April 26, 2019

The Oberlin Review April 26, 2019

established 1874

Volume 147, Number 21

Residential Education To Reorganize Dorm Arrangements Jenna Gyimesi News Editor

The lawsuit filed by Gibson’s Bakery against the College and Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo in 2017 will go to trial May 1.

Photo by Talia Rose Barton

Gibson’s Lawsuit Will Go To Trial Sydney Allen Editor-in-Chief After 18 months of negotiation and discovery research, the lawsuit that Gibson’s Bakery and Food Mart brought against Oberlin College and Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo could go to trial early next month, unless a settlement is reached in the next week. Gibson’s filed the suit in November 2017, accusing the College and Raimondo of libel, slander, interference with business relationships, intentional interference with contracts, deceptive trade practices, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent hiring, and trespassing.

The trial is set to begin May 1 and is expected to last about a month.

Judge John Miraldi of the Lorain County Court of Common Pleas will preside over the case.

Oberlin Director of Media Relations Scott Wargo said that the College has been working for months to reach a resolution with the local business.

“The court has notified Oberlin College that … the Gibsons’ claims against Oberlin College and Dean Raimondo will move forward in court on May 1,” Wargo said. “We are disappointed. Every effort to resolve this matter has been to no avail. We believe the evidence is clear. Neither Oberlin College nor Dr. Raimondo

defamed a local business [nor] its owners. Colleges cannot be held liable for the independent actions of students. Employers are not legally responsible for employees who express personal views on personal time. The law is clear on these issues.”

The current tension between the College and Gibson’s began in November 2016 when a Black student attempted to make a purchase at Gibson’s Bakery and was accused of shoplifting. The student ran outside the store and Allyn Gibson, the son of owner David Gibson, followed him.

Gibson allegedly tackled the student, and the two got into a physical altercation. Two of the student’s friends saw the altercation and began hitting and pulling on Gibson to get him away from the student.

A customer in the shop saw the altercation and called the Oberlin Police Department out of concern for the students’ safety. When the police arrived, they immediately arrested the three Black students and refused to take statements from some students and witnesses who were present.

After the arrest, students organized a 12-hour boycott outside Gibson’s Bakery to protest what they characterized as racial profiling from Allyn Gibson, who is white, as well as the Oberlin Police Department.

Charges were filed against the students involved in the

altercation, and after a 10-month long investigative process, all three pled guilty to misdemeanor charges in August 2017 in order to avoid the uncertainty of a trial. As part of the plea deal, they also read statements recanting any racial profiling accusations against Allyn Gibson.

The Gibson’s suit accuses the College and Raimondo of sanctioning and aiding students in the protest and boycott effort. The bakery claims its reputation has been smeared and that it has lost a significant amount of business since the protests.

Despite the rift, the College maintains it is committed to mending ties with Oberlin’s local businesses while supporting students in their exercise of free speech.

“The College values its long relationship with the town of Oberlin and its businesses,” Wargo said.

“We will continue our commitment to the economic uplift of the local businesses that make this community, county, and region a destination of choice. The claims in this case conflict with the obligations of higher education to protect freedom of speech on college campuses. The College respects the rights of all individuals to express their personal opinions and to peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights.”

Attorneys for the Gibsons family did not return calls requesting comment.

The Office of Residential Education is planning to introduce a series of changes to the nature of living spaces over the next five years in hopes of increasing programming, faculty integration, and feelings of community. As of next year, Zechiel House will become a First-Year Residential Experience dorm, Barnard House will hold the Sci-Fi themed halls currently located in North Hall, and Noah Hall will be a designated substance-free and quiet space which was previously located in Barnard.

During this time of transition, ResEd is also faced with other uncertainties — the office is in the midst of searching for a new ResEd director, and a search committee was formed earlier this year.

“Our goal is to maximize opportunities to integrate the academic and residential experience,” wrote Assistant Vice President of Student Life Adrian Bautista in an email to the Review.

“We’d like to expand faculty/academic department connections to our living spaces, remodel educational spaces in our housing facilities, create new programmatic events [that] enhance a sense of community, and maximize peer leadership opportunities.”

To achieve these outcomes, ResEd hopes to expand program house offerings and continue to support efforts to learn and live collaboratively.

“A goal is to expand these [program house] connections as we believe faculty, staff and student engagement should be a cornerstone of all our residential facilities,” Bautista wrote. “Student Life recently received a grant from NASPA, a national student affairs organization, for programming in the remodeled Third World House classroom called Obie Xing.

Obie Xing is a collaborative learning space that brings together faculty, staff, and students to enhance student success through programs sponsored by such offices as the Career Development Center and Student Academic Success Programs with significant faculty participation.”

College junior and Lord House Resident Assistant Daquan Williams noted the impact the program housing model, and faculty integration into housing, has had on Afrikan Heritage House residents.

“I think that things that happen in The House really benefit students, hosting programs that really get at how to navigate Oberlin and how living in a space can inform that,” he said. “The See ResEd, page 2

CONTENTS NEWS

OPINIONS

THIS WEEK

ARTS & CULTURE

SPORTS

02 Private Grades, Transcripts Accessible to ExcCo Instructors

06 AAPR Offers Opportunity to Build Residential Community

08 Course Registration: Over a Century Ago

10 ASA Banquet Highlight of Campus Afropolitan Week

15 Pole Vaulter Sarah Voit Finds Success in Her Very First Season

03 Winter Term to be Restructured

07 Oberlin Should Invest More in Honor’s Program

11 One Song, One City Unites Community Around Music

16 Reflections From a Graduating Four-Year Student Athlete

The Oberlin Review | April 26, 2019

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ResEd Hopes To Expand Sense of Community

Zechiel House will transition into a first-year residence hall in fall 2019.

Photo by Talia Rose Barton

Continued from page 1

House is currently connected to Africana Studies; we work together.

It’s really beneficial that you get to cultivate relationships with professors in the departments that the house is connected with — to really embody a learning, living space.”

These changes will be enacted in hopes of carrying out some of the goals, called Directions for the Future, presented in the Oberlin College Strategic Plan 2016–2021, and will be coupled with modifications to dining and other areas of student life. “[The plan details ways in which Oberlin can] develop the residential

experience to ensure that it serves as an intellectual and artistic incubator for educational excellence,” wrote Bautista. “Such excellence requires an integrated plan that reimagines sequenced living experiences, dynamic dining practices, and more opportunities for intimate peer circles that enhance meaningful connections where students can further develop their sense of belonging, and engage one another across differences.”

However, some RAs are concerned that attempts to expand program housing may lose sight of why program housing originated.

“Program housing right now is mostly POC and low-income,” Barnard Hall RA and College junior Ariana Gladieux-Carter said. “It’s typically been associated with activism. Houses pop up in response to what’s going on.

A-House came about for civil rights, and to have a space for Black students on campus. … There is already that sense of community amongst POC and low-income students so expanding on community is possible, but I think it’s hard to navigate the narrative of program housing when it has inherently been for POC and people with a lower socio-economic status in general.”

Many students are also confused

as to why Zechiel, which houses 45 students, was chosen to become a firstyear dorm. As of next year, the dorm will remain in the ZEBRA cluster, along with Burton, Langston, and Noah, but will be in collaboration with the First Year Residential Experience cluster. “[Zechiel] is too far from everything,” said College junior and Zechiel RA Jasmine Sorrells. “It’s all singles, [firstyears] aren’t going to meet each other, they won’t talk to each other, they won’t be involved in first-year events. … I am personally incredibly frustrated by these changes because they do not make any sense.”

ResEd is hopeful that this transition will help foster long-lasting connections between students that will continue developing after they move out of residential buildings.

“One goal with programming will be to help residential communities develop unique traditions and “signature” programs that will enhance a sense of community and long-term bonds amongst Obies,” Bautista wrote.

“We want the residential experience to be more intentional, to more comprehensively reflect Oberlin’s core principles.”

Housing selection information has already been updated to reflect these changes to living spaces.

Private Grades, Transcripts Accessible to ExCo Instructors Anisa Curry Vietze News Editor Some students were upset to hear that — through a technological error — anyone who teaches or has previously taught an ExCo was able to access the private transcript of every current Oberlin student.

These transcripts include all of the grades students have received during their time at Oberlin, every class taken, and in some cases even past AP test scores.

This exclusive access has left some with questions about privacy.

“I feel like it’s fair to call it a breach in security,” College first-year Luci Williams said. “It definitely gives people who have taught ExCos a level of undue and unwarranted power that can really easily be abused.”

The Office of the Registrar and the Center for Information Technology are unaware of how long ExCo instructors have had access to this information, but say they have been working on finding a solution since they found out.

“We’ve been investigating it for the last couple of weeks,” said Monica Crawford, Director of Administrative Computing Services within CIT. “It requires some custom development, so that’s what we’ve had programmers working on.”

According to Crawford, the problem arose because Banner by Ellucian — the software Oberlin uses for class registration — did not have the infrastructure necessary to create roles that gave students some, but not all, faculty permissions.

“It is not typical for institutions of higher education to have students serve in a faculty capacity,” Crawford said. “What happened then was the software actually

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changed the definition of the roles. So our special modification got overlaid with their definition of roles, and we didn’t know.”

Liz Clerkin, Associate Dean for Academic Advising and the Office of the Registrar, hopes that even with the error, students wouldn’t access private information.

“Given the federal regulations under FERPA, which is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act [of 1974], everyone who has access to student data comes in with the understanding that they can only access the data — and this is the phrase from the legislation — with ‘a legitimate need to know,’” Clerkin said.

Similarly, Crawford believes in the integrity of ExCo instructors.

“We don’t want to make it easy for people to see things that they could misuse but, as Liz said, we’re trusting that if you have that role you’re going to use that role responsibly and not misuse the information to which you have access,” Crawford said. “It’s similar to student employees. Student employees have responsible roles all over campus and have access to sensitive information. We expect them to use that responsibly.”

Some students disagree, feeling that the issue is more urgent.

“I don’t think there should be much back and forth about why they need to see our grades or why it isn’t a problem,” Williams said. “I think it’s almost as sensitive of information as something like medical records. I think it’s pretty on-tier with that sort of information and background about students.”

College junior and current Chair of the ExCo Committee Lars Gallegos-Dreith explained that ExCo instructors need to have some level of faculty

Editors-in-Chief

Sydney Allen Nathan Carpenter Managing Editor Ananya Gupta News Editors Anisa Curry Vietze

Jenna Gyimesi Opinions Editor Jackie Brant This Week Editor Mikaela Fishman Arts Editors Kate Fishman

Katherine MacPhail Sports Editors Jane Agler

Alexis Dill Photo Editors Mallika Pandey Meg Parker Senior Staff Writers Carson Dowhan Roman Broszkowski Julie Schreiber

Ella Moxley

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clearance in order to consent students into their classes.

“I think our approach thus far has just been not to advertise this to ExCo instructors at all,” GallegosDreith said. “When we do our orientation training, we do have a number of slides where we go through screenshots of how to navigate the website. But those [slides] are very leading. So it’s like, ‘Okay, this is the link you click on and you don’t touch anything else,’ theoretically.”

As of Thursday, following the Review’s interview, the Office of the Registrar and CIT say they have found a short-term solution to remove access for all ExCo instructors to student information, describing this as a “work-around” that will be implemented until a long-term solution can be found. However, some students still have questions regarding why it took so long to find a solution.

“I mean it makes sense that it would take time to solve technical issues but it’s kind of sus[picious] that they only found the solution after the Review came to talk to them,” College first-year Noah Plotkin said.

Chief Information Technology Officer Benjamin Hockenhull and others in CIT are in the process of switching software from Banner 8 — which is also known as PRESTO — to Banner 9. Once this transition has been completed, Hockenhull believes errors like this are less likely to happen.

“The software is more flexible; it makes it possible to accommodate unique situations like this one,” Hockenhull said. “It just takes time to implement the change and make sure that it’s doing what we expect that it’s going to do.”

There are typically 100 ExCo instructors per semester and this semester there are 105 instructors.

Parker Shatkin Jake Butcher Lila Michaels Lillian Jones Business Manager Jared Steinberg Ads Manager Jabree Hason Web Manager Sage Vouse Production Manager Giselle Glaspie Production Staff Christo Hays Olive Hwang Lior Krancer Devyn Malouf Madi Mettenburg Allison Schmitt Annie Schoonover Ivy Fernandez Smith

Corrections: In the article “OCircus Welcomes Spring Season,” The Oberlin Review, April 12, 2019, the spellings for College senior Solomon La Piana, College junior Marika Mortimer-Lotke and College sophomore Lydia Finkel were incorrect. Additionally, the correct photographer for the photograph published online is Dale Preston, OC ’83.

To submit a correction, email managingeditor@ oberlinreview.org.

J Street U Hosts Sunset Seder

Security Notebook Thursday, April 18, 2019

3:02 p.m. Officers were requested to assist with a Life Safety inspection at an Elm Street Village House. A substance consistent with marijuana, a pipe, a grinder, and rolling papers were observed in plain view. All items were confiscated and turned over to the Oberlin Police Department.

Friday, April 19, 2019

10:43 a.m. Officers were requested to assist with a Life Safety inspection at a Lorain Street Village House. A grinder, a glass bong, a mason jar containing a substance consistent with marijuana, and rolling papers were confiscated and turned over to the Oberlin Police Department.

3:02 p.m. An officer on routine patrol noticed that some parking signs in Hollywood parking lot had been spraypainted. A work order was filed.

11:44 p.m. An officer on routine patrol observed students smoking from a glass bong by the west side of the concession stand of the Knowlton Athletics Complex.

The bong was confiscated and turned over to the Oberlin Police Department.

Saturday, April 20, 2019 Members of J Street U Oberlin, a pro-peace, anti-occupation group, gathered in Wilder Bowl for a Sunset Seder on April 24. The group is a part of a nationwide effort to fight for a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestininan conflict and to educate fellow students on the issues surrounding the conflict. The Sunset Seder was an act of community and activism.

“It is both an action and an event, to demonstrate the importance of connecting our anti-occupation politics to our Judaism and to celebrate in community with each other,” wrote College senior and J Street U member Yael Reichler in an email to the Review. “It is also connected to our current campaign working toward Israel/Palestine trips that acknowledge Palestinians and the occupation.”

Text by Jenna Gyimesi, News Editor Photo by Mallika Pandey, Photo Editor

Winter Term to Be Restructured With AAPR Ella Moxley Senior Staff Writer Oberlin administrators have been working to create a more structured, equitable Winter Term model in response to the preliminary AAPR recommendations first detailed in March. Future changes include increasing the number of students and professors on campus and increasing the breadth and variety of courses offered.

AAPR steering committee members hope that as many as onethird of the student body may remain on campus during future Winter Terms. “[An increased number of students on campus is] a way to maximize use of the institution’s resources and to build a stronger sense of community through shared experiences and organized social events,” according to the AAPR’s Summary of Work to Date document, made public to students on March 29.

Student Senate and an internal review by the Winter Term office also came to similar conclusions about the necessary changes to Winter Term, as they concluded some students weren’t using the time in an academically or personally challenging way.

This would differ from prior Winter Terms, where most students leave campus, pursue independent projects or internships, or work in labs.

“Some students stay on campus [for

The Oberlin Review | April 26, 2019

Winter Term], but it’s a bit of a dead time,” said Renee Romano, professor of History, Comparative American Studies, and Africana Studies and chair of the History department.

Traditionally there have been limited academic or professional opportunities on campus during Winter Term. Associate Dean Laura Baudot hopes that future Winter Term offerings will create greater opportunities for career development.

“A liberal arts education is a fantastic foundation for any career students might want to go into, but sometimes courses that are more specially geared toward professional development give [students] the confidence that they need,” said Baudot. “Also, it’s just really interesting to explore the industry in a more concrete way.”

Baudot is currently working informally with the Career Center on a project called “Obiewood,” which will use Winter Term to connect students to the entertainment industry.

Associate Dean Elizabeth Hamilton also noted that the recommendations are focused on building up what is already happening on campus, including opportunities for community-based projects and learning practical skills. There is also a possibility that students could earn course credit toward distributional requirements over Winter Term, but this remains a preliminary suggestion.

“On-campus Winter Term group projects are great opportunities to delve into a topic and build community,” Hamilton wrote in an email to the Review. “Two that I know well are the Intensive Russian or German courses, models of immersion in learning. In a bigger Winter Term, we could enlarge the range of campus offerings and build in better resources for housing, dining, transportation, and social activities.

I think that everyone would benefit from this. I really look forward to seeing what we can do.”

Romano also said there must be an intentional effort to increase the sense of community on campus during Winter Term with “money for social events, money for cultural events, [and] money for transportation.”

Another issue is that Winter Term opportunities are not evenly accessible to the student body, whether due to lack of financial resources, family connections, or support in the planning process.

“Oberlin is a ‘let every flower bloom’ kind of place, but we could give more support to the seedlings,” Romano said.

Hamilton suggested that a more robust advising program for Winter Term could bolster student experiences, including first-year students who may struggle to develop their first Winter Term project.

“From my perspective, students See Increased, page 4

9:13 p.m. Officers were requested to assist a student who was ill from marijuana consumption in Wilder Hall. An ambulance was called, and the student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

10:18 p.m. An officer was requested to assist a student who was experiencing side effects from consuming a marijuana edible. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

10:33 p.m. Officers were informed that a student had checked in to Mercy Allen Hospital because they were feeling ill from marijuana consumption. Officers transported the student back to their dorm later that night.

Sunday, April 21, 2019

12:19 a.m. Officers responded to a loud noise complaint at a Village Housing Unit. Approximately 80 to 90 people were observed at an unauthorized party. Numerous bottles of alcohol were observed, as well as a beer pong table. The area was cleared of attendees, and the residents were not located.

12:43 a.m. Officers were requested to assist a student who was ill from consuming a marijuana edible. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment.

Monday, April 22, 2019

7:21 a.m. The custodial manager reported a discharged fire extinguisher on the floor in Bibbins Hall. Officers concluded the extinguisher fell from the hanger and accidentally discharged. The fire extinguisher was replaced.

1:40 p.m. The grounds manager reported lawn damage at a Village House on North Professor Street. It appeared someone had parked in the wet lawn and created ruts when attempting to back out.

Wednesday, April 24, 2019 2:48 a.m. Officers, members of the Oberlin Police Department, members of the Oberlin Fire Department, and an ambulance responded to a 911 call from an ill student in Keep Cottage. The student advised there had been a misunderstanding with a nurse hotline and that the hotline contacted 911. The student advised they were feeling better and declined treatment at this time.

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Increased Campus Opportunities Will Be Offered During Winter Term Continued from page 3

currently face several challenges with Winter Term, though often in very different ways and to varying degrees: The “blank canvas” is, for many, a golden opportunity, but for others, a truly daunting prospect,” Hamilton wrote. “When there are so many possibilities, how does a person actually design a meaningful project? Some clearer guidelines and models will help students to make the most of this time.”

Some students have noted that Winter Term funding is sparse, and securing funds can be complicated and too difficult to acquire given the time constraints.

“Another challenge stems from costs of projects, whether they’re individual or group projects, in the States or abroad,” Hamilton wrote. “Access to financial support is uneven, and the process of applying for funding is complicated and confusing.”

The proposed changes would also increase faculty involvement in Winter Term projects.

The AAPR recommendations suggest that faculty would be expected to sponsor one group project every four years. This would create more equity among faculty members, since some spend more time mentoring projects than others and have less time to work on personal projects.

The AAPR report also suggested that restructuring might open the door for ExCos to exist during Winter Term. College first-year Serena Zets, member of the ExCo committee and a student senator, expressed excitement about the idea but hesitation about its implementation.

“Offering Winter Term ExCos would require committee members to overwork ourselves even more and stay on campus over Winter Term to maintain the program,” Zets explained.

She fears that the burden of constructing more Winter Term programming may fall on students.

“Offering Winter Term ExCos seems like a thinly-veiled way to utilize the labor of the ExCo Committee and [its] student instructors to bail the College out from paying faculty to develop Winter Term intensives and stay on campus in January.”

No final decisions have been made about changes to Winter Term. Student Senate has a working group devoted to the issue and has been accepting student input through forms and surveys since the AAPR recommendations were announced. College second-year Bridget Smith, who formed the working group, says that she and fellow member David Seo gathered student input in a survey they administered to the student body. The Winter Term survey data will be published alongside the release of other AAPR data.

OFF THE CUFF

Rabbi Megan Doherty

Rabbi Megan Doherty, director of Hillel and Jewish Campus Life, is approaching the end of her third year at Oberlin.

Hillel and Jewish Campus Life build community as well as provide various religious and cultural programs for students and community members, and Rabbi Megan works alongside students to cultivate a welcoming environment for all. She has previously worked at the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale University and the Mishkan Ha’am Reconstructionist community in New York. Additionally, she was recently a contestant on Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, NPR’s weekly hour-long quiz show.

Rabbi Megan currently lives in Oberlin with her daughter and wife.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Gwen Cappel-McCoy What are Hillel and the KosherHalal Co-op? What role do you think they serve on this campus?

Hillel is an organization to support and cultivate Jewish life, community, and experiences. I think of my job as empowering Jews on campus to build the kind of Jewish lives and identities they want, so that often means religious services, holiday services, programming speakers, education, informal educational opportunities, text study — all those different kinds of things. That’s Hillel, and it’s a student organization that I support.

KHC is an independent co-op that’s not part of [the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association], and it serves as a space for Jewish and Muslim students who want to both eat together in a co-op experience and observe their respective dietary laws. My role in KHC is, well, the Hebrew is Mashgicha Mora; it’s like an educational supervisor. They have students who are trained members of the co-op who supervise the different kinds of dietary restrictions, and I am their backup phone call.

So you’re kind of like the co-op parent?

I handle things like, you know, if we had a spoon that’s designated for meat, and we put it on a counter that is a dairy counter, and there was salt that was spilled. So now between the salt and the meat and the milk — what needs to happen to the counter and the spoon and questions like that have very technical answers. I can help them figure out those things.

How did you find your way to becoming a rabbi? What would you say were your defining moments in your journey to rabbi-hood?

Oh my goodness. That is a great question. So the very, very short answer

Rabbi Megan Doherty

to that question is that it is the job I found where I could do all of these things that I love. I keep learning all the time, and I could teach and have a voice in the world around activism. I could do counseling work and be really close to people at transformative moments in their lives. I could also be a little bit of a performer, be on stage, and do all of that while being holistically Jewish and have that at the core.

The slightly longer version is this: I graduated from a school with no majors, so I have a degree in liberal arts. I had been active in the Jewish community when I was in college and wound up at a family camp with my mom and my brother. There were all these rabbis and I was like, “I want to do that. I think I could do that. That would be really cool.” So I talked to them and took three years between graduating college and starting rabbinical school. And so I did an AmeriCorps year and worked in nonprofit for a while and went to Israel.

I went there because I needed Hebrew, which I didn’t have, and then went to rabbi school.

What has been your experience as a woman rabbi?

Oh, that’s a great question. It has mostly been really delightful, that I really feel the gift of the generations of women who came before me. At least half of my teachers in rabbinical school were women rabbis. The first women rabbis in the modern U.S. were ordained in the ’70s. And so by the time I got through rabbinical school in the early 2000s, there was a generation of women rabbis to follow. I feel grateful for that work that was done so I didn’t have to fight that fight. We exist in a patriarchal society and a world where, you know, there’s misogyny, and #MeToo happens in synagogues and Jewish institutions too. Those things have been present for me in the way they’ve been present for other professional women my age, which is

Oberlin Community News Bulletin AMAM Brings Papermaker for Hands-On Workshop Learn about paper arts in the Allen Memorial Art Museum with papermaker Aimee Lee, OC ’99. Lee will be leading a community workshop on hanji, traditional Korean handmade paper. Lee has done Fulbright research on the history of hanji and is the first person to open a hanji studio in America. Lee has also written Hanji Unfurled, an award-winning book on the art.

The workshop is on Saturday, April 27 from 12–3 p.m.

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Big Parade Celebration Marches Through Oberlin Oberlin community members, faculty, staff, and students are invited to come together for the 19th annual Big Parade, May 4 at 11 a.m. The event will begin at College Street and will include floats, costumes, performers, and more. There will be free food, music, and activities in Tappan Square following the parade.

Photo by Meg Parker, Photo Editor

sad and frustrating.

What challenges have you faced as a woman rabbi?

On the one hand, I went to [a] rabbinical school that was sort of jokingly referred to as the queer rabbinical school, and I had worked at Yale, which is the “Gay Ivy.” I went to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, which had that reputation then, and it was interesting because the proportion of queer students wasn’t actually that high, but the proportion of queer faculty was actually pretty high when I was there. So many of the really hard fights had been fought. I think for the trans rabbis, their story is different.

I have trans rabbi friends, and I think their story of their fights were more recent. But as for being lesbian, I wasn’t pushing to get into school. I didn’t have to fight that fight to find a job. It’s easier than I think people imagine it.

At the same time, you know, there have been issues. I lived in Israel for a while after I graduated, and being a woman rabbi there is very weird, uncommon, not accepted even by secular Israelis. In the Orthodox world, there are very clear gender roles, and men can be rabbis and women are not.

So that was a struggle, to come out as a newly minted rabbi then be in a place that didn’t really accept me as a rabbi.

I’ve worked in some organizations where there were inherited sexist and misogynist structures, and some experiences working for men were challenging.

I feel like I’ve had personal experiences of pushback against being a woman rabbi, a queer rabbi, or a gay person. I feel for the most part, though, I haven’t had to deal with major institutional or structural struggles.

It’s been more about a person than the structure of institution, which I feel like is a bit of a gift from my teachers. I know they were pushing against institutional structures to make space for that.

Cycling Club Leads Group Ride to Fuel Community Silver Wheels Cycling Club, Northeast Ohio’s largest cycling groups, encourages new cyclists to take part in a group ride next Sunday, May 5.

All individuals, including those who aren’t club members, are invited to participate. There will be five groups cycling at different speeds, so everyone can ride at the pace most comfortable for them.

Cyclists should bring a bike, helmet, and water bottle and meet at 291 South Main Street. The ride will start at 1 p.m. and will be preceded by a meetand-greet with club members at 12:30 p.m.

Oberlin Primary Election Looks to Renew Key Tax Levies

Community members vote at Philips gym in the November 2017 local election.

Photo by Bryan Rubin, OC ’18

Jane Hobson Staff Writer Ohio’s primary election on May 7 will decide whether the city of Oberlin will renew two preexisting taxes — an income tax that supports the city’s general fund and a tax levy for the benefit of the public library.

The five-year, 0.2 percent income tax levy supports

the operating and capital improvement expenses that go toward the City’s general fund. The levy is estimated to generate $618,889 in 2019 alone and city officials predict that this number will stay consistent for years to come.

“The general fund pays for, this is the way I describe it, quality of life issues,” the city of Oberlin’s Finance Director, Sal Talarico, explained. “Police, fire, making sure your family and property are safe, recreation programs, the beautiful parks that we have — all quality of life things.”

The tax levy for the benefit of the Oberlin Public Library, the other item on the ballot, provides nearly a quarter of the library’s annual operating budget. It is imposed at a rate of 1.5-mills for each one dollar of valuation — i.e., for $100 of valuation, $0.15 will be generated. This levy would also last five years and is estimated to produce $285,921 per year.

“Financially, the levy really helps the library a lot,” Audrey Kolb, the chair of the Library Board of Trustees said. “I don’t know if we would survive as well without it. It is used for current expenses including paying staff, buying materials (books, DVDs, etc.), building maintenance and repairs, and The Bridge, which is the Oberlin Community Technology Center.”

The .2 percent income tax levy started in 2005, according to Talarico’s report. The 1.5-mill tax levy for the library has been passed two times previously, making this the third time it is up for election. If both are renewed, tax rates will not increase.

“It’s no change at all,” Talarico said. “The tax rate will stay the same.”

Without the revenue generated from these taxes, Oberlin may see a reduction in some of its key public

services. However, if the municipal tax proposal were to fail during this election, it would appear on the ballot again during the November general election.

“If the levy does not pass, the libraries would continue to function but limpingly,” Kolb said. “The fact is, the state Public Library Funding has been slashed, so this is really necessary for the public library to continue to serve the community.”

Oberlin College Assistant Professor of Economics Evan Kresch expressed support for the tax renewals and believes they could solve local budget problems created during former Governor John Kasich’s administration.

“He slashed the state income tax,” Kresch said.

“Kasich also cut the budget deficit. The way he did that was by cutting transfers to local governments. He cut support to the cities, which made the state budget look really good. He was then able to pass state income tax reductions. …What Kasich did was essentially kicking the issue down the line. So, cities have to address it.

It’s now on local government to decide if they want to make up for that shortfall on the revenue.”

Even though most Oberlin students do not have a taxable income or property within the city, Obies who are registered to vote in-state have the opportunity to participate in the May 7 election.

“It’s really important that everybody take advantage of their right to vote,” Kolb said. “Students should look at what the issue is, look into their conscience, and see if they feel that it would benefit the people that are going to be left behind when they take off with their own lives.”

Oberlin voters can cast their ballots in Phillips gym from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Ohio Nurses Association Enters Contract Negotiations With Mercy Sydney Allen Editor-in-Chief The Ohio Nurses Association is entering negotiations today with Mercy Allen Hospital Administrators on behalf of nurses at Mercy Allen Hospital which could result in a hospital-wide nurses strike if the group’s requests are not met. The ONA is accusing Mercy Allen Hospital of underpaying its nursing staff and failing to consistently and adequately staff the hospital with nurses, resulting in inadequate patient care.

“The nurses at Mercy Allen Medical Center work around the clock caring for patients each day. Nursing is an emotional and physically demanding profession — the toll the job takes on the average nurse is indescribable, but nurses make that sacrifice because of their unwavering commitment to patient care,” the petition reads.

“Mercy Allen Medical Center has made it clear that this commitment to patients is not to be rewarded. In fact, Mercy Allen Hospital moved away from an already-lowwage proposal, wanting to instead pay nurses an even lower wage in return for their commitment to the community.”

Though the group has raised concerns about inadequate nurse staffing and inconsistent practices around paid time off, the negotiations today will center primarily on nurses’ pay, as the ONA is planning to address the other issues at a later date.

The ONA has been negotiating with Mercy Allen Hospiyal since February, and extended their negotiation period from March 31 to April 30 in an attempt to come to an agreement. During this negotiation process, the Ohio Nurses Association filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against the Medical Center, which is still pending review.

The group has been mobilizing

The Oberlin Review | April 26, 2019

Nurses at Mercy Allen Hospital, located on West Lorain Street, have raised allegations of unfair working conditions and could go on strike in the coming weeks.

Photo by Meg Parker, Photo Editor support from community members and fellow nurses through petitions and canvassing as Mercy Allen Hospital prepares to enter negotiations where they intend to bargain for higher wages. Between an online petition and physical signatures of support, they have garnered around 500 signatures.

Oberlin College’s Student Labor Action Coalition, a labor solidarity group on campus, has been working with the group to acquire signatures and raise support.

“We were contacted by labor organizers working for the Ohio Nurses Association on Tuesday morning about organizing with Oberlin students in support of the nurses at Mercy Allen Hospital,” said College junior Elsa Schlensker, SLAC’s communications point. “This is a hospital that a lot of students have received care at, myself included, and it’s one that doesn’t

exactly have a shining reputation for quality care. Over the course of talking with the union, it became clear that the workers’ struggle for fair labor practices was tied up in broader trends of cost-cutting, especially at expense to patients’ and workers’ safety and well-being.”

Schlensker added that they believe meeting the nurses’ requests could significantly improve patient care at Mercy Allen Hospital.

“I cannot emphasize enough too that rectifying these issues, while not a cure-all, will result in better care at Mercy,” they said. “Allowing nurses to spend more time with patients will improve care. Allowing nurses to actually utilize their paid time off to recover from burn-out will improve care. Supporting and empowering nurses will improve care, at all levels, and challenge Mercy Health to put

patient safety and quality of care above austerity and profit-seeking.”

Today’s negotiations could affect 30 Mercy Allen Hospital nurses.

“The Medical Center passed a last, best and final offer to the nurses, of which the nurses overwhelmingly voted down,” read the petition. “The nurses have also voted to authorize a strike notice if the Medical Center continues to belittle the nurses’ worth.”

By federal law, health care professionals are required to give a 10-day notice before going on strike.

Depending on how the negotiations go today, that 10-day period could begin today and the Mercy Allen Hospital nurses could be on strike as early as Sunday, May 5.

Representatives from Mercy Allen Hospital did not return a request for comment.

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Opi n ions

April 26, 2019

OPINIONS established 1874

Academic and Administrative Review Process Not the Enemy Lior Krancer Production Editor As of yesterday, a year has passed since President Carmen Twillie Ambar shared the list of Academic and Administrative Program Review Steering Committee members with the Oberlin community. The AAPR is daunting because it indicates that hard decisions will need to be made to secure Oberlin’s long-term financial future. However, the fact that we have a dedicated program to address our serious deficit shows that Oberlin’s administration understands the gravity of our current financial struggle.

During this process, I have come to see a pattern of Oberlin students leveling sweeping criticisms of the AAPR rather than meaningfully confronting the potential danger we face. While there are plenty of reasonable concerns to be had about the changes to Oberlin’s future, there comes a point when a reality check is needed.

Our challenges are many and varied, and the AAPR Steering Committee is working tirelessly to come up with helpful solutions. The faculty, administrators, alumni, and our peers on the committee have poured energy into ensuring Oberlin College will live to see its 200th anniversary. Perhaps instead of stonewalling them and lobbing accusations of secrecy and lack of transparency, concerned students could embrace a modicum of patience and cooperative spirit. The AAPR is not the enemy. They are trying to save this school, and are finally ready to engage with the broader community on the merits of their areas of recommendation.

Personally, I consider it unacceptable that OCOPE and hourly workers currently have no voice on a committee that is making recommendations concerning their wages and institutional future. There is no universe in which choices that will affect College employees should be made without their input. An article in the April 12 issue of the Review explained why labor laws made it complicated for hourly employees to sit on the committee, but the AAPR should have figured out a way to make it work (“AAPR Prompts Concern Among Union Supporters,” April 12, 2019). If this lack of representation leads to hourly workers and unionized

staff footing the bill for the College’s future, it goes against every tenet of Oberlin’s mission. This is a problem that needs immediate attention.

Student outrage over a lack of transparency, on the other hand, is entirely unfounded. Since the program began, the AAPR has been clear that they plan to open up the program review for outside dialogue. Over a year ago, in late March 2018, President Ambar sent an email explicitly encouraging students to recommend students for the then-forming AAPR committee.

Since then, the Office of the President has been utterly clear that this process will incorporate student insight. While it is true that the AAPR has been on radio silence for most of this academic year, our financial challenges are inordinately complex and require multi-pronged solutions — it would have been unreasonable to ask for a half-formed idea when there are so many ways this process could go. I do not doubt that the areas of recommendation from this past month look very different from the ideas generated in September.

I often hear complaints that the possible changes to Oberlin’s academic options will compromise its character as a liberal arts institution. Rumors of incorporating public health and business curricula date back to last spring, but, for some reason, connected them to the AAPR caused some to clutch their pearls and decry these potential academic additions as contrary to Oberlin’s liberal arts mission.

Those who take up this view should recall that students took a detailed survey in September — as the AAPR was getting underway in its comprehensive review — that sought student feedback en masse. The survey inquired into student public opinion about the academics here at Oberlin, the resources on campus, and all other notable aspects of student life, including dining options, facilities, and more. There were also surveys that went out to faculty, staff, prospective students, and admitted students who declined to attend Oberlin College. The AAPR’s March 2019 recommendation to create concentrations in Business and Global Health is a reflection of student interests, and likely also addresses part of the reason certain admitted students decided not See Oberlin, page 7

SUBMISSIONS POLICY

The Oberlin Review appreciates and welcomes letters to the editors and oped 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 that week’s issue.

Letters may not exceed 600 words and op-eds may not exceed 800 words, except with consent of the Editorial Board. All submissions must include contact information, with full names and any relevant titles, for all signers. All writers must individually confirm authorship on electronic submissions. The Review reserves the right to edit all submissions for clarity, length, grammar, accuracy, strength of argument and in consultation with Review style. Editors will work with 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. Headlines are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. Opinions expressed in editorials, letters, op-eds, columns, cartoons or other Opinions pieces do not necessarily reflect those of the staff of the Review. The Review will not print advertisements on its Opinions pages. The Review defines an advertisement as any submission that has the main intent of bringing direct monetary gain to a contributor.

The Oberlin Review | April 26, 2019

Volume 147, Number 21

Editorial Board Editors-in-Chief

Sydney Allen

Nathan Carpenter

Managing Editor Ananya Gupta

Opinions Editor Jackie Brant

AAPR Offers Opportunity to Build Residential Community There are few Oberlin departments that require as much love, attention, and resources as the Office of Residential Education. Oberlin’s residential facilities are perceived by students as generally subpar compared to our peer institutions. Many students don’t feel their residential spaces are meaningful sources of support or community, and the office seems to be perpetually understaffed — as evidenced by the pending search for a new director.

Furthermore, the office itself is not widely held in high regard by students, who often talk publicly about negative experiences they’ve had with ResEd, both on social media and in the Review. Few students have personal relationships with ResEd staff, and even Resident Assistants — the students who work most closely with the office — openly share concerns about the office’s structure and functions.

Oberlin will soon see widespread institutional shifts once the recommendations of the Academic and Administrative Program Review begin to be implemented next year. We understand that Oberlin will not be able to significantly renovate every single facility that needs improvements during this period of financial austerity, however, now is the perfect time to improve ResEd’s other functions and think creatively about how the office can better serve students moving forward.

The Review reported this week that, outside of the AAPR recommendations, ResEd is already planning to change the function of some of Oberlin’s dorms next year, including turning Zechiel House into a first-year residential space and moving both substance-free and quiet spaces into Noah Hall. This transition is an excellent opportunity to think critically about the purpose and use of some of Oberlin’s dorms while seeking ways to create supportive communities on campus that center around students’ residential experiences and provide opportunities for meaningful connection.

In its current form, ResEd offers students space to live. At best, some students enjoy their time at Oberlin while tolerating its facilities, and at worst, other students suffer feelings of isolation and disconnection from the residential community, leading some to transfer.

However, if we get creative enough, the residential experience could be a landmark part of the Oberlin experience, rather than a cause for concern, and dorms could be places where students have the chance to collectively explore identities and interests.

ResEd could become a key factor in preparing students for life outside Oberlin. Because of Oberlin’s three-year residency requirement, ResEd could create programming for all students centered around vital life skills — filing taxes, picking a mortgage, putting aside savings, and planning for retirement, just to name a few. While some of Oberlin’s current programming does this in small doses, there are opportunities to institutionalize these lessons and connect them to the residential experience in a meaningful way. This would not only serve Oberlin’s mission of preparing students for life after college, but also address the shortcomings of the current programming model, which rarely attracts more than a handful of students to programs.

In addition to a renewed critical approach to programming, ResEd should take this opportunity for change, both within its own department and from an institutional perspective, to reconceptualize how communities are formed in residential spaces.

Program housing such as Afrikan Heritage House, Third World House, and Baldwin Cottage, and themed halls such as Sci-Fi and Latinx hall offer some of the strongest, most intentional communities Oberlin has to offer. These residential spaces are key examples of how students can create meaningful relationships when given the space to explore their stated common interests and goals.

These communities also suggest that identity- and theme-based housing has the potential to better engage students in holistic residential life than traditional living communities — a suggestion Oberlin should heed. While we are not necessarily suggesting there needs to be more program housing, this same model of community-building could be applied to Oberlin’s more traditional housing through a student-directed model. This could look like more theme housing, housing organized around academic interests, or whatever other connections students call for.

In order to make this happen, there need to be some significant adjustments within the administrative process to allocate space to students hoping to form their own intentional communities within Oberlin’s residential facilities. Last year, when student group Obility attempted to create a disability-themed hall to support students who have accessibility needs, they reported difficult bureaucratic hoops that nearly derailed the hall’s launch, despite significant student interest. If administrators truly want to increase community at Oberlin, there needs to be a streamlined process for students to design and propose their own livinglearning communities (“Students, Staff Chart New Course For Accessibility at Oberlin,” September 2018).

It’s no secret that ResEd as it currently stands is not operating as effectively as it could — it isn’t satisfying its mission of creating campus-wide community and providing students the life and interpersonal skills they need to succeed beyond Oberlin. Luckily for both students and ResEd, there are ways for us to fix this, and this time of institutional change offers a chance for a new residential experience. We just have to take advantage of it.

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

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Oberlin Should Invest More in Honors Program Jackie Brant Opinions Editor When I visited Oberlin as a junior in high school, I was intrigued by the College’s honors program. Though the speaker did not go into detail about what the program entailed, it sounded exactly like the sort of thing I would be interested in doing, as well as something that might seem impressive to future post-graduate programs or employers.

However, after attending two Senior Symposiums during my first and second years as a student, I realize the honors program at Oberlin is much more than I originally thought. It is more than just an opportunity for students to say they graduated “with honors,” or a way to impress future employers and universities. Rather, honors incorporates many elements that draw prospective students here in the first place, and is also the embodiment of what makes Oberlin College such a special place.

The honors program allows Oberlin students to engage with

these passions on their own terms. While projects are constrained by department requirements, the program still allows students to hone in and extensively explore topics that may lie outside the scope of classes offered by the College. As a prospective student, one of my favorite things about Oberlin was that students seemed genuinely interested in a variety of topics, many of which I did not know much about myself. While I still feel this way on a day-to-day basis when talking to friends or listening to my peers talk in class, the Senior Symposium schedule is a yearly reminder of all the niche and individualistic interests of Oberlin students.

Although each academic department has its own way of running its honors program, most programs involve working closely with a professor who guides students through the research and writing process. Final products typically take the form of 40- to 60-page papers and a final verbal presentation, although projects may be different depending on the department. This is yet another strength of Oberlin

that the honors program incorporates. The student-to-professor ratio is always a major talking point on any Oberlin tour or admissions event. The honors program allows students to access the full benefits of that ratio and work closely with a professor, which is an opportunity that undergraduates at large universities can’t access as easily.

This is an especially important consideration during a time when liberal arts colleges are trying to figure out how not only to survive, but also prosper. Oberlin and other liberal arts colleges around the country are suffering major financial challenges; some are even being forced to close their doors permanently. There are many things that a large university can offer its students that liberal arts colleges simply cannot, due to financial restraints.

However, Oberlin’s honors program, and similar programs at other liberal arts colleges, combines many of the best elements of a liberal arts education: interdisciplinary pursuits, a great student-to-professor ratio, and opportunities for undergraduate research — elements that larger

institutions can’t replicate as effectively.

However, the Office of Admissions does not emphasize the honors program program nearly as much as it should. Due to new financial challenges in higher education, we must now more than ever make the case for why an Oberlin education is valuable — and the College’s robust honors program is one thing that is both unique to a liberal arts education and beneficial for students postgrad.

To better emphasize this program, the Office of Admissions could take better advantage of the fact that All Roads Lead to Oberlin and the Senior Symposium always happen around the same time period. If both of these events happened simultaneously in the future, it would be a great way to both highlight the meaningful research that Oberlin students are conducting, and also show prospective students the benefits that an Oberlin education, as well as the honors program, have to offer.

Furthermore, Oberlin should invest more in the honors program. There should be more re-

search funding set aside specifically for students participating in the honors program. Often, being a part of the honors program is a daunting task for many students. The projects are long and time-consuming. Having funding set aside for research might encourage more students to participate, and also attract more prospective students to choose Oberlin over other institutions.

The honors program and undergraduate research, in general, must be bolstered and promoted to a higher degree in the future, especially as the Academic and Administrative Program Review searches for ways to attract and retain students. They are both unique aspects of an Oberlin education that will lead prospective students to choose Oberlin over other institutions. As liberal arts institutions across the United States face financial distress, we need to ask ourselves what a liberal arts education has to offer that other institutions don’t, and how we can make our programs highly beneficial to students. Our honors program is part of that solution; let’s continue to invest in it.

All In Fundraising Efforts Are Essential for Scholarship Fund Meg Parker Photo Editor In his most recent Netflix comedy special Kid Gorgeous, John Mulaney recounts the tale of how frequently his alma mater mails him requests for money. He jokes about how abrasive it was to receive a letter demanding money from his college. If you’ve seen the special, you’re familiar with his bit, if not, it goes something like this: “I just got a letter from my college, which was fun, ’cause mail, you know?” he says. “So I open up the letter and they said, ‘Hey, John, it’s college. You remember?’

I say, ‘Yes, of course.’ And they said… How did they phrase it?

They said, ‘Give us some money!

As a gift! We want a gift! But only if it’s money.’”

The frustration and discomfort Mulaney jokes about is a sentiment many Oberlin students expressed this week. On Thursday, April 25 Oberlin held its third annual All In For Oberlin event, a fundraising day when current students, families, and alumni are encouraged to donate in a generous matching scheme with Chair of the Board of Trustees, Chris Canavan, OC ’84.

The Development Office spends weeks preparing for the event, which features pop-up attractions like field activities in Wilder Bowl, free lunch and music in the ’Sco, and complimentary Ben and Jerry’s — thanks, Jerry Greenfield, OC ’73. As staff in yellow shirts bounce around campus asking students for money, the climate on campus is tense, to say the least.

With the school striving to eliminate a structural deficit amid an intense program review, fundraising and donations are a crucial

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component of Oberlin’s financial model. However, as students examine their tuition statements and ruminate on the weight of their student loans, the prospect of donating their disposable income to an institution to which they already pay living, dining, and learning expenses seems absurd and unfair.

This is not to say that donating is a bad decision; in fact, I have donated to All In For Oberlin each year that I’ve been on campus for it. A dollar here and a dollar there goes to financing our scholarship fund, student resources, and general campus programming.

Approximately 87 percent of the money raised on the 25th will go to scholarship funding — something many students, myself included, depend on to attend this college.

Every time you donate a spare dollar or three, Canavan matches with $100, up to $100,000. This matching scheme is incredibly special, and Canavan — as well as the other alumni willing to put their personal resources toward making Oberlin a more accessible place — deserve our and future Obies’ gratitude.

When John Mulaney jokes about his college asking him for money, he’s forgetting the value of investing in future generations and the betterment of an institution that provided him with an education and the economic buying power of a college degree. While it may feel awkward and uncomfortable to donate to an institution you’re enrolled in and paying money to attend, it’s important to contextualize why All In is fundraising in the first place, and understand the privilege of having disposable income.

Athina Apazidis, Staff Cartoonist

Oberlin Student Activism Reveals Pattern of Non-Involvement Continued from page 6

to accept their offers of enrollment.

Often, students will also argue that the AAPR is anti-democratic. Some claim that there has never been an opportunity for student voices to be heard. While I do agree that it is not necessarily representative for students to comprise of only three of the 31 members of the steering committee, the perception that student voices have not been part of this process is absurd. There have been many small group listening sessions and faculty governance listening sessions. Additionally, two of the students on the committee have served on Student Senate, either currently or in the past — that is to say, they were already elected democratically by their peers to represent student interests.

College seniors Kameron Dunbar and Sadie Keller and double-degree junior Janet Wu represent so many different interests on campus: both the Conservatory and the College; academic departments in the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences; and organizations spanning from El Centro Volunteer Initiative to Bonner Scholars to Oberlin Student Cooperative Association. These three Obies are experienced in being heavily

involved on campus and in the community. I would encourage others to follow their example, and to not undermine their work — and the work of the AAPR at large — to keep this school’s doors open.

I do not dispute that there are severe problems with the AAPR, and I do believe it has the potential to threaten members of this community. My hope, however, is to raise the concern that Oberlin activism is taking on a character of non-involvement and uninformed indignation. For our concerns to change anything, they have to have direction.

Liberal arts colleges across the country have been consolidating or shutting down.

This is the time to look at the big picture and step up to ensure the survival of Oberlin College and Conservatory. The information on AAPR is readily available, and so are the tools to offer our opinions, raise our concerns, and do our part. Participation is key, and it is crucial to acknowledge that this process is not about those of us who attend Oberlin at this moment. The point of the AAPR is to make sure that, for future students in the decades to come, there remains an Oberlin to attend at all — let’s make sure that, when we look back at this moment, we are proud of the way we advocated for this institution’s future.

COURSE REGISTRATION:

OVER A CENTURY AGO

1880

In 1880, it a prescribed a

Layout and drawings by Mikaela Fishman, This Week Editor // Text from archived course catalogs1

These days, class registration means frustrations with OberView, navigating DegreeWorks, trying to track down your advisor so you can get your RAP number, and endless overly polite emails to professors begging them to let you into their class. But what was registration like before email?

Before OberView? Before PRESTO? Even before computers? This week, we’ll take a look through course catalogs from 1880 to 1920 to get a sense of what Oberlin had to offer over a century ago.

1

Through Hathi Trust Digital Library

1890 In 1890, the College maintained its commitment to religious education, but also added more scientific and liberal arts-related courses of study.

1900 By 1900, male students were able to choose classes individually, but women were still not treated as fully independent students.

WEEKLY EVENTS

CALENDAR

FRIDAY–SATURDAY, APRIL 26–27 Symbiotic Tendrils: An Organismal Installation & Post Script: A Site-Specific Performance Dance at Oberlin presents two senior dance concerts. First Louise Wurzelbacher will perform at Warner Main, then the audience will move as a group to view Celia Morris’s performance on the roof of the Terrell Main Library. Tickets are free but limited.

Rain date April 28. // Warner Main Space and Terrell Main Library, 4th Floor • 7:30 p.m.

SATURDAY, APRIL 27 Senior Symposium 2019 College seniors from various majors will give oral presentations on their academic work at this annual symposium.

King Building • 9:30 a.m.–9 p.m.

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appears that students didn’t choose classes individually but were a course of study based on which division they enrolled in.

1910 By 1910, Oberlin had begun offering calculus classes –– before this, the only math classes were arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. They also started offering classes specifically for women.

1920 By 1920, Oberlin offered more politically-relevant classes, including some that revealed Oberlin’s racist and sexist tendencies.

SUNDAY, APRIL 28 Zero Waste Picnic Come out to learn about sustainability-focused campus groups, participate in a free swap, play games, and enjoy some snacks in the fresh air.

Kahn Hall, front lawn • 1–4 p.m.

MONDAY, APRIL 29 K-Pop Night with Karaoke A celebration of Korean pop music complete with karaoke, music, dancing, snacks, and a performance by the K-Pop Choreography ExCo at 11 p.m.

The ’Sco • 10 p.m.–1 a.m.

THURSDAY, MAY 2 First Thursday: “Conflict Kitchen” Artists Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski discuss Conflict Kitchen, a restaurant that operated in Pittsburgh, PA, from 2010–2017 and served food from regions that were engaged in diplomatic or military conflict with the United States.

Allen Memorial Art Museum • 5:30–7:30 p.m.

A r t s & C u ltu r e

April 26, 2019

ARTS & CULTURE established 1874

Volume 147, Number 21

Student Organizations Shed Light on Oberlin Protest History with Powerful Projections

A visual history of Oberlin activism was projected onto the outside of Mudd Center last Thursday. Photo by Meg Parker, Photo Editor

Carson Dowhan Senior Staff Writer Last Thursday night, students and passersby might have noticed a series of protest messages and art projected onto Mudd Center’s East-facing wall. With the help of a 10,000-lumen projector and a generator, the library was shrouded in a spectacle of still images and moving frames depicting the history of student protest at Oberlin.

The projections — a collaboration between students in the classes Creative Interventions and From Bandung to Black Panthers: The Past, Present and Future of Third World Liberation — were part of a project meant to create an intervention in public space.

The public protest was associated with with the Illu-

minator collective as well as student groups: Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Energy Justice, Students for a Free Palestine, Student Labor Action Coalition, and Oberlin College Office and Professional Employees.

“I’ve been involved in interventionist art for a decade and this is one of the most moving examples of this kind of public art I’ve ever seen,” said Grayson Earle, visiting professor of Studio Art and Integrated Media.

The images on Mudd Center showed quotes and images from Oberlin’s history of activism. College seniors Nicki Kattoura, Emma Doyle, Lara Edwards, and Octavia Bürgel, the event organizers, told the Review in a collective statement it was “student labor [and] action disruption that actually put the College on the right side of history, and … those movements were almost always met

with administrative push-back. The history of Oberlin’s activism was paralleled with current student demands and protests.”

This project is meant to remind students of the school’s history of critical engagement and to encourage them to carry this legacy into the future.

“The students also projected their own words in response to the administration who have asked students not to protest at the ‘wrong place at the wrong time,’” Earle pointed out.

The collective response from student groups declared this list of student demands: “[to divest] from Israel, to boycott Sabra products, to provide students [with] resources to protest the Nexus pipeline, and to recognize the importance of unions and workers on this campus.”

Some students on campus thought the event was sponsored by the administration when in actuality it was an anti-institutional demonstration. In the Oberlin Facebook group “Oberlin Consortium of Memes for Discourse-Ready Teens,” College first-year Michael Plevin made a poll asking for student opinions on the projections. There was debate and confusion as to who was behind the projections and what the overarching purpose was. Some students first assumed that the College was behind the light show.

“My first reaction was mixed,” Plevin wrote in an email to the Review. “But it seems a bit disingenuous to me in that, so far as I can tell, it seems like [the College is] doing it to try and woo the prospies.” Plevin continued to discuss student reactions to the spectacle. “[Responses to the meme] show how many people are confused about the College’s spending and are upset or exasperated with what they choose to spend their money on,” he wrote.

The Illuminator collective, a New York City organization that offered their time and equipment, formed out of the social networks of solidarity and trust from the Occupy Wall Street movement. The group was financed by a $60,000 grant by Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.

See Illuminator, page 12

ASA Banquet Highlight of Campus Afropolitan Week

Imani Badillo Staff Writer

The African Students’ Association adorned the Carnegie Building’s Root Room in purple and gold decorations last Saturday for its annual banquet. The event showcased a vibrant expression of pride in African identity, promoting it as something that is both modern and rooted in tradition.

This year’s theme, Afropolitan, was a continuation of Afropolitan Week, a series that featured several other events hosted

by ASA. Included in the week’s festivities were student-led panel “African in America,” an ASA TGIF at the ’Sco, and an Afropolitan Banquet after-party. The event’s poster read, “We are Afropolitans: Not citizens, but Africans of the world.” This theme promotes the visibility of African individuals as modern people, not as a primitive monolith created by European colonizers. Outdated representations of African people were addressed throughout the week’s events.

In the “African in America” panel, ASA members explored “questions of identity as it relates to racial and ethnic experience,” as described on the event’s Facebook page. Topics discussed included the duality of holding both an African and an American identity, the importance of language within that, the distinction between identifying as African versus identifying as Black, and the development of one’s own identity in American culture. The panelists noted the difference between being African and being African-American, and commented that American cultural iden-

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tity is often based more on individual success rather than on communal happiness, in comparison to other cultures that prioritize the latter.

While sharing their experiences, ASA members noted that many people assume that African life holds a mystical quality — an untrue assumption which still persists due to European colonization. Even now, many people think in terms of how they can help African people and do not see African people as equals. The panel allowed attendees to learn about the details that create the experience of African identity.

Two days after the panel, ASA hosted TGIF at the ’Sco, playing African music hand-picked by ASA members. This event created excitement one day before the banquet and further increased the visibility of African individuals on campus.

The Afropolitan Banquet itself had a lively, welcoming atmosphere. The event was open to all and allowed a large variety of students, faculty, and guests alike to celebrate African culture. The event called for semi-formal wear, and attendees certainly delivered. Some came in traditional clothing, some in formal dress, and others wore a synthesis of the two.

ASA members were truly central at this event: The ceremony started with ASA members singing “Shosholoza,” a traditional South African song. College firstyear Evans Muzulu sang a song he wrote himself; double-degree sophomore Kopano Muhammad and College sophomore Blessing Bwititi sang the song “Live and Die in Afrika” and danced to “Pata Pata” and “Gweta.” This dance mirrored the ASA members’ performance at Colors of

Rhythm, highlighted by the many expressions of African identity. The performances were a highlight of the night, an opportunity to proclaim pride in being African and embody that identity on stage.

Attendance was high, and so was excitement. The audience clapped and whooped throughout these performances.

“I was really inspired by the different types of performances,” said College sophomore Mikaela Howard. “They just embodied life and gave me life in return.”

Not only were the performances fantastic, but the food was also amazing.

While setting up the Root Room that morning, ASA members prepared dishes like Creole chicken and jollof rice. Also featured on the menu were coconut rice, plantains, red lentil stew, and puff puff, a West African street dish made of fried dough. Toward the end of the banquet, take-out containers were set next to the dishes for for attendees to take leftovers.

The banquet was an opportunity for African students to see their culture represented at Oberlin, and to share that with their broader community.

“Culture, food, music, traditional clothing, and the banquet to me just makes me feel like I’m back in Ethiopia,” College first-year Hermona Erdachew wrote in an email to the Review. “So the ASA banquet is very important because there’s really not a huge African community in Oberlin, and being able to host an event like this that brings a lot of people together is great.”

Yolanda Walker, OC ’09, delivered the keynote address. The night’s featured performer was Demola, a Nigerian Afrobeat

violinist. He performed both traditional African songs and modern pop music.

Towards the end of the night, he took requests, including one to play “Old Town Road.” As the banquet concluded, he expressed his gratitude for playing the event and his excitement for the night’s message.

College first-year Mowa Badmos said that her favorite part of the night was at the end when everyone was invited to dance.

“It was beautiful to watch [everyone] participate and embrace our African culture with us,” she wrote in an email to the Review. “As a minority group on campus, it is easy to forget we exist and this event makes sure our voices are heard. It also brings us together in a way we all enjoy and can be proud of.”

Tickets for this event were $10; all proceeds went to the Yakubu Saaka Fund, which provides financial support for international African students attending Oberlin. Not only were tickets sold out, but a waitlist also ensured that as many people as possible could attend.

Afropolitan Week concluded with an after-party in the ’Sco, truly concluding in a celebration. ASA members gave non-African students an experience that provided an important opportunity to learn about African culture and become aware of false stereotypes. In this Afropolitan message lies the hope that individuals will understand the meaning of this week-long event and use these experiences to educate others. This event was surely one worth attending and will continue to be in future years.

College Juniors Debut Crystal Bridges, Zine on LGBTQ Life in Taiwan

LGBTQ posters, banners, and art left at 288 Peace Memorial Park, where Taipei’s first pride parade was held.

Photo Courtesy of Jenn Lin

Jaimie Yu After months of work, College juniors Jenn Lin and Sheng Kao unveiled their new zine, Crystal Bridges, on Monday at a release party held in the Multicultural Resource Center. After being awarded an Oberlin Shansi In-Asia grant this year, the pair traveled to Taipei during Winter Term to document LGBTQ life in Taiwan and interview civilians and activists.

Foregoing a traditional print format, Lin and Kao released their zine, a self-published, handmade magazine, on WordPress for free to facilitate accessibility. The digital format allows for not only typed interviews and visual art, but also audio, videos, and links for further reading.

For Ted Samuel, deputy director of Shansi, “the whole idea of making a zine was something that really excited me.”

As deputy director, Samuel is involved in Shansi’s fellowship and grants program. The In-Asia grant that Kao and Lin received awards students up to $1,500 for summer or Winter Term projects in either a non-governmental organization or self-guided study in any East, Southeast, or South Asian country. Shansi also has a visiting scholars program, where young lecturers from partner universities and NGOs from Shansi’s partner sites come

to Oberlin for a semester to audit classes.

Lin is a Creative Writing and Art History major with a concentration in Book Studies, while Kao is a Biology major who also studies Creative Writing. Despite their diverging academic interests, their shared Taiwanese heritage and interest in LGBTQ activism naturally led both of them to collaborate on Crystal Bridges.

“We wanted to go back because we’re both Taiwanese-American and we hadn’t been back in so long,” Lin said. “We had been reading the news and it came out that there was a referendum happening toward same-sex marriage and Taiwan.

And so we were really interested in investigating what was happening there.”

The aforementioned referendum was in November 2018, in which questions about supporting same-sex marriage were presented to voters. Despite the 2014 Sunflower Student Movement, which brought a new wave of young political activists to the forefront and led to same-sex marriage being legalized in Taiwan in May 2017, the referendum results overwhelmingly opposed same-sex marriage and were regarded as a political tragedy by activists and allies alike.

“With this context in mind, we tried to set out asking questions that would provoke reflection, on our parts and on our interviewees’ parts, concerning Taiwan’s

current and future political situation,” they write in the zine.

Samuel attested to the value of personal connections to student projects.

“While we do definitely put a large value on [the] feasibility of the project and the academic and artistic values of them, we do not discount personal connections at all,” Samuel said. “In fact, we encourage that, I would say … Given the referendum that happened over the fall, we understood that if we’re going to have a project on queer activism, now is really a good time to do that.”

The zine’s title is a combination of Crystal Boys, a 1983 Taiwanese novel

by Pai Hsien-yung about a gay student named A-Qing, and a reference to Shansi’s and the zine’s goal of “creating bridges between communities abroad and here in Oberlin,” according to Lin. Lin and Kao even visited various parks named in the novel during their trip, strengthening the significance of the novel to their project, which was both political and personal.

The zine takes a more unidirectional approach, according to Kao, and brings snapshots of LGBTQ life in Taiwan for Oberlin students to learn from and engage in. It lacks the traditional thesis, evidence, and conclusion of a research project because it is meant to inform outside readers.

“I think it’s important to walk in open-minded because we obviously didn’t grow up in those contexts,” Lin said. “I think it’d be harmful to impose our own biases and opinions onto a community.”

Michelle Tyson, a College first-year, attested to the informative nature of the zine.

“I was not familiar at all about the scene for LGBTQ youth in Taiwan before this event,” she said. “I really enjoyed hearing about Sheng and Jenn’s travels in Taiwan and how their identities and language abilities affected their experience.

It gave me broader ideas about what a study abroad trip could mean for me beyond academics.”

While the entire trip offered new experiences and insights, Kao cites one interview as particularly poignant. By chance, Lin and Kao came across an unassuming

market stall owned by a young gay man.

After conducting an interview, they asked him, “What do you want people to know about Taiwan?” He expressed his hopes for the future of the country, believing that despite the challenges, Taiwan could progress together with the LGBTQ community. Kao recalls that his simple wish, to be able to marry his boyfriend, was both empowering and touching.

Lin also spoke about the Tongzhi hotline. In Chinese, “tongzhi” translates to “comrade,” but in contemporary Taiwan and Hong Kong, it is also used to refer to people in the LGBTQ community. On the hotline’s website, there are pages for not only lesbian and gay bars, but also more accessible safe spaces such as bookstores and cafes. Kao and Lin have links on the Crystal Bridges zine to some of these spaces that they visited, including FEMbooks and Halfway Coffee. The hotline features over-the-phone counseling for individuals, families, couples, and elders who identify as queer. Lin and Kao went to several of their youth planning group meetings, where most of their interviews took place.

Samuel and Returned Shansi Fellow, Louise Edwards, OC ’16, spoke about how Shansi fulfills its mission of “deepening mutual respect and understanding through exchange between Asia and the United States,” according to Shansi’s website.

“Shansi is not a one-way street. It’s not just sending Oberlin students to other countries. They really do build connections, and these connections do last generations,” Samuel explained.

Edwards credited the networking possibilities that Shansi brings on a global scale.

“Whether it’s the students that I made connections with when I was teaching in China, or the staff here that I made connections with, as well as other past Shansi fellows, I feel like Shansi has really given me this huge network of people for me to not only be friends with but also make professional connections with,” Edwards said.

For Lin and Kao, having the opportunity to visit Taiwan with Shansi’s In-Asia See Students, page 12

One Song, One City Unites Community Around Music Roman Broszkowski Senior Staff Writer

In an effort to build stronger bonds between College and city communities, Oberlin’s Yeworkwha Belachew Center for Dialogue and the Office of the Ombudsperson have created a series of music listening and sharing sessions called One Song, One City.

The bi-monthly meetings, which began in March 2019, are held at the Oberlin Public Library and the Lewis House, bring community members together to discuss the historic and emotional contexts of songs that attendees care about.

Conservatory junior Griffin Woodard, who started the program through his work as a community relations intern for the Office of the Ombudsperson, explained that the purpose of the series is to facilitate interactions between Oberlin residents who may not otherwise meet.

“I believe that these little exchanges are powerful,” Woodard said. “If you met someone that you didn’t know before … through this program and you met them over this song, in a little way that’s strengthening our whole Oberlin scene, our whole Oberlin community.”

Woodard was inspired to begin the program by a similar series called One City, One Book, which began in 1998 in Seattle, Washington. Originally called “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book,” One City, One Book attempted to create community engagement through a citywide book club. Since its inaugural year, the idea has grown increasingly popular, and cities across the country have adopted the model as a method for community building and literacy promotion.

The Oberlin Review | April 26, 2019

Although Woodard initially considered directly replicating the literature program, he decided instead to go in a more musical direction.

“I’m first and foremost a musician,” he said. “So I realized that it’s not really going to be possible for me to continue working on [a reading program] because I don’t even have the drive to do that. So I meditated upon how to do it with music instead.”

While listening to John Coltrane’s “Love,” Woodard came up with the idea of holding group listening sessions for music that spoke to individual community members.

“I was listening to [“Love”], and it made me want to share this music with people,” he said. “It touches me so deeply that I’d like to bring that to other people.”

Members’ stories connected to specific pieces of music are a key part of the sharing sessions.

“The concept of telling your story, that’s what we really want to do,” Woodard said. “I learned that from a fellow YBCD mediator who advised me about this program, [Religious and Spiritual Life Affiliate] Meeko Israel— [he told me] that telling each other stories needs to be part of it because that’s the way we can really reach each other.”

College senior Chloe Falkenheim agrees.

“It’s very refreshing to talk about music in terms of how it connects to us personally, which is different from a lot of academic discussions in classrooms here,” she wrote in an email to the Review.

Ombudsperson Kimberly Jackson Davidson credits Woodard’s goals with the program’s success so far, including the decision to shift from books to music.

“As the final plans to launch a small scale pilot of what would have been One Book, One Oberlin, Griffin proposed

that we consider shifting to music instead,” Davidson wrote in an email to the Review. “I believe this suggestion on his part was motivated by cautions that were being expressed about the ability of a book discussion to be a draw in Oberlin, where there are so many book discussion groups. I think his own passion for music and conversations with his friends and mentors might also have prompted him to think in this direction. I really appreciated the fresh consideration of what can draw people together from disparate experiences to listen to and value one another.”

While different from other One City, One Book programs, Oberlin’s One Song, One City series represents one of many community-building programs that Davidson’s office and the YBCD have pursued in recent years.

“When I entered the office in the summer of 2016, Oberlin College had experienced 2–3 really challenging years in terms of campus climate,” Davidson wrote. “The nation was being rocked by tensions spurred by police violence, and we were enduring an acrimonious presidential election campaign. I kept hearing the question regarding … how can [the Center for Dialogue] be involved in improving communication in ways that are proactive and that do not wait for full-blown conflict to arise … As I hired student interns to work in the office, I engaged them in conversations about projects the Center might take on that would not distract from its mission of conflict resolution, initiatives that would make space for enhancing communication in our community.”

One Song, One City is one such initiative. Remaining meetings this year will take place at the Lewis House on April 27 and May 4, and at the Oberlin Public Library on May 18, all from 2-3 p.m.

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A r t s & C u lt u r e ON THE RECORD

Andrea Lawlor, English Professor, Author, and Poet Author Andrea Lawlor is a visiting lecturer of English at Mount Holyoke College and a fiction editor at Fence magazine. They published a chapbook of poems, Position Papers, in 2016 and their first novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, in 2017. A 2018 finalist for the Lambda Literary and CLMP Firecracker Awards, Paul tells the story of a queer shapeshifter as he makes his way across the United States, navigating a series of complicated relationships. Last week, Lawlor visited Oberlin for a reading and Q&A alongside fellow author Hilary Plum.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kabir Karamchandani Staff Writer

Andrea Lawlor

Could you talk a little bit about your book, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, and what you’ll be reading from it today?

To start with, it’s my first novel, and it is a coming-of-age story about a queer shapeshifter set in the 1990s in the U.S. It starts out in Iowa City and follows Paul the shapeshifter as he moves around, going to Provincetown, Chicago, San Francisco, and other places.

Tonight, I’ll read a selection of smaller bits that I would hope give an ambient sense of the book as a whole. The novel has some sections that are literary realism, or magic realism; fabulism is probably the word I would use.

There are sections of that, where you’re in our world with a little bit of magic, and then there are some other sections that are homages to queer writers, and sections that are fairy tales, or myths, or these sort of impossible contradictory origin stories. So I’ll try to give a taste of those modes rather than read from the beginning.

You’ve spoken in previous interviews about how the book is based in part on personal experience, even calling it a thinly-veiled memoir. How did you go about separating the character from yourself?

Well, a good trick for a fiction writer — if you’re writing thinly-veiled autobiographical material — is to change the character’s name. That makes it fiction, like magic! I gave Paul many, if not

Photo Courtesy of Andrea Lawlor

all, of my flaws, and then added some extra. I also tried to change certain biographical details that I then used as constraints. So having Paul grow up in Troy, New York — which is a place that is demographically similar to the place where I grew up, a factory town in Connecticut — forced me to make certain other kinds of changes. What would have been true at the time for Paul would not have been true at the time for me, at least in some ways. And so I tried to change certain things that would have ripple effects and eventually bring it more into the realm of pure fiction, which it is. It is fiction. I am not literally a shapeshifter.

I think we’re always writing ourselves into characters in fiction — that’s true for me, at any rate. And I’ve certainly given other characters bits of myself, as well. I had some struggles writing characters who were very different from me, like Jane. Or Diane — I got nothing there. But I tried to use my experience or observations of other people and, you know, being alive for a number of years, to write that.

Your book presents a nuanced portrayal of gender and sexuality; is this something you wish you saw more of?

Sure! I mean, what I’d really like to see more of is just other people’s takes on being queer, being trans — other words, other ways to think about gender and sexuality and the connections

and differences between the two.

I like to encounter things that tell me something I didn’t even know to ask for. Freshwater, by Akwaeke Emezi, for example — it’s a wild ride, but the material that that writer is working with is so different from anything in my experience. It’s exciting to read somebody else’s experience that is so radically different from mine — I like to see what other writers have up their sleeves.

When it comes to reading things that you didn’t even know you were looking for, do you think there’s a cost to writing material that sometimes is hard for readers to understand or empathize with? Or should writers go ahead and write books that are hard to understand but give readers new perspectives?

Definitely the latter. I think that we need a lot of books, and there’s definitely room for books that are more educational and walk readers through things that are unfamiliar to them in a really gentle way. And I think there’s room for books that say, “You get it or you don’t, everybody’s invited.” There’s also room for books that are only for a very particular audience, [and authors] that don’t care if anyone else reads them.

I’m more of a people-pleaser in that way. I’m more into that sort of radical openness, in terms of audience. But I also like the idea of centering a book around a queer or trans audience, readers who are sort of like, “Yeah, that’s my scene, that’s familiar,” or “That could be my world.”

You mentioned that Paul was in the works for a while. How

did it change over time?

I wrote what started out as a short story, a version that turned out to be the beginning of the book, in something like 2002. It changed a lot over the time I was working on it; I was never working straight through. It was a span of 15 years from beginning to end.

And in that time, there were years where I didn’t touch it at all. But I probably cut 30,000 words. I had some ideas for things that didn’t ever see the light of day. I didn’t know how to write a novel when I set out to write it, and I was afraid if I didn’t finish this novel, I’d never finish a novel, so I just clung to it. Over the last 15 or so years, the conversation around gender has changed in a lot of wonderful ways, in ways that have been really instructive and liberating personally for me, and also culturally. I actually thought when I finished it that people were done talking about gender, and I was very happy to find that that wasn’t the case.

Another thing that happened over the span of the 15 years was that it became historical fiction.

It started out as being about the very, very recent past — like, a few years ago — but then it became historical fiction and reached the point where I was asked how I got the historical details so right.

That was a real turning point for me, to see that was a constraint.

To see that I want to stay in this moment, to look at this span of a year and a half. So those were some of the big changes that happened for me, over time.

What advice would you have for young writers?

It’s hard to say. I think the general advice I have for young

writers is to figure out what a sustainable process is for you. Know that it may change over time, and try to cultivate it. There’s no right way to write, no right process.

There’s no right way to learn how to write, to write a novel, to finish something. You have to teach yourself who you are as a writer, and hopefully you’ll have some good guidance along the way. At the end of the day, it’s your writing, and it’s your life, and you have to trust your own instincts.

What are a few books you’d recommend to aspiring writers?

Especially to fiction writers, and people interested in writing things that are not necessarily literary realism, my favorite writing book right now is called [Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction.]

It’s mostly written by Jeff VanderMeer, with these wonderful essays and sidebars by other writers. He sort of centers on non-realist fiction, but he’s got some of the best ways to understand certain elements of fiction writing as a craft, like thinking about story arcs, different kinds of structures, thinking about characters, world building. His chapter on revision is one of my favorite teaching tools.

One of the best things we did in my graduate program was reverse outlines of novels we loved.

I did a reverse outline of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse that changed my life. And now I do reverse outlines all the time. If I love a book, try to take it apart and see how it works. I think you can do a lot of that teaching yourself by looking really closely at other people’s work that you love.

Illuminator Collective Collaborates with Students Students Release LGBTQ Zine Continued from page 10 His business partner, Jerry Greenfield, graduated from Oberlin in 1973. The Illuminator collective outfitted a van with a powerful projector and generator, using it for smaller display pieces on topics like Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks, the Guerilla Girls movement, and Trump’s Muslim travel ban. Today, they work with various large and small organizations and operate on a sliding scale cost model based on their clients’ financial status. Organization representatives Emily Allyn Anderson and Kyle Depew spoke at an informational panel on Friday at the Ward Art Building.

“One great strength of radical politics is the affinity group — that tight network of trust,” said Anderson.

“When you begin operating in these realms that are illegal and challenging to the dominant power systems, there are a lot of ways that things become dangerous.

We’ve built a network of trust that can be used to do many things, but projection is the dominant mode of expression we use.”

“I think it’s fascinating in New York City because it’s an environment that is so inescapably encased in advertisements,” said Depew at the panel. “There’s so much visual imagery in that place that I like playing with and taking it back. We see a blank wall as the peo-

12

ples’, even if it’s just for 10 minutes.”

Anderson spoke about the potential risks in projecting images onto public and private buildings.

“Doing this in New York City is stressful,” she said.

“We are always on the lookout for police, or people who are upset at what we are doing. On the day of the Trump inauguration, we had multiple people screaming at us and grabbing the projector. Nobody’s ever been assaulted doing this, though cops are a big thing too. We often get shut down by the NYPD. We get asked to move along. Now we try and project something as long as possible.”

“We start speaking to the cops, saying ‘Oh, it’s a student project’ and try to buy more time and delay them,” added Depew. “There are ways around authority.”

The student organizers added that it was incredibly inspiring to work with the Illuminator Collective and engage with an audience in such an innovative way.

“It was exciting to see our message be projected on the wall and to be able to share it with such an engaged audience,” the student organizers wrote. “We got word that students joined the organizations after seeing our projections, and that is the biggest success of the event.”

Continued from page 11 grant enabled them to overcome their hesitancy to engage with its culture and language.

“I think like a lot of Asian Americans feel a certain way about their language skills — there’s always a struggle to connect with your culture with or without language,” Kao said.

“I realize that having that Chinese skill is super important to connect with a new culture. As difficult as it may be to realize that. I really understood it this time because I was in Taiwan without my parents.” She went on to say that having a language in common made it easier to interview their Taiwanese subjects, put them at ease, and connect with them.

Lin also praised Shansi’s In-Asia Grant Program.

“Shansi has the opportunity to not only make really great global connections but also to explore identity yourself,” she said. She added that although one of the greatest challenges was overcoming her insecurity with her fluency in Chinese, the experience built her language skills and allowed her to see Taiwan in a fresh new way.

“There’s a lot of value in traveling and growing as a person from those experiences, specifically as members of an Asian diaspora,” Lin added.

Kao and Lin’s zine, Crystal Bridges, is now available to the public, at this link: https://crystalbridgeszine.wordpress.com/?ref=spelling.

Senior Dance Shows Highlight Non-Traditional Performances

Dancers rehearsed for Louise Wurzelbacher’s senior dance installation in Warner Main yesterday. For some innovative dance work this weekend, look no further than Wurzelbacher’s dual senior show with fellow College senior Celia Morris. The titles of the pieces alone provoke intrigue: Wurzelbacher’s Symbiotic Tendrils: An Organismal Installation is the first piece in the line-up, followed by Morris’ Post-Script: A Site-Specific Performance. The actual performances live up to their creative names. In Wurzelbacher’s piece, dancers will perform in Warner Main Space, but without traditional concert dance set-up and with large pieces of fabric adorning the space. She was only able to put up the installation less than a week ago.

“I had to try to imagine how everything would change with the installation and try to communicate my vision with my team,” Wurzelbacher wrote in an email to the Review. “So this consisted of drawings of the space, and getting familiar with my color scheme and the materiality of the cheesecloth as a prop or, more precisely, the tissue of the organism.”

After Wurzelbacher’s show, audience members will be walked to the fourth floor of Mudd Center where Morris’ show will take place. The site-specific piece, which will feature dancers outside in the glass rooftop courtyard, will present a unique opportunity for watching dance.

“Celia and I decided to have our shows together because we have worked closely together for our entire time at Oberlin, have [complementary] aesthetics and concepts for the way we want audience[s] to interact with our work, and did not want the logistical pressure of an entire night for each of us,” Wurzelbacher wrote.

The show will take place tonight and tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are currently sold out, but will be available at the door.

Text By Kate Fishman, Arts Editor Photo by Meg Parker, Photo Editor COMIC

CROSSWORD

The Oberlin Review | April 26, 2019

Clair Wang Staff Cartoonist

Organ Transplant

Alex Metz

The words in the circles have been swapped, transplanted if you will — the clues suggest the original words, but you have to switch the circled letters to complete the puzzle (25 across and 34 down, 5 down and 27 down).

ACROSS 1. A dryer sacrifice 5. Essential for the rain 10. Sunday before Easter 14. What you might ask a loved one to take 15. Friends who met online 16. “Der Hölle Rache” or “Nessun Dorma” 17. “On the double” 18. Pelvic exercises 19. Dad 20. What might elevate a Brit 21. “All ____ it should be” 22. What a drummer keeps 23. New York City time zone 24. Where a bear might live 25. Thin shard, especially of wood 26. Shock 28. A popular 1960s dance move/song 30. Hard to get to 32. Joplin genre 33. Exclusively 37. Tehran 38. Long for 40. ____ on a loom 41. Companion of pots 42. Ford Transit or Toyota Sienna 43. Pilot Earhart 45. Those who verify ages, maybe 47. Bones of the ankle 48. Many a murder mystery locale 51. Conspiracy 53. River in southeast of France 56. Building material made from mud, straw, grass 57. Controversial apple tree pesticide 58. ___ mortals 59. To look through, as a book 60. Taxonomologically puzzling creature native to the Democratic Republic

of the Congo 61. Human metabolic waste product high in Nitrogen 62. Water in Bolivia 63. Instruction, with lather 64. Dispatch 65. Spotted 66. Poker beginnings 67. Ash or TV DOWN 1. Notable Osiris possession 2. Desert haven 3. Builder 4. Held 5. What a precious metals investor might do.

6. Corpulent 7. Surgical procedure first performed by Joseph E. Murray 8. Foot digits 9. SpaceX competitor 10. Bounty or Brawny 11. Smell 12. Painter Filippo 13. One who works with stone 22. Conan network 24. Sound of Music country code 25. Those who sign treaties 27. Common chili ingredient 29. National confrontation 30. Tombstone headline 31. Epoch 34. Something trivially easy 35. 2022 Super Bowl 36. “Sure” 39. Organ with the body’s smallest bones 44. Thing that might welcome 46. Female deer 48. Plural of 19 Across 49. A proverb or saying 50. Wild 52. Momentary shortcoming 54. Star Trek Episode with “Gorn” 55. Prepared 57. ____ to; similar 58. Has to 60. Latin for “mouths”

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Sp ort s

Sean Kuo, College Junior, Fencer, Club Sport Athlete, and Pre-Med Student IN THE LOCKER ROOM

While “In The Locker Room” interviews often focus on members of the Oberlin community associated with varsity athletics, College junior Sean Kuo is a prime example of the flexibility and fun that can be found through participating in Oberlin’s many club sports and activities. Kuo’s friendly presence and love for exercise make regular appearances at nearly five clubs around campus; primarily the club fencing team, Club Aikido, and the Movimiento dance crew — all while he majors in Biology, pursues the premed track, and works as a course writing associate. With all this going on, it is no surprise that Kuo often finds himself floating between many different groups of people at Oberlin. In the midst of all this chaos, though, Kuo purely enjoys his extracurriculars and has a deep appreciation for the community they have fostered.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jane Agler, Sports Editor You are an active member of the fencing team — can you tell me a little bit about fencing and how you discovered it?

I started fencing last year during spring semester. I was at the ExCo fair and I saw the fencing ExCo. And I was like, “Wow, this scene is pretty cool.” So I signed up for it, and over the course of the ExCo I found out that I was actually not too bad and I had a lot of fun doing it — I loved the community. Eventually, I just became a member of the club. I continue to be a part of the club. I’m the secretary now and go to multiple tournaments. I didn’t really win that much, but it’s still a lot of fun.

So you learned how to fence only recently? Do you enjoy it?

Yeah, I do. I mean, come on. It’s just a big, fun time of people stabbing each other.

Maybe on your end, if you’re stabbing the other person.

It is a little bit more of a one-sided affair. So when I started learning to fence, it was a little bit confusing because fencing has three different weapons. There is the foil, épée, and the saber, all

of which have different rules.

In the ExCo we started with the foil, which is the one that’s most technical. There’s a certain target area that you have to hit and there’s a lot of different concepts involved.

There’s a lot of different rules involved as well. You need to understand [them] in order to understand the point system.

It’s not too hard to learn. But when you start getting more involved into it, you realize just how easy it is to mess up a call or see something in a different way than everyone else.

And how is it different than the other activities that you do? You play soccer, you dance, and you practice Aikido.

It definitely involves a lot of stabbing. And it’s very different because, in most of the sports, I’m not using other equipment besides my hands and my feet. In that aspect it just feels really different, but in a good way.

Is it a particularly emotional sport? Because you’re using aggressive, but simultaneously intimate, movements?

It’s pretty emotional, especially when it comes down to the last few touches before

Photo courtesy of OC Athletics

Sean Kuo.

the match is over. Especially in saber, you’ll see people screaming as soon as they get a touch [against their opponent] because it also is a way to convince the referee. It’s pretty emotional when you are just about to win.

Fencing could not be more different from dance. How did you fall into that?

So I actually just started getting into dance last summer. I went to a dance club at [the University of California at Santa Barbara]. [My friend] asked me if I wanted to go. So I was like, “Sure, why not? It’ll be interesting.”

And from there, obviously it was a steep learning curve for me because they’re all amazing dancers, but I thought it was really fun. It’s a really good way to connect with people, especially because the community around my area [loves dance]. It’s always funny when my neighbor invites me over and I break out the moves. He’s always like, “Wow, this kid is amazing.”

And eventually I came over here and I was exploring the dance clubs [at the Club Fair].

I heard music and was like, “Oh, that music sounds like salsa.” I see my friend over there and ask, “Hey Danny, is that salsa?” And he was like, “Yeah man,” and I just started moving to it.

I feel like in college a lot of people get stuck into the routine that they develop.

You are always looking for new things to do and explore. How do you break out of the confines of routine?

Well, I don’t know actually.

I just saw things that looked interesting to me. I’m a very whimsical person, so when I see something that looks interesting, I just want to fall right into it.

It sounds like there’s also a social aspect to your activities, or a nice community.

Yeah, I would say so. I got a lot of different friend groups from those. It really helps me connect with others because

I’m also not exactly the most social person outside of, maybe, a party. So yeah, it really helped me find the friends and people who have similar interests to me.

What is it like being a biology major and on the premed track in addition to everything you do outside of academics?

It’s very tough, especially with the things that I have to do every single week. I have fencing practice, I have dance practice. I have a lot of meetings because I’m the secretary of the fencing team now, and I have my own job as a course writing associate. It’s definitely harder to manage.

It’s not impossible. I’ve definitely seen people who do way more stuff. Shout-out to my friend Ritesh [Isuri, College junior]. It’s difficult to juggle. I’m sure it would be a lot easier if I dropped a couple of activities, but I’m just really stubborn. I think that’s maybe one of the reasons why I’m still able to go on this track.

White Players Cannot Be Complacent Amidst Racism

Continued from page 16

mitments. One of the most important is his declaration that any fan who wears his jersey should know where he stands on issues of race, privilege, and police brutality.

That connection is important in a sports world that generates billions of dollars of revenue annually and is increasingly dictated by the bottom line.

It also acknowledges that many outspoken athletes of color have already had their jerseys politicized, whether by choice or not.

For the most part, however, the rest of the piece remains somewhat surface-level. Korver’s main message is that white people need to sit back and listen — which is certainly true, but those moments of listening must also be followed by action. He opens the piece by writing about when his teammate, Thabo Sefolosha, was racially profiled

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by the NYPD in an incident that ended with officers breaking Sefolosha’s leg.

That was a powerful moment in Korver’s journey to confront his racial privilege and a perfect example of when more than listening — perhaps a public condemnation of the NYPD’s actions — could have been helpful.

Similarly, when Westbrook was taunted with racial slurs last month, it was Westbrook who was left to confront the fan himself. That’s another moment when a white player — one of Westbrook’s teammates or somebody on the opposing squad — could have helped address a racist incident headon, instead of leaving Westbrook to fend for himself and be criticized for it in the media. In actuality, the ability to defend a teammate should not be dictated by race. Westbrook’s situation warranted support from anyone, but white players should not believe they

are incapable of intervening when a fellow teammate is being brutalized by a spectator, simply due to their inability to understand their counterpart’s experiences as a person of color.

Still, there’s a huge conversation to be had about race and the role of white athletes in the NBA and in basketball more broadly, and Korver’s piece is an important starting point. The conversation needs to continue — and not just on ESPN or in the context of professional hoops. This is a piece that coaches need to bring into high school locker rooms. They need to talk about it with young athletes as early as middle school.

I think back to my own high school team; an environment where we all idolized Portland Trail Blazers heroes like Brandon Roy and Damian Lillard — and where a few of my white teammates felt comfortable using the

n-word in the locker room until the issue was brought to a dean.

I don’t know whether Korver’s piece would have had an impact on those teammates or not. I do know that when white high school athletes idolize Black athletes and still use the n-word in their own athletic spaces, there is a racist, exploitative tension that needs to be identified, drawn out, and addressed.

That tension has a long history in basketball, dating back to before Robertson’s playing days. White athletes and fans should have called it out a long time ago, but we ignored it in favor of maintaining our cultural mythology of sports as an egalitarian meeting ground somehow unsoiled by the outside world’s prejudices.

Kyle Korver is opening this conversation, but there is much more that needs to be explored. We need to take advantage of this opportunity.

Pole Vaulter Sarah Voit Finds Success in Her Very First Season Alexis Dill Sports Editor At the Case Western Reserve University Invitational last Saturday, first-year pole vaulter Sarah Voit cleared 11’-03.75” to win the event — something she has done at seven of the 11 meets she has competed at during her collegiate career. With two school records and one North Coast Athletic Conference Championship already under her belt, Voit is favored to win the Outdoor NCAC Championship next weekend at Kenyon College.

However, Voit’s sights are set even higher. With just four weekends of competition left, she is hoping to qualify for the NCAA Championships, which will take place May 23–25 at the SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio.

According to Voit, qualifying for nationals would be the icing on the cake of what has been a spectacular rookie season. She was named Athlete of the Week during the week of Feb. 25, when she broke the school indoor record at the NCAC Last Chance Meet by clearing 12’-01.50” — the best performance in the conference, the third best in the region, and the 15th best in Division III. At the conclusion of the indoor season, Voit earned U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association All-Great Lakes Region honors — an accolade only the top five individuals in each event from each region receive.

She was again named Athlete of the Week for the week of April 9, when she broke the outdoor school record at the Bob Kahn Invite by clearing 12’-01.50”, topping teammate and College junior Grace Finney’s career-best mark of 12’-00.00”. That jump was the best in the conference and

10th best in the country at the time.

However, Voit claims she is unconcerned with records and accolades.

“I’m not really motivated by external things,” she said. “I’m always just focused on self-improvement. I can always keep improving.”

Voit hasn’t beaten her personal-record leap of 12’-03” yet, which she cleared during her senior year of high school — her best performance so far at Oberlin has been 12’-01.5”. She said she doesn’t know what specifically she will need to clear in order to qualify for nationals yet, but if she PRs, she should make it.

“My coach [Ray Harris] says that I should shoot for 12’ — 07,” Voit said. “I know that I can get there, and it’s in the back of my mind every single day.”

Voit credits both her coach and her teammates for keeping her motivated despite already having accomplished so much. Finney, who was the NCAC Outdoor Champion last year, has been pushing Voit to be her best all year long.

“Before [Finney] came back [for the indoor season], I would run maybe one lap on the indoor track for warm-up,” Voit said.

“Then [Finney] got here and was like, ‘I’m running four laps. I’m doing extra lifts. I’m pushing myself every single day.’ She takes practice very seriously and is a really good teammate who makes us all better.”

Finney said that Voit has inspired her in a similar way.

“I’ve been so impressed by how quickly [Voit] adjusted to college track,” she said.

“She carries herself and competes like a seasoned athlete, which is extremely difficult as a first-year. I’m very glad she chose to come to Oberlin, because after her visit,

we were positive she wouldn’t.”

Although a native of Cincinnati, Voit said she originally wanted to attend a big school in a big city, outside of Ohio.

“I ended up in the opposite place, which is really interesting,” Voit said. “I applied to only giant schools, and my parents said, ‘Maybe you should apply to one school that’s a little different, just in case,’ and so I applied to Oberlin. As time went on, it became an increasingly better option.”

Voit said having the ability to succeed in the classroom and have a life outside of track appealed to her, but, of course, the dominance and camaraderie of Oberlin’s track and field team is what really drew her in.

She said that she and the other young pole vaulters call College senior and pole vaulting captain Jahkeem Wheatley their mother duck because they always follow him around. But when Wheatley isn’t around, Finney is like their older sister.

The pole vaulters have great chemistry, regularly attending brunch together and cooking together.

According to Voit, the closeness of the pole vaulters, but also the entirety of the team, is what makes the track and field program at Oberlin so successful.

“The team culture is a big reason why we’ve been so dominant,” she said. “We really do support each other and love each other and make an effort to help one another out. The coaches emphasize this as well by never putting us down or yelling at us. It’s just a really positive environment.”

With a long career ahead of her and plenty of time to work toward some lofty goals, Voit said she just wants to continue chasing PRs. Voit already has near-perfect

College first-year and pole vaulter Sarah Voit is having a spectacular rookie season with two school records and a North Coast Athletic Conference Championship under her belt.

Photo courtesy of OC Athletics

form — something that being a gymnast for 15 years helped with — but said there are minor tweaks she can make to her technique. For example, she’s focusing on rocking back in her swing more, so that when the pole unbends, she can get more air under her When an athlete accomplishes so much so early on, it’s natural to wonder how much better they can get. Voit, however, insists that the best is yet to come.

“I don’t really know how much higher I can jump, but I definitely want to be able to say I cleared 13 feet at some point in my career,” she said. “I just want to keep pushing and see how much better I can get.”

OC Athletics Senior Day Photo Series Balancing academics, athletics, and other extracurriculars at an elite institution like Oberlin is a challenge that very few student-athletes manage to tackle for all four years. Last weekend, four different varsity teams at Oberlin honored their seniors and celebrated the contributions they have made in the classroom, in the community, and on their respective field or court over the past four years.

The softball team honored its trio of seniors — Kat Ladouceur, Hannah Rasmussen, and Emma Downing — on Saturday with a celebratory lunch in the Knowlton Athletics Complex and at Culhane Field before their doubleheader with the Kenyon College Ladies Wednesday. The Yeowomen earned a split, running their conference win total to four.

Photos courtesy of OC Athletics Text couresty of Alexis Dill, Sports Editor

The women’s lacrosse team enjoyed a 14–1 victory over the Hiram College Terriers on Saturday. Seniors Sabrina Deleonibus, Hayley Drapkin, Sydney Allen, Jenna Butler, and Siena Marcelle were honored before the game and celebrated with a late lunch afterward.

The Oberlin Review | April 26, 2019

The men’s tennis team honored seniors Elias Duthinh and Matthew Gittings before their matchup with the Allegheny College Gators Saturday, in which the Yeomen cruised to a 9–0 victory. Gittings went 2–0 on the day in the sixth position of singles play.

The men’s lacrosse team honored seniors Michael Pruchnicki, Jay Messina, Elie Small, Jake Parentis, Dan Nerenhausen, John Parks, Michael Miller, and Will Prangley before the opening face-off against the College of Wooster Fighting Scots Saturday. After a hard-fought game, they lost by just one goal.

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April 26, 2019

SPORTS established 1874

Volume 147, Number 21

Kyle Korver Calls on White Athletes to Recognize Their Privilege Nathan Carpenter Editor-in-Chief

As many of the spring sports teams celebrated Senior Day last weekend, College senior and former field hockey player Julie Schreiber took some time to reflect on her four-year career for the Yeowomen.

Photo Courtesy of OC Athletics

Reflections From a Graduating Four-Year Student-Athlete Julie Schreiber Senior Staff Writer

My four years as a student-athlete at Oberlin have been commemorated generously. In addition to a celebratory Senior Day, I developed as an individual with a community of athletes who turned a field hockey team into a family. The many hours I’ve spent with this team will remain some of my fondest college memories for the rest of my life.

But to recognize my athletic career only on the field feels a bit incomplete; so many of my Oberlin athletic experiences actually took place in the newsroom.

My dad is a sports writer — anyone who talks to me for more than 10 minutes will hear me bring this up — and he raised my twin sister and me with a steadfast commitment to sports, specifically baseball. But he did so through unconventional means. I remember sitting in the stands at Shea Stadium, watching the New York Mets lose, while my dad shared quirky anecdotes with me and my sister about each player who came up to bat. More than statistics like earned runs or batting averages, the topics my dad was most eager to discuss were the stories of players who came from tough backgrounds; the origins behind the teammates’ iconic nicknames, handshakes, and dances; and even the scandals of players who were in trouble with the law for peeing outside a bar or showing up to practice hungover. Every player has a story, and those stories create the colorful character and culture of the team, as well as that of the sport.

At a glance, Oberlin may not seem like an interesting place to write about sports. When one thinks of Oberlin, the images conjured are most likely those of protests, co-ops, and barefoot cyclists. Varsity sports and the traditional state-

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school stereotypes associated with them feel out of place here. But in a way, it is Oberlin’s very reluctance to center athletics as a major attraction for incoming students that has drawn such a diverse and interesting athletic community.

While the records of most Oberlin sports teams are historically not something to brag about, compelling stories about the College’s athletes and sports programs have never been difficult to uncover. Just this year, I’ve been able to write stories about famous athletes returning to their games after injuries, Oberlin alumni athletes, social movements taking place on courts and fields both on campus and nationwide — all stories that would interest anyone, not just athletes or sports fans.

A frequent topic of conversation on Oberlin’s campus is that of the infamous “divide” between North Campus, where athletes tend to reside alongside athletic facilities and STEM buildings, and South Campus, home to more theme and program housing, and arts and humanities buildings.

Students on one end of campus often feel isolated from the other end, and while this is frequently a hot topic on campus, during my Oberlin tenure, no reasonable solution has emerged to bridge these two factions of one community.

As I prepare to leave Oberlin and reflect on the ways I’ve witnessed different social circles come together, the common thread has been the power of communication — specifically through conversation, publications, and platforms to share stories. There’s no saying exactly how the two ends of campus can foster a greater sense of togetherness, but my experiences make me certain that the sports section of this student-run newspaper, with writers who use sports as a launch pad to reach any audience that wants to hear a good story, is a great place to start.

Americans have a cultural fascination with the idea that sports are a meritocracy, where the only ingredients for success are physical prowess and a burning will to win.

This mythology is strong within basketball culture, as legends like Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and others have become revered for their aggression, unwavering ambition, and exceptional work ethic.

What this narrative erases, however, is that athletes are people who face many of the same barriers as the rest of us — both physical and social. Athletes of color, for example, face racist people and structures, as do other people of color — a fact that is not discussed often enough at both amateur and professional levels within the world of sports.

Take Hall of Fame point guard Oscar Robertson. We remember him primarily as the first player in NBA history to average a triple-double for an entire season in 1962 — and only one of two NBA players to have ever averaged a triple-double at all, the other being Russell Westbrook.

What we discuss less, however, is the ways Robertson had to overcome racism at every step of his playing career, from high school to the NBA, and how such incidents profoundly shaped his perspective on sports and life.

To put it simply, race mattered in Robertson’s career, as it has in the careers of so many other basketball players of color. But we often erase that reality because it complicates the narrative we want to build about Robertson; we want him to be someone who pushed the sport forward, who had that killer instinct and determination to win.

While he undoubtedly pushed the sport forward, we don’t want to acknowledge that he did so despite barriers intentionally put in his path by people who wanted to hold him back because of the color of his skin.

Similarly, Hall-of-Famer and retired Los Angeles Lakers point guard Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. is remembered most for his dazzling smile, flashy passes, and unlikely friendship with white frenemy Larry Bird. We don’t talk about the racialized backlash he received after announcing to the world that he was HIV positive — and his friendship with Bird is often reduced to a simple story of how basketball pushes athletes to overcome differences, including racial ones.

It would be nice to think that all of this is firmly in the past and that basketball has come a long way. And yet, it was during a game just last month when point guard Russell Westbrook was mocked with racial slurs by a fan watching the Oklahoma City Thunder take on the Utah Jazz, an experience Robertson had to deal with countless times throughout his career.

That incident was part of what moved Utah Jazz wing Kyle Korver, one of the preeminent three-point shooters in NBA history, to publish a piece called “Privileged” in The Players’ Tribune, an online publication launched in 2014 by MLB Hall-of-Famer Derek Jeter.

The Tribune’s mission is, in part, to help bridge the gap between famous athletes and fans, to humanize the players we idolize and mythologize in so many ways. Part of that work is acknowledging that athletes — and their performance — are impacted on a daily basis by so much more than their physical responsibilities.

At its core, Korver’s piece — as implied by the headline — focuses on what it means to be a white athlete in a predominantly Black league. He acknowledges that his teammates of color have a remarkably different experience than he does, both on and off the court, and implores other white people to both identify racist incidents when they occur and to sit back and follow the lead of people of color in deciding how to address them.

In the piece, Korver makes several key points and comSee White, page 14