Oberlin College — arguably the single most leftist, progressive, touchy-feely campus in the United States — canceled all classes on Monday in response to a month-long series of apparent hate-related incidents that has recently bedeviled the campus, reports WJW, the FOX affiliate in Cleveland.
The most recent incident allegedly happened sometime around 1:30 a.m. on Monday morning near the school’s African Heritage House.
“Early this morning, there was a report of a person wearing a hood and robe resembling a KKK outfit between South and the Edmonia Lewis Center and in the vicinity of Afrikan Heritage House [sic],” wrote Oberlin’s president, Marvin Krislov, in a letter also signed by no less than three deans.
“As I was driving in my car, I saw, what seemed to be someone in KKK paraphernalia walking around,” Sunceray Tavler, a student who reported the sighting, told WJW.
The incident follows a spat of racist, anti-Jewish and antigay graffiti found on campus in recent weeks. Ugly slurs showed up on Black History Month posters, reports the Oberlin Review. Graffiti bearing the message “Whites Only” appeared above a water fountain. “Nigger Oven” was scrawled inside an elevator. Someone found a note found a note in the Multicultural Resource Center saying “Nigger + Faggot Center.” Drawings of swastikas materialized.
School officials billed Monday as a “day of solidarity,” according to The Times. The administration encouraged students to attend a series of campus-wide discussions instead of classes.
The 1,200-seat campus chapel was brimming with a sea of fresh, earnest, mostly white faces when President Krislov spoke.
“From what we have seen we believe these actions are the work of a very small number of cowardly people,” he said, according to The New York Times. Krislov also apologized to any students who have felt threatened.
“I was pretty shocked it would happen here,” freshman Sarah Kahl told the newspaper of record. “It’s a little scary.” The 19-year-old from Boston added that the spat of incidents seems menacing. “That’s why this day is so important, so urgent.”
“Many of our students feel very frightened, very insecure,” added Meredith Gadsby, who chairs the Afrikana Studies department.
Some students praised the administration’s response to the crisis, reports The Times. Other students complained that officials haven’t done enough to establish a “safe and inclusive” environment. Officials only act when pushed by heroic student activists, they say.
This private school in Ohio of some 2,800 students is perhaps the last place you’d expect to find an outbreak of anti-Semitism or anti-gay sentiment, or a Ku Klux Klan member in full regalia.
Oberlin was founded in 1833. In its early days, it was a hothouse of abolitionist sentiment and a vital stop on the Underground Railroad. The school was among the first coeducational colleges in the United States, as well as one of the very first to admit black students.
“If you’re a liberal, artsy, indie loner who likes to throw around the phrase ‘heteronormative white privilege,’ then Oberlin might be the place for you,” advises The Princeton Review, quoting a representative student.
Citing an open investigation, school officials and local law enforcement were tight-lipped about the student allegedly dressed in the white robe and pointy hood, as well as the prior vandalism.
Oberlin spokesman Scott Wargo told The Times that investigators do not know whether the perpetrators are students, or even how many perpetrators there are.
Classes will resume Tuesday.