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Campus life this fall ‘much 

closer’ to 2019 than 2020

Schlissel talks preparations, predictions for this semester

The 
Michigan 
Daily 
sat 

down with University of 
Michigan President Mark 
Schlissel Aug. 25 to discuss 
preparations for the fall 
semester amid the ongoing 
pandemic. This interview has 
been edited for clarity. 

Mark Schlissel: Students 

are coming back, we’re 
planning to have now 93% 
of our classes being taught 
in person and the residence 
halls are nearly full. We’ve 
had very good success and 
uptake on our vaccination 
requirements. We’re up to 
91% of students on the Ann 
Arbor campus — and I think 
that continues to go up — 
and 87% of faculty and then 
looking at 72% of staff have 
already 
completed 
their 

vaccination 
requirement. 

Those rates are much higher 
than 
the 
surrounding 

community, and it really 
puts us in strong shape to 
have the kind of semester 
that we’re all trying to have. 

That has to be balanced 

against concern around this 
Delta variant that certainly 
can 
infect 
vaccinated 

people. Thankfully it doesn’t 
make them ill enough to 
require hospitalization, and 
you almost never see severe 
illness 
in 
a 
vaccinated 

person, but we have to 
continue to be vigilant. 

Overall, the message is it’s 
a pretty exciting time of the 
year at the University, and 
it’s a very different feel.

The 
Michigan 
Daily: 

At the end of last semester, 
you said that the best case 
scenario for fall was having 
a vast majority of campus 
vaccinated, and the worst 
case 
a 
variant 
forcing 

more mitigation measures. 
Considering both played out 
to some extent, what should 
students expect campus life 
to be like this semester? For 
example, 
should 
student 

organizations or individual 
students 
host 
large 

meetings, shows, tailgates 
or parties?

MS: I think life on campus 

is going to be much closer to 
2019 than it will be to 2020 
in the fall. We are having the 
residence halls running at 
essentially full occupancy; 
we put aside some rooms 
in case we need to do 
quarantine, but basically the 
residence halls are up and 
running again. You don’t 
have to mask inside the 
residence halls. Everyone 
has to be vaccinated in the 
residence halls, and the very 
tiny number of students 
that aren’t for medical or 
religious reasons will be 
masked. All of the lounges 
in the residence halls will be 
open, the dining halls will 
be open, so that part of the 
student experience — the 
lived experience — will be 
much closer to normal. 

Student 
orgs 
will 
be 

free to meet. We’ll have 

at least in the beginning 
of the year a masking 
requirement regardless of 
your vaccination status if 
you’re operating indoors. 
Outdoors, it’s up to you, 
though I would still advise 
people 
in 
big 
crowds 

outdoors to wear a mask, 
to be prudent regardless of 
whether they’re vaccinated, 
but it won’t be a requirement 
at this stage. So life will be 
much more like what you 
recall, what brings joy to 
students.

TMD: Given some of the 

Delta variant concerns, the 
fact that cases are still rising, 
how optimistic are you that 
classes will stay in person, 
that athletic events will 
have full fan capacity and 
that students in residence 
halls will be housed there 
the entire school year?

MS: 
My 
crystal 
ball 

has a big crack in it. The 
ability to predict a novel 
once-in-a-lifetime event is 
tough. I think we’re very 
well-positioned 
to 
make 

it all the way through this 
semester without the kinds 
of interventions that we 
had to impose last year, but 
we have to continue to be 
vigilant.

For example, we’ll still 

require 
folks 
who 
are 

unvaccinated to be tested 
weekly for COVID, and 
if the levels of COVID 
increase, we’ll test more 
frequently than that. We’re 

CALDER LEWIS &

CLAIRE HAO

Daily News Editor & 

Editor-in-Chief

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

Potential lecturers’ strike would 

‘represent a failure’ 

From The Daily’s interview with U-M’s president:

LEO union can vote to take labor action beginning Sept. 8

The Michigan Daily sat 
down with University of 
Michigan President Mark 
Schlissel Aug. 25 to discuss 
a potential lecturers’ strike, 
calls to rename campus 
buildings, Schlissel’s football 
season prediction and more. 
This interview has been 
edited for clarity. 

The Michigan Daily: 

The Lecturers’ Employee 
Organization 
quit 
their 

contract with the University 
earlier this month, meaning 
a large portion of faculty 
instructors could go on 
strike the second week 
of school. What is the 
likelihood of a LEO strike?

Mark Schlissel: It’s up to 

LEO. I really don’t believe 
that a strike is necessary. 
I think a strike represents 
a failure. It represents the 
failure of both parties to 
diligently negotiate in good 
faith with one another with 
the shared intention of 
arriving at a fair contract. 
So if there’s a strike, we 
failed. I’m very hopeful that 
there won’t be, but that’s 
really in LEO’s hands.

The University made a 

recent salary offer. LEO 
told us the most important 
issue to them was starting 
salaries, 
particularly 
in 

Flint 
and 
in 
Dearborn 

where 
they 
had 
been 

quite low. With the last 
contract, 
the 
starting 

salaries went up quite a 
bit, and the University just 
last week offered increases 
to 
lecturers’ 
starting 

minimums between 16% 
and 
17% 
increase. 
16% 

and 17%, that’s a pretty 
fair amount all at once, as 
well as across-the-board 
annual increases. There’s a 
negotiating session today. 
The University is ready to 
negotiate every single day, 
and we remain committed 
to continuing to bargain to 
come to a fair resolution. 

A strike would cause 

tremendous 
harm 
to 

students. 
Lecturers 
are 

critical 
colleagues 
in 

delivering the Michigan 
curriculum. They’re a great 
part of our educational 
experience. 
They’re 

our 
colleagues, 
they’re 

our friends, they’re our 
neighbors. We would really 
love to find an amicable 
way to move forward and 
treat 
everybody 
fairly 

and not really cause the 
challenge and the chaos of 
a strike at the beginning of 
the semester. Last fall was a 
rocky semester. We’d really 
love to give our students the 
gift of a Michigan education 
instead of this labor strife. 

We’ve 
called 
upon 
a 

state mediator who’s been 
working with us. We also 
petitioned the state for a 
fact finder — that’s the next 
step after mediation where 
someone comes in and 
determines facts on both 

sides and then proposes 
a 
way 
forward. 
We’re 

committed to that process. 

TMD: What did you learn 

from last fall’s Graduate 
Employees’ Union strike 
as you prepare for the 
potential of a similar one?

MS: I think one of the 

common lessons of the 
whole pandemic is that 
communication is really 
important, and having open 
lines 
of 
communication, 

so that we don’t just think 
we understand a group or 
a person’s situation — we 
actually ask them about 
it. And what we’ve been 
doing in the many months 
since last academic year is 
really meeting with GEO 
regularly, absent a crisis, 
on often on a weekly basis, 
to work on shared issues 
of concern to try to head 
things off at the pass before 
they get to the stage of 
provoking frustration and 
anger that might lead to 
some kind of work action.

So that’s what we have 

learned from GEO last 
year, and we continue to 
work on it optimistically 
in partnership to avoid 
the same kind of thing 
moving forward. The GEO 
has been very supportive 
of vaccination efforts, for 
example, 
and 
masking 

indoors and the like. Efforts 
to keep people safe have 
been quite collaborative.

CALDER LEWIS &

CLAIRE HAO

Daily News Editor & 

Editor-in-Chief

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

