Dear Liberal Arts Student Colleagues:
In the life of a university, fall is a time of both continuity and renewal.
Those of you returning to campus bring with you the wisdom of your past educational accomplishments now enriched by a summer’s internship or travel or the comforts of home.
Those of you joining us as freshmen or transfer students bring with you a diversity of past experience that enriches our community by opening us to new perspectives.
Never in the history of our university has this reaffirmation and renewal been more important or more appreciated. We welcome your return with anticipation, sober in the recognition that a challenging opportunity lies before us.
The painful revelations of the past 10 months offer us a chance to reshape our community by affirming our long tradition of academic excellence, redressing our past failings, and rededicating ourselves to the pursuit of an education capable of deepening our understanding of the world and enriching our relationships with one another.
As a student entering or returning to the College of the Liberal Arts, I invite you to bring your best self to this most important academic year. We faculty, staff and administrators have been preparing for your arrival and for the work we have ahead of us. Bring your thoughtfulness, your creative talents and a willingness to shape and be shaped by the life of this university, which finds itself this fall in need of the revitalizing energy you bring with you.
Sincerely,
Christopher Long
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies
Professor of Philosophy and Classics
Typically thoughtful, confirming both of incoming students and the basic, ongoing purpose of PSU. This welcoming letter opens a new narrative for all involved and helps turn the page of recent tragic events and its accurate but unfortunate collateral damage and sounds the right approach for beginning to learn from and change the mistakes which led to that tragedy. Chris Long is a great gift to the university, administration, faculty, students and alumni of PSU.
I love this letter–and all of the hope it provides about the coming year. We all need that!