The people have spoken and the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association, a $2 million-a-year corporation, has decided on its new leadership for the 2003-2004 school year. Beginning June 1, Annie Sorich will serve as OSCA president, Adam Sorkin as treasurer and Maggie Raife as membership secretary.
This winter’s election was one of the most competitive OSCA has seen in the past few years. Approximately 200 of the 265 OSCA members voted on the six students who ran for the three high-level positions.
Last year only two students ran for Membership Secretary, and candidates for President and Treasury ran for their positions unopposed.
According to senior Tim Haineswood, OSCA Financial Intern, 2003’s Winter Term OSCA President and Treasurer of OSCA Properties (a sister company of the on-campus OSCA), getting candidates to run is usually a process of twisting arms.
“Usually it’s like, ‘will someone please run!’” Haineswood said. “It’s a lot of work and not a lot for it.”
This year has been a turbulent one for OSCA, which makes the large turnout for candidates even more surprising. The association got bad press in November for Harkness’s involvement in “dumpster-diving,” and more recently, when Tank students stole a makeshift stop sign during the blackout.
“Avery [Book] and I got together and decided to run, to make it a more democratic process,” newly-elected president Sorich said. “We wanted to give people a choice.”
President, Treasurer and Membership Secretary are three of the five paying positions in OSCA. They offer a stipend that is equivalent to one year’s board bill in a Co-op without taxes, but the jobs are extremely involved.
“You work no less than about 20 hours per week so the pay works out to probably less than a dollar an hour,” OSCA President Rachel Dwarzski said, laughing.
“But it has been a great opportunity,” she added. “I have learned a lot and gotten experience that I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else.”
Yet whenever there is a disagreement between the College and OSCA and whenever a co-op has a confrontation with the police, someone has to take care of it. Someone has to make sure that there is enough tofu for Fairchild, that garbage isn’t piling up in the Harkness kitchen and, at the same time, keep the College happy and informed. Often, that someone is the OSCA President.
“Every year is a crazy year for OSCA,” Dwarzski said. “There are always ups and downs.”
She added that her relationship with OSCA and her job is a “love-hate” one.
“None of the hate comes from OSCA,” she said. “It’s just the time that I miss spending with my really close friends, my last semester of my senior year.”
“President is basically acting as a loose-ends coordinator for all OSCA,” Haineswood said. “When I was president, just over Winter Term, I used to have nightmares about the job. That’s why I only did it for a winter term — I couldn’t handle the job for a year.”
There are greater challenges to the OSCA positions than just the time commitment. Dwarzski and treasurer Katie Shilton weren’t prepared for what their jobs would entail when they started at the end of last year.
“My training just wasn’t the best,” Dwarzski said. “[The outgoing President] just said ‘You’ll be fine!’ but I was definitely lost for a little while.”
One of their goals this year has been to develop job manuals to ease the transition into office.
“Annie knows she’s going to have a lot to deal with, but she’s really qualified for the job,” Dwarzski said. “She’s been really involved in OSCA on several levels, so I’m really optimistic.”
The 2003-2004 school year promises to be an especially interesting one for OSCA. The main challenge for the incoming officers will be renegotiating OSCA’s rent contract. The corporation pays the college $1,075,000 every year for its rent, and every three years it has to renegotiate that price. Sorich said the renegotiation, an extremely involved and intensive yearlong process, will be her biggest task.
There are several other long-term projects on OSCA’s plate for the upcoming year. After losing a large amount of money in the stock market, the corporation recently pulled out all of its investments. The rest of this year and the next will be spent deciding the future of OSCA’s finances.
OSCA is also working toward the establishment of a new co-op, a process that involves a lot of money and involvement.
“Next year is going to be an exciting year for OSCA,” Shilton said. “OSCA is growing and changing. That builds dedication and interest. People care about OSCA and want to get involved.”
“OSCA really means a lot to me,” Sorich said. “I want to devote all my energy to it and I know that I’ll get the job done.”