SARS reaction frustrates BU student

For Leah Seskin, the last week has been a major disappointment.

After starting to get immersed in her internship on a Boston University-affiliated study abroad program in Beijing, China, and beginning to like both classes and people on the program, she was told last Thursday she would have three days to pack and head back to her home a world away.

And all for a disease she thought was not much to fear anyway.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has instilled fear in people around the globe, and that fear hit home for the only BU student studying abroad in Beijing last Thursday, when program coordinators on her study abroad program told her she would be flying back to America because of the illness.

‘We had had SARS meetings before,’ Seskin said Thursday night, two days after arriving back in the United States a month earlier than expected. ‘At that one, they were like ‘we just decided to cancel the program.”

‘They gave us three days and told us we were leaving,’ she said. ‘It was a shock some people were expecting it, but it was really short notice.’

SARS had killed nearly 100 people around the world as of this week, according to reports. Nearly 1,000 have been stricken with the sickness.

But Seskin said she was sad to come home early, especially because she did not feel at risk to catch the disease.

‘I didn’t think it was all that bad, personally,’ Seskin said.

Officials from China Educational Trips Academic Programs began warning program participants about the sickness, which has caused fear in Southeast Asian cities since mid-March, just days after the news broke. But the warnings had, for the most part, been simple advisories about how to avoid the disease, Seskin said.

‘We just heard that there was a virus,’ Seskin said. ‘We were told just not to go to Hong Kong, but we didn’t hear much about Beijing until the last couple of weeks.’

She had little idea the program would simply end, and neither did her mother.

Seskin’s mother Ann said she was not very worried herself when news of the disease broke last month because most instances of it initially popped up in Hong Kong and other southeast Asian cities.

‘Frankly, my immediate reaction was that it was in the southern part of China, so I wasn’t worried at all,’ Seskin’s mother said. ‘With the numbers of people, it just seems to be kind of a ridiculous hysteria thing.’

Though other schools participating in the program told their students they could fly home early, BU did little to communicate with Seskin or her parents about their options, or even to tell them about the safety precautions being taken on Seskin’s behalf, she and her mother said. Though they were not worried, both said it was disturbing not to hear from the school.

‘I really think BU has a lot of rethinking to do,’ Ann Seskin said.

Still, Leah Seskin said SARS media attention has, for the most part, been blown out of proportion and she would go back if she could. Though it has received widespread media coverage, the chance of coming down with the sickness is really minuscule of millions of Beijing residents, few have actually come down with the illness, she said.

‘I mean, there’s a greater chance of catching and dying of the flu than from SARS,’ Seskin said. ‘It’s just because it’s a new thing a new virus and people don’t know what’s causing it. Other diseases are much easier to catch and die from.’