Bedbugs force Colden Hall closure
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Northwest Missouri State University students are shown exiting and entering Colden Hall late Wednesday morning. Three classrooms inside the 78,000-square-foot academic complex were closed earlier this week following discovery of a bedbug infestation. On Wednesday afternoon, university administrators shut down the building completely but announced that normal operations were expected to resume Monday morning.
Northwest Missouri State University officials are responding to evidence of bedbugs in Colden Hall, a large three-story classroom complex on the south end of campus.
Mark Hornickel, the university’s communication manager, said Wednesday that Northwest Facilities Management staff is working with Hart’s Pest Control of Maryville to end the possible infestation.
Northwest administrators and staff constituting the school’s crisis management team met Wednesday afternoon to discuss the situation and decided to close Colden for the rest of the week.
According to a Northwest release issued after the meeting, the university became aware “of the remnants of bed bugs inside some Colden Hall classrooms” on Tuesday.
With the exception of three affected classrooms, Colden was open Wednesday. However, administrators closed the building at 6 p.m.
The release stated that Colden is to reopen “for normal operations” Monday morning pending satisfactory inspection results.
All classes scheduled between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. today and Friday are canceled. However, faculty were given the option of delivering instruction using “alternative methods,” and students were advised to monitor their university email accounts and online course sites for further information.
Evening classes have been relocated to other buildings. Faculty and staff working inside Colden Hall were told to await instructions from their academic directors or supervisors.
Students and faculty inside the building late Wednesday morning said initial closures included three classrooms: Room 3600 on the third floor and Rooms 1700 and 1750 on the lower level.
All three rooms were posted with paper signs reading “Room closed. Facility Services maintenance project. 11/28-12/4. Classes moved to Valk.”
Located northeast of Colden Hall, Valk Center is a smaller classroom building that currently houses the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Hornickel confirmed that some classes had been moved to that facility.
On Wednesday, scores of students attended classes inside Colden and walked through the hallways carrying backpacks and laptops, apparently unconcerned.
Colden Hall is one of Northwest’s largest facilities and houses a number of academic entities, including the Melvin D. and Valorie G. Booth School of Business, the Department of Language and Literature, the School of Computer Science and Information Systems and the Division of Behavioral Sciences. Completed in the late ’50s, the building comprises a little more than 78,000 square feet.
This week’s incident is the second bedbug episode affecting Northwest in a little more than two years. In July 2015, the City of Maryville and the university moved jointly to evacuate Horizons West after confirming that the aging five-building residential complex was infested.
Located on private property at 1121 N. College Drive just north of the Northwest Administration Building, Horizons West was home at the time to approximately 150 college students and a small number of local residents unaffiliated with the university.
All students were evacuated from the complex, and those wishing to do so were given the option of temporarily moving into a vacant dormitory.
Alternate housing was not provided for nonstudents, who were allowed to stay in their apartments if they so desired.
City officials said they adopted that course of action because, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bedbug infestations are considered a public nuisance as opposed to a health hazard or emergency.
But the blood-sucking pests are persistent. In the case of Horizons West, the room-by-room abatement and inspection process lasted five and a half months, and municipal code enforcement “substandard” tags were not removed from exterior doors until late December 2015.
While not known to spread disease, bedbugs can cause itching and excessive scratching that sometimes leads to secondary skin infections.
Bedbugs have been known as human parasites for thousands of years but by the early 1940s were mostly eradicated in the developed world. They have grown in prevalence since 1995, likely due to pesticide resistance.
The flat, reddish-brown insects measure up to 5 millimeters long, or about the size of an apple seed.
Northwest said it conducts monthly treatments to prevent the spread of bedbugs and other pests.
Students and employees who believe they may have been affected by the infestation are urged to place suspect clothing, shoes and backpacks in a plastic trash bag, then empty the trash bag into a clothes dryer set to run on high heat for 30 minutes. Immediately discard the sealed trash bag in an exterior trash receptacle.
Northwest students and employees with concerns should call Facility Services at 660-562-1183 or email [email protected].
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Room 1750 in Colden Hall was one of three classrooms in the massive Northwest Missouri State University academic complex locked and posted earlier this week following the discovery of an apparent bedbug infestation. Mark Hornickel, the university’s communication manager, said Northwest Facilities Management staff is working with Hart’s Pest Control of Maryville to rid the building, now closed, of any remaining pests. TONY BROWN DAILY FORUM
