Dear Miami Students,
With so many unknowns in our world right now, please allow me to share some definitive certainties with you.
One being that Miami’s campus is as beautiful as ever this spring. The redbuds that encircle the Hub in the heart of our academic quad are in full bloom, and you can’t help but smile at the profusion of jaunty red tulips. I wonder if Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Frost was strolling Slant Walk in springtime when he declared ours “the most beautiful campus that ever there was.”
A second certainty is that even more beautiful and vital to Miami than our trees and flowers are our people. As Renate and I walk past Armstrong Student Center these days, we long to see students gathered at tables, comparing class notes and debating politics. The real distinctiveness of this place is its people — our students, faculty, and staff living out Love and Honor through their studies, teaching, scholarship, work, and outreach.
We miss you and all the wonderful energy you bring to Oxford.
On April 27th, Ohio Governor and Miami alumnus Mike DeWine, Class of 1969, announced the plan to reopen the State of Ohio. We are excited to be returning to on-campus classes this fall and are planning diligently for that to happen. The health and safety of our students has always been a top priority, but our efforts embrace a new emphasis this year.
We will follow the experts.
We continue to work closely with public health officials and Governor DeWine, who has been recognized nationally and internationally for taking early action to mitigate the pandemic’s impact in Ohio. By following the advice of health experts, we are able to promptly address issues as they arise.
We have a strong health-care network right here.
Collaborating with our Student Health Services experts, we have strengthened our relationship with our health-care partner, TriHealth, one of the top integrated health systems in Greater Cincinnati. TriHealth operates both McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital, located just a few blocks from campus, as well as our full-service Student Health Center, giving our students access to TriHealth’s medical specialists.
We are preparing the campus for your arrival.
Following CDC guidelines and utilizing hospital-grade products approved by the EPA, we are sanitizing the residence and dining halls as well as every classroom building. We have also increased the cleaning frequency of all high-touch, heavily used areas on campus and are providing hand sanitizer and other disinfectants in various locations across campus.
We are outfitting our housing, dining, and maintenance staff with face masks and other appropriate personal protective equipment. We are also currently limiting on-campus personnel to those who must be on campus to do their job and will return additional personnel to campus incrementally.
Test, trace, isolate.
We are working with TriHealth, our local hospital and healthcare provider, to develop a plan for testing and have set up a system to quarantine students who may be exposed to the virus so they can continue their studies in place while protecting our students, faculty, and staff.
These are just some of the steps we are taking to protect our students, faculty, and staff as we prepare to return for the fall.
Many of you may know that I end all of my correspondence with the words Love and Honor. This phrase comes from our beloved Fight Song and is used as a greeting among Miamians around the world. It represents Miami’s values, detailed in our official code. One of the lines in the code states: “I demonstrate Love and Honor by supporting and caring for my fellow Miamians.”
This will always be our pledge to each of you. That is a certainty.
In Love and Honor,
Gregory P. Crawford
President