It was already several years after the “Water Buffalo incident” that I came back to Penn to work at the Gazette, but the events and emotions of the time remained fresh in many people’s minds—as I learned whenever Sheldon Hackney’s name appeared in the magazine and prompted a stream of mostly angry and occasionally defensive letters, almost up to his death in 2013 [“Gazetteer,” Nov|Dec 2013]. This surprised me at first, but eventually I came to accept it as a kind of state-of-Penn-nature, so much so that it was a bit of a shock to read, in senior editor Trey Popp’s cover story, “The Hackney Files,” that none of the students in Jared Farmer’s HIST 2000: History Workshop had ever heard the term. (The course is designed to introduce students raised on the internet to archival research. Library card catalogs were also news to most of them.)
Taking advantage of the fact that the records of the Hackney administration had been unsealed after 25 years, as per University Archives and Records Center guidelines, Farmer decided to design a course built around them. In addition to the Water Buffalo incident, students dove into the archives to research controversies from the era over South African divestment; minority presence; and the Mayor’s Scholarship, a complicated lawsuit about the University’s provision of financial aid to Philadelphia residents.
Not coincidentally, the exercise also offered an opportunity to consider more recent history. “They lived through last year—I wanted to help them better understand it,” Farmer told Trey. The story details the coursework involved, and Trey also spoke with a number of the students—whose reflections are, well, more nuanced than mine would have been at 20 or so.
Back then, I would have fit into the category of student now known as first-generation, low-income (FGLI), though I don’t recall being conscious of that as a status—except maybe after spring break when some peers came back with a tan and others of us had to be content with having banked extra work-study hours. Thinking about it now though, I would have welcomed the resources offered by Penn First Plus.
In “Helping Hands,” Caren Lissner C’93—whose essay, “Close Your Eyes” [“Alumni Voices,” May|Jun 2025] dealt with her own family and economic challenges—details the history and goals of the program, and the growth of an alumni network dedicated to helping students find their way at Penn and thrive in the years following graduation as well.
Also in this issue, in his latest historical piece Dennis Drabelle G’66 L’69 writes about Founding Father John Dickinson, who was a trustee of an early iteration of the University. Though famous at the time as the author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, an influential collection of political essays, Dickinson is less well-remembered today than, say, Benjamin Franklin (with whom he occasionally battled). That may be because he considered his fellow delegates to the Second Continental Congress a bit too hasty about cutting ties with Britain—thus the article’s title, “The Prudent Patriot”—and absented himself from the final vote and signing of the Declaration of Independence. He went on to serve loyally in the revolution, though, and also to play a significant role at the constitutional convention in 1787–89.
—John Prendergast C’80
Editor
