Hundreds of students will flood Wilder Hall Saturday night dressed in gender non-conforming clothing and ready to have the time of their lives. Drag Ball is one of the highlights of the school year for many students. It is a time when both LGBTQ and non-queer students can come together, celebrate queer culture, and enjoy an abundance of glitter. When Drag Ball goes well, it gives LGBTQ students — especially transgender and gender-nonconforming students — a chance to celebrate their identities without fear of judgement. The evening should also serve as a way for non-queer students to respectfully explore gender nonconformity and express appreciation for their queer friends. The workshops individuals are required ...

By the way, Drag Ball is this weekend. You might have missed the Facebook reminders (because there really were none), the posters (also few and far between), and most unfortunately, if you just arrived on campus this September, you might not know the Ball is a thing at all. As seniors who remember the all-Wilder-consuming, Wizard-of-Oz-themed, end-of-an-era blowout Ball of 2009, we cannot help but lament the apparent demise of the great Oberlin get-together to celebrate the queerness in all of us. The cancellation of Drag Ball in 2010 due to a lack of student organizational support and funding spurred discussion about whether, in the almost two decades since its inauguration, the event had lost its focus. Some...

Early on Friday, April 8, President of the Drag Ball Committee and College senior Hunter O’Neill received an e-mail from City of Oberlin Fire Marshal Dennis Kirin informing him that he had limited Drag Ball attendance to 280 people: 100 in the ’Sco and 180 in DeCafé. “The minute I saw this information, my jaw dropped,” O’Neill wrote in an email to the Review. After a reevaluated fire code severely curtailed the number of attendees allowed into the Halloween Guided by Voices concert ...