Hello,

I am writing an email I never expected to write, but all signs point to us being in the beginning stages of a measles outbreak on campus. Wednesday afternoon we took one of the recruits in Basic Training to the clinic as he had developed a fever and a rash. The clinic determined that he was displaying symptoms of measles, and because of the measles outbreak in west Texas, they tested for measles and reported it as a suspected measles case. Due to the nature of measles, and the implications of a positive case on campus, the last 36 hours have been a bit of a whirlwind of calls to the state health department, researching measles, figuring out next steps, and tracking down data on our students. We do not have the official confirmation from the measles test yet, but after further research into the symptoms and health history of the individual in question, the health department has a high confidence that we are dealing with a case of measles and has advised us to operate as though we do have a measles outbreak on campus.

Unfortunately, since measles is contagious for four days prior to the onset of the rash, the entire Battalion and Basic Training will likely have been exposed. In-Processing was living in Aspen over the weekend, and doing prayer time and meals with the Battalion prior to R-Night, all while the individual would have been contagious. Additionally, as it happened at the start of Basic Training, the individual was in contact with a large number of administrative and support staff throughout the onboarding process. From the guidance the state has given us, an exposure counts as spending two minutes in the same room a contagious person was in, even up to two hours after they left the room, or just walking through the same doorway that an infected person used. Additionally, for an unvaccinated individual, 90% of exposures will result in an infection. The exposure load we are dealing with is three days of frequent, lengthy exposure, so we are preparing for a worst case scenario of every unvaccinated student and staff member contracting measles within the next few weeks. About 50% of the men in Basic Training and Battalion are not vaccinated against measles, so that is a pretty high number of cases in that worst case scenario.

At this point there is nothing we can do to try and minimize or contain the exposure for the Battalion or Basic Training, so we are preparing to ride it out as best we can, while trying to minimize the impact on the student body as best as we can. We also have a delicate balance to strike with working with our students and their parents who range the entire spectrum on their perspective on medical treatments, while also working with the state health department, who is trying to minimize the impact on the surrounding communities.