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.

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Students in a suite of Living/Learning’s B-building were displaced last week after it was discovered that one of the inhabitants had been bitten by a bed bug, UVM’s Director of Communications Enrique Corredera said.

On Thursday, April 17, it was confirmed that the bites on the leg of a female resident of one of the “German House” suites were from a bed bug, and all of the students living in the suite were moved to other housing by the next day.

The residents of L/L B-220 are permanently relocated to other areas in L/L for the rest of the semester as the suite goes through a three-week treatment process to eliminate any possibility of a bed bug infestation, Corredera said.

Evacuations must be done extremely carefully. Here, the students laundered all clothing and “bagged all belongings” (though what happens after belongings are bagged is unstated, and is of major interest, since bed bugs can apparently live for a year or even 18 months, unfed).

Evacuation of all residents and treatment of the rooms were carried out after one student received bed bug bites on her leg. It is not clear from the article whether any signs of bed bugs were found in the room (in fact, in the absence of such evidence, the student could have been bitten at a restaurant, in a library, or on a city bus).

• bedbugs at Stanford University dorms (again)
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• Bed bugs at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
• Ryerson University: a study in unenthusiastic bed bug control practices

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Student Aaryn Secker finally moved out after battling bed bugs in Solin Hall for months:

Secker notified Howard Zinman, Services Coordinator for Solin Hall, after discovering tiny red bites all over her body in September. Residence Services was initially responsive to her concerns, replacing her mattress and couch, paying for dry cleaning, and spraying her room with chemicals to kill the bugs.

But despite the intensive cleaning, Secker said that the bedbugs returned.

“They kept coming back. McGill [Residence Services] replaced my bed about twice. By the end of it they ended up taking out my bed and my fridge,” she said.

When the problem persisted, Secker moved out for good and sought rent compensation from the Student Housing Office for the entire academic year.

McGill’s refusal to reimburse Secker for rent or to terminate her lease has caused Secker to threaten bringing her case to the Régie du Logement, Quebec’s housing office.

Zinman refused to comment on Secker’s case, citing confidentiality reasons. He said the process of treating bedbug infestations has not changed since last year’s incidents in MORE Houses and New Residence, where bedbugs were found in several rooms.

It is not easy to treat for bed bugs, let alone in student housing. But replacing a bed twice does not seem like the most well-considered protocol, since beds can be treated, and moving infested furniture is tricky.

Perhaps McGill and their pest control operator should talk to Stanford and their pest control operator (who we believe is Crane Pest, San Francisco). Stanford has had its share of bed bugs, but the reports of their responses so far have been the best we have heard of on college campuses. And let’s face it, there will be bed bugs on college campuses, you can’t stop that from happening, though you can try to implement policies to help prevent it. And you can educate students and staff about the problem.

What matters most, though, is the response when bed bugs are discovered.

• Comment dites-vous le bed bugs en français?
• Ryerson University: a study in unenthusiastic bed bug control practices
• Bed bugs at the University of Vermont
• bed bugs at University of Bridgeport

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But what I found intriguing was the following comment:

Used and freebie couches are breeding grounds for these pests and a center-piece in many college students’ living rooms. Many apartment complexes warned tenants of the commingling of on-campus and off-campus Aggies, with reference to spreading bed bugs. The Luxor Management Group told tenants to avoid visiting residence halls and “if someone who lives in the dorms must come to visit you in your residence, [we] strongly recommend that they do not sit or put their belongings on your beds or even enter your bedrooms and to just stay in your living or dining rooms.”

This management company is warning residents of off-campus apartments that they should avoid visiting students who live in dorms, and treat visitors from dorms with caution, keeping them in the living room and dining room, and their belongings off the beds.

Bed bug awareness is a good thing, but this advice is a bit off.

Yes–I would absolutely advise people to avoid putting guests’ belongings in their beds. The whole party “coat pile on the bed” (or coat pile anywhere) concept is a bad idea, and aversion to it is a litmus test for whether people have experienced bed bugs or not.

And taking in used couches and other items from the street, Craigslist, or other sources, is a bad idea. (Though surely some of the students in private accommodation have done this too?)

On the other hand, you should realize that if your friends have bed bugs and bring them to your home on belongings or on their clothing, they can infest other rooms as easily as the bedroom. Keeping friends to the living and dining room is not going to do it. Sofas and upholstered furniture are common targets, but bed bugs do also move into rooms themselves, and wooden furniture items.

Better advice for Texas A&M students is to talk about bed bugs. Make sure your friends know about them and know that experts claim as many as 50% of people may experience no bite marks and no itching–that means you can have them and not know it.

Make sure they know what unfed first instar nymphs look like (1 mm or 1/32 inch, white or translucent; not 6 mm or 1/6 inch and brown), since–as Lou Sorkin keeps reminding us–this is not what the media usually tells people to look for, but they may be all you see.

Talk to your friends about avoiding curbside furniture, lawn sales, flea markets and the like.

While Luxor Management may have the idea that students in a dorm are more prone to bed bug outbreaks than those in private accommodations, it is true that anyone can get bed bugs anytime.

And you do not have to share your bed with a student who lives in a dorm–or trash-pick furniture–to get them, as most of us will attest.

You can read thebatt.com’s article here.

• Stanford still fighting bed bugs
• Bed bugs at the University of Vermont
• Eastern Nazarene College: students cannot bring in ANY used furniture
• Spring break bed bug warnings!

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Well, he’s back. And it’s hard to believe, but he sounds even less charming than last time. He updates the world that his dorm bed bugs have come back, and he is now moving to a non-bed bug-infested apartment in Greenpoint.

(Dude, no bed bugs in Greenpoint?!? Maybe that old landlord has a bridge he wants to sell you next.)

He writes,

OK, so I HAVE bedbugs; what if you have herpes? - m4w - 29
Reply to: pers-502210415@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-12-07, 7:31PM EST

Yeah, the little buggers came back. Oh how I wish there were something like valtrek that you could use to keep them from biting, but the last group must have hatched a new batch of eggs with their dying breath (do bugs breathe?), deposited them in the cracks of the linoleum beneath my bed, and so here I am, arms covered in welts, looking like a fool while you look so elegant and kewl. But does that make me any less interesting, any less handsome, any less good in bed than the next guy you let have you? The odds are that this next guy has some crummy, there-for-life STD (herpes? hep-abcd?) that bug killer can’t get rid of, and he is going to give you something that insecticide won’t fix. So if you don’t have herpes, I am definitely the kind of man you should want to meet, even if I do have bedbugs. And by the way, I am out of the dorms soon enough. I’ve got a sweet deal from some old Polish dude on a nice sunny apartment in Greenpoint, and I’m going to be moving in with a new bed and new bedding, sterilized clothing and not much else. My new place will be as clean as a whistle and bedbug free. So why not give me a second chance, stuck up hipster girl, and let me show more of the man whose blood bedbugs covet.

Again, I think there is something there between us worth pursuing, and we should not let talk of bedbugs or blisters get between us.

* Location: Williamsboard/Greenpoint
* it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 502210415

What a difference ten days makes.

This may not actually be the same guy. In the first post, he spells valtrex correctly, but he botches it up in the second. And was he really a mutual fund manager living in SoHo per the first post, or a dorm-resident as per the second?

Or maybe it’s all a joke?  If so, it’s pretty lame.

You can see the original post until Cragislist pulls it like they did the other one. Or you can click the photo above to see my screenshot.

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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:

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• bed bug news for 2007-11-15
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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.)

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Dear Pennypacker Resident:

After reading the Crimson opinion piece from October 22, 2007, “I’ve
Got an Itch”, it seems worthwhile to review where things stand after
the incidents of skin complaints two weekends ago at Pennypacker.

At that time, three individuals came to university health services
(UHS) with similar symptoms. After being evaluated by a physician at
After Hours Urgent Care, the possibility of scabies was considered.
Discussion with proctors at Pennypacker revealed that there were at
least 5 or 6 students at Pennypacker with itching skin and rash, though
only three of them wished to be examined.

Given the symptoms, also under consideration was the possibility of bed
bugs, though the skin findings were not classic for this diagnosis. A
scraping from the skin of one student was done to look for mites, but
these were not seen. It’s important to note the presence of mites on a
skin scraping absolutely confirms the diagnosis of scabies; if they are
absent, though, the diagnosis is not excluded. Frequently, the
diagnosis of scabies is difficult to make, and it takes several
examinations of a patient over time before other possibilities are
excluded. This is because the rash associated with scabies can be
fairly non-specific, and the “burrows” are often not seen.

But the three students’ rashes had cleared up within three days, leading an entomologist to speculate that scabies was not to blame:

Four days later, Dr. Michael Alpert, an entomologist from the Harvard School of
Public Health came to Pennypacker and talked to three symptomatic
individuals and concluded that scabies was unlikely, given the rapid
clearing. He speculated that the causative bug could have been
mosquitoes, though he never saw the bites when they were present. The
physician who did see the bites, said that the appearance of the bites
was not consistent with mosquitoes, and that their locations on the skin
was more consistent with scabies. As is frequently the case with rashes,
the simple symptoms can lead to a variety of diagnosis, and it
is often difficult to tell, in the absence of definitive testing, which
one is correct.

This memo above to students was from Doctors Sohayla Gharib and Gregory Johnson of the Harvard University Health Service, who also had this to say,

If the diagnosis was not scabies, it is
possible that there was another insect involved, though it does not
appear to be bedbugs (because there are no ongoing symptoms and there
was no evidence for bed bugs when the pest control team evaluated the
dormitory), nor appear to be mosquitoes. Whatever the ultimate source,
it is now eradicated from Pennypacker thanks to your response and
cooperation.

Let’s all hope that Pennypacker is itch-free for some time to come.

Get the full story from IvyGate.

Also, here’s a Columbia University gossip blog, BWOG (put out by writers from the student magazine) alleging bed bugs are in Schapiro 12 (student housing at Columbia University):

According to Bwog,

Now that a few students have been bitten severely, Housing has finally admitted that there are bedbugs. Two rooms have been fumigated, one of them twice. Unfortunately, Housing still refuses to clean the hallway and carpet even though bedbugs can easily travel from one room to another. Housing, you’ve really let yourself go on this one…

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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.

• bedbugs at Stanford University dorms (again)
• Stanford U bed bugs: being fought with enthusiasm and wisdom
• Stanford bed bugs: university fights back
• Boston University’s bed bugs: if we don’t talk about them, they’ll go away

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