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Colleagues,

As the fall semester begins, please take a few moments to review information on the H1N1 virus (swine flu) located at http://www.emergency.appstate.edu/ . This web site is your guide to the latest information on the impact of H1N1 at Appalachian.

H1N1 will doubtless affect the operations of campuses nationwide in the coming months. Please take appropriate hygiene precautions and encourage others to do likewise. An important guide to basic information on prevention and management is at the Centers for Disease Control web site: http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/qa.htm.

Please also be as flexible as possible in responding to the academic challenges presented by likely widespread student absences due to H1N1.

Here are a few notes of special interest to faculty members:

• A person with a temperature above 100 degrees and a cough or sore throat should seek treatment and stay away from class, work, and public gatherings until he or she has been free from fever for at least 24 hours. Please note that fever-reducing medications, such as ibuprofen, may artificially diminish fever even while victims remain infectious. Please use caution and do not rush back into daily activities until you are sure that you will not infect others.
• Students will not be able to prove that they have H1N1, since most cases will not be confirmed.
• Student Health Services does not issue medical excuses even under normal circumstances, so instructors will have to use their own judgment in determining the justification for excused absences. Because of the highly contagious nature of this virus, it is better to err on the side of generosity in excusing students who have flu symptoms; these students should not feel pressure to attend class. Please see below for explanation of this policy.
• For absences that occur near the end of the semester, the question of a medical withdrawal might come up. In some cases medical withdrawals may be the only option, but instructors should keep in mind that with medical withdrawals students lose the tuition and fees that they paid for their courses, so instructors should consider other options, including incompletes, for affected students who are otherwise in good standing.
• Under the current CDC protocol, students will probably be absent for no more than three or four days. We will monitor changing CDC guidelines on http://www.emergency.appstate.edu/. Another major source of information is http://www.flu.gov/index.html.
• Instructors are advised to have material available on ASULearn to help classes continue to function if students or teachers must be absent with the flu. Assistance with AsULearn can be arranged through Learning Technology Services at http://lts.appstate.edu/support/asulearn.php.

Faculty members may wonder about the rationale for some of the above policies related to Student Health Services. The following points may clarify some matters:

1. Not all students with H1N1 need to visit doctors or Student Health Services. It may well be better for them to remain in isolation.
2. Any note system for class excuses that could be devised in Student Health Services would overwhelm the staff and would create impossible questions of judgment as to when exactly a student was sick enough to "earn" an excuse.
3. Some faculty members do not, in any event, distinguish between excused and unexcused absences, which would make getting a note from Student Health Services pointless.
4. Most students are honest. Those who are dishonest will figure ways around any system devised. Student Health Services staff are not any better than faculty members at separating out honest from dishonest students.
5. We have a system in place through Student Development that does handle cases in which students are severely ill, injured in accident, and so forth. Students contact Student Development, explain the situation, and give permission to share medical information. Student Development then checks the student's class schedule and notifies professors. This is extremely time-consuming and is put into operation only in extraordinary cases.

The bottom line is that faculty members have to use judgment in managing attendance policies for their classes. Thank you for patience and perseverance in handling the challenging circumstances that we face.

Stan

This page last updated September 7, 2009.