Ouch!

"You have been academically dropped," were not the words Candace Lowell was expecting to hear from her advisor. "Apparently you have not completed your MMR vaccine requirements."According to CCNY's Wellness and Counseling Center often during the semester, as many as five students a day were scrambling to satisfy this requirement.Beginning August 1, 1990, students attending New York State colleges and universities were required to show proof of immunity against measles, mumps and rubella. (If you were born before January 1, 1957 you are exempt from this requirement.) Before the widespread use of a vaccine against measles, its incidence was so high that infection with measles was felt to be "as inevitable as death and taxes," according to The Center for Disease Control.  Today, the incidence of measles has fallen to less than 1 percent of people under the age of 30 in countries with routine childhood vaccination. For those who are not vaccinated, measles, mumps and rubella are contagious and can cause potentially serious complications.But many students say they didn't "get the memo" about getting vaccinated against these diseases. "The problem is I never received word from City College telling me I needed to complete this," Lowell adds. "I received my first round of the vaccine when I registered for classes and was told I would receive a follow up call from the Wellness Center, which never happened."Wellness and Counseling Center employees say they're doing the best they can. "A lot of the contact information we have on file is inaccurate…and needs to be updated," a Wellness staffer reports. "If the contact information we have is wrong and the student never receives their second round of the vaccine, they are dropped."That's what happened to transfer student Vincent Alvarez. "I got my first shot and was told I would receive a call when it was time to get my second shot," he says. "I never got a call and didn't learn that I was dropped until I went to register for fall classes." After a mad scramble to the Wellness Center to receive the shot and an exhausting back and forth between the academic advisors office and the Center, Alvarez was reinstated."I want to warn all students to check and make sure  the contact information the school has is correct." Alvarez says, "Id like to prevent other students from having a heart attack like I did."