Critical packet given to prospies

Packet produced anonymously

A group of students, under the name tremble our rage, have compiled a packet of essays and writings aimed at prospective students visiting Oberlin as part of All Roads Week. Many of the pieces are critical of Oberlin's dedication to minority and lower-class students' concerns.

The packet was produced and distributed anonymously. Producers of the packet would not speak to the Review.

The packet includes 16 student-produced pieces and several cartoons and graphics. Several of the pieces have appeared previously in the Review and The Voice as essays and letters, while others were written specifically for the publication.

One essay reads: "We are talking about the college's lack of commitment to its students of color and the queer community."

Naomi Buck, college junior, wrote one letter which was included in the packet. It originally appeared in the Review on March 28 and criticized the College's asking several hundred financial aid students to write thank-you notes to donors.

Buck said it was her understanding that the packet was to serve as "an alternative view for prospective students." Buck said another student asked her whether her letter could be included. "It sounded like something we really needed. When prospectives come here they get certain things that are slightly misleading," she said.

Amanda Soden, a high school senior from Santa Barbara, CA who was given a packet, said she thought it was interesting, although she didn't understand it all. "I am trying to blend the two," she said, referring to the material she has received from the Office of Admissions and the packet. "Both perspective are probably true," she said.

Several members of the Office of Admissions staff said they had heard about the packet but not seen it.

Several passages in the essays address the anonymity of the packet. One read, "That our names do not appear reflects out invisibility in the great, blank face of this institution. In the collective there is untold strength ..."

Another essay expressed fear if the packet were produced publicly. "I fear retribution to various sources which enable me to attend Oberlin. That is how I see it, that is how I feel and it is valid," it read.

Tremble our rage is the same name which appeared on anonymous fliers last semester attacking a Women's Studies faculty search.

The essays in the packet address many issues from many perspectives. One focus is the difficulty the writers feel in getting their concerns heard seriously in the College community. Another target is the Office of Admissions and Communication's new admitted student packet, which contained a t-shirt, phone card and other materials.

Many essays focus on the hypocrisy the writers perceive between Oberlin's image as a liberal-progressive college, its attempts to attract minority students and actual attitudes and experiences students have at the College.

"I'ight, Oberlin is not where you go to change the world," one essay reads. "Don't be fooled. You don't come here to change the world."

Another piece, written as a dialogue, states,"Oberlin boasts about being the first coeducational school, the first school to admit Blacks, but they were still treated like they were treated everywhere else in the world at that time ... They bend over backwards to be this 'liberal' school, but there's so much."

"you can come here or not, but know what you're getting into either way. because they're gonna try hard to get you, if they haven't yet already. if you haven't been gotten yet already. this school needs innocent (read ignorant) lambs, and the browner the better," one essay reads.

Several of the essays also spoke about the effect the packet was intended to have on prospective students. Most pieces assured prospective students that they were not encouraging them not to come to Oberlin, but simply trying to educate them on what it would really be like at Oberlin.

"The articles in this publication are written in the hopes that y'all may get a more accurate perspective on how Oberlin works," one piece says.

"We're hoping that if we give people this magazine they'll get really nervous because all those kids walking around they see as, you know, potential people who could pay the money, and if they see something bad about the school are they going to want to come here and pay that money," another reads.

Many of the essays talk about frustration in the academic realm in terms of getting courses and programs that deal with race, gender and sexuality issues. Many list attempts to pressure the College to create an Asian-American Studies program and other Ethnic Studies.

Others express anger and frustration at the reactions they hear and receive from Oberlin students. "But i am tired of being your study, angry that you see me as an example of some theory you have yet to grasp, angry with the way you use me as the lens to view darkness. Tired on the way in your classes i am something other than what i know me to be, something that you use," one essay reads.

"If I had money I probably wouldn't be noticing the things that I think are wrong with the school," another says.

One essay defended the arguments of many of the student pieces in general. "Perhaps you think that I exaggerate and overemphasize my experience of racism and oppression. Believe me, there is nothing I wish more than for someone to prove me wrong ... that what I see and what I hear and what I feel is a figment of my overactive imagination. But it's not. It's reality that can't be denied," it read.