Year in review: from President of Oberlin Alumni Association
A senior's meditations on graduating from Oberlin College
Interview with President Nancy Dye concerning students
Commencement and Reunion weekend offers us all a wonderful chance to reflect on our accomplishments in the past year and to make plans for the future. For the Oberlin Alumni Association, this past year's accomplishments are ones that all of us in the Oberlin community can be proud.
Last year, we set two goals for the Alumni Association. First, we committed to working closer with the on-campus community and to forge a closer link between students and alumni. Second, we embarked on an aggressive and ambitious program to improve communication among alumni and between alumni and the college. Through the hard work of many, many dedicated alumni volunteers and the tireless Alumni Office staff, Midge Wood Brittingham '60, Margaret Sahs Erikson '62, and Dale Preston '83, I believe that we have made great strides on both fronts. Let me explain.
Almost two years ago, we informally surveyed student leaders to find out what (if anything) they knew about alumni and the Alumni Association and to learn how (if at all) alumni could provide direct service to students. What we learned should not have come as a real surprise. To many students, alumni were a black hole. They were those unknown people who, long, long ago had attended Oberlin and who had quaint ideas of the college. Students had remarkably little sense that Oberlin alumni are at once a diverse but amazingly cohesive group who are bound together by common experience and who share an intense loyalty to Oberlin. They were surprised that we collectively share many of the same values with them and that we, too, believe that one person can change the world! The students we visited did not know (and were, frankly, skeptical) that the alumni have an abiding interest in helping Oberlin and Oberlin students prosper.
We were, however, reassured to learn that students thought that alumni and the Alumni Association could help in direct and meaningful ways. Student leaders asked (and, in fact, virtually begged) us to help them in the difficult transition from college life to life after Oberlin. In direct response, we initiated a coordinated program to introduce alumni and students to each other. We expanded our long-running mock job interview program. Through the creativity and energy of Wendy Smith Miller and her staff in the Career Services Office, we started the first alumni-student exchange, to give students an informal opportunity to learn about life after Oberlin, to explore career options, and to ask tough questions about the transition away from Oberlin. Over the course of the year, we had direct, personal contacts with hundreds and hundreds of students. The result was a rewarding experience for both alumni and students. Even more valuable than those direct contacts, however, was the renewed sense by current students that Oberlin is a community that extends far beyond Oberlin, Ohio and lasts much longer than the end of senior year. As alumni, we were intensely proud that we were able to give back to this generation of Oberlin students some of our post-Oberlin experiences. It was but a small beginning but an important one.
Our second major initiative was to improve communications among alumni and with the college. In informal conversations with alumni around the world, we learned that alumni cherished the opportunities they have to meet and share ideas with fellow alumni and to keep in closer touch with what was happening on campus. We also found that the existing vehicles publications such as the Oberlin Alumni Magazine and the Around the Square newsletter were very effective at keeping people informed but were not really able to engage alumni in the debates and dialogue that we fondly remembered from our days on campus.
Taking advantage of recent advances in electronic communications, we launched the Oberlin On Line Community earlier this year. We think of it as a virtual Oberlin campus, where alumni can chat about events or issues of interest, trade stories, catch-up on campus events and search for long-lost friends. The On-Line Community is still in its infancy but we already know that it offers almost unlimited opportunities for alumni to connect with each other and with the Oberlin campus. We have introduced a resume posting and job-searching service for alumni and students and are offering electronic yellow pages for alumni to trade business listings. We also are providing all alumni access to an email forwarding address so we can all have a lifetime email address (yourname@world.oberlin.edu) that tells the world we are Obies no matter where life takes us! Best of all, it's free! All of this came together through long hours and careful coordination led by Boston alumnus Greg Kehm '88, Baltimore alumnus Aaron Levin, '68 and Dale Preston in the Alumni Office.
While we are tremendously encouraged by our accomplishments this year, we are even more excited by the opportunities ahead. Our venture into electronic communication has barely touched the surface of the ways that we can create a virtual Oberlin campus around the globe. The overwhelming student response to the student-alumni exchanges tells us that the limits are set only by our creativity and student interest. While these have been small steps, the Oberlin Alumni Association is proud to have helped bring the Oberlin community closer together.
If a poll was conducted among this year's graduates, I would not be surprised if I found that half of us had no idea what we would do come Tuesday. I count myself among those wayward souls with no concrete plans for an indefinite amount of time; the difficult part is to figure out whether I am lucky, or whether I should consider myself a member of the unlucky bunch.
Either way, our collective lack of plans speaks volumes about our college, and about those of us who constitute its student body. As Oberlin graduates, we are in a sense trapped and free at the same time. This week has been a curious mix of reminsicing about the past four years, and dreaming of the future. In a way, this little town has become a haven for many of us - territory that we own, create, and make over in the image of what we want it to be. In other ways, we are sick of it, lusting for various promised lands known as New York, Boston, the Bay Area, or, quite simply, home.
It is difficult to know whether our aimless plight is better attributed to the generalization that Oberlin students have too much vision, or too little of it. In some ways, many of us actually believe we can make a difference in the world. We scorn the workplace of consulting firms and investment banks, wishing we could just get paid for our dreams, our art, our writing. In other ways, we as a student body are cynical, skeptical of ideals and visions in the face of the the inequality, oppression, and apparent meaninglessness of what surrounds us. Some of us have chosen to venture "into the real world," others have chosen graduate school, five or six more years of papers, poverty, and the security of what we know - school. But just as many of us do not yet understand this "real world" - why work at something we don't really love; on the other hand, isn't doing something better than living in our parents' attic or sleeping on a friend's couch for another year?
If William James pointed out that every generalization leaks of error, then that is particularly true about Oberlin graduates. On one level, I try to make generalizations about us. On the other hand, I know that is ultimately impossible. Some dress in black and profess to love Foucault; others spend all of their time at the gym thinking they will one day become athletes; others lock themselves in the conservatory with their instruments; still more can be characterized by no category, clinging so dearly to their own uniqueness that all description is almost destined to fail.
Despite our differences, however, there are some things we have in common. We have all spent four years (or at least two) at this liberal arts institution. And the education we have received, while to me it has been outstanding, does not explicitly serve to get us jobs. We are prepared not for "the real world" but for the world of ideas, of the mind. That many of us do not know what we are going to do is to Gary Kornblith "the defining success" of our liberal arts education. Norman Care has told me that at Oberlin we are to chase those ideas that we find intrinsically interesting. Much to the dismay of Career Services, Oberlin prepares us not for careers but for thought. To even schedule an interview at Career Services, we have to know what general field in which we want a job. "The civil rights movement," "truth and postmodernism," "the inner-workings of human cells," or "gender theory" are not sufficient answers. I do not find it unfortunate that a substantial segment of us graduates are more interested in ideas than in careers. Money is attractive to some, the nebulous feeling of self-fulfillment is to others. Rarely do the two go hand in hand.
As a group, we are disgusted by tradition. Drag ball is our most defining custom; we were attracted to Oberlin because it is easy to do things here - to dress how we want, learn what we want, love who we want, or try out for whatever sport we may wish. The administration keeps wondering why we have a retention problem that keeps us from cracking the top ten on U.S. News & World Report's list of elite colleges. Our retention rate is not a "problem," but a consequence of who many of us are. We do not know exactly what we want, and we do not really want to play by anybody's rules. As individuals, many Oberlin students are somewhat different than what one might find at Yale, Harvard, Amherst, or Swarthmore. Few of us wear white hats; only a handful seem to want to be in a fraternity; and most of us were far from the most popular in high school. We come together in this little Ohio town to learn, to enjoy ourselves, to grow, to at times act like little boys and girls, at other times like old men and women.
During this week before graduation, we get drunk and ride roller coasters, and our debauchery is condoned by our beloved institution. Our college wants us to be "normal" at the same time that it prides itself on the fact that we are "different."
In many different ways, we Oberlin graduates are a sort of collective paradox. We are finally free of all the commitments of school, but we also are already longing for a little security. Nervous and excited, we will walk through - or around - the arch, in cap and gown, suit and tie, or whatever the moment might inspire us to don. Hopeful and pessimistic, our gaze will soon fix upon our next stomping ground. Finally free, but all of a sudden trapped by that very freedom, many of us know not what we will do next. We might suck it up and work at some bank. We might get drunk. We might change the world. Or, we might just relax and contemplate all of those things. We'll figure out what the hell to do tomorrow, or for many tomorrows.
On May 2, 1999, I had the opportunity to interview president Dye about community service, the state of higher education, town and gown relations, and many other things. Our dialogue, known as the Templeton interview, was sponsored by Campus Compact, a coalition of "600 college and university presidents committed to helping students develop the values and skills of citizenship through involvement in public and community service." Approximately 200 presidents were interviewed by Templeton Fellows, the interviews taking on various forms: panel discussions, individual interviews, etc... So that I would be more prone to represent a multiplicity of viewpoints in my dialogue with the president, and would be more informed of the issues at hand, I had mini-interviews with selected members of the entire community and issued an e-mail survey to America Reads tutors.
President Dye described herself as a reconstructed Deweyan, after the educational philosopher John Dewey who stressed that education is always a social process. This is reflected in her opinions on the "virtual university" and "distance learning," which she sees as running counter to education's being an "interactive process between and among people." (For further inquiry, see Late Night Reflections of a College President, her address to the Cleveland City Club on July 11, 1997. It may soon be available on Oberlin On-line.) It skips the confrontational aspect of change, whereby people test their politics, and try to change some aspect of the world. "I'm convinced that the best way to learn about the world is in trying to change it," says Dye. President Dye has always been interested in how colleges and universities, in particular, "[educate] people not only to a set of skills or arts or a knowledge base like mathematics... but also what the role of a liberal education is in enabling students to think about and learn to be citizens."
As a first-year Bonner scholar I read "To Hell with Good Intentions," by Ivan Ilich, a fiery reproach of good intentions in relation to service, particulary in the case where Americans go abroad to do service. Like Ilich, President Dye does not advocate service simply as good deeds. She expressed some concern about much of the literature on community service for college and high school students, "which puts an awful lot of emphasis on individuals feeling good because they're contributing or giving back to society, but not necessarily a good deal to really questioning." Questioning is a functionally crucial part of service learning-reflection "not simply individually, but also socially, and politically," says Dye.
The Center for Service and Learning was an outgrowth of this kind of questioning. How could that part of Oberlin's mission which stresses social engagement be built upon? The Center's goal was to "really pay attention to what people said they needed, allowing students to take all kinds of initiatives and not just fit into one of many existing programs that were going on, but help them tailor initiatives to meet the needs of the community and also help figure out how... to continue these initiatives." The Center was created to make services and initiatives more continuous and "connect the whole campus a little better to the community." "Oberlin the town, and Oberlin the college, have fates that have always been, and always will be, inextricably linked, so that the welfare of both is dependent on the welfare of each," said Dye. It's through interaction and communication that some of the structural differences between city and college may be broken down.
Interested in seeing and possibly even hearing the entire interview? Keep your eyes and ears peeled. The interview should be in audial or textual format on Oberlin-On-line. There will also be an article about the interview in Around the Square. There's a lot more to it than what was written here. What does President Dye think about service requirements, the credit system, bringing Oberlin youth on to the campus, etc.? Here's her response to a question concerning "en loco parentis" and treating students like customers:
"I hate calling students customers. There is very little that I find more distressing than the idea of calling students customers, and I must confess that I find the whole popularity of the word customer, or the term customer, to describe a whole host of relationships, distressing. It's as though every human relationship can be reduced to the cash nexus, which is really what customs is about, and I find that an awfully shallow way, and distressing way, frankly, of going about thinking about the relationship between professor and student, between Oberlin college and its students, between a lawyer and a client, or a doctor and a patient. All manner of relationship have come to be described, and people seem to take great pleasure and pride in saying, 'Well, I'm the customer or I'm going to treat you like a customer' which presumably means I will treat you well since you are giving me money. So there are certain standards of customer service that we will seek to abide by. Now some of those customer service ideas are good ones, but I would rather say, 'I don't want to have Oberlin college treat Oshon Temple with respect and with consideration and with concern and with empathy because he's our customer.' I would say, 'because he's our student.' That's how students should be treated."
Copyright © 1999,
The Oberlin Review.
Volume 127, Number 25, May 28, 1999
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