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University of Pennsylvania Takes Away Steve Wynn's Honors. And Bill Cosby's, Too.
Multiple accusations of sexual assault were not enough to persuade the University of Pennsylvania to revoke Bill Cosby’s honorary degree.
Two years after declining to rescind Cosby’s honor, the university changed its mind on Thursday, but only after deciding to strip casino mogul Steve Wynn’s name from a prominent campus plaza and a scholarship, and to take back his own honorary degree.
The university announced the decisions a week after reports emerged that Wynn, a Penn alumnus and former trustee, had frequently demanded naked massages from female employees, sometimes pressuring them for sex, in one case leading to a $7.5 million legal settlement.
Students had already begun making their feelings known about Wynn Commons, an outdoor area on campus named for Wynn after he made a $7.5 million donation in 1995. A protest was planned for Friday, and earlier this week, the word “Wynn” was vandalized with black paint. The university quickly covered it up with plywood, with only the word “Commons” remaining visible.
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In an email to the campus community, the university president, Amy Gutmann, and the chairman of its board of trustees, David L. Cohen, said Penn had made the decision because “the nature, severity, and extent of these allegations, and the patterns of abusive behavior they describe, involve acts and conduct that are inimical to the core values of our university.”
In explaining the university’s decision, which was made by an executive committee of the board of trustees, Gutmann and Cohen wrote that once the committee decided that Wynn’s honorary degree, bestowed in 2006, needed to be revoked, it had to do with same with Cosby’s 1990 honor.
“The decision to remove the name Wynn Commons could not be made independently of considering the other ways in which the university had previously recognized Mr. Wynn,” the email said. “It became necessary, therefore, to consider the appropriateness of Mr. Wynn’s honorary degree and any other honorifics Penn had previously bestowed.”
“That decision in turn made it also clear that the multiple and highly credible charges involving Bill Cosby warranted the same action.”
The New York Times
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STEPHANIE SAUL © 2018 The New York Times
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