COVER ART NOTE

EDITOR’S

Fionna Farrell

Opinions Editor

Raghav Raj

Arts & Culture Editor

Isabel Hardwig

Bad Habits Editor

Ollie Axelrod, Ellen Efstathiou, Skye Jalal, Zach Terrillion, and Max Miller

Staff Writers

Julian Crosetto

Layout Editor

Maia Hadler

Art Director

Frances McDowell and Molly Chapin

Production Assistants

Hello hello! You hold in your hands The Grape’s fnal issue of the year. I don’t want to mince words here, so I’ll just come out and say that I am deeply sad about this fact. The Grape has been a staple of my life at Oberlin since I joined the staf as a second-year; some part of my internal clock is always gonna be set to, and frantically trying to pull of, the Thursday-to-Sunday rough-draft-to-fnal-draft turnaround. I love The Grape very, very much—I love how it prioritizes and preserves individual writers’ tone and style, I love how it provides a platform on such a wide range of topics and issues, I love how it’s a thing that I work on that I can hold in my hands every two weeks (or click on and stare at with my eyeballs, in the case of our concurrent online publication at oberlingrape.com). The Grape has provided me an invaluable outlet and source of community especially with regard to regional and class justice; as someone who hails from rural southern Ohio—and is still working out their feelings toward region and class at Oberlin, even as they leave—I am immensely grateful. And I am immeasurably proud of the 2022-23 Grape, from all the informative, incisive, and hilarious articles by staf and contributors to the amazing skill in art & design on display in every issue. I love The Grape, I love our staf, I love our community, and I love you for checking it out. If you’re interested in anything that’s going on here, please get involved. The Grape would love you.

I’ll miss it here dearly. I can’t wait to see all the awesome new shit this paper does next.

Sincerely, Teagan, co-Editor-in-Chief of The Grape. :-)

AUGHHHHHH! I second everything dear Teagan wrote! The Grape is defnitely one of the things I’ll miss most about Oberlin, about college. A couple days ago, nearly everyone on staf met in the old basement Grape ofce to take our big staf centerfold photo (what is a student journalism org without its traditions?). Everyone was super excited and armed with props (poptarts, a rotary phone, a couple computer monitors, a disheveled blond wig)…just full of this really earnest, dorky enthusiasm. And I think it sort of hit me then how much I’ll miss The Grape. Because that energy is really special; it isn’t something you can just fnd anywhere. I think that, to outsiders, The humble Grape can seem a little silly or lowtech – and it is – but it’s also equally true that everyone involved puts a lot of sincere work into every issue. I’ve taken my job as EIC very seriously and so has Teagan. We started meeting on Zoom to strategize last summer —Teagan in Oberlin, me in Ann Arbor — and have, rather happily, taken hardly a break since. Because, to us, The Grape isn’t so much a mere publication as it is this fabulous outlet for a particularly Oberlin sort of expression. There’s truth to that line Grape-People have espoused since I can remember: write whatever you want! And what incredible power that sentiment holds, especially in college, when you’re that precarious 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, and life is so… bafing! Confusing! Pressurized! You’re a teenager and an adult! You’re silly but you’re serious! Sometimes you’re brilliant and sometimes you’re really, really stupid. The world is opening up before you in this intense, bountiful way. As a writer and a young person, having an outlet which allows you to feel, even for just a couple weeks, that something you care about matters, can mean the world. The Grape, in all its silly DIY warmth, its rejection of all things competitive and exclusionary, can be just that. I’m so grateful to have worked with a community who cares about cultivating that outlet as much as I do. And I’m really proud of what our team has accomplished this year. While it is true that The Grape attracts a special sort of person, I think I can confdently say that this group was Extra Special.

With love, warmth, and blinding sincerity, Safron, co-Editor-in-Chief

of

The Grape