Progressive Oberlin College (Ohio) will pay $36.6 million to Gibson´s Bakery for defamation. The university announced that it will indemnify the local business after the school's involvement in a campaign of false accusations of racism was proven in court.
The legal dispute began in 2016 when, according to the proven facts, black students attempted to purchase alcoholic beverages at the store with a fake ID and steal several bottles from the establishment. A store worker (Allyn Gibson, grandson of the owner) who had observed the incident, then chased and then intercepted one of them in the street. Both the robber and his two companions then proceeded to assault the bakery employee.
Despite the facts, a community backlash began in protest against Gibson´s Bakery, which they falsely accused of racial profiling and discrimination. Protests in which numerous Oberlin College students and college officials participated - including the dean of the college - demonstrated in the court's view that Oberlin College was clearly involved in the harassment and smear campaign against Gibson Bakery. Students and university officials alike, had encouraged citizens not to shop at Gibson.
Witch hunt against Gibson´s Bakery
During the trial, the student accused of robbery himself acknowledged the facts and read a statement in which he acknowledged that the store clerk was justified in attempting to restrain him and that his actions were not racially motivated. However, the student movements and the university itself seized the moment to make their campaign woke. A moment that was not accidental. A day before the events, Donald Trump had been elected president of the country and thus began a campaign of unprecedented racial mobilization that would culminate in episodes of violence and crime such as those carried out by the radical Black Lives Matter movement.
The dispute turned a one-time episode of robbery into a national debate about racism and justice. Oberlin College decided to get involved by not only canceling orders to Gibson´s, but by singling out and labeling the local business as racist. Now they will have to pay a sum of money large enough to make certain institutions in the country think twice before defaming someone innocent.
Although Oberlin College has plenty of money to pay the settlement - tuition at the college is more than $61,000 a year - for the Gibson´s Bakery defense, sanity has prevailed. "The truth matters," said Lee E. Plakas, attorney for the Gibson family. "David, supported by a principled community, can still defeat Goliath," the lawyer stressed.
Gibson v. Oberlin College by VozMedia on Scribd
