Posted on June 2, 2020 by Dr. Marc M. Camille
Dear Members of the Albertus Magnus College Community,
As a Catholic College in the Dominican tradition, Albertus has a mission rooted in values, including those we deem important enough to be labeled as pillars: study, prayer, community, service. Through delivering an Albertus education, the pursuit of the truth, even when painful, is what we seek in order to share the knowledge and wisdom gained from study, inquiry, and exploration. In prayer, we seek reflection, a deepening of our spirituality, of mind and soul. As a community, we embrace, respect, and champion the dignity of every individual being, seeking to find the goodness in the individual and the bond that ties us together as a family. In service, we always are called to give back, to share, to serve others above self, to be loving toward our neighbors at the margins. Our Albertus community is united by these common values, gifted to us by the Dominican Sisters who founded this College with its distinct purpose in 1925.
Since the death of George Floyd on May 25 at the hands of Minneapolis police, our nation has again born witness to raw emotions and actions that emerge from the debilitating racism and injustice that continue to stain and scourge the fabric of our freedoms: anger, outrage, grief, and despair as well as protest, violence, and destruction.
In these past few months, our Albertus community has faced with grace and resilience the circumstances and challenges associated with the Coronavirus pandemic. Today, our community is actively planning for the fall semester, when we will welcome our students, faculty, and staff back to campus. In ordinary times, Albertus is a community where we actively work against the evils of racism and injustice. These are no ordinary times. Dominican Saint, Catherine of Siena, implored us to “Preach the Truth as if you had a million voices. It is silence that kills the world,” and “We’ve had enough of exhortations to be silent! Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten because of silence.” George Floyd’s tragic death, and the too many before him who have suffered similarly, is another call where we must pursue the greater good, the good and the right in solidarity with all God’s children, created equal and entitled to the same equality, the same dignity, and the same mercy. This must be true in education, in healthcare, and in the eyes of the law.
In the days, weeks, months, and years ahead, our Albertus Magnus College community must be an agent of change and discourse, action oriented toward eliminating racism and injustice, working toward a campus, a neighborhood, a city, a nation, a world where the future is marked by love and respect, by fairness and justice, and by peace versus violence. Our Dominican mission insists we do so, and it inspires us toward that future.
Let us pray, let us act, let us bring a more just world, let us promote peace. I stand with you.
In peace and justice,
Marc M. Camille, Ed.D.