The Northerner

The beginning of spring signifies the arrival of warm weather, flowers and, most unfortunately, bugs.’ Imagine noticing a few red bites on your leg and assuming it has to do with the changing climate.’ You go about your day mindlessly scratching the bumps, forgetting all about it by nightfall.’ That evening you return to the warm sanctity of your bed, hoping for a restful sleep before the beginning of another day.
For a few Northern Kentucky University students, the comfort of that bed is the source of their problems.’ Callahan Hall has been plagued with bed bugs.

A source who wished to remain unidentified gave a firsthand account of what he or she had been dealing with.’ ‘A maintenance man told everyone in the hall that it was most likely that someone brought them from home, and they spread slowly down the hall. Supposedly, they can not tell exactly which room they originated in,’ the source said.

Director of University Housing Peter Trentacoste said, ‘I can confirm we had a (bed bugs) incident. We successfully treated the six rooms.’

According to the Center for Disease Control, a common bed bug is a wingless, blood-sucking insect that grows up to seven milimeters in length and has a lifespan from four months up to one year.’ ‘Bed bugs hide in cracks and crevices in beds, wooden furniture, floors, and walls during the daytime and emerge at night to feed on their preferred host, humans,’ the CDC reports.

Bed bugs are most common in underdeveloped countries and cases of them in the United States were rare in the late 20th century.
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‘Bed bugs to me is something dirty people get, and I am not dirty. It was disturbing to think that I might have shared a bed with such things,’ the source said.

When University Housing discovered a possibility of bed bugs, it began calling every resident on the infested floor to ascertain which rooms were affected.’ Students were relocated to begin extermination last weekend.’ Some students were given All-card credit for their inconvenience.

‘The reality is this is something we take extremely seriously. It is important for students to be educated on what to look for. We will be including this in our orientations and informing our RAs,’ Trentacoste said.

‘We were made to move out of our rooms. We were given a list of things that would melt in a treatment of heat being circulated at 150 degrees to kill them off. We had to go through our room and collected aerosol bottles, all makeup, crayons, etc. and take any clothes we needed or were wearing and wash them, or at least put them in the dryer,’ the source said.

The university is taking measures to ensure that these types of treatments won’t be needed again.
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