Our campus has experienced significant turbulence, and many within our community have suffered threats against their lives and humanity. These threats are reprehensible.

In the face of these threats, we are grateful to MUPD, which has worked tirelessly to keep our campus safe and secure. This is and will be our top priority.

The process of making our campus as inclusive as it must be will not be easy. We have difficult conversations ahead, and we must all dedicate ourselves to learning together.

Aware of the hard work ahead, we also must address immediate needs. First, we have additional counselors available at the Counseling Center, Student Health, and Employee Assistance Program, including counselors of color. Second, faculty and staff have already begun organizing learning opportunities for us all. Some of these are campus-wide events. Others are designed for smaller groups. On Friday, we will feature a panel of faculty who will share their teaching experiences this week. These will be the first of many more events occurring on our campus in the months, and years, ahead. More details about events this week and next will be announced as they become available.

For those of you who are discouraged, we hope you will see what we have seen in the last fifteen months and especially in the last few weeks. We have watched faculty, many of whom have great expertise in social justice, act with extraordinary compassion to our students, and we have benefitted greatly from our amazing staff who are dedicated to making Mizzou the best it can be. Finally, we have witnessed our brave students who sacrificed their own needs to do work that should have been done long before they joined our community.

We feel the weight of the world’s eyes upon us. We will not flinch from the work ahead.

Hank Foley, Garnett S. Stokes, and Chuck Henson