Prospies denied entrance to co-ops
Oberlin’s co-ops have always embodied the progressive values and spirit that the College prizes, but with new concerns from the Office of Admissions, prospective students may not have an opportunity to experience the long-lived Oberlin Student Cooperative Association tradition. Responding to suspicions that swipe cards given to prospective students do not allow complete access to the College campus — the Harkness Co-op in particular — a Review staff member reported that indeed the prospective student she was hosting could not use her card to open Harkness’ door. Last night, this same staff member asked another prospie to travel around campus to see which doors she could open with the swipe card. The prospie visited Asia House, Keep, Dascomb, Talcott, Tank, Fairchild and Harkness. The last three, which are all co-ops (although Farichild is only an eating co-op), did not respond to the swipe card. Administrative Technician Jennifer George, who works at the admissions office and oversees the distribution of swipe cards for campus visitors, denied that any measures were taken to prevent prospective students from accessing certain dorms, adding that there were a number of prospie hosts living in Harkness. On Wednesday, Michele Gross, the assistant director of ResEd who is responsible for programming the cards distributed to prospies, was surprised to hear that students were having such difficulties with their swipe cards. “The cards have a funny issue,” Gross said. “The programming is broken into subgroups, so that all dorms on North campus and South campus, and then co-ops, are put onto the card collectively.” This means, Gross explained, that if one co-op cannot be accessed by a specific card, then theoretically none of the co-ops should respond to the card either. “The cards are not set up that way,” Gross said. “You can only turn off or on a whole group of dorms. If something is not working properly, it might be the sensors on the doors.” Gross, who is also a liaison to OSCA, assured the Review that “OSCA has a long history of students who value the OSCA experience and I believe we list it as one of our strengths and one of our selling points. OSCA is an asset to the College and I don’t believe anyone would be interested in hiding it from prospective students.” The functioning of prospie swipe cards is still a highly questionable and sensitive matter that must be looked into in greater depth but, in the meantime, it is important to consider it in the context of Harkness’s clashes with the Office of Admissions throughout this past academic year. Junior Colin Gunn, House Loose Ends Coordinator at Harkness, recalled that “early last semester Crys Latham [senior assistant director of admissions] came up with the idea that Harkness prospies were less likely to come to Oberlin based on some information that prospies at Harkness tended to have more complaints.” Gunn reported that Latham was ready to prohibit students living in Harkness from being prospie hosts, which led to a meeting to discuss Latham’s concerns. “There are probably lots of students who come to Oberlin and stay at other dorms and don’t come to Oberlin because they don’t get to experience the kind of community that Harkness fosters,” Gunn said, recalling his arguments at this meeting. “By not letting prospies come to Harkness, [Latham] would be weeding out the students who are more likely to appreciate what Harkness has to offer.” According to Gunn, Latham responded that in order to keep Harkness open for prospie visits, the co-op would have to be cleaner and “less offensive and intrusive” to visiting students. Towards the end of first semester, Gunn, along with fellow Harkness HLEC sophomore Benny Wheat and OSCA president sophomore Kat Tierney, met once again with Latham and another representative from the Admissions office. “They basically said that what they wanted from us was for us to change everything that Harkness is,” Gunn said. “We said to them, ‘we’d rather you not have prospies come to Harkness than to have you put so much pressure on us to change and be more like traditional dorms, like Dascomb or Noah.’” The result was that prospective students are no longer assigned to the dorm hosts living in Harkness unless they specifically ask. Whether this decision is at all linked to the issues surrounding the swipe cards has not yet been confirmed. When asked her thoughts on this matter, Latham declined to comment.
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