 But I was able to come back. Well, I want to just before I ask Ed to just give us a little bit of an introduction. I know he's got this great bio that I looked up at on Hampshire's website. He's done a lot of really impressive things. And I want maybe him to share a little bit about his story with you. But I want to remind folks in the room, but feel free to raise your hand if you have a question you want to make a comment. I can use the q&a function within zoom and I can read your question or comment doesn't have to be specific to Hampshire but feel free to share those questions with us at any point. So Ed, could you give us a little bit of introduction on yourself and you know what the last years been like and how you came to Hampshire. Sure. So, you know, I'm an academic by training my, my doctoral degree is in political philosophy. So I study democracy and, you know, how democracy should work ideally and how we think about conflict particularly deep emotional unresolvable conflict within democratic institutions so this is a interesting time for someone who studies the kind of things that I studied as a professor. But you know I went to, I went to Lake Forest College near Chicago, and I went there primarily because as I was looking at colleges from as a rural Ohio, I had a sense like there was these things that I wanted to do and none of the colleges offered precisely what I wanted to do and Lake Forest had this program called the independent scholars program, right, where I would be allowed to design my own major and take whatever I wanted. Right and Lake Forest didn't have any distribution requirements at the time and like, that's what I want to do. Right, so I went there, because I should have gone to Hampshire. Right. And I was you know, a rural Ohio kid I didn't know Hampshire thinking about that the Northeast was way too far away. But I should have gone to Hampshire right and then I you know my first job out of out of graduate school. First full time job was at the University of Maryland Southern California, which has a center called the Johnson Center for integrative studies which was founded about the same time as Hampshire. And that's about 200 students sort of a college within the university that again is modeled on the kind of self designed contract based design your own curriculum education that Hampshire is. I had my intellectual home for most of my time at Redlands and realize at that point like, you know, what Hampshire does is the model for what the ideal of a liberal arts education and undergraduate education should be it's what, you know, I think everybody would do if they have the kind of the courage and the resources and the commitment that you would, you would help students figure out what questions matter to them, what projects matter to them what, what they care and are passionate about and then you would support them with resources and mentorship to do that and to do those projects as their education. So when it came became, you know, when I got the opportunity to come to Hampshire as, you know, to lead the institution but also to more importantly, make sure that this model for what undergraduate education should be because survive, you know, I jumped on it right away. So now I feel a little jealous that I didn't go to Hampshire college. It just gave me the warm fuzzy feelings of you know supporting students and asking them those questions rather than saying you know pick which box you want to check to start your education so that's really that's an interesting concept. So how is Hampshire doing now. You know there's been some changes over the last few years and not to mention a pandemic so what's what's what's the state of the college today. Well I think there's two ways to answer that one is right now and one is where we're headed. So maybe start with the second part of that which is, you know Hampshire is on a good trajectory to be a sustainable institution financially. You know I think Hampshire is an exciting and sustainable institution educationally and always has been but it has had some challenges in balancing its incoming revenue with its expenses. And that's, that's a common challenge that most, almost all small colleges in the country except for a small handful that have very very large endowments face right and find different ways to resolve that. And in the midst of the second year of a multi year plan that we've, you know, worked very carefully within our community and with external stakeholders like the Department of Higher Education and our creditors and everybody's on board on this, where by 2425 as our as our enrollment recovers, you know a bit by bit each year, and we maintain a stable and slowly growing budget. And the revenue should match right so and that's where you need to be in any kind of, you know, any kind of business any kind of private organization even a nonprofit, you've got to be roughly in balance there. And so we're on trajectory to do that, where we are right now is maintaining a level of operations that is in that is technically in deficit right we're spending more than we're bringing into our normal revenue. And we have this huge amount of support from our community, who are providing lots of, you know, lots of support to our annual fund through fundraising, and providing support that is directly designed to help us bridge that gap. And so we've raised since, since, you know, right before I got here, year and a half ago, we've raised $24 million in cash and pledges, all of that directly to support this transition over the next few years. And then another 6 million addition to that 24 that is for more restricted purposes right things that that are that can't be used for daily operations but help us build our other kinds of resources so that's, you know, and then finally we have access to parts of our endowment we have access to the endowment relative to you know, Emerson Smith and Holyoke, but we have access to enough of it that that's kind of a nice emergency cushion that, you know, can help us smooth this transition. So I would say we are stable now. And headed towards sustainability and doing a great job of attracting students and maintaining what we, what is the important mission of Hampshire. And what I've heard you speak at alumni gatherings at what I've appreciated I think others alums have appreciated is that you don't sugarcoat the stuff, you know, you sort of say what it is. And at some times you're saying it's difficult, but you have sort of a real sort of rational approach to saying here's where we need to go. We're not, we're not like rolling in the dough, but we're okay, you know, and we can do better and all that kind of so I always think that it was sort of a measured answer to the financial questions. I think it's really important to be honest and transparent with people, particularly with stakeholders and, you know, as far as I'm concerned the town of Amherst and the Pioneer Valley or stakeholders in Hampshire college. We, we depend on the region and people around here depend on us and, you know, it's important that that that people will understand what our situation is but also can understand and trust us that we are managing it responsibly. Because people need to be confident that that Hampshire is here it will be here, and we are, you know, we're a thriving place. So if you're in the room I'm going to welcome in our friend Ken Rosenthal so Ken if you could introduce yourself. Your predecessor, first employee of Hampshire I think. And the most recent president so yes. Yeah. Paul the fifth. The fifth. Chuck Longsworth was the first. A couple of things and I don't want to monopolize this conversation because I know the people in Amherst need to hear from Ed, but we're very lucky that Ed chose to come to Hampshire college because he came at a really difficult time he gave up a thriving career, a young man who had a whole career ahead of him to take on a college that was troubled. And we're lucky because he's credible not only to alumni Paul but to faculty students and staff he makes sense to every one of these communities and that's a remarkable characteristic for a college president. I want to say one more thing about the situation that Hampshire is in now, and looking down the road at Amherst College which has an endowment of over $2 billion in thousands of alumni. When Amherst was as old as Hampshire is now it was in serious serious trouble. And Amherst College president named Stanley King wrote a book about the endowment of Amherst College and he used that word serious trouble for when Amherst was this old Emily Dickinson's brother. Austin was the treasurer of Amherst College and he was writing checks for Amherst College out of his own pocket and he almost went into personal financial bankruptcy because he was doing it. One of Hampshire's fascinating problems is its alumni aren't dying yet. I don't wish that on anybody, but we know that colleges get a lot of money from the voted alumni who leave them funds in their wills and this is not happening at Hampshire College because Hampshire is so young. So, we need to put this in a context of understanding how colleges mature and Hampshire is still a very young place. And thanks to Ed, it's going to mature very nicely and we have a good future ahead of us we Hampshire folks. And again, thank you, Ed for for being here and thank you for getting up this hour and letting folks hear from you this morning and thank you Paul and Brianna. Thank you, Ken. Thanks, we should thank Ken for stepping in a year and a half ago and doing this job for the generous compensation of $1. I think I think we have the dollar bill sitting over there in that desk somewhere. You know, and, and also for your support kind of the institution so, but you're right we've been around 50 years. We're going to be around for the next 50 years and, you know, this is a this is always a difficult kind of transition period for colleges. But, you know, we make it through this, make it through this transition successfully, and continue to attract the kind of students who off who want and need what we offer, right which we've always been able to do right there's kind of a self selected group of students looking around like this is this kind of education is what I want more than anything else. But there's a whole bunch of other students who would want what we do, and would thrive in what we do, if they knew we existed, and we were we were, in their consciousness and so part of what we're trying to do over the this year next year and in the years going forward is to kind of find a better way to communicate the core of what Hampshire does and adapt it to the really important needs of the future that are ways that are compelling to students into their families. Thank you for your comments can feel free to raise your hand at any point again. I do see that we have got another hand in the room and this person's name is number so you're ending in 1364 if you could on you and introduce yourself that would be great. I'm Alice Lara I generally follow can at these events. First of all, I'm so glad you and Susan are here at that is just fabulous. You have a huge solar panel array. How does that impact you economically your electrical use. What's happening there and I think you also have some solar big things at your house. So could you talk about that and thank you for being here. Thank you. Yes, there's a couple things about that that Hampshire was, I believe the first college in the country to to offset its entire electrical use with solar. I think there's been some others have done that sense but so we have enough capacity here to essentially to be fully solar. Solar dependence not the right word it's dependent not the word you want to use the solar but that we are some self sufficient average over the course of the year. You know that that what that does is it keeps some of our electoral costs down. You know it's probably doesn't save us as much money as people might expect, given that you know you have to pay for the installation and you know that that takes some time to pay that off over the course of years but it's certainly cheaper that it would be to pay for electrical coming off the grid but more importantly, it's doing the right thing, which is, you know trying to contribute to a better future. So Hampshire also is a was one of the first college to the best from investing in South Africa Hampshire was a founder of the intentional endowment network, which is in the group of colleges that only invest in their their funds in socially just and businesses and organizations or avoid, you know, investing in things that make the world worse right and try to be really conscious and aware of that and trying to be a an environmentally friendly and sustainable place as part of that. We also have I don't people on this side looking at the people to call people will call know this right but people watch the recording later, you know we also have the current center here which is the most recent building at Hampshire college which is one of, you know, about 25 living buildings across the world, and a living building is a building that is entirely self sustainable is completely doesn't doesn't draw anything out of the grid is built only with sustainable safe locally sourced materials. It is not just carbon neutral what sort of contributes back right now the Hitchcock Center is also a living building right so we have to here in our, in our campus. And I think those are just core to the kind of commitments that Hampshire has to the community into the world. Hey fellas, do you have solar panels in your house. Absolutely yes, you do. Right. Do you save money. I have to tell, because I have the kind, I do not own them. The company owns them so when I generate the power in the summer. Sorry major, I don't have a bill from ever source, but in January February and March, I do have a bill. So I have to add that all up. But I also hang out my clothes outside. I don't use my dryer. I have my own compost heap I grow some food as you know. So I try to do my best, and I keep my microwave unplugged unless I'm using it. That's a good tip I didn't think about that. Yeah, because think about it if you go to bed at night, you won't use it all night so why keep it plugged in. That's my, my action item for today fellas thank you. But thank you I really appreciate your being here and Susan as well. Thank you very much. Thank you fellas feel free at any point to raise your hand again. I do have a question in the room from Jeff. Jeff Lee what challenges has Hampshire face during the pandemic and do you see a clear path back to normality. That's a great question. Well, the challenges, you know, there are some ways in which the one virtue of having been in something of an enrollment crisis was that we were already de densified right so the, you know, when we come thinking about this last the current year as a residential institution the big challenge for any college that is primarily residential was how do you bring students to campus and spread them out widely enough that you can maintain a safe environment. Combined with masking and testing but the sort of the basic social distancing challenge is really hard. We were able to bring back all of our students, because we have the capacity to house, you know, 12 1300 students in our residential enrollment right now is you know, 500 or so so we didn't have to, we can offer everybody spots and spread people out everybody you know in Hampshire for some people don't know this already we everybody here a single room so we were able to spread people out even a little bit farther. The child the bigger challenges were one, we're securing regular testing and contact tracing services because you cannot have people living in close proximity without doing that. And we were really fortunate that the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard worked closely with the private colleges association that Hampshire is a part of over the last summer to shift their, their, the people who sequence the human genome, right, to shift all of their expertise into into testing for COVID. And by the time the fall hit, we had this nice network where we were everyone on the state and then broader broader region New England were able to use the Broad Institute for very quick testing and turnaround. UMass has now got testing capacity as well. So that was really important that that was available. It was expensive, even at a great discount. So we were lucky that that the federal government and the state of Massachusetts allocated some funds for higher education to offset some of those expenses. But you know that's been that's been a challenge right to create a safe environment. The second big challenge that not the financial and planning and testing one was figuring out how to deliver quality education to students. In a place that is primarily about face to face individualized contact. And, you know, our faculty and our staff and our administration I think did huge amounts of work last summer, figuring out the best ways to take advantage of this kind of technology that we're talking about this morning, in order to provide as close as possible to the kind of experience our students would normally have, and then combine that with some in person activities so we're not all in person but we're personally in person. And why wouldn't, you know, want us to have that model for a long time. I think it's been, I think it's gotten us through this year. It's been a day that kept most of our students on track. The other party question and then I'll stop is path back to normality. Yeah, I think that we're, I think I think I see a pretty clear path back to something like normality and in fact, we announced two weeks ago that it's our expectation that the fall will be in person residential with, you know, the full range of activities and supports and classroom teaching environment. So that we will be largely like we were prior to the pandemic now that probably will include still wearing face masks and other kinds of you know safety measures that are that we didn't have before. But it's very much our expectation that we can, we can resume, largely normal operations by the fall. Great question and great answer. Thank you, Jeff. Got another question in here and I just want to remind it a couple of the new attendees who came in, please feel free to raise your hand, or add a question into the q amp a function for for Ed. Oh, Jeff says thanks. So, thank you. Thanks for joining by phone you can press star nine to raise your hand. One question that that I kind of had is that you didn't come here alone you came here with with a family and presumably just slightly before this pandemic hit so what has that been like for you for yourself and for your family to kind of come to a new place but also have to be home and not experience it. That's that has been a very bizarre experience. You're right we moved and we moved very quickly. You know we basically over the course the last week of July first week of August, we decided that we would come to that I would take the job at Hampshire college and then we decided as a family to move here. And you know maybe that that's kind of an unusual unusual thing for a family with kids to do at least that quickly. So we moved here early in early August and of course, the pandemic shut everything down and more than a year ago in March so we've been here in the pandemic longer than we were here prior to the pandemic. I want to say a couple things about that one is that, you know, not knowing a pandemic was coming that first you know six or seven months were really the focus on getting to know Hampshire college getting things in place. Like I was saying like oh there's some interesting things I should be doing around here. I'm really looking forward to, you know, may or June we can do X or Y. But I do came and we couldn't go anywhere do anything. So I'm really there's a lot of things around in Amherst and North Hampton and the Pioneer Valley there's indoor activities that I'm really looking forward to exploring and and visiting with my family, once we start to get a little bit more back normal hopefully over the summer. So the challenge, you know, for is just to be, you know, a little more personal by the time the challenge for the for the family and particularly for my kids has been, you know, being here for a little bit of time and then going to fully remote learning. You know, so you know I have, I have one child who was this is this is our first year of high school, you know and another who's in middle school right. So it's hard to make those transitions hard to make those transitions. When you're not actually at school. It's even harder and so that's been difficult, but, but we're getting there and you know what is and I will say it's been the amount of support from the school and from the teachers and the efforts that the Amherst teachers have made to be accessible and available. To our kids, I think our experience is this has been they're doing really everything they possibly can to to to create a positive educational environment, but it also just shows that the limitations of that of that mode is just it's not, it's not ideal. It's a daily don't you breathe. Yes, at a different different stage elementary school stage but I think a lot of people are in that very same same boat as you add here in town and across the country looking forward to, to a spring of sorts where maybe that's not an automatic fix but we get to be outside and do a little bit more. Um, I want to acknowledge that we do have our council president Lynn grease mayor in the room and I, if she does want to pop in and say hello or have a question for Ed I just welcome her to raise her hand. As well but no pressure Lynn. You try on her first cup of coffee. Oh no she's. She's always there. Okay Lynn if you could unmute. Welcome. Hi, Ed. First of all, thank you for taking over the leadership. I'm sure it's a, you know, a piece of our economic of present or Amherst, and it's great to have your energetic leadership at this particular time. And so we fully support you in that effort. I'm sorry I really can't stay for the rest of the meeting, but hello to all the residents that have joined as well. I have another meeting at 830. Thank you Lynn. Thank you for joining. So I think one question you know when we think about our area. We're a five college community and what what's the interaction been with the other institutions. Maybe pre pandemic when you first got here and how does that changed in response to this crisis over the last year. Well, I mean the five colleges are really essential to Hampshire as an institution. People probably most people on this call probably know this Hampshire was founded by the four colleges. We became the five colleges with Hampshire. And so the Hampshire exists in part because of the, the commitment of the other four colleges and in the valley to have and support and experimenting institution to have the vision to say look, we need both here in western Massachusetts but in higher education broadly, we need some college whose job is to try to invent the future to take those risks and you know figure out what what nobody else is doing, try to do it and if it works, you know the rest of us will adopt it. That's that's really the origin story of Hampshire College right, and that has continued I think to be a strong relationship over the last 50 years, and we'll continue to be one and so, you know, we, when, when Hampshire ran into or you want to be careful and describe what happened in the spring of 2019 because I wasn't here but you know that when when the troubles emerged or were recognized or were provoked depending on which story you're hearing about this right. The five colleges were were incredibly supportive. And one of the things that they did was create space for a lot of our, a lot of our long term faculty members to go and teach as visitors and short term faculty at the other colleges right which is no good deal because we had these great faculty who were who are now, you know, teaching it in her store at Holyoke or UMass, but it means that our students continue to have access to them as well through the five colleges system, and they've continued to do that to kind of help support us as we move through this transition. The other five colleges have continued to, you know, allow and and encourage our students to take courses across the other five colleges to supplement what we do here and that's part of the great thing about being a student Hampshire right that you're, you're building your own curriculum you're pursuing your own project and it turns out that, oh, in order to do this project, I really need this very specialized piece of knowledge. So if somebody at UMass or Amherst or Smith or Holyoke has that knowledge, and you can go talk to them, right, and bring that back to your to the work you're doing in Hampshire. So that's so that's essential they've been very supportive. During the pandemic, we have been coordinating really closely in our planning and trying to, you know, figure out ways for our students to cross register in the remote mode. And, you know, sharing strategies and sharing stories and, you know, all of the various levels of the organizations at each college have their own groups that meet regularly to share and understand what's working and what's not and how to coordinate. So it's, you know, it's been a different kind of collaborations and again we're doing it all this way on screens, but it remains a very strong organization. I'm going to give another call to our room. Feel free to raise your hand or use the Q&A to pop in your question. I have a question because I'm going to pretend that I'm regular Amherst community member and not at work. So, for example, my daughter will go to tennis lessons on at Hampshire College using your facilities goes to summer camp and I just wonder, you know, what are some ways that the broader community interacts with Hampshire College, maybe in the past or maybe what do you see in the future different ways of that that kind of commingling happening. Harder for me to speak to the past since I my by experience with the past is a little bit limited and mostly mostly not pre pandemic. But let me say a couple things here one is, you know, we were it was really important to us and we've continued to do this to keep the campus open during the pandemic. People use our, you know, our close to 900 acres for recreation and, you know, place to get out and so we've kind of, you know, talk coordinated with Paul a little bit about this to find out you know what is Amherst doing we want to kind of be consistent with Amherst's expectations for how to use public spaces. In fact, we just spoke about this day and like our tennis courts we had, we closed our tennis courts off when the town sort of close some of the recreational spots where we've now we've now decided we're now going to reopen them because you know they're those sort of things are open in town as well and you know so we're allowing access to that again. And so that's been and people have been really, you know, good about that they've used our campus, following our rules people wear masks but they enjoy themselves and so that's important. You know we also have that remind people about the cultural village institutions that are within and or adjacent to our campus so the Eric Carl museum, the Yiddish Book Center, the Hitchcock Center, all of which are also places that you know where people have access to come to the to Hampshire the Hampshire area here and engage in different kinds of intellectual and artistic activities and you know the Carl is is now reopening by you know you can they have, you know, 50 50 slots in the morning in the afternoon that you can sign up for and go online, the Hitchcock's programs will be resuming again fairly soon. So that's another way in which you know there are opportunities here and around us. And one of the things it's really that I really miss during the pandemic and am excited to be to get past is being part of a college one of the great things about being part of a college community are all of the events that are hosted at a college that people in the community come to me so lectures and plays and dance performances and art exhibits and you know it's it's so much harder to have the community participate in those activities when we're when we're finding, you know, new ways to mediate that experience through technology and new ways to get the word out on that. You know I was a great experience this week of Tuesday we had our the Ahmed Akbar or Ekba Ahmed lecture, which brought together three scholars and activists internationally one from Columbia, one from the United States one from Palestine to speak and we had just 200 people in at on the zoom call, you know from all over the all over the world, all over the country, and all over the area had this moment of like this almost felt like, you know, even though virtual it almost felt like okay we're actually doing, we're having one of these things where the community is here again. And I just, that's one of the things I miss more than anything else about this, this pandemic. It's interesting because I know we hear a lot from the folks who live at Applewood, which is right across Bay Road, and they love walking through campus and appreciate that it's available to be walked to walk through campus and. In fact, they, they advocated, you know, advocated quite vigorously to get a good crosswalk there, because it was, you know, people come steaming up Bay Road, and they're like, you know, we need protection and so now we have a little refuge island so you can cross the way and they can rest and then cross the rest of the way. But that's been a really important thing because in that community really appreciates that the campus is open that the cultural institutions are there. And it's nice, you know, I noticed that just when I have out of town friends like we'll go to the Eric Carl museum, just for a couple hours and it's just fun to walk around it's such a beautiful space. I know we got a lot of thank yous and letters and photos when that crosswalk went in so. That was a couple years ago but people really made a big impact. Okay we've got another question in the room. From Tammy. Does the Chamber of Commerce or Town of Amherst have a list of Amherst businesses that are open with details about their hours and whether or not you can go into the spaces I'm thinking of how Hampshire students might purchase goods and services in town. So I think that I think that the Chamber does and the Business Improvement District does they keep that pretty available. The Chamber I think has the most robust list on their website. And they really focus on the restaurants and most of the restaurants have some kind of, many are open. Some of them have indoor seating. And all of them have takeout. And I think we're starting to see more and more about that so starting next week our DPW will be out there, coordinating off roads like we did last fall, so we can have outdoor dining. And we're looking at like Johnny's is looking at having taken a few parking spaces there to have additional outdoor dining on the Boltwood parking lot and that's a beautiful space for it in utilizing some of the space that they own. And I think the restaurants sort of figured it out last year. And so we're going to help them get started as early as possible. We already own the heaters that people need and the tents that people want. And so we'll just sort of start to reassemble that and hope that we get through and maybe some of those changes will be permanent. You know, that's one of the things that we're looking at is what are these outdoor seating opportunities that might be worth keeping. Is there a start date an official start date for outdoor dining or is it kind of incremental as we I think it's it's up to the businesses starting around in our minds we have like April 1, it's been the opportunity zone. Some businesses will just be open on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or on warm weather weekends and things like that but you know as soon as the warm weather hits everybody's outside. So the businesses want to be ready to go. So we want to help help them be ready to go. So Tammy's question, both and Paul mentioned this but both the bid and the chamber have this ongoing list with really great details, open hours take out pick up only or dine in. So I would navigate to both both sides and their newsletters their weekly newsletters also have a lot of updates in terms of, you know, restaurants and different openings so always good to check there and I guess the other part of Tammy's question that might be more for Ed is you know how to Hampshire college students interact with local businesses or do you have any kind of anecdotes around that. That's a really good question I think that, you know again this is this is mediated through the pandemic. And I had to admit there's a bit of a, it's been, you know, it's a kind of balance the desire to want to say to our students. We worked really hard to get you safely into campus right we tested everybody that the moment you arrived and told you to stay in your room until we had a result and then slowly let you out so that we're you know and now we're testing you every week to make you know and we don't want you to, we want you to don't know if you feel trapped we want you to be able to go off and do, you know, live live in the town and the community, but at the same time, don't really want to, you know, get too many of them going too far. It's a real it's a tension right. I do think that our students do do want to and content and use to I certainly certainly know you take advantage of the opportunities to to be in Amherst and to have this a town that has, you know, such a disproportionately large amount of cultural institutions and excellent restaurants and wonderful shops right one of the great things about being here is having all of that available in in a really accessible manageable. Beautiful small town. And so I think you know as as again as we could have opened up out of the pandemic and people are feeling safer. And I'm really excited to see that that be less for there to be less sort of ambiguity about, you know how comfortable we are with that like I really do want our students to be engaged with the town, but as part of means like no just just just don't leave campus. You know, stay safe. Yeah, I think you're right at because you know where we're seeing cases in the town is in the 1824 age range. There's very few cases and over 50 year old range, one or two at a, you know, at a time but it really is, you know, clearly because of small group gatherings. I would not have any at Hampshire as far as I know. And, you know, there's so it's it is that age range where people are socializing and feeling invulnerable and, and that's that's been our biggest challenge. Yeah, we haven't had any we haven't had any big gatherings. We've had cases this this year since January, I think we've had five, five positive tests between, you know, staff and students are in it. And that includes some asymptomatic or some symptomatic tests outside of our testing program. But right now we have one active case on campus that, you know, so it's been, it's been, you know, here and there and, and mostly it's been, we haven't seen, you know, what we haven't seen is what doesn't look like what we've seen are sort of spread amongst people on our campus that it's sort of somebody who's they've gone out and gone somewhere and then come back and then our testing program has caught it pretty quickly. Hopefully, you know, fingers crossed we will continue to have the drips and drabs or not at all. So do you have plans for the opening the red barn I mean that's that's always such a popular venue for I mean we would have our town employee holiday event there. So employee recognition event. That's right. I'm sorry. Yes, yes, the red barn is, you know, is is working with people on taking reservations and planning. You know, where we obviously are going to follow the state and town guidelines on this to make sure that that it's any events that we host there or allow people to use their follow those guidelines. But it is available we do have reservations in place and you know, people should should use the red barn they should contact us about it. We did the, I know you saw this with the Chamber of Commerce annual meeting is usually in there has been in the red bar and we couldn't have it this year in the red barn but we did a bunch of filmed a bunch of the people's speeches there. So that was sort of kind of from the red barn. And that was kind of a nice, a nice event. Are you thinking about commencement at all. So right now our, and I don't think we're going to change this. We announced early in the semester, in part because we just wanted to get people information about travel and something that what we were going to do is a virtual commencement. And then we're we're going to we are planning some events for people who are on our campus and in our testing program, sort of celebrations adjacent to the commencement, but we're not going to have an in person commencement on campus. There's a couple reasons that one is that, you know, that's to have a larger event like that we'd want to, you know, get permission and work with the local, you know, local health authorities on that. There's also a kind of a kind of the issue of responsibility here, from my point of view that, you know, we don't want to send students home with COVID-19. Right. So, last year, you know, as everybody exited we set up, you know, we had testing every couple of days and as students leave there, we tested them, and then, you know, within 72 hours of them leaving campus so that they, and if they got there positive they would need to do them stay or quarantine, because we don't want to be a source of them of spreading the disease. So we're going to be doing that again, you know, in May we're testing people before they leave and the kind of, and this is sort of like, well, we're going to test all of our students who are on campus before they leave but then the day before they leave we're going to bring a bunch of people in and mix them together. This doesn't feel like like a, like a wise thing to do at this point so what we will be trying to try to try to think about it and we this question from last year looks we didn't have we had a remote commencement last year are what are some ways that we that we can make up for that in the future. In some kind of in person event for those two classes. So how do we figure that out right now. I think a lot of institutions of higher education or university Amherst College are all thinking along the same lines what can we do in person that's responsible. And then how do we make it up for folks and try to do something later in the year around, you know, a homecoming or from other event you know you have your 50th anniversary delayed. Yeah, do you have celebrations for that. 50th anniversary we we are planning right now for that to be a full in person on campus event. That's in mid October. You know, we recognize there may be reason that maybe things go sideways that we might have to pull back from that but we're planning right now that to be able to do that event. In the way that we initially intended to do it and lots of people come back to celebrate the first 51 years of and really hope we don't have to fall back and continue to see plans on that because it's it's going to be a fabulous event. Yeah, in town hall we were sort of marking, you know, like fourth of July it seems like everything you were hearing from the federal government said, you know, get you get the vaccines out there you get it, people vaccinated. Everybody except children basically, you know, if we can get that done through the summer, you know, might be might be in good shape. Well I hope so. So I'm going to give a call to everybody in the room. We've got about, you know, 10 more minutes left, but I wanted to invite you to ask any last minute questions of, of Ed or Paul or just in general. Please use your hand and zoom or use the Q&A function. And while we wait for that. I wondered if if Ed had anything to share with us that he didn't get specifically asked or any, any news or anything like that that you wanted to share that you haven't been asked about yet. Yeah, you know, I'm always happy to talk about, you know, how we are thinking about Hampshire's evolution. I mentioned earlier in passing here but you know that Hampshire's job, its mission in a sense is to, you know, invent the future of higher education. And what it says in our mission statement is that, you know, Hampshire is Hampshire's goal is to transform higher education right. And you can't transform it without innovating and trying new things. And so, you know, one of the things that we're really focused on right now. Is, is that we spent a pre pandemic we spent a lot of time working together our faculty staff students community alums trustees to try to conceptualize what should be the next step for what how Hampshire college lives its vision and and events the future. And what we've been trying to build over the last year and a half and it's, you know, it's been a little slower than I would have liked because we had to spend a lot of energy last summer, figuring out how to teach during a pandemic. But we've still been really good progress here is to orient Hampshire college really directly around the challenges and problems and questions that our students undergraduates coming to college will face in coming years and century, and try to get them to provide them with the opportunities and resources to begin engaging those questions in multiple ways using the tools of disciplines and knowledge from across the spectrum of the liberal arts to get some traction on those questions to do the work. Now that they would otherwise go to college in order to kind of partially get prepared for to do later. And that's, that's having real impacts on how we think about our curriculum how we think about the role of faculty, how we design courses, how they relate to one of the even like like our organizational structure. I think it will be, you know, really exciting and compelling way to speak to populations of students who in the past may not have considered Hampshire college, but should. Right. You know, so that's, but I noticed looking at the call there's a lot of people on the call here who who know what we're doing here and involved in those conversations but that's a really exciting thing. And I really appreciate the amount of work that that people have done to make that happen. Great. Thank you. Paul, do you have anything you want to add to that. It's funny, because one of the things that he knows when I came back here become town manager is that how many, you know, you talk about the, the poster behind you the entrepreneurial spirit. The Amherst books, you know, Black Sheep Cafe, just our insurance company contracted with the company called Berkshire Naturals, and their wellness program and now they're delivering a book, a box of healthy snacks to everyone. All of our different departments, once a week at once every two weeks something like that. And it's, and I, and there's no, you know, there, this is another person just started this business, David Starr and, you know, I was walking on the street yesterday and a fire department captain came running out and said, we really appreciate that we were always eating the wrong things and now they're giving us healthy snacks, plantain chips and, you know, kind bars and all kinds of, you know, things that we should be eating and fruit and vegetables and people really appreciate it. So it's just night as a nice feel good thing and a good thing and that's where some of these, I think some of our folks, you know, the Iron Horse Cafe started by Hampshire alum. But, you know, and those are just the sort of high profile things that people see the retail type things but there's a lot of other things happening. Obviously, I'm a big champion of Hampshire. I make sure I always wear the right hat when I'm talking about it whether I'm talking about something that we're angry about or not but also when I wear my other hat I'm very supportive of that so I do recognize that as well. Well, I do not see any, let's see any hands or any questions in the queue. So I would really like to thank President Ed Wingenback for taking his time today. I know it's early. You had a couple coffees under your belt already but we appreciate you sharing one with us. And if anybody has follow up questions for for Ed or for us, please email us at info at AmherstMA.gov we can get anything over to the President's office if it's related to Hampshire we'll get that over to them. Thank you so much Ed for giving us your time we really appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity because it's a great way to reach out to the community I'm glad that I'm glad that you do it. Yeah, it is. Thanks everybody. Thank you.