It’s Go Time
We’re almost to the point where our upperclass students will be all moved in; today is their last day for that. Classes start on Wednesday, so very soon your students’ free time will dramatically decrease as their academic workload increases.
I have been in 1-on-1 advising appointments for most of this morning, so today will be brief-ish. A couple items to mention:
Many of you have asked about our COVID dashboard, and whether we are going to do ongoing/random testing of students for COVID through the semester. I am told that we are getting final details ironed out and will announce those tomorrow, so stay tuned.
We kicked off our Weekly Message for P’24 Parents and Families today. This does not get emailed out to all families; you can either bookmark this page or know that I will reference the messages here in the Daily Deac. There is a companion piece for ’24 students called Letters So Dear, with advice from students and young alumni. You can read the first message here. This will give you a taste:
One of my favorite things in the world is a good story. Stories teach, build, unite, share, and move. And you, friend, have just begun a story of your own! What a blessing you have been given to be able to be here at Wake Forest. Has that quite sunk in yet for you? You get to write a story of your own at Wake, and, even more importantly, you get to take part in writing Wake Forest’s story.
As you write your own Wake Forest story, you might encounter a few challenges. Here are some tips and truths that I wish I would have learned sooner. I promise you that they will make your story just a little bit sweeter.
I had a [very good] follow up question from some families on the guidance Dean Goldstein sent out last week clarifying policies and expectations, specifically this part: “If indoors, wear a mask. The exceptions would be in your residence hall room (alone) or if you are showering or eating.” We did not mean to imply that if your student has a roommate, both roommates need to wear a mask in their room at all times; our expectation is that roommates would have had an explicit conversation about their safety practices as part of the “rules of the room” conversation that students typically have at the start of school. What we meant about wearing a mask in your room was if you had a WFU friend visiting in your room, and you had not explicitly talked about whether they are always masked and always stay 6’ apart from others, it would be wise for both the person and their guest to wear a mask during the visit out of an abundance of caution, as stated in our guest policy. Apologies for any confusion there.
Last off today, I need to ask a favor of you, Daily Deacdom. We have an incredibly high number of questions coming in – so many that we cannot always give an individualized response, so I answer some of those questions here. Sometimes a well-intended family member asks the same question across multiple platforms – so a family member might reply to a Daily Deac to ask me a question about housing, but also are contacting the housing office with the same question, and are asking that question in the call center or our COVID feedback form. The result is we have multiple people from different offices all spending time trying to answer the same question.
There are 5,000ish undergraduate families and far fewer of us who can answer your questions. We want to make sure we get you answers, but we also need to make sure we do it efficiently. So I humbly — and with great love — ask you to pick one avenue when you have a question or if you want to give feedback. Please help us by not asking questions across multiple channels. If you have a question, I recommend starting with the Call Center (336-758-7500, M-F, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.) Thank you for understanding that right now we can’t afford to have people unknowingly duplicating efforts. And rest assured, we understand there are questions, and we want to get you what you need. Thanks for your partnership in this!