It is very keen on plain, straight living—no smoking, no chewing [tobacco], no coffee or tea; jewelry and tight dresses are explicitly renounced, as are fancy houses, furniture, and carriages.

Everyone, regardless of worldly maxims, shall return to Gospel simplicity of dress, diet, houses, and furniture, all appertaining to him, & be industrious & economical with the view of earning & saving as much as possible, not to hoard up for old age, & for children, but to glorify God in the salvation of men: And that no one need to be tempted to hoard up, the colonists (as members of one body, of which Christ is the head), mutually pledge that they will provide in all respects for the widowed, orphan, & all the needy as well as for themselves & households.

[27]: 20 The charismatic Theodore Dwight Weld, after three years (1827–1830) studying with Gale at Oneida, was hired by the new Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions, a project of the Tappans.

"[28]: 40 ) He was charged with finding a site for "a great national manual labor institution where training for the Western ministry could be provided for poor but earnest young men who had dedicated their lives to the home missionary cause in the vast valley of the Mississippi.

Weld visited Cincinnati in 1832, determined that the school would do, got the approval of the Tappans, and by providing recommendations to them took over as de facto head of the Seminary, to the point of choosing the president (Lyman Beecher, after Finney turned it down) and telling the trustees whom to hire.

"[29]: 226  Shortly after their arrival at Lane, the Oneida contingent held a lengthy, well-publicized series of debates, over 18 days during February 1834, on the topic of abolition versus colonization, concluding with the endorsement of the former and rejection of the latter.

[19]: 159 A chance encounter with Shipherd, who was travelling around Ohio recruiting students for his new Collegiate Institute, led to the proposal that they come to Oberlin, along with Mahan and the fired Lane professor.

They did so, but only after Oberlin agreed to their conditions: "In the summer of 1835, they all arrived in Oberlin—President Mahan, Father Finney, Professor Morgan, the Lane rebels, the first black students, and the Tappans' money.

[36]: 82–83 Asa Mahan (1799–1889) accepted the position of first president of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1835, simultaneously serving as the chair of intellectual and moral philosophy and professor of theology.

[41] In 1965, the board of trustees voted to discontinue graduate instruction in theology at Oberlin, and in September 1966, six faculty members and 22 students merged with the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University.

[13]: 122  A committed abolitionist, Fairchild, at that point chair of theology and moral philosophy, had played a role in the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, hiding fugitive slave John Price in his home.

Oberlin (and Princeton) alumnus Robert W. Fuller's[65] commitment to educational reform—which he had already demonstrated as a Trinity College dean—led his alma mater to make him its tenth president in November 1970.

He recruited and hired the first four African-American athletic coaches at a predominantly white American college or university, including Tommie Smith, the gold medalist sprinter from the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

Howell wrote that college workers sought the union's representation in response to the administration's effort to "speed up work" to meet a "mounting budget crisis".

[77] In September 2014, on Rosh Hashanah, Oberlin Students for Free Palestine placed 2,133 black flags in the main square of the campus as a "call to action" in honor of the 2,133 Palestinians who died in the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.

"[81] In early 2016, an Oberlin professor, Joy Karega, suggested Israel was behind 9/11[82] and blamed it for the Charlie Hebdo attacks and for ISIS,[83] prompting a rebuke from faculty and administration.

[87] Oberlin came under federal investigation in late 2023 by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights for alleged breach of Title VI, which protects students from discrimination because of their religion.

[106][107] Oberlin's Winter term, occurring each January, is described as "a time for students to pursue interests outside of regular course offerings through immersive learning experiences.

The selective, three-week intensive program connects the participants with other entrepreneurs and business leaders chosen from the surrounding northeast Ohio region as well as the extensive Oberlin College alumni network.

In 1995, Emeritus Professor of Sociology (1966–2007) James Leo Walsh told The Oberlin Review that students "carried out dozens of protests against the Vietnam war ranging from peaceful picketing to surrounding a local naval recruiter's car".

[128] In 2013, after the discovery of hateful messages and the alleged sighting of a person wearing KKK robes, president Marvin Krislov cancelled classes and called for a day of reflection and change.

[132] During the fall 2014 semester, Oberlin's Student Labor Action Coalition organized a petition to permit dining hall temporary workers working four-hour shifts to eat one meal from food the college throws out each day.

[144] The pro-Israel advocacy group Alums for Campus Fairness has called on Oberlin to address alleged anti-Semitic hate speech directed at Jewish students.

In the spring of 2013, the Board of Directors of OSCA made a decision in a closed-door meeting to remove the Kosher-Halal Co-op from the Association after disputes over budgets and kitchen inspections.

The entirely student-run Oberlin College Marching Band (OCMB), founded in 1998, performs at various sporting events including football games, women's rugby, and pep rallies throughout the year.

The theater has since been a mainstay in the Oberlin community at its comfortable locale on south campus, and in 2012 (after a year of renovations) became the centerpiece for The Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman Cinema Studies Center for Media Education and Production.

The school's Campus Committee on Shareholder Responsibility provides students, faculty, and staff with the opportunity to make suggestions and decisions on proxy votes.

A student board, the Oberlin College Green EDGE Fund, manages a set of accounts to support local sustainability, resource efficiency, and carbon offsetting projects.

Eventually, as the athletic department became more cohesive, the Yeomen mascot was adopted, drawing on the phonetic sound of "O" Men and the schools official motto of "Learning and Labor".

Oberlin also has 17 club sports, including ice hockey, fencing, ultimate frisbee, rugby, equestrian, tennis, volleyball, and in martial arts such as Brazilian jiu-jitsu and aikido.