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Oberlin College hit with $11M judgement in libel/defamation lawsuit


Beau Vine

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50 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

The jury also found for the bakery on counts of libel against both the college and Raimondo. Raimondo was held responsible for interference of business relationships while the college was cleared.

Saw this on another forum:
 

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Meredith Raimondo was held liable on the libel and interference with business relations, but not intentional infliction of emotional distress. By stipulation, the college is responsible for any amounts awarded against her, so she will not pay anything out of pocket.

 

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1 minute ago, Beau Vine said:

Saw this on another forum:
 

 

Possible.  That the term "stipulation" was used kind of makes it less credible.  A "stipulation" is an agreement made in open court or otherwise on the record by the parties or by one party stipulating to the truth of certain facts.  The fact that she was found liable, i.e. had a judgment entered against her, which can be collected from her personally until satisfied, is unchanged by any indemnity agreement by the school.  The plaintiffs could probably make her suffer pending appeal if they wanted.  I suppose that it is possible that the plaintiffs agreed in open court not to pursue any judgment against her in her personal capacity, but that seems unlikely, both that they would agree to that, or that they would do it by a "stipulation."

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Oberlin college is city of Oberlin. The city was founded to support/serve the college. The college is the economic engine for the town, students and staff are close to 50% of the population, thus not surprising the college tried to throw their weight around. 

If the perps were first chair musicians this is the equivalent of protecting the star football player that goes on all across America. 

Have no idea about Oberlin College’s financial position but if they go under the town of Oberlin becomes a hair above a Valley Colonia, paved roads but with 5 months of freezing weather. 

Edited by ShaggyBevo RIP
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40 minutes ago, BurntEyes said:

Lulz, yeah that sounds like that shit show in Washington state that had the student basically bullying and damn near kidnapping the fucking president of the University. (Don't hold me to the details, but it was a fucking insane mess)

Evergreen State University

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1 hour ago, TexasBuckeye said:

Oberlin isn't even the worst. Antioch College (also in Ohio) was closed due to finances, but has reopened recently. Ultra liberal. Just check out their website to get an idea of it: https://antiochcollege.edu/

Wikipedia brings the lulz...They currently have 135 students:

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Also in 2012, Antioch announced it would offer free tuition to its students for the following three years, pledging to charge them only room, board, and fees.[76] As a result, Antioch College received more than 2,500 applications for fall 2012 admission.[77] About five percent of applicants received acceptance letters, making Antioch one of the more selective colleges in the US in that year.[78] After tuition was re-introduced, the applications and selectivity fell, with 140 applicants for 2016 entrance, with a 71% acceptance rate.

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In the fall of 2017, only 28 new students enrolled, with 19 Freshmen and 9 transfer students. This was far fewer than the administration's target of 60 and leaves overall enrollment at 135.[3] The following spring, the college announced that faculty and staff making more than $40,000 annually would be required to take 10 days of furlough, the equivalent of a 3.8% pay cut. 

Good grief!  Liberal arts phds apparently work for minimum wage.

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16 minutes ago, WBT said:

Dat critical thinking though...

Critical thinking is a good sign of the intelligent and/or educated, but it seems to me that high school, or a decent one with a rigorous curriculum, installs a good bit of critical thinking, as does just about any college degree with rigor.

Granted, some subjects advance critical thinking, particularly in terms of modes of argument, moreso than others, but I think all of them contribute to one degree or another.

It seems to be a bit of a shibboleth for the liberal arts college.

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7 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

With all these idle lawyers on here, somebody ought to write a proposal to Oberlin on behalf of the Canecutter Foundation, offering $44 million to pay their settlement. Then if they nibble and get an administrator to call me, I will use Tom Hank's voice from Ladykillers and tell them my only condition is that they erect a statue of Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard on their blissfully beautiful corner of Elysium, their Garden of Eden, to whit, their campus.

PGT Beauregard was of Caribbean extraction and had an Afro-Caribbean wet nurse. That makes him a POC, so your proposal should be greeted very warmly, especially if you stress the part about how he was nursed by a woman of color. 

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8 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

PGT Beauregard was of Caribbean extraction and had an Afro-Caribbean wet nurse. That makes him a POC, so your proposal should be greeted very warmly, especially if you stress the part about how he was nursed by a woman of color. 

Oh, I'm not actually going to give them my P. G. T. Beauregard statue, it looks too good right here on my front lawn. I just want to hear what a dean sounds like if they're ready to become my pillow-biter.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The plaintiffs' lawyers prepared a FAQ that is pretty good.  Surprisingly free of hyperbole.

http://www.lawlion.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/FAQs-re-Gibsons-Bakery-v.-Oberlin-College.pdf

It would appear from that that Tita Reed, special assistant to the president of Oberlin, is lucky she didn't get her ass sued off too.  Her specialty apparently is "community relations," at which she appears to suck ass.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

The plaintiffs' lawyers prepared a FAQ that is pretty good.  Surprisingly free of hyperbole.

http://www.lawlion.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/FAQs-re-Gibsons-Bakery-v.-Oberlin-College.pdf

That is a powerful presentation.  I downloaded it as an example for a future demand or mediation statement.  Item 13, with respect to the strike of a potential black juror was rather instructive.  Oberlin screwed the pooch.

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26 minutes ago, DalTxHornFan said:

That is a powerful presentation.  I downloaded it as an example for a future demand or mediation statement.  Item 13, with respect to the strike of a potential black juror was rather instructive.  Oberlin screwed the pooch.

Best of all, it's not a PowerPoint!

And yeah, they got so riled up and supportive of a protest against injustice, abstractly speaking, they never stopped to consider whether any injustice actually occurred and that there were real people on the other side that suffered as a result of their actions.  It doesn't speak well of their institutional priorities.

Can you imagine UT attempting to intervene with an off-campus vendor to preempt shoplifting arrests or attending sentencing hearings of students?  Granted, there are economies of scale involved, but still.  

Oberlin seems to be in loco parentis culpatus et helicopterus 

Edited by TwiceHorn
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15 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

The plaintiffs' lawyers prepared a FAQ that is pretty good.  Surprisingly free of hyperbole.

http://www.lawlion.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/FAQs-re-Gibsons-Bakery-v.-Oberlin-College.pdf

It would appear from that that Tita Reed, special assistant to the president of Oberlin, is lucky she didn't get her ass sued off too.  Her specialty apparently is "community relations," at which she appears to suck ass.

And Ben Jones is the VP of Communication (lulz).  They seem like bigger idiots than Raimundo:

Capture.jpg

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Still morons:

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In a conference call with Oberlin College alumni Thursday night, Oberlin College President Carmen Twillie Ambar and Chris Canavan, president of the Oberlin College Board of Trustees, told alumni that Oberlin College will be able to manage if it is required to pay the judgment.

“We do expect and hope that worst-case scenario won’t come to fruition, given some of the legal options we have available,” he said on the call, citing mitigation in future court hearings, damage caps “and the like.”

Ambar said there were “very complicated and nuanced issues” involved in the protest that were “not necessarily created by this case,” and said she and college legal counsel continue to believe that legal principles were “not appropriately applied.”

She pointed specifically to community, citizenship when it comes to students taking personal responsibility for their actions; legal issues of free speech, defamation and libel; and race.

College officials didn’t know students planned to protest, she told the alumni. It was the Student Senate that wrote a resolution condemning Gibson’s Bakery and students who drew up a protest flyer.

“The college did not create those documents,” Ambar said, which she said are protected by free speech.

As dean of students, Raimondo was required by the college handbook to be at the protests to act as a liaison with police and to ensure the protest remained lawful and safe — not to inflame passions against the Gibsons despite later texts and emails show at the civil trial that contained “inappropriate” language by college officials, Ambar said.

As for the issue of an apology, Ambar told alumni that “goes to the issue of race.” Without going into specifics, she said members of the college community have had “a variety of experiences with Gibson’s — ranging from “wonderful” to “not wonderful.”

“Those different lived experiences are absoutely true, but they are in conflict with each other,” Ambar told the alumni. “The college didn’t issue an apology because it was hearing these different perspectives and didn’t think it should apologize for issues it didn’t create.”

 

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17 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Still morons:

 

My goodness.  That contains some flat whoppers.

Given what the FAQ says, it appears that the judge properly instructed the jury on defamation vis a vis the First Amendment (malice), and there was ample evidence for the jury to reach its verdict.  So I don't see a whole lot of room for victory on appeal.

There is, I suppose, the issue of calling someone or something "racist" being defamatory per se, but that seems to be a fairly harmless error and I have seen that other courts have held similarly.

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31 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

College officials didn’t know students planned to protest, she told the alumni.

....

As dean of students, Raimondo was required by the college handbook to be at the protests

I think this is my favorite part. 

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At Oberlin College, in particular, this problem precedes the Trump era. In 2013, students at the elite liberal arts college panicked after someone reported seeing a person in a Ku Klux Klan robe on campus. The administration cancelled all classes for the day. The phantom klansman was never found, though police did find someone wrapped in a blanket. This overreaction was preceded by a month-long spate of racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-gay posters around campus. These, too, were found to be hoaxes.

 

https://www.city-journal.org/campus-hate-crime-hoaxes

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4 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

At Oberlin College, in particular, this problem precedes the Trump era. In 2013, students at the elite liberal arts college panicked after someone reported seeing a person in a Ku Klux Klan robe on campus. The administration cancelled all classes for the day. The phantom klansman was never found, though police did find someone wrapped in a blanket. This overreaction was preceded by a month-long spate of racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-gay posters around campus. These, too, were found to be hoaxes.

 

https://www.city-journal.org/campus-hate-crime-hoaxes

That’s rich coming from a school who’s student body is less diverse than the community it’s located in...

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5 minutes ago, BurntEyes said:

I wouldn't say it was a BAD school.

Just a terrible one that had, arguably, let the liberal insanity run more amok than Oberlin. Which is an impressive feat.

Agreed, that’s my point. 

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19 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

At Oberlin College, in particular, this problem precedes the Trump era. In 2013, students at the elite liberal arts college panicked after someone reported seeing a person in a Ku Klux Klan robe on campus. The administration cancelled all classes for the day. The phantom klansman was never found, though police did find someone wrapped in a blanket. This overreaction was preceded by a month-long spate of racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-gay posters around campus. These, too, were found to be hoaxes.

 

https://www.city-journal.org/campus-hate-crime-hoaxes

I feel badly for them.  It’s a terrible thing when your need for racism outstrips your supply. 

Edited by Lhorn
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2 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Compared to Oberlin, yes, Evergreen State College is a bad school.

Well, compared to a normal citizen you’re an idiot, so see yourself back to the cr and spare the rest of us from you us news college rankings...

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6 hours ago, SDG said:

Hopefully they’ll pay the $25mm since “they have the money” then the free market will go to work like it did with evergreen.  

I think Oberlin's "brand" among the liberal (nttawwt) children of rich white people will only be helped by this incident.  

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1 hour ago, Beau Vine said:

I would.  Evergreen was open admission and assigned no grades.  That seems like a catastrophic recipe for producing solid graduates.  

But . . . a bunch of grunge rockers attended Evergreen.  It must have been an idyllic haven of enlightenment!

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5 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

I would.  Evergreen was open admission and assigned no grades.  That seems like a catastrophic recipe for producing solid graduates.  

I didn’t apply there so I don’t have 100% factual first hand knowledge, but 1) they are/where a state school so they required the same legislative scrutiny as UW or WSU, I’m not quite sure if I buy the open admission thing...  2) farhaven college tried the no grade thing and died. It turns out that companies are risk adverse and $40k per year jobs don’t pay off $100k in debt...

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This thread makes me think there still a tiny group of sport-coat clad, Sperry wearing, white guys hiding out in an admin building calling themselves Balls & Shaft. They walk around campus, led by David Spade saying shit like, “This school used to be a bastion of rich, white elitism. And now... now they let homosexuals on the football team. Whining minorities run the student government. And you can't even coerce a woman into having sex with you without being brought up on charges.”

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
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ELYRIA — The law firms that represented Gibson’s Bakery and its owners in a lawsuit against Oberlin College have been awarded approximately $6.5 million in attorney fees by Lorain County Common Pleas Judge John Miraldi.

The amount is on top of the $25 million in compensatory and punitive damages Oberlin College has been ordered to pay the bakery and its owners, who won a lawsuit against the college last month.

The fees will be split between the law firms of Krugliak, Wilkins, Griffiths & Dougherty; Tzangas Plakas Mannos; and attorney James N. Taylor of Elyria.

Lee Plakas, one of the lead attorneys for the Gibsons, said Thursday that Miraldi’s decision “keeps the courthouse doors open” for small businesses and individuals who otherwise “would not be able to withstand the power and resources” of an institution like Oberlin College.

“The jury’s verdict opened the eyes of a nation to recognize the college’s need to have an adult in the room,” he said.

Attorney Ronald Holman, who represented Oberlin College, referred all questions to college officials Thursday. Oberlin College had no official comment on the matter, spokesman Scott Wargo said.

Attorneys for the Gibsons initially sought between $9.5 million and $14.5 million in fees and more than $404,000 to reimburse them for expenses incurred while representing the Gibsons. Their representation amounted to more than 14,400 billable hours between April 2017 and this month.

Given a chance to rebut those claims, Oberlin College attorneys estimated during a hearing July 10 that fees payable to the Gibsons’ attorneys by the college more reasonably were between $2 million and $2.25 million.

Oberlin College attorneys asked the court to award fees to Gibsons’ attorneys based only on their successful claims and not the ones rejected by jurors. They also asked Miraldi to exclude any fees or expenses for expert testimony disallowed by the court.

Defense attorneys billed Oberlin College for more than 15,600 work hours, they told the court July 10.

In Miraldi’s ruling, he said the Ohio Supreme Court has a two-step process for figuring out attorney fees, which involves multiplying a reasonable hourly rate by the number of hours reasonably spent on the case. This is known as a lodestar number, and provides an estimated value of services.

The court can adjust this number up or down. Miraldi found the reasonable hourly rate for the plaintiff’s attorneys to be an average of $290 per hour. Multiplied by the 14,417 billable hours “reasonably expended” representing the Gibsons, he ruled the lodestar number to be $4,180,930.

Miraldi then multiplied that number by a factor of 1.5 to reach $6,271,395 in attorney fees. Factors included in Miraldi’s decision, he wrote, were the time and labor required; the novelty and difficulty of the legal questions involved in the case; and the experience, reputation and abilities of the attorneys involved.

The Krugliak firm also was awarded expenses totaling almost $214,000, Tzangas Plakas Mannos received $79,500 in expenses and Taylor about $800 in expenses. That totals slightly more than $294,000, or about three-quarters of the expenses the plaintiffs sought to recoup, according to Miraldi’s ruling.

Following a six-week trial, jurors found that the college libeled and intentionally inflicted emotional distress on the bakery’s co-owner, David Gibson; that the college and its vice president/dean of students Meredith Raimondo libeled and intentionally inflicted emotional distress on his father, Allyn W. Gibson; and that the college libeled the bakery as well as intentionally interfered with its business relationships.

Jurors originally awarded the Gibsons $44.2 million in compensatory and punitive damages — the largest libel judgment in Ohio history. That amount later was reduced by Miraldi, due to state laws governing caps on civil judgments.

The lawsuit followed an incident in November 2016 during which a student tried to use a fake ID to buy alcohol and shoplifted wine from the West College Street store. He and two other students, who are black, then assaulted the clerk who chased the thief from the store.

The clerk, Allyn D. Gibson, is white and the son of owner David Gibson.

Students protested, calling the bakery racist and claiming black shoppers and black shoplifters were treated differently. The college also briefly stopped its daily catering order from the bakery, a business relationship that stretched back more than 100 years to before World War I.

The students involved in the theft and assault eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanor criminal charges. The Gibsons sued the college and Raimondo for libel, intentional infliction of emotional distress and intentional interference with business relationships in 2017.

Attorneys for Oberlin College have said in court that they intend to appeal the initial verdict. Holman declined comment on that issue Thursday.

 

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Ouch, shitheads...

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Judge granted Oberlin College’s motion to stay execution of the judgment, but required the posting of a bond in the amount of the judgment plus three years interest as security.

Judge-John-Miraldi-reads-Gibsons-Bakery-

The compensatory and punitive damages of $25 million (after reduction for tort reform caps), plus the over $6.5 million in attorney’s fees and costs, put Oberlin College almost $32 million in debt to Gibson’s Bakery and its owners.

 
 

Absent some judicial action, the next step would have been for the Gibsons to execute on the judgment, meaning start collecting the money through post-judgment remedies, such as seizing bank accounts and physical property.

 

Oberlin College, which intends to appeal once post-trial motions are over, obviously doesn’t want its bank accounts, computer equipment, and er, Dean of Students’ office furniture, seized just as the freshman class was arriving. So Oberlin College filed a motion for a stay of execution of the judgment until such time as it can appeal and obtain an appeal bond.

We covered the parties’ arguments for and against in our prior post, Gibson’s Bakery: “there is serious concern about [Oberlin College’s] ability to pay this sizeable judgment three years from now”. Gibson’s Bakery devoted much of its opposition to arguing for a bond on the basis that Oberlin College was in poor financial shape:

A stay of judgment execution is not automatic under Ohio law for private litigants. Defendants do not have some absolute right to a stay of execution. Should the Court decide, in its discretion under Civ. R. 62(A), that Defendants are entitled to bond off the execution of the judgment, then Plaintiffs request that the bond be set at $36,356,711.56….

The need for such bond is made clear by the College’s own statements about its dire fmancial straits. If the College is to be believed, there is serious concern about its ability to pay this sizeable judgment three years from now. At trial, and in its recent filing, the College represented that there was only $59.1 million of unrestricted endowment funds available to pay any dollar judgment and that $10 million of those funds had already been committed to pay down the College’s existing debt. [Trial Tr., June 12, 2019 at 95:13-21] There remains $190 million of existing debt on the College’s books. [Id.] The College has also testified that it has a significant operating deficit and that its deficit situation is not sustainable…. [Trial Tr., June 12, 2019 atpp. 86:1-6, 88:1-9]

The College also testified at trial that they have experienced a “significant” and “steady” decline of enrollment from 2014 to 2018. [Trial Tr., June 12, 2019 at 79:4-17] In describing their economic position, the College offered Exhibit N-33 at trial, which is its May 10, 2019 report entitled “One Oberlin: The Academic & Administrative Program Review Final Report.” [Trial Tr., June 12, 2019 at pp. 99-100] In that Report, the College describes its alleged financial hardships and warns about how many other private colleges have had to close due to financial difficulties …[Ex. N-33, pp. 4-5].

Thus, we know that Oberlin College could attempt to continue using its available funds to pay down its other debts between now and the filing of a notice of appeal, thereby leaving less available to pay the judgment in this case.

Judge John Miraldi has ruled, entering an Order (pdf.)(full embed at bottom of post) that grants the stay of execution, but conditions it on Oberlin College posting a $36,367,711.56 bond, the full amount requested by the Gibsons. That amount includes three years of future interest.

Clearly, Ohio Civ. R. 62(A) gives the Court great discretion in determining what conditions, if any, are proper to grant a stay of execution of the judgment and to afford security to the Plaintiffs. After considering the Parties respective briefs, the attached exhibits, and applicable precedent the Court hereby orders that the judgment is stayed, as of the date of this entry, subject to the following conditions:

1) Within seven (7) days, Defendants shall post a bond in the amount of $36,367,711.56. Failure to timely post the bond shall result in the stay being terminated. Timely posting of the bond shall stay the judgment until August 19, 2019;

2) If Defendants timely file their post-trial motions on or before August 19, 2019, the stay shall be extended until September 9, 2019. Plaintiffs shall have fourteen (14) days to respond to any post-trial motions and no reply briefs shall be accepted. The Court will rule on Defendants’ motions by September 9, 2019. See Local Rule 9(/1).

While the judge did not explain the reasons behind his requiring a bond, it’s pretty clear that he accepted that there is at least some meaningful risk that the Gibsons will not be able to collect without security.

 

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16 hours ago, Armybrat said:

Oberlin appears to be an indoctrination fish camp for the left. No tears shed.

Nah, I think people who go there are already fucked up mentally and politically.  Preaching to the choir.  Too bad, as it has such a great history but has now become a dumpster.  But not the first one, won't be the last.

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A bond like that is extremely difficult to procure without actually putting up the cash amount.  It's not a bail bond, where you head over to Chico's and put down 10%.  Given their endowment, I suppose it won't be particularly difficult for Oberlin to post it, but the bond writer is probably going to make them open a secured LOC or something.  Or they may have to liquidate assets or pledge specific ones.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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So, they're latest common data set is not workable (2018), but the 2017 indicates they let 124 kids in off the wait list.  That's an enormous number for a school with 2000-ish enrollment.  That's over 15% of the entering freshman class. Bates only let in 7 from the same time frame. 

IDK if there applications are down or not (i'm too lazy to go through multiple data sets) but they are clearly admitting too many kids who then don't enroll/accept.

Edited by Bateshorn
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