March 11, 2020

Dear Reed community,

Tonight we heard from the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC), which is working closely with Oregon higher education institutions on our coordinated and aligned approach to COVID-19 planning and response. The HECC shared that the CDC plans to announce additional COVID-19 guidance tomorrow morning, March 12. Additionally, Governor Kate Brown announced this afternoon to the media that a press conference on new coronavirus response measures will take place tomorrow at 11 a.m.

Based on the HECC communication, the college anticipates that tomorrow Governor Brown will be announcing new steps to stem the spread of the coronavirus in Oregon, addressing mass gatherings, social distancing, workplace practices, and other community-wide mitigation efforts to help slow transmission.

The Reed COVID-19 task force will pay close attention to all of the updated guidance. We are also listening carefully to the wide-ranging input, recommendations, and suggestions from our community members. As we address questions and implement additional preventative measures, we are updating Reed’s Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Prevention & Response website. We will communicate any substantive changes to Reed’s response via a campus news email like the one you are reading now. We will also add a link to our website, and we will share via the college’s official social media channels on Facebook and Twitter.

We anticipate tomorrow will bring a lot of information for the task force to process and we expect to have another email update for the community by 6 p.m. tomorrow.

On behalf of the Reed COVID-19 task force, we thank you for working with us on the health and wellbeing of our community. More than ever, we have much to gain by working together.

Thank you,

Mike Brody
Vice President for Student Life, co-chair of the COVID-19 task force

Hugh Porter
Vice President for College Relations, co-chair of the COVID-19 task force