To the Editor:
Thanks to the Net, I now get to follow the bold and progressive intellectual currents that wash across campus. This is quite a switch from the old days, when I either had to visit, or trust to various administration - managed publications like The Observer and The Alumni Magazine.
In my case, the intrepid behavior of all those defending the Tribe 8 extravaganza has been an inspiration. It's good to know that Oberlin can still pick the important issues to study, debate and resolve for all mankind. (Questions of an information-stratified society, economic hopelessness in our inner cities and rural countryside, and the encroaching, numbing effect of our popular culture on thinking in this country and abroad - these are just so-o-o quaint and passe when compared to dildos, knives, fellatio spectacles, and all manner of threatened violence).
While some might just call it bad and stupid art, and offensive, violent and noisy bad art at that, others (myself included) know that performance represents all that is good at Oberlin. I think we should share our enlightened ways and general good fortune with the world. It wasn't a cheesy rock `n roll debauch, it was a meta-event!
Here's a modest proposal:
Let's make Lynn Breedlove the official Oberlin Poster Child. (This is probably the wrong noun, but if I say Poster Person I'll date myself, Poster Girl will piss off the legions, Poster Woman would indicate I don't know if Womyn is singular or plural; bear with me while I muddle along, please.) (After all, this is the page that created and published the term "Swolehead," in another daring exercise in anti-intellectualism - whoops, advocacy journalism - so, archaic language like Child might be forgiven.) I'll fund it if the Review will contribute license rights to the concert picture published in the Review on 11/1/96. I'm sure Ms. Breedlove won't mind if she and her band get the free publicity; she's got to be laughing at all the bourgeois angst her performance has generated at Oberlin since her brief performance, and if one looks at the cost of that performance (basically, a function of staff and student time devoted to "understanding" the event; remember, Oberlin's sandbox costs $30,000 per year, and that's a lot of sand!), one can say that she is very well-compensated indeed.
This is what we'll do. We'll gin up a poster with the slogan (referencing the dynamic Ms. Breedlove): "Think one person can change the world? We do!" We can footnote the poster with the results of Sam Carrier's poll, in which we read that "we" in this case, are the 87 percent of the campus who disagree that the concert represented bad form, taste, and concert management. Then we'll mail the poster out to prospective applicants, alumni who are looking for ways to justify increasing levels of financial support, and parents. The latter should be pleased to know that their $30G's aren't just affording any education; this is a sandbox with real style. Last, let's use it as a recruiting tool to locate Deans; you never know when you're going to need a new Dean or two.
No doubt Oberlin's ongoing application yield collapse will be reversed through this campaign for excellence, and giving ratios will climb by 50 percent to reach levels sustained by those institutions with which Oberlin presumes to compete. Parents, who pay $125,000 in hopes of properly educating their children (that's $125K in after-tax money, remember), will rest easy knowing that their children are being well-prepared for the balance of their existence. Imagine, some of them probably got to College having never even seen a dildo, been threatened by a knife, or watched someone simulate fellatio! Amazing!
My last suggestion is that we encourage The Observer to publish an ad promoting our poster, so that those pesky JFO types know better where their money is going.
I only have one question. When the three candidates to be Dean of the College met with students to discuss their approach to that critical job, a total of nine students showed up across the three meetings. One of the three sessions (Feiss') was attended by one student, Clayton Koppes drew five, and Marks three. I suppose there just isn't time to be concerned with how the College is going to be run, not with the crushing burden of defining the meta-meaning of Tribe 8 bearing down on one and all. But I'm still confused, since I would have thought that an activist studentry would be more concerned about structural, high level appointments that in large ways influence the quality of their education. (I know a few alumni who would have attended, were they invited.) Oh well, it must be a generational thing, and I don't understand! Rock on! -Drew Eginton OC'79
Copyright © 1996, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 125, Number 11; December 6, 1996
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