The New York Times reports on a court case in which a local bakery sued Oberlin College. The jury awarded the bakery a judgment of $33 million dollars, $11 million in compensatory and $22 million in punitive damages. Here’s the NYT’s take:
The dispute began on Nov. 9, 2016, when an Oberlin student tried to pay for a bottle of wine with a fake ID, and the store clerk noticed that the student had hidden two more bottles of wine under his coat, according to court papers.
The clerk, Allyn D. Gibson, a son and a grandson of the owners, chased the student out onto the street and tackled him, according to some witnesses, and two friends of the student, also students at Oberlin, joined in the scuffle. The bakery prosecuted the students, who are African-American and who pleaded guilty to various charges.
The next day, hundreds of students and others gathered in the park across the street from the general store to protest the arrests. The Gibsons accused the college; its dean of students, Meredith Raimondo; and others of actively supporting the protesters. Oberlin officials bought them pizza, authorized the use of student funds to pay for gloves for the cold weather and helped them to hand out fliers urging a boycott of the store, according to court papers.
For just over two months, the college suspended its purchase of baked goods from Gibson’s for the college dining halls. The college said that it suspended buying from Gibson’s in an effort to de-escalate the protests. The store said that the suspension had sent a message to the community that the college believed the store was racist, and that people had stopped shopping there, or went in through a back door, because they did not want to be associated with it.
Though the college resumed buying from Gibson’s it refused to issue an apology, and Gibson’s said its business continued to suffer.
The bakery’s complaint said Dr. Raimondo, had helped hand out fliers saying: “Don’t Buy. This is a racist establishment with a long account of racial profiling and discrimination.â€
But the college and the police had no record of prior complaints about racial profiling, the complaint said. Rather, local merchants suffered from students shoplifting, according to court papers, and a college publication had written about how shoplifting was a rite of passage.
The incident and the article bring up a number of interesting issues. The NYT article omits a number of factors that I think are important.
Oberlin, Ohio is a small town of about 8,000 people. Oberlin College is an elite institution and one widely known for social activism and progressivism. The median income of Oberlin students’ families is $178,000. Most of the students’ families are in the top quintile of income earners. The median income of the people of Oberlin, Ohio is $51,117. This divergence provides the basis for a classic “town vs. gown” dispute.
Lorain County in which Oberlin is located is one of the many counties that has never recovered from the Great Recession during which housing values plummeted, indeed, it has suffered substantially from the loss of manufacturing jobs over the last several decades. The punitive damages awarded by the jury in the case were the largest allowed under Ohio law. I don’t think it’s too much of a reach to conclude that the people of Oberlin and Lorain County don’t have a lot of sympathy for how the college handled the situation. The college’s complaint that the judgment would harm students reminds me of the old story about the guy convicted of murdering his parents whose lawyer called for the mercy of the court because he was an orphan.
The incident in question occurred the day after Donald Trump was elected president.
The facts of the incident are not in question. The students who shoplifted pled guilty and were convicted of that and a number of other charges. There was no racial profiling involved. The college refused the Gibsons’ request to send out a letter to the students denying that racial profiling had taken place.
Is it really possible for the Dean of Students to take part in a student demonstration without the college’s having de facto endorsed the cause for which the students are demonstrating? That’s the claim that the college has made.
The bakery has lost a half million in revenue, more than half of its typical annual revenue, as a consequence of the incident and the students’ and college’s actions. The college offered $35,000 in settlement of the Gibsons’ suit against it. In the past I’ve mentioned the idea in negotiation theory of an “insult price”, an offer so ludicrous it aggravates the other party rather than encouraging an agreement. That would seem to fill the bill.
I do not know whether the decision was just or unjust or whether it will stand on the appeal which is inevitably coming. I think that the entire matter provides evidence that the concerns about “social justice warriors” out of control and abetted by colleges and universities has actual weight.
From the college POV this looks to me like the problem you have when you cater to the privileged class. The customer is always right mentality prevails. You have to cater to your customers, the students and parents, or admissions drop off.
On the town side, this must put a lot of pressure eon them dealing with a bunch of well to do kids. In small towns in the Midwest rich kids (and athletes) weren’t going to get arrested for much of anything, but that was pretty small population. It must be galling to have to suck up to every kid at the school the same way you would to the kids of the town elites.
Steve
The year before the shoplifting incident, Oberlin’s Black Student Union issued a list of demands, which included the creation of safe spaces for blacks, an annual 4% increase in Black enrollment, and an end to institutional complacency that allows violence against Blacks. “These are demands and not suggestions. If these demands are not taken seriously, immediate action from the Africana community will follow.â€
I’m guessing that these and other demands were embarrassing and scapegoating the bakery was the easy path.
The idea that any school, private or public, can have on campus, a school sanctioned, racially segregated student union bold enough to make demands of administration, and issue threats if not accommodated, is embarrassingly revealing of how far from reality higher education has been allowed to drift.
The court ruling, even if overturned on appeal, is a very welcome development.
Meanwhile, our religious universities continue the kind of exemplary behavior we expect from people of faith. Note that it costs a university $33 million to not buy food from a bakery for a few months, while it costs $60 million to run an orphanage as a sex slave camp for 8 years.
https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-perlitz-haiti-abuse-settlement-20190606-20190606-t3v7xeuqozakdfu5q56z6zegcm-story.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Steve
“Orphanage”
2 Corinthians 11:13-15
For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.
We can only hope so.
1. The Oberlin authorities in a blast e.mail belittled and abused the jury for finding against them prior to the penalty phase. Brilliant move.
2. Texts were produced during the trial showing Dean Raimondo and others boasting about how they could mobilize the students against a critic, had they so chosen. Astroturfing, anyone?
3. Demands by Oberlin that in the future Gibson should contact the college first, not the police for first-time shoplifters (left unmentioned was how they expected Gibson employees to determine first-timeism). Boy, get out of jail free cards are great when you are fighting the Oppressive Patriarchy of the Townie Deplorables.
4. Pleas of poverty when the damages were handed down. Oberlin’s endowment is almost a billion dollars.
5. And in all this Raimondo et al won’t lose a dime. In fact their SJW street cred probably went up. Isn’t it wonderful and exhilarating being able to fight for what’s right when someone else always pays the bills?
#1 is the reason that, were I in the Gibsons’ shoes, I would file a second defamation suit. This time I would seek $100 million. The objective would be to deter Oberlin from making defamatory statements. Clearly, $10 million was inadequate.