Proactive students will hinder H1N1

In recent weeks, the university has made many efforts to prevent an outbreak of H1N1 on campus. By the end of the first week of classes, if students were not aware of the pandemic waiting to sweep the halls of the White Hall Classroom Building, they received the memo loud and clear in the many H1N1 Policy additions to some of their class syllabi. UK has made its stance known and hopefully students have taken the subtle hints: use common sense.

The university is using many of their resources in both the health and planning departments to ensure the campus remains a safe, healthy environment where students can come to learn each day without the fear of catching a threatening disease by merely running their hands down the railing of Funkhouser.

With a campus of nearly 30,000 students, it is only logical the university is taking such precaution. Inciting a small sense of fear may be the healthy decision: why not make students paranoid? Turn them into obsessive-compulsive hand-washers. Better than having half of COM 101 missing class for a week due to the flu.

But with this newfound paranoia comes another issue: overcrowding at the health clinic. Already, the clinic is inundated with students complaining of sore throats, the chills and other flu-like symptoms. This is where accountability comes into play.

Providing hand sanitizer in “high-traffic” areas around campus, taking proactive measures by reminding students with friendly posters to cover their cough and washing their hands (a lesson many should have learned in elementary school) and advising students to stay home if they have a fever.

The threat of H1N1 has this campus on edge. While it may unnerve many who live in on-campus housing, the idea of isolating sick students isn’t foreign. In an article that ran in the New York Times this summer, many summer camps had to quarantine their campers due to the flu.  Sure, it wasn’t arts, crafts and archery all day long, but in places where there is a large number of people in a small area, keeping the flu contained will help stop the spread of disease.

What it comes down to is simple: Be proactive, be smart and be aware. UK can only do so much to prevent the spread of H1N1. It’s up to students to remember not to pick their noses, rub their eyes and cough in their hands and wipe what could be swine flu all over White Hall Classroom Building.  Don’t take advantage of being sick to skip class, but the fear and dread of missing a class or two shouldn’t push you to infect your classmates by showing up with a fever. Stay home. See the doctor if you’re running a fever, have the chills, body aches, a sore throat, are vomiting or have diarrhea. The clinic is going to be busy this year, so be patient. Don’t be social while you’re sick. Take the time to catch up on class reading and some extra rest.

Besides, who wants to be quarantined with a bunch of other sick college students? If campus is proactive now, what might be a critical situation in the future could turn out to just be a big scare everyone will look back on and laugh about a few years down the road.

H1N1 is an important issue, so take it seriously.