College second-year Avery Russell wrote a piece speaking to the lack of awareness of current events on campus and how it damages our community and lessens the amount of social change we can create (“Oberlin Students Should Read News,” The Oberlin Review, Oct. 27, 2023). The Editorial Board would like to argue that this lack of awareness and attention aimed toward current events hinders students’ ability to advocate for themselves within our own institution.  

One example of this is the current Israel–Palestine conflict, where misinformation and conspiracy theories are spreading faster than ever, especially with the lack of an adequate verification system on X, formerly known as Twitter. We’re in a unique position where we are getting firsthand accounts of issues in real time. While that is certainly a benefit, it also leaves room for a significant potential spread of misinformation. Over the past couple of weeks, people have shared videos of events that happened years ago, falsified AI generated images, and false translations. A video from 2021 where Vladimir Putin speaks at Russia’s Victory Day military parade was circulated as proof that he was sending aid to Palestine. A video of a soldier being thrown to the ground after an Israeli tank is hit by an airstrike has been circulated despite being computer generated and based off of a video game trailer. Many people don’t know the depth of the conflict, which spans back 75 years, and are now learning about it with little or no historical context. 

The difficulty with the on-the-ground reporting that has been happening during this conflict is that videos and photos are coming out faster than journalists are able to report on them with the same level of care and attention that they afford their regular reporting schedule. The problem with fact-checking is that it takes time. It is difficult to incorporate thorough fact checks into our modern-day news cycle, especially when you can only rely on yourself to do them, rather than a team of professionals whose sole purpose is to find and verify information.

Individual social media platforms have given us, as individuals, an ability to monitor and share information about the issues that are important to us with the click of a button. It has given us an unprecedented amount of access to firsthand accounts from worlds away within moments of their occurrence. But as with any type of platform, no matter how personal it may seem, you have a responsibility to ensure the information you repost or send to the group chat is accurate.

Our generation is often criticized for our tendency to be glued to our devices, and for a large part, this is true. Every day we are bombarded with an onslaught of notifications, both about the everyday lives of those around us — our family and our friends — but also about the impactful conflicts that are facing our world. The flood of information we receive on a daily basis can be difficult to sift through, time consuming, exhausting, and demoralizing. But, living in a country that is not currently experiencing the same level of violence, we have the privilege of time to sort through the facts and the fiction. More than that, we have the responsibility to make sure the information we distribute is true and from trustworthy sources. It’s great that we as Oberlin students are protesting and speaking out about different issues, because we’re not allowing people to forget about these conflicts. However, we need to make sure that we know exactly what we are fighting for to actively contribute positive change. 

Question and verify where your information is coming from before you share it online. Be cognizant of whose words you are espousing. Conduct your own research with a critical eye. Read articles from multiple sources. Put your liberal arts education to good use.

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.

Issue 1, the Right to Make Reproductive Decisions Including Abortion Initiative, involves protecting all forms of reproductive health care in the state, essentially codifying them into the State Constitution. This Editorial Board believes that the health care protected by Issue 1 is important to the state of Ohio and students at Oberlin College. After Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, a ban on abortions after six weeks was instituted shortly afterward, which was previously vetoed in 2019. On Sept. 14, 2022, a lower court in Ohio blocked this ban. However, if Issue 1 does not pass, it would mean that the six-week ban could be reinstated. Ohioans who need abortions would then have to travel to Pennsylvania or Michigan to get these. Restrictive bans such as this have had devastating effects across the country. Fourteen states have completely banned abortion, and two states — Georgia and South Carolina — uphold the six-week ban. Along with the devastating health effects, abortion bans have the most significant effect on people of color, primarily low-income Black women. Preexisting mistreatment of women of color within reproductive healthcare will only be exacerbated if Issue 1 does not pass. Therefore, this board urges you to vote “Yes” on Issue 1. We cannot allow Ohio to jeopardize our reproductive rights. It is important to note that the Issue 1 on next week’s ballot is different from the Issue 1 that was voted on in August, which, if passed, would have caused constitutional amendments to be passed by a 60 percent vote instead of majority rule. 

Issue 2 is the Marijuana Legalization Initiative. If passed, adults 21 and older would be allowed to buy recreational marijuana. Although medical marijuana has been legal in Ohio since 2016, this board believes that recreational marijuana should be decriminalized. Much like abortion, the criminalization and stigmatization of marijuana still predominantly affects people of color. Polls are showing that Ohioans are in favor of this constitutional amendment. According to a poll by the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, out of 843 likely voters, 55 percent were in favor. 

Finally, Issue 20 would act to redistrict Lorain County. If passed, districts will be created in Lorain County and four more county commissioners will be added. This proposal is controversial, and people across party lines have spoken out against it. The increase in county commissioners would mean that power is diluted among elected officials. Voters would not be able to vote on the elected county executive, who would instead be entirely voted on by the board. Additionally, the seven-district map is also problematic, as it places Oberlin, a suburban town, within District 2. This district encompasses most of Southern Lorain County, which predominantly consists of rural towns. This is not equitable demographically, and Oberlin’s vote would not be adequately represented in future elections in Lorain County. In other words, it’s gerrymandering. We urge readers to vote No on Issue 20. 

It goes without saying that we have a significant impact on the town as Oberlin students. It was particularly encouraging to watch students from the Reproductive Justice Alliance and other organizations phone banking and canvassing against Issue 1 in the August election, even while the majority of students were not on campus during the summer. Even after one of the strictest voting ID requirements in the country was passed in March, Ohioans overwhelmingly voted “no.” Although this is not a midterm or a presidential election, the rest of the country is watching what voters in this state have to say, because these changes are necessary and an inevitable sign of progress. Our vote can make a difference that stretches far beyond our campus. Educate yourself on local and statewide issues, and if you haven’t already filled out an absentee ballot, please make a plan to vote in-person on election day.

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.

Pell Grants are a type of federal student aid given to students who display “exceptional financial need” to help subsidize the cost of higher education. Unlike federal student loans, Pell Grants, which do not exceed $7,395 for this academic year, do not need to be paid back after the student graduates. The other institutions ranked among Oberlin, with only eight percent of the first-year class receiving Pell Grants, include Fairfield University, Tulane University, and Bates College, all of which are private institutions with exceptionally high tuition costs and small, selective student enrollment practices. The article also shows the percentage change in first-year recipients between 2010 and 2020: Oberlin decreased by two percent. Meanwhile, Oberlin’s endowment per student — another statistic listed within the report — is almost $200,000 more than the second-highest endowment per student of the three other colleges. These rankings were determined through an annual report from the Department of Education. While this ranking does not present definitive evidence that a college isn’t admitting low income students, to have received such a low ranking should be a wake-up call to Oberlin’s administration. 

Another reality is that Oberlin has a very high tuition cost at $63,700 for the 2023–2024 academic year. Additional fees total the yearly cost at $83,588. These high costs suggest that the Oberlin student body is generally well off. A The Upshot analysis from The New York Times reported that around 70 percent of Oberlin students in the class of 2013 come from families in the top 20 percent of income earners, while only two percent of Oberlin students had a family income of $20,000 or less. While these statistics are from 10 years ago, the ranking published in early September showed a two percent decrease in Pell Grant first-year recipients since 2010 which means that it’s possible this percentage of low income students is even lower now. And while many students receive merit scholarships and financial aid, these numbers as well as the data released about the amount of first-years who receive Pell Grants may deter low-income students from even applying for admission. 

The biggest reality check arises when comparing Oberlin to Berea College, another college ranked on this table. Berea College was founded 22 years after Oberlin and on similar principles, being the first college to admit women and Black students in the South. Yet Berea is ranked first in Pell Grant recipients, with 94 percent of students receiving one. While Berea specifically admits students who have demonstrated financial aid, the contrast is stark.  

The recent Supreme Court decision to end affirmative action in college admissions may exacerbate this trend in the coming years. The removal of affirmative action can potentially cause certain grants or scholarships to be less accessible to students of color, which affects Oberlin’s economic diversity as well as racial diversity. Even though Pell Grants are open to any and all students that need them, because colleges can no longer accept students on the basis of race, low-income students of color have less access to an affordable education. Within the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, general legal principles related to Pell Grants say that laws prohibit contractors and subcontractors from discrimination based on race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, disability, and protected veteran status. However, even though these laws are still in place, there’s still a question of whether they will remain accessible to low-income students of color. These students are not being put in high priority anymore. 

Oberlin, the oldest coeducational college in the country as well as the first private institution to accept Black students, has been at the forefront of social justice issues since its conception. The College itself advertises this culture and history. “With its longstanding commitments to access, diversity, and inclusion, Oberlin is the perfect laboratory in which to study and design the world you want.” The idea that Oberlin might be excluding, or at the very least, not including, lower income students in their admissions decisions directly contradicts this statement. In light of this recent ranking, the Editorial Board must ask, who has access to “this laboratory?” Who gets to “design the world” they want? Meanwhile, discussions of class consciousness remain ingrained in Oberlin’s campus culture as students make an effort to acknowledge and learn about their biases and privileges in and out of the classroom. If Oberlin is not doing its part to make sure that its education is accessible to low-income students, how productive can these conversations actually be? 

Oberlin, according to the Office of Financial Aid, meets “100 percent of demonstrated financial need making an Oberlin education accessible to students of all financial backgrounds.” This does not mean that the College accepts students of all financial backgrounds, especially those who need financial assistance to afford to attend Oberlin. The College should not claim to be committed to diversity, access, and inclusion if they are not also committed to increasing the economic diversity of our campus community. As many have said before, Oberlin cannot continue to live in and embrace its past when it is not implementing or upholding these values in real time.

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.

The Editorial Board understands the perspective of students who wish to live off-campus. Moving off-campus, especially as an upperclassman, often signifies a level of maturity and freedom that many first- and second-year students look forward to. We also understand that off-campus housing may alleviate financial or accessibility issues that are caused by living in a dorm.

Off-campus housing most often involves the renting of single-family homes and small rental buildings near campus; owners rent out homes to students as an alternative to on-campus Village Housing, which allows students to live off campus in College-owned houses and apartments. This makes it so that student off-campus housing directly intersects with affordable single-family homes that could be dedicated to lower-income families looking to move into Oberlin. Similarly, because Oberlin students often come from more well-off backgrounds, renters are inclined to raise their rent prices, making it hard for low-income community members to gain access to housing opportunities in Oberlin.

In recent years, larger incoming class sizes have caused a lack of on-campus housing. As a result, off-campus living became popular in order to take pressure off of the overcrowded dorm system. Though, as students, this decision to transition away from off-campus housing may seem like a direct contradiction to our interests, this board urges you to consider how a reduction of off-campus housing benefits the town, a space that we share with a larger Oberlin community. As temporary residents, the student body should better recognize our potential impact on the Oberlin community’s current housing  crisis. 

The lack of affordable single-family homes has been a topic of discussion for the Oberlin community for many years. In the spring of 2023, the City Council held a work session for an affordable housing proposal. This proposal was made after the affordable housing subgroups worked with a developer to design a plan to help low-income families trying to find housing within Oberlin. The affordable housing subgroup plans to build eight rent-to-own houses owned by the City to create housing outside of the homes that are also rented out to College students. In addition to this initiative, Oberlin students could help alleviate this crisis by decreasing their demand for off-campus housing, thus increasing the amount of housing opportunities for the community. 

We often forget to recognize that we are temporary visitors of Oberlin. We often prioritize our needs without acknowledging the real community in Oberlin and its issues. Many of us come from cities or areas with higher costs of living. Though the lack of affordable housing is also a problem in cities and higher populated areas, the same fate unfolds in small towns in the Midwest. Small rural towns nationwide are facing a housing crisis as home prices surge after the pandemic and are exacerbated by workers’ new ability to move out of cities to work remotely. Overall, housing prices are up by more than 30 percent in the last couple of years, with rent rising as well. This is seen in Ohio specifically, as data shows only 44 affordable and available units for every 100 extremely low-income households, leaving a significant shortage of homes. Oberlin is not spared from this issue. 

With the building of this new dorm, students should open up the conversation about how we can improve our own housing rather than look for outside sources. Village housing is an option for students to gain a similar level of independence while not increasing demand within the Oberlin housing market. Rather than putting our efforts towards bringing off-campus housing back, we should think of how we can improve the dorms and homes we currently have access to. 

As students of Oberlin, we have a responsibility to the community and their issues, as we are interconnected. By deprioritizing ourselves and remaining in on-campus housing, we can actively support the community members who reside here for much longer than four years.

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.

The Review team worked with Facilities Operations to locate the missing items only a couple of days before we officially started work in the office. While we are grateful for the help we received from Facilities and other departments to return the office items, the lack of communication our team received about the initial removal of our items speaks to a larger issue with the way the administration has interacted with student clubs during this period of ongoing construction. 

Many of us on campus last semester remember the displacement of student organizations caused by renovations to Wilder Hall. During this displacement, clubs found their office inventory missing or moved to different rooms without any sort of warning, and  some items were even lost or discarded. This loss significantly disrupted the regular functioning of many clubs — for instance, WOBC-FM was unable to go on air for an entire semester because of their last-minute relocation. While replacing pipes in Burton that broke over Winter Term 2023, Facilities moved items out of the Review’s archives. After communicating with different administration members about their whereabouts, we have only recently received all our items back. Such relocation of items due to construction places unnecessary strain on student organizations. 

We are grateful that Facilities collaborated with us in returning our items, and we understand that the displacement was prompted by essential construction. At the same time, we acknowledge that Review staff is connected with various departments across campus in a way that many organizations are not. Two Review staff members conducting research at Oberlin over the summer were able to alert Facilities and the rest of the staff to the missing items, and begin the process of tracking down our inventory months before most student organizations were aware. The initial discovery was circumstantial, and the following process of retrieval may have posed a greater challenge to student organizations that don’t work as closely with administration and therefore may not be aware of the right avenues for their complaints. Oberlin will only experience more construction and relocation as SIP advances and other projects break ground. These projects will likely result in more displacement of office items. The SIP — which is expected to conclude in 2025 — follows a particularly tight schedule, leaving little room for lengthy conversation between students and administration. It is because of this that we urge Facilities and administration to plan proactively for next summer. Students need to feel secure in the whereabouts of their items and should be notified by Facilities in order to prepare for disruption or preemptively move their belongings. When the Review closed production down at the end of last year, the office was left disorganized under the assumption that once we returned to campus, we would be the ones cleaning it. If warned about the summer construction, we as staff could have better packed, prepared, and stored items in a way that would have made the process of unpacking smoother. This, in turn, would have lessened the burden on the construction team. 

Better communication about the construction would have also helped us significantly as we started our next production cycle. As it was, we had less than a week to set up our office from scratch — moving furniture, finding documents, and setting up the computers and printer — which, to most of our staff’s recollection, had not been unplugged for at least 10 years. While we understand that it is not Facilities or the construction team’s job to reorganize our office, if we had received better communication about the whereabouts of our belongings at the start of the semester, we could have been better prepared to handle the transition. This is especially important because our staff had to work unpaid hours of physical labor to unpack. 

It is also important to note the need for a system to keep track of the items that are moved. When our printers and computers were returned to us, we received electronic devices from The Grape, whose office also resides in Burton. Again, we are thankful for the safe return of our electronics, but if we had not been in communication with The Grape about our items, there was no guarantee that we would have flagged them as theirs and not ours. If there existed a system to record the whereabouts of items and which organization they belong to, students would be better equipped to identify what items were missing. 

The Review staff want to extend our gratitude to all who helped us find our items. We take the time to recount our experience in order to identify an issue in communication that needs to be addressed, in hopes of making the process of renovation easier for all parties involved. The reality is that an email in early May could have allowed us to avoid much unnecessary stress and labor. Construction in Oberlin means we are moving towards a new, cleaner campus. Our student organizations want to be able to support this positive change without losing their autonomy or functionality.

SFC has many strengths, and they often go uncelebrated. The fact that a committee of full-time students manages more than $1 million annually while negotiating the demands of dozens of organizations is spectacular, and it is a duty that we do not envy. The hours of deliberation over budgets, the attention to detail in fulfilling ad hoc requests and filing reallocation forms, managing concurrent projects, and so much more make SFC’s work arguably among the most complicated and hands-on of student jobs on campus. We want to celebrate these efforts because without SFC, most student organizations would be defunct. Unfortunately, the scale of student operations at Oberlin is so vast that student organizations must have access to funds throughout the year. If SFC members didn’t work overtime and throughout the winter and summer shutdowns, despite the explicit mandate not to, student activity on campus would suffer  in its current form.

The COVID-19 pandemic also changed the way SFC runs. During the pandemic, students were unable to use student funds in the same way. In-person events couldn’t be held, and in turn fewer things needed to be funded. As a result new SFC members learned less about how the organization functioned prior to the pandemic. This has left gaps in understanding among a new generation of SFC staff members of how to carry out protocols and file forms. There has been a lack of institutional memory carried on to a new generation of staff members. Students running SFC are only at Oberlin for four years — maybe five, if they are double-degree students — and it’s unlikely that a student would be heavily involved in SFC for their entire college career. This leads to rapid turnover within the organization, and we, as a fellow student-run organization, are familiar with the pitfalls that come with frequent changes in staff. The resulting loss of opportunities to pass down institutional memory leads to frequent overhauls of procedures and practices, which ultimately often take more energy to carry out than continuing existing protocols. 

While SFC’s student-led status is among its greatest strengths, the limitation of finite student bandwidth is one of its greatest weaknesses. Students should not be expected to work long hours during exam periods or the weeks leading up to breaks, but at these points in the semester, many organizations still host events or pay individuals for speeches or performances, all of which require ad hoc funding. The academic year may draw to a close, but student life doesn’t stop during shutdown periods, which means that organizations need access to their funds. Additional bureaucratic roadblocks, such as a lack of access to money an organization has independently earned or the difficulty of getting precise numbers for the amount left in an account, can create uncertainty for student organizations. The fundamental issue is that the regular functioning of every student organization is dependent on the assured functioning of SFC, and with hurdles as extreme as the pandemic or as regular as shutdowns, stable SFC operations can never be guaranteed.

Given the immense responsibility placed on SFC to keep student organizations up and running, and the unavoidable rapid member turnover, we believe that SFC needs bolstered institutional support. 

Institutional support in the form of a permanent staff member paid by the College would allow SFC to better function on a year-to-year basis, while student staff naturally shifts as people graduate or otherwise restructure their involvement in campus life. Having a full-time staff member with sustained knowledge of SFC’s functions would allow for better preservation of the organization’s knowledge over time, giving the students involved in SFC the opportunity to focus more on the distribution of funds rather than the burden of relearning how the systems in place work.

We recognize that SFC is doing what they can with the resources and time provided to them. SFC makes numerous events, clubs, and publications function. It is the institution that we call to action. With institutional support, SFC would not only better help the student body thrive, it would preserve an essential part of Oberlin College that should be passed down for years to come.

As of last July, the College employs an associate vice president of risk Management & Operations, currently Kalinda Watson, a new role on Oberlin’s campus. While roles like Watson’s aren’t altogether new to higher education, the introduction of the position to Oberlin  is indicative of tightening attitudes among administrators toward the potential liability student protests present. One crucial way in which the administration, though not necessarily Watson herself, has changed aspects of student life deemed capable of risk is by prohibiting classes or activities, such as Barefoot Dialogue, from taking place in faculty or off campus households. This may seem innocuous at first glance, but consider the bigger picture of risk management: last October, the Board of Trustees voted to change language in the institution’s bylaws to erase any delegation of authority to faculty councils in matters outside curriculum. When asked about the reason for this revision by the Review, Trustee Chuck Birenbaum, OC ’79, outlined the state of abundant litigation concerning the College and the necessity of risk aversion.

“The board recognized our claims history was a lot greater than it should be for an institution of Oberlin’s size,” Birenbaum said. “The number of lawsuits, employment cases, Title IX claims, personal injury cases, the Gibson’s case — which we can call a torts case — all these claims demonstrated that Oberlin needed to take a hard look at itself in some ways that it hasn’t before. One of the things that [Oberlin] did was it sought professional advice on risk management.”

Despite joint student, staff, and faculty protests against this decision last October, the Board elected to add language to the amended bylaws that specified faculty should be consulted on long term institutional planning — a symbolic gesture of collaboration in an otherwise unilateral decision. Symbolic gesturing unfortunately cuts both ways, as is apparent in the amendment to visiting assistant professor contracts that now explicitly state their employment can be terminated at the College’s will. While Ohio is an at-will employment state, the choice to introduce that language to contracts is conspicuous within the present reality of the College redoubling efforts to implement legal safeguards against potential liabilities. Last week, the Review published a statement by the Oberlin American Association of University Professors Executive Committee that considered the risks to academic freedom this shift in contract language enables (“AAUP Asks Oberlin to Value Faculty,” The Oberlin Review, April 21, 2023).

This emphasis on litigation is visible from student and faculty affairs to pedagogical opportunities like the Conversations with Counsel that the Office of the Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary have hosted all year. For yesterday’s session of the discussion series, the event description read, “We will explore a variety of topics, such as specific actions that could be attributable to the College (including social media and other speech), implications of actions taken pursuant to one’s employment, and the creation of obligations on behalf of the College.” None of this is happening with any malicious intent, rather efforts like Conversations with Counsel seem like a unique opportunity to understand the inner workings of the College. At the same time, the institution’s obsession with finding and sealing these gaps in its operation can come at the expense of the wants and needs of our collegiate community. 

So where does this meet the current reality of activism on campus? It seems unlikely that a college living in fear of litigation, and one that has used legal technicalities to dismiss concerns expressed in protest, will behave favorably toward activist efforts in the years to come. Further, several of these decisions were made unilaterally or without disclosure to the broader public. The room to have an effectively informed conversation is shrinking, which makes it tougher for students to know the stakes of what’s happening on our campus. This has the potential to limit students’ ability to organize and engage in discourse with administrators. In fact, since spring 2022, the highest student turnouts have been at protests surrounding faculty issues, organized by faculty and staff. It isn’t that the state of discourse in College issues is shrinking, but rather that certain kinds of decisions have become less visible and the likelihood of being heard has become more distant. 

Oberlin’s student body has historically been defined by its involvement in nationwide movements and activism in general. These tightening restrictions and a larger focus on risk management and liability within our administration threaten to curb the progressive nature of Oberlin and, to a certain extent, limit what makes Oberlin the institution that drew many of us here in the first place. As we near the end of the year, as seniors graduate to go on to involve themselves in the outside world, as Oberlin prepares itself to welcome another first-year class, we must ask the school and the students what kind of institution we want to be and what kind of institution we want to be a part of. Student activism in Oberlin is integral to the culture. Without it, what do we stand for?

Instances of security breaches on foreign social media sites — notably the classified U.S. military documents that were released on a Discord server — place the onus on legislators to turn their attention toward regulating these emerging technologies. We live in a world where technology is constantly growing and redefining itself, to the point where even college students, supposedly on the cutting edge of technological advancements, sometimes have a hard time keeping up with the latest developments. This struggle is also embodied by our older leaders, who have had to absorb the same amount of information about technology within a relatively shorter timespan and then, based on that information,  make decisions that define how the country as whole treats social media and technology.

Recently, the U.S. federal government has taken a stand against popular social media and technologies our generation has incorporated into our daily routines. Congress recently called TikTok CEO Shou Chew to testify in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which convened on the basis of a congressional investigation into TikTok’s privacy and data protection practices. Some lawmakers called for a ban of the app, whose parent company, ByteDance, is based in China. Members of Congress also posed questions that reflected a lack of knowledge about the app and technology overall. Representative Buddy Carter of Georgia’s First Congressional District questioned whether or not TikTok tracks pupil dilation as a form of facial recognition for the app’s algorithms. Representative Richard Hudson of North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District asked whether or not TikTok can access home Wi-Fi if someone’s phone is connected to the network. Both these questions were irrelevant to the overall debate of privacy and, for many people in our generation, self-explanatory.

Though it’s true that familiarity with technology and its uses is not one that only young people can acquire, it is also fair to say that younger generations who grew up using a piece of technology enter the room with a preexisting understanding of how that technology functions. This knowledge gives them a hard-to-quantify but undeniable advantage over older generations in understanding how to regulate that technology. With familiarity come some limitations. Because our generation is so reliant on technology and its benefits, it is possible that we could be disregarding certain harmful influences apps like TikTok have on our lives. 

Other arguments have been made about the ways in which an aging legislative body can have negative implications for legislators’ constituents. A Congress with such a homogeneous demographic makeup is not representative of the general population and does not account for the views of an increasingly politically active younger generation. These recent problems, such as concerns over TikTok’s privacy, have highlighted more pressing concerns about elected representatives  who lack an understanding of the rapidly shifting world of social media. While this isn’t necessarily a direct result of an elderly legislative body, electing younger legislators would help bridge this gap. As we move into election season, U.S. voters need to consider the benefits of electing younger leaders to positions of power. As college students interacting with these technologies every day, we are aware that those who will regulate these technologies need a better understanding of their practical day-to-day applications. 

There are three factors that deserve higher consideration when hiring faculty members: students benefit from an abundance of long-term faculty; faculty benefit from the freedom to conduct research and the ability to build their careers; and both of these factors benefit the institution by attracting young, competitive academics who are looking for long-term positions. 

Oberlin’s low student-to-instructor ratio naturally allows professors to give more attention to their students, both in and out of the classroom. This is a large selling point for the College as a whole. Some students decide to come to Oberlin because of the benefits reaped from close relationships between students and faculty members. During the semester, this means more detailed feedback on papers, more personalized advice during office hours, and accommodations that are better tailored to individual needs. Often, students take multiple courses with the same professors, which translates into a long-term rapport. Students often ask their recurring professors to be their academic advisors or write letters of recommendation. In addition to building a relationship, students benefit intellectually from the opportunity to immerse themselves over several semesters in their professors’ specialized fields. This can translate into doing credited research with professors, which is invaluable in securing offers from graduate schools, or individual research in the form of capstones or honors projects. 

An additional concern with adjunct faculty is the short-lived nature of their course offerings due to their limited time at the institution. If a student were to become especially interested in a field of study that a visiting faculty member specialized in, the sudden departure of the professor teaching that course could derail the student’s long-term plans and negatively impact their academic career.

First-years have also expressed specific concerns with being assigned faculty advisors who are visiting professors. It is difficult for faculty to advise students on unique institutional requirements and provide them with targeted advice regarding courses and faculty they have little experience with. Incoming classes are increasingly disillusioned with the quality of Oberlin’s faculty. It has become more difficult to ask upperclassmen for advice because the professors they know may not be at Oberlin anymore. This year’s course selection has brought this issue into particularly clear focus, with desires to take specific courses stunted by, “Oh, actually, I think they were a visiting professor.” 

For faculty, the opportunity to stay at one institution for more than two years gives them a secure place to work on their research and fine-tune their courses. Getting published in journals and writing books is what enables faculty in the humanities to develop an edge. Meanwhile, professors in the sciences need resources, students, and time to work on lab experiments and data collection — all of which demand a steady base of operations. The ability to invest time and energy in research will no doubt incentivize up-and-coming academics to accept positions at Oberlin, which is a long-term investment in the success of the institution. 

A few years ago, the Oberlin News-Tribune, the City of Oberlin’s local newspaper, was bought out and ceased exclusive coverage of the City, leaving the Review to serve as the City’s paper of record. While the Review has continued to make efforts to serve the community effectively, there are unique challenges to being a student-run newspaper. For one, because we are full-time students, we only have the capacity to produce one issue worth of content each week. Given that, as a college paper, we largely cover College-related events, we are limited in the amount of community news we are able to feature. Beyond this, our publication schedule is dependent on the College’s academic calendar, and we publish only on weeks when regular classes are in session. This academic year, the Review has a total of 23 publication weeks. This means, for more than half the year, the City of Oberlin operates without a dedicated community publication. For long stretches of time, including the entirety of the summer, there is no paper operating in Oberlin. While the Review does have a precedent for ad hoc reporting outside of the regular print calendar, it is exceedingly uncommon.

Beyond the logistical limitations of our print schedule and scope, it is also important to recognize that, as a student paper, our staff stay at the Review for no more than four years, often less. Because we spend such a brief period of our lives in this town, we often lack the perspective on town issues that longer-term residents might possess. We rely heavily on people who have far more knowledge than we do and are willing to lend their expertise and perspective. While many newspapers employ veteran reporters who have strong relationships with community stakeholders, it is difficult to build those relationships in the short time that we have. It is also difficult to maintain and continue these relationships given the high levels of staff turnover. The relationship with the community must be with the Review itself rather than with our reporters as individuals. 

The Chronicle Telegram is able to fill some of the gaps in coverage, but its coverage of a larger geographic area means that it may not have as close of a relationship with members of the community as a paper based in Oberlin would. Its space and resources, like ours, are limited, and it is tasked with covering far more than our one town.

In some ways, the shift toward broader news sources is a good thing. The development of online versions of major newspapers like The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post gives anyone with an internet connection the ability to read and analyze news from thousands of miles away. The ability to learn about conflicts facing international communities separate from our own breeds a type of understanding that isn’t possible with an exclusively local understanding of politics and social interactions. 

However, reporting on issues facing the international or even national community should not come at the cost of local news. Coverage of local events is important for community building, especially in college towns where town and gown politics can create friction and conflict, particularly when there is inadequate information available about the reality of those conflicts.

The Review recognizes our responsibility as a publication that connects and provides a platform for productive discussion between these two parties. The town community and the college community work toward a common goal of creating a flourishing and lively Oberlin where people want to live and work. We recognize the critical need to continue to foster these relationships, and we would like to make an open call to Oberlin community members and students to not only use the Review to enhance your own understanding of your community but also as a platform to inform other community members about issues important to you.