SLAC is a student-led organization at Oberlin College that stands with student and non-student workers on campus. We organize teach-ins, speaking events, protests, and more. Our organization is focused on cultivating an environment of worker solidarity and support, with an emphasis on supporting BIPOC and low-income community members.
JOIN OUR MOVEMENT
From March 13th - April 3rd, 2023, we hosted an exhibit in Mudd Center featuring firsthand accounts from workers who were laid off and student publications that document the financialization of Oberlin since the 1990s.
Explore the exhibit online and the accompanying report, "It's All About the Dollar".
Informational pamphlet for parents on the diminishing quality of campus life.
Welcome to the Disorientation Zine! This is a guide to surviving and organizing at Oberlin College. We’ll be catching you up on activist history, explaining the ins and outs of radical organizing, and giving you some advice on how to navigate campus, especially for low-income, BIPOC, and undocumented students. Our goal is to provide you (especially 1st years!) with a perspective that the administration and orientation week will never give. Oberlin is a non-profit corporation that will do anything to grow its endowment at the expense of students’ and workers’ welfare. We are some of its investors, and so it markets itself to us instead of actually caring. We want to help you navigate the hypocrisy of this school: an elitist, neoliberal institution with some real radical traditions and students. We want to help you understand this dynamic and remind you to stay on your toes. This zine is an outstretched hand and an honest act of love from upperclassmen to you. Let’s make sure past radical struggles aren’t forgotten and build momentum for future community organizing on this Campus!
We are building upon a legacy of many past Disorientation Zines. The following pages were written by various past and current Obies. Please UTILIZE THE KNOWLEDGE that you take from this, do not read and move on. This college needs student organizers to hold it accountable and we need one another to survive and thrive within oppressive systems.
“Oberlin cannot live on its historical accomplishments forever.”
- Angela Davis, February 1986
Photo by Pearse Anderson, Oberlin alum
This photo was taken on February 19th, 2020 at a protest of 800 students and faculty against the school's firing of 108 full-time custodial and dining service workers.
- Fred Hampton