Seattle Pacific University

Seattle Pacific University (SPU) is a private Christian university in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1891 in conjunction with the Oregon and Washington Conference of the Free Methodist Church as the Seattle Seminary. It became the Seattle Seminary and College in 1913, adopting the name Seattle Pacific College two years later, and received its current name in 1977. History Seattle Pacific University was founded in 1891 by Free Methodist pioneers to train missionaries for overseas service. On June 5, 2014, a shooting occurred in the Otto Miller Hall, during which one student was killed and two other students were injured. The suspect was not a student at the school and had no connection to the university. The gunman was stopped by student Jon Meis, who used pepper spray to disarm him. Meis received a Citizen Honors award from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society in 2015 for his work in stopping the shooting. On November 16, 2016, the gunman was convicted in the shooting and sentenced to 112 years in prison. In May 2022, the university's board of trustees voted to keep rules in place that ban LGBTQ people from becoming employees, prompting student protests. The vote by the board of trustees occurred in wake of faculty voting with an 80% majority no-confidence in the board regarding this issue. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced on July 29 that his office was investigating the university's hiring practices, describing them as potentially illegal and discriminatory. In turn, the university filed a lawsuit against the attorney general, saying that the investigation violates its religious freedom.