By Kaleb Poor
Staff Writer
During their pre-semester Jan. meeting, the UW Board of Trustees voted to grant themselves the power to revoke honorary degrees while in a confidential session.
The Trustees amended regulations to allow for the revocation of an honorary degree if an honorary degree holder engages in unbecoming conduct, which reflects poorly on the university.
“I probably don’t need to remind you all why that’s coming up lately,” UW general counsel Tara Evans said during the Trustees’ meeting.
Revocation of honorary degrees has become a trend in higher education in recent years. Disgraced comedian Bill Cosby, who once held some five dozen honorary degrees, has had many of them revoked following his conviction for multiple sexual assaults. Cosby does not contain an honorary degree from UW.
The Trustees used one of their more significant powers in making this change. The Trustee bylaws allow the Board to change any University of Wyoming regulation for any reason at any time, and they have been overhauling UW’s regulations for some time now.
Anne Alexander, UW’s associate vice provost for undergraduate education, elaborated on what prompted the university to make this change.
“We have actually been working on this revision for over two years, as we’ve been revising all our regulations,” Alexander said in an email. “We have been revising all regulations, including this one, with the same process… This one was no different. This revision was examined because of the rising number nationwide of felony cases of prominent people who had been giving honorary degrees at other institutions and then did something very reprehensible.”
Notably, the Board deliberated and voted on this adjustment to their powers during an executive session, making any contents of their deliberations legally confidential. Executive sessions may only be held to discuss specific topics, and honorary degrees are not among said topics.
Evans justified the executive session vote by saying that the Trustees may have needed to discuss “sociological data on individual persons,” which would explain the secret vote by making it a matter of personnel. This is despite the fact that sociological data are widely understood to apply only to groups of people.
The Branding Iron has reached out to general counsel Evans for clarification of the data considered in an effort to confirm that the Trustees’ use of executive session was legitimate. She has not gotten back to us, but Alexander said that the executive session meeting was simply a coincidence.
“Every January, the Trustees meet to review the nominations from campus and the Honorary Degree Committee evaluations of those they recommend to receive this honor,” Alexander said in an email. “At this meeting in January, the Board also coincidentally considered the revision of the policy on honorary degrees. The first topic – the nominations and materials for the honorary degree recipient pool – is discussed in exec session every January. The second – this regulation – just coincidentally came to them for approval at this meeting.”
While this explains why the Trustees considered the regulation changes in executive session, it also speaks to their liberal use of confidentiality. The Board may move in and out of executive session at their discretion during meetings, and while it appears that they had no obligation to do so here, it is clear that they chose the less transparent of two options.
There have been no indications that the Trustees intend to revoke any honorary degrees in the near future.
Kenneth Chestek, chair of UW’s faculty senate, said that the new regulations will probably have a minimal impact.
“I do think that this is going to be an extremely rare occurrence,” said Chestek. “The University does not give out very many honorary degrees, to begin with, and I believe the intent was to provide a remedy in the very rare case that an honorary degree recipient does something subsequent to that award that could bring dishonor to the institution.”
While the Board was certainly well within their rights to make this change and to make it in the way they did, their decision to grant themselves additional power during a secret part of their first annual meeting is just another in a long line of decisions that raise questions about their commitment to transparency.
