Know Where City Councilmembers Stand on Coal

To the Editors:
  

We appreciate The Oberlin Review’s continuing coverage of the deliberations by and decisions of Oberlin City Council concerning the proposed 1,000-megawatt pulverized-coal-fired AMP-Ohio Generating Station in Meigs County.

As your story last week noted, this is far from the last word on Oberlin’s future energy needs and how to meet them; in fact, it is not even necessarily the last word on this particular proposal for meeting nine megawatts of our projected baseload power requirements over the next forty years. We eagerly await the further analysis and recommendations of the studies to be undertaken collaboratively by the City and the College over the next several months, and we are confident that important alternatives in the short term, combined with lower-risk, comparably-priced and less environmentally hostile options for the long term, will be identified and brought to the forefront.

It is important to know where candidates for Oberlin City Council stand on our community’s expressed commitments to securing baseload power resources that are both as reliable and cost-efficient as we want on the one hand and as sustainable and reflective of true total costs as possible on the other.  You mention that the Council vote in support of the AMPGS contract was 4-3, but you didn’t specify the “ayes” and “nays.”  For the record, Mr. Mealy, Mr. Rimbert, Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Tyree voted in favor of it; Mr. Ashenhurst, Mr. Gardner and Mr. Peterson voted against it. Among the non-incumbent candidates, Mr. Sonner presented the petition of more than 200 residents opposed to the project, and Mr. Baumann’s campaign brochure detailed his objections to the measure several weeks before it was brought to this (for now) final vote.

–David Ashenhurst
City Councilmember
–David Sonner

Cell Phones and Bikes Don’t Mix

To the Editors:

Multitasking is a way of life for many people, and in most cases it’s harmless, resulting in nothing more than doing several things at once, poorly. However, when a person multitasks while driving, or operating heavy machinery or in a hazardous environment, multitasking tends to increase the chances of injury or death. Case in point: bicycling while using a cellphone. Cycling really demands full attention, especially when rolling past pedestrians or sharing the road with motor vehicles.

Today, while walking across campus, I witnessed a near-death-experience when a pickup truck traveling at 35 m.p.h. at the Lorain/Professor intersection nearly smashed into a student who was rolling across Lorain Street, against the green light, while talking on her cellphone. The driver of the truck braked hard and laid on the horn, while the cyclist kept rolling, cell still held to head. This scenario is very common on campus. It’s sheer dumb luck that scenarios such as this don’t turn tragic.

Paying full, undivided attention to our surroundings enhances our chances for survival. Death by multitasking is an ignominious way to die. Winning the Darwin Award is not something our survivors would have hoped for us.

–Bill Ruth

Moon Festival Caption Correction

To the Editors:

We, the Chinese Students Association and Vietnamese Students Association, would like to address the photo used in last week’s issue from October 5, 2007.  The photo was incorrectly captioned as “Shansi Music and Dance in Asia Symposium,” in the section “This Week in Oberlin.” The photo was taken at our Mid-Autumn Moon Festival on September 28, and is in fact, not related to Shansi or their symposium in any way. Though it is unclear whether the fault lies with the photographer or the editors, we would like to make clear that this oversight not only belittled our efforts in celebrating this holiday, but also showed indifference towards cultural diversity.

Although the photo contains images of lanterns, it is very important that such images not be thoughtlessly associated with all things Asian. This generalization is dangerous and further alienates and marginalizes minorities. It is disappointing that a paper of such integrity would overlook this. In the future, we would like to request that all photos (especially those that are of cultural significance) are used in the proper context.

–Matthew Chen
CSA, Co-Chair
–Morgan Hughes
CSA, Co-Chair
–Shiyuan Chen
CSA, Officer
–Juliette Lu
CSA, Officer
–Priscilla Tsai
CSA, Officer
–Michelle Wong
CSA, Officer
–Jessica Saw
CSA
–Shibo Xu
CSA
–Nancy Nguyen
VSA, Co-Chair
–Minh-Tam Nguyen
VSA, Co-Chair
–Ai Ly Ho
VSA, Officer
–Yen-Nhi Ngo
VSA, Officer
–Thao Phan
VSA, Officer
–Tuyet Ngo
VSA

Students Respond to Arrests Coverage

To the Editors:

As fourth-year students at Oberlin College and active members of the campus community, we have looked to the Review for responsible reporting of campus and community issues. The Review has broad and deep influence on this campus and legitimacy that stems from being the most frequently published and reliable student publication on campus. Furthermore, each issue of the Review is archived and posted publicly on the World Wide Web. This reach comes with great responsibility, which we place in the hands of its writers and editors.

As students and avid readers of the Review, we are concerned about the content in last week’s article titled ‘Student Arrests Rouse Campus.’ This front-page article published the full names, years, charges and other personal details of students involved in a highly public and politically charged incident. While the students involved were asked to comment, they were at the time legally obliged not to speak about the incident and were not asked for permission or feedback by the authors before the article was printed.

One of our major concerns is what we perceive as a lack of journalistic justification for printing specific names and their alleged, unproven charges from the night of the 29th. We are fully aware that the information published in this article is public record; these names and charges are open to anyone who seeks them.

However, in our opinion, the dissemination of this specific information neither enhanced the credibility of the article nor served to shed light on the incident and its aftermath. Instead, it has put three students’ personal lives on display to their fellow students, professors, friends, employers and the community at large. The release of such personal and damaging information moves us to seriously question the trust and the discretionary license that we otherwise give to the Review. 

Oberlin College is a small school in a small community and the Review is our student newspaper.  News reporting and information disseminating should involve a process of professional discretion and peer respect, especially when it comes to making the highly personal into the highly public. More specifically, we are concerned that, in this particular article, the Review failed to weigh its responsibilities of informing readers with important, fact-based information against dealing effectively with personal and highly damaging information. 

We suggest that the Review do two things in order to mend the trust and renew the professional standards that we feel have been damaged. The first is that the article, or simply the names of the students charged in the incident, be left out of the online version of last week’s Review. We feel this would curb the damaging effects of its publication and would demonstrate a respect for the volatility of this incident, an understanding that the charges are yet unproven and a concern for the privacy of all individuals involved.  The second is that writers and editors exercise a greater sensitivity, awareness and discretion in cases like this in the future. 

We thank the Review for an opportunity to voice our opinions and welcome feedback.

–Maria Landi
–Juliet Lu
College Seniors