To the Editors:

I write regarding the Day X events at Oberlin High School. I want to emphasize that I don’t intend to speak for anyone but myself. I am a lifelong resident of Oberlin and a junior at Oberlin College. From this perspective, I am anxious about the consequences these events will have on my city and my school.
I was dismayed and disappointed with what occurred. I had been initially impressed with the dialogue that was occurring as OCAW attempted to include OHS in the rally. I was glad that OHS had recently allowed Ben Joffe-Walt to speak at the school about his time in Iraq as a Human Shield.
I saw OHS working with OCAW within the legalities that govern any such institution. Because the administration of a public school cannot legally allow students to leave the premises without permission from a guardian, the administration of OHS required written parental consent from students who planned to participate in the rally.
Whether students were granted this consent was up to individual parents. I am unaware of other restrictions set by the administration, but will be appreciatively corrected, should they exist.
In my opinion, the events that actually took place were careless at best. Had the group simply stood at a respectful distance for a moment of shared reflection, it could have been both powerful and successful.
But what might have been a hand extended in solidarity to the high school turned quickly and chaotically into a middle finger thrust at the administration. Ignoring the fact that a number of OHS students were already at the rally, a crowd swarmed the school. Individuals pounded on windows and shouted. OC students/alums climbed through windows into the building. Instead of protesting the war, they protested the high school. I don’t understand what the trespassing individuals intended to do inside. Were they planning to push the principal down so the bewildered/ scared/amused masses could stream into the streets for an event the vast majority didn’t even attempt to get permission to attend? The goals were obscured.
To those who participated in the shouting, banging, and trespassing, I pose these questions: What are the names of three administrators at the high school? When was the last time you were in the building? What was the groundwork for this event? What is the significance of the school’s proximity to the FAA? And, most importantly, what do you plan to do next for this “town-gown” relationship you apparently feel the right and the responsibility to shape as you choose? Your participation stapled your name to the many issues interwoven in that relationship, one that has staggered forward and backwards for over a century. In my opinion, there has been much recent progress in light of the Oberlin Schools Partnership, and made by individual college students making dedicated efforts in the schools through patience and hard work, subtleties and activities, meetings and appointments and a desire to understand what shapes and affects the town.
Despite my opinion of your actions, I will give you window-bangers and trespassers the benefit of the doubt and will assume that anyone who felt so strongly about the administration was not at the high school for the first time. I will assume that you, as a student of Oberlin College, already know that activism takes time and work, and that you are familiar with the inner workings of the high school and the community, and that this was a last resort.
I will assume these activities were only part of the process you are involved in as you attempt to shape this relationship, because otherwise, why would you have felt entitled to do what you did? Anyone who cares enough to scare my teachers, taunt local police, and “free” the students of OHS is obviously dedicated enough to be there for the public schools tomorrow, to be there in a few years tirelessly completing the work on this relationship they appear so committed to.
So I hope I see you tutoring at the high school. I hope I see you over at the Bridge. And I particularly hope that this was all just part of your larger plan, that you intend to stand by this initial blow you made to the relationship between the high school and the student body of the college because you have something much greater in mind. Otherwise, your actions might seem irresponsible and presumptuous, and you, as adults and members of Oberlin College, wouldn’t want to come across that way…would you?
Residents see new faces every year at events and protests. But they don’t usually appear at school board meetings. We don’t see a lot of them at the city council. You must understand that the administration at OHS is permanent, is there all the time.
These are their careers, lives, sometimes children, and they have an understanding of it, an investment in it, that you do not. The disrespect implicit in these events was a slap in the face of the administrators who trusted a group of college students to engage in an adult interaction surrounding a horrible war that affects us all. A small group of individuals took it upon itself to muddy things up for the majority.
I am not resting this weight solely on the shoulders of OCAW, but on the individuals who participated in such showy and ugly behavior. Don’t you see that you were setting a precedent? What if a pro-Bush group mobbed the school, or a white power group started banging on the walls? What makes you different?
You asked the impossible, the illegal of the administration. Whether you were or were not correctly informed about the realities of the situation, it was your sole responsibility to educate yourself about it before you took that kind of stand.
Don’t we learn that at Oberlin, to think for ourselves? Maybe you heard someone say that no high-schoolers were allowed to attend the rally. You didn’t notice the dozen already there? Did you truly know the situation or did you just throw yourself into it because it was the next event?
In my opinion, what happened was awful and merits apologies. I think your peers who actually take the time to work with and listen to the community, who have participated in the necessary process of developing a relationship with the schools deserve an apology. I think the administration of the high school certainly deserves one, as do the students.
And I think you should apologize to the police department, whose time and resources you flushed down the toilet. I understand getting caught up in frustration about the war, but I don’t understand taking it out on the faculty of OHS. It was unfair and unproductive and did more harm than good.
I hope you will be there for the long haul to deal with the effects of what you did next to the people who have no choice about it.

—Grace Hammond
College junior