I really wanted to go to Oberlin. Loved the campus, loved the atmosphere and the curriculum. It turned me down flat—the interviewer was actually hostile— so I ended up having to settle for my second choice.
Boy, am I glad I don’t have to try to defend Oberlin today.
Gibson’s Bakery, a small family-owned bakery with a contract with Oberlin, is suing the Ohio college, alleging that school officials facilitated a boycott after three black Oberlin students were arrested at the bakery for shop-lifting some wine. The complaint is here.
On November 9, 2016—probably not coincidentally the day after Donald Trump was elected, throwing ultra-liberal schools like Oberlin into a ludicrously extended period of irrational fear and loathing—Jonathan Aladin, Endia Lawrence and Cecelia Whettstone were caught stealing bottles of wine. As they have been duly trained by our culture, the students played the race card, initially claiming the shop had racially profiled them, and that their only misdeed was presenting fake IDs. When that wasn’t working, the three admitted their guilt and also signed statements that the store was innocent of any race-related bias. It also appears that the students punched and kicked the shopkeeper. What a fine job our institutions of higher learning are doing civilizing the rising generation! (Here is the police incident report.)
The day after the arrests, hundreds of students protested outside the bakery, and Oberlin’s student senate published a resolution saying Gibson’s had “a history of racial profiling and discriminatory treatment.” The Oberlin police conducted an investigation into the arrests and found “a complete lack of evidence of racism.” Over a five-year period, the bakery had pursued charges against 40 shoplifters, and only six were African-American.
Never mind. The owner met with then-Oberlin President Marvin Krislov and Tita Reed, assistant to the president, and they pressured him to drop criminal charges against the three students and any future student-thieves who were first time offenders. When he did not agree, the complaint alleges, the school made good on its threat and dropped its decade’s long contract with the bakery. Then, the complaints says, Meredith Raimondo, vice president and dean of students, joined students and members of the school faculty in campus demonstrations against the bakery, distributing a flyer that accused Gibson’s Bakery of being a “RACIST establishment with a LONG ACCOUNT of RACIAL PROFILING and DISCRIMINATION.” A boycott of the business was organized, and according to the complaint, facilitated by the school. College tour guides reportedly inform prospective students that Gibson’s is racist. How is it racist? Well, it doesn’t let black students shoplift, and black students told reporters that when they enter the store, they feel as though they’re being watched.
The lawsuit alleges libel, slander, interference with business relationships, interference with contracts, deceptive trade practices, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent hiring and trespass, and asks for more than $200,000 in damages.
Good.
It seems pretty clear what factors are at work here:
A left-besotted institution that is beholden to ideology and political cant, and when reality and the cant are incompatible, cant wins…
Anti-white racism being regarded as good racism, as opposed to the other kind…
Cowardly and principle-free college administrators who lack the integrity to tell black students when they are wrong and confused (and since when did trying to rob a local business and beating up the owner not get a college student expelled?)…
A school abusing its influence and power to bully a local business….
The presumption of racism….
A college-wide toxic culture that undermines education and that will render many Oberlin graduates perpetual victims for the rest of their lives….
Oberlin.
Whew.
Close call, there, Jack…
______________________________
Pointer and Source: Jonathan Turley
Facts: Chicago Tribune.
Ethics Alarms 
Is the school mascot a Lemming?
A jackal, I believe.
It was recently changed to a squirrel. And better yet, to a specifically white squirrell. Who looks all mean, or something.
Seems like no one understood what a ‘Yeoman’ was…
https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2014/01/06/oberlin-college-adopts-a-new-mascot-and-its-a-squirrel
Jonathan Haidt is out with another great article explaining, among other things, what’s gone on in the American academy: https://www.city-journal.org/html/age-outrage-15608.html
Safe spaces are supposed to keep black kids safe from prosecution for shoplifting, I guess. I’d also guess legions of dead segregationists are merrily saying “I told you so!” in their graves while MLK is spinning in his.
I guess this is what happens when the “Town/Gown” power balance gets out of whack. Would that the folks in Oberlin, Ohio had there own Carmine:
Thanks for highlighting the excellent Haidt piece, OB—required reading for all of us here.
CG;
Ecclesiastes 11:1 “Cast your bread on the waters: for you shall find it after many days”
Your “many days” ended yesterday when I plunged into Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind,” per your recommendation.
Check your renewal statement for the commission…
Ha ha, glad the bread made it across the waters, Paul; let us know if you find it nutritious.
You’re welcome, Charles.
”Safe spaces are supposed to keep black kids safe from prosecution for shoplifting,”
Get with the program OB, that’s, like, sooooo over two years ago.
Leave it to the 77 Square Miles Surrounded By A Sea Of Reality to be ahead of the curve on that.
To wit:
“University of Wisconsin Official Explains Why Stealing From Stores Like Walmart Shouldn’t Be a Crime.”
Everett D. Mitchell, Director of Community Relations U.W.-Madison (GO BADGERS!!):
““I just don’t think they should be prosecuting cases for people who steal from Wal-Mart. I don’t think that. I don’t think that Target, and all them (sic) other places – the big boxes that have insurance – they should be using the people that steal from there as justification to start engaging in aggressive police behavior.”
https://ijr.com/2015/08/400669-university-wisconsin-official-says-stealing-place-not-crime/
Broken Windows Theory be damned, am I right?
Broken windows is so Giuliani’s day…
https://endbrokenwindows.org/
”several other individuals who were also on scene at the time of the incident and who were initially interfering with officers attempting to gain control of the situation, began stating that Allyn was the aggressor and the black man didn’t do anything wrong.” (bolds mine)
The “other individuals” have convinced themselves that systemic “White Supremacy” is to blame.
Just like with Michael Brown in Ferguson, incuriously no one whipped out their phone to record this grossly racist miscarriage of justice?
Wouldn’t that be supremely poetic justice were Oberlin to acquire a severe, chronic, long-lasting case of Mizzou Syndrome, hitting it right where it hurts the most: attendance & endowment donations.
I think U Missouri was hurt because the protests there changed a lot of people’s perception of the school. Oberlin has long been a PC haven. This is what I think people have come to expect, so I doubt it will have the same effect.
There are a couple of post on this over at Legal Insurrection. One thing that really stuck with me was that when the college announced the contract cancellation, followed by the student boycott, the townspeople reacted by shopping…someone called it a “cash mob” … at the bakery.
How dare the racist townspeople!? That’s it, Oberlin has to move out of racist Ohio and into Oakland, CA, where the People of Color roam freely, and progressive cant reigns supreme. Hail Social Justice!
My gosh, these academic lefties seem to become more cartoonish by the day.
Lefties don’t like it when high crime areas intrude on their personal safely… which is why the would never move to south Chicago or Oakland…
Professor Haidt’s power lens lecture could not be more pertinent. Victimhood uses the power lens to confer power on itself and is to be used as the sledge of Alinsky’s favored two tools.
Demented. Stealing used to be, you know, wrong.
This is where progressives want to go: laws based and enforced on who you are, with progressives deciding that as they go.
Textbook definition of tyranny.