CHAPEL HILL – Though normally quite reserved, Bill Roper gets personal as he discusses his and the UNC System’s approach to reopening this fall amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The 17 institutions are preparing for multiple scenarios they could confront when students return, the system’s Interim President says in the accompanying video from a Zoom interview.
“We are determined to do our job. And that means in this time of global pandemic, of COVID-19, our job is to deliver what the people of North Carolina depend on us for – education, research, service, outreach – in a way that is responsible and that protects the people who have entrusted their lives, their health, their futures to us,” he says.
“And we’re just not gonna screw around with that. We are not gonna do things that are irresponsible…. We are gonna be doing this in a way that is careful, thoughtful, research-driven, expert-guided.”
Roper notes that the bulk of his career has been spent in public health, and that he was once Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
“Maybe that’s why I’m here,” he says. “But you can bet your bottom dollar I’m gonna be using my ability, my experience, and then the advice and counsel of lots of others to do this in a way that is good for the people we serve, and surely not harmful to them.”
He then raises his own faith and cites a biblical verse – Esther 4:141 – that he says is on his mind these days.
“There, Queen Esther was told, ‘Who knows, but you were brought to this place for a time like this.’”
Maybe he was.
1 “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
Dave R says
Thank you Dr. Roper. It is good to hear a voice that speaks experience, science and facts. Unfortunately not all North Carolinians operate from the same basis and believe that this is just like the flu and miraculously go away.