Hundreds of faculty and alumni from the alma mater of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, are pushing the university to rescind her honorary degree after she voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, CBS News reports.
Over 1,300 alumni from St. Lawrence University signed an open letter to the school asking them to “revoke” Collins’ honorary degree, which the university granted her after breaking with the Republican Party to protect the Affordable Care Act. That decision “embraced the strong values of St. Lawrence University,” the alumni wrote, but her vote for Kavauagh, who was accused of sexual assault, was not “in line with the core values” of the school.
“As alumni of St. Lawrence University, 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.”
In a statement to the Associated Press, the university said that it is “non-partisan and without political party affiliations,” and that it “has never rescinded any earned or honorary degree, and it has no intention of doing so in this situation.”
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