Students moving into their dorms for the semester have been greeted by some unwanted guests in their living spaces, as sightings of cockroaches have surged this fall.
The hot, dry summer weather resulted in a proliferation of cockroaches in dorms, including Hodgdon, Lewis and Wren Halls, Residential Facilities Coordinator Jennifer Bevins said. While the return of students to the dorms is expected to lessen the problem, students are reporting an increased number of cockroaches and other insects in their halls.
"During the summer, because no one was in the buildings, there was no water running through the pipes and it was so hot, the drains dried out, which afforded the roaches more ability to run through the building," Vice President for Operations Dick Reynolds said.
"The roaches use the various drain pipes as ways of getting into and around the building," Reynolds said.
He added that he expects the cockroach issue to fade now that students have moved into the dorms and water is flowing through the buildings' pipes once again.
"As soon as you turn on the drains, that cuts off the entry points into the building, but we are still left with the roaches that already got into the building," Reynolds said.
The university has a contract with an exterminator who is on campus four days a week and is on call at all times, Bevins said. The exterminator has been working on the problem for the past several weeks.
"We have had an exterminator on site since before the freshmen got here and we are getting at the problem, but it does takes a little while to get rid of the bugs that already got in," Reynolds said.
Many residential buildings were treated at the end of last semester, but the unusually warm summer lessened those treatments' effectiveness, according to Bevins.
"We are always trying to make sure we are ahead of the game, and this summer, the heat made what we had done in the buildings moot in some cases because everything dried out. That's something we didn't plan for," she said.
Because the insects rely on the dorms' pipes, the majority of cockroach sightings have happened in bathrooms.
"I had four cockroach sightings in late August in the bathroom area, but I haven't seen any in at least two weeks," sophomore Lincoln Giesel, a Wren resident, said. "I think it seems to be getting better."
However, another Wren resident, sophomore Catherine Heyward, said that she has seen no decrease in the number of cockroaches.
"We have had three roach sightings in my suite in the past three days," Heyward said. "A few days ago a suitemate of mine took a pair of shorts out of her drawer and shook them out and a dead cockroach fell out."
"My roommate was in the bathroom the other day and found a cockroach in the stall with her," Michaela Fallon, a freshman living in Hodgdon, said. "I think the cockroaches are absolutely disgusting and I would prefer not to have to worry about seeing one every time I take a shower."
In some dorms, insect sightings have not been limited to cockroaches.
"I actually haven't seen any cockroaches, but we have a ton of other bugs," sophomore Avani Gupta, a Lewis resident, said. "There were a bunch of ants all over the carpet and there were bugs on my bed when we first moved in."
Reynolds is optimistic that the remaining cockroaches will be eliminated soon.
"We are going to get into colder weather and now that people are using the dorms we have water flowing through the systems," he said. "The exterminators are working their way through the bugs that have already gotten in."
"Hopefully we will continue to make progress every day," Reynolds said.
