Our day at Seattle Pacific University began with a breakfast with our morning hosts. The food was superb, and I’ll take this time to mention that SPU’s food quality was voted #1 in the country by the students.

We proceeded from there to a presentation where Haven and Brian took a look at the creation story and gender. The school must have done a great job publicizing the event, because hundreds of people showed up, and some had to stand in the back due to lack of space. There was a short response from an Old Testament scholar and some Q&A time. One of the administrators, Paula, introduced herself to me, because she’s from Fayetteville, AR, my home city, and we found that we both knew some of the same people.

Over lunch, I had a wonderful conversation with Kim Campbell, the school’s chief judicial officer and director of resident life, for over an hour. A short forum on the lives of Riders was next (packed house again), followed by some free conversation time, where I got to meet some really neat people. The impression that I got from the students (and administration, for that matter) with whom I spoke today was really open and affirming toward LGBT people, which made me curious as to why there were not any official safe spaces or a Gay/Straight Alliance on the campus. The problem seems (in my eyes) to be that the students seem to be a little too apathetic about the issue that there are only a tiny handful of people (a lot of whom happen to be freshmen) who feel safe and loved enough to be openly GLBT. I hope that I was able to inspire people to get active at their school, because they certainly have a population that would be able to support such a movement.

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