Administration Introduces Activism Oversight Initiatives 2017–Present

Continued from page 1 the lay-off.

The Division of Student Life assembled a Rapid Response Team, which made its debut at one of the ensuing protests.

At the time of its rollout, Rapid Response Team Co-Chair and Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Student Conduct and Community Standards Thom Julian expressed the team’s motives in the article “Rapid Response Team Debuts at UAWRelated Protests” The Oberlin Review, Feb. 28, 2020.

“The purpose is really of the team to support students in their right to express their … freedom of speech, to make sure that students are aware of campus policies, and to support that process from a neutral perspective,” Julian said. “The members of this team are not supposed to have an opinion, necessarily, when they’re assisting and supporting students when it comes to whether they agree or disagree with the message of the student activists; it’s really just to support the students as students.”

When the team was made aware of student protests, demonstrations, or other forms of collective activism, its protocol was to reach out to organizers and ensure that they were aware of campus policies. The team would then station itself at the event in order to monitor and de-escalate it, or defer to Campus Safety Officers if needed.

Then-Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo told the Review that the Rapid Response Team’s existence was not specifically inspired by the UAW-related protest activity, but by a broader history of student activism.

“It was put together in response to some of the challenges around student protest and demonstration in the past,” Raimondo said. “I’m thinking about the events at Gibson’s; I’m also thinking about some of the protests that occurred around the ABUSUA demands. … We wanted [to get] something up and running this semester, I think with the knowledge that spring is a time when typically there’s something that’s going on. But [creating the team] was not specifically driven by the outsourcing announcement.”

Student Organizers’ Request to Negotiate with Board of Trustees Denied (2022)

In early October of last year, at a faculty teach-in event organized to protest the impending vote on the Board of Trustees’ proposed bylaw amendments, student activists were denied an audience with the board. Dean of Students Karen Goff eventually staged a meeting between protestors, who were stationed outside of the Center for Engaged Liberal Arts, and Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees Lillie Edwards, OC ’75. Student attempts both to enter CELA and to speak with Canavan were denied.

General Counsel Sessions (2023)

On April 27, Assistant General Counsel for the College Justin Younker led a session titled “Oberlin & Me: When am I Oberlin, and why does it matter?”

“This session will focus on the intersection of action and responsibility,” the event description read. “We will explore a variety of topics, such as specific actions that could be attributable to the College (including social media and other speech), implications of actions taken pursuant to one’s employment, and the creation of obligations on behalf of the College. We will also consider the College’s procedures regarding protests and student speech.”

With faculty and staff present, this session covered vicarious liability, when College employees are and are not agents of the College, and social media usage. Younker asked attendees to consider, in various case studies, when the College may be liable for the actions of its employees.

Ava Miller Senior Staff Writer

India to Pass China This Week as World’s Most Populous Nation, According to UN

According to projections by the United Nations, India is poised to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation by the end of this month. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs released a statement saying: “By the end of this month, India’s population is expected to reach 1,425,775,850 people, matching and then surpassing the population of mainland China.” Executive director of Population Foundation of India

Poonam Muttreja said, “We have also reduced our population growth and reached population stabilization faster than we had imagined, and it will continue to slow down as long as we stay on the right track. So I don’t think there’s any need for alarm.”

President Biden Announces 2024 Re-Election Bid

In a video announcement on Tuesday, President Joe Biden began his re-election campaign. In the video, Biden focused on a theme of freedom, stating: “Every generation of Americans has faced a moment when they’ve had to defend democracy, stand up for our personal freedoms, stand up for our right to vote and our civil rights. And this is our moment.” Currently, 56 percent of voters disapprove of Biden, dissatisfied with his handling of nearly all major issues such as the economy and immigration.

WHO Warns of “Biological Risk” After Fighters Seize Laboratory in Sudan

On April 25, one of the fighting parties in Sudan took over a laboratory in Sudan’s capital of Khartoum. The World Health Organization said there’s a “high risk of biological hazard.” Fighting began between the Sudanese armed forces and Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries on April 15. While WHO has declined to specify which side overtook the facility, there is clarification on the consequences. The occupying force has kicked out all laboratory technicians, making it impossible to manage stored biological materials. The laboratory contains isolates of polio, measles, and cholera. UN officials have labeled this as an “extremely dangerous” development.

Japanese Company Attempts

Moon Landing

Japanese company ispace aimed to be the first private company to successfully land a robot on the moon this week. The robot, named Hakuto-R, carried two tiny rovers and deployed a larger wheeled rover. Live animation showed the spacecraft coming as close as 295 feet (89 m) from the lunar surface. However, around 12:40 p.m. (EST) on Tuesday, communication was lost with the lunar lander. ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada commented: “We have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface.” The company has stated that the lander most likely crashed.

Ukraine Calls on World to Pressure Russia Over Black Sea Grain Deal

This past week, Ukraine called for global powers to pressure Russia to agree to the renewal of the Black Sea grain deal. The deal will expire on May 18 if not supported by Russia. The deal was arranged by Türkiye and the UN this past July to provide Ukraine with resumption of grain exports from Black Sea ports. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhail Podolyak commented that a way forward can only succeed “if the international community collectively pressures Russia.”

OUI Navigates Rebuilding Group Identity and College Relations

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Isaac

Production Manager

Obies for Undocumented

Inclusion has grown its public presence in recent years through outward-facing events, some of which — like Immigrant Narratives Night and the El Centro Volunteer Initiative Art Gala — have seen significant turnout from members of the Oberlin community. However, the organization’s mission of securing safety, comfort, and equal opportunity for undocumented Oberlin students is tied to the lessvisible push for internal change within the College, which involves collaborating with administration to make resources for undocumented students easily accessible and establishing norms around their treatment.

According to College secondyear and OUI board member Lily Baeza, undocumented students face unique difficulties. Professional development training for students may not always offer a roadmap for individuals who don’t have work authorization and can only receive payment via nonemployment stipends for jobs secured through the College — which can’t pay them for contracted work because the College keeps a record of students’ undocumented status. Similarly, while U.S. citizens may receive information on filling out the FAFSA, undocumented students who don’t qualify for federal student aid turn to each other for guidance in filling out their annual financial aid forms, which is a separate process entirely.

“The biggest hurdle, I feel like, is getting here,” Baeza said. “And once you’re here, it’s just trying to survive. You don’t have a way to legally work, so how are you going to get money? And on campus, one of the only ways to get money as an undocumented student is through [the Bonner Scholars Program], cause they pay through stipend … if you don’t have Bonner, what are you going to do for work?”

After they graduate, undocumented students also face a different reality than their documented classmates.

“A lot of people are excited to graduate, but I feel like as an undocumented student, once you graduate, you’re done,” Baeza said. “Because you have your degree, you have all this knowledge, you have experience, you can do the jobs, but you don’t have citizenship, which is what a lot of jobs require.”

OUI hosts fundraisers throughout the year, like the Pajama Solidarity Walk, to contribute to the OUI fund, which was created to alleviate the financial burden carried by undocumented students with severely restricted employment opportunities. But before the current iteration of the fund was created, OUI raised $50,000 toward an undocumented student fund, which was endowed by the College in 2016 to ensure its stability and longevity. It was officially titled the DREAM Endowed Fund for Undocumented Students. However, with its new designation as a scholarship, the fund lost much of its usefulness, according to student recipients.

“It can only be used for tuition, which is an issue, because many undocumented students already have full tuition scholarships,” College fourthyear and OUI board member Minerva Macarrulla said. “It was envisioned as a fund that could be used for anything, like for emergency funding, for room and board costs, for DACA renewals. … So, we were really frustrated with the fund. And also, there’s no way to apply to it. We have one student who, at one point, saw on her bill that she was given the fund, and it had no impact on how much she was paying at all.”

In the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, OUI lost a point of connection with the Multicultural Resource Center after a restructuring eliminated community coordinator positions. Community coordinators, who often worked with identity groups that corresponded with their own, would act as channels between student organizers and faculty members.

“The capacity for leadership development in student organizations, the capacity for institutional memory in student organizations, was incredible, because their role was literally to pass down that institutional memory — to train people who were leading student organizations to be better leaders, to mediate conflicts between people in these organizations and just really to honor the work that people who lead marginalized student organizations do,” Macarrulla said.

This year, OUI has made significant headway in rebuilding relationships with administrative offices across campus. In regular meetings with the MRC, OUI board members have been developing an UndocuAlly training tailored toward faculty and staff, to equip them to provide resources for undocumented students, even in the form of information.

“We’ve been working a lot with [Vilmarie Perez, assistant director for career readiness at the Office of Career Exploration and Development],” Baeza said. “She’s been great. She’s helped us figure out summer experiences, summer funding — anytime she finds out about an internship or something, she always emails us about that. She’s also been present at most of our meetings, so even her advocating for us a lot has been great.”

OUI’s willingness to take initiative in establishing and maintaining administrative contacts, as well as occupying a more visible role on campus, is a fairly recent development within the organization.

“We’ve changed OUI a lot in our time,” Macarrulla said. “It used to be very secretive … there was a really, really big emphasis on confidentiality. And I don’t think that we’ve lost the emphasis on confidentiality where it really matters. Like, we never ask anyone to disclose their status at OUI meetings.”

Now, the organization’s presence on campus is difficult to miss, with events publicized on bulletin boards, through posts on social media, and College publications. The change was catalyzed by a meeting staged between OUI board members and a fellow organizer for undocumented students operating on a different campus. When OUI members expressed their hesitancy in publicizing an UndocuChill session exclusively targeted toward undocumented students, their contact suggested a radical reorientation.

“He said, ‘Invisibility is just damaging’,” Macarrulla said. “He really emphasized the power of visibility in building support for undocumented students, and the fact that something always could happen — but better that you be visible as a campus organization and have something bad happen to you, than have no one know that you exist and have something bad happen to you. Because then you can draw on more of a network of support.”

OUI has not only increased its visibility but has also leaned into the intersections between their organization and other identitybased student groups, to broaden their community and share resources between organizations working toward mutual goals.

“I think it’s just us realizing that if, as identity orgs and as POC orgs, we don’t support each other, nobody else will,” Baeza said. “During our events, like during the art gala, a student came up and promoted [African Student Association] events. As identity orgs, we’ve definitely realized that if we’re not there for each other, then nobody will be.”