The College’s “Fearless” publicity campaign received its first artistic challenge Thursday, May 10 as posters examining what it means to be fearless drew a crowd to Wilder bowl.

The posters were the culmination of a Comparative American Studies class called Latino Cultural Activism in Theory and Practice. The 13 students, led by Professor Lisa Hall, spent the second half of the semester collaboratively creating several posters dealing with fears pertaining to the Oberlin community and higher education in general.

“We basically thought the idea of being fearless is a really dangerous concept because we felt there are actually a lot of things to be fearful of,” said College senior Sara Rizik-Baer. “We’re basically talking about personal fears, institutional fears and world fears.”

The poster that Ritzik-Baer collaborated on addressed the fear of Oberlin losing diversity as a result of rising tuition. A flyer distributed at the event explained, “Next year, attending Oberlin College will cost $49,000. In 2005, the median annual household income was $46,326. These facts, combined with the removal of need-blind admissions, have made it harder for low income students, including low income students of color, to attend Oberlin.”

For Ritzik-Baer, this issue hits especially close to home. “I got in because of need-blind admissions,” she said. “I definitely wonder if I were to apply today if I would have been able to get in due to my financial situation.”

The posters, printed in jarring black, white and red, were inspired by the poster activism popular among the Bay Area Chicano community. They were strung on a clothesline and as curious students and faculty mulled around the display, they were invited to become a part of it by listing their own fears on scraps of cloth that were then sewn together into an ever-growing chain of fright. Organizers said they may wrap the completed patchwork around Cox or otherwise deliver it to the administration.

The event coincided with presidential finalist Marvin Krislov’s visit to campus, but Pablo Mitchell, head of the Comparative American Studies department, said it was not planned with this in mind. “The event was planned far in advance of his visit,” Mitchell said. “It’s his good luck I think to be able to see first-hand some of the great work of Oberlin students.”

Another member of CAST 202, College junior Adriaan Follansbee called the exhibit “a campaign in response to the silencing of voices on campus in general.”

Follansbee was referring to legions of voices, according to the posters, but a central theme is resistance to the idea of branding Oberlin as fearless. “In a way,” Follansbee said, “the administration felt like they had gotten away with the ‘Fearless’ campaign.”

One poster dealt with this theme and bore the caption, “I fear that I am speaking, but no one in power is listening.” The poster showed a face in profile with an open mouth, from which issued white lines that apparently represented speech but spread out into empty space.

Another poster showed a student blithely enjoying music on her iPod in front of Mudd Library, safely behind a fence bearing the sign “Access denied” and locked by a card reader like those found on dorm doors. “I fear my educational privilege is at the expense of others,” read the caption.

“We decided to stay local and do Oberlin issues instead of world issues,” Follansbee explained, “but we also tried to do it in a way that it reached world issues too like the issue of educational access.”

The fears that viewers contributed to the display included poisonous spiders, inability to pay off student loans, American masculinity and many others. The public display of fears highlighted a point made by Rizik-Baer: “It’s only human to be fearful.”