I wanted to post on this news and just wanted something factual and journalistic, and I was disappointed that the 2 main newspapers I read just put up this rather thin AP story:
A jury in Lorain County awarded David Gibson, son Allyn Gibson and Gibson’s Bakery, of Oberlin, $33 million in punitive damages Thursday. That comes on top of an award a day earlier of $11 million in compensatory damages.
Problems between the Gibsons, their once-beloved bakery and the college began in November 2016 after Allyn Gibson, who is white, confronted a black Oberlin student who had shoplifted wine. Two other black students joined in and assaulted Gibson, police said.The extra space between "bakery" and the period is present at both the WaPo and the NYT. That's how little attention they paid to this story — not even rudimentary copy editing.
The day after the arrests, hundreds of students protested outside the bakery .
Members of Oberlin College’s student senate published a resolution saying Gibson’s had “a history of racial profiling and discriminatory treatment.”A direct quote — "snowflakes" — for those "conservatives." Which conservatives? Who? Did they all say the word "snowflakes"? Were they all taking a derisive tone? This is a story about the seriousness of damage caused by free-swinging attacks, so you might want to rein it in. Notice the students were concerned about "systemic racism" and their tone isn't characterized nastily, but they were involved in causing harm that the jury soberly examined and found deserving of a $33 million punitive damages award. And conservatives are casually smeared, made to look like they get on social media and jeer and name-call.
When news of the protests spread online, bikers and counterprotesters soon converged on the town to jeer students and make purchases from Gibson’s. Conservatives derided the students on social media as coddled “snowflakes” with a mob mentality, while students attacked the store as a symbol of systemic racism....
The AP article ends with a grab-bag of factoids:
Oberlin has long been a bastion of liberalism. During the 1830s, it became one of the first colleges to admit blacks and women. During the 1850s, it became a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Today, about 15% of Oberlin’s 8,300 residents are black.And there's your NYT and WaPo coverage of this story. Thin, undigested AP material. And you won't find it on the home page. I had to do a search to find it.
More recently, news articles quoted students decrying the school dining hall’s sushi and Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches as cultural appropriation.
The Gibsons’ attorneys said the college, which charges $70,000 a year for tuition and room and board, has an $887 million endowment and can easily afford to pay the family what they are owed.
Oberlin’s tree-lined campus is roughly 35 miles (56 kilometers) southwest of downtown Cleveland.
IN THE COMMENTS: wendybar said:
The best coverage anywhere was from Professor William A. Jacobson @ Legal Insurrection!! The Main Stream Media is the propaganda arm of the Democrats so of course this doesn't fit the agenda.Here's the Legal Insurrection post about the punitive damages verdict. Excerpt:
“We never wanted any of this to go to court and have to spend all this time in litigation,” David Gibson said exclusively to the Legal Insurrection. David Gibson is the lead plaintiff in the case and is the principal owner of the business.Left Bank of the Charles said:
“People have no idea on how much stress this has had on our family and business for almost three years. But from the beginning, we just didn’t understand why they were punishing us for something we had nothing to do with.”
“We appreciate that the jury understood what we had gone through, and I think they were saying to the entire country that we can’t allow this to happen to hard-working, small business people whose lives are defined by their business, their family, and their community,” he said.” What the college was doing was trying to take away all those things from us, and we fought hard against that.”
Here’s some better reporting. The college seems to have thought that claims of poverty would work in its defense against the punitive damages.He links to "Gibson's Bakery v. Oberlin College: Plaintiffs rest in second day of punitive phase (UPDATED)" (Houston Chronicle):
With its endowment as it is now," [Oberlin President Carmen Twillie Ambar] said the college can survive, but “survival isn’t sustainability”.... Of that $1.4 billion, the college has an $887 million endowment — more than two-thirds of which can’t be spent by the college because of the wishes of the donors who provided it... The largest check the college could write if it had to would be for $49.1 million from its unrestricted endowment funds....
[Lee Plakas, the lead attorney for the Gibsons] told jurors that “defamatory words in our country have become weapons as damaging as guns that shoot bullets”... “More damaging than bullets once you’re defamed... There is no procedure to remove those words.”...
He recalled for jurors how Oberlin College administrators labeled the Gibsons and their supporters “idiots,” discussed in internal texts and emails how they wanted to “unleash the students” or “rain fire and brimstone” on Gibson’s and how Meredith Raimondo, the college’s vice president and dean of students, referred to the college’s business with Gibson’s as the “stupid bakery order.”...
“Let’s teach the institution not to put gas on the fires,” Plakas told the jury, also asking them to consider recommending Miraldi award the Gibsons money to cover attorney fees. “They’re not above the law. They can’t make up their own rules.”...
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