PAC Student Media

By Twyla Herron
Pulse Staff Reporter

Palo Alto no longer has any medical assistance on campus. Students need to be aware of other options in case of an emergency.

Health care centers have been done away with on all Alamo College campuses with the exception of St. Philip’s Southwest Campus. If you are in need of a Band-Aid or some Tylenol, you might want to visit the bookstore located in the Student Center. However, if you are in need of more serious medical assistance, call 911. Having campus police call 911 for you will only delay getting help.

“I honestly thought we had a medical clinic of some sort on campus. This is new information to me,” said Kayla Tuttle, a Liberal Arts major here at Palo Alto.

For students who do not have asthma, epilepsy or allergies, an on-campus health clinic may not be something they have thought about too much, but where would you go if there were an emergency?

For emergencies, you may visit Southwest General Hospital on Barlite Boulevard near South Park Mall. For critical problems, Brooks City Base Urgent Care located on Southeast Military at South New Braunfels. For general medical problems, there is Centro Med on the Poteet Highway at Hunter. Another option is the nearest Texas Med Clinic on Roosevelt at Military.

Even though off-campus options exist, Palo Alto’s History Professor Peter Myers believes an on-campus clinic is needed.

“There are 8,000 PAC students, and we don’t have a health clinic. That’s abominable,” said Myers. “It’s imperative to have such a center. A health care center is as important as campus security. Just get sick and see if a center should be optional.”

The opinions on this topic vary, though. When asked whether or not he believed a medical clinic to be necessary on campus, 19-year-old Matthew Smith said, “A school that does not board students should not be responsible for the healthcare of its students.”

Smith, an Electrochemical and Computer Engineering major here at Palo Alto, continued, “A minor First Aid station should be the school’s only obligation to its students’ health.”

Palo Alto student Cynthia Archambault, though, thinks having a clinic would benefit the school a great deal.

“I think it is important,” Archambault said. “It would give us something. At least a staff member, so that if something was to happen, they would be able to assist immediately. As of now if just one person faints, they have to call 911.”

The reason an on-hand nurse is not on campus is a budgetary issue. Myers said that if the district were required to provide an on-campus nurse by law the way public schools are, they would find some way to fund it.

“If they were forced to do so, health clinics would be open within short period of time,” Myers said. “It would be far less costly to fund them, rather than be held liable if a tragedy should happen on the campus. Of course, it’s also the right thing to do.”