Oberlin Campus Dialogue Center

In addition to an ombudsperson and a counseling center, Oberlin maintains an innovative system of conflict resolution: the Oberlin Campus Dialogue Center. The Graduate Teacher Education Program is now accepting students to be part of its partnership with the local school system. These individuals are trained to mediate using the social justice model. Through the Office of the Ombudsperson, the Oberlin Campus Dialogue Center also assists individuals and the College community in confronting and resolving sources of community tension, particularly those stemming from racism and other socially derived sources of prejudice and misunderstanding.

The “Experimental College" (ExCo)

The Experimental College (ExCo) was begun in 1968 as an experiment in alternative education, and today it still provides the Oberlin community with perhaps some of the most enjoyable and most rewarding experiences in college learning. The ExCo is run as a student organization and headed by a volunteer committee which is solely responsible for choosing the curriculum and maintaining the integrity of the program throughout the academic semester. In a given semester there may be between 60 to 90 courses, so there is always plenty of variety. Anyone may take or teach classes--students, faculty members, staff members, and townspeople alike. Those who demonstrate expertise and enthusiasm may teach a course as long as that course is judged to have educational merit and a reasonably serious purpose. Due to its flexible nature ExCo reflects the current academic, intellectual, social, ideological, philosophical, political, emotional, sexual, and fashion trends of the Oberlin community.

Development of Creativity and Leadership Program

On December 10, 2006 Oberlin received a $1,126,382 grant from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation of Hudson, Ohio, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Missouri, as part of a five-year project to develop campus-wide entrepreneurship initiatives in Northeast Ohio. Oberlin was one of five colleges selected to share a total of $6.6 million in grants through the foundations’ Northeast Ohio Collegiate Entrepreneurship program; the others are Baldwin-Wallace College, Hiram College, Lake Erie College, and The College of Wooster. The funded colleges will share their models nationally, and the foundations hope to expand the program across the country if it is successful.

The Creativity and Leadership Program will feature concept development grants awarded on a competitive basis to individual students or teams of students from all majors, who will spend the year after graduation moving their ideas from theory to implementation. The program also will offer semester and half-semester courses, mentored experiential opportunities, workshops, and lectures by alumni and northeastern Ohio entrepreneurs to prepare students for the challenges of implementing their projects. Entrepreneurial Oberlin College and Conservatory alumni will mentor students in their experiential projects.

The Center for Service and Learning

The Oberlin College Center for Service and Learning (CSL) works in partnership with the surrounding community to link students with educational service opportunities. Community service, advocacy, grassroots organizing and applied research are the norm at Oberlin, where each year over 55% of Oberlin undergraduate students do some form of curricular or co-curricular community service. The CSL encourages all students to become involved in community efforts in the Oberlinian belief that intellectual inquiry and community involvement reinforce and enrich one another.

To support Oberlin's mission of "preparing students for intelligent and useful response to the present and future demands of society," the Center for Service and Learning:

In the 2005-2006 academic year, an estimated 1159 total participants completed 64,438 hours of community service.

Sustainable Reserve Fund

When Oberlin College agreed to purchase an estimated 60% of its electricity from green sources, the college worked with the municipal power utility and the City Council to create a Sustainable Reserve Fund from the money paid towards green attributes. This fund contains the $2 per MWhr that Oberlin pays as a premium for green power. This money is overseen by the City Council and is available for local energy conservation and greenhouse gas reducing projects. So far, portions of these funds have gone towards two local projects: the purchase and erection of a wind monitoring tower to assess the potential for local wind energy generation, and the infrastructure for a local biofuels station that sells biodiesel and ethanol fuels.

Investing in the Social Capital of the City of Oberlin: Partnerships with the Local Public School System

Oberlin College values the education of local residents and contributes to this in two main ways: the Oberlin Partnership and the new Graduate Teacher Education Program. The program is now accepting students to be part of its partnership with the local school system. Teachers in this program will work in the local schools, developing a partnership of reciprocal collaboration in which Oberlin students gain from working with experienced teachers in a richly diverse setting and teachers will be given support and time to think about classroom goals. The Oberlin Partnership, established in 2000, is a collaborative effort headed by leaders from Oberlin College and the City of Oberlin. Its purpose is to find cooperative and innovative solutions to pressing local issues of education, housing, economic development, and recreation. In the 7 years that the program has been in existence, 31 students have received the scholarship.

Valuing Human Rights
Anti-Sweatshop Purchasing Policy

In June of 1999 the college adopted a comprehensive Anti-Sweatshop Purchasing Policy that bans purchasing from vendors or manufacturers who engage in human rights abuses or poor labor practices. The Purchasing Department hires a student intern to research the human rights and labor histories of companies with which Oberlin does business. This intern makes recommendations to the Anti-Sweatshop Committee for vendors to add to an approved-vendors list. The most recent ban due to this policy was a campus-wide ban on coca-cola products stemming from the company’s failure to adequately address allegations of human rights abuses at a bottling plant in Columbia.