By David Edward Clark

Not the Same Thing thewb.com

In the next two days, another class of Oberlin students will be initiated into the College through The OC, a staple of orientation for about 20 years.

The OC started out as a long play called Sex at 7:30 that chronicled a night that started at 7:30 and went wrong.  A group of students started the program independently to teach first years the ins and outs of (dis)orientation, sexuality and sexual violence.  With little to no oversight and no comprehensive plan of action, the shows had mixed reviews; some great, some awful.  The original show received enough complaints in the initial years that the college decided to take some control.  It has evolved into a series of skits about gender, sexuality, drugs and alcohol.

The show teaches core values at Oberlin.  “Not sexually assaulting anyone…is fundamentally the primary drive behind the show,” said Lori Morgan Flood, the Director of the Center for Leadership in Health Promotion, whose office now runs The OC.

The show offers a clear representation of acceptable behavior so that all first years start with the same understanding.  This is the goal of The OC, and the reason that it is one of the few orientation events that require students to swipe in.  Students come from entirely different backgrounds; a kid from New York City can have a different understanding of sexual abuse than a student that was home schooled or one that grew up in a country halfway around the world.  Even new students with a clear understanding of the covered topics may not be aware of College and Ohio policies.  Students who skip the show are required to make it up.

“It’s not necessarily that The OC is making the assumption that everybody needs to know all that information–it’s that certain people are missing certain tidbits and that it’s filling in for everybody,” said Epiphany Acevedo Cher-Wen Dewitt, the house manager of the show who is in the show for her 2^nd year.  If you can’t get anything out of The OC because you already know the ways of the world, then take it for what it is: an emotionally charged show played by a cast of dedicated students.  The alternative is sitting in a room and getting lectured.

Each year, The OC is reviewed and improved upon by cast and audience members.  This year, the Chlamydia (Clap) Rap has become a Clap “Dick and Jane” story, music has been added between skits, and a new skit has been added that focuses on mental health and homesickness, Harry Potter style.

“Metronome,” a skit that deals with the various types of abusive relationships different stages of sexual assault, seems to be the cast favorite.  Others include “HIV,” which is self explanitory, “Bruce Anders,” which is about Oberlin’s medical amnesty policy and “Guilty,” which teaches Ohio’s sexual assult laws.  The cast expects that the student favorites will be “Bruce Anders,” “The Other Way Around,” which deals with gender stereotypes and the revamped Clap skit.

Student co-director Kyla Moore ’11 said that a general improvement this year is that “the actors, the RAs, were a lot more vocal about what should be in there [The OC] and what shouldn’t, and what they felt would read.”  This involvement has led many to actually learn their lines before they got on stage.  “This year, I think it’s a little more fun.  Last year had a sort of serious overtone–not all of the time–but we’re trying to do it this year a little bit more lighthearted.”

North Campus residents will attend The OC at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, and South Campus residents will attend The OC at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday.