Panel Pushes for New Curriculum
BY ARIELLA COHEN

A cross-section of Oberlin’s student body assembled last Tuesday afternoon to discuss the need for a Comparative American Studies program. 
Regardless of sunny skies and the distracting bustle of mailroom traffic, students gathered around Wilder’s microphone-wired steps, and listened as peers explained their personal and political interest in the developing College program. 
“The push for a curriculum inclusive of people of color, women and queer people has a long history in Oberlin. While each of these strands have different respective histories, for the first time, they are converging into a unique program, Comparative American Studies,” panel member and senior Kevin Gilmore said. 
The range of Oberlin students in attendance illustrates the broad-reaching interdisciplinary and multi-cultural base of the program. Comparative American Studies attempts to tackle several separate but related fields of study where students and faculty alike see opportunity and demand for expansion. 
The CAS program approaches questions of ethnicity, sexuality, race, gender and class as means to discuss and analyze concepts related to identity, nation, and specifically the narrative of the American nation. A comparative approach to cultural studies allows students to examine how specific social circumstances and structures have created divergent American identities.
Initially it was faculty, influenced by discussions with students, who pushed for this program. This year an interdepartmental committee has worked with students in making the program a reality. Next week’s faculty-student meeting is expected to move forward the program’s development. 
Oberlin’s progressive history and its current commitment to progressive values surfaced several times throughout the panel. Speaker Menna-Heiwot Demessie spoke of CAS’s value to all students and illustrated this by speaking about how Oberlin’s image as a diverse, liberal and progressive institution initially attracted her to Oberlin. After four years at the school Demessie, like other panel speakers, is more suspicious of Oberlin’s multiculturalism. One speaker made a point to distinguish between multiculturalism and anti-racism. 
“Diversity is not just walking around campus seeing a person like me in a shirt like this,” Demessie said, pointing to her dark skin and white embroidered linen shirt. A sprinkling of applause followed each such comment.

The character of Oberlin College as an institution was challenged multiple times as speakers explained the necessity of Comparative American Studies. For many campus activists the neccessity of CAS represents an institutional void of resources and support, as well as the potential in its progressive minded student body. 
“The Indigenous Women’s Conference, the Hip-Hop Conference, and other events have given me the education I am not getting in the classroom, but this is unfair resource allocation. All these events are student supported, not institutionally supported. We should not be [this kind of] additive to white man’s history. We are part of it,” panel member and first-year Julie Dulani said.