Housing inconsistencies enrage landlord

To the Editors:

The letter sent by Glenn Gall, property owner, to Marshall Whitehead, City Code Administrator, regarding illegal College owned rooming houses has caught the attention of The Oberlin Review, September 3, 1999. Allencroft and Old Barrows house between five and 20 unrelated tenants and have never been licensed by the City, nor have they "been inspected under city rooming house codes," according to City Manager Rob DiSpirito.

It would appear that certain similarities exist between Old Barrows and one of my own rooming houses located on Morgan Street. Both are three story structures. Both are designed to house students on the third floor. Old Barrows has, I believe, 5 beds, my house has 2. Both have ladders as a means of egress from the third floor and a single interior stairway.

There the similarities end. Old Barrows is at full occupancy this year, to the best of my knowledge. So is Allencroft. My property is not. Because of a March 11, 1998 letter sent to the Oberlin College community by Nancy S. Dye, President, I am obliged to rent to only four students on the first and second floors of my property so that I will not be operating a "rooming house" while I fight my battles in court. Another dissimilarity: Old Barrows has never gone through the required processes to obtain a rooming house permit. I have, faithfully and repeatedly, every year since 1988. I have done, up until the City's shenanigans began in 1996, exactly what the City and its various boards required and requested that I do. The College has not.

Yet another dissimilarity: My two ladders run from the third floor to the ground. The ladder at Old Barrows ends at a second floor porch roof. Ah well, never mind. Generally, a person will not die jumping from a height of 15 to 20 feet in an emergency. We will hope not.

You understand the point. The City is treating and has treated housing owned by the College in a far different manner from the way in which it treats property owned by ordinary community members such as myself. I am enraged at these inconsistencies. Allencroft and Old Barrows must ABSOLUTELY be renting to only four students each this year. We are all aware there is a student housing shortage on campus and in town, partly caused by the lack of availability of several dozen off-campus rooms such as mine. Five of my student rooms in two houses are sitting empty this year. But if standards are to be applied evenly, if I can't fully rent my houses, neither should the College. Put the extra students in lounges! The situation is ludicrous all around. And while I continue to press for the reinstatement of the licenses to my three outstanding properties in town, the College is certainly unable to apply for rooming house licenses this year. There's a moratorium on the issuing of new licenses, remember? We do.

Let us please not "wait for a ruling by the city solicitor," Eric Severs. Rather, let this ruling be made by an independent counsel appointed by the State of Ohio. The city solicitor works for the City and has shown no indications that his decisions are impartial. The College and the City cooperate in many ways to the exclusion of certain citizens. Why should we imagine that this decision would be any different?

--

Carol B. Graham,Oberlin landlord

Need for political discourse

To the Editors:

It was more than mildy alarming to arrive at Oberlin and discover in the course of a week that everyone was a so-called "liberal." During one of the orientation sessions, "Many Stories: One Community," students were asked to stand with respect to certain groups they identified with. Among these groups were "Liberal," "Moderate," and "Conservative." Now granted, students are concerned about their own well being when they stand up for conservative issues. However, none stood. I was appalled.

Certainly, Oberlin is a liberal institution with primarily liberal students. In my experience, however, after attending a similar-minded liberal high school, "liberal" is used to cover a broad spectrum of opinion. Many so-called "liberals" are not what they purport themselves to be. Ask them about the death penalty, or even, in some cases, affirmative action, and see what their response is. What about welfare, or prison reform? Many know the stock answers, but even more "liberals" are likely to give you a moderate answer. This is not to say that liberals can't hold moderate positions, rather that some self-evaluation needs to be done over a wide variety of issues to see where people really stand. In a college of 3000, there really have to be some conservatives. It would be absurd for there not to be.

What's more is that I have yet to have a serious discussion on current political topics. This in itself is alarming. Within a week of having arrived at my high school, I had bonded with an affable conservative Korean student and we had decided to start a discussion group, Political Students in Discussion. It was invigorating to debate provocative topics with someone who did not share my political beliefs. One learns to respect and come to understand other opinions, and in doing so, better understands one's own opinion. In addition, one develops counter arguments to their opposing position. Occasionally, one may even change positions, having been swayed by a convincing contender. Whatever the case may be, an active dialogue is taking place. During the course of high school, he went on to become the editor of the school's conservative underground publication, The Realist. I became the editor of a countering publication, The Idealist, and so it went.

Arriving here, however, there were no political publications to be found. Surely, some had informed me of socialist zines, and individual publications from special interest groups, but there were not exclusively political zines as there are at a number of other undergraduate colleges. And so, I am proposing to start a political journal for student opinion. I feel that the current publications do not devote enough time to political issues, nor do they seem to be entirely honest in reflecting a broad spectrum of opinion. I'm aware that both The Voice (now somewhat defunct) and The Review publish political commentary and opinion, but even more than that I'm seeking to land opinion from all over the political spectrum. The Voice came close, but seemed to be chock full of Oberlin-centric liberal social discourse. Arousing controversy, sparking debate, printing articles that do not match my own opinion - these are all goals I aspire to. Tentatively titled The Grape, a journal of student opinion, I hope to bring new life to the political scene at Oberlin. Articles will be complemented with political cartoons. In theory, the journal will print articles and opinion from all over the political spectrum, on current political issues such as the death penalty, abortion, gay rights, euthanasia, affirmative action, etc.

--

John Byrne, College first-year

Fresh$#*@ respects hygiene and is disheartened by Brother Jim

To the Editors:

As a fresh$#@-or rather freshperson, I am becoming bored with everyday's everything always being new. Some ordinary regularity would be an exhilarating challenge and change.

In the beginning, at least I knew what to do: I followed the flesh. Sweaty summer flesh which I followed building to building to fill out form after form. I went to a ceremony where administrators told jokes, and I wondered if the possessors of those strategically sycophantic cackles from the front of Finney chapel believed that each administrator sat around after the ceremony, saying to himself, "That kid in aisle three sure found me funny, I'm going to make sure that great boy gets phi beta kappa." Some hours after this, my mother and father bid their maudlin farewells, and disappeared into a familiarity now distant. My adolescence kept telling me that my adolescence was now over; but by now I think I know adolescence, and, well, he's a big fat liar. Nevertheless, the liberation did intoxicate, and the chaos did continue.

The chaos continued in the form of a dynamic duo: Mulberry and PRESTO. I did not get along so well them. I did not enjoy the Mulberry madness, and I had PRESTO problems. No matter how many times I yelled at the screen and pounded my fist on the keyboard in frustration, for some reason, it just would never do what I wanted.

In addition to PRESTO there are ropes to learn. I now know that if I say fresh&!#, I may receive a lengthy hostile lecture for saying fresh$#*, and that I should say freshperson instead of fresh^$# even though we all know that fresh$^* is more legitimate. I also learned that telling the lecturer that "freshperson" is not only not a real word, but that it is also a trademark of PC liberal bunk, you will receive a lecture for this, too.

Sometimes Oberlin reminds me of a famous line by T.S. Eliot: "In the room the gender equals sit and stand, always blabbing about Ayn Rand."

But of all the activists I have met, two certainly surpassed the others in the inanity of their claims and cause: Brother Jim and Sister Pat. These are peripatetic tag-team preachers, who go college to college spreading the word of some God who believes that marital-rape does not exist, homosexuality should be subject to capital punishment, and miscegenation is a path of doomed unhappiness. I am not quite sure why, but I just had trouble identifying with their point of view-perhaps it is because I am not a homophobic racist sexist anti-Darwinist extremist. I have trouble understanding Gods so displeased by their own work.The French author Duhamel once said, "I respect the idea of God too much to hold it responsible for a world as absurd as this one."

I respect the idea of hygiene too much to believe that men possess it in my dormitory. It is just another consistency of overwhelming change. This flux is freedom perpetuating. This past week I have been drowning in freedom-yet, you suffocate if you drown, even if it is in freedom.

--

Peter Nelson, College first-year