page_title: Oberlin College
section_title: Political activism
hierarchical_section_title: Oberlin College / Campus culture / Political activism
caption_attribution_description: English: At College and Main St., Oberlin OH. Students and town members protest the War in Afghanistan, and oil well fracking.
context_page_description: Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest coeducational liberal arts college in the United States and the second oldest continuously operating coeducational institute of higher learning in the world. The Oberlin Conservatory of Music is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. In 1835 Oberlin became one of the first colleges in the United States to admit African Americans, and in 1837 the first to admit women. It has been known since its founding for progressive student activism.
  The College of Arts & Sciences offers more than 50 majors, minors, and concentrations. Oberlin is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Five Colleges of Ohio consortium. Since its founding, Oberlin has graduated 16 Rhodes Scholars, 20 Truman Scholars, three Nobel laureates, seven Pulitzer Prize winners, and 12 MacArthur fellows, and 4 Rome Prize winners.
context_section_description: The Oberlin student body has a long history of activism and a reputation for being notably liberal. The college was ranked among the Princeton Review's list of "Colleges with a Conscience" in 2005.
  In the 1960s, Memorial Arch became a rallying point for the College's civil rights activists and its anti-war movement. Oberlin supplied a disproportionate number of participants in Mississippi Freedom Summer, rebuilt the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in the Carpenters for Christmas project, supported NAACP sponsored sit-ins in Cleveland to integrate the building-trades, and with the SCLC participated in demonstrations at Hammermill Paper. Emeritus Professor of Sociology (1966–2007), James Leo Walsh stated that students, "... carried out dozens of protests against the Vietnam war ranging from peaceful picketing to surrounding a local naval recruiter's car", to the Oberlin Review in 1995. In November 2002, 100 college workers students and faculty held a "mock funeral 'for the spirit of Oberlin'" in response to the administration's laying off 11 workers and reducing the work hours of five other workers without negotiation with college unions. Oberlin Students have protested instances of fracking in Ohio such as "the first natural gas and fracturing industry conference in the state" in 2011. 
  In 2004, student activism led to a campus-wide ban on sales of Coca-Cola products. However, this was revoked in spring 2014 and students may now buy Coca-Cola products from the student union.
  In 2013, after the discovery of hateful messages and the alleged sighting of a person wearing KKK robes, president Marvin Krislov cancelled classes and called for a day of reflection and change. In a public statement, he stated that an investigation had identified two students believed to be largely responsible, who had been removed from campus. One of the students responsible said to police that he was "doing it as a joke to see the college overreact to it".
  During the fall 2014 semester, Oberlin's Student Labor Action Coalition organized a petition to permit dining hall temporary workers working four-hour shifts to eat one meal from food the college throws out each day. The petition garnered over 1,000 signatures and resulted in workers obtaining the opportunity to put food into a management-given styrofoam container to eat after their shifts.
  In May 2015, students temporarily took over their school's administration building to protest a $2,300 increase in tuition cost between the 2015 and 2016 academic school years. Students initially proposed, "... moving from providing merit aid to need-based scholarships, loosening on-campus dining and housing requirements, reducing food waste and temporary workers in Campus Dining Services ... " to the school's Vice President of Finance Mike Frandsen on Monday, April 27, 2015, in which their demands were declined for issue. $10,931,088 were allocated to management salaries for the 2013–2014 school year, much of which came from student tuition.
  In December 2015, Oberlin's Black Student Union issued a series of 50 specific demands of the college and conservatory including promoting certain black faculty to tenured positions, hiring more black faculty, firing other faculty members, and obtaining a $15 an hour minimum wage for all campus workers and guaranteed health care in their contracts. The board of trustees responded by appointing some of the individual faculty and by, "reviewing the allocation of faculty positions with consideration of how they will contribute to interactional diversity in the curriculum" in the college's 2016–2021 strategic plan. The college opposed firing any employees in response and neglected to issue formal responses to many of the other demands, though it has sought to cut wages and health care funds for administrators, office workers and library support staff during contract negotiations with the Office and Professional Employees International Union. Many campus workers still earn the minimum wage. Over 75 students protested the college's attempt to alter administrator, office worke
caption: At College and Main Streets in Oberlin, Ohio, students and town members protest the War in Afghanistan and oil well fracking.
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