text: Jury awards Gibson's Bakery $11 million against Oberlin College — College Confidential
  Thread Jury awards Gibson's Bakery $11 million against Oberlin College
  June 2019 edited June 2019 in Oberlin College
  This doesn't exactly show Oberlin in a great light:
  Replies to: Jury awards Gibson's Bakery $11 million against Oberlin College
  It all started in 2016, so the students involved have likely all left Oberlin by now - seems a shame that they won't be impacted by their actions. Any tuition increases tp cover it would be on current students for example.
  willowglen 15 replies0 threads Junior Member
  TomSrOfBoston 15466 replies1042 threads Senior Member
  "Scott Wargo, spokesman for Oberlin College, provided the following comment in response to my inquiry: "The College does not have a comment.""
  DoyleB 270 replies5 threads Junior Member
  Indications are that the.school's insurer will deny coverage by virtue of the verdict being grounded in an intentional tort. I am astounded the school let this go to trial, and am equally astounded there has been no apology or acceptance of culpability.
  LilacSoul 191 replies4 threads Junior Member
  welll.. I don't think that's a fair thing to say. My sister graduated from Oberlin and she's conservative lol.
  I wonder if Oberlin's refusal to accept any wrong doing on their part, is going to come back and bite then in the punitive damage phase.
  Even worse? If it impacts freshmen enrollment over the next few years...
  "At that point, everyone has drank the Kool-Aid, and are rather detached from normal reality."
  My guess is they would have been quite happy to lose, if the damages had been $11,000 or even $110,000 instead of $11,000,000. The administration could then have continued to state that they were just supporting students' free speech rights and had done nothing wrong. And the bakery would have gone out of business and disappeared as a point of contention. So as @DoyleB points out, the punitive phase may not go well for them.
  doschicos 25967 replies258 threads Senior Member
  The college has already seen a downtick in enrollment/admissions results the past few years which is starting to put some financial pressure on them. More bad press isn't what they need right now, IMO.
  (I've added the %% to the F word in the quote)
  I really don't understand why they haven't "separated" Raimondo from the college. Claiming they are sorry and will make changes (like Raimondo) could possibly save then $10+ million in the next phase.
  This is a massive failure by the Board of Trustees, the President and the legal team. Did they honestly think the jury was only going to award $35K to $110K? A business that's been around since 1885? When the plaintiffs would roll into the courtroom each day with 90-year old Allyn W. "Grandpa" Gibson?
  Seems like Copeland has been a vocal critic of the administration's handling of this issue for some time (this appears to be his op-ed that prompted the text mentioned above):
  "...all three defendants pled guilty to attempted theft among other charges and that all three declared, under penalty of perjury, that the actions taken by Gibson's employees to prevent the attempted theft were "not racially motivated." It is now abundantly clear that the College's boycott of Gibson's was disingenuous and utterly unwarranted."
  StJohnny 33 replies0 threads Junior Member
  Of the 40 shopliftings at Gibson's, 32 were whites, 6 were black, and I believe 2 were Asians. Based on what's been disclosed in the media, Gibson's only had white, black, and Asian shoplifters - in almost exact proportion to the local demographics of white, black, and Asian populations. The disclosed information of Gibson's thieves is just too "perfect" in mirroring the local demographics. Were there no Hispanic shoplifters at Gibson's? Or were they just classified as "whites"? I seem to remember there was an S. Cali law enforcement agency that was in the hot water a while back for classifying Hispanics as "whites" to appear non-discriminatory. I am not suggesting anything nefarious on the part of Gibson's - but I am wondering if the Oberlin defense team verified that all 32 whites were, in fact, whites and not Hispanic whites.
  Sue22 6745 replies118 threads Senior Member
  Most of the shoplifters were Oberlin students and the Oberlin College population is only about 10% Hispanic so it's possible that there just weren't any Hispanic shoplifters arrested.
  Sue22 Trust - but verify. You can't just assume these things. I believe Hispanics are considered as whites, so they can be classified as whites. Or they are classified as whites and then classified under the subcategory of Hispanics - and reported as whites.
  austinmshauri 9486 replies361 threads Senior Member
  @StJohnny, Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race. According to the US Census Bureau, Hispanics can be of any race.