Interview with student activist Dan Kiss

Scan page 4

The following interview with student activist Dan Kiss was conducted by Shirley Pasholk in Oberlin, Ohio, on Oct. 18.

Socialist Action: Why was the April 13 March Against Bigotry called?

Dan Kiss: A death threat had been made against a Latino student because of something he had written about racismthe limits of liberalism at Oberlin College-that was printed in the Oberlin Review. Neither the City Prosecutor nor the College Residential Life Services was interested in investigating. That was the spur for calling the march.

People were fed up with instances of intolerance and bigotry on campus. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Union had been knocked out of the Viewbook, the PR on what the college is all about. This handbook has more and more changed to reflect something white and unobjectionable.

Then, there's the huge issue of access to education, of who's being allowed into the institutions. The college is becoming a place where people of color can't afford to come. It's even a problem for middle-class white people, which prompted the antitrust probe by the Department of Justice.

S.A.: What is that probe?

Kiss: Last year the Department of Justice began examining price-fixing allegations against about 60 elitist colleges, including Oberlin, Kenyon, Connecticut Wesleyan, Yale, and Harvard. They're seeing tuition on an annual basis set within a few hundred dol4 SOCIALIST ACTION lars at all these schools. The administrators admit that they share this information.

S.A.: Why do you think the college administrators and the cops decided to attack this particular demonstration?

Kiss: This tuition issue is the core of what the college is about—who it serves, who it excludes, what it wants to become, and who it just wants to make invisible. This is something the entire college is guilty of. They treat the workers in the Oberlin College Employees Association like some kind of riffraff. I think it was a personal indictment against Fred Starr too.

S.A.: How did other students respond to the police attack?

Kiss: Many acted with shock and disbelief. Then some of that disbelief turned to horror when they realized they were at a place where this could and would happen.

Others refused to believe. They doubted the integrity of the students involved. I think that's because we're trained to believe that authority does not abuse power.

S.A.: How did the faculty and staff respond?

Kiss: OCOPE, the Oberlin College Office and Professional Employees, Local 502 of the OPEIU, wrote a resolution in support of us almost right away.

We have a few tenured "Marxists" on the faculty who have done very little on this issue. I think it's because professors, in a lot of ways, have got it good and, as far as they're concerned, they've got a stake in these issues.

NOVEMBER 1990 The administration effectively plays us off against the faculty. They say to the faculty, "If we lower tuition or freeze tuition, it's just going to hold your salary down." They say to us, "Hey, it's not our fault. It's those faculty. " We know the faculty aren't paid extremely well here.

The alumni has been our most consistent source of support. They have really been the backbone of financial support for legal fees and medical costs. A lot of them have made phone calls and written letters to the trustees and the president. They wrote letters to the Alumni Magazine.

S.A.: What's happening on campus now?

Kiss: Organizing is going on preparing for a week of action and education on Nov. 5-9. The call for this originally came out of the Education for the People conference.

S.A.: What connections have you made with the students who are protesting institutional racism at Cleveland State University?

Kiss: I feel like we've made some good preliminary connections. We've talked to them many times and participated in some of their demonstrations. We're trying to hold a joint press conference.

CSU President John Flower and [Oberlin President] Fred Starr are really the same kind of people, the kind of college president who are really concerned about their reputation with the corporate class.

S.A.: What was your reaction to the guilty verdict?

Kiss: We were really thought we had made our case well. We showed the police for what they are. That jury chose not to believe students and the actual neighbors of Fred Starr [who corroborated the statements of the students].

This shows we've got to get stronger. We've got to organize better. We've got to reach out to the kind of people who were sitting on the jury. Before the trial started, when the jury was being interviewed, they said they couldn't afford to send their kids to college. We have to work on reaching people like that.

I'd like to see us link educational accessibility to other human rights issues like healthcare and housing. Millions of people aren't getting adequate healthcare, if any. Millions are homeless and millions can't get an education. I think these things are all related. They're basic human rights.

People are being sent to the Middle East for oil. Can you imagine the U.S. government ever fighting for education or housing or healthcare? These aren't the kind of things we're socialized to fight for—but we're ready to start a war over oil.

I'm hoping this will bring home where the interests are in this country. It's a huge battle to convince people that education, housing, and healthcare are things that have to be nationalized. They have to be brought to whoever desires them and needs them— and that's everybody.

I see 1990 as a beginning and a real turning point. There have been some victories like the miners' strike against Pittston. I think there's a new militancy. People are going to see the necessity to organize.