(The Center Square) – The ongoing scandal over the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has reached Ohio State University, where a major hospital complex is named for one of Epstein’s former business associates, billionaire Lex Wexner.
The Ohio Nurses Association and 295 individuals have requested the university rename the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center.
“Jeffrey Epstein trafficked and sexually abused underage girls,” the nurses association wrote in a letter to the Ohio State Board of Trustees. “Not ‘’young women,’ not ‘participants,’ children. Girls who were groomed, exploited, assaulted, and discarded by adults with wealth, status, and influence.”
Wexner, the founder of Limited Brands retailer and former CEO of Victoria’s Secret gave a deposition last week at his New Albany home to the U.S. House Oversight Committee on his relationship with Epstein. Wexner denied any wrongdoing.
“I was naïve, foolish, and gullible to put any trust in Jeffrey Epstein,” Wexner’s statement said. “He was a con man. And while I was conned, I have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide.”
Epstein was Wexner’s finance manager and advisor starting in the mid-1980s, and Wexner had previously called Epstein a “loyal friend.”
Ohio State has an “established procedure” for requests on space and entity names, university spokesman Ben Johnson told The Center Square.
“The University Naming Review Procedure was introduced in 2022 and allows current Ohio State students, faculty and staff, as well as alumni, to submit requests,” Johnson said. “Each request receives full consideration.”
As of Feb. 8, the university had received about 295 requests to rename the Wexner Medical Center, he said.
Members of the nurses association picketed in a park near the hospital recently to “stand visibly and unapologetically with survivors.”
The protest was held as the Wexner Medical Center opened its new University Hospital which it described as, “the largest single-facility construction project in the university’s history and the largest single-facility hospital project to open in the United States in 2026.”
Sunday’s opening “should represent healing but remains overshadowed by the controversy and pain attached to the Wexner name,” the nurses group said.
The university’s re-naming review involves a five-step process that starts with an advisory committee and potentially makes its way all the way to the board of trustees.
“Removing a naming designation is a serious step that will only occur under exceptional and narrow circumstances,” the university’s website says.
