June 15 - Preparing to Reopen Campus

Dear members of the Whitman Community,

I wanted to give you a few updates from the Coronavirus Task Force as we make progress toward bringing some faculty, staff and students back to campus. 

Tuesday we will begin the first phase of reopening campus to non-essential employees on a per building basis. The first building to reopen will be the Hall of Science. If you do not work in the Hall of Science, please do not return to campus until you have heard from your supervisor or Human Resources that you should do so. As we continue the slow reopening of buildings on campus, staff from Facilities and Health and Safety are doing walkthroughs of each building to help managers assess the safety of the spaces and the flow of traffic through the building to ensure that the return to work is as safe as possible. Throughout the summer Facilities will work on modifications to areas identified during these walkthroughs.

As buildings reopen to faculty, staff and students, it is important to know that the buildings are still not open to visitors, community members, or family members. This policy will continue all the way through the fall semester. There may be rare exceptions to this policy. If you feel like having outside participation or hosting community members is necessary to your work and that you can accommodate them in a safe manner, check with your cabinet member for permission. Nothing should be scheduled involving outside community members and no college money should be spent on visitors without prior approval from your cabinet member. Again, we will not have visitors from outside campus this fall without cabinet approval.

Until further notice, if any member of our campus community conducts travel outside of our contiguous states (Oregon and Idaho), that person will need to quarantine for 14 days before returning to campus. Any college-sponsored travel needs to be approved by a cabinet member.

As we move forward with our plans to reopen more buildings in the coming weeks, I will keep you updated via email as well as via announcements in Whitman Today. If you have any questions about the return to work process, please check with your supervisor.

Best,
Josh Jensen
Coronavirus Task Force Chair