For the past few years, Buffalo State College has leased rooms for students at the Adam's Mark Hotel, to compensate for the shortage of dorm rooms on campus.
As the student newspaper recently reported, living in the hotel can be a bit different from the traditional dorm experience, from the good to the bad: from maid service making the bed and cleaning the bathroom to having to wait to catch a shuttle to campus every time you have to get to class.
This year, some BSC students living at the Adam's Mark had an extra headache to deal with: bedbugs.
The Record reports:
The rampant spread of bedbugs across the United States has come to Buffalo, and several students living at the Adams Mark Hotel have had to cope with the annoying parasites.
One student, who asked to remain anonymous, said that her roommate was the first to suffer from the biting insects.
“She started waking up with bites, but they were like welts,” she said.
They were moved to another room. However, they were not warned to thoroughly clean their belongings, and bedbugs are known for being notorious hitchhikers. Soon both girls started waking up with bug bites again.
“We’re thinking that we brought it with us,” she said.
They moved once more, making sure this time that their bedding was clean and bug-free, and have not had further problems.
Buffalo State is hardly alone. Colleges across the country have been reporting bedbug problems in the dorms. MSNBC reported that the University of Florida is baking its mattresses at high temperatures to get rid of the pests, and Texas A&M brought in dogs to sniff out the bedbugs.
An expert told the Today show: “U.S. college campuses are really the perfect setting. We have large numbers of students coming from all over the country and, in fact, all over the world every semester, and it’s inevitable that somebody is going to bring bugs with them. And once the bugs are introduced, they can rapidly spread because of all the interactions students have visiting each other’s rooms.”
