President Dye should take Jewish student concerns seriously

We are writing to inform you that if things do not change, the Shabbat program, the cornerstone of Jewish life, will end in February due to budget cuts.

Shabbat is the Jewish Sabbath. Every Friday night, students gather in Talcott's dining room to celebrate Shabbat with a prayer service and a traditional kosher meal. Shabbat is a religious and cultural necessity for Jewish students. Shabbat services and dinner are free and open to everyone, regardless of religious background. They have been a continuing Oberlin tradition for 20 years. Last year there were an average of 65 students at each Shabbat meal. So far this year we have had an average of eighty students.

Shabbat dinner is sponsored by Oberlin Student Hillel, which is funded through the Student Finance Committee (SFC). Hillel has been submitting essentially the same budget to SFC for the past 10 years and SFC has shown it to other organizations as a model budget. This year, Shabbat funding was cut by 50 percent, making it impossible for the program to continue through this school year.

Concerned Jewish students began meeting with President Dye second semester of last year when they realized that Shabbat funding could be cut. On more than one occasion, President Dye, Dean Cole-Newkirk, and Diana Roose guaranteed that even if SFC cut Hillel's Shabbat allocation, the Shabbat program would continue. After Hillel's budget was cut, students went to the President to ask her to reiterate her financial support for the Shabbat program. Instead, President Dye avoided the issue and talked about "creative solutions" to the problem including charging students to attend Shabbat and having students drive to the nearest synagogue in Lorain, 25 minutes away. These suggestions are impossible because traditional Jews do not discuss money or drive on Shabbat in order to sanctify the Sabbath. In suggesting these options, President Dye insinuated that the Jewish community on campus should look elsewhere for its religious and cultural needs. The vitality of the Jewish community on campus is not a priority of this administration.

Requests for emergency funds for essential programs are not new to the administration. The President has a large amount of ad hoc funding for emergency student needs. Students have been asking that President Dye supplement the Shabbat budget this year and carry out her promise of finding a long term solution to the Shabbat problem.

President Dye now claims that the problem is solved and believes that "Shabbat is a non-issue." She seems convinced that student concerns are unfounded. She has not reaffirmed her guarantee that the Shabbat meal will continue if money runs out. The idea of a permanent solution in the form of an endowment, previously endorsed by the administration, has now been discarded. President Dye simply says there is no problem.

It is time for the administration, especially President Dye, to take the concerns and vitality of the Jewish community seriously. Shabbat is a necessity of Jewish religious and cultural life. We invite everyone to come and celebrate Shabbat with us while it still exists at Oberlin.

Discrepancies found between points cited in Review  article and fact

I should like to respond to the article written by Julie Hillman in the Review,  September 5, 1997.

There are many rooming houses operated by conscientious owners. We are in agreement with the city and with Fire Chief Dennis Kirin that the safety of our student tenants is very important. There are, however, certain discrepancies between points cited in the article and fact. First, they're not licensed by the city; not licensed, not inspected, not regulated. One of these unlicensed rooming houses is owned and operated by an employee of the Office of Residential Services.

Second, the city's efforts to oblige previously-licensed rooming house owners to install hard-wired (electric) smoke detectors and outside stairways is almost certainly illegal. The Ohio Basic Building Code affirms that neither newly enacted regulations nor previously unenforced regulations can be applied to existing previously authorized properties. Sooner or later, the City of Oberlin will have to acknowledge this.

Third, to my knowledge, there is no appreciable increase in safety to be obtained by hard-wired smoke detectors. Tenants now find it very easy to disable a battery-operated detector by merely removing the battery. How much more motivation there will be to disable the hard-wired interconnected system because when one is activated (due to, for example, one tenant who makes popcorn at 2 am.), they all go off throughout the house. The flip of a circuit breaker switch, or the snipping of a wire here and there, and that won't happen again! (By the way, I and several other owners require our tenants to sign an affidavit that, upon occupancy, the smoke-detectors are operating properly. Nevertheless, the detectors are still disabled.)

Fourth, I suspect, that many more than five rooming house owners are resisting the city. I am one of them. I own three of the most sought-after houses in Oberlin. What a shame it will be if the city shuts down many of the most desirable rental properties, the owners of which have been destroyed by the actions of certain city officials, and Oberlin College students stand to be penalized by losing some of the best housing available to them.

-Carol Graham, Oberlin resident