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- Aug. 18, 2020 | Our Success Begins with Your Leadership...
- Title:
- Aug. 18, 2020 | Our Success Begins with Your Leadership
- Date:
- 2020-08-18
- Category:
- Presidential Memos
- Harvested from:
- https://perma.cc/H79Z-9K2U
- Type:
- text
- Digital Format:
- text/html
- Reference Link:
- https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/fridayletter/letters/president_memo_2020-08-18_2.html
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Aug. 18, 2020 | Our Success Begins with Your Leadership
TO: University of Idaho Moscow-Based Students
FROM: Scott Green, President
DATE: Aug. 18, 2020
SUBJECT: Our Success Begins with Your Leadership
Welcome back to campus! We have been working hard all summer for the start of classes and are prepared. This has been a fall like no other, and I expect we will continue to be challenged to provide the learning experience we have delivered for over 130 years, and that you expect.
We hope you are familiar with our plans to do all we can to reasonably protect our campus and community. That begins with testing all of you before you participate in in-person classes. We are also encouraging faculty and staff who have traveled out of our community to test as well, although this is not mandatory. As of this morning, we have received results back on 3,694 tests, have 1,000 samples currently being processed and have another 3,000 scheduled to be swabbed over the next week. Positive tests are running at 0.97% of those tested. Most of the employees and students who tested positive live off campus and are isolating in their homes. However, we have five students who live on campus and are receiving care in our on-campus isolation facility.
Our new lab, opened in partnership with Gritman Medical Center, is now testing samples as they arrive from the swabbing site. Getting this lab up and running has been a Herculean effort but worth it. Few universities in the country have the capability we now have.
Despite having tested each of you upon your return to Moscow, the single most effective tool we have against the virus is compliance with the Healthy Vandal Pledge. The cornerstone is that all students and employees will be required to wear face coverings while on campus. Face coverings work. It is also important that we are mindful of these practices when we leave campus. Notre Dame, which also tested every student, recently had an outbreak of 29 cases, all traced back to an off-campus party. Just today they announced they are moving to online-only delivery.
For our campus to remain open, we all need to take responsibility by showing our leadership, taking action when poor decisions are being made and looking out for the health of our fellow Vandals and those in our community. To be clear, if we fail, we will close the campus and students will be sent home. It is a daunting responsibility but one I know you will help us lead. Frankly, employees and students not willing to protect our community and each other should not be here. All Vandals, employees and students, need to avoid gatherings where social distancing cannot be practiced, particularly where face coverings are not worn. Moscow has a face covering mandate. If you identify such a gathering held without face coverings, please contact the Moscow Police Department at 208-885-2677.
We have a saying at our university, Keep Calm and Vandal On. In the face of adversity and anxiety, our team remained steady and focused on preparing our campus at a detailed level for the fall. We have worked tirelessly this summer to prepare for you, and I am proud of how our staff has responded. There are few, if any, universities that have done more to reasonably protect their communities. We are focused on you and doing all we can to ensure that, like those before us, we execute on our mission to provide the best learning environment possible. Now it is up to you, the next generation of Vandals, to help us remain open.
Keep Calm and Vandal On.
Scott Green
President