3. AIDS

Q: AIDS once again occupies a slot on the administrative agenda.

A: The College already has made a commitment to educating undergraduates about AIDS. We assumed the leadership position, and we attracted a fair amount of national attention as a result of that. What we haven't developed is a set of policies or guidelines that we can turn to should we have a person carrying the virus within our community.

Many of our fellow institutions have expressed similar concerns about the absence of policy in this area. Some institutions, like Columbia, have an information brochure on AIDS that has some policies in it. It is our concern at Dartmouth that we not be caught sleeping on this issue. During the coming year we will work with the medical school and the medical center and try to understand the risks associated with AIDS. We will then consider policies that will help guide our administrators, students and faculty. It does not have to be a very complicated policy, but we should think through what our institutional response should be.

We won't be doing this alone. We will work with the other schools in the Ivy group and in close consultation with the American College Health Association.