O
n Tuesday of Wel-
come Week this
year, I had dinner
alone on my porch. The house I
had moved into just a few days
earlier was still uncomfortably
hot, so I fled to the cool breeze
and quiet murmur of the street.
Settling into a chair, I watched
the world go by in front of me
as dusk faded into night.
Usually, when I sit still in
such a bustling environment,
I like to imagine where people
are coming from, where they
are going, who they are talk-
ing to on the phone and other
mildly
entertaining
things.
This time, though, I was fo-
cused on whether or not peo-
ple were wearing masks.
Since Gov. Gretchen Whit-
mer signed Executive Order
2020-153, Michiganders have
been required to wear face cov-
erings in public spaces — both
indoors and outdoors — to
stop the spread of COVID-19.
Adherence to these and other
guidelines
represents
cru-
cial public health measures for the state of
Michigan, which has suffered more than
6,700 of the approximately 180,000 corona-
virus deaths in the United States thus far. By
my count, it seemed that less than half of the
people who walked past my house that eve-
ning were wearing masks.
In addition to inadequate mask compli-
ance, the return of students this fall has also
increased the probability of super-spreader
events. Large universities like ours, such as
the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, Notre Dame University and the Uni-
versity of Alabama, have already succumbed
to spikes in cases that have been traced back
to bars and off-campus parties. With each
new day, another university learns the same
lesson about trusting its entire student body
to restrain itself during one of the biggest
party seasons of the year.
Over the course of the past week, I con-
ducted interviews collecting people’s per-
ceptions about our campus community’s
response to the pandemic, as well as our
chances of maintaining in-person instruc-
tion. How likely was it that our campus
would experience similar outbreaks to those
at other colleges? While there were differ-
ences in opinion on many issues, one par-
ticular prediction proved unanimous: the
University of Michigan is next.
To me, this was cause for alarm. Practi-
cally everyone I asked predicted the Univer-
sity would be completely online within one
or two weeks, and that the freshmen would
likely be sent home before they even got a
taste of the much-advertised “First Year Ex-
perience.” It was quite confusing to watch
other people, especially my peers, go about
their daily lives as if nothing especially odd
was happening.
At the outset of my investigation, I want-
ed to explore the fatalism that had taken
hold of our campus community. Operating
under the assumption that a move to all-
online instruction was a litmus test for our
ability to contain the virus, I struggled with
the question: Is the closure of campus inevi-
table? Or, in metaphorical terms: Are we liv-
ing through the calm before the storm?
T
he belief in the likely failure of
the University’s reopening plan
was certainly widespread, but I
still questioned the prevailing wisdom that
there was nothing I could do to stop it. As
a senior, the social connections and experi-
ences I have built here over the years give
me a relatively small, but relevant sphere of
influence. I could still choose not to attend
social gatherings that might endanger my
health or the health of others, and encour-
age my friends to do the same.
But what if I had just arrived on cam-
pus, desperate to make friends and wriggle
my way into the fabric of college social life?
This is the plight of the current freshmen,
who since March have had major coming-
of-age events such as prom, graduation and
now Welcome Week canceled or severely
limited to virtual equivalents. I remember
when I was a freshman; the first few weeks
were a mad dash to attain the sense of feel-
ing established and comfortable in my own
skin.
My intuition is that most upperclassmen
like me have probably not thought much
about this year’s freshman class, let alone
interacted with them in any meaningful
way. To better understand their perspective,
I talked with a few freshmen who decided to
study on campus for the fall term this year.
The first freshman I spoke with was David
Welch, a student in the School of Engineer-
ing and an Ann Arbor townie. In our phone
conversation, I asked David why, even with
the pandemic still raging, he would still opt
for the perennial college experience of liv-
ing in the dorms rather than at home just a
few miles away.
“What I want to do is meet new people,”
Welch said. “I feel like that’s the most im-
portant thing that I could potentially miss
out on if I didn’t, you know, live in a dorm.”
For the majority of undergraduates, re-
turning to campus offers the opportunity of
connecting with their peers. There is noth-
ing wrong with that, though I did find it
unfortunate that the parties thrown by the
elder undergraduates would likely lead the
first-year experience to be more of a first-
few-weeks experience.
Bea Brockey is another freshman who
will be starting her first semester in the
LSA Residential College, a living-learning
program especially geared toward under-
classmen. RC students have the privilege of
living and taking classes in East Quad Resi-
dence Hall for their first two years, though
the uncertainty of the pandemic has made
students like Bea wary of getting too com-
fortable.
“I really hope we get to stay as long as
possible but I think we’re gonna get sent
home in, like, two weeks or a month,” Bea
said during our phone conversation.
I then asked Bea whether she thought
campus closure was inevitable. “College stu-
dents aren’t necessarily notorious for their
ability to follow the rules, and I think people
are going to party. They have been partying
at other colleges that have reopened. And if
they do that, I think it’s likely that we will be
sent home.”
I felt empathy for the freshmen I inter-
viewed about the upcoming semester, if only
in the sense that I also felt I had very little
control over how things would play out. I
wondered: Is there any evidence out there
that Michigan will be able to stop the spread
of the virus and deliver a quality in-person
education at the same time?
T
he first data source I probed was
my own lived experience. On two
consecutive nights, I went out
late in the evening to scope out the streets,
and this time not just from my porch.
Donning a face mask, I set off on the first
night for a walk around campus. I walked
by a group of guys playing a game of beer
die, blasting music and shouting as the dice
plummeted toward a carefully painted ta-
ble. I passed by several restaurants where
bare-faced diners were wolfing down their
meals in the outside seating area. Wher-
ever I looked, it seemed like more people
were wearing their masks around their neck
than on their actual faces. I even had a few
minutes completely to myself as I walked
down an empty State Street, but the rela-
tive solitude was interrupted when a group
of roughly twenty girls dressed up to go out
ran past me on the sidewalk.
The next night, I interviewed some of
the late-night revelers. The prevailing senti-
ment among the people I talked to was that
they were just having a good time (all spoke
on the condition of anonymity). They did
not believe what they were doing was harm-
ful, and many said they felt poorly informed
about the consequences of getting in trouble
anyway.
This lack of awareness was not surpris-
ing. In fact, the University has largely avoid-
ed addressing disciplinary action in its COV-
ID-19 messaging but instead has appealed to
students’ sense of responsibility. In an inter-
view with The Daily, University President
Mark Schlissel complained that “I get a lit-
tle insulted when everybody says there’s no
way that students are going to wear masks,
and there’s no way that they’re not going to
party in dangerous fashions, and there’s no
way they’re mature enough to recognize the
importance of the moment and behave like
the adults that you all are.”
But students disagree, and for good rea-
son.
In an episode characteristic of mature
adults, a Twitter user captured a photo of a
social gathering that featured a banner with
the words, “You can’t eat ASS with a mask
on.” The photo also featured another banner
that seemed to have “Rush Phi Psi” written
across it in red letters, referring to the fra-
ternity Phi Kappa Psi.
The University’s public response was one
of mild displeasure toward the students in
the photo. In an email to The Daily, Univer-
sity spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen wrote
that even though the banner was “embar-
rassing,” it constituted protected speech
under the first amendment. She also main-
tained that Phi Kappa Psi was not affiliated
with the gathering and that the people in the
photo were not breaking any public health
guidelines. On the other hand, she wrote
that she “thoroughly condemns” those who
were harassing or threatening the residents
on social media.
Jeff Lockhart, a sixth-year Ph.D. student
in sociology and complex systems who is
also involved in the Graduate
Employees’
Organization’s
COVID Caucus, pointed out
the irony in Broekhuizen’s
statement during our phone
conversation.
“It seems to me like what
the University is already do-
ing is letting people off the
hook and assigning no sort of
criticism at all for that kind of
behavior, while actively criti-
cizing the people who call it a
potential problem.”
When I asked Lockhart for
his opinion on the Universi-
ty’s reopening plan more gen-
erally, his response caught
my attention.
“We know that this Uni-
versity administration is liv-
ing in fantasy land, right?”
He then referred to an argu-
ment Schlissel made during a
“Virtual Faculty Town Hall”
in mid-August about testing;
namely, that students who
tested negative for COVID-19
would be emboldened to take
greater risks, just as gay men
supposedly did during the HIV/AIDs epi-
demic. As Greg Gonsalves wrote in his ar-
ticle for The Nation, Schlissel’s statement
was “a fabricated tale, stigmatizing gay men
all over again as vectors of disease and infec-
tion.”
Lockhart further criticized Schlissel’s
statement as a justification for not carrying
out regular asymptomatic testing on-cam-
pus: “Anyone who knows anything about
HIV public health knows that regular as-
ymptomatic testing is crucial … so for him to
say that HIV testing is an example of why we
shouldn’t have asymptomatic widespread
testing; it is the most backward, nonsensical
thing.”
In fairness to Schlissel, he has since made
several apologies for this statement in the
wake of criticism from U-M’s Queer Advo-
cacy Coalition. Nevertheless, his slip of the
tongue was not merely a mistake; it was a
window, an invitation to discover a wealth
of unsettling evidence regarding potential
corruption in the University’s reopening
scheme.
Lockhart shared with me two key docu-
ments that reveal a suspicious misalignment
between expert knowledge and University
policy: The Report of the Ethics and Privacy
Committee that Schlissel himself charged
with investigating the University’s options
for reopening, and a more recent document
titled “Update on the current situation and
planning for the Fall Term” by the same com-
mittee. The Report assesses the ethical im-
plications of a return to in-person instruction
“from a diverse array of standpoints,” taking
into account the moral obligations the Uni-
versity has to its students, faculty, staff and
surrounding communities. Its publication on
June 8 preceded the announcement of the
University’s Maize & Blueprint plan for what
Schlissel called, “a public health-informed
in-residence semester this fall.”
However, the Update memo, originally
sent on July 31 according to the memo’s
header, was not made public until Dr. Silke-
Maria Weineck — a professor at the Universi-
ty — shared it on her Twitter account on Aug.
24. The main assertion of its authors is that
we, as a University, would likely turn Ann Ar-
bor into a COVID-19 “hot spot” that placed
members of the campus community as well
as all members of adjacent communities in
serious danger.
The publication of the document was just
one of a series of actions by University em-
ployees demanding greater accountability
and transparency from the University. On the
Friday before classes began, the Faculty Sen-
ate considered a vote of no confidence in the
administration, one day after an anonymous
staff member published a scathing Op-Ed in
The Daily.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
12 — Wednesday, September 2, 2020
statement
The calm before the storm: Michigan and the ethics
of uninformed reopening
BY ALEXANDER SATOLA, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SCHOTT
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
Statement Contributor & Man-