I’ve got a variety of odds and ends to share with you today. I have gotten a couple of process-oriented questions on how to know important dates, information about non-COVID respiratory viruses we’re seeing on campus, and a couple of corrections to last Friday’s Daily Deac at the end.

For those who may be asking “when is Family Weekend 2023?”, the date for Family Weekend is typically set based on the football schedule, which we likely will not know until late January or early February. We will announce Family Weekend as soon as the date has been decided, but I do want to be transparent that it does take a bit of time between the football schedule release and the setting of the date. (If you want to know how the sausage is made, we need to check on availability of hotel space, see if there are religious holidays that coincide, check the academic calendar (can’t be too close to move in, nor too late in the semester) and the University calendar, as we have to decide both Homecoming and Family Weekend). So know the announcement will not be immediate, but we will be working on it!

For families trying to plan travel for the end of the fall semester and also for the return in the spring: All students have to be out of their residence halls by Sunday, Dec. 11 at 2 pm (see Residence Life and Housing’s opening and closing dates for the year). BUT your Deac may be able to leave sooner than that – it just depends on which days they have final exams. The final exam schedule is listed at the bottom of this website. Students can leave as soon as their exams are finished and they follow the appropriate steps to prep their rooms for the break (Residence Life and Housing will be sharing those instructions later this fall).

As to when students have to return for the spring semester, they can return to their residence halls on January 7 starting at 9 am through January 8, 2023.

At this moment in time, your students will not know which day they can leave after the spring semester next May; they won’t know that until they have gotten their syllabus for all their spring classes. Students will register for classes later in late October/early November, but students sometimes make changes to their schedules, so if it is possible to wait, you might want to delay purchasing any May travel tickets until classes start in January and your Deac can decide if they want to keep the schedule they have, vs. dropping/adding new classes.

Just as with the fall semester, the spring final exam schedule typically determines their last day to be on campus. All residential students (other than those who are graduating or otherwise approved to stay) need to check out of their residence halls by 2 pm on Saturday, May 6.

Our Student Health Service (SHS) is seeing a higher volume of non-COVID respiratory illness on campus right now. The typical symptoms are nasal congestion and drainage, sneezing, sore throat, cough, low-grade fever (< 100 F), headache, and fatigue. Because these illnesses are caused by viruses, antibiotics are not helpful for treatment. Symptoms typically will go away on their own after 7-10 days, and over-the-counter medications are helpful in managing symptoms. Read more

In the same way that if you or I call our primary care physician and ask for an appointment, if it is a time when there is a lot of illness within the local community, there can be a delay in how soon your doctor can see you. The same holds true for colleges. Student Health Service does their very best to see as many students as they can, and provides off-campus resources for students too. SHS also notes that because we are seeing more respiratory viruses at present, students with non-urgent needs (e.g., routine physicals, etc.) may want to schedule non-urgent appointments a few weeks from now if they do not want to share the waiting room with ill students (even though all will be masked).

In terms of other news, for our P’26s, our Weekly Message for First Year Families comes out each Monday. You can see this week’s message about Navigating the Classroom and Professors. Your ’26 students also got their issue of Letters So Dear yesterday.I saw a message that tonight (September 20), Erin Schrode will speak at 7:30 pm in Wait Chapel on “Hate & Antisemitism on College Campuses and…How I dealt with trolls when I ran for Congress!

There will also be Global Food Tabling Station on Wednesday (September 21) from 11:30 – 1:30 pm in the Pit. It will be a Rosh Hashanah themed session, hosted by our WFU Hillel is hosting and will have Kosher Brisket and Honey Cake available for all Deacs to enjoy.

I was especially excited to see a note about Dinners for Democracy: Cut through the bullsh*t: Detecting and avoiding election mis/disinformation! which will be held on September 29 at 6 pm: “Join Deacs Decide and the ZSR’s Roz Tedford and Hu Womack to do a deep dive into how to sort through the noise and find credible information for the election!” Students need to RSVP for this event.

Finally, two corrections from last Friday’s Daily Deac: you can find contact info for Black Tie Transportation (car service) here. And Family Weekend t-shirts can be purchased as you register for the weekend’s events. See the Register Now button on the Family Weekend website.

— by Betsy Chapman, Ph.D. (’92, MA ’94)

September 20, 2022

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