First impressions and I have a love-hate relationship. Sure, getting fired up about a juicy topic is certainly fun (especially for a columnist) but impressions are just so gosh darn unreliable unless you do the fact-checking to back them up.
Take, for example, this past week when I did a spit-take after reading in the Phoenix that Loyola has had bed bugs in campus dorms as recently as this January.
"But I'm finding this out in March!" said my gut-reaction inner monologue. "And I live in a dorm! What am I not being told?! CONSPIRACY!"
Now mind you, I've been terrified of most bugs since childhood and was already on edge after finding out a fresh outbreak of the little bloodsuckers hit Chicago recently. If I were an airport, my threat level would have been orange - needlessly, as it turns out.
A quick call to Brian Johnson, associate director of Residence Life - as both a concerned columnist and lifelong scaredy-cat of all things entomological - put my mind at ease.
Yes, he told me, bed bugs have been found in Loyola dorm rooms, but only a couple of cases pop up a year. Early notifications from students and an "an aggressive extermination program" have nipped all serious problems in the bud, he said, and no on-campus instances have become a "major infestation" or spread to other buildings. In rooms that have hosted the filthy buggers, "We've never had a reoccurrence," Johnson said.
Phew!
I wish I could say the same for the 49th Ward. The ward, which you're likely standing in right now, is home to the Lake Shore campus and many student residents, and was called "a hotbed for the infestation" in a Feb. 26 Chicago Tribune article.
Some quick research, however, revealed that even if Loyola is handling the problem well, the city of Chicago has a long way to go.
For starters, the city doesn't keep official information on the spread of the bloodsucking, itch-causing pests. State and city officials, according to the same Tribune article, don't keep tabs on bed bug cases because "until recently, officials hadn't received widespread reports" although the article goes on to say that Illinois officials have been recieving a relatively high volume of complaints for a year.
A year? Couldn't we have a tracking system in place by now? Or an Excel spreadsheet at least? As a Chicago resident, I'd love to know what buildings near me are infested. You know, so I can avoid, say, moving into one.
Right now, it seems as if an unofficial resource like BedBugRegistry.com, a voluntary, unverified Web site where people can report the pests, is sadly the best guess we have.
According to the site, users have reported infestations in 27 buildings within two miles of the Lake Shore campus (Moving off campus? Best ask your landlord about the bugs). Users report nine infestations near the Water Tower campus, mostly in hotels.
A city-wide publicity campaign to educate citizens about the signs, symptoms and preventative measures is long overdue.
"It's all about public awareness," said Jeff White, a research entymologist with BedBugCentral.com, an educational Web site run by pest experts. "The best thing that will slow this whole rise in bed bug problems is telling people it's not a myth anymore," he said.
A centralized resource for handling bed bug complaints is also necessary. Currently, the Chicago Department of Health doesn't handle complaints because bed bugs, though disgusting, don't carry or spread diseases. Frustrated bug-bitten victims are left to find help elsewhere.
"Any of the major metropolitan areas are having significant problems at this point," White said. "It's extensive and widespread."
Yes, the stigmatized bed bug is now a reality, not just an old adage, for many Chicagoans and as such requires a city-wide solution. Living in a "hotbed of infestation" while a city scrambles to solve a problem that could have been predicted years ago is, to say the least, really bugging me.
LeeAnn Maton is the discourse editor. lmaton@luc.edu
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