Print Publications Shed Light on Generations of Oberlin Activism

Yasu Shinozaki Arts & Culture Editor

Before the internet, print was the primary means of spreading ideas and information. Campus groups or individual students who wanted to bring attention to an issue, gather support to a cause, or educate the population on a certain topic turned to the printing press. In the form of magazines, zines, pamphlets, newsletters, and newspapers, printed materials were a large part of discourse on campus. Many of the publications they created are saved in the Oberlin College Archives, and give us a window into the beliefs and ideas of generations of past students.

The oldest political publications available in the archives date back to the World War I era. The Oberlin Critic was created in 1922 to promote progressive thought and policy on campus through both serious and humorous pieces. Articles in their first issue criticized the school’s policy of requiring female students to have a chaperone in many circumstances and called for more freedom of discussion in the classroom, labeling professors at large “The Autocrat of the Lecture Table.” Another interwar publication, The Vanguard, was more left-wing. The Vanguard, of which records exist from 1934 to 1935, reported on international issues, labor conflicts, and other current events, and espoused anti-capitalist and pacifist views.

The 1960s ushered in a new era of activism on campus, and the material published by students reflected the change. One of the many new publications in this era was The Activist, the first issue of which was released in the fall of 1960 The Activist began as a newsletter for the Midwestern Student Coordinating Committee, an organization comprised of representatives of 24 Midwestern colleges and universities with the purpose of coordinating direct action for civil rights amongst students in the region. The first issues were short typewritten newsletters that reported on the actions of the Midwestern Student Coordinating Committee and other affiliated student activist organizations, and national events like the arrest of Martin Luther King Jr., as well as provided editorials on current issues, primarily centering around the ongoing Civil Rights Movement.

By 1961, the publication had ended its affiliation with the Midwestern Student Coordinating

Committee and took the form of a magazine. With the change in format, The Activist published longer and more scholarly pieces, like “The Philosophy of Activism” and “The Meaning of Dissent,” both from 1961, in which the writers gave their worldview on the role of activism and how it was to be employed, or provided in depth analyses of current events. The publication proclaimed itself a “journal of the new student awakening” and embraced the politics of the New Left.

“The publication is independent of any organization, although we are associated with Students for a Democratic Society in more or less an ideological sense,” the mission statement published that fall read. “We both desire to see the extension of the democratic process, so that each individual might have the chance to develop to his fullest capacity, free from fears of war, hunger; free to hear all sides and form opinions in an atmosphere of tolerance and sanity.”

The Activist did not shy away from pushing the envelope. Their 1969 special issue on Black literature and poetry was rejected from the printers on grounds of “dirty words” and “dirty ideas,” according to an editor’s note. The ed- itors typed up the issue and had it mimeographed by the Oberlin College Buildings and Grounds department, but after printing the department refused to give the students the finished copies. In the end, the issue had to be published with two poems removed.

Other publications on campus during the counterculture era were even more provocative. The self-proclaimed Review Rip-off used the Review’s font in their masthead that read “What the Review Wouldn’t Print” in their first issue in 1972

“We have been waiting to see what the Review has to say about women’s issues,” reads the mission statement entitled “No More Diplomacy” read “Well, we have gotten tired of waiting, so we’ve decided to bring you our own version. While we realize that we have inconvenienced and perhaps offended some, and annoyed many others by our action, we do not apologize. We have tried diplomacy, and we have decided that liberalism is bunk.”

Over the decades that followed, a multitude of new student publications emerged. Some campus publications were published by organizations like Oberlin and South Africa, a single issue newspaper style publication released in 1979 by the Oberlin Coalition for the Liberation of South Africa educating students about apartheid. Other publications centered around the perspectives and activism of certain identity groups such as The Collective, a publication that featured the writing of people of color at Oberlin. It ran articles on international, domestic, and Oberlin-specific events, as well as poetry. Some of these publications, designed to reach an audience outside of Oberlin, were given away in public spaces. Others such as Alternatives, founded in 1975, relied on subscriptions. Former editor of Alternatives Suzanne Ludlow, OC ’81, told me that at the time she worked for the publication, the audience was largely outside of Oberlin.

“We were trying to [publish Alternatives] as something that represented Oberlin being thoughtful about political issues,” Ludlow said.

Not all publications had an explicit agenda. Some functioned as a forum for students to share their own views.

“I think in particular we [were] interested in trying to explore different angles of issues, because Oberlin can feel like an echo

See Publications, page 12

Public Spaces, Digital Spaces Act as Important Sites for Artistic Forms of Actvism

Dlisah Lapidus Arts & Culture Editor

Art has held a specific role in protest, activism, and resistance throughout history. At times, just the act of artmaking itself has been a form of political resistance. Art has also been a unifying force, building spaces of solidarity around marginalized groups and fostering conversations about political reform and social justice. Today, visual culture has seeped into media outlets and redefined the way we communicate the political and social issues that we care about. Reflecting this change, larger-scale media about political and social issues now has different needs, as it must appeal to an audience with a contemporary attention span and aesthetic. In 2021, 48 percent of U.S. adults said they “sometimes” or “often” learn about news from social media, according to Pew Research Center. In order for news to be attention-grabbing on social media, the visual component is most important. Infographics, photos, and visual art are often utilized not only to share actual news but also to discuss systemic issues and promote causes. Infographics have a particularly bad reputation, with some popular social media accounts being viewed as corny and ineffective and as capitalizing off of the issues that they have reduced to a three-slide graphic. Additionally, Instagram activism, which many claim to be “performative activism,” provides an excuse for social media users to simply repost a snappy tweet on their story, wipe their hands, and forget all about the issue at hand, failing to follow up and enact real change. However, the reality is that internet spaces are becoming just as big a part of individual lives as physical spaces, and people are still figuring out how to bring their personal and political values onto these platforms.

In recent political movements, many visual artists have adapted their practice to exist in and collaborate with the digital space.

Shirien Damra is a PalestinianAmerican artist and organizer whose portraits memorializing George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery became visuals most associated with the fight for Black lives in 2020. At the same time that people were taking to the streets to protest police brutality and demand systemic reform, artists were using the tools and language that theyʼd acquired to spread awareness and memorialize the lives lost, as well as spreading awareness about the movement itself. This form of artistic activism involves community organizing, with the internet serving as a resource rather than a platform for virtue signaling. Internet art as activism is certainly not a one-off solution for systemic political issues, but if we care about social and political reform, we cannot exclude digital spaces from the sites of our activism. For many users, this feels unnatural, but many artists are familiar with designing digital spaces as networks for sharing political sentiments and information. Our issue with what we call “performative activism” makes sense: it seems to reflect a lack of personal responsibility for political and social issues, allowing people to praise themselves for virtue signaling instead of taking direct action. Performative activism often reflects a desire to increase social capital rather than actual concern for the issue at hand. Additionally, many people have concerns that aestheticizing digital movements has changed the landscape of political activism, making it so people will not take part in social reform unless it is “pretty” or can be made into a performance. Although this is a very real threat, as it can prevent actual change, the problem with generalizing in this way is that all forms of social media activism are viewed as equally ineffective. In reality, the artistry behind informative illustrations like Damra’s has a different purpose than the hashtags and black squares that Instagram users posted in 2020, which many people promptly forgot about. Art-making and performance have a longstanding relationship with activism and protest. One of the forms that performance and activism have taken and continue to take is that of political or experimental theater. At times, like the period after World War I, the theater was used as a platform to express anti-propaganda sentiments. Today, experimental theater and larger-scale media often introduce political and social issues through creative development and the art of performing.

Visual artists also use their practices and their methods of performing as stages for sharing political sentiments. During a time in which so many people from various communities are under attack simply for their identity, art has proven to be an effective tool for expressing fears and concerns. Installation design and public art are popular mediums through which many conceptual artists create work motivated by intentional activism. Artists like Ai Weiwei and Jenny Holzer have developed artistic practices that make political statements, bringing conversations about systemic issues into gallery spaces and museum settings.

Contemporary artists and art organizations have been increasingly connecting performance, visual art, and public spaces with activism. For Freedoms is an artist collective that brings the visual aesthetics of Instagram activism into physical spaces, confronting the public with po- litical statements and starting conversations through visual art. One of For Freedoms’ recent projects was the 50 State Initiative, through which the organization installed artwork along roads in every U.S. state, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. The art behind this activism was the jumping point for the organization, which also facilitated town halls and other community events in partnership with local art institutions to facilitate conversations about regional and national issues in each state. These artworks feature catchy political sayings and minimalistic imagery comparable to the aesthetics of internet activism; however, the work of For Freedoms did not stop with these public installations or even their popular Instagram presence, on which their aesthetic finds its target audience.

The digital world has created a demand for striking visual components and aesthetics in activism. This comes with many downfalls, including an increase in performative activism and virtue signaling. Still, many artists and organizations use these changes to continue the long history of activist art. The visual identity of activism and social reform cannot be seen as an easy substitute for “real” political action, but rather as a language through which artists can express political theories, share information, build community, and enact change.