The Benedict News Spring 2021 Edition

Q) FC: Do you have any final comments?
A) GC: First and foremost I would want to thank one, all of the people I referenced earlier.
I also want to thank everyone who has been involved: every faculty member, every
administrator, every student, everybody that’s been involved because it has been
incredible to be a part of this. I also want to encourage us all that, sadly, this situation is
not going to go anywhere anytime soon. We are still going to be dealing with COVID for
a while. I firmly believe we will be able to start bringing more people together. We will
be able to start putting people back in classrooms. I firmly believe that will be happening
by the summer. But I don’t know that we are actually going to be able to put everyone in
Shanley gym or the HAB gym and have a Convocation. I don't think that we are going to
be able to do that anytime soon.
So I encourage us to do a few things. One, to be patient. Two, to not lose faith and to not
lose hope, and to not lose sight of what St. Benedict’s is and has been. And then three, that
all of us need to work hard on how to maintain the St. Benedict’s community throughout
whatever the length of the pandemic is and beyond. So when we have the opportunity, and
there will be a day when we will be able to put everybody back in the gym, we will need
Convocation to feel just like it did in March of 2020, and that is going to be a real challenge
because we haven't done that for a year and it might be a lot longer before we can actually
do that. And a lot of the students by next year, will have never attended a Convocation like
that. The freshmen have never done it. Next year's freshmen wont have done it. So if we’re
not able to do that early next summer, you're going to get to the point where more than half
of the Prep Division has never done a Convocation in person. So recreating that feel is
going to be really tough. So I encourage all of us to be thinking about how we hold on to
that and how we recreate it when the time comes to be able to do that.
And last is, continue to keep yourselves safe. Follow the precautions, do what you can.
When restrictions are eased up a little bit, allow yourself to enjoy life to the extent that you
can but do it safely. Don’t allow yourself to get sucked into bad situations where you're
indoors with a lot of people, and you're not wearing masks. That is just not the way to go.
So adhere to the precautions and allow yourself to live. And, as restrictions are lifted, you
can allow yourself to live more but be safe about it.
23 The Benedict News Vol. 3 Issue 2 Spring 2021
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