Recent Stories with tag seattle university

As you may know, I like to keep an eye on the motivated sellers on Capitol Hill, as a kind of market barometer. Here's a special case, likely due to financing.

This one bedroom is on the second floor of a 1924 brick co-op near Seattle University, 1136 13th Ave. Redfin says it's been listed for over a year; Windermere has it selling originally for $175,000, now for $149,000.

It's 600 square feet, with a redone kitchen: granite countertop, slate floor. It comes with a stacked washer/dryer combo, and the HOA dues of $312 include earthquake insurance (because brick, see). It faces south, which is terrific, and there's a large walk-in closet. Downside, baseboard heat, not FHA-approved. I imagine that last is a sticking point for bargain shoppers.

With a 20-percent down payment, your mortgage and HOA could still be under $1,000 per month. And, you have to like the location. At 13th & Union, you're blocks away from everywhere you want to be (i.e., Café Presse and Stumptown, Piecora's, the Pike/Pine corridor, Pony...really, anything fun that begins with "P"). Assuming it doesn't fall down around your ears in the Big One, you're in a good spot.

George Tsutakawa's Centennial Fountain, in Seattle U's Quad

As a relatively young city, Seattle doesn't have a large number of major art collections in public or private hands. Though our art benefactors have been generous and shown a fine eye for great art, Seattle can't stand up to the magnificent art collectors and collections in cities like San Francisco, New York, or even Los Angeles.

So local art lovers have to do a little more legwork to enjoy the pleasures of seeing art. One great source for viewing art is to take in the fine art collections in the corporate or organizational world. To take in one of these fine collections, start at Seattle University's central campus on Capitol Hill.

Seattle U has done a great job of integrating art into the public areas of many of its buildings, and a tour of some of the best art is both fulfilling and easy; it won't take more than an hour to see the best works. All buildings are open weekdays during business hours, and most are open outside of that, even on the weekends, so there really isn't a bad time to go. After, pop into Cafe Presse or Stumptown for refreshment and post-viewing conversation.

Start your tour at the far north end of the campus, just off Madison. The first work of art is a building, the award-winning Chapel of St. Ignatius designed by Bremerton-born architect Steven Holl.

The chapel is a magnificent work; surely one of the finest examples of modern architecture in the city. Holl followed his brief closely on this building. It subtly draws you in with clean, simple lines, and then invites contemplation. It's a spiritual house, but not overly tied to any one religion. Seattle U is a Jesuit school, but the chapel invites all to worship and pray.

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Jodi O'Brien

It must have looked good on paper. Marquette University wanted to hire Seattle University's sociology professor Jodi O'Brien, chair of the sociology department, to be dean of arts and sciences.  They extended her a job offer, O'Brien accepted. The signed contract was in the mail, the Seattle University Spectator says, when she got the take-backsies phone call.

AP reports that: "The archdiocese acknowledges [Milwaukee] Archbishop Jerome Listecki called Marquette President Father Robert Wild about the university's offer to Seattle University professor Jodi O'Brien," though the university stoutly insists its unprofessional behavior is its own doing. Citing worries that the openly gay O'Brien's hiring would "create dichotomies and cause tensions," Marquette's administration managed to vault itself--dichotomous, tension-filled--into the national spotlight. 

Wayback Machine: That's MvB on the left and John Drabinski on the right. Center guy is from Portland, which you can totally tell.

I was curious what a (mostly) unaffiliated academic would think of this story so I trundled off to Facebook to look up a Xavier Hall dormmate from my own Seattle U years, John Drabinski, who teaches in the Department of Black Studies at Amherst. 

First, is this an embarrassing kerfluffle or a major issue? Good for Seattle U, bad for Marquette?

Well, Catholic schools are at a crossroads, I think: Either you continue along with mainstream higher-education, which really does value diverse forms of critical inquiry, or you throw your lot in with the fundamentalists and the religious right.

For Seattle U, I think this is good. And Seattle U is also good for Catholic universities generally, because this goes against the growing narrative about Catholics and Catholic schools as indifferent to child abuse, backwards, out of touch, equivalent to the religious right. Bad for Marquette because now, no matter what the school does, it is branded a right-wing outpost. Sadly, because Marquette is a perfectly fine school with solid academic standards.

I feel terrible for the MU students. Seriously. They must be incredibly embarrassed. For quite awhile, they'll have to explain how they are not like Marquette, even though they went to Marquette....

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Seattle University faculty statement

What happens when a East not-West-Coast Jesuit university turns down a professor from a West Coast Jesuit university? It's time for chest-bumpin'! But, in a scholarly, considered way.

When Seattle University sociology professor Jodi O'Brien was offered a position at Wisconsin's Marquette University, she probably didn't expect the news to make the Huffington Post. In fact, it didn't.

It wasn't until Marquette belatedly revoked the job offer of dean of arts and sciences that HuffPo got interested in allegations that Marquette's cold feet had to do with O'Brien's lesbian status, and delightedly covered Marquette President Father Robert Wild's "Why, some of our best professors are lesbians" defense. 

(Now Firedoglake has an incendiary letter from Marquette's own Dr. Daniel Maguire, displaying the benefit of tenure in calling for his president's resignation.)

Jodi O'Brien

O'Brien, who got her PhD at the University of Washington and came to Seattle U in 1995, later becoming chair of her department, is both popular with students and openly gay, according to the Seattle University Spectator (a paper for which I once wrote a few pretty lousy film reviews, back in the day). A Seattle U students' Facebook group supporting O'Brien sprang up even before her colleagues had time to issue their own statement. They are "deeply saddened and angry." Step off, MU!

Somehow she made it to the last round of the process, as one of the top two finalists, and had the job offer extended to her via a phone call before Marquette noticed that her academic work has "strongly negative statements about marriage and family." Talking with The Advocate, O'Brien mentioned that a search firm had tried to recruit her for the same position a year earlier, but that she had declined....

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