When Donald Hackney to start with enrolled at Gonzaga College in 1966, the kid from Kennewick, Washington couldn’t have imagined his workplace 47 yrs in the foreseeable future would sit in a coal dumping ground by the river.
By a couple of twists and not as well several turns, the Jepson Heart was erected in 1987 and the “Law Dog” settled into his business office on the next floor of the small business university, where by he was hired whole-time by GU in 2006.
Infamous for educating Business enterprise Regulation to sophomores — either to their delight or their chagrin, dependent on who you question — the roots of the “Law Dog” nickname are ambiguous. Colleague and Director of Graduate Accounting Andrew Brajcich accuses Hackney of bestowing the nickname on himself.
For what it is worthy of, Hackney does not bear in mind if it was him or a university student that came up with the moniker. All that’s sure is that the title has caught, so a great deal so that the beginning of each lecture features a slide with the formal “Law Dog” emblem of a snarling bulldog.
Donald Hackney’s nickname at Gonzaga is “Law Dog.”
Hackney has the unique difference of owning almost just about every organization scholar at GU pass as a result of his classroom due to the fact he started training in 1974. If Hackney misses a scholar in the classroom, he also offers a speech to future GU college students around GEL Weekend on enterprise as a calling as a precautionary evaluate.
“I experienced him for Business Law when I was an undergraduate, so I achieved Professor Hackney in 1979,” said Interim Provost and 1981 GU graduate, Ken Anderson. “He’s taught each individual single part of Small business Law for most of the time he is been right here, surely considering that he’s been entire-time. Due to the fact of that, he is aware of so numerous people today.”
Outside of Small business Regulation (after named Regulation, Small business, and Culture), Hackney’s fingerprints are all above the training of Zags inside of the university of business enterprise. To generate an exhaustive record of Hackney’s involvement at GU might be difficult.
Not only was he 1 of the most important advocates for the Legislation and General public Policy focus, Hackney has served on the GU Board of Trustees for over 25 yrs. He is also a club advisor for Alpha Kappa Psi and an lively member of the GU Alumni Association, all although conducting study on the Logan Neighborhood and individual bankruptcy filings in Washington.
Hackney’s journey commenced in the Pacific Northwest on a family peppermint farm outside of Kennewick exactly where he commenced performing with his mother and father and siblings at the age of 7.
As he describes his roots, Hackney moves methodically throughout his business office. The walls are loaded with biographies on Alexis de Tocqueville and Benjamin Franklin between other books like “The Federalist.” He pauses to admire a image amid the thick white binders made up of authorized jargon on All-natural Law. The black-and-white photograph is of a young Hackney with his aunt, uncle, parents and siblings on the farm.
“I grew up in a life style which is essentially long gone in the region,” Hackney said. “From the time you’re previous more than enough to do anything at all, you are a part of an economic enterprise since everyone functions. You know, I glimpse back and I assume how fortunate I was to understand how to do the job. I you should not take into account I was punished by getting to function in the fields, it was a blessing for me.”
By way of blissful ignorance and some slight divine intervention, the self-described “cradle Catholic” produced up his head that he would show up at GU and turn into a lawyer at the age of 14.
“I’ve never ever experienced just one ounce of hold back again or fear in me,” Hackney explained. “I remember likely up to some Jesuit that was visiting from Gonzaga back again when I was in junior large. I went up and launched myself to him and explained, ‘I’m coming to Gonzaga’.”
Hackney attended just one calendar year at a junior higher education in the Columbia Basin prior to transferring to GU as a sophomore.
The “Law Dog” still left GU for a temporary two-calendar year stint in the military at the peak of the Vietnam War next graduation. Hackney was originally deployed to Fort Riley before training in war video games in Germany, lastly settling at Fort Benning in Ga.
“There’s my Infantry College Airborne certificate, which suggests I have jumped out of properly superior airplanes,” Hackney mentioned, pointing to his shelf with a giggle. “I acquired to Fort Riley and they ran down their officer strength so lower there since they were being delivery people today to Vietnam. They froze orders for a when to establish items back up, and that held me from going to Vietnam.”
Within two weeks of returning from the army, Hackney was enrolled in regulation college at GU and hasn’t remaining since. Whilst he practiced in Spokane as a attorney for decades, he began educating the infamous Company Regulation system right away after graduation as GU was pressed for adjunct college.
“I assume he has a deeper being familiar with of what it signifies to be a Zag more so than any individual else who’s here,” reported Director of the Hogan Entrepreneurial Management Plan Dan Stewart. “He’s found it from both sides as a college student and as a college individual and as a trustee. He understands the background and the roots of the faculty.”
Hackney’s tenure at GU is a single of benchmarks. Because arriving in the late ’60s, Hackney has noticed the peaks and valleys the university has endured in the course of the latter 50 percent of the 20th century as the Jesuits and their counterparts fought to maintain the doorways open up at GU.
“The basketball team was on the ascendancy and in 1999 the full issue took off,” Hackney stated, referring to the Zags’ to start with Elite Eight operate. “We went from courses of 500 individuals up to shut to 1,000. People today can pat by themselves on the again all they want. The purpose Gonzaga is a name that people today know is because of basketball.”
Nonetheless, Hackney is rapid to credit history the work of former Gonzaga presidents Fr. Bernard Coughlin S.J. and Fr. Robert Spitzer S.J. for their integral part in developing the GU campus into its current kind. Hackney estimates that Spitzer made near to 50 structures on campus throughout his tenure.
“I signify, [Coughlin] stored the warmth on, he kept the place open up,” Hackney mentioned. “He straightened some issues all around and went out there and hustled income. Barney is in the pantheon of Gonzaga saints. He’s in the entrance row for having performed it.”
When Hackney shared the GU campus with people patron saints of GU, he was also busy managing a promotions business, numerous building outfits, creating land and jogging his possess regulation exercise as the senior associate. The “Law Dog” endured his reasonable share of dissolved partnerships, but in spite of the rotating solid of names from Lawson to Delaney, Hackney’s identify generally remained on the sign out entrance.
“We all take these psychology exams that tell you what you are. Properly, I am an entrepreneur,” Hackney explained. “I have a type of passion for people today who go out and make factors and do items. Folks that soar into ships and check out to learn new worlds. My sympathies are with all those people.”
Not just one to backtrack, the “Law Dog” is unbelievably comfy in the existence his 14-calendar year-previous self put in movement in junior substantial. As he leans back in his workplace chair, a small glass jar of pure peppermint extract sits in front of his pc to remind him of his agricultural roots in Kennewick.
“There’s a real tendency, when you happen to be a 20-year-outdated to just kind of set off all of the large thoughts and just form of commit your lives distracted. No one needs to get as well significant,” Hackney explained. “I would explain to folks to carve out silent time where you are not distracted and get in contact with your interior voice. Which is how God speaks to us. If you’re just all-around chaos, loud songs, nonsense, movie game titles and social texting and all that stuff, you can never ever access into that tranquil location.”
When he isn’t marshaling his Organization Legislation pupils in the Wolff Auditorium, he can be located in his business office, whether it’s a weekend or a vacation. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic when campus was with out college students, Hackney and Stewart would indulge in a beverage as they walked all over the campus that the “Law Dog” has watched increase out of its previous industrial modesty.
Although Hackney didn’t disclose any kind of retirement plans consisting of rides into the proverbial sunset, when he does inevitably come to a decision to dangle it up, GU will reduce above two generations of knowledge. A portal into the past will shut and a new elder statesman will think Hackney’s article. Some acts are unachievable to abide by and as he methods his 50th calendar year, Hackney has made the task of his successor amazingly difficult.
“The very good Lord only presents just about every of us so many years, what I refer to as this side of the grass, you know, and I have experienced a superb lifestyle,” Hackney claimed. “I’ve been able to perform into yrs exactly where quite a few of my friends are retired. I consider people today will need get the job done and have been designed to operate and I delight in it. I like teaching. I derive a terrific offer of individual gratification from currently being capable to do people kinds of matters.”
