ITHACA, NY—On Monday morning, Samuel Whitmore ’27, a student in Professor Daniel Sarver’s Ethics in Business course, noticed something different when he received an email from his professor. Near the close of the message, students were met with an additional paragraph between Sarver’s office location and the university’s standard land acknowledgement.
“I live and work within elite academic and social networks referenced in the recently released Epstein documents,” the statement began. “I recognize that certain interactions, relationships, and opportunities now detailed in the Epstein documents are unacceptable by today’s standards, even though they were, at the time, understood as appropriate and customary by the institutions of which I was a part.” The message then mentioned “the evolving framework through which past conduct is viewed.”
The acknowledgement was “disturbing” and “shocking,” according to Whitmore. “I was just asking for an extension on my essay due this week,” he said. “I honestly thought Professor Sarver had CC’d me in an email to his lawyer or something.”
Sarver was unavailable for comment, but was reportedly consulting legal counsel as to whether the statute of limitations applied to his circumstances.
