Obies
Have Quiet Thanksgiving
By Jesse Baer
It was Thanksgiving morning in Dascomb lobby, and feathers were
flying.
“These two girls got pissed off at each other,” a witness
to the dispute said. “One of them was complaining about how
nobody told her the food was [only available] at Stevenson. She
was like, ‘we already paid for these meals.’ The other
one was like, ‘I don’t want to listen to you whining
— go away.’”
Although the altercation never came to blows, it was one of the
more exciting moments over a sleepy Thanksgiving break at Oberlin
College.
The great majority of Oberlin students left campus over Thanksgiving,
either visiting their families or going with friends on road trips.
Only a few hardy souls decided to remain and rough it out on the
mostly-deserted campus.
The campus all but shut down over break. Only a few basic facilities,
such as the dorms and Mudd, remained in service. Stevenson was the
only dining hall that continued to serve food, albeit with a drastically
scaled back schedule.
Students who stayed on campus told the Review that they had had
a good time overall. Many formed makeshift families with their friends
and prepared their own Thanksgiving dinners.
“I cooked a lot of food,” first-year Meaghan Brown said.
“And ate a lot of food.”
“We baked 22 pounds of turkey, 20 pounds of mashed potato,
pumpkin pie, stuffing… It was way better than Stevenson,”
first-year Samina Ali said, referring to the special Thanksgiving
dinner Stevenson offered students.
Several students said that they enjoyed the relative quiet and solitude.
“It was really fun because I got to be in an apartment,”
first-year Rachel Weinstein said. “It was nice to be out of
the dorm. Most of all, it was nice to just be by myself —
to have that time and see Oberlin without everyone else here.”
“I enjoy being alone, and I enjoy there being quiet,”
first-year Craig Barnes said. “This was beautiful.”
“I liked being here, how it was really quiet,” first-year
Xander Quine said. He added, however, “I wish more of my friends
were around.”
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