“Actually, they are paying for their education, whether lots of other students are getting education for free.” If you are talking about US residents in state schools, their families have probably paid into the system (taxes) for decades and long after the international students have returned to their native countries, the former students will be paying state and federal taxes that support the university (and grant funding agencies).
When I attended Oberlin in the mid-late '90s, the food mostly ranged from ok to outstanding. I was fine with it for the most part.
Then again, growing up in a Chinese-American home, I did find the “Chinese” food offerings at my college and some of my friends’ colleges left much to be desired from a culinary/authenticity standard. However, I expected that and always opted for something else. Friends of other ethnicities and from abroad made similar observations when their ethnic food was offered as an option in the dining halls.
Then again, the boarding fees were along with tuition and dorm were mostly covered by the near-full ride FA/scholarship package and Oberlin was far less expensive even accounting for inflation back when I attended(~$27k for everything including room and board as opposed to $64,224 per year currently).
Wonder if I’d feel similarly to the students if I was on the hook for being full pay…especially at the current rates.
One issue with the dining halls were the hours…especially considering in some years, I had classes or part-time work which overlapped with lunch hours (~11 am - 1 pm) and/or dinner hours(4-6 pm). The dinner hours also threw me for a loop as my immediate family usually had dinner later than those posted hours so 4-6 pm was quite early from my standpoint. Sometime in the mid-later undergrad years, they did introduce “4th meal” served in the basement of the student center from 10:30 pm till sometime after midnight so that helped a bit.
As an aside, my father adamantly refuses to eat cooked soybeans as that’s what the dining hall at his college in the ROC(Taiwan) offered* as the “free/cheap option” every day for all 4 years.
- Reportedly cooked so abysmally that the food offered in the army when he did his two years of mandated military service as a conscripted junior officer to be a great step up from a culinary standpoint. And the food even for officers in that army wasn't something to write home about according to other former conscripted or regular army officers in his generation.
Indeed. In fact, some older relatives and folks in their generation would regard the serving of undercooked rice as not only disrespectful, but also demonstrating lack of adequate due care for health as they’ve mentioned how undercooked rice could cause serious sometimes long-term digestive ailments as they’ve seen from some worse off refugees and a few childhood classmates during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
They felt the need to emphasize that point with myself and relatives in my generation while teaching us how to steam up rice while growing up.
And if they did find that my undergrad or their own kids’ undergrads served undercooked rice, some would regard that as the institution’s being careless with their students’ health on the cooking front. Especially considering what they were paying for the boarding fees.
Find this a bit odd as I don’t remember Oberlin dining services serving undercooked rice when I was there.
Assuming that figure doesn’t include Oberlin students, the town of Oberlin must have grown dramatically since I was last there in the late '90s. When I attended, the population excluding students was around 6.000 more or less.
When college guides like Fiske’s reported Oberlin’s population back when I was in HS, it included Oberlin students which boosted the town population to around 10,000. Once the students leave for the summer, that figure is reduced by around a third.
In some ways, the NYPost is quite Onion-like…except they take themselves far more seriously than warranted considering it is well-known among New Yorkers like yours truly as an extremely partisan conservative sensationalist tabloid.
And compared to the '80s and early '90s…the headines and stories covered increasingly resemble those of the National Enquirer or jokey supermarket tabloids of that type. Wonder when the post will story covering Batboy as front page news. 
Incidentally, none of the hardcore libertarian-right or conservative HS classmates would be caught dead reading the NYPost in our HS years. They’d be much more inclined to reading the WSJ, The Economist, etc.
I attended a holiday party last night and spent much of it chatting with an old friend whose D is a sophomore at Oberlin, lives in Johnson House, is very stereotypically Oberlin SJW type and even she thought this was getting ridiculous and out of hand.
“Incidentally, none of the hardcore libertarian-right or conservative HS classmates would be caught dead reading the NYPost in our HS years. They’d be much more inclined to reading the WSJ, The Economist, etc…”
This is a thread about Oberlin. The reading habits of your ha classmates are irrelevant.
While some of the demands are over the top, some others are understandably driven from reasonable outrage. For instance, the outrage over serving beef in Indian food among Indian Hindus and Hindu organizations.
Maybe you are much more openminded, but that doesn’t sound very different from newsmedia reported outrage over a supermarket in Baltimore some years back placing cans of Maryland crabcakes in the “Kosher” section or other hypothetical supermarkets doing the same with pork products when they are most certainly not.
And unless someone’s been living under a rock for the last century or so, most reasonably aware folks should be aware that beef is forbidden among Hindus and perceived ignoring of such religious dietary restrictions have sparked serious outrage…sometimes to the point of insurrection as shown in this event:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Rebellion_of_1857
One of the factors in causing that insurrection was how when the British East India Company issued new rifled muskets which the loading procedure required them to bite off a bit of greased paper cartridges, it ignored concerns from Native Indian servicemen under their employ about rumors that the grease used to seal those cartridges were made from beef and/or pork fat. Those ignored concerns ended up motivating both Hindu and Muslim Native Indian soldiers to start and join the insurrection in 1857 and effectively launch their first bid for independence from British based rule. .
“Maybe you are much more openminded, but that doesn’t sound very different from newsmedia reported outrage over a supermarket in Baltimore some years back placing cans of Maryland crabcakes in the “Kosher” section or other hypothetical supermarkets doing the same with pork products when they are most certainly not.”
There’s no “outrage” when these things happen (pork products for Hanukah, etc), just some mild eye-rolling. It’s treated as humorous, because we needn’t interpret everything as a microaggression or an insult.
“The creation of a department that focuses on languages of the Africana peoples to include a minimum of one language each from the African continent, Caribbean, and the Americas: ● The continent of Africa: Kiswahili, Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa/Fulani, Mende, Xhosa, Zulu, Shona, Ndebele, Lingala etc ● The Americas: Black English, Creole, Gullah Dialect etc ● The Caribbean: Haitian Creole, Jamaican Patois, etc.”
Yeah, good luck finding profs to teach these languages and good luck finding a job with them.
Do the HBCUs offer those languages?
There certainly was with that Maryland supermarket Crabcake incident in the newsmedia and among several Jewish friends and colleagues.
And I don’t blame them considering many Jews and observers of other religions with dietary laws IME do take those laws very seriously.
Some people associated with Oberlin have pointed out that’s it’s the equivalent of going to a baseball game and ordering a hot dog and getting a slice of wonder bread with a piece of spam on top, which I think helps put it in terms most Americans can understand better.
@Cobrat - There is an old saying to the effect that if you are a hammer salesman, every problem will look like a nail.
A more modern saying would be that if you are a SJW, every problem looks like an insensitive cultural appropriation by an oppressive, patriarchal, gender-dominant society. These students cannot complain about bad food without invoking critical race theory and its off-shoots.
Or like someone ordering and expecting a 1/3 pound hamburger from a reputable mid-high end hamburger restaurant and getting a few stalks of celery between two hamburger buns or a thin slice of poorly prepared vegetarian meatloaf instead. And to add insult to injury…still being expected to pay the same or higher premium price for the institution initiated substitution…
I wonder just how many students would take these languages. I was once in a department that tried to offer a course in obscure 3rd world lit and no one took it.
If I ordered a hot dog and got spam on wonder bread I might be annoyed. I wouldn’t consider it a great offense against the U.S., or baseball.
And if I was in another country when I ordered a hot dog, I’d probably be prepared for the possibility that it would be different.
I learned this lesson in high school when I first encountered “gumbo” outside of Louisiana. It was not anything I ever would have called gumbo. I rolled my eyes and went on with my life.
This varies depending on the campus and students at the time the course is offered.
When I attended Oberlin, a course on obscure Third World Lit would have garnered some popularity among some students. If anything, one department which had issues recruiting new majors or even students taking their courses to fulfill core/elective requirements when I was an undergrad was Classics.
Part of it was the fact there were only 3 Profs all of whom were coming close to or at the age when one typically retires along with the fact Classics was along with Economics associated by many classmates during my undergrad years with students with much more social and politically conservative inclinations.
However at more mainstream US college campuses where students are either more preprofessional or more conventional in their academic preferences, a Third World Lit course would probably have few or even no takers as you’ve observed on your own campus.
I am glad to hear this @Pizzagirl. Some of what my son tells me makes me wonder about the common sense, and yes, intelligence, of some of the students at Oberlin.
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You are probably aware of the fact that 40+% of Americans are not paying taxes and their children are getting education for free, at state universities and at the best privates. Children of illegal immigrants are getting education for free. International students are considered “cash cows” by colleges. Yet, somehow, you consider these students “second class”.
I believe the 40% not paying refers to federal income taxes, not state taxes. In states I’m sure it varies quite a bit. In my state sales taxes are a big source of revenue and everyone pays those.
International students certainly have the right to complain, and not just because they are paying the full price. But it’s silly to go to another country and expect things to be like they are at home. People do it all the time, of course.