Oberlin is not known for its loud and proud school spirit, but Homecoming and Reunion Weekend seems to have brought it out of us regardless. Former students from over fifty years of classes have been roaming our streets, filled with nostalgia for their college days. It was hard not to feel infected by their energy, standing underneath the colorful lanterns strung across Tappan Square. But this is not the Oberlin we all normally live in; we don’t tend to express our school pride overtly, instead preferring to show our love by looking at our institution through a critical lens, with an eye for change and improvement. While this can be a difficult task and is one that deserves merit, this critical lens misapplied can turn into a culture of constant complaints. It felt refreshingly new to have a group of people on campus that feel so much love for a place where we’ve decided to spend four or so years of our lives. 

As we enter our second year and are no longer blinded by the glow of novelty and new experiences, nor the anxiety and overwhelm of starting anew, it has become easier to see the College through this critical lens. Situations that were not showcased in the admissions brochures — a tendency to underpay and overwork professors, an outsourcing of our food to AVI Foodsystems and staff, a lack of resources funneled towards certain departments — have risen to our attention. Co-ops are losing membership, literary journals are struggling to have enough material to fill an issue, and alumni talk about the lack of social life they see on campus. Rather than an institution ready built to fulfill our every academic whim and desire, we are starting to see a College that has been struggling since COVID, that needs a lot of love and tape and support to keep it together. On top of the College’s apparent difficulties with running the institution, we’re also grappling with a student body that does not seem to hold the vibrant enthusiasm for activism and participation we expected. Our understanding of Oberlin as it once was does not match with the Oberlin we experience today.

This article is not intended to tackle all of these issues, many of which are larger institutional problems that should be investigated individually in their own articles. This article wants to address the idea that since COVID, Oberlin’s social life and, by extension, spirit, has dwindled. As fourth-years prepare for their departure at the end of this academic year, we face the loss of a significant piece of institutional memory. This is the main feeling that we have been burdened with when interacting with alumni over this past weekend. We are not necessarily nostalgic, and we are not sad either. It may not be a feeling that can be described in a single word. We look out at our Oberlin experiences and we lay it beside the stories the alumni have told us, the pictures they have painted of an Oberlin “before.” It looks pale in comparison, robbed of color and of light. Perhaps this is simply a result of the rose colored glasses we like to put on when we look at the past. But we have also been told that college really is supposed to be a formative experience, a place of compounding possibilities and opportunities and friendships. There is something more significant to be said about the loss of campus culture that occurred during COVID, and the fact that we are still bearing the brunt of this loss. 

This is not to say that we are without hope. Though the alumni we spoke with painted a compelling picture of the past, they did not hesitate to express concern about the future of the College. Many of them condemned the administration, but felt that it was the student body and the faculty that made the institution. They expressed hope for the next generation rising through the ranks. We’re both members of Pyle Inn Co-op, and the other night a group of nostalgic alumni wandered into our dining room, looking to see what the world they left behind had become. The disappointment in their faces was evident as they saw our sparsely-occupied dining room. They graduated in 2019, leaving before COVID had entered our global consciousness. They had left a Pyle that used to fill three massive tables of people, so crowded that a diner might not even be able to find a chair. The co-op they returned to barely meets thirty attendees a meal. 

It’s hard to imagine coming back to Oberlin after graduation. It can be easy to forget that after our four years here, there will continue to be students after us. This institution will continue on even if we are absent from our places lounging in Wilder Bowl or sitting, eyes tired, coffee empty, in the booths of Azariah’s Café. Whether or not we, the students right now, will factor into our institution’s memory is up to us. As we continue our Oberlin journey, regardless of however many years you have left here, we should keep the up and coming generations in mind. The change we make now, the conversations we start, the clubs we join, the foundations we build, may not show the progress we are fighting for in the next two years that we are here. Change takes time and, though it may feel like forever, our time is passing by in the blink of an eye. The culture we are building is ultimately for someone else. When we come back in 10 years, we don’t want to see the things we worked for torn down or falling into disrepair. We want to see that the foundation we laid became something bigger. It’s easy to miss an Oberlin that was, it’s harder to recognize that our actions, now, create the Oberlin that will be. We call on the student body to continue to be enthusiastic, to join clubs and write for publications — not for the lines on your transcript or your resume, but for the simple joy of participating in something and creating something that will last.