New Letter Policy

This week the Review changed its policy for letters to the Editor. It was not a huge change, but it was significant, and it was a difficult decision to make.

Until now, it has been our policy to print all the letters we receive. The assumption is that by printing every letter sent to us, we are both helping to expose our readers to issues they may not have otherwise been aware of, and promoting a wider discourse than that which would occur if we exercised editorial discretion regarding letters. We hope our new letter policy will continue to provide a forum for this diversity of ideas.

The new language in the policy reads, "All letters from within the Oberlin community will be printed, although some from outside the Oberlin community may be withheld at the Editorial Board's discretion due to a lack of pertinence to the College." The intention is to reduce the number of bulk letters the Review receives intended for publication in every college newspaper across the nation. This publication's main audience is those connected with Oberlin; this includes students, faculty, the administration, townspeople and alumni. While letters from other individuals often bring up important issues, they do not always take into account the particular concerns and mindsets of these groups. By all means, we welcome letters from individuals with differing concerns and mindsets, but we cannot be expected to print letters of no direct relevance to our readers.

Of course, this is a very thin line we are walking. It is extremely difficult to publish an opinion page, include our own editorial opinions, and then decide that someone else's opinion has less of a right to be on our pages. Who are we to say what is and is not relevant to our readers? Surely they are much better-equipped to answer this question and form opinions about the importance to their lives not only of the letters published in the Review, but of our editorials, articles, critiques and all the other material we publish than we are.

Therefore, we will take caution in making the decision not to print a letter. We will do our best to ensure that when we decide not to publish a letter, it will be because it is clear that its writer(s) did not intend the letter specifically for our paper, to be read by our audience.

Save Your Money

Everyone around here can use a rest. Between classes, extracurricular activities and trying to keep up with the exhausting social climate, Oberlin students deserve a break now and again. Thus, it's nice to have a movie theater downtown showing second-run films at a bargain price. In theory, at least.

Recent movie choices by the Apollo have had many students saying, "Why bother," and saving their three bucks for a Newcastle at the Feve. Those who have ventured to bother likely found themselves dismayed with the decidedly dismal quality of America's latest high-budget films. The smart ones left early.

Scary Movie, last week's box-office flop among students, offended many with ubiquitous homophobia and sexual jokes that wouldn't have even culled a snicker from a fourth-grader. The week before, Hollow Man thrilled audiences as Kevin Bacon utilized his invisibility to watch his neighbors undress and unbutton unsuspecting women's shirts.

If readers place any trust in Tim Willcutts' review of The Replacements in this week's Arts section, things aren't improving much. Of course, the Apollo deals with the dilemma of having to cater to two audiences ‹ the town and the College. However, their choices ‹ especially this semester ‹ have consistently been mindless Hollywood films with excessively foolish plots.

No one is asking the Apollo to shift its focus to self-consciously independent or lesser publicized, "intellectual" films. After all, a fluffy Hollywood drama goes down nice and easy sometimes (see Titanic). Moreover, a drastic shift in genre focus risks alienating sectors of its audience, an uneccesary venture since the Oberlin Film Series has Oberlin's underground film market cornered.

The Apollo would do well, however, to try and bring movies with some‹any‹degree of substance. If the Apollo continues to screen movies like the ones they have had recently, students will begin to seek alternative sources of entertainment on campus‹bowling, dancing at the 'Sco, even renting movies from Campus Video.

The fact is, films like Hollow Man and The Replacements just aren't worth our money. The Apollo seems to have adopted the dubious policy of deliberately showing mindless American movies featuring big stars and ill-conceived plots. One hopes that the coming weeks will find them showing movies with more stimulating scenarios, or at least diversifying the genres of incoming films. Until then, save your three bucks.