This post was updated Oct. 23 at 7:31 p.m.
It goes by many names.
The frat flu, freshmen fever, dorm disease – you know what I’m talking about.
From the student not covering their mouth in lecture to the ASUCLA worker desperately trying to hold in their sneeze, fall quarter coughs follow UCLA students everywhere they go.
But instead of going about daily life with contagious illnesses, students must stay home if sick.
The diseases that permeate the fall are often respiratory. Pamina Gorbach, an epidemiology and infectious diseases professor, said COVID-19, influenza and colds spread around campus easily.
“It’s (infectious disease is) transmitted when small liquid particles come out, when people cough, sneeze, speak, sing or breathe,” Gorbach said. “Things are passed through the air, mostly at short range. That’s what we call aerosol transmission, and they’re very commonly transmitted in what we call ‘crowded indoor settings.’”
There’s nothing that screams “crowded indoor settings” like a college campus: 300-person lectures, triple-occupancy dorm rooms, crowded parties, long lines and many other situations fit this description.
Gorbach said although bacterial infections are less common than aerosol viruses – such as COVID-19 and flu – they still exist on campus. Naina Aggarwal, a third-year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student, said she recently conducted a research project on bacteria in residential college areas.
“Everything in the dorms and apartments is covered in bacteria, and a lot of it is very normal, like food or skin bacteria, so it’s not actually harmful to people,” Aggarwal said. “But what I did find is that about 30% of the bacteria were potentially pathogenic.”
Whether it be through particles in the air or a surface you touched, students are constantly exposed to illness.
It is important to take precautions.
Gorbach said she recommended students get their flu and COVID-19 vaccines for the year and that it is important to wear a mask or stay home if you feel ill.
“The right thing to do, ethically, is to wear a mask,” she said.
Aggarwal added that it is important to consider how your illness might affect others – she said many people at UCLA may be at a greater risk of severe sickness.
With that in mind, the solution seems obvious. When ill, students should stay home and limit their contact with peers to protect the public health of their school.
But it is not always so simple.
Lucero Herrera, a senior research analyst at the UCLA Labor Center, said she found that 71% of students attending Los Angeles County public institutions have reported going to work while sick because of financial pressure.
“There are more students that work nowadays,” she said. “There’s a rising cost of living paired with higher tuition costs, so we see that more and more students are actually having to engage in paid work to be able to make ends meet, to pay for rent in addition to their educational expenses.”
This issue is exacerbated by a capitalistic tendency to wear sickness like a “badge of honor.” Professional culture creates a stigma in taking time off for fear of upsetting the balance of the workplace.
Students at UCLA also fall victim to this. Such an occurrence explains why lecture halls echo with the coughs of people that should be at home and resting.
“They’re prioritizing that kind of hustle over their own well being, over their academic performance,” Herrera said. “You need time for your body to be well.”
Herrera added that workplaces and professors sometimes do not have accommodations in cases of sickness, something she believes should change. ASUCLA only started to allow paid sick leave for part-time workers in 2025.
Herrera said to get proper rest, students should know their rights and know the time off they are owed. Students ought to know the sick day policies that employers and teachers are compelled to comply with.
So please, when you sense that tickly feeling in the back of your throat, do not try to push through.
Instead, read up on your workplace’s sick day policy and reach out to your professors and TAs to let them know you are not well. Stock up on some masks for when you will have to venture out.
Instead of continuing to spread illness to every corner of this campus, help steadily minimize the thunderous cough we are so accustomed to.
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