@OHMomof2 and @thibault: whether Oberlin was participating “more” or “less” for this particular protest than others is beside the point. It could well be that Oberlin had a well-documented history of participation in all sorts of protests. The point in this particular incident is that the protest was 1) defamatory and harmful to the Gibson’s and 2) shown to include Oberlin’s participation and planning.
^ will also add that when it comes to the bullhorn and the passing out of the defamatory flyers, there were witnesses outside the school community who testified that Raimondo’s actions indicated she was helping out, even running things. One of the witnesses was a journalist from the local paper and his testimony was pretty solid, IMO.
There were negative Yelp reviews (well at least one, i didn’t read them all) prior to the incident and protest though. That’s more in line what I’d expect from this age group.
^ Sure. Agree. There were probably negative Facebook and Reddit comments as well LOL. As many small businesses are aware, anyone can say anything on the internet. As a result, those reviews can’t exactly be entered into evidence. You need witnesses who can testify under oath and be cross-examined as to specific incidents of racial profiling and racial discrimination in order to support the factual statement that was on the flyer. Absent that, you have a defamation suit which you could very well lose 
Many of the questions raised above about how the college was deemed legally responsible are covered in this summary by a journalist who covered the trial: https://quillette.com/2019/06/20/ideology-and-facts-collide-at-oberlin-college/
@twoinanddone I already found a factual error in that reporting, in:
There was at least one that I read on yelp today. The truth may be that police and others testified to that, but it’s not true.
I’m a little leery of the bias on the part of this reporter as well, given the clear slant of the reporting at his home publication.
I don’t have any skin in the game but the entire situation is absurd. Oberlin the school is on the hook for a huge $ settlement, not the President of the school. Someone above her is paying the bills and wants to continue the fight. She’s just the mouthpiece. What are they trying to prove? What is the agenda here?
Then reimbursing students from Oberlin to buy gloves to aid a “protest” against people that won a settlement against Oberlin. Helping a protest to “save the whales” or “homelessness” is fine but to help protesters targeting people you owe money. Basically mercenaries. The term “useful idiot” comes to mind.
In the normal world this would’ve been settled way before it went to court and never spoken of again. Let’s keep spending millions of $ to make a point and then double down and spend more on appeals? Really? All I can say is Wow. The optics from the outside look awful. Apparently a judge and jury felt the same way.
Weren’t the gloves reimbursed for the original protest, meaning well before the Gibsons took Oberlin to court?
For starters, see Trial Exhibits 33, 74 and 211.
Exhibit 33 shows VP of Students/Dean Meredith Raimondo’s Nov 10, 2016 email to colleagues in which she proposes a meeting to discuss ways to support a “student protest planned for a local business.”
It turned out that a principal way to support this protest was for employees of the college to print and later distribute (see below) defamatory flyers accusing the Gibsons of racial profiling.
Exhibit 74 shows Raimondo’s email authorizing reimbursement of student demonstrators by the College for gloves etc.
Exhibit 211 is the notorious email, apropos of an Oberlin professor’s request that Oberlin stop tormenting the Gibsons, in which Raimondo says “F— [Roger Copeland]. I’d say UNLEASH THE STUDENTS …” [emphasis mine]. This email clearly shows that Raimondo considered herself to have the authority and the influence needed to orchestrate student activity.
Next, see the sworn testimony at trial from five eyewitnesses, May 10-15, who testified that they heard and saw Dean Raimondo directing students with a bullhorn and that not only Raimondo but also Julio Reyes, Assistant Director of the Oberlin Multicultural Resource Center, who reported to Dean Raimondo, distributing the defamatory flyers to students.
- Jason Hawk, an Editor of the Oberlin News Tribune-- testified that Raimondo confronted him at the demonstration, told him to stop taking photographs for the newspaper, and then pushed a defamatory flyer on him without being asked for one ("Q: it was Raimondo's idea to give [you] the flyer? Answer: Yes" )-- May 10, 2019 Trial Transcript, pp. 98, 101-02, 104
- Trey James, who testified he saw Raimondo "standing directly in front of the [Gibson's] store with a megaphone in her hand, directing some of the activities of the students." Trey James also witnessed Raimondo handing out, while talking through the bullhorn, "half a stack of a paper ream" of the defamatory anti-Gibson flyers to a student, who then distributed them to the protestors and also handed out flyers to other students multiple times at the demonstration--May 14, 2019 Trial Transcript, pp. 178-179
- Rick McDaniel, a longtime Oberlin resident and Oberlin College Director of Security from 1980-1995, also testified, as did Trey James and Jason Hawk, that he heard Raimondo speaking continuously on the bullhorn, "orchestrating" the students' activities including directing students where to go for refreshment, bathrooms etc and also "where to make copies of the flyers."--May 13, 2019 Trial Transcript, p. 28.
Rick McDaniel also testified, and police records attest to this as well, that a self-identified college official (“I’m with the college”) who turned out to be Julio Reyes, Raimondo’s subordinate, physically threaten him and also block him from taking photos of the demonstration by holding up a “stack of flyers” in front of McDaniel’s cell phone camera–May 13, 2019 Trial Transcript, pp. 15-16
- Longtime Oberlin resident, Sue McDaniel, testified that she saw Raimondo "telling the students what to do", that Raimondo was "standing in the middle of the students [with] students on all sides of her... she was the center of attention... [she was ] extremely authoritative" and "at one point, the students actually moved in concert with, closer to her..."--May 15, 2019 Trial Transcript, p. 07
- Finally, Oberlin police Sgt. Victor Ortiz testified that college officials were passing out flyers and also were doing "nothing to calm down the situation" at the demonstration, which was at risk of turning into what Sgt. Ortiz described, in a phone call he made from the scene to a friend who worked for the college, as a potential "riot" ("Hey, if we can't get this under control, I'm going to call the county riot team in")--May 10, 2019 Trial Transcript, p. 155
“There was at least one that I read on yelp today. The truth may be that police and others testified to that, but it’s not true.”
@OHmomof2 - the Yelp comment references an actual verifiable complaint, or the yelp comment IS a complaint? Because I believe that by “complaint” the police were referring to statements made to the police such as “I was in the store and saw Allyn Gibson do this or that.” No complaint of that sort seems to exist, and the police testified under oath to that effect. So if they were lying, Oberlin’s own attorneys sure didn’t catch it
The students made plenty of statements to the police about what happened during the shoplifting and subsequent assault on young Allyn Gibson, but their statements completely contradicted the police’s own body cams, among other evidence.
After re-reading the articles Oberlin helped protesters before the settlement. Still doesn’t look good when you aid protesters against simple business owners in-town. Even after the police investigated.
It also doesn’t sound any better after re-reading, maybe worse. It looked like Oberlin tried to stiff-arm the local businesses into doing their bidding by dropping charges or else suffer the consequences. Where were the adults?
“It also doesn’t sound any better after re-reading, maybe worse. It looked like Oberlin tried to stiff-arm the local businesses into doing their bidding by dropping charges or else suffer the consequences. Where were the adults?”
- That is a correct assessment of Oberlin's antics, it's a good question and Oberlin has yet to answer intelligently LOL.
Very comprehensive post there @thibault , I appreciate that.
It makes me wonder where the right of a dean/professor to free speech ends and where that speech is said to be “representing the college” begins?
It is a complaint posted a couple of years before the incident. I assume it is verifiable if anyone wanted to chase it down, but also appears to be a student who graduated perhaps prior to the incident she’s from North Carolina, her profile says, so likely not in Oberlin area anymore.
^@OHmomof2 - “verifiable”? You mean this person posted online or filed an actual report with police?
Details are helpful. Post the link if you need to.
No, I mean the person posted a review and a name and a city and yelp allows messaging. YMMV but it’s possible she could have been contacted if anyone had wanted to. Indeed that review was referred to in the case, by Oberlin, which is how i knew to look for it.
If I felt a store was treating me badly, I would (and have) gone right to review sites to post my experience. Did so last week, in fact.
I would not call the police - having a store owner be rude to me is not a crime, even if I think it’s because of my race or anything else. Who would call the police for that, honestly?
“It makes me wonder where the right of a dean/professor to free speech ends and where that speech is said to be “representing the college” begins?”
- Declining to assist with organizing and paying for the protest in her capacity as Dean of Students would have been a good start.
In all the years of Gibsons and Yelp, there are only 73 reviews. Most of the reviews are positive. A dozen or so are negative - and most of those are immediately after the November incident. Only one mentions possible racial profiling.
In her own words…
** “I’m not sure if my experience was a result of racial profiling but I have heard from other students who are not white that they have been treated rudely and regarded with suspicion as well.” **
A Gibsons employee said, “Ma’am you need to pay for those,” as she was walking out of the store with a handful of merchandise. Yes, the merchandise was previously purchased at the store next door, but the Gibson employee didn’t know that and seemed to be doing his job by telling her she needed to pay for the items. She corrected him. Story over…except that she felt the need to accuse Gibsons of racism on Yelp, but that’s the world we live in.
It may be true that Gibson treated non-white students rudely and with suspicion, but Gibsons also treated white students rudely and with suspicion, and with more regularity according to official police reports. It is well documented that Gibsons was regularly pilfered by Oberlin students and they’ve had enough of it.
Yes I definitely go the sense that service there was generally not very good for a lot of reviewers.
Is it, legally? Would that have been enough to avoid the college being sued?
“Paying for the protest” is odd language, it suggests the protesters were hired by the college. I don’t think that accusation has even been made, has it?
“It makes me wonder where the right of a dean/professor to free speech ends and where that speech is said to be ‘representing the college’ begins?”
Please don’t be led astray by the College’s repeated attempts to invoke free speech. That is not at issue here, for the simple and obvious reason that DEFAMATORY speech - printing and distributing (i.e. “publishing,” in the law’s jargon) VERIFIABLE claims that the Gibsons committed illegal acts - defamatory speech is not covered by the First Amendment.
Again, there simply is no free speech issue here.
What Dean Raimondo did was to use her authority, influence and her office’s institutional resources to support malicious, repeated acts of defamation that resulted in real and very significant harm to the Gibsons. This is fact. This is the material point, the issue on which the trial and the verdict and the judgment all turned.
Defamation can’t be mitigated by anything other than facts. Oberlin presented no factual evidence at all in support of the defamatory assertions that were published by Oberlin’s Dean of students and other officers of the College.
Hope that helps.
Also, FWIW, I really wish Oberlin would turn itself around and do the right thing here-- that is, to do exactly as former President Fred Starr recommends. I don’t want Oberlin College to fail; in fact I earnestly desire the opposite.
Also, please stop bringing up yelp. It’s a well-known fact that most online review sites are cluttered with spambots and fake reviews, crazy people’s rants and other nonsense. There is an entire category of startups and consultants specializing in detecting, tracking, exposing and measuring this fakery. An online complaint is not by itself valid, true or otherwise meaningful.
Again, our anglo-american legal system rests on facts. As Elton John said in his successful libel suit back in the day against one of the British tabloids that published false accounts of him committing gross and criminal acts with children, “They can say whatever they want about me-- call me a poof, an old sod, say I can’t sing-- but they MUSTN’T PRINT LIES about me.”
You can’t accuse people of specific criminal actions without factual evidence to support your claims.