According to Lawdan Bazargan, the protest organizer and sister of a 1988 massacre victim, the upcoming protest will be mobile, unlike the more stationary protests they have previously staged. Protesters have planned a highly visual event to draw attention from audience members at the Commencement.

“We want to walk around and hopefully talk to as many people as possible and embarrass the College as much as possible,” Bazargan said.

College fourth-year and Iranian-American student Sophie Bernstein expressed hope that the Commencement protest will attract broader support than the last demonstration, which only drew a small crowd.

“I hope that because it’s Commencement, people who aren’t students will pay attention,” Bernstein said. “I think Oberlin College has failed these protestors in a lot of ways. I hope that a broader audience at Commencement would be more sympathetic than people have up until this point.”

Bernstein specifically noted the lack of student response to the protest movement.

“There has been a lot of pushback to talk about Professor Mahallati, especially because he’s tenured and he still works here,” Bernstein said. “I think it is concerning when there are such severe allegations against someone, people are not willing to have a conversation … especially because [the protesters] keep coming back — it’s not like the issue is over for the people that are affected. Oberlin prides itself on being a school that’s centered around social justice, but there are people seeking justice and their calls are not being answered.”

Since May 12, the AAIRIA has rallied members in the United States and internationally to protest Mahallati’s continued employment at the College. Groups will continue protesting in a few other U.S. cities before culminating their movement at Oberlin early next month. 

The group chose locations to target specific individuals, from Board of Trustees members Amy Chen and Chris Canavan to various offices of Greenberg Traurig, the law firm representing Mahallati. Notably, Canavan will also speak at the Commencement. Canavan declined the Review’s request for comment.

Bazargan also commented on a recently resurfaced 1989 Reuters article in which Mahallati defended the  fatwā issued against Salman Rushdie after the publication of his novel, Satanic Verses. Although unsurprised that Mahallati supported the fatwā, as his position required that he defend the theocratic regime’s dictates, Bazargan expressed shock that the College continued to employ Mahallati. 

“He had said back then that if Westerners believe in freedom of speech — this is our freedom of speech,” Bazargan said. “Can you believe it? Putting a bounty on the head of somebody is freedom of speech — and this guy teaches ethics and morality to you guys.”

At the time, Mahallati defended the fatwā by arguing that other Islamic countries supported Iran’s stance toward Rushdie.

“I think that if Western countries really believe [in] and respect freedom of speech, therefore they should also respect our freedom of speech,” Mahallati told Reuters. “We certainly use that right in order [to] express ourselves, our religious beliefs, in the case of any blasphemous statement against sacred Islamic figures.”

Bazargan also responded to accusations that her protest movement peddles Islamophobia and aligns with pro-Trump politicians. 

“We are none of that,” she said. “We are just victims of an Islamic regime, and that’s what we are talking about.”

Although the College has yet to formally address the protests, Bazargan’s commitment has not diminished. 

“We are also going after politicians — we have started [reaching out to] some contacts and we are asking some citizens of Cleveland to contact and talk to them,” Bazargan said. “We are trying to organize some other pressures coming directly from the government. But for sure we won’t let this go because it is not acceptable that somebody who was involved in such atrocity continues teaching students.”

As they reflected on the Oberlin community’s response to the Mahallati issue toward the end of their College career, Bernstein described a lack of understanding and compassion for the protesters. They expressed hope that the coming protest would change the tides in the community’s acknowledgement of the allegations against Mahallati. 

“I really hope that there’s more attention to this protest,” Bernstein said. “I hope there’s more flyers or publicity or conversations on social media. I don’t know what it will take to get people to care, but the people that are protesting are in mourning for a very real issue. At the very least some support would be awesome.”

Yet recently, there has been a growing trend of faculty at Oberlin being overlooked and underpaid. This should concern everyone with a stake in Oberlin’s future. Great faculty, as much as they love the relationships they build with Obies, will not stay at Oberlin if they consistently feel underappreciated. 

The past several years have been troubling for faculty compensation. To be fair, during this time Oberlin has begun to address its structural financial deficit, and many crucial features of campus life have taken a hit for the cause of the greater institutional good. We understand — and we believe that most faculty understand as well — the importance of making sacrifices in the face of the changing landscape of higher education. Still, at what point do we draw the line in making sacrifices at the cost of the value of education at this institution?

Before COVID-19, compensation at Oberlin was already lagging behind our peer institutions; Oberlin was ranked 15th out of our 17 peer institutions with which Oberlin competes to recruit and retain faculty and students. In 2013, the Board of Trustees announced that they would strive to meet at least the median pay of this group and, to Oberlin’s credit, for the next three years the College did climb the ranks in compensation. However, three years later, the College abandoned this plan and instead instituted a temporary wage freeze for all faculty and administrative staff. 

In 2019, the College released the One Oberlin report, which included a host of proposals to bring the institution’s expenditures back on track — including reductions to faculty health care insurance options. As of Jan. 1, all faculty have been moved to a Consumer Driven Healthcare Plan and Healthcare Savings Account, a high-deductible health plan. This move will save the College approximately $1.2 million a year. For some faculty, the change will be inconsequential. For others, not having a choice in health care plans will place a financial burden on their shoulders.

Many faculty members have said the change speaks to a larger issue among teaching staff.  Not having a choice in health care plans is not just about health care — it feels indicative of an underappreciation from the administration. A lot has been asked of faculty over the course of the pandemic: learning how to teach over Zoom classes meant navigating entirely new ways of engaging students, and working during an unprecedented summer semester meant that faculty had little time to invest in their own professional development and research. On top of the inevitable burnout experienced as a result of these challenges, professors have faced barriers to their own academic pursuits.

Traditionally, faculty spend the summer catching up with their own research, but with many professors occupied with teaching last summer and planning for COVID-19 the summer prior, some feel they are behind schedule. For tenure-track faculty, the loss of research time and the difficulties associated with teaching in a pandemic add up to potential struggles in future career opportunities. Even though the College Faculty Council decided in fall 2020 to allow faculty to extend their tenure track by two semesters, this kind of solution doesn’t account for faculty that may inevitably want to transition to other institutions. 

This situation is dire. Faculty compensation has been non-competitive for years, with no sign of improvement in the near future; the single option for a health care plan not only disadvantages older, at-risk faculty, but also deteriorates existing retirement benefits; and faculty cannot do research to ensure their own professional development and safeguard their competitive edge. This last point further disadvantages faculty who may wish to avoid Oberlin’s problems by applying for a position at another institution. 

It’s no surprise then that on Dec. 15, the faculty proposed and passed a motion with 82 percent in favor of recommitting Oberlin to the 2013 compensation goals. This motion, of course, cannot change policy on its own. Ultimately, it’s up to Oberlin’s Board to make this decision, and at this point, we have no indication to suggest that they will act with faculty’s best interests in mind. In any case, the next Board meeting is on March 3 of this year, and even though they would be three months late in reversing the health care decisions, the Board still has the opportunity to right past wrongs and set a better precedent for the future. 

It’s understandable that in a changing academic landscape, and with the College attempting to pull itself out of financial deficit, things will have to be cut. At the same time, we’re at a college with no shortage of extracurricular programs, a massive endowment, and multiple big budget projects underway, all of which look incredible on admissions brochures. However, as students at this school, we can assure the administration that we wouldn’t pay our exorbitant fees if it weren’t for our professors, and no amount of amenities can change that. 

Given the overwhelming indications that faculty are being taken for granted, this Editorial Board stands in solidarity with the Dec. 15 motion, and hopes that the College will hold itself accountable to the people responsible for the respect we enjoy as an institution.

This outbreak could have been avoided — or the campus community could have been better prepared for its arrival — had the College continued its regular testing regimen. Mandatory monthly testing for students ended on July 1.  Shortly following this, in mid August, the College stopped testing those exposed to COVID-19, provided they were vaccinated and asymptomatic. In the three weeks prior to this decision, 27 people on campus tested positive despite a campus vaccination rate in the upper 90-percent range. This surge should have been a warning signal for the College. At the very least, the College should have taken this opportunity to return to stricter COVID policies. Yet the College moved forward into the Thanksgiving season with barely any trace of the stringent measures it had enforced earlier that fall and maintained its August policy of not providing tests to vaccinated, asymptomatic individuals. Of course, this prompted many students who were exposed to COVID-19 but did not meet the College’s testing requirements to seek tests from other community resources. 

That’s where things started going downhill. With students testing off campus, the College wasn’t able to track the positive cases slowly mounting on campus, and thus was caught completely off guard by the seemingly sudden surge of cases in the week before break. If the College had provided accessible testing for students, it would have been able to better monitor positivity trends and prepare the necessary infrastructure to address rising case numbers. Instead, it had to change plans at the last second to accommodate students who were stuck in COVID-19 isolation on campus during winter break. The lack of proper planning also meant that staff — from upper-level administrators to AVI Foodsystems employees — had to work overtime during the holiday season.

Students came back from Thanksgiving break on Nov. 28 without testing upon their return. This was the first time students were not required to test after a break since the start of the pandemic, marking the College’s shift away from strict COVID-19 policy and toward complacency. At the time, the Review published an editorial calling for the College to test students upon their return after the break, as well as returning to a regular, mandatory testing policy for members of the campus community. 

The College did not take these concerns seriously, as evidenced by its steadfast refusal to implement more testing procedures. Instead, it consistently reminded students that the advent of the vaccine enabled us to move forward with the goal of learning how to “live with COVID-19,” rather than avoid it altogether. While theoretically, this approach seems reasonable, in practice, contracting COVID-19 has far more nuanced implications. The argument that the College continues to emphasize is that there have been no reported COVID-related hospitalizations among students. While this is obviously a good thing, testing positive for COVID-19 still puts an immense burden on individuals and those around them. From the toll isolation takes on mental health, to the inability to work and attend classes, to putting surrounding individuals at risk of also contracting COVID-19, testing positive for the virus is a devastating event for many people. The bar shouldn’t be whether a student is hospitalized. It should be aiming to keep COVID-19 case counts as low as possible to minimize the wide-ranging impacts of this awful pandemic. And what exactly will the College do once someone — likely an already immunocompromised individual — does get hospitalized? We don’t always need to wait for the unthinkable to happen in order to pivot toward productive policy.

This rings especially true for Oberlin, an institution with immense financial resources. If we have money to pay for ice sculptures in the shape of a squirrel that are left to melt in Wilder Bowl, then I’m sure we can scrape up enough money — perhaps from the nearly $2 million the federal government granted us for COVID-19 relief back in spring 2021 — to pay for consistent and accessible testing for our community. We owe responsible testing practices not only to members of our immediate College community, but also to the broader City of Oberlin. Students are guests in this town, and expecting local medical resources to shoulder the burden of our lax testing policies is simply unacceptable. 

I want to emphasize that, for the most part, the College has dealt with the twists and turns of the pandemic in an exemplary manner. Faculty, staff, and administrators have worked tirelessly to make sure that every member of our campus community is safe and cared for, and for that, I am incredibly grateful. I just hope that the College learns from the situation it was in over winter break and appropriately reinforces its COVID-19 policies, just as it had throughout the pandemic up until that point. I hope that the College does not return to careless COVID-19 policies once case counts decrease again. If our positivity rate is low, that’s a strong signal that we’re doing a good job and that we should continue implementing the policies that got us there. 

Further, the College would do well to invest in long-term preventative measures. Following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, the College has decreased the COVID-19 isolation period to five days for people who are asymptomatic. The College has also declined to mandate that students remain in quarantine until obtaining a negative result. However, students are reporting that it takes multiple days — between 48 hours and seven days — to receive the results of their tests. If students are getting positive test results multiple days after arriving on campus, in the interim period between testing and receiving the result, they are potentially exposing friends, classmates, and local residents to COVID-19.

In addition to preventative measures like testing, the College should also look to equip itself to handle the longer-term implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mounting evidence shows that beyond the immediate threat of COVID-19 infection, long-term effects prove to be a murky but menacing obstacle. As of yet, the College has no plans to develop a system to support students with long-haul COVID-19 symptoms. Meanwhile, students are already experiencing COVID-19 fatigue that extends far beyond the 5-day contagion period, with no institutional support or understanding from professors or administrators. In addition to the lasting medical repercussions of COVID-19, the ongoing pandemic has already caused ramifications to people’s mental health and will continue to do so. As it stands, our current mental health resources are meager to say the least, and the College’s attempts to improve these resources have been weak and incomplete. In a time when national COVID-19 infrastructure is strained, the College should expend the resources it most certainly has to maximize COVID-19 protections for students.

The critical days of the program were from Jan. 4–8, when a large number of students tested positive immediately upon returning to campus after break. However, the program will continue to operate as long as there are students in isolation. 

The College put out a call for faculty and staff volunteers to assist with AVI’s delivery program, anticipating the need for extra hands on deck due to the looming nationwide staffing shortages and the highly contagious Omicron variant.

“We were really worried about our staff’s availability — especially with staff themselves possibly testing positive for COVID — being able to meet that initial demand,” said Thom Julian, assistant dean and director of community life and standards. “We’ll need to reevaluate when it comes to the beginning of Winter Term, the beginning of spring semester. It’s really an equation based on Omicron, timing of the semester, and Ohio.”

Julian, who volunteered to participate in the meal delivery program, lauded AVI for quickly building a food delivery system to cater to  student’s additional needs generated by the surge of Omicron.

“I think AVI really saw the influx, they responded, and from what I saw … I think they really have stood up a good process that was hard at first, but I think they’ve really gotten it down,” Julian said. “I think it’s a hard time for everybody, and I think our staff are really stepping up to the plate to volunteer.” 

Similarly, Assistant Dean of Students Monique Burgdorf, another volunteer who adjusted her schedule to help deliver food to students in isolation, noted that AVI adapted admirably to ongoing staffing challenges.

“AVI wouldn’t be asking for help unless they were literally desperate,” Burgdorf said. “And it’s not like Oberlin is not immune to what’s going on in the world in terms of the job market right now — they can’t find people to do things. But I was actually really impressed by how organized the process was. It was the managers who were out there delivering food with us — it wasn’t the workers.”

Burgdorf also said the volunteer program was set up to provide extra help to AVI staff, but that the existing team would still maintain a functioning program without faculty and staff assistance. 

“[If they hadn’t had volunteers] it would have just taken them a lot longer,” Burgdorf said. “On the night we delivered, I feel like there was like 22 or 23 meals that had to go out. It’s not so much a difficulty thing — it’s a logistic thing. There’s North Campus, there’s South Campus, then you have to get into the dorms and then find [the room]. So obviously, [AVI] would have done it, it’s just that the meals probably would’ve gotten delivered at like 7:30, 8 o’clock at night, which kind of sucks if you’re hungry.”

Despite the College’s quick reflexes in addressing the obstacles presented by the rise in COVID-19 cases on campus, there are still outstanding concerns to iron out in its testing and isolation program.

Conservatory fourth-year Michael Yang-Wierenga tested positive on Dec. 31 and had to return to his off-campus house to quarantine during his illness. Yang-Wierenga told the College about his positive test and sent an email to the College on Jan. 2 inquiring about having food delivered to him. When no one from the College replied with adequate information, Yang-Wierenga texted the AVI help line and received an automated response. 

“It’s basically this unintelligible reply … saying ‘We’ll be in touch shortly,’ with a link to this website that did not answer my question,” Yang-Wierenga said. “I had a specific question — I was asking, ‘Do they deliver meals to off-campus housing?’ and I never got a reply. The next day I asked, ‘Am I not getting food delivered?’ … It just gave me what seemed like another automated message, saying what times they deliver food. It was clear I wasn’t talking to a person. [After that,]… I just gave up and ate corn dogs.” 

Yang-Wierenga said that throughout his six-day isolation, the College never delivered a meal. 

College second-year Sequoia Jacobson received a routine test at Hales Gymnasium on Jan. 3 after returning to campus, but did not receive the results of his test until Jan. 10 — a full week later. As so many days had elapsed, and other close contacts of his had tested negative, Jacobson went on a road trip, only after which did he receive a call informing him of his positive results. 

“On the car ride back, I get the call,” Jacobson said. “The nurse at Hales  was like, ‘Yeah, sorry, the lab’s really been backed up, but your test was positive. You should be getting an email from ObieSafe and they’ll tell you how long to isolate. But since your results are a week later than your test was, you might not even have to isolate.”

While none of Jacobson’s close contacts have tested positive, the late notice proved to be stressful for those he had been in contact with during the period between his test and his result.

“I mean, it was a bit of a scare,” Jacobson said. “It was a whole moment because immediately, I was thinking about the people I was with… but luckily everyone else that I saw was fine.” 

Although the College is still adapting its COVID-19 isolation program, which has resulted in some obstacles along the way, faculty and staff remain eager to help care for the student community.

“I just feel like sometimes when things get hard at Oberlin, it can be nice to be a part of something that isn’t about you, or about your individual feelings,” Burgdorf said. “It’s about something that is helping to do good. It can just give you a slightly different perspective.”

Oberlin Navigates Ups and Downs of Fall Semester

Students were tested upon arrival in October 2021 and proceeded to enjoy a highly vaccinated campus with a close to zero percent COVID-19 positivity rate for the first few weeks of the semester. Oberlin’s first uptick in cases occurred at the beginning of November: By Nov. 7, the College had reported 27 cases in a three-week span. 

In response to the November cases, the College expanded testing to seven days a week and relocated the testing site from the Student Health Center to Hales Gymnasium. The College did not revise its contact tracing guidelines, which had been amended in mid-August. The Review reported on Aug. 13 that the College stopped following CDC guidelines and instead adopted Lorain County Department of Health guidance that vaccinated, asymptomatic individuals did not need to be tested upon exposure. Despite the need for increased testing, the administration remained confident about its contact tracing protocol due to the campus’ high vaccination rates and mask protocols. 

“Now the health department said they already consider it endemic,” said former Campus Health Coordinator Katie Gravens in a Review article published Nov. 12. “It hasn’t been officially termed as endemic as opposed to pandemic, but they said, ‘We feel we’re already in an endemic state because of the vaccination rates and the [low] rates of infection that [vaccines] have provided.’”

However, when reports in late November began to point to the existence of the new, highly-transmissible Omicron variant, this statement proved premature. 

“I think Omicron took a lot of people by surprise because it’s so remarkably infectious and also so remarkably effective at escaping vaccine-induced immunity other than recently given vaccines,” said former Center for Disease Control Director Tom Frieden, OC ’82. “I mean, hindsight is always 20/20. Fortunately, Omicron is not particularly severe. It’s much less severe than other strains.”

In response to the new variant, President Carmen Twillie Ambar released a video on Dec. 14 reminding students to continue mitigation measures and urged them to be more concerned about hospitalization rates rather than individual case numbers. Oberlin did not test students returning to campus after the week-long Thanksgiving break at the end of November. 

The College provided testing to students who fit its definition of COVID-19 exposure. Students who did not fit this strict definition but still felt they needed to be tested began testing off-campus in increasing numbers. As a result, the College was not aware of the full degree of student positives. 

“One of the issues that we discovered that we had in our system was that there was a perception among students that we had bottlenecks in our testing protocols, so they were going off campus,” said Chief of Staff David Hertz. “We had to urge people not to go off campus for testing, because we wanted to be able to have a regular flow of information about reports of the results. But the perception persisted, and so when students [go] off campus and then when they get their results, if they’re positive, we are sort of dependent upon students for that information flow.” 

First Signs of Trouble: Monday, Dec. 20 : 12 p.m.

At 12 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 20,  President Ambar sent an ObieSafe update to the campus community, maintaining that the College was not seeing a rise in COVID cases despite the nationwide surge of the fast-spreading Omicron variant. 

“Currently we are not experiencing the same spread of COVID that some campuses across the country are experiencing, but as we all know from our past efforts, we benefit when we are proactive,” President Ambar’s afternoon email read.

That email also included announcements regarding significant changes in ObieSafe policies, from requiring students, faculty, and staff to receive a booster shot by Feb. 18, to remote-option classes and grab-and-go meals through January. 

As Positives Grow, Oberlin Pivots Response: Monday, Dec. 20 : 10 p.m. 

By 10 p.m. that night, the College had a stark update for the campus community. 

“Since sending my message about our plans earlier today, Oberlin received new COVID test results showing that about 50 individuals on campus tested positive,” President Ambar’s Monday night email read.

According to Hertz, the College was suddenly inundated with calls from students reporting positive COVID-19 results, primarily from tests administered using off-campus facilities. This jump marked a stark shift from the slow trickle of daily positive cases the College had experienced so far in the semester.

“Right around 5 o’clock, I got a report that we were up to 50 and that’s when we really realized that we had a significant number of COVID cases on campus, that we were going to need to shift into a different gear to cope with,” Hertz said.

Hertz attributed the overwhelming number of off-campus tests to the perception among students that testing at Hales Gymnasium was inaccessible, largely due to the College’s strict definition of exposure to COVID-19. 

College second-year Imogen Pranger was exposed to a peer who tested positive for COVID-19 on Dec. 19. Despite having a positive close contact, Pranger said that obtaining a test from Student Health proved to be a challenge.

“I told [Student Health] the whole situation and they were like, ‘If you’re not symptomatic, you can’t have a test,’” Pranger said. “They just weren’t giving me any guidance for — if I had been exposed — what to do. Then the nurse also said something along the lines of, ‘If you have been exposed from a close friend, you’ll probably eventually be contact traced, but it might take a while.’ And I was like, ‘Well, what is that supposed to mean?’” 

While Pranger initially tested negative shortly after her exposure, she later tested positive on Dec. 29. However, she said that Student Health did not contact her about her potential exposure until a week after she was already exposed to the virus. 

A total of 158 students, faculty, and staff tested positive for COVID-19 from Dec. 17–23.

A Winter Break for No One

Faculty and staff members spent most of their break responding to the spike in cases. Necessary tasks included contact tracing, caring for nearly 150 students in isolation, shifting classes to an online format, and modifying protocols to prepare for students’ return to campus Jan. 2.

“There [were] so many people who were working during the holiday season to make sure that our students who were on campus were cared for,” Hertz said. “The contact tracing continued, and we planned for the safe return of the students who wished to return — and the safe return of our faculty and staff from the winter shutdown.”

One of the biggest challenges over the break was finishing contact tracing. With such a large number of students sick, contact tracers were overwhelmed, resulting in many students returning home unaware they had been exposed to the virus. 

Pranger said that receiving guidance from a medical health professional would have helped her better prepare for how to deal with the virus and her impending return home. 

“If [the person who exposed me] hadn’t been communicating with me directly, I wouldn’t have even known that I’ve been exposed, because [Student Health] didn’t contact trace me until a week later,” Pranger said.

Meanwhile, students who tested positive before the break had to remain in isolation, which created another challenge. As part of the effort to care for these students, senior staff personally called each student in isolation individually to offer support and ensure access to resources. Vice President and Dean of Students Karen Goff had the idea to reach out to students and personally called 50 students who tested positive. 

“I wanted to provide a sense of hope and care and remind them of why they’re a part of this kind of community: that even in isolation, you’re really not alone,” Goff said. “There’s a whole group of people, including the President and her Senior Staff — the most senior members of the administration — reaching out to you to make sure that our students have what they need, under the circumstances.”  

Preparing for the Remainder of Fall Semester

Besides caring for students on campus, faculty and administrators spent the break quickly adapting classes to a hybrid format and developing new safety protocols for students to return to campus. This work was especially challenging for Conservatory administrators. Unlike the College, where most classes were already slated to go hybrid in January, the Conservatory had originally planned for all students to return to campus for the end of the semester. 

The shift to a hybrid curriculum created challenges for ensemble groups and 24 students with recitals planned for January. In response, the Conservatory used the break to allow professors to develop plans for ensembles post-beak and to work with Student Health to develop a testing regimen to allow recitals to proceed. 

“Any musician on the recital who makes music with their breath — namely woodwind, brass, vocalists — we put in place a special testing protocol for those musicians,” said Dean of the Conservatory William Quillen. “For the recitals whereby four days before the recital, they take a PCR test, the day of recital, they take a rapid test. … We really just wanted to make sure that the recitals could continue.”

Looking Ahead: Planning for a Safe Winter Term and Spring Semester

After the College made students’ return to campus after winter break optional, many students decided to complete the final three weeks of the semester remotely. Hertz said that a College survey showed that only one half of the student population — roughly 1,500 students — are returning to finish the fall semester in person. 

Hertz said that the College has been working to create steps to protect the students that remain on campus. These steps include continuing grab-and-go only meals through Winter Term; requiring faculty, staff, and students to get booster shots by Feb. 18; and mandating testing for students upon arrival on campus.

Between Jan. 2 and Jan. 6 the College administered 1,952 PCR tests and 92 rapid tests, with 64 positive cases, including self-reported positives. As of Jan. 5, 44 members of the campus community are in isolation. 

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the College has reported its testing statistics weekly; now, the College will be reporting statistics daily for the first time, a switch that was due to the changing nature of the Omicron variant.

“We want to be transparent because transparency reduces rumor, reduces undue fear — that’s why we decided, at the beginning of the pandemic, to report every week,” Hertz said. “Omicron has redefined that somewhat because it spreads so quickly.”

The new guidelines do not effect enforcement of ObieSafe violations.

“I don’t think that it’s like a renewed enforcement of ObieSafe,” Hertz said. “I think what we saw was, at the very outset [of COVID-19], a need for enforcement on a de-densified campus before the advent of vaccines. … As we became more vaccinated, we said that this was the best way to safeguard our campus, and so our approach to the protocols was still, ‘Please follow them,’ but it reflected the realities that we had a lot more protection.”

Still, Goff maintained that students with a repetitive pattern of reckless behavior, such as partying and gathering with large groups of maskless students, will be held accountable through strict measures, including being asked to leave campus.

“We are an educational institution, so the intention is not to be punitive, but if we have people who are being reckless with their behavior, showing a disregard for the larger community — especially if it’s a behavior that’s repetitive, happening over and over again, then of course,” Goff said. “We do have to hold individuals accountable.” 

Oberlin is also looking to reduce risk during Winter Term. The College canceled all group Winter Term projects that involved plane travel or more than four hours of car travel. Students are allowed to continue to do individual projects that involve travel, but they are encouraged to have backup plans. 

This meant that the College had to shift the projects of 151 students, including 21 students who moved from off campus domestic to on campus, 35 students who had to cancel individual international projects, and 95 students in domestic and international group projects that were canceled. 

Over the next few weeks, the College will prepare for Winter Term and the spring semester with transportation to booster sites and potentially another booster clinic hosted in conjunction with Lorain County Public Health. The College is also looking to anticipate shortages of personnel that have impacted other schools and industries in recent weeks. 

“What we’re trying to do is anticipate concerns,” Hertz said. “It doesn’t mean that we’ll have all the answers, but we are anticipating the concerns, and I feel good about the planning process. I’m not seeing things shutting down and I’m not seeing a shortage here, but we’re planning for a lot of eventualities.”

The initial changes include mandating booster shots, effective Feb. 18, and increasing testing availability. Additionally, Campus Dining Services has halted indoor dining and will provide food via grab-and-go boxes only through Winter Term. Professors will be required to offer remote classes through the remainder of the semester for students who wish not to return to campus in January. 

Several co-ops made announcements this morning that they will close their operations through winter break, effective immediately. Through Dec. 22, students in these co-ops will have two meal swipes per day and will still have access to co-op kitchens for individual use. The Oberlin Student Cooperative Association is currently developing a plan to provide grab-and-go options for co-op members in January, in accordance with the College’s policy. The decision to close OSCA co-ops was not made by the College. 

To respond to an overwhelming increase in demand for testing, the College will expand testing hours for symptomatic individuals and close contacts of people with positive tests at Hales Gymnasium. Testing will be available to individuals who meet these criteria from 8 a.m.–12 p.m. and 1 p.m.–8 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday. Over 200 students received a take-home rapid test from Student Health today.

“As is the case all across the country, Oberlin has a limited number of rapid tests available,” President Ambar wrote in her email tonight. “For that reason I ask that you only show up for testing if you meet the following criteria: students who are symptomatic, students who are a close contact to someone who tested positive. Remember that close contact is defined as someone who has been within 6 feet of a positive person for 15 minutes or longer up to two days prior to their symptom onset. If both people were wearing a mask at the time, you are not deemed a close contact.”

According to President Ambar’s email, students, faculty, and staff will be required to receive a booster shot by the start of the spring semester on Feb. 18. Additionally, students returning to campus in January after winter break will be tested upon arrival, but they will not be required to quarantine while waiting for results. The College will also test students returning to campus for Winter Term, spring semester, and the end of spring break. 

“Everyone will have to be tested,” President Ambar wrote in her email this afternoon. “Just like in the past, we want to find a baseline so we can get a sense of what’s happening on our campus. We’re also adding capacity for voluntary walk-in COVID testing this winter and spring. So those of you who have concerns, you’ll have a more convenient testing opportunity available to you.”

As of Dec. 15, 1,558 students had applied to remain on campus during Winter Term. While it is unclear how the spread of COVID-19 will impact student presence on campus during those weeks, the College is providing remote options for students who do not plan to remain on campus to complete their Winter Term requirement.

“We are currently looking at options for Winter Term offerings that don’t lend themselves to remote experiences,” President Ambar wrote in her afternoon email. “But the point here is that you can return to campus in early January and during Winter Term, and the remote option will allow you to remain off campus should you choose to, and still be able to participate in the academic experience. We are making this change to give ourselves the maximum amount of time for our entire campus to get booster shots before the spring term.”

Despite an increase in concern among students, the College says there have not been any hospitalizations due to COVID-19. The College is strongly urging students to be vigilant about mask wearing in the final two days before winter break. 

Students who test positive prior to winter break and who need to isolate themselves on campus will receive food and support from the College. Please email the ObieSafe team to inform the College of a positive test result not administered by the College’s testing protocol.