3 minute read
From the Director
Here’s Our Version
“You learn a lot about people when …” occurs to me regularly when reflecting on the past 12 months. This issue of our magazine occupies a now-familiar in a way that listens to each individual experience while taking care of everyone. genre for publications from schools — yet includes what others And this all happens decision by decision, quite literally case by locally, nationally, or globally have not chosen to do. At each step case. In the midst of the journey, heroes continue to emerge. I along the way, we keep learning. could not have understood back in July the importance of our staggeringly qualified Medical Advisory Board with its weekly The pandemic, as we see incessantly, amplifies differences that consults, nor could any of us have predicted the difference that our already existed: regional, economic, racial, political, philosophical rock-solid and impressively credentialed Health Team on campus — all in combination, in ways that challenge efforts to form and would make. Teachers transform into academic contortionists on preserve an inclusive consensus. Such has been our experience at short notice to reach students with tools we barely could identify USN. Sending this message out to your household helps open a not long ago. Families find ways to make amended routines work, window amid an uncommonly bubbled time, with those of us on for the good of the whole. Students from the Blue, Yellow, Green, the mitigated inside distinct from so many constituents watching and Red Doors of kindergarten to the halls outside Janet Schneifrom the outside. It’s just not our nature to be buttoned up. der’s College Counseling Office have in inspiringly large numbers thought far beyond themselves. Going back decades, people here never set out to follow the herd. And right now, the question would actually be, “Which herd We hope these examples prove contagious, a buttress against anyway?” Our part of the country responded less directly to COVID-19 fatigue and a bulwark against just doing what we COVID-19 guidelines (to put it mildly), then felt (and feels) the remember used to be OK. Making a compelling argument for the consequences of that stance as case numbers soared. We took right choices in the moment remains an ongoing challenge, but I our time in opening and sought public health directives from wouldn’t trade our school community for any I’ve ever seen. The renowned research centers. Then by October we were all back in range of opinions expressed by USN households remains wider person, unlike scores of trusted peer schools across the country — than at any time I can remember, but we still feel broad support despite our checkered record locally. on big priority issues — like taking care of faculty and reducing spread of the virus with the resources we need. The numbers we tracked at 2000 Edgehill confirmed our path. As you’ve no doubt Our attention is riveted on what’s directly in front of us. In that read elsewhere, effort, you would find tremendous urgency in our response to the schools have overdue generational reckoning on race, so palpable since last not proven to summer. To be the school that we need to be, we need to be about be transmis- that work, pandemic notwithstanding — actually especially so as sion vectors for stark societal inequities lay bare in this time of parallel crises. the virus. So we work our Read in the stories to follow our version of school right now, to see plan, we modify us focusing on issues so fundamental that they might ironically our protocols have escaped attention at another time. In so many easily demonin light of the strable ways USN could boast of being in the best position ever, emerging under- yet that doesn’t seem right at this crossroads time in the wider standings, and world. Better that we continue learning a lot about people. nn we recalculate our risk budgets Stay connected — keep sharing your stories too,
