Oberlin: use your ballot to help change the world
Rain didn't deter Day
Students should continue funding OhioPIRG's valuable works
Toupy droops; needs better dialogue
To the Editors:
With elections rapidly approaching, I would just like to take a few moments to discuss some local and statewide Democratic candidates. Many of these candidates have served Oberlin in the Past and need our support to continue battling the Republicans for the people of Ohio.
Lee Fisher is an Oberlin alum (OC '73) who is running for Governor of Ohio. He is a former Attorney General of Ohio and former Representative in the Ohio House. Voted as "Ohio's Outstanding Freshman Legislator" in Columbus Monthly, Lee Fisher authored more than ten laws, involving child safety seats, crime victims' assistance, missing children, and Ohio's Hate Crime Law. Fisher created Ohio's first ever Children's Protective Service, and has worked to train police officers to treat domestic violence as a serious crime. As Attorney General he closed unsafe child cares and established a Rapid Response team to prosecute the most serious cases of child abuse. Lee Fisher is currently sponsoring the Fisher-Coleman Patients Bill of Rights which will insure doctors make Medical decisions for Ohioans, and that all residents of Ohio can choose their own doctor regardless of their Insurance Company's policies. He is a very progressive Democrat who supports pro-choice and Gay and Lesbian rights. Fisher has been endorsed by numerous Gay and Lesbian groups in Ohio including Ohioans for Equal Rights. As Governor, Lee Fisher wants to enforce equal pay for women, protect workers' benefits and require safe work conditions, enforce prevailing wage in public contracts, and provide incentives for job training and apprenticeships. Lee Fisher is currently in a very close race with Taft, Republican Ohio Secretary of State and needs your support.
Sherrod Brown, Oberlin's current U.S. Representative, is up for re-election. He supported a bill to lift the ban on gays in the military, and supports a national health insurance ban. He is extremely pro-union and will continue to fight big corporations for his district. Brown is an avid pro-choice supporter and supported late-term abortions. Sherrod Brown is environmentally friendly and has served Oberlin well in the past.
Dan Metelsky, running for State Representative, will work to give all Ohioans greater access to high quality health care. He favors a reduction of Government waste and an elimination of regressive, unfair taxes. He supports better and more equitable schools for children. As a current State Representative, Metelsky is a liberal democrat who has always gone out of his way to listen and support Ohio Students.
Mary Boyle is running for U.S. Senate. She supports increasing the minimum wage, is pro-choice, and favors Campaign Finance reform, especially a ban on Soft Money. Mary Boyle is currently trailing Ohio Governor Voinovich and really needs your support.
The Democratic Candidate for the Ohio Senate, Ronald Nabakoski, favors a Health Care Bill of Rights. When previously in the House he supported Solar Energy development and other forms of alternative energy in Ohio. He will work to insure all workers receive a wage they can live on. He supports Campaign Finance reform and a total ban on soft money. Nabakoski supports a return to a more progressive tax system to protect middle and working class Ohioans, and he wants to eliminate regressive, unfair taxes.
With the current conservative inclination of voters, Liberal candidates need all the support they can get. These Democratic candidates want to help the people of Ohio, but need your help to do it. On election day next week, vote Democrat. Remember that voting is the easiest way one person can change the world.
To the Editors:
Rain did not keep us from delivering Student Appreciation Day on Saturday, October 3. On behalf of the Oberlin Merchant's Association Marketing and Promotion Committee, I would like to thank the many Oberlin businesses and individuals that assisted in making our First Annual Student Appreciation Day a success. Please mark your calendar for next year on October 2 for our Second Annual Student Appreciation Day.
To the Editors:
(This is an open letter to the student body.)
Next week you will be asked to sign a petition to reaffirm Ohio PIRG on this campus and maintain its funding. In order to be directly accountable to the student body, OhioPIRG goes to students every two years to ask them to make a community decision on whether they want to continue to have and fund this organization on campus. Ohio PIRG is currently funded by a $6/student/semester waivable fee which is added to our term bill. It takes a majority of students signing the petition to continue to have a PIRG chapter on this campus, but individual students can choose to waive the fee by turning in a card to the registrar during the first two weeks of school.
Ohio PIRG is a student-directed, state-wide organization that works on issues of hunger and homelessness, the environment, consumer/tenant's rights and democracy. Students formed a PIRG chapter at Oberlin in 1974 when students decided to pool their resources to create a student-directed organization that would hire a professional staff to help them organize, lobby, and research to be a watchdog for the public interest. Since then, we have worked with student PIRGs across the country to protect and strengthen our basic environmental protections (like the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, etc.). We have successfully sued fifteen major corporate water polluters in Ohio for violating the Clean Water Act. Three years ago, we helped create the new recycling program on campus. In the last two years, we have raised more than $4000 for local hunger and homelessness agencies and volunteered hundreds of hours at the Haven and Junction Shelters. We also continue to fight for consumer and tenant's rights by creating the annual tenant/landlord survey book for Oberlin and by researching and exposing consumer "rip-offs" and scams. Over the past three years we have worked with other student organizations on campus to register and educate more than 1,000 students to vote, and we have worked with PIRGs across the country for campaign finance reform to get big money out of politics and make politicians more accountable to their constituents and not the special interests.
None of this is possible without the support of students. After all, Ohio PIRG is a student-directed and student-funded organization that was started 25 years ago because students realized that they had immense energy and ideas to change their communities and this country. I encourage you to continue OhioPIRG's activism on campus and throughout the state by signing the petition. If you have any questions about OhioPIRG or the reaffirmation petition, please call 775-8137 or stop by Wilder 303.
To the Editors:
This may be a rather unusual letter. I do not wish to inveigh against any administrative policy or group on campus. I merely presume to offer a minor aesthetic critique.
Without a doubt, "Toupydoups" is the most visually appealing feature of The Review, and its creator should be commended highly for his graphic artistry. Hence I find it so lamentable that this "comic" strip usually seems devoid of humor and/or narrative interest. Each week my friends and I eagerly turn to Mr. McShane's charming chiaroscuro, only to be disappointed by yet another drably autobiographical allegory, or by a dreary parade of antiquated slapstick clichés. After all, one can only milk so much comedic nectar from cattle prods and cigar-wielding simians. I do not expect Swiftian satire-juvenility is grand, just let it be original.
Perhaps the illustrious Mr. McShane should consider abandoning the pretext of dialogue, and re-cast his strip in a purely visual genre. Or perhaps he might employ the services of a member of that too-often disparaged and disappearing species-a competent writer.
I sincerely hope that my remarks will be received as they were intended-as humble constructive criticism, with all due respect to their object-and not as any sort of vitriolic character assassination, with which this campus is already sufficiently suffused.
Copyright © 1998, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 127, Number 7, October 30, 1998
Contact us with your comments and suggestions.