March 5, 2013

The Oberlin incident.

"Oberlin Cancels Classes After Figure in KKK Robes Spotted Near African Heritage House" — so read the headlines yesterday. The article referred also to "a string of hate-related incidents at Oberlin," such as graffiti on Black History Month posters crossing out the word "Black" and scrawling in the N-word.

But who's the culprit and what's the real motive? I avoided blogging this story when I saw it yesterday because I expected an update, and here it is:
According to a person with access to the faculty mailing list, faculty members had been told—"unofficially," (i.e., not through official channels)—that "the investigation into this incident was dropped when it was discovered that the person responsible was someone within the MRC [the Multicultural Resource Center], who would be disciplined internally"; according to conversations with other members of the Oberlin community, this appears to be a widespread, and widely-believed, rumor. (The same source, who asked to remain anonymous, claims that the MRC, whose former director, Eric Estes, is now the Dean of Students, has been criticized for the amount of student college money it receives, and that its leadership has "had trouble justifying how many campus coordinators they have on staff.")
When you don't know who has said/written/done something, don't take the expression at face value. Where the identity of the speaker/writer/actor is hidden, think about who has a motive, who has an interest.

How many class hours were taken from tuition-paying students (who also pay the fees that support, perhaps lavishly, things like the Multicultural Resource Center)? Impulsive, biased assumptions are made by the authorities and normal lesson plans give way to a teach-in about a problem that may not even be the problem. A university should model intelligence and reason.

Will we ever learn the real story? Do the students even care?

78 comments:

khesanh0802 said...

First official college sign of spring: a reason (good or bad) to cancel classes.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Thank god I went to college before college turned into what it is now. There was way more validity in trying to mass levitate the Penatgon than this ongoing foolishness that never seems to end or find meaning other than within the self referencing group it comes from.

Sorun said...

"...crossing out the word "Black" and scrawling in the N-word."

I think rappers did it.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Translation.

People are questioning the existence, purpose and cost of your department.

Create a crisis that will justify your existence.

ooops. Got caught. Nevermind. Nothing to see here......move along.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

A university should model intelligence and reason.

I'd call in the grief counselors.

Fernandinande said...

"Hate crime" hoaxes are themselves "hate crimes", with a different target. (Quotations because the incidents aren't actually criminal).

Patrick said...

I'd like to know the ratio of hate crimes to hate crime hoaxes.

Kevin said...

Given the record they should always assume these are fake until proven otherwise.

But it comforts them to assume they are real.

rhhardin said...

Oberlin is a lefty-loony bin.

It was great in the early 60s.

Anonymous said...

They should come to my school. I live with the word "Nigger" and all it's permutations from the moment I get to work until the moment I leave. As a white child raised in the South of the 1950's we were NEVER allowed to let that word pass our lips. If it did, and an adult heard you, it was a spanking or sent to your room and no dinner for sure. So of course in the inner city where I teach, it's "nigger, nigger, nigger" all day long. I won't even get into the love and reverence we held Ms. Grace our nanny and care giver after our mother passed (7 children all under the age of ten) and my daddy gone and flying jets off an aircraft carrier. I hate that word so of course I have to live with it. Sets my teeth on edge everytime. Students dropping the "F" bomb hardly get a glance from me aymore. I remember the last time (several years ago) that i wrote a referral on an African-American student for saying the word nigger. The black Asst Principal laughed and said children will be children and tossed the referral into the waste basket. Never wrote another one for that word.

rhhardin said...

Windows has a multicultural resource center that handles mp3 files.

Anonymous said...

I blame the North Koreans.

William said...

There are still plenty of prejudiced people around, but I don't think they want to dress up in white robes anymore. That is just too gay.

Calypso Facto said...

the MRC, whose former director, Eric Estes, is now the Dean of Students, has been criticized for the amount of student college money it receives,

Hopefully (wishfully) this prompts the complete dismantling of the wasteful Center.

Anonymous said...

Re: KKK robes --

-- how do we know it wasn't someone in a white burka?

That would be multicultural, right?

furious_a said...

It's like firemen turning to arson to keep open their stationhouse.

Beta Rube said...

I wonder if Michelle Malkin is on the banned list. She studied piano there.

Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...

False-flag operation(s), pure and simple. Attempt to make conservative, male, hetero, Christian, white folks look bad. Justifies the need for your privileged affirmative-action position, don't you know.

American post-secondary education is as rotten and unsustainable as old ice in early May.

Anonymous said...

From "The Harrad Experiment" to "The Oberlin Incident."

That damned Don Johnson, stirring up trouble.

Mary Beth said...

If it was a hoax and they know who is responsible, why keep the name of the person secret?

George Grady said...

If this had been done by people associated with a fraternity, say, that fraternity would be completely destroyed. It would be decommissioned and no longer be allowed to exist.

If this was, in fact, done by people associated with the Multicultural Resource Center, well, of course, it can be handled "internally".

What else would anyone expect?

bleh said...

The boy has cried wolf WAY too many times.

edutcher said...

Cancel classes because of a little grafitti?

And we all know it's going to turn out that it was a Lefty what done it, right?

Patrick said...

Reading about this incident led me to this story which I find funny. The college, a very liberal, liberal arts college has a list of townies that it won't allow on campus. The list is secret and those on it are given no appeal or even a time after which they would be allowed on campus.

Of course the college is private property and they have a perfect right to exclude whomever they like however they'd like. I find it interesting because this behavior of the left is thoroughly unsurprising, except perhaps to those on the left.

YoungHegelian said...

Well, did they find any scruffy white guys with beards nearby? If not, then probably there were no Klansmen.

(And someone please tell me how that guy in the gold got dressed without a buddy telling him "Billy Ray Bob, that is just the gayest thang in the whole wide world!")

MnMark said...

It's amazing, really. In this country with something on the order of 150 million+ white people, there are so few actual "hate" crimes committed by whites that the non-whites feel compelled to invent such incidents in order to keep the fires of white guilt and "diversity-worship" stoked.

There have been dozens of these fake "hate" crimes staged by non-whites in the last decade. When was the last time you can recall an actual "hate" crime committed by a white? They are so rare that for all practical purposes they just don't occur. Non-whites have been forced to invent offenses like "white privilege" to try to maintain the appearance of discrimination where there is none - at least none that anyone, white or black, 50 years ago would have recognized as actual discrimination.

The last actual white-on-black "hate crime" I can think of is when those white guys dragged the black guy behind their pickup, something like 15 or 20 years ago. And that wasn't just casual "hate", it was revenge for a prison rape.

YoungHegelian said...

Ooops, sorry!

Here's the guy in gold.

Methadras said...

They canceled classes because democrats in white robes showed up? Oh the huge manitee!!!

Michael K said...

How many of these incidents, where the alleged victim is the perp, do we see before the whole multi-culti thing is discredited ? Aren't we there now ?

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

I was explaining this to my 9 and 7 years olds yesterday after they were telling me all about the global warming play they had seen at school. We had a great discussion at the dinner table about always, always asking yourself, when you are being asked to swallow something, who benefits by suggesting this is true?

great Unknown said...

"A university should model intelligence and reason."
What world is the good professor living in? Universities model, and reflect, what succeeds in the "real world": controlling and generating PR, suppressing dissent, and living off of victimhood.

If universities were actually held to objective standards, they would quickly collapse. As many are doing now, with people realizing what a waste of resources they are for both students and the public funding them.

See, e.g., the current implosion of law schools.

Hagar said...

In other news, the school that suspended that kid for biting his pop-tart into a pistol-like shape (the kid says he actually tried to make it look like a mountain) is now offering "counseling" to any of his fellow pupils traumatized by the incident.

Levi Starks said...

Yawn

Michael K said...

"Reading about this incident led me to this story which I find funny. The college, a very liberal, liberal arts college has a list of townies that it won't allow on campus."

USC (Southern Cal to you midwesterners) is going through a somewhat similar situation. It has begun to close the campus at 9PM with barriers at the entrances and requiring ID to enter. The reason is the high crime area where it is located.

When my son and daughter went there in the 80s, their first campus briefing was about auto theft. They were told, "The highest auto theft rate in the nation is in Los Angeles. The highest rate in Los Angeles is on this campus and the highest rate on the campus is in that parking structure."

The campus is large and urban so the LA Times is hyperventilating. They need to come up with a compromise involving a list of folks who are OK. There've been some student murders the past couple of years.

furious_a said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
furious_a said...

The Oberlin Incident sounds like the title of a Ludlum novel.

Hate crimes hoaxes have upsides -- they serve as teachable moments, forcing perpetrators and victims alike to confront preconceived notions of race/gender/ethnicity/privilege, thereby opening minds, building bridges and creating more tolerant and diverse communities.

But mostly increase funding and Hate Whitey.

khesanh0802 said...

What is a Multi-Cultural Research Center? Is that "like" a library?

Known Unknown said...

What is a Multi-Cultural Research Center? Is that "like" a library?

it's a safe haven from the endless waves of white hate directed at noble peoples of color who endure a precipitous and dangerous journey through the violent, dark halls of academia.

Synova said...

Considering that students did miss classes they paid for (and review time with instructors before tests, etc.,) I'd be profoundly dissatisfied with "deal with it internally."

If they'd found out that some other student was defacing posters and writing "hate" stuff on campus, would they really not have any discipline coming their way? Up to, perhaps, expulsion?

Really?

Anonymous said...

Re: "Do the students even care?"

Only the ones with the Magic Markers is my guess.

Calypso Facto said...

96% of blacks murdered in Ohio are murdered by blacks.

On average, a black person is murdered by a black person in Ohio about once per day. A white person is murdered by a black person in Ohio about once per week. A black person is murdered by a white person in Ohio about once per month.

But yeah, let's worry about the white guy.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like Ohio is a good place to be Asian.

mccullough said...

The Backdraft motive

James Pawlak said...

What was the gender, gender-preference, race of the offender?

Anonymous said...

Damn! Pretty soon this will be triggered by any white person in white clothing.

Liberals are getting more scared and ignorant - which seem to be reinforcing forces.

KCFleming said...

NPR reported the story this morning as still true, no update on the bullshit part.

So I told my wife it'll turn out to be a hoax, and NPR will not report it.

As of this writing, the story is still up, uncorrected.

I think my wife uses NPR as the alarm because I get so pissed off so quickly that I'm awake and cannot go back to sleep.

Or else she hates me.

KCFleming said...

By any means necessary, ad nauseum.

Andrew said...

" Calypso Facto said...
96% of blacks murdered in Ohio are murdered by blacks.

On average, a black person is murdered by a black person in Ohio about once per day. A white person is murdered by a black person in Ohio about once per week. A black person is murdered by a white person in Ohio about once per month.

But yeah, let's worry about the white guy.

3/5/13, 10:39 AM
betamax3000 said...
Sounds like Ohio is a good place to be Asian."


You two should go on the road. Anyone know how to get dark coffee out of a keyboard and silk tie?

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Pogo--gah, looked at that link and made the mistake of reading the comments. Questioning anything about this incident means one is HOLOCAUST DENIER!!111!!1!

ricpic said...

It happens so often that it's practically a dog bites man non-story when a black commits a hate crime against himself by scrawling nigger on a wall or a doorway. That a significant number of blacks need to feel threatened is a psychosis, but don't expect the psychiatric "community" to look into the matter anytime soon.

KCFleming said...

@Erika

Ugh, yes. I'll bet that evwen when the students find out it was a hoax, theyll still think it is essentially true.

Derve Swanson said...

so who writes all the nasty internet comments re. FLOTuS' behind...

the ones that prove our rampant racism.


Amartel said...

The Multi-Cultural Center is trying keeping itself relevant. Trying to make racism happen. Fuckers. Back in the 80s when I was in college there were several incidents where racial slurs were scrawled on walls and it turned out eventually, after the inevitable campus "conversation" (lecture), that they were scrawled by the would-be slurees. Apparently disappointed on missing out on the good old days when racial and ethnic minorities actually were oppressed. Nothing happened to these frauds. No expulsion or other punishment for assuming bad faith among their fellow students and going around all falsely and ostentatiously aggrieved for weeks. But they did expel a guy for making fun of diversity week in an editorial cartoon in the school newspaper. Because that's just WRONG.

BTW, this is how conservatives are made.

Shouting Thomas said...

I'm behind all the comments about the FLOTUS's behind!

You caught me, Typhoid Mary!

Geoff Matthews said...

My first instinct was hoax. The police think it may have been idiocy.


Lt Mike McCloskey of Oberlin police told the Guardian on Monday that officers were still following up the KKK sighting, but suggested that the only witness may have been mistaken.

"Officers checked the area and were unable to locate anybody. College security later saw a student wrapped in a blanket."

McCloskey suggested that the apparent missighting may have been an innocent mistake. He also indicated that those responsible for the racist vandalism had now been caught and were being dealt with.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/04/oberlin-cancels-classes-racist-homophobic-incidents

rhhardin said...

I wonder if Oberlin still has an honor system.

damikesc said...

The school doesn't care. That the group will exist after this incident is proof positive of that.

It's amazing hearing universities outing themselves as laden with little more than hatred all of the time.

My job has whites and blacks working together. If I go a major university, it is the most racially segregated and angry place I can fathom.

Nomennovum said...

If Republicans weren't so darned racist, we wouldn't have these problems at colleges and universities around the nation.

I envision a three step process to deal witht he scourge of racism in America:

1) Oberlin should institute a school-wide program to raise awareness of racism in America -- NOW! It should be called the Oberlin Project to Combat Racism Now.

2) The OPCRN should serve as a template for all other colleges and universities in the nation, which can be implemented by the fall semester of 2013.

3) Congress should pass a law against racism. The so-called Act Now Against Racism Act can be passed within the current session of Congress and signed into law by Obama by the summer.

Sydney said...

Nothing new for Oberlin. There is a very nice monument on the town green that memorializes missionaires who died in the Boxer Rebellion in China. When we lived there in the mid-1990's someone spray painted "Death to Chinks" on it. Turned out it was an Asian student. She said she was protesting the presence of the monument, which she found insulting.

Tank said...

Pogo said...
@Erika

Ugh, yes. I'll bet that even when the students find out it was a hoax, theyll still think it is essentially true.


See: Dan Rather.

TMink said...

So a KKK robe is terrifying? Really? I would think a lone KKK robe wearing individual in the wrong part of campus would get a quick education about what not to wear.

Trey

Anonymous said...

lol.

Yet more proof that all leftists do is lie.

gerry said...

What is a liberal arts asshole?

Now we know.

You need one of them BA thingies now just to flip burgers. Just.what.they.deserve.

Nomennovum said...

Progressive Anti-Racism Action Plan:

Dress up in Klan robes and start lynching Blacks.

Cedarford said...

So we are supposed to swallow that the black activist behind the KKK hoax that disrupted the campus will "remain anonymous, be privately counseled" and that is it??

The irony is these race baiters that lie to achieve societal transformation or advantage themselves with money and prestige from victim martyrdom - and the liberal and progressive Jewish enablers they count on to close ranks and defend them - take a completely opposite view of whites that lie to pillory and harm minorities.

Like the Duke Lacrosse whore Crystal Mangum's rape hoax against whites - there were no doubt many Lilly Belles in the South that accused the other race, falsely, of rape.
And when blacks were strung up on the white bitch's lies, the reaction, so hated by the Left, was that racist whites closed ranks around the poor troubled white Missus...the last thing that would "help" would be stringing her up as well...

Of course, that was a century or so ago, and about 35% of those lynched were whites, and many of the blacks lynched were lynched with blacks in the lynch mob cheering the demise of the "no-good nigger", or enacting the lynching as a 100% black thing. Black street justice for the thugs within their communities.(with whites cheering the blacks cleaning house).

100 years ago.

Now it is down to Columbia professors hanging nooses on their faculty door, black students getting caught writing "nigger" graffitti, lesbian activists found after police investigation to have scrawled anti-gay slogans on their car and beaten their own face with a sock stuffed with gravel...
And the main beneficiaries of the Innocence Project turn out not to be convicted murderers, but men jailed for years on conviction due to false rape accusations. With the bitch caught lying by the DNA tests typically never serving a day in jail for her malicious lies.

Are they doing the same harm as ol' Lilly Belle?
Why do we not prosecute false accusations more vigorously??

Alex said...

The first sign of a not serous university. Can you imagine UC Berkeley canceling the engineering classes over something like this?

Patrick said...

Ugh, yes. I'll bet that evwen when the students find out it was a hoax, theyll still think it is essentially true.

Racial hoax at my law school, years ago. Once the hoax was discovered, it was handled exactly like that well it could have been real...

Patrick said...

And no discipline for the perpetrator.

test said...

I don't believe the story. Klan garb attracts such attention it borders inconceivable someone could wear it in such a setting and not be identified. What do you do, wait until there's no one else on the street or dorm hallway before opening your door? Just hope no one sees you until you're far enough away? Carry it with you and find a building to change behind? What if campus security stops you and asks for ID? After your stroll how will you disengage? Someone is likely to follow you, are you going to outrun them in your robe? Do you walk back to the dorm believing those you pass in the hall aren't going to say something?

The overwhelming odds are that either the event was entirely made up or the campus "awareness" mania caused someone to leap to the wrong conclusion and misidentify someone wearing a blanket.

A university should model intelligence and reason.

The university has a chance to teach what it believes to be its core mission: promoting the leftist vision of America. The university is thrilled to set aside education for this opportunity.

heyboom said...

Actually, blacks don't use the word nig-GER, they use the word nig-GAH, e.g., "Whats up, my niggah?" or "Niggah, please!". Big difference. The word nig-GER still has negative connotations and isn't condoned in any way.

rcocean said...

This reminds me of the Trotsky-Stalin Politburo fight. Yes, Stalin was wrong to falsely accuse Trotsky of being a running dog counter-revolutionary. But who cares? Its sill was a left-wing loony bin.

rcocean said...

I'm waiting for someone to be disciplined for using the word Niggardly

Oh wait...

Gene said...

Even if there had been someone in a KKK outfit, why is that a reason to cancel classes for a day? Tuition at Oberlin is over $22,000 a semester, which works out to something like $350/student for every day of classes. A sighting of someone in a white sheet is presumably so traumatic the school cavalierly blows off all the instruction those hundreds of dollars were supposed to buy? That's over a million dollars worth of unprovided instruction for the school's 2900 students.

What was the school thinking? That anyone in a white sheet on a college campus must be crazy and if he's crazy who knows what he's planning to do? What if the guy was a lecturer from the biology lab still wearing his white frog dissection coat while he ran out for a sandwich? Close down the school for that as well?

We truly are a nutty society. The medieval witch burners had nothing on us. These people are seeing ghosts under their beds. No wonder so many blue collar workers see college graduates as dumb.

Craig said...

African-American students at Oberlin have long enjoyed great opportunities, like hanging with John Brown.

Both of my parents and all four of my grandparents took liberal arts degrees from a college founded in 1860 by Oberlin graduates.

rhhardin said...

Deadening prose, probably the same that students run into every day. Maybe they like it. QUOTE

To our friends and family in the Oberlin community:

We want to express our support for the community and our admiration for the way the administration, the students, our fellow alumni and the residents of the area have stood together in recent days to express our collective rejection of intolerance and hate. We could not all be together in Finney Chapel or on Wilder Bowl or at the Afrikan Heritage House on Monday, but 1500 remote Obies/Oberlinians participated in the on-campus events by watching or listening to the live streams. Ironically, members of the Alumni Association’s Executive Board had gathered on campus last weekend and, as part of our meetings, had reaffirmed the values of tolerance, activism, passion and the pursuit of excellence that have been at the core of Oberlin’s existence since its founding in 1833. As the current campus community finds itself facing new challenges and experiencing in real time the insurgence of intolerance and hate that have seen too much support in our culture in recent years, the alumni community stands together and holds everyone in our hearts and thoughts as they stand courageously together to overcome intolerance and fear.

UNQUOTE

rhhardin said...

African-American students at Oberlin have long enjoyed great opportunities, like hanging with John Brown.

In the early 60s nobody gave race a thought. There's your opportunity.

Try to get back to it.

Badger Pundit said...

Funny how investigations tend to end when it's "unofficially" discovered that an alleged instance of hate speech is actually a race hoax, but the hoaxer isn't identified -- e.g., apparently something like that happened a few years ago at Harvard Law School:
http://harvardlawracehoax.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/copy-of-my-1252008-comment-on-the-volokh-conspiracy

I readily found other examples of lamentable behavior by Googling "race hoax" -- top links here:
http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/03/oberlin-declines-to-comment-on-motivations-of-students-behind-writings/comment-page-1/#comment-413746

Shouldn't the people who engage in such behavior be named and shamed?