The following is a transcript of an interview with President Robert Robbins of the University of Arizona, which aired Sunday, August 23, 2020 on “Face the Nation.”
MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re now going to Tucson, where classes at the University of Arizona will begin tomorrow with four instructional options, including personal learning. Joets joins us is university president and doctor, Robert Robbins. Good morning.
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA PRESIDENT DR. ROBERT ROBBINS: Good morning, MARGARET.
MARGARET BRENNAN: How many students come back for instruction, in-class, and will they all be tested?
DR. ROBBINS: That all students living in our bedroom be checked, that is mandatory. We have tested more than 5,000 students with 26 positive, so it is about 0.3%. The other students who live off-campus are strongly encouraged to test. And in total there will be about 5000 students who will take personalized personal courses. That would be things like organic lab for chemistry, physical lab, gross anatomical lab, that sort of thing. And we think we’ll get about 30,000, 28 to 30,000 students back to the Tucson area. Normally we would have 45,000.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And your office told us that the only mandate for testing is for those who live on campus. You just mentioned dorms there.
DR. ROBBINS: Right. Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It looks like 5,000 of your students live in dorms. That- that means the majority do not live on campus. That – so this is not everyone exposed if you can not mandate test for those who do not live in a sleep?
DR. ROBBINS: Well, I think – I think what we are going to do is that we will try to test everyone who comes on campus. What I want, and of course what we all want is a 10 second 10 cent test that we could test every day. We- we think we can test everyone who comes back to campus in person, but we can not test them every day with an antigen test, that’s what we use to see our students going to the dorms. We- we think we have a random test protocol that we have in place, but I would like to see that we test everyone who comes face-to-face on campus at least once a week.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So Notre Dame mandatory testing for students on campus. And I’m sure you know they had an outbreak–
DR. ROBBINS: Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: – that caused them to put things off for a few weeks. If they tried and failed, why do you think your university will be any different?
DR. ROBBINS: Well, I think we have comprehensive testing policies. I think they did the same thing we did, that’s test students when they came into the bedrooms, but I’m not sure if they were tested – because they were just in class, just like at UNC Chapel Hill, I’ve only been in class a week or so. I think the big problem is off-campus activity. I think we all know that we can control things in the classroom and on campus and in the student union and not have large gatherings of people on campus in official locations. The problem is, what I’ve seen is that others, like Kansas, even Arizona State, other universities, Purdue, have aggressively gone off campus to try to break up big gatherings and parties. And that’s where most of the transfer took place.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Would you expel a student if they violated one of your applications? I mean, how do you force people to act in their own interest? –
DR. ROBBINS: Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: – when they were teenagers and in their early 20s?
DR. ROBBINS: Sure, no, I understand, and I think we’re here to answer your question first, we – we have a face-to-face policy. We expect that there will be some who refuse to cover their face because of their expression of their individuality and freedom. But that will be – that will continue through the dean of students and code of conduct. And, yes, they can be expelled. What I think we are over is that we have done a very good job with testing, contact tracking. We have COVID-19 Watch, which is a Google Apple app that uses Bluetooth. And we are the first university to use that. That we feel good about our education. And we’ve been having a weekly briefing every week and on social media. I think we – we will continue with the preventive therapy and education. But we need to switch quickly in the treatment mode. We know they will be nails in cases, so we need to be able to treat them.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Very quickly, when do you hit the brakes? What is your threshold?
DR. ROBBINS: When we can not reduce and cope, when we are overwhelmed with cases where we can not have enough space for isolation, our hospitals begin to get capacity for overcapacity, where we can not switch to ICUs, and if anyone would get really sick. That we will look at the figures every day. And if we run out of solitary confinement and we can not handle it and people get very sick, then – then we’ll pull the plug.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Dr. Robbins, thanks for your time. We’ll be back.
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