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Thursday, May 2, 2024
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Volume 10, Issue YY
Oberlin College joins nationwide protest Students across the U.S. want their schools to cut financial ties to Israel this situation for what it is: a genocide,” Montgomery said. OBERLIN — More than “We act in steadfast solidar130 students gathered Monity with Palestine and with day outside Wilder Hall at students across the country to Oberlin College to demand an demand that the administraend to Israel’s occupation of tion and the board of trustees Palestinian territories and the examine Oberlin’s financial college’s investment in Israel. link to war, oppression and Student organizer Mary Ann exploitation. Our eyes are on Montgomery, a second-year Gaza and none of us are free sociology major at Oberlin until all of us are free.” College, said the protest is Oberlin is the latest college needed now more than ever. campus to see protests against “We are demanding Oberthe Israel-Hamas war. lin’s divestment in the Israeli Students across the country occupation and that the colat several major universities, lege recognizes and names such as Los Angeles’ UCLA, Lauren Hoffman The Community Guide
New York’s Columbia University and Rhode Island’s Brown University have taken to campus greens in encampments to draw attention to the conflict. Also Monday, Case Western Reserve University students in Cleveland set up encampments demanding divestment. “Oberlin College maintains moral and material complicity in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people and so BRUCE BISHOP / COMMUNITY GUIDE our demands today are simple ones,” Montgomery said. “We An encampment of student protesters is shown Monday at Oberlin College near Wilder Hall. The students across the country have been See OBERLIN, A2 protesting the Israel-Hamas war.
CONSTRUCTION OF FAIR EXPO CENTER BEGINS
1.5 tons of old Rx’s turned in County’s haul in Drug Take Back Day Lauren Hoffman The Community Guide
BRUCE BISHOP / COMMUNITY GUIDE
Construction workers strip away topsoil as they prepare the site at the Lorain County Fairgrounds last week. The work will include multiple upgrades to the fairgrounds.
55,000-square-foot expo center to be part of $12M project Lauren Hoffman The Community Guide
WELLINGTON — Mounds of dirt at the Lorain County Fairgrounds in Wellington are the first steps of the fair board’s $12 million Fairs Forever renovation project. The project, which will be built in four phases, will feature a new 55,000-square-foot expo center on the southwestern corner of the fairgrounds; a 32,500-squarefoot covered horse arena; and a 14,400-square-foot cattle barn. The project was announced in 2022 but details have been sparse since then. The project’s co-chair and fair board member John Piwinski said the final result will be worth the wait. “Work started yesterday on preliminary groundwork for the expo center and horse arena which is a little behind our planned schedule but we have an aggressive timeline to make
up for it,” Piwinski said. “Right now in this phase one, they are grading the ground and getting the underground infrastructure of pipes and the like done before we move on to the building phase.” Phases two and three of the project, which are building the expo center and horse arena, are expected to happen concurrently. A tentative completion date is mid-2025. Phase four of the project will combine two existing cattle barns into one new facility. No timeline on when construction will begin has been announced. Instead of lavish dining halls and cushy office chairs, the center will focus on empty space, a must according to fair board member and longtime fair veterinarian Dr. William Spreng. “You could take a semi in there and turn it around,” he said previously.
The building will also feature offices, a prep kitchen, showers, restrooms and an information technology room. It is expected to house between 2,000 and 3,000 visitors and serve as a home to horse, cattle and pig shows, volleyball and wrestling tournaments, corporate conferences, weddings, rodeos and even indoor tractor pulls during the off-season. “Our fair only operates for one week a year, what are we to do with the other 51?” Piwinski asked. “That’s why we need this center.” “There’s a lot of hoops you have to go through for the area that we are preparing to do work on,” Piwinski said. “There are a lot of railroads and stormwater management rules that we had to work through and follow so we are a little behind schedule. While we wanted to be further along, I also know there’s so many facets to a project this size.”
The Lorain County Drug Task Force collected 3,297.86 lbs of unwanted prescription medications during the 26th National Prescription Drug Take Back Day on Saturday. “Before the DEA had their program on the national level, locally the program originated between the Westshore Enforcement Bureau in Cuyahoga and the Lorain County drug task force back in 2009,” said Maj. Rich Bosley, commander of the Drug Task Force. “It’s important just to get drugs out of people’s homes that they don’t need anymore.” Police departments collected prescription medications, over-the-counter medications and less than 4-ounce liquid medications in their prescription drop-off boxes across 15 locations in the county on Saturday. From there, the boxes of recovered prescriptions made their way to the Lorain County Sheriff’s Office for processing and counting before being sealed in a shipping container that the DEA will take. This process of collecting the medications is essential, Bosley said.
“Any one of these expired medications can become unsafe and you don’t want people wandering in and grabbing them or a child or someone that doesn’t need them,” he said. “And the worst thing we can do is flush them down the toilet and get them into a water supply. I know the water filtration systems do a good job of taking care of that, but we still don’t want these getting flushed down the toilet.” The national program was started by the DEA in 2010. Since then, the DEA has collected 17,900,351 pounds — or 8,950 tons — of prescription drugs through the program as of October 2023. Ohio collected 43,420 pounds during the last takeback and has contributed 880,226 pounds since 2010, according to data collected by the DEA. “The DEA will come pick it up and they have contracts to destroy them securely,” Bosley said. Of the 15 departments, the Amherst Police Department collected the most medications, filling 44 boxes. “Amherst usually brings the most boxes,” Bosley said. “They are pretty good at it.”
INSIDE THIS WEEK Memorial
School remembers Avon student. A2
Oberlin
Elementary wins green award. A4
Wellington
Company gets state grant. A5
SPORTS A6 • CROSSWORD A7 • SUDOKU A7 • KID SCOOP A8