News reports about bed bugs are all over the place today, and most of them address the issue of dealing with them in your home or hotels. But the tiny pests are showing up somewhere else that’s causing a great deal of stress: college dorm rooms.
Higher education is stressful enough without worrying about bloodsucking insects. Unfortunately, there are several factors that make dormitories prime breeding ground for bed bugs.
First is the sheer population of people – thousands of students congregating from different cities, states, and even countries makes a college campus extremely vulnerable. As recently as a few years ago, bed bugs were most likely to come in with students from abroad, but the recent surge of infestations in the U.S. means that just about any of the incoming pupils might be bringing uninvited guests.
So the fact that bed bugs are generally more prevalent now in the United States than before makes colleges highly susceptible to the hitchhiking bloodsuckers. But the social dynamics of college itself also gives bed bugs lots of opportunities to spread around.
Typically, students are paired with at least one other roommate. Any bed bugs brought along with one student are almost assured to spread out into the clothes, bedding, and other belongings of all that person’s roommates.
The risks of a dorm room’s close quarters can be applied to a dorm or even a campus as a whole. In other words, large numbers of people sharing a small space increase the likelihood of a widespread infestation. Couple the concentration of humans with the social activities that students engage in – going to other students’ rooms to party, watch a movie, or even (occasionally) study – and you have a perfect commuter system for bed bugs.
There is no evidence to suggest that bed bugs transmit any diseases to humans when they feed at night. But just because they don’t pose a health threat doesn’t mean these creatures can’t cause trouble and distress to the college students who unwittingly let them crash in their room.
Bites from bed bugs are small, red, and often itch. They feed once a night, usually just before dawn, then retreat back into hiding to shed their skin. This cycle repeats five times, and then the bugs are ready to lay eggs. All this means that a few bites on a college student’s skin can quickly multiply into many as the bugs feed and breed. Moreover, the stresses of academic and social life are likely to be much higher priorities than the origins of the irritating bumps on their back. This makes it easier for bed bugs to escape notice before they can feed several times and lay their eggs.
There’s also a potential element of embarrassment in admitting that you have bed bugs. Even though the cleanest of houses can become host to them, there’s still a social stigma that someone who has them must be dirty – filth by association. This myth is gradually disappearing, but any negative judgment, real or imagined, is bound to add to the stress of a student’s life.
Most of all, because bed bugs are so resilient, the extermination process can seriously disrupt the already hectic life on campus. Depending on the method of treatment (pesticides, extreme temperature manipulation, etc.), students may have to evacuate their dorms for up to several days while the pests are eliminated.
Come summer, you can always hear students singing “no more pencils, no more books.” Let’s hope that we can add “no more bed bugs” to the list soon too.