Tag: Oberlin

Class, Wed, 10/02

UD as “Literacy Sponsor”

[The President’s] priorities include: enhancing students’ success, investing in intellectual and physical capital, fostering a spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship, building an environment of inclusive excellence and strengthening interdisciplinary and global programs.

“President Assanis Reviews Top Five Priorities with Faculty and Staff“, UDaily, 2/17/2017.

Nathan Heller, “The Big Uneasy”

How do the politics of inclusion play out “on the ground” of a US college campus?

Fastwrite

Go to a point in Heller’s piece where he quotes a particular individual who is speaking in a way that you either admire or find troubling. Be ready to tell us why.

Safety and Engaging with Difference (John and Jennifer)

Of Interest

EJ Dickerson, “How a Small-Town Bakery in Ohio Became a Lightning Rod in the Culture Wars“, Rolling Stone, 7/18/2019

To Do

  1. Wed, 10/02/4:00 pm: Group B responses to Solnit.
  2. Thurs, 10/03, 4:00 pm: Everyone else reads Group B’s responses and comments on at least two.
  3. Fri, 10/04, class: We will use those responses and comments to structure our discussion of Solnit.
  4. Mon, 10/07, class: Read Jamaica Kinkaid’s “A Small Place”. I will lead our discussion.
  5. Mon, 10/07, 4:00 pm: Group C responds to Roxane Gay.
  6. Tues, 10/08, 4:00 pm: Everyone else reads Group C’s responses and comments on at least two.
  7. Wed, 10/09, class: We will use those responses and comments to structure our discussion of Gay.
  8. Thurs, 10/10, 4:00 pm: Everyone emails me a one-page proposal for their final project.
  9. Fri, 10/11: Fall “Break”.
  10. Mon, 10/14, and Wed, 10/16: No class meeting. Individual conferences with me.

Heller’s Thoughts

I found it interesting that while the rest of the country had moved on from the Tamir rice shooting due to the Iowa Caucus, while on Oberlin’s campus “unease spread like a cold front coming of the lake.” I feel like Heller is pointing out that while the national conversation continues, sometimes smaller communities and areas continue to feel the pain of hardships that have happened. This made me think of Flint, Michigan, a city in Michigan that has no access to clean water, and the media had covered it nationally but even after the media coverage stopped, the crisis was still happening. 

Heller also makes a very interesting point regarding race, which is that although a white male cannot know what it means “to be, say, a Latina,” the white male can “make yourself her ally, though deferring to her experience, learning from her accounts, and supporting her struggles. I found this stance on race relations to be dynamic and shows compassion through empathizing with marginalized groups’ struggles. 

In addition, I thoroughly enjoyed how Heller would use a narrative while also making commentary on social and cultural issues. For example, toward the end when he is telling the story of the talk with Amethyst Carey, he uses this story while also highlighting the social issues, he does this with phrases such as “Carey wears sweatpants and a T-shirt that says “NJ NEEDS MORE HOMES AND JOBS.” Here, Heller is explaining what Carey is wearing but it also speaks to the social issues she advocates for, which include more affordable housing and jobs.

Response to Heller

In “The Big Uneasy,” by Nathan Heller, many different opinions about student activism are acknowledged. Heller specifically talks to students and faculty from Oberlin College located in Ohio. Heller doesn’t mention much about his own opinions on the issues discussed, he just mentions a bunch of other conflicting ideas and then leaves it up to the reader to determine what they want from the interviews that he conducted. I think that the main issue of this article was where to draw the line when it comes to student activism. If you’re too hard on the students then they will fight back, however, if you’re too easy on students then they’re not being challenged enough. 

“A president’s job is to push past contradictions, while an activist’s duty is to call them out. The institutions that give many people a language and a forum to denounce injustice are, inevitable, the nearest targets of their criticism.”

Heller

The whole point of college is to challenge its students. Heller mentions that there are some people who believe that if a college protects its students from unwelcome ideas, then that college isn’t doing its job in preparing its students for the real world. I’ve heard this term “real world” so many times in my college career and I have yet to fully grasp its concept. What is the real world and what makes it so different from college? What will happen if students don’t face enough challenges in college and are then thrown into the real world? I don’t know if I agree with this huge distinction between college life and the real world because it almost diminishes all the experiences that students have during college. What you face during school aren’t “real” challenges. However, Heller mentions some examples of students who facing some very real challenges.

One student, Megan Bautista shares that exposing herself to opinions that were different from her own just exhausted her. She tried to engage in activism outside of campus but due to the impact on her grades, this idea quickly fizzled. Students tried to compromise with the college asking for activism to be looked at like a job that should be paid, or by having a minimum grade that the college couldn’t go below while their students were involved in activism outside of campus. These ideas were rejected and students felt like they had to choose one over the other because doing both seemed impossible. 

“Today they are told that they belong there, but they also must take on an extracurricular responsibility: doing the work of diversity.”

Heller

There are students who feel like they aren’t being reflected in their college community. Jasmine Adams leads a discussion about Oberlin’s indifference towards racial oppression. Adams, as well as other students, bring up the issue that they feel like they are being forced to conform to the standards of their college and these standards don’t reflect what they have experienced in the real world. They aren’t going to change who they are for four years of their life just to satisfy the college’s expectations. 

The problems that students are facing on campus extend to the faculty as well. One teacher, Wendy Kozol, had to disband the class because the class seated themselves by race and weren’t communicating with each other. Another teacher, Roger Copeland, who has been teaching at Oberlin for over 40 years, noticed that his teaching style wasn’t being well received by his students recently. He spoke sharply to a student once who reported to the dean that Copeland was creating “a hostile and unsafe learning environment.” 

Heller mentions a lot of different views about student activism that all seem validated. It’s hard to organize my own thoughts on this idea because I feel like in order to understand what’s happening, I have to respond to each individual that’s mentioned. There are a lot of issues that are talked about that seem circumstantial, but bring each issue to light and the school is having to deal with students clashing with teachers, teachers clashing with students, and students clashing with students. Which, I guess is all ok, if the point of college is to challenge its students right?

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