No Excuse: Sick Students Take Test--in UHS

Maria S. Ho '03 was missing-in-action for more than a day last week.

For all her friends knew, Ho had left her Cabot House dorm for a 9:15 a.m. exam last Wednesday. But after she failed to return that afternoon, that evening or even the following morning, her sister started to wonder.

"My parents were a little worried," said Ho's sister, Diana M. Ho '01.

What her sister and her friends didn't know was that Ho had in fact arrived at her Chinese exam, but after complaining of flu-like symptoms, was whisked to University Health Services (UHS)--the start of a 26-hour ordeal.

Over the next day, Ho would be quarantined in her UHS room--stripped of her belongings and the telephone--where she would take the two exams that she had missed.

To Ho, the experience was almost as bad as jail. But for the University, which has to deal with students who become sick during exams every term, this was standard procedure.

"I couldn't even make my one phone call," Ho said.

According to Thurston A. Smith, senior associate registrar, a handful of students have their exams proctored in their UHS rooms each year.

"They get half, or part way through [with their test], and they faint or fall ill with exhaustion," he said.

Once that happens, Smith said, Harvard protocol calls for an exam proctor to transport the student to UHS and arrange for them to be admitted. If the student has seen the exam, exam conditions must be maintained in the hospital room until the situation is resolved.

"There can be no contact that would compromise the exam," Smith said.

In practice, this means the phone is removed from the hospital room and the student is allowed no visitors.

Most of the time, the illness is not serious, and the student finishes the test at some point in the next 24 hours. Until then, "we try to make the hospital room resemble an exam room," Smith said.

Because Ho had not actually seen either of her two exams when she was admitted, she was given the option of taking a makeup test in March or taking the exams in the hospital.

The proctor, Ho said, convinced her that getting the test over with was the best option. As a result, quarantine conditions were imposed.

"I hadn't seen either test, but they still didn't want me calling people," Ho said.

She said she rested comfortably at UHS, receiving intravenous fluids until she regained her strength.

Once she was significantly recovered Thursday morning, Ho finally started her first exam, taking it in her hospital bed.

But the exam was not to go off without a hitch--the registrar, she said, had forgotten to send along blue books. The proctor, who was present at UHS during both exams, had to scrounge around the hospital looking for plain paper.

Despite the obstacles that prevented Ho from taking her tests the first time around, she said she was glad to finally get the exams over with--and let her friends and family know that she was okay.

"It was a pretty stressful experience," she said. "I wouldn't recommend UHS as a place to take an exam."

--Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.