University of Michigan president Dr. Mark Schlissel says the university was "turned on its head" by the coronavirus pandemic. He talks with WEMU's Lisa Barry and said they are still a few weeks away from deciding if fall classes will be held on campus or remotely but are "parallel planning" right now for both possibilities. He also talked about university athletics and other impacts on the Ann Arbor university from the current global health crisis.
Saying he hopes to make a decision “sooner vs. later,” University of Michigan president Dr. Mark Schlissel says they are still a few weeks away from making a final decision about whether classes will be held on campus or remotely in the fall, due to the coronavirus pandemic. He says they are currently planning for both possibilities.
He says they are getting lots of expert help in figuring about what to do about athletics at the University of Michigan but says if students aren't on campus, he doesn't think football players will be either. Dr. Schlissel says, "It's hard for me to imagine by the fall that they will be able to bring 100,000 people together in Ann Arbor to watch a football game, but that doesn't necessarily mean the games won't be played," adding, "That's all being worked on right now."
The U of M president says, no matter what, it's not going to be a “normal semester” in the fall, because they will be incorporating precautions advised by the state and by their own public health and medical experts into the coming school years.
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— Lisa Barry is the host of All Things Considered on WEMU. You can contact Lisa at 734.487.3363, on Twitter @LisaWEMU, or email her at lbarryma@emich.edu
