To the Editors: I’m writing to disagree with almost everything in Booker C. Peek’s recent opinion column, “Oberlin, Gibson’s Should Settle Out-of-Court” (The Oberlin Review, Dec. 1, 2017). I laughed at Peek’s opening comment that the lawsuit “has the potential to be earth-shattering.” Really? Let’s maintain some perspective here. This is a tempest in a teapot, a tiny incident at a small college. Potentially earth-shattering would be President Trump’s brinksmanship with North Korea, or the increasing severity of tropical storms fueled by global climate change. Those are earth-shattering issues that Oberlin and its students should be addressing. Peek also writes about the damage of a financial settlement. Ma...

We should all root for a quick out-of-court resolution between Gibson’s Bakery and Oberlin College. It can be exciting for us to root for our favorite teams; that is what sports are all about. We may debate who the greatest composer is, the finest painter, or the best dancer. Having all those options is what we enjoy in America, along with the right not to take part at all. But there are times when the outcome of a matter affects us quite profoundly. This lawsuit is not a sporting event; its outcome has the potential to be earth-shattering. The founders of the College settled in a wilderness in the 19th century, a site where there were no humans at all. In the intervening period — more than 150 years — we have...

Following last semester’s arrest of College sophomore Elijah Aladin, which sparked intense protests in light of accusations of racial profiling, Aladin is once again facing felony charges and could be indicted by a Lorain County grand jury. Aladin was arrested Nov. 11 following an alleged shoplifting incident and was charged with robbery, a felony charge, when the situation escalated to a physical altercation between him and employee Allyn Gibson. In the most recent development, Aladin was expected to receive a misdemeanor charge for pleading guilty to shoplifting after both his lawyer and City Prosecutor Frank Carlson agreed to drop the felony charges as part of a diversion program. However, municipal court...

I was both heartened and worried by the protests outside of Gibson’s over the past few days, a response to the assault and arrest of an African-American student near the store earlier this week. I was heartened because they reflected our students’ and our institution’s fierce commitment to social justice, freedom, equality and human dignity. We all share a responsibility to reaffirm these commitments every day, and I was proud to see our students doing that. I was worried, however, by two things: first, by a sense that these protests were oddly displaced. There is something incongruous about shouting “No justice, no peace! No racist police!” outside a family-owned business that serves the needs not just of wh...