https://oberlinreview.org/14052/news/enrollment-drop-creates-financial-shortfall/
Important to know…S is a soph at Oberlin. This info in addition to the new presumably promising Pres will make for aa sharpened and discerning eye on Obie in many respects. Curious though…Obie endowment in range of 725-750 million. Where does that play in? Certainly Admin can’t just write a check but aside from providing financial aid…merit or otherwise…one arm might be to access that endowment…Thoughts?
@parentgeorgia At most schools the endowment is restricted to programs specified by the donor. What is Oberlin’s unrestricted endowment?
An “unexpected drop in admissions” does not just happen. There are reasons: trying to be more selective to raise rankings, offering less financial aid, bad press.
Understood as that certainly makes sense. Thank you. I will find out what the unrestricted endowment is.
Often schools meet short term budget needs by doing without. Don’t replace a prof who quits or dies. That new sidewalk or repaving a parking lot? Next year. Close off a dorm or floor to save heating costs.
Interesting to see that the article quotes administrators as saying that non-union employees (such as faculty) will have 0 salary increase, for the second year in a row, that most faculty research grants have been cut, and that open positions are being left unfilled.
Oberlin is a wonderful school, both my kids looked at it. I hope the administration is able to manage through this successfully, and quickly.
As far as bad publicity is concerned, the College created its own PR disaster this past year by its boycott of Gibson’s Bakery following student protests of the arrest of three students for shoplifting and assault last November. Gibson’s is a beloved 130 year-old institution in Oberlin and was accused by the protesters of racial profiling the arrested students. The Plain Dealer investigated and found that (a) Gibson’s (like other merchants in Oberlin) had been victimized by dozens of shoplifters the previous year, (b) the clear majority of those arrested were white, and © were mainly students, presumably of the college. The students arrested in November recently pled guilty. In sum, the College boycotted and summarily cancelled its daily purchase order with Gibson’s despite the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing, and in spite of contrary evidence that racial profiling was not occurring, and that students were regularly shoplifting and victimizing the store.
To my knowledge, the College has yet to apologize to Gibson’s. If not, an apology should be the first act of business for the new President.
For those interested, Emeritus Professor Roger Copeland has a letter to the editor in this week’s Review recounting these events.
This saga, which endured for months, created terrible press for Oberlin in the Lorain/Cleveland area. I would be curious to know what Oberlin’s yield was like for admitted students from Ohio this past cycle.
Exactly, @cornelldad10, that whole Gibson’s fiasco was political correctness run amok. My son is a junior at Oberlin, and I am ashamed of the way the school handled it. To accuse the store of racism simply because the shoplifters were black is racism, pure and simple. It’s patronizing and offensive to the vast majority of law-abiding black students, who do not shoplift.
This situation, along with the embarrassing “culturally appropriate” chicken dinner disaster, the protest over grades, and the ridiculous length of time it took to fire the unscholarly Joy Karega, have all combined to lower Oberlin’s profile as a serious school. If my son were applying today, I’d encourage him to take Oberlin off his list.
I think it’s a shame, because Oberlin still is an excellent school. The new president needs to make a public commitment to intellectual honesty, even if it’s not PC. And the college certainly needs to be a better neighbor to the town of Oberlin and the surrounding area.
I don’t follow Oberlin that closely, but I thought I read somewhere, that all of the pro-Trump signs in the area(county/city) around the school, back in the run up to the election, may have been a turn-off to the liberal students that tend to enroll at Oberlin.
In other words, it’s all Trumps fault. 
And this headline won’t help recruitment in New England.
http://www.theoberlinnewstribune.com/news/8631/oberlin-grad-arrested-in-quadruple-homicide
The victims were his mother, his grandparents and their caretaker.
The kid was clearly mentally ill. I wish his Oberlin affiliation hadn’t been the first thing they posted.
One of my son’s tutors from high school is a huge fan of Oberlin (think a child went there).
Out of respect and admiration for our tutor (who is a gifted teacher), we looked at Oberlin’s admissions page but quickly noticed that they have a bunch of added ‘hoops’ for home educated students.
That was the end of that.
Of course that is a school’s right and I have no problem with it whatsoever. It was just something that stood out to me in the big scheme of application season.
I think a bigger issue may have been the publicity surrounding protests at Oberlin including the infamous letter to the president and trustees (which demanded that protesters be allowed not to take exams and demanded the firings of faculty, among other things) and the General Gao’s fiasco, all of which was being covered in the media around the time much of this year’s incoming class was looking at colleges. I think anyone looking seriously at Oberlin had to be aware of its history of student activism but the cavalcade of protests may have had more moderate students wondering if they’d fit in and some parents wondering how much time their kids would spend in class if they ended up at Oberlin.
I want to address a few of these things.
The fact that a recent graduate killed some his family members should not impugn Oberlin. There is nothing so far tying it to Oberlin and I doubt that it will.
There was a demonstration by a few students after the arrest of the 3 students for the incident at Gibson’s. I think the vast majority of students did not participate. The college had a pr problem: should it continue to buy pastries from Gibson’s(as it had done for decades), when there was a potential racial profiling issue? It decided not to, until the facts were fleshed out, and I think the college is now buying the pastries again.
After the appropriate committee met, and due process took place, Karega was dismissed from the faculty. This was an issue of academic freedom versus anti-Semitism, and the college took the proper action.
The college never gave into the demands that the protesters not be allowed to take exams, nor to the other unreasonable demands.
When I started Oberlin, I was a typical 18 year old, and kind of a jock. I was exposed to people who had strong anti-racist and pro-gay right positions. After being exposed to this, and after much discussion and thought, I became a champion of those positions. I could have gone to another school where these things were just swept under the rug. At Oberlin, they are not. Among students, there is also an ethic that people should not violate the laws, unless there is strong justification for doing so(such as the Jim Crow laws). If I had been a student when the Gibson incident occurred, I doubt that I would have demonstrated, and let the legal proceedings take place. But, I understand those who chose to demonstrate, because, as we have seen, there is still much racism in this country.
As for the comment that these things interfere with studies, that is not true. You can be citizen asserting the rights of others, and an excellent student as well. I think they go hand in hand.
Gratefulalum, I agree with much of what you say and that Oberlin is a special school with a unique history of social justice. I also agree that the administrators, to their great discredit, considered the Gibson’s fiasco to be a “pr problem.” Roger Copeland’s letter, which is in the Review issue linked to in OPs post, makes it clear that the school knew early on that Gibson’s was not racially profiling - the great majority of persons arrested for shoplifting were white. Moreover, most were students. Despite this evidence, the administrators made the craven decision to punish the College’s long-time friend and neighbor, whose proprietor had just been beaten by the three students, to mollify the protesters (which, as shown on the archived videos on youtube, were quite numerous). I’ll cut the protesters some slack - this was right after Trump’s election and the students wanted to vent. However, the administrators should have stepped in and shown some moral leadership instead of being cowed by the mob.
If you google “Krislov(for President Krislov) Gibsons” you will find descriptions of what happened. After the incident in November, the college temporarily suspended its orders with Gibson’s until it could investigate what happened. There was a very tense situation on campus, with many rumors swirling around about who was at fault in the incident. Then, in January, after it was satisfied that Gibson’s was not at fault, it restarted its orders.
How is that unreasonable?
@gratefulalum The bakery lost a lot of business due to the boycott. They were punished by the college even though innocent. Did Oberlin provide compensation to the bakery for their lost business? No, the bakery was presumed guilty until proven innocent. That appears to be the new normal.
I do not know if Gibson’s lost a lot of business overall. In fact, there was a reaction and many local people started buying more things from Gibson’s because of the student demonstration, and the temporary cessation by the college…
The college had no contract with Gibson’s. It could have said at any time that we have a new supplier, or we want to cut costs, or we want to reduce our wastelines, and we no longer want to buy baked goods from you. If it had a contract, then it could have owed Gibson’s damages for breach of contract. But it had no contract and owes nothing…
With hindsight, we can determine 100% what happened. But if you are a college administator at the time, and 3 of your students are arrested, and there are different versions of facts of what happened(some asserting fault by Gibson’s), and the college is tense, and some hotheads might vandalize Gibson’s or threaten its deliveries on campus, you probably would have done the same thing: let’s stop the deliveries until we find out the facts. In the past, other students were been arrested for shoplifting and crimes, black and white, and there was no reaction.by anyone.
@gratefulalum In other words, take the easy way out in order to appease those with violent tendencies.