Times and battles have changed

Think student senators should be paid? Feel victimized about being asked to write thank-you notes to your scholarship providers? Want Senators to sit on the General Faculty Committee? Should Senate have the ability to take issues straight to the Board of Trustees? Do you care or know what we're rambling about? If so, are you gonna vote? Whether you vote or not, here's something to remember, something to put us and our student government in perspective:

Way back in 1968-69, 80% of the campus voted on student elections and student government reform. The problems plaguing students, student government and Oberlin were an itsy-bitsy bit different. Students and student government concerned themselves not with stipends, but with passing laws which forbade Vietnam recruiters on campus. Students and Senate fought to make women's curfew and visitation equal to that of men, which was 1p.m. till 5p.m. on weekends. Students fought and voted to open up the snack bar and the gymnasium, which had been off-limits, to town residents. Students and student Senate planted the seeds for gender equity in athletics. Police, not Student Life, were finding and arresting students for using and selling drugs. Students faught ferociously against the expulsion of a student that was kicked out for performing a classroom anti-Peace Corps guerrilla theater skit.

All this is not meant to say that we should fight the same battles or fight the same way that those old cats did back in the day. Student government and student organizations wielded more power and interest back in the day when students battled passionately to bulldoze structural barriers to student freedom. Many of those structural barriers are now wimpy speed-bumps. Not a whole lot moves us that can be remedied by student government ... and perhaps this is fine.

Maybe there's something to that the "government which governs best governs least" stuff. All of us here are in relative comfort because of the battles waged by workers, students, and student governments of the past. We still have a long way to go as new problems and ambiguities have arisen, but shadow-boxing the battles that have already been won is ridiculous. We complain but our complaints lack zeal, immediacy, and passion. For instance, the animal rights debate is worthy but it takes up so much ink because very little else moves us to move ... at least not in an organized direct confrontation direction.

Read Oberlin's constitution and history. Understand them. Find out how this place works. And even though we aren't voting to keep Vietnam recruiters off campus and though it seems that the effective politics of confrontation has been replaced with the "same ol' same ol' politics of committee, our right to reform is a privilege that cannot be taken for granted.

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