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 em

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. :)