Penn State approves policy for rescinding honors and distinctions

They hope it won’t be needed often, but Penn State trustees voted last week to give the president the power and discretion to rescind university honors, awards or namings if he or she feels an ongoing association with an honoree could bring the university disrepute.

The policy requires the president to consult with the chair and vice chair of the board, plus the university’s Distinguished Alumni Award selection committee. But formal board consideration or approval of a reversal of an honor would no longer be required, though the president would still have to notify the board of any such action.

The policy passed 22-9 after a brief debate in which several board members objected to ceding the authority to strip a building name or an honorary degree to the president, especially since board approval is required for all such official honors to be granted in the first place.

Alice Pope, one of the board’s nine alumni-elected trustees, summed up the opponents’ arguments the best.

“I’m reluctant to give this away on behalf of all future trustees who follow us,” Ms. Pope said. “And I think that there are dangers to conveying this authority to a single individual. ... We live in a time right now, unfortunately, when there is a lot of revisionist history, there is a lot of political pressure placed on all kinds of institutions to undo things that had been previously been done.

“I’m thinking that if I were a university president I might appreciate having the cover of a board saying: ‘This is a collective decision by a deliberative body; it’s not up to me.’ ”

Trustee David Kleppinger said the policy had the potential benefit of allowing the board to reverse a decision “without the public embarrassment to whatever individual it may apply to at board meeting. ... The only element in the process of this that doesn’t occur is in fact the full board of trustees vote.”

In 2017, the board voted to rename an campus child care center that initially had been named for Senior Vice President for Business and Finance Gary Schultz. Schultz had pleaded guilty to a count of child endangerment for failing to report an allegation of child sexual abuse against former Penn State football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky to police or child welfare officials.

Asked whether the revision was prompted by current concerns about any particular Penn State honoree, university President Eric Barron declined to comment.

Earlier this year, the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State were challenged to rescind all honorifics to Dr. Albert Kligman, who — late in his career — faced lawsuits over medical experiments on prisoners in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s while a member of the Penn faculty.

A former Penn State Mont Alto student, Kligman endowed several scholarships at the Franklin County campus, at least one of which still appears to carry his name. Kligman died in 2010.