“Colleges Put the Squeeze on Germs”
Feb. 27, 2008 by Lisa Currie
From the Chronicle of Higher Education…
By Libby Sander
If a man who carries a urinal in one hand and solicits high-fives with the other isn’t enough to get college students thinking about germs, then officials at the University of Central Florida are out of luck.
A spirited campaign to promote “hand hygiene” is under way at the Orlando campus, and the urinal toter, known as UCF 5th Guy, is its front line.
Like their counterparts at many other institutions, health officials at Central Florida want students to think about the germs that lurk on their hands. And then clean them, preferably with one of 32 strategically placed hand sanitizers on the campus.
Waterless hand sanitizers like Purell, Germstar, and AeroFirst, once the province of medical examination rooms, are becoming fixtures on college campuses. Dispensers are appearing in dining halls, next to elevators, at entrances to computer labs and recreational centers, and anyplace else students are likely to share their germs.
“Pathogens are getting stronger,” says Ruth Stoltzfus, director of the wellness and health center at Goshen College, in Indiana. “We spread pathogens in ways that we weren’t aware of before.”
Students, of course, will still sneeze, cough, kiss, and otherwise spread germs with abandon. Officials just want them to reach for a zap of hand gel in between.
At Central Florida, a Web site instructs students what to do if they encounter 5th Guy, whose moniker comes from a statistic that one in five men do not wash their hands after leaving a public restroom.
“Do your best not to touch him,” say the instructions. “Or, better yet, if you happen to have some hand sanitizer, feel free to offer it to him.”
Maybe too few students have listened: 5th Guy himself, a theater student named David Cohn, took a hiatus from his $10-an-hour duties earlier this month, laid up with a cold.
Gimmicks like 5th Guy, a spinoff of a statewide health campaign in Florida, are key to getting students to think about hygiene, says Michael Deichen, medical director of Central Florida’s health services. Simply installing dispensers of AeroFirst around campus would probably not compel students to use them, he says.
Mr. Cohn, 21, hands out bottles of hand sanitizer and tissues and otherwise goads his fellow students into practicing good hygiene. “I put the goodies in the urinal and I make people grab them,” he says. “It’s obviously not a real urinal,” he adds quickly. “That would be disgusting.”
Health officials emphasize that old-fashioned hand washing is the best way to stay clean. “We have a clean-hand station in every restroom,” John Hughes, coordinator of student health services at Sul Ross State University in Texas, says in an e-mail message. “It’s called a sink, hopefully with running water and soap.” They acknowledge that generations of college students turned out just fine without the antimicrobial benefits of Purell. Some also cite evidence that widespread use of hand sanitizers could create “superbugs” that are resistant to antibacterial cleaners.
Still, hand sanitizers can be convenient. “Most people are not going to specifically go into a restroom just to wash their hands,” says Joyce Walter, director of health services at Wesleyan University, in Connecticut, where health officials are in their second year of promoting Purell use.
A recent study by researchers at Boston College’s William F. Connell School of Nursing took another age group noted for its germs — second- and third-graders — and put the two hand-cleaning methods to the test. They compared the absenteeism rates of children who used alcohol-based hand sanitizers and those who used soap and water, and concluded that there was no significant difference. Teachers and school nurses, however, said they preferred the hand sanitizers over soap and water.
Some college health officials said the Purell units offered a psychological edge more than anything.
“We put the dispensers up because we like thinking they help,” Mary Rick, director of the health center at Spring Arbor University, in Michigan, says in an e-mail message. “We are in huge denial.”
A couple of years ago, an outbreak of a stomach flu so nasty that students began calling it simply “The Gastro” ran its nauseous course on Wesleyan’s Connecticut campus. Soon enough, health officials and students formed a hygiene campaign. They called it “Infection Control” and promptly got money to install Purell dispensers, at $55 apiece, in eight computer labs on the campus.
Use of the dispensers has not been quite what they had hoped, not even at the health center, where a parade of ill students traipses in each day, right past the Purell dispenser mounted next to the front desk.“Hardly anybody uses it,” says Ms. Walter, the health center director, with more than a touch of incredulity.
So this year, the Infection Control team plans to distribute 3,000 foil packets of Purell to students’ mailboxes. It is also considering a screen saver for the labs’ computers that would urge people to get a pump of the gel on their way out.
Are college students really dirty enough to justify all the excitement?
“They’re pigs,” says Ms. Rick, of Spring Arbor. “Just stand in the bathroom and you can’t even count how many don’t wash their hands after leaving a stall. That’s just the girls. Just think what the guys are like.”
http://chronicle.com
Section: Short Subjects, Volume 54, Issue 25, Page A1
UPDATE: Check out the Wesleyan Infection Control website, created by the Student Health Advisory Committee