Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Monday June 10 2019, @07:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the pie-in-the-face dept.

Ohio bakery awarded $11 million in libel lawsuit against Oberlin College over alleged racial profiling

An Ohio jury has ordered Oberlin College to pay $11 million to a bakery which said it was libeled and wrongfully accused of racially profiling students.

The case stems from the November 2016 arrests of three black Oberlin students at Gibson's Bakery and market near the college's campus in Oberlin, Ohio. One student, Jonathan Aladin, was accused of attempted robbery for allegedly trying to "steal wine or otherwise illegally obtain wine" from the bakery, according to a defamation lawsuit. He would eventually confess in a written statement to buying alcohol illegally. Two other suspects, Cecelia Whettston and Endia J. Lawrence, were arrested and accused of misdemeanor assault, court documents state.

After that, Oberlin staff members tried to discredit the family-owned bakery, the lawsuit says. Oberlin College staff -- including deans and professors -- and students engaged in demonstrations in front of Gibson's Bakery following the arrests of the three students, the lawsuit stated. The suit also said Oberlin Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo and other college staff members "handed out hundreds of copies" of a flier to the community and the media stating that Gibson's Bakery and its owners racially profiled and discriminated against the three students.

A mass email sent by Oberlin College's Vice President and General Counsel to school alumni criticized the decision of the jury, despite the trial not being over. The email was sent ahead of a punitive damages hearing, which may triple the amount Oberlin College has to pay.

Also at Inside Higher Ed.

Update: Bakery suing Oberlin College for libel wins $33M in damages
Oberlin College hit with maximum PUNITIVE DAMAGES (capped at $22 million by law) in Gibson's Bakery case


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 11 2019, @01:53PM (3 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday June 11 2019, @01:53PM (#854195)

    Oberlin is for better or worse the alma mater of both myself and my mother, and I've shopped at the establishment in question (it's really as much a convenience store as a bakery).

    For what it's worth, the employees and owners weren't particularly rude to me, but then again I'm a white dude who would occasionally stop in for donuts, not a black guy trying to illegally buy alcohol. Gibson's has been a solidly established local business for decades, but never much more than that. The Gibsons also own a bunch of properties that they rent out to college kids, which causes a bit of conflict in town because many of the college kids are heavily from much more expensive rental markets and thus tend to overpay, which leads to rents that are about 50% higher than nearby towns and that causes all kinds of problems for the local town residents. There is also quite a bit of racism in the area around the college, so it wouldn't surprise me if Mr Gibson had knowingly or unknowingly hired someone with those tendencies.

    The campus activists types are on average complete fools who are almost never effective in their often-ridiculous protests. My impression from the ones I knew was that they were mostly looking to either (a) get hired by a political non-profit organization after college, or (b) impress potential sex partners. For instance, a group tried to shout down a visiting speaker with chants of "Free Speech", which didn't go over well at all even though the speaker in question was a jackass who is nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is (Larry Summers, Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary at the time and an architect of "free trade" agreements like NAFTA and the TPP). They do not normally have the support of most of the student body: The only actions they were involved in that I ever saw getting more than a few dozen participants were a rally opposing the Iraq War and a counterprotest to the Westboro Baptist Church. I get the distinct impression that a lot of the political activists got the impression Oberlin was a hotbed of activism based on its real history of abolitionist and anti-Vietnam efforts, and are rather disappointed to find that modern-day students tend to be less supportive of that than they anticipated. Also, the classes aren't remotely as left-wing as you might think: My econ classes covered Keynes, but also covered Friedman and Mankiw, for instance.

    So with the more-insider take on this:
    1. The students in question were wrong, although the crimes they committed were rather petty.
    2. The activist types were probably right that racism played a role in the incident: White students have almost definitely tried to commit the same crime many times before and either succeeded or at the very least weren't arrested for it.
    3. However, the activist types also overreacted because it was something they could do to make a big show of accomplishing something.
    4. The real damages were probably not $11 million or even close to it, and there was likely an element of "owning the SJWs" in that number.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Interesting=1, Informative=2, Total=3
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday June 11 2019, @02:10PM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 11 2019, @02:10PM (#854204) Journal

    Informative - thank you.

    I would like to point out one detail from the PDF. In the past x number of years, Gibson's has had either 50, or 60 people arrested for theft in the store. That figure is thrown out within the complaint. Of those roughly five dozen people arrested, the claim is that only six of those people were black.

    Given those numbers - do you A. believe it B. disbelieve it C. accept that it may be accurate, but it is probably exaggerated, or D. other?

    Oh, the rent situation? Isn't it the same in almost all college towns? Probably less noticeable in a real city, but any time you put a captive population into an area, they are going to affect real estate costs. Those effects seem to be less noticeable here, locally, where we only have three community college extensions. Closer to the main campuses, it can get crazy.

    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 11 2019, @02:38PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday June 11 2019, @02:38PM (#854209)

      I would like to point out one detail from the PDF. In the past x number of years, Gibson's has had either 50, or 60 people arrested for theft in the store. That figure is thrown out within the complaint. Of those roughly five dozen people arrested, the claim is that only six of those people were black.

      The ~10% number does seem reasonable based on the racial makeup of the area in question, both college and town population. As for the total numbers, Gibson's is smack dab in the middle of town, and the nearest available source of booze for most students, so I'm not surprised that there have been a bunch of attempted thefts by idiots. As I said, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if somebody at the college overreacted big time based on a lot of unwarranted assumptions about who they were dealing with, although the $11 million number sounds excessive as well.

      And yes, the rent thing is a pretty common feature of college towns. Hint to college kids and their parents from New York City, Boston, Seattle, Silicon Valley, and other high-rent areas: Check for nearby town rents and negotiate a bit before thinking you got a good deal. I know you're used to paying $3000 / month for a crappy studio, but that's over 5 times the going rent for larger 1-bedroom apartments in much of Ohio. Or if you're attending Oberlin, know that on-campus living is quite decent, and if you want a more independent situation you can consider moving into one of the very egalitarian cooperatives.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 11 2019, @06:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 11 2019, @06:05PM (#854296)

    #2. Yeah, let's assume it's whitey's fault, b/c some dumb monkeys, only in college because of affirmative action, in one way or another, subsidized by stolen tax money, are stirring up shit in a fucking bakery/store.