Good Evening and happy new year. We are glad to begin the spring semester. As always, It will be a busy term, but faculty look forward to the start of classes and seeing our students on Tuesday.

In retrospect, 2018 was a significant year of change at our school; the coming calendar year promises even more change at every level. We hope, of course, that change also means progress, and progress in the right direction. At this time last year, we spoke about the need to reflect on change, and to evaluate and absorb the implications collectively and in due time, and on some issues, the college community took some time to do so. On other fronts, this wasn’t possible or available, and perhaps we can all keep working to do better. Building ample time and meaningful dialogue into the process always leads to better collective decisions. It also seems clear we are all better off when decisions are made based on good public policy by high-information leaders who care about the common good.

So our wish this year is that our College continues to evolve through dialogue, deliberate collaboration, a culture of rigorous dissent, and honest conversation about real students, as they are, in all of their variety and complexity at our school. As we’ve learned over and over in the past several years, complicated problems require complicated solutions and a longer timeline than anyone can estimate. So here’s to more variety and complexity in 2019.