Students Need To Participate in Dialogue

Last Sunday, the College held the first of over 10 scheduled public forums on sexual assault. The administration took this commendable move a step further by actually acknowledging culpability for the poor quality of campus education on the subject, noting that students are not required to go through mandatory education whereas staff are required to do so.
As the Review said on March 1, “The coupling of administrative and student-run educational programs to balance leadership roles between authoritative and peer figures is a crucial first step in looking into sexual assault on the Oberlin campus.” On this occasion, the administration has actually come through by scheduling forums on a host of topics and putting out a survey on sexual assault to the students through the mailroom, but the response of the student body has been disappointing so far. Less than 40 students attended the first panel discussion and there were more sexual assault surveys in the recycling bins than in the drop box in Wilder.
“We need to have a two-way discussion on accomplishing goals that [students and administration] have in common.” SAST representative Becky Hempel said (see article page 1). To be certain, it is just as crucial that the student body — more than just a few dedicated activists — participate and make their voices heard, as it is that the Administration is listening.
One of the issues discussed at the first public forum was mandatory education (in the form of a class) on sexual assault, a decision that will most certainly provoke angry letters from students that don’t think that sexual assault relates to them. Yet, discussion and prevention of sexual assault should not be left only to the victims and the perpetrators of sexual assaults. The student body as a whole needs to take full advantage of the public forums offered by the Administration and not wait for education to become mandatory.

Binge Drinking at OC

Monday night: pitchers at the Inn. Tuesday night: quarter beers. Wednesday night: any special at the Feve. Thursday night: professor beers, pitchers again. Friday: TGIF, happy hour at the Feve. Ha ha, you say. That’s my schedule. Well, if it is, you probably have a problem.
The Review does not presume to be a parent to the student body, all appearances to the contrary aside. But binge drinking is a problem on this campus. And especially in light of the recently-released survey from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, it is a problem we can ill afford to ignore. Among other things, the study noted that on an average day four college students die in accidents involving alcohol, 1370 suffer injuries related to drinking and 192 are raped or sexually assaulted after drinking (which is not to say they are culpable for their being assaulted, merely that they are at higher risk).
That’s not us, you might say. That’s OSU and Wittenberg and all those jock and frat schools. Well, see the calendar above. It is us. The proximity of all these establishments eliminates the need for driving and the most tell-tale sign of alcohol abuse, drunk driving and accidents, but just because the alcohol abuse of Oberlin is less blatant does not mean it does not exist.
A binge drinker is any man who drinks more than five drinks or any woman who drinks more than four drinks consecutively, and if you’re a regular attendee at more than one of the weekly specials nights, that’s probably you. Regular binge drinkers make up 44 percent of college students, and from 1993 to 1999 the percentage of frequent binge drinkers — four or more times in two weeks —rose from 20 to 23 percent.
This is not an easy problem to get a handle on. Most of the particularly self-destructive binge-drinking which occurs at Oberlin and elsewhere is done fully within the bounds of the law — there is nothing stopping a 22-year old senior from getting a case of PBR and splitting it with their off-campus housemate. And that is generally the atmosphere of much of Oberlin’s excessive drinking: off-campus and legal.
A partial solution is already underway — the shift of a greater proportion of Obelrin’s student body to on-campus housing. Again — not to parent, but this will help, as most of the heavy drinking in Oberin occurs away from the controlled, supervised campus environment. Yet, the more crucial and still lacking step is increased education on this campus about the dangers of binge drinking.