Overview
- Interim provost Trevor Brown announced on Friday that Ohio State will not remove Wexner’s name from the Wexner Medical Center, the Wexner Center for the Arts, or the Les Wexner Football Complex.
- A standing advisory committee reviewed 512 formal requests and thousands of pages of supporting material submitted from January through September and urged further review of three allegation categories: Wexner’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, alleged personal sexual misconduct, and alleged abusive employment practices.
- Brown said the university’s naming rule requires "substantial evidence" of misconduct to show gross reputational harm, noted Wexner has not been charged or convicted, and emphasized the committee lacks investigatory powers such as subpoenas.
- Survivors and alumni activists immediately condemned the decision, with lead petitioner Steve Snyder-Hill calling it an insult to abuse victims and linking the outcome to long-running frustration over how the university handled past abuse cases.
- The decision comes against a backdrop of more than $200 million in Wexner donations to Ohio State, Justice Department files that flagged him as a potential co-conspirator in the Epstein probe, and university officials saying the review can be reopened if substantive new public evidence appears.