After announcing the University of Oregon’s plan to conduct most fall term classes remotely, President Michael Schill spoke with the Daily Emerald in an interview about the school’s plan for remote instruction and managing coronavirus outbreaks in student housing.
UO will hold most classes remotely and open on-campus buildings — such as the EMU, the libraries and the Student Rec Center — to students, staff and faculty, the school announced Aug. 26 in a campus-wide email.
Schill discussed the school’s live-on requirement for first-year students, how the university will enforce coronavirus-related restrictions and its plan for containing potential outbreaks on campus, among other topics.
The Emerald has lightly edited this transcript for grammar, style and clarity.
Daily Emerald: The first thing we wanted to clarify was, is the university continuing to require first-year students to live on campus for this upcoming school year?
Schill: There’s a live-in requirement, but we have an exemption process and the exemptions are going to be enormously generous. If a student doesn’t want to live on campus because they have a concern about COVID-19, they’re not going to have to live on campus.
Emerald: What is UO’s rationale for keeping dorms open?
Schill: Well, we want to give students choices, right? We believe that with — particularly new students coming to the University of Oregon, they want to get started. They want to make friends. They want to feel what it’s like to be in a college environment. We want to maintain that choice for them. We know we can make the dorms as safe as possible.
It’s not going to be 100% guaranteed that no one’s going to get COVID-19. People leave the dorms; they interact with folks. But what we’re doing is taking every step we know of to be prudent, whether it’s reducing density in the dorms, setting aside Barnhart for isolation and quarantine. We are cleaning like crazy; we’re going to do grab ‘n go meals, and we’re going to work very hard to do that.
We also are going to — and this is really important — we’re going to provide a really enhanced set of activities in the dorms to make up for the fact that you’re not going to be in class meeting people. We want you to be able to meet people in the residential environment in a safe way. So we’re going to have masks; people have to wear masks, obviously. We’re going to have ARCs [Academic Residential Communities] and things which will have in-person meetings. We’ll have lectures by professors there. We’ll have an expanded Faculty Fellows Program. We’ll do club sports, other types of recreational activities and basically everything that we could think of to safely bring students together to be able to have that really formative freshman year experience in the residence halls.
And if you don’t want that — like if you are concerned about COVID-19 in the sense that you don’t want to be exposed, you want to take every last step to not be exposed — then you can, if you want, you can live at home, or not come to Eugene, and have classes remotely.
Emerald: How will the university enforce regulations for social distancing, mask-wearing and other coronavirus-related restrictions on campus and in the dorms?
Schill: Every student who moves into the residence halls is going to sign a statement saying they’re going to do these things as part of their housing contract, and that they’re going to agree to testing, they’re going to agree to masks, that sort of thing.
Normally, if they violate that, they’ll be in violation of their agreement to live on campus, and then obviously, there’s consequences of that. We have the possibility of conduct proceedings if you take actions that violate the student conduct code, but you know, that’s sort of the hammer side.
But the other side of the hammer is the heart. And we want to really rely on the heart. People want to be here, and they don’t want to let down their peers… We’re going to rely on students to impact and to influence other students. So, for example, we have — you may have seen this on Facebook — we have a mask campaign that’s starting now that is being worked on by our communications folks in the journalism school. We’re going to have other types of campaigns. ASUO is very involved in this.
The University of Oregon, we’re sort of rough and tumble. We disagree with each other from time to time, but we’re all in this together right now and there’s no disagreement at all about staying healthy and about the importance of not turning into a North Carolina or not turning into a Notre Dame. And so, I think our students are up to the task.
Emerald: Just to clarify on a point you mentioned, obviously, you don’t want to have students violating social distancing orders, but you had mentioned that there would be some sort of conduct proceeding and that students would be in violation of the contract they signed at the beginning of the school year if they do so. Is that right?
Schill: That’s always an option. The conduct proceeding is always an option. And we do have this agreement with everyone. But, hopefully, we won’t need it.
Emerald: What number of students, or what percentage of students, will be the number of students that will trigger campus to return to all-virtual instruction? Is there a specific number that UO has?
Well, no, and we’re going to be predominately online, and remote. The only areas where we are not going to be remote or online are specialized classes, say performative classes, some of the arts, music, labs, some of the sciences. And ultimately, what we’re also doing is, some professors have indicated a desire to teach in person, and we’re going to be talking with them over the next month.
And if we can create a safe environment for them to be teaching those classes in person, we will try to accommodate them. And that’s going to be about it. So we are going to be predominantly remote, and so the exception will be those classes, which are not virtual.
Emerald: What plan does the university have for the event in which a large number of students contract the coronavirus in the residence halls, and those quarantine dorms — you mentioned Barnhart — aren’t large enough necessarily to contain the number of students necessary for proper containment. What are your plans for that?
Schill: Well, number one, our first plan is not to let that happen. So the idea is, that’s why we’re doing testing, contact tracing. We want to nip any problem in the bud before it becomes a widespread outbreak. So I’ll resist your hypothetical a little bit, as we would say in the law school.
But if I’m going to indulge the hypothetical, and we do get an outbreak, we have a — I mean, Barnhardt is a pretty big building. There’s like 200-and-something rooms in it, and they all have their own bathrooms. And, if necessary, we’re also looking into arrangements with various hotels in the city that we can help students move into those places, but we’re hoping that that’s not necessary.
And one of the things that’s important to realize, if we are in a situation where students are quarantined or isolated, we’re not just going to leave them be there for 14 days and you know, give them the keys and say, “Enjoy yourself at Barnhardt.” … We are going to take care of them. So we’re going to have case management. We’re going to deliver their meals to them, we’re going to make sure they have health care. We’re going to make sure that they can keep current with regard to their classes. We’re all one family, and we need to act that way and we will act that way.
Emerald: Will UO consider modifying out-of-state tuition costs to meet the financial stresses that lots of students are experiencing? Will UO consider reducing that out-of-state tuition cost?
Schill: Did you read the thing I sent out earlier? I was pretty clear about that.
Emerald: Another thing that announcement mentioned was UO hoping to return to predominantly in-person classes in January of next year. What does the situation on campus need to look like for that to happen? How few cases of coronavirus would there need to be for UO to safely return to predominantly in-person classes?
Schill: We don’t have a specific trigger. But one of the things that’s happening — and I don’t know how much you know about this — but our faculty this summer — and, actually, an administrator, I’ll call them out — so, Greg Shabram, Leslie Leve in the College of Education, Bill Cresko in biology. They basically said, “Okay, we’re not gonna do research this summer. We’re gonna work on testing, and what we’re going to do is sacrifice our own work for the benefit of the university.” They’ve been working on developing a testing methodology that will be used at broad scale. We’re hoping that by November, December, we’ll be able to do thousands of tests every day. And if we’re in that point, then by — which I’m confident we will be — then by January, we’ll be able to test everyone multiple times, and this is both on campus and off campus.
And so that’s an important threshold for us to know that we’re testing. And if you’re doing more testing, you’re going to also want to be able to do contact tracing. So we need to increase the students — we’re working with the county health authority in that — so that capacity is coming online. So I think that that’s really important. We’re going to watch what’s happening in those parts of the country, which successfully opened right now and are opening right now and see what they’re doing and then modify our cause of action.
One of the things is, everyone is craving certainty. You two are. I am, too. But that desire for certainty will never stop us from looking at the reality as it is today, or as it will be on Jan. 1. So, for example, four months ago, I said we were going to be predominantly in person. About a month ago, I said, “Well, we’re rethinking, and we’ll announce today.” And you could say, “Okay, he’s being inconsistent.” But in reality, I’m not being inconsistent, I’m doing the right thing. Doing the wrong thing would be saying, “I said this. We’re going to do it. We’re going to drive our car over — we’re going to be Thelma and Louise.” We’re not going to be Thelma and Louise. We are going to take care of our students. We’re going to make sure health and safety is always number one.
Emerald: What is UO’s plan if a faculty member or staff member contracts the coronavirus?
Schill: We have a number of leave programs — we have health leave, we have health days. It’s specified in everybody’s employment arrangement with regard to the university. But you know, we care a lot about our staff and our faculty, and we’ll make sure that people are well taken care of.