“We're all in this together.”

Welcome back, everybody. I'm going to take my mask off to talk to you outside here. For those of you that I've not had the pleasure to meet yet, I'm Pam Cipriano, dean of our School of Nursing. And it is really exciting to welcome you back to what will once again be a pretty unusual semester. But I hope for those of you that are already back that have been doing summer classes or have arrived already just start your fall work or getting ready to do that, that you are excited and ready to go.

Now, as I mentioned, this is an unusual time and we have all been transformed by the effects of the COVID-19 virus. Again, every part of our lives has been altered. And so as we continue to adapt and be flexible, there's some things that we know are really important to think about as we come back together.

Now you've been challenged. You've seen the video from Dean Groves, who really wanted to make sure that we are following all of the right practices in order to keep you safe and to keep our community safe. But it really depends on every single one of us following those guidelines. And that's keeping six feet apart, not having gatherings of more than 15 people, and wearing your mask pretty much all the time unless you're eating or drinking. And so these are really important requirements.

Now I don't know if you've also seen the #YOU-- capital Y-O-U-- VA, which has been adopted by our second, third, and fourth year councils to create a wonderful belief system among all of our students that you are the key to keeping our greater community safe. And it's a peer to peer relationship of saying, we're all in this together, and we all need to make sure that we're doing the right thing. I love the message that they said we can do more by doing less.

So they're asking for a moratorium on CIO events, and really, again, bringing home the point that this is an unusual time. It's a short term sacrifice for a long term gain. And I think we're all really wanting to make sure that you can get back on grounds and stay on grounds and have a great experience this year.

So I don't want to add to any of the threats, which is wow, look at what's happened on a couple high profile campuses. Students came back, we're doing lots of partying. And guess what-- the campus was shut down and people have been sent home. I believe you're going to do better than that. And I believe together, we will be able to be tough on each other and remind each other if for some reason if we see someone who's not complying, because this is really part of what we do as responsible members of our community.

As you know too, one of the goals of UVA is to create citizen leaders. This is an opportunity for you to shine and demonstrate your solidarity and commitment as a citizen leader, not just at UVA, but for the community of Charlottesville. So I have great confidence in you. I know our faculty and staff are so excited that you're coming back. We all want to be here together. Even though many classes will be online, we have a lot of face to face experiences, because you're going to be nurses or already, are nurses. And so this is an important part of us being able to have those opportunities continue.

So I'm here to help in any way answer any questions, reinforce all the positives and great things you're doing. I want to be able to welcome all of you at some point as we continue to either pass six feet apart or have opportunities to continue on Zoom. So thank you for your part in making this a success. I wish you a wonderful summer fall semester. Look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks.