Back in December, I corresponded with Anne-Marie Devine, the communications director for the University of San Francisco, regarding any effort to rescind the honorary degree they conferred upon Bill Cosby in 2012 or otherwise distance USF from him as a parade of women alleged sexual misconduct against him, and his legal challenges mounted.
The university was waiting for facts to be established by a court of law before undertaking any action.
In recent days, Noah Zimmerman, an alumnus of USF, unhappy with his alma mater's association with Cosby, alerted me to the scrubbing of the communications office's page containing a news release about Cosby receiving the honorary degree.
I contacted Devine over the weekend seeking deets about the removal of the USF release and why just the headline remains on the page, and she issued this statement:
"The status on Mr. Cosby has not changed. Should this change, I will [alert] you. The statement on this matter is as follows: 'The volume and nature of these allegations are deeply disturbing, and the University of San Francisco (USF) takes sexual assault seriously. USF leaders are closely monitoring the legal developments surrounding Mr. Cosby to determine the proper next steps regarding his honorary degree.'"
Quite odd to delete the body of the page but leave the headline intact. I searched for a cached version from 2012, after Cosby appeared at USF and generated a tremendous amount of free publicity, but couldn't find one. If you locate the post's cache image, please share it with me.
Meanwhile, it was time yesterday for USF to find its spine on their relationship with Cosby and finally take full and substantive stand on the allegations and such piling up against him. Two terse statements in eight months just doesn't cut it.
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