Last week Marvin Krislov was named the next president of Oberlin College, and our school ushered in a new era. Many of us have framed our relationship to the president around Nancy Dye’s push for a relationship with Iran and her work on a Strategic Plan, the goals of which many of us still aren’t quite sure about. Krislov’s nomination for me marks an opportunity — an opportunity for transitions that may bring substantial but positive change, and for reflection.

I have watched Oberlin change over the last four years. My first year here, bent on remaining a New Yorker without a driver’s license and wondering where the 24-hour markets were, I found companionship in other city kids, struggling to make the transition from bright lights to rural sprawl. My sophomore year I went to my first OCircus performance and reaffirmed my belief that Oberlin is the most productive, quirky place on the planet. At the beginning of my junior year I discovered the Writing Center, which quickly became a service I was determined to promote, and in the spring I went abroad and weekly wondered what was happening in Oberlin that I undoubtedly wouldn’t want to miss.

This year I saw Oberlin make a greater push towards environmental sustainability, thanks to the efforts of folks like Andrew DeCoriolis, Morgan Pitts and Sam Merrett, to name a few. I also participated in the first full year of the Spanish In The Elementary Schools program, the brainchild of Kim Faber that is quickly changing the face of town–gown relations. I watched Oberlin struggle to work out the kinks of new housing policies, which surely will be less baffling in time. I helped develop a new Academic Commons in Mudd, a place that will provide a physical space for uniting students, faculty and academic services in a more casual way than the dark corridors of Rice or the concrete underground of A-Level.

I also had the pleasure of being a student member on the Educational Planning and Policy Committee, where I discovered the other side of Oberlin, where departments are reviewed and proposed faculty positions are discussed, a side that convinced me that Oberlin is and will continue to be in good hands.

In many ways, I feel that this year has exposed me to the underbelly of Oberlin, and I only wish that it had happened sooner. In these final days, when reflections are crucial for processing all that has happened in these past four years, I offer you mine and wish you the best in your own reflection on this year of new beginnings.

–Mathilda McGee-Tubb, College senior

I spent much of the past week playing softball. This was the perfect way to conclude my stay at Oberlin. It afforded me, among other things, the occasion to review my time here.

When I stepped up to the plate one day this week, I was ready to hit the ball as hard as I could. Just as the ball flew over home plate and I swung, the catcher shouted out. She had been trying to distract batters like this all day, and everyone had been having a good laugh about it. The funny thing in my case was her choice of words. Of all the things this young lady thought could potentially annoy me, she chose to scream: “I voted for Kerry!”

The humor of it all sunk in a few minutes later. “How did I ever end up with such a reputation?” I asked myself. I had never even met this classmate, and yet she somehow knew me as The Conservative, as if Oberlin had only one. What had happened to me, to the fervent left-winger who arrived here in 1999?

Looking back, I recall two things. I remembered that the seed of my discontent with Oberlin liberalism was planted during the 2004 presidential election. I found that my classmates would not confront President Bush’s arguments; they instead mocked his appearance or laughed at his admittedly second-rate oratory. Their abhorrence of the president was matched in intensity only by their uncritical love of his challenger.

Around the same time, I took my first course in economics and learned two critical lessons: 1) that nothing in life is free, even when it appears to be so; and 2) that people respond to incentives. These experiences sparked in me a long process of learning and transformation.

In the end, I found myself both politically and culturally conservative — and I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I was fortunate to play a role in the renaissance of the College Republicans on campus. This was a great privilege. My decision to be publicly forthright with my political convictions, however, had costs. Life at Oberlin became tiresome, and I relied a great deal on my thick skin. I love this place, but after four years I am ready to go.

I gaze back for only a moment, though. Next week I turn instead to the future, as the word “commencement” suggests we should. That rare, intoxicating excitement will emerge as I drive out of town — dreaming of all that may lie ahead — while Oberlin shrinks away in my rear-view mirror, perhaps for the last time.

Some wise man once claimed that everything in life is bittersweet. When I pass beneath the Memorial Arch on Monday morning and reach out to accept my degree, the taste of sweetness — four years’ worth — will be on my lips. The bitterness I don’t expect to arrive for at least another four.

–Jonathan Bruno, College senior

I came to Oberlin two years ago under the impression that it was a “clothing-optional campus.” I told all my friends only two things about my collegiate plans: I was going to Oberlin, and it is clothing-optional. The only person in my isolated Catholic high school who knew anything about the college was a young, gay Religion teacher who graduated from Oberlin. Since I didn’t want to ask this teacher about his naked college adventures, and none of my friends knew anything about Oberlin, this piece of unconfirmed information became fact.

Having attended Catholic schools, I was not exactly accustomed to embracing the human form in its most natural state. When your Health textbook indicates that hand-holding could lead to the ultimate sin of Sex Before Marriage, you know that the Church isn’t exactly in favor of walking around naked on a co-ed campus. Naturally, I was excited to arrive on campus.

This year I found out the hard way that Oberlin is not a clothing-optional campus, when five friends decided to streak from Fairchild to Harkness (the nudist’s haven) and back. Not yet comfortable with my own sickly and deformed naked form, I decided to simply watch and laugh at their antics. As an RA in Fairchild this was a poor choice. I opened my door to find my RD struggling to control her fury. We had a nice little chat about Oberlin’s alleged clothing-optional policy, which sadly turns out to be nonexistent.

Every student here knows that, clothing-optional or not, Oberlin remains a sanctuary for people wanting to prance around in their nudie pants. While many colleges have their fair share of streakers, where else could streakers run through the library at midnight, or play a naked co-ed soccer game, or frolic naked during the first rain of the season? I think I might even find the nerve to streak myself sometime during these next two years, as long as neither my RD nor the Catholic Church finds out.

–Emelio DiSabato,
College sophomore