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Essay by Chapin Benninghoff |
(Note- This is an individually conceived and written essay. It by no means should be interpreted as the word of the Senate as a body)
Please, God. Please tell me no one at Oberlin is as stupid as Geoff Mulvihill thinks they are. Or as stupid as Geoff Mulvihill is, for that matter. I designed a couple of posters awhile ago that had puppies on them. Adorable puppies. Luscious little adorable puppies. On these posters was printed "Vote for Senate ... or the puppies die." One thing everybody knows about Geoff is that he's got a legendary nose for news, and, boy oh boy, was it twitching at this tidbit. Ooh, picture the headlines: "SENATE HOLDS ADORABLE PUPPIES HOSTAGE: DEMANDS VOTER INVOLVEMENT!" Alas, alas, Geoff's investigative reporting skills led him to the conclusion that we did not actually have said puppies. It was all just an "unfunny joke," in his own words. Heartened by this discovery, he decided to bring the good word to the campus as a whole with an editorial entitled "Senate incompetence enhanced by bad advertising campaigns, threats." Duh.
I made another poster, one that cited the activist tradition among students worldwide, including those students who protested in Tianenmen Square. You indict me for belittling those Chinese students by comparing them to student activists here at Oberlin. You make the claim that such a comparison is worse than threatening puppies. And I've got the bad sense of humor? I believe that we at Oberlin exist in a world community where every action we take has a global impact, that participating in democracy here honors the struggle of disenfranchised peoples everywhere, that it is our duty to promote freedom and encourage the equitable distribution of power by any means necessary, even humor. So yes, I do believe that we are linked in spirit to student activists everywhere. I believe it with all my heart. If you truly hold that such a belief constitutes "an infantile attempt at wit," an "unfunny joke," that such a code of ethics exemplifies my "incompetence," then, well ... fuck you. My apologies, but I can't come up with a better response, and, at the moment, I don't think you deserve a better one.
You provide a long list of issues Senate should be addressing. If you read the article about Senate on page three of the same Review that your editorial appears, you'd discover that virtually all of those issues were addressed. But you must not have read that article. I know you weren't at the Senate meeting. I know that you've never been at any Senate meeting I've ever attended. I know that the Review didn't bother to send a reporter to last week's EPPC meeting, where we discussed the future of the Colloquium Program and the school's involvement in a controversial Chinese academic exchange program. The fact is that Oberlin is a generally good place, and the role of Senate isn't as exciting as the Review would like it to be.
Every week, critical decisions are made in faculty committees, Senators have their vote, and the Review doesn't bother to show up and record what happens. The Review dedicates four pages to sports and half a page to student government. Last year, while the campus was gripped in turmoil over Kwame Ture's visit, drug use on campus and administrative restructuring, The Review gave us an insightful, multi-page spectacular on the resurgence of House music at the 'Sco. Really brilliant. We as a Senate should be doing our best to foster campus dialogue, but our first priority is not to report and disseminate information. That's the Review's job. Last week, there were only two letters to the editor, and one was about how bad the Review's reporting is. We've all got to work together to get discussion going, and that means that Senate, the Review and all other organizations have got to learn to network and build coalitions. Accusing each other of incompetency in insulting terms does nothing to build the kind of open community that Oberlin should be. Maybe my humor is slightly off-color, but it is humor and deserves broad license. It was not directed at any specific person or group. Geoff's terms were not humorous ones, nor were they general ones. They were serious, ugly and personal ones.
I carry 16 credit hours. I work at Annie's. I party and get a wee bit tipsy once a week. Every other moment I dedicate to Senate, to the Student Life Committee, to the Educational Plans and Policies Committee, to the welfare of students at Oberlin. And honestly, I'm one of the lazier Senators. People like Senators Andreas Pape, Matt Green, Joshua Kaye, Chuckie Kamm, Nicole Johnston and Dan Persky, among others, make me feel like a turd.
You wrote that editorial at midnight on deadline day. You didn't research it. You didn't interview anybody. Three different people at the Review have told me this. If it's not true, then deny it next week.
If you really think that it's appropriate for you to slander the competence of some of the most dedicated people on campus, then go ahead. If you think that your half hour broadside editorial is a more worthwhile achievement than Senate's years of tradition, outreach and effort, then go ahead and believe it. If you really think that you know what's best for students at Oberlin, then run for dictator. We Senators are kinda fond of our incompetent little democracy.
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