Moping About Mumps

Welcome back to campus, Harvard!

Whether you spent the last week chilling in Cambridge yearning for the sweet taste of HUDS meals, or lounging on a beach in Cancun, or carefully crafting a March Madness bracket that would be in tatters by last Friday night, you probably weren’t thrilled to be returning to classes today.

You didn’t do any of that reading you were supposed to catch up on over break, that pset due tonight at midnight is still lying unfinished in your backpack, and the outside temperatures are hovering around freezing again. Just when you think life can’t get any more grim, Dean Khurana and Dr. Paul J. Barreira slide in your @college inbox with an update about the hottest topic of the Spring semester: the mumps. (Ok, technically that update dropped last Thursday, but who actually checks their email over break?).

Didn’t read the email? It’s ok, it’s basically just Rakesh and Dr. Barreira reminding us all to not be gross. What’s more concerning is the increased ambiguity about how many people actually have the mumps. The numbers ‘have grown’, according to the update, but by how much it doesn’t say. Should we take that to mean a handful of students, or like, seven handfuls? How many students even constitutes a handful? We need answers, Paul.

Speaking of needing answers, spare a thought for the residents of the Inn at Harvard who weren’t initially aware that their dorm was being used to house mumps patients in isolation. Leaving aside the fact that the way the students figured it out (by noticing food packages suspiciously left outside the doors of isolated students) was kind of hilarious, it was probably pretty distressing news for them to learn.

Considering the incubation period for mumps is up to three weeks, we can be almost certain that mumps won’t be going away any time soon. About as certain as we were that those “6-10 inches” of snow never had a chance at shutting down class today (sorry Freshmen, you won’t be experiencing the glory of a Harvard snow day any time soon).