The Oberlin Review
<< Front page News September 9, 2005

Oberlin responds to Katrina crisis
Community reaches out after devastation
 
Katrina reaches Ohio: An installation outside of the Science Center falls to pieces as the effects of the hurricane reached Ohio and Oberlin early last week.
 

This fall, Oberlin welcomes back students, faculty and staff members during the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.. In a variety of ways, the community has directly responded to the devastating consequences.

In her first letter for the new academic year, President Nancy Dye announced to the community that three students from New Orlean’s Tulane University have been admitted to Oberlin for this academic year. Other measures taken include an organized faculty/staff panel on Wednesday night and many ongoing and planned fundraising events.

“The Office of Admissions has received a number of inquiries from students enrolled at Tulane University and other colleges in the devastated region,” Dye said in her letter. After a long discussion in which all the senior staff members took part, a decision to admit these three students was made. These discussions included Dye herself, together with all deans, the provost and the vice-presidents.

“We are certain that two first- year students will enroll soon — one has just arrived — and that a transfer student may join the class within the next day or two,” said Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Debra Charmonte last Tuesday. Due to issues of confidentiality, the names of these students are not disclosed to the general public.

Students, too have been involved in various ways: raising money and providing support for the victims of the hurricane.

The Wednesday evening faculty/staff panel met in West Lecture Hall and was attended by more than 200 students. The participants covered a variety of different aspects of the reasons for and the consequences of the disaster.

“We are seeing environmental racism embedded in structures and institutions,” said Ellen Stroud, an environmental historian. “By and large the people who found themselves in this situation were poor and they were black, they were sick and they were old.”

Stroud said that now it’s not a matter of “just rebuilding New Orleans, but rebuilding a just New Orleans.”

Many of the other panelists expressed similar opinions that linked the aftermath of the tragedy very closely with a social and class inequity.

Professor of African American Studies Pam Brooks presented the audience in West Lecture with examples from both recent and early American history to compare with the current situation.

“Make these connections and, most of all, take some positive affirmative action,” she urged the students in the hall. “We here in Oberlin have a tradition of meaningful activism.”

Brooks even recited the lyrics of a 1927 song by Betsy Smith, dedicated to the Mississippi flood of the same year.

“Don’t say blues ain’t political,” she added.

Taking a slightly different perspective, but making many of the same arguments, Charu Gupta, staff writer for The Cleveland Free Times, took the opportunity to criticize and discuss the reaction of the media to Katrina.

“In a disaster there is a tendency to over-generalize,” Gupta said, addressing the problems with the media coverage. “Bias which already exists is only compounded when [a journalist is] under a deadline.”

She added that “this has become a story about race and class,” but also expressed her opinion that there are some positive signs in the way journalists have reacted to the disaster.

“[They] seem to have grown a spine,” Gupta said, approving of the fact that journalists have dared to ask the Bush administration straightforward questions.

As a whole, the panel proved very successful for students and faculty members, who remained in the lecture hall for almost three hours, asking and answering questions.

Despite the fact that one student pointed out that there were more people in the hall than he had seen on campus doing something about the issue, there are a number of on- and off-campus fundraising initiatives in progress to support the citizens of New Orleans and the region.

The Oberlin branch of the national Second Harvest organization has a T-shirt sale, the money from which will go directly to New Orleans and will go toward purchasing food and clothes. The Oberlin College Office and Professional Employees Union are accepting donations for the American Red Cross. The Conservatory of Music will also be sponsoring a benefit concert, as Dye said in her Sept. 2 letter.

As Eric Estes, associate dean of students and director of the Multicultural Resource Center, said at the end of the Wednesday panel, “I hope this panel will serve as a start here in Oberlin as we think about this event in our history.”
 
 

   


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