To the Editors:

Did you know that every current student is an Oberlin alumnus already? It’s true. By merely attending Oberlin for a single semester, you are officially a member of the alumni community (check out Section 2 of the Alumni Association Bylaws). And since you are a member of the alumni community, you have as much of a stake as anyone in Oberlin’s reputation in the world beyond it. The “alumni” label, when used on social media, or in letters to the editors for the Review, describes a broad community of diverse thought, because not all groups with “alum” in their names really represent all of the alumni community.

Here’s another thing about the Oberlin alumni community. You have agency in it. What do you want our community to be like? What parts of Oberlin do you want to take with you as you head out for your Winter Term? What parts of Oberlin should we export from Ohio? These are all questions that face us individually and collectively.

Everything you’re doing right now, curricular or extracurricular, is building bonds to and establishing some part of our billowing community. Everything that we alumni are doing, in some way, connects to this community too. Whether the thread connecting us to Oberlin is on campus, connected securely from afar or barely holding onto the smallest purchase in the education section of a resume, what we do and how we connect relates to our community. Our community exists because we connect to each other, discuss issues and act together. It is a broad community, and no one part speaks for the whole. Additionally, it means that some parts are a little hidden and hard to find. Some parts exist beyond the campus. It should not be a surprise, since the community has over 40,000 individuals spread across the globe.

How can we connect to these off-campus parts of the alumni community? There’s Switchboard, where you can find a job, an internship or a ride to Cleveland. There’s the Career Center and the Alumni Office, where you can get in touch with an alumnus doing something that you are interested in, or who came from your major or who once had their classes canceled because of the Kent State shootings. There are the regional clubs, where alumni are currently connecting to each other in their home-away-from-Oberlin.

We alumni are eminently interested in helping you however we can. There are over 20,000 of us on LinkedIn. I’ve deleted my Facebook account, but I hear there are some folks on that too. A lot of us prefer phone calls to impersonal emails. We may not be able to help you directly in every instance or with every problem, but we can probably point you to someone who can.

If you ever want to talk about employment discrimination law or environmental law, look me up. If you ever need something in D.C. from the D.C. regional club, look me up. If you want to hear about starting a group on campus, about navigating the administrative processes or about a good Somali restaurant in Lakewood (Kifaya’s Kitchen), look me up. My email is [email protected]. Contact me about whatever.

Sometimes alumni are out of view from the campus, but the alumni community is still out there. Remember, too, that you are already part of it. So take heart, learn something fascinating today and connect with an alumnus. Oh, and vote next week!

– William Yon
OC ’10