The Oberlin Review

Students from The Peer Advising Leadership cohort Poplar Tree have an informal socially distanced gathering in Tappan Square during the first week of classes.

PAL Program Prepares Students for a Socially-Distanced College Experience

September 11, 2020

This semester, the Peer Advising Leaders program has expanded in both length and content to address the strains that incoming first-year students face under COVID-19. The PAL program began in 2017 and has constantly evolved since then. This semester, the PAL program’s goal of teaching students to optimize their college experience hasn’t shifted, though its methods of achieving this goal have changed significantly. “PAL programming this year expanded in a number of ways,” wrote Executive Dire...

Kyle Hartzell, “DIY as a Response to Change” Co-Instructor

September 4, 2020

Educational Technologist, Digital Media Engineer, and Lecturer Kyle Hartzell wears many hats at Oberlin College — he works in the Center for Information Technology and the Oberlin Center for Technologically Enhanced Teaching, as well as in both the Cinema Studies and Studio Art departments. He manages equipment and spaces, teaches workshops for student production, and is teaching a sound design class in Cinema Studies this semester. This August, he and Fabrication Lab Supervisor Rachel Smith led th...

Junior Practicum Aims to Provide Career Readiness Skills in Lieu of Summer Internships

Ella Moxley, Senior Associate Editor

July 19, 2020

While third-year College students won’t enroll in the fall due to the College’s three-semester plan, they will have the opportunity to continue their education off-campus with the Junior Practicum program. The practicum is designed to help build career readiness skills. Although the practicum offers an opportunity for experiential learning, some students remain concerned that it will not make up for lost internships during the summer semester. “I think that everyone in the community is making an adjustment that they would rather not make [due to COVID-19],” said Chair of the Board of Trustees Chris Canavan, OC ’84. “[But] if we think about other ways in which Oberlin could provide an experience for juni...

Double-degree second-year Kenji Anderson will play the piano accompaniment to Conservatory second-year Julia Alexander’s vocals in their Sunday recital “Art song, etc.”

Pop and Classical Played Together in “Art song, etc.” Show

February 14, 2020

At “Art song, etc.” this upcoming Sunday at 3:00 p.m. in Stull Recital Hall, “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles will be performed alongside the 1913 art song “À Chloris” composed by Reynaldo Hahn — and it works. Double-degree second-year Kenji Anderson and Conservatory second-year Julia Alexander are the duo behind every cover and performance. Anderson is a Piano and English major, while Alexander is majoring in Vocal Performance. “Art song, etc.” celebrates both stude...

Obies Create Inclusive Dating App for Long-Term Relationships

Carson Li

February 14, 2020

Imagine an online dating app that doesn’t show you a person’s photo at first. Instead, you match with the other person based on compatibility — only then does the app reveal users’ photos to one another. Paire, an online dating app for Oberlin students that is currently searching for beta testers, will function exactly this way. It differs from most mainstream dating apps in that it is designed for people of all genders and sexualities looking for relationships — not hookups — based on personality, rather than appearance. College second-year Kabir Karamchandani, a Computer Science and Creative Writing major, is one of the main founders of Paire. Over Winter Term 2020, they built a team and s...

Students in the Phlox Ensemble sit with their instruments.

Oberlin Students for Gender Inclusivity in Music Presents Phlox

February 7, 2020

Can you think of a famous female, transgender, or nonbinary classical music composer? The average person would likely know the name Beethoven or Bach, but might struggle to recall a composer who’s not a cisgender man. The Phlox Ensembles, an intensive two-week Winter Term orchestra and choir, aim to combat this lack of gender inclusivity by performing works by composers that are not cisgender men. Organized by Oberlin Students for Gender Inclusivity in Music, the ensembles are a spa...

Neo-Futurist Member Teaches Obies Non-Illusory Performance

Jaimie Yue, Arts & Culture Editor

February 7, 2020

A scathing monologue about the zodiac signs. A somber mathematical proof about the square root of two and the mysteries of human behavior. A carefree dance to “Shark Smile” by Big Thief. An unabashed cover of “Somebody to Love” by Queen, but performed in a pitch-black room. All these and more were the 38 short performances in Staging the Real, an on-campus Winter Term project and that went up for one night only on Jan. 31. Staging the Real incorporated the principles of neo-futurism and non-illusory performance. Both styles embrace the limitations of theater and do not attempt to project the illusion of a character or setting. Joey Rizzolo, OC ’97, was the project facilitator leading the 16 ...

College fourth-year Steven Mentzer’s artwork for

“The Wild Beast of the Bungalow” Premiered at Warner Hall

February 7, 2020

The Winter Term Opera The Wild Beast of the Bungalow premiered this past weekend in a whirl of pink décor, human-sized prairie dogs, and singing chickenpox. Composer Rachel J. Peters describes her work as both “opera that sounds like musical theater” and “musical theater that sounds like opera.” For example, The Wild Beast features traditional opera with sparse orchestration, but also a libretto by Royce Vavrek sung in a barbershop quartet and sixties girl-group style. The opera was born w...

Innovation, Inspiration Nestled in Rajasthani Village

Kushagra Kar, Production Editor

February 7, 2020

Imagine living in a village in the Amazon, three days by canoe from the closest city. Imagine a group of people, foreign in looks, speech, clothes, and ideas, turning up on your shores and asking you to travel with them. Travel – which for you would likely be the first time you’ve seen your capital city, been in a car, heard this alien language of English – to a completely different country to be trained in solar engineering. Stepping out of your door would require some serious courage. At the same time, the people asking you to do this would have to be either really brave or just naively optimistic. They would need to have real guts to ask you to take that risk, and be so certain of their ability to deli...

Oberlin Should Consider Social Entrepreneurship Program

Bara Watts, Director of Entrepreneurship

February 7, 2020

Do you want to find a way to reduce college debt, effectively sort recyclables, or support teens recovering from addiction? Help international students compete at U.S. colleges, support English-as-a-second -language-learners become fluent, build community for neurodivergent individuals, grow local environmental engagement among high school students, or build advocacy to radically change economic inequality? These are only a handful of the goals that inspire the entrepreneurial ventures students and alumni developed this Winter Term in the LaunchU Bootcamp and Pitch Competition. See a pattern? These Oberlin entrepreneurs are tackling big social and community problems. Per the program’s motto, they are actively w...

On Addressing Student Stress, Oberlin Must Put Its Money Where Its Mouth Is

David Mathisson, Columnist

December 17, 2019

Recently, Student Senate presented findings on mental health to the Board of Trustees. I’d like to thank fellow Senators, including College third-year Emma Edney and College second-years Raavi Asdar and Kofi Asare, for leading Senate’s efforts in this area. They identified a distinct connection between the mental health of students and investment in student happiness. Their presentation made it clear that Oberlin must expand resources available in times of crisis; invest in areas that impact Oberlin students’ day-to-day happiness — i.e. housing and dining; invest in adding more events to the community social scene; and eventually upgrade Wilder Hall so it can justifiably be called a student union. Investments...

Senate Updates on Committee Progress

Patrick Powers, Contributing Writer

November 22, 2019

As part of Student Senate’s mission to inform the Oberlin student body about the work going on throughout Oberlin’s various administrative governance structures, we’d like to offer a snapshot of the work going on in some of the committees in which senators serve. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the work Senate is doing at the moment. Still, we hope it will provide some valuable insight into the conversations going on amongst faculty and administrators that will affect Oberlin’s students in the weeks, months, and years to come. Arts and Sciences Academic Restructuring Committee update: Cait Kelley ASARC is one of several committees created this year to formulate specific recommendations...