 Over these last months we've made an effort to inform everyone and involve everyone in the process of reopening and operating the university this fall. We've held some two dozen town halls, a long series of written bulletins and FAQs and several of these personal messages to the overall Purdue community. But a faculty member wrote me recently suggesting persuasively that I should do one more, this one directed specifically to our faculty. And I'm grateful for that good advice. Whether to reopen the campus this fall was the hardest decision in my years at Purdue, maybe in school history. We arrived at it very carefully and reviewed it regularly, as recently as late July. You'll recall it began with a faculty led task force which concluded that the science supported bringing students back, provided that we could devise ways to separate or otherwise protect those older and more vulnerable. As our plans came together, they were carefully reviewed by our Board of Trustees at a series of special meetings and ratified by the board at their official meeting on August 7th. In reaching this decision, we are squarely in the mainstream of American higher ed. As things have worked out at least 2,000 schools and more than 80% of our four year public counterparts are bringing students back to campus. All of us have reached the same conclusion. The question isn't whether we should try to operate, but rather how can we do so safely and effectively? I'd like to thank all those, especially those members of the faculty, some 500 of you by one count, who have contributed your expertise and leadership to our preparedness project. Those things really extend to every member of the faculty as almost all of you have redesigned courses to make them safer, as well as flexible for students who may need to work remotely for a time. You restarted more than a thousand research projects beginning on July 1st, bringing more than 5,000 people back into our labs and have operated them successfully so far without medical incident. The fact that we are making so many changes and spending tens of millions to do it is fundamentally a tribute to you. Our students have told us over and over how much they value their interactions with faculty and how essential a part of their education they deem it to be. Given a full choice, 88% of them opted to come to campus and perhaps half the rest would have done so if travel restrictions did not preclude it. Here's a sample of the countless messages we've received on this point. I would be so disappointed if online classes had to continue for the fall. Or my online classes may not be accepted at the medical schools I'm considering. They emphasize that our classes and labs should not be taken online as we need hands-on in-person learning to perform well in our medical studies. And while the online option was an amazingly well-executed reaction to a crisis situation, it cannot compare to the on-campus experience my son and his friends believe that in-person instruction is pivotal and irreplaceable. As I said, a tribute to you. The fervent wish of these students to be here and benefit from your teaching and mentoring drives home the central reality of our current situation. Our chosen course entails unknowable but undeniable risks. But leaving Purdue shuttered this fall would inflict certain large-scale damage on staff who would lose jobs and income, on a surrounding community whose economy would be devastated, and most of all, on the lives of young people seeking to launch successful adult lives with our help. We owe it to them to make the attempt. A few observers have said that our trustees or some of us are, quote, confident about the fall. That's a word we have never once used. We may believe that we've done everything conceivable to protect you and the rest of the community, but no one is predicting sure success. We're moving ahead not because we know it will work, but because we believe it has a good chance of doing so and that it is right to try. Said another way, it would be profoundly wrong not to. If you're worried about the next 13 weeks, join the club. It's a big one. It includes all of us in the Protect Purdue project and all your colleagues at 2000 plus other institutions. As we undertake this challenge, your support would mean a lot. At a minimum, I ask your understanding. Thank you for the scholarship and leadership that makes Purdue a national treasure.