Oskaloosa Herald Hero of the Week
06/18/2020
Written by the Oskaloosa Herald
This week’s Hero of the Week is William Penn University, for their long history of a diverse and welcoming campus. Earlier this month, the college released this message from Dr. Noel Stahle, Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Jihna Jenkins-Mullens, Assistant Professor of Business, in the midst of the country-wide protests and the Black Lives Matter movement:
From our beginning in 1873, William Penn University, a proud and resilient Quaker college, has been committed to creating a campus where everyone is welcome, where everyone has a right to sit at the same table. In 1902, five full decades before the Civil Rights movement, we had our first African-American graduate. One hundred forty years on, William Penn University continues to provide a safe and caring campus that embraces women and men from all backgrounds. We celebrate our diversity and the richness it brings to our William Penn family.
Today, while prejudice and inequality dominates race relations in many U.S. communities, William Penn University proudly and loudly proclaims again what we have asserted for 140 years, that we stand with you in these days of racial dis-respect, we care about your well-being physically and socially and intellectually. We stand true to our Quaker principles of simplicity, peace-making, integrity, community and equality. In this time, more than ever, we hold these values close and we firmly believe that education is for all, because there is value in everyone.