Tommy Thompson: Running the UW System is our responsibility | Columnists

Our authority, as exercised by our universities in requiring masking and testing, enabled us to succeed last academic year, when our on-campus COVID-19 prevalence rates were significantly below state rates. In fact, testing and masking at this summer’s UW youth programs enabled us to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks, allowing us to serve approximately 40,000 students at universities across the state.

At a time when students and staff want assurances that where they live, work, and study will be healthy and safe, we must be nimble. Our talented faculty are rightly concerned about the environment they will be teaching in, and the uncertainty caused by this effort is troublesome. Last academic year, the legislature provided tacit acknowledgment for our nationally recognized mitigation steps. The endgame of these new efforts to control our universities would put at risk staff, students, and the businesses that count on our universities to be open, safe, and vibrant.

The effort to block the UW System’s authority is both wrong on the law and wrong as a matter of public policy. Had this happened last academic year, the University might never have been able to set up community testing and vaccination sites, or even isolate sick students. It would have been a disaster. I have no plans to abdicate our responsibility.

Tommy Thompson is president of the University of Wisconsin System.