SPU’s Tent City: Doing Good

Jack Levison:

It is January 8th, 2015, a Thursday night, 7 PM, exactly 217 days — 5208 hours — after my daughter and I walked to the front of the auditorium, I walk again onto campus, this time with my wife Priscilla. The reception room is packed, so we nudge our way in, peering out toward a crowd of students.

But not just students. We are at a reception for residents of Tent City 3, which Seattle Pacific University is hosting. This community lives in, well, tents, with tarps as roofs, plywood thrown down as flooring. Without these tarps, without a host such as Seattle Pacific University, these people would probably endure a wet winter under various viaducts and bridges in Seattle….

Tonight, they do not. Tonight we are sharing a meal together in the campus center. For three months they will live with SPU folk, their tarp fence and the tops of their honey buckets a reminder that they are part of us, at least partly, for the winter quarter.

They were part of us two years ago, as well. Over the protests of some residents in the surrounding neighborhood, despite the anxiety expressed by some tuition-paying parents, they lived with us. But then it was on an athletic field tucked in a fenced area, across a very busy Nickerson Avenue, away from the heart of campus. This year Tent City 3 lives on our main quad, smack in the middle of our community, right next to the front gate.