Frederica Freyberg:

University campuses across the state are geared up to hold in-person fall semester classes with COVID protocols in place. That’s despite pushback on the safety measures from some corners of the Republican Legislature. UW-Madison is among the schools with a plan. We should note that PBS Wisconsin is part of the UW. We talked with Chancellor Rebecca Blank late this week and started by asking her what her message is to families and their students about how their safety is being protected.

Rebecca Blank:

So we’re taking a number of steps to make sure we open safely and I should say we are trying to open as fully in-person as possible but with some modifications. The first and most important thing is to say we are a highly vaccinated community. As people here know, the community around us is highly vaccinated in Dane County. But on campus we have now over 90% of our faculty and staff vaccinated. Over 96% of our faculty and we’re still counting the student numbers. At latest report we were well over 80% and that number will continue to go up because not everyone yet has reported in. In the dorms, we’re going to be well above 90% as well. So the most important thing we can do, which is to make sure our community is vaccinated. We’re in pretty good shape on that and we will continue to push that with free vaccinations to anyone. But on top of that there are other measures we need to take. We have an indoor mask mandate like Dane County and that is important. All of our dorm residents when they arrive actually have to test before they come and then will be tested weekly if they are unvaccinated once they are here in the dorms. And we now last week announced that all unvaccinated campus community members, students and staff, need to test weekly. We’re going to watch these numbers very closely. If they go up, we’ll talk about other measures. If they go down, we’ll reconsider what we’re doing. We’re following the data. We’re following the science. We’re doing what we did last year, when we were really quite successful. Our infections rates were below 1% all throughout the spring.

Frederica Freyberg:

Would other measures include going back to online instruction?

Rebecca Blank:

We’re trying very hard not to do that and I think we’d have to be in a greater health emergency than we are right now given our vaccination levels. Our students really want to be back in-person for obvious reasons after almost a year and a half many of them being online. Our faculty are eager to be back mainly with students. We are trying to do everything we can to preserve that college experience which so many of our students just haven’t had for more than a year.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile, Republican State Senator Steven Nass says he will sue the UW if these kinds of measures stay in place: the masking and the testing. As you know, System President Tommy Thompson is not backing down on this. I trust you stand with President Thompson?

Rebecca Blank:

I very much appreciate President Thompson’s stance. It is not possibly acceptable that the Legislature has control over every policy we make on this campus, particularly our public health policies. This has to be at the discretion of chancellors in the system.

Frederica Freyberg:

Senator Nass also said this. “It is not surprising that the ivory tower administrators at the UW System are openly defying state law to issue COVID-19 mandates to control every adult that dares to walk on their campuses with the notable exception of 70,000+ ticket-paying fans at football games in Madison. Apparently the UW System has discovered that revenue-generating football games don’t spread COVID-19.” What is your response to that?

Rebecca Blank:

That’s actually not quite true. Our ticket-paying fans, when they’re indoors, have to mask. So if they’re in the bathrooms, if they’re in closed rooms, as does everyone else in our community, they need to be masked. Outside in the bowl, we recommend people mask, but it is outside and there is far less evidence of disease transmission among people outside with the wind blowing out in the open air. So, as I say, we’re going to follow what’s happening. But we are following rules that I might note virtually every both professional teams and other college teams are following this fall.

Frederica Freyberg:

What are provisions for students who do get infected with COVID on campus?

Rebecca Blank:

Well, if they’re in the dorms, we will help them move into either isolation or quarantine space so they can recover without infecting other people. We have some of that space set aside. If they’re not in the dorms, it will be the same procedure as last year. We expect them to isolate or quarantine in their apartments. Our student services stays in touch with students who tested positive, call them regularly, make sure things are good, that they don’t need any additional assistance, even mental health or physical care.

Frederica Freyberg:

With how much trepidation are you be looking forward to the fall semester here with these rising cases?

Rebecca Blank:

It does feel a little bit like Groundhog’s Day back where we were last August, but the right answer is we’re really in a very different place than last August. We have an effective and safe vaccine. A very high share of our campus has taken it and even those who do get breakthrough infections are almost surely not going to be seriously ill given everything we know about the experience with this vaccine. And that does make this semester feel safer and better than last fall. I think we’re better prepared for what we are going to get in terms of infections. And there will be some infections on campus. That’s just a given.

Frederica Freyberg:

Chancellor Blank, thanks very much for being here.

Rebecca Blank:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

A final note about the UW-Madison campus. On Thursday the campus Office of Financial Aid reported that it has cleared just under $2 million of student financial debt using funds granted to the university by the American Rescue Act.