To the Editors:

The Oberlin Review’s editorial of 2/22/08, “Obama for President,” as well as the column (written by two Review editors) entitled “What Is It That We Owe the Army?,” were more than a little disappointing. Neither article made much sense, and both were notable for the absence of coherent writing as well as their inaccuracy in the reporting of facts.

Editorial endorsements of politicians traditionally review the candidate’s record and positions. The Review, however, failed to discuss Sen. Obama’s background or positions at all. Instead, the Review makes the following case in favor of Sen. Obama: “Break out the party gear. It’s time for Obama-rama. Yes we can.”  I have no idea what that means (and I suspect that Sen. Obama would be equally baffled).

More troubling is the following passage: “Barry’s got it straight and he’s got it right: We hate war. We always hated war. And we love Obama for hating on the war from the get-go. We do not want to fight anymore.” The use of English is atrocious, and it is also more than a little misleading and dishonest for people who have probably never been in combat to claim that they “do not want to fight anymore.”

Most damning, the statement that “we love Obama for hating on the war” is the only allusion in the entire endorsement to any of Sen. Obama’s actual positions and manages to grossly distort them. Looking over his campaign’s website, I found no reference to pacifist sentiment. Rather, I found that Sen. Obama advocates expanding the Army and Marines by 92,000 heartbeats. This only makes sense if Sen. Obama recognizes that as president, he will almost inevitably have to call on Americans to do more fighting (whether they are tired or not).

The second column starts with a misleading title, since “What Is It We Owe the Army?” is a question that the column completely fails to address. It took me some time to recognize that the goal of the column was to defend The Oberlin Review’s running of a recruitment ad for the U.S. Army. In the process, however, the authors make some claims that, in addition to being completely irrelevant to the topic they are supposedly addressing, are outright wrong. For example: “The Army targets and manipulates lower class youth, making them pawns to advance the United States’ neo-imperial agenda.”  Anyone reading this would get the impression that the U.S. Army is manned by the underclass. As a matter of empirical fact, the average Army recruit is better educated and comes from a wealthier home than the average person of the same cohort who is a civilian.

Having misrepresented the Army, the column goes on to misrepresent the students of Oberlin College: “We on the Oberlin campus, in our world of left-wing politics and expensive, elite education, have been shielded from military presence. The fact that we gasp at the intrusion of this ad into our idyllic community is a reflection of our privilege.”  The description doesn’t quite jive with Oberlin’s actual students. For example, of the 150-odd students I personally know, I would be hard pressed to categorize more than a dozen as being from genuinely privileged backgrounds. Offsetting this, at least a dozen of my students are clearly from working class families, and one of my students could qualify as a member of the underclass. Indeed, socioeconomic diversity is one of Oberlin’s great virtues, and it is paid for by generous scholarships that have strained the College’s financial resources.

Visiting Associate Professor of Economics