Advocating for social justice is perhaps the Oberlin community’s most strongly-held value. We care deeply about equity, even though we’re far from perfect in achieving it. One of the most important resources on campus in our ongoing work to be better advocates for diversity, equity, and inclusion is the Multicultural Resource Center. The MRC plays an invaluable role on campus through the support and programming it provides for marginalized communities at Oberlin. Further, the MRC does good work in educating and training other campus groups to be more sensitive to social power dynamics and their own biases. Because of the contributions that the MRC makes to our community, we have been alarmed to see the deterioration...

The City of Oberlin celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day for the second time ever this Monday, after officially changing the holiday’s name from Columbus Day in 2017. Oberlin joins a growing number of cities around the country in rejecting dominant narratives of colonial expansion, instead choosing to recognize and remember the violence that Columbus and other settlers inflicted — and continue to inflict — on Indigenous peoples across North and South America. We stand behind the City of Oberlin in changing the holiday’s name. We also view the change as an opportunity to further consider the histories of Indigenous communities who lived here before us. A land acknowledgement is a conscious, historically-grounded...

We must turn our gaze outward. That was President Carmen Ambar’s message as she prepared to ship a group of nearly 1,000 people — including first-years, Peer Advising Leaders, staff members, and volunteers — to Cleveland for the inaugural Connect Cleveland trip during New Student Orientation. The pilgrimage was part of Ambar’s initiative to build stronger ties with the Northeast Ohio community. In a massive 20-bus caravan, students connected with local organizations and alumni all over the city, visiting a total of 39 different sites, including the public radio and television broadcaster Ideastream, the Cleveland Museum of Art, an urban farm, and a Cleveland food bank, to name a few. The goal was to help st...

Oberlin has reached many milestones this year — some deserving of celebration. Among those was the beginning of Carmen Ambar’s presidency. Ambar has worked to be more transparent and communicative than former President Marvin Krislov, whose time at Oberlin was marked by campus tension and administrative opacity. Ambar’s presidency has begun at a time of great financial uncertainty for Oberlin. To her credit, Ambar has made an effort to be candid about those challenges, carrying out a series of campus presentations regarding the College’s financial outlook this winter. She has also called upon all of us — students, staff, faculty, and alums — to be Oberlin’s stewards, institutionalists concerned not only with Oberlin...