4 ms·
Some more interesting context from your link: When the author anonymously interviewed students, he gathered the following responses: • “I totally have [taken
by markdog12 4y ago
Some more interesting context from your link:
When the author anonymously interviewed students, he gathered the following responses:
• “I totally have [taken things from a store downtown without paying for it].
I think I’ve stolen from Gibson’s twice. I took a packet of those noodles that
come in boxes… It wasn’t expensive and I felt like it. I just preferred not
paying for it, but I could have.”
• A female student admitted that she has stolen many things from Gibson’s
Bakery and Ben Franklin’s. “I took a wine bottle. I had a large winter jacket
and I put the bottle in the lining and I walked right out.” And, “I took pens
from Ben Franklin because individually the pens cost $4 and I thought it
was a racket.”
• “Probably [I have stolen from downtown] but let me think about it…yeah,
no, I do that all the time.” The same student then talked about how they
stole a one-hundred-dollar ($100) bottle of wine from Gibson’s Bakery.
• “I have stolen from Gibson’s, Kim’s, IGA. I took some dumb stuff. From
Gibson’s I took some steak knives for an avocado that I also stole. I was
really drunk and that was really bad.”
• “I think I’ve taken candy and just small shit from Ben Franklin’s and the
Oberlin Market.”
• “[I have taken] a few pens from Ben Franklin over the years… they’re hard
to resist.”
• One said she’s never paid for Chapstick while at Oberlin for four years.
• The author: “I myself have stolen from the very people I’ve interviewed for
this story. I could have paid for the items easily, but I chose to steal them
instead.”
This student and/or institutional attitude was supported by the statistics provided from the
Oberlin Police Department of thefts at Gibson’s Bakery from January 1, 2011 to November 14,
2016. These statistics show that of the 40 adults arrested for theft during that time period, 33
of those adults (82.5%) were Oberlin College students.
- rayiner 4y agoThey should do like Saudi Arabia and cut off their hands.
- remarkEon 4y agoI'm going to be charitable, because I recognize the username since you usually comment with more verbose and thought-out text, and assume you meant to say "They should be thankful that Gibson's doesn't do like Saudi Arabia and cut off their hands".
- tptacek 4y agoI would have thought the same thing, a year ago. It's a low-effort provocation either way, though. The thread has nothing whatsoever to do with Saudi Arabia.
- rayiner 4y agoWhen someone points out a problem with healthcare in America, others always chime in with “we should have socialized healthcare like Sweden.” This is in the same thing, except the premise is that maybe Saudi Arabia and other Sharia law countries are on to something. The affluent, privileged Oberlin students profiled in the article don’t even feel shame about stealing from local small businesses. That suggests not only something about them, but the moral context they inhabit. And these are our next generation of leaders! What if we have made a mistake and ratcheting down punishments for theft had the effect of weakening social taboos against it? What if the students aren’t the product of something that can be called progress? What if the Saudis are on to something?
- tptacek 4y agoWhen people make stupid comments in the other ideological direction, I flag them too. This stuff is beneath you --- or, it used to be.
- rayiner 4y agoIt’s “stupid” to suggest that hundreds of millions of other people might have a point in how they’ve structured their laws? Are you just upset because you think corporal punishment for theft should be outside the Overton window and you assume I agree and am just being flippant? (And I’m not sure what the “ideological direction” here is. I’m pretty sure right wing people don’t think sharia gets anything right.)
- tptacek 4y agoI'm not upset, but I flagged your comment because it was an unserious, low-effort attempt to provoke the thread, which is something you've been doing a lot lately. I'm probably being too testy about this. There's been a pretty clear shift with your comments (people have emailed me about it out of the blue!) and it's been disappointing, in the sense that I have a rooting interest in people who contribute good stuff to HN continuing to do so, and not tearing the place down. But that's my problem, not yours.
- dang 4y agoWhoa, please don't post like this to HN. That's the sort of thing we ban people for. I know you know this! I don't want to ban you and have no intention to, but you create a big problem for us if we ban people for comments like this and then an account like yours does the same thing. Users expect fairness. How am I supposed to answer them when they say things like "so it's ok if rayiner does it?" https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html