Oberlin College

Academics

Of Oberlin's 2,800 or so students, roughly 2,200 are enrolled in the College of Arts & Sciences, a little over 400 in the Conservatory of Music, and the remaining 150 or so in both College and Conservatory under the five-year Double Degree program.

Sustainability

Oberlin College has demonstrated its commitment to the pursuit of sustainability on a number of fronts. An estimated 50% of the school's electricity needs are met using sustainable energy sources. Oberlin's innovative Center for Environmental Studies, a building the Department of Energy labeled as one of the “milestone” buildings of the 20th century, incorporates a 4,600 square foot (425 square meter) photovoltaic array, the biggest of its kind in Ohio.

The school utilizes hybrid and electric vehicles for various purposes, offers financial support to a local transit company providing public transportation to the school, and offers a bike co-op program. The school's Campus Committee on Shareholder responsibility provides students, faculty, and staff with the opportunity to make suggestions and decisions on proxy votes. In 2008, Oberlin received a grade of “B+” from the Sustainable Endowments Institute's annual College Sustainability Report Card, and was featured among schools as a “Campus Sustainability Leader”.

The Experimental College (ExCo) program at 3,000-student Oberlin College allows students to teach topics of interest that are normally not covered in the standard curriculum, giving them the opportunity to be on the other side of the blackboard. There is a course about Peak Oil.

In Pop Culture

On page 327 in the book, and in the 1998 movie version of Toni Morrison's Beloved, Kimberly Elise's character Denver exclaims: "She says I might go to Oberlin" (slightly different in the movie). As Morrison's book revolves around characters who have living memories of slavery and of real loss that haunt them greatly, college was a rather lofty yet attainable idea.

Robert Downey Jr.'s character Roger Baron in the 1989 film True Believer attended Oberlin College.

Oberlin was mentioned in the popular 2004 American movie Eurotrip as the school that the main character attends at the end of the film. It is a joke referring the fact that the plot of the movie has the main character trying to find a girl in Berlin, Germany only to be united with her at the college in Ohio, which sounds like "Oh Berlin." Humorously, the campus portrayed in the movie bears little resemblance to the actual Oberlin campus, including a lake that is conspicuously absent in real life.

An episode of the popular television sit-com, Dharma & Greg mentions Oberlin as a prospective college choice for the yet to be born grandchild of Dharma's hippie parents.

The protagonist in H.P. Lovecraft's horror short story The Shadow Over Innsmouth spends his senior year at Oberlin.

Oberlin features prominently in the novels The Color of Light and Boys and Girls Together by William Goldman, an alumnus of the college.

Rich Orloff's play Vietnam 101: The War on Campus depicts the turmoil that occurred on the Oberlin Campus in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of the Vietnam War.

The character J.D. Lutz from the American television comedy 30 Rock went to Oberlin.

The character Tim Haspel from Showtime's The L Word left Los Angeles to coach the swim team at Oberlin.