Ok, I’ve skimmed through all of this and I’d like to give my opinion. I’ve tried to point out some completely untrue statements as to facts in some earlier posts. I am an Oberlin parent. I would call our politics moderate to liberal. When this whole thing happened I asked my son who will be a senior this year and who is studying the hard sciences what he thought. He said this whole thing is absolutely ridiculous as far as the students who shoplifted and all the protesting by a segment of students. Some of you have already tarred and feathered the entire student body. Let me tell you that there were many more left of center students than just my son who didn’t agree with the College’s and the protesting students position. I agreed with them and was critical as well of the College and segment of the students. Please note that the incidents under the previous president, and yes I know that some of the strategies may have occured under the current president who my son and other students felt was trying to do her best to clean up a number of issues left behind by the previous president. When I was in Oberlin on a few occasions I purposefully shopped at Gibsons. I introduced myself to what turned out to be one of the owners and told him what my son and I thought and that I was specifically shopping there as a sign of support. He thanked me. That being said, the store isn’t some nirvana. The chocolates are average, the baked goods are average. There are places I would go out of my way to buy these things, Gibson’s would be one of them. I was hoping that the Gibsons prevailed to a degree at trial in order to send a message. The jury’s verdict was absolutely ridiculous and completely emotional. I see no way that it will stand up on appeal. I would have been fine with a 3 million dollar total settlement. 1 million to the attorneys and 2 million to the family. Anything beyond that is ridiculous. I see many comments about friction between the town and the college. That is not something unique to Oberlin. I think just about every college we looked there was something you could find about strained relations between segments of the town and college. Maybe the college can do better. I’m sure they can but one might want to think about how many Oberlin folks work at the college and for some of the bright lights who wish badly on the college one might want to actually visit the town of Oberlin and see what’s there. One might want to imagine the downtown without the college. I would guess 80% shuttered. One might want to imagine the town services - police, fire, library, parks etc. without the college. If Oberlin was to go away, the town would go with it. So those who take glee in Oberlin failing also would shoulder taking glee in thousands of area residents being knocked out economically. One might want to think about that for a moment. My son will graduate next Spring with a degree in the hard sciences and a well earned high GPA. I worry about whether this will affect his applications to PHD and other programs. Hopefully they’ll look at the body of his work and the quality of science programs at Oberlin.
One typo in the above. I meant to say that I would not go out of my way to go to Gibsons for baked goods and chocolates. They were fine, It was nothing to merit a special trip.
I don’t take any glee in the damage done to the college and I have respect for Oberlin’s academics. I have close friends and relatives who are Oberlin graduates-all great people doing productive things in the world. I actually recognized someone I know in the video I posted in #249. Nice kid. Smart kid. Someone who supports the mistreated and underserved. Doubtless they thought that’s what they were doing as they stood shouting outside Gibson’s.
With all that said I think Oberlin really stepped in it here. The students went off a bit half-cocked, as idealistic students are wont to do, but IMO Oberlin’s administration did little to calm the waters and may even have fanned the flames of student anger at Gibson’s. To imply, as @gonzaga35 does, that only a small minority of students were involved in the Gibson’s backlash ignores the evidence. Looking at the video I’d estimate there were in the neighborhood of 300 kids at the protest the day after the arrest. That’s 10% of the Oberlin student population at this one event alone. Considering you couldn’t get 10% of most student populations to show up for a free beer and condoms party that’s pretty significant.
It’s sad that Oberlin has damaged both town-gown relations and the school’s national reputation. This could have been handled far better by Oberlin’s administration and now the school will pay a heavy penalty.
That’s your opinion but you weren’t in the courtroom. You didn’t hear about the value of the lost business and (for the punitives) how much the college is worth. It really does matter what the evidence is that is presented to the jury. It isn’t just the loss to the store but to the other businesses the Gibsons owned (parking lots, rental houses). Attorney’s fees aren’t set by the jury. They are an agreement between the plaintiff and the attorney. It is common in tort cases for the attorney to get 1/3 or 1/2 of the judgment (may or may not get part of the punitives or specific amounts for medical), but if they lose they get nothing. Yes, much of the award was punitive but the college has already said they can afford the award so while it might hurt a little, it probably won’t hurt as much as is needed to change the ways of the college.
Oberlin might have tried to ‘clean it up’ but that’s not the standard either. What was the condition when the events took place? What did Oberlin do to mitigate any damages? Did they come out and say that Gibson’s was a great place, a valued partner in serving the students, students who are often only there for 4 years and don’t recognize that Gibson’s was a part of the community long before and long after those 4 years? No, they asked Gibson’s to overlook the shoplifting, to take a ‘they’re just kids stealing candy’ position rather than they are adults stealing liquor position. Oberlin paid for pizza for the protesters. Even after the verdict the general counsel sends out a letter that the school is right and Gibson’s is wrong. The Jury believed that Oberlin encouraged the behavior of the students. Don’t you think it would have been better if Oberlin had said to the students “Look, shoplifting is wrong and if you are caught you WILL be prosecuted. They are going to prosecute you , AS THEY SHOULD, and we can’t save you”?
My best guess? This will settle for something like $20M, plus fees which are substantial (accounting, depositions, discovery - I read about $10M has been spent). The attorney will take $10M, the Gibsons will split $10M. The school will hate Gibson’s and the student will continue to steal from there.
Two words:
Karma
Schadenfreude
SJWs are definitely hurting traditional liberals, but traditional liberals have done very little to reign in the SJWs that love to call anyone that disagrees with them a Nazi, racist or misogynist and try to stop ideas they disagree with by any means necessary.
Until traditional liberals stop nurturing SJWs and start standing up to the radicals at places like Oberlin, they will continue to define the left.
It is comical the way SJWs try to virtue signal their wokeness. Here’s a fun experiment, try thinking of something innocuous and then do a google search by adding “is racist” after it, for instance, “ice cream is racist”.
https://www.mrctv.org/blog/weeks-racist-dessert-ice-cream
The Oberlin decision is important because I think it is waking more people up to how bad SJWism has gotten.
It is important, as we engage in these discussions both internally and externally, that we have a shared set of facts.
@ivycover said, “I’ve noted earlier that they don’t seem to receive many comments. I wonder why that is. Is there a forum or venue where students regularly express their selves? Is there a staff pulpit? For an institution that prides its self in expression they appear relatively silent - particularly so of recent. Are they self censoring? Are they being muted? Is there any diversity of thought on the campus with regard to this matter. The lone dissenting instructor was the object of scorn in at least one communication. Do those affected now lack the chutzpah to speak?”
I read that Oberlin was blocking dissenters from commenting on twitter. Maybe the college is censuring comments on other social venues, too.
@gonzaga35 , what do you mean?
I have a few comments mostly on the original incident… The shoplifter originally tried to buy wine with a fake ID, hence the clear motive. A store has a right to detain shoplifters. A big chain store uses uniformed security guards, which also makes picking on a small store for doing the same thing a little ugly.
It was presented in the student newspaper that there was a fight and the store cashier was the aggressor. He was in a sense, but he had the legal right to detain the shoplifter. Avoiding detention violently can escalate it from shoplifting to robbery, and that is what the three were charged with.
Apparently, the the store had a big problem with shoplifting by Oberlin students. I went to a somewhat more competitive and very intense college, and I cannot imagine that many students there shoplifted. The blue collar locals on the jury were probably offended by the school appearing to condone shoplifting by the mostly well off kids, as well as by idea that challenging any behavior by blacks was racist.
I don’t understand the legal details, but my understanding is that the defendant usually has decent chance to reduce the award or get some other favorable ruling on appeal with these huge awards. I also understand that these cases are usually settled for less than the amount of the award before appeals. However, it would have been cheaper for Oberlin to settle than pay legal fees even if it won, so there may be protracted appeals.
@Ohiodad51 …don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys
Don’t let 'em pick guitars or drive them old trucks
Let 'em be doctors and lawyers and such
Preferably lawyers that win multi-million dollar jury awards…
Coincidentally, my daughter and I had a tour scheduled for Oberlin on the very day the news broke of the jury verdict. As a free speech advocate, it bothered me that the school was being punished for rallies and emails and other things covered under the First Amendment. And I wonder whether the verdict will stand on appeal.
But at any rate, we had been looking forward to seeing Oberlin because of its reputation academically and historically. Sadly, we were disappointed by the information session (very low tech, and the presenter still had difficulty getting the PowerPoint to work). And we were disappointed in the tour, which was very impersonal. No one made a good case for why we should choose Oberlin over other liberal arts colleges.
My impression was that Oberlin doesn’t need to court students, so there are no personal touches put into it. By contrast, the tour and session at Kenyon was marvelous and geared precisely to my daughter’s particular academic interests, and Whittenberg’s was the most personal of all – even with a private parking spot with my daughter’s name on it.
As far as the bakery goes, we walked by it on the tour and from what I could see the place had a line at the counter at 3 in the afternoon on a Tuesday, so there was no visible evidence of the place suffering economically.
The business, according to some articles, is worth low six figures. Any verdict should have been well below $1 million to be sane. And, I am against any institution being punished (including financially) for First Amendment speech – even if they’re wrong. This is why the ACLU has even defended the KKK at times.
^It was libelous speech, accusing people (who own a store) of being racist, which hurt their livelihood and caused emotional distress. The college encouraged the libelous speech, even after knowing there was no proof of racism. Let that happen to you and then we can hear about what you think of this “free speech”.
It’s funny that when conservative speakers try to come on these campuses to speak their Free Speech, they are run out of town and students don’t protest the fact the speakers don’t have the opportunity to speak.
The first amendment restricts government from regulating free speech. These are two private parties, the government wasn’t involved at all.
No first amendment issues here.
Am I the only one who thought the $11 million actual damages verdict was on the modest side? I read somewhere that the elderly owner suffered permanent injury during a student protest at his home and must wear a neck brace. I don’t know if any of the damages were for that, but the medical bills alone could easily exceed $1 million. And of course the going concern cost for a business, with perhaps 50 or 75 years ahead of lost business. I could have voted for well above this verdict level in these circumstances.
I think the time period for loss of income was 30 years. I don’t know why it’s 30 years, but that’s what they use. There were some damages for injuries and damages for the loss of business to the bakery, but also for loss of business for a downtown parking area and several rental homes owned by the family.
The insurance company wanted the jury to break out all the damages for each claim, but the judge turned down that motion.
People can sit here and say “oh, it’s a little store, not worth $1M,” but the accountants thought it was that was the testimony the jury believed.
The award amount is obviously ridiculous. The jury was clearly annoyed at Oberlin and sending a message.
^If you watch the bodycam video, you will notice the store is much more than a bakery. I actually saw no baked goods at all, lol. Not what I was expecting. It looked more like a CVS with booze and food (minus the pharmacy) or old school Woolworths.
It was more of a general store than I expected. It had one little table outside (maybe because it was Nov?) and I did notice the ice cream freezer, but other than that, it looked like a little general store.
(CVS stores all have liquor where I live.)
There was also more of a mess after the shoplifting/robbery than I expected. It was more of an incident that I first thought.
Hey, Gibson’s won, Oberlin lost. Oberlin was arguing the loss was about $35k so I doubt they were willing to settle for $3M or more as some were arguing in a few posts above. Cases usually go to trial when the parties aren’t even close to the same number for settlement. I’ve seen them where the insurance company offered $40k and the plaintiffs wanted $1M.
I really doubt Oberlin offered anything in the millions to settle. Also, costs were already out of control (in the millions) so there may have been no choice to settle because no one was willing to eat the costs.