 Welcome back Boilermakers. I hope your holiday was as pleasant and safe as you enabled the campus to be last fall. I have to start by thanking yet again our faculty and staff for heroic work teaching and operating the campus under the toughest circumstances ever and you students for your indispensable adherence to the Purdue pledge. A special word of welcome to those hundreds of international students who were prevented by travel restrictions from being with us last fall. It's great to have you back. I wish I could use this message just for celebration and congratulation but we all know a new year doesn't mean we've left old problems behind. In fact for all we can tell this semester could be as tougher tougher than the last one. It's an Indiana winner so we'll all be inside somewhat more. There's a risk that despite the pretesting you've all helped with holiday activities will have created another surge of the virus and new variants of the COVID virus have as biology teaches us they inevitably would begun to show up. Our medical experts advise that so far these mutated strains are no more dangerous than the version we've been dealing with. But we'll be rigorously vigilant and we'll ramp up the intensity of our in semester testing. Please cooperate whenever you're asked to do so. It goes without saying that all the practices that got us through the fall masking distancing hand washing immediate reporting of symptoms will be every bit as important this spring. As I've said so often I can't wait till we can lift these impositions and the new vaccines may bring that day nearer. But for your safety and that of others please show the world again how disciplined and considerate of others boiler makers can be. 2020 was a lousy year in more than one way. Many Americans engaged in embarrassing and unacceptable conduct unbecoming of a self governing people and the very worst such actions came just 10 days ago in our nation's capital. This week therefore marks a new chapter not just on our campus but for the entire country. We congratulate the new president on a campaign fairly and indisputably won and wish him and his entire administration all the best in pursuing the public interest as they perceive it. And we hope that in this new year all our new leaders will lead the nation in leaving behind the acrimony and divisiveness of the miserable year just ended and charting the course of magnanimity and reconciliation and true tolerance. That of course is out of our hands but what is within our control is the chance to conduct ourselves here in this community with civility and mutual support and genuine affection for one another that celebrates our diversity in all its forms. We'll start with a program optional but open to all that examines the history and meaning of Inauguration Day and the orderly peaceful transfer of power represents. That was the example a newborn United States gave to a surprised world in 1796 and which remains the hallmark of any truly free democracy. I hope you'll take part. For now, welcome back Boiler Up.