Scabies Infestation at Harvard a Total Mood-Killer for Horny Frosh
As if dorm life weren't humiliating enough already, a freshman dorm at Harvard has contracted a group case of scabies, a parasitic disease involving skin-burrowing mites usually confined to livestock, 19-C covered wagons, and Oregon Trail.
Today at 2:30 residents of Pennypacker Hall congregated on the first floor of their building to receive medicated cream and instructions on the eradication of the skin-borne (read: sex-related) infections.
Treatment involves application of Permethrin cream for at least eight hours, followed by rigorous showering and the fumigation of all clothing and bed linens, courtesy of Environmental Health and Services.
In a letter to Pennypacker residents, adminstrators warn that scabies treatment is not terribly precise, or fast-acting:
Please be aware that the process of treating everyone and making sure the building is clean may take a while, so your patience will be much appreciated. Additionally, itchiness may continue for a few weeks until the mites and eggs have been removed from your skin with its natural turnover. It is vital that persons with whom you have had close personal contact be treated, even if they do not have symptoms.
Basically, the infected frosh have creepy-crawlies spawning beneath their skin, and cannot do anything except wait for said creepy-crawlies to die off ("natural turnover" means the carcasses will just kind of float around infected students' bodies until the they disentegratre and get, like, sweated out), try not to itch, and -- oh yeah -- stop having sex.
Not that anyone will knowingly hook up with a Pennypacker ever again.
After the jump: The Pennypacker scabies letter in full, pictures of forlorn freshmen receiving treatment and feeling generally disgusted with themselves, and scans of Harvard's official hand-outs on the topic -- all courtesy of our man on the ground, P-pack resident Idriss Fofana.
Written images are scans; click for high-resolution views.
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October 14th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
hah.
October 14th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
that’s disgusting.
October 14th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
i wonder when lena chen will announce that SHE broke the news.
October 14th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
This is actually too good to be true.
October 14th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Harvard students don’t have sex anyway, so it looks like the dorks dodged the bullet here! Man, suck to have scabes..
October 14th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
“…..As if being a Harvard student wasn’t humiliating enough already, a freshman dorm at Harvard has contracted a group case of scabies…”
October 14th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
How are they supposed to cover their entire body with that little bit of cream?
October 14th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
what you all should know is that idriss fofana lives in the room where the scabies originated. guilty? probably. a glory whore? definitely.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
what you all should know is that idriss fofana lives in the room where the scabies originated. guilty? probably. a glory whore? definitely.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
what you all should know is that idriss fofana lives in the room where the scabies originated. guilty? probably. a glory whore? definitely.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
For the record, we’re actually all very proud of our scabies and would like to note the following:
Chances are, scabies were spread to other dorms on campus. But we have been thoroughly disinfected, making us the only people who certainly do NOT have scabies.
Despite this, I had fun at dinner this evening writing a scabies song, which I will recount here. It’s sung to the tune of “Daisy, Daisy”.
Scabies, scabies
Scabies you make me blue
I’m half crazy
Itching and scratching you
I’ve taken every precaution
All of my sheets are washin’
And I put on the cream
And my clothes have been cleaned
But I still might give scabies to you
October 14th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
You’re funny! I want to be friends with you… over the internet. Seriously. Don’t touch me.
October 14th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
i’m pretty sure the scabies originated elsewhere since the people showing symptoms are in other rooms. H’11 seems pretty eager to deflect the blame.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
“Hey man, can you get my back for me?”
October 15th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Wow….wow, rofl.
Oh, and “Put the cream under your fingernails and toenails with a toothpick” - what about the girl with the cast?
October 15th, 2007 at 9:14 am
So if I got scabies from my girlfriend and scabies are transmitted via sex, then….
I’ll never look at art school girls the same ever again.
October 15th, 2007 at 10:52 am
now this is news!
October 15th, 2007 at 10:55 am
now this is news! good job ivygate
October 15th, 2007 at 11:33 am
It seems that Yale is practicing biological warfare again. Good job, Yale!
October 15th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Good job, Ivygate. You scooped The Harvard Crimson!
October 15th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Wow, scabies pwnd that whole dorm!
October 15th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Good job publishing some great libel in an effort to assuage your pain at not getting into Harvard. A case of sour grapes, I guess.
Anyway, I’d like to make some things clear - iniquitous activities inside of our dormitory are not ubiquitous, as this article portrays them to be. Additionally, not every freshman from this dormitory had “creepy-crawlies sprawling beneath [our] skin.” Rather, the application of the cream and laundry were simply efforts to prevent its spread.
When you malign a place that I live in, you absolutely disgust me, especially when I try to maintain a high level of appropriateness throughout my actions herein.
October 15th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Dear Emanuel: please chill the eff out. That is all.
October 15th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
“Columbia ‘09er says: It seems that Yale is practicing biological warfare again. Good job, Yale!”
SHHHH! Way to blow our cover! :-P
Haha Emanuel definitely sounds like frosh. And FYI, you don’t need two prepositions in a row, nor should you leave them hanging willy-nilly! (pet peeve: ill-executed pretension, but you’ll learn with time - it’s a pre-req to graduate ya know).
October 15th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Way to cement the Harvard douchebag stereotype.
October 15th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
emanuel sounds an awful lot like the student council douchebag-in-chief… so either this is clever satire, or all harvard students sound eerily like pompous pricks.
October 15th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
ROFL! this is just awesome. I miss University Health Services already.
October 16th, 2007 at 1:28 am
oh whatever, it was funny, admit it.
October 16th, 2007 at 3:02 am
“Emanuel” (fake name) got slammed by Y ‘10.
October 16th, 2007 at 7:11 am
…wow. i was just living in ppack this summer. hah..good thing i missed the scabies outbreak
October 16th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
oh, come on: what college freshman doesn’t go through the phase of over-stating everything?
“I am absolutely disgusted by your gross slander of my hallowed institution. furthermore … subsection two of my argument, i postulate blah blah blah…”
that’s great stuff; it’s just priceless. You can’t write like that without a MASSIVE sense of self-righteousness. wonder if he’s an Objectivist, too…
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:18 pm
scabies is not an STD, these ppl need to get their facts straight.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:22 pm
PROBABLY BECAUSE YOU GUYS NEVER CLEAN.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:22 pm
PROBABLY BECAUSE YOU GUYS NEVER CLEAN.