To Pass Through the Arch, other letters

To the Editors:

Commencement is approaching and once again the question of walking through or around the Memorial Arch on that Monday morning is at the forefront of graduating seniors’ minds; whether one walks through or around the Arch, a serious political statement is made. There are many opinions and rumors surrounding the Arch and we hope to clear up any misconceptions or confusion regarding the history of this controversial monument.

The Arch was dedicated on May 14, 1902, as a gift from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to Oberlin College. Its purpose was — and continues to be — to commemorate the lives of Christian missionaries from the United States who died during the Boxer uprising. The American Board voted to place the monument on the Oberlin College campus since 14 of the 18 who were killed were affiliated with Oberlin.

Students have traditionally walked through the Arch during commencement ceremonies during the opening processional. However, in the 1970s, students decided to take an alternative path by walking around the Arch. From the onset, the Asian American Alliance was a prominent voice in educating students about the Arch. AAA printed a pamphlet titled, “Haven’t decided to walk around the Arch, yet?” which explained that walking around the Arch “does not deny or dismiss the history, or condone the killing, of Oberlin’s missionaries and others with ‘good intentions.’” In other words, walking around the arch does not at all demonize the missionaries. Walking around the monument also “reminds others of the alternative histories that have been submerged under, and conveniently forgotten by, Western expansionism and imperialism,” and honors “those struggles that are obscured or denied by the dominant narratives of history.”

The Class of 1994 dedicated a plaque that has been installed on the Arch. The plaque is, according to its inscription, “in memory of the Chinese Citizens killed” during the Boxer uprising. While this installment does address that Chinese died, it is important to remember that the plaque came about after years of education that AAA and other active students promulgated.

It is necessary for this education to continue. Before listening to rumors or jumping to conclusions, we encourage you to take into consideration the historical truths and implications of the Arch.

–Daniel Domaguin
–Marianne Tassone
College seniors
–Kimberley Meinert
College junior

To the Editors:

I recently re-read a story on ObieWeb about the incredible generosity of the late Dr. William Shelby Oliver, OC ’35, and his wife Evelyn “Puddy” Oliver, OC ’34. Dr. Oliver and his wife had been generous benefactors to Oberlin during their lifetimes and shortly before his death, Dr. Oliver enhanced a scholarship fund established in honor of his wife with a gift that will over time support scholarships for 32 “Puddy Scholars” at Oberlin. In making that gift, Dr. Oliver was quoted as saying: “You never pay back, you pay up.”

As I thought about Dr. and Mrs. Oliver’s gifts to Oberlin, I thought that there is no better legacy in life than helping other people get their good start in life as educated men and women. You see, Dr. Oliver started life without the benefit of family money or social status and he came of age during the Great Depression with no means to pay for the college education that he desperately wanted. Oberlin College (i.e. previous Oberlin students and friends of the College) came through for him with a scholarship and he never forgot the support from his alma mater that prepared him for medical school and a highly successful career as a doctor.

For the Class of 2006, my sincere congratulations on the successful completion of your undergraduate experience at Oberlin. You will now have the rest of your life to enjoy the status of being an Oberlin alumnus. Whether you are going to graduate school or entering the working world, remember that you have available to you a broad network of Oberlin alumni wherever you live. Consider starting early the habit of “paying up” as an alumni volunteer for both some of your time and money.

You should know that Oberlin relies on substantial financial support from alumni and friends; that support allows the student body to reflect a broad social and economic diversity and enhances the Oberlin experience for all students. If you believe in the Oberlin experience and value its diversity, remember that it costs a lot of money. The money must generally come from Oberlin’s alumni and compared to some of our peer institutions we don’t give back to Oberlin to the extent that we should.

I challenge the Class of 2006 to start a new tradition and aim for full participation within the class in making an annual monetary gift to Oberlin. Hopefully, each and every one of you will have something about your Oberlin experience that you love and if that’s the case, you should find inspiration to provide support to maintain that aspect of Oberlin for the benefit of future students.

Enjoy the satisfaction of earning your degrees and please accept a warm welcome into the ranks of your Alumni Association.

–Wendell P. Russell, Jr.
OC ’71
President, Oberlin Alumni Association

To the Editors:

I realize much of the Review is made up of volunteers. I know that this school provides little to no journalistic training (there is a journalism lab offered along with private reading, but no major, department or full-time professor). I respect many of the authors and editors on the Review staff. Nevertheless, after I read Kelsey Fuller’s article entitled “Two 9/11 Films: Too Much, Too Soon” I had to ponder the following questions:

1. Does the Review own a stylebook? For people not accustomed to journalism terms (perhaps most of the Review staff), a stylebook is a standard manual for writing articles, including commentary, reviews and editorials. It is like the Chicago Manual of Style, telling journalists how to abbreviate, state and quote sources. The most popular stylebook is published by the Associated Press. Just a heads-up, though, before the Review staff starts pointing out faults in my writing, people writing letters to the editor don’t have to use a stylebook. Therefore, I will not.

2. Which brings me to my next question, why don’t Review commentary writers use sources? “According to polls, though, Americans have agreed that this is one movie to avoid. It’s just too much too soon,” Fuller wrote in her article. According to what polls? The critics are not polling as such. Of 150 reviewers featured on www.rotten-tomatoes.com, 137 gave United 93 a positive review, giving it an incredibly “fresh” rating of 91%. A skeptical Manohla Dargis of the New York Times wrote that the movie is almost challenging us in a time of war and blind leadership. “But that narrow focus, along with the lack of fully realized characters, and the absence of any historical or political context, raises the question of why, notwithstanding the usual (if shaky) commercial imperative, this particular movie was made. To jolt us out of complacency?” she wrote, referring to the film’s absence of a “star” and focus on an event, not a context.

Of course, Fuller was referring to “American Polls,” which, by the way, is not a source; it’s a cop-out for a writer that does not want to do her research. Out of 2000 votes in a USA Today online poll, 63% said they would not see the movie. They did not, however, say that it was “too much, too soon” as Fuller stated in her article. A SurveyUSA News Poll reported that 57% of people are “ready to watch a movie about the events that unfolded on 9/11,” though only 38 percent are planning on actually seeing the film. Fifty-eight percent of those polled believe it is “appropriate to have made a movie about the events of 9/11.” Fuller’s generalized statistic applied more to Americans just not interested in seeing the movie, not Americans that believed it was “too much, too soon.”

3. My last question is possibly my most pondered when reading the article: How the heck can Fuller review a movie (and, because the story had biased, generalized viewpoints, it read very much like a review) without even seeing it? Fuller never communicated whether she saw the film or not, but based on her lack of any substantial information, I’m guessing not only has she not seen the film, but she hasn’t read very much about it either. I have not seen it, so I cannot say if it is a politicized source of propaganda for an unjustified war. But whether it is “too much, too soon” depends from person to person. There were at least 20 films made about World War II during World War II, including Above Suspicion, Across the Pacific and Bataan. Was it “too much, too soon” for those families? My grandmother said the Hollywood depictions helped her understand and cope with the war.

What I do know is based on the testimonies about the film from the families of the victims and the incredible reviews I have read from some of the critics I respect the most, I already respect and intend to see this film. As Dargis of New York Times said, perhaps this was meant to draw us out of complacency. Or maybe it will just be a well-made film that deserves recognition for just that. Either way, people have written stories, created art and composed music about 9/11 since the day after the attacks. Filmmaking is another art form that deserves a chance to express the events of 9/11 in hopes that people will better understand.

–Megan Highfill
Conservatory junior

To the Editors:

It is that happy time of year, a time when many remarkably talented students graduate from Oberlin College. To all of you I shout a hearty “Congratulations!”

While students, staff and, yes, even faculty are in a celebratory mood, I would nonetheless like to take this opportunity to comment on two unfortunate stereotypes which, in my view, are present on campus to some degree.

The first encompasses the general view that women and mathematics do not mix. This is blatantly false. One example among many is provided by senior Joanna Miles, a double major in mathematics and English. Joanna carries a 3.82 GPA in mathematics, this from a Department in which the average grade awarded last year translates to a 2.55 GPA. Joanna also completed an Honors project under the supervision of Michael Henle for which she tackled open (that is, unsolved) problems in graph theory. To Joanna’s substantial credit, she even managed to come up with her own theorem along the way. I simply want to point out that women and mathematics clearly do mix well.

I believe no underrepresented group on campus is marginalized to a greater extent than the athletes. The gist of many a comment in this weekly and in other venues over the years is that athletes are not up to snuff academically, that is, the presence of an athlete on campus is primarily due to the fact that s/he plays a sport. Noah Streib is a senior who played four years of soccer and two years of baseball at OC. Noah happens to also be a mathematics major with a 4.0 GPA in mathematics. An Honors student this year under the direction of Robert Bosch, Noah is heading off to the highly regarded PhD program in Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization at Georgia Tech.

Every Department graduates absolutely outstanding students each year. At this happiest of times I hope we can remember to continue on with the often difficult task of being truly open-minded. Happy end-of-the-semester to all.

–James A. Walsh
Professor of mathematics

To the Editors:

I regret the need to engage in a debate that detracts attention from a pressing contemporary issue, but my comments have been provoked by the profoundly offensive accusations leveled at Becky Bob-Waksberg by Matthew Lippincott.

Ms. Bob-Waksberg’s article “Never Again” urges us to speak out against the atrocities being committed in Darfur, drawing an analogy between the genocide taking place in Sudan and the heinous crimes perpetrated by the Nazis. Aside from missing the point of her article, Mr. Lippincott slanders Ms. Bob-Waksberg who was in no way trying to obscure the suffering of non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Ms. Bob-Waksberg wrote about her individual, personal reaction to visiting Auschwitz. Ms. Bob-Waksberg is Jewish and I presume the targeted slaughter of people who share her religion and ethnicity has particular resonance for her in considering the history of World War II.

Mr. Lippincott goes beyond the spurious accusation that Ms. Bob-Waksberg advocates a “hierarchy of value” for human lives — in essence calling her a racist. He creates a vulgar and graphic scenario (“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?”) and interprets her well-intentioned and insightful article as a kind of Nazism (“This act stratifies human lives within a hierarchy of value, which is in its form exactly what the Nazis did.”).

Needless to say, Mr. Lippincott’s analysis is not only wildly inaccurate, but deeply disturbing. Mr. Lippincott should examine his impulses. If he felt that Ms. Bob-Waksberg did not pay proper respect to all of the victims of the Holocaust, he might have written an educational piece that served that purpose. As an Oberlin student, he should know the dangers of a universalizing ideology that ignores difference. Mr. Lippincott’s appreciation of the gravity of catastrophe that decimated the Jewish population would benefit from a more thorough study of the long and complicated history of anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe. Ms. Bob-Waksberg’s acknowledgement of the particularities of human existence is what allows her to value the lives and losses of others. Whatever his motivations, it is inexcusable to suggest that mourning the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust is morally reprehensible.

–Lily Brent
–Aviva Richman
College seniors
–Julia Vogl
College junior
–Ze’ev Saffir
Double-degree junior
–Sarah Rosenthal
–Katie Greenberg
College sophomores
–Julia Leeman
College first-year
–Hannah Levinson
Double-degree sophomore

To the Editors:

I was glad to see Becky Bob-Waksberg’s article (“Never Again,” April 28th) receiving attention by readers. The genocide being committed in Darfur has only recently begun to receive major coverage by the international press, and far too little has been done to prevent the deaths of innocent Sudanese people.

The Holocaust is something every child needs to learn about, and I think that those who wrote in about Becky’s article will agree with me here. But knowing the truth about the past is useless unless we use this knowledge to guide our actions today. Indeed, I can think of no better way to memorialize those who died in that unthinkable violence than to stand up and try to stop the past from repeating itself.

The fewer genocides we have to debate about, the better.

–Matt Rumizen
College first-year

To the Editors:

Results have been tabulated from the election for the Class of 2006 Alumni Class Officers. The following students have been elected:

Anita Ofori-Addo, PresidentDiana Wueger, Vice President

For your information, the alumni class president is a member of the Alumni Council and returns to campus each fall for its weekend-long meeting. Each year, after the Alumni Council meeting, the class president writes a letter to members of the class reporting on Oberlin and on alumni activities and programs.

The class officers serve a five-year term until the class celebrates its first reunion in May 2011. They are responsible for planning the cluster reunion activities with officers of the other two classes (2005 and 2007) and the Alumni Office staff.

If for any reason the president is unable to carry out her responsibilities, the vice president assumes that office.

–M. Danielle Young
Assistant Director of Alumni Events
OC Alumni Association
 
 

About us
Subscriptions
Advertising

Previous issue
Archives

Powered by