To support survivors, USC should revoke Bill Cosby’s honorary degree

“Let’s award honorary degrees to violent criminals” probably isn’t a statement you’d want your school to make. There is no discernable reason, then, as the University of San Francisco joins multiple universities of varying prestige — including Brown University, Fordham University and Marquette University — in the rescission of comedian and actor Bill Cosby’s honorary degrees, that USC has so passively sat by allowing the recognition the University gifted Cosby to stand. USC does not tolerate sexual assault. It has told students so over and over again, be it in handbooks, housing contracts, Department of Public Safety public notifications or a freshman health and safety seminar. And yet, here at USC, Cosby’s degree stands: a Doctorate of Fine Arts.

One could make the claim that Cosby’s 1998 degree was awarded quite a while ago — perhaps long enough ago to render it irrelevant. After all, the actor has not appeared at USC since then — he has not given commencement addresses or graduation speeches, does not visit from time to time like other celebrity alumni and is largely absent from the community. Even more importantly, though he admits to “extramarital relationships” with several of the women who have come forward to speak about his attacks, he has not yet been convicted of rape.

Rape is a heavy term and, unfortunately, all too common — especially on university campuses such as USC. Rape culture is alive and well in the United States. It is a lingering caution in university life. However, it is also so muddled in our country’s long-lasting Puritanical ethos surrounding sexual subject matter, that for many years the most palatable solution traditional power structures could find was to sweep it under the rug — to quiet the victims, if society didn’t do that much on its own.

But USC isn’t a school tolerant of sexual assault and has pledged not to stand idle if students are attacked. It has funded programs that aid survivors and educational activities that inform the student body about the various classifications, definitions and prevention methods of sexual violence. The state of California passed its own “Yes Means Yes” law last year, requiring explicit consent from both parties, and it appears that USC holds its students to the same strict standards.

But it is not enough.

USC cannot claim to wish to prevent sexual violence and in the same breath withhold judgment on the actions of a serial rapist, a man who has committed such an insidious crime against dozens of people. The University should uphold its stalwart standing against sexual violence. USC should absolutely, unequivocally revoke Cosby’s honorary degree.

Opposition points to the fact that Cosby has not faced formal conviction, and they are, in a literal sense, correct — he has not been convicted. But an empty award such as this surely means little now, and it certainly means little to a multimillionaire in the last years of his life.

But USC must revoke the degree in condemnation of this behavior for the community that resides at USC and beyond, for every survivor, every one of his or her friends and family and for the student body that entrusts this University with the protection of individual rights. The University should send the message that the Trojan Family does not approve of these actions. The University must divest itself from association with Cosby.

The University must make the decision to stand in solidarity with its own community of survivors as well as that of the nation to greater support the movement toward the eradication of the silent disregard of sexual assault. The honorary degree itself is almost nothing to the perpetrator, even less of a headache for the University itself — but it represents a large step in the elimination of campus rape, and of rape culture in America as a whole.

The University of Southern California should not be, and should never be, a bystander.