Radio Host Recounts Experiences With Oberlin Youth

To the Editor:

For the past year, WOBC has provided me an opportunity to work with Oberlin kids on a radio show. I am eternally grateful to the station, and the many kids in this community who shared their time and their lives with me on the public airwaves.
As I think about the kids I had the chance to meet, two young men, both African-American, stand out in my mind.
I met 12th grader Ron Thompson during an Academic Challenge game show we had on the radio. He answered nearly every question asked, leading a high school team to victory over a group of college seniors. Watching him think, I sensed a good deal of intelligence behind his eyes, a mind constantly trying to make sense of things. The following week, the Oberlin schools newspaper, Students First, did a feature on Ron. In the article Ron discussed reading Jonathan Kozol books and his take on a society that creates and reinforces cyclical patterns in education. Ron argued that, “If they are poor, they usually stay poor and poorly educated because money is put in schools that already have money.” Of gifted programs he says: “It’s like a caste system; the intellectuals get more.”
The article on Ron went on to discuss his performance in school by noting “Something happened to him in the second trimester of sixth grade: he stopped working to get good grades. He did pass the state proficiency test and wants to take the SAT test again because he’s sure he can do better. He notes that students who have more money can pay money for tutoring to improve on the SAT. He very much wants to go to college, but recognizes the steep hill he faces to get there. ‘I wish I had a mentor,’ he says. ‘Or maybe I could apprentice [myself] to someone’.”

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Emmanuel Allen, in the eighth grade, first came on our radio show to rap. In between songs he performed we would interview him. Polite, engaged, articulate and with a smile that lights up a room, you couldn’t help but be taken in by him. He proudly boasted of making all Bs, except for a D in gym. Bad scores in Field Hockey and Badminton tests spoiled his chances to make the honor roll. The Gym grade aside, his mom was proud of his marks and allowed him to come on the radio whenever he wanted.
When talking to Emmanuel, it was clear his powers of observation were quite acute. His body language was carefree and awake, as if he were in that state of grace, right before the world would come crashing in on his head. While I enjoyed his appearances on our show, I always felt a bit uneasy around him, a dull pain in the pit of my stomach. Seeing Emmanuel continually served as a reminder of the possibility of a day ahead for him when he loses his sense of wonder; when he begins to see himself as separate from the world, from Oberlin and from opportunity. A day when he becomes like Ron.

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I wish I knew more about how and why Ron fell through the cracks. What were the arbiters of academic talent looking for? Who is to blame? For one, Ron must take some responsibility. It is, after all, his life. Then there’s the schools, the teachers, the city. There’s enough blame to go around, but somehow blaming people doesn’t suffice, nor is it appropriate or accurate. These institutions are filled with good, hard-working people who work hard only to be underpaid and unappreciated. I suppose I can chalk it all up to Ron being the byproduct of a number of factors, too enormous for me to grasp in full.
I keep coming back in my own mind as to what exactly makes me think of Emmanuel so often. Perhaps it is because it feels like the hope for Oberlin kids and the community at large rests in his eyes. We must do more to ensure that Emmanuel does not want for a mentor like Ron did.

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I have been thinking about fate and odds and random acts. On a joyous spring day a few weeks ago I attended a Cleveland Indians baseball game. I sat in the upper deck down the left field line, barely in foul territory, some 400 feet from home plate. Late in the game, Juan Gonzalez, an All-Star for the Indians, cracked a ball that came soaring, higher, higher, closer, closer, right at me. Everyone sitting around me scattered. The ball hit me smack in the hands and bounced away.
Ever since, I have been obsessed by the randomness of that event. How was it possible that the baseball found its way exactly to me, so far away, in that very seat in the upper deck? I could go to Jacobs Field for every day for the rest of my life, sit in that seat and never touch another baseball.
I must have walked by Ron Thompson many times in my first three years here. We all have. Had he dropped something as I was walking by, I could have picked it up and maybe started a conversation. Perhaps I could have made a difference. The ball found me, Ron did not, and I wish I had a better explanation as to why.

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Last I heard, Ron is planning on going to college. Wherever he ends up in life, I think he will do well. I will continue to believe that someone, somewhere will reach out to him and he will respond in kind.
I hope some college students stop Emmanuel when they walk by him. He will need our help to keep from slipping through the cracks. You can’t miss him. He is 14, has a big smile, and will shake his head with both laughter, disgust and a tinge of embarrassment if you ask him about that gym grade.

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All of these thoughts wash over me as I prepare the last of my schoolwork and think back over all the kids I met this year. I wish I could say Ron and Emmanuel stand out in my mind because their situations are unique, but they are not. Hundreds of kids in Oberlin, as dynamic and talented, stand at the same crossroads.
It at times appears as if Oberlin College students (myself included) are so quick to attack and so unwilling to forgive. Instead of asking for clarification from our peers, we use terms like “pro-rape” and racist to describe one another. We talk about how right we are and how wrong everybody else is. And yet, we lose sight of those a few blocks away from where we live, kids looking for opportunity, searching not for “most progressive” or “most politically correct” status but for meaning.
People like Ron and Emmanuel, my neighbors.

–Joshua Rosen
Oberlin, Ohio
College senior