Nearly 2,000 alumni of St. Lawrence University are calling on the school to rescind an honorary degree bestowed on Sen. Susan Collins of Maine in 2017.
Collins, who graduated from the school in 1975, was given an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters last year when she refused to vote for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Alas, degrees given for abject political reasons can apparently be yanked away for the same. Now staff, faculty, and graduates of the school are demanding that Collins be stripped of her honorary title because she voted to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
“We feel that Sen. Collins’ support of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court is not in line with the core values of St. Lawrence University and the commitments of its faculty, students, and staff,” the signatories wrote in a letter to the school’s administrators. “In stark comparison to her support for the ACA, her actions during the Kavanaugh nomination process have lacked the ‘careful consideration of evidence,’ the ‘value [of] diversity and [recognition of] the inherent worth of every human being,’ and the installation of ‘knowledge into action to benefit our communities’ of which our Faculty aspire.
“As alumni of St. Lawrence University,” they continued, “we find Sen. Collins to lack the integrity and commitment to justice that we expect from the St. Lawrence body. We feel that the Senator lacks the ‘St. Lawrence in Action’ that the Senator drew from her Christian Ethics class and cited in her 2017 address accepting the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. We ask that the University revoke this honorary degree as we find that she is not deserving of it in the face of her recent actions. We ask the university to do this in support of truth and for all of the victims of sexual assault and violence, of which many of her fellow alumni and students have suffered.”
Thankfully, the administrators of St. Lawrence University are, for now, refusing to play this tit-for-tat game where they award graduates honorary degrees when they do something that helps Democrats and strip them away when they do something that hurts the #Resistance.
“Throughout its long history, St. Lawrence University has never rescinded any earned or honorary degree, and it has no intention of doing so in this situation,” said school spokesman Ryan Deuel.
