A recent color piece on Oberlin College in the New Yorker Magazine tags the tempestuous cauldron that is my alma mater as the exemplar of the "Firebrand Generation" of younger millennials.
The stories have a familiar ring. Student government institutions that I put in place when I was on campus are alive and well (e.g. a student senate headed by "co-liaisons" rather than a study body president). The general tenor of the P.C. and identity politics have continued on the trend line it was on when I was there.
Oberlin isn't a utopian model. But, it is a canary in the mineshaft at the bleeding edge of identifying cultural trends and activist issues. Sometimes I think the issues it fights over are misguided, but I take a great joy in knowing that Oberlin is still a place where almost everyone seems to give a damn.
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