A town-gown culture clash in Oberlin, Ohio reached a fresh level of absurdity last week. At local mom-and-pop store Gibson’s Bakery, a shoplifting incident straight out of Spike Lee’s oeuvre amplified into a boycott, followed by a counter-effort by the community: a “cash mob” to help keep the shop up and running.

Law professor William Jacobson at the blog Legal Insurrection reported the timeline of events—from Gibson’s employees’ call to the police, to the student body of Oberlin College’s-sanctioned boycott, to the locals’ heartening response. “This could have been a case of mob rule destroying a business. But instead, the community rallied around Gibson’s,” Jacobson notes.

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