Posted on 06/23/2019 6:29:37 PM PDT by xxqqzz
Earlier this month, a jury awarded Gibson’s Bakery $11 million following a month-long trial stemming from the bakery’s lawsuit against Oberlin College and Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo. Then, last Thursday, it added $33 million in punitive damages. This stunning decision — which strikes a serious blow against free speech on college campuses across the country — has garnered significant attention in major media outlets such as CNN and The New York Times, as well as on social media and various personal blogs.
The tension between the College and Gibson’s began in November 2016, when three Black students were involved in a physical altercation outside of Gibson’s after Allyn Gibson, son of store owner David Gibson, accused one of the students of shoplifting. The three students were arrested. Shortly thereafter, Oberlin students alleged that Allyn had racially profiled the students and launched a protest and boycott of the bakery. A year later, Gibson’s sued, alleging that the College and Raimondo had participated in smearing its reputation.
Unfortunately, much of the coverage and commentary has either inaccurately represented the lawsuit and the events that led up to it, or has only presented parts of the larger story. An extensive timeline of events is outlined in a recent Review article covering news of the verdict (“Jury Rules for Gibson’s, Assigns $44 Million in Damages,” June 14, 2019). Readers looking for more background on the verdict should consult that article.
As stories about the verdict transition from breaking news coverage to think pieces about the impact of the jury’s decision, the Editorial Board wants to identify three of the key ways that existing coverage has skewed or misrepresented events leading up to the trial.
The first concerns the Oberlin Police Department report that was filed following the initial altercation outside Gibson’s in November 2016. The document filed by responding officers was wildly prejudiced in favor of Gibson’s, as it only included statements from owner David Gibson, his son Allyn Gibson, and a Gibson’s employee. David and the employee both backed up Allyn’s version of events, giving them near-complete control of the narrative in the report and, consequently, in the media.
Noticeably absent from the police report was the perspective of any of the three Black students involved in the initial incident, not to mention the witnesses who originally called police out of concern for the students’ safety or who saw the altercation. Officers did include the line, “It should be noted that as the reporting officer was interviewing all three subjects 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.” This is the only suggestion in the entire report that anything took place outside of the Gibson’s’ version of events.
This omission is meaningful — particularly in a country with a long and shameful history of manipulating testimony and evidence to criminalize people of color, especially Black people. That report defined the narrative that, from the beginning, was parroted by mainstream outlets and right-wing blogs alike to vilify the three Black students and those who came to their defense. By immediately assuming the students’ guilt, the report significantly impacted the way this story is discussed in the public sphere — even today.
Second, many people have bought into the narrative presented in court by Gibson’s’ attorneys that the College acted as a ‘Goliath’ in encouraging students to crush a small, locally-owned family business. While it’s true that the College is often not the most considerate neighbor, in this situation the accusation is entirely contrived, and the support that it has found not just from personal blogs, but major media outlets as well, is misleading.
Former Student Senate Chair Kameron Dunbar, OC ’19, put it best in a recent New York Times article when he said, “Part of the narrative that has been built up is that Oberlin’s administration weaponized students against Gibson’s out of malice. I find that concept to be pretty insulting. We’re autonomous” (“Oberlin Helped Students Defame a Bakery, a Jury Says. The Punishment: $33 Million,” June 14, 2019).
Whatever you think of the protests and boycott of Gibson’s, the responsibility for them lies squarely with students. Nobody at Oberlin — student, administrator, or otherwise — has ever contested this fact and, indeed, students continue to openly take ownership of their actions. On campus, the idea that administrators could somehow orchestrate a student protest is laughable; Oberlin students prize their independence above nearly all else. If anything, students at the time felt that administrators were dragging their feet — especially after it was announced that the College would resume its contract with Gibson’s in early 2017.
In this context, the narrative of the ‘Goliath’ college egging on its students completely deteriorates. It’s true that Raimondo was at the protests, but she was simply attempting to ensure the safety of all involved — as dictated within the responsibilities of her job. Any other framing is incomplete, and we urge both journalists and readers to critically evaluate the facts of the College’s involvement.
Finally, many journalists and commentators — although not all — appear to believe that the salient question at hand is whether the three students involved in the initial altercation were actually guilty of shoplifting, or if students were right to protest the bakery and characterize that incident as racial profiling. Many outlets have even used the names of the three students in their coverage of the trial — an irresponsible decision given that the three students were not parties to the lawsuit and have nothing to do with the legal questions at hand.
We encourage readers and journalists to reject this framing of the story. The core question of the trial was whether Oberlin College and its dean of students are on the hook for statements made by their students. The chilling answer from the jury was a resounding yes. That decision should broadly concern everybody who believes in freedom of speech and student autonomy.
Throughout the trial, the Gibsons maintained that the College should have stepped in on the bakery’s behalf; the College’s argument was that administrators could only try to maintain the safety of all parties involved, and that any attempt to dictate student speech would be blatantly outside the scope of responsible leadership.
The jury sided with the Gibsons — a decision with profoundly disturbing implications for free speech at Oberlin and on college campuses across an increasingly authoritarian country. Conservative commentators often talk about a supposed crisis of free speech on campuses, wherein students wield the sword of political correctness to silence dissenting opinions. To the contrary, this verdict is a real warning shot against free speech. The fact that those same commentators have widely lauded the verdict reveals their hypocrisy and lays their thinly-veiled agenda bare.
Ultimately, we believe that the story of the verdict should be discussed out in the open, because the jury’s decision — as it stands — sets a concerning precedent that must be challenged. However, these discussions must take place with the full picture in mind, otherwise they won’t get anywhere useful. This piece is a starting point for expanding those conversations, but it is by no means the end.
In this difficult moment, we hope that Oberlin students are not discouraged from continuing the kind of sustained and brave activism that emerged following the initial November 2016 incident at Gibson’s. We hope that students continue to validate and support the experiences of their peers, even as some silence them and others attempt to force their institution to do the same. We also hope that students continue the good work of building relationships with community members, and that tension arising from the verdict does not impact the many positive, symbiotic partnerships that exist between students and the broader community.
And, in the very near term, we hope that the College will appeal the jury’s verdict and continue to fight for the right of its students — and the rights of students across the country — to identify injustice and speak out firmly against it.
lol....Id bet their lawyers are saying...i wish Id signed up for the other side of this case.....Id be getting a huge percentage of 33 million dollars and wouldn't look so incompetent now....Ill be lucky to get paid for losing this!!!
They just don’t know when to STHU.
Thanks for the laugh.
Thanks for posting this, because it must be seen to be believed!
Below is the response I submitted, under my real life name. Should ill befall me I hope this post will substantiate what I said and when.
I wrote:
I really wish you persons of the Left would deal in the truth, but it’s always just malarkey all the way down.
For you all, there is no True Truth, it’s all perception and viewpoint, and whatever suits your Narrative of Violence and Oppression and/or Offensive Cafeteria Meal Choices.
I know that Truth is now considered a tool of the Patriarchy, along with Math, etc. But society won’t get anywhere without those things, and if you need an empirical example, I give you Venezuela.
As to the original miscreants’ names being made public, that is a very silly complaint. Their names are now a matter of the public record, since all three plead guilty in a public court of law. I realize that to you white liberal savior types these individuals are just three Oppressed Negroes; however they were (are?) enrolled students at your school so I wonder why you deny them their agency. I don’t wonder why you omit their guilty pleas.
Thank you for reading this comment. Please try and open your eyes to reality, it is all around you, and it is, indeed, authentic.
They are liars, racists, probably wear MAGA hats and no doubt are affiliated with the local Ku Klux Klan!
Oh, brother. The faculty lied about their participation, the president is still unapologetic, and "free speech at Oberlin" apparently extends to public bullying of off-campus businesses. And just to top it off the behavior of university counsel was somewhere between incompetent and incomprehensible. To openly insult a jury currently sitting on the case? Unbelievable.
No, it is clear that Oberlin has learned nothing, including how to apologize to a family treated badly enough to earn the school a $44 million judgment against. Just as clearly it insists that the bullying by the students is a manifestation of some sort of "justice" when real justice said otherwise, and worst of all, that the "increasingly authoritarian country" is so due to the authority of the mob with themselves as the primary perpetrators. I hope the penalty stands.
The trial was extensively covered by Leagal Insurrection.
" It is clear that Oberlin College has settled on the claim that it is the defender of student free speech as a crisis management theme.We have explored many times why the assertion that the college was held liable for the speech of students is false. Oberlin College was held liable for the actions of its administrators, including the Senior Vice President and Dean of Students, in spreading the defamatory statements. The college may dispute the facts, but the legal theory of liability cannot be disputed.
There is a separate legal issue as to whether the accusations against Gibson’s were defamatory or constitutionally protected opinion, but that has nothing to do with the erroneous vicarious liability narrative."
Nonsense
Oberlin encouraged and staff participated
Your comment misspelled “manufactured racial profiling”
Gibson’s has caught over forty shoplifters. Five have been black. That isn’t racial profiling and was addressed in the trial.
This article is Libel, and Gibson’s should sue.
Nothing changed, or will change, with respect to free speech.
The court re-coupled accountability and responsibility to speech.
If the snowflakes do not understand, we can bring back dueling pistols
Back in the day, the Marxist’s published the same sort of drivel at my University. I think they called themselves the Chevron club.
Democrats are evil scum.
Live by the collective, die by the collective.
Let employers beware of hiring anyone with an Oberlin degree.
They are telling the media to “change the narrative.”
Pathetic.
Well someone is noticing and counting /s/
Is it profiling to ask how many of them were Oberlin students. One might conclude that Oberlin students are not honest as a class. Imagine walking in to buy a cupcake or brownie and finding that the staff are suspicious that you might be a shoplifer just because they already profiled you and determined that you were a shoplifting risk. And there you were believing that with white privilege you were protected from such things.
That would be the police, over time.
Yes, yes, we know.
Keeping records of arrests is racist.
Here’s another kicker...
Oberlin found an Alumni who would paid the defense and fine of the shoplifter
And the shoplifter was driven to Columbus for court in a college owned vehicle
I wonder how many of the 80% of the non-black shoplifters charged have been given those perks
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