Oberlin should not forget Coming Out Day

Not just a day to don a pink triangle, National Coming Out Day is a day of celebration, a day of personal affirmation. Oberlin will spend Oct. 11 celebrating the tenth anniversary of the March on Washington for lesbian-bi-gay and transgendered human rights.

Human Rights. The phrase alone emphasizes the necessity for such a movement. Funny how many people often forget the foundation of the cause. Riding near the tail end of the series of this century's human rights movements which fought and abolished racism, sexism, ageism and the inequalities handicapped individuals face, freedom of sexual orientation has yet to be established. Some are hopeful that it too will be a success story, while others fear that the nature of the cause makes people think it is an exception.

On the level of awareness, the movement has made incredible progress. Roger Goodman, OC '68, introduced Oberlin to the idea of being openly homosexual in 1964. That was only 35 years ago, shorter than the lifetimes of our parents, shorter than the half-life of attitude alteration for most people. The first black student and the woman were "out" at Oberlin long before.

Visibility is the first step. Expect to see pink triangles, open-air speeches, buttons and posters. But expecting a dramatic change after the day might prove disappointing. The philosophy of the campaign - that knowing your dentist, classmate or teacher is not heterosexual - doesn't change how people relate to each other. The changes that must occur are on the grand scale, but right now, LGBT alliances are still fighting for existence as a movement.

Oct. 11 also marks the fourth annual National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day. Conservative and "pro-family" groups have released a television ad campaigning to the very students to whom university unions will be speaking on Monday. The backlash is even younger than the original cause and is, as in all things, inevitable. The question might well be, is it possible to support this opposition for the sake of being fair and objective in the manner that is called for in LGBT issues? Or is encouraging someone to deny their innate sexuality or change their sexual behavior anti-human rights?

Oberlin on Oct. 11 should maintain its progressive stance for LGBT support, because sexual behavior is basic to human behavior. Identity politics shapes the politics of the bedroom, the classroom, the campus and the nation, and we are lucky to be its historical agents. In our lifetimes, we can see this through.

CDS must improve

Ever notice how the folks at the Campus Dining Service delight in torturing us? Admittedly, the selection of food products and dining options has improved somewhat during the past two years, but there are still a number of glaring flaws with the current system that often prevent students from enjoying their dining experiences.

Imagine a typical meal at the dining hall of your choice. Envision waiting in long lines for cold crispy patties and the egg noodles with ketchup that somehow pass for spaghetti with marinara sauce. One might be tempted to absolve the College of responsibility for these lines, reasoning that overcrowding is just a natural phenomenon during the lunch hour at Stevenson or the dinner hours at Dascomb. But that's not exactly true. Understaffing at dining halls throughout the campus have caused service at places like Dascomb and Stevenson to become shockingly inefficient, while a similar shortage of employees has forced De Caf� to close its doors on several occasions during the past month.

Unfortunately, that's not the only problem. During the past four years, CDS has experimented with a number of menu choices with varying degrees of success. Such experimentation is certainly a welcome change of pace, adding diversity to the otherwise stagnant menu of hamburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches and salad that is available to students on a daily basis. But one also must question the purpose of such experimentation. After all, some of the most popular items on the expanded CDS menus - the wraps and the corn dogs, the Mongolian Wok food and pasta bar selections - have been slowly but surely phased out. Why? Why would CDS offer students new meal options only to remove them once they became too popular? It is almost as if the College tries to find things that work, dangles them in front of the students and then quickly pulls them away, preserving the mediocrity of the status quo and frustrating student diners in the process.

But it's all right, it's all right, CDS works in mysterious ways. Or is it? Perhaps the folks down at Residential Life and Services should wake up and try to smell the coffee that might have been available to students had De Caf� been properly staffed at the beginning of the school year. Perhaps they should call those slick Marriott executives who have been playing the College administrators for saps these last few years and try to locate the food products that students actually appreciated so long ago. Perhaps they should invest in an on-campus Taco Bell. Whatever the case, something must be done to improve the sorry state of campus dining.