Harvey’s Last Words on Assault
 
To the Editors:

In the weeks following the March 17 assault on me by [seniors] Ryan Catignani, Richard Kocher and [junior] Nicolas Walker I have grown increasingly frustrated and eventually exasperated with the weak willed, weaker minded and ultimately stubbornly ineffectual administration whose leadership (or lack there of) currently permeates Oberlin College. As the weeks turned into months, I had little choice but to stand by and watch as the College repeatedly sacrificed my rights to safety and security in order to protect the perceived rights of the perpetrators, hid behind the Community Board when word of their behavior got out to the public, and never (it is now eight weeks and counting) apologized to me for the way in which I have been (mis)treated.
However, what I have come to realize is this administration does not truly represent Oberlin College, an institution with a rich and storied legacy of doing the “right” thing and standing strong and proud in the face of adversity. It is this spirit that has been exemplified and reaffirmed over the last two weeks by the student body of Oberlin College. I cannot count the number of supportive e-mails, phone calls and comments I have received, most of which came from students that I either didn’t know, or only knew in passing. As the facts of the assault and subsequent mishandling made their way around campus, the reaction was quick and decisive (words conspicuously absent from the vocabulary of the current administration). The Oberlin Community saw something that was wrong, and they did whatever was in their power to voice their displeasure, to say, “this is not the Oberlin that I chose to attend, or the Oberlin from which I want to graduate.” This administration certainly does not represent the Oberlin that bravely admitted blacks and women when it was unheard of to do so. Yet, as evidenced by the student body’s emotional, yet organized response to the assaults on me (the first by Catignani and company, the second by the College) the traditional Oberlin spirit is still alive and well. But for how long? As I prepare to graduate from Oberlin, I see myself leaving behind an institution far different from the one I entered, an institution heading in a direction that threatens to taint the rich tradition out of which the college has grown. I leave behind an institution that has done away with need-blind admissions, and already begun to lose some of the diversity which for so many years was a point of tremendous pride. I leave behind an institution where campus security was involved in both a possible sexual assault, and an ugly incident of racial profiling in the space of two weeks. Exactly how welcome is that supposed to make women and students of color feel? I leave behind an institution which admits students of extremely questionable moral character for the sole purpose of athletics (I challenge the college to prove to me that Catignani, Kocher and Walker would have been admitted and given substantial financial aid had they not been football players). I leave behind an institution that hires an athletic director, Mike Muska, who brazenly coins a phrase such as “sportsphobia,” likens it to racism and homophobia, and succeeds in single handedly raising the tension between certain athletes and the community at large to the point where physical violence is seen as justified. I leave behind an institution that hires a dean of students, Peter Goldsmith, from Dartmouth, despite the vehement protests of students who were fully aware of the “good ol’ boy” network of which Dartmouth is still very much a part, and the decidedly “un-Oberlin” views attached to it. 
Yes, the Oberlin College of the past still lives through the student body of today, and for that I am thankful. However, it saddens me to think of the distinct possibility that we may very well represent the last generation of true “Obies.”

–Jeff Harvey
College senior