Oberlin College’s “almost sociopathic malevolence” towards Gibson’s Bakery
“Oberlin refuses to accept any responsibility … and shows no remorse”
I appeared tonight on Tucker Carlson Tonight to provide an update on the Gibson’s Bakery v. Oberlin College case.
I’m in D.C. for my lecture Friday night about the case. (The event is sold out, btw).
It was my first time doing an on-set interview, and it was fun.
(transcript to follow)
TUCKER: In late 2016, three students at Oberlin college, maybe the most liberal college in the country, tried to rob a small family business near the school called Gibson’s Bakery. Tried to steal a bottle of booze among other things. When they were caught, one of them assaulted the son of the bakery’s owner, physically. One response to that, Oberlin college amazingly attack the bakery as racist and tried to destroy it. Tried to run it out of business. Well, they sued and a few months ago a jury awarded, ordered Oberlin to pay the Gibson family $44 million in damages. So that’s where we last left this story. What happened next?
Bill Jacobson has followed this story closer than maybe anybody and thank God he has. He’s a professor at Cornell Law School. He joins us tonight on the set. So Bill, what happened? 44 million, is the Gibson family enjoying their award?
WAJ: No, they’re not. The college continues to fight it. Irony of ironies, liberal Oberlin invoked Republican tort reform caps and got the award reduced from 44 million to 25 …
TUCKER: You’re making that up.
WAJ: I’m not making that up. And then the judge awarded six and a half million dollars of legal fees for Gibsons. So it’s about 32 million that Oberlin owes. They are continuing to fight it. They have appealed it. They’re continuing to attack the bakery.
In fact, in a really extraordinary move after the trial was over, they tried to get unsealed Facebook records from one of the Gibson’s children. The clerk who stopped the students, who wasn’t a party, didn’t testify. And why release these Facebook records? Is because Oberlin continues to demonize this small family bakery, refuses to accept any responsibility for what they did to them, and shows no remorse and they’re appealing it. They’ve hired additional lawyers for the appeal. They’ve already spent, or their insurers has spent, $5 million fighting this little bakery and they just cannot seem to accept it.
TUCKER: Shafting the little people. Oberlin, meanwhile for our viewers who aren’t aware of what it is, is like kind of the stereotype of the annoying liberal rich kid school. I mean, it’s not actually like a real college, but it’s incredibly expensive and they have a lot of money. Why don’t they just pay?
WAJ: Well, because you know, they have a reputation of being a little kooky lefty sort of school, but they’ve really shown a very cold heart here. They have been completely heartless towards this bakery. They have no empathy towards the bakery. It’s almost a sociopathic sort of malevolence towards this bakery because the bakery stood up to them. And it’s really bizarre. I don’t know what’s going on there, but I know a lot of alumni are very upset about it. And I would be too, if I were an Oberlin alum, because the value of your degree has been diminished by multiple administrations at Oberlin who simply want to crush this little family bakery and it makes no sense in any real world.
TUCKER: The degree is less than worthless. I mean it, I would never hire someone, someone who went there. But this is so revealing. Scratch a liberal and you find a fascist. Bill Jacobson, what a public service you have done following this story. I hope you will come back here. Thanks. We’ll celebrate when they finally get their money.
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Comments
Great appearance on Tucker. You’re a natural, Professor!
This kind of press is why I have long felt the college should have put this behind them and paid the money (or settled) – which they could well afford to do. Although Oberlin’s target audience does not watch that show, prospective employers of graduates might.
Dragging out the reputational damage could ending up costing more in numbers and quality of applications and enrollments; and folks with money being willing to go there. As a high cost college, if the rankings decline, they could be in even worse shape.
Oberlin’s biggest mistake was a belief that they could control everything because they were this massive entity in a tiny little bubble. And despite everything that has happened, I suspect that they still believe it.
Oberlin is counting on alumni not straying beyond their narrative available on their web page. At some point though a critical mass of alums will know what really happened and that is when it will be all over for the current administration.
It remains to be seen whether our views are close to the mark. To date the Board of Trustees is behaving as if the reputational damage is not material. That is hard to fathom when Tucker Carlson says on national TV, “The degree is less than worthless. I mean it, I would never hire someone, someone who went there.” Perhaps they see their target market as large enough, uncaring about Gibson’s and unforgiving of any compromise.
Right on.
Gibson’s is the Trump of bakeries. Liberals have no off button.
It would be nice if they had a rheostat, though.
HEADS UP: 60 Minutes is doing a show on Gibsons vs Oberlin!
https://chroniclet.com/news/177035/cbs-news-report-on-gibsons-v-oberlin-college-case-to-air-sunday/
from the chronicle
CBS News will run a special report on the court case between Gibson’s Bakery and Oberlin College at 9 a.m. Sunday.
I didn’t see a 60 minutes airing listed
That snowflake. Almost had a heart attack after getting arrested. I did not feel sorry for him at all! Check out how CBS tells the story of this. I never seen nicer cops arresting a SJW/snowflake! Anyone know where we can get these guys criminals record from to post here?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oberlin-college-and-gibsons-bakery-a-protest-against-racism-and-a-31-5-million-dollar-defamation-award/
Smooth segment, excellent discussion. Tucker is treating you like a trusted personal resource. That is great.
The the point that Tucker was MOST correct about – if it wasn’t for you and your efforts, Professor, this issue would have NO national exposure at all!!!
This site has been a force for justice on this case. I wish I could write a check to L.I, maybe next year.
I agree. This was LI’s finest hour, no question.
SJWs always double-down. Always.
Almost sociopathic?
Surely you know them better than that, professor.
Although, “malignant narcissisism” would also suffice.
Sadly, ‘malignant narcissism’ infects the entire left. It’s a global pandemic with them.
Great job last night, professor!
Great job Professor! I just read your Blog and am proud.
Ditto all of the above. This has been a real education for me. (BTW, you okay with the green M&Ms?)
I love the line scratch a liberal and you’ll find a fascist. This has been the big lie the left has fabricated, that fascism is only possible from the right. Look at “antifa”, the very fascist like brown shirts who tolerate nothing but their own views and if you disagree they attack. They attack those who dare defy them. The left ignores that fascism grew out of socialism.
The Professor has done a wonderful job in helping expose the despicable behavior of this college. It shows the ugly underbelly, not only of this college, but of many places of higher learning. They use the education system as a type of Hitler Youth mentality, indoctrination, pounding into the young minds that capitalism is wrong while enjoying the fruits of capitalism, meanwhile wanting the youth to accept socialism and communism as viable and noble government pursuits.
Fascism is the root of this impeachment effort that Nancy and Schiff-face is pushing based on nothing, but even though even the propaganda wing has a number of their agents telling them there isn’t anything there, the majority are fueled on their hatred.
Hatred has been the key to understanding liberal think of today. They change the language, change the meaning to hide their hate and intent. They fear a free people, so offer up sops they claim are freedom while shackling those who disagree with them with labels.
YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHING YET! Just wait for your next Democrat president, after Trump is defeated. The gun grabbers will go nuts, regardless of the constitution. The only ‘rights’ Americans will have is to shuffle off to work, with their eyes lowered as they mumble ‘yes sir, no sir’. The socialists and progressives are busy poisoning the well right now, even as we speak. Days of conflict are close to hand, and the energetic liberals are playing for ‘keeps’.
Well, that’s the day they’ll find out what the 2nd Amendment really means.
THANKS for the hot air, it’s chilly up here on the Northern Plains. /sarc
Which is why we need to find a strong conservative to win the presidency after Trump. Who can carry that mantle? Who can withstand the onslaught? It will take years of conservative leadership to right the ship and squash the far left ideology throughout our institutions.
The youth need to experience the alternative to the lies they’ve been fed.
The issue of succession to POTUS DJT is critical given the consequences. A long view must be taken. Nevertheless, the starker the choice, the easier it is to make. And in the unlikely event the deranged Left got their filthy hands on the levers of power, it would be a temporary event, because it would lead to the end of the United States of America and the establishment of a new sovereign entity minus the coastal chancre.
I note that many others have contemplated the crucial question of who will follow DJT. My answer is Nikki Haley. She has all of the necessary qualifications, i.e., she is a female of color.
Added plusses are that she is brilliant, a fine speaker, experienced in all respects and conservative enough. She will not disappoint.
So very accurate.
Not so much liberal as insane.
The Left is sanctimonious in their belief that they are morally superior in all things. It not only makes them incapable of admitting error, it makes them incapable of even recognizing when they are wrong.
Indeed. Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” immediately comes to mind, the key reason she lost the election.
I have a history with Hillary, having once been a supporter and campaign donor and then abandoning her after the e-mails and the Uranium One scandal came to light. At one point, I sat on a couch and chatted with her for 10 minutes in a content-free conversation. I wasn’t put up, chalking it up to a politician’s caution.
The e-mails and Uranium One affair turned me the other way, but it was the “deplorables” part that really turbo-charged it for me. Then, and now, I had and have friends on both sides of the divide. I cast a write-in vote in ’16, but took the “deplorables” comment almost personally because, after all, she was talking about some of my friends.
The coup de grace was when she called them not just deplorables, but irredeemable. I watched her speak at the D Convention stressing her Methodist upbringing and how it was a part of her view of the world. That’s what really made me angry, and still does.
I attended a Catholic elementary school, and while I’m not anyone’s theologian, I do recall that redemption sits right smack at the core of Christian belief. Everything else in Christianity is built on the idea that sinners can be redeemed. When she called half of Trump’s voters not only part of a “basket of deplorables” but irredeemable, she lost me forever — on steroids.
I instantly regarded her Christianity as fake, and have never changed my mind. Jesus had his own words for the “deplorables” of his day, railing in the Bible against hypocrisy. So I can understand (though not agree) with that part of it, but “irredeemable” crossed a bright line.
There is another angle.
I recall when Mitt Romney, in 2012, was caught on video dividing the country in two, and saying that 47% of Americans were “takers.” I had been considering voting for him, but for that reason I voted for Obama. I laughed when Obama beat him 51%-47%, and more than a few times pointed out the irony.
Woe betide the politician who seeks to divide the country and call the other side “deplorables” or “takers.” Aside from the ethics of it, I firmly reject the whole idea of such divisions. It’s why I didn’t vote for Trump in ’16, and it’s probably why I will cast another write-in vote in ’20.
Ever since the Civil War, presidential politics has at least paid lip service to the idea of e pluribus unum. We’ve been through tough times as a country, but presidents have understood that, at least at the level of rhetoric, that outright appeals to division are something to be avoided.
There’s been no small amount of artifice at times, but this is one bit of artifice that the elections of ’12 and ’16 made me appreciate. I held it against Romney and Hillary that they divided the electorate as they did, and I hold it against Trump for doing the same thing in his own way.
Like it or not, we’re in it together. We’ll rant and rave and dispute, but there is a line not to be crossed. I hope that the election of 2024 sees a retreat from what I’ve been calling “the politics of subtraction” and a return to the politics of addition. In the long run, I think our future depends on it.
Correction to the above:
* I wasn’t put out, chalking it up to a politician’s caution
Didn’t they ban Gibsons from service in their cafeteria, but then later lift that ban?
Gibson’s had a contract for nearly 100 years to supply the baked goods to the dining halls for 3000 students. The college was by far Gibson’s biggest customer. The contract was initially canceled in response to a public protest by about 7% of the student body. It was re-instated about 3 weeks later only to be canceled again when the Gibsons filed their lawsuit.
Read the FAQs published by the Gibsons’ lawyers on http://www.lawlion.com and then read Oberlin’s whitewash FAQs on https://oberlin.edu. I will publish links to both FAQs ASAP on my blog at https://OberlinChaos.com.
Please see my post below on publicly confronting the college president on her freedom of speech hypocrisy. The situation is far worse than I ever imagined.
The Ohio Judicial organization isn’t doing much to speed this along and dispense justice. The Gibson’s shouldn’t have to wait YEARS for their settlement, anything is possible when the will to do Justice exists.
Thank you Professor Jacobson.
As a long time reader I am so proud of, and truly appreciate, all the effort you personally have put into establishing Legal Insurrection as a premier website. I know it’s a wonderful team, but Kudos to all of your life hours.
I have, with pleasure, watched you guide a “good idea” into a substantial resource to achieve “in conformity with or permitted by law.” A concept that means so much to me. A true counter-balance to the forces simply promoting insurrection.
And just how cool is it to see you on TV! Whoo-Hoo Professor. Grats!
Excellent, Professor Jacobson!
The illiberal Left bureaucrats that infest tertiary education across the West work from the same play sheet. Resist the neo-Marxist globalist polemic and lose your appointment or face their fierce, vicious, soulless onslaught.
In Australia, James Cook University sacked physics prof, Professor Peter Ridd for calling out shonky eco-research purposed to show the Great Barrier Reef was dying. The goal? Funding largesse to the University from the State government, a common tactic designed to fuel the globalists Green Trojan horse.
Prof Ridd crowd funded and went to court. He won plus AUS$1.2M. The University bureaucrats are taking their appeal to the High Court, so Ridd continues with crowd funding support.
Deo gratias; it seems there is no shortage of individuals willing to stand up for scientific integrity, liberty and prosperity. https://www.gofundme.com/f/peter-ridd-legal-action-fund
For supposedly highly educated people, they’re pretty damn stupid & ignorant to the fact that they are beaten
Many commenters on LI do not realize that there are many Oberlin graduates like myself who are in a state of moral outrage over the effectively sociopathic treatment of the Gibsons by the college.
On Wednesday I confronted college president Ambar on her self righteous defense of freedom of speech. I asked her if she believed in free speech enough to invite Prof. Jacobson to come to Oberlin to tell the rest of the Gibson story.
Her answer was that under no conditions would her office issue an invitation to Jacobson to come to Oberlin and speak. BTW, Prof. Jacobson had previously told me that he would be willing to come to Oberlin. Ambar also disparaged Prof. Jacobson’s views, indicating that other lawyers disagreed with him! Ambar actually went to Law School!!!
Now you can say Nobody told you!
/s/ JD Nobody, OC ’61.
JD, you performed a public service there. Until your exchange there was some small hope that Ambar was just following the orders of the Board of Trustees. It is now clear that she is part of the “problem” as we see it and not part of the solution. However, note my earlier post that we may have it wrong financially and there may be plenty of liberals to continue to support Oberlin, have their children attend and are able to pay. There just will be not be the diverse viewpoints represented, or even tolerated, as when you and I attended; and, as Tucker Carlson strongly said, employment opportunities of graduates may narrow.
Thanks for your kind comments. We must do all we can to marshall the troops, and the war will be won.
We need to find all the practical ways to turn up the heat on the Board of Trustees and the sociopaths in the college administration to get their attention and back off of the Gibsons.
It seems to me that this will require a legal strategy that goes after the BOT and Administration personally. A class action based on the damage they have done to the value of our degrees and reputation is one possibility.
After reading the FAQs of both the Gibsons and the College, one has to wonder if there aren’t grounds for federal action against the Board and Administration members personally under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Cutting off a contract that provided a large chunk of Gibson’s income, boycotting them, slandering them, and disrespecting the jury’s decision in the civil matter sounds like something the mafia might do. Moreover, it looks like a major reason for the college keeping the heat on the Gibsons is that if the Gibsons can be destroyed the college can then obtain their much-coveted Gibson’s parking lot! If all this is true, it might make the RICO people perk up their ears.
In reality, I don’t think the mafia would be remotely as stupid in handling the Gibsons as Oberlin has been. If the mafia were to launch a multi-year krystallnacht against the Gibsons they would not screw it up Oberlin style.
I have vigorously condemned Oberlin’s actions in the Gibson affair, to the point of being banned from two internet discussion boards as a result.
I do have a legal question, though. You mention “fiduciary duty.” To whom does Oberlin owe this duty, in a legal context? Not being a lawyer, but being a retired financial analyst who is familiar with “fiduciary duty” as it extends to money managers, it seems to me that Oberlin’s “fiduciary duty” is to itself.
I do think that Oberlin is hurting itself quite badly, but I don’t grasp the legal side of apply the concept to this case. It seems to me that, as stupid and arrogant as their self-destructive behavior is, “fiduciary duty” doesn’t prevent someone or some entity from destroying itself.
Who would be the plaintiff in such an action? Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think Oberlin owes, say, its students or its donors “fiduciary duty” in the sense of not doing stupid and self-destructive things. If they’re bent on destroying themselves, I think they’re free to do so.
There might be restrictions on gifts, but wouldn’t those be straightforward contractual issues? If the quality of education is degraded, isn’t that in the end a matter for the free market to decide? Lamentable and absurd as all of this is, I’m having a hard time invoking the “fiduciary duty” legal concept here.
Please feel free to correct me on the legalities, but I’d appreciate it if you’d do so without somehow casting me as the college’s defender — which I am most certainly not.
So I guess the question is “to what degree can the college destroy itself?” Normally, one would assume that the board exists to prevent the administration from doing really stupid stuff, but after three years I am pretty certain that the board is literally “on-board” with what is happening. Unfortunately, there are only 6 positions on the board that are elected by the alumni. That means at least 80% of the board could be hand-picked “yes-people” and thus there are no checks and balances. Well, there is one, and that is for the alumni to stop funding their behavior. As a kid raised on a farm I learned early on that the best way to get rid of rats is to stop feeding them. The problem here, though, is that none of the board depend on Oberlin for their livelihood. So drying up the money really has no effect on them except freeing up 4 weekends a year when the board no longer meets because the college has gone under. Essentially, there is no system in place to check the board, except for alumni donations to dry up. Oberlin has no “Mrs. Fawlty” to step in and fix things. From my perspective, Oberlin has a lot of grown ups, but few, if any adults.
If the college does go under, does that mean that major donors of restricted funds get their $$$ back? If I were one of them, I think that I’d start filing the paperwork now.
Speaking strictly as an amateur, I have a hard time thinking it’s illegal for an enterprise to destroy itself. Are there laws against tragic stupidity? There are laws against doing certain things arising from that condition, but it seems like a real stretch to claim a breach of fiduciary duty in this case. I’d love to see the legal counterargument, because I’m very open to being factually contradicted.
By the way, I think it’ll be a very long time until Oberlin would actually close its doors. Apart from the restrictions within the endowment (the details of which none of us here knows), Oberlin has a big pile of cash. The trajectory is problematic for sure, but they seem quite far from the academic equivalent of living paycheck to paycheck.
Not only that, but they are squatting on top of a hugely valuable art collection that they have purposely (what purpose, I don’t know) haven’t included in the value of their assets.
As a retired financial analyst who really knows his way around balance sheets and income statements, I’d absolutely LOVE to see everything. For instance, is the art really the college’s property or are there restrictions on it, i.e. would any, a lot, or all of it revert to the owners under some circumstances?
Is is mortgaged? Can it be sold? Along the way, I’ve looked at as much of the financials as have been published, and that’s what leads me to think that they remain well cushioned. If they were on thinner ice, my gut tells me that they’d have simply coughed up the money and moved on.
Now, their operating numbers suggest that, even before this contratemps, they were bleeding some cash on account of enrollment pressures that led to tuition pressures. They did some belt-tightening as a result, but that’s probably because they were run pretty small-c conservatively.
If push should come to a harder shove, my guess is that they’d do a bunch more downsizing on the administrative side, and curtail scholarships to a much greater extent. My bet is that there’s plenty of adipose tissue there, not to mention that endowment and art collection to fall back on.
I think the real issue isn’t so much financial as it is the hit to their reputation. This surely has LONG TERM financial implications, but anyone who thinks they’re going to dry up and blow away because of L’Affaire Gibson had better not hold their breath waiting for it to happen anytime soon.
Who knows, maybe their financial footing is much more precarious than we know, but I doubt it.
I see that I attached my comments on fiduciary duty to the wrong comment, but I’d appreciate your legal commentary anyway. I share your intense disappointment at what they’ve done, but would appreciate your dispassionate analysis of the concept as it applies to Oberlin, if that’s possible for you.
I know virtually nothing about RICO, so all I can say there is that it looks like quite a stretch. I’m not sure that there are any laws against outright stupidity, but I’m willing to be educated.
Using RICO is a stretch at this time, but it is something for the plaintiff’s attorneys to file in the backs of their minds for reference when, not if, the clowns on the BOT and in the administration do something exceptionally stupid.
Regarding your desire to see financial information on the college, you will probably find the details you want on https://Oberlin.edu under the One Oberlin Initiative. The college’s financial engineering is probably not as good as that of General Electric but there appears to be some creative accounting going on.
A lot of numbers are available, but the ones I have seen appear to be strictly on a cash rather than an accrual basis. The financial info I saw did not contain any footnote mentioning the contingent liabilities coming out of the FUBAR Gibson mess. People never read financial footnotes anyway, so Oberlin could have been more forthright without any fear of being asked embarrassing questions.
When sociopathic financial engineers bully aeronautical engineers and don’t listen to them you get a Boeing 737 Max 8. Oberlin’s cocky managerial screwups in the Gibson matter are Boeing class screwups. The Gibson situation is Carmen Ambar’s personal 737 Max 8.
Much of the endowment is unrestricted, and Ambar sees this as money they can do with as they please. That is true, but if they do blow the money the endowment will shrivel and donors will be fewer.
J.D. Nobody, I’m sure I looked at those details, and others. And regardless of what anyone else does, I DO read the footnotes. I didn’t commit this to memory; I examined everything and reached the tentative conclusion that Oberlin is quite solvent.
This doesn’t mean that the trends are going in Oberlin’s direction. They had run into operating challenges even before the Gibson incident. But, from what’s available to outsiders, the wolf appears to be quite far from the door.
Without more information about the endowment, its restrictions, Oberlin’s debt burden, and a full analysis of that art collection’s value and the college’s future ability to liquefy all or part of it, it’s impossible to paint a full picture of the college’s finances.
As I’ve already said, it could be that their footing is less solid than I tentatively conclude it is, but I doubt it.
Oberlin has a chosen a path to obscurity which has been going on for the last 15 years. Twillie’s contribution was to strap-on and fire-up the jet packs.
One recent article noted that she was not in charge when this all started, and to be fair, a whole lot of it was Krislov’s doing. He seemed to be a huge fan of Obummer and likely adopted that air of arrogance of being the local King and the Gibsons were just some village peasants who weren’t doing what they were told.
Oberlin’s real undoing in this matter will be the stark contrast between what they claim to stand for (fairness) and their actions towards the Gibsons, which was well characterized as sociopathic malevolence. Regardless of what points Oberlin argues, they will never escape the big question of “why did you spend $5M on lawyers?” In no world can that ever not be seen as a dick move. Period.
Yesterday morning I bumped into an alum that I hadn’t seen in awhile. Like other alums that I had encountered, he was still of the opinion that the case was about the shoplifting incident itself. I told him that he really needs to look at the court transcripts available on line, and that having read them which would point to Oberlin’s true nature and depth of involvement, it would be hard to look at their virtue seeking in the same way again. Oberlin has the advantage by being able to contact the alumni with their message en masse, but once an alum is exposed to the reality of the trial, it is doubtful that they will ever look upon their alma mater the same way. Over time, those on Oberlin’s side will be reduced to the perennial bubble-dwellers.
It’s not their money. Fiduciary duty. What on earth is that? It’s possible that few people care about such esoteric concepts.
I will publish links to the legal FAQs of both the Gibsons and the College on https://OberlinChaos.com ASAP.
The more one learns of this matter the stronger the moral outrage one feels.
What do you mean, “It’s not their money?” With the qualifier that some gifts are restricted for use for particular purposes, it seems to me that it most certainly is their money. The fact that it’s controlled by a pack of arrogant idiots doesn’t change who that money belongs to.
It is the college’s money, not theirs, and their fiduciary duty is to not spend it on a stupid vendetta against the GIbsons.
“They” ARE “the college.”
MW & JD, I have seen a ton of irrational, immoral and criminal behavior in recent years by liberals, who are not in the least apologetic for it. AntiFa is an example. Anything related to the President is another. A third would be their huge shift toward Socialism, which only ends up impoverishing everyone not in the ruling class – the “deplorables”. These folks need to take a trip to Venezuela. Despite its behavior, I have no confidence that Oberlin’s survival is really at risk long term with this crowd – perhaps the College is their hero. (I do suspect that wealthy liberals may not put their money where their mouths are in sending their children, but that remains to be seen.)
Your comment suggests a potentially effective strategy, although I don’t know if it’s achievable: Obtain a list of alumni and donors, and contact them directly.
My guess is that these lists are jealously guarded, so executing that strategy would require the connivance of a disaffected insider.
I think the College’s financial situation is good enough to permit many years of this conduct. However, one key “card” has yet to be turned over – what happens with applications and enrollment this coming year. The Gibson’s suit results and all the publicity came out after decisions on acceptances had to be in for September 2019. If they get a wake up call for next September’s class – fewer, poorer qualified and less financially capable students – things might change. Otherwise, the current trend is likely to continue.
A lot of damage can be done before next September when the truth will be in. The PR people are boasting about the excellent quality of this year’s freshmen, who were committed to coming to Oberlin before the trial results were in.
JD, I continue to believe that with the liberal Oberlin community at large it is still an open question whether the treatment of Gibson’s is a “feature” or a “bug”. The Board of Trustees conduct to date seems to indicate the former. If they were worried about more than a clearly affordable lawsuit, they would not behave this way. Of course, they may be misled, or stupid, or whatever, but that might be a bad Occam’s Razor choice.
I am becoming convinced that we are all looking at a smokescreen which is obscuring something even uglier. Stupidity and ignorance do not adequately explain things.
I dimly recall that there’s another legal action against Oberlin dating further back, but I don’t recall the details other than that the numbers were much lower. So I wonder what that “even uglier” something might be, in your view.
Your comments are reminding me of the gun owners’ boycott of Dick’s Sporting Goods, the retail chain that recently went to the dark side on AR-15s, and appears to be in the process of exiting the gun business altogether.
Lots of outrage (mine included) accompanied by predictions of dire consequences for the business (mine not included.) As a retired financial analyst, I took a close look at the financials of Dick’s and its larger publicly-held competitors.
The sporting goods retailers, like most other retailers, are under long-term assault by Amazon. That’s the 100-ton gorilla in the retailing living room, including at Dick’s. Not the gun business, which is pretty close to an afterthought for Dick’s.
Dick’s sales are about $8.5 billion, and if the CEO is to be believed, they’ve given up about $250 million in gun and gun-related sales, which at their 5% net margin amounts to about 13 cents a share in a company that earned $3.24 a share last year.
I don’t like what Dick’s did in the least, but a gun owner boycott won’t put them out of business any time soon. Same goes for the Gibsons and Oberlin.
Good segment except for one missing fact. Michelle Malkin is an Oberlin Alum. I’m sure Tucker didn’t realize this fact because who would not hire Ms Malkin.
Link to CBS story which I am currently watching.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oberlin-college-and-gibsons-bakery-a-protest-against-racism-and-a-31-5-million-dollar-defamation-award/
Bye Twillie.
Thanks for the post. I read through the article but have not yet watched the video. From the article, it looks like CBS got it right. Hey, lightning strikes, right?
Hope you are right. Remember, the BOT has been thoroughly vaccinated against truth.