If the past two weeks have taught the Oberlin community and administration anything, it should be that students need to feel included in important decisions. Or we must at least be offered inclusion, even if we as students choose not to participate. So as protesters were storming Cox, a few hundred yards down the road, at one of the preeminent conservatories in the world, a dean search is also currently underway. What makes this selection particularly ironic is that it is being conducted with no students on the search committee.
What is being lost in this scenario is a chance for the administration to improve its reputation with a vocal minority which asserts it is not responsive to student concerns. On the other side of the picket line, demonstrators are missing a prime opportunity to act proactively, instead of reactively, in voicing student opinion. The choice for the new Dean of the Conservatory will play a pivotal role in the direction of the Conservatory in the near future, as well as in the possible make-up of the Oberlin student body. With so much at stake in this next selection, this lack of input, or lack of even a reaction, shouldn't stand.
In this current selection process, it is President Dye, yes - that great oppressor of student opinion, who would like to see more student involvement in the decision. However, due to strained relations with the Con, she is unable to exert enough pressure to allow more student participation. And while the College bylaws state that it is the Con faculty who appoint the members of the search committee, there is no rule barring students. Though the Conservatory faculty is undoubtedly concerned with student opinion, they are responsible for this exclusion of students from the search.
With the search process still underway it is not too late for student participation into this appointment. However, it is not going to occur unless students make themselves heard, and soon. If we the students do not tell those in charge in the Conservatory our opinions, then the search committee will just proceed as is. And if recent history is any indicator, come next fall, or whenever the new dean is announced, there will be more protests equating Dye with some tyrannical despot. And yet again, students will have failed to make their opinions known when they had the opportunity.
Devastation, disbelief and despair. We heard about the tragic murders in Colorado, the two high school students who opened fire on their classmates, reportedly giggling as they unleashed their arsenal. Death tolls ranging from 20 to 30 students and teachers were released from web sites and TV stations. Now, the count has settled on 15: 13 murders plus the suicides of the 17 and 18-year-old assassins.
The killers in Colorado were reported to have targeted athletes and minorities; jocks because they allegedly verbally abused the two men, and minorities because of a racist agenda that was part of the "Trench Coat Mafia." The fact that the massacre occurred on Hitler's birthday is not seen as a coincidence. The two teenagers shouted that their killing was a form of retribution as they sprayed bullets throughout the halls and classrooms of Columbine High School.
A young Oberlin man shot himself this week. This suicide is another cap of the hopeless iceberg that seems to be chilling the hearts of many of America's teenagers. He was on WOBC last year, chatting with Kiese about his girlfriend, his thoughts about college students and how much impact we could have on the youth in the town. The funeral is this weekend. The funerals in Colorado will, no doubt, begin soon.
Senseless deaths. Hopeless children. The horrifying reports of the apparent callousness of the killers in Colorado, the intensive planning that they did to prepare for their own private Armageddon. The tragedy of children preceding their parents in death by an entire lifetime. The rising death counts in Iraq and Yugoslavia. The gravity of a violent and hopeless sub-section of the tail-end of Gen- X ... these are all peeks at the sad underbelly of human despair.
We have to recognize these deaths as the tragedies that they are, and grieve for the families that have lost their loved ones. We need to let the realities of suicides in lonely rooms and school killings in crowded classes serve to remind us of the thin gossamer thread that holds us here. Rather than viewing these tragedies with the same hopelessness felt by the kids that believed bullets held answers, we need to do what we can to make things better, to inject life and passion into ourselves and others. Make connections with each other. Reach out, and try to refrain from picking on those that seem most different, most vulnerable. When people have nets of folks who care about them, they're less likely to fall the distance that these three young men fell.
Copyright © 1999, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 127, Number 21, April 9, 1999
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