Staff Box by Sara Foss

Understanding College rules is important in our community

Warning: what follows is a generalized rant which has been formatted for publication. It is the opinion of Sara Foss, based on observations made during the three years she's been here. It does not reflect the views of the Review staff.

One thing I've always been thankful for at Oberlin is that most people here are basically decent people. I didn't consider most of my high school classmates basically decent people.

But lately I've been re-evaluating my assessment of Oberlin students. In many people, I think, I've mistaken decency for something else. Harmlessness. There's a difference between being decent and being harmless. I think I've managed to confuse the two.To qualify as a harmless person, you don't have to be particularly decent. You just have to leave people alone, for the most part. Lately, I've been observing a lot of Harmless But Not Particularly Decent People. They're the kind of people who are pleasant enough, but tend to forget to close the door to the Feve whenever they enter. You know those people. The kind of people who never really consider how their actions impact others. And occasionally, when things don't go their way, these Harmless But Not Particularly Decent People make other people's days a little more unpleasant. For some reason, they seem to think that rules don't apply to them.

I was hanging out at a Harkness party one night and got to observe some of these Harmless But Not Particularly Decent People in action. My friends were working the door, collecting money. One guy (let's refer to him as The Loser) tried to run past my friends. One of them said, "Hey, you have to pay." An argument followed, in which The Loser said he didn't have any money and he wasn't going to pay. He never pays for campus parties, he informed my friends. And while The Loser was arguing, all The Loser's loser friends walked in for free. Eventually The Losers were thrown out by those running the party, but they managed to sneak in again. I saw them running around the Harkness basement, high-fiving each other and congratulating themselves on successfully pulling off such a great and cunning feat.

It was then I wanted to grab them all by their necks and throw them out myself. They reminded me of the guy who came to a party at my house. I didn't know him, but he was drinking some beer, and so I asked him for money. I don't have any money, this guy told me. Most people might be angry if someone walked into their house and started drinking their beer, just assuming that they didn't have to pay. I mean, my friends gave me money. But I wasn't angry. Dumfounded is the more appropriate term for how I felt. I mean, I've just never gone any place and, if it cost money, assumed that for some reason everyone but me had to pay. I've never considered myself elevated to a godlike plane where everything I want is automatically available, and for free, even.

It's not just at parties that people seem to think they can get away with whatever they want. See, people may not like rules. They might not think that rules are important in Oberlin, land of the free and enlightened. But they'd benefit from learning a little bit more about the rules, especially Oberlin College policies. They'd benefit from thinking about the rules, and why they're there, and how their actions affect others. They'd benefit from understanding current processes, and how to use them to implement change. More on this later.

(Warning Two: this section doesn't apply to everyone, everywhere. Some people actually understand how the college works. You know who you are.)

Here are some things I think are pathetic: I think it's pathetic that the biggest student outcry this year stemmed from the Tribe 8 show. Just like I think it's pathetic that last year the Matt Holford drug scandal and co-ed rooms debate spawned a similarly huge outcry. I think it's pathetic that the proposed student government might not get implemented -- not because it does or doesn't suck -- but because not enough students care enough, or know enough, to decide if it's even a worthwhile proposal.

I think it's pathetic that someone hung up anonymous posters last semester attacking the Women's Studies search. The signs suggested that the search committee had not done enough to find qualified candidates of color. (Maybe person who hung these signs up served as the inspiration for whoever mailed out the anonymous packets containing the confidential Professional Conduct Review Committee report in January.

There are several issues here. First, people don't care about things if they aren't directly affected by them in some completely obvious way. In A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving, Owen Meany says he's never heard of the peace movement. He asks, "What 'Peace Movement'? -- Or do you mean the don't-get-drafted movement? That's the only 'movement' I see." You can substitute different Oberlin issues in to this sentence. The Tribe 8 censorship/free speech debate becomes the 'let me watch what I want to watch wherever I want' debate. The loco parentis drug rights discussions become the 'let me smoke up in my room' discussions. The progressive move for gender equality becomes the 'let me live with my significant other on campus' move.

I would say that students only care about issues that directly affect them, but in reality they don't know enough to know which issues directly affect them, or which channels to use when voicing their complaints. Do the students who care about the cost of tuition understand the budget and last year's process of reducing the structural deficit? Do the students who complained about Student Health in last year's surveys know what the Health Plan Board is up to?

And the students who are complaining, those who want more environmental studies profs, an Asian-American studies department, a better dining program, etc. Where were these students when the open forums for director of security, dean of the college and associate dean of student life were held? Have these students approached people who serve on relevant committees, such as the EPPC and Housing and Dining Committee? Instead of hanging up anonymous posters, or complaining about some faceless entity called The Administration, people should contact student reps and search committee members and voice their opinions.

Oberlin is a place where we discuss and analyze how the College does things and how the world works. We point out everything that's wrong with everything, everywhere. But as individuals we rarely take the time to evaluate how we do things ourselves. We rarely take the time to figure out what the most effective way to go about implementing change would be. And how can we figure out what the best way would be, if we don't understand the whole picture?

It's weird that I'm writing this. I've never been one who particularly cared a lot about rules or structure. I didn't have a problem with Tribe 8 show. I think College processes don't always work, and often have gaps (like how could Charlene Cole delete rules from the Regs Book just because she didn't like them? how come it has taken the Holtzman complaints this long to move forward?) But I do think it's important to understand what's going on around you, even it's boring, and even if it's not always tons of fun.

Rules and structure do apply, whether we want them to or not. If you don't like the rules or existing structures, you should try to change them, not just ignore them. Maybe breaking into a party is vastly different than hanging up anonymous posters. But both show a lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding that the rules and structures in place are there for a reason. They're both examples of students thinking they can get whatever they want just by doing whatever they want. What matters, though, isn't always what we do, but how we do it.

Sara Foss is editor-in-chief of the Review and a college junior.