Alumni Blog

This fall as other schools are gearing up for Homecoming football and chilly tale gates, Seattle U is joining in the fun as Homecoming Weekend moves to November with basketball!

With Veterans Day taking place over Homecoming Weekend, celebrating our veterans is a key element of this year’s Homecoming. 
We sat down with Tom Hove, Seattle University Veterans Navigator, to talk about how our veterans’ community is being celebrated as part of Homecoming.

The Homecoming festivities kick off on Thursday with the Red Umbrella Parade, sports games and other festivities, with Homecoming Day of Service and the Robert Bennedsen Veteran’s Day 5k on Saturday, concluding on Sunday with the Homecoming men’s basketball game.

The Robert Bennedsen Veteran’s Day 5k honors the service of a fallen alumni hero and celebrates the contributions of our military and veteran community. This family friendly event will have participants running around the perimeter of campus. All alumni and families are invited to participate. Anyone who makes a donation of $10 or more to the Emergency Support Fund, which supports our student veterans, will receive a limited edition challenge coin. Check the Homecoming website for details on registering for the 5k.

The Day of Service opportunities include manning the 5k and joining the veteran’s organization, The Mission Continues, to clean up the international district. You can sign up for Day of Service here.

Following the 5k and Day of Service, there will be a lunch and silent auction on campus with all proceeds going toward the Veterans Emergency Support fund. Veteran resource tables will also be on site throughout the day.

According to Tom, “This Veteran’s Day we are not just saying thank you for your service we are actually showing our gratitude, and that’s the type of support we give to our veterans. We are a military supportive school.”

On Sunday the Homecoming festivities continue with a Homecoming pre-game rally and men’s basketball game v. Bryant at the ShoWare Center. All veterans will receive special ticket pricing. Details are not yet finalized so check the Homecoming website for information as it becomes available.

Learn more about Homecoming here and join us to celebrate our veterans and show your Seattle U pride.

Students preparing for their freshman year at Seattle University are tasked with reading a common text, which will be discussed with faculty and staff during Welcome Week and incorporated in programs throughout the year. The Common Text not only provides students the opportunity to practice active reading and exploring challenging and conflicting ideas, but introduces students to the Ignatian-inspired process of inquiry. This process emphasizes meaning-making, risk-taking and asking deep questions.

The Common Texts for the next two years were chosen by a committee of fifteen faculty, staff, and students selected from a list of finalists. The 2018-19 Common Text is Tulalip from My Heart: An Autobiographical Account of a Reservation Community.

Presented in the author’s own voice, this memoir is immediately engaging as an act of storytelling. It is accessible and varied and offers distinct, specific history of the lives of native peoples here in the greater Seattle area.

As publisher University of Washington Press explains, “Written by a member of the Tulalip tribe and edited posthumously by the local community college writing instructor who collaborated on the project, Tulalip, from My Heart is . . . written in rich, voice-driven text and the traditional Tulalip storyteller narrative style, recounts the myriad problems that such tribes faced after resettlement. Born in 1904, Dover grew up hearing the elders of her tribe tell of the hardships involved in moving from their villages to the reservation on Tulalip Bay: inadequate supplies of food and water, harsh economic conditions, and religious persecution outlawing potlatch houses and other ceremonial practices.”

Members of our committee were excited about this text as a local oral history, as it is likely to engage a broad array of members of our community, as well as a range of ethical complexities related to ethnography, local history, issues of translation, etc. This book is an immersive experience in storytelling, and it is a beautiful example of qualitative research, an important example to incoming SU students. Moreover, it is well-timed to coincide with the opening of Vi Hilbert Hall in 2018, named for a Washington State National Treasure, Vi Hilbert, who devoted much of her life to preserving Native American Lushootseed (Puget Sound Salish) language, traditions and stories.