I guess Oberlin thought they would get away with beating down stupid Townies.
Leading the charge was Oberlin College dean of students, Meredith Raimondo, who joined the baying mob in bullying the Gibson family. She disseminated flyers libelously asserting that Gibson’s is a “racist establishment with a long account of racial profiling and discrimination.â€
Never mind that the “racism†charge is a brazen lie. As the police department pointed out, since 2011, there had been four robberies at the store including Aladin's, “and he was the only black person. There were 40 adults arrested for shoplifting in five years, and 32 were white. There were six adult black suspects arrested and two Asians, and 33 of the 40 were college students.â€
And never mind that Trey James, a Gibson’s employee who is himself black, bluntly told the student newspaper that race had nothing to do with the incident. “If you’re caught shoplifting, you’re going to end up getting arrested,†he told the Oberlin Review. “When you steal from the store, it doesn’t matter what color you are. You can be purple, blue, green, if you steal, you get caught, you get arrested.â€
Oberlin needs to go down, and go down hard.