Touching doorknobs, taking a sip from a friend's drink at a party, sharing a pint of ice cream, smoking a friend's cigarette, giving a significant other a kiss — this is the kind of contact that the college experience entails.
But the instances that define the collegiate experience could also jeopardize it.
During the last week in September, an outbreak of the Norovirus spread violently and rapidly on the Georgetown University campus. A group of viruses that cause acute gastroenteritis, the Norovirus is extremely contagious and easily spreads through person-to-person contact. With so many people living in such close proximity to each other, a college campus is the prime location for something like the Norovirus to take hold and proliferate.
Georgetown sophomore Dave Wilkins said the epidemic affected everyone in some way.
"It was pretty confusing at first, because initially, everyone thought it was dining hall-related food poisoning," Wilkins said. "My friend was one of the first people infected, and everyone in the ER was initially comparing what they'd eaten recently. The campus pretty quickly went into quarantine mode. Everyone started carrying around hand sanitizer and trying to make sure they were keeping healthy because pretty much everyone knows someone who got sick."
Despite such a "confusing" experience, Georgetown's response was quick and direct. The university's Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson sent nearly a dozen e-mails to the student body detailing the school's response to the virus and updating students and staff about the number of students infected and the severity of the infections.
Olson sent his first e-mail to the Georgetown community Oct. 1.
"I am writing to notify you that O'Donovan Dining Hall will be closed for breakfast and lunch today, with breakfast temporarily relocated to McShain Lounge and lunch in the Leavey Center. We are taking this step as a precaution after being notified overnight that approximately 25 students were treated at the Georgetown University Hospital for symptoms related to possible food borne illness," he wrote in the e-mail.
In his second e-mail, Olson noted that by late afternoon of the same day, 96 students experiencing symptoms of vomiting, diarrhea or dehydration had been treated for gastroenteritis. With the cause of the illness still unknown, the District of Colombia Department of Health (DOH) was called on site to conduct food safety and epidemiological investigations.
By the next morning, the DOH confirmed that Norovirus was the cause of the sickness. Immediately, student resident halls were cleaned with a specific focus on common areas and high-contact surfaces such as bathrooms, doorknobs and handrails.
Georgetown freshman Catherine Urfer said that the university made every effort to halt the spread of the virus.
"Free hand sanitizer and electrolyte fluids were provided in our common room, and the school provided us with $13.50 in order to do our laundry and wash our sheets," Urfer said. "Basically, it was bad for the people who got sick, but it was comforting that the school was so proactive and open about what was going on."
As Georgetown's President John J. DeGioia remarked in his message to the community, officials were aggressive on five fronts: notifying students, staff and parents, cleaning, identifying sick students, responding to those students and closing the dining hall.
Taylor Burkholder, director of public relations for GERMS (Georgetown Emergency Response Medical Service) said that the GERMS staff saw triple their normal amount of calls and responded to them seamlessly.
"The outbreak was quite sudden," Burkholder said. "But it was treated as any other communicable illness by GERMS. In order to accommodate the sheer number of calls we received (triple our previous record for a shift), we doubled our crews in service and brought in extra staff to take care of administrative and operational tasks around the clock. We sanitized often, bleaching down our equipment and ambulances frequently. I'm really proud of our organization for stepping up the way we did. We managed to handle a call volume that is unheard of for a squad our size, and do it without any mishaps. After the fifth day, GERMS had treated and transported just over 100 Georgetown students to the Georgetown University Hospital."
Despite the swift response, 192 students and two staff members in total caught the virus. Because a large number of student athletes were among those who became ill, many athletic events were cancelled after consultation with competitor institutions and league officials.
Margaret Higham, medical director of Health Service at Tufts said that even though the Norovirus outbreak seems like a rare event, outbreaks on college campuses are actually more common than people may think. As serious as Norovirus is, staph infections, Mononucleosis (Mono) and the flu are also frequent visitors of college campuses.
"Tufts actually had a recent outbreak of Norovirus [as well]," she said. "It obviously wasn't as pervasive as the Georgetown outbreak, [but] these viruses are very widespread. Students leave home and they don't have very good hygiene. People don't wash their hands after leaving the bathroom and there is a fair amount of sharing mouth-to-mouth — from marijuana to cigarettes to water bottles to intimate contact."
While reversing these trends would lead to a healthier campus, many of the necessary precautions challenge the college lifestyle.
Freshman Marco Marrazza feels that germs are bound to spread on a university campus.
"College students will inevitably share drinks, pass around blunts and stay up all night to finish a paper. So even though diseases thrive in these conditions, nothing's going to change," he said.
Still, some students realize that getting sick in college is too easy and that at a certain point, student have to realize that they are not invincibleS.
"I live in a suite, and if one of us is sick, all of us will get sick," Junior Erin Flood said. I'm one of those crazy people who won't share food or drinks just because I'm so paranoid about contracting something."
Junior Melissa Jones shared Flood's sentiments. "Usually when I get sick it's because I haven't been getting enough sleep," she said. "Also, when there's a cold going around, it spreads fast. A lot of people go to lecture sick, and if you have a roommate who's sick, it's really hard not to catch it. I try to get a lot of vitamin C to help my immune system."
