Official Says Sickouts Up 14 Per Cent

The number of students getting medical excuses from midyear exams jumped 14 per cent from last year, administrators at the University Health Services (UHS) said yesterday.

The increase, from 456 to 528 students, conforms with a fairly steady rise over the last five years, Rhoda Neidorf, medical records administrator for UHS, said yesterday. Five years ago, during the 1973-74 midyear exam period, only 149 students "sicked out."

"I'm sure the Faculty Council will be somewhat disturbed to see that increase," Dean K. Whitla, director of the University's Office of Instructional Research and Evaluation, said yesterday. He added that some changes made in the examination process to cut down on the number of medical excuses had been discussed by the Council and "may well be considered again."

"We have three or four options," Whitla said. "We could recommend difficult make-up exams, or we could schedule them for unattractive times, like spring recess or Thanksgiving," Whitla said.

"An asterisk might also be attached to any grade that was the result of an extended period of time," Whitla added.

Whitla said that the increase was especially disturbing because "the number of seriously ill students has not changed."

"People have more of an attitude that they have to be in 100 per cent shape to take an exam than they used to have," Warren E.C. Wacker, director of UHS, said yesterday. "A few years ago, they would have gritted their teeth and taken the tests," he said.

Wacker added, though, that it was "impossible" to tell if students were truly sick. "I don't think that there are many malingerers," he said.

"Right now, our standard procedure is to demonstrate to students the reality that they will have to take a make-up exam in the spring without the benefit of a reading period," Wacker said. "I certainly don't think they do any better the second time around," he added.

Wacker also said that UHS plans no changes in its system of granting medical excuses. He said that the reforms discussed in the Faculty Council "might be a way of bringing things back to where they were.