by Zoe Brunk, Staff Writer
It was the second weekend of October at the Ice Cream Social; fall was creeping into the air, and the sounds of banjo, mandolin, and acoustic guitar blended with the low, steady buzz of excitement over free ice cream. The ice cream line stretched from the sidewalk, up the Tank pathway, and curved around the tables piled high with chocolate and vanilla. There’s something strange about seeing fully grown, middle-aged adults tapping their feet and waiting for free ice cream, standing beside eager, penny-pinching college students desperate for something sweet after a week of lentils and chickpeas. Something strangely equalizing. It allowed me to imagine them in their own college years. Alumni; they are just like us. I walked amongst them, eager to find out something interesting about the Oberlin of the past, yet not one stopped me to talk.
Finally, I saw one of my friends out of the corner of my eye, engaged in conversation with an alumni woman. Soon, another of my friends joined him. And another. They flocked to her like birds, and I, too, found my way over. We circled her, one woman and seven college students. Her name was Talia, and she graduated from Oberlin in 1985. We asked her if she had any crazy stories. “The usual,” she said, “streaking in the dark, that kind of thing.” She shared one particularly shocking memory involving some kind of traveling minister/priest, speaking to a student outside of Harkness Hall while, just inside, a girl and her boyfriend were standing directly in front of a window performing (very obviously) an unspeakable act. “The couple was partially clothed and quite engaged with each other,” said Talia.
Then, Talia began talking about her own experience at school. She and her friends went abroad the fall semester of her senior year, then came back and had a house together on West College. Her house was called the Hostility House. “I guess we were all kind of snobby, and that’s what people ended up calling us.” She remembered that she and her friends made pins that said Hostility House and accepted their name, effectively coining themselves as the snobby feminists of Oberlin. She said anyone was welcome to a party at the Hostility House, “as you get older, you realize how fruitless all that exclusivity is.”
Our conversation with Talia made me think a lot about the Oberlin of today. There are definitely still hostile houses, yet they go unnamed. The snotiness of Tank is renowned, known even by non-OSCA students, and there are definitely senior houses with a certain hostile air about them. Is it worse to accept this superior energy, acknowledge it as a point of (agreement) between students? I say we take a page out of Talia’s book, either embrace it, mark our houses and, this way, make them more welcoming, or put the hostility aside. Whatever happened to “Charming Chamber,” or “Happy House,” perhaps “Darling Dwelling,” or “Peaceful Palace.”
There is something nice about referring to a house party with a common name that makes everyone feel “in on it.” Perhaps this is a feeling about the Oberlin community as a whole, but I feel we could all use a few more inside jokes with each other. Some points of relatability might be nice amidst this sea of unique thinkers, of students searching for their own niches of style and opinion.
I also feel that we don’t prioritize adventure as much as the Oberlin students of yore. Take Harkness Hall, for example, a co-op with a history of celebrated nudity. Last year during my time in Hark, Tits Out Tuesday was sparsely attended, and I did not see one fully naked inhabitant in all my time there. There is no widely attended Oberlin streaking, no nude bike racing, and Centerfold pictures have become tame, barely a nipple in sight. This is all to say, perhaps if we all weren’t so worried about doing the cool thing with the “right” people, we would experience a lot more, have more stories to tell, and just might be a stronger community.
(All quotes are paraphrased. Thank you, Talia, of Oberlin College ’85.)
