Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser and Health Service Medical Director Margaret Higham on Monday announced a new system for students to report class absences due to short-term illness, encouraging them to avoid class settings in an effort to curb a potential flu outbreak this season.
In an e-mail addressed to the Tufts community, Glaser and Higham introduced the Illness Notification Form, which can now be found on Tufts' WebCenter. The form is designed for students who are anticipating an illness-related absence lasting several days or in a class in which attendance is monitored.
Students can e-mail the form to their professors to notify them of their absence, though Glaser stressed that faculty members are not required to accept it as an excuse.
"The Administration is asking faculty to think about their class attendance policy, but we don't dictate those policies," Glaser told the Daily. "We want faculty to figure out ways to make it work. This is just a vehicle for students to communicate with faculty about what's going on, but it doesn't represent a change in our policy."
Glaser said the university decided to implement the new system as a way to protect the student body from the H1N1 virus.
"Our interest is in keeping it from being a severe flu epidemic," he told the Daily. "By following certain practices ... hopefully we can keep it from spreading."
Higham stressed that the key to containing the virus is self-isolation upon the appearance of any flu-like symptoms. She added, though, that the form is aimed to be a "standardized" system for reporting illnesses in general, not just swine flu.
"I think that there has been a concern for a while that Tufts was looking for a better system that would promote more adult-type interaction with professors with respect to illness and more ownership of students in the process," Higham said.
The new system came about after several summer meetings between Health Service, the Office of Residential Life and Learning, Dining Services and Student Services to discuss ways the university could conform to the Center for Disease Control's H1N1 recommendations, Higham told the Daily.
Glaser emphasized that the new policy is subject to change from class to class and department to department. "It's going to be different in a lab course or a language course or a lecture course," he said. "But we want everyone to consider the fundamental principle that we don't want students going to class when they're ill."
Italian Senior Lecturer Patricia Di Silvio said that the new system is not considerably different from the one professors in her department are currently using.
"The instructors have been told not to require a dean's excuse, to accept something else: an e-mail or the form for the swine flu," she said.
Di Silvio said there had only been one case reported to the Italian department of a student sick with swine flu, and it was handled between the student and professor. Other cases are likely to follow suit. "The teacher and the student will have to work out how the work will be made up," she said. "When the student returns, she will pick up at the new pace of the class and make up the past work."
Three other faculty members interviewed within the romance languages department, which typically offers small classes in which regular attendance is expected, said they were not familiar with the new system.
The new form cannot be used as an excuse for missing an exam. If students are too ill to take an exam, they are required to obtain medical documentation prior to the exam.
Senior Ben Smith said that he would probably use the form if he experienced flu-like symptoms and believed that professors would honor the new system.
"I'm sure they're getting pressure from the administration," he said.
Senior John Heneghan said that he too would self-isolate if noticeably ill, but he added that students likely might not fill out the form given the amount of course material and work they would have to make up later.
"The problem with it is that it doesn't take into account all the work," he said. "It's tough to make that judgment call when you're worried about work and grades."
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Matt Repka, Ben Gittleson and Alexandra Bogus contributed reporting to this article.
