Derby Important as Life Itself

To the Editor:

As a hundred or so of our fellow students head off this weekend to the FTAA protests in the distant land of Quebec City, a few of us will stay back and fight to save our school and ourselves. The Bike Derby is back and more important than ever. As we gather together this Saturday on Harkness bowl we will not just be smashing bikes together but we will be making a strong attempt to reconnect ourselves with Oberlin College’s progressive history and anarchistic spirit. As many of us watch our community around us we see Oberlin slipping into the mainstream. The Bike Derby and other memories of past glory become only reminders of what we have lost. This weekend we strive to end the nostalgia and to start a new revolution on the Oberlin campus. A revolution of beauty and expression that allows us to color the world around us and fill ourselves with the emotion of an alive human spirit. A revolution that when we leave here will spread out to the world and bring it real change.
We cannot sit idly by while the last wisps of our human spirit are drained by litigation and fear, the factors that ended the first round of Derbies. We must break out. We must come to the Derby ready to fight for our salvation, our expression, and cry out for our existence.


–Zachary Moser
College junior