DANIEL MCGRAW: Oberlin College’s identity crisis led to its Gibson’s Bakery train wreck.

Oberlin College, in the minds of the jury, wasn’t guilty only of what they did, but also what they didn’t do. They had opportunities early on to see the bullshit flying in their faces — thrown by the social justice warrior students – and didn’t have the good sense to see a basic problem and recognize the simplest of solutions.

What happened here is that Oberlin College and many universities have lost the understanding of their identity and basic purpose, and when that happens with most of us, when we don’t know who we are, we tend to do stupid things. That’s what happened here.

A few years ago, they had students saying they wanted finals cancelled because they were protesting minority men being shot by police in nearby Cleveland; in Dec. of 2015, the school’s black student union published 14 pages of racial accusations against the school with 58 demands to fix them; and the school had students thinking that the sushi in their cafeteria was “cultural appropriation” and unfit for eating because of that.

Instead of the school telling their students, “You are all crazy, and get back to studying,” they took on the “these poor snowflakes need our support” attitude.

It was the tail wagging the dog in the end, and ended up how most things like that do.

If there’s a difference between “the inmates running the asylum” and “the students running the school,” it’s only in the wording.