Thanks to students' participation in call-in

To the Editors:

This is an open letter to the student body at Oberlin to thank everyone who participated in the call-in day to Ford last Thursday. As part of the National Dirty Jobs Boycott campaign, students in Ohio PIRG encouraged students and community members to make phone calls to Ford's various 1-800 numbers asking them to pull out of the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) and stop funding global warming.

Global warming is a huge problem facing our planet, the warming of the earth has allowed tropical diseases such as malaria to spread to places they never existed before. Malaria has even spread to Michigan, New Jersey and New York! In 1998 global warming was linked to the hottest year on record, causing a drought that brought $4 billion in agricultural damage. Extreme weather has also been on the rise: 1998's record heat brought a record $90 billion loss to the global economy.

The GCC, an industry funded lobby group in Washington D.C., is dedicated to undermining the science behind global warming and devoted to halting political measures to limit the release of green house gases such as CO2. Other GCC members include General Motors, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil and Allegheny Energy.

The Dirty Jobs Boycott is a national campaign of the State PIRGs, SSC and SEAC as well as other groups across the country. The campaign targets corporations with specific demands (for example, Ford withdrawing from the GCC) The offending corporation is then put on notice that if they don't begin to act responsibly towards the environment, we will run a jobs boycott against them. This year 500,000 of the best trained students in the world will sign

the pledge; this proved to be too much for Ford.

Following the national call-in day, students around the country have an opportunity to celebrate VICTORY! Ford has announced that they are withdrawing from the Global Climate Coalition (GCC)!!! The power of student organizing has been felt by one of the largest, most powerful corporations on Earth! So once again, thank you to all students who participated.

This just goes to show that although our government has been unresponsive to calls from the public and the international community to protect our environment, students CAN hold corporations accountable for the damage they are doing to our planet and our society.

Great work everyone.

--Winston Vaughan, College first-year, Ohio PIRG Vice Chair

Mocking safe space offers further reason why it is necessary

To the Editors:

It isn't enough for a white male to have full reign over 99 percent of the campus, he must dominate 100 percent of the campus. As a white male, folks like Yakup Mete Sener ("Safe Space or Safe Racism") and S. Andrew Smith ("Fascism masked as legitimate criticism") don't understand power relations in this country - that as white men they do enjoy privileges not enjoyed by people of color and poor people. For Sener, he feels entitled to enter any meeting, any group, as he has been entitled to enter all other spaces in his life, without challenge, without racism, without sexism. It proves curious to me that boys like Sener feel threatened by a group of Asian Americans who, because they are meeting together, MUST be plotting against the white culture (which we are, you know.) Never mind that Oberlin's campus is still about 75 percent white, the curriculum is still 90 percent white and the faculty is still 80-90 percent white.

I encourage Asian American students, other people of color and our allies to keep up the fight against those who wish to curb our empowerment. Organizations and collectives like AAA, Abusua and L'Allianza Latina were created because people of color were excluded from other realms of college and from realms of society. Organizations like AAA serve as spaces where people who self-identify as Asian Americans come together to work on solutions to the problems of racism, sexism, homophobia and classism - forms of oppression that institutionalize the power of whites over people of color, men over women and rich over poor.

As a student at Oberlin, if you are an active student struggling to balance classes, work and progressive social change, YOU DO NOT HAVE THE ENERGY TO WASTE on people like Sener and Smith who mean to take away the small gains we've made - gains like cultural and political spaces, Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies classes, programs that reflect our history, our politics, our culture, our contributions and our survival.

Students who are fighting to maintain community control and self-determination for our student of color organizations: know that you must be doing something right when safe spaces like AAA are seen as dangerous by the white culture. Know that nothing has been won without struggle, especially at Oberlin. Know that you are entitled to self-determine your own community spaces, without having to concede every last bit of the campus as the domain of whites.

Pity the man (or men, or boy) who doesn't even recognize his own white male privilege. Pity the boy who flings around terms like "fascism" without really knowing the historical context, or what it really means. Pity the boy who labels people of color empowerment or working class empowerment as "fascism" and "reverse racism" because he is afraid that as a white male, a middle class male, his power and privileges will be reduced by the "uprising" and organizing of people of color and poor people - god forbid planning such uprisings in their own meetings.

Pity the boy who is so idle, his projects focus on going to meetings where he is not wanted, while probably never attending open speakers and presentations sponsored by organizations like AAA. If only I had the time to attend extraneous meetings when I was a student.

If boys like Sener are so incensed by being unable to attend an AAA meeting, why doesn't he start his own white male organization? Perhaps it is because he knows it would be a membership of one. Oh, but wait - such white male organizations already exist. Look at most of the departments at Oberlin. Look at the Board of Trustees. Look at the past presidents of Oberlin College, presidents of this nation, the entire Congress, most of the CEO's in this country. Sure, there may be some people of color and women sprinkled in those organizations, but they are by and large run by white men.

But no, the boys like Sener want to make AAA white too. AAA, decolonize your mind. Fight for your right to meet, to organize, and to empower the Asian American community on your own terms. Focus on what needs to be done to make our progressive community stronger so we can fight for concrete improvements in the lives of students of color, in the lives of people of color. Continue to call out cultural and poverty appropriation as we see it. Welcome the support of our allies, white and people of color, who will stand by you as you fight for your political and cultural space - for me, such spaces were my survival. Know that silence will not protect you, and only through organizing our communities can we win.

--Jennifer Lin, OC '98

Safe space important to students of color

To the Editors:

Increasing attacks on organizations considered safe spaces by their members are due to the growing lack of critical analysis by the student body. For instance, the national ranking of Oberlin College has been falling in recent years. This is directly related to the low retention and recruitment of students of color. Yet, although the College has realized this relationship, the overenrolled class of 2003 holds less than 100 students of color. Students generally leave an environment when they do not feel supported. Still, after 30 years of struggle, there are no Asian American Studies, Latino/a Studies, Middle Eastern Studies or Ethnic Studies programs at Oberlin. This means there are no spaces where Asian Pacific American's (APA), Latino/as or other non-Black American students of color and their allies can go to learn our histories, find validation of our experiences and the truth about our contributions to society. Yet, instead of supporting members of our society that face historical and institutional alienation, attack and invisibility, attacks have been expanded to student of color organizations, with the Asian American Alliance (AAA) repeatedly in the forefront.

What is it about AAA that threatens people so much? Recently, AAA has regularly come under attack and had its validity challenged. How is it that people with racial privilege (i.e. Whites) attack safe spaces designated for racial minorities and aren't considered racist? Even IF straight White men were the minority on this campus (and they're not), power relations remain in effect regardless of who is the numerical minority due to existing social hierarchies.

Safe spaces are spaces for a self-defined community to address internal issues; to provide a support network for its members; to provide a space where every member is recognized as a complete and complex human being with a complex personal and historical identity; to cultivate the self-love and respect of the community members for themselves and each other; but it is not an educational space for non-community people. These are POLITICAL SPACES where inter-communal growth provides a springboard from which these communities can then interact on an intellectual and personal level with other communities. Thus, these spaces are based on mutual RESPECT, where communities are not forced into exclusionary measures, because there is an understanding and respect of the need for such a space.

APAs at this College need a space they can unite in order to deconstruct the historical silencing which has supported such false stereotypes as the "perpetual foreigner" or the "exotic other." Historically, APAs were seen as such a threat to the White American identity, that they invoked the passage of laws which limited natural citizenship for Whites only, excluded the immigration of Asians and legalized violations of our basic civil rights (i.e. Japanese Concentration Camps). Today the APA community still faces the implications of the "Yellow Peril" fear have continually been the scapegoats of the labor force, while their struggles were delegitimized and silenced. Even our successes have been used against us with the creation of the "Model Minority" myth, which portrays APAs as passive, upwardly mobile people, consequently silencing a large portion of our community and pitting us against other people of color.

AAA was founded in the struggle for Asian American Studies 30 years ago to establish educational spaces which reconstruct the history books and uncover the lies and racism this country was built upon. Due to low retention rates of students of color and the continuing attempts by the administration to dismantle our support networks, safe spaces are more important than ever to keep the APA community strong and unified.

-Kasi Chakravartula

-Grace Han

-Christine Soyong Harley

-Adrian Leung

--Officers of Asian American Alliance

Unlearn racism: one student's plea

To the Editors:

The letters from exasperated white males which appeared in last week's Review made a lot of us angry, but they do speak (however poorly) for a very large number of intelligent, yet bewildered white (and some nonwhite) students on this campus. These students feel incredibly frustrated that the most prominent discussions on this campus are about race and oppression. They are discussions that place members of privileged groups, most notably white males, in the role of "bad guy" more often than not. That is not a fun role to get stuck with if you are a person of conscience. And since you know you are a good person, it is maddening to be seen as other than that, not to be taken as individual. It hurts.

I am writing this for all of the folks out there who don't feel welcome in discussions about race at Oberlin. Your thoughts and ideas and feelings do matter. They are vitally important to the well-being of this nation. However, there are some places that are appropriate for meeting your needs in this area, and other places that are intended to meet other needs of other students. Knowing the difference and respecting the rights of other young people to meet their own needs should be a matter of common courtesy even if you don't fully comprehend their need for a safe space.

It is understandably difficult for many white males to imagine how the world would feel if they were immediately labeled as "one of those people" by everyone who saw them. White people who are not fat, handicapped or poor may have never experienced the kind of small and large daily affronts to self that torment people of color. Most of the world is their safe space, one that tells them they are good, that their history and culture are "American" and that they themselves are normal. This sense of what is normal is a central reason why old-fashioned integration doesn't work; it eases white guilt and provides some opportunities for some minorities, but it is still a white world.

The author of one of last week's articles commented on the possibility of a "straight white male club" for Oberlin students. While that idea scares me, I think that a safe space for students trying to understand the racism that they have absorbed all their lives is a great idea. Some students in this position might only feel comfortable talking in a group that was all white, or a group that had restricted membership to those who had demonstrated a certain level of sensitivity to their needs.

Unlearning racism can be a scary process that includes unpleasant feelings like loneliness, shame, anger and confusion. But there are people here at Oberlin who know a lot more than I do and are more than willing to help you through that struggle. There are professors who teach classes on a variety of topics relating to people of color. Talk to them about what you're trying to understand and ask for recommendations of what classes would address your interest. Read books like Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Tatum. But please, please don't act as if students of color have some kind of responsibility to educate you. Chances are, that wasn't actually what they came to Oberlin to do.

So now you're invited. You can be white and male and still be a "good guy." But you have to decide to make the effort, and after there will be challenges. Please become an ally to the struggles of people of color to combat white supremacy and oppression everywhere. I welcome responses to this letter.

--Gina Robinson, College senior

Give credit to the scientific method

To the Editors:

Through the course of this semester I have begun to seriously doubt the value of the liberal arts education. Not as an idea but as it is practiced at Oberlin College. Oberlin College strives to teach students how to think and reason in many areas; unfortunately I have come to fear that these goals are not being met.

I have spent many hours this semester in a classroom where "theorization and deconstruction" are stressed. I do, however, spend much more time within the walls of Kettering. I have learned to question, to reason and to understand in my science classes. I have learned to broaden my perspectives, construct arguments and interpret what I read throughout my college career in all disciplines. Unfortunately the thing that has most struck me about the "theorization and deconstruction" class is the lack of broad-based understanding and critical thinking. Recent arguments about the biology of reproduction and the nature of sexuality have upset me. We must not confuse our interpretation of science with life processes that have been observed and recorded for thousands of years. I have been bombarded with criticisms of biology that are irrational. The discipline of biology deserves criticism, but criticism with a basis.

It is, at least in part, the responsibility of the professor to present accurate information. If I can recognize huge flaws in the information provided on topics which I happen to know something about, how can I be comfortable with the information I am getting on topics which I know very little about? Part of the answer lies in the student. We must all strive to critically examine the various bits of information that we are exposed to throughout life and throughout our official education. I welcome criticism of whatever subject I am studying, but please take personal responsibility and learn about what you criticize before attacking the topic.

--Mark Frey, College senior