The Michigan Daily spoke with 

University of Michigan President 
Mark Schlissel Oct. 8 to discuss his 
plans to step down as president in 
June 2023 as well as his exit package. 
Read part two of the interview to hear 
Schlissel’s thoughts on COVID-19 on 
campus one month into the semester, 
in addition to new sexual misconduct 
policies. 

This conversation has been edited 

for clarity.

The Michigan Daily: On Oct. 

5 you announced that you will be 
stepping down as president of the 
University in June of 2023, a year 

earlier than previously planned. 
Why did you decide to step down, 
and why did you announce it now? 

Mark Schlissel: I’m looking at 

the University gradually coming 
out of this pandemic that upended 
how we function and trying to 
define what the new normal is 
going to be. We’ve got people 
working remotely still, some people 
working on campus. We’ve learned 
how to deliver online education in 
ways that may alter the on-campus 
curriculum. It’s just a time of great 
change. We want to be sure that 
we’re planning forward-looking 
strategies to make sure that the 
excellence and the impact of our 
University 
is 
maintained 
and 

enhanced, even under the new 
world we’re going to be functioning 
in, and it seems like that’s operating 
with a time course of many, many 

years longer than my original time 
horizon. 

I told myself I’d do 10 years, and 

I’ve reconsidered. I plan on stopping 
after my ninth year. The reason 
to announce it as soon as I did is 
to give the Board of Regents and 
the community as much time as 
possible to talk to one another and 
to get a sense of what the highest 
needs are, what our ambitions are as 
a community, and just to get enough 
input and be deliberative on what 
you know is an important decision.

I’ll have been leading the 

University for approaching a decade 
— that’s a long period of time — and 
the regents really need the time 
and space to make a really careful, 
thoughtful approach to a search, 
look very widely for my successor, 
settle on a great person, and then 
we need time for a transition. I 

benefited greatly from having my 
appointment announced six months 
before I actually started. I was still 
provost at Brown, but I was able 
to come here to Ann Arbor at least 
once a month or once every three 
weeks or so and meet with people 
and climb the learning curve to help 
understand this big, complicated 
place. So, just to provide plenty of 
time for a thoughtful transition is 
the main thing.

TMD: The Detroit Free Press 

has characterized your stepping 
down early as a deal between 
yourself and members of the Board 
of Regents who were divided over 
your performance. Is this reporting 
accurate in your view, and what role 
did the board play in your decision 
to step down early?

The University of Michigan’s 

Division of Public Safety and 
Security 
released 
its 
2021 

Security and Fire Safety Report 
Oct. 4. The annual report, which 
is required by the Jeanne Clery 
Act, lists statistics for several 
types of crime on campus.

The 
most 
recent 
report 

covered the 2020 calendar year. 
Crimes are entered into DPSS’s 
Clery logs based on the date the 
crime was reported, regardless 
of when it occurred. Reports of 
crimes perpetrated by former 
University 
doctor 
Robert 

Anderson — which spanned 
the decades he spent at the 
University — were not reported 
until 2020, making the number 
of reports from this past year 
much higher than in years prior.

Of the 1,212 rapes reported 

in 2020, 1,194 were part of the 
Anderson investigation. There 
were 947 cases of fondling, 
of which 916 came from the 
investigations.

“It is important to note that 

the University also received 
reports about Anderson that 
included conduct that did not 
meet the definition of a Clery 
Act crime,” the report reads. 
“Because 
those 
allegations 

did not reflect crimes meeting 
Clery Act definitions, they are 
not included in the University’s 
statistics.”

As 
part 
of 
the 
report’s 

addendum, DPSS clarified how 
it classified Anderson cases, 
especially 
cases 
where 
the 

details are unclear due to the 
nature of the reports. In general, 
when there was a question 
of whether or not a case took 
place within the University’s 
Clery area — which refers to 
the University property and 
its 
immediate 
surroundings 

— DPSS said they erred on the 
side of including that case in the 
report. 

Survivors 
of 
Anderson 

protested at the most recent 
Board 
of 
Regents 
meeting, 

calling on the University to 
better protect victims of sexual 
misconduct. 
Hundreds 
of 

survivors had previously filed 
a class action lawsuit against 
the 
University, 
saying 
the 

University knew of misconduct 
but failed to take action on these 
claims. 

DPSS also said they leaned 

toward including all cases when 
an individual gave a vague 
number of instances. When 
individuals reported a range 
of occurrences, officials took 
the higher end of the estimate. 
DPSS also said they did their 
best to correlate descriptions of 
cases to a specific number. For 
example, a “couple” of incidents 
was counted as two and a “few” 
were counted as three.

Beyond the Anderson-related 

claims, the University saw a 
decrease in liquor and drug law 
violations during 2020, while 
other crimes remained largely 
stable. Four fires occurred in 
2020 — all were unintentional.

Daily Staff Reporter Dominic 

Coletti 
can 
be 
reached 
at 

dcoletti@umich.edu.

michigandaily.com
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Wednesday, October 13, 2021

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©2021 The Michigan Daily

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STATEMENT......... INSERT
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Schlissel: Exit package is ‘a fair way forward’

CALDER LEWIS, 

GEORGE WEYKAMP & 

ARJUN THAKKAR 
Daily News Editor & 
Daily Staff Reporters

PUBLIC SAFETY
DPSS report logs 
over 2,000 crimes 

by Anderson

Survivors of late athletic doctor have 

protested for better protections

GABBY CERITANO/Daily

University President Mark Schlissel sat down with The Michigan Daily to discuss his resignation announcement and exit package.

RESEARCH

U-M President talks resignation announcement, multimillion dollar contract in Daily interview 

DOMINIC COLETTI

Daily Staff Reporter

Last December, the Michigan 

Nurses Association voted to ratify a 
one-year extension to their previous 
collective bargaining agreement with 
Michigan Medicine. The agreement, 
which included a stipulation that 
nurses are not required to be 
vaccinated against COVID-19, covers 
all 6,200 nurses in the University of 
Michigan Professional Nurse Council 
Independent Union and will expire in 
June 2022.

According to the new agreement, 

“subject 
to 
Federal 
and 
State 

requirements and guidelines for 
distribution priority, the Employer will 
provide the COVID-19 vaccination 
at no cost to the employees and on a 
voluntary basis.”

The 
University’s 
COVID-19 

vaccine mandate announced in July 
by University President Mark Schlissel 
does not apply to nurses at Michigan 
Medicine due to the terms in their 
collective bargaining agreement. The 
provisions of the agreement allow 
nurses to negotiate a vaccine mandate 
and though it encourages vaccination, 
it doesn’t require it. 

Michigan Medicine spokeswoman 

Mary Masson told The Michigan Daily 
that reporting individual vaccination 
status is not required as well. 

“Our staff members are required 

to be vaccinated, unless they have 
received an exemption or are covered 
by collective bargaining and have not 
reached an agreement on the vaccine 

mandate,” Masson wrote in an email. 
“We are currently asking our nurses 
to voluntarily report their vaccination 
status, but have not collected all of that 
data.”

Anne Jackson, a registered nurse 

at Michigan Medicine and interim 
president of the MNA, said she 
believes a vast majority of nurses at 
Michigan Medicine are vaccinated 
and encourages everyone who can to 
get vaccinated. Jackson added that 
there are other aspects of safety that 
Michigan Medicine staff should be 
focusing on and that vaccines are 
only one part of the fight against the 
pandemic. 

“We need to make sure that every 

nurse has access to proper PPE,” 
Jackson wrote. “We need to make 
sure that nurses are promptly notified 
by Michigan Medicine if we have 
been exposed to COVID-19. We need 
to make sure that nurses are able to 
easily and quickly get tested if we are 
exposed irrespective of vaccination 
status. We need to make sure that all 
nurses are able to take the time off 
they need if we get exposed or contract 
COVID-19.”

Many Michigan undergraduate 

nursing students said they feel as 
though getting the vaccine is an 
obligation that nurses should have 
to follow. Nursing junior Molly 
Reynolds explained that health care 
providers set the standard for others, 
so if patients see their caretakers 
not getting vaccinated, that might 
persuade them to decline the vaccine 
as well.

Michigan Medicine 
nurses exempt from 
vaccine mandate

Bargaining agreement approved last year 
includes stipulation against a requirement

ASHNA MEHRA & 
NADIR AL-SAIDI 
Daily Staff Reporters

A professor has taken over the 

undergraduate class previously taught 
by Bright Sheng, Leonard Bernstein 
Distinguished University Professor 
of Composition, David Gier, dean of 
the School of Music, Theatre & Dance 
announced Oct. 1. The announcement 
comes almost a month after Sheng 
showed a video to an undergraduate 
composition seminar featuring an 
actor in blackface. 

Regarding the recent instructor 

change, Gier wrote that this switch 
would “allow for a positive learning 
environment” so students could focus 

on their “growth as composers.”

Sheng, a highly accomplished 

composer, conductor and pianist, has 
had his music featured by prestigious 
groups including the New York 
Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chinese 
National Symphony Orchestra and the 
New York City Ballet Orchestra.Sheng 
also received a commission in honor of 
Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji visiting 
the White House in 1999, as well as 
numerous awards and fellowships.

The Michigan Daily looked deeper 

into what happened. 

On Sept. 10, Music, Theatre & Dance 

freshman Olivia Cook attended her 
first composition seminar with Sheng. 
This semester, the course focused on 
analyzing Shakespeare’s works, and 

the class began with a screening of 
the 1965 version of “Othello.” Cook 
told The Daily she quickly realized 
something 
seemed 
strange, 
and 

upon further inspection, noticed the 
onscreen actor Laurence Olivier was in 
blackface. 

“I was stunned,” Cook said. “In 

such a school that preaches diversity 
and making sure that they understand 
the history of POC (people of color) in 
America, I was shocked that (Sheng) 
would show something like this in 
something that’s supposed to be a safe 
space.” 

The 1965 version of the film has 

been a topic of controversy since its 
initial release when The New York 
Times wrote a 1966 article criticizing 

Olivier’s use of blackface as well as his 
stereotypical performance. 

According 
to 
Cook, 
the 

students were given no warning or 
contextualization prior to the viewing. 

Sheng sent out an apology on Sept. 

10 shortly after the class ended, noting 
that the casting and portrayal “was 
racially insensitive and outdated.” A 
copy of this email has been obtained by 
The Daily. A planned “Othello” project 
was then canceled by Sheng.

In an email to The Daily, Evan 

Chambers, professor of composition, 
wrote about the importance of 
properly 
preparing 
students 
for 

possible instances of racism in film.

SMTD professor steps back from 
course after blackface incident

FRANCESCA DUONG 

Daily Staff Reporter

DESIGN BY MELLISA LEE

SMTD Professor Bright Sheng stepped away from his course after showing a version of Othello that featured an actor in blackface.

Bright Sheng previously taught an undergraduate composition seminar

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

See SCHLISSEL, Page 2

See SMTD , Page 2

