Next month, Washington State University President Kirk Schulz and former WSU quarterback Jack Thompson will lead a small delegation from Pullman to American Samoa on a goodwill trip that Thompson described as a “very magnanimous gesture by President Schulz.”
Schulz and Thompson, who is Samoan, will be joined by Pullman Police Chief Gary Jenkins and Mary Jo Gonzales, who was hired as WSU’s vice president of student affairs in December.
This first-of-its-kind trip to Samoa comes in the wake of a tumultuous fall at WSU which saw the university’s conduct board accused of ethnic bias against Samoan and Asian-Pacific Islanders after it penalized four Samoan football players before their cases had fully unfolded in the legal realm.