March 11, 2022

The Oberlin Review March 11, 2022

Established 1874

Volume 151, Number 14

New Staff Reimagines Student Life Lauren Krainess Contributing News Editor

compensation, Alexis called upon the hundreds of students gathered under the Memorial Arch to share their own experiences. A number of students talked about being overworked as students and employees, being students of color on a predominantly white campus, and a variety of other issues that they’ve faced over the pandemic at the College. Over the course of the two-hour protest, students performed songs, recited poetry, read speeches, chanted, and marched as an expression of their support of the faculty.

“There’s so many professors who have so many other jobs assigned to them,” said College second-year and event speaker Chudi Martin Jr. “They have to uplift communities, uplift students, be supportive for students outside of academics, be supportive when students need help [or] when emergencies happen due to just so many different things. That could honestly fit a job for five people, but they all do it by themselves. So just making sure that the work that they do is compensated for is especially important.”

Following the protest, President Carmen Twillie Ambar released a statement acknowledging the need for competitive compensation. She also reiterated some of the points made in the Board letter and called for care and patience as the College determines its next steps.

“First, I want to acknowledge many of the concerns raised by faculty, staff, and students at today’s protest,” President Ambar wrote. “You have raised important questions about how Oberlin will continue to recognize the work of faculty and staff through our compensation and benefits. We are in agreement that Oberlin must offer competitive compensation that is in line with the truly exceptional work that defines our institution.”

Faculty have been raising concerns about the College’s lack of competitive compensation since 2017, and as of last summer, they have also expressed outrage at being shifted to a high-deductible health insurance policy.

“Faculty salaries have been stagnant for some years,” wrote Chair of Rhetoric and Composition Laurie McMillin in an email to the Review. “If you compare Oberlin to similar institutions, we used to be in the middle and now we’re at the bottom. We’ve been getting cut from all angles, all at a time when many faculty have taught

Vice President and Dean of Students Karen Goff continues to restructure the student life division, welcoming several new staff members. Mark Zeno started as assistant vice president and dean of Residential Education and Campus Life Auxiliaries on Feb. 28, Andrew Oni started as executive director of Student Safety and Wellbeing on Feb. 21, and Ted Evans started as director of entrepreneurship on Jan. 18.

The three new staff members join Dean of Student Success Harmony Cross and Assistant Dean and Director of Student Accessibility Services Rebecca Smith, both of whom were hired in January.

After identifying seven strategic focus areas to reimagine the College’s student life division, Goff has developed and filled new positions to increase communication among departments, prevent administrative bureaucracy, and increase student accessibility.

“I’m trying to figure out: how do we move barriers out of students’ way so you all could really have a full rich experience?” Goff said.

Part of this realignment has resulted in new positions that bridge communication divides between departments. Although the administration formerly operated with individual roles overseeing both ResEd and Campus Dining Services, Zeno, in the new position as dean of Residential Education and Campus Life Auxiliaries, will oversee both of these departments. Likewise, Executive Director of Student Safety and Wellbeing Oni will act as a new connecting piece between Campus Safety, the Counseling Center, and Student Health Services.

Although the College’s LaunchU program offers entrepreneurial opportunities to students, Evans’ new position as director of entrepreneurship will expand this framework to include both academic and co-curricular experiences.

Prior to starting their positions at the College, both Zeno and Evans worked in higher education.

Zeno served as dean of student affairs at Heidelberg University while Evans worked as senior director of corporate relations and placement and director of finance at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. Oni has worked primarily in the health care industry. Most recently, he worked as a physician and provider relationship manager at Bon Secours Mercy Health.

Zeno named Oberlin’s campus culture and community, along with Goff’s vision, as key factors that drew him to Oberlin. After familiarizing himself with the College, students, and staff, Zeno plans on developing the College’s current housing master plan with more detail and regard for student needs and expectations.

As for specific plans in campus housing, Zeno said his approach will focus on both building new structures and renovating current dorms. He mentioned that the College plans to construct a 300bed complex consisting entirely of suite-style rooms with more private bathrooms to better meet student expectations.

“As newer generations are coming here, there’s higher expectations,” Zeno said. “We want to be able

See Board, page 2

See Zeno, page 3

Students and faculty gathered under the Memorial Arch yesterday to protest stagnant faculty compensation.

Photo by Khadijah Halliday, Photo Editor

Faculty and Students Respond to Board Rejection of Compensation Motion Kushagra Kar Editor-in-Chief Last Tuesday, the Board of Trustees rejected a faculty motion to recommit to its 2013 compensation resolution and offer options in health care plans. This motion, introduced on Dec. 15, 2021 and co-signed by 20 members of teaching staff, passed with 82 percent in favor during a General Faculty meeting. In response to the latest statements by the board, students and faculty gathered for a protest outside Cox Administrative Building yesterday.

“The Board does not support the motion,” read the March 1 letter signed by Board of Trustees Chair Chris Canavan and Vice-Chair Chesley Maddox-Dorsey. “Doing so would be to return to the practice of making consequential decisions without ensuring that they are consistent with financial sustainability. This practice has led to the deficits we have now. Instead, we want to make financial decisions that are sustainable.”

Students and Faculty Gather in Protest Yesterday, over 200 students gathered in Tappan Square and marched to Cox in protest of the College’s refusal to increase faculty compensation. The protest was organized by Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Comparative American Studies Yveline Alexis and Jane and Eric Nord Associate Professor of Africana Studies Pamela Brooks, with support from students. Following the protest, Alexis expressed appreciation for the solidarity shown by the community as well as for the students who brought to light other issues with the College during the protest. “[The teach-in] was literally less than a 40-minute meeting yesterday, and yet here we are, with [Kopano Muhammad, dual-degree fifth-year] issuing that poster with the QR code, people designing their own posters, that UPS store in town putting these [posters] together for me,” Alexis said. “Then for all y’all to come out and then talk about ... neurodivergent issues, mental health — the professor who shared that a fellow colleague is making $6,000, what the heck is that?”

The protest was centered around the organizing culture of Oberlin’s Africana Studies department. Though the purpose of the event was to protest current faculty CONTENTS

SPORTS

NEWS

OPINIONS

CONSERVATORY

ARTS & CULTURE

02 Old Barrows, Brown Bag Coops to Remain Closed

05 Affirmative Action Must Be Upheld

08 Classical Music Used as Power and Resistance During Wartime

04 Professor Md Rumi Shammin on Migration, Refugees

07 Demand for Creative Writing Courses Not Met by Department Size

THIS WEEK

10 Senese-Grossberg’s At the End 15 Student-Athletes Reflect on of the World Illuminates Jewish Women’s History Month Identity, Hope 16 BSAG and SAAC host Black History Month Basketball 12 The Batman Proves We Don’t Need More Batman Films Fundraiser

The Oberlin Review | March 11, 2022

09 The Bike Co-op is Back!

oberlinreview.org facebook.com/oberlinreview TWITTER @oberlinreview INSTAGRAM @ocreview

1

Ne w s

Old Barrows, Brown Bag Co-ops to Remain Closed Gigi Ewing Managing Editor Due to low enrollment numbers, Old Barrows housing co-op and Brown Bag dining co-op will remain under the College’s control next academic year — the third year in a row that neither co-op will be in operation through the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association.

The announcement of these prolonged closures comes as the nonprofit navigates its first year under the new rent contract finalized with the College in December 2020 and after all co-ops were shut down and operated by the College for the duration of the 2020–2021 academic year.

All co-op housing and dining spaces were operated by the College between March 2020 and October 2021, which prompted concerns among OSCAns that the College would not allow the nonprofit to continue its normal operations. However, OSCA reopened under a newlynegotiated rent contract at the start of last fall. Notably, Fairchild housing and dining co-ops both permanently closed under the new contract, and their facilities were transferred back to the College. Residential Education now controls Fairchild House, while Clarity operates out of the building’s industrial kitchen. Kosher Halal Co-op similarly closed its doors in spring 2021 and is now home to Heritage.

The new rent contract provides that OSCA may operate co-op spaces only if it meets an enrollment threshold — if not, the College has the prerogative to use OSCA facilities for ResEd and AVI Foodsystems. As a result of this change in the contract, Old Barrows and Brown Bag co-op have not been run by OSCA this academic year.

According to double-degree third-year Katie Galt, allOSCA membership secretary, the continued closures of

Old Barrows and Brown Bag co-op were due to the overall under-enrollment of OSCA rather than a lack of interest in the two specific co-ops.

“It’s unfortunate because there actually was enough interest in Old Barrows and Brown Bag co-op to have been able to open those co-ops, but we didn’t have enough total numbers,” Galt said. “We need to be able to fill [Harkness], Keep, Pyle, [Third World Co-op], [and Third World Social Justice Co-op] before we could open Old Barrows or BBC — or close one of those five. ... The way our rent is calculated changed because of this new contract. Now we pay per student, instead of by building. If we can’t fill the building, we can’t afford it.”

Galt outlined how the new rent contract has posed a number of challenges for OSCA — in addition to the underlying difficulties emerging from the institution’s two-year closure due to COVID-19.

“Our rates are calculated based off Oberlin College’s prices, which removes the level of autonomy that we have over how we can determine our prices,” Galt said.

Galt also said that vague language in the new rent contract adds further financial strain on the institution and enables the College to profit off of students’ decisions to leave OSCA midway through the semester.

“The lease is a bit vague, or unhelpful, in terms of what to do when students go abroad,” Galt said. “Right now it kind of seems like OSCA is expected to just absorb the cost of a student going abroad. We can’t fill their housing spot [because] we can’t let people join OSCA midyear ... which creates pretty big problems for us in terms of retention and keeping our membership numbers up because people can still leave OSCA ... then the College makes double money on that person because we ... buy a dining exemption for them to be in OSCA. When they leave OSCA, they also pay

[Campus Dining Services].”

In addition to these logistical details, College firstyear Abigail Nordan pointed out a continuing trend in the increase of OSCA’s cost. According to Nordan, while participating in co-ops was previously a means for lowincome students to attend Oberlin, the price has risen to the extent that joining OSCA is now a burden on lowincome students.

“Originally intended to make Oberlin more accessible to low-income students, OSCA membership used to cost approximately half as much as CDS membership,” Nordan wrote in an email to the Review. “Now, Oberlin’s administration reduces grant money awarded to prospective OSCAns dollar for dollar according to the price difference, making the financial incentive to join coops obsolete. In addition to this, the administration also lowers need-based financial aid to prospective OSCAns, as if there was still significant money to be saved by opting out of CDS.” Nordan also highlighted that the dwindling institutional memory within OSCA, compounded by the financial challenges the new rent contract poses for low-income students, threaten the core of OSCA as an institution.

“OSCA suffers more than ever in the wake of COVID, as those who remember how OSCA operated before the pandemic shut-down have mostly graduated,” Nordan wrote. “By next year, we will be able to count those students on our fingers. Without institutional memory of how our kitchens are meant to be operated and cleaned, we risk failing inspections and getting shut down.”

The next opportunity for OSCA to renegotiate its rent contract with the College will take place in 2025.

Board of Trustees Reject Compensation Demands, Faculty Protest

Continued from page 1

year-round, had to adapt their teaching due to the pandemic, and supported students struggling with their own issues.”

The continuing lack of compensation increases has resulted in concerns around faculty retention. Last year’s faculty motion mentioned that the long-term survivability of the College would remain uncertain if Oberlin is unable to hire and retain the best teaching staff. According to President Ambar though, the data on faculty departures in the past four years reflects the expected employee turnover for that time period.

“I think it’s important to say — and this may feel like it’s being dismissive, I’m not — that when you look at both retirements and departures, the numbers have not changed over the last four or five years in terms of the typical numbers that happen over those time periods,” President Ambar said. “So when you look at those numbers, there’s not a dramatic shift in the number of people who are retiring early or who are departing the institution.”

The Impact of Compensation on Oberlin’s Budget The faculty motion called for a recommitment to a September 2013 Board resolution to raise compensation to the median of the ‘Sweet 16’ group of peer liberal arts colleges. However in 2019, the One Oberlin report identified total employee compensation — which includes more than just faculty — as accounting for more than 60 percent of the operating budget. Although that same report highlights the fact that on average Arts and Sciences faculty and senior staff salaries fall far below those of the

College’s peer institutions, the Board decided to cut faculty compensation benefits in order to meet its budgetary goals.

Canavan emphasized the heavy budgetary commitment of faculty compensation and the need to create a framework for long term stability in compensation. “[Faculty compensation] is the most important financial commitment the institution makes, it’s the largest; it is also a commitment that you make for the long term,” Canavan said. “We also know that for faculty, compensation is the source of financial stability for them and for their families. And so we need to be sure that when we make a commitment like that, it is stable, resilient, and sustainable.”

The Road Forward The Board’s letter also recognized the work done by faculty over the past two years and the importance of competitive compensation with peer institutions. In an effort to collaboratively address the situation, the Board has asked the administration to undertake a long-term compensation review. The Board will also begin considering ways to acknowledge the pandemic’s impact on faculty during its meetings this July and next January.

President Ambar emphasized that the work to be done, while collaborative, must keep in mind a sustainable, cost-efficient solution through which the College can follow through on its promises.

For some faculty members, dipping into the endowment is a readily available and straightforward way to Editors-in-Chief

The Oberlin R eview March 11, 2022 Volume 151, Number 14 (ISSN 297–256) Published by the students of Oberlin College every Friday during the fall and spring semesters, except holidays and examination periods.

Advertising rates: $18 per column inch. Second-class postage paid at Oberlin, Ohio. Entered as second-class matter at the Oberlin, Ohio post office April 2, 1911. POSTMASTER SEND CHANGES TO: Wilder Box 90, Oberlin, Ohio 44074-1081. Office of Publication: Burton Basement, Oberlin, Ohio 44074. Phone: (440) 775-8123

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

2

Managing Editor News Editors Cont. News Editor Opinions Editors Arts Editors Sports Editor Cont. Sports Editors Conservatory Editor Photo Editors This Week Editor Senior Staff Writers

Anisa Curry Vietze Kushagra Kar Gigi Ewing Ella Moxley Kush Bulmer Lauren Krainess Emma Benardete Angel Aduwo Lilyanna D’Amato Kathleen Kelleher Zoe Kuzbari John Elrod Zoë Martin del Campo Walter Thomas-Patterson Khadijah Halliday Abe Frato Wiley Smith Adrienne Sato Nikki Keating

improve compensation. The Board argues that because of the endowment’s inherent dependence on market forces, an overdependence on the fund would result in an increasingly volatile rate of faculty pay. This, however, is an insufficient argument for Oberlin’s teaching staff.

“As one of my colleagues has argued, the board does tie faculty salaries to endowment performance in bad years when they don’t give us raises,” McMillin wrote.

“But when the endowment is doing well, they say they can’t tie the two.”

Professor of Mathematics Jeffrey Witmer has already written a motion that will be introduced during next Wednesday’s General Faculty meeting. The motion stresses the importance of faculty and staff and the dangers in their becoming demoralized, emphasizing that investment in employees is an investment in Oberlin’s future. While efforts are made to use faculty governance platforms to address the situation, Alexis wants to keep the momentum of this first protest going, and asks that students and faculty continue their activism in support of this cause.

“So what I’m hoping for next steps, I was like, ‘who got neck in this game?’” Alexis said. “It has to be a weekly thing, at least until the board responds to us favorably. It’s like, how can we keep this momentum going? Because to see so many of us — student workers [too] — were treated that way. ... I know what’s gonna come from the students, but I really also want fellow faculty members who are protected, tenured, full professors: what are they doing across all identities?”

Web Manager Production Manager Production Staff

Layout Editors

Illustrators Distributors

Sierra Colbert River Schiff Ada Ates Katie Kunka Claire Brinley Sumner Wallace Yuhki Ueda Isaac Imas Lia Fawley Kayla Kim Trevor Smith Ella Bernstein Grace Gao Adrienne Hoover Erin Koo Clair Wang Holly Yelton Thomas Xu Nondini Nagarwalla

Security Notebook Thursday, March 3, 2022 12:30 p.m. A student reported that their laptop was taken from the printer area in Mudd Center. The laptop was found and turned in to staff, who returned it to the owner.

Friday, March 4, 2022

Photo by Khadijah Halliday, Photo Editor

Students Plan Protest, Fundraiser Isaac Imas Production Editor

This Sunday at noon, students will hold a peaceful protest in Wilder Bowl in support of Ukrainian armed forces, state actors, and civilians resisting the Russian invasion. The upcoming protest is just one aspect of Oberlin students’ organizing efforts to aid Ukraine, which also include a series of fundraisers to support nonprofit organizations providing aid on the ground.

The invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24 when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” to “denazify” Ukraine, with Russia subsequently launching ground and air strikes against major Ukrainian cities. Since then, the invasion has spiraled into a severe humanitarian crisis with flagrant Russian violations of international law and hundreds of civilian casualties.

Money raised from the student-organized fundraisers will primarily go to Razom, a U.S.-based nonprofit that coordinates with peer organizations to distribute humanitarian aid.

Student organizers will also donate funds they raise to Ukraine’s branch of the Red Cross, the Ukrainian armed forces, and Come Back Alive, an organization providing military personnel with training, supplies, and psychological support.

Due to Ukraine’s current inaccessibility, organizations like these are currently distributing aid to Ukraine through hubs set up in bordering EU countries.

College third-year and Moldovan international student Andreea Procopan has taken on a large role in the organizing.

She described how the Moldovan finance ministry is organizing distribution of aid to Ukrainian refugees.

“The finance ministry of Moldova set up an account where the funds go directly to Ukrainians coming in, and they’re actually giving debit cards to refugees,” she said. “Also, people [are] just showing up on the border offering hot meals and to transport people to wherever they need.”

Diana Tymochko, a College first-year who is also involved in campus organizing to aid Ukraine, explained what supply distribution looks like on the ground.

“My brother is staying with Polish Ukrainians who are volunteering in Poland right now, so they are buying stuff, they are shipping it to the border, then Ukrainian people are grabbing it at the border,” Tymochko said. “My neighbor in Ukraine, he is driving stuff to Kyiv as well, so our building and other people who know what’s happening, they just bring stuff, as much as they can — food, medicine, clothing — and then they all drive it to places where it’s relatively safe to drive, ’cause right now there’s a risk of getting shot in the car.”

Last week, over 250 students attended the Russian and East European Studies teach-in on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Procopan noted how Oberlin students can continue to show concern for Ukraine despite their distance from the invasion.

“There was a good momentum at the teach-in, with people coming in, so it would be great to keep that type of interest and momentum going,” Procopan said. “And, just in terms of emphasis, if half of the student population donated $10, which is some people’s weekly Slow Train budget, we would already be hitting more than our initial goal.”

Tymochko also underscored the importance of supporting organizations like Razom which can directly donate goods rather than just money.

“In Ukraine, in a lot of stores, there isn’t stuff to buy anymore,” she said. “Even in Poland, I saw this volunteer [and] she says that even in Poland there are many stores where you can’t buy the needed medicine right now — the painkillers, mostly, and medicine for injuries.”

Fundraising efforts will continue into next week with a bake sale on the first floor of Mudd Center on Monday starting at 10 a.m. The sale is supported by Blue Rooster Bakehouse, and there will be a sliding scale for purchasing baked goods.

Students can also donate through @OC_Ukraine on Venmo.

Zeno, Oni, Evans Fill Newly Created Positions Continued from page 1

to live up to some of those expectations that they might have.”

Zeno also placed an emphasis on considering student input when planning renovations of campus housing.

He stressed that he wants to preserve dorms’ cultures, traditions, and valued spaces in the process of finding ways that the College can renovate dorms to better meet students’ needs.

“I don’t want to lose the charm or the tradition. I’m a big fan when it comes to tradition,” he said. “I think traditions define who we are as a community.”

When asked about what drew him to his new position, Oni said that he wanted a role where he could combine his prior work experience in health care with his educational experiences and interests.

“When I saw the job description, I was like, ‘This is what I’m looking for,’ and I prayed I would get it,” he said. “When eventually I got the job offer, it was one of the best days of my life.”

Evans said that in his previous position at Case Western, he worked with and developed relationships with Oberlin

The Oberlin Review | March 11, 2022

students and administrators. So, when approached about the role for director of entrepreneurship, Evans already had some familiarity with Oberlin.

“Entrepreneurship programming is emphasizing creativity, leadership, excellence, innovation, perseverance — all those things that entrepreneurs have — and it’s critical, not just in the business world,” he said.

Evans also said he plans on implementing experiential learning opportunities, courses, workshops, guest lecturers, internships, fellowships, support for launching businesses, and networking opportunities. He mentioned that he would like to reincorporate the Conservatory into the LaunchU program.

All three new staff members said that they look forward to meeting and working with Oberlin students to make their College experience better.

“The past two weeks I’ve spent on campus with students reminds me of my own growing up as a student and the support I received from faculty and staff on campus,” Oni said. “I’m hoping to bring that same kind of support to student learning and experience on campus.”

11:09 a.m. A student reported the theft of their backpack while studying on the second floor of the Science Center. The backpack is black and green and contains a charging brick and cable, laptop battery, laptop charging cable, journals, and a prescription bottle. The area was checked

by Campus Safety officers, but they did not find the backpack.

2:40 p.m. A student reported the theft of their unlocked bicycle from the bike rack on the north side of Peters Hall between 9 a.m. and 9:50 a.m. The bicycle is a Trek Domane AL 3 racing bike with drop handlebars. It is gray with blue and white trim and valued at approximately $1,500. A short time later, the student reported that they located their bike on the south side of the Science Center.

2:45 p.m. Staff at Wilder Hall reported the theft of a 60-inch Sharp LED television from a room on the first floor. The TV was last seen in the room Feb. 28.

5:55 p.m. A student reported the theft of their unlocked bicycle at around 12 p.m. from the bike rack on the north side of Asia House. The bicycle is a silver Trek Marlin 5 with blue headlights and is valued at approximately $400.

Saturday, March 5, 2022 8:54 p.m. A resident of Lord House reported the smell of smoke on the first floor of the building. Officers responded and upon entry to the building they detected smoke in the hallway. Two students admitted to smoking marijuana.

The smoke detector was checked and found to be operating normally.

11:17 p.m. Officers responded to a request for assistance for a student who was ill from drug use. The officers spoke with the student who reported that they consumed two marijuana gummies and began vomiting. The officers offered transport to Mercy Allen Hospital but the student declined and stated that they were fine to stay in their room.

Sunday, March 6, 2022 4:56 p.m. A parent of a student reported that the catalytic converter was stolen from the student’s vehicle while parked in the Woodland Street lot. They also reported the theft to the Oberlin Police Department.

Monday, March 7, 2022 6:11 p.m. An officer on routine patrol observed three juveniles attempting to enter Bosworth Hall at the northwest handicap entrance. The officer approached the juveniles who stated that they were looking for an unlocked door. The officer warned the juveniles of their actions. The same juveniles were observed a short time later attempting to open a door at the basement level. The juveniles left the area and the Oberlin Police Department was advised of the incident.

6:27 p.m. An officer on routine patrol observed five laptops, five bookbags, and various other items left unattended in a second floor lounge in the Science Center.

SAFETY TIP: Never leave personal property unattended. Items such as bookbags, laptops, purses, wallets, and other items are easily taken within seconds.

3

Ne New wss OFF THE CUFF

Professor Md Rumi Shammin on Migration, Refugees

Kush Bulmer Ella Moxley News Editors Professor of Environmental Studies Md Rumi Shammin’s research focuses on energy and resource use, ecological economics, refugee camp environmental management, environmental justice, and applied research on sustainability in the built environment. This week the Review spoke to Shammin about his research at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh, his home country. Since the mass exodus of Rohingya refugees in 2017, Shammin has collaborated with nongovernmental organizations at the overburdened Kutupalong, the most populous refugee camp in the world. The camp, with a population of almost 900,000, has been around since the second wave of Rohingya migration in the early 1990s.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Could you describe your current research projects and how you got involved with them?

I have been conducting research on climate change adaptation in vulnerable coastal communities of Bangladesh for about 10 years now. Some of my project sites are in Southeastern Bangladesh, where the Rohingya refugees moved in. Originally, I was not visiting the area to study anything related to the refugees; I was there to study climate change adaptation. However, when the refugees arrived, it created an emergency situation. Most of my work was with environmental organizations that also got involved, and it coincided with one of my field visits to the area.

The camp, Kutupalong, is in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh. My collaborators, who were working within the refugee camp administration, presented an opportunity for me to visit the area. When I visited, I was accompanied by people from an international environmental NGO — the International Union for Conservation of Nature. We were looking at what was happening at the camps, and we identified that the environmental management of the camp was lacking. Basically, everyone involved was completely engrossed with the humanitarian crisis — and rightly so, because you have to make sure that people have food to eat, shelter, a roof over their head, and basic sanitation and health services. But, we also saw that there were many environmental challenges in the camp and surrounding areas which were being overlooked that affected both the refugees and people in surrounding communities.

How does your research address the environmental

problems that you witnessed in Kutupalong?

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees staff and other camp management personnel told us, “We are just overwhelmed. We want to do this work, but we don’t have the time or resources to do it.” So we developed a research project in collaboration with UNHCR to address environmental management issues in the camp. I saw some synergy between my climate adaptation work and the kind of challenges that refugees face in the camp. In my climate adaptation work, I was using a holistic framework to approach solutions — I was looking at the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and resilience principles, and I wanted to find ways to integrate those into climate change response on the ground so that the solutions achieve broader outcomes. I brought the same principles to the discussion in terms of management of refugee camps. We were saying that we want to address deforestation in and around the camp, as well as sanitation, clean water access, and energy access. But in the process, can we also look at those broader outcomes and figure out if we can engage women in meaningful ways, or if we can empower the youth who are often overlooked in the camps?

Could you describe in greater detail the kinds of projects you have worked on?

My first project was developing camp environmental management guidelines that would incorporate this broader approach and provide concrete directives to field operatives and camp management personnel. The second project I initiated a couple of years after I started working there was to conduct an environmental oral history project with the refugees. That project was designed to document the memories of the home environments they left behind. Some of their homelands have already been transformed and are being converted to new settlements.

Some of them may never go back to those places, and those places will change and evolve to become very different many years from now. From a historical perspective, there is tremendous value in documenting their memories of the environment in their land left behind.

This is sort of a new area of research in oral history. Oral history research typically documents historical facts, such as changes in political and socioeconomic circumstances, but rarely is environmental information documented — information that is not political or controversial, but valuable nonetheless. That’s been really, really rewarding, especially because when we were conducting the oral history interviews, the people that we interviewed were genuinely happy to talk. Many explained that no one had ever asked them about anything other than their story of persecution. They’ve always shared stories that bring back

tragic memories that are sad and depressing — so much so that it’s hard for some of them to even talk about them.

Whereas we went and asked, “What was the place like where you came from? What kind of trees and animals were there? How did you interact with the environment?

Did you have storms or cyclones, and what did you do in those situations?” We interviewed about 154 Rohingya refugees over the second half of last year. I’m currently working on the final report of that project.

Let’s shift focus to another refugee situation, one that’s caught the focus of many people across the world: the current mass migration out of Ukraine.

How do you contextualize this migration issue with other international migration issues that you have studied?

Forced migration, or displacement, is a big issue of our times.

I think the ones that are happening because of political persecution or war, traditional drivers of displacement, are similar to what’s happening in Ukraine. But a lot of people in developing countries are being forcibly displaced because of climate change and environmental impacts. In Bangladesh, we’ve seen people from vulnerable coastal areas being displaced from their homes because of rising sea level and salt water. Many are moving into other parts of the country and sometimes across the border into India.

In the case of traditional refugee issues happening in response to persecution — like what’s happening in the Rohingya refugee camps — I think the international community has stepped in with a lot of resources.

However, we’ve also seen that with Rohingya refugees, and to some extent with Syrian refugees, the re-settlement process has been challenging. Who’s going to take those refugees and provide shelter? It’s not necessarily fair for one country to bear the burden of a large influx of refugees when it’s considered to be an international humanitarian issue. From what I’ve seen so far, the response to refugees from Ukraine has been better in terms of re-settlement opportunities — many different countries have stepped in.

I think that it can be looked at as a positive example of how other refugee crises could also be addressed. I know that it’s aligned with geopolitical issues. Everyone’s kind of banding together to support Ukraine and refugees from Ukraine. I hope that whenever there is migration and displacement, the world bands together to support the people affected in a welcoming way. It’s especially important that they take one step further to understand that migration happens not just as a result of persecution, but also as a result of environmental stress and climate change.

Local Businesses Navigate Changing Economic Conditions Anisa Curry Vietze Editor-in-Chief As the Omicron wave loosens its grip on Northern Ohio, downtown Oberlin businesses navigate yet another stage in the pandemic despite ongoing supply chain and labor shortage issues. ThiNi Thai is expanding its kitchen and seating area, and Golden Hour Acupuncture is reopening in a new space.

ThiNi’s expansion — which will likely cost over $100,000 — began this January with the goal of creating more efficiency in a small space.

“Our kitchen is about maybe 200 square feet,” said Jason Adelman, co-owner of both ThiNi Thai and The Feve. “It’s extremely small considering the [work] that we’re doing, so a lot of things are stored at the Feve. … Labor is expensive and we’re wasting hours and hours every day, people walking it back and forth. It’s physically draining, mentally draining on them. It’s not fun. It’s raining, snowing, whatever, and they’ve gotta walk across the street to go get eggs.”

Additionally, the larger kitchen will allow more cooks to work at one time, meaning available prep time will increase and, hopefully, the restaurant will be able to open for lunch.

“We’re hitting our capacity of how much food we can actually prepare, we just physically do not have the room for food that we’ve prepped, nor do we have the cooking facilities to prepare any more,” he said. “Like on [Parents and Family] weekend, we were like, ‘We literally cannot cook more food.’ We had to stop taking tables and we had to stop taking carry-out at 6:30. We were booked out. I never experienced that before in 20 years at The Feve.”

Adelman is also excited to serve more curries and

4

authentic Thai barbecue with an indoor charcoal grill once the expansion is complete. He hopes to open the new wing of the restaurant by summertime.

Golden Hour Acupuncture, which opened in February 2021 on West College Street, also expanded recently, relocating to a larger space on South Main Street.

“The space that I was in before was awesome — it was really good for visibility and getting started, and ... it was really nice having a storefront,” said Marikate Workman, owner and acupuncturist of Golden Hour.

“But, that space also had just privacy concerns. Just being right on the street like that and not having enough separation basically from people just popping in to say ‘hi’ or ask questions and then people receiving treatment in the back.”

Workman did not originally plan to open a business, but after doing house calls throughout the pandemic, she realized she wanted to rent a space for her practice.

She hopes that someday, when COVID-19 concerns are minimal, she can provide group-setting community acupuncture.

“Especially here in Ohio, there’s not great insurance coverage for acupuncture,” Workman explained. “It ends up just being costly for people if they’re trying to manage pain or manage anxiety. So the goal of groupsetting treatments is to offer sliding scale fees. … The thing that makes sliding scale sustainable is seeing multiple people at a time, but because of just ongoing COVID [concerns] and new variants and whatever, I still have not been doing group-setting stuff.”

While business has been up for many storefronts in town, some are still experiencing supply chain and labor shortage issues they were facing several months ago.

“It’s inching to better but just not there yet,” said

Janet Haar, executive director of the Oberlin Business Partnership. “I do believe that later this spring and summer — especially if COVID holds off — I think that we’re going to see more of what we might consider normal.”

For Adelman, these issues — both supply chain and labor costs — have been a puzzle to navigate.

“We’re having an issue [at] The Feve with tater tots right now,” he said. “It’s just the whole world is kind of flipped upside down. We’re having an issue with the cost of charcoal, fish sauce — any of the sauces coming from Asia, like oyster sauce, fish sauce, [and] soy, [are] three to four times more expensive now in terms of shipping.”

For Lorraine Morrison, one of the owners of Carlyle Gift and Flower Shop, reflecting on the past two years of the pandemic has helped her realize how much it brought the community together. At the beginning of the pandemic, she said it seemed to her that customers needed social interaction when they came into the store.

“For example, if a 90-year-old woman said to me, ‘What I really want is a fish dinner,’ we’d get her a fish dinner,” Morrison said. “So we were able to respond to the community as we heard about things and that’s extremely gratifying. We also, for the past two years, were able to have people from the community who have been very supportive. They supported us because they wanted to see us succeed.”

However, not all businesses are staying afloat. Both Catrinas and The Oberlin Market have closed in the past few months.

“It’s hard to say,” Haar said. “There are some people really high at the top and some people really low at the bottom. … I think some of our businesses are doing okay.

But some of them are still struggling.”

March 11, 2022

OPINIONS Established 1874

LETTER TO THE EDITORS Anti-Mahallati Protests Lack Context My thanks to the Review for its most recent story about the controversy involving Professor of Religion Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, as reported

by Managing Editor Gigi Ewing (“Continued College Inaction Provokes Second Demonstration Against Mahallati,” The Oberlin Review, March 4, 2022). As the story noted, I have done extensive research on the controversy. I would like to emphasize some additional points that I think the Oberlin community should think about in considering the issues involved.

In general, there is no statute of limitations on human rights violations of the kinds involved in the 1988 state-sanctioned executions in Iran. Anyone who participated in — or supported either directly or indirectly — those human rights violations can still be and should be held to account.

That should be done according to fair judicial proceedings or investigations that weigh evidence in an objective manner.

A key question in this is whether Professor Mahallati had direct knowledge of the executions at the time he made various statements before the U.N. that questioned reports originating with Amnesty International. So far, I have found no evidence that he would have had either direct or indirect knowledge of the executions from sources inside Iran. The executions were carried out in extreme secrecy. They did not become public knowledge in Iran until shortly after Mahallati was dismissed from his position as the U.N. ambassador to Iran.

It is well-documented that Mahallati played a key role in gaining Iran’s acceptance of the U.N. resolution that ended the Iran-Iraq war. He did that despite significant opposition from inside Iran to his efforts. His arrest and imprisonment in Iran after he was dismissed from his U.N. position are indicative of the risks he took to bring an end to a war that by best estimates killed 500,000 people on each side and produced in excess of 1,000,000 casualties.

The issues involved in this controversy are complex. My research into these issues is ongoing, and there are several questions I am still examining. As a result of conversations with an Oberlin alum, I have written a 5000-word assessment of the controversy that I have labeled “tentative.”

It covers not only questions involving former U.N. Ambassador Mahallati, but also concerns I have regarding the actions of the protest group and its allies.

Ray English Director of Libraries Emeritus, Oberlin College SUBMISSIONS POLICY

The Editorial Board encourgages anyone interested in submitting an Opinions piece to email the Opinions editors at opinions@oberlinreview.org to request a copy of the Opinions primer. Opinions expressed in editorials, letters, op-eds, columns, cartoons, and other Opinions pieces do not necessarily reflect those of The Oberlin Review staff. Submission of content to the Review constitutes an understanding of this publication policy. Any content published by The Oberlin Review forever becomes the property of The Oberlin Review and its administrators. Content creators retain rights to their content upon publication, but the Review reserves the right to republish and/or refuse to alter or remove any content published by the Review. It is up to Senior Staff’s discretion whether to alter content that has already been published.

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. in the Opinions email for inclusion in that week’s issue. Full-length pieces should be between 600 and 900 words; letters to the editor should be less than 600 words. All submissions must include contact information, with full names and any relevant titles, for all signatories; we do not publish pieces anonymously.

All letters from multiple writers should be carbon-copied to all signatories to confirm authorship. The Review reserves the right to edit all submissions for clarity, length, grammar, accuracy, and strength of argument, and in consultation with Review style. Editors work to preserve the voice of the writers and will clear any major edits with authors prior to publication. Headlines are printed at the discretion of the Editorial Board. 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 or otherwise promoting an event, organization, or other entity to which the author has direct ties.

The Oberlin Review | March 11, 2022

Volume 151, Number 14

Editorial Board Editors-in-Chief

Anisa Curry Vietze

Kushagra Kar

Managing Editor Gigi Ewing

Opinions Editors

Angel Aduwo

Emma Benardete

Affirmative Action Must Be Upheld

Photo courtesy of KCRG

On Jan. 24, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear a challenge to affirmative action with regard to two cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These cases could determine the fate of affirmative action not only at these two institutions, but across the nation, especially considering the Supreme Court’s current conservative supermajority.

The reemergence of debate around the constitutionality of affirmative action raises the question: why is the practice still necessary for ensuring students of color have access to higher education? Moreover, these cases gives us the opportunity to reframe how we think about not only affirmative action, but also about the continuing, broader issue of diversity — or lack thereof — in higher education.

A common and intensely bigoted misconception is that affirmative action allows underqualified students of color to get into prestigious institutions on the basis of their race alone.

This belief, while obviously untrue, also discredits the accomplishments of students of color and perpetuates the harmful notion that being a person of color gives you an easier chance at getting into universities. In reality, affirmative action simply seeks to give traditionally disadvantaged students a more equitable opportunity at accessing higher education.

Another common misconception is that affirmative action involves a quota for a certain number of people of a certain racial group to be accepted. In reality, the 1978 Supreme Court decision deemed a quota-based system unconstitutional. Affirmative action isn’t a single concept or policy. It can take the form of outreach campaigns, targeted recruitment, and employee and management development. Its implementation can vary greatly depending on the institution or company.

Considering the benefits of affirmative action and the history of white supremacy in higher education, it is essential that we campaign for affirmative action to remain firmly within our legal framework. For most of history, colleges and universities were composed almost entirely of white men. Many schools like UNC did not accept any students of color until they were mandated to by the Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

There were schools like Harvard and Oberlin, that did accept students of color — albeit in small numbers — prior to the overturn of segregation. Affirmative action works to combat the legacy of white supremacy by making admission into elite, historically white institutions more accessible to people of color who have grown up facing systemic barriers.

We do not need less affirmative action. If anything, we need more, especially here at Oberlin. Despite being one of the first colleges in the country to start accepting Black students back in 1835, Oberlin today falls short in terms of its Black student population. Currently only 5 percent of Oberlin students are Black, compared to an average of 15 percent across U.S. baccalaureate institutions.

Outlawing affirmative action would likely further diminish the small proportion of Black and Brown students at small, elite liberal arts colleges like Oberlin. In the event that affirmative action is found to be unconstitutional, Oberlin, and all colleges, must take steps to recruit Black students and provide adequate aid to those who apply. Adopting a need-blind admissions process, which Oberlin currently does not employ, would help counteract the effects of affirmative action being gutted by allowing the College to accept more low-income and Black students.

Overturning affirmative action would leave colleges — even private colleges like Oberlin — with their hands tied, limiting options to cultivate the type of equitable community we want on our campus. If the Supreme Court decides that affirmative action is unconstitutional, Oberlin and other schools like it must institute other policies to protect the Black and Brown students already on campus.

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

5

Opi n ions

Demand for Creative Writing Courses Not Met by Department’s Size Aniella Day Columnist During my first year at Oberlin, I was pretty sure that I wanted to double major in Creative Writing and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies.

I signed up for Introduction to Writing Poetry and Introduction to GSFS my first semester. The professor who taught Intro to Poetry in fall 2018 no longer works at Oberlin, but the way they taught the class was incredibly frustrating and disheartening for me.

I heard over and over, “It’s so hard to be a Creative Writing major; it’s so competitive.” So in my second semester, I focused on other topics, trying out new subjects like Computer Science and Psychology, as well as delving into my love for feminist theory by taking two 200-level GSFS classes.

Creative Writing ended up slipping to the back of my mind as I was certain that I wouldn’t get into a class even if I tried.

My second year, I decided to give Creative Writing another try and took a class called Strangeness and Surprise with Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Robin Beth Schaer. I loved this class. I got to experiment and try new, weird things with my writing. The prompts that Professor Schaer gave us introduced me to new ideas that I never would

have thought of on my own. I spoke with Professor Schaer about how the class I took my first year had discouraged me from the subject and she told me to keep trying. She was a new faculty member that semester, but she was the most welcoming and encouraging member of the Creative Writing department I had met so far.

I took the spring semester of my second year off, but I had already declared GSFS as my major. I was scared that if I didn’t also apply for the Creative Writing major that semester, I would never get into the program.

So I applied, even though I was away from Oberlin and had only taken one of two required 200-level courses. If I had been at Oberlin that semester, I would have taken a Creative Writing class and been on track to declare the major. When I got the email that I’d been rejected, I was overwhelmingly confused. I thought that the application process was merely a formality to weed out people who weren’t serious about the major. I had worked very hard on my application. I took it very personally at the time: Did they think I was a bad writer? Was my application not convincing enough?

A friend recently told me that a Creative Writing professor told them that the major application was simply a formality, and that everyone who applied got in. However, I have

an email from the department chair of the Creative Writing department sitting in my inbox telling me otherwise, but that I should apply again next semester. The ethics of disseminating a promise that all people will get into the major seem questionable, especially when I know for a fact this promise is false.

Eventually, I came to realize that the reason I was not let into the major was because I most likely would not have been able to finish it with the condensed schedule my semester off forced me to take on. It would have been too difficult for me to get into the courses I needed for the major. The classes in the Creative Writing department are some of the most sought-after classes at Oberlin — and for good reason. The ones I have taken have given me some of the most healing, wonderful, silly, and fun experiences I’ve had at Oberlin. Thankfully, not being a major did not stop me from continuing to take Creative Writing classes and building a strong relationship with Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Lynn Powell during my third and fourth years.

However, I still wonder about the reasoning behind requiring students to apply for the major. Creative Writing is the only department on campus that has this requirement. I understand the desire to keep class sizes

small, but I think there is something very important about allowing Oberlin students to experiment with the classes from different disciplines. It seems to me that if someone wants to declare a major, they should be able to.

This is not to say that the Creative Writing department is purposefully making things difficult and excluding interested students. I love all the faculty members that I have taken classes with and still feel very connected to the department, despite not being a major. I have been able to take all the classes that I have wanted to as a minor in the department, and I definitely think that things have moved in a positive direction since my first year. I appreciate all the hard work that Creative Writing professors put into their classes and the attention they give to each of their students.

My main plea to the Creative Writing department is to let more non majors take Creative Writing classes. I understand that the reason space is limited is because it is best to keep class sizes small. However, shouldn’t the solution to that problem be to hire more faculty? It seems to me that the Creative Writing department is one of the biggest pulls for many prospective students. Shouldn’t such a popular program be given more resources so more people can take part in it?

Faculty Sponsors Should Be Lenient with Winter Term Projects Emma Benardete Opinions Editor One of Oberlin’s most unique selling points is our Winter Term program. Students must complete three Winter Term projects to graduate, and the time is supposed to be an opportunity for students to delve into something they would not otherwise have the time to do.

One crucial aspect of the Winter Term program is that all projects are graded pass/fail, which, in theory, provides students with an opportunity to leave their comfort zones with minimal consequence, allowing them to set ambitious goals and experiment with new activities that they may not be particularly experienced with. However, it seems as though there are at least a few professors on campus who focus too much on the student’s final product, and not enough on the time, effort, and learning that went into the project.

Winter Term is supposed to be about learning. Project goals should be flexible, and students should not be penalized for having to change their project if the original goal is too lofty. Receiving credit for a Winter Term project should be contingent upon putting in the work and hours required to have a valuable educational experience, not on doing exactly what you thought you would do when you applied for your project in November. For the most part, faculty members respect this. Plenty of students have had to change their Winter Term goals over the course of the month-long session and have done so without consequence. Nonetheless, I have heard about

6

multiple instances of students failing Winter Term projects, and their professors do not always have good reasons to fail them.

One friend of mine spent their Winter Term writing a full-length play, only to fail their project because they were unable to produce a complete, polished script. Even though they wrote more than 40 pages worth of material, they had not done exactly what they had expected to do vis-à-vis writing a finished script. It is conceivable that, had they set a less ambitious goal for themself, they would have passed handily. Instead, the professor was so set on the original proj-

when she sponsored a student who set out to build a mandolin.

“Ultimately, I don’t think the mandolin got built, or it didn’t work … but, to me, that’s okay,” Romano said.

Given this year’s unusual schedule and the extra stress students have had to endure because of it, it was more important than ever that faculty took into account the circumstances surrounding each student’s experience with the program. Unlike most years, where students come into Winter Term from a restful couple weeks of break, this year, students didn’t even have a day to unwind after a stressful and draining finals

Given this year’s unusual schedule and the extra stress students have had to endure because of it, it was more important than ever that faculty took into account the circumstances surrounding each student’s experience with the program. ect goal that they neglected to take into account the importance of the learning that came from the experience. If a sponsor is considering failing a student, it is critical that they take into account not only the end product but also the experience the student had.

I spoke to Robert S. Danforth Professor of History and former Chair of the Winter Term Committee Renee Romano about how she determines whether a student has successfully completed a

Winter Term.

“It’s really, ‘Did the student spend the time and show that they spent some time and gave it some thought?’” Romano said. “I’ve had Winter Terms where a student sets out to do something and it doesn’t work. That’s still a Winter Term and it’s still a good Winter Term. … To me, the only time someone doesn’t pass Winter Term is if they just don’t do the work.”

She recounted an instance years ago

period.

“There was no downtime, there was no time for reboot, and it was just hard,” Romano said.

Romano sponsored a group research course for Winter Term this year, and she worked to ensure that the students were able to have some time to recover from finals. She wanted to make sure she knew how students were doing so she could plan accordingly.

“I told my students in my group Winter Term if they ever felt stressed, they had to come talk to me,” she said.

I asked Romano what advice she would give to faculty sponsors in the event that we have to follow this bizarre Winter Term schedule again, and she emphasized the importance of understanding how the schedule would impact students.

“Like all good pedagogy, be aware as much as you can of what your students are experiencing so that you can try to meet them where they are with what they need,” she said.

For group projects, she said, “If your class is exhausted and you can tell, you may want to throw out your lesson plan and think about, ‘What can we do to make this a learning space even when everybody looks like they just want to crawl under the table?’”

For individual projects, this year’s schedule meant understanding that students have never experienced the back-to-back sequence of school, Winter Term, and school again, and that we may have been more drained than we originally thought when we submitted our project outlines in November.

Refusal to Raise Faculty Salaries Disgraceful Kayla Kim Production Editor On March 1, the Board of Trustees released a three-page letter formally refusing the faculty’s request for better compensation and benefits. This article is not the first, nor will it be the last, written in the Review about the nearly 10-year fight for higher wages for faculty.

In the past several years, Oberlin has been falling behind its rival liberal arts schools, such as Swarthmore College and Pitzer College, in terms of compensation. This has had a devastating effect on faculty members and, by extension, students. Many faculty members have chosen to leave Oberlin in favor of colleges and universities that offer better pay. As a 2019 opinion piece by Raavi Asdar, OC ’21, stated, “For me and many of my peers, these changes have meant the sudden departure of some of our most valued professors, advisors, and sources of support on campus.” (“Oberlin Must Retain Professors Despite Financial Difficulties,” The Oberlin Review, December 13, 2019).

Between teaching multiple classes, publishing a book, coping with deaths in her family, caring for elders in her community, and simply surviving in the face of violence against Black and Brown women, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Comparative American Studies Yveline Alexis is just one of many faculty members who have been significantly affected.

“I’m told by a financial planner in my life that I could make more teaching at a high school,” Alexis said. “The students who are curious and really committed keep me here, but I think there’s gonna be a real impact about us being able to stay with security.” She also mentioned that she and many of her colleagues are being approached by other prestigious institutions, including Ivy Leagues such as Princeton and Brown University.

Oberlin has an approximately $1 billion endowment, so why is it that esteemed faculty members, who are regularly praised by the College for their dedication, barely make enough to get by? Almost nothing has changed in the 10 years since the Board of Trustees passed its 2013 resolution to increase faculty salaries — except for rising copays, a two-year salary freeze, and most recently the compulsory switch to a Consumer-Driven Healthcare Plan and Health Savings Account. It is clear that, as an institution, Oberlin has abandoned its values of “Learning and Labor” in favor of austerity and greed.

It’s also worth noting that the lack of fac-

Oil Stains

ulty compensation has a disproportionately adverse effect on marginalized faculty and students. Oberlin prides itself on its progressive values, such as being the first college in the United States to accept women and Black students. Yet, by refusing to compensate professors adequately, Oberlin sacrifices these very morals at the expense of both marginalized faculty and students. By losing marginalized faculty members, students lose invaluable resources and mentors who are already underrepresented in academia.

Alexis addressed the premature departure of marginalized faculty and how it affects students in terms of representation in academics.

“You can study these people, but do you know them? Are they invited to your house?” she asked.

There has already been action planned in response to the trustees cementing their abandonment of their own five-year plan to raise faculty wages approved in 2013. The Student Labor Action Coalition released a statement in response to the Board of Trustees’ decision, which reads, “We echo the calls from students around the country fed up with the current system of unelected and unaccountable wealthy individuals with nearly absolute power that has wreaked havoc on campuses around the country through their mismanagement and misplaced priorities. The Oberlin Board of Trustees is not alone in their incompetence and condescension, but we are also not alone in opposing them.”

Crediting her union background, Alexis planned a two-hour protest this past Thursday, in front of Memorial Arch and the Cox Administration Building. Hundreds of students and faculty gathered to speak, perform, and read works by Black revolutionaries. During the protest, Visiting Assistant Professor of German Peter Woods stressed the importance of openly discussing salaries, describing how one of his colleagues earned only $6,000 for teaching one course and was denied an official position, and how another makes only $26,000 annually teaching three courses. Additionally, multiple student spoke about the one-to-two-year turnover rate for professors and the lack of adequate mental health resources. These speakers showed how students and faculty alike are overlooked and mistreated and that change is long overdue.

At this point, telling faculty we are thankful for their “incredible ingenuity and resilience,” as in the Board of Trustees letter, is empty and hollow. It’s time for the Board to take action and for the Oberlin community to rally together to finally uphold our institution’s values of “Learning and Labor.”

PAL Program Feels Like Just Another Responsibility Phoebe McChesney Columnist I went to a very fast-paced high school, the kind of place that prided itself on attracting and accepting the “best and brightest” of Chicago’s youth.

It’s consistently ranked within the top five public high schools in the nation. Academically rigorous, classes were usually one of two distinctions: Honors or Advanced Placement. The culture was geared toward perpetual achievement, the kind that former Mayor Rahm Emanuel made a point to acknowledge during his victory tour of Chicago when he left office.

By my senior year, I was looking forward to a new start. Coming from burnout and exhaustion of high school, I was hoping for a slow transition and easy-going start to college. That’s when I encountered Oberlin’s Peer Advising Leaders program. Designed to serve as an introduction to college life, it helps direct students to resources, provides a cursory overview of college academics, and facilitates exposure to other first-years through cohort groups. The idea was brilliant for the energetic and inspired, the ones who are eager for college life.

But for those of us who were left disenchanted by the high school experience, it would’ve been nice to hit the pause button. Is it really necessary to start meeting over the summer if there are going to be cohort meetings during the school year? Both my parents work full-time jobs, so I only got to see them in the evenings at home; the virtual PAL meetings cut into our precious time together before I left for Oberlin.

When I arrived on campus, I was immediately inundated with obligatory happenings, along with job training, and started school immediately after. PAL was an additional commitment with its meetings before the start of the school year, mandatory orientation events, and 8 p.m. one-credit class sessions. It started to feel less like a constructive experience and more like just another responsibility. For me, it was a lot at once and as the first semester progressed, I had to balance Introduction to Oberlin Life and Learning classes with homework assignments and work shifts.

The PAL program promised to launch me into college preparation, but I had spent the past four years doing just that. Much of the heart of the matter, the guidance itself, seemed to be of little use. I, and most of my fellow cohort members, already knew how to write emails, engage in class discussions, and use Google Suite. Entire class periods just for these activities seemed rather unnecessary. I think PAL academic preparation is worthwhile for those who would like that extra support with understanding classroom etiquette and digital infrastructure in college, but not needed for those with prior experience.

I did enjoy getting to meet other first-years and connecting with an experienced student. I first met my cohort over Zoom. Engaging in Jamboard or discussing pieces of art were useful and fulfilling, but they were not as frequent as “how-to” activities like learning to navigate Gmail. The latter seems to be more beneficial on a case-by-case basis; there should be available resources to get those questions answered or to seek individual assistance.

While it is possible to drop LEAD 050, that option is not provided to students until after the semester begins. Students are required to participate in the PAL activities that occur during orientation, arguably the busiest and most stressful period of the first weeks on campus.

So, for the sake of students like me who are tired of the academic rat race, the PAL program should provide an relaxed environment that doesn’t focus on academic success. Much is already expected of so many students to contribute to the highly esteemed reputation of the college. Financial aid and merit scholarships are based on the maintenance of good academic standing. The PAL program doesn’t need to add to that stress. So when the time comes to begin the first year of college, students should be able to ease into college, not be immediately thrust into it.

Clair Wang, Staff Cartoonist

The Oberlin Review | March 11, 2022

7

C on s e r vat ory

CONSERVATORY Established 1874

March 11, 2022

Classical Music Used as Power and Resistance During Wartime

Russian soprano Anna Netrebko performs.

Courtesy of Leonhard Foeger Walter Thomas-Patterson Conservatory Editor The year was 1958.

In the midst of the Cold War, 50 pianists from around the world flocked to Moscow for a firstof-its-kind event: the International Tchaikovsky Competition.

It was a chance for the Soviet Union to wield a soft-power cultural sword — to bolster its national strength, already demonstrated by the previous year’s successful launch of the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. Each pianist is required to perform a complete program of music, the focal point being Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a tour de force in bravura, intensity, and passion. Harvey “Van” Cliburn’s calculated yet relentless performance wowed the judges, but before he could be awarded first prize, they had to ask Supreme Leader Nikita Khrushchev if an American, a citizen of the Soviet Union’s greatest Cold War adversary, could receive such an honor.

Khrushchev responded, “Is he the best?” The judges told him yes. “Then give him the prize!”

By winning the International Tchaikovsky Competition, Van Cliburn would become the first and only pianist in American history to receive a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan. His image appeared emblazoned on the cover of TIME magazine with the caption, “The Texan Who Conquered Russia.”

But Cliburn did more than just win this competition. He became a symbol of the power of classical music to transcend geopolitical boundaries when other forms of diplomacy had failed.

Cliburn’s success in the Soviet Union demonstrated the capacity of classical music to bridge cultural and political rifts, particularly between authoritarian and democratic countries.

Yet authoritarian regimes, particularly Russia, not only see classical music as a rich component of culture, but also as a tool for spreading state propaganda.

As a genre, classical music poses little threat to the state. Much of its canon has emerged from a revered past, so it appears removed from current political conflicts. Indeed, when most American pianists play a Beethoven sonata, or when famed Russian conductor Valery Gergiev leads a symphony, they are not envisioning their performance as a political statement, but rather as an expression of the human condition at a moment in time. In an effort to convey artistic authenticity, they look to the past to try to capture how the composer would have imagined the piece being played.

In much of the Western world, classical works are often associated with a nation’s highest cultural achievements, and because of this the government can exploit the artistic form to celebrate a glorified, mythical past. Sergei Prokofiev’s score to Sergei Eisenstein’s seminal film Alexander Nevsky (1938) was released on the precipice of war in Europe and rallied Russian audiences to fight in defense of the

8

Soviet Union. A nation’s world-renowned classical musicians, meanwhile, reflect universally recognized technical and artistic brilliance which serve as symbols of that nation’s prominence.

This past month, Gergiev and soprano operatist Anna Netrebko, both towering artists who have close contacts with Western musical institutions including Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera, have faced almost universal boycotts outside of Russia for their refusal to denounce Russian President Vladimir Putin’s role in the invasion of Ukraine. By ostracizing these artists, the classical music world has raised the immensely fraught issue of whether the politics of the artist should determine if we enjoy their work.

In Gergiev’s case, the ethics of canceling him are more understandable — he is a close friend of Putin’s and has a history of using his work to support Russia’s international aggression.

In 2008, for example, Gergiev performed Dmitri Shostakovich’s famous Leningrad symphony — a work composed during Germany’s yearslong siege of Leningrad in World War II — in the separatist region of Ossetia, Ukraine, implicitly comparing the international condemnation of Russian military aggression to the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. In 2016, Gergiev performed a concert in the ruins of Palmyra, an area that the Russian government helped Syria to retake as part of Russia’s ruthless bombing campaign to squash the Syrian Civil War, a campaign that also recieved international condemnation for its intentional targeting of civilians.

The case for canceling Netrebko’s performances, however, is less straightforward. While she had previously voiced her support for Russian aggression in Crimea, she denounced the current war in Ukraine, albeit refusing to call out Putin’s responsibility, while vociferously rejecting the idea that artists should be expected to make political statements.

A few days later, General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera Peter Gelb released a statement declaring, “We can no longer engage with artists or institutions that support Putin or are supported by him.”

Yet in Russia, where the long claw of the authoritarian regime reaches deeply into the lives of citizens, especially those in the world of classical music, what precisely does Gelb mean by musicians who “support Putin or are supported by [Putin]?”

At the current moment, as the world recoils in horror at Putin’s war against Ukraine, the classical music community is again forced to confront uncomfortable questions. How do we acknowledge the role that classical art forms have played in bolstering authoritarian power? Does the work of the artist transcend their political beliefs? And perhaps most importantly, how do we as artists trained in a classical tradition use our craft to protest the brutality of an authoritarian-turned-totalitarian regime, hold those who support it accountable, and honor the humanity of those who suffer needlessly from it?

This Wednesday, as The Washington Post reported, the Ukrainian National Tchaikovsky Academy of Music in Kyiv — named after the same composer who inspired the International Tchaikovsky Competition, and saw the Ukrainian capital as a second home — decided, in the midst of the shelling, explosions, and devastation from Russia’s military assault, to perform a program of Ukrainian classical music and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in Maidan, Kyiv’s central square.

According to the senior adviser to the Academy’s president Louri Loutsenko, “We are showing our strength through music.”

Volume 151, Number 14

Oscar Duffield, French Hornist, Polyglot IN THE PRACTICE ROOM

Walter Thomas-Patterson Conservatory Editor Oscar Duffield is a double-degree second-year student planning to pursue degrees in Comparative Literature and Horn Performance.

As a polyglot, he is fluent in English, French, and Spanish, and proficient in Italian.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How were you first introduced to foreign languages?

I was first introduced to language through a program called French Camp, a summer camp for small children seeking language immersion. I loved the food, but most importantly, the way French sounded to me was really intriguing. I remember feeling a desire to decipher what was being said; not knowing what was being said was frustrating for my little brain. In high school, I took two years each of French and Spanish.

Do you think there is any congruence between your musical and your language pursuits?

Music and speech are both forms of communication; you are trying to tell a story, convey an emotion. I think they are complementary, musical learning and language learning. Playing music helped develop my ear.

How did you motivate yourself to develop language fluency mostly independently?

I think it is a positive feedback loop. If you notice yourself making progress in something, then you are more likely to make further progress because the progress is motivational in itself. With languages and music and sports, you must put aside your ego and recognize that perfectionism is a detrimental state of mind. Progress should be the focus rather than perfection. I know that I am never going to sound like a native Parisian, but that doesn’t mean I can’t focus on improving.

Can you talk about how you avoid the abyss of internet surfing, especially given how so much of your pursuits involve personal discipline?

You need to find things that don’t involve looking at the screen.

Listening to things as opposed to watching things is key. If you are reading something, try to find something that is a physical book.

I am not a very social person, and I don’t have that online friend network, which is fine. In-person interactions are usually a lot richer. If social media is a problem, delete your apps and start interacting with people face-to-face. There is little value that social media adds to our lives. I think everything that you get from social media can be found from personal interactions. Life may not be as funny as an endless feed of dank memes, and it doesn’t elicit the unending stream of intense emotional reactions that social media often does. The point of social media is to capture and maintain our attention in this way; it’s important to resign yourself to the mundanity of the real world, and potentially face boredom in the pursuit of increased productivity.

As a person pursuing various interests, how have you dealt with the fear of burnout?

Playing music is my greatest source of frustration. French horn is a really frustrating instrument — it’s notoriously capricious, and you can feel great one day and awful the next.

Burnout is when you are just excessively tired. You don’t have any motivation anymore. It’s sort of like a self-imposed boulder you are toting around with you. It makes everything less appealing. In late high school, I was overwhelmed by everything I had to do. One thing that was really helpful was recognizing what Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature Claire Solomon calls “the capitalist myth of infinite productivity.”

You can’t be productive all the time — you need to take breaks. I did not understand the concept of taking breaks in high school.

Now, reading things just for fun is my comfort. I read a lot of Terry Pratchett. I take a lot of naps. I have never been very good at sleeping, but getting in the habit of not taking breaks to stare at your phone is key. I also do meditation and running — I usually feel better after a run. Cold showers are great too. I am also aware of the financial burden I am being to my parents. My education here is about figuring out what I want to do next.

T h i s We e k

by Ania Ocasio

Photo by Abe Frato, Photo Editor

A mixture of sounds emerge from the co-op headquarters: bike clamps tightening, wrenches clanking, pumps inflating tires. Head mechanic and College first-year Alicia Fessler guides members through repairing their bikes while a live recording of Oberlin’s Trombone Choir plays in the background. Fessler joined the Bike Co-op during the fall semester. Members of the co-op who feel confident in their ability to guide and train others are known as head mechanics. That said, no experience is required for new members looking to join.

“You come in, you keep coming in, that’s it,” Fessler said.

Keep Cottage’s lively basement is home to the Bike Co-op, a student-run organization that provides Oberlin students and community members with access to bikes and repair training. After the pandemic shut down cooperative organizations on campus in March 2020, the Bike Co-op reopened last semester and its mechanics are hoping for new members to join.

The Bike Co-op is currently repairing bikes Photo by Khadijah Halliday, Photo Editor

in preparation for their spring rental program. To rent a bike, students and community members can email bikecoop@oberlin.edu to receive the spring 2022 lottery form. If their assigned lottery number is chosen, students pay an initial $35 deposit but get $20 back at the end of the semester when they bring back their bike.

If a student does not get chosen for bike rental, they can build their own bike after working three shifts at the co-op to learn the necessary repair skills. College first-year Dan-Ha Le explains her experience building a bike.

“It depends on what parts you start off with,” Le said.

Photo by Khadijah Halliday, Photo Editor

“I started off with a pretty already completed bike, and it only took like two shifts to get it done with the help of the head mechanic.”

College first-year Bridget Heinzerling, who joined the co-op during Winter Term, describes her experience as a working member as “grimy, chaotic, [and] lovable.”

According to head mechanic and College first-year Emerson Rosen-Jones, the Bike Co-op aims to make bike culture accessible.

“Our MO would be ‘distributing bike knowledge,’ but our slogan is ‘ride or die,’ so take your pick,” he wrote in an email to the Review.

Design by Wiley Smith, This Week Editor Text illustration by Holly Yelton, illustrator

The Oberlin Review | March 11, 2022

Photo by Abe Frato, Photo Editor

9

A r t s & C u ltu r e

March 11, 2022

ARTS & CULTURE Established 1874

Volume 151, Number 14

Senese-Grossberg’s At the End of the World Illuminates Jewish Identity, Hope in the Face of Apocalypse

At the End of the World, a play written and directed by College fourth-year Zoe Senese-Grossberg, opened Thursday in Wilder Main Space.

Photo courtesy of Clarissa Heart Sierra Colbert Senior Staff Writer “How do we live when we feel like everything is being destroyed?”

This is the question College fourth-year Zoe Senese-Grossberg has spent the last few years reflecting on while writing and directing their play, At the End of the World. Written during the pandemic, the play was initially produced as a radio play but premiered on stage for the first time Thursday in the Wilder Main Space, where it will run through Sunday.

In Nov. 2019, Senese-Grossberg had a discussion with a friend about fears surrounding the end of

the world, and soon after, she began writing the play which would ultimately become a two-and-ahalf year endeavor. At the End of the World is set in New York City in 1938 and follows the lives of three characters: Ezra Lavinsky/Edward Llewelyn, Freyda Lavinsky, and Julia Ford, who grapple with questions of identity and family in the wake of an antisemetic attack.

College fourth-year Justin Pelofsky, who plays Edward/Ezra, feels that despite the dark material of the play, it ultimately offers audiences a message of community and hope.

“I think, really importantly, the connection we have to our loved ones, and how much that matters, … I think that that’s sort of a big message,” Pelof-

sky said. “To value these connections that we have even though sometimes things feel so hopeless.”

Pelofsky’s castmates expressed similar thoughts on the play’s impact. College second-year Noa Shapiro-Tamir plays Ezra’s cousin Freyda, whose apartment serves as the backdrop for much of the play.

“It’s a really beautiful play that, to me, speaks about how people struggle to connect with one another and with other people in a time of tragedy,” Shapiro-Tamir said. “Especially one that is outside the realm of control of these people.”

As it explores the vitality of human connection, At the End of the World also examines the experiences associated with holding Jewish identity in See Student Play, page 13

Dance Majors Jewel Cameron and Analise LaRiviere to Perform in Capstone Recitals Jocelyn Blockinger Senior Staff Writer

College fourth-years Analise LaRiviere and Jewel Cameron will perform in their joint capstone dance recital March 11–12.

Photo courtesy of Analise LaRiviere

10

On March 11 and 12, fourth-year Dance majors Jewel Cameron and Analise LaRiviere will perform their capstone dance recitals in Warner Main Space. LaRiviere’s piece is titled Au Milieu and Cameron’s, Dance Stories. While the performances are the culmination of LaRiviere and Cameron’s dance careers at Oberlin, both performers also hope to communicate their love and dedication to the College’s Dance department.

A labor of love that has taken months of preparation, the show is being put on with the help of a grant from XARTS, an Oberlin fund created to support the development and execution of collaborative, multi-disciplinary artistic projects. When asked about their preparative creative processes, LaRiviere and Cameron discussed the vital transformation of their choreographic skills.

“This is very different from other shows because it’s not as much sitting back as it can be with other departments’ shows with a lot of shorter dances all by different people,” Cameron said. “This is almost an hour of my own choreography, which is like

nothing I’ve ever done before. So it was a little bit daunting. But it was a wonderful experience. I feel like I learned a lot.”

Both Cameron and LaRiviere used experimental ideas to help form their final outcome. While LaRiviere prefers to showcase her work in non-trditional spaces, she highlighted the sentimental aspect of showcasing her capstone project in Warner Main Space.

“I’ve always been interested in site-specific dance, which is dance that happens outside of a regular stage theater,” LaRiviere said. “But in my heart of hearts, I knew that I needed to dance my senior show in Main Space, which is just such a gorgeous, beautiful space that holds such a place in my heart.”

LaRiviere chose to create an installation for her performance. A series of decorated cloth-like pieces will be draped around the stage for the duration of her performance, transforming the traditional stage in Warner into an otherworldly space.

“I was craving a new and interesting space to create and move in,” LaRiviere said. “The installation mainly consists of large sheets of cheesecloth See Graduating, page 13

Allegra Hyde, Professor of Creative Writing, Author of New Novel Eleutheria

ON THE RECORD

Allegra Hyde Courtesy of Tanya Rosen-Jones Lilyanna D’Amato Arts & Culture Editor Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Allegra Hyde released her debut novel Eleutheria last Tuesday. Grappling with issues surrounding political activism, systemic corruption, and climate change, the novel follows 22-year-old Willa Marks as she flies to the Bahamian island of Eleutheria to flee heartbreak and join a group of ecowarriors. Much of Hyde’s previous work, including her short story collection Of This New World, deals with the scope of climate change and themes of utopianism. Hyde’s writing has been featured in anthologies like The Best American Travel Writing, Best Women’s Travel Writing, Best of the Net, and The Best Small Fictions and her work has also appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, and The Threepenny Review.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your initial goal when you started working on Eleutheria?

When I started thinking about writing a novel, I knew I wanted to write about climate change. I am a believer that every person has some sphere of influence, some skill they can contribute. And since I’m a writer, I felt like, “Okay, the thing I can contribute to the movement for a sustainable future is to write about it.” I wanted to use fiction as a space to imagine what it would look like to try to solve climate change instead of mostly ignoring it or just not doing anything.

I wanted to use fiction as a space to draw connections between groups of people through time. That’s something I think that fiction is uniquely suited to do. That was the challenge that I set myself going into the project.

What was the writing process like for this novel?

Well, my story collection Of This New World was all about the utopian imagination, and the stories were written in a variety of genres. There were science fiction stories about a colony on Mars. There was historical fiction about a Shaker village. Each story was exploring different kinds of relationships: imagining a better world, losing a better world, trying to create a better world. That’s just been an ongoing fascination of mine. I think that actual intentional communities that are out there in the world, where people are stepping away from the mainstream to try to live differently, to try to problem solve — I admire the courage that it takes to do that. I also recognize that those intentional communities often run up against many challenges — humans are flawed, and living up to any ideal is really difficult. So I’ve always been really fascinated by that, and that showed up in my first book. There was one story in particular in that collection called “Shark Fishing,” also set in the Bahamas. It was the longest story in the collection, but it felt like there was more to say. So I used that short story as a springboard to also move forward with a novel. The novel isn’t an exact expansion of that story, but it did grow from that initial effort to talk about what I wanted to talk about.

It took me over five years to write this book. It was a long haul. Being a writer is also a constant struggle to figure out how I can give myself time to write while making sure that I have a place to live and food to eat. I was moving around a lot during that time, looking for opportunities. I lived in Bulgaria at one point. I lived in Houston for a while. But the writing process was just extensive research, reading about climate change — and people’s projections for climate change — reading about utopian communities, and research on the legacy of colonialism in the Bahamas. Also,

learning about the patterns of idealism and exploitation that have played out in the Americas. It felt like 1,000 drafts. It took a long time to figure out the shape of the book, to figure out how to best position the material.

What do you want your readers to take away from the novel and your work as a whole?

I want readers to leave the book with a sense of the complicated legacy that has brought us to this moment.

Climate change is vast and connected to so many other forces that have played out through history: white supremacy, colonialism, extractivist mentality, and misogyny. They’re all playing a part in bringing us to where the world is in this moment.

That legacy has to be reckoned with and brought into consideration when we’re making plans for how we’re going to resolve the future, so I want readers to understand that history.

But at the same time, I also hope that people leave the book with a sense of agency and optimism. This book was about balancing that reckoning with a sense of hope. That’s what I was trying to leave readers with. I don’t think you can just have one or the other; you need both of them. That’s where I was trying to go.

Who were your biggest influences when writing this book?

Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement was really helpful. It talked about how literature could do a better job talking about climate change and imagining alternate scenarios for the future. I really took to heart the critiques Ghosh was making and used that as a touchstone. Another book that was a big influence on me was Dr. Micah White’s The End of Protest, which is a book about activism and how it needs to evolve in order to effectively address the crises of today. I found it really inspiring, and my novel is in many ways about social movements, activism, and the ethics of activism.

Hales Late Nighter Features Bowling, Billiards, Bands Kathleen Kelleher Lilyanna D’Amato Arts & Culture Editors Hales Late Nighter, held this past Saturday at the Cat in the Cream, featured performances by Oberlin’s own MNGLW, the winner of the Cat’s Battle of the Bands, and DAISY, a Los Angeles-based R&B punk band. The event, which featured everything from face painting to bowling, is the largest event at the Cat every year.

College first-year Tabitha Bird, a manager at the Cat, helped organize the event. In the week before the show, they spent a lot of time coordinating with the bands, decorating the Cat, and setting up the different activities.

“We had a DJ and then we had the two bands, which were our main acts,” Bird said. “Then we had face painting off in the corner, and we had the bowling lanes open and billiards down the hall. There were some little pop-up activities too; people could bring stuff if they wanted. It was kind of open for everyone.”

Bird reported that nearly 350 people attended the event, a number only on par with Battle of the Bands and concerts featuring more popular, professional bands. Not only was the Late Nighter one of the busiest events of the year, Bird felt it also boasted one of the most engaged audiences.

The Oberlin Review | March 11, 2022

“The crowd was really hype,” Bird said. “People were dancing everywhere. Lots of crowd-band interaction. I think Sehréa [N’dayu], the lead singer for MNGLW, had us all on the floor at one point. She told us to crouch and we crouched and danced, and then she told us to get back up and we stood up and danced.

It was so fun.”

College first-year Max Grossman, the drummer for MNGLW, was excited to see so many people at the performance. The group’s set list included pieces by

Photo courtesy of Tabitha Bird artists ranging from jazzy funk acts like Yussef Dayes and Hiatus Kaiyote to soulful vocalists like Sade and Beyoncé.

“I was a little worried about alienating the audience by playing kind of an obscure song selection,” Grossman said. “But afterwards, a bunch of people came up to us and were so complimentary. I just had so much fun, and DAISY, the band that we opened for, was really good too. I thought they were really nice people and really talented.”

11

A r t s & C u lt u r e

The Batman Proves We Don’t Need More Batman Films

Matt Reeves’ The Batman, starring actors Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz, was released on March 4.

Courtesy of DC Comics Kushagra Kar Editor-in-Chief It’s a f **king drag at this point. People have been making Batman films for what feels like forever. You’d think there’d be enough at this point. But I suppose there is just something about a mysterious detective of the night that captures the imagination of thrill-seeking audiences, not to mention huge box office numbers. Somewhere out there is a voice in a pitch meeting saying, “Let’s make another one,” and that person really needs to shut up.

Matt Reeves’ The Batman, released on March 4, 2022, is the latest attempt at offering a new take on the Dark Knight, but I keep wondering if it was worth the effort. The film stars Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Jeffrey Wright, and Paul Dano. Before I get to its major issues, I admit there were elements of the film I did enjoy. I thoroughly enjoyed Pattinson in the role of Batman and completely bought into his tortured, creepy, and emotionally raw take on the character. He brought

COMIC

performance by John Turturro, who plays Carmine Falcone. Paul Dano was great, but his Riddler was so obviously inspired by Heath Ledger’s Joker and the film didn’t even try to hide it. Fans of The Dark Knight will be crying foul at the near-identical artistic choices for The Riddler’s camera recordings that foretell Gotham’s reckoning, citing everything from dialogue to cinematography.

Dialogue actually accounts for the majority of this film’s embarrassments, with most bits coming across as either cheesy or striving for the pretension of a better film. Incessant voice-overs representing Batman’s inner monologue resulted in tonally dissonant scenes where every plot point is spelled out for the audience. Instead of trusting the filmmaking itself or the audience’s intelligence, everything is spoken as opposed to shown.

For a crime thriller, the film is disappointingly liberal with its vocalization of clues and twists, altogether butchering any mystery or angst that could have otherwise been there. I was neither surprised nor inspired by any of

Oberlin Activism, Then and Now

Ananya Gupta, OC ’21

12

so much gravity and edge to the Bruce Wayne character and delivered a quality of performance to rival any Batman actor prior. The soundtrack was haunting, mysterious, and appropriately fear- or hope-inducing to suit the moment. Costumes, set design, makeup, and prosthetics contributed to the goth aesthetic echoed in the script, not to mention an especially seedy feel for Gotham City. An incredibly talented team of people worked on this film, but were tragically let down by the drab writing and directing of the film’s visionaries.

The Batman is a three-hour-long film stuffed to the brim with villains and subplots that go nowhere and add no value to the viewing experience. The Penguin, Carmine Falcone, and The Riddler struggle for screen time and the title of primary antagonist, yet none of them ever display a clear motivation for their choices and general villainy. I maintain that Colin Farrell as The Penguin was despicably miscast and an unnecessary addition to the film; constantly playing second-fiddle to a more interesting

the supposedly big reveals of the plot, and frankly, I was continually disengaged by the constant chatter of the characters. The worst of it all was the repeated use of the word “vengeance” to characterize Batman’s motivations, reaching a head when both Catwoman and The Penguin use the word to mock Batman. Despite the lack of intentional jokes, the film ended up oddly campy and juvenile, which was especially disappointing considering how seriously the whole enterprise takes itself.

Then there’s the plot, which was contrived and messy. I honestly cannot clearly track the progression of events and am unable to pinpoint what the cause and effect of different things were. Despite Pattinson and Kravitz’s chemistry, their romantic arc felt shoehorned. It distracted from Catwoman’s already packed storyline of seeking revenge on Falcone, finding her friend, stealing a bunch of money, and taking care of her cats. There was so much happening constantly, which is ironic because I was drop-dead bored for a lot of it. The additional consequence of this hectic writing was the dreadful underdevelopment of Alfred and Bruce’s relationship.

After two hasty scenes of Bruce mistreating Alfred, we’re somehow supposed to care when the iconic butler nearly dies, and rightfully so. But, because no one expected him to croak so early in a potential franchise, there were no stakes at play for anyone.

The unjustified runtime and rather clumsy execution of this film are symptomatic of shoddy directing.

There was a lack of prioritization in both the screenplay and characterization, and a lack of faith in the medium of visual storytelling. Everything was overexplained, overwritten, and ended up being unrewarding and uninspired despite the abundance of talent on this production. If Warner Bros. decides to make a sequel — which of course, they will — a better director needs to helm that project. This isn’t the movie Gotham deserves and is certainly not the one it needs right now.

Reprinted from The Oberlin Review (April 5, 2019)

Graduating Dance Majors Perform in Culminating Recitals

Continued from page 10

that are 40-50 feet long. It also includes two films that I made over Winter Term. One was an installation in a hallway in the basement of Warner called ‘ Stuck.’ The other is called ‘Masked Play.’ I made the installation using chairs and partner dance work.

It’s very much an interdisciplinary show of movement, art, film, and projection.”

Cameron’s performance will combine her two passions: dance and psychology. In the last few months, she conducted a department-wide survey, the results of which inform the structure and narrative of her piece.

“First, I conducted a campus-wide dance survey of the entire Oberlin dance community,” Cameron said. “I collected about 60 responses, which I think was the final number. And there were eight open-ended questions all pertaining to dance. From those written words that people sent me, I cre-

ated the almost 40-minute-long show that we’re putting on this weekend.”

Although Cameron and LaRiviere will be showcasing their pieces for the same event, the performances differ greatly from each other.

“The shows are completely opposite aesthetically,” La Riviere said.

“Jewel’s is 100 percent on a different page than my show. But I think it’ll be really fun for the audience to be able to see two such different but engaging pieces.”

In reflecting on the ethos of the Dance department, LaRiviere noted that the faculty prioritizes student choreography.

“The department really pushes student creation,” LaRiviere said. “I feel like every year that I get older, I get more and more courage and knowledge and experience to create my own work. It feels very supported by the department.”

Associate Professor of Dance Alysia Ramos described the Dance department as a non-prescriptive, open environment where students are encouraged to design their own paths.

“I was really interested in teaching dance in a liberal arts environment, rather than a conservatory,” Ramos said. “I am really interested in students who do interdisciplinary work or who have other interests outside of dance, too.”

Ramos’ statement highlights the life-blood of Oberlin’s Dance department, as it primarily serves students who do not commit to a major. In fact, there are currently only a handful of Dance majors in the department.

However, many students who dabble in the Dance department regard their experience as one of the most memorable throughout their college career.

“There’s a lot of people who end up accidentally minoring in the Dance

department because it’s really easy to pick up a dance minor,” LaRiviere said. “One of my friends had taken samba, hip hop, ballet, and contemporary twice and ended up with a minor just because she kind of fell backwards into the Dance department and had never really taken a dance class before coming here.”

For LaRiviere and Cameron, majoring in Dance was always the plan, though both are multi-disciplinary students. LaRiviere shares her major with Biochemistry and Cameron with Psychology, a shining example of the Dance department’s interdisciplinary principles.

Au Milieu and Dance Stories are set to begin at 8 p.m this Friday and Saturday. They are sure to be a beautiful and original showcasing of the hard work and passion that runs throughout Oberlin’s Dance department.

Student Play At the End of the World Explores Connection in Times of Tragedy Continued from page 10 the 20th century.

“When I started the play, it was a lot more about this metaphor of the end of the world,” Senese-Grossberg said. “But I think doing this production, it’s felt like it’s way more about Jewishness and, specifically, the Holocaust.”

Senese-Grossberg hopes the play will bring to light Jewish issues she encounters in her own life.

For Senese-Grossberg, intentional erasure of identity, particularly during the Holocaust and subsequent American assimilation, defines the modern Jewish experience.

“If you don’t feel safe being Jewish and you feel like being Jewish is going to impede you or your children moving forward, especially integrating into American whiteness and a white middle-class society, then you’re not going to teach them Yiddish, you’re not going to give them Jewish names, and you’re not going to send them to Hebrew school,” she said.

For this reason, she believes it is important to bring discussions of Jewish identity in tumultuous times to the Oberlin theatrical audience and beyond.

Production-wise, At the End of the World went through a process that was far from ordinary. Written near the end of 2019, original production for the show stalled when students were sent home as the world’s focus drastically shifted toward public health.

Over the course of the pandemic, Senese-Grossberg and her team continued working on the piece, rehearsing, and producing the radio play in place of a live performance. However, upon returning to campus in the fall, the team began to imagine a way to revitalize the project in its originally intended format. Their solution was to turn the play into a Winter Term project, giving the whole team time to focus intently on production. Shapiro-Tamir says she saw this as an excellent opportunity.

“Having this as a primary focus over Winter Term, for me, was really wonderful,” she said. “I got to go deep and become really close with these people, and spend my work day with them, but also had a few hours in the evening to take care of myself and nurture other aspects of my life.”

College second-year and stage manager Ryan Beatty was also happy with the work that was done over Winter Term.

“I’m proud of the lights and the sound and the costumes and everything,” Beatty said. “I think they look really good. I don’t think they’re necessarily changing the artistic vocabulary of theater at Oberlin, but I do think we put together a really good show.

College fourth-year Sophie Falvey, who plays JuThe Oberlin Review | March 11, 2022

Fourth-year Justin Pelofsky plays Edward/Ezra in At the End of the World.

Photo courtesy of Clarissa Heart lia, enjoys participating in Oberlin’s creative theatrical atmosphere.

“Because the culture around theater here is so self-motivated, it becomes, at a certain point, hard to pin it down,” Falvey said. “I think that’s the wonderful thing about college theater … the look of it is always going to be changing.”

The play follows the stylistic tradition of American realism, an artistic movement which encouraged theater to be didactic, while also bringing a

unique voice to the stage. It ruminates on the human condition in times of conflict.

“If you want to see three people try to figure out how to live in a world that is so much like ours, maybe you’ll learn how to live in the world yourself a little better,” Senese-Grossberg said. “I don’t think they know what to do, and neither do we, but hopefully we can come to the same space for a few hours and try to figure it out together.”

13

S p or t s IN THE LOCKER ROOM

Audrey Koren, Women’s Lacrosse Powerhouse

Zoë Martin del Campo Contributing Sports Editor Second-year women’s lacrosse attacker Audrey Koren has made it no secret that she’s playing to win. Only three games into the season, Koren has already been responsible for 12 goals. This is Koren’s first full lacrosse season as last year the team only played four spring games.

Outside of athletics, she is exploring various passions at Oberlin while majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Hispanic Studies. This summer, she’ll be working in a neuroscience research lab at Stanford University.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How long have you played lacrosse?

I think it’s been 11 years now, I started right when I turned 8 years old.

Why did you choose Oberlin?

For as long as I can remember, I really wanted to play lacrosse in college. When I was younger, I had a big university mentality, but then in high school I started looking at smaller schools and recognized how liberal arts schools have a perfect balance of small class sizes, the ability to have relationships with professors, research opportunities, and athletics.

Also, fourth-year midfielder Annie Payne went to my high school and we were teammates. When she went to Oberlin, I decided to look as well.

When I visited, I fell in love with the school.

How does it feel to have your first full collegiate season?

It’s been really fun and special. We were so fortunate last year to get those four games, and it was a bit of a teaser for myself and everyone else on the team. I think it made us hungry, excited, and eager to put in the work for the full season. It’s definitely made us appreciate every little moment more because we know what it’s like not to have it. Overall, it made us work harder and motivated us a lot.

You’ve had an amazing season thus far, what do you attribute your success to?

Honestly, my team, our overall work ethic during practice, and the support system we’ve built. Our coaches help run an offense where everybody gets a moment to shine and we’ve learned how to create those moments for every person. And then there’s the comradery that we have on the team; we’re all best friends and a big family.

We wouldn’t feel comfortable trying different things in games if we didn’t

know that we had our teammates to back us up if a mistake happens.

What are you looking forward to for the rest of the season?

Our team has the potential to go really far in the league. Right now we’re ranked fourth, but I think that we will get even better and work to be ranked higher. The goals are to win the league and go to the tournament afterward. I’m excited about our potential, spending more time with my team, and just being a new Oberlin lacrosse player. I think that this is the best team that Oberlin has ever had and it’s also the youngest team, which is exciting.

We have great leadership from our older players and our younger players have an incredible skill set. That’s exciting for a lot of us because these past games have been the first collegiate games that we’ve really played in. As we get more experience and the older players get back into the groove after not playing for so long, I think we’re going to have a winning season and hopefully set some records.

Outside of lacrosse, what are you interested in?

I’m a Neuroscience major and Hispanic Studies minor on the premed track, so most of my time is spent on school and lacrosse. I’m also a Student-Athlete Advisory Committee

Audrey Koren.

Courtesy of GoYeo

representative. I’ve recently gotten involved with the One Love Foundation, and I’m now a school ambassador for them. The program focuses on spreading awareness about healthy and unhealthy relationships and different steps to take. I’m looking forward to getting involved with research in the future and studying abroad next fall in Spain to finish up my Hispanic Studies minor.

College Basketball Fans Ready for March Madness

Courtesy of Paul Sancya

Matt Rudella One of the greatest sporting events of the year, my personal favorite, is once again upon us. The time of Cinderella stories, upsetting blue bloods, buzzer-beater endings, and brackets being busted: it’s March Madness time. Last year, we saw the Baylor University Bears take down the Gonzaga University Bulldogs to win their first championship game. With consistently edge-of-yourseat anticipation until the clock hits zero, it’s hard not to love March Madness and all the crazy upsets that come with it. In anticipation of another month of insanity and hopes for a perfect bracket, I asked some fans around campus what their predictions are and which teams they’re pulling for.

Assistant Men’s Lacrosse Coach Drake O’Neill currently thinks the University of Kentucky is going to win it all and that players Oscar Tshiebwe and Kellan Grady will be key factors in the team’s success. Some other teams he likes are UCLA, Auburn University, the University of Houston, and his personal favorite, the UNC Tar Heels.

Fourth-year men’s soccer player Ryan Kim has been supporting the University of Illinois for a while and sees them going all the way to the top this year.

“I’ve been a lifelong fan, so I have to back the Fighting Illini for March,” he said. “We are the Big Ten regular season champions, and this was the first time since our Final Four 2005 team. We won arguably the toughest conference in the country, so I am confident in our abilities.”

Like O’Neill, Kim is excited to watch Tshiebwe from Kentucky. He also says not to overlook Kofi Cockburn from Illinois or Jaden Ivey from Purdue University.

“I’ve loved watching all these guys play this season, and they will definitely be must-see players in March,” Kim said. “I do like Kentucky, [University of ] Arizona, and Purdue as some other favorites to win March Madness.”

14

Some Blue Devils fans might hate to hear this, but O’Neill believes that Duke University will have a disappointing performance in the big dance and has his eye on some underdog teams that he thinks could make it through this year.

“I think [Duke will] have a Sweet 16 exit with the pressure of Coach [Krzyzewski] leaving being too much to handle,” he said. “For underdogs, I’m going with [the University of Tennessee at] Chattanooga, Wright State [University], and Iona [College]. Chattanooga’s overtime conference championship buzzer-beater win will help give them a boost of momentum for the tournament.”

O’Neill also says to keep an eye on Silvio De Sousa for Chattanooga, and not to underestimate the Mountain West Conference, which he believes has some great “under-the-radar teams” like Colorado State University and Boise State University.

“As a Boise native, I’m definitely looking for Boise State to make a big run,” he said. “I think they have what it takes behind star player Abu Kigab.”

I think we also need to keep an eye on Murray State University. Not many people are familiar with the Murray State Racers since they play in the Ohio Valley Conference, but they’re 30–2, ranked 19th in the country, and just won the conference tournament. They are led

by OVC Player of the Year KJ Williams and have a top 25 offense and defense in DI at 79.3 points per game and 62.3 points allowed. I could definitely see Murray State upsetting a No. 1 seed as the No. 8 or 9 seed and going to the Sweet 16 or Elite 8.

Second-year men’s lacrosse player Ben Johnson is a die-hard UNC fan, and he sees them as a sneaky contender.

“I’ve always been a big fan [of UNC] since the 2016 championship loss, when they lost in brutal fashion to Villanova [University,]” he said. “But I think [players] Armando Bacot and Caleb Love have what it takes to make some noise and get to the Final Four.”

When asked about his other favorites that he thinks could be contenders, Johnson mentioned some heavy hitters.

“Despite what I just said, I like Villanova,” he said.

“They have a lot of experienced, scrappy guards like Colin Gillespie, and experience is very important in March Madness, especially as you progress through the tournament and get in more high-pressure situations.”

Similar to Kim, Johnson likes Purdue and Jaden Ivey and seems to think he’s the best player in college basketball.

Jaden Ivey has turned a lot of heads in the regular season and for good reason. Ivey is a projected top-five NBA draft pick and has been compared to budding superstar Ja Morant.

First-year men’s lacrosse player Jonas Taylor-Lilliquist has some strong ties to college basketball, speicifically Seton Hall University.

“My dad is the athletic director at Seton Hall, so I’ve been following them very closely all my life, and I think they’re very dangerous this year,” he said.

There’s no question that Taylor-Lilliquist is a die-hard Pirates fan. In fact, I had to pull him away from their first round Big East Tournament game for this interview.

When I asked what separates Seton Hall from the rest of the pool, Taylor-Lilliquist presented some strong points.

“We’re a very good defensive team, we’ve beaten a lot of high-ranked teams, and we have a great blend of veterans and young talent,” he said.

We’ll see if the Pirates can make some history this March and bring home some hardware for the TaylorLilliquist family.

Personally, I think Auburn is going to be the last one standing this year. They have all the components that they need to win, most notably two Player of the Year candidates — projected No. 1 draft pick Jabari Smith, who has an average of 17.1 points per game, and defensive standout Walker Kessler, who averages a staggering 4.5 blocks per game. With the strong guard play of K.D. Johnson and Wendell Green Jr. and the great coaching of Bruce Pearl, I don’t see anybody stopping this team.

Don’t be surprised if this group gets revenge for their 2019 Final Four loss and takes it home.

We can make all the predictions we want, but at the end of the day, nobody has a clue who’s going to be dancing in April, since March Madness is one of the most unpredictable events in sports. After all, the odds of getting a perfect bracket are 1 in 9.2 quintillion. And that’s the beauty of it — you truly never know what’s going to happen next. All you can do is sit back and pray that your team makes that magical run and cuts down the nets.

Teams Talk Traditions at Oberlin Continued from page 16

favorite field hockey tradition is Teamsgiving, which takes place right before fall break at the end of the field hockey season. Teamsgiving is a potluck where teammates and coaches bring a dish they enjoy cooking and hand out paper plate awards to the team based on inside jokes they’ve formed over the season. “The food is really good. I know we have some good chefs on our team,” Schreiber said. More importantly, it’s her favorite tradition because it’s the last time all her teammates and coaches are together as a team for the season.

Soccer: The women’s and men’s soccer teams have a tight bond — in the past, they’ve thrown a wedding, a prom, and a dress-up-as-decades night together. Fourth-year Belle Smith’s favorite tradition is prom, which happens in the spring. Athletes on the men’s and women’s teams put on their favorite formal attire or go thrifting to find an outfit. To Smith, it reaffirms athletes’ love of soccer during the offseason. “It’s like getting back together and bonding over soccer again,” she said. “Everyone who quit is still invited to come.”

Winter Sports Basketball: One of the first tasks second-year Jaedyn O’Reilly was assigned during her first season on the team was to read The Hard Hat: 21 Ways to be a Great Teammate by Jon Gordon. Each week during the season, one teammate is awarded the hard hat, which is a white hard hat that team members write on. “Whoever gets the hard hat [that week] adds a word or phrase that explains why the next person deserves it,” O’Reilly said. “By the end of the season, the hard hat is covered with different ways our team have been good teammates to each other.”

The men’s basketball team sticks with traditions on game day. Ten minutes before tipoff, the team huddles together to discuss and finalize their game plan. All day before the gane, they wear their

team tracksuits. “We all love game day,” said second-year Adel Dibael. “Wearing our sacred track suits on game day makes us feel very special and a part of something bigger.”

Swim and dive: This year’s swim and dive Friendsgiving was done before conferences instead of over fall break. Friendsgiving, similar to field hockey’s Teamsgiving, is a team-wide potluck dinner that happens each year at Swim House. Secondyear Anika Kennedy explained that each teammate must bring either an appetizer, an entrée, or a dessert to the event.

Spring Sports Tennis: Each year, the men’s and women’s tennis teams celebrate Halloween together. “One of the most memorable years was when half of us dressed up as Average Joe’s and the other half as Globo Gym, the two rival teams in the movie Dodgeball,” recalled fourth-year James Dill. A tradition Dill mentioned was the memorable quotes written throughout the years on the locker room chalkboard. “One of my favorite items is a drawing of a wizard, who is described as being ‘ashamed of his squib (non-magical) son.’”

Lacrosse: As explained by second-years Maya Blevins, Kaela Wilson, and Aidan Loh, each year the men’s and women’s lacrosse teams come together for a country-themed wedding. Everyone dresses up for the occasion, and teammates are assigned characters — a bride and groom, ring bearers, bridesmaids, a maid of honor, a best man, the congregation, and, of course, an officiator. There is even a wedding cake at the end to celebrate the marriage.

Baseball: The baseball team calls itself “The Mules.” Why mules? Because mules can’t breed.

“Our team is known to have been very bad in the past,” said second-year Jay Aghanya. Apparently, many years ago, a coach from a school in the North Coast Athletic Conference conference said that Oberlin’s baseball team was “so bad that

they shouldn’t be able to reproduce.” The team now makes a joke of it. “We would say we’re the mules so we don’t have any bad generations in the future,” said Aghanya.

Softball: Before each game, the team huddles in a circle around some members in the middle to do the Yeo Baby cheer: “Can I get a yeo? Can I get a yeo baby? Can I get a yeo baby yeo baby yeo!” “It’s the thing that gets us hyped up for the game, gets us into a good headspace, and hopefully intimidates the opponent a little bit,” said third-year Kathyrn Beeman.

Track and field: The track and field team also does the Yeo Baby cheer during their meets. “Every other [competing] team hates us for it,” said second-year Jon Dromlewicz. With a large team, the cheer can become extremely loud when there are groups of Obies scattered around the track.

Dromlewicz clarified that Yeo Baby is usually done during relays and finals toward the end of the race as a final encouragement to those competing.

Club Sports Rugby: “We have a special naming process for the rookies each semester … we always have to call each other by our nicknames or you have to do a push-up,” said second-year Gillian Shin. For the Rhinos, the women and trans rugby team, each teammate is given a nickname when they first join.

How they come up with the names is very secretive, but nicknames are unanimously agreed upon by the team.

Frisbee: A yearly tradition between the Preying Manti and the Flying Horsecows is Flat Crawl.

Second-year Alea Strasser explained that in Flat Crawl, two to three people are tied to each other to compete in three- or four-legged races from one house to the next, and the first group that gets to the last house wins the game. “It helps form friendships between the teams,” Strasser said. At this year’s Flat Crawl, Strasser and her friend won second place.

Student-Athletes Reflect on Women’s History Month

Bette Imhoff looks to pass the ball on Bailey Field.

River Schiff Senior Staff Writer Women of color, especially Black women, continually face discrimination in the sports world. Women’s History Month is a reminder that we need to celebrate the diversity and beauty of womanhood in athletics.

Fourth-year captain of women’s lacrosse Bette Imhoff spoke on her experience being a Black woman in a predominantly white sport.

“Growing up in a predominantly white area, I was always the only Black girl on the team,” she said. “Joining a team, in the beginning, was tough because I was already distinguished as being different and an outsider, so I had to find a way to be accepted. They The Oberlin Review | March 11, 2022

didn’t know me. I didn’t look like them.

I was probably one of the first Black people they have seen. Therefore, they wouldn’t pass me the ball or ask me to be their partner during warmups.”

Despite these struggles, Imhoff thinks the extra barriers that she had to endure have made her a stronger, more empowered athlete.

“At a young age, I learned that I had to get my teammates’ respect before they would allow me to play,” she said. “Sports give athletes a safe space.

However, I had to create that safeness for myself — it wasn’t just given to me.

Sports have allowed me to become self-empowered and prideful of being Black and a woman.”

In athletics, the extra steps required of underrepresented women inform

Courtesy of Lucas Draper

the work that’s yet to be done. Imhoff highlights a possible solution for the lack of diversity in lacrosse, specifically, that children of all backgrounds should be able to get a sports education.

“Economically speaking, lacrosse is an expensive sport to play because of the pricey equipment and thus, excludes a majority of people from participating,” she said.

Third-year Solace Porter, who is also on the women’s lacrosse team, is thankful for the opportunity that Oberlin Athletics has given her to build her self-confidence and sense of worth.

“Being POC in a majority white space, there is no one to look up to that you can relate to, and even in spaces like Oberlin where [diversity, equity,

and inclusion] is supposed to be really important, there is still a cultural difference,” Porter wrote in an email to the Review. “But despite all this, having the Black Student-Athlete Group as a resource of like-minded and talented Black athletes is great. I have formed connections with former Black Oberlin athletes who have assisted me in securing internships, and I have been offered mentorship from current athletes.”

According to Porter, it is imperative that Oberlin students become more active in their support for Black students, especially Black women whose unique experiences often get ignored or go unsaid.

“As one of the few Black lacrosse players, I not only play lacrosse because I love the sport, but I play for young girls who look like me and who deserve the opportunity to play,” she wrote.

Second-year women’s lacrosse player Emilie Jones thinks that the sense of togetherness among a community of strong women is of the utmost importance. As a white athlete, she acknowledges the privilege of her experience as a white person in sports — having been able to transcend certain stereotypes and create confidence for herself without the scrutiny of fellow women.

“Sports gave me a sense of confidence and empowerment, and a community who defied that timid aspect that is sometimes pushed onto women,” Jones said. “Being in athletics gives me so much power and confidence, and has made me a stronger, better person, more myself than I ever had been.”

15

March 11, 2022

SPORTS Established 1874

Volume 151, Number 14

Oberlin Sports Teams Hold Traditions Close to Their Hearts

The Black Student-Athlete Group and Student-Athlete Advisory Committee held their first-ever Black History Month basketball tournament on Sunday.

Courtesy of Maggie Balderstone

BSAG and SAAC Host Black History Month Basketball Fundraiser Adrienne Sato Senior Staff Writer Last Sunday, Oberlin’s Black Student-Athlete Group and the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee worked in conjunction to host a Black History Month basketball tournament. The tournament raised money for Black Girls Smile, a nonprofit aimed at providing mental health resources and support to young Black women.

Participants were split into 16 teams and competed in the five-on-five single-elimination tournament in Philips gym. The tournament was open to all students, and BSAG and SACC encouraged the teams to be coed. To keep the competition fair, the organizers only allowed two varsity basketball players on each team.

According to second-year Alyson Jefferson, the BSAG and SAAC representative who organized the event, evenly distributing the varsity athletes kept the tournament fun and inclusive.

“It wasn’t only for already-known athletes on campus,” Jefferson said. “We also got the rest of Oberlin kids involved. The teams that came out — they weren’t only varsity basketball or varsity baseball. … It was people who you never would’ve thought wanted to play basketball.”

Each team was encouraged to donate to Black Girls Smile. Jefferson said that BSAG chose this organization from a list of nonprofits that align with BSAG’s mission statement and support Black people. The Atlanta-based organization provides mental health education and resources to young Black women with the goal of helping them feel supported. The tournament raised a total of $435 for Black Girls Smile.

Second-year Taylor Gwynne, the SAAC secretary, also helped organize the event. She said that the tournament was a lot of work, but it turned out to be a huge success.

“It was really competitive,” Gwynne said. “There were a lot of people that came, and it was a lot of fun to watch.”

The tournament ran through Sunday morning and afternoon. After eight initial games, four quarter-final

16

games, and two semi-finals, two remaining undefeated teams were set to face off in the finals, The Avengers and The Tallest Team. The Tallest Team took home the championship, walking away with the grand prize of new Oberlin College Crocs. Jefferson said that the tournament was popular enough for them to continue the tradition in the future. She noted that after hosting the tournament, there were some things that she would like to consider for next year.

Each team was encouraged to donate to Black Girls Smile.

Jefferson said that BSAG chose this organization from a list of nonprofits that align with BSAG’s mission statement and support Black people.

“Initially planning it, we weren’t really sure what to expect, but after going through it … there were just so many things we could do,” Jefferson said. “We could have half-time games, or we could get shirts.”

Gwynne has ideas for potential improvements as well.

“I think it would be really cool for the next tournament to have a place to donate at the door for spectators who are coming to watch, or encourage teams to donate even more,” she said.

SAAC and BSAG plan on hosting similar events later in the semester. They are still accepting donations for Black Girls Smile and students can donate via Venmo to @OCAthletics with the memo line “Black Girls Smile.” Students can also donate directly to Black Girls Smile through their website.

Second-year field hockey players Ruby Schreiber and Susan Robinson-Cloete smile at Teamsgiving, a yearly tradition on the team.

Courtesy of Amanda Phillips

Andrea Nguyen Traditions have always been a big part of team bonding at Oberlin. From formals to game day rituals, unique traditions bring the teams closer together.

This week the Review asked College varsity and club sport team members, “What is a tradition for your team?” This is what they had to say.

Fall Sports Volleyball: Each year, the volleyball team throws a fall formal called Volley Ball. Teammates bring a date, dress up, and take pictures just as if it were a school ball. In addition to this major team event, third-year Lucy Myers described a smaller-scale tradition: whenever the team goes to away games, each athlete is paired with a “psych buddy” during the trip. Before getting onto the bus, they give each other a gift such as a note or a snack or as Myers puts it, “something to hype them up.”

Cross country: Third-year Chase Sortor spoke about an event where teammates anonymously submit a crazy story from their life to be read while roasting marshmallows over a fire for s’mores.

After one person reads a story aloud, the rest of the group must try to match the story to the teammate.

“It’s confusing, and you learn insane stuff about people, such as riding their bike naked,” Sortor said. “It’s a fun one.”

Football: Big Brother/Little Brother is a tradition that second-year Jack Diskin adores. At the beginning of the season, each teammate is assigned a big or little brother. “When one guy gets knocked down, we are there to help them up, and it teaches us to appreciate the relationships we have within our team,” Diskin said. “It allows us to be vulnerable with someone else, which is hard for football players to do, and that alone helps strengthen our bond, making it easier to trust one another on and off the field.”

Field hockey: Second-year Ruby Schreiber’s See Teams, page 15