Residence halls and Dining Services are joining forces to tackle the H1N1 and seasonal flu on campus.
The Dining Services Web site went live with an online sick-box request form Oct. 5 for students seeking boxed meals because they are too sick to leave their rooms. Sick students with a meal plan or munch money can order a meal that is delivered directly to their residence hall.
With the swine flu outbreak at Washington State University suspected of sickening at least 2,200 students—2,000 within the first ten days of classes—Associate Director for Western’s University Residences John Purdie decided to take preemptive action if a similar outbreak occurs at Western.
Purdie said he was observing the semester schools in session one month before fall quarter started and began collaborating with Dining Services Director Ira Simon to devise a plan that would allow residents to be quarantined to their room while still receiving adequate nutrition through their meal plans.
If the student is in stage one of the flu—the first 24-48 hours of flu-like symptoms—then he or she can look forward to Gatorade, saltine crackers and a few cans of soup.
For those in the second stage—after the fever subsides and the three to four days following—food such as gelatin cups, sandwiches and rice are on the menu.
Students who are too sick to get to the dining halls have been able to get food in the past by lending their Western card to a roommate, friend or resident adviser who can bring food back to the residence hall, but Purdie said that system can be cumbersome and food available in the halls might not fit the appetite of the sick student.
The potential size of an outbreak could overload dining and residence hall staff, so to handle a dramatic outbreak, Dining Services in collaboration with University Residences and the Student Health Center devised the sick-box system, Purdie said.
“We were looking at it from a number of different avenues,” said Lisa Philbrook, director of business development for Dining Services. “One was the potential volume: it could be hundreds of sick meals a day.”
Philbrook said Dining Services was in contact with Dr. Emily Gibson, director of the health center, to find out how much nourishment students would need in each stage of the flu.
Gibson said in an e-mail she told Dining Services sick students would need “easy access to lots of clear liquids with electrolytes (like sports drinks and soda), broth, jello, popsicles and easy to digest starch—crackers, rice, pasta, toast.”
Beyond recommending the essentials, Gibson said she played a small role in planning the sick boxes but did not know the exact contents on which Dining Services decided.
As of Friday morning, 21 sick boxes had been delivered to 12 students around campus. So far, Dining Services has delivered to Nash, Ridgeway Alpha, Delta and Gamma, Edens and Fairhaven residences.
Philbrook said Dining Services has supplies for 300 sick boxes and is prepared to keep that threshold until the flu season passes.
“We’re at the very beginning of this,” Philbrook said. “We’re not anywhere near the peak of what the demand could be [for sick boxes].”
When the program was first implemented at the beginning of fall quarter, sick students were instructed to call the dining hall closest to their dorm to place an order for a sick box.
Purdie said that system was flawed because students sick with the flu are often bad at communicating, especially when leaving voicemails. Commonly, students would not leave their room numberor phone number when they placed the order, or would not say what stage of the flu they were in.
The online form now in place is aimed at reducing the communication problem. It was inspired by the sack-lunch order form already implemented for students and staff to pick up their dining-hall meal on the go.
Sick box deliveries are made twice a day. Meal requests received by 10:30 a.m. are delivered between 11 a.m. and noon. Those received by 5 p.m. are delivered between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m.
Two residents in Nash Hall have come down with the flu in the past few weeks, resident adviser Kelci Clare said.
Clare is one of the intermediaries between Dining Services and the sick students in Nash Hall. She accepts the deliveries and then relays the sick boxes directly to the students’ rooms.
A new work shift has been added at residence hall front desks ever since the sick-box system was implemented. Usually, front desks were open from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. throughout the week, but now because of sick-box deliveries, an RA must wait by the phone between 11 a.m. and noon for a call from Dining Services telling them a sick box is being delivered to the hall.
Students, faculty and staff have been containing flu germs by washing their hands, getting adequate sleep and covering their coughs and sneezes with their sleeves, Purdie said.
“We have flu in the buildings; we’ve always had flu in the buildings,” Purdie said. “We don’t want students and staff to put down their guard and then have an outbreak on campus.”
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