Bed bugs were found in LaFarge Residence Center, according to a Sept. 18 email sent to residents from the Office of Residence Life.
The bed bugs were found “in an isolated area within a suite within the building,” according to the email. The students who discovered bed bugs in their suite were relocated to a showroom on the ground floor of the building.
Full chemical treatment, which usually takes seven to ten days, began on Sept. 21, according to Jessica Moran-Buckridge, director of Residence Life.
At St. Joe’s, bed bugs have been found in residence halls more frequently than in the past, which coincides with a regional trend throughout Philadelphia.
Michael Levy, Ph.D., associate professor of epidemiology and informatics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted a door-to-door survey of the increasing bed bug infestations in row homes in Philadelphia in 2014.
“We were expecting about 1% of households to be infested,” Levy said.
Instead, Levy found that around 11% of respondents reported having bed bugs recently in their residences.
Moran-Buckridge has worked in Residence Life at St. Joe’s for the past 14 years and said she has “certainly seen an increase in bed bugs” in residence halls on campus.
“This is an issue in urban areas that is increasingly common,” Moran-Buckridge said. “A decade or so ago we weren’t seeing any or very few bed bug situations [at St. Joe’s], and now we have a full protocol.”
That protocol includes checking all residential buildings with bed bug dogs over the summer. Levy said the problem is partly seasonal because bed bugs go through growth in late August, and outbreaks can occur when students move back into residence halls.
Last year in Xavier Hall, residents noticed and reported bed bugs after Easter break. Initially, a single room was treated, but after others noticed bed bugs elsewhere in the building, the entire house was treated.
Bobby Martin ’21, who was living in Xavier at the time, noticed bites that he suspected were from bed bugs.
“Once I noticed, and the health office confirmed that [they] were bed bug bites, I put it in our house group chat so everyone else would notice,” Martin said. “Other people spoke up that their rooms were contaminated.”
Martin said the process was less than ideal. He moved through three different rooms before going back to their house.
“In McShain, the first room they tried giving us they left unlocked, so freshmen that lived in McShain went in there,” Martin said. “There was a bunch of garbage all over the place. They relocated us to the room across the hall which was all dusty. The next day they moved us to Villiger.”
Philadelphia is the only major city without laws outlining responsibilities for bed bug infestations. Philadelphia Department of Public Health does not offer public services regarding bed bug infestations because bed bugs are not known to spread disease.
However, Levy said there are absolutely health concerns related to bed bugs. He noted the emotional distress caused from having the insects in one’s home. Levy has also conducted a series of laboratory experiments that concluded that bed bugs are capable of spreading disease.
“Whenever you have an insect biting sucking blood from one person and biting and sucking blood from another, you have to worry,” Levy said. “We know that bed bugs can transmit a number of diseases. We don’t know that they are, but they are capable.”
A Philadelphia-based task force called “Philadelphians Against Bed Bugs” (PhABB) is working to create legislation to control bed bugs. That legislation, which will go before City Council on Oct. 22, will require landlords to disclose past bed bug infestations.
Michelle Niedermeier, community IPM and environmental health program coordinator for Pennsylvania Integrated Pest Management’s urban outreach office, is a member of PhABB. She said she hopes this legislation will help to decrease the presence and spread of bed bugs. She described the current situation as the “wild west”—with no protocol for reporting or monitoring bed bugs in the city.
“We don’t really have a good sense of how many bed bugs there are out there and how many infestations, how many introductions, because nobody is in charge of bed bugs,” Niedermeier said.
Currently, Residence Life does not inform the larger university community about bed bug infestations “unless it is an extreme case” according to Moran-Buckridge. She added that Residence Life does not officially track past infestations although she said she thinks they may begin doing so.
Levy emphasized that the best way anyone, including a university, can limit the problem is to detect and exterminate bed bugs early.
Attacking the problem also comes down to awareness and proactiveness of residents of the building, Levy said.
“It’s so much easier to treat an infestation early,” Levy said. “It’s critical that the tenant, whether they be students in a dorm or tenants in apartments or housing, are aware so they can keep an eye out and make sure bugs don’t come back again.”
Charley Rekstis ’20 contributed to this story.
