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Wednesday, March 10, 2021 — 3

Civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson announced 
as Spring 2021 commencement speaker

Author of ‘Just Mercy’ will address graduates during virtual ceremony

ALEC COHEN/Daily

The University of Michigan announces civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson as this year’s commencement speaker 
(NOTE: This photo was taken at the 2018 Spring Commencement, before the COVID-19 pandemic).

Bryan Stevenson, notable civil 

rights lawyer and social justice 
activist, will give the commencement 
address 
during 
the 
University 

of 
Michigan’s 
virtual 
Spring 

Commencement Ceremony on May 
1, the University Record announced 
Thursday morning. 

Stevenson 
has 
worked 
to 

exonerate prisoners on death row 
for more than 30 years and is a 
bestselling author. His memoir, “Just 
Mercy,” was adapted as a motion 
picture in 2019, where actor Michael 
B. Jordan portrayed Stevenson.

Stevenson is also the founder 

and executive director of the Equal 
Justice Initiative, which provides 
legal representation to prisoners who 
have been wrongfully convicted, 
improperly sentenced or abused 
while imprisoned. 

Through his work with the Equal 

Justice Initiative, Stevenson has 
won major legal battles to overturn 
wrongful sentencing. During his 
time with the nonprofit, he has saved 
more than 135 wrongfully convicted 
prisoners from the death penalty. 

In 2012, Stevenson successfully 

brought a case before the U.S. 
Supreme 
Court 
in 
which 
he 

argued mandatory life sentences 
for juveniles convicted of murder 
without the opportunity for parole 
was in violation of the Eighth 
Amendment. 

This announcement comes one 

month after the University said a 
virtual ceremony would be held 
for the Class of 2021 rather than 
an in-person event. The virtual 
ceremony is slated to include student 
performances 
and 
speakers 
in 

addition to the conferring of degrees.

The University also released 

information Thursday for graduates 
regarding various socially-distanced 
photo sessions at Michigan Stadium. 
The photo sessions are set to begin 

April 6, and graduates will be able to 
have free professional photographs 
taken with other graduating friends 
and classmates. 

University 
President 
Mark 

Schlisssel told the Record the 
decision to hold photo opportunities 
in Michigan Stadium is a result of 
feedback received from graduating 
students. Since the confirmation 
of virtual commencement, some 
students and families have pushed 
the University to try for a safe 
in-person commencement event.

“We’ve heard from them that 

they want inspiring commencement 
speakers and the opportunity to have 
a celebration in Michigan Stadium,” 
Schlissel said in the press release. 
“We created our photo event in the 
Big House and invited influential 
leaders to share their message and 
make this spring special for our 
graduates.”

Daily Staff Reporter Alec Cohen 

can be reached at cohenale@umich.

ALEC COHEN

Daily Staff Reporter

CAMPUS LIFE

So, I think when this is all over 

and behind us, I think we should 
really take stock and see how we did. 
It’s almost like the grading system 
that’s in effect now for students, 
right? You get to wait till you have 
your grades to know whether you 
should take a grade or a pass/fail, so 
maybe I’ll wait until we have a little 
bit more perspective, but it’s really 
a group project; and I appreciate 
everybody who’s been helping.

TMD: In a recent tweet, Regent 

Jordan Acker (D) said, “I hope Dr. 
Fauci is right that every American 
can get a vaccine by July … That 
would go a long way toward getting 
back to the Michigan experience 
we all love.” You’ve said that the 
University is looking at scenarios 
based on what fraction of the 
campus community is vaccinated. 
Can you walk us through some 
of those scenarios? What’s the 
difference between if, say, 60% and 
90% are vaccinated?

MS: I think what’s most likely is 

that by the time the summer rolls 
around, all of the faculty and staff 
that want to be vaccinated will 
have that access to the vaccine. 
But, when the new school year rolls 
around, probably not more than 
half of students will be vaccinated. 
So we’ve got to figure out how to 
have as much in-person education 
and student life as possible. So it 
could be the semester will begin 
more constrained and become less 
constrained as time goes by, but 
those are the plans we’re working 
on now. 

And what we’re doing in the last 

couple of weeks and then the next 
week or two is talking to faculty, staff 
and students and learning about 
what they’d like the fall semester to 
look like. The Regents are weighing 
in; parents are weighing in. The 
best of all possible worlds would be 
everybody, including all students, 
who want to be vaccinated to have 
been vaccinated by the fall semester. 

And I think when we get to 

that stage, campus might be quite 
normal. For sure we’ll get to the 
stage eventually where there aren’t 
masks; you can have football games 
and big classes. I don’t think we’ll be 
quite there in the fall, but I think it’ll 
be a good part of the way there.

TMD: If much of the class 

instruction remains online, how 
does U-M plan to combat virtual 
fatigue from students, as the end of 
the fall semester would mark nearly 
two years of almost entirely online 
instruction?

MS: I think no matter what 

state we’re in, there’ll be more 
activities on campus for students to 
participate in, and not just virtual 
activities. If we have to continue 
to be conservative, we would still 
wear masks, but we do things 
together; we start to get people out 
of their rooms. I can’t predict yet 
what percentage of classes will be 
in person, but it’s very likely to be 
much more in person than it is now. 

TMD: Rich Holcomb from U-M 

Human Resources shared poll 
results on Feb. 12 that said 87% of 
Ann Arbor staff would be interested 
in continuing to work remotely 
after the pandemic. Three days 
later, Public Affairs tweeted that 
U-M remains optimistic that the 
fall semester “will be more normal.” 
Given this juxtaposition, do you 
expect there to be conflict between 
staff/faculty and administrators 
if you choose to introduce a more 
in-person fall semester plan? If so, 
how will you handle it?

MS: The survey that vice 

president Holton was talking about 
was for a significant number of 
back-office staff at the University 
that 
aren’t 
face-to-face 
with 

students. Our staff that deals with 
students, such as student affairs 
people, the Student Life folks and 
the faculty of course — we’re a 
residential, in-person higher-ed 
institution — and they’re going to 
do their jobs. 

That said, I do think there are 

going to be reentry challenges for 
people as they come back to work. 
Just like you’ve been studying 
remotely a lot and you’ve got Zoom 
fatigue, a lot of our faculty and staff 
have been working remotely for a 
long time. We have to do everything 
we can to convince people that 
they’re safe on campus. 

TMD: Given that classes are 

entirely asynchronous for many 
students and that we live in 
an unprecedented time where 
the 9-to-5 work week has been 
completely disturbed, do you feel 
that “well-being breaks” make a real 
improvement to students’ mental 
health? If you were a student, would 

you feel like this is enough to make 
a difference?

MS: I think for many people it 

was a welcomed day not to have 
to take class and not to have to 
Zoom. By itself, no, it doesn’t solve 
the problem. But it recognizes that 
there are little things we can do to 
make things marginally better, at 
least for a little while.

One thing that I learned relatively 

early in the pandemic which 
surprised me is students said that 
many of their classes are actually 
harder than they are when you’re 
doing regular classes in person. 
The workload seems greater, there 
seems to be more tests and more 
quizzes. I talked to faculty about 
this, and they said they needed to be 
sure students were keeping up and 
paying attention when they couldn’t 
see you. So we’ve tried to give 
feedback to the faculty to get them 
to better adjust the workload to 
reduce stress. The well-being days 
(are) just a day to give time. We’re 
not under the illusion that the well-
being days solve all our problems at 
all.

TMD: When can we expect a 

more detailed plan for the fall?

MS: In the coming couple of 

weeks. We’re working on the 
details right now, but in the grand 
scheme, we’re expecting to have 
a significantly more in-person 
fall semester with much more 
residential life and more of our 
classes in person. Hopefully we’ll be 
able to get it to you by the middle of 
the month.

TMD: In late January, the Office 

for Institutional Equity released 
two annual reports on sexual 
and 
gender-based 
misconduct, 

one looking at students and one 
looking at University employees. 
The 
student 
report 
included 

breakdowns of reported allegations 
and investigative and appellate 
outcomes (if any), whereas the 
employee report did not include 
an 
appendix 
or 
distinguish 

between assault and harassment 
in its data. Both employee and 
student misconduct affect the 
University community, and cases 
like Philbert’s and Anderson’s 
have brought attention to alleged 
sexual misconduct from employees 
in particular. Do you have any 
thoughts on the University’s attitude 
toward these two sources of sexual 
and gender-based misconduct on 

campus and/or an explanation of 
the difference in detail between the 
two public reports?

MS: I think you’re pointing out 

something that’s important that 
many of us have noticed: The nature 
of the reporting is quite different 
when it comes to student events 
as compared to faculty and staff 
events. One of the recommendations 
we got in an earlier review of our 
policies is that we should have a 
single umbrella policy that uses the 
same definitions and provides the 
same information for everybody. 
That’s what we’re in the process of 
doing; we’ll be ready to push that 
out hopefully by the summertime. 

TMD: 
Especially 
following 

the WilmerHale investigation of 
Philbert, which detailed several 
instances 
where 
allegations 

were brought forward to OIE 
and University officials but not 
thoroughly investigated, can you 
comment on this single-digit rate 
of investigation for reports against 
students and the approximate 12% 
rate of investigation for employee 
reports reflected in the two reports 
from this year? 

MS: 
When 
I 
first 
started 

reading these things, shortly after 
I got here, recognizing that sexual 
misconduct and sexual harassment 
are incredibly serious problems, 
I was surprised how few full 
investigations were done compared 
to the total number of reports. 
What I’ve learned is OIE reports 
every single report of misconduct or 
harassment. We report everything. 

The other thing that I learned is 

that investigation is only one way 
forward. There’s another pathway 
forward that involves more of a 
discussion or mediation between 
individuals where a person has 
made a complaint against another 
person. There are many people 
that just want to be heard and 
undergo some kind of process of 
accountability, and that sort of more 
restorative justice approach is being 
used and offered as an option. 

Sometimes we’ll get complaints 

that actually aren’t illegal or 
disallowed by our rules. In order for 
something to be sexual harassment, 
it has to be severe and pervasive. 
So sometimes we get a complaint 
of moderate severity, and we 
don’t ignore it. We feed back the 
information to a local leadership, 
and we try to address it. It doesn’t 
become an investigation because it 
doesn’t fall under something that’s 
disallowed by Title IX. 

When it comes to Philbert, one 

of the things that we’re trying to 
learn from the report and from the 
help that Guidepost is giving us, 
is how we can do a better job fully 
investigating reports of misconduct 
to 
prevent 
multi-year 
serial 

misbehavior. We have to look at and 
revise our procedures and make 
sure we’re not missing things. We 
have to get better at this.

TMD: 
On 
the 
website 

of 
Guidepost 
Solutions, 
the 

investigative firm hired to help 
implement 
the 
WilmerHale 

recommendations, 
they 
claim 

their goal is to “help you seize 
opportunities 
on 
the 
horizon, 

minimize disruption, or move on 
from difficulty.” What message do 
you think that sends to survivors 
of alleged sexual assault at U-M, 
and does U-M see the entire 
process as just another disruption? 

Are you committed to structural 
change when it comes to sexual 
misconduct?

MS: Well, the description you 

give is certainly not the reason 
we hired them. What they’re 
contracted to do is to help us 
implement the recommendations 
of 
the 
WilmerHale 
report. 

We’re absolutely committed to 
diminishing 
the 
frequency 
of 

misconduct and harassment to 
zero. It should never be tolerated. 
What we need their help with is 
establishing an environment where 
the people who are subjected 
to misconduct feel that their 
complaints are going to be taken 
seriously — that there won’t be 
retaliation against them. The fact 
that only a fraction of instances 
of misconduct ever gets reported 
is a huge problem. We really need 
to 
increase 
our 
community’s 

confidence that they’re going to be 
treated well and fairly. 

The other thing they’re going 

to help us with is look(ing) at our 
procedures inside of OIE and how 
we do our investigations. They’re 
not here to reinvestigate the 
Philbert matter. They’re here to 
help us make the place better and 
stronger.

TMD: The Lecturers’ Employee 

Organization is in the midst of 
bargaining for a new contract with 
the Regents. Last year, Regent 
Ron Weiser (R) sent an email to 
the entire board that disparaged 
Graduate Employees’ Organization 
picketers as probably “hired union 
hacks” and one member as “an 
idiot.” With this type of discourse 
going on behind the scenes, how 
can organized labor on campus 
believe that the University and the 
Board are negotiating with them in 
good faith?

MS: All of our employees are 

important and essential for our 
mission. The institution respects 
and values the people that work 
with us. There’s no way we could 
be outstanding in research and 
teaching and service and patient 
care without the tens of thousands 
of people that work with us. 

For example, in recent months, 

I’ve been down on South Campus at 
our transportation facility visiting 
with bus drivers and talked to 
them about their experience and 
thanked them for being frontline 
workers. In the Dow Building a 
couple months ago, I sat and visited 
with maintenance and custodial 
staff for the University and thanked 
them for working under difficult 
circumstances; 
you 
can’t 
do 

custodial work from home. 

When it comes to our organized 

workers and our unionized workers, 
we always endeavor to bargain in 
good faith. It’s incredibly important 
for both sides to believe that the 
other side is bargaining in good 
faith, otherwise the whole system 
breaks down and the University 
suffers.

TMD: In that same email, 

Weiser wrote about a GEO member: 
“While he was cleanly dressed it 
was impossible to imagine him in 
a classroom. Janitor maybe from 
the mental content.” What kind 
of message does that send to the 
University’s custodial staff and 
other frontline workers, most of 
whom have risked their health 
to work in person and keep the 
University functioning throughout 

the pandemic? 

MS: I can say the board, myself 

and the leadership of the University 
incredibly appreciate the work of 
those folks in particular. Think 
about when you come to campus 
the morning after snowfall. Those 
darn paths are all clear, and there’s 
rarely patches of ice. These folks do 
a spectacular job. They’re outside 
shoveling my driveway at five in 
the morning. I can’t even get any 
exercise; they’re out there before I 
would get out there. So, they have 
a huge amount of gratitude and 
respect from me.

TMD: February was marked 

by several virtual events around 
campus in honor of Black History 
Month. 
At 
the 
kickoff 
event 

Feb. 
1, 
one 
student 
panelist, 

LSA Student Government Vice 
President Josiah Walker, said he 
wants the University to continue 
to highlight Black history beyond 
the month of February. What is or 
will the University do to elevate its 
commitment to Black students in 
the months and years to come?

MS: I think Josiah is 100% 

correct. You pick out a month 
just to draw people’s attention. 
But we should focus on issues 
around racism, equity, Blackness 
in America, Black Lives Matter — 
almost every day of the academic 
year. 
Also 
from 
a 
research 

perspective, the Institute for Social 
Research runs a very famous 
program called the Program for 
Research on Black Americans. 
We’ve got a Center for Research on 
Ethnicity and Culture and Public 
Health, the Center for the Study 
of Black Youth in LSA and the 
National Center for Institutional 
Diversity.

We’ve worked hard, and we’ve 

only been modestly successful 
increasing representation, not just 
of African Americans, but of many 
other 
underrepresented 
groups 

on campus. In terms of studying 
Black History, I don’t think we 
understand 
American 
history 

without 
understanding 
Black 

History. The Black experience 
is the American experience in 
many, many ways, and we have to 
understand it to live together and to 
be scholars.

TMD: We know that the men’s 

and women’s basketball teams are 
both having great seasons. When 
was the last time you got out on your 
driveway — on that hoop you have 
— and shot some baskets?

MS: It was last fall before the 

weather turned. It’s often on the 
weekends, sometime in the late 
afternoon when I just have to shake 
the cobwebs out. The embarrassing 
thing is I’m 63 now, and I can 
actually just shoot baskets by myself 
and pull muscles. So, I don’t get to 
do it as much as I’d like. One of my 
bucket list things is I’d like to invite 
some of our coaches or basketball 
players to come and play some 
pickup on the driveway. So, maybe 
after the season’s over or maybe 
when they bring home a national 
championship we can play some 
hoops here at the president’s house. 
That’d be great.

Daily News Editor Calder Lewis 

can be reached at calderll@umich.
edu. Daily Staff Reporters Jared 
Dougall and Christian Juliano can be 
reached at jdougall@umich.edu and 
julianoc@umich.edu. 

ALEC COHEN/Daily

The Michigan Daily talked with President Mark Schlissel about well-being days and plans for the Fall semester in an interview March 2.

SCHLISSEL
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