Race, class and leadership at Oberlin College

As the Supreme Court begins to hear arguments for and against affirmative action at the University of Michigan, I wanted to share some general reflections on race, class and leadership at Oberlin.
I’ve spent five years now working for my alma mater interpreting Oberlin to others. We have magnificent students. I have no trouble telling an audience of New Yorkers or Seattleites or Atlantans what makes Oberlin students unique: they are more independent and mature than most students you’ll meet. They are risk takers. They are intolerant of peer pressure. They love learning. They learn from each other and from their professors. They are outstanding artists and researchers. More Oberlin students go on to earn PhD’s than from any other private undergraduate college. Oberlin students organize; they do it for themselves; they don’t sit around waiting for it all to happen. Oberlin students make profound commitments to research, the arts, musicianship and athletics. And as the admissions office will say, they think one person can change the world. Oberlin students come from a fascinating mix of racial, religious, geographic, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.
Sometimes people in the audience will ask the hard questions: are there drugs at Oberlin? Do students self-segregate? What are Oberlin’s weaknesses? Is Oberlin need-blind? Will students make fun of a southern accent? I try to answer honestly in context. Colleagues at other schools are perhaps less honest, but I don’t believe Oberlin is the right school for the easily misled, or those who must believe their school is perfect. And I think admissions would be doing the Oberlin student community a disservice to portray it as a utopia, because I think we want students at Oberlin who will appreciate the unique atmosphere at Oberlin, but who also are good at identifying and engaging with the challenges inherent in any community.
Like many Obies, I like to think and talk about how “they” should fix the place. There will always be things that need fixing, and I’ll mention a few opportunities I see, but first I’d like to praise the place a little more in the areas of race, class and leadership. (One of the biggest things that they need to fix, make that we, is that we don’t praise the place enough in balance with our expressions of concern). Since I graduated from Oberlin in 1987, the college has roughly doubled its minority enrollment. After the fin-de-siecle retirement wave among the professorate, Oberlin has made real strides in attracting new teachers who come from importantly different backgrounds and life experiences (especially in light of how PhD’s from the underrepresented academic minorities are in great demand nationally). While Oberlin can’t afford to be need-blind, we enroll more Pell grant recipients and more students with financial need as a percentage of the total student body than some vastly wealthier need-blind schools. While we don’t wear uniforms, our students choose not to emphasize their various class backgrounds by what they wear, perhaps leveling the “playing field” a bit. Many of you come here from experiences of dramatic leadership: you organized a gay-straight alliance at a Catholic school against parental opposition, or you worked a job every week for as many hours as you went to school in order to help hold your family together financially, or you mentored and tutored younger students, or you were first chair of an all-state youth orchestra, or you captained an athletic team or two, all while making the most of what your school had to offer. Many of you still do these things at Oberlin. You’re awesome.
Beyond the leadership, the individual and personal achievements I read about from prospective students are no less impressive: you won scholarships to academically challenging schools, and not only succeeded in the classroom, but somehow managed to navigate the jarring commute from ghetto to rich classroom and back every day. Or you managed to engage creatively with life despite the dulling isolation of the teenage suburbs. You managed to perceive your privilege while others around you were navel-gazing, and you started to give back and to lead. You nurtured a talent with discipline and skill to a level of achievement few will ever reach. You overcame depression, or your parent’s depression or your parents’ divorce. You overcame your parents.
I have the best job in the world reading the stories of prospective Oberlin students’ lives so far. I have the hardest job in the world saying “no” to some applicants. We are all very fortunate to be here.
In five years on the staff at Oberlin, I haven’t seen a year where staff received raises of an equal — much less greater — measure than the faculty. The Oberlin classroom is what you, the student, pay for, and I have seen the College trim expenses where it can to protect faculty salaries and the core academic mission of the college. Undoubtedly, cuts in spending will hurt other programs, including non-academic student programs (unless the recession is suddenly over and we return to 20% gains in the endowment). It’s a disappointment, but it’s also an opportunity for those student leaders who haven’t engaged here yet.
In the areas of race and class, is there room for more student-run initiatives? Could new student leaders help ease the transition for those of us who come here and face profound culture shock? And if you don’t see yourself as a leader, can you support one? With Oberlin student pride as strong as ever, I am always gratified to see a student-lead solution to a problem outside the classroom. We’d all like to see more students stay on and graduate from Oberlin after a challenging and enriching experience here. If I were a student today and wanted to improve retention and relations among students from different backgrounds, I’d think about what student lead options could help. I think the best solutions to student social concerns (outside the classroom) come from the students: like ExCo, the Co-ops, the student-run music conferences and the new organizations every year.
Students here achieve so much outside of the classroom, but I think we have a harder time with teamwork than is ideal. We have some wonderful examples of successful teams on the fields and in the orchestra halls, but sometimes, with all of Oberlin’s individualist strengths, we forget to seek expertise in teamwork. Efforts to achieve consensus become a contest to see who’s the last one standing. Joint class projects end with someone saying, “I’ll just do it.” We forget to acknowledge the strengths of our opponents in discussions.
I’ve always been a little weary of the “Think one person?” slogan. It works, it gets our literature read by the right people, students who need to be here. But sometimes I wish we could rephrase it: Think two people can change the world? Or think 2900 people can change the world? So many of the great modern examples of Obies who’ve changed the world couldn’t have done it by themselves: Donald Henderson needed the World Health Organization to eradicate smallpox, Julie Taymor needed Walt Disney to stage the Lion King, Eduardo Mondlane needed the people of Mozambique to help improve the government, etc. Have you asked yourself who you will need to help you change the world? Have you learned to work with people who are profoundly different from you?
We should work deliberately as a community to be certain that students from different backgrounds are encouraged to work together towards achieving a goal. This requires deliberate effort, but it results in better harmony among the different. I do not think it is enough for students from different backgrounds to go to class together. I agree with social psychologist Robert Cialdini who suggests in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion that a desegregated classroom may increase dislike among different students if the classroom experience is a competitive one. Cialdini’s is a marketing book, but his insights on how to get people to like something offer insights for overcoming the divisions that may still be present at Oberlin against our better wishes for the place. I think we can all agree we want to like each other.
People tend to like people with whom they have collaborated in overcoming an obstacle. Cialdini suggests something called “jigsaw” learning as a cooperative model in the classroom that will bring students from different backgrounds to appreciate one another. I’m sure there are other pedagogies that work too, but they all seem to require a self-conscious effort on the instructor’s part. It may not be enough to throw everybody in the mixing pot of the classroom for it to work: someone may need to stir.
Outside the classroom in the Oberlin student community, there may be different challenges. Mostly, the college resists a role of in loco parentis and that is part of why many of you are here. You’re grown up already. You’re more mature than some of your professors. But that makes it up to you to change things in the social life of students at Oberlin. It seems unrealistic to expect independence and also to expect the college to fix everything in the student social realm. Oberlin students do it for themselves. That’s part of what makes you unique as a community. But here’s a challenge I see: I’m beginning to think that it’s not always enough just to live near people who are different from you to appreciate them. Rather, I think it takes leadership and collaboration with those who are willing to stir the melting pot. Lead and take part in group challenges self-consciously designed for people from different backgrounds. It’s not enough to live together.
Of course, the academics here and the performance demands can be all the challenge anyone can wish to face. It may be enough just to succeed in the classroom, but when you’re feeling in control, don’t forget to take time to get out of your social comfort zone. From what I read, that’s part of why you’re here.
Thank you to all of you who will spend time with the admitted students who will be visiting Oberlin in droves in the next couple of weeks. What you say to them has a profound impact on where they’ll choose to go to school and whether those that have something exciting and needed to offer (each in their different way) will come here. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “I chose Oberlin because of the people.” You, our current students, are our best advertisement. Thank you for taking that role seriously.

—Edward Derby ‘87
Assistant Director of Admissions

April 25
May 2

site designed by jon macdonald and ben alschuler ::: maintained by xander quine