Pending an appeal, that’s their only move.
This is one angry jury; they just added $33 million in damages. See this post for details.
Why are they so angry? I’m gonna go ahead and guess.
- Most people really hate bullies.
- The jury perceives itself to be defending not just a family but a way of life, and the reputation of its community (which, by the way, voted for Hillary Clinton). These are things they take very seriously.
- Oberlin has throughout this fiasco handled things with the delicacy, kindness, and rationality of Donald Trump. In the way of Trump, it has basically, and repeatedly, dismissed the jury as losers. The jury did not take this well.
Oberlin at this point desperately needs an outside public relations firm. But apparently it is too clueless even to realize that.
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UD thanks tp.
June 14th, 2019 at 1:34AM
Isn’t the job of a liberals arts education the creation of people capable of assessing the quality of evidence and proof of arguments? Surveillance cameras caught the students in a lie, but I guess at Oberlin, who you gonna believe? Cliches or your lying eyes??
June 14th, 2019 at 9:47AM
The students went ahead and confessed. It’s the administrators who refuse to see the light.
June 14th, 2019 at 10:32AM
The world of student affairs, especially at small liberal arts colleges, attracts many individuals who come from the activist tradition. Students see them as allies who advocate for them with the administration. Nothing wrong with that. The problems arise when student affairs administrators start to crave the affirmation of the students and cross the boundary from being advocates to being promoters and motivators of sophomoric woke-ness. That’s when you get situations like this. I hope other schools are watching this story.
June 14th, 2019 at 12:46PM
It would probably be a good idea for Oberlin’s administration to decree a military-style “stand-down” for a day and have a come-to-Jesus/YWH/Allah/Buddha/Gaia/etc. revival meeting about institutional liability, professional behavior, and such.
Even then, some people don’t get it or can’t follow directions. My place had to pay out in a harassment case partly because the vp-let in charge pretty much ignored the whole set of procedures carefully laid out in the manual until it was too late.
June 14th, 2019 at 2:51PM
Polish Peter:”crave the affirmation of students” says it. These people are the functional equivalent of sports-mad administrators who crave the affirmation of the football players.
June 14th, 2019 at 5:11PM
I think you’re on to something, UD. There really does seem to be a functional parallel between the sports-mad administrators and the administrative cheerleaders for woke-ness.
June 14th, 2019 at 8:38PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/opinion/liberal-college-administrators.html
don’t think “liberal” is any longer the right word for what’s described here.