University of Maryland regent resists student calls to resign over Epstein ties

University System of Maryland regent Tom McMillen is resisting student calls to resign over his ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Mr. McMillen, a past Terrapins basketball star and former Democratic congressman from Maryland, called a Student Government Association referendum seeking his ouster “unfounded and biased” in a letter to student legislators and his fellow regents.

Undergraduates at the system’s flagship College Park campus will vote Tuesday and Wednesday on the largely symbolic measure, which builds on a unanimous student government resolution that school administrators ignored.

“The conclusions being drawn by some members of the SGA are not supported by the facts,” Mr. McMillen wrote. “They are based on limited, decades-old, and tangential interactions that have been taken out of context, amplified into something they are not, and distorted to fit a narrative.”

The student government passed a resolution on March 4 calling on Mr. McMillen to resign because his name appeared in Epstein files that the Justice Department publicized last month.

The student government voted March 11 to add the following to the upcoming ballot: “Do you call upon the University System of Maryland Board of Regents and the leadership of the University of Maryland to demand the resignation of USM Regent Tom McMillen in light of documented communications with Jeffrey Epstein?”

Mr. McMillen chaired the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports during the Clinton administration. Emails, flight logs and other documents in the Justice Department files show that he maintained contact with Epstein from that period until five years after the financier pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor.

Louis Mancuso, the student government’s chief of staff and a sophomore accounting major, said the legislators had no plans to withdraw their ballot referendum after reading the regent’s letter.

“At this point, I am not aware of any intention for them to do so,” Mr. Mancuso said.

A spokesperson for the College Park campus referred questions about the letter to the University System of Maryland, whose 12 institutions also include Towson University and Bowie State University.

System spokesman Michael Sandler declined to comment on the letter.

The University of Maryland has declined to comment on the referendum, despite repeatedly insisting in statements last year that administrators have no obligation to implement student suggestions.

The student-run Diamondback newspaper estimates that 6,000 undergraduates voted in the spring 2025 elections. That’s the highest turnout since 2020, but still only 20% of the school’s roughly 30,000 students.

In an interview last month with The Baltimore Sun, Mr. McMillen dismissed a 2013 text message to Epstein as a “blow-off,” even though he previously claimed they hadn’t spoken since the 1990s.

Jim Moran, a former Democratic congressman from Virginia who leads the political consulting firm that employs Mr. McMillen, insisted that the regent knew Epstein only in passing and decided early on to avoid him.

“I think the students are searching for someone to blame and punish, but they found the wrong target,” Mr. Moran said in a phone interview with The Washington Times. “It’s misguided.”