…is claiming poverty.
Screw them. Put them out of business. Let them serve as an example to the other Social Justice Universities.
[Update a while later]
Campus insanity is migrating into society, and Republicans had better stop it before it’s too late.
This is also a useful reminder that contra leftist tropes, business, and corporations, hate the free market.
Plus this:
…key Republican leaders, like Senator Lamar Alexander (R–Tenn.), are resisting calls from among their colleagues and conservative groups to attach protections for free speech to the endlessly flowing spigot of cash from Washington. Instead, Republicans seem to be substituting real support for free speech with a toothless resolution, which pays lip service to calling out speech codes and speech “zones” as contrary to the First Amendment.
There is a reason (well, lots of reasons) they call them the Stupid Party.
[Friday-morning update]
Will Oberlin learn its lesson? Probably not.
[Update a while later]
The jury hated Oberlin.
And deservedly so.
In my view, the main significance of the jury’s verdict is that is shows how normal people react when they are exposed to today’s campus leftism. You cannot sell to a normal person the idea that it is “racism” for a store to catch a student stealing a bottle of wine, and call the police, merely on account of the student’s skin color. Social justice warrior culture is insane, and is properly judged as such by normal people, who–luckily for them–tend not to encounter it often. The jury’s reaction to the demonization of Gibson’s bakery is, I think, a good indication of how most Americans will respond if, and when, they realize how depraved the Left has become.
Yes.
[Saturday-morning update]
Conor Friedersdorf has the full story:
After that initial round of protests, Oberlin caved to student demands to cancel all its business with the bakery. Later, an Oberlin Police Department investigation, undertaken to probe accusations of racist behavior at the bakery, found that among 40 adults arrested for shoplifting at the business in a five-year period, six were black, suggesting vigilant enforcement against people of all races.
“Suggesting…”
Given that their endowment is $887 million dollars, and their net assets are over a billion, their claims of poverty aren’t going to hold much weight with the jury.
A full award of $33.6 million would come to $103,000 per staff member or $11,800 per student.
The only good thing about colleges like Oberlin and Middlebury is that most of the students they finagle into debt are themselves would-be commissars.
Career politicians have learned there’s no future in solving problems. They’re much more useful if they’re never solved, and can be used for fund-raising.
This is why I remain a supporter of term limits. Letting these people endlessly substitute their institutional imperatives for the imperatives of their constituents is a huge source of mischief.
They’re much more useful if they’re never solved, and can be used for fund-raising.
The same can be said for so-called “Non-Government Organizations” and most charities. If they actually solve the problem they were formed to study or alleviate or eradicate, they put themselves out of business. One that us usually nicely paid for the administrative lifers.
Or they change causes. The March of Dimes was founded to help eradicate polio. When that problem went away, they switched to eradicating birth defects, which can’t be prevented by something simple like a vaccination.
As for government agencies, they’re the closest thing to immortality we’ll ever see in daily life.
Claims of poverty didn’t work. The punishment verdict is in and the local community hit Oberlin beyond the guidance of 2x actual damages. $33 million punitive plus plantiff’s attorney fees. $44 million in total to Gibson.
Oberlin will likely appeal to get it knocked down to $22 million punitive.
Legal Insurrection’s post-verdict story
My lawyer once got a rape charge reduced to “tailgating.”
Oh I love the juxtaposition of these two facts (from the article):
Fact 1)
“Some of the defenders of Oberlin College have claimed that the Gibsons’ were just in it for punishment on this case, and never tried to settle. That could not be further from the truth. According to Lee Plakas, lead attorney for the Gibsons’, a letter was sent before the case was filed in Nov. of 2017 asking for at least some talks on settlement and no answer was sent back (this reporter has seen it).
In early 2018, according to Plakas, two days of talks with a mediator were done, but nothing close to a settlement was achieved. In fact, the talks were initiated by the Gibson’s and “We were ready, willing and able to not have this case go to trial, but Oberlin College and their insurance company seemed to have no interest in settling this case,” Plakas said.”
Fact 2)
“Plus, the jury said that the attorneys’ fees that Gibsons’ would have had to pay out of its verdict awards (often at 30% of jury verdict awards), would now have to be paid by Oberlin College.”
Very sweet
Still think the way to go is to get colleges to accept online classes for their reverence studies and for non-Marxist groups to create competitor courses. This would remove the labor market for a lot of these majors. Sad to say, might be a good way to go for history too.
The other pipeline is Human Resources. Not sure what to do about that one.
She also looked at the Gibson family and said, “The college doesn’t hate you.”
The hell it doesn’t.
Despise you. Loathe you. Wish you were dead and forgotten But “hate you”? Never.
Oberlin wanted to put the Gibson’s out of business.
Oberlin lost and so THEY should be put out of business.
If the world lost Oberlin University, no one except a few profs would ever notice.
Sorry Oberlin College.
This is why the media doesn’t ever report on all the crazy stuff the Democrat’s base does and no politician is ever asked if they agree with specific examples of the craziness. But the politicians do agree and they incrementally apply these policies under the radar until one day everything is different and people ask, “How did this happen?”