Dear Orange Friends:
Yesterday, November 11, Syracuse University observed Veterans Day. As a university that is committed to being the best school for veterans, Syracuse works hard every day to do right by those who have served and are serving in our Armed Forces. But November 11 is particularly special here.
Dear Orange Friends:
We have just finished family weekend at Syracuse University. There were many hundreds of parents, grandparents, siblings, and other family members of our students on campus for a wonderful array of events organized by Division of Student Affairs staff with the amazingly dedicated oversight of Colleen Bench.
Dear Orange Friends:
Syracuse has just completed Remembrance Week, when our community comes together with friends from Lockerbie, Scotland and with families to “act forward” in the memory of those who died on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.
Dear Orange Friends:
Ruth and I had 103 emeritus faculty and their spouses and partners over for lunch this past week. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of stories, a lot of advice, and more than a few meetings of longtime friends after many years. Together, these citizens of Syracuse University have given more than two millennia of service to our University.
Dear Orange Friends:
On campus we are in the midst of Orange Central, a kaleidoscope of reunions, activities, performances, and competitions that brings thousands of Syracuse University alumni and friends to campus.
Dear Orange Friends:
One thing you can’t help notice when you spend time on this campus is that a lot of our students work. I don’t mean work on their studies and extracurricular activities and teams and schools—they do that in abundance, of course. I mean that they have part-time jobs, work-study jobs, and community service activities in which they volunteer, and they have businesses.
Dear Orange Friends:
This weekend an incident occurred on campus in which a Syracuse University student made offensive and hurtful comments toward another student. These comments, focused on race and sexual orientation, were recorded and a video of the remarks was shared via social media.
Dear Orange Friends:
Two weeks ago, we welcomed several thousand new students to Syracuse University in a moving academic convocation. Many faculty, staff, and students (including orientation leaders, RAs, graduate assistants, and others) helped make the event special for our incoming students and their families.
Dear Orange Friends:
The Chancellor’s house has a library with a lot of empty shelves. I have been filling them up with books written by our faculty, and reading the books late at night. This reading gives you a sense of the breadth and depth of faculty expertise and interest (and you can access all these books free through our library). I know writing these books can be grueling and lonely at times, but from what I have read, the results are really worth it.
Dear Orange Friends:
I have been reading a lot of books by our faculty lately, and learning a lot. Next week I’ll alert you to a couple of them that are representative of the extraordinary work Syracuse aspires to.
