After Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction was overturned by Pennsylvania’s supreme court on Wednesday, his former co-star Phylicia Rashad took to Twitter to celebrate his release: “A terrible wrong is being righted – a miscarriage of justice is corrected!” she wrote.

The comment provoked fierce backlash across the internet, including several commenters expressing disappointment and sympathy with Howard University students — Rashad was recently named dean of Howard’s College of Fine Arts, where she was to have started on Thursday, July 1. Rashad is a Howard alum who once taught classes at the fine arts college. The college, which was reestablished in 2018, was recently named after the late actor and Howard alum Chadwick Boseman.

Cosby served three years of a three-to-10-year sentence in a prison outside of Philadelphia after being convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman named Andrea Constand. Dozens of other women also accused the Cosby Show actor of drugging and raping them — and in testimony, Cosby himself admitted to giving women quaaludes, according to the New York Times. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Cosby’s agreement with a former district attorney in 2005 should have prevented him from being charged in the 2018 case.

After news broke that the 83-year-old comedian would be released from prison, Rashad shared her approval of the decision online. Hours later, Rashad followed up with a tweet addressing her original post. She wrote, “I fully support survivors of sexual assault coming forward. My post was in no way intended to be insensitive to their truth. Personally, I know from friends and family that such abuse has lifelong residual effects. My heartfelt wish is for healing.”

Her original statement was shared far and wide with thousands of quote tweets in a matter of hours. Several people questioned how the newly appointed dean would protect students who might share their own survival stories.

One Twitter user wrote: “As a @HowardU School of Fine Arts alum, and as a survivor, this tweet from @PhyliciaRashad is disappointing. I hope we can have a dean who believes & respects survivors. Howards students who are survivors, I believe you …”

The former student shared a link to the university’s counseling and safety resources.

Another alum, 26-year-old writer Nylah Burton wrote: “SO, since the Dean of @HowardU College of Fine Arts wants to tell all of her students that sexual assault doesn’t matter to her, y’all can donate to help survivors of sexual violence from Howard.”

Burton helped start a mutual aid network, the Black Survivors Healing Fund, which provides $5,000 to Howard students of any gender who’ve been victims of sexual assault — the funds cover therapy needs, tuition, housing, groceries, and anything else students need to heal. Members of the Howard community started the GoFundMe in June 2020 after alumni started tweeting details of their experiences with sexual violence on campus, including many who said they were assaulted by the same male Howard student. In the hours since Rashad’s tweet, the Black Survivors Healing Fund has received an uptick in donations — including a few anonymous $200 donations.

Burton tells DCist that Rashad’s tweet wasn’t surprising but was disappointing.

“As a survivor, one of the things you’re always worried about is that people are going to dismiss you and ignore you,” Burton says. “When someone in a position of power tweets out that level of support for such a serial rapist, it brings in this added concern of being retaliated against. So now you’re wondering whether you’re going to be expelled. You’re worried about a little bit more than being ignored.”

Howard University, in a statement late Wednesday evening, said that “survivors of sexual assault will always be our priority.”

“While Dean Rashad has acknowledged in her follow-up tweet that victims must be heard and believed, her initial tweet lacked sensitivity towards survivors of sexual assault,” the statement continued. “Personal positions of University leadership do not reflect Howard University’s policies. We will continue to advocate for survivors fully and support their right to be heard. Howard will stand with survivors and challenge systems that would deny them justice. We have full confidence that our faculty and school leadership will live up to this sacred commitment.”

But this isn’t the first time Rashad has voiced public support for her former TV husband. In 2015 she told an interviewer that she thought the women accusing Cosby of assault were part of an orchestrated attack on Cosby’s career. She told Showbiz 411, in stark terms, “Forget these women.”

Burton says she wants to see the university terminate Rashad from her position, fearing that her presence there will inflict harm on current students. Students should be the priority in any decision the university makes, she says — not Rashad and not Cosby.

“Based on Dean Rashad’s tweet today, she is absolutely unfit to be the dean, to lead students, to be a role model, and to be someone that they can trust,” Burton says. “It’s really disappointing because, obviously she has a lot of talent, but her tweets today disqualify her, in my firm opinion, from being someone who should have responsibility over students.”

On Friday, according to several news outlets, Rashad sent a letter to the Howard University community apologizing for the tweet and saying it  “caused so much hurt in so many people — both broadly and inside the Howard Community.”

“My remarks were in no way directed towards survivors of sexual assault,” she wrote.  “I vehemently oppose sexual violence, find no excuse for such behavior, and I know that Howard University has a zero-tolerance policy toward interpersonal violence.”

This story has been updated with a statement from Howard University and information about Rashad’s followup letter to the Howard University community.