Lawsuit rattles Oberlin
Verdict reverberates beyond city, college
OBERLIN, Ohio — The city of Oberlin is quiet this time of year — its population of 8,200 ebbs and flows in tune with the Oberlin College school year, shrinking by 2,800 when the liberal arts college’s students leave campus for the summer.
But even in Oberlin’s quiet season, the nation has felt reverberations from the small city, now home to a high-profile legal case that awarded family-run Gibson’s Bakery $44.2 million — with punitive damages set at $33.2 million on top of an existing $11 million compensatory award — against Oberlin College this week.
The Gibson family sued the college following student protests and a boycott of the shop sparked by a Nov. 9, 2016, incident in which a black college student attempted to shoplift wine from their shop. The student and two friends, also black, faced arrest after an employee and grandson of the store’s owner — who is white — followed the student out of the shop and a physical altercation occurred.
Protests erupted outside the bakery in the days following, claiming that the robbery charge and subsequent conflict were racially motivated and that Gibson’s had a history of racially profiling its customers. During the protests, students distributed printed flyers that labeled the store as a “RACIST establishment with a long account of RACIAL PROFILING and DISCRIMINATION” and provided a list of alternate shopping locations. Following the unrest, the college temporarily suspended its daily bakery order from Gibson’s for two months.
The three arrested students later pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and said they did not believe the Nov. 9 incident was racially motivated.
The family’s lawsuit al- leged libel and accused Ober- lin College of supporting the students’ harmful actions and cutting economic ties with the bakery.
The $11 million compensatory damages accounted for the Gibsons’ past and future economic and non-economic harm and loss. The $33.2 million in punitive damages were set to punish Oberlin, but also to deter future conduct by the college and similar institutions.
“[The jury] vindicated us. They dispensed of any notion of past history of racism and current racism. Never has been the case, never will be the case for our family and our business. That’s the most important part in our minds,” David Gibson told The Blade after the verdict.
Oberlin within an Oberlin
On the ground in downtown Oberlin, community members have had to reckon not only with the local conflict, but the national scrutiny their city has been receiving.
At the bakery, a note card stuck to the clear display case filled with doughnuts and butter cookies directs any inquiring reporters to the Gibsons’ lawyers. A few doors down, a local gallery plastered a makeshift sign on its door: A big “no” symbol with the words “Gibsons/College Lawsuit Talk: Ginko is a lawsuit-talk free zone!”
“Nobody likes that it’s gotten so big. That’s the first thing everyone says,” said Jerry Anderson, owner of Watson Hardware in Oberlin. “If this situation was behind us, it would be better for everyone.”
Janet Haar, director of the Oberlin Business Partnership community-development agency, said her job is made more difficult when the national media are “concerned with a couple of our organizations fighting.”
Hard feelings
Nathan Carpenter, an Oberlin student who has reported on the incident for the Oberlin Review, said the relationship between Gibson’s and the college is a lot more complicated than people would like to think.
“This is not a situation where you had a mob of angry students randomly attacking a local business and being supported by a ‘Goliath’ college. Students felt that they were not being heard or respected, and used their freedom of speech to say so,” Mr. Carpenter said.
Several students who spoke with The Blade said they consciously chose not to shop at Gibson’s because of a common perception among students that the store racially profiles customers. Meg Parker, a 2019 Oberlin graduate, said students of color had told her they felt watched in an uncomfortable way at Gibson’s.
“As a white student, I didn’t experience that — I do think that’s partly because of the color of my skin,” Ms. Parker said.
Kameron Dunbar, also a fresh Oberlin graduate, said he had “uncomfortable experiences” along racial lines in Gibson’s, including times where he was asked to take off his backpack in the store when other, white customers, weren’t asked to do the same. He remembers feeling “watched in ways that may not manifest the same for a white audience.”
“I never wrote a review on Yelp, I didn’t write to Better Business Bureau — I just decided not to patronize there anymore,” Mr. Dunbar said.
Other students have emphasized that the decision to protest and boycott Gibson’s was a personal choice — not one encouraged by Oberlin administrators.
“Students were like, ‘We don’t want Gibson’s doughnuts here anymore. We don’t want to go shop at Gibson’s. And it seems like the college is getting penalized for that,” said another student, Naeisha McClain.
Paying up
Throughout the trial, the Gibsons’ attorneys argued that Oberlin was a “Goliath” against the Gibson Bakery’s David. During the hearings’ punitive phase, the lawyers underscored the college’s economic power, citing its $887 million endowment and $1.4 billion in total assets.
“Everything is relative,” Lee Plakas, the Gibson family’s lead attorney told the jury, arguing that paying $100 is a “mosquito bite” for a millionaire. “If in fact you wanted to deter or discourage and protect not only the Gibson’s, but other people in our society — it’s got to be relative. It can’t be a mosquito bite.”
However, Oberlin’s legal team clarified these numbers, saying the college has been operating in an unsustainable deficit year after year — a situation caused largely by substantial declines in enrollment.
They argued that outside a small portion of its endowment, the college has minimal discretion over how donors’ funds are spent. They told the jury that any punitive damages will impact “people who have nothing to do” with the trial, including employees and future students on financial aid.
“When I read these huge figures for damages, I start to think about where this money will come from and who that will impact. Is Mary, the beloved janitor of my dorm, and who I consider a maternal figure in my life, going to be here next year?” student Elmo Tumbokon said.
Beyond Oberlin
While the aftermath of the Oberlin trial reverberates through the town and campus, the case’s influence could extend to other colleges and universities in the United States, as institutions of higher education grapple with backlash to progressive campus culture and questions surrounding freedom of expression.
After the $11 million verdict, the case’s national magnitude was not lost on either litigating side, who both ensured the jury — barred from all media during the trial — understood this week the shock wave that its initial verdict sent around the country.
Before the jury withdrew to deliberate punitive damages Thursday, Mr. Plakas reminded jurors that the case represented a chance to “tip [the nation] in the right direction.”
He underscored that imposing a penalty on the college could send a larger message that institutions should do a better job providing “discipline and guidance” to their students, adding that colleges like Oberlin are “not doing students any favors by letting them act like nursery-school students and threaten tantrums or throw tantrums.”
“You forevermore in this case will know that you executed, I hope, the power that helps our entire country, students everywhere,” Mr. Plakas said. “Forevermore, depending upon your verdict, you will be known as the Gibson Bakery jury or a Gibson Bakery juror . ... To have that badge, to have that mantle — that is fate.”
Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of “The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture”, paints the suit as “a very defining moment for people in understanding the ideological environment on college campuses.”
She criticized “the adults on campus” at Oberlin for allowing the incident to become so “inflamed” and encouraging students to paint themselves as victims of racial discrimination “in the most tolerant environment in human history.”
In an interview with The Blade, Mr. Dunbar said the common portrayal of the protesting students as stupid or irrational is too simplistic and misses out on broader factors at play. While he acknowledged that students are not above criticism and it can be argued that protesters rushed to judgment, Mr. Dunbar stressed that many common critiques disregard that students sincerely felt they were “responding to a grave ill in the community.”
“Nobody wants to protest. Students don’t get joy from waking up in the morning and asking, ‘What are we gonna protest next?’ “he said. “[The days of the protests] were some of the most emotionally exhausting days of my life . ... I think it’s easy to essentialize this moment into another ‘college kids gone crazy’ or ‘radical Oberlin kids gone wild’ ... that’s sort of a reductionist take. For the Oberlin community, this is so serious, and I just wish the broader community was afforded the opportunity to gain the nuance that I have.”
Evan Gerstmann, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles who attended Oberlin for his undergraduate studies, posits that the current national climate of political polarization, economic inequality, and strained race relations likely factored into the jury’s decision. The situation’s specifics — such as profanity used by student demonstrators and unprofessionalism in email and text exchanges between administrators — “played into what I imagine were the jurors’ worst assumptions about schools like Oberlin,” he said.
“We’re living in not just angry times, but in punitive times . ... I don’t think people are going to know the Oberlin jurors in 10 years,” Mr. Gerstmann said. “I think what people will remember about our time is how divided the country was, how angry people were, how punitive people have gotten on both the left and the right . ... Progressive campus culture has concerning aspects, but I don’t think this verdict is going to prove that. Fear rarely generates positive results.”
Experts in law, politics, and higher education worry the jury’s verdict holds broader implications for free expression on college and university campuses throughout the country. In particular, they question whether higher-education institutions will now feel pressured to temper the role administrators should play in both maintaining safe atmospheres during demonstrations and the extent to which colleges can be held responsible for student speech.
In a letter sent following the jury’s initial $11 million verdict to students and alumni by Oberlin Vice President and general counsel Donica Thomas Varner, she argued that neither the college nor Meredith Raimondo, college vice president and dean of students, defamed the business or its owners, but rather acted to ensure the protection of the students’ free speech, lawfulness and safety at the demonstrations.
“I think [this case] will make institutions be more cautious about the messages they send out to students and the ways that they engage in communication around these complex issues of freedom of expression, concerns about equity and inclusion, and community/college relationships,” said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Appeal possible
The $44.2 million penalty is not set in stone. Should the college decide to appeal the jury’s decision, some experts suspect that an appellate court would view the college’s argument more favorably, given legal precedent to favor First Amendment free-speech rights in many libel cases.
Although the outcome in this circumstance is difficult to predict because of its complicated nature, with cases involving public figures or matters of public interest, a successful libel suit often is a difficult victory to claim, experts say.
Yet it remains unclear whether the college plans to appeal. While the Gibsons’ lawyers say motions likely will be filed because of the Ohio punitive-damages cap of no more than twice the compensatory damages, meaning a total cap of $33 million in damages, not $44.2 million. The college’s law firm declined to comment Friday and passed The Blade’s inquiry to Oberlin College, which did not provide a response.
Oberlin President Carmen Twillie Ambar sent an email to students Friday morning assuring them the decision does not signal a long-term crisis for the college.
“This is not the final outcome,” Ms. Ambar wrote. “This is, in fact, just one step along the way of what may turn out to be a lengthy and complex legal process. I want to assure you that none of this will sway us from our core values. It will not distract, deter, or materially harm our educational mission, for today’s students or for generations to come.”