Nancy Dye will drive Oberlin College into the ground.

As a writer for The Oberlin Review, I’m exposed to a wide range of opinions regarding the operation of the College. One thing seems clear among the more socially-concious student body, however: Dye is removing the foundations upon which Oberlin College became great.

There are rumors the changes occurring at Oberlin College in the past few years have to do with moving Oberlin College up the ranks of liberal arts schools. While Dye might indeed be accomplishing this task, she’s doing so at the expense of what Oberlin is — a fantastic liberal community for students to come and feel acceptance at a place where they might not have felt accepted before, a place where free thought runs rampant and students escape the more undesirable aspects of high school they so loathed. Oberlin is a wonderful and diverse community of out-there dreamers, thinkers and intellectual pioneers.

However, Dye seems to be forgoing all this in the sake of attracting a more mainstream element to the College — exactly the people who many students don’t feel belong here. I’ve heard so many stories of how much tamer the students are compared to those of the 1980s; I’ve even noticed a contrast between the class of 2007 and the class of 2004. Seniors here are more outspoken, unique and envelope-pushing than first-years. And more and more I meet younger students who are pro-capitalism, pro-globalism and generally apathetic to economic and political issues.

What Dye is creating is a vacuum where students who are attracted to the College for its reputation are accepted and discover that the transformation this place is undergoing is not what they applied for at all. Dye is riding out on a reputation created by the students and presidents that came before her. That is what manages to attract the more outspoken students.

I want to know what got into Dye’s head or the administration that decided to give her money for her destructive tendencies toward this College. Sure, she’s lowering the drop-out rate. But Oberlin has always been a place where students came to find themselves and sometimes discovered college wasn’t for them. Sure, she’s enlarged the endowment, but why are our tuition, OSCA rent rates and board rates all skyrocketing? Sure, she’s renovated the student bookstore, but by calling in the culturally-sanitizing Barnes and Noble. What a huge conglomerate chain has anything to do with the principles Oberlin supposedly stands for is beyond me.

More concretely than the way Dye is eroding the culture of Oberlin is the mismanagement of finances. It seems the administration is shouldering its own problems onto the student body. OSCA rent is going up by five percent. Student tuition is rising by $2,000 this year. More and more off-campus students are being pulled back onto campus. Financial aid is changing policies to attract wealthier students.

And all, I would guess, to accommodate Dye’s pay raise. What I want to know is, where is her sense of morality and ethics? No one needs the kind of raise she received. I certainly hope the extra money she’s earning will go to charity, though I sincerely doubt it. And because of that, I believe the money should be given back to the students. After all, no students means no Dye. If I were in her position, I would decline the money offer to prevent the further struggle and stress of the students and their parents.

She is driving this school into the ground culturally and financially. I think at this juncture Dye needs to ask herself if she’s going to uphold that which has made the community great. She needs to ask herself if she’s going to be needlessly selfish in financial matters or help the students whose pockets are already empty. Dye needs to ask herself if she wants to build this College on a foundation of sand or stone.