Oberlin College - Hi-O-Hi Yearbook (Oberlin, OH)

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1833 Oberlin College, from its founding in 1833 has been a proud and unconventional place, distinctive in its sober moral purpose, its special sense of what was wrong about the past and present, its special vision of a desirable future. The College's first 50 years clinched these traits. They left marks on this place that are invisible but unforgettable. They shape our behavior from year to year in ways we sometimes do not fully know. A central fact about Oberlin has always been its distance, both geographical and psychological, from the ingrained habits of the outside world. In 1983 as in 1833, Oberlin often seems about 10 miles from everywhere: 10 miles from Elyria, 10 miles from original sin, 10 miles from normal American society. We're not unique in being located in a small town. Most 19th Century American colleges were put in villages. Their function was to serve as conservative oasises of knowledge and morality where children of the middle classes could be safely kept during their vulnerable years. But Oberlin's main purpose in the early years differed sharply from most other colleges, and from society at large. These differences enforced a constant tension between Oberlin and the rest of the world. tThat tension survives to the present, though we love to quarrel among ourselves about its current vitality and meaningj .Xhi Xi HltX :l'lHHI .: piiutugmpix in tin tnwlllil tullr'gr' I ihlulm . ..-..... ....r-............4. M-MA-...- Asym- .4 -.g. a w-M.Ag$gmd5.a uh rx-IJJK . :v,.;t.-...iv' V a ..,., val. . .;A has i. -A WW4;

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1 Sketch Oberlin College Historica

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m maawmtm ' m t ' ' ' ., g i i ii 2 g T?X'W i JV. i ' ., -v 3 .4 , i 333 t . t . . ,s A ':2 i i -r a a f: f: ' i 1 2' aw ., T . t1 x22..XA.M , w 3 . '73.: 1.... 94,. AMlyT . ' M Jan ' ' .7 4:; $Mxrzx57f I ' . 594 .; I A s;' t SOME 1833 RECXHLDS OF THE OBERIJN COLONY AND INSTITI'TE M the top is a receipt for work performed on the Boarding Housc -0berliu Hall. mom originals in the Miscellaneous Archivesi PRESIDENT VA HAN'S HOl'SE by the Institute for him in I835. Occupied by him to l850 and by Professor Morgan from then until 1831. and hv t t Tonscnratory of Music from 188: to 1883 when it was demolished. It was on the site of the present Warner Hall. 1839 Oberlin's location was chosen by its founders, Reverend John Shipherd and his partner Philo Stewart, for both practical and educational reasons. It was originally a desolate swamp forest. The land came very cheap, the only large tract in the region left unsettled because it seemed to have no earthly value. The site fitted nicely with the founders' aim. Shipherd and Stewart wanted to be left alone in their clearing in the woods with their friends and followers, to work out an experiment in higher education on their own terms. Their purposes were big, and bold, and authentically radical. They dreamed of saving the popularion of the raw new American West from ignorance and degeneration. Although the College never tied itself to any specific religious sect, it was profoundly protestant and evangelical in its origins. Oberlinis founding was part of a broad wave of millenial, reform-minded Christian Perfectionism which came sweeping out of New England and upstate New York and across the Middle West during the 30 years before the Civil War. This dream of human perfectibility could take many forms. It could involve tinkering with family relationships among wives, husbands, and children; it could involve testing the idea of communal sharing of property and labor; it could inspire the drive for abolition of slavery, and the beginnings of the women's rights movement. Oberlin's early history was interlocked with many of these impulses. But the Oberlin version of perfectionism was mainly oriented toward missionary education. Underneath its theological complexities, it strove to help people cast aside their momentary imperfections and experience through personal behavior the fullest reward of emancipation from original sin tby which they meant selfishness, egotism, and pridei and so lead more moral and more useful lives. As John Shipherd gathered recruits for his colony across New England and upstate New York, he carried in his saddlebag a written covenant, which each recruit had to sign as a condition of joining. The Oberlin Covenant is a fascinating document. It is keen on plain, straight living - no smoking, no chewing, no drinking tand that included coffee and tea. Jewelry and tight dresses were renounced, as are fancy houses. The Oberlin Covenant combined with severe economic hard times in the early years to enforce the 19th Century plain style of Oberlin domestic architecture which still marks the town, in contrast to the striking variety among the buildings of the 20th Century campus. The Oberlin Covenant served as a kind of screen or filter which controlled the sorts of people who came with Shipherd to found his colony. They were a very earnest, headstrong batch of men and women. There was nothing otherworldly about them. They were determined to change people's behavior here and now. From the outset, colony and College were gathered in a common cause e education for moral service to a world in need of saving. This was the Oberlin latch-key to perfection. 5