Sandoz discovers its first room with bedbugs

Sandoz Residence Hall received its first report of what appeared to be bedbug bites yesterday from a student living on the seventh floor.

"We didn't have the dogs to check the room for bugs, but we've treated the room anyway just to make sure," said Glen Schumann, the associate director of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Housing Facilities Operations.

UNL Housing Director Sue Gildersleeve provided the information at Thursday night's bedbug information session in Harper Dining Conference Room B. Although this wasn't the first report of bedbugs in Sandoz, it was the first report of bedbugs possibly being in a student's room.

Schumann said the report was called in around noon and treatment of the room began later in the evening, because the equipment was already in use on other rooms.

As of 10 p.m., the room was still being treated with the heat equipment. Using heat treatment on a room takes up to eight hours, Schumann said.

The treatment was expected to finish at about 2 a.m. Gildersleeve said there haven't been any student complaints about the activity being late at night, because the equipment doesn't create much noise.

"We're relieved that the dog will be sweeping all rooms in Sandoz early next week," she said.

During the information session, Gildersleeve said she has been trying to speak with UNL's Education Department about reports she heard of students being asked by their professors to pile their backpacks on top of each other in a corner of the classroom.

"This just doesn't seem like a very good practice to us, given our current situation," she said.

Housing believes the bedbugs attach themselves to backpacks and clothing in order to travel from place to place.

An HSS student said her professor asks the class to pile the backpacks in a corner of the room to prevent cheating during exams.

"If it was my backpack and coat, I would want it separated from other people's stuff," Gildersleeve said.

Gildersleeve said that currently there have been a very small percentage of students reporting bedbugs before the dogs locate them in the dorm rooms. She said that they will continue to sweep every floor of every residence hall as scheduled.

"I don't want you leaving here thinking the sky is falling, because it isn't," Gildersleeve said.

The next information session regarding bedbugs will be Feb. 15 at the Cather-Pound-Neihardt Dining Hall beginning at 9 p.m.

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