7 ms·

Can anyone point to a parallel article that makes Oberlin College look like the "good guy" here? This article does a pretty convincing job of making them look

by nkurz 7y ago

Can anyone point to a parallel article that makes Oberlin College look like the "good guy" here? This article does a pretty convincing job of making them look ridiculous, but I presume there's another version from a different point of view that makes them look more heroic.

DogOnTheWeb 7y ago
This accounting, while pointed, aligns with most of the reporting and the facts of the case. I spent some months at Oberlin years ago in close contact with student organizers there. Nothing about this case is too surprising. It's a boring town with arguably the nation's most progressive politics and many students looking for something, anything, to organize around.
awinder 7y ago
I don’t know about you but I don’t meet a lot of good guys walking around paying off $44M in libel suit damages. I can’t in good consciousness link to any of the parallel viewpoints, but mostly they center on “chilling free speech effects” of the case, and the vast majority are college-associated interests posting. Apparently oberlin has trouble with the concept of objective reality, but I do not, this story has one bad actor.
nyolfen 7y ago
here is a more sympathetic account, which crucially does not dispute the facts of the case: https://www.toledoblade.com/local/education/2019/06/15/oberlin-college-gibsons-bakery-libel-lawsuit-race-community-free-speech/stories/20190614189 https://www.toledoblade.com/local/education/2019/06/15/oberl... i think you will have a hard time finding anything besides letters to alumni that make them sound like 'good guys', though
- cobbzilla 7y ago
  From the Toledo article you linked: ———— Kameron Dunbar, also a fresh Oberlin graduate, said he had “uncomfortable experiences” along racial lines in Gibson’s, including times where he was asked to take off his backpack in the store when other, white customers weren’t asked to do the same. He remembers feeling “watched in ways that may not manifest the same for a white audience.” “I never wrote a review on Yelp, I didn’t write to Better Business Bureau — I just decided not to patronize there anymore,” Mr. Dunbar said. ————— This article and Mr. Dunbar’s potential bias are discussed in TFA, with the clincher: “Neither the New York Times, nor Rolling Stone, nor any of the other media outlets that quoted Dunbar noted that he worked alongside Jonathan Aladin in the Office of the Student Treasurer and was a paid blogger for Oberlin’s Office of Communications.” Not exactly star witness material, but precisely the kind of person who might subtly push an agenda in the media, facts be damned.
  - SilasX 7y ago
    That dynamic reminds me of Scott Alexander’s toxoplasmosis of rage article[1]. That, even when there’s a legitimate grievance, activists make a cause out of the least sympathetic case, like Michael Brown for police brutality against black people. Let’s assume the Gibson store does racially profile customers, and does it in a way that doesn’t quite bubble up to the arrest statistics. Even so, why would you make your “hill to die on” out of a case where their suspicions were majestically justified, where the customer was not only shoplifting, but willing to assault the shopkeeper and kick him while he’s down? [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
jdietrich 7y ago
>I presume there's another version from a different point of view that makes them look more heroic. Comment is free, but facts are sacred. The facts of the case can only be interpreted to make Oberlin look heroic if the Gibsons were in fact racist; a jury found that they weren't. If we accept that the jury were correct in that judgement, then the actions of Oberlin are inexcusable - the college administration were actively complicit in libelling the Gibsons. I see no reason to doubt that the jury came to a conclusion that was justified by the evidence. If we accept the facts of the case, what possible alternative explanation is there? That it's OK to try and ruin a business based on the mere suspicion that they might possibly be racist? That accusations of racism should be believed uncritically, regardless of the evidence? That the law of libel is an unjust restriction of speech and that anyone should be able to make false accusations with impunity? I'm genuinely looking for a steelman argument, but I can't find one. The closest I could find to a defence of Oberlin are the articles below, which argue that a) Oberlin should not be culpable for merely failing to rein in the actions of students and faculty and b) accusing someone of being racist is merely an opinion, so cannot by definition be libellous. On the first point, I think the evidence is clear that senior administrators acting in an official capacity were far more than passive bystanders. On the second point, while an accusation of racism in the general case may possibly be mere opinion, an accusation that the Gibsons engaged in racial profiling is actionable. https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2019/06/12/the-11-million-dollar-libel-verdict-against-oberlin-college-is-a-threat-to-colleges-nationwide/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2019/06/12/the-11... https://academeblog.org/2019/06/13/the-dangerous-defamation-judgment-against-oberlin-college/ https://academeblog.org/2019/06/13/the-dangerous-defamation-...
- mushufasa 7y ago
  [I'm removing this because I don't think this is a productive discussion, and I shouldn't have commented to begin with]
  - speedplane 7y ago
    > the legal definition of racism is a small subset of the colloquial definition and the academic definition There is no legal definition of racism. There are legal definitions of unlawful discrimination > I wouldn't take the jury's decision here as a 'fact' You don't have to agree with the jury, but the very purpose of juries is to decide "facts". If a jury decides that something is true, then legally, it is true, even if you personally disagree. Giving such weighty authority to a collection of people from society is not a bug of the system, it's a feature.
mushufasa 7y ago
Here is the perspective from the student newspaper: https://oberlinreview.org/18975/opinions/media-coverage-of-gibsons-verdict-misses-the-mark/ https://oberlinreview.org/18975/opinions/media-coverage-of-g...
- high_derivative 7y ago
  Strikes me as pretty ironic that student groups which are most active in no-platforming efforts now make a free speech argument.
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    Your free speech is violence and their violence is free speech. That’s always how it is with these groups.
jccalhoun 7y ago
I've read a few accounts about what happened and all of them seem to make it clear that the faculty and students involved were wrong. I'm a college professor who tries to be a good ally and while I would suspect that race had something to do with what happened, everything I've read makes this seem like a case of mob mentality running wild. That being said, as the article does state, it seems like only a small number of students and faculty were involved in the protests. I am, however, suspicious that there have been so very many editorials about this when so many people in conservative circles love to talk about "far left academia" who are "stiffing free speech" and are taking the terrible actions of a small number of people as representative of all of academia.
- asciident 7y ago
  I feel like blaming rogue actors in an institution or group is a common tactic in any polarizing situation, and happens in different degrees. High-level members at the Catholic Church may say the same for their pedophile priests, or price manipulators at Enron, or greedy scammers on wall street, or when politicians get embroiled in a scandal. There is a certain extent at which one might say it's institutionalized, in which case the bad actors can no longer be excused as only a few bad actors, but part of a system that enabled it. In all those cases (and this one with Oberlin), many more people were aware of what was going on, but chose to turn the other way or even silently go along with it. So this seems "worse" than a case where an employee is acting on their own accord while hiding it from the institution. If we take a position that academia is not at fault because of these more extreme bad actors, then I don't see how we can be upset at the Catholic Church, Enron executives, conservatives, etc.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > I am, however, suspicious that there have been so very many editorials about this when so many people in conservative circles love to talk about "far left academia" who are "stiffing free speech" and are taking the terrible actions of a small number of people as representative of all of academia. I'm sure that's not what you meant, but this sounds like you're suggesting it shouldn't be reported on (in depth) because it gives critics ammunition.
- 7y ago
Lazare 7y ago
I've seen a couple, but they all rely very strongly on ignoring the testimony that came out in trial, the police reports, and especially the internal Oberlin emails, which were very damning. I think the most pro-Oberlin spin you can get that doesn't completely ignore the factual record would be something like: "The Gibsons did nothing wrong, Aladin and his friends were shoplifitng and did assault Allyn Gibson, and the resulting student protests were utterly groundless. However, Oberlin College itself was merely a hapless bystander. The internal emails, although they sounded terrible, were taken out of context; a small number of administrators may have mispoken, but phrases like "unleash the students" were utter hyperbole. The guilty verdict against the college hinged very strongly on the extent that Raimondo was directing the protests and, especially, to the extent that she was distributing the flyers, and there was a legitimate factual disputes about this. Yes, a jury determined that Raimondo had distributed the fliers, and her contention that someone had merely passed her a flyer which she had unwittingly passed on to someone else, perhaps without realising the content, and certainly without endorsing it was not deemed credible. Still, it's not implausible that the jury got it wrong, and Raimondo was right. In that case, Oberlin was merely guilty of incompetence and poor phrasing in internal emails, neither of which is strictly speaking a tort." I don't entirely agree with that take, but it's plausible. A lot hinged on the actions of Raimondo during the protests. Had she simply avoided touching the pamphlets (and even better, not been there with a bull horn at all), presumably all the events would have still taken place (the boycotts, the harassment, the protests), but Oberlin wouldn't have been found liable. I mean, that doesn't make them the "good guy", but maybe they're not the Machiavellian villians of the piece, but just idiots, and unfairly were hit by the guilty verdict. That's about as good as you can hope for I think. :)

by nkurz 7y ago

DogOnTheWeb 7y ago

This accounting, while pointed, aligns with most of the reporting and the facts of the case. I spent some months at Oberlin years ago in close contact with student organizers there. Nothing about this case is too surprising. It's a boring town with arguably the nation's most progressive politics and many students looking for something, anything, to organize around.

awinder 7y ago

I don’t know about you but I don’t meet a lot of good guys walking around paying off $44M in libel suit damages. I can’t in good consciousness link to any of the parallel viewpoints, but mostly they center on “chilling free speech effects” of the case, and the vast majority are college-associated interests posting. Apparently oberlin has trouble with the concept of objective reality, but I do not, this story has one bad actor.

nyolfen 7y ago

here is a more sympathetic account, which crucially does not dispute the facts of the case: https://www.toledoblade.com/local/education/2019/06/15/oberlin-college-gibsons-bakery-libel-lawsuit-race-community-free-speech/stories/20190614189 https://www.toledoblade.com/local/education/2019/06/15/oberl... i think you will have a hard time finding anything besides letters to alumni that make them sound like 'good guys', though

cobbzilla 7y ago
From the Toledo article you linked: ———— Kameron Dunbar, also a fresh Oberlin graduate, said he had “uncomfortable experiences” along racial lines in Gibson’s, including times where he was asked to take off his backpack in the store when other, white customers weren’t asked to do the same. He remembers feeling “watched in ways that may not manifest the same for a white audience.” “I never wrote a review on Yelp, I didn’t write to Better Business Bureau — I just decided not to patronize there anymore,” Mr. Dunbar said. ————— This article and Mr. Dunbar’s potential bias are discussed in TFA, with the clincher: “Neither the New York Times, nor Rolling Stone, nor any of the other media outlets that quoted Dunbar noted that he worked alongside Jonathan Aladin in the Office of the Student Treasurer and was a paid blogger for Oberlin’s Office of Communications.” Not exactly star witness material, but precisely the kind of person who might subtly push an agenda in the media, facts be damned.
- SilasX 7y ago
  That dynamic reminds me of Scott Alexander’s toxoplasmosis of rage article[1]. That, even when there’s a legitimate grievance, activists make a cause out of the least sympathetic case, like Michael Brown for police brutality against black people. Let’s assume the Gibson store does racially profile customers, and does it in a way that doesn’t quite bubble up to the arrest statistics. Even so, why would you make your “hill to die on” out of a case where their suspicions were majestically justified, where the customer was not only shoplifting, but willing to assault the shopkeeper and kick him while he’s down? [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...

jdietrich 7y ago

>I presume there's another version from a different point of view that makes them look more heroic. Comment is free, but facts are sacred. The facts of the case can only be interpreted to make Oberlin look heroic if the Gibsons were in fact racist; a jury found that they weren't. If we accept that the jury were correct in that judgement, then the actions of Oberlin are inexcusable - the college administration were actively complicit in libelling the Gibsons. I see no reason to doubt that the jury came to a conclusion that was justified by the evidence. If we accept the facts of the case, what possible alternative explanation is there? That it's OK to try and ruin a business based on the mere suspicion that they might possibly be racist? That accusations of racism should be believed uncritically, regardless of the evidence? That the law of libel is an unjust restriction of speech and that anyone should be able to make false accusations with impunity? I'm genuinely looking for a steelman argument, but I can't find one. The closest I could find to a defence of Oberlin are the articles below, which argue that a) Oberlin should not be culpable for merely failing to rein in the actions of students and faculty and b) accusing someone of being racist is merely an opinion, so cannot by definition be libellous. On the first point, I think the evidence is clear that senior administrators acting in an official capacity were far more than passive bystanders. On the second point, while an accusation of racism in the general case may possibly be mere opinion, an accusation that the Gibsons engaged in racial profiling is actionable. https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2019/06/12/the-11-million-dollar-libel-verdict-against-oberlin-college-is-a-threat-to-colleges-nationwide/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2019/06/12/the-11... https://academeblog.org/2019/06/13/the-dangerous-defamation-judgment-against-oberlin-college/ https://academeblog.org/2019/06/13/the-dangerous-defamation-...

mushufasa 7y ago
[I'm removing this because I don't think this is a productive discussion, and I shouldn't have commented to begin with]
- speedplane 7y ago
  > the legal definition of racism is a small subset of the colloquial definition and the academic definition There is no legal definition of racism. There are legal definitions of unlawful discrimination > I wouldn't take the jury's decision here as a 'fact' You don't have to agree with the jury, but the very purpose of juries is to decide "facts". If a jury decides that something is true, then legally, it is true, even if you personally disagree. Giving such weighty authority to a collection of people from society is not a bug of the system, it's a feature.

mushufasa 7y ago

Here is the perspective from the student newspaper: https://oberlinreview.org/18975/opinions/media-coverage-of-gibsons-verdict-misses-the-mark/ https://oberlinreview.org/18975/opinions/media-coverage-of-g...

high_derivative 7y ago
Strikes me as pretty ironic that student groups which are most active in no-platforming efforts now make a free speech argument.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  Your free speech is violence and their violence is free speech. That’s always how it is with these groups.

jccalhoun 7y ago

I've read a few accounts about what happened and all of them seem to make it clear that the faculty and students involved were wrong. I'm a college professor who tries to be a good ally and while I would suspect that race had something to do with what happened, everything I've read makes this seem like a case of mob mentality running wild. That being said, as the article does state, it seems like only a small number of students and faculty were involved in the protests. I am, however, suspicious that there have been so very many editorials about this when so many people in conservative circles love to talk about "far left academia" who are "stiffing free speech" and are taking the terrible actions of a small number of people as representative of all of academia.

asciident 7y ago
I feel like blaming rogue actors in an institution or group is a common tactic in any polarizing situation, and happens in different degrees. High-level members at the Catholic Church may say the same for their pedophile priests, or price manipulators at Enron, or greedy scammers on wall street, or when politicians get embroiled in a scandal. There is a certain extent at which one might say it's institutionalized, in which case the bad actors can no longer be excused as only a few bad actors, but part of a system that enabled it. In all those cases (and this one with Oberlin), many more people were aware of what was going on, but chose to turn the other way or even silently go along with it. So this seems "worse" than a case where an employee is acting on their own accord while hiding it from the institution. If we take a position that academia is not at fault because of these more extreme bad actors, then I don't see how we can be upset at the Catholic Church, Enron executives, conservatives, etc.
luckylion 7y ago
> I am, however, suspicious that there have been so very many editorials about this when so many people in conservative circles love to talk about "far left academia" who are "stiffing free speech" and are taking the terrible actions of a small number of people as representative of all of academia. I'm sure that's not what you meant, but this sounds like you're suggesting it shouldn't be reported on (in depth) because it gives critics ammunition.
7y ago

Lazare 7y ago

I've seen a couple, but they all rely very strongly on ignoring the testimony that came out in trial, the police reports, and especially the internal Oberlin emails, which were very damning. I think the most pro-Oberlin spin you can get that doesn't completely ignore the factual record would be something like: "The Gibsons did nothing wrong, Aladin and his friends were shoplifitng and did assault Allyn Gibson, and the resulting student protests were utterly groundless. However, Oberlin College itself was merely a hapless bystander. The internal emails, although they sounded terrible, were taken out of context; a small number of administrators may have mispoken, but phrases like "unleash the students" were utter hyperbole. The guilty verdict against the college hinged very strongly on the extent that Raimondo was directing the protests and, especially, to the extent that she was distributing the flyers, and there was a legitimate factual disputes about this. Yes, a jury determined that Raimondo had distributed the fliers, and her contention that someone had merely passed her a flyer which she had unwittingly passed on to someone else, perhaps without realising the content, and certainly without endorsing it was not deemed credible. Still, it's not implausible that the jury got it wrong, and Raimondo was right. In that case, Oberlin was merely guilty of incompetence and poor phrasing in internal emails, neither of which is strictly speaking a tort." I don't entirely agree with that take, but it's plausible. A lot hinged on the actions of Raimondo during the protests. Had she simply avoided touching the pamphlets (and even better, not been there with a bull horn at all), presumably all the events would have still taken place (the boycotts, the harassment, the protests), but Oberlin wouldn't have been found liable. I mean, that doesn't make them the "good guy", but maybe they're not the Machiavellian villians of the piece, but just idiots, and unfairly were hit by the guilty verdict. That's about as good as you can hope for I think. :)