Dear Faculty and Staff: We hope this note finds you well as we all continue to deal with the challenges of COVID‑19. It is encouraging to see signs of progress in the effort to get the pandemic under control in the United States—not the least of which is getting vaccines into the arms of Americans coast […]

To our WSU community: We are shocked and horrified by the antisemitic graffiti and damage to the Holocaust memorial at Temple Beth Shalom in Spokane on Monday. While this desecration did not take place on our Spokane campus, we join our Jewish friends and neighbors as well as the greater community in denouncing these acts in […]

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students: “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” Those words of famed South African cleric and anti-apartheid and human rights activist Desmond Tutu seem particularly appropriate to ponder as we celebrate Black History Month throughout February. For even as we recognize the enormous achievements and […]

Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff: Navigating the challenges of COVID‑19 together as a Cougar community has taught us much about the resiliency of the human spirit. We have sacrificed individually and collectively while simultaneously adapting to a redefined world, a world requiring new pathways to pursue our goals and hopes and dreams. Your own courage […]

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students: There’s no doubt our lives have been upended to varying degrees during the past 10 months. COVID‑19. Racial injustice. A roller-coaster economy. Political upheaval and related violence. Diminishing availability of vital health and social services. Devastating natural disasters from coast to coast. In such a gloomy environment, it’s easy to lose sight […]

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students: Monday’s annual commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life should be a soul-stirring call to deeply examine, reflect on, and—most importantly—act to change systemic injustices that have long tarnished widely espoused American ideals about freedom, equality, and opportunity for all. The evidence driving this need for self‑examination is undeniably and painfully […]