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

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Oberlin: What About It Remember your first day at Oberlin? Maybe you drove in with your patents, or took a train, or maybe you flew in. It was still summer, the summer after high school. And as you arrived you might have looked out the car window or limo window, thinking how exciting it was to be in a new place, probably a whole new state, starting COLLEGE, perhaps your first time away from home. You were still a teenager - almost all of us were tthough there are excep- tions to everything herel. Although it is difficult to notice changes in ourselves, friends and family can assure us that we are not the same pe0ple we were when we first set foot in Obie-land. We think about things differently, we might look and dress differently, and the way we feel about ourselves has changed. We know more about ourselves and our values, even if we still have doubts about the future. In one sense, there isnt too much to Oberlin. About 2700 students 600 of them in the Conservatory of Musicl in a town of 9000, thirty-five miles south- west of Cleveland is little to boast about. There's only one hill in town, if you don't count the one which resulted from excavations for Carr swimming pool. Add a couple dozen shops, three pizza parlors, a bookstore, a handful of bakeries and restaurants, and a bar that can serve nothing but beer, by law. It's all very removed from the rest of the world, and often people are too busy to read the papers or watch TV. Oberlin is small in scale, sometimes self- contained. The colleges relationship with the town is generally a good, mutual one, much better than those at other schools. AlthOugh Oberlin enjoys an excellent reputation and Strong applicant pool from the East Coast, it has yet to achieve this recognition south and west of Lorain County which, inci- dentlyt is rumored to be one of the two American counties where solar power is unfeasible because it is always cloudyl This, however, is gradually chang- ing, thanks to the Sesquicentennial celebration in 1983, a good public relations campaign, and the appointment of the charismatic S. Frederick Starr to the college presidency. Oberlin's size and relative isolation from the rest of the world attract a particular type of student: people who want to know what its like to stand still for a moment, observe themselves in the world and become aware of how they fit into it. But do we really stand still? On one level, no. Boredom at Ober- lin is a myth. De5pite its smallness and location, numerous daily events and extracurricular activities abound. Combine this fact with the intellectual ag- gressiveness and tight friendships within the student body lnot to mention with the faCultyl, and you will find that more often than not, Obies choose lifestyles in which they are constantly on the go. It is a wonder that students do find the time to be introspective or hypothesize abOut the world. Yet it is in these years that we learn that we can still function, create, and excel while under tremendous pressure, beyond a point we formerly considered to be our potential. In this way especially, we have learned about ourselves. Thus we graduate with a sense of commitment to our lives and our ideals. We have a greater sense of the self-respeCt, dedication, and resilience necessary to achieve our goals. Optimists that many of us are tor idealists, as Outsiders may tell usl, we have faith in the good of the world, and are willing to work to make it a better place. Many of the skills we will use have been acquired or recog- nized during our years at Oberlin. In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, jet cats zoom down the highway so fast that the drivers take a green blur to be grass, a white blur to be a house, and a brown blur to be a cow. Since pe0ple are going so quickly, they can't see what is on the side ofthe road; billboards are constructed 200 feet long so that they can be read. When Clarisse tells Guy Montag about her uncle slowing down to forty miles per hour just to take a closer look at things, the uncle is made out to be a subversive and is arrested. I sometimes think drivers dont know what grass is, or flowers are, because they never see them slowly, says Clarisse at one point. You think too much, is Guyls answer. Not to oversentimentalitize, we who are at Oberlin are like the uncle in the story e somewhat nonconformist, independent, and interested in the world. Plus. we have the courage and means to slow down , to put ourselves into a place which has a timeless quality - a place where, despite hectic schedules, we lose track of time because little changes. There are people like this elsewhere, with similiat opportunities, but what makes Oberlin so unique is that in addition to all this, it is steeped in a 151-year-old tradition, one which provides a sounding board, a testing ground for one's theories and opinions. Some of OberlinIs liberal tradition rubs off on everyone in some way .. at the least, we learn to keep open minds, even while we are zeroing in on Our unique- ness. So in a way, we hardenl' as our years at Oberlin go by: our ideas and our points of views crystallize into a set of ideals and principles which provide us with a means of appreciating, criticizing, or simply understanding the world in which we live, as well as ourselves. We become more sure of ourselves as individuals as we see our differences from Others in every area. The education we receive at Oberlin is largely responsible for that. We are made to realize it every time we come into contact with someone from the outside world , even ifthat someone is an old friend. The road to a distinctive identity is a long and diffiCult one, and we sometimes may be prone to Curse whatever is responsible for Our mood swings, moral dilemmas, and mental and emotional hardships. But the fact is, now that Commencement has come and gone tor will come and go, ifyou are not yet a seniorl, whether we have liked or disliked Oberlint it has played a tremendous part in the formation of our minds and selves as real people in a real world. 14