by Anna Holshouser-Belden
Staff Writer
A page from a 2006 edition of The Grape
[originally published May 20, 2022]
Whether this is your first time reading The Grape or you spend all your waking hours consuming page after page of our publication until your hands are stained with ink and your eyes are watering, you’ve hopefully picked up this paper for some reason or another. Maybe the cover art was particularly intriguing, maybe you’re a crossword enthusiast looking for something to do besides the Wordle, maybe you’re waiting to meet up with a friend or looking for something to read in between classes. No matter what has actually compelled you to pick up this issue of The Grape, our campus’ beloved alternative newspaper has a twenty-two-year (almost fifty semesters!) history dating back to the first published issue in 1999, complete with Lena Dunham as our Features editor and comic strips that would make your dad’s jaw drop. The un-finished product of this history comes in the form of the copy you’re holding in your hands today, and has transformed again and again as it travels through generations of editors-in-chief. This curious staff writer decided to take an educational trip down to the Grape’s office in the Burton basement in order to find out what The Grape is really all about, and fish through the stacks of yellowing issues in order to pull out a few lost highlights for our readers. The old issues were full of surprises, from the now-extinct Sports section to vintage porno reviews in Bad Habits. They are finally here to be shared with the public after years locked away.
My first stop once I got to the archives was figuring out the answer to a question I’ve now pondered since I started working for the Grape: How old is this publication anyway? I found my answer from a torn piece of printer paper reading 1999, under which one relatively-thin newspaper lay. The paper claimed to be the first-ever copy of the Grape, published on October 11th, 1999. Which, for reference, was the year the majority of the class of 2022 was born, three years pre-9/11. It was the year of Bill Clinton’s impeachment and acquittal, the election of Vladimir Putin in Russia, and the premiere of Spongebob Squarepants on Nickelodeon, all whilst Y2K caused mass-panic about the fate of the internet. Three years prior to the invention of the popular BlackBerry phone and eight years prior to Steve Jobs’ transformation of the digital world, The Grape was up and running, and their official Mission Statement was as follows: “The Grape is printed by the Oberlin College Political Publishing Organization, a student group in the process of being chartered. It serves as a vehicle for the publication of social and political opinion; provides a means by which opinionated students and faculty and other community members can voice their feelings on issues of a political or social nature; maintains a diversity of opinion; ensures a permanent forum for political and social discussion within the Oberlin College community; promotes well-written, considerately thought out essays and letters which enhance the understanding of various political viewpoints through their lucidity.” Within this issue was an interview for National Coming Out Day 1999 with the first openly gay Oberlin student–Roger Goodman ‘68, then a 53-year-old recovered addict with AIDS–in which he unpacked his experiences with queer spaces in mid-60s Oberlin. Also included was an anonymous letter entitled “A Single Woman’s Cry For Straight Men,” a guide to choosing political party affiliations in the 2000 election, a segment on diversity statistics within the classes of 2002 and 2003, and a tidbit on womb chairs being sold for $3890 at retromodern.com accompanied by a drawing of a dancing skeleton. Clearly, The Grape was already on its path to the unconventional journalism we know today.
I don’t know if the editors who put together the October 1999 issue could’ve expected exactly where “vehicle for the publication of social and political opinion” would veer in the early 2000s, especially with the recurring segment of vintage porn DVD review that ran in the Bad Habits section—one of the more entertaining and far-fetched pieces the archive had to offer me on my visit. Published during the 2004-2005 academic year, this segment offered exciting titles like “Legal at Last I: Barely Legal Babes Get Down…While Sobbing Openly” and “Buckskin Bo’sun: This is the Cutest Porn Ever and It’s About Seamen (huh huh huh).” The section editors would sit down together and watch their X-rated finds and write two-page spread reviews including a rating out of 10, favorite scenes and attributes (ex. “Taking socks off first +30,” “Gee Whiz Dialogue +80,” “Cuddling -50”) adding up to a comprehensive numeral score topped off with either a recommendation or warning to stay away. In 2022, I’m guessing a series of vintage porn reviews could quickly lead to twitter cancellation drama, but in 2005 it was witty and just vulgar enough for students to read on Wilder Bowl after class while listening to Gwen Stefani or Ludacris on an iPod shaped like a brick. Almost as outlandish as vintage porn reviews—at least for today’s The Grape—was the short-lived Sports section, covering Kobe Bryant’s (RIP) rise to athletic fame, pay disparities in NFL contracts, the Oberlin football’s record losses in the early 2000s, and the daily lives of athletes in and out of the locker room. The sports section provided an interesting juxtaposition of Oberlin campus life, directly following the arts, successfully providing a diversified student-life profile for readers. As today’s students may have noticed, if you want to read about Oberlin’s athletic population you head to the Review for your fix; I think it's important for us to know it hasn’t always been this way, and here at The Grape we have a history of sports journalism that drew in a wider population of the student body!
Some of my favorite segments found in archives were not in fact the full-length articles, but the entertaining sidebars and extras. Many of us today know all about the “Oberlin Overheard” Instagram account, with an impressive follower count of 3,161 and juicy quotes often containing the words “yeobie” or “polycule”. Without easy access to the internet, however, one of the longest-running sections of The Grape was birthed; “Overheard in Oberlin” in the Bad Habits section. With a new multi-page spread of killer quotes each week, this page-turner of a subsection contained gems such as “Every time I masturbate, God makes it snow” and “Is Che Guevara the Folgers guy?” An additional long-running favorite was the “Letters” section, featuring correspondence between Oberlin students and community members to editors and writers at The Grape. Letters could be completely anonymous or signed, and the opening page of the Opinions section always contained a letter from The Grape’s staff to the greater Oberlin community on a topic of choice. In the Letters section, town or school events could be announced, political arguments could be had, and general opinions or musings could be shared from a wider variety than just staff members, in a more casual manner than a fully fleshed-out article. Then there were recipes: everything from “Drink Drank Drunk,” instructions on how to make Long Island Iced Teas on par with The Feve’s from the comfort of your own dorm, to the more straightforward “Apple Saffron Cake.” There was an orientation issue that included an “Oberlin Bucket List” for new students, an alphabetically organized glossary-style guide of Oberlin specific terminology like Above Ottica, CDS, OSCA, Splitchers, and more. A guide to Oberlin dining halls and restaurants followed, along with profiles on random first-years found lounging on Wilder Bowl. Perhaps the most vile of contributions was a spread of gross photos of clogged sinks and inedible food labeled “Oberlin Jank” informing new students just what exactly they were getting into.
Of course, on the other hand, there are some things about The Grape and the consciousness of the students writing it that have remained unchanged over the years. For example, recurring fake ExCo catalogs, reviews of performances at the ‘Sco and the Cat, and countless complaints about the administration can be found deep into the archives. In the very first issue appeared an article on protests surrounding mass firing of CDS workers eerily similar to those happening these past few years, twenty-two years later. Overall, The Grape remains the “vehicle for the publication of social and political opinion…a means by which opinionated students and faculty and other community members can voice their feelings,” with an even higher diversity in terms of genre as the years have passed, with past editors shaping The Grape into a publisher of everything from the arts to sports to comedy and comic strips. After surviving through Lena Dunham’s participation and a global pandemic, The Grape’s archives continue to have much to offer up to curious eyes. This staff writer sincerely hopes that whomever has happened upon this issue has gained as much as she has from the history of such a campus favorite, regardless of whether you’ll flip right back to the crossword and move on with your day, or share tales of “Legal at Last I” and the price of womb chairs in 1999 to your friends.