The long and vengeful campaign of Oberlin College against a small family-owned grocery has come to an end at the cost of a breathtaking $36 million for defamation. The Ohio Supreme Court had rejected what should be Oberlin College’s final appeal of a verdict in favor of Gibson’s Bakery. The bakery has been the target of an unrelenting attack by the school after it had the temerity to fight a false charge of racism in a shoplifting case involving Oberlin students who later pleaded guilty to criminal charges. Oberlin President Carmen Twillie Ambar and the Board burned through millions in litigation costs above the damages rather than admit that the college was wrong in the targeting of this grocery. That money could have been used for scholarships and other worthy purposes. Instead, Amber and the Board will simply ask alumni to foot the bill for a legal effort that seems to become little more than a revenge fetish.
Starting in 2017, I have written a long line of columns on the lawsuit against Oberlin College in this case where the college not only joined the mob but helped lead the mob against Gibson’s Bakery. Even after a massive award by the jury, Ambar continued to refuse to apologize for the shameful and costly conduct of her administration. (Ambar became president in 2017 shortly after the incident).
This controversy began with a shoplifting case. In 2016, an African American student named Jonathan Aladin was caught trying to steal a bottle of wine from Gibson’s Bakery, which was established in 1885 and has been closely tied to the college for over a century. When the grandson of the owner tried to stop Aladin, a fight ensued and police were called. Aladin and two other students, Cecilia Whettstone and Endia Lawrence, were arrested. Students, professors, and administrators held protests, charging that the bakery was racist and profiled the three students.
Oberlin maintained in court filings that the son and grandson of the owners of Gibson’s Bakery “violently and unreasonably attacked” an unarmed student, but that is not how the police viewed it. Aladin was charged with robbery, which is a second degree felony, and Whettstone and Lawrence were charged with first degree misdemeanor assault. Police rejected claims of a racial motive and noted that, over a period of five years, 40 adults were arrested for shoplifting at Gibson’s Bakery, but only six were African American. It also is not how the court viewed it. When prosecutors cut a plea deal to reduce the charge to attempted theft, a local judge refused. He said the plea deal appeared to be the result of a permanent “economic sanction”by the college in which the victim had little choice but to relent. Ultimately, all three students pleaded guilty.
The merits of the case did not seem to bother Oberlin officials or student protesters. Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo reportedly joined the massive protests and even handed out a flier denouncing the bakery as a racist business. When some people contacted Oberlin to object that the students admitted guilt, special assistant to the president for community and government relations Tita Reed wrote that it did not change a “damn thing” for her. Reed also reportedly participated in the campus protests.
Other faculty members encouraged students who denounced the bakery. The chairman of Africana studies posted, “Very proud of our students!” Oberlin barred purchases from the bakery, pending its investigation into whether this was “a pattern and not an isolated incident.” Raimondo also pressured Bon Appetit, a major contractor with the college, to cease business with the bakery. Reed even suggested that “once charges are dropped, orders will resume” and added that she was “baffled by their combined audacity and arrogance to assume the position of victim.”
The jury in June 2019 awarded the Gibsons $44 million in compensatory and punitive damages. A judge later reduced the award to $25 million. That was upheld and the appellate court also upheld an award of $6.2 million payment in attorney fees. Now interest has pushed the reduced award back up to roughly $36 million but you then have to add the attorney fees and the college’s own towering legal costs. That is likely to put the total back to near the original $44 million award.
It takes considerable work to burn over $40 million on such a case. Yet, time and again President Ambar and the college threw more money into a losing hand like a bad gambler at Vegas while refusing to apologize for the college’s reprehensible record in the case.
As the grocery recently warned that it might have to shutdown due to the lack of funds and drain of litigation, the college fought to pay the damages.
The Ohio Supreme Court finally ended this farce by refusing to hear a new appeal on jurisdictional grounds. It voted 4-3 to end further litigation.
In a statement, Oberlin College expressed disappointment but not an apology:
“Oberlin is disappointed that the Ohio Supreme Court has chosen not to hear our appeal of the Gibson’s Bakery judgment against the college. The issues raised by this case have been challenging, not only for the parties involved, but for the entire Oberlin community. We remain committed to strengthening the partnership between the College, the City of Oberlin and its residents, and the downtown business community. We will continue in that important work while remaining focused on our core educational mission.”
While the college could always try a federal appeal, it would just add more litigation costs while little hope for a change in the case or the verdict beyond further accruing interest.
The handling of this matter by Oberlin is nothing short of reprehensible in not only the treatment of this grocery (which was founded in the 1800s) but in the wasting of the assets and reputation of the college. Yet, not a single official appears to have been disciplined for this costly campaign. With tuition at $30,000 a year, the ultimate cost of this litigation would cover free tuition for a year for half of the college. (The total enrollment is only 2,600 students).
Yet, over $40 million somehow became little more than the price of vanity of a college to refuse to admit its original error and to apologize for its conduct. It was a complete failure of leadership by the president, the board, and the college. No one seemed willing to take the responsibility to say “enough” and stop the burning of added costs year after year. So the college continued to gush money as it racked up losses in court.
They have frittered away the assets and reputation of a school with a wonderful history and stellar academic reputation . . . all to pursue a small grocery like Captain Ahab and his whale. Indeed, the final filing should just quote Melville to capture the blind rage needed to sustain this ill-conceived effort: “From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”
Charles Finney, the lawyer/Christian evangelist and accomplished cellist who originally founded Oberlin, must be rolling in his grave over the college’s current corrupted state.
The Ohio Supreme Court didn’t really “refuse to hear” the case, they refused to hear oral argument on the case. The Court majority wrote a 40+ page opinion demolishing the arguments of Oberlin College. This was not even a close call, unless you were blinded by leftist ideology, which Oberlin was.
Lord, how liberals hate to pay up.
This is a shining example of how evidence, facts, logic and reason are simply trampled by “woke” (eyes wide shut) ideology for those that are indoctrinated.
It is refreshing to see that the facts, law and justice actually prevailed (at least for the moment–although this should have been a slam dunk 7-0 decision).
Let me take a hypothetical stab at how this all plays out:
Ambar and her radical band of “woke” idealogues will resign and cite the adverse court findings as a clear example of systemic racism. In order to promote and advocate for racial equity and social justice, Oberlin will reach a multi-million dollar severance and settlement package with Ambar and all those involved whilst decrying the systemically racist nature of our institutions.
Oberlin will seek financial relief by appealing to the Biden administration by noting its leading role in fighting the gross social injustice caused by systemic racism. Subsequently, buried in the back of one of the Biden administration’s multi-trillion dollar spending sprees will be the money to make Oberlin whole again.
No worries as this will all be paid for in one of two ways. 1) the government will simply print the money and all will be well simply because Modern Monetary Theory says so or 2) taxpayers will foot the bill with the not so gentle persuasion of the 87,000 IRS agents the Biden administration plans on hiring to facilitate the ever burgeoning growth of the federal government. The choice between 1) and 2) will depend on which one forms the best political narrative and messaging along with election timing.
If there’s fallout, all will be blamed on MAGA Republicans.
Welcome to Joe Biden’s America.
I need an anti-emetic.
Last year The Oberlin Review announced that Oberlin College’s endowment had reached one billion dollars which should bode well for the future unless unforeseen expenses in the range of $40 million appeared. Oops!
Looks like $40+ million is here.
The percipitating incident began in November, 2016, after Trump was elected. That it’s dragged on for almost six years, chiefly spearheaded by women administrators, should cause one to ask “where were the adults?”, that is, the trustees of the College. Nowhere to be found, apparently. Recall that Oberlin College was one of the first American institutions of “higher” learning, chiefly theological at first, to admit women and blacks before the Civil War. How’s that diversity working out for you nowadays?
While it’s good that the Ohio Supreme Court put an end to this farce, I’ll have to check into why it was by a 4-3 margin, because some judgeships are up for votes this November.
Since this incident happened almost six years ago, Oberlin College has demonstrated conclusively that what’s called “schooling” and what’s called “education” are two entirely different matters.
Oberlin College is just another high priced school with a good art museum and a well-known music school in
rural Lorain County, Ohio. And Division III athletics. What’s that worth to anyone?
4-3
4 Republicans 3 Democrats
2 Republicans are up for re-election this year another R is term limited out.
And the R that is term limited switched from being an R but started voting D. Good riddance. She just happens to be the Chief Justice, skank and coward.
“The Oberlin Review announced that Oberlin College’s endowment had reached one billion dollars”
If this has become their S.O.P. they’re going to need it.
You don’t have to go woke. Hillsdale College was founded in 1840s, admitted women and blacks from the beginning, and avoided the woke fate by losing a legal action against the federal Department of Education for refusing to count racial numbers as required by student financial aid regulations. Hillsdale just decided to carry on without federal financial aid programs.
What makes this even more bizarre is that at the beginning the Gibsons offered to settle the case for no cash; all they wanted was a public apology. Oberlin refused.
No one at Oberlin cares about Oberlin’s money. They would have spent a billion dollars to destroy Gibson’s if they could have.
The only thing real to them is hatred of Whitey.
What? The black “victims” apologize to the white supremacist grocery store? It’s all about revenge.
you are insane,…..craven racist!
this is the craven lunacy that almost all progressives have…..reprobate minds
that;s rich!!
My one coda to Professor Turley’s comments is that while Oberlin once had a stellar academic reputation, it is now one of the most unabashedly leftist academic monocultures in the US, and accordingly its student body is filled with social justice warriors of all stripes. I doubt there is a single conservative function or club on the campus.
You are absolutely correct
Lena Dunham U.
Exactly. She is a metaphor to what happened
Nicely stated, Patty.
Just Desserts
Darren Smith: That is your best yet.
If someone commits a crime and suffers no repercussion what are the odds that such a person will commit the same crime again? The state of California encourages crime by not prosecuting anyone for a theft under $995.00. What part of the population in California will be encouraged to commit more crimes? So the grandmother in Palo Alto who could go to her local walgreens to pick up her diabetes medicine has to travel farther because the Walgreens has closed the store because it has become unprofitable to keep the store open due to the theft. I hope that this bakery uses the 34 million to open three more stores in more favorable locations. It would be ironic if the college in the end has helped the bakery to expand. Unfortunately justice has not prevailed in so many other cancellations. My suggestion is a commemorative cookie with justice written in icing on top. It would be a big hit and would sell like hotcakes. It would taste great with a hot cup of coffee on a blustery winter morning. Oh sweet justice at last.
I would buy dozens immediately even if they arrived stale.
It’s about a 3 hour drive for me. I may have to go just to buy something and put a big tip in the jar.
Just a quick heads up. You made a mistake when writing about the cost of tuition at Oberlin. Tuition is 30K per semester and 60k for the year.
A bright spot in a very dark world. Surely, results would have ben different in a blue State.
Professor Turley seems to be forgetting that Oberlin, like virtually all entities formerly known as “educational institutions,” has fully transformed into a modern “Leftist Indoctrination Entity” or “LIE.” As the new name of their institutional category suggests, Oberlin is no longer concerned with education, intellectual development, critical thinking, and the like.
Today, the opposite is true. LIEs are opposed to education, intellectual development, and critical thinking. They exist solely to inculcate their woke-leftist ideology and “values” into the passive student population, who will serve as easy-to-manipulate-and-control tools that are enthusiastically obedient to Authoritarian Control.
So, nobody should be surprised that Oberlin would put destroying an American small business that was doing the right thing as a top priority to pursue at any cost.
I can only hope the alumni are well-aware of this debacle. I suspect the University’s plea for increased contributions from them will not read at all like the factual narrative.
How do the people who feel like the students who shop lifted, and admitted to it, get to their conclusion that the bakery was racist? Is stealing not stealing when a Black person does it? These people are apparently so ridden with white guilt that they are willing to overlook and/or justify any illegal action by a Black person. And presumably, they do this because they feel like they are helping Black people. The irony is that in reality their excusing such behavior is achieving just the opposite. They are not just holding them back; they are setting them back and our entire culture with it.
carpslaw: Ah, but “these people” that you mention, i.e., “These people are apparently so ridden with white guilt that they are willing to overlook and/or justify any illegal action by a Black person,” -are themselves Black/minority. Please see my statistical note a few comments below you. And your last two sentences are very on-point.thanks
lin: Thanks for pointing out my error in assuming the Oberlin administrators were white. No doubt there will be people who think that makes me a racist, but it really only reflects how common it is for white people to make indefensible excuses for Black people behaving badly. I stand by my conclusions.
carpslaw: And I agree with your conclusions. Irrespective of sounding racist, I know (from representing employers in court and federal government) that whites often become “enablers” in endorsing claims of discrimination, -either by just wanting to “settle the case” and save the cost of protracted litigation, or, because they are bamboozled into thinking that they did not have the right to terminate/not hire/not promote a minority when grounded in non-discriminatory fact. (That’s not to say that there haven’t been some valid cases of blatant [or even sub-surface] discrimination or retaliation.) (And I have MANY black friends-many of whom share my thoughts and some of whom play great pranks on me and vice-versa!)
Before I even clicked on the President’s name I thought, “bet it’s a black woman”. BINGO!
I grew up 10 miles from this college. Since the 60’s a bizarre enclave of Leftist thought, in a sedate Ohio countryside on the edge of Amish Country. They never made much of an investment in infrastructure, you could drive through the town on SR 58 and never know you had just driven literally through a college campus.
Visited Gibson’s many times, nicest little bakery with the best cookies you ever had. I hope they survive this. Whether the college goes under or not matters not at all to the well-being of the town itself. It would probably be an improvement.
THis is what is wholly amazing to me:
According to statistical reporting, (e.g., https://www.collegefactual.com › colleges › oberlin-college › student-life › diversity),
Oberlin has roughly 2,600 students, 60.4% of whom are White/Caucasians, and a variety of racial/ethnic minorities (39%) make up the remainder. (Blacks represent 7.9% at 159 students; Hispanics at 8.4% with 218 students.) This MORE than parallels the general population, according to the latest U.S. Census report, where whites are 67%, not 60%.
SO, how is it that the school’s top leaders/officials (all of whom played prominently in Gibson’s Bakery v. Oberlin),– Oberlin President Carmen Twillie Ambar , Vice President and General Counsel Danita Thomas Varner, special assistant to the president for community and government relations Tita Reed, and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo, ARE ALL persons of color?.
Apparently diversity and inclusion doesn’t exclude ignorance and tunnel vision.
Ot would be great if we didn’t use the term POC. That’s their term and we all have a color.
dboc2000: Yeah, I agree, except that three of the four are Black, and the 4th describes herself as a POC. I didn’t feel like going through all that distinction in my comment. thanks
And all women or identifying as same?
(I think so..)
Photos of Meredith Raimondo make her look white.
If I were alumni I would immediately cease all contributions until this crew is gone. What makes it more reprehensible is that the majority of sane, legal American citizens totally understand the racist game of grievance tantrums that is being played out. And it seems most courts see through this “ends justify the means” game. This comes just as “Lizzo” is crying about her oppression – (trying not to laugh here).
“. . . while remaining focused on our core educational mission.” (OC)
JT omitted the footnote: “Which mission is to mold obedient social justice warriors.”
Sam, You beat me to it. Oberlin is looking like another Evergreen State College but with a higher price tag. Who would admit going there now?
“Who would admit going there now?”
And who would *want* to go there?
If a product, say a brand of ice cream, were tainted — people would stop buying it. Why don’t they practice the same “buyer beware” with respect to higher education?
After some 30 years in higher education, I came to two conclusions:
1) Consumers (parents and students) do *not* know what a tainted education looks like. And they don’t know that because they don’t know what healthy education looks like. They have no standards for determining the difference between a good or bad curriculum, or a good from bad teaching method.
2) Those consumers just don’t care. They care about the “rankings” (which are a joke), about a degree’s “CV value,” and about social activities. But they don’t care about the essence of the product.
1) I can sort of understand. Those parents and students are not experts. But 2) is criminally negligent.
Much of higher education is not paid by the recipient of the education. Parents, states, feds, endowments, and scholarships pay a major portion. Therefore, there is no pressure to ensure the value of the education meets expectations. The kids getting the education don’t know any better. The people paying for it have no clue what the kids are getting. It’s a perfect scam for these universities and colleges.
“Much of higher education is not paid by the recipient of the education.”
And, yet, the recipient (the student) does pay a very high price — in terms of time, effort, and (in the end) an addled brain.
Because the social life IS the essence of the product. They’ve long since abandoned the idea was to gain knowledge to learn to be a better human, better citizen, better anything. Self improvement is a middlebrow value that all leftists seek to destroy.
“Who would admit going there now?”
And who would *want* to go there?
Employers are the consumer of the product put out by colleges. Employers have the power to stop this . Stop hiring the product being turned out.
The company I retired from stopped hiring Ag students out of MIZZ U, at my urging. I don’t think the university noticed much, but I now I have steered dozens away from going to school there.
The prog/left is so ignorant of their own ignorance, and compound this with pressure from public schools (indoctrination centers themselves) and mis-informed parents mistakingly thinking they are providing a leg up to their children and you have a perfect millieu for grifters such as the racial and diversity grievance industry to flourish.
“The chairman of Africana studies posted, ‘Very proud of our students!’”
Right. Because theft is just “reparations.”
so the basic lesson….defending violent black criminals…isn’t good?
@Guyventner
They weren’t violent black criminals.
They were kids looking to lift a bottle of wine because they weren’t 21.
Had they just let it go at that… no big deal.
But no. The University had to make it all about race.
Now that’s an expensive lesson that no one will learn.
-G
so basically 600 student tuitions. to COVER UP THAT blacks commit more crimes than whites per capita?