Message from our Superintendent

Constitution Day Weekend

Dear ASFM community,

I know if I were in the US and we had this Monday off from school, my students would think that the holiday was to celebrate the winning team of the NFL Super Bowl. However, the Super Bowl is next week, a week later than usual, but we do have this Monday off. PCR testing will be on Tuesday, so please plan accordingly.

Until I started this letter I did not know anything about the Mexican Constitution Day. A quick google search, and now I feel much better about giving up a day of classes on Monday. The current constitution was approved on February 5, 1917, at the conclusion of the Mexican Revolution, hence Constitution Day.  I think it’s pretty remarkable that the constitution was the first of its kind to include socio-economic rights. This constitution granted economic, social and cultural rights as fundamental human rights. Some of the fundamental socio-economic rights that the Mexican Constitution names are: education, health, and access to science and culture. Let’s celebrate Constitution Day knowing that we owe our guarantee of access to education, science, culture and health to this document ratified in 1917, on February 5.

With regards to Covid, our positivity trend line continues downward–we’re getting healthier. Our pool testing positivity rate is 1.2%. We do have an interesting phenomenon happening. While 1.2% is good and does keep us on track to continue reducing our rate of positivity, it is slightly higher than last week. We wonder whether it’s possible that people are going to pool testing even though they have slight symptoms. If you have symptoms please self-select out of the pool tests.

If we consider our priority tent rate of positivity with our pool testing results we have an overall positivity rate of 1.8% for our ASFM community. In early December we did get pretty comfortable with 0.1% positivity on campus, but anything under 2.0% is really pretty good. Perhaps the most notable statistic from this week is that our staff positivity rate is 0.4%. We are getting healthier; I look forward to warmer weather as this too will help drive COVID out of town!

With an overall positivity rate of 1.8% we have begun planning to bring back afternoon activities beginning the week of February 14. In addition, our athletic department is hard at work developing our protocols for how we will manage hosting tournament play on campus. Inevitably, we will require all tournament participants to test for COVID (probably an antigen test) as well as wear a mask. We will probably have to set limits on the number of spectators we can have in attendance. We will be forthcoming with the details. On February 25 and 26, we will be hosting a Model United Nations conference. Again, as COVID positive case count goes down, we are able to begin offering more activities as well as allow for more student driven activities. NHS, iMUN, as well as a host of other groups have plans for February. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that our COVID numbers continue to decrease.

Have a great long weekend. Be safe, and I will look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday in the parking lot for PCR testing!

Onward, George