<p>Racial episodes shake Oberlin College</p>
<p>Racial</a> episodes shake Oberlin College | The Columbus Dispatch</p>
<p>Probably not students. At least I hope not.</p>
<p>Why Oberlin of all places? That school has always seemed to me to be of type of college less or even least likely to have this kind of trouble flare up.</p>
<p>I think some of it might be students. Some of the grafitti and things were found in campus buildings, I think, where non-students could go but not as easily. I am heartened by Oberlin’s response.</p>
<p>It only takes one person to write graffiti, which is also a rather cowardly means of political expression.</p>
<p>At the risk of getting flamed, I wonder if this was done by students who wanted a teach in day, etc.</p>
<p>Would not be the first time such an incident was faked.</p>
<p>If this is what they consider an “ordeal,” then this is a very fortunate group of people.</p>
<p>There are jerks everywhere. Hopefully there is video, but in the last few of these situations, the outcome wasn’t what was expected.</p>
<p>Here’s what I wondered when I first heard this reported yesterday: they canceled classes because there was “a report of someone wearing what looked like a Ku Klux Klan-type hooded robe on campus”? Really, that was all it took?</p>
<p>I had no idea Obies were such hothouse flowers! I guess today’s students couldn’t have held up during the Underground Railroad days that this College is so justifiably proud of.</p>
<p>As the mother of someone who was bullied because of her race (she is biracial), I can’t help but notice that some comments here appear to minimize the problem-accusing the minority students of writing the graffiti, wondering if it was non-students, putting ordeal is quotes, as if not really harmful, and calling complainers hothouse flowers. </p>
<p>Um. One word or two dozen-when they are vile and racist, numbers don’t matter, who wrote them doesn’t matter, and it should be a given that you feel safe in your own school. My daughter did not feel emotionally safe in the school where she was called names, and just because it was only a handful and not the majority of the student body didn’t make it any less painful for her. And yes, she was accused of making it up-even after some of the comments were heard both other kids and even parents.</p>
<p>But that’s what some people do to feel better about themselves-“it couldn’t happen here”, “it’s made up,” “it was outsiders”, yada yada. </p>
<p>I hope they find out who’s behind what’s going on and put the hammer down.</p>
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I put ordeal in quotes because I was quoting the article.</p>
<p>I stand by my statement. What happened at Virginia Tech was an ordeal. No one knows yet what this was.</p>
<p>I am very sorry about your daughter’s situation. I can sympathize because my daughter was a victim of violence based on her race and ended up having to change middle schools as a result. </p>
<p>I am also sympathetic to people who are victims of racial bullying who aren’t believed because of the incidents that were staged.</p>
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<p>Actually, they canceled classes because the sighting of someone wearing something they perceived as looking like a KKK robe was the latest incident in a series of racist/homophobic/anti-Semitic incidents over the last several weeks…including a mugging in which a student was taunted in a way which indicated hatred towards a US EEOC protected class and physically beaten. </p>
<p>The efforts to cancel classes was meant to provide a day to discuss the string of threatening incidents and to alleviate the serious rise in fearful tensions due to those string of incidents. Students were already on edge and this was the college community’s effort to start providing some relief…especially to students from the targeted groups. </p>
<p>The last incident was just the last straw which broke the camel’s back.</p>
<p>Seeing your race being called out in vile terms is an ordeal as well. Even if some minority kids DID do the graffiti to get out of class, OTHER minority kids would not know that and be affected. My kid considered jumping out a window to get away from the constant taunts. I consider her having been through an ordeal.</p>
<p>ETA-thanks for the additional info, cobrat</p>
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That is an ordeal, without question.</p>
<p>But having someone walk around on campus in a bathrobe, as the police now think, is not an ordeal. Whether the grafitti is part of a larger problem is something that only the future will tell. </p>
<p>Perhaps there is a racist group of people on campus who are creating a hostile environment. But it is also possible that there is an individual who has a motive of his or her own using race as a way of whipping up a frenzy.</p>
<p>And sseamom, my kid at 12 was kicked down an entire flight of stairs because of her race. She still has physical scars.</p>
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<p>No problem. One problem with many of the comments focusing on the supposed KKK hood sighting was that they were probably misled by national coverage which failed to provide the context behind the college community’s call to cancel classes. It also doesn’t help the news sources providing the most details are local regional news-sites, not many of the national ones. </p>
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<p>From a few of the local news sites and from alums, two students are being suspected of the graffiti/vandalism incidents and are barred from campus pending the investigation.</p>
<p>Sikorsky,</p>
<p>Actually, in one of the earlier incidents leading up to the canceled classes, a student was beaten up and knocked down while being taunted with epithets demonstrating hatred against one of the targeted groups. </p>
<p>While everyone’s focusing on the KKK-hood sighting, that was just the last incident in a string of incidents which broke the camel’s back.</p>
<p>Cobrat, please link to the inclident you just described.</p>
<p>The recent offenses that I have heard of at Oberlin, in this thread and elsewhere, are inexcusable. The people who committed them should be punished. If they are students or employees, they should be dismissed from the College, and they should prosecuted if they have violated local laws.</p>
<p>But I still don’t see any of this as reason to close down the college. These things are unpardonably wrong. But they are also no different from what happens every day in places that are a bit rougher around the edges than Oberlin, Ohio. If these Obies are the liberal firebrands they like to think they are, they need to be a bit hardier.</p>
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I think that’s right. For me, it would take making attending classes next to impossible to justify closing the entire college.</p>
<p>I stand corrected. If the number of bias incidents are accurate from the local media coverage, then Oberlin does, in fact, have a serious problem. I haven’t found the report of violence that cobrat refers to, though.</p>