Editorial: Educators must learn to be the adults in the room

When Oberlin College and Conservatory, an elite Ohio institution with an endowment in excess of $1 billion, finally agreed to cough up the $36.59 million it owed in legally mandated damages to a struggling bakery in its small college town, a payment it long had delayed, it managed only this weaselly statement: “We hope that the end of the litigation will begin the healing of our entire community.”

Here’s a draft of a better statement: “We’re sorry and we’ll change how we check facts and comport ourselves with regard to the small businesses in our community.”

If you did not follow the case, events began in 2016 when, at minimum, an Oberlin student used a fake I.D. to try to obtain wine at the long-standing local bakery and food store called Gibson’s. That much is not in dispute; the student confessed. But at the time, the incident led to a melee outside and student protesters arguing that the bakery racially profiled its customers, even though the student himself later said he did not believe that to be the case.

Those students, as wrongheaded as the courts later found their arguments, given that the bakery was just trying to follow the prescribed Ohio law, were within their rights to speak and assemble freely.

But expensive trouble arrived for Oberlin when one of it administrators, Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo, handed out flyers alongside the students, accusing the small business of being a “racist establishment” (an explosive charge) with a history of discrimination. The bakery, which saw its business quickly destroyed by the charges, sued for defamation and libel. After a long period of litigation through a trial and an appeals process, it finally emerged the victor. And still Oberlin dragged its heels, insisting it could not be held responsible.

As is the case in other Midwest college towns, Gibson’s business was inextricably linked with Oberlin. Once Oberlin froze it out, and took steps to cancel its catering contracts with the college, it was ruined. Oberlin, which liked to see itself as an elite force for social justice, found itself a Goliath fighting with very little evidence on its side against a strikingly sympathetic David, a 137-year-old, small-town bakery.

This hardly is the only recent incident where educators have been struggling to behave like adults.

This week, right-wing media was enjoying an incident at a prestigious private school in New York City, where Project Veritas somehow reportedly managed to tape an educator saying “we just need some vigilante Dexter” (a fictional serial killer) to take out the “horrible … white boys at the school.”

We don’t condone Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe’s obfuscatory methods, and no doubt the teacher was speaking figuratively, rather than actually wishing for gruesome deaths for a group of her students. But what the heck was she doing speaking like that to anyone?

Assuming the accuracy of the widely distributed tape, any parent of one of the teacher’s rhetorical targets might reasonably conclude she did not have their best interests at heart.

And then there is the matter of Duke University and Brigham Young University, fighting over whether or not racist chants were uttered at a women’s volleyball game last month. One of the Duke players, a sophomore, tweeted that she and other teammates were repeatedly subjected to racist heckling “throughout the entirety of the match,” and that “the slurs and comments grew into threats which caused us to feel unsafe.” BYU did not respond adequately, she wrote, even after the school knew of the issue. A man at the game in Provo, Utah, stood accused.

All such accusations deserve immediate and thorough investigation and that’s what BYU did, first apologizing, then banning a fan it thought could be involved and also combing through hours of tape from multiple cameras that also captured audio, trying to figure out what happened. It said it also interviewed more than 50 people. Eventually, it determined that the accused man was not anywhere near any place in which he could have done what he was accused of, and that there was no evidence of any such incident. The ban initially placed on the fan was thus rescinded with an apology.

Did Duke thank BYU for its efforts? Not at all. It undermined them and implied they were conducted in bad faith. Duke’s vice president and director of athletics simply said of the team, “we unequivocally stand with and champion them, especially when their character is called into question.” Thereafter, the University of South Carolina canceled its scheduled volleyball games with BYU for the next two seasons.

We’re all for institutions caring for their students and doing all they can to keep them safe, but what should have happened here is that Duke as an institution should at least have engaged with the BYU investigation, since they clearly found it inadequate, given the implications of their statement. They could have conducted an inquiry of their own.

It certainly is possible that the investigation missed what happened. But this was not a general accusation — it was a statement that implied a crime had been committed. And anyone accused of a crime deserves not to be convicted without evidence, just as that sophomore deserved two universities working together to find out the truth.

Educational institutions (of all places) should understand that imperative. All three of these unpleasant instances should have been handled differently. People in positions of responsibility must make it clear that they stand with the discovery of the facts, which does not always correspond to the group passions of the moment.

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