The Oberlin Review
<< Front page Commentary December 2, 2005

Space concerns far from over

Students returning to campus after Thanksgiving found much to be thankful for, including the promised addition of two new campus facilities, made possible by gifts from alumni — and not a moment too soon. Students studying jazz will finally move away from those taking Jazzercise and into their own building, while the track team will be able once again to host home meets on their new NCAA-approved course.

The jazz studies program was previously housed within Hales Gym, an old, dimly-lit, un-air-conditioned building barely passable as a gymnasium, much less as a suitable home for talented musicians. Performance study was often hindered by poor acoustics and noise from activities in the adjacent gymnasium. Located across campus from the Conservatory, the facility was isolated and embarrassing.

The College’s current track was in such bad shape that the NCAA forbade its use, preventing several years of home meets and opportunities for students to show their support for their school and team.

These gifts were sorely needed, and cannot be appreciated enough.

While both of these are important steps in the ongoing effort to get Oberlin’s facilities up to par, as the roomful of demonstrators at Thursday night’s Trustee Forum showed, much still needs to be done.

The theater community of Oberlin has been waiting for new performance for over 30 years. The support for SPACE committee is such that demonstrations have become a regular feature of the forums. A school whose reputation is built largely on its commitment to the arts cannot afford to ignore this gaping void for so long. Oberlin’s rapidly declining rankings as a theater school by the Princeton Review show that this issue must be addressed if prospective students are to see us as anything other than a haven for “dodge ball targets” and “reefer madness.”

The SPACE committees newest proposal to build a flexible arts space rather than a simple black box theater shows a great deal of foresight into how to address Oberlin’s dearth of arts facilities.

Thanks largely to SPACE’s efforts the issue of performing arts space has been quite visible, though it is hardly the only area in which Oberlin’s facilities are lacking. Wilder also suffers. From the deteriorating stairwells to constraining spaces, the building no longer functions as an adequate Student Union center.

DeCafé has grown popular beyond its capacity to seat the number of students who try to frequent the dining area, and its shopping aisles are often gridlocked. The ’Sco, tiny and with poor sight lines, cannot rise to its potential as an appealing venue. Wilder is, simply put, aging, and in need of more than a face-lift.

These are just two of the many areas of the College badly in need of improvement; however, they are two of the most pressing.

We commend the administration for raising the appropriate funds and thank our generous alumni for the new jazz and athletic facilities, and urge them to continue fighting for better spaces on campus.

The improvements the alumni gifts facilitate will begin to amend the problem of shoddy, inadequate and nonexistent facilities that afflicts the school’s ability to stay competitive with peer institutions.
 
 

   

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