Sexual harassment more than physical or verbal intimidation

To the Editors:

(This letter is in regards to the April 2 advertisement of a party given by Ministry.)

Some people and I had a very negative reaction toward an advertisement about a party in the last Oberlin Review. Taking up more than half a page, the underwear-clad woman was posing as a model in a Victoria Secret or pornography advertisement. Right next to the picture, there were bold letters saying "Everyone gets laid," below the word "Ministry." What do this woman and this phrase imply? The phrase "Everyone gets laid" has an implication for anybody, not just for women. Did the advertiser mean that "everyone" can sleep with the women like the "sexy woman" in the picture if s/he comes to the party? Then there should be a naked man posing right next to the woman. If it was done to merely attract readers, it surely did in any means.

The advertisement did not physically or verbally "abuse" women. It is possible that some people including women even thought it was funny. However, it definitely treated the woman in the picture as a sexual object for the purpose of gaining sexual attention from readers. Also, it was certainly not done to make women feel dignified.

This advertisement reminded me of the poster of Cosi fan Tutte, the opera that was performed about a month ago in Oberlin. If you remember the poster, there was a man staring at a woman's breasts that were ready to pop out from her dress. Although the whole effect was "diminished" by not including details (e.g. no eyes, nose, or mouth), the intention was very clear.

So was the poster done to be faithful to the content of the opera? I don't think so. Not one moment in the opera showed the sexual interest between main characters. The characters were rather naive, and the opera itself was more about courtship and faithfulness.

This poster did successfully draw attention from people, but not everybody found it very pleasant. Many women I know told me that they felt uncomfortable or annoyed by the poster, and some of them were even outraged. However, the majority of people seemed not to notice.

What is the definition of sexual harassment? Does it only include physical or verbal harassment directly to a person or a group of people? I believe it also includes incidents that I mentioned above. It is a result of thinking of women and men as sexual objects. Most of the time, sexual harassment by the media is just as degrading to women as physical or verbal harassment.

I believe people in Oberlin are very sensitive about sexual harassment around campus and their lives. But when the matter is not from physical or verbal abuse, and especially when it is from the media, we often fail to notice or speak out about what needs to be changed.

Everybody, including advertisers and editors in the media should consider what might be degrading to some people before whatever they have in mind comes out to the community.

-Shinhee Kim, Conservatory senior

America's sick health care system must be cured

To the Editors:

The national crises of the US healthcare system is being felt here in Oberlin in a big way. In a town with poverty rates exceeding 25percent, a large chunk of the local population has no insurance at all. Those that do often have totally inadequate coverage, with the new HMO systems that, in their search for profit maximization, neglect any serious preventive care and require premiums at a rate unaffordable to many workers.

Recently 25 workers at Allen Memorial Hospital were laid off (10 percent of the workforce) because the monster HMO corporations, with complexes in Lorain and elsewhere, are actively driving small family style health care providers out of business. This is also bad for the consumers of Oberlin, who usually get their insurance through employers who are increasingly contracting with the more aggressive corporate bidders. Now people are forced to drive far out of their way to have an appointment, and any real relationship with the care providers is certainly lost.

As many students have discovered, the new College health plan is also symptomatic of this trend. Unlike before, there is no doctor in our clinic and many of the services previously provided were simply nixed in the new HMO set up.

In a healthcare system run for profit instead of for people, the quality of care is going down for everyone but the small stratum of super-rich, who can access all the new technologies being developed for them. Over 50 million Americans have no insurance at all, and more again are under-insured. What is needed is a nationalized health care system of universal coverage. The US spends vastly greater sums for vastly less care than any other industrial country because we continue down the road of privatized, for profit health care. We must build a strong opposition to the powerful special interests of the giant insurance corporations who fund the two major political parties. The new Labor Party is building this opposition.

-Ty Moore, College sophomore