A salvo on the construction site: A call for goat's blood

Imagine an alarm clock from hell that wakes you up at 8 a.m., but can't be shut off until 4:30 p.m. Now imagine this happening from Monday through Friday for nine months straight. And its not like you can simply get rid of it. You would have to escape it, and to do that you would have to pack up and move. If you can imagine this, you can imagine the pain of living on the south end of campus.

The infernal cacophony which bothers me so emanates from the construction site of the Environmental Studies building - from their tractors or forklifts or whatever the hell they are joy-riding around in over there. Every time one of those beasts backs up it spits out a series of slow shrill pulses to warn the workers of its activities. I think that's great. I am so into job safety - Safety First! But why the hell do I need to know whether they are going backwards or forwards? Am I going to accidentally leap out of bed, bound down to the site, climb the fence, and inadvertantly step in the path of this machine? The only people that are gonna need to hear that fucking beep are the ones standing right next to the damn machine. If I can hear it, across the street, while I am asleep, with my double-paned windows closed, then it's pretty clear, it is way too loud.

"Ah, quit your bitch'n," many of you, no doubt, are saying. Lemme just make something clear here - I am not talking about an occasional beep. I am talking about beeping, constantly, all day. Sometimes there is a whole chorus of beeps. Let's not get me started on the rest of the obnoxious noises that that site is responsible for - the constant rumbling of the massive diesel engines, the hammering, and all the other random clamor.

I have deep sympathy for those unfortunate souls who live in Harkness and Baldwin. They live a few feet from them damn beepers. Then there are those who live in South and Fairchild. Many of their dorms face the site. I am surprised that Oberlin has not risen up and taken over the administration building. I suppose, though, that this is sort of the darling of the environmentalists, being the Environmental Studies building and all, so it wouldn't make much sense to complain about its noise pollution. In the name of progress, some must get trampled. In the end though, it's all for the best. (At least, that's what I tell myself.)

On those occasions when I am overcome by the incessant beeping (and hammering and rumbling), I fantasize about destroying the damnable beepers. I see myself sneaking over to the construction site late at night. In my hand would be a large hammer, one you gotta swing with both hands. Then I would locate the beeper - I imagine it as a tiny bastard, just an inch or two across, protected by a yellow metal grating. Then I would commence whacking it, the grating would cave in, and as I whack it more the grating will fatigue and then break. Then I would really go to town. "There you puny little fuck, you think you can fuck with me? Nobody fucks with ME!" WHACK! "Take that!" WHACK! "And THAT!" WHACK! Debris would be flying everywhere. And then that crappy little speaker would give a little whimper as it tried to force out its last squeak. But then I would whack it even harder. By that time, I imagine the OPD would be all over me. With all the banging and cursing, why wouldn't they? They would be like - "Freeze mutherfucker!" Well, actually they would probably ask me to please stop, and suggest I come with them. I would be a political prisoner, standing up for the rights of all disturbed students.

Just because you wanna build some Environmental Studies building, doesn't mean you can pollute with impunity while you are doing it. I mean, not only do they use enough plastic to choke a whole herd of sea turtles (everything is wrapped in plastic!), but more importantly, they are polluting MY environment. Noise pollution is serious business.

Noise pollution can be just as bad as the air or water pollution. Noise pollution kills! Or rather, technically, it can kill. But it's all a matter of exposure, right? I mean, a little bit of dioxin never killed anyone. Just think about it. The noise keeps you up, you get less sleep. Eventually the cumulative effects of sleep deprivation start making you perpetually cranky, then you start seeing things that aren't really there, and you start getting really aggressive. Ultimately, if you lose enough sleep, you die. So, if that isn't pollution, what is?

All right, so I am not going to die, that's not the point. Lets all just get a grip on things here. We must maintain composure. Even if no one dies, sleep is sacred to us college students. It is the third leg of the tripartite system which defines the natural order of college life; the three fundamental aspects being: School work, avoidance of school work, and sleep. We are always doing at least one of the three. But, when something disturbs the natural order of the universe, we experience states which are an abomination to nature. This vile beep is such a force. Think about it - you stay up till 2 a.m. to finish that really important paper, knowing that eight hours later you are gonna get up and work on that other really important paper. But, a mere six hours later your world comes crashing down and nothing seems to make sense any more. There you are, it is 8 a.m. you are lying in bed, but you are not sleeping, you are not studying, and you are not avoiding studying. In the natural order of things, this state should not exist.

Who knows how long this can go on? There are indications that nature may be coming back into balance. I don't want to take too much credit for this, but I have been doing some pretty powerful rituals and exorcisms to rid us of this demon. This is not a fight that can be won by one lone crusader, though. We need some of that good old Oberlin collective action. I mean, it could take 10 people just to gather enough goat's blood....

-Dominic Canterbury, College senior

Kramer-Duffield's essay was well-meaning but embarrassing

In general, I found your coverage of the Cox Administration Building incident and its rumor-laden aftermath (including the editorials and most essays penned by Review staff) to be responsible and well thought-out. That said, I was dismayed by Jacob Kramer-Duffield's well-meaning piece on the affair. No, I do not question the decision to print it: I will leave such ersatz-rational censorship to the fanatics Kramer-Duffield treats with kid gloves.

On the other hand, I must question his judgment. There are few things more frustrating than sophomoric thinking, based on half-knowledge or half-reasoning. In a sense, Kramer-Duffield's accusation toward the general student population of Oberlin College uses this logic: that our ignorance and apathy, or at best partial knowledge, allow us to dismiss radical activism in general, and the Cox Administration Building usurpers particularly. Our generation (or at least, the Oberlin sample of it) has known less suffering, and our complacency is seen as undermining American civilization. We who are not a part of the solution, it would seem, are a part of the problem.

Kramer-Duffield ends his essay with a more temperate plea: "Whether or not you agree with the politics of a protest the next time you see one, at the very least don't knock it." This sounds like a dandy enough sentiment on the surface, but collapses under the weight of its own assumptions. Protest, complaint and criticism all stem from the fundamental refusal to accept the status quo. If this is true enough for the Cox usurpers, then it is equally true for anyone else. Joe and Jill Oberlin had, have, and always will have every right to evaluate Oberlin's radical wing just as the latter so often exercises its license to judge the world generally. Kramer-Duffield makes the loathsome assumption that only this elite vanguard, for their radical audacity, deserve to have their opinions respected.

Look at the problem the other way: perhaps most Oberlin students are not so apathetic, much less conservative. It seems to me, anyway, that most are decisively left-of-center, far more so than mainstream American swing voters, or even the politically-soiled Democratic Party. There is a sharp split, true enough, between the student body in general and the radical coalition that seized the Cox building, but it is not left vs. right, but left vs. far-left. Still, there are those who use an offensive moral tautology: with-us-or-against-us dogmatism, parallel to the sort of evangelical Protestant fanaticism that leaves so many Oberlin students cold. Whether it is Brother Jed or an Oberlin crypto-Communist really doesn't matter, and Kramer-Duffield should have thought a little harder about that one before rushing to their aid. Just as I do not blame anyone for dismissing a missionary who warns your eminent damnation, I do not blame anyone for dismissing secular preachers who curse the less devoted for complicity with the existing order.

The Cox usurpers represented factions of several activist groups, but in their Real Story failed to identify themselves. Though outspokenly outraged by the secrecy of dean selection, they operate(d), in Hannah Arendt's classic quotation, like a "secret societ[y] established in broad daylight." Did Kramer-Duffield read The Real Story? If he has any self-respect as a Review editor (i.e., not blind group loyalty, but attention to fact), he would have been deeply offended by the conspiratorial accusations lobbed at the Review in the Story pages, and never supported such liars, or at least, would have withdrawn upon discovering their intellectual dishonesty.

Alas, he only seems to have thought half-way. That is the real tragic distinction, perhaps: half-thought versus half-action. The latter encompasses the depressing "apathy" of Oberlin, and perhaps of Americans in general. The former, however, is equally obnoxious. My first impulse was to discount the protesters at Cox as the usual collection of malcontents, overreacting with unusual intensity. On second thought, I decided that the extremity deserved a little more of my attention. I went to Cox late Thursday night and actually spoke with the protesters for over three hours. My initial suspicions were largely confirmed: this was an over-heated, badly-planned fanatical affair, which had left behind legitimate grievance early. Perhaps the Cox protesters could have sent a mass-mailing to the student body, measuring our support before doing anything rash. Instead, their small faction decided to grab the building and then hope that the student body would affirm their action. This was a big gamble: even if a fraction of the Oberlin population expressed their support throughout the day, the rest walked on by, shook their heads, grumbled in the snack bar, as Kramer-Duffield noted. Too bad.

This letter is already over-long, and I cannot provide great detail on my experience at Cox that night. In short: my companions and I were asked to remain outside the building while vital strategic planning went on inside, and a handful of delegates spoke to us outside. We were not representatives of the administration, as was insinuated. The dean search, however, was not the main theme of discussion. Protesters had a great range of self-declared allegiances: "I represent only myself," "I represent oppressed people everywhere," "I represent the interests of Oberlin students," and all points in between. The goals were similarly far-flung, from incongruously calm requests for mere dean search clarification/revision to tawdry social revolutionary millenarianism. Maybe they were tired, maybe they were cranky, but the protester delegates were not very diplomatic. One woman shouted at us breathlessly with few pauses for approximately three hours, joined by a micro-chorus of other protesters who should have reeled her in if they didn't agree with her sermon. I am led to believe that they, at most, only disapproved of her shouting demeanor, and not her alarmist conspiratorial accusations about some sort of brewing Oberlin counter-revolution. On the whole, they were poor listeners, which is a fatal flaw for representatives of any kind, especially those of our student body.

If Kramer-Duffield was eager to point out the sad lack of activist participation for most students, in an attempt at critical observation, then he owed it to himself and all of his readers to exert a greater effort. He should have investigated and evaluated the Cox protest on its own terms, rather than just limply chastising all non-participants. By not doing that, he made a pack of childish hotheads with an irrational set of platforms look admirable for their adolescent mock heroics, and damns the rest of us for maturity. In doing so, he is almost as embarrassing as the group he defends.

-Adam Balling, College junior