University of Maryland mold adenovirus

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Now, the 18-year-old freshman was curled up in the fetal position on the floor of her dorm room at Elkton Hall in College Park, her brown hair resting on the shaggy white rug. She warned her friends, Sarah Hauk and Riley Whelan, to stay away from a plastic bag where she had just vomited.
The teenagers hoisted Olivia up and shuffled to the elevator. Once inside, Olivia leaned against the wall and slid to the floor.
“Don’t sit down,” Riley said. “Come on, it’s just a short ride. You can do this.”
“I literally can’t,” said Olivia, the words slicing her sore throat like knives. “I have to lay down.”
Olivia had been sick most of her first semester living in an overcrowded dorm that was infested with mold. But her symptoms now were far worse than a cough and congestion.
Her skin was pale, and dark circles cupped her eyes. The lymph nodes in her neck had swollen so much they felt like golf balls. The freshman — who turned late-night trips to the dining hall into stargazing adventures, belted out Miley Cyrus songs on demand and easily flipped strangers into friends — was sprawled across the elevator floor.
Sarah and Riley linked arms with Olivia and made their way through the dorm lobby into the cool night of Nov. 8. They watched as Olivia trudged to a parking lot where her dad was waiting in his car. She didn’t turn back to wave goodbye.
As Olivia battled her mysterious illness, the University of Maryland was rocked by turmoil. Widespread mold that fall had forced the temporary evacuation of nearly 600 students in Elkton Hall after outraged parents besieged officials at the state’s flagship university.
The administration already was dealing with a full-blown scandal over the death of Jordan McNair, a 19-year-old football player who succumbed to heatstroke in June. Athletic trainers had waited more than an hour to call 911 after he showed signs of extreme exhaustion. His death exposed deep problems within the athletic department and led to the dismissal of the football coach, the retirement of the university president and resignation of the chairman of the university system’s governing board.

In November and December, the University of Maryland would become the epicenter of an outbreak of adenovirus, which can have symptoms similar to a cold or flu. But certain virulent strains can sicken healthy individuals and be particularly dangerous to people with weakened immune systems — people like Olivia, who was on medication for Crohn’s disease, a serious digestive tract condition.
In these cases, medical experts say, early detection can be key to treating severe adenovirus.
But the university waited 18 days to tell the community after learning the virus was present on campus. Officials discussed — but decided against — notifying students with compromised immune systems and residents living in Elkton Hall, according to records reviewed by The Washington Post.
As the days passed, more and more students fell ill.
Many parents and students have denounced the administration’s handling of the viral outbreak and the mold infestation, complaining its actions endangered thousands of students, faculty and staff on campus. In the end, more than 40 students were sickened with adenovirus, and 15 of them treated at hospitals, according to the university.
Mold does not cause adenovirus but can set the stage for other health problems. The director of the university health center, in emails to administrators, acknowledged that “mold can cause respiratory irritation that may increase susceptibility of any viral infection.”
In recent statements to The Post, university officials defended their actions, saying they hired a remediation company to remove the mold in September and provided guidance to students on how to prevent the spread of viruses. They said they went beyond what was legally required to address the adenovirus outbreak and public health officials advised that it was not necessary to inform the public about the virus. In April, the college hired two outside doctors to review the school’s response. They found the university followed policies and procedures.
“The actions we took are in line with CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance on adenovirus outbreaks and were consistent with the University’s strong commitment to the health and safety of our students,” said David McBride, director of the health center.
In early November, the virus was quietly spreading through campus. Only days after Olivia had slumped in the elevator at Elkton Hall, she was fighting for her life at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
On Nov. 13, her father frantically called the university from the intensive care unit in Baltimore. When McBride called back, Olivia’s father pleaded for information. What’s going on with the mold? Or was there something else on campus making students sick?
LEFT: Olivia Paregol takes a selfie with her parents, Ian and Meg, at the University of Maryland in September. RIGHT: Students move into Elkton Hall, which would later be evacuated because of mold. (Family photo; photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Olivia, or Livy Shea, as her family and friends called her, grew up in a small community west of Baltimore and considered going to college in South Carolina. She loved beaches and had a soft spot for country music. Mostly, she wanted a university with a lot of school spirit. She planned to study criminology, inspired by the TV show “CSI.”
During her senior year of high school, Olivia was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an incurable condition. She began treatment at Hopkins that left her immune system weakened. At college, she would give herself injections of Humira, an anti-inflammatory medication, every two weeks. Olivia’s parents, Ian and Meg Paregol, wanted their daughter, the baby of the family, to stay close to home.
When Olivia was accepted at the University of Maryland, it checked all the boxes and was only an hour away. After Olivia learned she had been assigned Room 3152 at Elkton Hall, she felt lucky to have landed in a dorm with air conditioning.
On Aug. 24, Olivia’s family stuffed two cars with dorm supplies and headed to College Park. She had coordinated colors with her 18-year-old roommate, Megan Sassaman, and bought a cream-colored tapestry with a map of the world to hang in their third-floor dorm room. Olivia’s parents tucked handwritten notes of encouragement in her dresser drawer before saying goodbye.
Elkton Hall, an eight-story, red-brick dorm located in the shadow of the university’s football stadium, was bursting with students. Built in 1966, it was designed to hold about 530 students, but nearly 570 were squeezed into the building because of a large freshman class.
Study lounges had been converted to dorm rooms for four students and some rooms for two residents now housed three. Students crammed the narrow halls and communal bathrooms on each floor. They waited endlessly for elevators because one of the three was always broken.
It was one of the soggiest summers in Maryland history. By the end of September, more than 50 inches of precipitation had fallen. Eventually, 2018 would go down as the region’s wettest year on record.
Olivia’s room felt like a swamp, so humid that bath towels never dried. The air-conditioning unit in her room stopped working in the first week of September and had to be fixed repeatedly. By mid-September, Olivia and her roommate, Megan, had persistent coughs, and it seemed harder than usual to breathe.
A pungent odor hung thick, and it was impossible to ignore whenever Riley and Sarah, 18-year-old freshmen who lived together on the eighth floor, visited Olivia’s room.
Mold had surfaced earlier that summer in Elkton Hall and other dorms across campus. University officials dispatched housekeeping staff to wipe off visible mold before students arrived in August, according to workers interviewed by The Post. With damp conditions and overcrowding, it didn’t take long for the mold to return.
It began to invade Elkton — on the blinds, under the beds, inside sneakers and all over the cooling units. On Sept. 18, a resident assistant sent a message to students on Olivia’s floor instructing them to check their rooms for mold: “Best way to see it is in the dark using a flashlight . . . It’ll probably look fuzzy and green.”
“we got mold,” Olivia texted Riley later that day.
“how bad,” Riley asked.
“look under ur drawers on ur dresser,” Olivia responded. “that’s where we have it.”
The campus again sent housekeeping staff, who said that they were untrained in mold removal and without the proper protective gear, to wipe down desks and chairs with an all-purpose disinfectant. The workers were beset by scratchy throats, itchy eyes and headaches. Some called in sick and visited the health center.
After Megan’s mother complained, staff replaced their dressers, blinds and desks. But the mold grew back in rooms across Elkton. Housing officials hastily called a meeting on Sept. 21 to address the mold in Elkton Hall as parents descended on the campus that Friday for Family Weekend.
“You have a sick building with 600 children,” one mother told university officials at the meeting. Students cried about being ill.
McBride, 50, handed out business cards and told the roughly two dozen parents and students in attendance to call him at the health center if they had concerns.
He had spent his early career as a physician at a community health center outside Boston. It was there, he said, that he learned the importance of engaging with people outside of the clinical setting. McBride later led student health services at Boston University before arriving at the University of Maryland in 2014.
During the meeting at Elkton, housing officials insisted they only learned of the latest mold outbreak in recent days and blamed it on the unusually wet weather.
Mold under a desk in Olivia's room and on a sandal belonging to Megan Sassaman, her roommate, from late September. (Photos by Megan Sassaman)
Hours after the meeting, administrators announced they would move students out of the dorm over the coming weeks and pay for them to stay in local hotels. They would hire an outside specialist to clean the mold and an engineer to examine the underlying cause.
That report would find
Mold outbreaks on campus were not new or confined to Elkton, according to workers; articles in the Diamondback, the student newspaper; and documents reviewed by The Post. Since 2017, the university has received reports of mold at all 38 residence halls in College Park, records show.
In recent years, other colleges have grappled with mold outbreaks. In October, the University of Tennessee closed a dorm housing roughly 600 students for the rest of the year. Last fall, Montclair State University in New Jersey tested mold spore levels before and after remediation even though there are no federal or state requirements to do so.
The University of Maryland, where in-state tuition, housing and other costs run about $25,000, took a different approach. It would rotate students out floor by floor while the remediation was ongoing, starting at the top of Elkton, where residents had made more complaints about mold. And, at the recommendation of the campus environmental safety team, the college said it decided against testing the type of mold, noting the Environmental Protection Agency has said such testing is unnecessary.
Riley and Sarah, who both battled coughs and congestion, on Sept. 23 moved to the nearby Cambria Hotel with other eighth-floor residents. Contractors in hazmat suits and masks began cleanup efforts at Elkton.
A health and safety specialist who inspected Elkton on behalf of the campus labor union said the building’s condition was so bad that it looked as though it were filled with floodwater.
Workers placed dehumidifiers in the hallways throughout the building. On Olivia’s floor, a tube drained water from a dehumidifier into a drinking fountain. Olivia and her roommate, Megan, weren’t scheduled to move out for another 10 days.
Olivia, meanwhile, couldn’t stop coughing.
On Monday, Megan walked to the student health center, a red-brick building in the heart of campus, for the second time that month. Megan said that during a breathing test a physician assistant asked whether she was trying hard enough because her oxygen levels had dropped.
Megan complained in an email to university officials about how she had been treated. “[It] made me feel as though my symptoms were pushed under the rug yet again,” Megan wrote on Sept. 25 to University of Maryland President Wallace D. Loh and others. She mentioned Olivia’s illness and said: “I continue to live in an unhealthy environment. The lack of communication and lack of acknowledgement of the issue saddens me and comes across as if the University puts student health as a low priority.”
After more than a week of relentless coughing, Olivia now had a sore throat and chest congestion. On Sept. 26, she also visited the student health center at the urging of her parents. There, a doctor diagnosed her with an unspecified viral upper respiratory infection with a cough and “exposure to mold,” according to her medical records. She was prescribed cough medicine and a nasal saline spray.
In an effort to understand the effects of the mold infestation, health center staff, at McBride’s direction, had begun to take note of where students who came for treatment were living and if their respiratory symptoms were worse inside the dorms.
After the relocation plan was announced on Sept. 21, Megan’s parents, Kim and Kevin Sassaman, sent emails to top university officials asking why Megan and Olivia couldn’t be moved to a hotel sooner, given their poor health. With approval from a housing official, the two students moved into the Cambria on Sept. 26. The roommates stocked up on beauty masks and snacks for their makeshift dorm room.
Two days after they checked into the hotel, McBride, the director of the health center, wrote Olivia that a doctor there “let me know that you’re feeling unwell and that mold may be a factor. I know that you’re scheduled to move for cleaning in early October. Do you want for me to advocate for a sooner move to another location on campus until after the cleaning is complete?”
Olivia responded: “My roommate actually already had us moved. Thank you for reaching out, but I’m already in a hotel at the moment.”
After 11 days in the hotel, Olivia and Megan moved back into Elkton Hall, where the remediation was winding down.
Parents increasingly took to social media to vent about conditions on campus. On Oct. 8, they started to complain on Facebook that their children were misdiagnosed at the health center, were told they had unspecified viruses or couldn’t even get an appointment.
In an interview, Angela Hayes said her son, a freshman who lived in Easton Hall, repeatedly sought help for a sore throat and high temperature. Health center staff told him he had a virus. When he didn’t improve, she said, he went to a nearby urgent care center, where he was diagnosed with acute tonsillitis and prescribed antibiotics.
“It was almost like a factory,” Hayes said of the university health center. “They’d tell students, ‘You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.’ ”
McBride told The Post that in October he noticed an uptick of fever-associated illnesses that were not the flu. He scheduled a meeting in early November of the Campus Infectious Disease Management Committee, a group that evaluates health threats.
In mid-October, Debbra Aiello’s 18-year-old son, who lived in La Plata Hall, called her at home in New Jersey complaining of a bad headache, sore throat and high fever. She drove down to College Park and brought him back to a pediatric emergency room in New Jersey. He had a 104-degree fever, and after a battery of tests, doctors determined he had an ear infection and adenovirus.
Aiello said she had never heard of adenovirus and had no clue that it could severely sicken a healthy teenage boy. It took him nearly a week to recover at home.
When his father drove him back to College Park, the son fell ill again, so they headed to the health center.
But there was a two-hour wait. They left campus and drove to an urgent care facility. Had the health center been able to treat the student, the university might have learned much earlier about the dangerous virus snaking its way through campus.
Midway through the fall semester, the death of Jordan McNair still dominated headlines.
In late October, the University System of Maryland Board of Regents huddled behind closed doors to discuss an investigation launched in the wake of his death that revealed poor management of the athletic department. During a May 2018 workout, Jordan had hyperventilated and complained of cramps, but athletic trainers waited for about an hour to seek emergency help. He underwent a liver transplant before dying in June.
“You entrusted Jordan to our care and he is never returning home again,” President Loh told the McNair family.
The case led to a review of the university’s accreditation, which could threaten the school’s federal funding.
On Oct. 30, the Board of Regents recommended that football coach DJ Durkin keep his job, triggering a barrage of criticism, including from Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R). The next day, the university reversed course and dismissed Durkin. The chairman of the Board of Regents would also resign amid the turmoil.
As this was unfolding, Olivia languished. She bailed early from a Halloween party, where she was dressed as one of the Three Blind Mice. She had painted her glasses black, dark enough to cover her puffy eyes, and told friends it pained her to speak.
“i can’t swallow my own spit,” Olivia texted Sarah on Oct. 31, “and my neck is so lumpy bc my lymph nodes so swollen.”
That day she went to her family doctor, where a pediatric nurse practitioner tested her for strep but found none. Two days later, on Nov. 2, as her symptoms worsened, Olivia’s father urged her to visit the campus health center. There, she complained to a physician that she had a fever, fatigue and a sore throat and mentioned that a friend had mono. The doctor ordered a test for mono, but Olivia didn’t have time to wait at the lab.
That evening, she was headed to a birthday celebration for her sister. At the dinner, Olivia whispered in between coughs that she was sure she had mono. Her father worried about her weakened immune system and was determined to take her home from school. To his surprise, she did not object.
Olivia soon retreated to her childhood bedroom. Over the weekend, she complained of chills and took hot showers to soothe her shivering body.
“r u coming back today?” Riley texted her the afternoon of Nov. 4, a Sunday.
Olivia replied that she didn’t know.
“my fever won’t break,” she wrote.
The university’s first warning of adenovirus among students came the day before Olivia’s Nov. 2 visit to the health center. McBride received an email from a physician at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, who told him about a College Park student who had been hospitalized there and tested positive for the virus.
“I thought it best that you know in case there are more,” wrote the physician, James Campbell.
In a follow-up phone call that day, Campbell told McBride that the student had been admitted with a high fever and pneumonia, according to records and interviews, and was suffering from “an unusual presentation” of adenovirus.
The virus was in the news: It had been linked to the deaths of children with weakened immune systems living at a long-term care facility in New Jersey. The outbreak ultimately killed 11 children and sickened more than two dozen others.

Certain strains can severely sicken healthy adults. The military has had multiple fatal outbreaks in barracks. A vaccine is available to military personnel but has not been approved for the general public.
Soon after the phone call with Campbell, McBride learned that a student who had been seen at the health center with a fever and respiratory problems had been admitted to Washington Adventist Hospital in Maryland, according to interviews and records. McBride suspected it was a second case of adenovirus and asked the hospital to run a test.
On Nov. 7, McBride convened the meeting of the Campus Infectious Disease Management Committee, which included about a dozen officials from student affairs, athletics, communications, housing and other departments. They discussed updating the campus plan for disease outbreaks. McBride told them about the increase in fever-associated illnesses on campus and several cases of hand, foot and mouth disease, which causes a mild rash and mouth sores.
McBride, however, did not advise the committee of the confirmed case of adenovirus or the second suspected one, according to the minutes. Asked why he didn’t bring up adenovirus, McBride told The Post that it is “not currently a reportable condition . . . we were more focused on what we knew at that time.”
Unlike some other infectious diseases, adenovirus is not governed by mandatory state or federal reporting requirements — doctors or hospitals are not required to alert health officials or the public when the virus is discovered.
Two days later, on Nov. 9, Andrew Catanzaro, a physician at Washington Adventist, followed up with McBride and emailed him that he was concerned about “others coming into the hospital who are quite ill . . . Perhaps you have an outbreak of Adenovirus on the campus.”
That day, the campus health center began testing for adenovirus. The nasal swab used to detect adenovirus is significantly more expensive than a flu or strep test, and it is not available at many primary care and urgent care clinics.
That Friday evening, McBride sent out a campuswide email about flu and virus prevention techniques, such as washing hands, and noted that there had been several cases of hand, foot and mouth disease. He made no mention of adenovirus.
“This is no cause for alarm,” he wrote in boldface type, “but it does give us the opportunity to practice effective prevention techniques for these types of illnesses.”
By then, Olivia had been out of school and at home for a week, except for a brief visit to Elkton to pick up her medication. She kept Sarah and Riley in the loop, texting “i just puked blood.”
She returned to her pediatric nurse practitioner on Nov. 5. The following day, her parents took her to the emergency room at Howard County General Hospital, where doctors treated her as if she had bacterial pneumonia and sent her home with antibiotics.
But the medication wasn’t working, and her chest began to hurt when she coughed.
Three days later, Olivia’s parents brought her back to Howard County hospital. She was admitted and tested for influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), hepatitis and bacterial blood infections, records show. All came back negative. But physicians did not test for adenovirus.
They knew she had pneumonia but it was unclear as to what had caused it and why she wasn’t getting better. They continued to treat her with antibiotics.
Howard County hospital officials later declined to answer questions about why they did not test Olivia for adenovirus.
Ian and Meg Paregol traded off nights sleeping on a small couch next to Olivia’s hospital bed. Ian, an attorney who represents clients with disabilities, had learned how to advocate for patients under difficult circumstances. He barely slept as he watched his daughter’s oxygen levels dip well below normal on Saturday night.
Olivia’s left lung was filling with fluid.
On Nov. 11, with her condition worsening, Olivia was moved into the intensive care unit. Doctors suggested puncturing her back with a needle to help drain fluid from her lungs.
Olivia, now struggling to speak, asked: “Will it hurt?”
Suddenly, her eyes rolled back and she suffered a seizure, thrashing against the bed. Medical staff rushed in, and Ian, fearing she was dying, ran from her bedside into the hallway. He fell to his knees and started to pray. Doctors intubated Olivia and administered sedative drugs.
That night, Howard County physicians planned to airlift her to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, where she could undergo a Hail Mary treatment: the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine or ECMO. Tubes circulate and oxygenate the patient’s blood outside of the body, giving the heart and lungs a chance to recover.
Ian and Meg drove to Hopkins. They took the elevator to one of the top floors of the hospital and stood by the window. There, they stared into the night sky and waited for the flashing lights and whirring blades of their daughter’s helicopter.
Back on campus, Sarah’s text messages to Olivia went unanswered.
“Okay you’re scaring me,” Sarah wrote. “I just wanna know ur okay/coming home tomorrow.”
Olivia’s roommate, Megan, was too sick to leave their dorm room. Megan had tried to get an appointment at the campus health center, but nothing was available.
On. Nov. 12, Megan’s mother, Kim Sassaman, wrote to Loh and McBride about her daughter’s illness and questioned whether mold remained in the dorm room. She asked for “full disclosure” on what was making her daughter and other students sick.
“Her constant illness is not an isolated case in Elkton,” Sassaman wrote. She alluded to Olivia, saying that Megan’s roommate was hospitalized with pneumonia and another student — their 18-year-old friend Humza Mohiuddin — had been hospitalized with respiratory issues.
McBride responded quickly and traded emails with Megan’s mother. “We’ve discovered several cases of a particularly nasty strain of adenovirus (a typical cold virus),” McBride wrote in one message. “If Megan has not been tested for this, we can either perform a swab at the UHC for it or you can ask her current caregiver to test for it.”
By then the state Department of Health was aware of the outbreak. On Nov. 12, Catanzaro, the infectious disease physician at Washington Adventist, alerted the state about two students who tested positive for adenovirus. The next day, McBride learned that a student tested at the health center was also positive for adenovirus.
At Hopkins, doctors began the ECMO treatment for Olivia and ordered dozens of tests, including a screening for respiratory viruses that could detect adenovirus.
After Olivia showed no improvement on Nov. 13, Ian, in a panic, called the university.
When McBride returned the call later that day, Ian pressed him about her illness and any connection to mold.
“I need some answers,” Olivia’s father pleaded. “I need to know what’s going on because she should not be this sick.”
“We’ve had a couple of cases of adenovirus appear,” McBride responded, according to Ian. He said he told McBride to immediately call Hopkins to share what he knew.
Later that afternoon, McBride left a voice mail for Ian, saying he had spoken to medical staff at Hopkins: “The state health department is getting involved as well, so we can try to prevent further spread of the virus called adenovirus, which is actually a pretty common cold virus. But every once in a while it causes a more severe illness. So we suspect that’s what it might be.”
Suddenly, Ian had a sobering realization: For the past week, doctors had been giving her a cocktail of antibiotics, which would only be effective if a bacterial infection were the underlying cause.
But the true culprit had been a virus.
Although many people recover from adenovirus on their own, immunocompromised patients with severe cases, such as Olivia, can benefit from antiviral drugs, such as cidofovir. The drug carries significant risks, including kidney failure, and has not been studied in large-scale trials for use in treating adenovirus.
“You want to start it before the patient gets too sick,” said Ivan Gonzalez, a physician at the University of Miami who has studied the use of cidofovir in adenovirus patients with compromised immune systems.
In Olivia’s case, doctors didn’t wait. On Nov. 13, hours after tests confirmed she had adenovirus, they began to administer cidofovir.
That afternoon, Linda Clement, vice president for student affairs, wrote to Loh, “We have three cases of adeno . . . it is likely [Prince George’s County] will declare an ‘outbreak.’ ”
About two weeks had passed since McBride learned of the first adenovirus case on campus. The unofficial tally of students with the virus was up to at least five, three of whom required hospitalization. There probably were many others who had not been diagnosed. The University of Maryland was now navigating one of the country’s first adenovirus outbreaks on a college campus.
Still, there was no announcement.
On Nov. 14, McBride sent an email to Richard Brooks, a CDC employee assigned to the state health department, and shared the university’s campuswide virus prevention email that was sent on Nov. 9. McBride asked Brooks, who works with state officials on outbreaks, if the CDC wanted the university to do more “adeno specific communication” with people on campus.
Later that day, Brooks responded by email: “Based on our conversation with CDC, we don’t think additional, more specific messaging about adenovirus is necessary at this point in time.”
On Nov. 15, McBride gathered the infectious disease committee — this time to talk about the growing number of adenovirus cases. The university’s plan for responding to low-level health threats states that officials should be “providing information to the community about the infection in question, increasing prevention measures in resident halls/dining halls/public locations.”

The group suggested conferring with Katie Lawson, the university’s chief communications officer, about sending a message to students who had compromised immune systems and to residents of Elkton Hall given “heightened sensitivity” over the mold, according to minutes of the meeting.
No message was sent that day alerting students, but McBride warned his counterparts at Georgetown, George Washington, American, Howard, Towson and other regional colleges. In an email, he told them about a “cluster” of adenovirus cases, noting that three students had been hospitalized, including one in “very serious condition.”
“Please keep your eye out for this on your campuses,” he wrote on Nov. 15.
At Hopkins, additional tests soon revealed that Olivia had adenovirus 7, a virulent strain responsible for the deaths of children in New Jersey.
When Angela Crankfield-Edmond, a health official with Prince George’s County, learned on Nov. 16 that preliminary results showed Olivia had the pernicious strain of adenovirus, she wrote to McBride, “Please do not tell anyone until we get the final result.”
Crankfield-Edmond later said the state instructed her not to make anything public until final results were available.
Hopkins physicians continued to give Olivia cidofovir and also began a blood treatment designed to boost her immunity.
But it made no difference.
Fluid rapidly accumulated in her once slender 130-pound body. By Nov. 16, she had swollen to 232 pounds. Her blood pressure plummeted. Her kidneys and liver were failing.

Glenn Whitman — an ICU physician at Hopkins — gathered Olivia’s family in a conference room to explain the best chance to save her life.
An open abdominal surgery could release fluid and pressure. An adhesive film would temporarily hold Olivia’s organs in place. If she survived, she could face up to a year of recovery in a hospital bed.
Ian and Meg asked him: What would he do?
Whitman broke down into tears. He had children as well, he told them. And he would do everything to save the Paregols’ daughter, just as if she were his own.
On Facebook, Ian asked family and friends to pray as Olivia underwent surgery on Saturday, Nov. 17.
The pulse within her feet had become faint. Now doctors were struggling to pick up a pulse in her legs. Amputation was a possible last resort.
Ian and Meg tried to channel Olivia’s mind-set. At what cost would she be willing to live?
“Ultimately what we really need is a miracle,” Ian posted on Facebook.
Early Sunday morning, on Nov. 18, the Paregol family made the 45-minute drive home from Hopkins to shower and change clothes. A nurse called with grim instructions: Come back as soon as possible.
With permission from Ian and Meg, doctors stopped giving Olivia blood pressure medication. They warned that she could die within minutes.
Country music — Olivia’s favorite — played in the room as her parents and two siblings, Zoe and Evan, took turns by the teenager’s bedside. They remembered the vacation to Turks and Caicos and trips in the family Prius with Olivia crammed in the middle seat between her brother and sister.
One by one they held her hand for hours that Sunday afternoon and told her how much they loved her.
At 10:15 p.m. on Nov. 18, Olivia Shea Paregol was pronounced dead.
Doctors listed three causes of death: organ failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome and adenovirus.
LEFT: Meg Paregol stands in her daughter Olivia's bedroom at her home in Glenwood. RIGHT: Ian Paregol sits for a portrait after getting a tattoo in memory of Olivia. (Photos by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Early the next morning, McBride wrote to Brooks, the CDC employee working with state health officials, saying he had an unconfirmed report that Olivia had died. Given that she had adenovirus 7, he wondered if they should go public.
“We’ve discussed internally here, and we don’t feel that this changes our plans to do any messaging,” Brooks responded an hour later. “To be clear, we are not recommending that you NOT put out any additional communications (i.e. if you feel the need to send any additional messaging, we are fine with that). We just aren’t recommending that you need to do so.”
After reaching out to the state, McBride faxed the result of Megan’s test at the campus health center to her family doctor — she also had adenovirus.
Around 2:30 p.m. that day, Nov. 19, McBride sent out a campuswide email that for the first time publicly acknowledged adenovirus, saying that there were six confirmed cases over the past two weeks. The next day, he revealed in another email to the campus that the virus had killed an unnamed student — Olivia — and urged others to take the virus seriously.
McBride privately expressed concern that an upcoming news article in the Baltimore Sun about the adenovirus outbreak might suggest that the University of Maryland “should have done more,” he wrote in an email to Crankfield-Edmond, the Prince George’s County health official.
“There was nothing else you could have done,” responded Crankfield-Edmond, who days earlier had told McBride to remain silent. “It’s a cold virus that is in the community.”
The next day, on Nov. 21, McBride appeared on a local television segment and defended the university’s response to the adenovirus outbreak.
“While we want to acknowledge that there are cases on campus, we don’t necessarily want to stir up unnecessary angst,” McBride said in the interview.
The Paregol family spent Thanksgiving planning a funeral. Two days later, on a rainy Saturday, the ground so wet that heels sunk into the mud, Olivia’s family and friends gathered at the Good Shepherd Cemetery in Ellicott City, Md.
Olivia’s longtime pediatrician, Jacqueline Brown, attended the service. Brown kept revisiting the early days of November, when Olivia had come into her office, ailing without an apparent cause. Brown said she would have recommended an adenovirus test if she had known that the virus was circulating among Maryland students.
“If we were looking for it sooner, then maybe the treatment might have worked,” Brown told The Post. “I think by the time that that’s what we realized, she was already very sick. And I’m not sure that it started in time to have made a difference.”
The following Monday, McBride publicly announced that there were three more cases of adenovirus.
On Nov. 28, four days after burying Olivia, her father wrote to McBride, accusing the university of a “pattern of indifference” and questioning the failure to alert Olivia about adenovirus.
“The information could have saved her life and a proper course of treatment could have been identified well before we were told about Adenovirus on 11/13,” he wrote, referencing his phone call that day with McBride. Ian told McBride that had physicians known what to look for, the antiviral treatment “could have been initiated long before she became critically ill.”
The Paregols wanted to sit face-to-face with the university president and try to understand why their daughter was dead. Two teenagers within six months had lost their lives. Ian and Meg wondered: Had the school learned nothing from Jordan McNair?
In early December, the Paregols gathered around a coffee table in the president’s office. Ian sat across from Loh, and Meg faced Clement, McBride’s supervisor. By then, the University of Maryland had disclosed that adenovirus had sickened at least 30 students.
“My condolences to your family,” Loh said. “This is such a terrible loss.”
After an uncomfortable silence, Ian began peppering Loh with questions.
Ian wanted Loh to understand the connection he saw between the mold infestation and the adenovirus outbreak. Ian said he knew that mold did not cause the virus, but the mold had made Olivia sick all semester. That made her more susceptible to other respiratory infections, such as adenovirus, he said. Her system was already compromised from her Crohn’s medication.
Ian asked Loh who had made the decision to stay quiet about adenovirus since it was discovered on Nov. 1, the day before Olivia visited the health center.
Loh, according to the Paregols’ recollection, responded that he had many employees and relied on their expertise for advice.
“You’re the president,” Ian said. “You’re the face of this university. You make the decisions. So this is all on you.”
After 30 minutes, the Paregols said an official began to usher them from the room. The family insisted on a few more questions but left unsatisfied with Loh’s responses.
In a statement to The Post, Loh, who is planning to retire in 2020, said: “I cannot speak to the medical care that Olivia received at emergency rooms or hospitals, or to whether or not an antiviral medication treatment could have saved her life. We care tremendously about student health and well-being, and we offer our condolences to the Paregol family for this tragic loss.”
Clement, in a recent interview with The Post, said she stood by the decision to take 18 days to publicly disclose the presence of adenovirus and felt reassured after two outside physicians reviewed the response to the outbreak. “We responded as quickly as we could,” she said. “They confirmed that the way we handled it was well done.”
A spokeswoman for Johns Hopkins Medicine, which operates both Howard County General Hospital and Johns Hopkins Hospital, declined to answer specific questions about Olivia’s treatment.
“We are deeply saddened about the death of Olivia Paregol,” the spokeswoman said in a statement. “Ms. Paregol was diagnosed with an adenoviral infection, for which there is no FDA-approved treatment. Her case was quite complex, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to summarize it in a brief media statement.”
At Elkton Hall, students were skeptical of the university’s efforts to eradicate the mold.
Days after Olivia’s funeral, her friends Humza and Megan returned to the dorm and found mold growing on the shoes in their closets. Housing officials gave Humza a humidity monitor for his room.
Megan eventually decided she had had enough and transferred to a school in another state.
In early January, Sarah and Riley joined Olivia’s family at Elkton Hall to clear out the rest of her belongings. Olivia’s parents and sister pulled up to the dorm on a cold, cloudy morning. They stood silently with housing officials and waited for the elevator, holding empty duffel bags.
Ian asked to go the eighth floor where Sarah and Riley had decorated a bulletin board with red construction paper and photos of Olivia’s brief time on campus. They wanted to feel like she was still a part of Elkton. As he looked at his daughter’s face, Ian broke down in tears.
In Room 3152, Sarah and Riley began to sort through Olivia’s clothes. They took some T-shirts, a pillow and folded up the tapestry of the world map. They planned to hang it on the wall of their on-campus apartment in the fall.
Sarah lay down on Olivia’s bed and stared at the ceiling. She wiped tears from her eyes.
Several days later, Sarah returned to Elkton Hall to move in for the spring semester.
She walked toward the elevator and looked up at the bulletin board. Olivia’s smiling face was gone. All of it had been taken down.
How this story was reported:
Reporters interviewed more than 100 people, including students, parents, university employees, and county, state and federal health officials. Health-care providers and mold and adenovirus experts were also consulted. The reconstruction of events, including conversations, was based on thousands of pages of medical records; hundreds of emails, text messages, voicemails and other reports; and documents provided by sources and through public records requests. The Washington Post requested emails from the University of Maryland that mentioned “mold” or “adenovirus.” The Post also asked the university to waive any fees, arguing that disclosing the documents would be in the public’s interest. Officials denied the fee waiver and estimated it would cost more than $63,000 to produce 25,000 responsive documents. The scope of the request was narrowed to 300 pages and it cost $690. The Post also reviewed emails provided through state and county records requests.
Julie Tate and Rick Maese contributed to this report. Editing by David Fallis and Jeff Leen. Videos by Patrick Martin. Photo editing by Nick Kirkpatrick. Video editing by Deirdra O’Regan. Copy editing by Matt Schnabel. Design and development by Victoria Adams Fogg. Project management by Julie Vitkovskaya.


I'm looking for information about an adenovirus outbreak at the University of Maryland and the related death of Olivia Paregol.

I'm looking for information regarding the adenovirus infection and subsequent death of Olivia Paregol at the College Park campus of the University of Maryland. I'm interested in how and when the university administration became aware of a possible outbreak and what steps were taken to inform vulnerable students and their parents of the risk. Details about other students' affected by the virus are relevant.  Administrative repercussions and actions and any steps taken to mitigate and prevent the spread of adenovirus also are relevant. Do not include any information directly related to students.

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U-Md. installs sensors to monitor moisture a year after mold infestation

As students at the University of Maryland’s flagship campus made their way back to school for the fall semester, officials installed 50 sensors to monitor moisture and humidity in a dozen buildings.
The move followed a tumultuous year at the College Park campus. Last fall, sprouting mold and an adenovirus outbreak engulfed the school in controversy. Then, last month, anthropology professors complained that persistent mold in their offices had destroyed belongings and made them sick.
Carlo Colella, the school’s vice president for administration and finance, said the heightened monitoring of campus facilities has helped officials stay on top of maintenance problems.
“We feel very comfortable that only a few of our buildings have persistent atmospheric moisture issues and that’s why we are deploying this moisture watch program, to stay ahead of that as best we can,” Colella said.
Even as U-Md. moved to improve environmental monitoring, students who live in a cluster of apartment-style residences belonging to the university reported recent episodes of mold and flooding.
Jared Bennett, 19, a sophomore, said he has been battling mold in the bathroom since he moved into Old Leonardtown, a collection of apartment-style residences on the southern end of campus.
“They’re just generally very humid, and the air-conditioning [units] are old. In the bathrooms, the shower curtains are hung too low, so everything grows mold,” Bennett said. “It’s most concerning, the amount of mold that grows, and, no matter how many times we clean it up, it comes back.”
Students are expected to permanently move out of Old Leonardtown at the end of this school year, with the 1970s-era structures later being demolished, student newspaper the Diamondback reported. About 225 students live in the complex, according to the university’s website.
Michael Robidoux, 19, said rain showers Oct. 20 flooded his bedroom, although he did not find mold.
“We realized that most of our floor was pretty wet. Rain had come through the walls and soaked our carpet,” the sophomore said. “It’s been pretty frustrating.”
A university spokeswoman said Old Leonardtown is not experiencing persistent problems and described mold growth reported in one apartment as an “isolated incident.”
U-Md. spent $30,000 to purchase and install the sensors. So far, they’ve been planted in three dorms and nine academic buildings. School leaders said they hope to identify mold growth before it leads to infestation.
Data is collected manually from the devices every 48 hours, said university spokeswoman Katie Lawson. In November, the sensors will be replaced with “smart sensors” that share readings in real time.
Michael Kletz, an allergist and immunologist with practices in the District and Northern Virginia who is not affiliated with U-Md., said the sensors could be a useful mold abatement tool.
“It’s much easier to get rid of mold when it starts than once it’s already grown,” Kletz said. “The thing about mold is that it tends to increase, or is more likely, when it gets humid. When the humidity is kept to a minimum, there’s less of a chance of the mold growing. But it’s still possible to have mold grow, even in deserts.”
The university expects to spend $84,000 a year to keep the sensors working and to monitor the data, Lawson said. The campus purchased 50 additional sensors to keep in reserve in case moisture problems arise in other buildings, university spokeswoman Natifia Mullings said.
The introduction of the mold monitoring system follows criticism leveled at the school for its handling of last year’s infestation and for an adenovirus outbreak that left one student dead and more than 40 other students ill.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) called on the university to investigate its response to the adenovirus outbreak. Officials waited 18 days to tell students the virus was present on campus. Olivia Paregol, an 18-year-old freshman with a compromised immune system, died of complications from the virus.
A panel assembled in the spring was supposed to deliver a report to the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents this month, but officials don’t expect it to be complete until November, said Tim McDonough, spokesman for the system.
“The governor demanded a thorough and transparent investigation of the outbreak, and has urged the regents to act quickly for the sake of the Paregol family and the entire campus community,” said Hogan spokeswoman Shareese DeLeaver-Churchill.
In a letter to the Paregol family’s attorney, Hogan said he told his staff to “follow up with the University of Maryland and find out why the investigation has not been completed in a timely manner and to express my disappointment in the time it has taken to be responsive to my request.”
In Elkton Hall, where Paregol lived, first-year students said they haven’t seen mold this school year. Nearly 600 students were forced to evacuate the dorm a year ago.
“This building, I feel a lot safer in it because I know they did a lot of remodeling,” said Michelle Badolov, 18. “We have air conditioning and dehumidifiers, which a lot of the other buildings don’t have.”
Isabella Irving, 18, said school leaders emphasized mold prevention when students moved in.
“That was a big thing they talked about the first weekend we were here,” she said.
Professors in Woods Hall — a 70-year-old building that houses the Anthropology Department — have been complaining about mold for years.
Jen Shaffer, an assistant professor, said she stopped meeting with students in her office because she was worried mold might make them sick.
Colella said he wasn’t sure whether the conditions in Woods Hall posed a threat to students.
“I haven’t spoken to that faculty [member],” he said.
The offices Shaffer and her colleagues occupy in the building’s basement will be torn down by next semester to improve air flow, Colella said. The basement will probably be converted into a workspace for graduate students.
“We’ve done a number of things over the years,” Colella said. “Each of them have improved but not adequately.”
Since last year’s mold and adenovirus episodes, U-Md. has started 100 renovation projects in 19 residence halls and 11 sorority and fraternity houses, Colella said. The upgrades include window replacements, dehumidifier installations, heating and air-condition system upgrades, and foundation waterproofing.
Those improvements come amid broader upgrades on Maryland’s public higher education campuses. The University System of Maryland, which oversees the College Park campus and 11 other higher education institutions, said campus presidents plan to spend more than $1.1 billion over the next five years to maintain, renovate and replace buildings.
About $640 million was spent the past five years on building infrastructure in the statewide system.
“A primary driver of this [University System of Maryland] focus is providing our students, faculty and staff with healthy, functional, attractive and innovative living and learning environments,” McDonough said. “Such efforts take into account climate change and would include state-of-the-art building systems.”
University leaders said they are trying to get ahead of problems and respond quicker when they emerge.
“In all of our spaces for all of our community members, health and safety is our paramount concern, so if there is a situation in a building, or an office or a room that is requiring us to address it, we are addressing it,” Colella said.
lauren.lumpkin@washpost.com


Gov. Hogan calls on regents to probe U-Md.’s handling of deadly adenovirus outbreak

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is calling on the University System of Maryland Board of Regents to investigate the handling of an adenovirus outbreak last fall on the flagship College Park campus that killed an 18-year-old freshman and sickened more than 40 other students.
Hogan, in a sharply worded letter sent Thursday morning to the university system’s governing board, said the circumstances surrounding the November death of Olivia Shea Paregol should be investigated immediately with specific attention paid to decision-making by university officials who waited 18 days to tell students about the presence of the virus.
“It appears that, at just about every turn, leaders withheld information instead of being open and honest with the student body,” Hogan (R) wrote. “There should never be a question as to whether the campus community will receive timely and accurate information, especially when it is an urgent matter of public health and safety.”
Hogan’s letter followed a report by The Washington Post that revealed university officials remained quiet for more than two weeks as the virus spread through campus and landed students in hospital emergency rooms. The director of the University of Maryland’s student health center waited until after Paregol’s death to inform students about the viral outbreak.
In the coming days, the regents say they will review and discuss the options for meeting the governor’s directive and will work with officials on the College Park campus to see that a “thorough and transparent investigation takes place.”
The university said in a statement Thursday it will “be forthcoming and accessible and will work closely with the Board and the Governor’s office to provide information and understanding about our actions and close coordination” with state, county and federal health officials.
The Board of Regents during the past year oversaw two investigations into the death of another U-Md. student, Jordan McNair, a 19-year-old football player who succumbed to heatstroke in June 2018. The investigations, which cost nearly $1.7 million, found various problems, including that athletic trainers waited more than an hour to call 911 after McNair showed signs of exhaustion.
“Mr. McNair’s death rightfully prompted multiple investigations and brought to light numerous inadequacies in how the university dealt with a medical emergency,” Hogan wrote. “Unfortunately, I am deeply concerned that the University learned nothing from that troubling and tragic episode.”
While U-Md. President Wallace D. Loh took “legal and moral responsibility” for the death of McNair, Loh has denied shortcomings in the university’s response to the viral outbreak.
“Our approach to reporting, testing, cleaning and communicating about the virus was coordinated with health officials, and exceeded” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, Loh said in a statement after The Post published its report May 16.
A Board of Regents spokesman previously told The Post that the chancellor of the university system has asked all presidents in the University System of Maryland “to review their policies, processes, and communications related to incidents of infectious diseases and environmental hazards to ensure best practices in responding to these matters.”
Hogan, in his letter, pressed the governing board to go further and review the handling of the adenovirus outbreak, including the response by the student health center, and publicly release its findings.
“The Paregol family’s grief has been considerably worsened by the lack of urgency — and lack of transparency — shown by university officials before and after Olivia’s death,” Hogan wrote. “There are serious questions about how this happened, and the families who entrust their children to your care deserve your assurance that they will receive answers.”
Ian Paregol, the father of Olivia Paregol, said he hoped a “truly independent body” would examine the circumstances surrounding the outbreak and his daughter’s death, including communication with public health officials and compliance with the college’s infectious disease response policies.
The Paregol family, which notified U-Md. on May 20 of a potential wrongful death claim, believes the teenager could still be alive if the university had not withheld information about the presence of adenovirus, giving doctors more time to administer an antiviral treatment.
Adenovirus can have symptoms similar to a cold or flu, but some virulent strains can sicken healthy adults and be lethal to individuals with weakened immune systems, such as Olivia Paregol, who was on medication to treat Crohn’s disease, a chronic digestive tract condition. In these cases, early detection can be key to treating severe adenovirus, according to medical experts.
David McBride, the director of the university health center, first learned Nov. 1 that a student had been hospitalized with adenovirus. The next day, Paregol visited the university health center complaining of a sore throat, fever, fatigue and swollen lymph nodes, according to medical records. No one mentioned that adenovirus could be a possible cause of her sickness.
Adenovirus was making national headlines because it had been linked to the deaths of children with weakened immune systems living at a long-term care facility in New Jersey. That outbreak killed 11 children and sickened more than two dozen.
Paregol languished as doctors struggled to pinpoint the cause of her illness. On Nov. 13, her father called the university pleading for answers while the medical condition of the freshman deteriorated at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. It was only then that McBride disclosed to Paregol’s father that there were adenovirus cases on campus.
Paregol tested positive for adenovirus that day and doctors quickly began an antiviral treatment. The teenager died five days later.
Ian Paregol said any investigation into U-Md. should also examine overcrowding and mold in the dorms. A mold outbreak sickened College Park students and set the stage for additional health problems. Olivia Paregol had struggled with respiratory problems during the fall semester while living in Elkton Hall, a mold-infested dorm from which students had to be relocated.
Mold does not cause adenovirus, but McBride, in emails to administrators, acknowledged that “mold can cause respiratory irritation that may increase susceptibility of any viral infection.”
“Students were at greater risk for adverse health consequences because the university also failed to disclose, test, clean using proper practices, and certify that Elkton Hall was free of mold,” Ian Paregol told The Post. “We see all of these aspects as demonstrating a reckless pattern of disregard for the health and safety of staff and students, where the university has placed its own public relations needs ahead of the students’ health.”
Paregol, who is weighing whether to file a lawsuit in coming weeks, has called for the resignation or termination of Loh, the U-Md. president. A board of regents spokesman recently said the board is not considering the employment status of Loh, who is planning to step down in 2020.
The university in its statement Thursday said it “remains committed to transparency — and student safety above all — in the handling of mold and adenovirus on our campus. Transparency has been demonstrated through legislative testimony, briefings to our Board of Regents, and real-time publishing of all actions and communications on mold and adenovirus throughout the fall. In addition, the university has made public the external review by medical experts of our response to adenovirus, and the findings support the university’s approach.”
Adenovirus, unlike some other infectious diseases such as measles, is not governed by mandatory state or federal reporting requirements. Several public health officials advised U-Md. it was not necessary to disclose the outbreak. Ultimately, college leaders had the authority to decide when and how to share information about adenovirus with students.
University officials discussed but decided against notifying students with compromised immune systems and residents living in Elkton Hall, according to records reviewed by The Post.
Campus leaders waited until Nov. 19 — the day after Paregol’s death — to acknowledge the virus was present on campus and took an additional day to disclose that a student had died from adenovirus. They say they sent an email to the campus communicating that a student had been diagnosed with adenovirus 7 — a strain that can result in severe infection – after they received authorization from state health officials to release the information.
“It should not take the death of a student for the university to alert families about an illness spreading through campus, whether it is a common cold or meningitis like the university saw in 2014,” Hogan wrote in his letter to the board of regents. “Caution is sometimes understandable and called for, but common sense should never be overruled by bureaucratic protocol when lives are on the line.”
jenn.abelson@washpost.com


U-Md. at College Park is warned that it could lose accreditation

The University of Maryland at College Park said it is working to respond to a warning from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education that its accreditation is at risk.
On Friday, the commission wrote to the institution informing it that its accreditation may be in jeopardy because of insufficient evidence that it is in compliance with standards on governance, leadership and administration.
The commission found this spring that the institution appeared to be out of compliance after its investigation found that personnel actions taken following the June 2018 death of football player Jordan McNair show “that the Board of Regents and the UMD administration do not have a clearly articulated and transparent governance structure.”
The commission has given the university until March 1 to show it has a structure that “outlines roles, responsibilities, and accountability for decision-making.”
In a joint statement Friday, University System of Maryland (USM) Board of Regents Chair Linda R. Gooden, USM Chancellor Robert L. Caret and U-Md. College Park President Wallace D. Loh said, “Progress toward full compliance is already underway and will be completed” by the due date.
USM administrators said in an email Sunday night that the board has taken a number of steps toward that goal, including appointing Gooden as chair, engaging the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges to conduct a review of the system’s policies relating to governance, and increasing board transparency.
Katie Lawson, a spokeswoman for U-Md. College Park, said in an email Sunday, “Under the new Board chair, the university is encouraged by USM changes and increased collaboration.
“The renewed commitment to openness and communication will ensure that the necessary actions are taken to secure autonomy and full compliance,” Lawson said.
In the meantime, the university remains fully accredited.
The warning from the regional accreditation agency follows a tumultuous and tragic year at the state’s flagship campus. McNair, a 19-year-old lineman on the school’s football team, collapsed from heatstroke during a practice on May 29, 2018, and died in a hospital 15 days later. An independent investigation found that school officials failed to properly diagnose and treat McNair, after it emerged that coaches waited an hour after he began showing troubling symptoms to call 911.
Fallout from McNair’s death sparked turmoil on campus and within the university system’s leadership. Following an investigation into the actions of the athletic department and coaching staff, the Board of Regents recommended in late October that football coach DJ Durkin remain at the university. Loh said Durkin would stay, but the president announced he would retire at the end of the school year.
The regents’ decision led to anger throughout the state, and the next day, Loh changed his mind and fired Durkin.
The turmoil after McNair’s death led James T. Brady, then chair of the Board of Regents, to announce he was stepping down and prompted a public letter from the university’s provost and deans who said the regents’ actions could imperil the school’s accreditation.
“We, the academic leaders of the University of Maryland, write to express our dismay and deep concern for the events and the process that has led to the forced retirement of President Wallace D. Loh,” they wrote.
“We have been extremely alarmed for weeks by the interference of the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents into University governance matters. It is the President who is responsible for personnel matters at the University, and it is within the President’s discretion and authority to decide whether to retain athletics staff. Through its intervention, the Board of Regents usurped the President’s authority and intervened in the ability of the President to carry out his full duties and responsibilities.”
In February, the university provided the commission with a report “in relation to the series of actions by the Board of Regents, President Loh, and the University Senate that transpired in the aftermath of the tragic death of student athlete Jordan McNair and the subsequent review of UMD’s football program.”
Lawson, the UMD spokeswoman, said the accreditation warning was “related to whether the Board of Regents was directly involved in personnel decisions at the university last fall, and not to “the handling of the care of Jordan McNair or his tragic passing.”
Universities rely on accreditation because the U.S. Department of Education requires it for a school to be eligible for federal student financial aid. Students at a school that has lost its accreditation also can find themselves unable to transfer their credits to another, accredited institution.
The Middle States commission is one of seven regional accrediting agencies that oversee the country’s colleges and universities. Brian Kirschner, a spokesman for the commission, told The Washington Post in November that the agency sought information from the school that related to two required standards: ethics and integrity and the student experience.
Although the warning should be taken seriously, the university is highly unlikely to lose its accreditation, said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, an organization representing the higher-education community.
“It is uncommon, but certainly not unknown for accrediting agencies to raise questions about a college or university at any time, but particularly after a widely publicized event or a situation where a university’s handling of an issue might not have been as smooth as it could have been,” Hartle said.
Penn State University received a similar warning after the child sexual abuse scandal involving former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, and the University of North Carolina was warned after news reports of academic violations by athletes, Hartle said.
“This is not good news for a university; it’s something they would prefer not to happen,” he said, adding that the university needs to demonstrate to the commission that it realizes things were “managed badly” and that steps have been taken to prevent that from happening again.
In its email Sunday, the USM administrators said the board recognized that “its final decisions could have been handled more effectively. Middle States has noted both this lapse as well as the actions taken by the board to prevent a reoccurrence.”
This is not the first such warning for the University of Maryland system. In 2016, the commission issued a similar warning to Frostburg State University, saying it needed to improve learning assessment; the university made corrections and announced that its accreditation was reaffirmed the following year.
The College Park campus also is reeling from the death last fall of an 18-year-old freshman from adenovirus. In May, the family of Olivia Shea Paregol filed a notice of claim against the school, setting the stage for a possible lawsuit. Paregol’s father said her death could have been prevented if the university had disclosed that the virus was spreading through the campus. The commission’s warning does not appear to be related to that event.
tara.bahrampour@washpost.com
joe.heim@washpost.com


After a tumultuous year, U-Md. graduates celebrate new beginnings

susan.svrluga@washpost.com

There’s a legendary place on the University of Maryland campus, a large circle marking the site of a devastating fire a century ago. Students try to avoid its epicenter, known as the Point of Failure.
Michael R. Bloomberg told the Class of 2019 that it’s really the place where people banded together and decided to rebuild the school. “When everything burns down around you, don’t walk away,” he said Friday, urging them to seize their own points of failure, when they come, and innovate.
The former New York mayor’s commencement speech, which made graduates laugh as he told them about getting fired and other disasters that turned into unanticipated opportunities, came at the end of a year punctuated by losses at U-Md.
“I won’t sugarcoat it,” said Jonathan Allen, the outgoing student body president. “It has definitely been a very difficult year.”
On Friday, the school awarded thousands of diplomas: 6,062 bachelor’s degrees, 1,595 master’s degrees, 592 doctoral degrees. Graduates tossed long red metallic streamers overhead like fireworks that showered down slowly, sparkling in the bright lights of the Xfinity Center in College Park. They swayed to the school song. And they looked ahead: to new jobs, new cities, new beginnings.
The difficult year began almost immediately after Allen started his term as student president, when 19-year-old football player Jordan McNair died in June.
McNair’s death exposed troubling issues in the athletic department and touched off a leadership crisis at the school.
In the fall, another student death was mourned on campus, after an outbreak of adenovirus sickened several students. Freshman Olivia Paregol’s death also angered many who said university officials should have warned students sooner about the illness, particularly those with weakened immune systems such as Paregol.
“A lot of students right now are able to be proud of their own individual accomplishments,” said senior Olivia Delaplaine, but not proud of a university they feel has let its students down. She did not go to the universitywide commencement ceremony Friday, preferring lunch with her family to speeches by people such as Wallace D. Loh, the university president, whom she said she does not admire. “I don’t want to listen to it. It’s empty words.”
But the school year had ended. It was time to look forward.
“It’s bittersweet,” Delaplaine said Friday.
Graduates were walking with their families in the sunshine, leaning in for hugs and photos. “Everyone’s really, really proud; everyone looks beautiful in all their regalia. That’s really inspiring to see,” she said.
Despite all the frustration students had felt, she said, “It’s really happy and joyous.”
With the sashes and cords from his student activities fluttering in the breeze, Michael Wijesinghe said the things he would remember are good things, like the student hydroponics club he launched on campus, and sunny afternoons sitting on the porch with his friends, playing guitar.
“I’m sad to leave, but excited to see what’s next,” he said.
Wijesinghe majored in agricultural science and technology, believing it could help him make the world better by making food more available, he said, and has plans to work for a greenhouse company.
After McNair’s death, conversations changed on campus, Allen said.
“We’ll really need to have learned from everything that happened this year,” and ensure some of it will never happen again, he said. “Just as we as individuals strive to be better, I’m sure the university does as well.”
Two external investigations examined what had happened and how to prevent future problems.
One report concluded that the athletic staff failed to properly diagnose and treat McNair’s heat stroke after a team workout. Athletic trainers did not call 911 for more than an hour after he showed signs of exhaustion. Another investigated allegations of an abusive culture within the football program and recommended the university establish an independent health-care system for athletes.
On Thursday, university officials announced steps toward that goal. The university — not the athletic department — is launching a national search for a head physician who will oversee the sports medicine staff and athletic trainers. That doctor will report through a chain of command leading to the university president.
Last fall, in the wake of the athletic scandal, Loh promised to step down at the end of this school year. But the announcement, coupled with the University System of Maryland Board of Regents’ decision to bring back football coach D.J. Durkin after a leave of absence, infuriated many. The following day, Loh fired Durkin, and soon afterward the board’s chairman resigned. Earlier this year, the board decided Loh would stay through another academic year.
With all the leadership changes still to come, the university is moving into a new era, Allen said, and those hires will shape the school for the next decade and beyond.
“I do think many students, myself included, are very proud to have been able to call this university home for the last four years,” Allen said.
The university honored its graduates of 50 years ago, and one in particular: Elaine Johnson Coates, who started in 1955, the first year black students were allowed to live on campus. She was frightened when she arrived and endured insults during her years in College Park. “I stand on this podium and look at the diversity in the beautiful faces of the graduation class,” she told the crowd, “and it tells me that my journey mattered.
“Class of 2019, I say to you: See through the obstacle. Walk past it. And refuse to be defeated.”
Bloomberg had a piece of advice, too, before they all flooded out into the sunshine with their robes streaming behind them. “Go step on the Point of Failure,” he told them. “Because this really is a turning point.”
susan.svrluga@washpost.com


More adenovirus cases found at UMd, total rises to 22

The University of Maryland health center said Friday that it has learned of 22 confirmed cases of students with Adenovirus. In four cases, tests showed the presence of Adenovirus 7, which can cause more severe illness than other strains. The death of one Maryland student has been linked to an Adenovirus infection. According to the health center, the 22 confirmed cases include a number of students who had were sick earlier in November, but have since recovered. In a statement issued Friday, the health center distinguished between Adenoviruses that cause colds and are widely found at this season, and a more dangerous strain, known as Adenovirus 7. It said that strain turned up in four specimens sent for testing. Adenovirus 7 , the statement said, may cause more severe illness particularly for patients with chronic medical problems, or with immune systems compromised by illness, or by medicine. For them, the health center said, “it is vitally important” not to ignore flu-like symptoms and to visit a physician within 48 hours of developing the symptoms. In describing flu-like symptoms, the announcement listed high fever and cough/sore throat and vomiting/diarrhea. Martin.Weil@washpost.com

Martin.Weil@washpost.com


Virus kills 7 children at New Jersey rehab center

Seven children have died and others remain ill from a viral outbreak at a nursing home and rehabilitation center in New Jersey, health department officials said.
Officials with the New Jersey Health Department said Wednesday that the seven “medically fragile children” were among 18 confirmed cases of an adenovirus among pediatric patients this month at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell, not far from the New York border. Experts say the outbreak highlights the challenge of controlling infectious diseases in nursing homelike environments.
Adenoviruses are ubiquitous viruses that can cause a variety of illnesses, from the common cold and conjunctivitis (pinkeye) to more severe diseases such as bronchitis and pneumonia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A spokeswoman for the state’s health department said that at least one of the patients who died was a toddler.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said in a statement that he was “heartbroken by the news that several children have lost their lives in an adenovirus outbreak at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation, and pray for the full recovery of the other children impacted."
The governor added that he has spoken with the state health commissioner, “who has assured me that the Department of Health has recommended vital measures to enhance protections against the further spread of infection and will continue its active on-site surveillance. I am confident that the steps being taken by state and local officials will minimize the impact to all those who remain at the facility, including patients and employees.”
The strain responsible for the outbreak in the long-term-care facility in New Jersey is adenovirus 7, known for causing pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses.
State health department officials said Wednesday in a statement that the strain “is associated with communal living arrangements and known to cause severe illness.”
The state, with help from CDC, is investigating the outbreak. Health officials said in a statement that investigators have found “minor handwashing deficiencies” at the nursing home and rehabilitation center, which has 135 long-term-care beds and 92 pediatric beds, according to the health department. The department said it is working with the facility on “infection control issues.”
Health officials said the center has been told not to admit any new patients during the outbreak.
The Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation could not immediately be reached for comment. According to the center’s website, it offers short-term and long-term care, from physical and occupational therapies to hospice care, and has a pediatrics center for “medically fragile” children.
Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, said that by adulthood, most people in the United States have been sickened by an adenovirus and recovered on their own. In patients with compromised immune systems, however, the viruses can be deadly.
Adalja, an infectious-disease physician, said there is a nationwide problem with hospital-acquired infections — even more so with nursing home and rehabilitation centers, where, he said, “infection control is not as rigorous” because such facilities are not always set up to help prevent outbreaks.
“It’s not surprising that this ferocious of a spread happened in a nursing-home setting,” he said, adding that “nursing homes are one of the weaker links in the chain of infection control.”
Adalja noted that he does not know how the faculty in New Jersey is handling the outbreak, but he said the outbreak is considered “particularly severe” given the high number of fatalities.
There have been similar outbreaks in the past.
In 2006 and 2007, adenovirus 14 sickened at least 140 people across four states — New York, Oregon, Texas and Washington, according to CDC. Nine of them died, CDC said.
Adenoviruses have also been a problem in military training centers, where men and women are under extreme physical and emotional stress and live in close quarters. For that reason, Adalja said, a Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccine for certain strains is given to members of the military. But when outbreaks occur, he said, it prompts questions about whether vaccines should be available to the general public.
To prevent transmission, CDC recommends that people avoid close contact with those who may be ill as well as practice good handwashing techniques and avoid touching the eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands.
There is no treatment for adenovirus, according to CDC, but the majority of cases clear up on their own.
Read more:
Can an upper-respiratory infection make you fat? If it’s caused by adenovirus 36, maybe.


Three new cases of adenovirus reported at U-Md.’ s College Park campus

Three more students have been diagnosed with adenovirus at the University of Maryland’s campus in College Park, bringing the number of cases to nine in recent weeks. A letter sent to students indicated the new cases had been diagnosed over the Thanksgiving holiday, university officials said. In the letter, David McBride, director of the University Health Center, wrote that “none of these new cases has required hospitalization to our knowledge.” University officials said before Thanksgiving that the campus had recorded six cases of students with adenovirus. One student, 18-year-old Olivia Paregol, died Nov. 18 after being diagnosed with the illness. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan this week called Paregol’s death “very concerning.” A viral outbreak of the illness also left 11 children dead at a health center in New Jersey. Adenoviruses are “common causes of colds” and typically “found in significant numbers of people at this time of year,” McBride said. But certain strains of adenovirus can be more serious, according to the website for the school’s health center. For healthy people, treatment includes rest, fluids and fever-reducing medicine. There is no medication for the infection outside of hospitals. Officials advised those with chronic medical problems, including diabetes or asthma, or those taking medications that weaken the immune system to seek medical help within 48 hours of developing symptoms. University officials said they are working closely with state and local health departments to monitor the illness and test those who may have it. To stop the spread, the university is increasing the cleaning of “high-touch surfaces and restrooms” on campus. The dining services department is also increasing cleaning. The campus earlier in the fall worked to remove mold in some on-campus dorms, but officials said there is “no consistent connection between mold exposure and the incidents of adenovirus infection affecting UMD students.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends other preventive measures, such as frequent hand washing; avoiding touching the eyes, nose or mouth with unwashed hands; and avoiding close contact with those who are ill. dana.hedgpeth@washpost.com

dana.hedgpeth@washpost.com