To the Editors:

You may be seeing splashes of black on T-shirts around campus. These bursts of ink are part of the new design for the Peace and Conflict Studies concentration. We are pleased to announce that the winner of the design contest is College senior and History major Andres Feliciano. The new design beautifully portrays the aspects of the words “Peace and Conflict.” The Concentration features the design on the PACS Blackboard site, which is open to all and is self-enrolled, on T-shirts and on other items.

Andres grew up in New Orleans and currently lives in Atlanta. He took an ExCo class last fall in which he learned how to create and edit designs. Andres writes: “When I made the design, I thought about what these terms mean to me: ‘Peace’ — clarity, equality, and balance; ‘Conflict’ — chaos, confusion and pain. I wanted to show how imperfect and ambiguous the term ‘peace’ can be — since one person’s peace might exist at the cost of someone else’s — and how the study of these difficult human issues seeks to creatively approach and understand them. I wanted to design something that took into account how our notions of peace itself tend to be imperfect, in a way that could also speak to the fact that in every conflict, there are always two or more very real, human sides to the story. Conflict and peace have an interesting relationship with each other,and I hope my design can show this.”

The PACS concentration recently helped fund a trip that Andres and other students took to Israel and the West Bank as part of the American Democratic Culture Partnerships, to reunite with Palestinian and Israeli friends they met at a seminar in Oberlin last summer. One of the things that the PACS concentration can do is help fund peace-related projects. A requirement for students who are doing the concentration is to do an experiential component — to put some of what they are learning in classes into practical action.

Sheera Bornstein, OC ’08, was instrumental in helping to get the Peace and Conflict Studies concentration started at Oberlin. She recently wrote, “I’m currently in a residency at Citizen Schools. I was recently talking with a colleague of mine who graduated Oberlin in ’10 (I think). She took Intro to PACS and said, I quote, ‘It changed my life.’ I think she said it was one of the best courses she took. Amazing to hear and I wanted to share.”

The concentration is in its third year. Andres continues as he talks about his winning design: “I believe every decision we make as individuals in the present influences the future of everyone around us, so in my opinion, a program like PACS has a huge responsibility: to encourage a push for solutions to these heavy issues that separate us as people.”

–Kristen Bredenbeck Mayer,
Coordinator of PACS concentration