Advisory committee found no substantial evidence of misconduct, provost’s letter says
Les Wexner’s name will stay on three Ohio State University properties — the Wexner Center for the Arts, named for his father; the Les Wexner Football Complex, which Jeffrey Epstein himself helped get renamed; and the OSU Wexner Medical Center, a research hospital overlooking the Olentangy River — under a decision interim provost Trevor Brown announced Friday.
Brown, the university’s interim executive vice president and provost of academic affairs, announced the outcome in a letter saying an advisory committee tapped to review the issue had conducted a “thoughtful and thorough analysis” that failed to turn up the “substantial evidence” of misconduct by Wexner necessary to justify stripping his name from the buildings.
Brown noted the committee lacks the power to conduct its own investigations and must review only the evidence placed before it.
He also pointed to Wexner’s standing at the university: he and his wife, Abigail, are prominent community members and generous donors, a status Brown wrote creates “a high bar for removing a name.”
The review made clear, Brown wrote, that Wexner has faced allegations of misconduct but has never been charged with or convicted of a crime.
The dispute is arguably the highest-profile of the denaming protests that arose at U.S. universities this year in the wake of the release of the Epstein files. Those documents contained references to numerous wealthy donors — including Wexner, Steve Tisch, Casey Wasserman, Glenn Dubin and Howard Lutnick — whose names appear on campus buildings across the country. Universities resisted renaming in almost every case.
Documents released by the Justice Department showed the FBI labeled Wexner a potential co-conspirator after Epstein’s arrest on sex trafficking charges in 2019. A spokesperson for the billionaire said Wexner provided background information, was told he was not a target of the investigation and was never contacted again. Wexner repeated his denials of any wrongdoing in February at a congressional deposition.
Brown invoked that record in his Friday letter. “Mr. Wexner has denied these allegations, including under oath,” he wrote, “and if I were to ask the committee to conduct further review, you would be in the nearly impossible position of searching for substantial evidence of misconduct where law enforcement entities, Congressional committees and international media outlets have not discovered such evidence.”
Steve Snyder-Hill, an Ohio State alumnus and former athlete who helped lead the effort to remove Wexner’s name, called the decision “expected,” citing “how horrible they have been fighting sexual assault survivors for over eight years.”
Snyder-Hill is among hundreds of former student-athletes and other alumni who say they were abused by Dr. Richard Strauss while he served as a team physician at the university. Strauss died in 2005, before the allegations against him came to light. His alleged victims say the abuse spanned his two decades at the school and that Ohio State officials failed to stop him despite knowing about complaints.
Snyder-Hill said the decision is insulting to all sexual abuse survivors — including Ohio’s newly elected governor, Dr. Amy Acton — “that they would rather keep an association with a friend of Epstein because he pays them ‘lots of money.’”
“Over 521 survivors, alumni and general public submitted requests to remove his name, as well,” he said. “OSU just gave them all the middle finger.”
A spokesperson for Wexner declined comment.