On Sept. 8, the university released a blog post, “President Mark C. Reed, Ed.D., Discusses His Approach to the Return to Campus,” in which Reed responded to five questions posed by his public relations team. The questions covered his rationale for opening campus, along with reassurances that the university was doing everything it could to keep the community safe. Here are five questions we hope Reed will answer in his next blog post, or better yet, in an interview with us. The invitation stands.

1. Many Philadelphia area universities agreed with St. Joe’s stance that COVID-19 isn’t going away anytime soon, and that higher education is important, yet they still moved to remote learning to protect their students, faculty, staff and surrounding communities. What makes St. Joe’s uniquely positioned to remain open (compared to, say, LaSalle University or the University of Pennsylvania or Temple University or West Chester University, which have all gone online)? 
2. What are you doing to frequently engage with students, faculty and staff who are outside of your administrative team to acknowledge their worries and stresses about returning to campus amidst a global pandemic?
3. St. Joe’s is located in a high density area with many vulnerable communities, namely BIPOC (Black, Indiginous and people of color) communities. When reopening campus for students to return, how did you apply St. Joe’s Ignatian values, considering specifically the vulnerability of  BIPOC students, faculty and staff and those residing in the surrounding neighborhoods?
4. What are you doing to follow up with students, faculty and staff who did not take the mandatory campus arrival test and ensure that they do so?
5. How are you addressing the St. Joe’s community’s concerns about the lack of proper cleaning procedures students and faculty have witnessed? Who has taken responsibility for those missteps and what has been done to rectify ongoing problems?