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Under Hackney, a university met a community

Seth Zweifler

The Daily Pennsylvanian

Friday, September 13, 2013

Sheldon Hackney, who died Thursday, came under fire later in his presidency

When Sheldon Hackney took the reins inside College Hall in 1981, he inherited a university that colleagues say was in pressing need of repair.

Penn, coming on the heels of a period in the 1970s of sobering budget cuts and consternation, found itself at the center of many West Philadelphia residents’ ire. In its push to move westward, the residents said, the University had done lasting damage to its relationship with surrounding neighborhoods. The community, some of which had been displaced by Penn’s expansion, had developed a deep sense of mistrust toward the University.

In some regards, the atmosphere on campus was equally bleak. In the early 1980s, much of Locust Walk was dominated by traditionally white, all-male fraternities, creating an environment that some students and professors said was unwelcoming to women and minority communities.

More than a decade later, it was Hackney who began the movement to reintroduce Penn onto the stage of national consciousness, laying much of the groundwork to the model of the modern-day urban institution.

Click here to read the full story in the Daily Pennsylvanian.