During Oberlin’s annual homecoming reunion, several alumni will be serving on a panel titled Living Oberlin Values: Making Lifelong Commitments and Careers this Saturday at 10:30 a.m. in the Root Room of the Carnegie Building. 

The panel will feature alumni who graduated between 1965 and 2015 and have made considerable contributions to the fields of scientific research, law, government affairs, journalism, community organizing, environmental policy, and nonprofit work. The panel is tailored to provide students with examples of how they can lead fulfilling and prosperous careers, while embodying Oberlin College’s educational liberal arts mission. 

Many of the participating alumni said they felt inspired by the alumni preceding them and hope to replicate that experience for Oberlin’s current students. 

“There’s a long list of alums who’ve inspired us through their careers,” organizer Clyde Owan, OC ’79, said. 

Eric Seitz, OC ’65, said more broadly that being a student at Oberlin was a very pivotal period of his life, and that it helped to shape his lifetime career pathway as an attorney for nearly half a century. Throughout his career, he served as a defense attorney for pivotal political advocates, including several members of the Black Panther Party, the Chicago Seven, and Leonard Peltier, the Indigenous political activist who was at the center of a nearly 50-year-long controversy surrounding the killings of two FBI agents at South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He recalled how he was a firebrand advocate during his time as an Oberlin student. 

“I was involved in all kinds of other demonstrations and activities throughout the time such that at some point [College] President Carr wrote me a personal handwritten note suggesting that maybe I’d be happier at some other school,” he said.

Seitz, as well as James Monroe Professor of Politics and East Asian Studies Marc Blecher, cited many community members’ anxieties about the future of career pathways — spurred by growing global political and economic turmoil — as a key issue to address at the panel.

“Now that people are laying out 80, 90K a year, parents are concerned about making this into something” Blecher said. “It doesn’t have to be just corporate…. The labor market is hungry for good people.”

Owan said the political situation also raised the stakes.

“The stakes are more critical [today] because the national government at the executive, legislative, and judicial branches are unified in an assault against civil liberties,” he added.

The organizers also mentioned recent administrative decisions from the College, including the creation of Business and Financial Economics majors, which they perceive as part of a broader change in the College’s academic priorities as a liberal arts institution.

“I really don’t agree with the directions in which the College is going in many important respects,” Seitz said. “My participation in [this panel] … is deeply affected by the fact that I’m very concerned that the school is becoming, if not has already become, a somewhat different institution than the institution that I attended.”

Blecher expressed similar sentiments. 

“What we do need Oberlin to do is [focus on] things that are being too casually thrown away all across the country: humanities, political theory, various [kinds of] cultural pursuits,” Blecher said. “Business studies is not being endangered around the world — on the contrary. With our limited resources and with our place in the world, we should stick to what’s our niche.” 

The organizers hope that students will leave the panel with new insights that will make them more confident that wherever their professional journey takes them, they will be well-equipped to make meaningful contributions to the world through their careers.

“Students will be alumni for many more years than the time [they] spend on campus,” Owan said. “So the key question is, what will you do with this gift called an Oberlin education? And how will you apply the values and examples set by Oberlin graduates to change the world and have a meaningful career and life?”