As the year draws to its official close, the Editorial Board of The Oberlin Review decided to sit down and reevaluate the editorial issues of the year. We attempted to discover common trends and considered the transformations — large and small, negative and positive — that we’ve seen.

There have been some significant strides forward. The General Faculty Council has just approved the all-gender housing proposal which, if approved by the Board of Trustees, will catapult Oberlin even further on its path of progressive action. The College has joined forces with the George Jones Memorial Farm to compost food scraps and coffee grounds from campus dining facilities in a move toward environmental sustainability. And generous alumni donations will fund a new jazz studies building and a facility for lacrosse, soccer and track and field.

But despite these strides ahead, many of the steps that the College has taken are too small, tentative or ineffective to enact real change. Some even represent steps backward. The Strategic Plan, passed last year with the intention of improving the quality of an Oberlin education, threatens to eliminate a number of faculty positions invaluable to our education; while we are relieved at the return of the Asian-American history position, this incongruous dismissal-turned-reinstatement troubles those of us who look for a better understanding of the administration’s closed-door decision-making procedures. In an effort to give us better housing, the Union Street complex was hastily constructed without due regard for student safety and environmental sustainability. The Oberlin Student Cooperative Association, a boon to the College’s marketplace reputation, had to fight for a major renovation in order to remain in operation for next year because the College is currently blinded by its long-term building vision.

These incidents make us wonder about how the College’s lack of inward action impacts our outside marketing image. To make us “fearless” in the fullest sense of the word, we need to become fearless beyond glossy admissions brochures. This unquestionably means that administrators must consider student and faculty voices in College governance. The College must bravely, but not irresponsibly, implement its goals articulated in the Strategic Plan to truly make Oberlin a stronger institution. To want to successfully compete with our “peer institutions” means to fund Middle Eastern and North African Studies, comprehensive housing repairs and environmentally-sustainable building projects.

If Oberlin wants to remain competitive — or live up to its ideals — cautious, small steps forward will not suffice. We must be fearless and make big, far-reaching moves.

To be fair, we have seen powerful instances of informed and focused student and faculty activism this year. Student senators themselves proposed the all-gender housing initiative, along with a resolution to adopt LEED building standards. Following the proposal to eliminate the Asian-American history position, members of the faculty were unafraid to challenge the effectiveness of the Strategic Plan and College governance. Students and faculty must continue to immerse themselves in the decision-making process so that the administration cannot excuse its monolithic decisions with claims of student apathy or misplaced activism. There must be a complete cooperation in transforming Oberlin for the better with full strides forward.

We hope that the Class of 2006 and others that follow will be able to return to an Oberlin that embraces student and faculty voices, to a College that unabashedly leads its peers and to a place where changing the world is not just something we talk about, but something we do every day.