As the Review reported last week, an investigation by the Worker Rights Consortium released last December revealed that Nike had been using a sweatshop as a supplier for its collegiate clothing, violating its anti-sweatshop agreement with the College. As a college dedicated to social justice, Oberlin has a Sweatshop-Free Apparel Code of Purchasing, meaning that the College refuses to buy from businesses that use sweatshops in their production process. Sweatshops are wildly unjust to workers, as they may force employees to work unreasonable hours in unfit conditions, pay less than minimum wage with no benefits and may use child labor. Unfortunately, most major sports apparel brands have been tainted by labor malpract...

It has become common practice for colleges and universities across the U.S. to mandate sexual misconduct workshops for incoming students. At Oberlin, all new students are required to attend the first round of Preventing and Responding to Sexual Misconduct workshops, and all athletes are required to attend the second, which is also open to the entire community. The mandatory first workshop is called The Essentials, and the second workshop is called Bystander Intervention. Together, these two workshops are meant to inform students about the importance and language of consent. Overall, the PRSM workshops are crucial to the social atmosphere at Oberlin. I have heard stories and personally experienced instances in which...

In a frightening shift toward the dystopian, Congress recently voted to kill vital protections for internet privacy, with President Donald Trump officially approving the bill Monday. These protections, approved at the end of Obama’s term but not yet enacted, would have been the only line of defense against those who wished to keep their personal information classified. Now, internet providers will not need our consent before collecting and sharing our data, including browsing histories, geo-locations and even the contents of our online identities. This data will be sold in aggregate to advertisers, who will use it to target ads more specifically to internet users. This effectively puts our personal information up for...

The futurists once had a dream: Through technological advancement, all of humanity’s needs would someday be provided for automatically, leaving us free to pursue our passions and aspirations. In the 1930s, for example, economist John Keynes predicted that his grandchildren — now the people of today’s workforce — would need to work a mere 15 hours a week, and their descendents would work even less. Someday, according to this dream, everyone would have a home, enough food to eat and the resources to cultivate ourselves into the very best people we could be, unhindered by a rat race for basic necessities. And then, miraculously, technology surpassed these expectations. In the United States alone, empty homes...