Troy

Seventeen years ago, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute made a mistake. It declared Bill Cosby a "great American" and gave him an honorary degree.

The mistake can be forgiven. At the time, the country was still buying Cosby's carefully cultivated but entirely phony public image. He was America's dad, a cultural star with the moral rectitude to decry single parenthood and the clear-eyed gumption to tell black teenagers to pull up their sagging pants. He was Dr. Cliff Huxtable, or so we thought.

"You have to respect everyone," Cosby said as he delivered the RPI commencement address in 2001. "I want you to be honest with people so they know who you really are."

We now know who Cosby really is. He is not a great American. He doesn't deserve moral authority. By his own admission, Cosby repeatedly gave women quaaludes so he could have sex with them, and he did so for decades. He is a sick and terrifying predator.

Last week, in a courtroom near Philadelphia, Cosby was convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault. It was a milestone moment, proof that even the biggest of celebrities with the deepest of pockets can be held to account.

In light of the conviction, RPI should admit its mistake, as some students are pushing it to do.

"Allowing Cosby to continue to hold this degree is a disgrace to this university," Chase Roberts, a senior studying math and computer science, wrote in the online petition he launched.

In a column three years ago, I more or less said the same, generating more heat from readers than I expected. Many noted that Cosby had not been convicted of a crime. What about due process? What if the comic is being wrongly accused?

At the time, the evidence against Cosby was significant and damning. More than 50 women had stepped forward, often with remarkably similar stories about being drugged and raped in hotel rooms. At least 15 colleges and universities already found the accusations, along with Cosby's words, incriminating enough to rescind honorary degrees.

But I'll grant that the column's critics did have a point. Innocence is supposed to be our default presumption until a judge or jury says otherwise.

Cosby's presumed innocence is gone. He is a convicted felon facing the possibility of a 10-year prison sentence.

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Immediately after the conviction, at least four universities — Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, Carnegie Mellon and Indiana — took back honorary degrees for Cosby. So did Temple University, Cosby's alma mater and the school with which he has been closely associated.

And RPI?

So far, nothing. I asked about Cosby's degree on Monday and was told by school spokesman Richie Hunter that there would not be a response by the end of the day.

Roberts, the student who started the petition, suggests that the school's inaction on Cosby's degree might signify a larger problem with how it views sexual assault. "They're not giving the issue the respect it deserves," he told me.

Roberts points to a letter recently published by the RPI student newspaper. Written by Hannah Merlow, a senior at the school, it warns prospective female RPI students that the school might not have their best interests at heart.

"The odds are stacked against you if choose to report a sexual assault at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute," Merlow writes. "Now that my time at RPI has come to an end, I wish I had been at a school that placed more importance on my safety and well being."

Part of me hesitated to mention Merlow's letter here. She's raising a complex topic with real-life impact for students, and her concerns are obviously more important than Cosby's honorary degree. But Merlow told me she sees the debate over Cosby's degree as related to the issues she raised in her letter, which was ignored, she said, by the RPI administration.

"I'm disappointed that they didn't revoke his honorary degree earlier," Merlow said. "Now that he's been convicted, there's even more urgency for them to do so."

As I said in that earlier column, rescinding Cosby's honorary degree would show that honesty matters at RPI. It would show the school is willing to acknowledge the truth about an icon it once honored after the facade is revealed as false.

Revoking the degree would recognize that the ground has shifted for sexual predators since the claims against Cosby became known — and that the career-destroying allegations against Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose and so many others are evidence of progress for women and men alike.

It would show that RPI takes sexual assault seriously and that the school stands with the women who were brave enough to stand up and tell their stories, speaking words nobody wanted to hear about Bill Cosby.

He was an icon. We didn't know the truth.

cchurchill@timesunion.com • 518-454-5442 • @chris_churchill