The campus sexual assault hotline has been shut down after Sexual Assault Support Team members claimed the hotline was racist. Unfortunately, this closure is not due to a lack of need or the absence of sexual assault at Oberlin, but rather because of troubles occurring inside SAST.

The SAST hotline was created to offer abused students anonymous counseling. The hotline closed because some SAST members felt it was a racist service.

“For years the hotline has only been available to a small section of Oberlin, white straight women,” Junior Myrl Beam, who began working with the organization in 2000, said. “We know this not only because of who feels this is a resource for them but also because SAST itself operates as a white space.”

“At this point SAST needs to make a meaningful commitment to restructuring the entire organization to work under an anti-racist framework,” said sophomore Farah Joyner, who joined SAST in spring of 2002 and ended her involvement with the organization this February. “Until that happens it can not continue to offer racist services, including the hotline.”

Although others involved with the hotline acknowledged that a larger spectrum of races should be comfortable enough to utilize the service, many felt strongly that it should not have been shut down.

“When we tried to recruit people we realized that we needed more women of color,” hotline operator senior Rachel Klein said. “We thought we would work on this. Not running the hotline isn’t helping anyone, the racist allegations were premature.”

“I think a hotline is always needed. Only an Oberlin hotline can give the students here specific information concerning the school,” Rebecca Tinkelman, the senior who had been the hotline coordinator, said. “Oberlin doesn’t have the problems of bigger schools, but there is still rape, date rape, and sexual assault. They still need people to talk to whether or not the people on the other end of the line are perfect, they are still trained and know what to do.”

“The SAST hotline was performing a job, but it needed to be restructured. The hotline didn’t know about the different backgrounds. In a way it was a racist hotline without meaning to be so,” said Caleb Baker, a sophomore who started with SAST this year. “I wanted to keep the hotline open, but the general consensus was to close it.”

The vote to close the hotline took place on the Monday before break.

“They voted to end the hotline and not to tell the hotline leaders. It isn’t because there isn’t enough money,” Tinkelman said. “SAST has a lot of money because they don’t do all the programming and services which they used to. When the Vagina Monologues approached SAST for funding, the group refused because they said it was too racist.”

According to some members of SAST, the hotline had stopped operating before the vote took place.

Others countered the contention that hotline leaders were not informed by pointing out that the leaders were not present.

“If [the hotline leaders] were willing to be present we could all have engaged in a conversation about it,” Beam said. “As it was we were funding a service that was not operating and that no one was willing to commit to changing.”

Tinkelman said that hotline leaders had stopped going to meetings because they felt a lot of hostility aimed at them. The hotline had been shut down before the vote was cast. SAST asked them to stop operating until they came to an understanding.

Apparently the hotline leaders were not the only ones who felt uncomfortable with SAST.

“People would call the hotline and first ask if it was affiliated with SAST because they felt uncomfortable talking with anyone from SAST,” Tinkelman said.

“I was willing to work with SAST up until the vote,” Klein said. “I felt disrespected and that they won’t listen and there was no way to get through to them.”

“It is the SAST hotline and we are accountable for the services we offer,” Joyner said. “We provide the trainings and funding resources and SAST can’t make a meaningful commitment to anti-racism if not all members, including the counselors, are willing to engage in the process and make a full time commitment.”

Although SAST’s charter includes outreach efforts associated with running the hotline, the telephone service is their primary purpose according to SAST’s charter. SAST may be jeopordizing its status as a chartered organization by ending its primary purpose.

“I think this is one symptom of a very large problem on campus where instead of educating people we hurl words at them like ‘racist’ and ‘homophobic,’ ” Tinkelman said. “It scares people from saying what they feel. This way of inhibiting freedom of speech is problematic.”

“This is endemic of bigger race relations on campus that has always been really troubling but is now actually affecting something that I want to do and is helpful to the school,” Klein said.