Love in the Times of Oberlin

Penny Norris, OC ’84, and Ted Norris, OC ’82, met through overlapping friend groups. They were on different academic tracks — Penny was an English major and Ted was a Physics major. At the time, Ted lived in Talcott Hall, where much of their socializing occurred through lying on the floral carpet listening to Pink Floyd. They stayed together even once Ted graduated and went to Universi...

Tanya Rosen-Jones, OC ’97, was a South Campus girl and Ben Jones, OC ’96, was a North Campus boy. Loosely united by separate a cappella groups and campus jobs at the Dionysus Disco and the Cat in the Cream respectively, they were never officially together until the end of Ben’s fourth year. Seeing her perform in Nothing But Treble, Ben didn’t even know if Tanya was attracted to men after she...

Claire Solomon, OC ’98, and DeSales Harrison are united through the humanities — language and literature characterize their life together. Claire is an associate professor of Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature while DeSales is a professor of English. While sitting in Claire’s office, they both wear beaded bracelets of contrasting colors made by DeSales’ daughter. They met fo...

Elizabeth Rogers, OC ’07, and Sarah Newman, OC ’07, balance one another. They’re both writers, although of very different sorts: Elizabeth, a poet, and Sarah, a law- yer. Sometimes, they disagree about sentence length. They were both Shansi Fellows post-graduation — Elizabeth went to China and Sarah to Indonesia. They met in Shansi House, on the first day of orientation traini...

Yerin Kim, OC ’10, and Brendan Shea, OC ’11, met as second-years. They met through Brendan’s roommate, Andrew, president of the Oberlin Korean Student Association, at an OKSA party early in the semester. Yerin and Brendan were both in the Conservatory. Yerin graduated with a double-degree in Piano Performance and Psychology, while Brendan followed a year later, with a degree in Violin...