Brown and White Vol. 130 no. 1

              The Brown and White Vol. 130 No. 2
Tuesday, February 9, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Lehigh, Northampton counties lead state in number of flu cases
By CATHERINE MANTHORP
B&W Staff
Donald Trump, businessman and
candidate for the Republican pres-idential
nomination, was given an
Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree
from Lehigh in 1988. Since declaring
his candidacy for president seven
months ago, Trump has insulted indi-viduals
and groups both online and
during campaign events. Because
of Trump’s often controversial com-ments,
professor Richard Weisman is
asking members of the campus com-munity
if Trump’s honorary degree
should be rescinded.
“Not being a big fan of Donald
Trump, I was listening to the radio
one day and heard on NPR that a
Scottish university was rescinding
his honorary degree,” Weisman said.
“And I thought, ‘Wow, wouldn’t that
be an interesting conversation for
Lehigh to have?’”
Weisman, a professor of water
resources engineering at Lehigh,
began his campaign in December
by conversing with the Council
for Equity and Community, the
Graduate Student Senate, the
Honorary Degrees Committee and
the Undergraduate Student Senate.
Lehigh awards honorary degrees
to those who are in accordance
with the Principles of our Equitable
Community, according to Weisman.
These principles are Lehigh’s foun-dation
of values that every mem-ber
of the community has “a per-sonal
responsibility to acknowl-edge
and practice,” according to
Lehigh’s Principles of our Equitable
Community.
The year before Trump deliv-ered
Lehigh’s 120th commence-
Will Lehigh dump Trump?
Professor starts debate on rescinding honorary degree
Designed by Kelly McCoy/Image courtesy
of Creative Commons
RIGHT: Donald Trump,
who holds an honorary
degree from Lehigh, is
a businessman and a
prospective Republican
presidential candidate.
ABOVE: Excerpts from
The Brown and White
archives detail Trump’s
1988 commencement
speech at Lehigh.
See TRUMP Page 2
By MEG KELLY
B&W Staff
Most students on campus are
asleep or preparing for a morning
class at 8:45 a.m. on a Monday,
but the seats in the Health and
Wellness Center are already fill-ing
with patients.
The room is nearly silent, and
the tapping of the reception-ist’s
keyboard provides the only
soundtrack.
The silence is then broken by a
sharp cough from a student in the
corner. After a moment’s pause,
the girl next to him begins cough-ing,
harmonizing with him hack
for hack.
The blur of runny noses, high
fevers and sore throats are evi-dence
that cold and flu season has
returned to campus. To combat
these illnesses, the university’s
Health and Wellness Center is
offering new programs aimed at
illness prevention and adminis-tering
care.
Angelika Wyzlic, ’18, who works
at the center’s sign-in desk, said
the days leading up to final exams
in December were especially busy
for the center’s staff.
“We definitely saw a lot more
people in the last two weeks or
so of the last semester,” she said.
“Especially as the weeks went on
and it got colder.”
While catching a cold or feeling
unwell isn’t uncommon on college
campuses, especially during the
winter months, Lehigh experi-ences
these symptoms more than
most schools, according to data
from the National College Health
Assessment.
This season, Lehigh and
Northampton counties lead the
state of Pennsylvania in cases of
influenza, according to the State
Department of Health.
According to the December/
January edition of the
InSTALLments published
by Health Advancement and
Prevention Strategies Office, 16
percent of Lehigh students were
diagnosed or treated for strep
throat by a health professional in
the last 12 months.
By comparison, the
InSTALLment reported the
national average at 11.5 percent. See HEALTH Page 2
In addition, 22.1 percent of Lehigh
students said that the flu and other
similar illnesses had a negative
effect their performance in the class-room.
Dr. Thomas Novak, the center’s
associate director, said in an email
the most commonly seen illnesses
at the center are upper respiratory
infections, acute pharyngitis — a
sore throat — sinusitis, pink eye and
urinary tract infections.
“On average, the Lehigh University
Health and Wellness Center will see
between 10,000 and 11,000 student
visits per year,” Novak said. “Our
students use our services on average
of 1.5 visits per year.”
Novak went on to explain how