As junior accounting major Omar Asghar spent the night at his desk, studying for his Intermediate Accounting 2 quiz two weeks ago, he spotted an unexpected roommate that had moved into his South Hill suite – a large, reddish-brown winged creature with six legs was flying up his wall.
After immediately calling all his suitemates into the room and frantically jumping about to try and catch the surprisingly mobile insect, Asghar finally took a shoe and squashed it. He notified his resident assistant and commiserated with fellow Kent Hall residents, whose screams reverberating through the dorm earlier in the week alerted him that he was not alone in his fight against bugs.
According to the university’s Department of Urban Biology, Asghar and his friends in Kent Hall aren’t the only ones who might be sharing their living space with insects and rodents. In fact, the Department of Urban Biology reported receiving 375 calls relating to infestation and extermination needs during the 2004-2005 academic year, said Urban Biology manager Christine Garcia. In the last year alone, the department spent between $12,000 and $14,000 on pest management and exclusion materials, money provided by the Department of Residential Facilities.
Since the beginning of the semester, Asghar estimated seeing at least two cockroaches crawling or flying through the rooms of his suite each week. These occurrences were enough to prompt him and his suitemates to call the campus maintenance line, 4-WORK.
Garcia, whose department responds to pest control problems reported to 4-WORK, said ants and cockroaches are generally the largest complaint received from residents. She reported the department received 116 calls relating to cockroach complaints and that an additional 110 residents complained of ant infestations last year.
Garcia said work orders submitted through 4-WORK alert the department to potential problems. However, before any work can be done to move toward extermination, students must meet with Urban Biology staff members to get information about the depth of the infestation. In most cases, the problems require follow-up appointments, as many as seven in severe situations.
Asghar and his roommates talked to Michael Hamilton, an environmental specialist in the Urban Biology department, who told them they had seen American cockroaches. According to Garcia, these kinds of roaches account for 67 percent of all roach calls her department responds to. Hamilton installed 10 sticky white triangular roach traps to catch the insects last Friday and returned again this Monday to follow up on the problem.
Asghar said the traps haven’t caught any roaches and his suitemates are still plagued by the roach problem.
“It definitely discourages us from having guests in our room,” he said. “And if we feel something scratching us at night, we immediately turn on all the lights and think it’s a cockroach.”
His roommate, junior mechanical engineering major Sameem Siddiqui, said the sightings have caused him to be even more conscious about keeping his suite clean.
“Now we are so paranoid,” he said. “We don’t leave any trash in our trash cans, and we never bring back food. Before we were a little more relaxed about that stuff, but now we aren’t comfortable at all.”
Garcia said most pest problems are seasonal; for the most part, during late summer and early fall, stinging insects are the largest reported problem among students. As the weather cools more reports of rodents crop up, she said.
In 2004-2005 alone, the Urban Biology department responded to 10 work orders for mice in the residence halls. But Garcia said mice aren’t the biggest pest problem. She said squirrel sightings occur more often than students think, many times because of student behavior toward these animals. During the same year, 11 squirrels were reported in dorms.
“When students get animals used to feeding them on window sills, they begin to have a problem,” she said. “We have insect screens that tend to keep them out, but squirrels are adept to going through our window screens.”
In an effort to keep the crawling critters under control, residence halls are inspected by the department every eight weeks following a philosophy of integrated pest management, which combines several extermination as well as pest prevention measures at a flurry of maintenance checkpoints.
One measure includes making sure the floor drains in residence halls are filled with water. Garcia said that each floor drain – found in bathroom floors, sink drains, and showers – serves as a plumbing trap to capture any insects that might fall through and drain them straight to a sewer system. She said that when these drains go dry, for example, when toilets are out of use, rodents can crawl back out of the sewer system, giving pests free access to nest in residence halls.
Another component of the integrated management are the door sweeps that have been installed on all exterior doors. This thick row of black bristles exists to keep mice and insects out of residence halls.
As Asghar might agree, South Hill suites experience some of the largest volume of four-legged traffic because they lack public areas that can be inspected, leaving them out of the circle of bi-monthly inspections.
“I can tell you suites and apartments tend to be more complicated because the kitchens are not monitored and residents are responsible for their own cleaning,” Garcia said. “Also, maintenance only comes once or twice a year here, whereas high-rises are on a schedule.”
Garcia said everyone she employs has at least a bachelor’s degree in life sciences, which allows them to identify the exact animal species and use the most effective extermination approach. That way, they can ensure that these pesky roommates can relocate to adequate outdoor housing.
Contact reporter Hadass Kogan at kogandbk@gmail.com.
