These problems include, according to the Review’s coverage in late September of this year, a high, unmet demand for introductory courses across majors, difficulty expressed by students in finding in-major advisors, and a desire to diversify Oberlin’s faculty both in terms of pedagogical techniques and the demographic makeup of its members.

Many of these new faculty members have been hired to teach the specific courses for which Oberlin had apparently been lacking in instructors. These additions to Oberlin’s faculty will also add to the pool of potential advisors from which students may choose from upon declaring their majors. 

While I am confident that the new additions to Oberlin’s faculty will offer redress to the problems for which they were hired, the decision doesn’t seem to address the larger problem. 

For example, the difficulty that students report experiencing in searching for their advisors isn’t just due to a mere lack of bodies to bear that title. It is also due to the fact that students are often unable to build on already existing relationships with professors that may not be able to remain on campus long term. 

Few of the professors hired to fill these new tenure-track positions have previously taught at Oberlin. Second-ye ars declaring their majors next semester will have had limited opportunities to have taken classes with these professors before potentially reaching out to them to be their advisors. 

And what about the visiting professors, on whom Oberlin seems to have an increasing (and troubling) reliance and with whom many students will likely have taken classes and perhaps even developed meaningful rapport with  during their first year in college? The Review reported on a student, perhaps one example among many, having to settle on a professor with whom she had a “less established relationship” with to be her advisor after her first choice could not fulfill her request. Another student’s experiences in both of her majors where she found “professors that [she] developed a rapport with and that fit [her] learning style very well” who ultimately “left Oberlin” shortly after. These reports are telling. 

I’m happy that there are now more professors at Oberlin who are here to stay. But Oberlin’s latest hiring spree has done little to lessen the number of professors whose long-term presence here as visiting assistant professors remains tenuous. 

However, students entering introductory courses will certainly benefit from enhanced offerings taught by professors who will then remain on campus as they advance to upper level courses. Students who have long since made their forays into the introductory levels of their varying academic  interests face a likely future — if they haven’t experienced this already — in which their favorite professors from their first year will no longer be on campus in their second, third, and fourth years of college. This eventuality inhibits their ability to develop meaningful and generative academic relationships with these professors. 

As for those visiting professors that remain whose contracts have been renewed two years after two years without the stability accorded to tenured and tenure-track professors, I advocate that the College focus in the coming years on their retention. This should be done not through the renewal of short-term contracts while competing institutions are free to make more attractive offers opposed to the looming threat of their employment’s expiration, but by offering tenure-track positions to those who are already here. 

Surely those professors who have demonstrated sufficient merit to be retained as faculty for years are deserving of a commitment by the College to be employed for years to come. Surely Oberlin’s students, to whom the College has made a commitment to offer a rigorous and comprehensive higher education, are deserving, too, of greater stability in their instruction. 

While the hiring of tenure track professors is a step towards this stability for many new classes of students to come, it seems to me to be antithetical to Oberlin’s values of inclusion and accessibility to leave anyone behind. I applaud Oberlin’s expansion of its tenured and tenure track faculty, as I do with any decision that seeks to benefit future students and to promote the institution’s longevity. But I implore the College not to neglect or renege on their commitments to those who are already here and who have long been committed to the institution and its community.

Attending a college that had a commitment to diversity and claimed to be engaged in social issues was very important to me. Part of the reason I chose Oberlin was its history of supporting marginalized communities. Oberlin College was the first college in the United States to grant undergraduate degrees in a coeducational program and the first college to admit non-white students. In many ways, Oberlin students do have extreme commitments to social issues and marginalized communities. There are over 20 student organizations dedicated to identity and 13 student organizations dedicated to politics and activism. In addition, any Oberlin student would tell you that there are countless events each week on campus, many of which revolve around global and local politics and activism. Despite this, I know few Oberlin students who read the news and, while I have had many conversations with students revolving around issues of diversity and inclusion at Oberlin College, I have scarcely had dialogues on everyday political events. In addition I have found that we often congratulate ourselves for being socially and politically engaged when, as individuals privileged enough to gain this education, it is in no way something that makes us impressive. 

I believe there are many reasons for this lack of conversation surrounding current events among Oberlin students. The decline of local news outlets has been an issue for decades, especially among the Gen Z population. While it is false to say that younger people solely get their news from social media outlets, the American Press Institute in 2022 found that the main source of news for Gen Z and Millennials is social media. Social media in many ways can be an extremely valuable tool to spread information on politics and current events; however it can also lack in-depth analysis on opinions and global issues. The lack of young people across the globe interacting with traditional and local news outlets is surely an aspect to the problem of Oberlin students’ lack of knowledge around current issues. 

There is also the issue of the sheer amount of involvement Oberlin students have. I am a subscriber to The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal; however, with all my academics, extracurriculars, and readings, finding time to keep up with the news is extraordinarily challenging. I am in no way the only student overwhelmed by academics and extracurriculars; we are a student body who loves to be a part of an unbearable number of organizations and course overload. While this can be a fantastic thing, it also means that in our spare free time we most likely will not dedicate our time to reading the news. 

However, I think the most pressing and truthful reason Oberlin students have a lack of awareness and discussions surrounding current events is we are a population that enjoys to center ourselves in the issues most pressing in our world. Oberlin is an incredibly privileged student body: it’s predominantly white and extremely wealthy. An aspect of privilege is that it causes one to think most about one’s own position in the world. This can be incredibly true for Oberlin students. 

While, as I stated earlier, I have rarely had discussions around current events, I often have overheard and had discussions over the ways Oberlin College mistreats the student body’s marginalized communities. This is something Oberlin students too often congratulate ourselves for, when as individuals privileged enough to gain this education it is in no way something that makes us impressive. Also a problem in these discussions, is that while they are not inherently wrong or unnecessary, there is a level in which we care about these issues because we connect to them. To have a discussion around, say, the devastating floods in Libya, takes a desire to talk about political issues that may not have an impact on ourselves. In addition, it takes a desire to educate ourselves on issues that may not relate to our academics, extracurriculars, or personal identities. Lacking knowledge of political and current events unrelated to ourselves renders us unable to have a true understanding of social and political issues. In addition, we do not stay true to our values of wanting to better our society, and supporting marginalized communities. 

It is easy for students to say they defend disenfranchised communities, are anti-capitalist, and fight against systems of oppression. These are beliefs that align with the majority of the Oberlin student community’s moral compass. To have a true understanding of what it means to be disenfranchised and how the systems of oppression function we have to understand them beyond our community which unfortunately means spending even more time reading. I encourage all the students reading this article, to read another, or maybe even listen to The Daily — and try not to pat yourself on the back for doing it.

When I first heard that this list was out, I hesitantly clicked on the link leading to the 80-page report, apprehensive to see the presumably low rank they had given Oberlin. This fear did not come from a personal low opinion of Oberlin’s ability to maintain free speech, but rather the tendency of Oberlin’s reputation to precede itself. 

Oberlin was named #75 out of 248 schools, making its ranking higher than around 70 percent of the other colleges studied, with FIRE succinctly describing its speech climate as “average.” As a private university, Oberlin does not have to adhere to the same First Amendment laws regarding free speech that public schools do. Even still, it was surprisingly ranked higher than even some public colleges. These results insinuate that, despite this legal difference, students at Oberlin feel that their experiences indicate a campus that cares about freedom of speech just as much as any other college. 

However, if you asked most right-leaning media outlets, it is likely they would be surprised by Oberlin’s place on the freedom of speech index. In general, whenever Oberlin is profiled by right wing news outlets, it is usually not in a positive light. Just a few examples:

“Oberlin College in ANOTHER legal battle over defaming bakery: Woke school now sues insurance companies for refusing to cover $37 million it had to pay family business over false racism claims” (Flipboard, 2023).

“Oberlin College coach said: ‘Felt like I was burned at the stake’ over opinion on trans athletes in women’s sports’” (Fox News, 2023).

“Oberlin College’s ‘Woke’ Curriculum Offers Avoiding Responsibility 101” (The American Society of Defense, 2022).

These publications specialize in “rage baiting,” a term describing content that is designed to evoke strong feelings of anger. They know what will upset their dedicated readers. However, it is possible that these often misleading headlines actually work in Oberlin’s favor. 

Most students applying become aware of its liberal tendencies after a few simple Google searches. Those who end up actually committing to the school tend to do so because of its reputation. While this does mean that there is somewhat of an echo chamber on campus, the students here are still often exposed to differing opinions.

Recently, a pastor from the Cleveland Street Preachers, made an appearance on campus. I do not want to falsely assume the intent of this visit, but it definitely seems that they wanted to evoke a negative reaction from the students here. While I did not see the event in person, I did watch the subsequent video that was uploaded to their YouTube channel, titled “Preaching At One Of America’s Most Liberal Colleges…” Aside from a few middle fingers and shouts, Oberlin students seemed to approach the preacher in a respectful manner, even when his own words became far from that. 

This is also not to say that students need to be open towards bigoted statements. Dealing with someone who has a differing viewpoint is not at all the same as someone who spouts hate speech, and no student should be expected to maintain good will toward the latter. 

Another surprising placement was that of Harvard University, which was ranked #248. This was, again, out of 248 schools. Their speech climate was described as “abysmal,” with a resounding overall score of 0.00, over 11 points below the second lowest school. 

When I read about the incidents that placed Harvard so low on the list, I had to admit that multiple of them were somewhat concerning. In one of them, a Harvard student newspaper ran a cartoon that criticized the Career Services Department. They then, allegedly, received a verbal warning from the administration, which led to the resignation of one of the members of the newspaper staff. I have written pieces published in this very newspaper critiquing the College and have never received any warnings or messages about them from the higher-ups who are being criticized. 

It is undeniable that institutions like Harvard have more of a reputation to uphold than Oberlin does. In order to maintain its elite appearance, the school must be careful not to accidentally support negative expressions. In fact, according to FIRE, one Harvard student was asked to take down a flag depicting Nicki Minaj bikini clad in front of the American flag, as it could be considered “offensive.”

Oberlin still, presumably, must uphold a certain image, but at least its very existence does not rely on its status as an “elite” institution. To most, Oberlin is known as a good school with an even better conservatory, if they have even heard of the school at all. Most people from my hometown had never heard of Oberlin until I told them that I was enrolled there — and I’m from Ohio! 

None of these statements I have made are to say that Oberlin has a total grasp on this whole freedom of speech concept. The administration here has a habit of giving students the benefit of the doubt beyond what seems to be a reasonable point and often makes questionable decisions regarding rebukes and who deserves them. 

But at least I am allowed to say that. 

At the end of the day, most students attend college to learn and grow. This clearly cannot be done in an environment where those in charge do not actively fight against bigotry and hatred, which is why Oberlin should keep making strides to do so, as everyone here has the right to feel safe around one another. Still, in order to maintain the integrity of an enriching liberal arts education, Oberlin must also continue to encourage and support its students’ ability to freely express themselves and their opinions, controversial or not.

Yet, the proposed reframing in this article that encourages students to see college as a time of leisure fails to alleviate the burden that so many students feel regardless of their expectations of the applications of their education. I don’t disagree with the author’s claim that skills such as an “ear for poetry, a grasp of geometry, or a keen moral imagination” are worth cultivating for their own sake, even if they “may not pay off financially.”

However, when pursued to its extreme, what is leisure if not another unrealistic expectation of the college experience of which most students will inevitably fall short? Personal edification and well-roundedness are much less concrete than more transferable and easily quantifiable skills. Either way seems to me to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the black-and-white mentality of either succeeding in earning the requisite degree for entry into a particular field and securing a skilled position upon graduation or failing to do so divides graduates into two extremes, the latter of which renders their costly education essentially valueless. On the other hand, the amorphous and unquantifiable nature of alternative goals renders them nearly impossible to fully achieve, such that students are constantly at risk of overwork in chasing them. College is a means to an end in this case, too, except that the endless pursuit of these goals offers no end in sight. 

I recognize and deeply believe in the value of one’s college education beyond its direct application to the workforce after graduation, but I would caution that the impulse to maximize one’s learning, especially at the expense of one’s actual leisure time outside of the classroom or of more pragmatic preparation for one’s chosen career, can have the opposite effect. 

How can a student ever fully devote themself to the mastery of a given subject, be it for their own gratification of learning or in service of more concrete goals, if they are too distracted by the pressure toward discovery and exploration of subjects for which they have no other interest? How can a student fully devote themself to their studies, in whatever subject or subjects they might be, if their conception of learning as leisure or rest from the labor demanded by the outside world precludes any acknowledgement of their laborious and demanding course load as something from which they need rest, too?

Learning certainly can, and should, to an extent, be joyous, but the expectation that it always should be seems like a recipe for burnout and misery. I don’t have to leave it to my imagination to see students forcing a smile as they overload their schedule with courses and extracurriculars that are not required for the completion of their college degree but that they feel are vital to a full college experience. 

Students are burdened enough by the regular demands of their degrees without feeling as if they must tack on extraneous subjects and activities with the paradoxical expectation that they be both sufficiently challenging and completed with ease. 

To say that college is work is not to say that its only purpose is to prepare students for work after college. It is to acknowledge the inherent difficulty and rigor of an education that successfully builds in those who complete it a foundation of knowledge that will serve them personally and professionally in years to come. 

True, college is a unique context that allows for the cultivation of skills in areas that graduates might no longer be able to explore upon graduation. Who has the time to learn geometry while working an unrelated 9–5? Who has access to a geometry class if not on a college campus? The impulse to take advantage of finite learning opportunities while still in school is both laudable and understandable and, to an extent, should be encouraged. But college, for most studious students, is no reprieve from the outside world. It is a costly enterprise — both financially and in terms of effort — that is necessarily difficult for its successful completion. College is work, and that’s ok. There’s no need to make it harder by expecting that students see it any differently.

This year also marks the debut of mail lockers as Oberlin’s primary method of mail delivery. Prior to the spring semester of 2023, all students were assigned an Oberlin College Mail Room number where they would receive letter mail or wait in line to pick up packages from the window in the mailroom. The mailboxes and the area where students waited have been eliminated to make space for new mechanical systems, according to an article published in the Review (“Mailroom Prepares to Implement Electronic Lockers,” The Oberlin Review, Nov. 18, 2022). 

A few months later, on Feb. 2, 2023, the Student Employment, Payroll, Finance, and Human Resources Office sent an email to student employees stating that the College had eliminated OCMR boxes, “effective immediately.” The new mail locker system had been announced several months earlier with a bulletin from the student mailroom posted on the College’s website Oct. 20, 2022.

The bulletin claims that the implementation of mail lockers would “improve the efficiency of processing more than 70,000 packages annually.” So far, the newly implemented locker system has completely failed to meet the needs of the mailroom and Oberlin’s student body, as has been demonstrated by the College’s announcement of a secondary package pickup location Sept. 11.  

The announcement, shared with students in the Campus Digest, stated that Stevenson Hall room 100 would temporarily serve as an Amazon package pickup location, likely to help the mailroom cope with the enormous number of packages that students order from Amazon at the beginning of the school year. This change in mail procedure, however, was not communicated to the student body in a clear and obvious way, nor was it clear exactly what packages were available to pick up at Stevenson and when packages had begun to be stored there.

I believe that this change should have been communicated via a separate email to students, rather than thrown into the daily roundup of student announcements. At the very least, mailroom changes should have been included in the subject line of the email. Had I not taken the time to scroll even just a bit, I would have been completely unaware of this change. 

The package that I was waiting for was shipped by a company owned by Amazon, which may have been why I was redirected to Stevenson from the mailroom when I went to pick up my package. However, this was not clearly communicated in the announcement in the Campus Digest. Nor was it communicated to students whether their packages that had been delivered prior to the announcement, like my package, would be at the mailroom in Wilder Hall or in Stevenson. 

As I waited in line, student after student in front of me was redirected to Stevenson to pick up their packages from Amazon. Clearer communication about this change would have certainly saved me some time, and I would not have had to wait in line as long. It would almost certainly save the mailroom staff time as well, as they would be able to help students whose packages were, in fact, available at the mailroom, rather than entering students’ information into the mailroom system then redirecting them. 

This lack of communication between the mailroom and the student body continued when I arrived at Stevenson and joined yet another line, made up largely of people whom I had just stood in line with at Wilder. While I was standing in line, we were informed that the Stevenson pickup location would be closing after we had been helped. While this didn’t affect me, I still found it frustrating that hours for the Stevenson pickup location were not communicated. When I encountered a package mixup and needed to return to Stevenson again, I had no idea when I would be able to do so.  

The addition of the lockers has also increased the amount of space that a single piece of mail takes up before it is picked up by its recipient. The smallest size of package locker is still around twice the size of the old mailboxes, but they only hold one piece of mail at a time, whereas OCMR boxes could hold multiple pieces of letter mail. This has the potential to make picking up mail less efficient for students, in direct contrast to what the goals of mail locker implementation were. 

All of that said, I want to be exceedingly clear that I do not blame the staff of the mailroom in the slightest for delays in students receiving mail. There is seemingly very little oversight about these changes and the impacts that they will have on Oberlin’s student body. In fact, the changes to the mail system are almost certainly significantly more detrimental to the mailroom staff than they are to the general student body. The elimination of the mailbox room and the renovations to Wilder have resulted in a drastic reduction of space for packages to be stored; before they are picked up. 

The decision to change the way that the mailroom operates was one made by the College, and what’s done is done. It is my hope that as the beginning-of-school package rush begins to subside, so will the long lines and wait times for mail. I wish that this implementation had been made in a less hasty manner and that there had been clearer pathways of communication. I also hope that, with election season just around the corner and many Oberlin students receiving absentee or mail-in ballots, these issues are resolved sooner rather than later. 

Yet it is worth noting which ones don’t make the cut. The fact that Oberlin cannot celebrate each and every student with an individual shoutout is self-evident, and prioritizes those whose accomplishments are truly extraordinary, such as winners of Fulbrights or Critical Language Scholarships, seems more pragmatic than exclusionary. But can the same be said of the ways in which Oberlin students perceive the accomplishments of their peers outside of the digital realm?

Alongside their name, pronouns, year, and major, students are frequently asked to share what they did over the summer in initial class meetings as if it is as integral to their identity and educational pursuit as the former categories. And while my answers over the years have varied, I don’t think I’m the only one who has felt sheepish when sharing my restaurant job among high-achieving peers, or feeling a mix of jealousy and admiration toward said peers, or feeling a newfound sense of pride upon my circumstances changing. 

In the period of transition at the beginning of this past summer, in which I was fortunate enough to be able to hold off on returning to the job that I had held the two summers prior in search of a “better” opportunity, I spent what felt like nearly the same amount of time scrolling on LinkedIn as I did sending in applications. Inundating my feed were posts by my peers that updated their work experience to summer 2023, with likes and comments of congratulations from their followers. Notably, I saw these comments dwindle in quantity for those conventionally less prestigious — though often still grueling — jobs. My desperation in searching for new employment this summer was in part because I dreaded returning to my previous job but also admittedly because I felt a need to join the ranks of these peers who I felt were miles ahead of me professionally.

But in what sense is an internship qualitatively better than working at a restaurant or in retail? Where does being a camp counselor fall in this arbitrary hierarchy? The appeal of more highly competitive opportunities on the part of the applicant isn’t hard to miss, whether it be work experience that might engender more opportunities in a student’s chosen field after college, the prestige that comes with having been selected for such an opportunity from among large applicant pools, or simply a means of curating a more pleasant summer for oneself before the return to school. 

In arguing this, I understand that these professional opportunities, especially when relating to a student’s chosen area of study, are often preferable to service work. This doesn’t mean these summer jobs are less deserving of respect. The implicit hierarchy that many students assign to summer jobs and internships contradicts the egalitarianism that characterizes Oberlin’s reputation and the leftist leanings that so many students, writing-class or often otherwise, outwardly profess. 

Though many such students will, for this reason, shy away from the explicit denigration of said labor, where they choose to allocate their praise speaks for itself. That many students are relegated to these jobs precisely because they cannot afford the unpaid internships that are feasible only for more well-off peers or because they lack the luck or connections by which such opportunities are often actually secured only further perpetuates the classism of which the dismissal of this type of labor reeks. 

When you withhold the praise toward some students while you readily lavish upon others with more seemingly prestigious jobs, do you consider that there might be little to no difference in merit among them? This is not to say that luckier students are unworthy of celebration, nor that other students are awaiting your congratulations for summer jobs that paid the bills but for which they otherwise had no enthusiasm. 

Rather, as we are still fresh off of summer’s end, I advocate for Oberlin students to extend their respect and recognition to all of their peers, and to dispel the notion that anyone is more or less worthy of these acknowledgements than others. 

I am genuinely happy for those among my peers who enjoyed, learned, or gained valuable experience from prestigious summer employment, though no more so than the equally deserving students who, due to some combination of circumstance, luck, or necessity, spent their summers differently. 

Barbie is one of many examples of white feminism being popular in mainstream media. Legally Blonde, a classic chick flick and a movie focusing on female empowerment, stars — like Barbie — a beautiful, blonde, white woman. While Legally Blonde was made more than 20 years prior to Barbie, the film similarly universalizes the experiences of women and ignores racial and class hierarchies which influence women’s experiences of oppression. While Legally Blonde does showcase a woman finding her independence, the main character’s ability to do this is only possible due to her status as a white, upper-class woman. The majority of women do not have the funds to attend Harvard, and would not be able to get accepted by simply getting a high LSAT score. In addition, both Legally Blonde and Barbie center white, beautiful, skinny, cis women, showcasing that, in pop culture, white women are most acclaimed. The issue of white women being at the center of mainstream feminism is one that has been an issue in feminist movements for decades. 

During the second-wave feminist movement, many Black women advocated for the need of intersectional feminism. Intersectional feminism is the understanding that systems of oppression affect people differently based on their varying identities including class, race, gender, and sexuality. One of the most famous community organizations advocating for intersectional feminism is the Combahee River Collective, which was a Black and Brown women-led organization that emerged in the 1970s to fight against the oppressive systems that most affect Black and Brown women’s lives. In the Combahee River Collective’s “Black Feminist Statement,” they critiqued the “fractionalization that white women who are separatist demand.” In this statement the Combahee River Collective was critiquing the demands from white women arguing that they should separate from all men. For Black and Brown women, it is imperative to show solidarity toward Black men due to their shared experience of racial oppression. While Barbie and Legally Blonde do not advocate for the separation of men and women, they do depict women as the victims of the gender system and men as the perpetrators. America Ferrera states that “women have to answer for bad men’s behavior.” But, historically, many white women have weaponized their power against Black men. For example, in America’s Jim Crow era, Black men were thought to be feared by white women due to an image created by white society that Black men are hypersexual predators. This resulted in the unjust lynching of thousands of Black men. In this way, white women held power over Black men. 

 The “patriarchy” in Barbie and Legally Blonde is seen as a binary of men oppressing women when, in truth, the gender hierarchy is extremely complicated and also connected to America’s racial system. Women are not oppressed by men, rather by capitalist systems that enable a small percentage of individuals to succeed and gain wealth and the majority to live in poverty. Racism and sexism are tools of this system. Mainstream feminism promotes the idea that, if women realize their individuality and the way males’ expectations of them limit them, they will find power. However, the majority of women’s lives will not change if they realize their potential, because the majority of women do not have the privilege that the main characters Barbie and Elle Woods have. A lower class position, which often coincides with experiences of racial and gender injustice, can not change for a woman due to a shift in her mentality. Instead, overarching systemic change is critical. 

Despite this, it is important to note that lots of media that promotes white feminism has value and is simply fun. I love Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, and Legally Blonde is one of my comfort movies. However, it is important to recognize the limitations of the ideologies promoted in these films. They are simplistic versions of feminism that only apply to upper class white women. In order for women to gain liberation, feminism necessitates the understanding that every woman experiences different types of oppression based on their identities.

In general, there is a definite difference in the way that Obies and Midwestern “townies” interact with one another. Over 90 percent of Oberlin students come from out of state, with the majority being from California or New York. Compare that with the Oberlin residents, where almost everyone was either born in Ohio or lived here for a significant portion of their lives. While there are many similarities between town and gown, there is an undeniable difference in certain regional habits. Almost to a fault, people in the Midwest tend to live up to their reputation of being, for the most part, a kind and polite people.

 This constant friendliness is often dubbed “Midwestern Nice” by those from the areas themselves. Those from out of state might call it “obnoxiously friendly,” or “overwhelmingly polite,”or“why-is-this-stranger-waving-at-me-please-stop.” For students who do not hail from the Midwest, suddenly seeing overly friendly strangers everywhere might be a culture shock, especially for those from bigger cities. 

As a piece of advice, when you are in the town itself, expect strangers to smile at you. Expect people to nod and greet you with a smile and a “Good morning!” Don’t be surprised if the cashier asks you a multitude of questions, and genuinely seems interested in your response. Expect people to go out of their way to help you if they see you struggling. The town of Oberlin seems to have a real sense of community, as shown by the many festivals, town-wide activities, and by the fact that almost everyone knows each other’s name.

Unfortunately, once you cross the threshold from city to school, the nature of the community changes. One of the more common complaints about the atmosphere at Oberlin College is that it can seem very cliquey. People tend to find “their people,” and then not branch out much past that. While having a group of supportive friends is great, it can’t hurt to reach out to other people you think might be fun to be around. Making small talk with those you don’t totally know could lead to a new, possibly lifelong, friendship.

On a more institutional level, it can also be easy for students at Oberlin to feel isolated, as we don’t really have anything that unites the entire student body. We’re not like The Ohio State University, whose students deck themselves out in scarlet and gray every Saturday night to support their AP Top 25-ranked football team. We don’t “Roll Tide,” or “Gator Chomp,” or even happen to own a 450-pound tiger named Mike. While this is not necessarily a totally bad thing, as the lack of sports and Greek life-based culture makes this school somewhat unique, it does make it more difficult for students to find an outlet to express their school spirit.

However, the one thing we do have over the bigger, sportier schools is the size of our campus. You will almost certainly see at least one person you know, or even just recognize, on your way to class, the Rathskeller, or anywhere in between. This is the easy part: everyone can smile and wave at their friends. It’s interacting with every single other person that you don’t know that becomes difficult. 

It’s understandable that it might take some time to muster up the courage to smile at someone you’ve never met before. I get it. It’s a daunting task. Still, the feeling you get when that person smiles back is well worth any trepidation you might have beforehand. Additionally, positively interacting with strangers can be a helpful tool to combat social anxiety. Smiling in general has also been shown to positively influence your mood, as shown by the facial feedback hypothesis. Life is short! Smile while you still have teeth.

Now, nobody is saying that you need to have a twenty-minute conversation with each person you pass, like some Midwesterners (myself included) have the habit of doing. However, we can easily take a page out of the Ohio Book of Politeness, and take a few seconds out of our day to give each other a quick nod and smile as we pass. This simple action has the capability to change the trajectory of someone’s day, and maybe even the culture of an entire campus.

These characters — Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, Hermione Granger from Harry Potter, and Kat Stratford from 10 Things I Hate About You, to name a few — acted as molds for the woman I aspired to grow into. They were independent. They were cool. They were completely and utterly badass. They were successful, they were smart, they were respected by their male peers. While these were important qualities for a young girl to see represented in the media, they often came at the expense of putting other women down. Throughout their narratives, Katniss, Hermione, and even Kat continually distance themselves from the other female characters within their narratives, expressing distaste for their adherence to values traditionally associated with femininity — interest in fashion and homemaking and boys. In separating themselves from traditionally feminine structures, they implied that to be accepted as a strong and capable woman you must, to a certain extent, reject objects, fashions, and ideas that have long been associated with femininity. 

College has given me the distance to evaluate the ways in which such narratives shaped my childhood understanding of femininity. I am not alone in my childhood rejection of the color pink, my detestation of dresses, or my refusal to associate myself with anything frilly or feminine. These interests — or lack thereof — are not inherently flawed, but as I’ve grown up, I’ve learned to be intentional about why I participate in or choose to separate myself from certain gendered structures. Why did I hate pink and refuse to wear dresses? Was my self-imposed distance from these traditionally feminine structures because I didn’t like these things, or was it because I was afraid of being equated with a certain “type” of woman I had been taught to despise? In the same vein, I have been able to evaluate the structures of femininity that I now operate within. I wear makeup and I shave my legs. I am often soft-spoken or worried to speak up about my own opinions or needs. I ask myself similar questions about why I take part in these structures. Do I make these choices because I want to or because I am afraid of being judged? I do not claim to have all the answers. It is a process I am only just beginning and will continue to undertake for the rest of my life. 

When we talk about activism, we tend to think of large-scale events — protests and strikes, nationwide or statewide movements that bring huge groups of people together in the name of social and political reform. Involvement in these movements, whether remotely or on campus, is a shared passion among the Oberlin community. We boast groups like Students for Energy Justice, Survivors of Sexual Harm & Allies, and Students for a Free Palestine — each dedicated to advocating for or against a specific cause. And though these large-scale movements are important and work to unify individuals to engage in productive dialogue and enact specific legislative goals, it is important to make space in our definition of activism for more personal growth. Collective action is only made possible by the small steps we each take toward acting on our convictions in our everyday lives. 

These small journeys of self-discovery within a larger sociopolitical context are integral to the on-campus activism within Oberlin culture. There is a narrative that I have heard, specifically as a first-year on this campus, that Oberlin’s activism culture has declined within recent years. While it may be true that large-scale protests and sit-ins are less common than they were in years past, Oberlin excels in a smaller, everyday activist spirit. I have been impressed by the attention our professors give to the importance of mental health in the classroom, the respect students have for remembering to ask for each other’s pronouns at first meetings, and discussions among friends about issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality that happen on an everyday basis and allow us, as students and as people, to learn and grow. There is an understanding that Oberlin College can sometimes be a bubble, closed off from the rest of the world. This Oberlin echo chamber can, at times, be harmful due to its tendency to cut students off from differing ideas and ideologies. But in other ways, the Oberlin bubble facilitates a community of students participating in these small acts that prioritize how we interact with one another and our own shifting identities on a daily basis.

With many recent protests being faculty-led, specifically those regarding faculty members’ own treatment by the College, the influence of professors in students’ education extends well beyond the confines of the classroom. Causes such as higher compensation for faculty and the maintenance of their governing power as guaranteed in the College’s bylaws since its beginning are baseline benefits our professors should be entitled to. These causes certainly warrant our solidarity, and I would like to express mine in this article. 

Faculty members engaging in the very activism that is so integral to the Oberlin education further attests to their value as teachers, and it points to why we should join in opposition to the College’s consistent devaluation of our professors and continue to engage with protests to further our learning. I think that we have much to learn. 

I applaud Oberlin students’ impulse toward activism, and I find it far preferable to a culture of complacency. I do not think that our protests should be burdened with the expectation of perfection. Rather, I find them to be a meaningful practice in and of themselves and an area in which, like our studies, we have constant room for improvement. 

Faculty members have, in the past, protested in forms their positions render them uniquely capable of. It’s true that students don’t have the power to cancel classes, as some faculty did in March 2022 in response to the board’s refusal to raise their compensation. The administration argued that the action was harmful to students and contrary to the school’s primary mission of teaching, but I would disagree. If professors’ absence from their regular duties for just one day was so deeply felt, then doesn’t that demonstrate all the more that they deserve the compensation they were protesting for? Given our professors’ importance, isn’t any step toward the retention of our faculty, to which competitive compensation is key per President Carmen Twillie Ambar and the Board of Trustees, actually in Oberlin students’ best interests?

Contrast this with the behavior of students during a more recent protest against the Board of Trustees’ meeting to discuss the potential reversal of the right of faculty governance. The Editorial Board rightfully observed, in the wake of the Board of Trustees’ ultimate decision to go through with the revision, that students acted with animosity at what was a faculty organized event at the expense of its message. I don’t begrudge my peers their rage at the prospect of the reversal, nor the expression of this sentiment. We have a right to be angry, not only on behalf of our teachers, but for our own sakes as well. 

Our successful support of faculty requires deference to their chosen methods of protest. Whereas the faculty-organized protest of the bylaw revision allowed students to gauge how to best advocate for them, both by hearing them speak on their situation and through the example of their conduct, the chanting of the phrase “Abolish the Trustees” lacked both nuance and pragmatism, qualities which I believe are the purpose of a liberal arts education to equip us with. 

My suggestion, then, is that we treat faculty protest as an in-the-field learning opportunity. I suggest that we listen before we shout, that we continue to support our faculty in their ongoing conflicts with the board, and that we let the example of their activism function alongside our education to inform our own so that we may engage in more productive forms of activism and effect more concrete change in the future — both on campus and beyond.