Announcer:
A PBS Wisconsin original production. The following program is part of our “Here & Now” 2020 election coverage.
Rebecca Blank:
I’m here today with not good news and a plea to ask all of us to do better in the coming days. As many of you know, in recent days COVID-19 cases have been growing among our campus community.
Zac Schultz:
Dane County reported a record number of COVID-19 cases this week as students returned to the UW-Madison campus. Madison Dane County Public Health attributed at least 71% of positive tests to UW students or staff. Students were back for barely a week before cases began to strike. Nearly half of all fraternity and sorority chapter houses, some with more than 50 members in one house, were issued public health orders to quarantine for two weeks. On Wednesday evening, UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank announced in-person instruction would be moved online and the two largest residence halls would quarantine for two weeks. In a letter, Dane County Executive Joe Parisi urged the state’s largest campus to send undergraduates in residence halls back home for the remainder of the fall semester and made a plea for more quarantine facilities, testing and contact tracing, as he said local public health officials can’t keep up with the overload in UW cases.
I’m Zac Schultz sitting in for Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” UW-Madison takes drastic steps due to a spike in COVID numbers on campus. Chancellor Rebecca Blank is here. The co-chairs of the Legislature’s bipartisan Task Force on Racial Disparities are here. So is Marquette University Law School Pollster Charles Franklin. It’s “Here & Now” for September 11.
Announcer:
Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
Zac Schultz:
We are joined now by UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank. Thank you for your time today.
Rebecca Blank:
Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
Zac Schultz:
Did any element of this outbreak or the need for a quarantine come as a surprise to you?
Rebecca Blank:
So, we did a lot of planning for this fall, and, you know, much of our planning have been effective. We’ve had no transmissions of any disease in the classroom. So far as I know, we’ve had no transmission of disease in the workplace. The health protocols we put in place have worked. I think none of us expected quite the magnitude of rise that we saw at the very beginning of this week, which really led us to take action. We knew that there would be some spikes, some upward rise. Students would come, there’d be some partying. The amount of that rise was steeper and faster than we expected and steeper than some of our fellow schools in the Big 10 have seen as well. So we are at a point where consulting with our medical experts, we have to flatten that curve.
Zac Schultz:
So the steepness was even more than you had prepared for throughout the summer in terms of how fast and how hard the cases rose?
Rebecca Blank:
Yes. Which is exactly why we took the actions we have taken. Basically putting into some form of lockdown two of our dorms and restricting the movement of all of our students and taking down in-person classes for at least the next two weeks so that we can basically get on top of this virus and make sure that it is safe for our students to be with each other and on campus.
Zac Schultz:
Now, you had, like you talked about, there were a lot of preparations throughout the summer. I’m assuming the possibility of quarantining dorms was talked about. So why did students feel like that this felt very rushed for them, that the communication was happening in fits and spurts when it actually came down just two hours’ notice?
Rebecca Blank:
First of all, if you are going to quarantine people, you want to quarantine fast. You don’t want to give them a day to run all over town and get things and then come back if you think there’s a health issue there. Our data came in on Tuesday. We took some actions about restricting movements. The data looked even worse on Wednesday. And at that point, particularly the two dorms that we quarantined, there was a very substantial outbreaks going on in both of those dorms, much more so than any of the other dorms on campus. We felt we had to take action with those two dorms.
Zac Schultz:
Health experts have talked quite a bit about how this type of scenario is not advisable, bringing this many people into one space where they have to share a lot of facilities. Was it a mistake to allow students to return to campus and specifically the dorms?
Rebecca Blank:
So let me answer that in a couple ways. First of all, I do think we very strongly believe – I certainly strongly believe in – that there’s certain things you do in in-person classes you cannot do online and via video. There’s some classes that you almost can’t hold because they require some interactions. This is true in some of our arts classes. It’s true in some of our lab classes. Some of our clinical education classes. I think all of us believe deeply in that value. So we really wanted to have a chance, particularly for our smaller classes, to try to meet. The second issue here is that the students really wanted to be here. I heard from students and parents, you know, from across the spectrum. It became very clear to us by the middle of the summer that all of our upper classmen were going to be in Madison, almost all of them, whether we held classes online or in person. They had all gone home last March and they didn’t like that. They were back in their old bedrooms with their parents and they wanted to be back in Madison and in many cases their parents wanted them to be back in Madison. So they were going to take up their housing contracts in any case. If you’re going to have 35,000 students, put the freshmen aside, 35,000 students in Madison, you know, you’re much better off having some control over them and having them on campus, messaging to them, doing testing. Indeed, if we announced today that we’re going online for the rest of the semester, I think very few of those students are going home. They are going to be here in any case. Those are exactly the circumstances under which we want to have closer connections rather than further connections. Now, with regard to the dorms, I will say the vast majority of our dorm students are behaving very well. We’ve got a whole number of dorms where the infection rates are 1% or so. That’s perfectly fine. That’s the base rate in the population. So, you know, there are many, many students doing exactly what they should be doing and I’m sorry that there are a couple of dorms that we’re going to be restricting even more. But the students, they wanted to be here.
Zac Schultz:
Dane County Executive Joe Parisi says contact tracers are having difficulty getting answers out of some students. Is the fear of punishment preventing some students from cooperating?
Rebecca Blank:
I think students don’t want to turn in their friends, and it’s not that the students aren’t responding. We can find students who tested positive and aren’t responding. And indeed we are taking steps to do that to make sure that any student who’s positive we get in touch with and make sure they go into isolation in the way that they need to. The bigger problem is the contact identification, where students don’t want to do that to their friends because it means their friends are going to go into quarantine for the next two weeks. And we’re looking at different options for that. There are a variety of technological acts that try to trace where people are, who they’re close to for extended periods of time. Everyone who’s used those has not been very satisfied with them. But that technology is improving every week. It’s one of the things we’re clearly going to be looking at.
Zac Schultz:
Some students who may be considered positive in the dorms have left, gone back to their hometowns. Is this the beginning of a super spreader event around the state or the Midwest?
Rebecca Blank:
We’ve been very clear that we don’t recommend students go home. We think they need to complete their quarantine. At that point if they wish to go home, we certainly aren’t going to stop them. If they do go home, we’ve been very clear, they need to complete their quarantine at home. We’ve told that to them. We’ve told that their parents and I very much hope that their families will follow that advice.
Zac Schultz:
Businesses are closed in Dane County. Public schools are closed and this outbreak won’t help them reopen. What obligation does the university have to the city and county when it comes to decisions like keeping students on campus when we have these outbreaks?
Rebecca Blank:
I’m back to the comment that our students pay rent. They have housing contracts with all sorts of landlords all over the city and they were going to be here. This is their home and where they want to be. I don’t have the ability to say to students go live in another city. And neither does anyone else. And we need to work with the residents who are here. And it’s certainly our responsibility to work closely with those students. And we are. As I say, the vast majority of our students from everything I know are doing exactly what we’ve asked them to do. But there are some small number who are not. And unfortunately, even if they are not symptomatic, they are infectious and have been spreading this, particularly to other students. At this point, I think it is much more limited to within the students. As I say, we’ve had very, very few employees, no faculty or instructors who’ve been ill. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to worry about it.
Zac Schultz:
Chancellor Blank, we’re going to have to leave it there. Thank you for your time.
Rebecca Blank:
Thank you.
Zac Schultz:
So how do UW-Madison students feel about the quarantine? “Here & Now” reporter Will Kenneally has that story.
Will Kenneally:
On Wednesday night a little after 8:00 p.m. an email was sent to students that confirmed the rumor. UW-Madison would move classes online and quarantine students in two dorms for the next two weeks.
Emma Mihas:
So we were in our dorm room in Sellery and then we heard gossip about it and then we looked out the window and everybody was kind of like fleeing out, running to the stores.
Will Kenneally:
Students in the two dorms were told they had two hours before they would need to remain in place for quarantine. After the quarantine went into effect, students could leave but wouldn’t be allowed to return to the dorms for the next two weeks.
Neal Sidhu:
My roommate came back and told me. We went out, got groceries, stocked up.
Michelle Conte:
Went for our last walk.
Female student:
Freedom.
Michelle Conte:
And then the walk inside was like the walk of shame. I literally felt like I was like being arrested.
Matthew Mitnick:
All of us in ASM found out at the exact same time that the rest of the student body found out as well as the public. So we were a bit insulted and confused why there was no student input as far as we know in this decision.
Will Kenneally:
Matthew Mitnick chairs the UW-Madison student government, which has been critical of the university’s reopening plan.
Matthew Mitnick:
Students need to be involved in these decisions that are being made because it is impacting people in a variety of ways. Just one that comes to mind with the quarantine at the dorms, what if a student has dietary needs.
Will Kenneally:
The university said it would provide meals for students while in quarantine, but after facing backlash, UW-Madison said it would allow students to leave their dorms to pick up meals from a near-by dining hall.
Sammy Lane:
It’s nice to be able to leave for a couple minutes to go outside ’cause originally that was not an option.
Emma Mihas:
We could not go outside.
Will Kenneally:
The move to go online comes as UW-Madison sees hundreds of new cases of COVID-19 a day, mostly among students. Despite that, students say their peers are taking the virus seriously.
Neal Sidhu:
The last two days, yeah, I’d say it’s a little more serious. I feel like it hasn’t been as much room hopping, floor hopping, people going around and stuff.
Will Kenneally:
Overall, students had a mixed response to the university’s handling of the quarantine. Some saying it was rudderless but responsive to some concerns.
Michelle Conte:
I think this was a bad representation just because I think they felt they had to do something really fast. So they kind of made a decision quickly and we heard like they — really late, I guess. Other than that they’ve been very frequently messaging us through email telling us what they’ve been observing and how they want to react to it.
Will Kenneally:
Reporting from Madison, I’m Will Kenneally for “Here & Now.”
Zac Schultz:
We have an update to an interview we conducted last week with Dr. Jeffrey Pothof, a UW Health physician who was first to take an investigative vaccine as part of an international study. This week the AstraZeneca trial was placed on hold after one participant, a volunteer in Great Britain showed concerning side-effects after receiving the vaccine. Officials with the study say temporary holds in vaccine trials are not uncommon and the study is expected to continue if questions are answered about the British participant’s symptoms.
Now to racial justice issues. Last week, we spoke with Republican Representative Jim Steineke about the special task force he’s leading on racial disparities. He said a Democrat would be announced as co-chair this week. And that is Democratic State Representative Shelia Stubbs who joins us from Madison along with Representative Steineke, who’s in Kaukauna. Thank you both for your time.
Shelia Stubbs:
Thank you.
Jim Steineke:
Thank you.
Zac Schultz:
Representative Stubbs, let’s start with you. Democrats were extremely critical of the creation of this task force instead of voting on the bills Governor Evers has proposed. So why are you a part of it now?
Shelia Stubbs:
First of all, thank you for giving me this opportunity to be interviewed. This is important. As an African-American woman, as a legislator, someone who’s representing Madison, someone who has personally had a personal experience of being profiled, it’s about saving lives. It’s about getting common sense bills passed in the Legislature that we know will be impactful to our constituents. Let me be clear. What was really attractive to me when Representative Steineke asked me to be the co-chair, he said, “Hey, we’re going to check our politics at the door. We’re going to go to work on behalf of the people across the state of Wisconsin and we’re not going to do it by ourselves. Let’s bring in faith-based. Let’s bring in not-for-profits. Let’s bring in grassroots organizers. Let’s bring in the public health department. Let’s bring in law enforcement. Let’s all sit at the table and craft meaningful resolutions or meaningful bills that we have consensus that we can pass in January.” Let’s be clear. We need to pass these bills because it’s going to make a difference across the state of Wisconsin.
Zac Schultz:
Representative Steineke, how important is it to have a woman of color co-chairing this committee? What legitimacy does she bring to this?
Jim Steineke:
Well, it’s incredibly important to have Representative Stubbs as part of this. When the creation of the task force first came up, I raised my hand to volunteer for it, quite honestly the partner that I really wanted was Representative Stubbs because I know we have a good relationship. I know she’s been frustrated by the fact that we didn’t come in and immediately pass those bills. I know she knows that we were frustrated with how Governor Evers put those bills out there. But the nice thing is I know working with Representative Stubbs, we both can set those things aside and then move forward together with people from the private sector, like she said, faith-based communities, law enforcement and others, to really come to a bipartisan consensus on this issue.
Zac Schultz:
Representative Stubbs, if any of these ideas are going to become law, there will have to be a lot of compromise. Do you think Democrats will be willing to vote for what they may feel is a watered-down version of a bill?
Shelia Stubbs:
Well, I think what’s really important is we come together with a bipartisan piece of legislation. It’s not just a Republican voice. It’s not just a Democrat voice. It is a community voice and I think that’s what’s really going to be the driver in this conversation. And people know my values and my beliefs. I’m going in that room on behalf of the people I represent and I’m coming out of that room with Representative Steineke and those on this task force with a consensus of bills that’s going to move us forward across the state of Wisconsin. I know my colleagues trust me and I trust myself. And I know what I’m talking about when I talk about racial disparities and as a victim of racial disparity. This state is the worst state for a black person to live in. That is disturbing. That is unacceptable. Let’s do something about it. So I’m willing to come to the table with other who have different viewpoints to make the best of the situation.
Jim Steineke:
Just to push back a little bit on that, Zac, as far as the concept that these bills would somehow be watered down, that’s not what we’re looking for. What we’re looking for is just bipartisan consensus and work on this where we’re taking not only the ideas Democrats proposed in June, but the ideas that Republicans proposed just a couple of weeks ago along with initiatives by the Wisconsin Professional Police Association and other reforms from across the country. So it’s important that we don’t talk about this as being watered down because that’s not the goal here. The goal here is to get real reforms done working together to show the state that we can still solve big problems working together from the very beginning all the way through to the end of hopefully passing and getting these bills signed into law.
Zac Schultz:
But —
Shelia Stubbs:
And also, Zac, I think also to add on to what Representative Steineke said, I think the nation is going to be watching Wisconsin and I think we are going to be a trailblazer for what criminal justice reform should look like across this nation.
Zac Schultz:
All right. Representative Stubbs then, what would you consider success? What’s the bare minimum in terms of legislation that needs not only to be passed but signed into law?
Shelia Stubbs:
Absolutely. I think excessive use of force is a reality. We must talk about the need to address that. I think no chokeholds, no-knock warrants must be addressed considering what’s happened across our nation. In addition, I personally want to make sure we’re addressing profiling. You know, this state having the worst disparities for black people, we must address these initiatives and these issues. And I am hopeful because I wake up optimistic. I’m hopeful because I truly believe my colleague, Representative Steineke, is going to do absolutely his best to work with the Republicans. I’m going to do my best to work with the Democrats. When we go in that room and work with communities, we cannot fail. Failure cannot be an option for us.
Zac Schultz:
Representative Steineke, just a few seconds left but your reaction. What is the minimum that needs to happen for this to be a success?
Jim Steineke:
I don’t want to go in prejudging anything. I want to go in and do more listening than I do talking. I see my role especially as a facilitator. Representative Stubbs brings more experience to this issue than I do. So I’m going to help try to bring all sides together so we can come up with a package that has some real strong reforms in there.
Zac Schultz:
All right. Well, thank you very much to both of you for your time today.
Shelia Stubbs:
Thank you.
Jim Steineke:
Thanks, Zac.
Zac Schultz:
The conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued two very important orders yesterday. The first puts a hold on Dane County’s health order shutting down all schools in the county. Private schools say the county doesn’t have the authority to force them to stay closed. The court’s order says schools can reopen while the case is argued. Second, the court ordered local election clerks to stop mailing absentee ballots and count how many have been sent out. This comes as multiple lawsuits are underway to determine whether the Green Party candidate and rapper Kanye West should be added to the ballot. By Thursday night, the Elections Commission told the court nearly 400,000 ballots have already been printed and it’s not clear how many have already been mailed. Clerks say forcing them to reprint could cause massive confusion and expenses and could cause municipal clerks to miss federal deadlines to mail the ballots.
We do know three of the names on the ballot for president. In the latest Marquette Law School Poll tells us who voters prefer right now. Poll Director Charles Franklin joins us now. Thank you for your time today.
Charles Franklin:
Good to be here.
Zac Schultz:
Your latest polling was in the field right after the conventions and it appears the race for president is relatively unchanged even with the Libertarian candidate in the mix.
Charles Franklin:
That’s right. We added the Libertarian this time explicitly for the first time, so that was a change. But we’ve really seen a pretty tight race with a small but consistent Biden lead. Since May, we’ve had Biden ahead with likely voters by four points, by six, by five and now by four this time. Jorgensen, the Libertarian, gets 4% this time. And that’s kind of notable. That’s about what the Libertarian candidate got in 2016. But the question is as we get closer to the election, can she sustain that support. But between Trump and Biden, we’ve just been seeing one percentage point differences over time. It has come down from June to August to September, but just by one point each time. That’s not strong enough to identify that as a trend. But I think a close race, small advantage Biden would be the easy way to wrap up the summer.
Zac Schultz:
One of the reasons regular polling is worthy of coverage is to measure which events actually shift public opinion. In this case, you’ve been asking about approval of protests against police shootings. We saw a drop in support over the summer, but there really wasn’t a change after the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha and the protests that occurred afterwards, correct?
Charles Franklin:
That’s right. And I think it’s important to understand that. Support for protests and for Black Lives Matter was high in June. There was an immediate sympathetic reaction, I think. But by early August, before the events in Kenosha, we had seen a couple of months of continued protests. We had seen some images of vandalism in that, including in Madison and elsewhere here in the state. But we had also seen additional examples of police violence against people of color. So there were both of these messages going on and President Trump had already started talking about the protests in terms of law and order and violence and revolutionaries, as he sees it. And so people had already had all of those messages. The events in Kenosha were vivid, dramatic and important. But they weren’t new. And as a result, people didn’t change their minds particularly after it.
Zac Schultz:
And I’ve been doing interviews recently and a lot of Republicans tell me they’re convinced Kenosha is an inflection point in this race and Trump’s law and order message is resonating. But your latest poll was in the field during the time Trump visited Kenosha and you found the only people that changed their minds were Republicans.
Charles Franklin:
That’s right. About half the sample, just over 400, were interviewed before he came and about half interviewed after he came. There was very little movement, but a big move among Republicans, who became much more approving of the way the president has handled the protests, going from 65% approval to 87%. But among Independents and Democrats there was hardly any change at all. This is an example of preaching to the choir and you got an amen from the choir but the choir was already voting for him and that’s why it didn’t change the vote very much.
Zac Schultz:
Another thing that occurred while your poll was in the field was a lot of kids went back to school, some virtually, some in person. Your poll found 51% of people were uncomfortable with reopening schools. And notably, there was a big shift among parents with school-age children.
Charles Franklin:
I think it’s striking that nonparents, people without a kid in the household at least, barely changed between early August and now. But parents flip-flopped. They went from the 40s uncomfortable, 50s comfortable to exactly the opposite of that, more uncomfortable than comfortable. We’ll see how that shapes up in a month as schools try to reopen or some stay with online instruction.
Zac Schultz:
And when you look at the numbers from around the state, there’s a big difference between areas in how comfortable they are with schools reopening.
Charles Franklin:
Yeah. Yeah. We see that, you know, urban areas are much more uncomfortable than rural areas. Also, we saw that areas that have had significant outbreaks, like in the Green Bay area, we saw a little more discomfort than in areas that have been less affected.
Zac Schultz:
And when do you expect to have more polling coming out as we’re getting closer and closer to the election?
Charles Franklin:
Sure. We’ll have two more before election day roughly equally spaced from now til then.
Zac Schultz:
Can we expect to see any movements? Is there room for October surprises in just the last few seconds?
Charles Franklin:
There’s less than there was. About half as many people say they’re undecided now. And less than half as many say they dislike both presidential candidates, down to about 8% that don’t like either Trump or Biden. It was 21% in 2016. That reduces volatility, but let’s remember what happened last time. Surprises can occur.
Zac Schultz:
That’s right. Professor Charles Franklin, thanks for your time today.
Charles Franklin:
Thank you.
Zac Schultz:
Finally tonight, some context for this anniversary of 9/11. It was 19 years ago today that terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Less than a month later, we were at war in Afghanistan. That war is still ongoing. Just this week, the military announced another troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. The U.S. is expected to be down to 4500 troops on the ground by November. Around 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks. Currently, that many people are dying from the coronavirus every three days.
That is our program for tonight. Frederica Freyberg will be back next week. I’m Zac Schultz. Have a great weekend.
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For more “Here & Now” 2020 election coverage, go to PBS.org and click on news. Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
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