The College of William and Mary has its first reported case of swine flu.

According to University Spokesman Brian Whitson, the College was alerted at 4:00 p.m. Friday by officials at the Student Health Center that a student has been infected with the h1n1 strain of the influenza virus, more commonly known as swine flu.

The student, whose name and gender are being withheld for confidentiality purposes, is currently at their private residence recovering.

Students at the College have been reporting flu-like symptoms to the health center for the past couple weeks, but until Friday all tests for type-A influenza, administered to determine the presence of h1n1, have come back negative.

“The Health Center is seeing what they normally see in September,” Whitson said earlier in the day, before receiving word of the case. “We are trying to inform students, not alarm them, and remind them of the procedures necessary to prevent its spread.”

Posters are being distributed around campus to remind students to wash their hands and remain diligent.

“We certainly expected to see the flu on campus,” Whitson said via e-mail. “Like all universities, we’ll likely have more cases. That is why we have been preparing and why we want to continue to educate folks on campus about precautions. That’s what we’ll continue to do.”

Three participants at a summer camp based at the College were diagnosed with h1n1 influenza and sent home in late June. Friday’s case is the first to strike the College during the academic year.

What was originally billed as an opportunity for the College of William and Mary community to meet the new Board of Vistors Rector Henry Wolf ’64 J.D. ’66 and College President Taylor Reveley Wednesday afternoon quickly became a serious dialogue about how to accommodate the most recent round of state-funding cuts. The cuts put total state support for the College at a record low 13.7 percent of its operating budget.

Gov. Tim Kaine announced Monday that his plan to deal with Virginia’s budget shortfall would include a 15 percent, or approximately $6.2 million, cut to the College’s operating budget. While the College says that it can move $2.7 million of federal stimulus funds originally allotted for the fiscal year 2011 to the current year, the College would still be $3.5 million short in funding. Reveley and Wolf, said they are open to any suggestions to close the financial gap.

“So all the discussion will be around the debt between the 6.2 and the 2.7, that’s where we have to decide and as the president and the rector said, everything’s on the table,” BOV Vice President for Finance Sam Jones ’75 M.B.A. ’80, who was sitting in the audience, said. “Do you cut, [or] do you try to raise additional revenue?”

Both options raised concerns from the audience. With a prominent professorial presence, talk of spending cuts in the form of furloughs, salary stagnation and layoffs dominated much of the forum. Student concerns of mid-year tuition increases, in-state and out-of-state percentages and possibilities of privatization filled out the hour and 15 minute form.

Kaine’s plan already includes a one-day furlough for all state employees that will occur for most on the Friday before Memorial Day. Faculty and administration alike questioned the usefulness of a one-day furlough.

“My reaction to that is — what’s the point of one day? What’s the state trying to achieve with that?” Reveley said. “But perhaps, in due course, the holy city will enlighten us.”

When the possibility of longer furloughs, salary reductions and layoffs was mentioned, Wolf assured the group that the objective of the College is to preserve jobs.

“At least at this juncture, without an additional source of revenue or an additional source of funding, it is possible — with compensation costs being the single largest cost of this university — to financially make those salary adjustments without resorting to trying to adjust the size of the workforce, and that’s what we’ve been astutely trying to work toward,” Wolf said.

Physics professor Carl Carlson cited a graph showing that the College’s salary rates were no longer competitive with other Virginia universities, such as George Mason University. According to Carlson’s statistics, an average full-time professor at GMU earns approximately $10,000 more than an average full-time professor at the College. President Reveley said he had been given the same graph by economics professor Robert Archibald previously.

“It certainly looks just as you described it,” Reveley said to Carlson. “We don’t have any money.”

Reveley went on to note that the College, despite having fewer financial resources than peer institutions, continually ranks highly among college rankings such as U.S. News and World Report, who ranked the College 33rd among national universities but only 88th in financial resources, the lowest of any of U.S. News’ top 50 universities.

“Of course, what we would want to do is stop doing more with less and start doing more with more,” Reveley said.

To that end, Reveley and Wolf emphasized seeking further autonomy from the state, particularly for tuition decisions, in order to build a new financial model that would use the College’s prestige to bring in more revenue.

“We have enormous market power for students — enormous market power. We have particular market power for out-of-state as well as in-state,” Reveley said. “We’ve got to be allowed to earn more money.”

Both Reveley and Wolf said politics are the greatest obstacle to achieving greater autonomy.

“We are a public university,” Wolf said. “We are to a large extent in the hands of the commonwealth and our ability to construct that new financial model can’t be done in a vacuum. It has to be done with the governor’s office, with the General Assembly, quite honestly, with the other colleges and universities.”

Wolf said that the College would have to be sensitive to both the political and the economic realities of where it could go with tuition.

Reveley said that he felt tuition should increase only on the condition that need-based financial aid will also increase.

“We will never raise tuition, on in-state people in particular, without simultaneously raising need-based aid,” Reveley later said.

One student in the audience who said she could pay the increased tuition worried that she would not have time to plan ahead for it.

Reveley responded that he too felt mid-year tuition hikes disrupted family budgets.

“I don’t think it’s fair to change the rules in the middle of the game, but we did have to do it in 2003,” Reveley said. “If we end up having to do it, it will be with some real regret.”

Reveley ended the forum by suggesting that any actions taken by the College will be the result of the state making sudden changes to the budget.

The president gave no timeline for any budgetary decisions.

“Those decisions are not decisions that we can make this afternoon or tomorrow, and I think that it would be unlikely that we could make those decisions a week from now in the Board of Visitors meeting,” Wolf said earlier in the afternoon. “But I do think that those are all subjects that need to be on the table and that we need to be focusing on them in a way that allows us to meet the objective that I stated at the beginning, and that is do everything we can to maintain the quality of the instructional program here at William and Mary.”

The new City of Williamsburg Emergency Operations Center opened to the public this week.

Previously located in a 300-square-foot room on the second floor of the Stryker Building, the new EOC is an addition and expansion of the Williamsburg Fire Department and boasts 4,700 feet.

“During Hurricane Isabel, when we were all crammed together staring at each other for six days, we knew we had to change,” Williamsburg City Public Information Officer Eric Stone said.

EOC’s, usually located within a county’s municipal seat, provide headquarters for emergency staff in times of disaster to plan emergency-preparedness protocols or management during a time of crisis.

Planning for the addition began in 2007 when representatives from Williamsburg traveled to other EOC’s in nearby Virginia counties including Waynesboro and York counties. The city took elements from those facilities to design the new EOC. Ground was broken in October 2008, and construction was finished last June.

The new EOC boasts several technological improvements. Prior to the opening of the new facility, staff members had to use their own personal laptops during emergencies. Now, there are over 10 screens are placed throughout the center in order to display multiple broadcasts.

Additionally, there is a new audio system throughout the building and a touch screen keypad that allows workers to map patterns in the weather.

“You can kind of be like John Madden and draw on the screen, but it also lets us draw and display wind directions,” Fire Chief Pat Dent said.

Stone mentioned that the building can be used by city staff outside of emergency situations. For example, the police department can use the space for technology training.

“Most facilities are undersized, since it’s hard to justify spending the money,” Dent said. “However, we are all about preparedness, and we want to provide people the proper facility to operate in, or you’re going to have issues.”

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Drug-Free Schools awarded the College of William and Mary a grant for a drinking prevention program called On TRACK, or “Teaching Responsible Alcohol Choice and Knowledge.” The $276,804 grant provides funding for over two years and began in July.

According to Dr. Jill Russet, the program’s coordinator, On TRACK will primarily target fraternities and sororities. However, Russet insists that the choice to focus on Greek organizations is not punitive.

“We selected Greek student organizations, [but] we know that other students who drink on campus are high-risk drinkers. So we don’t want to stigmatize or categorize them as the high-risk drinkers on campus.

We selected them because research shows that those
engaged with a Greek organization are more likely to drink,” Russet said. “But we’ve also done work with
Greek organizations in the past so we thought it would be a good, accessible population.”

Russet hopes that targeting fraternities and sororities will spark a trickle-down effect. The program’s goal is to inspire juniors and seniors to become positive role models in their organizations and around campus.

Another program goal is to create an open dialogue between college administrators and students. One problem Russet has encountered in the past is that students and administrators have different definitions of binge drinking.

Russet defines binge drinking as constituting five or more drinks in one sitting for a male and four or more drinks in one sitting for a female. However, she has found that many students don’t agree with this definition. Russet wants to resolve this and other kinks in the communication lines between students and administrators.

“We really want to utilize the perception of students and what they see as binge drinking,” Russert said.

While all the details of On TRACK aren’t concrete, focus groups will be an essential component of its programming. The focus group, concentrating on Greek organizations, will consist of eight to 10 people.

Gift cards and other incentives will be provided for students who willingly participate. The groups will use the social norming theory and motivational interviews will assist in making the dialogue more effective.

The social norming theory holds that students believe their peers drink more than they actually do, making them more likely to think binge drinking is normal.

According to the National College Health Assessment (NCHA) survey that the College utilizes, students overestimate the monthly alcohol consumption of their peers by 5 percent and their daily alcohol use by 25 percent.

This misconception may contribute to the College’s potentially high alcohol consumption statistics. The NCHA survey claims that 82.9 percent of students at the college consume alcohol, whereas 80 percent of students do so nationwide.

Motivational interviews will allow Greek organizations to assess any issues they may have with high-risk drinking and set goals for improvement.

Administrators will send alcohol consumption related surveys to students through e-mail at the beginning and the end of the program to assess its effectiveness.

The newly appointed Assistant President of Diversity and Community Initiatives Dr. Chon Glover M.Ed. ’90 Ed. D. ’99 spoke at the College of William and Mary’s Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People meeting Monday evening.

Before her appointment, Glover worked at the College for 13 years, serving as advisor to former College Presidents Tim Sullivan and Gene Nichol and as director of the Multicultural Affairs Office.

Glover has been involved in the reactivation of the College’s NAACP chapter. She watched as the percentage of entering freshmen from diverse ethnic backgrounds has exceeded twenty-five percent at the College in recent years.

“That is a very real measure of success,” Glover said regarding the higher percentage.

She even chatted on a first-name basis with many of the audience members as well as the NAACP president before the meeting.

During her talk, Glover explained that her appointment as assistant president is the culmination of changes that took place over several years.

Prior to 2003, issues such as student diversity were hardly considered to be a serious priority, but in recent years the campus has become more focused on promoting diversity.

Glover said that the Department of Diversity and Community was created as a separate entity from the
Department of Multicultural Affairs, with an even larger institution-wide influence that includes staff working alongside students.

One of the most noteworthy changes is the new non-reservable meditation room in the Campus Center, which was ready for use during the week of Ramadan.

Glover’s position highlights two significant milestones for the College. Currently, Glover is the College’s only minority senior-level official.

“This fact alone reinforces the renewal of our school’s commitment to diversity,” Glover said.

Glover spoke briefly of a time when black Americans in the Historic Triangle felt uncomfortable setting foot
on the College campus.

Besides her new residence along Jamestown Road, Dr. Glover said she was particularly enthusiastic about her direct access to College President Taylor Reveley.

She can now bring the issues weighing most heavily on students’ minds directly to the president himself.

“You are the greatest resource we have,” Glover said, looking out at a sea of student faces. “We’re on our way up, but we’ll only continue to go up if you continue to really speak and talk, share your feelings and inquire.“

The BOV is expected to approve Glover’s position at its next meeting, Sept. 17 and 18.

The Student Assembly senate allocated $6,000 Tuesday to provide free flu shots to 300 students. The Seasonal Flu Prevention Act, sponsored by Sens. Imad Matini ’11 and Stef Felitto ’12, built upon legislation passed last fall that provided 100 free and 200 partially subsidized flu shots on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The flu shots provided by this new initiative will be fully subsidized by the SA. The bill, introduced late in the SA’s marathon three-hour session, was lightly debated by a visibly fatigued senate and passed 15-1. Sen. Brittany Fallon ’11 offered the lone dissenting vote.

Debate over the Honor Council/Student Conduct Council Know Your Rights Act, sponsored by Sens. Ben Brown ’11 and Felitto, consumed the largest part of the evening.

The bill would allocate $600 for the purchase of 6,000 “Know Your Rights” cards, which summarize some of the student rights detailed in the Student Handbook.

Honor council member Will Perkins ’11 briefly addressed the senate, discussing the purpose of the cards and the process behind their creation.

“These cards serve no other purpose than to distribute information to the College community,” he said, noting that the student conduct manual is no longer distributed to the entire student body. “This card can help explain to the honest William and Mary student what his or her options are.”

Perkins explained that the Honor Council refused to downplay any aspects of the code that would appear on the cards, despite some Honor Council members pushing for removal of content that would lead to lax enforcement of the code.

“We believe in student rights and therefore agree to include all explanatory information on this card,” he said.

The bill faced a mixed reception from the senate. Many senators expressed concern about the wording and layout used on the cards. Sen. Jill Olzewski ’12 noted that the bolding of specific words and phrases on the cards seemed unbalanced and that, in her experience, “Know Your Rights” cards have not been very well-received.

“I hate the fact that ‘tell the professor’ is highlighted and ‘may’ is not,” Olzewski said.

“I personally know no one who has ever used [a “Know Your Rights” card],” she said.

Sen. Steven Nelson ’10 also criticized the utility of the card.

“It actually contains very few useful rights at all,” he said. “There’s no relevant right on here that’s actually going to help students.”

Sen. Erik Houser ’10 was more forceful in his criticism of the bill.

“All of my friends and me threw away our useful KYR cards the second we got them last year,” he said. “Nobody cares. Nobody is going to read this card. They’re all going to throw it away.”

Houser suggested that a website be established as an alternative to provide information about the Honor Code to students.

He also argued that the Honor Council’s participation in the creation of the cards was suspect, saying that the “policing body” was essentially being allowed to choose what rights to tell the public.

Brown responded that the cards were not designed by the Honor Council.

“The policing body did not design the card. I designed the card,” he said.

Sen. Betty Jeanne Manning ’12 spoke in defense of the cards, arguing that the senate was viewing the bill incorrectly.

“It’s important to realize that at its core, this is a finance bill,” she said, adding that the cards would cost about 10 cents per student. She also argued that Honor Council members were elected by the student body and therefore above certain suspicions.

“This should show that you have faith in them,” she said.

Felitto also defended the bill, saying that the information on the cards is very important and relevant to students.

Due to the protracted debate over the bill, Felitto moved to return the bill to the policy committee. The motion passed 12-3.

The senate also considered the 2009 Omnibus Code Update Act, sponsored by Brown, which would update the SA code. The bill passed unanimously with little debate. The senate also considered the 2009 Omnibus Elections Reform Act, sponsored by Brown.

The bill addresses several issues with the SA elections code that were revealed during the elections last spring. The bill passed unanimously without debate.

The senate also voted to appoint various members to the Elections Commission and the departments of Public Affairs, Student Life, Health and Safety, College Policy and Diversity Initiatives. The appointment of Ryan Eickel ’10 as secretary of the Student Outreach Department proved controversial, as several senators questioned his suitability for the position.

Several senators also expressed concern over Eickel’s conduct as a senator.

Sen. Ross Gillingham ’10 noted that Eickel, who was not in attendance at Tuesday’s meeting, had displayed a minimal presence in the SA, saying, “I don’t think he really cared that much about the senate.”

Nevertheless, Gillingham said that Eickel may prove to be a competent head of the Outreach Department.

“He has the Outreach credentials in terms of this job,” he said.

Sen. Jim Dunleavey ’10 also expressed doubts, arguing that Eickel’s recent unsuccessful senate campaign indicates a lack of public support.

Olzewski spoke in Eickel’s defense, arguing that Eickel is ready to head Outreach.

“If your only hesitation is based on how he was as a senator, I think that’s ridiculous,” she said.
SA President Sarah Rojas ’10 also declared her support for Eickel, though she said that if any executive appointees prove incompetent, they will be removed from their positions. “[SA Vice President] Ryan [Ruzic] and I are not afraid to fire people,” she said.

The vote on Eickel’s nomination was tabled until next week by a vote of 12-5.

Former College of William and Mary Board of Visitors member and creator of the Weather Channel Frank Batten passed away Thursday after a prolonged illness at the age of 82.

Batten served on the BOV from 1990 to 1994. He also served on the Business School Advisory Board, the Institute of Bill of Rights Law Board and the National Campaign Steering Committee. During the 1996 Charter Day Celebration, Batten received an honorary Doctor of Laws, and in 2006 was presented with the Lord Botetourt Award.

“It is impossible even to try to enumerate all of the ways our business school, our students and all of us — most especially, me — have benefited from our association with him,” Dean of the Mason School of Business Larry Pulley said.

The College of William and Mary’s Jody and Layton Smith Professor of Psychology Tracy L. Cross received the Mensa Education and Research Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award during a recent School of Education meeting. Cross also serves as the executive director for the Center for Gifted Education.

“The innovative research of Dr. Cross sheds light on an important issue, suicidal behavior, in the realm of gifted students,” the foundation’s president, Greg Timmers, said. “He has worked tirelessly for the past 15 years in the area of intelligence and gifted students, which is the forefront of focus of the Mensa Foundation. Dr. Cross deserves this award and we look forward to his future research.”