https://www.commentarymagazine.com/artic...y-oberlin/
This was the case where Oberlin College in Ohio boycotted a 140 year old business because they arrested 3 students who were shoplifting wine.
This Dean Raimondo is dangerously scarily demented.
"...The previous day, a Lorain County jury had awarded Gibson’s an astounding $33 million in punitive damages in addition to the $11.2 million it had already assigned to the family business for compensatory damages.
The jury found that Oberlin College and its dean of students had maliciously libeled the Gibson family as racists and deliberately damaged their business by suspending and later cancelling its century-long business relationship with the bakery—all while unofficially encouraging a student boycott. And the jury found that the college had intentionally inflicted emotional distress on the Gibsons themselves....
In August 2017, nine months after his arrest, Jonathan Aladin pled guilty to misdemeanor charges of attempted theft, aggravated trespassing, and underage purchase of alcohol. His friends pled guilty to the first two charges. All three students read statements to the court acknowledging that Allyn Gibson had been within his rights to detain them and that his actions had not been racially motivated. On the sidelines of the court, the director of Oberlin’s Multicultural Resource Center and interim assistant dean of students, Antoinette Myers, texted her supervisor, Dean Raimondo. “After a year”—that is, after the students were eligible to have their criminal records expunged—“I hope we rain fire and brimstone on that store,” Myers wrote....
But it was Copeland’s letter that upset administrators. Upon reading it, Oberlin’s Vice President of Communications Ben Jones texted Meredith Raimondo the following: “**** ROGER COPELAND!” To which Raimondo responded, “**** him. I’d say unleash the students if I wasn’t convinced this needs to be put behind us.” Which is to say, if prudence hadn’t suggested otherwise at that moment, Oberlin’s dean of students thought it would be a good idea to incite students against a professor for urging a respect for facts, law, and the welfare of one’s neighbors....
Apparently concerned that the protests were backfiring, a worried Raimondo emailed the Oberlin Student Senate: “At this point, demonstrations are driving u[p] Gibson’s business.” The Saturday demonstrations were duly cancelled, a fact that suggests that Raimondo knew not only how to “unleash the students,” but how to re-leash them....
As for Raimondo and Tita Reed, who were named as the point persons in finding that “full and true narrative,” David Gibson testified that Raimondo warned him that she had sent people door-to-door to ask if the Gibsons were racists. Raimondo denied that in court—but in any event, no such witnesses were produced by Oberlin (truth is, of course, always an absolute defense against libel). While she was ostensibly working on finding the “full and true narrative,” Reed was forwarded an email from an Oberlin employee and resident of the town who wrote: “I have talked to 15 townie friends who are poc (persons of color) and they are disgusted and embarrassed by the protest. In their view, the kid was breaking the law, period (even if he wasn’t shoplifting, he was underage). To them this is not a race issue at all and they do not believe the Gibsons are racist. They believe the students have picked the wrong target. … I find this misdirected rage very disturbing, and it’s only going to widen the gap (between) town and gown.”
The college president’s special assistant for community relations responded: “Doesn’t change a damn thing for me....""
