News Briefs

Commencement plans finalized

On the morning of May 26 more than 700 students plan to receive degrees at the College’s 170th Commencement ceremony, to take place in Tappan Square.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for national reporting, Anthony Lewis, is scheduled to present the Commencement address. Also a known civil rights activist, Lewis is a distinguished author as well as the recipient of a Visiting Professorship at Columbia University since 1983. For a time he was a Harvard Law School lecturer, and a New York Times columnist noted by the Boston Globe for his “liberal conscience.”

Myriad events are planned for Commencement weekend, beginning Friday, May 23 and concluding Monday morning, following the ceremony. Among these are alumni golf games, theater events, receptions, meals, campus and Allen Art Museum tours, faculty presentations, and dancing at the ’Sco.

Oberlin on-line has further information posted as well as a complete schedule of events at http://www.oberlin.edu/colrelat/commencement/.

—Rachel Decker

Dye denies student wages low

President Nancy Dye adamantly refuted figures given to the Swarthmore paper, The Phoenix, a few weeks ago that showed Oberlin’s student employment pay scales were much lower than the College’s peers. The figures, taken from data collected by the Consortium for Financing Higher Education, showed Oberlin’s average student wage at $5.50 per hour, $0.35 below the College’s minimum wage. Dye said that the COFHE data is flawed, and that the hourly student average rate at $7.87. Due to insufficent information, the Review has not been able to independently verify either of these numbers.

—Douglass Dowty

Firelands remains; Future complex honors first black female graduate

The Firelands apartment complex opening next fall as junior and senior housing will retain its original name after Residential Life sponsored a contest to come up with a moniker for the revamped College facility.

Also decided in the contest was the name for the off-campus College housing due to be built for Fall of 2004. The facility will be named the Patterson Complex after Mary Jane Patterson, who graduated from Oberlin in 1862. Patterson was the first African-American woman to graduate from the College and is thought by many to be the first black woman to receive a Bachelor’s degree in the United States.

Both naming decisions were made through Residential Life with the guidance of the Housing and Dining Subcommittee.

—Douglass Dowty