Well, we wrote to the Review last week, but so much more happened after Wednesday, we had to write a sequel.
"We woke the administration up. They know they can't count on their previous ability to push students around. We have the administration worried about what we are going to do."
This protest was no "wakeup call" to the administration. That's a cheap soundbyte. The administration doesn't push students around. We enjoy a spectacular amount of freedom relative to other students at different institutions. Oberlin students can grow illegal drugs in their rooms and not get pushed around by the law, precisely because of the administration. Furthermore, neither the administration nor the vast majority of students are worried about what will happen next. If anything, students perceived the Cox protest as a grotesque sideshow of the Brother Jed variety. The administration could only be worried about lost access to buildings, seeing as how they caved to precisely zero of the demands, and still give no ground to the accusation that the process was unfair.
"We set a precedent that we took over Cox, totally blocking administrative functioning for a whole day without being taken to Judicial or Community board. We demonstrated our collective power."
Yes, a building was taken over, but no, the administration wasn't shut down for a day. Given the way this college actually works, most of the operations of the college don't go on at Cox. If one really wanted to get a point across, take over the Service Building, or Carnegie. Protesters demonstrated only a lack of knowledge of the way the college operates, and weren't taken to J-board or community board because the General Faculty Council is comprised of people who don't want to punish students over a lack of communication. It's better not to have to suspend a bunch of students for essentially taking a collective piss in the Cox bathrooms.
"We made connections with other students who had similar experiences with the administration, and started building alliances - one example is the struggle to create a student based sexual offense policy. Like the dean search, the policy deeply effects students, yet has only token student input."
Who did the protesters meet? Most people who were not part of the protest were not eager to join, and the protest was met with harsh criticism or total disregard from most students. As far as all accusations of "token student input" go, it's not because of the administration. Not only were the candidate forums heavily publicized, but they were easily accessible. Fourteen students at one forum, four at the next? When the administration considered the demand for more student input, they only needed to consider this search to see that students don't use the opportunities for input that they have. Why should they give us more?
"...make our voices heard in an independent publication not tainted by intimidation from the administration or censoring by conservative editors."
Here's where all the student publications on this campus put this protest right: at the bottom of their priority lists. Such distrust of campus publications like The Review, The Voice, Tha' Cypher, etc., reeks of paranoia. The failure of The Review to publish on Friday, 4/16, was due to computer difficulties, not administrative intimidation. If there are any doubts about that whatsoever, look for details at the Review and the Center for Information Technology. The mistrust of campus publications sets the protesters at odds with any student who's involved with those publications. The distrust and paranoia exhibited discredits the protester's arguments because it suggests they are irrational and out of touch. Ignoring the publications where most students voice their opinions means discounting those students and their voices. Isn't that what the protest was trying to prevent?
As for Tarika Powell's article, there's another possible explanation (conjecture). Since Ms. Powell was herself a protester, it is possible that her article was edited to maintain journalistic objectivity. Of the two Review writers who attended the TWH planning meeting (on Tuesday, 4/13), she was the one who was permitted to stay, because she was there for personal, rather than journalistic reasons, which would suggest that she wasn't really in a position to write an objective article on it, though certainly her thoughts might have been ideal for an editorial submission.
"Early 'negotiations' consisted of huge crowds of administrators hanging around outside Cox."
A dozen people trying to get to work does not equal a huge crowd of administrators trying to keep you down (because, as we all know, nobody who is part of the administration at this college is part of a marginalized community. Nosiree, they're all white, straight, rich, Christian Men). Both of the writers of this diatribe were at Cox during the morning in question, and we contend that obfuscation of the protest was not possible.
"Unsatisfied by the answers, members of the group expressed distrust and anger at the fact that marginalized student groups at Oberlin had not been contacted or taken into consideration by the dean's search committee."
We're certain that most students have no idea just how many members of the Oberlin community fit into the ambiguous description "marginalized groups." We hope protesters had no idea that by engaging in the protest, they further fractured already-divided "marginalized" communities. They intimate that they speak for the LGBT community, yet there was a major objection to their request for support from LGBTU. Not every "marginalized" person agrees with them, and those who don't have been silenced in the very same way that they claim students have been silenced by the administration. How does it feel to be the oppressor? We might also point out that the protesters are now a marginalized community. This conclusion is based on the overwhelmingly negative response to the protest, witnessed by The Oberlin Review's letter's page (4/19). They certainly don't speak for the majority of the student body (less than 4% according to published numbers), and since they distrust other students, it's hard to believe that they want to "form coalitions" or "build alliances" with other students. Protesters discounted any opinion that differed from their own, and then proceeded to claim that the student offering the opinion was a tool of the administration. Finally, in regards to being contacted, it seems to have been forgotten that every person on campus received notification about the candidate forums and the dean search via campus mail.
"The General Faculty Council took it upon themselves to come to the doorstep of Cox at midnight to inform the students that they had taken a special vote to give us even harsher disciplinary consequences if we did not let workers into the building immediately."
If you break into a building, you deserve to be arrested. Protesters took over a building over the choice of a dean without even exhausting all of the non-confrontational means of getting their point across. Of course the GF Council threatened harsh disciplinary action, the protesters were out of line and preventing normal operation of the college. True, that is what civil disobedience is about; protesters compared the takeover of Cox to famous civil disobedience episodes in history or referred to it as civil disobedience. If this was true civil disobediance, they should have begged the GF Council to suspend them, send in the riot cops, and use as much tear gas as they could. It's the injustice of authority that creates the opportunity for civil disobedience. Last Thursday was more civil sideshow than civil disobedience.
This whole episode is a blemish on the history of Oberlin. There has been irrational behavior across the campus. People have spouted "facts" without verifying them first, jumped to conclusions, and dragged others through the mud. Oberlin claims to be a school where independent thought and unique behavior is encouraged. It is for the best that this happened during All Roads, because fewer frosh will arrive here with the misguided notion that this claim is true.
Last week as I was sitting in DeCafe, I overheard a fellow student complaining. This was not so unusual, and normally I don't give a second thought to strangers' complaints. But what got me was what he was complaining about. "Did you see the protest [at Cox]? God, I wanted to kill them!" It is a fair assumption that this comment was not inspired by any zealous support for Dean Goldsmith, Koppes or Nancy Dye, but out of some kind of aversion to student activism.
But why? Why, in a progressive college with a history of politically meaningful student activism, is the above student's attitude not only present but also pervasive?
Many make the argument that today's issues are not worth fighting for in the way that issues in our parents' day were. That is a tempting argument, and one I have fallen prey to more than once. But it is not a valid argument.
Without addressing the particular issues involved in the Cox protest, it stands as a good example of student protests at Oberlin. A small minority of students notices something with which they disagree, and educate themselves further on the subject. They organize a small protest, and the rest of the campus scoffs as they walk by. The protesting students write a letter to the Review publicizing their cause, and most of the campus becomes annoyed at the seeming self-congratulation.
Invariably, most protests and activism occur in a manner strikingly similar to the above. This is because the Oberlin student body is no longer a wholly activist one, but rather is split between those who are radical or passionately dedicated to a cause, and those who, for the most part, couldn't care less.
That is not to say that Oberlin's students have always presented a united front of political activism. Rather, they simply had a greater capacity to care, about anything or everything. This is where the problem becomes one not confined merely to Oberlin; students, and indeed the population as a whole, seem not really to care much about much anymore, no matter where they are in America.
There is no one reason for this change, a change that has come gradually over the past several years. Ours is a generation that has not known fear of world destruction, economic instability or a draft. Censorship is hardly an issue anymore; if anything, there is too much information to comprehend. With the exception of the L.A. riots following the Rodney King verdict, there have been no large-scale civil disturbances or racial strife witnessed (at least in the United States) by this generation. Take all of these factors and add on the most consistently and continuously prosperous American economy through our high school and college years, and the picture becomes clear: we have had it pretty easy.
And there is the root of the problem. If you, personally, have not known suffering, or discrimination, or fear, then what is the motivation to campaign against these things? Sure, it is the moral imperative, and many follow this and use their good fortune to change things for the better for more people. But it is much easier not to do anything, since not doing anything doesn't make things worse for you, Joe or Jill Student.
That is why this is a very dangerous time indeed. Complacency has toppled empires before, and will again. I don't pretend to suggest that the Visigoths (or Canadians) will be sacking Washington tomorrow unless every student on this campus picks up a banner and starts chanting against social injustice. But it is part of the ideal of not just America or higher education but most specifically Oberlin that students use their knowledge and advantage not simply for personal betterment.
Whether or not you agree with the politics of a protest the next time you see one, at the very least don't knock it.
Copyright © 1999, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 127, Number 21, April 9, 1999
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