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Amenities vary by location
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