Keeping Campus Afloat

Staring down from the second-floor balcony into the UW-Milwaukee Student Union concourse, the vast majority of visual space is made up of scuffed cement. Here and there a shoe will meet the pavement, maybe entering from an ill-oiled door on the further point of the corridor, crossing in front of the one manned “Welcome Center,” and heading for the cascading stairs ahead; up and out with little to no interaction. It is hard to imagine this amount of foot traffic, creating the texture of age on the foundation of the Union. Before the pandemic, dilapidated yet comfortable chairs were arranged in circles, filling the center of the concours and hiding the marks of too many years untouched in the name of other priorities.

From afar you can hear phone conversation from a janitor echo, although not visible, the tones of the conversation articulate a mundane conversation of no significance to the rest of the union, yet the acoustics center the discussion anyways. An elevator shakes open from floor one, the wheel of a cart squawks on the lower level, and keys jingle in the pocket of a spare passerby. A tour guides voice booms in, as if she is projecting for the whole building, she explains to the two prospective students of all the events that take place in the Union during a normal year. They continue through, down a hallway, and the explanations fade back to the echoes of hollow movement bouncing off the empty cement interior.

On March 6, 2020 all community members of UWM received an email stating, “The situation internationally and within the United States regarding COVID-19 has continued to evolve rapidly. To date, there have been no confirmed cases in the city of Milwaukee or in Waukesha or Washington counties. Our campus community, like many other communities that are in areas where there is not local transmission, is still at low risk.” No more than 11 days later, on March 17, another email hit the community’s inboxes. This email alerted the campus that we would not be returning to in-person operation after the extended spring break, and all instruction was to pivot online. The landscape was drastically evolving and where it was heading, felt more and more uncertain as the days continued.

More than 900 cases of COVID-19 have been reported at UWM. The University is operating at $15-18 million-dollar deficit for the year, with the continued decrease in enrolment and $12 million-dollar cut in state revenue contributing to the financial hardship. The overall enrolment of UWM in Fall 2020 was down by 1,142 students, this is 5.5% lower than Fall of 2019. These numbers are the basics of what campus leaders return to every day in their jobs on campus. Trying to keep the UW Milwaukee ship afloat is what will determine what UWM looks like next year, and in the future years to come.

Chancellor Mark Mone is the captain of UW-Milwaukee. Perhaps most students would recognize him from the “Guiding Values” emails that are always accompanied with a professional head shot featuring his strong facial features being pulled slightly by age. He smiles large when interacting with students, revealing a slight gap in his teeth. This smile offers a bit of softness to the edge of his freshly pressed suit and tie. Logging into our video call, he still wears a pressed button up and neat tie, although he slouches softly in the comfort of his home.

Glasses sit on the top of his nose, but when we begin talking, he takes them on and off when reading or focusing in on something. When first asked about the hardest part of leading campus through COVID-19 , he expressed how difficult it is to see all the hardship and not being able to help more. Although emergency grants and $8.5 million in  federal CARES grant support were dispersed, the pain of economic hardship and health crisis still touched everyone. Students, faculty, and staff are all struggling with the pandemic. Not all students can thrive in an online environment. Many student workers lost their jobs. Furloughs were distributed widely across campus to all faculty and staff who earn more than $15/hour.

Because UW Milwaukee is an access institution, it serves a large population of folks who are first-generation college students. Many students at UWM struggle financially and food insecurity runs at a high rate. In 2016, a survey was conducted and roughly 50% of students had reported not getting enough to eat. The pandemic caused a surge in use of the food pantry on campus. All of the campus community is able to use the service.

Campus community members are not the only ones struggling financially right now. The reality of economic stability seems far off in higher education and as Chancellor Mone says, the pandemic doesn’t help; “the financials in higher-ed broke some time ago.” Before COVID-19, Wisconsin had been defunding public education for decades. This was a common trend across the country, but some states, like Illinois, had reverted back to financial support for higher education. When describing a graph that he had seen in the Chronical of Higher Education, he said “Illinois was steeply going down until a couple of years ago, and then all of a sudden it J-hooked. It’s like wow, Illinois has its act together.” There was a sense of hope in his voice when he admired what could be public support for education in the state, “They are a model in terms of increase in funding. It’s nothing short of amazing.”

Comparing this to Wisconsin, the level of public support is opposite to what Illinois models. “What we are seeing is that independent of political party, going back to Governor Doyle, we started seeing cuts,” says Chancellor Mone, “we saw it with Walker, and we have seen it with Evers, just in this calendar year.” There have been two budget cuts, one at the end of the last fiscal year and another that was announced this summer. “And I don’t see any optimism about future growth in higher education funding given what Governor Evers has said publicly about our state budget.” The directness and concern from Mone doesn’t just end with state funding.

On top of shriveling support of the state government, enrollment has been steadily declining as well. As enrolment rates drop, less money is coming in from tuition. This leads to a tighter budget for educational programs and a need to lean on financial support from private donors. Although UWM’s overall enrollment is only slightly worse than expected, the impact that the drop in freshmen enrollment could have on the longevity of the campus is daunting. In the academic year of 2020-2021, freshmen enrolment is down 16% nationally. UWM is right in line with the national average drop in freshmen enrolment. To try and make up the losses, a new position is being created at UWM to strengthen recruitment and marketing. If the student loss in enrollment is not made up, it could exacerbate a catastrophic tightening of the budget belt.

The reality of enrollment, however, could be out of anyone’s control for the near future. Learning while living in a global pandemic does not only pose economic threats, but of course, serious health threats as well. UW-Milwaukee specifically has seen unpredictable surges in cases, even with serious health precautions in place. Reopening campus meant reimagining the learning environment. It meant a balance of health concerns and of access to education. Students are paying thousands of dollars for their education, and to be put in the reality of a COVID campus, poses administration with the challenges of fairness. Tuition itself is already high, but to learn online seems inaccessible to many. Of course, there have been some actions taken to mitigate access concerns, such as technology loans, however some areas of education just cannot be taught via video chat.

The arts and labs are in a particularly tough places for balancing the needs of students in a pandemic. Safety precautions for in person classes have been put in place, and about a third of classes are meeting in-person. Face masks are required, class sizes have been limited, but still, transition continues to occur around campus. It’s not just in-person classes though, housing needed be offered for students who might have nowhere else to stay, or who may need to be close for those in-person class. Currently, UWM’s housing is operating at around 46%. It would be impossible to have a zero-infection rate without completely shutting down campus. The economic hardship of this could be catastrophic; thus, a compromise was struck. That compromise however still leads to students, faculty, and staff getting the virus. To try and gauge the amount of cases on campus, testing was put in place both by our own health services and by the structures of government, both state and federal.

The Union Ballroom, the first room students ever see on campus at UWM as it is the location of summer orientation, now sits relatively empty of people. A room that has the capacity to hold hundreds, now seats three. Sitting behind plexiglass are three nurses who check students in before their tests. After filling out some documentation online, they ask for a name and student ID. The ID’s main purpose in the eyes of a student is to get them into campus events and pay for meals at the Union. They ask, “Are you experiencing any symptoms?” After responding, they hand off two labels and direct students across the empty ballroom to the divider that is pulled the full length of the room only to leave a 6-foot gap. When reached, students are then motioned into the other half of the room. There’s hardly ever a line and the nurses seem to be able to wave every new appointment in without a wait. Two tissues are given to blow away anything that may obstruct a clear test. Once clear, each student rubs a cotton probe inside each nostril for 10 seconds (counted out by the nurse). Once done, she places the specimen in the sterile tube and says, “if you test positive you will be called within the hour. You should get your results back by the end of the day.” The whole procedure, including check in, takes about five minutes max. Usually, the results are uploaded to an online dashboard within an hour.

To coordinate such a well-organized testing procedure on a college campus takes serious dedication, but also funding. Dr. Aamir Siddiqi is the interim health director at UWM and he is in charge of coordinating testing on campus. He works alongside the system level protocol and state and federal guidance. As he speaks about building up the testing structures on campus, certificates and plaques flank him on both sides of the wall in the background. “Testing is going as we expected it to go, really well,” says Siddiqi, “we have been able to keep ourselves on schedule, not have long lines, and students have been able to get their results back in real time.” Through testing and managing the results, they have learned that off campus students are 3 times more likely than student living on campus to test positive for COVID-19. “The university itself is a safer place than the community at large,” says Siddiqi. He explains that this is probably because of the amount of control and structure that is in place for on campus housing, versus community spread or, in some cases, relying on students to make the right decisions within their off-campus residence.

“Wisconsin in particular is in bad shape,” says Siddiqi when explaining the increase of cases at UWM, “and that trickles down to cities and communities.” Siddiqi explains that because our campus is a part of the greater community, when Wisconsin COVID cases go high, we should expect our campus cases to go high as well. Given the new surge in COVID cases in Wisconsin, the CDC just began administering funds and support to the UW system schools to administer 250,000 Binax tests. This test is free for the community at all of UWM’s campuses and offers results in a very quick turnaround. This new testing method is not only open to students and employees, but now the greater community in the Milwaukee area as well. The increase in COVID cases however doesn’t just come out of nowhere, and Siddiqi says part of the problem is the use of politics and personal agenda which has left us vulnerable. “Not following scientific evidence and rules that are very clearly telling you something, that has been our country’s error. We do love our independence, but we need to look at the grater community.”

When thinking about the protocols put in place on campus, Siddiqi feels that “we have provided a safer environment to control and regulate our risks.” The safest possible environment would be for everyone to lockdown for 14 days. Every single person would stay home, Siddiqi says that obviously this isn’t possible. So, to put in place some amount of safety protocol, is really the next best thing we can do. “I think with the testing, the protocols, and the smaller class sizes in person, we have significantly lowered the risk of virus spreading around campus.”

At the beginning of the pandemic, Chancellor Mone did not yet have details on what testing would look like on campus or how widespread it would be . With a sense of pride, he says he will be sending out an email about the new Binax testing to UWM’s three campuses and other institutions saying “come on over and get tested! Bring your students and bring your families!” It is clear that testing is truly a piece of what is making the operations of UW Milwaukee somewhat successful in limiting transmission rates. Mone says, “We have to test more, we obviously need all the behavioral stuff too like social distancing and mask wearing, but dog gone it, what we can control is this and we are saving lives.”

Everyone is suffering during COVID-19. Whether it is health, economic, or otherwise, the impact of a global pandemic is widespread. Not only is the University as an entity struggling, but its people are struggling. With infections being transmitted, furloughs causing lower pay checks, and an inability to learn online, there is not one person at UWM who isn’t finding a unique struggle. Looking ahead from now, there seems to be both optimism and caution. Chancellor Mone feels that on the health front, there will still be struggle. “I think we are still going to be a campus that is going to have a lot of online opportunities. I don’t imagine a scenario a year from now (November 4) that has us more then 50-75% in-person. That may be wildly optimistic. I just don’t think that between the people who have said they don’t want to get vaccinated and how long it will take for us to really understand if we have a safe society, I just think we are wobbly on the health front.” With campus initiatives, Chancellor Mone feels that in a year we will still make progress even given the challenges we face. In five years, he has even more optimism of creating a welcoming and inviting campus. He envisions more affordable education, more diverse faculty and staff, and continuing to build a strong and more financially stable University.

Although there are so many uncertainties ahead, we as a society need to be persistent in radical care for each other. As a university, UWM is juggling a lot. Trying to keep the ship above water is causing immense pressure from every direction. If the Union is ever to be welcoming again, it will have to be a joint effort of administration, students, faculty, staff, community members, and especially government leadership. There isn’t just one piece at fault, but rather a building of catastrophe on top of an already unstable ship.