Charfauros
Embodies Oberlin
To
the Editors:
I
am writing to express my anger and dismay at the dismissal of Professor
Antoinette Charfauros McDaniel. As a senior Sociology major the
teaching and mentorship of Ms. Charfauros have both maintained and
sustained me through the course of my studies. Her courses on critical
ethnography and educational sociology have provided me with the
necessary academic framework and ethical methodological skills and
practice to undertake advanced work in the field. Her courses are
logically structured and draw on a mixture of primary, secondary
and field resources to create a complex yet complete context for
examining situations from a sociological perspective. She addresses
ethical implications of field research in both a professional light
as well as one of social responsibility. At an institution where
students are encouraged to think one person can change the world,
Ms. Charfauros stresses a need for service-based learning and connecting
classroom experience and intellectual work with lived experience
and activism, a model that I intend to follow throughout my professional
career.
Charfauros embodies the ideal of an Oberlin professor. She has a
passion for teaching, a commitment to supporting her students academically
and personally, is accessible and available outside of the classroom
and imbues her teaching with a focus that is at once social and
political, contextualizing the materials relevance in modern
society. Charfauros steps outside of the ivory tower and engages
her students in ways that make course material both personal and
real. Not only has Charfauros been integral to my academic development
as a sociologist, but she has also had immeasurable influence on
my personal and political development. It is through her lectures,
the readings she has assigned and the conversations we have had
that I have begun to critically analyze and acknowledge systems
of power and privilege in the United States. She has given me the
necessary context to process and comprehend major global political
movements and events, and helped me to develop my personal and professional
goals. Her classes support students in our struggles against both
latent and manifest racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and ethnocentrism.
She encourages students to acknowledge and confront their preconceived
prejudices and biases and to truly challenge themselves to overcome
them. Her teaching enabled me to begin deconstructing my internalized
intolerance and committing myself to dismantling the institutionalized
forms of oppression and prejudice that are so prevalent in our society.
I have no great personal stake in Ms. Charfauros future at
Oberlin College. Come May, I will graduate and there will be no
real or tangible impact on my life should her dismissal not be overturned.
Those who will suffer are the future students of Oberlin who will
not have the benefit of her teaching. Ms. Charfauros ensures that
this institution and its students remain self-reflective and self-critical.
She takes on difficult battles such as APA and Comparative American
Studies and offers the academic context and support necessary for
students to question and evaluate their beliefs. She integrates
social action into her academic work, and encourages her students
to do the same. She takes a personal interest in her students, offering
them empathy and encouragement during both academic and personal
challenges. Oberlin College prides itself on its mission of retaining
excellent faculty who offer both dynamic pedagogy and close, individual
relationships with students, and on its longstanding history of
and commitment to racial, ethnic and gender diversity as well as
social justice. To fire Antoinette Charfauros McDaniel would be
an affront to that mission and a clear and definitive step backwards
for the College.
Jennifer
Katz
College senior
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