Faculty, Staff, Students, Spring 2021, Video

Mini-Break Message from President Patton

Hey, everybody! This is President Patton just checking in with you all before the mini-break. I just wanted to tell you first, I hope it’s wonderful. I hope you have some really great downtime catching up and resting and sharing good time with your pod and spending some time outdoors as well. I certainly am looking forward to it myself. I also want to say that this is not a normal break and I know you all know that, but it’s real important to be reminded of it right now. The reason why is because we are at a pivotal moment in terms of an increase in cases in Vermont. Our cases are very much on the rise. We have some pretty big outbreaks in other campuses in Vermont, as well as in our peer schools. And those peer schools, the reason for those outbreaks have to do with just small gatherings where people thought they were following the rules, but something happened and suddenly we have people in quarantine. So that’s really tough. And so we are at Middlebury at a pivotal moment. We are really experiencing the second successful semester of COVID, thanks to you, thanks to your awesome work as students and community builders, and we really want to make sure that we keep that going strong, keep our success to date going strong, keep our community healthy. So please, no travel outside of Addison County, unless you go through the permission protocols that Dean Doucet shared with you. Please no visitors unless you go through the permission protocols that we’ve already shared with you. These are really, really important things for us right now. If we can get through this mini-break and come back together safely, we will be able to get through the rest of the semester and avoid the kind of shutdowns that we’re seeing right now on other campuses. So I wanted to send that reminder to all of you, say how incredibly proud I am of you and all the great work and learning and creating the learning community that you’ve done so far. I’m just so proud to be part of this community, and I want to wish you a really wonderful mini-break. Thanks again.