“Did you eat the slaw? How about you, how much coleslaw did you eat?”

This is how the 74th annual Canadian University Press national conference’s bizarre outbreak of norovirus began. Norovirus, previously named Norwalk, is a highly contagious illness that most often causes violent illness for one or two days, including vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain.

CUP, a national organization that offers a newswire for campus newspapers as well as a number of other services, hosts a conference each year that brings together about 350 student writers from across Canada. The four ensuing days are filled with workshops about the craft of journalism, engaging keynote speakers who tell stories about bleeding on George Clooney’s couch and, most importantly, evenings full of copious amounts of liquor and attempted promiscuity.

It was the drinking and sex the night promised that were most jeopardized by the whispers of disease. As we stood in the lobby of the Victoria, B.C. hotel hosting the conference waiting to be bussed to the conference gala, the formal event on the last night of the conference, CUP National Bureau Chief Emma Godmere called for our attention and said there were reports of delegates falling ill and vomiting both at the gala and, more immediately disturbing to us, on the buses we were about to board.

At the time, no one knew exactly what was happening. Godmere’s only information was that as far as she knew, there was no cause to think it was food-related. This was heartening, as almost all of the delegates had been eating the same food for the last four days.

This was also why conference co-ordinator Jason Schreurs’ quiet questions about the coleslaw were so unnerving. What if it was food poisoning? Were any of us immune? Was this conference about to become a re-enactment of the pie-eating contest scene in Stand By Me?

The Vancouver Island Health Authority, which began an investigation almost immediately, has since concluded that the outbreak was not related to food. Norovirus is highly contagious, such that being in the presence of a sick person (or the vomit thereof, as on the buses) is enough to infect someone. Aside from some hotel staff, none of the other guests at the hotel have been reported ill, which corroborates that assessment.

Knowing nothing but expecting that the rumours of puke had been greatly exaggerated, we rushed onto the bus. Even the unmistakable smell of vomit could not dissuade us in our conviction that there was nothing especially amiss.

After all, if one person throws up — perhaps from drinking too much, a not-uncommon occurrence when student journalists gather — would it not make sense that others on the same bus would do the same upon seeing and smelling the spectacle? It would make perfect sense. The evening was going to be fine! What’s one puke-y bus, in the greater scheme of things?

The ride to the gala is where my own confidence in the evening began to falter. I felt ill, but I couldn’t tell if it was because I was genuinely unwell or if I was experiencing sympathetic symptoms. Mustering my courage, I tried to drink the beer I had smuggled onto the bus.

By the time we got to the venue, the driver had been instructed to turn around, as the gala was cancelled. We stopped and saw delegates come out of the building, hoping to board the bus. Clever and plucky even in the face of a possible catastrophe, people on the bus began hollering at them: “You’re infected! We have to leave you behind!” “We’ll tell your stories!”

By the time I realized I would not be disembarking the bus for the foreseeable future, my condition had deteriorated. I spent the last 15 minutes of the ride back to the hotel clutching one of the vomit bags that had been passed out at the start of the ride, breathing heavily and wishing the bus could somehow get to the hotel without actually, you know, moving.

At the hotel, I lasted about five minutes before I was violently emptying the contents of my stomach into the toilet (luckily, I suppose) and beginning an eight-hour cycle of vomiting violently every half hour. In the interim I felt well enough that each new bout of nausea was an unpleasant shock.

As fellow sufferer and Sheaf sports editor Kevin Menz described it: “Wash, rinse, repeat.”

I have since learned that while throwing up food is unpleasant, it is entirely preferable to throwing up the nothing that is left after three or four trips to the toilet.

Both journalists and students are, as a rule, quite connected to the Internet. Because of this, the sick and bed-ridden, including myself, were able to follow what was happening and learn the latest news as it became available. People fell like so many flies as the night wore on, letting Twitter know their condition for posterity. They came up with clever hashtags like #apukealypse and #barfipelago — a take on the conference’s theme, “Archipelago” — to pass the time.

Tallies of the sick fluctuated and information changed hour to hour; for a while it sounded like we were under a semi-official quarantine, while eventually we heard that the few healthy delegates were being urged to leave as soon as possible.

By Sunday morning, newspapers and radio stations around Canada began calling and emailing students at the conference to ask what was happening. The alarming uptick in tweets about barfing and shitting must have tipped some media bigwigs off to the story.

The news spread across the country and became one of the bigger stories of the day. One can only surmise that it was a slow day elsewhere in the world, or that journalists were desperate not to cover the Golden Globes that night.

As conference attendees make their way back to whatever part of the country they came from and regain their health, this is unlikely to be a news item with any permanence. But hopefully the next time all the students who have decided to spend their lives covering the news are sent to track down a scoop, they will remember what it was like to have been on the other end of the story, however briefly.

From the stress of being interviewed between bouts of throwing up to the way even those in the thick of an event might be unaware of the truth, the experiences of this outbreak can serve as important reminders in how to approach the people involved in breaking news. It is certainly a lesson I won’t soon forget.

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Graphic: The Sheaf