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Obama to Host Higher Ed Summit Continued from page 2 $60,000 dollars. It’s kind of like, why do BMW and Lexus all cost about the same?” Reddy said. Chermonte explained that most of the money goes to faculty first, and then student aid. “I think it goes to the teaching salaries. In the budget of the College, human personnel is the largest percentage; the second largest is financial aid. Colleges all over the country are evaluating faculty and staffing and programs, and are seeing how close to the core of the mission of the institution they are,” she said. “Some liberal arts colleges are thinking about merging, and eliminating certain programs that aren’t close to its core. We’re always thinking about this, every day,” Chermonte said. Although the cost of Oberlin is unlikely to drop, Reddy cited the value of the College as most important. “This is a wonderful place. I don’t think it tries to be an opulent place. We’re always trying to increase its value through the faculty and the experience,” Reddy said. Currently, no new plans have been announced to address the financial issues on campus.
The Oberlin Review, December 13, 2013
Transfers Experience Anxiety, Isolation Continued from page 2 entation] so much.” Conservatory first-year Voice major Juliana Zara, a transfer from University of California, Irvine, who is two years older than most of her peers, reflected back on Orientation as “isolating and silencing for a transfer student.” Eric Estes, vice president and dean of students, Kathryn Stuart, dean of studies, and President Krislov all cited the transfer pizza dinner as an opportunity for these students to get acquainted and noted the presence of a transfer student association. Many of the transfer students available for comment had no knowledge of this transfer student association, and a few doubted its existence altogether. The pizza dinner, according to College junior Sarah Epstein, was “just awkward and none of the transfers actually want[ed] to be with each other.” Dean Estes was quick to qualify transfer hall as a “housing option … to provide additional transition support and community for those who are interested.” Yet every student interviewed who lived on transfer hall gave a mixed, if not entirely negative, review of their experience there. The loudest complaint was the hall’s location in Langston Hall — often referred to as North — for its location at the far north end of campus. Langston houses more than just the transfers, but also classics and sci-fi theme halls. Quigley noted that, unlike the themed halls, “we were put together not because of a passion but because of our odd situation.” Epstein also questioned the value of transfer hall.
“It’s a stupid idea,” she said. “Why would you put all the people who don’t know anyone else and who had a bad time at their previous colleges in the same space? It’s like a recipe for disaster. You’re like, ‘I’m going to get all these not-motivated individuals together who don’t know anything about this school, and I’m going to isolate them in this wing of North,’ which is so far from anything else. You can’t interact with other people on your floor.” Even Wonderly, who “loved” living on transfer hall, admitted that, “sometimes being on transfer hall made it harder to go out and make friends that weren’t transfers though.” The isolating impact of transfer hall informs the adjustment period for many of these students. For College junior Isaac Nicholas, the downsides of his experience in North bled into his second year at Oberlin. “The after-effects of only knowing transfers and then not living next to them made this year weird, not better,” said Nicholas. Rosen added that living on transfer hall made him question his decision to change colleges. He often finds himself “wondering what the hell I’m doing here, did I make the right decision, will I ever have real friends and not friends that I’m making out of necessity.” College sophomore Shelby Lorman, who is finishing up her first semester at Oberlin, said that she too questioned her decision “all the time.” Lorman lamented the fact that she did not know that co-ops were a “viable option” for transfers. She added that joining one would have been a better solution than transfer hall. Epstein added that making co-ops more acces-
sible and welcoming for students getting off the OSCA waitlist mid-semester would constitute a solid next step. Both students hope to see more transfers in smaller themed housing such as the language houses, where students selfselect for a niche community. College sophomore and OSCAn Ari Robin was one of the few who expressed satisfaction with the social aspects of Oberlin, but she also recognized that her experience was an exception, not the rule. “I think my experience is definitely pretty atypical, but I think I just got lucky in that sense,” she said. “I’m definitely glad about my choice to live in a co-op, specifically for the community, because it generates a community obviously more than the residence halls do, so I think that’s really helped me.” On the whole, the bonding opportunities of transfer hall do not much mitigate the social discomfort of Orientation, and many transfer students described their place in the awkward “social limbo” between class years. “I think the worst thing about being a transfer student is that you’re in this social limbo between first-year and non-first-year,” said Zara. “You don’t really know how to define yourself. Especially in my case, when people ask me, ‘What year are you,’ you can’t really say because you don’t know. I think socially it’s a little bit isolating.” Robin was able to avoid that social limbo by pretending she was a firstyear, but most other students referenced the in-between discomfort of being a transfer. “[Transferring is] a really strange process; it’s like watching other people go to college and not feeling like you’re
going to college with them,” Lorman said. “It’s like really living a parallel life to people who exist on this campus already, especially at such an insular school, where it’s really small and so much of people’s relationships is based on just what they know about each other from past events.” Krislov was surprised to hear that the transfer experience is often tough, both socially and emotionally. “I think compared to other schools, the lines between class [years] are much more fluid,” he said. By a similar token, Wonderly explained that she was pleased that nobody seemed to actively judge her for being a transfer. “That at least was a good thing,” she said. Given the diverse make-up and needs of the incoming transfers, suggestions for change were also mixed. Most students concluded that something had to be done with the specific objective of guiding transfer students. College senior Lucien Swetschinski explained that the only transfer go-to person in the administration was part of the registrar, already a source of transfer students’ frustrations. Quigley also proposed the idea of a “transfer advisor,” while Swetschinski and Rosen noted the impact of older transfer students’ advice. Quigley and Krislov both noted that the transfer experience may be universally difficult. There is more, however, to a successful transfer adjustment than preferring Oberlin to their former schools: The struggle of transfer students seems to merit more than a pizza dinner, an isolating dorm and “all the resources that other students have access to,” as Krislov put it.
Activist Coalition Creates Symbol of Oppressive Barriers Continued from page 1
and people have been coming together around these issues already,” said Chatha. Planning began months ago, but the construction of the panels took only one week. The wall was constructed in collaboration with the Bike Co-op, which offered its space to the coalition. The materials for the wall, Chatha notes, contain “stories of the greater Cleveland area and economic barriers [and] boundaries. The physical panels themselves come from demolished foreclosed houses in Cleveland, and they were donated to us by the organization Reclaimed Cleveland.” The activists demonstrated outside Mudd because of its central location, high visibility and unavoidability. “In addition to logistics, there was a lot of talk about how to make it an accessible demonstration to both people on the north side and the south side of
campus, because that’s a type of barrier that we’re all familiar with,” added College junior Joelle Lingat. College junior Kaela Sanborn-Hum spoke on one of the demonstration’s main intentions, which was to highlight the different manifestations of walls, both campus- and world-wide. “There’s a unifying aspect in how borders and walls have separated and harmed communities here at the College but also beyond. This includes the U.S.-Mexico national border, prison walls and walls constructed to prevent people migrating between the Palestinian territories and Israel,” said Sanborn-Hum. Oberlin’s own wall action follows similar protests at universities across the United States. Mock walls have been built at Brown University, University of New Mexico, University of Massachusetts Amherst and University of Arizona. Organizers of Oberlin’s wall were in touch with students of the
University of Arizona, Brown and the City University of New York system to confer about the creation of their own mock wall. The wall represented not only physical barriers, but symbolic ones as well. For Lingat, this demonstration has been a long time coming. “There are mental, emotional [and] societal barriers that exist that we’ve all faced throughout our experiences both here at Oberlin College and outside of that. It’s not something that just came out of nowhere, it’s something that’s been part of our lives for years and it’s coming to a point where we are at a place where we can mobilize on it and share experiences with others,” she said. Another expression of shared resistance came in the form of interviews, poetry and music. College senior Ariel Goodman, who recorded the audio segments, notes that there are a vari-
ety of ways in which people confront and are confronted by walls in their lives. “People talked about borders as everything from the barriers that we face in attempting to attend a higher learning institution like Oberlin to the barriers that police our bodies into specific gender identities that perhaps we don’t identify with to the barriers of class, race and mobility and immobility.” The audio blasted across Wilder Bowl during the demonstration. Demonstrators also called attention to barriers between Oberlin students and the administration. Organizers of the wall action hoped to inform and educate students about issues on campus before Thursday’s Trustee meeting. “We are hoping to bring attention to those demands once more … to make sure that people get to reflect on that or realize what work has been put in this semester,” explained College ju-
nior Ana Robelo. In addition to their critique of the many systems of oppression that exist in Oberlin and elsewhere, those who stood along the wall sought to imagine a better world. Robelo suggested ways for students to be more involved in future demonstrations. “These things are happening even when there isn’t this physical action because they’re always happening,” said Robelo. “There are many opportunities on this campus to do that or to start that process. Keeping an eye out for events, speakers, trainings, getting involved with the student groups that work towards these issues and dismantling systems of oppression. Getting involved at that work is going to greatly change your perspective on what happens at this institution. Entering those spaces, talking to those people and not shying away from confronting those things.”
OSCA Reviews Partnership with UNAG, Allocation of Funds Continued from page 1 established a contract with the UNAG, this year will be focused on setting up guidelines with them. The partnership is supposed to be an exchange, so technically every other year we go to them and then they come to us, ” Woodmansee said. “That hasn’t worked out in the past, but I hope we can come to some understanding.” In the past, support for the Nicaragua Sister Partnership has been minimal. This year, however, Robelo and Woodmansee taught an ExCo to educate those who were interested on key components of the trip, such as instilling ideals of solidarity.
“I took the ExCo without knowing anything about the organization,” College first-year Ashley Suarez and delegate member said. “It wasn’t until we had readings and conversations that I truly became invested in this partnership.” According to the delegates, the ExCo was very beneficial for their personal preparation. “We do a lot of reading before we leave. Going in with those conversations and questions helps us think,” Robelo said. “Achieving solidarity is hard, but by understanding that it is a process and being humble and patient leads to genuine conversations and reflections.” Each year, all the co-ops on campus elect a representative to be on the committee and from
that committee five people are chosen as delegates. This year eight people applied and five were chosen: Suarez, College sophomore Claire Ciraolo, double-degree junior Arianna Gil and Robelo and Woodmansee, who will both be leading the group. “I went my freshman year and it has been one of the most important things I have done,” Woodmansee said. “It broadened my views and changed my perspective on everything.” Suarez expressed similar enthusiasm. “This organization is so different from any other organization. It is a direct partnership with the UNAG. We are not just doing community service and coming back, we are going to build solidarity,”
she said. “It’s not going to be a vacation, but rather a time to have meaningful conversations and dialogue between us and the UNAG.” Robelo believes that the experience gained from being a delegate extends beyond the month spent in Nicaragua. “This partnership was one of the contributing factors to why I chose Oberlin. I am Nicaraguan and lived there till I was nine years old. Going back and seeing my family was amazing. The personal connections I made and the difference I made in the community we went to is not something that I forgot when I came back home. Being a part of this partnership commits you to the rest of your Oberlin career.”