To the Editors:

In April 1990, there was a student demonstration on the college president’s lawn that got out of hand; it ended up involving the police.

As a long-time Oberlin resident heavily involved with the college over the years (I was once a tuition-paying father), I gave an Ex-Co course in the fall of 1990 entitled “How To Demonstrate Successfully Without Getting Into Trouble With The Police.” Some of the material presented at that time drew national attention.

Now, with the national mood turning strongly against the Iraqi War and the administration, I’d like to review a few of the subjects covered in that course. If there are going to be demonstrations against the war, they should be successful demonstrations.

1. Don’t demonstrate spontaneously. Determine well in advance what you want to accomplish and why.

2. Call Campus Security and tell them what you would like to do, where, and when and ask for their guidance.

3. If you want to demonstrate off campus, call the Oberlin City Police Department and ask for their assistance. Make sure your demonstration meets police requirements   – blocking traffic and walkways. Ask, politely, for police protection for the demonstrators.

4. Carry U.S. flags, small and large. You cannot carry too many flags. “Hard Hats” (those opposed to your demonstration) cannot jeer or throw items at people waving flags. Carry dozens if not hundreds of flags. It only confuses your opposition.

5. Do not destroy private property.

6. Carry whatever signs you want but do not print foul language on the signs. If you do, you defeat your purpose.

7. Obey whatever directions the police give you at the time of your demonstration. Failure to do so only results in serious trouble.

8. If you feel your demonstration will involve a large number of people, notify the Oberlin, Elyria, and Lorain papers for possible press coverage.

9. If the demonstration gets out of hand, for whatever reason, disband immediately. And please, do *NOT* do, as one student did back in April 1990, do not reach for or try to grab a police officer’s gun. It can be deadly.

These are but some of the points discussed in that Ex-Co course in 1990. If I can find the curriculum, I’ll forward it to the editors. At the time of the first Gulf War, the student demonstrators followed the points outlined above and the demonstration went off well. In the meantime, if you’re going to demonstrate, do it with an objective in mind. What do you want to accomplish? Does what you want to accomplish deliver a positive message?

As loyal American citizens, you have not a right but an obligation to rant and rave about what your government is doing!

—Harvey Gittler
Affiliate Scholar

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To the Editors:

The Kosher-Halal Co-op thanks you for your attention to our kitchen maintenance problems. We greatly appreciate the article and hope awareness about the issue will encourage a quick solution. We have, however, a few concerns about the representation of the community we serve. First of all, the article frequently referred to us as “Kosher Co-op.” It is important to us to avoid dropping either part of our full name (Kosher-Halal Co-op or KHC) in order to recognize both the Jewish and Muslim community in our co-op. Also, the article mentioned our trepidation about cooking for the upcoming Jewish holidays. We would like to add that Ramadan begins Saturday. Ramadan is a Muslim holiday where the co-op feeds additional members and serves meals at additional times in order to meet the needs of the Muslim community. Finally, the article explained that we traveled to Cleveland to cook Shabbat dinner, but we did not cook at the “Halal” as printed. Rather, we cooked at the Cleveland Hillel. Hillel is a nation-wide Jewish organization. Halal is Muslim dietary law. Thank you again for your help bringing awareness to the difficulties facing our co-op as we try to provide meals without a useable kitchen.

—Kosher-Halal Cooperative

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To the Editors:

The sun shined brightly on Saturday, September 1, 2007, the 11th annual Day of Service at Oberlin College. The Day of Service provides new students with the opportunity to engage with the community and get to know their new home better. 327 first-year students and 59 student and staff leaders participated in service projects throughout Oberlin, Lorain and Huron counties at 28 different organizations, totaling an estimated 1,745 hours of work provided to the community.

Hosted by the Bonner Center for Service and Learning (BCSL), the campus office dedicated to community-campus collaborations and civic engagement, the Day of Service seeks to establish and build relationships between students and the surrounding community from the moment they arrive on campus.

The BCSL extends a huge thank-you to all of the first-year students who participated, our student and staff leaders, and the many community partners who provided projects and support for the students. On behalf of the BCSL I also wish to thank local businesses Ben Franklin, Carter Lumber, Cherry Knoll Water, Oberlin College Bookstore, Wellington Farm and Home Hardware and White House Springs for their generous donations of supplies for the day. Many thanks as well to the people of Oberlin, Elyria and Lorain in general for their support of this event. To quote one student evaluation comment on the day: “It was awesome!”

—Jennifer Koerner
Day of Service Coordinator

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To the Editors:

As a relative newcomer to Oberlin and a kind of “on-looker” at the college, I want to thank whoever was responsible for the 9/11 commemorative display outside Wilder Hall last Tuesday.  It was a perfectly appropriate memorial to those lost six years ago.

I’ve not had my ear very close to the ground in Oberlin, so I’m not sure if there were other occasions in the college or the community that called us to gather around that shared memory or to explore our private feelings and responses.  That evening, Ishmael Beah opened his Convocation presentation at Finney Chapel with a call for silence remembering 9/11, but I know of no other public commemorations on campus or in the community.

It’s a moment we share, and shared moments are important in a community so keenly aware that we are all linked in a single world; 9/11 is an occasion of our one-ness, and of the fractures within it.  The commemorative display of flags, representing the countries whose citizens were lost, re-presented the event without forcing an interpretation of it, and – one is grateful for this – without exploiting the catastrophe. There might be other equally appropriate and dignified ways to commemorate our common loss, but there could hardly be any better, and as a newcomer and on-looker, I want to thank whoever was responsible for that rich and enriching moment.

—Rev. Glenn Loafmann