Oberlin Students Sought ‘Reaction’ From Anti-Semitic Acts

Two students committed a series of racial and anti-Semitic incidents at Oberlin College to provoke a reaction, according to police in the Ohio city.

According to a police report released late last week, one of the students said he meant the acts as a “joke,” as well as to show how students and college staff overreacted to earlier racist and anti-Semitic fliers found around the campus with which he denied involvement.
The later incidents spurred the college to cancel classes for a day.
The student was detained on Feb. 27 after being seen posting anti-Islam fliers in a school building. He said he posted the fliers to show how people had overreacted to similar fliers posted earlier in the year.
“I put out these fliers to get a similar overreaction to prove this point,” the student told campus security after being detained, according to a report by the Oberlin city police.
In early May, Oberlin canceled classes after someone wearing a Ku Klux Klan-like hood and robe was seen walking on campus. The cancellation also came after swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti were discovered on the campus.
Oberlin City Prosecutor Frank Carlson in deciding not to charge the students said they broke no laws, according to the local Chronicle-Telegram.
The students, who were not named in the police report because they were not charged, have been removed from campus and are being tried in the campus judicial system, according to the newspaper.
The Daily Caller newspaper identified the students as Dylan Bleier and Matt Alden and said they have a background in working for liberal causes.
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