by Irma Pelt
Senior Staff Writer

"Victims of BTY syndrome are most tolerable when highly sedated," said several hospital staff members.

Complying with public safety regulations, Haydu College reported this week that a senior-level administrator has been hospitalized with an acute and highly contagious disease known to afflict university administrators during the spring.

“The first symptoms were noted by her staff and reported to our campus health center,” said Kylynn Brownlee, a spokeswoman for Haydu. “She was frantic about the amount of work she had to complete before the end of the semester.”

Brownlee said Kirkwood Hospital confirmed the administrator was afflicted with a case of BTY syndrome. More commonly known as Busier Than You syndrome, it is estimated that 80 percent of university professional staff members will suffer from the disease during their career.

“We see most cases in student affairs, but it’s certainly not isolated to that area,” said Dr. Dan Mantia, Chief of Medicine. “Faculty members are highly vulnerable to this communicable disease, though we see a sharp decrease in likelihood after tenure is achieved.”

Brownlee said the diagnosed case on Haydu’s campus was isolated to one functional area.

“She constantly compared her schedule to other people’s. She made a point of telling them how many meetings she had to go to or how late she was in the office working on projects,” said Brownlee. “Whenever someone mentioned writing a report she offered that she was writing two reports and an article for publication.”

Brownlee said the tipping point came in a staff meeting.

“One of her co-workers requested a day off to take care of some personal errands. Soon she was pulling out old day planners showing how many errands she had to do in her life. She also had a 2013 day planner she created herself showing how much she was going to have to do in the years to come,” said a witness to the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Kirkwood Hospital did not plan to reveal the university administrator’s name; however, the college reported the victim as Kay Mahaffey, the director of student involvement.

“While we want to be respectful of Kay during this time, we also thought it was important to get all of those important meetings and projects covered. We discovered too late after revealing her identity that there was actually nothing on her calendar for the next three months,” said Brownlee.

In case you missed last week’s two-hour meeting of the Campus Collaboration Committee, we’ve posted a summary of events.

10:00 a.m.
Committee chair Marjorie Whiggins read the minutes from the previous CCC meeting.

10:10 a.m.
Ms. Whiggins praised all of the committee members for being so wonderful and collaborative.

10:15 a.m.
Whiggins gave thorough descriptions of all upcoming CCC events and provided in-depth analysis of all the work that would be necessary.

10:45 a.m.
Whiggins pulled out a book called The Collaborative Companion and read an inspirational chapter called “Synergy: The Magic of Group Collaboration.”

11:05 a.m.
Whiggins reminded everyone how important it is to collaborate and provided statistics that indicate group decision-making yields better results and buy-in.

11:10 a.m.
Whiggins looked at her watch and said, “I don’t have anything else. Does anyone have anything to add or could we go ahead and end the meeting now?”

11:11 a.m.
Whiggins thanked everyone for another super duper meeting and adjourned.