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Flu epidemic reaches campus
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With this year seeing a long string of flu cases, Student Health has offered students the $27 flu vaccine, which doctors consider to be 60 percent effective largely because the strain is familiar.
Influenza cases on campus nearly quadruple since last winter season BY FLETCHER LAICO Staff Writer laicft12@wfu.edu An unwelcome visitor has arrived on campus for an extended stay: the flu. Students live in extremely close quarters, and consequently college campuses are highly susceptible to a flu outbreak. Unfortunately, Wake Forest is no exception and has gradually fallen victim to this winter’s H3N2 flu outbreak. This has been
one of the nation’s worst flu seasons in the past decade according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The CDC has declared the current flu season an “epidemic,” meaning that the number of deaths has surpassed the expected number of deaths. As of the second week of January, a reported 2,257 Americans have been hospitalized with the flu and 18 children have died nationwide since October. Flu symptoms, which come on rapidly and generally last for five to six days, include fever, achiness, headaches, sore throat and extreme fatigue. Campus has experienced its fair share of the flu with a reported 84 cases thus far in the school year — 52 cases in the fall, and
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32 cases this winter. Cecil Price, director of Student Health Services, notes that these 84 cases mark a busy year. “Last winter, fewer than 20 cases of the flu were reported on campus,” Price said. Students have felt the effects of this dramatic spike in flu-like symptoms. Freshman Grayson Absher, for example, caught the flu shortly before exams. “It was really difficult because it impeded my ability to study for my exams,” Absher said. “I had to go home for about 10 days.” Teachers have also seen class attendance dip dramatically as a result of the flu season. “Last semester was noticeably worse than usual in my two classes,” Brian Kell, lecturer
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University Registrar strives for greater fairness and transparency with new automated waitlist system BY DANIEL SCHWINDT News Editor schwd11@wfu.edu More than a semester after the university changed its waitlist policy for class registration, students and faculty are beginning to evaluate the impact the new system has had on the registration process and whether it represents an improvement over the old system. “I actually like the new system,” sophomore Alex Gromer said. “I think it definitely makes the whole process a lot easier for students and faculty.” Previously, there was no ranking or order of priority for students on the waitlist, creating uncertainty for students during the registration process. “When I joined Wake Forest, the university was using what they called waitlisting, but it was just a list of students who were
interested in that class and weren’t able to get an initial registration,” Harold Pace, university registrar, said. “Some faculty ignored it, some faculty picked students off of that list who they thought might be promising and add to their class.” One problem Pace identified was the lack of transparency and uniformity, with few students knowing how the old system worked and whether they would be able to get into a class even if they talked to a professor. “How this worked did not seem to be necessarily fair and certainly not transparent,” Pace said. “It didn’t seem to be easy to the freshmen and there weren’t really any rules around waitlists.” In an attempt to address these problems, the University Registrar has begun using an automated waitlist system. The new automated waitlist system gives priority ranking
to students on the waitlist. The student who is first on the waitlist will receive a notification from the Registrar if a slot in the class opens up before the first day of classes. The notification tells them that they must then register for the class, but if they fail to do so within 24 to 48 hours, then they will be removed from the waitlist. According to the University Registrar’s website, “Automated Waitlisting is totally transparent. A student on the waitlist can see his/her position on the waitlist and the order of the waitlist will be maintained.” The waitlist also automatically clears when classes begin. Students then have to get a permission of instructor (POI) number from the professor teaching the class they wish to enter. The purpose of the automatic purging of waitlists is twofold: to signal to
See Waitlist, Page 6