Is someone trolling Oberlin College?

The gist of this story is that students at Oberlin are fired up because there has been racist language spraypainted inside campus buildings. A couple nights ago, there were sightings of someone wearing KKK regalia walking about. The usual theater is playing out, when college students get outraged. Town halls and so forth.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/03/why-was-someone-wearing-kkk-robe-oberlin-theories-so-far/62735/

Am I insensitive to think that this might just be a prank that some students are playing on their tightly wound, very liberal classmates? Or am I onto something?

 

Are liberals generally tightly wound?

 

A prank IS trolling. It's not serious, just meant to get a rise.

 

I think it has more to do with being college aged and politically aware that the particular political affiliation. Politically in-tuned college kids tend to experience outrage.

 

Right. That's what I'm asking. Is someone doing this to get a rise?

 

If they start looking for someone who may be depressed because they found a poem in a bathroom stall that starts "Here I sit, brokenhearted..." maybe.

Couple of interesting tidbits though. Oberlin was the first US college to make admitting students of color part of its policy (1833), and was a stop on the Underground Railroad and its student body is 20 percent non-white.
This isn't just another school, this is a school that was founded on the forefront of abolition. Good teaching moment if nothing else.

 

I grew up in Oberlin and now live the next town over. This "incident" is nothing but full-blown crap. The kid saw something out of the corner of his eye...what a load of crap.

I drive through Oberlin every day...there are no protests, no demonstrations...nothing going on. This is overblown garbage.

 

This is what I tend to believe, as well. The details of this alleged hooded Klansman seem awful sketchy. When I was in college, a student was murdered driving home from Wal-Mart. For weeks afterward, people on campus were reporting suspicious figures, probably all figments of their imagination.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is similar.

 

UPDATE: Pedestrian wrapped in a blanket.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/03/05/oberlin_college_kkk_sighting_police_suggest_that_eyewitness_may_have_mistaken.html

I'm really surprised about this development.

 

If you're going to surreptitiously graffiti racist slogans all over a school, a Klan outfit is probably not the best camouflage.

 

Yeah, but liberals never miss a chance to be offended and outraged, or just make shit up.

 

ahem..
Menendez, Robert; Obama birth certificate, Obama golf outings, John Kerry love child, FEMA camps...
It's not like either party has a monopoly on hypersensitivity (particularly when it benefits "their" side).