Just a quick comment to this thread. My DD has been sick ("off and on") since Plebe Parent Weekend. Just after the start of classes she was running fevers of 101 and 102, she complained of dizziness------and a sore neck!! (Learned of Meningitis stuff after she got to feeling better). My wife, the MD, prescribed a Zithro pack during Plebe Parent Weekend, that helped some, but the kid continues to feel lousy. She still does her work and goes to practice, but it did get to the point that her coaches took the initiative to hold her out of practice recently, based on what they saw, not what DD said.
My wife has been driven nuts by this. DD is NOT a "Complainer" but she would call her Mom when she was feeling really sick, asking what to do. My wife would beg her to go to the BMU. A few times DD agreed to visit the BMU "tomorrow"---but the next day we'd hear "I feel much better". This has become a pattern---sick kid calls, we tell her SHE NEEDS TO GO TO the BMU, but she never goes. I pressed her hard on this pattern, and She told me that "the BMU has more important stuff to deal with"; she has also suggested that visiting the BMU "is just something you just don't do". As a parent what can we do? DD calls her own shoots now. Mommy and Daddy don't call the office to have them look in on her------but then a couple of days latter Mom gets another call from a sick DD asking what to do about body aches, fever Etc..
I am an attorney I COMPLAIN ABOUT EVERYTHING! My wife, on the other hand, has the whole internship-residency / "MD super hero training" / "Getting sick is for the weak" thing behind her. Wife and I both get the toughness, no whiners ethos of Plebe summer and life at the Academy. That said, it seems to me that there is a residual message left over from Plebe Summer that a visit to the BMU/Sick Call is for "Slackers".
I am dead certain that the USNA never said anything like "Don't visit the BMU". I am equally certain that the USNA doesn’t want sick kids running around creating more sick kids. Still, my sample of one Plebe suggests a perception among Plebes that the BMU is for whiners and slackers. It would be so simple to just forcefully message to all the new Plebes (a the end of Plebe Summer) that a Plebe has a responsibility to the Brigade to hit the BMU when they feel sick (lord knows my DD takes USNA responsibilities seriously these days). Maybe USNA did that; if they did, the message sure didn't take for my kid.
Just my "2-cents"