A week and a half ago, I caught the flu, most likely from one of the many others who already had it at Amherst College, coughing their way through Valentine. Eating food was a challenge (I won't go into the details), but acquiring food was equally frustrating. The vending machines in my dorm were expensive and had only junk food or soda. Ordering food was costly and frustrating, since my appetite was very poor and I never finished what I paid for. And Valentine, a long walk through the cold, frequently had only one kind of soup-salsa soup-that, while delicious on a normal day, was a little heavy and spicy for my combination sore throat and nauseated stomach. Furthermore, to eat at Valentine meant to either spend a half hour explaining to my acquaintances that I was sick, or to infect them by breathing on their food (perhaps a false dichotomy). This latter solution seemed to be a little less than selfless.

There is a solution to this. Valentine offers bag lunches to sick students, available for pick-up by a friend with the victim's ID and a note from the doctor. However, I don't believe this is enough. If our school wants to take sickness seriously, then it should be encouraging sick students not to go Valentine when they start getting sick, regardless of whether they've been to Health Services. I did not have time, because of classes, to go to Health Services until I'd had the flu for four or five days (and I suspected I would be told I had the flu, which I already knew). A doctor's note seems, then, a bit draconian, and with a valid ID, it's unlikely students would abuse the privileges of sick students to get take out meals. Second, meals for sick students should contain food different from regular meals: for instance, a container of soup (chicken or vegetable), a piece of fruit, a couple of pieces of bread and a juice drink. This seems the somewhat universal food choice for someone with the flu-a sandwich is not, and at times during my ordeal it would have been very difficult to consume a sandwich. Valentine should also encourage and advertise this take-out food policy during flu season, in an attempt to get students to take advantage of it: It's in everyone's best interest that the policy is successful.

In conclusion, at a place where we aren't given extensions on our theses, midterms, papers or compositions because of sickness, the least the school could do is encourage the sick to stay out of the dining hall, and to provide us chicken soup when our tummies hurt-soup we can eat at home.

Max Rosen '07