Carson Li – The Oberlin Review

The Tricks to Making Ramen Even More Delicious

Carson Li, Contributing Writer

December 7, 2018

We need to rethink the way we treat our ramen. I know it’s cheap — $1.75 per pack on Amazon and in stores — and oftentimes it comes with a plastic bowl. It’s also seemingly easy to make: You boil the water, drop in the noodle patty, then the flavor packet. I grew up eating ramen as one of my favorite foods, and I think it could taste much better if we put more consideration into how we cook it. I know it sounds ridiculous — you just pour water into a bowl, what’s the point of changing anything? How could there be a difference in taste? Well, even pouring water has science behind it, and can make a huge difference in taste. More importantly, ramen reflects the way Americans tend to treat their food:...

AccessCo Position Must Have More Job Transparency

Carson Li

April 27, 2018

Even an organization like the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association, where students handle most of the management and regulation, still reflects many of our social and societal problems. One of them is about challenging authority. OSCA has at least one Accessibility Coordinator per co-op. Although AccessCos are all students, they establish their authority in a way that is completely mysterious to most OSCA members. Most people have no idea what specific work they are doing, and I found it extremely complicated and burdensome to challenge their authority because of this. Last fall, I was one of the Keep Cottage Dining Loose End Coordinators — someone who facilitates discussions and answers questions involving ele...

OSCA Fails to Adequately Address Needs of POC

Carson Li, Contributing Writer

November 17, 2017

Alright, white folks, let’s be honest — do you really care that the co-op you’re living in is too white? I was pretty surprised when my white friend, not a friend of color, first raised this question. It initially made me feel good because I felt like white people in my co-op were advocating for more diversity in our community. Later, things turned out to be different than I thought. Co-op diversity for many white people is just a casual topic for chit-chat while hanging out in the lounge. By the way, don’t get them talking about race; those white people can analyze the definition of race from four different angles. As an international student hailing from China, nearly all of my knowledge about race and dis...