OSCA Accomplishes Mission, other letters

To the Editors of the Review and the Oberlin Community:

As you know, these past few weeks have been particularly stressful for the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association. We are relieved and pleased to be able to say that the Pyle Inn hood matter has now been resolved to OSCA’s satisfaction. The College informed us on Tuesday that the hood will be replaced this summer, allowing Pyle Inn to serve its membership next year.

We would like to thank those who educated themselves, raised awareness and spoke out on this issue. These include: members of Pyle Inn who have been so cooperative and good-natured since this whole thing began, OSCA members who attended the General Meeting and brainstormed solutions with us, student Senate members who made efforts on our behalf, Review reporters who took great pains to present the facts, Review editors who encouraged the College to meet its obligations to OSCA and the student body for its general concern over the student-administration relationship. The collegial efforts we have seen these last few weeks constitute a perfect example of Oberlin students’ ability to have a voice. We appreciate all the support we’ve received and encourage you to keep working together to make change.

–Erica Tempesta
College junior
OSCA Operations Manager and President-Elect

To the Editors:

In its April 14 editorial, the Review urges the College to reconsider our campus’s ban on Coca-Cola in light of an impending investigation by the International Labor Organization into the violence against union activists in Coke factories in Colombia.

In May 2004, the Purchasing Committee, charged with overseeing Oberlin’s Anti-Sweatshop Policy, recommended to President Dye that the College boycott Coke. In November 2004, she assented to our recommendation, writing in part:

“This boycott will continue until our committee recommends otherwise, specifically unless and until Coca-Cola allows an independent investigation in Colombia by the Workers’ Rights Consortium.”

At the May 2005 meeting to which the Review refers, Coke and the Workers Rights Consortium agreed to form a commission to begin negotiations on such an investigation. Those negotiations collapsed in late 2005, when, according to Glen Fichman, chair of the WRC negotiating team on the commission and Professor of Law at UCLA, Coke “informed the Commission that Coke and its bottlers will not cooperate with the proposed assessment.”

Essentially, Coke argued that an investigation could reveal information germane to a lawsuit brought by the Colombian union whose activists were killed in Coke plants. The WRC team believes, however, that “the assessment plan developed by the Commission, following extensive discussions with Coke and other stakeholders, expressly stated that it was not the purpose of the assessment to investigate matters that were the subject of the pending litigation.”

The Review assumes, reasonably enough, that the ILO investigation will be independent. Yet the Chronicle of Higher Education recently referred to charges that “Ed Potter, Coke’s director of global labor relations,” who also headed Coke’s negotiating team on the commission, “is a member of a key ILO committee and that a union that had asked the ILO to get involved was not representative of the workers in Colombia.”

Coke has not met the sensible and feasible terms that President Dye specified for bringing Oberlin’s boycott to an end. There are good reasons to believe that Coke is engaged in a sophisticated strategy conceived and executed by highly paid, experienced attorneys and publicists to stonewall, obfuscate and dissemble. Under these conditions, the Purchasing Committee has no plans to change its recommendation to President Dye.

The Review is right to urge that “the College recognize student opinion in any dialogue considering the Coca-Cola ban.” The Purchasing Committee not only welcomes the views of students, staff and faculty, but it builds them into its work. The Committee came about as a result of a student movement, it has been chaired for many years by students (until this year when the chair left campus and no student member could be found to replace her) and two of its members are students. Our only staff is a student researcher. Two of the three delegates to the 2005 Washington meeting were students. We are easy to reach and we welcome discussion.

–Marc Blecher
Professor of Politics
Chair, Oberlin College Purchasing Committee

To the Editors:

Last week you printed a letter from me under a heading suggesting that those wiley Grape editors were making trouble. However, I was not making trouble. I was pointing out a lie you printed, which you have yet to retract. The Review advertised a show that did not exist: The Teeth and the Pussy Pirates, at the ’Sco. You said they would play on a Sunday, and even though the ’Sco isn’t usually open on Sundays, I believed you. But you guys were just up to your old tricks. You liars.

–Joe Kimmel
Double-degree fifth year

To the Editors:

As I read the editorial “Never Again?” I felt nearly crushed by the weight of history. I searched for something that could help me wrap my mind around the number five million, something to help me comprehend how Ms. Bob-Waksberg could forget all those people. While looking through the glass window into the gas chamber at Auschwitz, did she imagine herself ignoring half the suffocating victims while mourning the others? 

Eleven million died in the Holocaust.  Six million were Jews. All of them were people. To state six million as the number of Holocaust victims is to ignore almost half of the dead, to value the deaths of the Holocaust’s Jewish victims over all others. This act stratifies human lives within a hierarchy of value, which is in its form exactly what the Nazis did. The Holocaust was simply the outcome of carrying such a hierarchy to its logical conclusion. Only in regarding all human lives as equal can we prevent the Holocaust from reoccurring. Only then can we make good on the promise, “Never Again.”

–Mathew Lippincott
College senior

To the Editor:

I am pleased that Becky Bob-Waksberg (“Never Again,” April 28) learned from Polish teenagers about Nazi persecution of non-Jewish Poles. But I regret she did not draw the appropriate conclusions.

It makes no sense to claim that Poland “allowed” genocide or “let” the Holocaust happen, when unarmed Polish residents lacked the power to hinder the armed and hostile Nazis.

The Germans created the Auschwitz camp without Polish help or consent after they had invaded and conquered the area, and annexed it to the Reich. Their goal was a purely German region.

There were no Poles among the SS men who operated the camp. The only Polish role at Auschwitz was as prisoner. Indeed, the initial purpose of the camp was to terrorize the local Polish population.

Why should Poles not live in Oswiecim (as the town next to the camp is known in Polish)? Europe has a long history of war and violence; virtually every place on that continent has some bloody moment in its past.

For Poles to abandon their town of Oswiecim, as the Nazis had planned, would be to grant Hitler a posthumous victory.

–Charles Chotkowski
Director of Research
Holocaust Documentation Committee
Polish American Congress
Fairfield, CT

Dear Students, Faculty and Staff:

One of the main goals of the Student Union is to facilitate the development of an Oberlin College community while also serving as a hub for many different student activities, clubs and other organizations. Recently it has come to our attention that some people are choosing to avoid the Union due to the amount of second hand smoke present in certain parts of the building.

Cigarette use on the back porch and within close proximity to the building and its entrances causes the air in several offices and rooms to become filled with second hand smoke on a regular basis, creating a health hazard for building users.

As a result of the indoor and outdoor air quality, many individuals who are sensitive to secondhand smoke are prevented from using certain parts of the building, specifically the main lobby, outdoor porch area and south-facing offices.

This is a very tricky issue for the Student Union. There is not a uniform smoking policy that is enforced by the College; however, we feel that it is necessary to take some action to ensure that Wilder provides a healthy environment for its staff, students and visitors. We would like to make some change that will make Wilder more friendly to those sensitive to secondhand smoke. This would likely require some type of regulation for smoking on the back porch and entrances to the building.

As a Student Union it is important that we make every attempt to facilitate the creation of community space for all students. We would like to solve this problem in a manner that is sensitive to both smokers and nonsmokers and would like to hear suggestions from students, faculty, staff and others regarding this issue.

–Student Union Board

Dear Oberlin Student Body:

My name is Ilene Pabon and I have something to share. There is an incredibly ignorant and racist show going up in Wilder Main and as a Liberal activist, I feel dirty.

The Oberlin Gilbert and Sullivan Players’ production of The Mikado should not be allowed to be staged and performed in Oberlin.

Our rich tradition of activism, feminism, symbolism, cubism, Marxism and politicalisms would make it clear to some that the cultural appropriation found in this play go against the one “ism” we really stand for, blind opinionism.

How could a show where people are wearing Kimonos be funny? I find nothing funny about putting on the mask of another’s culture and parading around stage like actors or something. Actors are supposed to be race-less, that is the whole point of theatre here! To convey nothing! How dare OGASP go and use fans for ethnic believability. I’m sorry, but the only fans I know of are the ones who support our beloved Yeoman football team.

Furthermore, I am the type of leftist student who has ZERO subtlety or even an acute sense of irony, so if they really are trying to be funny, it is NOT going to work on ME. No sir. I hope you all realize what awful people you are for performing stuff I know nothing about. You ALL deserve to be in a room full of Republicans...forever.

–Ilene Pabon
Conservatory junior
Activist
 
 

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