Oberlin College Feminists Write Love Letter to Themselves, Hang Posters Attacking College Republicans and Libertarians

Feminist activists at Oberlin College reportedly hung posters personally attacking members of the College Republicans and Libertarians club for “perpetuating rape culture” because the group had organized an event featuring prominent American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers.

Though Oberlin is regarded as one of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges, scores of students protested Sommers’ speech, demanding that the event come with a “trigger warning” and that “safe spaces” be opened elsewhere on campus for those who needed to “decompress” before or during the event, as originally reported by Campus Reform. Sommers, an “equity feminist” who rejects what she calls “victim” and “gender feminism,” has since rebuked the protesters, some of whom sat in the front row of the event with tape over their mouths and others who hung signs reading “Fuck anti-feminists” outside the event.

An Ohio conservative group called Third Base Politics posted this video online featuring two Oberlin students directing students to “safe spaces.” Naturally, if you were a “toxic, dangerous, and/or violent person” you weren’t allowed in.

Campus Reform includes more from Sommers:

“It was such a strange experience,” Sommers told Campus Reform. “The students were so carried away with the idea that I was a threat to their safety—the Oberlin officials became alarmed—about my wellbeing. They arranged for security guards to escort me to and from the lecture to protect me from the safe spacers.”

Sommers said students “hooted, hollered, jeered, and mocked nearly everything” she said.

“I doubt my appeals to reason and rules of evidence made much of an impression,” Sommers toldCampus Reform. “I hate to say it, but some of those students need the services of a professional deprogrammer. What I saw was very cult-like.”

Sommers did report that several students apologized to her for the actions of their classmates.

Before the April 20th event, over 100 Oberlin students and student groups published “A Love Letter to Ourselves” in the Oberlin Review, the campus’s daily newspaper.

The letter’s concluding paragraph reads:

“So let’s engage in some radical, beautiful community care, support and love. Let’s make space for everyone to engage at whichever level they want/need. Let’s come through for each other, both now and in the future. Trauma is an experience that threatens a person’s bodily, spiritual and emotional integrity. The psychological, emotional and somatic impacts extend beyond the experience of trauma. Healing is a process that looks different for each person. Let’s make space to care for all experiences of trauma and to respect those we care for. Let’s focus our energy on taking care of each other and ourselves. Let’s make her talk irrelevant in the face of our love, passion and power.”

I think a much more fitting love letter would have been:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Welcome to the real world Oberlin feminists,

Where people will say things that upset you.