Multiple wealthy alums from the University of Pennsylvania halted donations to their alma mater over the university’s response to the recent Hamas attacks. Former U.S. Ambassador and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, and heir to Estee Lauder cosmetics, Ronald Lauder, were mad at Penn for its response to acts of war on the other side of the world and took action. It would have been nice if they were equally forceful on other issues, such as the Penn female swim team’s pleas for help in 2022.
Between fall 2021 and spring 2022, UPenn forced its female swimmers to accept a male, William “Lia” Thomas, on their team. This included having college-aged females share a locker room with the male Thomas, where female swimmers were exposed to his male genitalia. The university then suppressed any concerns from the women over Thomas being on the team and taking away athletic opportunities from women.
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Penn also intimidated its female swimmers into accepting this and warned them against protesting Thomas being on the team. Many female swimmers objected to this, begging and pleading for some adult to help them. Yet, no one did, and they were all silent — including Jon Huntsman and his band of billionaire donors.
Moreover, while Huntsman’s failure to help the female swimmers warrants significant criticism, it’s also essential to consider Huntsman’s reasoning for pulling donations. He stated it was because of Penn’s “silence” on the Hamas attacks. Objectively, it’s odd to insist Penn comment on an act of war in a country nearly 6,000 miles away. As horrifying and devastating as the Hamas attacks were, it has nothing to do with Penn. Moreover, there does not appear to be any precedent of the university consistently doing so for other international conflicts.
As a recent graduate from Penn, I can think of many horrifying events in which the school did not comment. For example, Christians living in Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory in the South Caucasus, have been experiencing attacks and ethnic cleansing by Muslims near Azerbaijan in recent months. However, Penn never made a statement acknowledging it or condemning it. This is a tragedy and a horrifying act of terror. Yet, no wealthy alumni or donors made public declarations of resentment for the school not doing so, nor did any threaten to pull funding.
Why not? Don’t the lives of those in Nagorno-Karabakh matter? Don’t those victims of Muslim terrorism deserve acknowledgment and recognition? This is just one example to illustrate the hypocrisy of the donors.
The other facet to all of this is that Penn was not silent about the attacks and did comment on it - twice, actually. The university released statements on Oct. 10 and Oct. 15 condemning Hamas and the carnage the terrorist organization caused.
So Penn wasn’t silent, but you know who was? Affluent donors like Jon Huntsman when UPenn forced female swimmers to compete and share locker rooms with a male. Regarding the pleas for help from the university’s female swim team in 2022, these donors’ moral compass was not working. They were nowhere to be found, offered no statements of support, and didn’t withhold donations or funding.
Their righteous indignation is laughable. The affluent alumni were perfectly fine doing nothing while the university’s female swimmers begged for anyone to help them and intervene, as revealed through anonymous interviews. They kept the cash flowing even though a complaint was filed to the school and city on behalf of some female swimmers. Donors did nothing and left these students alone to fend for themselves against Penn’s powerful intelligentsia. Their silence was deafening and troubling.
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If donors want to pull funding because they perceive Penn’s response to the tragic Hamas attack to be unacceptable, that is their right. However, they should take those same actions when the school’s female athletes are pleading for any person of power or influence to help them. But through inaction, these wealthy and powerful men showed they didn’t care about girls being forced to be uncomfortably naked in what was supposed to be their safe space.
What happened to Penn’s female swim team during the Lia Thomas fiasco was wrong. The University of Pennsylvania failed its female swimmers, but so did donors like Huntsman.