Oberlin College has seen no fewer than seven alleged bias incidents in the last month — five separate acts of racist and homophobic graffiti, one robbery, and a sighting of a figure in a klan robe. The college cancelled classes this Monday for a series of all-campus events relating to the incidents, and as many as a third of Oberlin’s undergraduates are said to have attended a rally against hate that afternoon.

Recently, however, some have alleged that the whole string of incidents may have been invented.

On Tuesday, Michelle Malkin accused the college’s students of “manufacturing hate crimes hoaxes.” Similarly, an article in the Daily Caller declared that, “given the liberal culture at Oberlin,” it is “highly unlikely that the student perpetrators were motivated by racial (or anti-gay or anti-Semitic) animus.” It’s far more plausible, that writer suggests, that “the students who vandalized the campus wanted to call attention to the horror of hate crimes by committing faux hate crimes themselves.”

As I was writing this story Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars, chimed in with a similar allegation, saying that “the racial and anti-gay provocations scrawled on several posters and notes appear now to have been the work of two student hoaxers.”

What’s the evidence for these charges? It turns out that there isn’t much.

Oberlin police have suggested that the “klansman” a student saw on campus late on Sunday night may have been a person who was later seen on campus wrapped in a blanket. The two sightings were half a mile away from one another, however, and the student who made the klan report insists that she could not have been mistaken. A college spokesperson late Tuesday indicated that the incident remained unresolved.

Even if the klan incident was a case of mistaken identity, moreover, that doesn’t point toward a hoax. And as of right now the evidence that the earlier graffiti incidents were falsified is thin at best.

The first suggestion that the graffiti might have been fake came in a Monday Gawker story that quoted “a person with knowledge of faculty and administration discussion” as saying that he or she had heard that unofficial reports had suggested that a student connected with the Oberlin Multicultural Resource Center was behind the vandalism. That Gawker report, however, was later updated to stress that the anonymous third-hand allegation was nothing more than “a rumor.”

While the Gawker allegation was refuted almost as quickly as it appeared, conservative writers have leaned heavily on a story in the Guardian that quoted an Oberlin police spokesperson as saying that his “understanding” was that two students were involved in the graffiti, and that they had been identified and removed from campus. Later in the story the Guardian writer — no longer citing the officer — said that it remained “unclear if they were motivated by racial hatred, or – as has been suggested – were attempting a commentary on free speech.”

Conservative commenters have made much of Oberlin’s refusal to identify the race of the suspects or to comment on their motivations, but such a response is entirely appropriate, particularly given the fact that the accused appear to be students — and the fact that, according to Oberlin’s student newspaper, at least one of those students has denied responsibility for the graffiti.

It does not appear, however, that Oberlin is treating the situation as a hoax perpetrated by two (identified and neutralized) students. The campus has stepped up security measures and police patrols this week, and just yesterday the college announced that it had asked for and received the assistance of the FBI in investigating the incidents.

Hoax hate crimes are not unheard-of on American campuses, and it’s possible that some or all of this semester’s Oberlin incidents will prove to be examples of that. But there is as of now no publicly available evidence indicating that either Oberlin or the police have made such a determination.

Meanwhile, evidence to the contrary — that these were in fact actual bias crimes — continues to mount.

Oberlin’s student newspaper reported this morning that individuals expressing bigoted views have been active in recent months on various social media sites with ties to Oberlin. They quote the founder of one such site, who shut down his service when it became a magnet for bigoted postings, as saying that he saw the recent wave of graffiti as “a natural escalation” of what he had recently witnessed online.

Oberlin’s Dean of Students concurred, saying there had been “a flood of racist propaganda on campus in recent weeks, including general references to the KKK and other white supremacist groups.” Meanwhile, several faculty members of color have this week reported incidents of online harassment that took place prior to Monday’s cancellation of classes.

In just about every false hate-crime act I’ve seen on American campuses in the two decades I’ve been paying attention to this stuff, the hoax was a one-time thing, either an isolated incident or a faked campaign against a “target” who later turned out to be the perpetrator. The Oberlin situation, in which a variety of attacks have been launched across a number of online platforms and in real life over a period of months, doesn’t fit the pattern.

Again, it’s possible that these are all hoaxes. But the suggestion that they’ve been proven to be hoaxes, or that they’re presumptively hoaxes?

The evidence just isn’t there.

The cancellation of classes at Oberlin College on Monday in response to a wave of bias crimes was the biggest higher education story in the nation this week. And according to an account written by Oberlin students of color for the campus newspaper we all got the story completely wrong.

In their public statements, Oberlin administrators described the decision to cancel classes and hold a campus-wide series of teach-ins and rallies as their own. But a student timeline of the events of Sunday night and Monday morning portrays it as a plan that “was advocated for and organized by students,” one that administrators initially refused to accept.

Students got top Oberlin administrators out of bed in the middle of the night to present their demands, they say, and it wasn’t until they began organizing to shut down the campus that the administration gave in.

The timeline, written by “students of the Africana community” and posted on the website of the Oberlin Review student newspaper late this week, was based on “time-stamped text messages and status updates as well as minutes from the emergency meeting” late Sunday night.

According to the timeline, a resident of Oberlin’s Afrikan Heritage House saw an unidentified individual walking on campus “in what appears to be traditional Ku Klux Klan regalia” shortly before 1:15 Monday morning and contacted their RA. Within a few minutes residence officials, campus security, and Oberlin Dean of Students Eric Estes had been notified.

At approximately 1:30 am RAs in the Afrikan Heritage House woke the house’s residents for a house meeting to discuss the incident. Estes arrived at the Afrikan Heritage House at 1:40 am. Students from outside Afrikan Heritage House were called over the next while, and the group continued to meet with campus officials and police.

At 2:49 am, Oberlin president Marvin Krislov arrived at the meeting.

Sometime after 3 am students asked President Krislov to cancel classes for Monday, and he refused, saying that all of the college’s deans would have to agree, and that it would not be possible to contact them at that time of the night.

At 3:40 am Meredith Gadsby, the chair of the Oberlin Africana Studies Department, told the students assembled in the Afrikan Heritage House that her department would cancel its classes for the day and would work to organize a noon teach-in.

Between four and five o’clock, as administrators continued to dismiss the idea of a full cancellation of classes, students developed a plan to blockade the campus at the start of the day.

Two excerpts from the timeline describe what happened next:

4:44 a.m. Plans for a Rally and Blockade solidify and working groups form. One working group maps out the exits of academic buildings such as King and the Science Center for the Blockade. Another working group compiles a letter to faculty members asking them to cancel classes in solidarity with students. An additional working group creates signs and flyers for the blockade and another working group organizes the rally to take place at 2 p.m. During the planning, a student requests that Marjorie Burton leave to allow the students to plan.

…

5:12 a.m. President Krislov, Dean Estes and Dean Stull state that classes will be canceled.

Update | A friend forwards a link to a Wednesday blogpost by Oberlin Vice President for Communications Ben Jones, in which Jones writes that “the genesis of Monday’s program was largely the work of students and I take full responsibility for any college communications that misrepresented this.”

In a victory for students, alumni, and faculty, and a startling reversal for administrators, the Cooper Union board of trustees this week announced that they will retain the college’s free tuition policy while they continue to evaluate Cooper Union’s financial situation.

A vote on a proposal to impose tuition was widely expected at Wednesday’s meeting, with many expecting the trustees to break with the college’s history of free access to all undergraduate admittees. But months of increasingly strong and well-organized opposition from student activists, Cooper Union professors, and alumni groups appear to have made an impact.

Cooper Union has been tuition-free since the 19th century. Today, with fewer than a dozen free colleges and universities remaining in the United States, the struggle to keep Cooper Union on the list drew national attention.

Public opposition to the tuition policy has been led by Cooper Union undergrads. Though they are not in the administration’s crosshairs themselves — the college has never contemplated imposing tuition fees on currently enrolled students — they have portrayed the imposition of tuition as a betrayal of the college’s principles and a threat to its reputation. A group of activists occupied Cooper’s most historic building for a week in December, and others have staged a series of protests and actions that have drawn substantial media attention.

In a welcome departure from much recent precedent in tuition fights, faculty have largely stood with students in their campaign, affirming the centrality of CU’s free education policy to the college’s mission. (In retaliation for the Art School faculty’s refusal to approve a tuition proposal, the college’s administration last month cancelled all early admission decisions for the fall’s incoming Art School class.)

Although the trustees have not taken tuition off the table for the future in yesterday’s statement, free tuition for the class of 2017 has been preserved. A new cohort of students will enter the college under the current policy. And having been jerked around for months by the administration on this question, it’s hard to imagine them not arriving even more committed to free tuition than their predecessors.

In another potentially major development, the Trustees announced in their Thursday statement that they will be exploring “the matter of student participation at meetings of the Board of Trustees” in the near future. Currently no students sit on the board, and greater involvement in college governance has been one of the demands of the current wave of Cooper student activists.

The fight to preserve free education at Cooper Union isn’t over. No fight to preserve free anything ever is. But every Cooper Union trustee meeting that passes without a vote to impose tuition is a victory — for student activism and for faculty prerogatives in governance, but also for Cooper Union itself, and for the ideal of accessible higher education in the United States.

This occasional roundup of student movement stories is put together by Isabelle Nastasia, a CUNY undergrad, New York Students Rising organizer, and friend of this site. 

Featured Campus of the Day – Occidental College

[Trigger warning: contains discussion on sexual assault and campus policy]

Sexual Assault Reported Near Occidental College – NBC Los Angeles

A California College Hopes to Model Best Sexual Assault Policies – Ms. Magazine

Information on the student groups responsible for this organizing can be found here: Oxy Sexual Assault Coalition

A Tumblr that students and other community members are using to speak out: Dear Oxy

A good friend doing similar organizing at Cornell University responded to this news from Oxy by saying:

“This is tricky issue, because sometimes these alerts can endanger the survivor and the survivor might prefer not to have the police report released. we have these “crime alerts” sent to all the Cornell student body regularly concerning “forcible touching” (they don’t use the term rape), and the reports have manifested in problematic ways. (i.e., because they are so sterile in their writing, i.e. “woman forcible touched on her buttocks,” people have reduced them to jokes). I’m not saying that this is a reason to not have crime alert systems – there are clear benefits – but I think there should be a discussion with a survivor-dominated group about what would best empower Oxy students.”

Very important to keep these ideas in mind moving forward doing this kind of student organizing on all of our campuses.

Important perspectives on combating educational injustice:

Amnesty Now – Jacobin (My personal favorite piece of the week)

Emory Groups Rally Against Racism – Emory Wheel

Student Debt Nearly Tripled in 8 Years – HuffPo

Quebec Tuition Hike Draws 10,000 Back to the Streets – Rabble

 Dispatches from the Student Movement (March 1st) – The Nation

L’Appel De Lasse a Manifester A Ete Entendu – Le Devoir

Cross Class Coalition at Columbia University – Waging Nonviolence

Why We are Occupying Sussex University – Guardian

Vanderbilt University Divests for Land Grab in Africa – Oakland Institute

Pathways, the CUNY administration’s controversial system-wide general education plan, is supposed to be in place by this fall, but meeting that goal may prove difficult.

Yesterday the College Senate at LaGuardia Community College in Queens — a joint student-faculty governance body — voted 23 to 7 to declare a moratorium on Pathways implementation, making LaGuardia the latest in a string of colleges to either decline to approve Pathways courses or actively declare their refusal to do so.

Last fall an administrator at Queensborough Community College was forced to back down from and apologize for a threat to dismantle the QCC English Department — canceling job searches, firing adjuncts, and eliminating full-time positions — in response to the department’s refusal to accept a Pathways plan to cut contact hours (and, as a result, faculty pay) for composition courses.

Faculty opposition to Pathways gained national attention in January when the delegate assembly of the Modern Language Association voted by an overwhelming margin to declare that CUNY’s attempts to implement Pathways had violated faculty rights and established principles of university governance.

Though the CUNY general counsel asserts that the Board of Trustees “has clear and final authority to adopt academic policy … and to direct the Chancellor to implement it,” a January letter to the CUNY administration from the American Association of University Professors notes that “no campus-level faculty governance body has supported the process or endorsed” the Pathways plan, and that in fact “faculty bodies at virtually all of the [CUNY] senior colleges” have “adopted resolutions opposed to the project.”

While not taking a position on the legal ramifications of a decision to move forward with Pathways in the face of such opposition, the AAUP expressed the opinion that it would  “run counter to generally accepted standards of governance.”