Instruction began this past Wednesday and in-person instruction begins Monday, and I am truly grateful to all who have contributed to being prepared for this moment. Our success as a campus community will hinge on each of us taking responsibility to follow our guidelines, participate in our programs and put each other above the inconveniences that some of these mitigation measures may elicit. We as a community will continue to learn how to live with COVID-19, adjusting our practices and behaviors as guided by the science and the experts in the field of Public Health.
To that end, our campus community has taken the first big step of supporting our campus public health by getting vaccinated. Our campus vaccination status is at 87.5% as a community and it is anticipated to be over 90% in the weeks to come. We are actively reaching out to those who are not in compliance with the policy and expect each individual to do their part out of respect for our community.
As a reminder, we have mandated indoor face coverings and have established requirements to participate in regular COVID-19 asymptomatic testing . We have been testing all students as part of our move-in for campus residents and have had very limited case positivity, with 0.3% positivity out of roughly 1,900 individuals. While we are hopeful that this trend continues, we are prepared for setbacks, with dedicated quarantine and isolation space available for those who are exposed or ill.
It is critically important to remember that each of us has different risk thresholds and tolerances. My ask is that each of us honor our community members by upholding our public health standards as I know we are capable of. There may be moments when our campus community members have a lapse in judgement and I encourage all of us to provide the gentle nudge to uphold our standards. I recognize that this isn’t always comfortable, but it will be necessary to establish the behavioral norms we all desire. Rest assured, we will have disciplinary measures for those who continue to be non-compliant, but our expectation is that each of us will show respect to our campus community through positive actions.
Now, more than ever I ask each of us to do our part in maintaining a safe environment for our campus community.
Be Well,
Andrew Boyd
Chief Resilience Officer
