time I’ve been here is how close the the team is. We have each other’s backs. JH: Yeah, we go to bat for each other. How do you integrate the firstyears into the team? CY: I think that they’ve integrated pretty seamlessly. There’s definitely a wide range of personalities. Some of them were ready to hang immediately, and some were a little slower to warm up. JH: We häz them intensely. There’s one of those double things on the ‘a’. Just kidding, we don’t haze anyone. We’re sort of forced to integrate. Our preseason forces us to be together for the entire time. [Integration]

just happens. What makes field hockey a cool sport to play? CY: It’s dangerous. People break their faces a lot, so that’s fun. Thankfully we haven’t had any broken faces yet this year. JH: The go-to answer is that we wear skirts, but we don’t do that anymore. So, there’s literally no reason to go to our games. Just kidding! There’s a fun hill that you can watch our games from. How do you keep a positive mindset even when the team isn’t playing as well as you’d like? CY: I’m probably not the person to ask about that.

— Football —

Rare Showcasing of School Spirit over Homecoming Weekend Continued from page 16 captain Paul Paschke. But the weekend didn’t go as well for the football team despite its home field advantage. On Saturday, the football team headlined the weekend and played the visiting Kenyon College Lords. It was a nail-biter game that left the Yeomen up 14–13 by halftime. The second half proved more difficult for the Yeomen who struggled to get points on the board. Although the final score was not in their favor, the Yeomen defensive line put forth an outstanding performance, led by seniors Kyle Kessler, Kirby Livingston and Zach Kisley. “Although we would have preferred a different outcome, it was still a special game,” said Kisley. “The alumni from the 1963 football team were our honorary captains and walked out onto the field with us. It made our seniors feel like they were a part of something bigger than ourselves and solidified our spot as the current leaders of the program.” Other teams had impressive games as well. Field hockey put up a tough

fight against Denison University, and the men’s soccer team defeated the Little Giants of Wabash College 4–0. The homecoming events concluded on Sunday with the baseball alumni Home Run Derby and the Special Olympics Swim Meet. Winkelfoos believed the weekend was a success and could not isolate one event that made it stand out. “It’s the entire weekend, there is not one moment. It’s seeing the reactions of people, and seeing the sparkle when the alumni return to campus and see that some things have changed. It’s seeing alums connect with their former teammates and coaches, and it’s watching people hug and share a laugh.” Jantz, for whom this was his first Oberlin Homecoming, was impressed as well. “I was really amazed by how truly moved people were and how excited they were to be back on campus,” he said. “I have been involved at Homecomings at other campuses and at high schools, and although they are nice, the Oberlin one is unbelievable for me because people truly love this place and love to return.”

JH: We aren’t winning a lot of games right now, but we have winnable games. We have a lot of hope for the future. We’re exactly half way through our season. This coming weekend, we’re going to kill it. Even though we haven’t done so well thus far, we all feel like we’re in a really good place to finish out the season. Does the team have any pre- or post-game rituals? CY: Our coach has been pushing for us to have individual pre-game rituals. Some people have been resistant to that idea, though. We always listen to Beyoncé. She’s been elevated to the status of a maternal goddess figure for our team. JH: We have a new one that we

Do you ever get hit in the shins with the field hockey sticks? CY: Constantly. We wear shin guards, but it still hurts. You get hit in the hands a lot. JH: I have [things that look like] bullet wounds on both shins because I used to wear soccer shin guards. Claire hit me in the hand with the ball once, too. What is your favorite Oberlin field hockey memory? CY: Jodi’s should be when we beat Kenyon College. She scored the game-winning goal. Beating Wittenburg [University], too. JH: Claire’s future favorite moment is all of senior year. She’s going to confront all of her enemies. Any last words? JH and CY: Eloise sucks [Laughs.] Interview by Nate Levinson, Sports editor Photo by Rachel Grossman, Photo editor

The Oberlin Review, October 11, 2013

Sports

Page 15

— Men’s Soccer —

Yeomen Steal Wins from Case Western, Wabash Erickson Andrews Staff Writer The men’s soccer team is off to its best start in 25 years under the guidance of Head Coach Blake New, who has been at the helm of the program since 1999. This season’s 9–1–2 record is its best start to a season since 1988, when the team went 10–1–1 over the first 12 games. The team’s ability to make adjustments from game to game has been one of its strong points thus far. “We are a very mature team this year; we can play different styles and still be effective,” said New. “We can find ways to ‘win ugly’ when we need to, but we try to stick to our more attractive fast-paced possession style of play.” This year’s Yeomen earned their ninth win with a 2–0 victory over the Case Western Reserve University Spartans last Tuesday. They could have tied the mark set in 1988 had the team not allowed a late goal against North Coast Athletic Conference foe Wittenberg University to tie 1–1. The Yeomen, who have seven games left in their season, have a Junior Sam Winward shields the ball from a Wabash College defender. The Yeomen defeated the Little Giants 4–0 on Saturday. The team is off to its best chance to do something special start in the past 25 years. Sarah Kaufman this year. Their nine victories are already tied for fifth highest the 30 goals to the campaign so each other’s energy and really get ly ranked 10th and first in the job taking this season one game number of wins of all time. They far this season. “We have really everyone pumped up during the country. With records of 11–0–1 at a time,” said senior captain need to win just four more to seen them grow together since games. We see them getting after and 13–0, respectively, the Yeo- Joe Graybeal. “From the start we tie the record set in that special the start of last year,” said se- it, and the whole team responds.” men will look to add the first loss have been saying, ‘This is the 1988 season when the Yeomen ––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Success can also be attrib- to each team’s record when they most important game of the seawon 13 games. uted to the defense that has put clash head to head. The Yeomen son,’ before each game. Our one Powered by a lethal offense “We can find ways to together five shutouts thus far take on DePauw on Saturday, loss really reinforced the need to that has scored an average of 2.5 ‘win ugly’ when we need in the season and stepped up in Oct. 19, and then play Ohio Wes- not overlook any [opponent].” goals per game, the Yeomen have pivotal situations to lock down leyan at home Saturday, Oct. 26. As far as being prepared for another record in sight. Should to, but we try to stick to wins for the team. The Yeomen know they have their conference schedule, the they continue scoring at their our more attractive fastThe Yeomen are now gearing a tough road ahead, but believe Yeomen don’t seem to be intimicurrent pace, they will finish the paced possession style up for their run at the conference they will win any game if they dated. “We can play with anyone, season with 47 goals. This would title, as the rest of their games play well. “The top of the confer- and we have what it takes to be of play.” break the Oberlin record of 41 this season are against North ence is very difficult, but we have successful,” said Graybeal. “We goals set in 1988 and 1999 by a Blake New Coast Athletic Conference op- proven to ourselves that we can are looking to make our first apconsiderable margin. ponents. Of those opponents, the play with anyone,” said New. pearance in the conference tourHead Coach The powerful offense of the ––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Yeomen will have several hard With a few games before nament in years.” Yeomen can be attributed in part contests. their games against the powers The Yeomen play their next to the hot feet of sophomores Two tests will come against of the NCAC, it is important for game this Saturday, Oct. 12 at 7 John Ingham and Slade Gottlieb. nior goalie Brandt Rentel of the DePauw University and Ohio the Yeomen to not get ahead of p.m. against Hiram College. The pair have contributed 16 of dynamic duo. “They thrive off of Wesleyan University, respective- themselves. “We’ve done a great

Editorial: Obama Joins Debate Over Washington Redskins’ Name Continued from page 16 [ from President Obama’s hometown], we love our team and its name, and, like those fans, we do not intend to disparage or disrespect a racial or ethnic group,” he said in a press release. However, the plain fact that “redskin” is the term used to describe a savage sports team, and one that competes against Bears, Giants, Jaguars and Lions, plays into the history of the use of the term “redskin” to describe a “barbaric” group of people. Proponents of the mascot call it “endearing.” But isn’t the fact that a caricature of an entire race of people could be seen as an “endearing” mascot offensive in itself ? Here’s an analogy. I did not understand the patently offensive nature of the term “redskin” until I read, in multiple news sources — political and sports-related blogs — that “redskin,” with its tainted history, is as offensive as the “N-word.”

Dressing up in feathers and donning Native-American spiritual props to show loyalty to the Washington team would be like –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Dressing up in feathers and donning Native-American spiritual props to show loyalty to the Washington team would be like wearing black face paint to support the “Boston N-words.” –––––––––––––––––––––––––––— wearing black face paint to support the “Boston N-words.” Hopefully, there is not an NFL team owner out there who would be able to defend such a mascot as not “intended to disparage or disrespect a racial or ethnic group.”

Sports The Oberlin Review

Page 16

October 11, 2013

Alumni Return for Homecoming

Offensive Names Plague NFL Rose Stoloff Sports Editor

“One of the greatest things about Homecoming Weekend are the alumni games,” said Winkelfoos. “The alumni live and die for this weekend; it is really important for them. They get the opportunity to play and relive those moments that connected them with their teammates all over again.” Participants in the game ranged from the player who began the lacrosse program to last season’s team members. “The alumni always want to feel like they are still connected to our program. The game is always a great opportunity for them to meet the new players, reconnect with old teammates and see how the team has progressed since their time in the program,” said senior and lacrosse See Rare, page 14

— Women’s Cross Country —

Yeowomen First in State After Weekend Success Tyler Sloan

The Yeomen welcomed back sophomore Gavin Ratcliffe at the meet. The team is still waiting for a few key runners to get back to full health, but projects wins regardless. Both teams will continue to prepare for a high stakes conference meet. The Yeomen have an extremely competitive conference with nationally ranked teams such as the Allegheny College Gators and Wabash College’s Little Giants. According to Appenheimer, DePauw University and Kenyon College are formidable foes for the Yeowomen. Coach Appenheimer attributes much of the teams’ success to a more experienced team this fall. With nine first-years last season there was a big adjustment period. “On the men’s end it’s been a big step forward. We have been sophomore-dominant and finally getting a handle on things. Academic expectations are a lot different here, it takes a year to get a handle on things,” Appenheimer said. This year, Appenheimer believes the Oberlin team will win the national championship. “This is the best team we have ever had,” he said. The teams’ next big event is the Inter-Regional Rumble hosted by Oberlin College on Saturday, Oct. 19, at 11 a.m.

See Editorial, page 15

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The cross country teams had an extremely successful weekend at the All-Ohio Championships in Cedarville, Ohio. Competing among over 50 teams, the men’s and women’s cross country teams earned their titles as the number one and number two teams in the state, respectively. Senior captain Molly Martorella and sophomore Geno Arthur earned accolades for their first places finishes in the women’s varsity 6k and men’s varsity 8k races. They returned to Oberlin named All-Ohio Champions and North Coast Athletic Conference Runners of the Week. This level of success is not new for the top-tier team, though. “There haven’t been any surprises thus far. We are ranked 11th nationally and we are a much better team than that. This is going to be a great team that can potentially contend for a national championship,” said Head Coach Ray Appenheimer. The women’s team has competed at the national tournament for the last four years. Previous seasons have set the bar very high. The team finished first in its conference the last two years and placed ninth at the national tournament last fall.

Junior Lindsay Neal made great strides for Yeowomen last weekend, finishing in second place in the varsity 6k race. This is her third year on the cross country team, and she said she has been happy with the progress thus far. “We have definitely gotten better every year,” said Neal. Despite facing adversity with injured runners, both the men and women’s teams have seen positive results from several runners. Overall, the Yeowomen placed four different runners in the top 15 at the meet; the Yeomen had five different runners place in the top 50. Sophomore Joshua Urso competed in the men’s 8k and took 11th place out of 143 competitors with a time of 26 minutes, 31 seconds. Urso has been an important runner for the team and believes that the Yeomen have improved greatly since last year. “It’s a very young team and we have a very competitive region and conference. If everyone runs to their full potential and stays healthy, we definitely have a shot at going to nationals,” Urso said. Staying healthy has been a challenge for both squads. The women’s team sustained a few injuries earlier in the season including one to Martorella, but it has been able to bounce back.

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any athlete can receive from Oberlin College; it is one of the pinnacle events,” said Athletics Director Natalie Winkelfoos. Senior Associate Director of Athletics and Physical Education Creg Jantz concurred. “It is a huge event. You want your grandchildren to know that you did something during your career,” Jantz said. “Your picture is always going to be up on the wall, and 30 or 40 years from now, your descendants can come see that their great-grandfather or grandmother was inducted into the Hall of Fame.” The induction ceremony was just one of many events scheduled for alumni last weekend. On Saturday, many teams hosted alumni games where current players competed against alumni and coaches.

At a small school, it is obvious when there are new faces on campus. If you happened to walk by the athletics facilities this past weekend, you would have seen dozens of people walking around in their old Oberlin College athletics gear, greeting old friends, meeting new athletics staff and looking at plans for the new athletics facility. All of these people returned to campus for the jampacked Oberlin Athletics Homecoming Weekend. Every year, the Heisman Club Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony kicks off the Homecoming festivities on Friday night. Athletics administration, alumni, coaches and captains are invited to the ceremony.

Women’s soccer captain and senior Sarah Andrews said she enjoyed the experience. “It was cool to see the athletic greats that have come before me. Their accomplishments were pretty amazing. As a member of a team sport, it is really hard to leave such a distinct mark in our school’s history, but it was cool that these people managed to do so. Their accomplishments just showed that we have the propensity to be great at academics and athletics.” Any student-athlete who has been out of Oberlin for 10 years can be nominated for the Hall of Fame. A committee through the Heisman Club reviews the selections every year and votes on five people to induct. “Being inducted into the Hall of Fame is the highest achievement that

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Sarah Orbuch Staff Writer

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Fans gather to watch the Yeomen take on the Kenyon College Lords. The football game was one of the many festivities to occur as a part of homecoming weekend. Lily Day

The Washington Redskins’s name has been contested for decades, and on Saturday, one new voice joined the debate: President Barack Obama’s. “If I were the owner of the team and I knew that there was a name of my team — even if it had a storied history — that was offending a sizable group of people, I’d think about changing it,” he said in an interview with the Associated Press. The Washington Redskins are one of many professional sports teams whose name and mascot plays on offensive Native-American stereotypes. Washington’s, however, is arguably the most offensive. Prior to writing this editorial I had assumed “redskin” was an insensitive way to describe the skin color of Native Americans. But its historical origins render it even more derogatory: During the French and Indian War, white settlers placed a bounty on the scalps of Native Americans. Among bear skins and beaver skins, trappers and hunters would collect “red” skins — the scalps of the Native-American people themselves. Whether “red” was used to describe the hue of the Natives’ skin or the bloody nature of the scalps is disputed. Either way, the term “redskin” implies an association between Native Americans and wild animals. Lanny Davis, the attorney of the Washington Redskins, responded to Obama’s comment by emphasizing that the Redskins do not mean to offend anyone. “We at the Redskins respect everyone. But like devoted fans of the Atlanta Braves, the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Blackhawks