| << Front page | Commentary | March 11, 2005 |
Review disrespects Senate, other letters
To the Editors:
(It should be noted that the views contained in this letter are my views alone and do not necessarily represent the position or stance of Student Senate as a body.)
After reading your editorial in the March 4 edition of the Review (“Senate needs to prove integrity”), I felt compelled to reply with a letter and to attempt to respond to the concerns raised in your editorial.
In the first place, I should point out a major problem in the structure of Student Senate that is rarely noted by students or the administration: turnover. Your editorial begins by citing two voting incidents (both of questionable integrity) that took place one year ago and one semester ago, respectively. The fact is, there is only one senator currently on Student Senate who was present for either of those events.
I don’t dispute the notion that Student Senate as a body should be held to the actions it has taken in the past, but I do object to the idea that the individuals whom Oberlin students currently call their senators be held responsible for these incidents, over which they simply had no control.
That being said, I can now respond to concerns raised over the actions of the current Student Senate, namely the manner in which the recent election was run. I candidly admit that there were mistakes made in this election. Some candidates were informed of the outcome a number of hours before the polls were officially closed (although votes trickled in at this point at a rate of less than one per hour). This was poor judgment on the part of the Senate Elections Taskforce and for that error I am extremely regretful.
But the fact that voter turnout was so high, that the election was extremely inclusive and that Senate did, in the end, have 15 voting members to vote on the College’s strategic plan at the General Faculty meeting on Friday, March 4 made this election a success.
Your editorial states that the student body should demand transparency and accountability from Student Senate. I could not agree more, and increased student involvement in Senate activities has been one of Student Senate’s chief goals for some time now. Senators have worked very hard to make themselves available to students, to communicate effectively with students and to organize regular forums and discussions between the student body and the administration in order to provide a venue in which students’ voices may be heard.
All of these actions have been taken with the utmost sincerity on the part of your Student Senators and all have been designed with the interests of Oberlin students in mind.
In the last sentence of your editorial, you suggest that the “political ambitions” of current senators have been the driving force of Senate’s actions in the past semester (and during the recent election). The logic in this statement escapes me. The connection between logistical errors committed (and admitted to) during the election and our current members’ “political ambitions” is nonexistent.
I was disappointed to see the Review make this accusation and believe it owes an apology to the many hard-working members of Student Senate who have spent a great number of hours over the past semester trying to make Oberlin better for its student body.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the recent election by voting. Student Senate extends an ongoing invitation to any and all Oberlin students to visit any of its weekly plenary sessions Sunday evenings, 7 p.m., Wilder Hall to get involved. Thank you.
–Jonathan Bruno
College sophomore
Student senator
To the Editors:
Last week, the Review wrote an editorial that puts question to the potency of this paper and questions whether writers at the Review know what they are writing about before they write it.
No one rallies for peach cobbler if it is already sitting in front of them. Similarly, the Review need not issue a call for students to demand accountability and transparency from Senate in addition to their administration. A correct call would be for Oberlin students to utilize the high levels of transparency and accountability already present in Senate.
Student senators are directly accountable to students; unlike the administration, students elect their representatives and do so on a semesterly basis. This semester, 30 students chose to run for Senate and half the student body took the opportunity to vote and choose who would represent them.
Student Senate is highly transparent. All Student Senate meetings, which are held every Sunday at 7 p.m. in Wilder 215, are open to the student body. Students are welcome to come to meetings to listen, comment and bring their own ideas and concerns. The Review is also invited to attend meetings; it is ironic that the Review calls for Senate to be transparent and yet no longer chooses to send a reporter to attend the public Senate meetings where Senate decisions are made.
Additionally, for the express purpose of being open and connected to the student body, each student senator sets and holds two office hours each week.
During my time as a senator, I have seen Student Senate work hard to try to give students a voice on this campus, working to be involved and to empower students with the ability to be involved in shaping decisions that affect them. The senators that I have worked with have put in extensive effort and have been genuinely committed to these goals. The Review’s characterization that Student Senate represents nothing “more than the political ambitions of its own members” is absurd and frankly hurtful.
–Ezra Temko
College junior
Student senator
To the Editors:
In the March 4 issue of the Review a copy of a letter appeared, signed by eight members of the faculty. This letter has also been circulated widely throughout the College community. It describes a variety of important concerns surrounding issues of diversity at Oberlin College in general and, especially, for the African-American community. As chair this year of the College Faculty Committee on Admissions and Relations to Secondary Schools, I would like to augment their comments with respect to recruitment, admission and enrollment of African-American students, as I believe that the statistics suggest that more subtle phenomena are affecting the demographics of African-American students at Oberlin College.
According to internal institutional research, the percentage of African-American students admitted to both divisions (i.e., College and Conservatory) as first-year students has been relatively stable, averaging 7.2 percent of the admitted pool for the last decade. Last year (fall 2004) that percentage was 7.0 percent, very slightly below the 10 year average. However, the yield for African-American students (i.e. the percentage of admitted students who enroll) has fluctuated much more during this same period. For example, during 1995-97, the average yield for African-Americans was 31.7 percent (overall average yield was 28 percent). For 2002-04, however, the average yield for African Americans was only 26.3 percent, while the overall figure was 35 percent. Hence, the decline in African-American enrollment can be correlated much more closely to the decline in yield, not to any changes in the percentages of students admitted.
I cannot directly refute the assertion that the “more recently admitted Black students tend to come from suburban schools and elite private schools versus the inner-city schools from which we drew significant enrollments in the past.” However, I note that the percentage of enrolled African-American students who are eligible for Pell Grants (and thus can be classified as low-income) has actually increased from 34 percent in 1995 to 40 percent in 2004. These figures would seem to run counter to the claim that the admissions process is resulting in a different social demographic among Oberlin’s African-American enrollees from years past. Thus any negative developments for the curriculum or community may be due to factors other than the socioeconomic make-up of the African-American students we enroll.
On the basis of the statistics cited above, there is evidently more work to do to encourage talented and desirable students to attend Oberlin College. I believe that the campus (not just the Office of Admissions) can be very effective at having a positive impact on the enrollment of African-American students, and students of color more generally, if it focuses on the transition from offer of admission to acceptance of the offer and enrollment at Oberlin College. And, indeed, with spring on the way, we all have the opportunity and obligation to take some time to make clear to prospective students and their families, and African-American students in particular, that Oberlin provides a rich and challenging curriculum, a nurturing educational environment and excellent preparation for their careers.
–Susan Jane Colley
–Andrew and Pauline Delaney
Professors of Mathematics
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