Our Letter to the Board of Trustees – Alumni for Oberlin Values

October 10, 2023

To: Oberlin College Board of Trustees
Transmitted via email to: secretary.office@oberlin.edu

From: Alumni for Oberlin Values (AOV) Steering Committee

Dear Oberlin College Board of Trustees:

Given that we received no reply to our previous email (July 10, 2023) [an invitation for Trustees to meet with AOV], we first kindly request that the Secretary for the Board of Trustees acknowledge that this email has been received and that it has also been distributed to the Board’s executive committee as well as its remaining members.

On August 28, our steering committee met privately and off-the-record with two people knowledgeable about the current state of the College to discuss our concerns and to initiate much-needed dialogue. We welcomed that opportunity and remain appreciative of it, and hope such conversations might continue so that we can all better understand the challenges facing Oberlin today and figure out how they might best be met. It was clarifying, for example, to learn that Harness Health broke the contract it had negotiated with Oberlin at the direction of its parent company, Bon Secours, the day after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and that Harness as a result had covered the expenses of the hybrid arrangement required that academic year.

However, and despite the progress we think that conversation represented, AOV’s concerns about the current direction of the college remain acute and unresolved. We appreciate the challenging environment in higher education today, and a number of us experience it quite directly in our professional lives. But we cannot ignore the concerns expressed across our intergenerational membership – which, in aggregate, point to a beloved institution whose current direction leads clearly away from Oberlin’s historic values, commitments, and traditions. As expressed on our website (https://alumniforoberlinvalues.org), there are by now quite a number of specific things that the College has done over the past few years that have alienated alumni, who remain a vital part of the Oberlin community.

To remedy this, we attach below our list of demands, the general content of which we had previously conveyed verbally in the conversation referred to above. We again request the opportunity for our group to meet via Zoom with the members of the executive committee of the Board of Trustees, including its chair, the College’s president, and any other members who are able to attend to address our demands. We look forward to arranging a time and setting meeting parameters at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

The Steering Committee
Alumni for Oberlin Values

Alumni for Oberlin Values (AOV) Demands:

That the College establish clearly defined targets for increasing its recruitment and retention of Pell Grant recipients, e.g. by 2% per year for the next five years.
That the College restore Oberlin’s traditional commencement reunions effective May 2024.
That the College preserve, support, and make financially sustainable its unique co-op system, including the restoration of Kosher-Halal Co-op and allowing students to transfer into co-ops mid-year.
That the Board of Trustees renew its 2013 resolution to pay the faculty competitive salaries, and demonstrate its commitment to that resolution by reinstating the traditional PPO health care plan as an option for faculty and staff effective immediately upon renewal of its annual health plan, and by increasing faculty salaries by 5% effective in the 2024-25 academic year.
That the College take into account when recruiting new faculty the historic underrepresentation of persons of color on the faculty, especially in comparison to the sixteen colleges traditionally included as part of Oberlin’s peer group and enact specific and appropriate measures to remedy this situation.
That the College provide AOV with actual endowment performance/returns before operating expenses as well as all fees/costs for endowment management, and agree to a forensic audit detailing the college’s general financial condition, budget allocations and decisions, and debt and endowment history.
That the Board of Trustees restore to the College’s Bylaws the language removed from Article I, section 1 in 2022, and that it add as members of the Board:
- Four members of the faculty, to be elected by all full-time faculty.
- Two employees of the College who are neither members of the faculty nor those designated in the Bylaws as “Officers of the Corporation,” to be elected by all other full-time staff members.
- Two residents of the City of Oberlin who are not employees or former employees of the College, to be elected by the City’s residents.
That the College provide meaningful restitution to the workers harmed by the union-busting in 2020 layoffs, to be negotiated through the UAW.
That the College provide full transparency and accountability regarding proposed actions that potentially will have a negative impact on any segment of the Oberlin community (students, faculty, staff, alumni, and town residents) prior to making a final decision on the proposed action (except when urgency requires otherwise). Transparency for each proposed action includes:
- Disclosing in writing to all segments of the Oberlin community the facts and arguments pro and con that have been considered.
- Providing a reasonable opportunity after such disclosure for all segments of the Oberlin community to comment and provide feedback to the Board of Trustees.