Reactions divide along town-college fault line

College junor Lael Avery has seen Oberlin from both the College's and the town's perspective. Avery attended Oberlin for two years and later lived in town for two years before returning to classes. "I remember watching people relate to me when I'm a student and watching people relate to me differently when I'm a 'townie,'" said Avery. The word 'townie' itself is used by many students to refer to a feeling of suspicion towards anyone who doesn't attend classes at Oberlin College.

Now that an arrest has been made in the Fairchild assault, there are many issues the City and the College can only work out together. The suspect stated that the motive of both brutal attacks was robbery, but many students have speculated other reasons. Some students point to relations between the City and the College as a reason for the attacks.

There have been many strong reactions from students who have stepped over the lines between college students and townspeople. "When I worked in CDS, people wouldn't look at my face," said college junior Aisha Cousins. She points directly at the College's treatment of its workers as the cause of incidents like this. "The College doesn't take into account how the people who work here feel," she said.

A woman who has lived in Oberlin all her life, and works on Main Street, sees this violence not as an attack on the College, but as part of a larger problem. "We're used to hearing about this kind of thing every day," she said. The Oberlin police department reported 57 assaults in 1996, and 42 in 1997.

There is a lot of violence that college students are not aware of because it does not happen on campus. However, Captain Thomas Miller of the Oberlin Police said, "These incidents are unusual because no particular person was the target." Usually in assault cases the assailant and victim know each other.

The investigation has had an ill effect on many people in the town. Students and townspeople alike have questioned the methods of apprehension, specifically the description and composite that was shown on the news and on posters in town. Oberlin High School senior Thamir Rimbert said the description and composite were too vague. "It looks like multiple people," Rimbert said. Aisha Cousins pointed out there are no references to his height, the texture of his skin, jewelry or voice. For example, the hair in the description is short and the man in the composite is bald.

Landon Young, also a student at Oberlin High School, described what happened to his brother-in-law the night of the incident. "He's taller than me and he's thick, and his friend is like 250 pounds," he said. "They picked them up that night and he had to stay in jail all night long."

Relations between the college and the town, though they might not have spurred the incident, have definitely suffered for it. A youth in Oberlin that usually asks college kids to buy him cigarettes at the gas station said, "After what happened to that girl, most kids won't do it. They see someone with darker skin and they think..."