To the Editor:
Unfortunately I do not have a paid subscription to the Oberlin Review, so I could cancel it! Are you consciously aware that the November 22nd issue of the Review the devotes approximately 25 percent of its usable column inches to a (then) month-old story that has been beaten to death in every issue of the Review since the event inspiring this diatribe?
Does the Review have an unpublished masthead motto; like, "Last Month's News Tomorrow?" And, to make the cheese a little more binding, the current issue wastes more space and trees on the same tedious non-story. Boooooooooring! If you have nothing better to put into the Review, why don't you make your paper a little green? Eliminate 4 pages and save a tree!
You would still be able to bore your readers with the column inches of tastelessness that escaped the 4 page circumcision. If you have this yearning burning desire for a full 20 page issue, why not put in something interesting; how about the minutes of the 1983 annual meeting of the Board of Directors of the Insurance Institute of America? I'm a student, I was there. I hate to admit it, I saw Tribe 8 at the 'Sco on a day which shall live in infamy.
Oh, I was there by accident and didn't inhale. Here it is, surgically objective:The best and worst thing that can be said about the act was that it was boring, amateurish, tasteless and vulgar. Then, of course, we can talk about what it was not. It was not titillating, entertaining and, of particular importance, it was not art. It was not even arts and crafts!
One would expect, or at least hope, that the Oberlin student body, with its average IQ presumably hovering somewhat above 70, would find something more interesting with which to entertain itself. Whoever paid to bring Tribe 8 to the 'Sco certainly did not get good value for the dollar. There probably would not have been this brouhaha had three things happened. 1) Had the Review done its job by not publishing a misleading photograph which seemed to show what's her name about to chop off her tricky dickey.
Unless the Review has a policy encouraging its photographers to distort facts, the picture should not have been run. As to the frontal nudity, I've seen more titillating acts at the Ringling Brothers' side show. 2) Had unnamed people, who presumably should have known better, run and run off at the mouth and told President Dye what they had not seen, neglecting to mention that they had not seen anything. And 3) Had President Dye not shot from the hip after seeing a misleading photograph in the Review and receiving erroneous information from people who weren't there and did not know what they were talking about. But hell, who has never done that. Since the performance in question was not art, the question of censoring the arts is moot. However, each of us censor things, including art, every day, and that is how it should be. We choose to read the New York Times instead of the Daily Worker, or vice versa. I see nothing wrong in that provided the Times is the paper chosen. We choose to eat some incinerated e.coli in the form of a Big Mac instead of Beef Wellington or a watercress sandwich. Oh, cooking is not an art? Or we buy the Picaso instead of the Matisse. We see that censoring is a normal, healthy, administrative function of every day life. It's called, "using your brain." That's one of the reasons Oberlin has an administrative staff. And, who is the head honcho administrator of Oberlin? Why, President Dye, of course. That's what she gets paid for, to administrate, to make decisions and, yes, to exercise her power and authority to censor when she feels it necessary.
All in all, President Dye, though not as perfect as you or I (who could ever be that perfect?) seems to be doing a good job. I guess, if you want to mau mau someone, she sure is a handy flack catcher.
Copyright © 1996, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 125, Number 12; December 13, 1996
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