The Schnade

The Schnade, sometimes called "Schnades," is a LAN disease that gained great momentum and notoriety during 07.2. It is the disease one gets from living in Schnader Hall, but it can also infect people who have made out or come in contact with Schnader residents. Although most CTYers had never heard of the Schnade until 07.2, this may be only because Schnader was most widely used in 07.2, since every girls' hall except for two was located there. Veteran Schnader RAs and students have been heard asserting the existence of the Schnade in past years.

Symptoms of the Schnade include coughing, sneezing, dizziness, fatigue, sore throat, congestion, runny nose, swollen sinuses, a generally horrible feeling of despair and lack of belief in anything good in life. People inflicted with the Schnade flooded the health offices, desperate for Sudafed, Actifed, and the most wonderful cough drops in existence, Cepacol. After a while the nurses limited us to one Cepacol at a time, after which an intense demand rose up, and someone with a pack of maybe three Cepacol became more popular than a drug dealer. There was at least one incident of someone making out with someone else to get to the Cepacol inside their mouth.

About halfway through the session, an ugly specter reared its head: the Schnade v.2, also called Xtreme TB. The Schnade v.2 was much like the Schnade except that its victims coughed up mucus and blood. The nurses dismissed the coughing blood as a perfectly normal symptom and gave the victims more Cepacol.

Although rumors were flying about the Schnade v.3, it never really materialized. There were a few people who threw up everything they ate, which led to it being named Schnade v.3. Some call it "a mild case of death." Some people say that the Schnade v.4 is chicken pox, but this is silly. The girl who contracted the chicken pox lived in Schnader both sessions, but she contracted the disease outside of CTY (it takes as long as a few weeks after contact with the Chicken Pox for the breakouts and such to appear). She was quarantined in South Ben immediately and then sent home. It became a widespread joke that Schnade v.4 was your skin "running away". There were no cases of this reported; however, those who consider v.3 as death and v.4 as the departure of skin have labeled throwing up as the Schnade v.5. It has been said that Schnade v. 42 is loss of soul, but this may just be a rumor.

Causes of the Schnade are widely pondered. Many people point to Schnader's legendary humidity/dampness as the source, and others blame the massive amounts of mold growing in Schnader's showers and air conditioners, which would arise due to the extreme dampness. Still others are skeptics and believe that the Schnade is just an ordinary infectious illness and had nothing to do with its victims' place of residence. These people have never lived in Schnader Hall. The Schnade is rumored to have been started in 07.1 by a girl who slept too close to the air conditioner and who passed it on to others via sharing drinks and such. Site Director Brian Bloomfield said that it came from an SRA living in South Schnader Base. She came to CTY sick First Session, got everyone in Schnader base sick through the air conditioners, and they got other people sick. A second strain arose in Session Two (SRA became sick again, Schnade evolved), and it was also passed into the air conditioner (and through double-sessioners), but spread to more people because of the constant PDAing.

One person with the Schnade v.2 was diagnosed with pneumonia when she returned home, but the doctor told her it was not contagious unless she actually coughed up mucus into someone's mouth, which she certainly did not. This student eventually made a full recovery. Also, the other people with Schnade v.2 were not diagnosed with pneumonia, so that cannot explain the entire endemic (and not an epidemic, because epidemics must cross physical or cultural borders, whereas the Schnade did not).

The Schnade made a reappearance in 08.1, leading returning students to dub it "The Schnade: Platinum Edition." This led to much panic among Alcovians when two of their number were sent to the emergency room, one being a Rocky Horror cast member two days before Second Saturday. This also caused the administration to force everyone in Schnader to leave their windows open for a day.