GMU President on Inclusive Excellence

nineteen and also systemic racism in our society. We've got a gut check on both. Thanks to Dr Gregory Washington joining us. He's president at George Mason University. He joins us on the phone from Fairfax, Virginia. Dr Washington, so nice to have you here with Janet and Paul and myself. You became president in July. UM talk about timing, and you came into the job. You had a lot to deal with UM between the virus and of course, you know,

as I said, we had a dual pandemic. We've been dealing with systemic racism in our society, and you've talked about and written about the school dealing with its own identity crisis. Tell me about coming into this job kind of what was on your mind and how you prioritized everything and how you dealt with it. Well, I'll be honest with you, it was like drinking to a fire hole.

I Uh, it was. You know. We we were actually dealing with three crises and so, uh, the two you just mentioned and being the pandemic in our crisis and racial inequity. But also we're dealing with a budget crisis because many states were struggling to support their state universities, and so we had a hundred and twenty four million dollar budget gap that I had to manage as well. So uh, suffice it suffice to say, to take care

of the racial inequity problem required money which I didn't have. Right, So, uh, you know, we tackle the problem as I tackled most problems as an engineer, right, and in a methodical kind of way. Right. You you eat an elephant one bite at a time, and uh, and and you tackle it by bringing groups of people together to help you solve

the problem. And so we established a task force on Racial inequity and begin and started that task force working towards coming up with solutions that we're going to help the campus and as they're makest out of pandemic. We've put together a separate Safer Return to Campus task force that's focused on that and and we've had premendous results in both and and that is propelling the institution for

at this particular point in time. So, Janet, you know Dr Washington talking about the precarious finances which we're hearing across so many different industries, and that includes higher education. What's your reporting been generally about what some of these big colleges, universities, how they're trying to piece it all together from an economic perspective. Well, it's sorry, just gonna you, Janet Lauren. Well, it's a tough time, partly because revenue

isn't what schools are used to sing about this time. Uh. Fewer enrollments means less money. Uh. Fewer students on campus means fewer students are paying for UM storms here there, fewer students are paying for dining services. UM they've all had to many of them have had to offer refunds for housing when students left in March. UM. Now George Mason is bucking the trend. A little bit in enrollment.

We just had some numbers from the National Clearinghouse data source which talked about a decline of fourteen percent for freshman enrollment and overall enrollments were down, but your enrollments were up about two percents this year with record enrollments. Um, can you talk a little bit about how you accomplish

that and where those numbers come from. Well, they primarily come from in stay students and uh, you know, we are the beneficiaries of a region, being at a part of the region of the country where uh the population is still growing, and that helped us. But because we actually brought students back to campus and we did sell in an aggressive way, students didn't, uh you know, feel

the need not to come back. Right there was if you if you could if you could take all of your classes online, or if you were gonna hit be hit with exorbitant fees and costs in terms of going to school. People started to ask the question, maybe I should take a gap year, maybe I should take some time off and not come back. Well, we made it advantageous and we made it uh clear to our students that we were going to provide an environment for them that was maybe not quite what they had uh two

years ago, but something really really close. So we worked really really hard with providing all sorts of ways for students to congregate safely and for them to enjoy fast food through our mobile robotic food delivery services from and so we've put a lot of different uh, you know, students can go to movies together, they go to we have this large drive in movies where students actually can do that together. Uh. And and we did lots of

virtual kinds of engagements with students. We have Tiffany Haddish on campus and other kinds of things. So so we've been able to figure out different ways to basically invent a new normal, which is what I think institutions are gonna have to do because they're gonna be dealing with the virus. Well, we just have about a minute and then we'll do some news. But in about forty five seconds, I mean, how much does this set you back? This the virus financially And again just about forty five and

then we'll come back and talk some more. Well, look, the reality of the situations, it sets in spectrumendously. Um, We're we're talking about a average student twelve thousand dollars per heads for room and board. And if you and and we got sixty eight hundred slots, so you just do the mask, that's seventy eight million dollars loss And we don't bring students back to campus, and and the

numbers just go up from there. So the number the losses are huge, over a hundred million dollars for US, and we brought students back, if we didn't need to be closer to hundred fifty two hundred million. Jannet. We were talking about financials there, and I know that's you. It's something you keep a close watch on when it

comes to colleges and universities. Yes, and then addation to um less revenue coming in, we've been hearing a lot from colleges about more money they're spending on things like toxi glass and trying to configure testing and paying for testing and uh and so much more. And I would love to hear about some of the expenses that have seen at George Mason that perhaps you weren't necessarily expected. Uh. Yes, Look, the biggest expense for us has been the preparation for

testing UM putting in place. Uh, you know, the average cost of a test can run upwards of a hundred and twenty dollars per test and UH and that's when you count take into account not just the test itself, but the corresponding infrastructure that you actually have to have in place to ensure that the students get the results that they get him in a reasonable amount of time. You have to coordinate the results with the with the local health department so that they understand when the potential

operak uh is occurring. And then you have to uh be able to record the results in the proper format relative to medical records. So there are a whole host of additional infrastructural costs besides the cost of the test themselves that go on top of it. And so you could easily spend upwards of a Protestant and universities that are spending that without questions. And then you've got to get your campus is ready for students and staff to

come back. And so that signage that's plexiglass, that's UH putting information on the floors, that's changing UH you know, entering and exiting UH protocols for how people will enter and exit buildings that may even be modifications and changing to the air handling systems and upgrading air handling systems and buildings to accommodate. Uh, you know, people will be in those buildings with COVID right. Hard to do, you know,

in a normal year where revenue flows are normal. Harder to do when they're not exactly So, what does spring look like? What does you know a year from now, next fall look like? Let's start with spring. You know, what are you guys expecting. So we're not managing the virus too well right now as a and what that means for us is that we're going to see, Uh, the spring looked very similar to the fall. It's going

to be a restart, right. Our students are gonna go home many you know, many campuses, despite the outbreaks that you've heard about, a significant number of us have actually have environments that have positivity rates lower than the surrounding communities in which the students come from. And we'll go

to and so that's the case for George Mason. Our students will undoubtedly, over the break, some of them will bring the virus back to the campus, and so we have a pretesting regiment that we had to put in place to account for that and Uh, and it looks like we're starting all over from scratch again, but this time was just a little bit more knowledge because we

did learn a lot from the fall. But it is indeed a restart, and so uh, lots of pretesting getting the students here and then managing student behavior to keep out breaks on happening and get us throughout the end of this way. So we'd be remiss. Go ahead, John, and I know we were both kind of all messaging each other because we'd be remiss if we don't go and ask you about what has been you know, the

other crisis, and that is racism. And you've got a university George Mason named for a slave owning founding father. Are you guys talked talked, I mean talked to us about that? I mean, are you thinking about a name change? What happens? So actually it was believe it or not. The very first question that I was asked by a reporter. I thought I was gonna get a question talking about how is it to lead an institution, you know, in these difficult times. And the very first question is George

Mason was a slave owner. What are you going to do about that? And um, so, so I actually I went to work. I actually I learned a lot about George Manson, but I also learned a lot about the country. Um. Look, twelve of our first eight team US presidents own enslaves individuals at some point in their lives, and nine of

them while working at the White House. Okay, um forty one of the fifty six signatories of the Declaration of Independence, right, five of the fifty five men who wrote the Constitution all owned plays. It was part of the the economic system of our country at that time, and so to throw all of that out, you would literally have to

throw out the country. And so we took a different approach, and that is two commemorate individuals like George Mason and Thomas Jefferson and all those individuals like that for their contributions, but not celebrate uh them for how they handle slaves. And it sounds like a cliche, but it was one of the things. And then we used it to enter the campus into a discussion of the contributions many of those enslave individuals had on the campus. Dr Washington actually

for us came out into a great play. Dr Washington, We're running out of time, do come back? Because I would love um to continue this conversation with you, and here you know how you guys are managing through and just dealing with those three crises. I really appreciated Dr Washington, President at George Mason along with our Janet Lauren Bloomberg News Higher Education finance reporter. You're listening to Bloomberg Radio