Oberlin to pay bakery $36 million for backing student boycott

Oberlin College has agreed to pay a local bakery $36 million (£32 million) after the inveterately progressive private liberal arts institution aggressively backed student protesters accusing the small family business of racism.

The 3,000-student college and music conservatory in northern Ohio agreed to make the court-ordered payment to Gibson’s Bakery nearly six years after a black student shoplifted from Gibson’s and was chased into the street by a store clerk from the owners’ family.

That led to a physical scuffle involving the student and two of his friends, followed by a prolonged campaign by other Oberlin students to brand Gibson’s as racist.

Oberlin officials, according to a lawsuit filed by the bakery, attended the student-led protests, cut food service contracts on which the bakery relied, and helped distribute fliers accusing Gibson’s of racial profiling and discrimination while giving the local community a list of competitors to use instead.

The 137-year-old bakery, sitting on the small commercial strip just outside Oberlin and long a celebrated partner of the college, struggled to stay in business. It alleged defamation and other civil claims, won a jury trial in 2019, and earlier this year secured a 4-3 decision by the Ohio Supreme Court upholding that verdict.

Oberlin, in a statement agreeing to make the payment and halt further legal appeals, said that it hoped to restore ties in the city that was created by the institution’s founding by fervently anti-slavery Christians in 1833.

“This matter has been painful for everyone,” the college said. “We hope that the end of the litigation will begin the healing of our entire community.”

Oberlin charges more than $80,000 a year in tuition and fees and has an endowment of nearly $1 billion. “The size of this verdict is significant,” the college said of the Gibson’s Bakery settlement. “However, our careful financial planning, which includes insurance coverage, means that we can satisfy our legal obligation without impacting our academic and student experience.”

For the bakery, its losses since the attempted robbery include the deaths of its co-owners at the time, 65-year-old David Gibson, in 2019; and his father, 93-year-old Allyn W. Gibson, this past February.

Their son and grandson, Allyn Gibson, was the clerk who chased the student, Jonathan Aladin, from the store. Mr Aladin and his two friends later pleaded guilty to attempted theft and aggravated trespass, although the case against one of those two was subsequently expunged.

Mr Aladin later wrote, according to court filings, that he did not believe the acts of Gibson’s staff to be racially motivated.

An attorney for the bakery has said that the lawsuit against Oberlin was aimed in part at convincing other US colleges to show maturity when their students overreact to emotional situations.

Oberlin’s history includes being a stop on the Underground Railroad – the network of secret routes and houses used to aid the escape of enslaved African Americans – and being one of the first US colleges to admit both black students and women, both well before the US Civil War. It claims four Nobel laureates and seven Pulitzer winners.

“Oberlin’s core mission is to provide our students with a distinctive and outstanding undergraduate education,” the college said in its statement. “It is our belief,” it said, “that the way forward is to continue to support and strengthen the quality of education for our students now and into the future.”

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com