Blodgett sets the Review straight

To the Editors:

I guess I need to set straight my attitudes about women's softball, which were pretty well misrepresented in the latest Review. First, I not only "professed" to favor adding the sport; I really do. Along with other former members of the faculty athletic committee, I had been advocating this addition for many years. It is an idea whose time arrived quite a while ago, and it is good to know that Oberlin has finally caught up with it. The athletic committee merits praise for winning its approval.

Secondly, since the stated rationale offered by the committee for adding the sport was that there are many more women than men among Oberlin students today, I asked whether the college seeks to enforce Title 9 against the percentage of male Oberlin students, which is dropping rapidly - down to 37 percent in the latest class to arrive, and even lower than that for men of color. I was reassured to learn that a good faith effort to maintain a balance between male and female sports is likely to satisfy Title 9. I hope that a good faith effort to reach a more even balance between men and women can characterize our admissions efforts as well. I believe that such a balance is likely to be attractive to top-notch students (and student athletes) of both sexes. In the current national admissions warfare, Oberlin needs all the attractions it can muster.

One last hope: it would be great if the Review tried really hard to maintain accuracy in its reporting, since with the disappearance of the Observer it is now the journal of record for this campus.

Geoffrey Blodgett, Professor of History

Debate about participation long overdue

To the Editors:

Michael Henle's letter to last week's Review requires a response, not least because it articulates in "ironic" fashion arguments that have been widely made across campus since the Cox occupation. Michael argued that campus activists ignore important issues, like Kosovo and global inequality, engaging instead in whiny protests around issues of narrow self-interest.

This claim, that selfless protest on behalf of others is somehow more legitimate than protest in one's own interest, is deeply problematic. It has a certain facile appeal to it, invoking the kind of paternalistic liberalism so beloved on college campuses: altruistic college students protesting on behalf of the less privileged, identifying injustice everywhere but in their own backyard. Altruism, not materialism, becomes the motor of history. The implication of devaluing self-interested protest, of course, is to reserve political action for comfortable, affluent protesters. Presumably the suffragettes fell into the category of those who "whine about narrow issues of self-interest" as do any workers who take action to improve their pay and working conditions.

In any case, on a factual basis the claim is simply wrong. Many of the very same students who occupied Cox are simultaneously involved in the campaign against sweatshop labor in the United States and abroad, are working to help improve the conditions of North Carolina pickle growers, have campaigned for a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and have taken action protesting U.S. policies in Central America and Iraq, policies which have led to the loss of tens of thousands of lives.

It is difficult to take seriously the suggestion that those occupying Cox were not addressing an important issue. That issue is student power at Oberlin College, and, more precisely, the question of the appropriate student role in college decision-making. There is no more important issue for students, because their ability to have their voices heard on everything from financial aid and student life to class size and the curriculum rests upon participation in decision-making. Of course, one can disagree about what the appropriate mechanisms, scale and scope of that participation should be, but it is a pretty sad day when we characterize debate about the democratic fabric of our community as whiny and self-interested.

More generally, Michael's letter belongs to a familiar tradition of faculty commenting critically on the kinds of issues that students choose to protest. There has been a lot of it about in recent weeks. I'm pretty uncomfortable with the practice whereby "we" faculty tell "our" students what is and is not an appropriate form and goal of protest. Under certain circumstances I can see some pedagogical value to it, particularly when the critic has some activist experience to draw on. But all too often the critics are doing nothing to protest atrocities in Kosovo or remedy global inequality, so using those, more "high-minded," issues to delegitimize student protests is little more than cheap posturing, and it is hard to see why students should take it seriously.

Issues of power, participation and representation are important to all of us at Oberlin College, students, faculty, administrators, and unionized employees alike. A debate about who participates, about how decisions get made, and about the appropriate roles of elected committees, student senate, unions, A&PS Council, and other representative mechanisms, is long overdue. I don't expect that we will all agree on these issues - they are about power, after all - but we at least need to start talking about what kind of democratic community we would like to see at Oberlin College in the new millennium.

Chris Howell, Associate Professor of Politics