Safety lawsuit will produce no winner

Do you feel safe on the Oberlin campus? When you"re walking home from the 'Sco late at night do you fear that you are being watched or followed? In light of the two vicious attacks which have stricken the Oberlin community in the last two years, these fears are justified. With this in mind, do you feel that Oberlin College has taken the necessary precautions to alleviate such a threat? Recent action taken by the two victims of the previous beatings suggest otherwise. Currently, they are enacting a civil suit against their alleged aggressor. However, the current civil lawsuits against the alleged perpetrator are a stepping stone to a much larger lawsuit. A lawsuit which, if the College is found negligent, will undoubtedly render a large settlement from the supposed "deep" coffers of Oberlin College. Fully a year since the attack at Fairchild, the College campus has settled back into its normal, complacent self. Actually this happened within a few weeks of the attack. At first, as normally happens after traumatic experiences, the community was shocked into a heightened level of awareness. Yet, as unfortunately happens with many traumatic experiences, guards were gradually let down. Old habits resumed as we settled back into our comfort zones and academic rigors. Nevertheless, if the lawyer for the victims of the recent beatings is correct, neither Security, nor the College at large, has taken measures to prevent similar attacks.

Look at the basement and first-floor windows of your residence halls. Have they been replaced or made more difficult to enter? Res Life has just received funding to replace these windows. Only now, a year after the most recent assault, are they able to replace the windows that allowed a vicious attacker into Fairchild. Security has been beset by union troubles and management conflicts. These are facts which the legal counsel for the victims will use to assert that Oberlin College is unresponsive to the safety and security of students.

Regardless of the outcome of the civil suit against the College, if it comes to that, it will be a very difficult case for the College. If there is no case of negligence on the part of Oberlin, the bare fact remains that two young adults were brutally attacked and one young adult will spend the better part of his life in prison. If the College has done everything it can to prevent further attacks, which it may have, that does not cure our community from such violence; it only appears to lessen the probability. No matter what the outcome, there will be no winner.

Safety lawsuit will produce no winner

On top of a lack of housing, endless lines at enrollment, and Presto snafus, we can now count the effects of under staffing among the factors which have made this the most harried start to an academic year in recent memory. Under-staffing has been most disruptive in two of the most vital aspects of student life: dining and mail. One need only observe the overcrowding and paper plates in Stevenson or take a walk through our newly refloored mailroom to truly appreciate their respective annoyances.

The lack of dishwashers and servers in Stevenson and DeCaf&é is understandable this early in the semester. Presumably students made plenty of money over the summer and are in no hurry to run down to Daub House and sign up for scrubbing pots and the like. However, as soon as those checks for books clear and our favorite monopoly, AT&T, graces us with their robber baron rates for calls to significant others in Strasbourg or home in Seattle, there will be no more paper plates in Longman.

What is more distressing has been the substantial lag in receiving mail. Beyond the dozens and dozens of cookies growing ever more stale in Wilder basement there are people's medicine, books for class, and late credit card bills. While some disorganization is to be expected with the start of a new year, with hundreds of new mailbox assignments for first-years and the conversion from summer changes of address, nine days to receive a letter from Cleveland is inexcusable. How much of the delay is to be attributed to mailroom under-staffing and how much can be attributed to the College's switch to the nefarious BANNER system for record keeping is anyone's guess. However, whenever it became apparent that students were not receiving their mail in a timely manner there should have been some action taken to assure that this problem was handled.

Instead, the mailroom "cautions students that there is always disorder in the mailroom at the beginning of the year." If there is always disorder at the start of a new year, couldn't some preventative measures be taken to insure that things are not as disorderly as they have been this year? Perhaps providing some added help for the overworked mailroom staff for the first few weeks would prevent students from waiting weeks to receive their medication. Perhaps double-checking the BANNER mailbox assignments would alleviate the current backlog. In the meantime, start setting aside some cash to pay the late fees on those Citibank cards.