Brown and White Vol. 130 no. 5

              The Brown and White Vol. 130 No. 5
Friday, February 19, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Student gets
Zika virus
while abroad,
recovers
Q&A: Simon talks Instagram
Student Senate will host the
second annual Gatsby Gala
tonight in the UC. The event
underwent several chang-es
from previous years.
See Page 5
Inside Lifestyle
By PAIGE PAGAN
B&W Staff
See ZIKA Page 3
A Lehigh student who traveled
abroad over winter break and
tested positive for Zika virus has
recovered, according to an email
on Feb. 10 from John Smeaton,
vice provost of Student Affairs.
Zika virus is transmitted
through infected Aedes mosqui-toes,
and symptoms include a
rash, fever, joint pain or conjunc-tivitis,
according to the Center for
Disease Control and Prevention.
Fifty-two cases have been report-ed
in the United States, two of
which were in Pennsylvania.
All of the reported cases were
acquired in areas where the mos-quitoes
carry the virus, and none
of those mosquitoes are in the
United States.
Susan Kitei, director of the
Health and Wellness Center,
said the Lehigh community was
notified as soon as the case was
confirmed by the Pennsylvania
Department of Health.
When the Health Center was
notified of the possibility of a
student with the virus, tests were
run immediately to determine if
the student posed a threat to the
Lehigh community.
“The test that definitively diag-noses
the Zika virus is a blood
test, which currently is only run
by the CDC lab in Atlanta,” Kitei
wrote in an email. “It takes at
least two weeks to get the test
President John Simon uses
the social media platform to
connect with the Lehigh
campus community
By JACQUELINE TENREIRO
Editor in Chief
John Simon, Lehigh’s 14th pres-ident,
posted his first Instagram
33 weeks ago and has posted 360
photos since, or an average of
almost 11 photos a week. Simon
has used the app as a way to learn
about and connect with the Lehigh
community.
Q: Your Instagram has
gained a lot of popularity.
What was the mindset in cre-ating
it?
John Simon: It sort of started
with the OurLehigh project in
that I wanted to use the transi-tion
time between my appoint-ment
and starting here to learn
about Lehigh as much as I could.
I figured (it was) the best way
to enable people to tell me what
they wanted to tell me about the
institution — their stories, their
engagement. There were some
great pieces that were submitted.
It was a lot of fun. I learned a lot.
At the same time, I’m still learn-ing
what this job is and what this
job is not. There’s many different
faces and connections to a wide
range of constituencies. As I’m
talking to members of each one
of those groups, they don’t have
a clue what the demands are on
the job and the ways in which you
need to connect and bring those
different constituencies together.
So that launched a conversation
internally — how do you convey
them? To me, the answer was
Courtesy of John Simon
Screenshots from President John Simon’s Instagram account. Simon, who usually posts several photos a
day, has garnered nearly 1500 followers.
some type of social media net-work.
There are a lot of them. Whether
you want to tweet, wheth-er
you want to use Facebook or
Instagram. I had a lot of friends
that tweeted. A lot of presidents
tweet, and I would say a lot of
presidents accidentally tweet
something that gets interpreted
in a way different than what they
(meant). There was a small hand-ful
of people using Instagram, and
I just decided it would be more
effective to tell the story through
pictures than 140 characters.
So I settled on Instagram and
made a commitment to it. I’ve
had surprising engagement from
parents and prospective students.
So it’s got a life bigger than what
I thought it would have as a com-munication
tool.
Q: Do you find social media
to be a good source of commu-nication
for the Lehigh com-munity,
particularly in your
experience being somewhat
new to the university? Does
Instagram get messages across
better than speeches?
JS: I think you have to do all of
it. So, I’m stuck with the bunch of
speeches, but I remember going
to Town Hall before I came, and
someone was tweeting out what
was going on in Town Hall. It
made me think that everyone is
going to do social media and net-working
about you — it comes
with the job. You might as well
also have a message about what
you’re doing and how you think
about it and what groups you’re
talking to and why, and what
you’re thinking about the institu-tion
through that media.
So I think to not be engaged
in that type of media is a huge
mistake. I think half the letters
I write don’t get read, or don’t
get retained. So it may in some
way be the most important way
in which I connect with the uni-versity
community that’s here in
Bethlehem.
Q: Do you think that in this
technological era, social plat-forms
reach and engage peo-ple
better than face-to-face
interactions?
JS: I come from a generation
that’s very face-to-face. I think
there are generational aspects in
the answer to your question. I
think a lot of business, politics —
whatever you want to think about
Chris Barry/B&W Staff
President John Simon, Lehigh’s
14th president, sits at his desk
on Aug. 28, 2015. President
Simon, who assumed his role
last year, uses his Instagram
account as a means to connects
with the Lehigh community.
See SIMON Page 4