Bilingual Paper

La vida loca: Spanish Professor Sebastiaan Faber, Christina Castellana and Viviana Westbrook plan to start a Spanish newspaper on campus. (photo by Lee Dolan)

For those people who wished the Review came equipped with a "SAP" function, they might be onto something. By next February, Oberlin will have its own bilingual newspaper, thanks to senior Christina Castellana, sophomore Viviana Westbrook and Professor of Spanish Sebastiaan Faber.

Castellana and Westbrook are two of this semester's recipients of the McGregor-Oresman Fellowship. Faber is their advisor for their project. He said, "The idea is to make a first issue over Winter Term, or publish it in February when everybody's back, and then if things turn out okay, if it was a good experienceŠthen it will continue. The idea is for it to be student-run and student-managed, and we faculty members just supervise and make sure the Spanish is correct."

For Faber, this project is years in the making. He and his wife, Kim Faber, also a professor of Spanish, taught at UC-Davis and were inspired by their Spanish newspaper. Faber said he was also struck by the strength of the writing he received in his Spanish composition class last year. "I noticed people wrote really well and I thought it was a pity that I was the only one reading it," he said.

For the Spanish professor, then, the move from compositions to the creation of a new newspaper seemed relatively straightforward. Faber envisions the paper as being " a podium for all kinds of stuff: for political issues to be discussed, for minority issues, cultural diversity issues, anything along those lines."

Faber said, "What I want to avoid is a faculty imposing what they want to do upon students. I want it to be student-run, with the faculty providing a little structure." For Castellana and Westbrook, the "student-run" refrain is oft-repeated, and completely true. One of the main projects thus far has been looking at Spanish newspapers on other campuses. For the most part, that job has fallen on Castellana. "I've basically been looking at papers at other campuses, meeting with people from other schools," she said. Castellana mentions that schools like Ohio State University and Carleton College have successful Spanish newspapers.

While both students want to see the newspaper continue, they had different reasons for their interest in the project. Westbrook said, "I was really interested in working on this project, and, well, I'm Mexican, and I know a lot of Latinos don't feel like people are listening to their voices and I know a lot of non-Latinos are always thinking, 'Hey, what's up with these other communities that we don't see too much of?'"

The newspaper, which is currently unnamed, will provide a

forum for a variety of different issues related to the Latino community. Castellana said, "We're going to include a section for La Alianza Latina, a section for Spanish House, a section that deals with current events in Latin America and a section for creative writing and humor." There will also be a free-writing section. Castellana and Westbrook also point out that the paper will be bilingual, so that even beginning Spanish speakers will be able to follow events in the Latino community.

For the time being, the newspaper will be staffed by College students, though it remains possible that the newspaper will broaden its reach. "I know a lot of people who are not from around here that would probably be interested in helping it, so we're still in the process of figuring out what we want to do," Westbrook said.

"One of the thing that Viviana and Christina have to figure out is what kind of constituency, what kind of audience we'll have," said Faber. Their audience, it turns out, is one of the largest in College history. Faber said that there are over 500 students enrolled in Spanish courses, not including the Latin American Studies majors. "The moment is just right for it."