OBERLIN, OHIO June 12 (DPI) – A jury in Lorain county, Ohio, ordered Oberlin College to pay at least $11 million to a local grocery store after the college’s students and administrators smeared the store and its owners for what they claim was racially discriminating against a student shoplifter in 2016.
The college, one of US higher education’s redoubts of radical progressivism, may have to pay even more to Gibson’s Food Mart & Bakery as the penalty phase of the trial against Oberlin takes place this week. The school was found responsible for libel and infliction of emotional distress. Gibson’s sued Oberlin after the school’s Dean of Students, among others, took to the streets of Oberlin, Ohio, to assert that Gibson’s had engaged in racial profiling when one of the family members who own the store tried to stop a shoplifter.
Readers on both the sites of The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal said the ruling was reasonable. The New York Times site reported on the story, suggesting first amendment rights were somehow being threatened by the court decision, but its editors chose not to include a comment board with the article.
The most popular among the 2,700 comments on WashingtonPost.com:
I’m an Oberlin alumna and a liberal. The students there are veering ever deeper into ridiculousness. It’s sad that the college is losing so much money, but based on the facts, I have to side with Gibson’s.
I am as well. More a moderate than a liberal, and I am furious at how much money the College is losing because of some bloated egos who couldn’t settle and apologize. All those donations going right into the black hole of legal fees and lawsuits. I would not be surprised to see a donor suit come of this; a lot of those people don’t seem to realize they work for a non-profit and they have a fiduciary responsibility to not throw away the money they have been entrusted with on stupid preventable lawsuits. It’s not their money, it’s the College’s money. And they are about to learn that the hard way. I don’t even want to think about how many students are about to have their tuition upped or financial aid yanked to pay for this debacle. Many are barely scraping by as it is. This should come right out of administrative salaries.
The Post fails to mention that Oberlin’s dangerously incompetent General Counsel Donica Thomas Varner probably just cost the college many millions more by writing that email. Varner is an extremely politically correct and highly woke progressive legal warrior who Oberlin very proudly touted (loudly as can be) as checking two important bean-counting boxes when they hired her – black and female – not because that has any relation to her skill or competence (of course it doesn’t) but because the college wanted to project their progressive bona-fides to all and sundry.
As noted, immediately after the verdict for $11M, the clever Ms Varner sent out a monumentally moronic email blast to everyone at Oberlin right after the verdict. The key part is where she blamed the jury because it “did not agree with the clear evidence we presented”. No, that was not a Post misprint.
The best part is that the jury has not finished its work. They still have to decide on punitive damages against Oberlin which can be 2x the amount of the base damages already awarded. The very high original award was largely due to the hubris, superiority and down-looking arrogance demonstrated by Oberlin towards Gibson’s Bakery, a venerable and highly respected establishment that has served the college and town for 150 years. That came off about as well as you might expect in a town filled with ordinary people with regular jobs with average incomes well below 1 year of tuition at Obelin.
In other words, the same jury that General Counsel Varner just essentially insulted still has to decided whether or not to increase the $11M award to $33M. Brilliant Ms. Varner, just brilliant. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was paid on the side by Gibson’s to sabotage her employer’s case.
This is your brain. This is your brain on “wokeness”.