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Oberlin College
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Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio. It was founded in 1833 by Presbyterian ministers, and is home to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, making it the only top-ranked liberal arts college (#20 according to US News & World Report) with a top-ranked conservatory. The school is noteworthy for its early admission of African-Americans (1834) and women (1833) into the academy. A study found that more 1999-2003 Oberlin College alumni receive doctorates than do alumni from any other liberal arts college in the country.
Oberlin College is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and The Five Colleges of Ohio consortium, including Ohio Wesleyan University, Denison University, Kenyon College, and The College of Wooster.
Oberlin College's motto is "Learning and Labor." While its school colors are often casually referred to as "crimson and gold," they are actually cardinal red and mikado yellow.
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Encyclopedia
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio. It was founded in 1833 by Presbyterian ministers, and is home to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, making it the only top-ranked liberal arts college (#20 according to US News & World Report) with a top-ranked conservatory. The school is noteworthy for its early admission of African-Americans (1834) and women (1833) into the academy. A study found that more 1999-2003 Oberlin College alumni receive doctorates than do alumni from any other liberal arts college in the country.
Oberlin College is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and The Five Colleges of Ohio consortium, including Ohio Wesleyan University, Denison University, Kenyon College, and The College of Wooster.
Oberlin College's motto is "Learning and Labor." While its school colors are often casually referred to as "crimson and gold," they are actually cardinal red and mikado yellow. Those colors were formally designated for the college by a faculty committee in 1889 and were drawn from the family coat of arms of John Frederick Oberlin. They remain in the official registry of school colors maintained by the American Council on Education.
The newspaper of record is The Oberlin Review. There is also an "alternative" student-run newspaper called The Grape, and a newspaper pertaining to interests of students of color called In Solidarity.
History
Both the college and the town of Oberlin were founded in 1833 by a pair of Presbyterian ministers, John Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart. The ministers named their project after Jean-Frédéric Oberlin, an Alsatian minister whom they both admired. Oberlin attained prominence because of the influence of its second president, the evangelist Charles Finney, after whom one of the College's chapels and performance spaces is named. Its first president was Asa Mahan (1800-1889), who served as such from 1835-1850.
The college was built on 500 acres (2 km²) of land specifically donated by the previous owner, who lived in Connecticut. Shipherd and Stewart's vision was for both a religious community and school. For a more detailed history of the founding of the town and the college, see Oberlin, Ohio.
Oberlin has long been associated with progressive causes. Its founders bragged that "Oberlin is peculiar in that which is good." Oberlin was the first college in the United States to regularly admit African-American students (1835). It is also the oldest continuously operating coeducational institution, since having admitted four women in 1837. These four women, who were the first to enter as full students, were Mary Kellogg (Fairchild), Mary Caroline Rudd, Mary Hosford, and Elizabeth Prall. All but Kellogg graduated. The college was listed as a National Historic Landmark on December 21, 1965 for its significance in admitting African-Americans and women.
One historian called Oberlin, "the town that started the Civil War" due to its reputation as a hotbed of abolitionism. Oberlin was a key stop along the Underground Railroad, station number 99. In 1858, both students and faculty were involved in the controversial Oberlin-Wellington Rescue of a fugitive slave, which received national press coverage. Two participants in this raid, Lewis Sheridan Leary and John Anthony Copeland, along with another Oberlin resident, Shields Green, also participated in John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry. This heritage was commemorated on campus by the 1977 installation of sculptor Cameron Armstrong's "Underground Railroad Monument" (a railroad track rising from the ground toward the sky) and monuments to the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue and the Harper's Ferry Raid .
Introduction of co-ed dormitories
In 1970, Oberlin made the cover of Life Magazine as one of the first colleges in the country to have co-ed dormitories.
Historian Geoffrey Blodgett, a professor and graduate of Oberlin, pointed out that campus dorms were a cause of anger among students during the 1960s. Students reacted vocally against the new dorms of the 1950s and 1960s (Dascomb, East, North and South), calling them expedient "slabs" of "sleeping and feeding space," and this protest soon took on other controversies, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. Dascomb went from being the impetus for protest to the vehicle of social change in 1967 when it was transformed into a co-ed dorm during winter term of 1969. In January 1969, with the approval of Dean of Students George Langeler, Dascomb became the first co-ed college dormitory in the United States. Hebrew House, as it was known, was set up as winter term project to operate similar to an Israeli kibbutz. The experiment was a success, and now all but one of Oberlin College's dormitories are coed. The Baldwin Cottage is open only to women and transgender students.
Sports teams
The school's varsity sports teams are the Yeomen and Yeowomen. They participate in the NCAA's Division III and the North Coast Athletic Conference. Oberlin's football team was the first team coached by legendary coach John Heisman, who led the team to a 7–0 record in 1892. Oberlin is the last college in Ohio to beat Ohio State (winning 7-6 in 1921). Though in modern times the football team was more famous for losing streaks of 40 games (1992–1996) and 44 games (1997–2001), the Yeomen have enjoyed limited success in recent years.
The college also hosts several club sports teams, including the Oberlin Ultimate team. Oberlin Ultimate was founded in 1976 and is often among the top 10 teams in its region. Recently, leaders of the Athletic Department and various club sports have spoken out in favor of increased institutional support for the teams, requesting that the College provide access to professional sports trainers and team transportation.
Academics
Of Oberlin's 2,800 or so students, roughly 2,200 are enrolled in the College of Arts & Sciences, a little over 400 in the Conservatory of Music, and the remaining 150 or so in both College and Conservatory under the five-year Double Degree program.
College of Arts & Sciences
The College of Arts & Sciences offers over 45 majors, minors and concentrations. Based on students graduating with a given major, its most popular majors over the last ten years have been (in order) English, Biology, History, Politics and Environmental Studies. The College's science programs are considered strong for a smaller liberal arts college, especially Chemistry and Neuroscience.
Conservatory of Music
The top-ranked Oberlin Conservatory of Music is located on the Oberlin College campus. Conservatory admission is rigorous, with over 1400 applicants worldwide auditioning for 120 seats. As a result, the quality of Oberlin's artistic community is high. Students benefit from over 500 performances yearly, most free of charge, with concerts and recitals almost daily.
Allen Memorial Art Museum and Mudd Library
The Allen Memorial Art Museum, with over 12,000 holdings, was the first college art museum west of the Alleghenies and is held on par with those at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. The Oberlin College Library System is one of the largest undergraduate library systems in the nation, containing over 1.3 million volumes and 1,800 print subscriptions in five separate facilities (Main Library, Art Library, Conservatory of Music Library, Science Library and Carnegie Storage), a large Special Collections department with strengths in Oberliniana and anti-slavery material, and 52 staff. In addition to the breadth of its holdings, it is recognized for its quality: the library received the Association of College and Research Libraries Award for Excellence in 2002, and in 2006 Director of Libraries Ray English was named the ALA's "Academic/Research Librarian of the Year". In the summer of 2007 the main level of the main library in the Seeley G. Mudd Learning Center was converted into an Academic Commons.
OhioLINK consortium
Oberlin students and faculty benefit by Oberlin's membership in the OhioLINK consortium, providing access to 12,000+ commercially licensed online journals, 130 databases, 18,000+ ebooks and is rapidly growing digital media collections. The OhioLINK Central Catalog represents the library holdings of 87 libraries in the state, including the State Library of Ohio, plus the Center for Research Libraries. The collection is nearing 10 million unique records representing 27.5 million holdings in the system, and undergraduates account for the larger percentage of OhioLINK online borrowing - the process by which any enrolled student can readily request the loan of books and other items from any other library in the system.
Experimental College
The college's "Experimental College" or ExCo program, a student-run department, allows any student or interested person to teach their own class for a limited amount of college credit. ExCo classes by definition focus on material not covered by existing departments or faculty.
Many courses supplement conventional disciplines, from languages and areas of cinema or literature, to musical ensembles, martial arts and forms of dancing. Other ExCos cover an array of topics, in the past ranging from Aquariums to Wilderness Skills. to Hacky Sack
Due to the nature of ExCo, while some staple courses are continued for years, the overall number and selection of classes offered varies dramatically from semester to semester.
Winter Term
Another aspect of Oberlin's academics is the Winter Term during the month of January. This term was created to allow students to do something outside the regular course offerings of the college. Students may work alone or in groups, either on or off campus, and may design their own project or pick from a list of projects and internships set up by the college each year. Projects range from serious academic research with co-authorship in scientific journals, to humanitarian projects, to making avant-garde films about historic Chicago neighborhoods, to learning how to bartend. A full-credit project is suggested to involve five to six hours per weekday.
Campus culture
Student Cooperative Association
The Oberlin Student Cooperative Association, or OSCA, is a non-profit corporation that houses 175 students and feeds 630 students in multiple sites. Its budget is nearly $2 million, making it the third-largest of its kind in North America, and by far the largest relative to the size of the institution whose students it serves.
OSCA is entirely student-run, with all participating students working as cooks, buyers, administrators, organizers. Every participant is required to do at least one hour per week of cleaning, ensuring that no one is valued above others. Most decisions within OSCA are made by Consensus. Oberlin bans all fraternities and sororities, making the co-ops the largest student-organized social system at the college.
Political activism
Oberlin students have a reputation for being radically liberal or progressive. Oberlin has a thriving LGBT community and most students are well informed about the intricacies of gender politics. The college was ranked as the eleventh most politically active by the Princeton Review in 2005.
Student unrest following the arrests of protesters on the lawn of then-President S. Frederick Starr's home on April 13, 1990, and his ongoing struggles with the faculty were major factors in his eventual departure from Oberlin. Recent activism among the student body has resulted in a campus-wide ban on sales of Coca-Cola products and a vote of no confidence in the college's president at the time, Nancy S. Dye, in May 2005. This vote, as well as similar actions by the faculty, likely played a role in her resignation in September 2006.
A sampling of the school's past commencement speakers reflects its reputation for embracing diversity, ranging from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jesse L. Jackson to figures as varied as Pete Seeger and Robert Frost; even Adlai Stevenson appeared, a month prior to his death.
Music
In addition to the Conservatory, Oberlin has myriad musical opportunities available for amateur musicians and students in the college. The Oberlin Gilbert and Sullivan Players (OGASP) perform one Gilbert and Sullivan operetta each semester. The entirely student-run Oberlin College Marching Band (OCMB), founded in 1998, performs at various sporting events including football games, women's rugby, and pep rallies throughout the year. There are a number of a cappella groups, including the Obertones (all-male),Nothing But Treble (all-female), and the Offbeats (co-ed jazz). In addition, students in the college can form chamber groups and receive coaching through the conservatory. Student composers also provide a demand for musicians to perform their work.
The college radio station WOBC-FM, and the party circuit (including the popular on-campus venue, The 'Sco) contribute to the campus music scene. Many alumni have pursued careers in popular and indie music, including members of the bands The Mars Volta, Come, Deerhoof, Liz Phair, Josh Ritter, Songs: Ohia, The Sea and Cake, Tortoise, Trans Am, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Due in part to both this and the school's proximity to Cleveland, the college attracts touring artists with a frequency nearly unparalleled among institutions of its size.
Oberlin College is also home to the steel drum ensemble Oberlin Steel, which has performed at venues including Central Park, New York's Lincoln Center, and the Lincoln Memorial.
Art Rental
Oberlin's museum has a unique art rental program. At the beginning of every semester students camp out in front of the north gate of the college's Allen Memorial Art Museum to get first pick of original etchings, lithographs and paintings by artists including Renoir, Warhol, Dalí, and Picasso. For five dollars per semester, students can hang these works on their dorm room walls. The program was started in the 1940s by Ellen Johnson, a professor of art at Oberlin, in order to "develop the aesthetic sensibilities of students and encourage ordered thinking and discrimination in other areas of their lives."
Events
Oberlin annually holds a Safer Sex Night and the Drag Ball, school-sponsored parties. The former originated in the 1980s as a response to the AIDS crisis, and features costumes, dancing, workshops, and free safe sex supplies provided by the Sexual Information Center. The latter is the last event of Transgender Awareness Week. Two of the largest events on campus each year, they draw large crowds of students, as well as criticism from social conservatives.
Sustainability
Oberlin College has demonstrated its commitment to the pursuit of sustainability on a number of fronts. An estimated 50% of the school's electricity needs are met using sustainable energy sources. Oberlin's innovative Center For Environmental Studies, a building the Department of Energy labeled as one of the “milestone” buildings of the 20th century, incorporates a 4,600 square foot (425 square meter) photovoltaic array, the biggest of its kind in Ohio. The school utilizes hybrid and electric vehicles for various purposes, offers financial support to a local transit company providing public transportation to the school, and has been home to , a cooperatively run bicycle center, since 1986. Each of the residence halls also monitors and displays real time and historic power and water use. Some dorms also have orbs which display a color depending on how real time energy use compares to the average historic energy use. The school's Campus Committee on Shareholder responsibility provides students, faculty, and staff with the opportunity to make suggestions and decisions on proxy votes.
In 2007, Oberlin received a grade of “B+” from the Sustainable Endowments Institute's annual College Sustainability Report Card, and was featured among schools as a “Campus Sustainability Leader”. In 2008, Oberlin received an "A-" on the annual College Sustainability Report Card. It was also listed as the school with the greenest conscience by Plenty in their green campuses ratings.
The Experimental College (ExCo) program at 3,000-student Oberlin College allows students to teach topics of interest that are normally not covered in the standard curriculum, giving them the opportunity to be on the other side of the blackboard. There is a course about Peak Oil .
Athletics
Football
Oberlin played its first football game in 1891, going 2 and 2 that season. In 1892, they were coached by John Heisman; Oberlin went 7 and 0, beating Ohio State twice by scores of 40-0 and 50-0. They outscored opponents 262 to 30.
Oberlin was one of the founding members of the Ohio Athletic Conference in 1902, along with Case, Kenyon College, Ohio State, Ohio Wesleyan University and Western Reserve. The league commonly was known as the "Big Six." Ohio State joined the Big Ten in 1913. Ohio State's all-time highest margin of victory was a 128-0 thrashing of Oberlin in 1916. Oberlin is the last in-state school to defeat Ohio State. The Yeomen upset the Buckeyes 7-6 at Ohio Field in Columbus in 1921.
The Oberlin teams of 1994 to 2000 have been rated the fifth worst college football team of all time by ESPN.com's Page 2. In 1994, Oberlin lost all nine games of its season scoring only ten points and giving up 358 points. In 1995, the Yeomen were outscored 469 to 72. In August 1996, Sports Illustrated featured Oberlin in its annual College Football Preview as the worst team in Division III. After four winless seasons from 1993 to 1996, Oberlin opened its 1997 season with an 18-17 victory over Thiel College sparking post-game jubilation with fans rushing the field. The victory garnered national attention as ESPN featured it on SportsCenter. Oberlin would not win again for years. Swarthmore College and Oberlin scheduled a 1999 matchup, with both schools nursing long losing streaks, just so one of them could end their streak. Oberlin lost 6-42 and continued a 40-game losing streak, ending it with a 53-22 victory over Kenyon College at home in October 2001.
Since then the team has enjoyed modest success, staying competitive in most matches and going 5-5 (with better than .500 records in conference) in 2003, 2006, and 2007.
In March 2008, Chris Schubert, a former wide receiver for Oberlin was invited to a mini camp hosted by the Cleveland Browns. He did not make the roster but in November 2008, was signed by the Mahoning Valley Thunder of the AF2.
Rugby
Oberlin has both men's and women's rugby teams, the Gruffs and the Rhinos, respectively. The women's rugby team defeated Ohio State University 14-0 in Spring 2008 and won the Teapot Dome Tournament.
Ultimate
Oberlin has both a men's and a women's Ultimate team, known as the Flying Horsecows and the Preying Manti respectively. The Horsecows have made trips to College Nationals in 1992, 1995, 1997, and 1999. The Manti qualified for Nationals for the first time in 1997. Both teams also maintain a tradition of emphasizing the spirit of Ultimate. Recently, the Flying Horsecows, after having an unsuccessful 2006-2007 season, hired a coach to work them into shape, and succeeded in advancing to the Regional championship tournament.
Notable alumni
Oberlin has graduated three Nobel Laureates and six MacArthur Fellows. Alumni have achieved success in a variety of fields and include the mayor of Washington, D.C., Adrian Fenty; Ben & Jerry's co-founder Jerry Greenfield; Robert Millikan, the physicist who measured the charge of an electron; Willard Van Orman Quine, the influential American analytic philosopher and logician; the first African-American major league baseball player, James McBride; a notable author of many books including, "The Color of Water" which spent over two years on the New York Times bestseller list. Moses Fleetwood Walker; a former executive director of Amnesty International; a Tony- and Emmy-winning director; a professional wrestler; a lesbian cartoonist; H. H. Kung, a premier of China; Michelle Malkin, a prominent conservative blogger, Ed Helms star of The Office and The Daily show, as well as musicians, playwrights, novelists, and activists and commentators spanning the political spectrum.
In popular culture
In Toni Morrison's debut novel The Bluest Eye, she described a town "which boasted an affinity with Oberlin, the underground railroad station, just thirteen miles away."
In Morrison's novel Beloved, and in the 1998 movie, Kimberly Elise's character Denver exclaims, "She says I might go to Oberlin!" as Oberlin was the first college to admit African-American students.
Robert Downey Jr.'s character Roger Baron in the 1989 film True Believer attended Oberlin College.
Oberlin was mentioned in the popular 2004 American movie Eurotrip as the school that the main character attends at the end of the film. It is a joke referring the fact that the plot of the movie has the main character trying to find a girl in Berlin, Germany only to be united with her at the college in Ohio, which sounds like "Oh Berlin." Humorously, the campus portrayed in the movie bears little resemblance to the actual Oberlin campus, including a lake that is conspicuously absent in real life.
An episode of the popular television sit-com, Dharma & Greg, mentions Oberlin as a prospective college choice for the yet to be born grandchild of Dharma's hippie parents.
The protagonist in H.P. Lovecraft's horror short story The Shadow Over Innsmouth spends his senior year at Oberlin.
Oberlin features prominently in the novels The Color of Light and Boys and Girls Together by William Goldman, an alumnus of the college.
Oberlin is parodied and renamed Accidental College in alumnus Gary Shteyngart's 2006 novel Absurdistan.
The protagonist of alumnus Alison Bechdel's 2006 memoir Fun Home attends Oberlin College.
Rich Orloff's play Vietnam 101: The War on Campus depicts the turmoil that occurred on the Oberlin Campus in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of the Vietnam War.
The character J.D. Lutz from the American television comedy 30 Rock went to Oberlin.
The character Tim Haspel from Showtime's The L Word left Los Angeles to coach the swim team at Oberlin.
In the "D-Girl" episode of The Sopranos, Meadow mentions Oberlin as the college that Anthony Jr.'s English teacher graduated from.
In Philip Roth's novel Exit Ghost, he writes of an acquaintance, whose children, at his insistence, all attend Wellesley, "Imagine, four daughers and not a single one of them saying, 'But I'd rather go to Barnard, I'd rather go to Oberlin."
Oberlin Conservatory of Music is the setting for feature film, "Ivory" (2009).
In "Carnal Knowledge," the February 2, 2009 episode of the hit CW show "Gossip Girl," Blair says with snotty resentment, "Turns out I can still apply to Oberlin..." after she is expelled from her prestigious Upper East Side private school, destroying her chances at her dream school, Yale.
In John Katz's Death by Station, private investigator Kit Deleeuw is interviewing a high school student who tells him, "I am going to Oberlin next Fall."
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