Keeping an Eye on the Local

To the Editor:

I’d like to drop a blip on the radar screen in response to your recent editorial, “Activism Laudatory.” The article praised Oberlin students for their activist work from Quebec to Washington D.C., sustaining Oberlin’s traditional spirit of activism and passion for making change. The article then pointed out a “glaring omission in the collective activism” of OC students: local involvement.

A group of seven environmental studies students are proactively engaging some of the central problems that persistently plague the Oberlin community. While the Oberlin Design Initiative is currently a private reading, next year several students and upcoming graduates will be working within the community through a design office they are starting.

Partnering with the Oberlin Chamber of Commerce and the Environmental Design Innovation Center, the goal of the initiative is to connect the human resources of the College with the needs of the town. The office will also function as a design center that will work in conjunction with Oberlin’s local government, organizations in town, citizens, students and the College to build a socially, environmentally and economically sustainable Oberlin. Employing asset-based community development, we are currently focusing on housing, education, public green space and issues in non-motorized transport design. ODI aims to better facilitate College-town interactions through mutual educational opportunities of service-learning. Such projects may range from making downtown storefront windows into artistic displays to economic research that examines the correlation between downtown retail and community accessibility and needs. 

Our projects focus on an implementation of the knowledge base of the College in the service of the town. Members of the Oberlin Design Initiative have given a presentation to city council, to the College community and to a group in Cleveland on principles of urban ecological planning which stemmed from a winter term project in Curitiba, Brazil. On May 8, we are bringing together representatives throughout the community to craft a transportation plan for Oberlin linking different parts of the community together with bike lanes. Other projects we are working on focus on promoting infill in the downtown and planning for a session to have Oberlin establish a community vision. 

The Oberlin Design Initiative is an attempt to, as was encouraged in last week’s editorial, “pierce the Oberlin bubble.” But we are not alone: Ohio-PIRG has done work on the county-wide level with their own transportation initiative; there is a group that goes into neighboring communities to do English as a second language conversations; OSCA supports local farmers. The prison activists have focused primarily on Ohio issues; there are also several opportunities for tutoring, mentoring and even teaching classes in the local schools; the Center for Service and Learning also puts a significant number of people into local activism positions. A number of alumni have stayed in the area to work to ensure that development in the area occurs in a social and environmental fashion: Brad Masi’s work on establishing the Environmental Design Innovation Center; Sadhu Johnson with the Green Building Coalition and Manda Gillespie with Eco-City Cleveland. Other alumni have started some of the most successful downtown establishments, such as Kotok’s Market, the Black River Café, Ginkgo Gallery and Bead Paradise.

Through this form of activism, we are coming to learn a great deal about our community. Every day it seems more like home. If you are interested in working with ODI in the future, e-mail us at ohousing@oberlin.edu. 

–Morgan Williams
College senior