Jeremy Presser '04 has had rotten luck. He was accepted into this summer's Foreign Study Program in Beijing, only to have it cancelled due to the threat of severe acute respiratory syndrome. A few years ago, his trip to St. Petersburg on the Russian FSP was also cancelled because of violence in the city. His flight was also scheduled to depart on Sept. 11, 2001.
Presser is one of 20 students affected by the College's decision to cancel the China FSP. Dartmouth's other summer program in Asia -- the Advanced Language Study Abroad Program in Tokyo, Japan, has not been cancelled.
"There have been very few SARS cases in Tokyo," said John Tansey, Executive Director of Off-Campus Programs. "We have no indication there would be a problem there."
The FSP in Beijing was officially cancelled last week in a letter to the students, although they had been notified a month ago that there was a possibility of cancellation.
School administrators monitor the advisories on the regularly-updated web sites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.
Yale University has also cancelled all nonessential travel to SARS-affected areas. Yale has stopped funding all undergraduate travel to Hong Kong, mainland China, Singapore and Vietnam, and students who do go will not receive school credit, according to Helaine Klasky, Director of Public Affairs at Yale.
"Of course the students are disappointed," Klasky said. "But if they were to go and get infected, and show any symptoms, they would be quarantined immediately. They would not have any access to communications with friends or family. They would be totally isolated."
New Haven's travel precautions may spread to New York. Columbia was planning to send 52 students to China this summer. But administrators met this week and are still finalizing plans. Nothing has yet been cancelled officially, but an announcement is expected to be made today.
SARS is an airborne virus. Symptoms include a fever of 100.5 degrees or higher, a cough and shortness of breath.
As of April 22, the WHO reported 3,947 cases worldwide, with 229 deaths. Of those cases, 3,464 were in China.
There have been no deaths from SARS reported in the United States. Of the 231 suspected and probable cases, the most were in California, with 46. There has been one case reported in New Hampshire and two in Vermont.
The decision to cancel the Beijing FSP was made official on April 9.
"When we cancelled it we didn't have as much information as we have now," Susan Blader, Director of the Beijing FSP said, "which proves our decision was absolutely correct. Beijing was not giving accurate numbers. Yesterday, nine people died in Beijing alone."Blader explained that the flight provides the greatest dangers for transmission of the disease. "The air is limited [and] re-circulated and everyone is in very close contact with one another. A mask will do nothing on an entire trip to Beijing."
No other FSPs to China have ever had to be cancelled, according to Blader. However, the 1989 Beijing FSP was "immediately switched to a program in Taiwan" after the Tiananmen Square incident.
Currently, Dartmouth alumni work in the People's Republic of China, but there are no students studying there now, according to Blader.
Normally, students take their first year of Chinese at Dartmouth and receive the second year abroad. The program in Beijing has continued seamlessly for 21 years. Instead of an FSP in China, students this summer will have China brought to Hanover.
"We're offering second-year Chinese on campus this summer," Blader said.
"We want to provide everything we can to give the students what they would have had, including daily cultural events like cooking and movies. We have acquired Chinese cereal, soap, etc. We'll do our very best."
The students will live in the Asian Studies Center, a teaching residence where only Chinese is spoken. "And we're really going to enforce that this summer," Blader said.
Jesse Gero '06 is considering majoring in Chinese, and will stay this summer. He was one of the students who had planned to go to Beijing, and had intended to stay in China for the fall and study on another program. "But now that's up in the air," he said.
Gero hopes to go to France next Spring. Perhaps he will have better luck than Presser did.
"I'm 0-for-2," Presser said. "I wonder if I'm ever going to get out of this country. It's frustrating that you learn the languages, and then you don't get to go experience the culture."
Presser expressed little excitement for the alternative "China-in-Hanover" program offered this summer.