On the far end of Mudd yesterday vendors sold posters. Students flipped through stacks of black and white photographs. One student concentrates on cityscapes: the Sears Tower, the Brooklyn Bridge at night, the New York City skyline. After minutes examining each picture, he continues back to his dorm room empty-handed.
Wilder Bowl feels hollowed. The laptop typists are gone, less cigarette smoke hangs in the air and most of the sound has been muted.
Community has invaded the inside of Wilder and A-level where students cluster around televised images of smoky cities. The clerk at Wilder desk, sophomore Alyson Dame, makes an announcement: “The city of Cleveland and surrounding areas have asked everyone who is not using their cellular phones for emergency calls to please turn them off.”
Across from the Decafé cash register, a tiny black and white television projects scratchy pictures of Senate hearing rooms. Standing in line to buy cups of coffee and organic potato chips, students watch the screen and talk of things like Pearl Harbor and the Middle East. Things like war.
“Everywhere I went today I saw people with mobile phones against their cheeks and tears streaming down their face,” said visiting Christian Fellowship minister Nick Pollard. Pollard spent yesterday alongside Finney Chapel with Oberlin Christian Fellowship members singing psalms of love and opening hearts.
“This is probably the biggest thing happening in our lives. The campus feels surreal, somewhat somber. I am sure people are angry. I don’t think I know what to do, how to react. More than anything it changes our perspective, our pace. The campus is in disarray. I haven’t been to class,” sophomore Buro Sen said.
Sen is not the only student unable to focus on routine academics. Yesterday professors taught half-empty classes and students wondered if they should be studying. New questions, ones not stemming from textbooks, have surfaced.
“There are lots of people all around campus saying, ‘Why did this happen?’ I got a friend who is a Christian whose husband died when she was 21. She once said that the why of a clenched fist is a very different why than that of an open hand. All over campus people with closed fists and open hands will be asking why,” Pollard said.
For some students political logic answers that question of why. “I think what has happened is an act of vengeance, for America’s support of Middle East affairs which it has no place in such as its pro-Israel stance and influence in Iraq,” senior Aram Donabedian said.
While the mainstream press seemed to already be assigning blame (one major network television mentioning “terrorists that practice Islam”), at Oberlin sentiments have focused more around maintaining community and discouraging further violence. “I was shocked earlier but now I worry about laying blame on a specific nation. I heard senators talking about waging war, encouraging hate, but I do not think that is what we should be doing in our community,” sophomore Dustin Kurtz said.
Other students already see how yesterday’s violence is shaping worldviews, and even the way we at Oberlin speak to each other. “I think right now people are focusing on their lives, on hurting, but as time goes by they will begin turning their heads and asking who is responsible,” sophomore Behrad Mahdi said. “You sympathize and fear for all people involved in the terrorism and then you hear ‘we need to bomb those fuckers and why do Muslims hate us’ and you feel betrayed by both peoples. I am not a Muslim, but my family is,” Mahdi said.
Across campus, students and faculty alike wonder how classes will fare in the coming days. “There has been a lot of discussion and meetings between faculty and administration concerned about students, especially the first-years. The counseling center talked us through what we may be feeling and how to deal with students. It’s too soon for me though, too personal, I don’t really want to deal with this and teach this in the classroom. There is a lot of variation within the faculty on the issue though,” Professor of Sociology Bill Norris said.
While last night the Yonder Mountain String Band did not cancel its Cat in the Cream show and today classes will continue, it is clear that yesterday’s explosions will reverberate through the Oberlin community. “We live in denial of these things happening most of the time. That is how we keep sane. That denial has been cut through,” said Director of the College Counseling Center Charles Ross.

Other students focus on what comes next. “ I think this should compel America to examine its role as an imperialist force in the Middle East but I also think what will happen is America reevaluating its relationship with Arabs and end up siding more with Israel,”senior Aram Donabedian said.

“To a much lesser extent I saw things like that in Pakistan. Its different here. Now I am more anxious to see what America will do,” sophmore Nauman Hafiz said.