Last February, a student at the Virginia Military Institute was hospitalized with severe pain and chills. He had felt fine just a day earlier.

On Oct. 9, a sophomore at Michigan State contracted the same illness and was hospitalized for almost a month.

And, last June, a Dartmouth junior died of the same ailment.

These students had all contracted bacterial meningitis, a disease that in recent years has increasingly hit college campuses, drawing the media's eye and prompting thousands of students to pay for costly vaccinations.

The number of people between the age of 15 and 24 who have contracted bacterial meningitis has doubled in the last decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Only 3,000 Americans come down with meningitis every year; but students living on college campuses are three times more likely than others to catch it.

Fortunately, there is a vaccine for the disease. Last October, in the wake of reports about several meningitis cases, the American College Health Association (ACHA) issued a statement urging college students to "consider" getting vaccinated.

But the vaccine is expensive, and lately some doctors have been questioning its cost-effectiveness. These experts argue that the vaccine would save few lives, even if widely administered to college students.

Harvard has not had a case of meningitis in at least a decade, according to University Health Services (UHS) Director David S. Rosenthal '59, who says he is neutral on whether to recommend that students get vaccinated.