This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What kind of student were you when you were at Oberlin? 

I was a combination of intense and intensely distractible. I was the sort of student who was very passionate about certain classes and subjects and got really into it and probably talked too much in class, but I was also very easily thrown off course. 

So, I was really into the classes, really loved the liberal arts atmosphere, and really loved all the learning I got outside of class, but maybe made a little bit too much of the array that was at my disposal.

What were some of the courses that you really enjoyed, and what were some of the distractions that were most gripping? 

I was a Religion major, and I was very into a sequence taught by the current Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences David Kamitsuka on modern religious thought in the West. I took several courses with him on that subject, and what I liked about them was that there was a mix of the philosophical and the practical that really drew my attention. 

And that was true also of political theory courses. I took a lot of political theory courses with former Politics Chair Harlan Wilson, who’s no longer here. One minute we’d be talking about something super abstract and seemingly arcane, and the next minute it’d be like, “Well, so should we change our voting system?” and I really love that connection.

Unofficially, I spent a lot of time listening to weird stuff in the Conservatory. Fairchild Chapel had a running stream of TIMARA composers, and other students who were more on the sort of “out there” side of things, who would often perform there. 

I came to school with no knowledge of music, music composition, sound composition, or any of that stuff. So, to encounter a lot of people who thought very deeply and very strangely about sound, and performances with people sticking candles in weird orifices and all sorts of stuff that was really just out there — the performance culture at the time at Oberlin was about pushing you out of your comfort zone in a lot of different kinds of ways — I found that to be thrilling, and I do think it kind of changed the course of my life in some ways. 

I don’t think I’d be teaching this radio class if I hadn’t had those experiences. One of the reasons I’m so excited to be working with Tom Lopez in the TIMARA department is if I hadn’t watched so many TIMARA department performances that I didn’t understand and didn’t know how to respond to, and then have people who were patient enough to tell me that I was stupid and say what I should have been listening for, then I never would have gotten into radio, because I really got into it as a listener first. 

After Oberlin, your dissertation at the University of Chicago explored post-fascist Italy. I’m interested in what made you move from working as a historian to working on Invisibilia. 

The dissertation was about stumbling onto things that I just thought were strange and fascinating and I got a little obsessed with, and it was as much about meeting people from the past who I really fell in love with as it was about pursuing some divine questions. 

It was also about hearing echoes, many of them unpleasant echoes, between the period that I was studying — fascist and post-fascist Italy — and the period that I was living through and the ways that people were thinking about fascism, or about populism, or about politics in the present. Those echoes really reinforced my sense that I was going in a good direction, but I also knew that, as a historian, I had a responsibility to take a certain distance from that presentist orientation. 

One of my research topics was about the role of what people call public intellectuals in the cultural reconstruction after fascism. It’s people who are not just academics or scholars writing for other scholars, but people who are doing behind-the-scenes work of editing journals, creating radio programs, curating art exhibitions, or other things that are really trying to engage the public in a variety of ways.

At a certain point, I just thought, well, if I really want to understand some of this stuff, I need to get some practice working in the public sphere. Invisibilia in particular struck me as a program that was doing a lot of really interesting work in that domain of public intellectuals. Social science and scientific concepts that were typically reserved for a sort of elite were being refigured and reimagined, not only in a popularizing way, but actually in a creative way that brought something new to them. I would have the experience of having read a book, then hear it talked about on Invisibilia and have something totally new revealed to me. That was very exciting, and I wanted to see what it was like to do that.

I’m curious how you brought this idea of being a public intellectual to your work with Invisibilia.

A lot of the work that I found most fulfilling at Invisibilia was not work that you would see my byline on. Work that was collaborative, behind the scenes, in a supporting role for people who were working through ideas and working through problems, was the most fulfilling. For the piece that we listened to today, “The Weatherman,” working with artists and storytellers to refine their work views, I discovered that I had some skills as a consultant in those places. I say that because I think that people hear the term “public intellectual” and they think that it means someone who wants to stand up on a soapbox, tell people what is important, and be an activist. There’s certainly space for that, but I have always felt that it’s almost the opposite. It’s about being willing to take yourself out of your ego and put yourself in a place where you can make collaborative work with people who have a whole range of skills that you don’t have. You can be a small piece of something that can touch a lot more people than the thing that you could have done by knowing how to do everything from A to Z. I think a lot of scholarship in the humanities is focused on, “You have to know a topic completely, write a great article about it, then write a book that’s built on a bunch of those articles.” For me, letting go of some of that vision of authority and being in more of a supporting, creative position was a way to reach a different kind of public.

Missiles hit a market Wednesday in Kostiantynivka, a town 12 miles from the front lines in the Donetsk region of Ukraine with an approximate population of 70,000. Russian officials denied targeting civilians while the European Union and United States denounced the attack. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a visit to Kyiv and announced new assistance in the form of weapons systems, defensive weapons, and grant money for purchasing additional weaponry. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Blinken for his support and said that Ukraine’s counteroffensive progress could face challenges in the upcoming winter months. 

“We want to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs, not only to succeed in the counteroffensive but has what it needs for the longterm, to make sure that it has a strong deterrent,” Blinken said. “We’re also determined to continue to work with our partners as they build and rebuild a strong economy, strong democracy.”

$800 million of the aid is aimed at post-war reconstruction, including removing mines, creating law enforcement, and combating corruption. 

Mexico’s Supreme Court Legalizes Abortion Nationwide

Expanding on a 2021 ruling that decriminalized abortion in the state of Coahuila, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that federal law criminalizing abortion was unconstitutional. At the time of the ruling, 12 out of 32 states had already decriminalized abortion. 

The organization that brought the case to the federal court said the decision could pave a path for access to abortion at federally-funded institutions. 

“With this decision of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, federal health institutions in the whole country will have to offer abortion services to women and people of gestational capacity who request it,” the Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida, a nonprofit that provided legal counsel on the case, said on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

Tens of Thousands Forced to Evacuate Amid Floods in Southeast China

Record-breaking floods in  Fujian province have forced at least 114,000 people to evacuate throughout the week. The region  has experienced historically high levels of rainfall for four consecutive days, and some areas of Fuian province recorded over one foot of rainfall in 24 hours on Tuesday. 

According to China’s national media, the damage may reach 552.1 million yuan ($75 million USD), as 4,195 hectares (10,366 acres) of farmland have been inundated by floodwaters. The government has set aside 200 million yuan ($27 million USD) for provinces hit by typhoons and floods, according to state media. 

African Climate Summit Urges Outside Investment in Green Energy 

According to Al Jazeera, Kenyan President William Ruto announced a declaration calling for global taxes and reforms to international financial institutions to combat climate change. 

The three-day summit brought African business leaders and politicians together to discuss clean energy, conserving natural resources, and how to finance adaptation to increasing climate disasters. 

Ruto emphasized that Africa’s resources and industry could be used globally to fight climate change. 

“In Africa, we can be a green industrial hub that helps other regions achieve their net zero strategies by 2050,” he said. “Unlocking the renewable energy resources that we have in our continent is not only good for Africa, it is good for the rest of the world.”

Summit attendees also called for wealthy nations to financially support African countries, which have contributed the least to global emissions while suffering the consequences of climate change the most. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When you started working at the Review, what were you interested in covering?

I got the list of emails at the beginning of my first year, and the first thing I saw was an email about a new dispensary that was opening up for medical marijuana. That was my first-ever byline and I thought that was really cool — to talk about politics and the ways community members are supporting each other, various policy things, and to write it in a way that was clear for students to understand. Because I know when you come to a new state, you don’t really know the laws. It was really cool to break that down for people, and explain how there can be a dispensary while marijuana is not legal here.

How do you see your Politics major complementing your work at the Review?

I did a lot of research papers about journalism because I was really curious about the interactions between journalism and politics. I recently wrote a piece about how conspiracy theories impacted journalism and the landscape of the press, as well as the ethical questions that people who write news have to grapple with, and that they wake up to all these conspiracy theories. I think it’s been really interesting to see the research side of that, practice it, and be the people who have to face those realities that are ever-shifting. In a lot of politics classes, we talk a lot about media, and sometimes in a really negative way, and so it’s really helped to be practicing that while learning about how we can be not the good press, but as much as possible the fair, ethical press. It was really helpful to learn the methods that journalists have used for years, and what is most effective and most interesting to read. And then when I became an editor, I could apply those skills to sort of rework people’s pieces around that.

You mentioned your mom is a journalist and creative writer. What’s your relationship with her, as News editor? Do the two of you talk about journalism?

I used to ghostwrite for her growing up. I’d put my name to some stuff once I was a little bit older. One time she had an assignment to write three books in two weeks, and so I wrote one of them and my dad wrote another, and she wrote hers. So that’s how I got my first — and I think my only — book byline, when I was like 16. My mom and I write different kinds of journalism. She writes more about lifestyle and a lot of stuff for children, or for moms, or things like that — whatever she’s commissioned to write. But sometimes, when I’m coming home from the office, she wants me to call her so I can feel safe when I walk home. It’s early enough for her to still be up and she’ll ask me about the issue and I’ll tell her what kinds of stuff we’re doing, and what kinds of problems we’re facing. She gives me some good input, which is really nice.

What do you think was your biggest achievement during your time at the Review?

I’m really proud of how the News section has recently got more into community reporting. The paper in town closed right before I got here. It wasn’t really something that people had fully caught up with yet, and I think we’re really doing a good job of figuring out how to be the paper of record for the town and the College. It’s been really great to work with community members and College students to talk about community stuff. For example, I really liked the drug testing at the library. It’s something that’s really of interest to College students that isn’t on their radar. A lot of College students really dramatize the opioid crisis around here. I think it’s really good to work with trained professionals in the community to break down some myths and do testing effectively, and help people feel safe and not really dramatize the situation.

I really admired the investigative journalism you did in reporting on the health code violations in the Rathskeller. Can you tell me about the impact of that story?

It was an important story to talk about because I think it was one that was on people’s minds, and people were saying, ‘Oh yeah, I’m sick from this food,’ and I could point them to what made them sick — it was just the soda machines and the ice. I think a lot of people didn’t read the story and they read the headline, and then they dramatized that a little bit. They were like, ‘I’m never eating there again.’ I’m like, ‘If you read the story, it’s just the ice.’ It was good to get that out there, and work with people to get some insight into what was going on.

“Oberlin’s industrial park, our current one, was started in the early 1960s, and it was a recognition that as a college town, our primary piece of jobs and tax revenue are from Oberlin College, but it would [also] be a good idea to diversify away from that,” Burgess said. “So the Federal Aviation Administration was built, and the Oberlin Industrial Park. They built that pretty quickly. It actually took us about 50 years to fill the industrial park, but the industrial park is now full. With no other opportunity for expansion, if we want to introduce new jobs and new tax revenue to the City, we’re gonna have to build a new industrial park.”

The City decided to buy undeveloped land based on recent trends in industrial development. According to Oberlin Director of Planning and Development Carrie Porter, developers previously would build speculative buildings designed to fit a variety of uses, and companies would search for buildings that matched their desired specifications, but recently, companies have begun buying land and building to their needs.

“Before this past year, everybody wanted a building,” Porter said. “I think now it’s gotten to the point where there’s not a lot of buildings left, so now the trend is reversed and now everybody’s looking for land so they can build their own.”

Before the purchase of the new land, the City owned 32.8 additional acres of land in Oberlin zoned for “light industrial” purposes. However, sprinkled throughout the property are federally protected wetlands that prevent development.

Porter believes the new land is better suited to development.

“It’s all pretty much usable,” Porter said. “There’s a couple little ponds in it, but there’s not a lot of wetlands or anything like that on these two properties.”

The land is located just south of Walmart, near the forthcoming Oberlin Crossing Shopping Center and other developments currently in consideration. Each property connects with U.S. Route 20, which runs from Oregon to Boston, Massachusetts.

“[U.S. Route] 20 is obviously a major corridor and probably the best corridor for industrial development that we have,” Porter said.

Oberlin has an annexation agreement with Pittsfield Township, where the land is located. The City will work with the township to determine how it will distribute resources and revenue. Developing the land will take several years. Before it can advertise the land to companies that might potentially build on the property, the City will install utilities.

“It’s gonna take us a minute to figure out what utilities we need there,” Porter said. “We’re looking at building a new electric substation to serve not only that property but the south end of town. We were looking at that, and there’s long lead times on the equipment for an electric substation, so it’s gonna take us a little bit. We gotta look at water and sewer and all that, too, so we got a little bit of time to get things organized.”

In the meantime, the City has entered into a lease agreement with a local farmer who will farm the land for two growing seasons.

“We signed a two-year lease with a farmer who’s been farming that land for a generation or two,” Burgess said. “So in the short term, that will continue to be farmland. … We put it out for bid, and there were at least a half a dozen farmers that bid on that, and it just so happened that the farmer who’s been working it this whole time, he put in the highest price.”

After the City has prepared the land, it will be able to offer the land for sale to companies to build on. Currently, College third-year Kern Brunk is working on a summer fellowship to find the most suitable companies for Oberlin’s industrial park. The state of Ohio sends Oberlin the information of companies interested in purchasing land, and Oberlin can offer them land if the company’s needs align with the City’s own.

Brunk is developing a scoring system that will allow the City to compare companies against one another. Brunk will factor in what the companies want, including their electricity needs, the number of acres they’d like to buy, and whether they want the land surveyed before they buy it, as well what the City wants a company to bring to Oberlin.

“There are some industries that are persona non grata,” Brunk said. “We will not be looking at chemicals, steel manufacturing — things that could cause pollution and harm the local environment.”

Burgess says that the current industrial park can provide a model of the values that the City brings to planning for the new industrial park. “Our current industrial park does automation, robotics, healthcare, and there’s even a marijuana greenhouse — none of that is dirty industry with smokestacks,” he said. “So, what are the high tech jobs of the future that might be suitable for an Oberlin market? Something in renewable energy, maybe something in electric vehicles. Maybe something else in health care.”

Porter hopes that companies interested in Oberlin’s carbon neutrality commitment will be attracted to the new park.

“We have our own electric company here in Oberlin that’s run by the City, and it’s 100 percent renewable power,” Porter said. “There’s companies out there now that [are] looking for things like that because they want to be sustainable. They have a commitment to reducing their carbon footprint. … There’s been a few leads that come from the state that the companies were looking for those particular things, but back when those came through, we didn’t have this land, so we couldn’t offer anything.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What drew you to drag as a performance art?

Itʼs the one thing where you can become anything you want to be. My primary thing is being a storyteller, and what I like about drag is that you can kind of use pop culture, music, and film clips to insert your own voice to tell any story you want. What are the stories that you started out telling with drag and how has that shifted into the stories that you tell today?

When I started, they were more oriented around what I was capable of. At the time, I didnʼt know how to make mixes; I didnʼt know how to do more complex drag looks or costumes. So I was kind of stuck in a space of female impersonation-style drag.

Once I started being able to make mixes, the stories that I could tell changed dramatically. Once I learned how to make props, that really helped add another layer. Learning to make new things and learning new skills helps you start telling the stories you want to tell. One of the numbers that I have analyzed a lot in talking about my career that I think is more indicative of where Iʼm at now is the “Women Who Slay” mix. My “Women Who Slay” mix is based around a metal song by In This Moment, but it has interspersed quotes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It ends with the battle between AON and the Witch King at the very end of it, and Iʼd behead my partner, who is dressed with the witch king head on, to end the whole thing.

I wanted a number that was specifically anti-man, if Iʼm honest. I wanted a number that was about heroes, but I didnʼt want to do the usual goody two-shoes heroes. I wanted to specifically use deadly female assassins who are heroic but who do kill their enemies.

Thatʼs more of the stories Iʼve been telling now — things that to me feel much more directly political, that are much more directly making a statement about either the world or my experience of the world.

You began your academic career as a rock and roll historian. How do you think the culture of rock and roll has influenced your drag?

The stereotypical image of a drag queen is a glamor queen. The idea is very based in white wealth, the fashion industry, or glamor. I donʼt want everything I do to be an easy pill to swallow. A lot of performers, if you talk to them about why they do what they do, one of the things theyʼll say is, “I wanna make the audience happy.” Thatʼs not my goal. I want to make the trans people in my crowd feel seen. I want the women in my crowd to feel seen.

In rock and roll history, the story of women is generally deemphasized because the people who are telling that story are generally men, cis men who are white, who believe that virtuosic guitar skills are the ultimate end-all-be-all of rock music. Thatʼs a lot of stuff I argued against as a rock and roll history specialist, and then I tried to bring those ideas into what I do as a drag performer.

Rock and roll is very political, and being a trans woman, I felt like every other image presented to me by most other trans women in the drag world that I have engaged with has been glamor drag, and I was like, “We as trans women are allowed to be butch too.” Why canʼt I come out here and act like Suzi Quatro?

Could you talk about how you came up with the act you performed on Saturday?

I have been wanting to go and do something like that for a long time. I just didnʼt know how to build it. But the impetus for that came about with this year. I felt the need, rather than just a desire, to create this number because of what is happening with trans and drag-oriented legislation. Seeing that happen made me feel like I wanted to step up as an LGBT activist and do something that was really in your face and really straightforward, where you didnʼt have to think about what the message was.

I made myself a rule years ago that I would never do what I did, which is put signs with words on them. But I just kept thinking, I have to do this number this way because I need people to feel that release — we are all so f*cking angry right now, and I think we need a moment of aggression and rage. I think that we deserve that as trans people.

But I also wanted to provide a hero. I wanted to make it so that I step into this role and pretend that it is this symbol, that we can just knock all these things down and let people feel that we as drag performers are not just going to respond to this in interviews, we are not just going to respond to this in talks, but Iʼm going to do this in my performances. I donʼt really do any of that for cis people at all. I really do that so that trans people feel seen and heard about what is going on for the length of that number.

Doing it in a place where I got to do the talk first was really special for me because it allowed me for once to show an audience how all my work connects. I donʼt usually get to do that.

How has your conceptualization of femininity shifted as youʼve come into your identity as a non-binary trans woman?

I feel that my definition of it has changed as to what Iʼm willing to show and share with people. When I started doing drag in Cleveland, I identified as a straight person. I identified as a boy or genderfluid.

When I started doing drag, my female impersonation-style look, which was all I was taught how to do, made me very dysphoric. It made me feel terrible doing drag because it was like I was putting on the face I wanted to have and then having to take that back off. What I have found over time is that when I switched to the super goth mom look that I have now, it allowed me to feel more like this is a mask that I put on and I take off to become this larger-than-life figure who can say and do these things that I canʼt quite express and do in the world. Having that happen allowed me to feel and start reckoning with who is under the mask.

Throughout 2021 and 2022, the affordable housing subgroup worked to find a developer that would suit the community’s needs. They spoke with Cleveland Housing Network, Woda Cooper Companies, Inc., The Community Builders, and New Sunrise Properties, Inc., before building a proposal with the current partner.

“We got really excited when we first talked with CHN Housing Partners of Cleveland,” English said. “We talked about doing 30 homes with a nine percent low income housing tax credit. And that tax credit basically would have created a huge amount of funding for a large, affordable, owner-owned housing project. They thought we would be eligible for this, but when they looked at it, it turned out we just aren’t eligible. We’re considered a rural community, and that program is only for cities.”

The affordable housing subgroup eventually decided to work with Revitalization Strategies Group, Inc., a developer group led by Michael Bowen. Bowen has 26 years of experience building affordable housing. Since starting his own company in 2017, Bowen has developed about 750 affordable housing units. RSG would build eight rent-to own houses on land owned by the City. The houses would be both accessible and sustainable as well as built in existing neighborhoods. Examples of possible house layouts for a plot at 878 Kimberly Circle were included in the proposal draft. The proposed layouts were two-bedroom, 1.5 bathroom, and 1,462 square feet total, or three bedroom, two bathroom and a total of 1,668 square feet, featuring an open floor plan and covered patio in the backyard.

Before RSG could begin bringing together funding and building the properties, City Council would need to pass an ordinance and enter into an agreement with the company. After the agreement is passed, RSG would be responsible for securing funding for the project. RSG would make use of a variety of funding sources, including applying to grants, working with investors who buy low income housing tax credits, and other investment sources. In the proposal, Bowen outlined five potential sources of funding for the project. Bank financing would account for the majority of funding with $1,200,000 sourced from private banks. The project hopes to earn $520,000 from the Housing Trust Fund, a federal program that allocates funds to states which then allocate money to qualifying projects. In 2022, the Ohio Housing Trust Fund allocated $53 million to various projects across the state.

Additional finances, in the approximate amount of $237,200, would be sourced from the Federal Housing Lending Bank. The Federal Housing Lending Bank is a federally organized group of private banks that provide funding for affordable housing projects. The Federal Housing Lending Bank does not use taxpayer dollars.

According to the proposal, Housing Development Assistance Programs would provide $186,000 for the project. HDAPs provide competitive loans and grants for programs that serve households at or below 50 percent of the area median income.

Oberlin is a part of the Cleveland-Elyria metropolitan statistical area. The median four member household income for the area is $85,400. Fifty percent below the median for a four member household is $42,700. Income can be adjusted based on the number of individuals in the household.

The City of Oberlin would provide the smallest portion of funds in the total finances of the project — $20,000 of American Rescue Plan Act funding per house as a loan.

Despite the $2.3 million price tag of the project, the City is only contributing $160,000. Michael Bowen and his team assume the majority of the financial risk in the project.

“He would take out a loan of over a million dollars to make this whole thing happen, and that is part of his risk in this,” English said. “He has to perform. And to get a loan like that, he would pledge certain assets of his own, where if for any reason he defaulted on the loan or couldn’t come through with payments, he would potentially be in a position where he could lose assets. If this somehow failed like that, which I think is unlikely if he’s able to put together the initial funding of about $2.3 million, then we would have expended ARPA funds when we could have used those funds for something else that might have also improved housing in the community.”

Once RSG has secured funding for the project, the City would transfer the land for the project to RSG. Bowen had requested tax abatement from the City, which would allow RSG to be exempt from property taxes while his company owned the property as well as allowing families who assume ownership to be exempt. English said that he thinks it is unlikely that the City would provide tax abatement.

According to the proposal draft, RSG could begin building in the first quarter of 2024.

When the houses are completed, families will be selected to occupy the homes. According to English, it has been projected that construction could finish in as little as one year after financial closing. While the selection parameters have not been negotiated with RSG yet, English said that Oberlin residents and former Oberlin residents would receive preference for housing.

“A preference will be given to either current Oberlin residents who are rent-burdened, who are paying a much too high percentage of their income for housing, or to former Oberlin residents who want to return here and want to assume home ownership,” English said at the work session.

Additional parameters will likely come from income, as many federal and state funding sources set income limits on who projects that are funded can serve.

“The financing that this company puts together would determine what level of income people would be eligible for,” English said. “And it could be, say, 80 percent of the area median income, it could be 100 percent, or the like. So people would qualify for this, they could apply and be selected and it would be based on their income.”

The selected families would participate in programs to help them prepare for assuming ownership of the home. Within five years, the families would assume a long-term mortgage and transition from renting to owning their home.

“They would pay an affordable rent, which is, again, based on their income, ensuring that they are not rent-burdened by having to pay more than they can really afford for rent,” English said. “Their mortgage payment would be tied and similar to their payment for their rent.” English clarified that the mortgage would not be for the full cost that it took to build the home, but instead would be in the range of $125–150,000.

Attendees expressed both gratitude and concerns to the Council during the work session.

“I would like to thank the social equity committee for their work on this,” William Jindra, a resident of Oberlin, said at the work session. “I would like to see the city take a holistic approach at looking at housing issues. There’s a great need across the spectrum, both for [low-cost,] affordable homes and older people that want to downsize.”

The Nord Center is a community mental health organization located in Lorain that offers a variety of psychiatric and trauma programs. It provides both mental and physical health services for victims of sexual assault that are available to Oberlin students at no cost. Forensic medical exams, which collect data that can be used to pursue legal processes and help determine treatment for injuries, are available at the center and can be administered during the first 96 hours after an assault. The exams are performed by trained Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners. In addition, advocates are available to provide support to victims throughout the medical examination process or the legal process of reporting the assault, if the victim chooses to do so.

A 24-hour hotline staffed by Nord Center advocates who have undergone 40 hours of training provides support specifically catered to sexual assault victims. Advocates can also advise College students involved in the Title IX reporting process.

Advocates are also able to provide psychoeducational support for individual students, offering a transitional service to victims before they go into therapy. It provides education around trauma, addressing what common responses are, what the student might be experiencing, and coping mechanisms.

Confidential Student Advocate Emily Seng is one provider of such support.

“It’s meant to be education about sexual harm … in printable, readable form,” Seng said when talking about the paper that is also provided to victims. “Usually I’ll talk with students, we’ll go through it, highlight, talk about what’s important to them in there. Are they relating to any of the stuff there? Depending on that, we can also do coping skills, making a self-care plan. Are they doing any types of self-care? I think a lot of times in college you realize, ‘Oh hey, I have to make all of these things, finding out also what works,’ because maybe what works in high school or earlier isn’t working anymore in this place. So we can do stuff like that, talking about triggers, panic attacks, flashbacks, and also talking about transitioning into therapeutic services if the reactions are intense — when they’re feeling like, ‘Hey, I could really use extra help.’”

Oberlin College is required to report felonies to the local police department. However, the Nord Center is not required to report felonies.

“If somebody really wants to make sure that nothing gets shared outside of who they’re wanting to share with at the moment, the Nord advocates are phenomenal options,” Director for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and Title IX Coordinator Rebecca Mosely said. “Yes, they can truly keep it confidential, both from the Title IX office and from the police.”

Additionally, the College provides transportation to and from the Nord Center at no cost to students.

“If Oberlin students do need to go to the Nord Center, we’re able to get Ubers for any of our clients,” Nord Center Community Educator Kayla Gelb said. “And that’s the same for any of our services. So if students aren’t connected with us, and they need to come to the Nord Center for sexual assault services, they’re able to get Uber for general counseling and other support services.”

Gelb commented on the importance of using Nord’s hotline if in crisis.

“We have general mental health services and sexual assault services,” Gelb said. “Either way, both of those services can be accessed through our main hotline. So if you call our main hotline, they’re going to explain what’s going on, they’re really going to be able to help you figure out what resources would be beneficial to you in that moment and how to access them.”

The Title IX office can help students in formal and informal resolution processes and provide on-campus support with processes such as changing residences and communicating with professors. Mosely believes that having a variety of partnerships and resources available is important to providing full support for students.

“Anything that we can do as an office to continue to make sure that students know about the opportunities that are provided by the Nord Center, that is always our goal,” Mosely said. “They can provide things that we cannot, … and so it’s knowing that there are different places and spaces where our work can work well.”

During the pandemic, a group of residents living near Prospect Park created a group that brought their dogs to the green space located behind Prospect Elementary School from 4:30– 5:30 p.m. However, it is illegal to have a dog off-leash in Oberlin.

During the April 3 City Council regular meeting, City Council members discussed how to deal with dogs being off-leash at Prospect Park. One factor brought up was that Oberlin hosts summer camps at the Oberlin Activities and Enrichment Center — formerly known as Prospect Elementary— and council members expressed concern in prioritizing children’s safety when the dogs were let off leash in the same area.

Ian Yarber, recreation director, shared with the council that he had spoken with some, but not all of the individuals who let their dogs off-leash during summer camp hours.

“When we had summer camp, we [had] 85 kids out on the playground,” Yarber said. “People would come and just let their dogs loose and run. And I would say, ‘Look, you see we have all these kids, can you come back after 3 p.m.?’ Because these kids don’t know your dog.”

Residents who bring their dogs to the park had requested the Recreation Commission to create a time frame making it legal to let dogs off-leash in the park. Chair of the Recreation Commission Kevin Miller shared with the Council that this request was denied by the Recreation Commission.

“What it comes down to is that it’s just not possible to facilitate what’s being asked of the dog park creation,” Miller said. “They aren’t asking for a formal dog park to be created, but they want certain hours to be designated as dog park hours and with just how little space there is there, and with the summer program coming up there quickly you have to prioritize the kids who are using the space for what it’s there for so we decided, the commission, to not to move forward with it.”

The Council decided to move forward with clear signage and enforcing the law as stated.

“I believe that it’s best to begin with education, clear signage, I dont have the ordinance in front of me whether it’s a misdemeanor, court appearance, any of that,” City Manager Rob Hillard said. “I think we educate, inform, be clear and enforce because that’s the law unless council changes the law.”

Any animal found on park property off-leash may be impounded according to ordinance 927.03.

On April 17, a group of residents who congregate at the park urged the council to allow dogs off-leash at Prospect. Members of the group expressed that their informal gatherings, dubbed the ‘dog party,’ created a sense of community, stewardship, and neighborliness.

“I am struck by the irony that the inaugural act for this community and enrichment center is to eliminate the most vibrant community currently using it,” said Will Kunert, hospice chaplain at the Cleveland Clinic.

Rebecca Cross, OC ’84, asked the council to consider setting aside part of the park as an official fenced-in dog park.

“Let’s make part of this big green space an official dog park,” Cross said. “We have been invited as community members to weigh in on the use of this space. I’d like to see my tax dollars spent on building a fence across the lawn area, establishing the western half of the field for a dog park.”

Sixteen members of the group signed a letter that was sent to Council. In the letter, the group expressed that Splash Zone, a legal dog park available to them, was too small for their group and required that they drive, increasing their carbon footprint. The Council advised that the group should bring their request for a dog park to the Recreation Commission. For the time being, Splash Zone is the only legal dog park in Oberlin.

“My only regret … is [that] the dog park there operates in conjunction with the operating hours at Splash Zone,” City Council President Brian Burgess said. “So when Splash Zone closes at, I want to say 8 p.m. on weekdays, the dog park closes. And people were bringing up that there’s a cost associated with it. It is nominal and really the point of the cost is to partially offset the cost of operating the dog park.”

Burgess expressed that changes would not be likely because the City has to account for the potential harm from others outside the group expressing their concerns.

“The woman at the podium made a good point that the dog owners that were in attendance tonight, they’re responsible,” said Burgess. “They’re the ones that really care. It’s not the ‘dog party,’ it’s not them. You also heard her say that when she shows up, she finds fresh piles of dog poop on the ground and she’s cleaning up after other people because most people who are going over there are not as responsible as the people tonight. We can’t just put out an exception — what, have an ordinance that says only responsible people can have their dogs off-leash — it’s just not feasible.”

The Admissions Office brought in Carnegie Dartlet as its new search partner in February. Assistant Vice President of Admissions Communications Ben Jones, OC ’96, explained that these workshops are intended to help admissions get an idea of what types of students they should recruit and what kinds of students are likely to choose and stay at Oberlin.

“We’re not looking to change anything about Oberlin students,” Jones said. “We just want more of them. If we can really understand why current students are here and what makes them motivated and happy and all those good things, we can project that forward in how we recruit the next generation.”

Instead of looking at conventional demographics like GPA, hometown, or major, the workshops were designed to explore Oberlin students’ values. Mandy Summers, senior marketing and enrollment strategist at Carnegie Dartlet, explained that qualitative data can help Oberlin understand the similarities and differences among its student body beyond demographics.

“There are so many different types of students, so we’re not going to generalize,” Summers said. “We’re really just gonna try to come up with their motivations, because we know people make decisions on emotion and not always on logic. Really understanding that emotion and where some of those values come from and motivations and what drives you is really what’s gonna help Oberlin understand its student body better.”

Different motivations are described through “personas,” which are represented by different colors. Students were asked to come up with three examples of types of students they see at Oberlin and then assign primary motivations to each type of student they created.

Heidi Fitzgerald, business operations specialist at Carnegie Dartlet, explained how a variety of motivations can result in the same decisions.

“We have this example — we have a green persona [or] personality attribute — that’s like the curious explorer,” Fitzgerald said. “Why might they pull an all-nighter the night before a test? Maybe it’s not because they care about a high grade; that’s more of a blue [persona] thing. Maybe they just got so into their project, so curious to find out more, that they lost track of time. … A maroon person might be interested in hard work and good ethics. Maybe a maroon person wouldn’t be pulling an all nighter because they planned better. So instead of saying surface level, ‘This is a person who pulls all-nighters, this is an academic person’ — those are three different personality drivers.”

After creating profiles of the different values and motivations present at Oberlin, Carnegie Dartlet plans to send a survey out to the general student population so that students can help confirm the results of the workshop.

Students will be asked to identify the profile they feel best describes them and provide more information on their preferences for communication.

“You’ll get a chance to say, do you like to be communicated with [via] email,” Summers said. “… It’s a larger survey to get more information about how to best communicate with you all.”

From the quantitative and qualitative results, Carnegie Dartlet will provide recommendations on how Oberlin can reach students during the “search” phase, when the College proactively advertises to potential students who might be interested in enrolling.

“Our role in that really is to then just say, ‘Okay, if you have this group of students that’s overly involved, what does that really mean?’” Summers said. “So for them, when we talk about communication, do they feel like they have enough information and they don’t really want to hear from you? And as Ben mentioned yesterday, it really is about the recruitment, too … They can definitely use the information to talk to current students, but when they’re talking to prospective students, it’s like, ‘Okay, the over-committed students, what do they really like about Oberlin?’ It’s really an idea of what messages can they push out to the over-committed student to make them understand that they’ll fit in here.”

Jones believes that each student’s individuality presents both a challenge and an opportunity for Oberlin during this process.

“One thing that’s a challenge for Oberlin — and it’s a very, very good challenge, the reason that I love Oberlin — is that we don’t fall neatly into a handful of profiles,” Jones said. “Oberlin is all about individuality. When I’m recruiting for Oberlin, one of the things that I tell prospective students is there are places where a thousand different people come in, and then when they leave, they’re kind of all the same. Whereas at Oberlin, a thousand people come in and they leave as a thousand individuals who are just empowered by Oberlin to be the best version of themselves.”

After weighing the costs of expanding its current building, constructing a new facility, or moving to other locations, OCS purchased the property on East Lorain Street from the National Association of College Stores for $1 million. Funding for the initial purchase of the building was provided to OCS by Roger and Fran Cooper.

Roger Cooper worked at Oberlin College as the treasurer from 1970–1984, while Fran Cooper worked for law and mortgage firms and as an administrative assistant at the College.

Fran Cooper, who volunteered at OCS, said that the couple had decided to donate the funds because they believe in the mission of the organization.

“I’m so excited that this new building is coming,” Fran Cooper said. “This building will be an uplifting building and a hub for organizations.”

Another anonymous donor gave $500,000 toward a community room on the first floor, which will be named after Ann Fuller, executive director of OCS from 1981–2006. The current stage of the capital campaign aims to raise $400,000 from the public to renovate the property. Nearly 1,000 pledge cards were distributed in Oberlin Friday, March 31. Donors were also asked to collect spare change in medicine bottles and deliver them to OCS through the month of April.

“We want everyone to have the chance to help make the Cooper Community Resource Center a reality,” Connie Ponder, a member of the OCS board, said. “Whether that means giving a dollar or ten dollars or a hundred dollars or a thousand, all your gifts are meaningful, and we welcome them because they’ve come from the heart. Oberlin is a heartful community.”

An anonymous couple has pledged to match capital campaign donations up to $100,000 in memory of Jacqui Willis, a volunteer and board member of OCS.

Willis lived in Oberlin for 40 years and was deeply involved in the City and the surrounding community. She worked as an administrator and media specialist at Lorain, Elyria, and Strongsville City Schools and served the community in organizations including Oberlin Recreation Committee, Athletic Boosters, Lorain County Alliance of Black School Educators, Jack and Jill, Inc., Oberlin Black Alliance for Progress, and OCS. At OCS, Willis organized the annual Juneteenth picnic, volunteered weekly at the choice food pantry, and collected back-to-school supplies for Oberlin children each summer.

“Jacqui would say, if she were here, ‘There’s no gift too small, as long as you’re helping people,’” Susan Egloff, a longtime sustaining donor of OCS, said.

OCS has contracted Williams Brothers Builders Inc. to begin renovating the first floor of the building in April. The first phase of renovations will create space for OCS’ food pantry and food warehouse, and renovations are expected to finish by August.

“Our hope is that we will be able to move in by fall,” Executive Director of OCS Margie Flood said.

OCS anticipates future renovations on the second floor of the building, to create office space for OCS partner organizations such as Providing Oberlin With Efficiency Responsibly.

“We are really excited about getting other area partners in the office space to make a community resource center,” Flood said. “Right now, legal aid comes to OCS once a month, but OCS doesn’t have the space to give them a full office. What we are talking about now is having an office [at 500 E. Lorain St.] so they can be onsite more often. That’s how it is with a lot of our community organizations — for example, POWER has an office at OCS, but [they] have to share it with several people, so now [they] will have their own office and our partnership can continue.”

Greg Jones, energy advocate at POWER, sees the collaboration between nonprofits as key to their mutual success.

“It just was a natural fit for what we do in housing to match up with what Oberlin Community Services did with all the other services,” Jones said. “That’s why it’s important now, for all help services — if you are a help service to people, then you need to be in one spot so people can find you and get help.”

Flood also expressed OCS’ goal of making the building energy-efficient.

“Eventually we hope to finish with solar panels on the roof and really make this a model community resource center,” Flood said.