Here & Now

UW Madison Transitions to Virtual and Two-Week Quarantine

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.