
O Oberlin, My Oberlin - jseliger
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/o-oberlin-my-oberlin/
======
rdtsc
> Interim assistant dean of students: "I hope we rain fire and brimstone on
> that store"

> "Fuck him. I’d say unleash the students if I wasn’t convinced this needs to
> be put behind us."

Oh wow. That's a very interesting and scary quote. They think the students are
their little minions to brainwash and "unleash" on someone.

Are these people still employed there? Because it would seem they have
severely damaged the reputation of the school for years to come. I wonder also
how the students who participated in the protests feel. Did they realize they
were manipulated, do they regret showing up or even graduating from the school
altogether.

> “Think one person can change the world? So do we,” has been Oberlin’s
> official motto for quite some time.

Well these administrators did change the world, so the motto is true. The only
problem is, it doesn't seem like they changed it for the better.

~~~
mirimir
So far, Dean Raimondo is still there.

[https://heavy.com/news/2019/06/meredith-
raimondo/](https://heavy.com/news/2019/06/meredith-raimondo/)

Edit: There's apparently no legal advantage to firing her:

> Despite being found guilty of libel, Meredith Raimondo won’t have to pay any
> of the $44 million settlement out of pocket. The state jury ordered the
> college to pay the entirety of the settlement. It’s unclear if Raimondo will
> remain on staff moving forward after the court decision on Thursday.

~~~
Vaslo
Wow, talk about a moral hazard - salaried employees can break laws that fine
in the millions and there is no repercussions for the individual. Instead,
endowments and tuition pay, despite the fact those paying or endowing don’t
share those opinions, or at least not to the point they would break libel law.

~~~
luckylion
> despite the fact those paying or endowing don’t share those opinions, or at
> least not to the point they would break libel law

She was found guilty of libel by supporting & being part of the student
protests/boycotts/misinformation campaign. It's hard to say what students
think that weren't immediately at the protests or printing flyers, but insofar
that the only public statements of larger numbers of students were those
protesting, it seems they did share those opinion, and might even go much
further than that.

~~~
mirimir
From what I've read, just about everyone at Oberlin seems supportive.

~~~
subpixel
It’s uncanny, though also depressing, how similar this behavior is to Trump
supporters who will not let the facts get in the way of their support. It’s
like identification: this person signals everything that I hold sacred so I’m
all-in.

~~~
mirimir
I guess that it's a bug. We all have more or less access to information, more
or less training and experience in assessing information, and more or less
free time and/or psychic resources for dealing with it all.

So there's a tendency to take shortcuts. In a good way, makin g intuitive
leaps. In a bad way, getting stuck with our preconceptions.

And then, as you say, there's the social aspect, identifying with our tribe,
hunting pack, or whatever. Wanting acceptance and approval from our peers.

------
cameldrv
What a shame to see such a venerable institution taken over by such an
antisocial group of people and ideology.

~~~
jcims
Did a bit of contract work there over the years, they were one of my favorite
customers. The town is sleepy and the campus is quaint with some absolutely
beautiful buildings. The staff there were always a joy to collaborate with, I
was pretty surprised the first time I heard about this issue and just wanted
to say that it definitely doesn't reflect my experience there or represent the
folks I met.

------
nkurz
Can anyone point to a parallel article that makes Oberlin College look like
the "good guy" here? This article does a pretty convincing job of making them
look ridiculous, but I presume there's another version from a different point
of view that makes them look more heroic.

~~~
jccalhoun
I've read a few accounts about what happened and all of them seem to make it
clear that the faculty and students involved were wrong. I'm a college
professor who tries to be a good ally and while I would suspect that race had
something to do with what happened, everything I've read makes this seem like
a case of mob mentality running wild. That being said, as the article does
state, it seems like only a small number of students and faculty were involved
in the protests.

I am, however, suspicious that there have been so very many editorials about
this when so many people in conservative circles love to talk about "far left
academia" who are "stiffing free speech" and are taking the terrible actions
of a small number of people as representative of all of academia.

~~~
asciident
I feel like blaming rogue actors in an institution or group is a common tactic
in any polarizing situation, and happens in different degrees. High-level
members at the Catholic Church may say the same for their pedophile priests,
or price manipulators at Enron, or greedy scammers on wall street, or when
politicians get embroiled in a scandal.

There is a certain extent at which one might say it's institutionalized, in
which case the bad actors can no longer be excused as only a few bad actors,
but part of a system that enabled it. In all those cases (and this one with
Oberlin), many more people were aware of what was going on, but chose to turn
the other way or even silently go along with it. So this seems "worse" than a
case where an employee is acting on their own accord while hiding it from the
institution.

If we take a position that academia is not at fault because of these more
extreme bad actors, then I don't see how we can be upset at the Catholic
Church, Enron executives, conservatives, etc.

------
luckylion
Will it hurt the college? I suppose it's too early for statistics to show any
trends, but since there's a (seemingly) large "SJW customer base" this does
appeal to, it's not obvious (to me at least) that their enrollment numbers
will plummet. The same goes for donations: their main donors are likely not
conservative but very liberal, and again, they aren't positioning themselves
against them.

------
thisguyuknow
I guess privilege isn't about race after all, power too easily becomes abuse,
and bullies always meet their match.

------
justaguyonline
Never heard of this incident before, very interesting.

What I found the most interesting was the fact that the original arrests
happen the day after the election of Trump. That actually explained a lot to
me about why a young man who was the student treasurer of the college would do
something like this and why the campus would react they way they did. (though
college students tend to shoplift a lot more than you'd expect in my
experience)

Unfortunately, people have a way of acting out their anger and fear about
things that are to big or to far away for them to touch on their local
communities. Sometimes twisting parts of them them into mistaken effigies of
larger events or people they truefully have no connection to.

~~~
liability
The fact that students from Oberlin shoplifted frequently at that shop, and
more often than not those caught doing so were white, should have been enough
to at least get cooler heads to prevail a few days later. But rather than the
situation cooling down as time went on, the libelous rhetoric accelerated.
When the school started doubling down, that was not the day after the
election. So I don't really buy the election outcome hypothesis/excuse.

~~~
gyc
The article also pointed out that the university was also prepared in a few
days after the protests to announce they had not renewed the contract of a
minority faculty member who had made some wildly anti-Semitic statements, and
that the protests may have been amplified to distract from that.

------
brownkonas
The statement posted by Dave Gibson is quite moving:
[https://www.gibsonsbakeryandcandy.com/](https://www.gibsonsbakeryandcandy.com/)

Hopefully, Oberlin ceases their dispute as soon as possible.

------
aklemm
A school like Oberlin in a town like Oberlin needs to have multiple off-campus
social justice trips per year so these students have perspective and real
opportunity to try on their newly-educated energy.

~~~
luckylion
Interesting idea. If you immersed them in a game where they could protest &
fight injustices, would they be less prone to looking for things to protest
irl? I mean, besides "not having time to protest because I'm playing this
game".

------
RickJWagner
IN a good future, Oberlin will erect a monument to the incident and be
resolved to be a sensible institution devoted to real education.

