Dear Father Peter, 
 
              With the incessant struggle of adjusting to the new normal with the coronavirus, there are many complications that are imminent, especially if we do not take the proper precautions to regulate everyone’s safety on campus by routinely testing all of our students.  Our community is scrutinized for even allowing students and faculty to return to campus, but we will also collapse as a community if we do not initiate frequent coronavirus testing on campus.  As I write this on Wednesday, August 26th, there are four confirmed cases, and we had zero reported cases two days ago on Monday, August 24th.  The cases are already beginning to expand rapidly in a very short amount of time, and we need to act before it is too late for us all.  Such procedures should be operated weekly if not bi-weekly. 
               

              In addition, all freshmen who participated in orientation received a bag with the “neck-fleece” mask for COVID-19 safety.  This is a major problem that needs to fixed now.  According to research performed by Duke University, “We noticed that speaking through some masks (particularly the neck fleece) seemed to disperse the largest droplets into a multitude of smaller droplets (see Supplementary Fig. S5), which explains the apparent increase in droplet count relative to no mask in that case.” (Fischer, 2020).  A lot of students on campus are wearing these masks provided by the school, but they do not know it is just as bad as not wearing a mask at all.  We need to utilize appropriate safety measurements to ensure the welfare of everyone on campus. 
               

             Before I came to Villanova, “community” was prioritized more than anything, and I took pride in embarking on this journey to pursue my future.  However, our future will be utterly disrupted by the chains of our current testing insufficiencies.  This is not an opinion, but a fact which will haunt us in the future.  To ignore the warning signs would ignore the cardinal beliefs of the Augustinian tradition: Veritas, Unitas, Caritas.  Ignoring the truth will obliterate all the diplomatic work which has gone into allowing us back onto campus.  Forgetting our unity as a community will further divide the gap between those who want to stay on campus and those who disregard the rules.  And without love, Villanova will shrivel into an infected campus for at least a year. 
               

             To conclude, do not let us slip away from this campus because of an irresponsibility to not regularly test our students.  We all must do our part, and it begins with making sure that our community is safe.  If we cannot produce an immediate solution to this predicament, then it is already too late. The coronavirus has won.  But we can prevent this from exponentially rising, so you must ask yourself this: Are you ready to take on the challenge? 
 
Sincerely, 
Thomas Dessoye, Villanova Class of 2024 & the Villanova Community 
 
 
Fischer, Emma P., et al. “Low-Cost Measurement of Facemask Efficacy for Filtering Expelled Droplets during Speech.” Science Advances, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 7 Aug. 2020, advances.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/07/sciadv.abd3083.