ASU President Crow says students will see ‘new’ normal on campus

May 15, 2020, 2:00 PM | Updated: May 17, 2020, 4:05 pm

(Facebook Photo/Arizona State University)

PHOENIX – The “new” normal for students at Arizona State University will probably include the typical coronavirus safeguards – masks, social distancing – if they can return to campus for the fall semester.

“That’s sort of how we’re proceeding – flashing yellow [light],” university President Michael Crow said Friday on KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show. “Proceed with caution.

“We’re deep in the planning process right now and hope all thing being equal … that it can worked out by the middle of August.”

ASU announced in late April that it intended to resume in-person classes at the next semester, which begins Aug. 20.

“We have to be ready to deal with whatever contingencies might come up,” Crow said.

That could mean a combination of testing and evaluating the health of people on campus.

“Basically, we’re turning all aspects of the university into an intelligent, interactive – both healthy and educationally- sophisticated, technological-assisted place,” he said.

Crow was one of over a dozen university leaders who talked with Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx on best practices that would allow students back on campus in the fall.

He said the Wednesday call with Pence, which included the presidents from Notre Dame, Stanford, the University of Virginia, Ohio State, “was a very good meeting.”

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