Three apartment units at the Smyth-Fernwald Complex near Clark Kerr Campus could have been infested with bedbugs as early as March, according to Jeff Urdahl, campus director for housing operations, maintenance and environment.

Yadda, yadda… it happens, and is probably happening on every campus now to some degree. But wait, you know there’s more to this story:

Urdahl said a combination of manure pesticides and heat and cold treatments will be used in the infested apartment units.

Hot and cold, I get.

But manure pesticides?!?

Perhaps above I should instead have said @#it happens.

Pest Control Professionals, please tell us more.

• an honest PCO, a clever move
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• Bed bugs in Ventura County (Thousand Oaks, California)
• The Wall Street Journal on “new” bed bug-fighting tactics

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Myrtle Beach, SC Spring Break 2007 27

Originally uploaded by Curtis and Eric

Articles are now starting to appear warning students traveling over spring break that bed bugs are something to try and avoid. This article from the student paper the Daily Kansan, and this one in the About.com Student Travel Blog.

And remember Winston’s advice to us last November — even visiting friends or parents, you need to be cautious. You might be taking bed bugs from school or motel to someone’s home. Since Michael Potter tells us as many as 50% of folks do not react, it’s worth being cautious and inspecting your dorm room (or other places you stay) carefully.

Note to Kansas students: even if your school claims no one at the school has had bed bugs, they may have. The problem just has not been detected yet. No, I am not being alarmist. It’s just that that’s too rich a claim to be making when bed bugs are spreading all over the country and around the world. Someone there has probably been bitten. The same goes for About.com travel blogger Kathleen: I hate to say it, but if you travel that much, you may well have been exposed; you may be one of those who is not allergic.

Bedbugger’s FAQ on how to avoid bed bugs while traveling.
How to avoid spreading bed bugs if you have been exposed.

• Stanford still fighting bed bugs
• Eastern Nazarene College: students cannot bring in ANY used furniture
• Bed bugs lurk in hotel rooms, says ABC news
• bed bugs at University of Bridgeport

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Jessie Lamotta, now a junior history major at the College, was pestered by bed bugs on Cromwell 3 from move-in day to sometime in October during her freshman year.

“My roommate woke up with little red bumps on her body, and I found little blood stains on my bed sheets,” Lamotta said. “Also, at night when we pulled our sheets back, the bugs would scurry and hide.”

“The doctor (at Health Services) said that my roommate and I had scabies and that we should stay away from other students and not transport any of our belongings to other rooms,” Lamotta said. She and her roommate were given body cream to wash with twice a day.

I seriously hope that the diagnosis of scabies was given much before the students actually reported seeing bed bugs scurrying in the bed, and that students suspected of scabies are given skin scrapings to confirm that condition.

It sounds like the flare-ups were mostly in Cromwell Hall and have been cleared up.

Hopefully the students will be bed bug free from now on.

• Harvard dorm treated for scabies–but what was it really? Also, bed bugs at Columbia?
• Stanford U bed bugs: being fought with enthusiasm and wisdom
• Boston University’s bed bugs: if we don’t talk about them, they’ll go away
• Stanford: stop those bed bugs! Here’s what you need to do.

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Bed bugs in dorms at Pace University in New York

Speculation about bed bugs in Portland SRO. People are talking about bed bugs–this has got to be good. Similar Posts:

• Bed bugs at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
• FAQ: Where can I read about bed bug lawsuits? Can you help me find a lawyer?
• Bed bugs under discussion at university housing officers’ conference
• Chinches de cama en Espanol

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• bed bug news for 2007-11-15
• How to avoid bed bugs, according to Texas A&M’s student paper
• Bed bugs at Berkeley will be treated with… say what?
• Stanford bed bugs: university fights back

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(The following is not really bed bug news, but a reminder of a time not long ago when encountering a bed bug in a place of business was a bit like finding a hair in your salad, but maybe more common.)

(These last two are not really bed bug stories, but they tell us something about how widely known bed bugs are becoming: they’re starting to mean something in popular parlance once again.)

• bed bugs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and at Cornell University dorms
• Bed bugs in casino and senior apartments in New Jersey, Binghamton University (again) and another dust mite photo in the news
• bed bug news for 2007-11-16
• Bed bugs under discussion at university housing officers’ conference

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Terry says, “A pest control program for bed bugs is very detailed. You’ve got to get all the crevices. We are doing a little more than we really need to, but it’s to make sure we don’t have a problem in the future.”

That means Terry’s son, Tony, has to bag contents of every locker in the school, and then spray those contents with an insecticide.

Tony and his mother are wearing only gloves now, but when the heavy fumigation gets underway, they’ll be wearing face masks, too.

I am interested in these methods, since I have not heard PCOs here talking about spraying into bags of belongings. Perhaps a PCO would tell us what this might be.

I initially thought it was a good thing that Bracken County Schools were taking bed bugs seriously after finding a bed bug in school, since cities like New York City are so slow to take action against similar situations. My initial positive sense was based on Bracken County’s willingness to treat schools for bed bugs. I thought that their treatment of every school in the district was based on a sense that bed bugs must be more widespread than in just this one school.

Now, however, I am becoming more concerned about the community’s response, especially their apparent obsession with pinpointing its source. It betrays a lack of education about bed bugs and their behavior, which appears to be a prevalent problem elsewhere too.

Parents in Brooksville are divided about the schools closing an extra day just for bed bugs.

Elizabeth Aulick, a mother of two Bracken County students says, “Yeah, it does concern me, but the letter I got said they only found one bug. If it’s one bug isolated to one child, keep him home for a few days.”

A mother of three Bracken County students, including one at the Middle School says, “I guess it’s a little unexpected. I never expected something like this, but I guess it’s a good thing. Just to be on the safe side. It didn’t both me, I said, ‘Well, that’s fine.’”

The school fumigation in Bracken County is getting the full support of the county health department there.

I am glad the health department in Bracken County recognizes bed bugs as a concern, since many don’t. However, I have to say that what’s being said about the child in this case is absurd.

People in Bracken County must not associate the schools’ bed bug issue, if they indeed have one, with this one student who may have had the bed bug on his things or on his clothing. Bed bugs can live and breed in schools or in school buses or public transportation, and they can crawl onto students at any of these locations (as well as many others). As we have taken pains to explain in the past, the presence of a bed bug on a person or their things absolutely does not prove the person brought the bed bug in.

All parents, including those of the child who was bitten by the bed bug, must search at home and have a qualified PCO inspect if anyone is complaining of bites or if they see any bed bugs or possible signs. However, it is crucial that parents and school officials realize that bed bugs are not lice, and do not live on people. They crawl on, feed, and run away. If a bed bug is found on a person in a school, it does not mean the person brought the bed bug to the school.

I would assume the Bracken County School officials know this, since they are treating every school, and not just the one the bed bug was found in. And yet it does not sound like the parents or media have been picking up on that fact.

If the child did indeed have had an infestation at home and brought them into the school, then his family, too, caught them from somewhere. They spread easily. And everyone should be alert. Everyone should be asking where this family might have picked up bed bugs: parents’ workplace? YMCA? School? Bus? Motel? Because where they got them, you can get them too.

However, the child should not be blamed, nor should he be kept home. People with active infestations need to take some steps to avoid spreading bed bugs. Treating the child himself as if he were contagious is an ignorant mistake.

• Schools in Bracken County, KY shut down due to bed bugs
• NYC Bedbuggers: time to have some local politicians over for a bite or two
• New York City public schools continue to be treated for bed bugs
• Spring break bed bug warnings!

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The article said,

“Student Housing has been informed of a few cases of bedbugs on campus for about the past six to seven years,” Imogen Hinds, associate director of student housing, wrote in an email to The Daily. “We have not had cases every year. Some years we do have more than in others.”

Actually, last year alone, they were at East Flo in December 2006, and Alondra in January 2007.

Nevertheless, the impressive-sounding bed bug protocols described in these various articles suggest that the way bed bugs are handled at Stanford is better than that at any other college where we have details of treatment. Which isn’t many, since colleges tend to hush this up. Having bed bugs repeatedly in different places, and fighting them aggressively, is the best case scenario when it comes to colleges and bed bugs. (Compare that with having them in the same place over and over.)

Nevertheless, it does seem like Stanford needs to implement more steps to avoid infestations. Students are being given some education about preventing and detecting bed bugs by the university, but I am sure more could be done.

• Bed bugs under discussion at university housing officers’ conference
• bedbugs at Stanford University dorms (again)
• Stanford U bed bugs: being fought with enthusiasm and wisdom
• Stanford bed bugs: university fights back

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Sorry– the post is gone: removed at the request of the young person who wants to forget the whole thing ever happened. Traditional steps are being taken to eradicate bed bugs, and we wish this individual well.

Sorry to delete your comments which were so well-conceived, but we were all young once– Nobugs too!

• Share your tales of Bed Bug Woe
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A BU junior said during her first night in the BU dorm Crofton in late May, she received small, red marks, each a centimeter wide, around her feet, legs and ankles. When she spoke with the associate director of British Programmes a month later after repeated unsuccessful attempts to meet, she was accused of making the marks herself, said the student, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of not being allowed to study abroad again.

The junior said she noticed the bites became larger and puffier and had spread over her entire body, but she and her roommate, Newbury College junior Michelle Beaton, did not complain until the second week. After their complaints, housekeepers sprayed the room using an aerosol insecticide and changed bed linens.

The aerosol insecticide worked briefly, but of course, the bed bugs came back with a vengeance:

Housekeeping and exterminators did not find evidence of a bedbug infestation in the students’ room, said Joe Finkhouse, international programs director of institutional relations, in an email to BU spokesman Colin Riley, to whom comments about the issue were directed.

“They wouldn’t admit we had bedbugs,” Beaton said. “We had all the symptoms of bedbugs.”

The students said the aerosol insecticide worked briefly, but eventually they began to notice more marks. Bedbugs do not spread diseases, nor are their bites particularly harmful to people.

“I was using makeup on my legs,” the BU junior said. “It was all over me. It was horrible.”

After the first spraying, the bugs got out of control, and she began seeing them, she said.

The junior said she tried contacting British Programmes Associate Director Alison Campbell after her room was first sprayed, but Campbell did not hear her case until about a month after. When they spoke, the BU junior said Campbell accused her of making the marks herself and said she “wasn’t allowed to tell anyone” about the situation.

BU’s Joe Finkhouse, international programs director of institutional relations, had this to say:

“Pests are not an ongoing problem in the London program or any other program site,” Finkhouse said in an email. “In fact, this was the first incident of its kind in London in over nine years. Over 4,000 students have participated in the London programs during that time. There have been no further reports since June.”

Well, it’s no great surprise, if students suffering from bites are threatened with retaliation for speaking about their experiences, as these students claim they were.

Students eventually got assistance with clothing cleaning bills and were moved to faculty housing at Lexam Gardens. (Hmmm… I wonder what happens to faculty who complain about bed bugs in their housing?)

Finkhouse had more to say:

“Fortunately, pest problems are extremely uncommon in our programs abroad,” he said. “We’re satisfied that the situation was handled well and quickly under the circumstances.”

What college administrators need to realize is that bed bugs are increasingly common everywhere. There’s no shame in contracting bed bugs; you will be judged not on the basis of having them, but on how you react to them, once a problem is identified.

I hope that BU’s study abroad program, and all international and domestic providers of student services, develop a proactive plan for preventing bed bugs, and dealing with them should they arise. Any complaints need to be met with a prompt, thorough inspection by a PCO and treatment by a PCO of the affected units. In this case, students claimed housekeeping staff coming in twice with an aerosol bottle represented the only treatment. It is extremely difficult to treat bed bugs, and professional, experienced pest control operators are the way to go. Unless more has been done since then, it is likely this dorm is still infested with bed bugs.

• Bed bug hotel claim in Isle of Wight; study/travel abroad and bed bugs
• Stanford bed bugs: university fights back
• bedbugs at Stanford University dorms (again)
• 80% of Single Room Occupancy units in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are infested with bed bugs; also Rensselaer Polytechnic’s dorms

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