To the Editors:

I wish to encourage students to support City Council Candidates Daniel Gardner, Charles Peterson, and Eve Sandberg in the election on Tuesday. As students, we’ve all felt the uneasy sentiments stemming from “town-gown” relations.

These three candidates have experience and expertise that is needed to begin to address some of the problems that create that uneasiness. They look to increased communication between the City and College, and ask both entities to take some of the responsibility, as the first step toward a mutually satisfying relationship.

To me, what sets these three apart from the rest of the field is their expertise and experience. Almost anyone (even us, the lowly student body!) can identify problems in Oberlin: economic development, housing, environmental concerns… the list can go on and on. But Gardner, Peterson and Sandberg have something unique – an understanding of the institutions and programs available locally, statewide and nationally that can actually do something about those problems.

Oberlin students don’t live in Oberlin for enough election cycles to make it worth some policy makers’ time to pay much attention to what we want and need. I’ve spent some time with Gardner, Peterson, and Sandberg, and they are accessible people who have shown that they care what students think by coming to Oberlin to get advice about their campaign.

They all have personal experience with students: Gardener has worked on campus as the director of college-town relations; Peterson is a Professor at Wooster College and Sandberg is a Professor in our very own politics department (even if her office IS all the way down in the basement of Rice!)

Wake up guys, we live here; this is our home. Let’s show that we care about it by turning out on Tuesday, Nov. 4 to help elect Daniel Gardner, Charles Peterson and Eve Sandberg – people who can start to change a town that we all agree needs changing.

–Ary Amerikaner
College junior