On April 15th, Concordia held BEAR (Build, Encourage, Assist, Respect) the Love, an on-campus event to acknowledge the perseverance of the CSP community through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kelly Matthias, Director of the Center for Student Engagement, organized the event along with the entire student life committee comprised of Kate Larson, Aqueelah Roberson, Rochelle Privatsky, and Kimberly Newton.
“We wanted to plan a brand new event to highlight how this year has been so different and thus deserved its own unique community celebration,” she explained.
“The BEAR the Love event was intended to accomplish three things: celebrate how CSP has navigated the pandemic while successfully staying open, acknowledge how this has been a strange and difficult year, and publicly thank the greater community for their role in keeping everyone healthy.”
The past year has been difficult as students, faculty, and staff have adjusted to a new mode of operations on-campus. The CSP community has successfully navigated the pandemic, avoiding outbreaks that have hit many other campuses. Matthias credits the students for following and respecting the administration’s careful plan.
“On a large scale, our students made efforts to protect themselves and others by opting out of large group situations,” she said. “I assumed we would be constantly reminding others to wear masks on campus this year and that wasn’t the case at all. Everyone seemed happy to do their part to keep our community safe.”
With a year of the pandemic behind us, it was important to acknowledge this milestone.
“This past year was historic and nearly everything we were asked to do as faculty, staff, and students had to be reimagined. It was important to celebrate the creativity and thoughtfulness of how our campus community came together in incredible ways this past year to navigate an unprecedented situation,” said Matthias.