This cover story appeared in the fall 2020 issue of the Law Quadrangle, the University of Michigan Law School’s alumni magazine. As the magazine’s editor, I assigned and edited staff contributions and stewarded the issue through design and production, in addition to writing the cover story and other sections of the magazine. The full article and issue is available here.
On a Thursday morning, stacks of The Michigan Daily carried a front-page proclamation from the president of the University of Michigan: Effective immediately and in response to the spreading global pandemic, all students, faculty, and staff must wear face masks while on campus, walking on nearby streets, and at all University events until further notice. The announcement came on the heels of an order the previous weekend from the Michigan governor that banned all public gatherings until the escalating public health crisis was resolved.
It was October 1918, the governor was Albert Sleeper, the U-M president was Harry Hutchins—dean of the Law School from 1895–1910 and namesake of its iconic academic building—and the disease was a flu virus that would go on to kill tens of millions of people worldwide.
More than a century after the flu pandemic, and midway through the winter 2020 term, current U-M President Mark Schlissel issued similar guidance to the University in a community-wide email about COVID-19. At the time, the pandemic had yet to take hold in the United States and was a substantial but still-nascent threat. That would quickly change.
President Schlissel’s March 11 message cancelled in-person classes for the remainder of the term, among other policy changes around campus activities and U-M programs abroad, and arrived in inboxes less than 24 hours after Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency and announced the first two confirmed cases in the state (public health officials now believe there were thousands of active cases at the time). Two days later, the University mandated remote final exams, cancelled all commencements, encouraged students in residence halls to move home or off campus if they were able to do so, and advised administrative managers to send all non-essential staff home who could perform their duties remotely.
By the third week of March, life was unrecognizable in the Quad. Various executive orders from Governor Whitmer further restricted University activity and mandated the closure of the Reading Room, Law Library, and all public spaces in the Law School. The state’s first stay-at-home order went into effect on March 24 and required Michiganders to remain at home unless their reason for leaving was necessary to sustain or protect life; it also banned all private and public gatherings between those who did not live in the same household. Residents of the Lawyers Club could retrieve take-out meals from the dining hall but otherwise had to remain in their single-occupancy rooms with private facilities. Students living off campus, as well as faculty and non-essential staff, found themselves barred from the Quad.
As March rolled into April, Michigan Law was reborn in remote classrooms, home offices, and makeshift work and study stations spread across the country and overseas. Students, faculty, building administrators, IT technicians and members of the administration persevered through extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Within weeks of going remote, skyrocketing case counts and overwhelmed hospital systems revealed the severity of Michigan’s outbreak, and metro Detroit became an early epicenter of what has become a public health catastrophe that continues to this day.
Meanwhile, on campus, public spaces were decontaminated and closed with unsettling strips of off-maize caution tape; chairs were roped off and stacked on Reading Room desks; an early April thaw brought sunshine and false spring to Ann Arbor, with temperatures rising into the 70s; and silence descended on the Law Quad for the first time since construction of the Lawyers Club began in 1923. Read more.