A couple months back, I ran into a UNC employee who asked me if I had been sick the previous week.

I had, and I asked him what made him suspect as much.

Well," he said, "There wasn't as much stuff on the blog last week as there usually is."

This was encouraging news, since it meant that Campus Notes was gaining some sort of foothold. It was flattering that at least one person followed it regularly enough to notice an occasional gap in service.

I've tried to use this blog to bolster my higher education reporting for the News & Observer in print and online. The blog and its twitter feed, @campus_notes, have helped me reach new audiences. They've also taught me what's popular on the web. For example, people seem to like videos of silly college kids engaging in what I like to call "planned spontaneity" in the campus library.

And blog posts about controversial Muslim leaders headed to town are popular too. And of course, the Granddaddy of all Twitter Trash Talk, UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp's Krzyzewskiville blast. That was an amusing day.

I'm really going to miss it all.

It's bittersweet for me to report that I'm leaving the News & Observer, my third newspaper in a 15-year journalism career, for a new job with the news office at Duke University.

My last day is Friday.

These are tough times for newspapers, which struggle to make money. (You're probably reading this on your computer. For free.) But the News & Observer is committed to its coverage of higher education here in the Triangle, one of the nation's most complex and dynamic higher education markets.

And the blog will remain as well, with contributions from a number of reporters and editors.

I've spent most of the last dozen years writing about universities here in the Triangle. I've learned a lot and I hope my reporting has been useful. I'm leaving this beat just as it's getting interesting, with sweeping changes to public universities beckoning on the horizon.

I'll follow all the twists and turns in the newspaper. I hope you will too.

Thanks for reading.

Fun's over.

UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp has now apologized for his tweet earlier today about Krzyzewskiville. Sheesh. And this Chancellor/President feud was just showing some promise.

Sheesh.

His latest:

"Sorry about the tent/Kville Tweet. Both U's have great students. I shouldn't have gotten carried away by our rivalry in basketball."

Well, I suppose that was fun while it lasted.

Thorp's apology came just after I used my journalistic cunning to pry this response out of Duke President Richard Brodhead:

"Hey Holden, someone hacked your Twitter account to talk trash. May the best team win. From the land of TRUE Blue, Dick."

Some context: Thorp's comments came during a digital town hall discussion on innovation.

Okay. Everyone get back to work.

It's on, now.

As you may recall, UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp stirred the pot something fierce this morning, calling out Duke University and its Krzyzewskiville tent city in the tweet you see below.

Subtle, huh?

Now, Duke President Richard Brodhead isn't on Twitter. But he's also apparently reluctant to let Thorp's gameday taunt stand unaddressed.

So here's his response, which just arrived in my in-box.

"Hey Holden, someone hacked your Twitter account to talk trash. May the best team win. From the land of TRUE Blue, Dick. "

As you may have heard, the Swine Flu - er, sorry, the H1N1 Virus - has made its home at universities across North Carolina and beyond.

Something strange about this particular new flu bug; it loves young people, particularly those who live in close quarters and cough and sneeze on each other.

Which got one Duke Chronicle columnist thinking about Krzyzewskiville, the tent city that emerges each winter during basketball season. It become home to hundreds of Duke students who camp out on campus for tickets to games at Cameron Indoor.

Talk about your breeding grounds.

Taylor Doherty writes in part: 

"I thought the C-1 and the communal utensil buckets in the dining halls would be the main carrier of the flu until I remembered that Duke students sleep shoulder-to-shoulder in tents during two of the coldest months of the year. But hey, you get grace if it’s below 20 degrees or snows two inches, right?"

Taylor has a point here, given that Krzyzewskiville isn't the most hygienic experience these young scholars will ever have. And all that key shaking and collective chanting may be muted if half the Cameron Crazies are stricken with Swine Flu.

Here's Doherty's column. The Krzyzewskiville section is at the bottom. 

The Duke freshman who contracted meningitis while sleeping out at the university's Krzyzewskiville tent city is expected to recover fully.

Bill Purdy, who directs Duke's student health service, said this morning the female student is in the hospital and doing fine. He said Duke officials have tracked down a dozen more of her roommates and tentmates, the people with whom she has been in close contact with recently. They've all received antibiotics as a precaution.

"We don't expect to have any more cases, but we'll be watching very closely," he said. 

Purdy said the student was one of 12 sharing a tent for the last six weeks in anticipation of tonight's big game with UNC. Meningitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord and brain, is passed through very close contact, so the other students sharing the tent were of particular interest to campus health officails, Purdy said.

"We don't have to treat the next tent, or the tent two over, or someone in a class with her, or who had coffee with her," Purdy said.

About 70 percent of this year's Duke freshman class had received the meningitis vaccine prior to coming to college, Purdy said. The student in question did not, according to her medical records, Purdy said. The vaccine lowers the meningitis risk considerably but does not completely protect you because it doesn't guard against all strains.

Meningitis is a constant threat on college campuses because it can spread relatively easily in dormitories and other places where people live in close proximity.

Krzyzewskiville, a sprawling community of tents, made this a somewhat tricky and unusual public health situation, Purdy conceded.

"Germs can certainly spread in tents very easily," he said. "It's close quarters and certainly not the best hygiene."

A Duke student who has spent time in Krzyzewskiville, the tent village where students sleep out before big basketball games, has contracted meningitis, the university has announced.

University officials say the female first-year Duke student, who has not been identified, is doing fine and that the bacterial infection was detected early.

People in close contact with her, including those who have been sharing her tent, have been given antibiotics.

The student had spiked a high fever and had been vomiting Monday evening or Tuesday morning and was admitted to the emergency room, according to this report in Duke's student newspaper. The meningitis was confirmed Tuesday evening.

The student was no longer staying over in Krzyzewskiville when the infection set in, the paper reported.

The student has bacterial meningitis, which is considered more serious than the viral form. Meningitis is an infection of the brain and spinal cord. Duke officials say between 50 and 75 percent of Duke students have previously received a meningitis vaccine, which is recommended but not required by state law.

Symptoms include high fever, vomiting, a stiff neck and severe headache.

NOTE: I've updated our blog with additional information on this meningitis scare. Click here.