This September the University experienced its first case of bedbugs in a residential dorm when a student found bedbugs in her room in WestCo. After multiple visits from an exterminator, the bugs have been killed, and Residential Life (ResLife) has developed a protocol to help contain future bedbug incidents. Bedbugs were also discovered and eradicated from Alpha Delta Phi this year.

The University is confident that bedbugs will not become a widespread problem, as the reported cases so far have been well contained.

“In talking to an exterminator, it seems that it’s highly unlikely that we would ever get to an infestation point, because it takes so many months for them to multiply to that degree,” said Director of ResLife Fran Koerting. “Because the students are only here for nine months out of the year, it’s highly unlikely that in undergraduate housing we would ever have a widespread infestation.”

The student in WestCo, who wished to remain anonymous, questioned the University’s handling of her case. She first discovered the bed bugs in early September after waking up with bites on her ankles.

“I knew that something wasn’t right with the room within my very first week of living there,” wrote the student in an e-mail to The Argus. “I kept waking up in the morning with bites concentrated around my ankles, and one morning I woke up with a row of bites that I couldn’t ignore. I first called Physical Plant on Sept. 18, and they told me that I should wash all of my belongings and vacuum the floor in preparation for an inspection.”

After the student cleaned the room and replaced the mattress pad, egg crates, and pillows, the exterminator came and searched the room, but concluded that there were no signs of bedbugs. The student then went to the Davison Health Center, where a doctor and nurse examined the bites and determined that they were, in fact, bedbug bites.

“This identification should have served as concrete evidence for an infestation, yet the University did not take the actions that concrete evidence merits,” the student wrote. “They wanted to move me back into my room after simply replacing the mattress.”

The University agreed to replace the bed frame and mattress and steam clean the carpeting in the room. Three days after the initial report was made, the student moved back into the room for another week and a half without experiencing any new signs of bedbugs.

“I was sitting on my futon, which I had been told had been treated, on the afternoon of Sept. 29, when I saw a small brown bug scurry across the top,” the student wrote. “The next day the exterminator confirmed that the bug was in fact a bedbug, but after inspecting the room once more they still found no signs of a bedbug problem. The implication that it was just ‘one bug’ was almost comical—there is never just one bug.”

The student decided she was uncomfortable living in the room any longer and the University allowed her to relocate to a single in the Butterfields.

“I decided that I no longer wanted to live in that room because I do not trust the exterminator’s ability to identify or eradicate a bedbug problem,” the student wrote. “I do not fault the University for the bedbugs that were in my room. I do, however, fault them for failing to take appropriate steps after my first report and for continuing to rely on an exterminator who is clearly unable to recognize an infestation.”

The exterminators administered a second treatment to the room, and the University believes the bedbugs have now been eliminated.

“The exterminator did have to do a second treatment, and we believe that it’s been eradicated at this point,” Koerting said. “There’s no way of telling where or when the bugs came from, since they can lie dormant for a long time.”

An unrelated case was also reported in the Alpha Delta Phi house after a resident found bedbugs in his bedroom a few weeks ago. Students found exterminators without ResLife’s involvement, since the house is not owned by the University, but through fraternity alumni. Initially, the house underwent several failed chemical treatments. After hiring a different exterminator—who used a special dog to sniff out any bedbugs in rooms throughout the house—they successfully killed the bugs through an extensive treatment.

“We tried a number of different exterminators and none of that really took,” said one of the Alpha Delta Phi House Manager, who wished to remain anonymous. “But this time they did a heat treatment, which treats everything in the room, so there’s much less of a chance that they come back.”

The bugs did not affect the lower level of the house, which contains the Star and Crescent café.

“Bedbugs live on soft surfaces and there aren’t many soft surfaces on the first floor,” the house manager said. “So it’s not a problem there.”

After the case in WestCo, ResLife developed a Bedbug Protocol that informs students what to do if they think they have bedbugs and how the University will go about treating it.

“When this situation happened in a residence hall, which is the first situation we’ve had in a residence hall, we decided that we really need to get a written policy down so that we’re all consistent in the way that we approach it,” Koerting said. “The most important thing is that people were clear on what should be done, and we wanted to be upfront with the students so that they would know what was involved if they were concerned that they had bedbugs.”

The protocol states that students should not clean their rooms before an exterminator arrives, so that the exterminator can more easily assess whether there are bedbugs in the room. The new policy also does not require that students change rooms.

“As we started looking at more and more policies across different campuses, they all said that they don’t move the student, because this could possibly move the bed bugs with them,” Koerting said. “So the new policy will be that we will not relocate the student.”

However, the WestCo student is uncertain that the protocol will be successful because of the potential financial burdens it places on a student. While students will receive financial assistance in paying for regular laundry costs resulting from a bed bug infestation, they will have to bear the costs of any special cleaning, such as for pillows or rugs, that is needed. “A student who cannot afford to treat special items in the way that they need to be treated will be forced to either dispose of these items or continue living with them without treatment, which will invariably lead to the spread of the infestation,” the student wrote.