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UI Slater Hall residents report influx of cockroaches and mice

cigaretteman

HB King
May 29, 2001
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I know Westlawn has a terrible mouse problem too:

After University of Iowa classes started last week, students have seen an influx of various pests in Slater Residence Hall — specifically cockroaches and mice in rooms and bathrooms.


UI Housing and Dining sent out an email Aug. 25 informing students of the increase in pests and providing various preventative measures. Von Stange, the senior director of University Housing and Dining and assistant vice president for student life, said the problem may be related to how active the dorms are the first few weeks.


“This is the environment [the mice and cockroaches] tend to like with all the construction and buildings being demolished,” Stange said. “Many of them are looking for a new home and therefore have been migrating to Slater.”



Stange said this is not a problem of infestation, and since Slater Hall wasn’t used during the summer, the environment changes entirely when students move in.


The whole building was sprayed on Aug. 8 before students moved in. Stange said these chemicals are not harmful to students and are administered after the students are asked to leave for a short period of time. For those who reported mice in their room, maintenance came in and placed mouse traps.


Stange said problems with pests have not happened in recent years, most recently occurring in 2015-16 when Quadrangle Hall was being demolished. At the time, the UI saw an increase in pests in surrounding buildings.


UI first-year student and Slater Hall resident Lizzie Kilburg, said her recent run-in with a mouse made her uncomfortable.


“It is a new environment and a new home for us freshmen. My initial feelings were annoyance and frustration that this was happening,” Kilburg said.


Kilburg initially assumed the mouse she found came with her from home. However, after further investigation, she realized that a leftover chocolate bar had lured the mouse to her room. The mouse was removed and a trap was set by maintenance.


Mice have only been found in Slater Hall, but there have been sightings of cockroaches in other dorms, such as Rienow, Catlett, and Mayflower Residence Halls.


Stange said students should make sure all food is being put into plastic containers and placed in a high area and any cardboard boxes that cockroaches could get into should be disposed of. He added that students should put in a work order as soon as possible if they see a pest in their dorm.

 
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I swear roaches are getting harder to kill. They seemingly have become much more resilient and adapted to our methods like fleas did with pets and flea collars. I work in rental property business and it comes with the territory... But in recent years we've seen them not just in dirtbag places that we discover got trashed on us, we've seen them start popping up in CLEAN peoples places and have become much harder to eradicate once we discover them.
 
Most large dorms aren't known for their respect of hygiene. This includes all women dorms, frats, sororities and women's floors. Trust me, I know.
 
They'll never get rid of the mice. You could encapsulate every building in steel, they'd pull out cutting torches. Encase it in cement or brick, they pull out the jackhammers.

I generally don't wish any type of non-human life form on this earth any harm...but all mice must f'n die.
 
They'll never get rid of the mice. You could encapsulate every building in steel, they'd pull out cutting torches. Encase it in cement or brick, they pull out the jackhammers.

I generally don't wish any type of non-human life form on this earth any harm...but all mice must f'n die.
There were rats in baltimore the size of small humans. I would put money on the rat kicking a human's azzz.
 
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There were rats in baltimore the size of small humans. I would put money on the rat kicking a human's azzz.

Rats vs mice...that's different. Use artillery on them. And my bet is that port probably means they'll never get it under any real control.

Mice on the other hand...very industrious little bastards. Small scale warfare is needed, and one must be quite inventive to get rid of the filthy buggers.
 
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I swear roaches are getting harder to kill. They seemingly have become much more resilient and adapted to our methods like fleas did with pets and flea collars. I work in rental property business and it comes with the territory... But in recent years we've seen them not just in dirtbag places that we discover got trashed on us, we've seen them start popping up in CLEAN peoples places and have become much harder to eradicate once we discover them.
Get some of this, treat perimeter of house, doors, windows, etc quarterly.
 
Roaches LOVE them some cardboard...I bet there’s enough cardboard around dorms to build a new dorm!
When I moved into my first dorm in Las Cruces we had diamondbacks in the trash container area the first day the dorms opened (the dorm was an “open patio/courtyard” arrangement). Now a diamondback WILL get your attention when you are emptying your trash at 9 o’clock at night......or 9 o’clock in the morning, for that matter.
The “rattle” is unmistakeable!
 
My oldest daughter cleaned the dorms over the summer. Every time I talked to he she talked about all the roaches she'd killed that day. Because of regulations only the full time university workers could handle the poison, so she smashed them.
 
My oldest daughter cleaned the dorms over the summer. Every time I talked to he she talked about all the roaches she'd killed that day. Because of regulations only the full time university workers could handle the poison, so she smashed them.
I admire people who do those jobs so a shout out to your daughter. I worked at UIHC once where my job involved hosing gurneys, in which dead people were transported. Back then, it was in the basement and they'd line em up in the tunnel. Now it's fancay and they call it the "decedent center." Haha. Sofas, free coffee and 2 autopsy areas.
 
Is Westlawn still around?
Lived there for a year way back.
Yes, it still there for now, but it is scheduled for demolition in the near future.
Still standing after 100+ years. Had no idea it used to be a dorm. I think it now houses Student Health and a potpourri of vague departments and offices.

Didn't realize its days were numbered. Not surprising. Medical campus is continuing to grow and modernize.
 
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Sabine Martin, News Reporter
April 25, 2021


Standing with a castle-like presence on the University of Iowa’s west side of campus, Westlawn, the current location for UI Student Health, has a rich history dating back to 1919.
More than a century later, that history is coming to an end. At the state Board of Regents meeting on April 7, the UI requested approval to remove the 137,000 square foot building.
UI officials said the removal, which will now happen in the next few years, will open up new space on the west side of campus.

UI Senior Vice President for Finance and Operations Rod Lehnertz said the UI continually needs modernized medical and health science research space on the west side of campus. At only three stories tall, Westlawn has a low land-use efficiency scaling and makes a large footprint, Lehnertz said.
“Its presence is notable, and you can certainly see it from the river valley looking up. It sort of has the crenellated details that are sort of castle-like,” Lehnertz said. “But at the same time, it does block an interaction that the health science campus has with the river with the rest of the campus by walling it in.
John Beldon Scott, professor emeritus in the UI School of Art & Art History, said he hopes the UI will be able to salvage the entrance of Westlawn, with its intricate Gothic-style engravings.
“That’s the kind of stonework today that you don’t normally see. The university is usually sensitive to that sort of thing,” Beldon Scott said. “It’s when the maintenance of a building becomes expensive, then the university has to make the difficult decision of taking down a building that does have some historical significance.”
Westlawn has $20 million in deferred maintenance and an annual operating cost of $900,000 a year, Lehnertz told the regents in April.
The first section of Westlawn was built in 1919, with additions completed in 1928 and 1945, UI Archivist David McCartney wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan.
Architect firms Proudfoot & Bird and Rawson of Des Moines headed the original project.
Originally serving as a nurse dormitory, Westlawn later housed university offices for the College of Nursing, the College of Medicine, the College of Pharmacy, and UI hospitals over its history.
“In 1974 portions of it were returned to use as a dormitory, but by the late 1990s it was once again converted to other uses,” McCartney wrote.
The residence halls at the UI were first separated with the east side of the river for women-only dormitories and the west side for men, Lehnertz said. Efforts to advance the nursing campus resulted in the Westlawn women’s nursing dormitory.
“By today’s standards, this was completely sexist,” Lehnertz said. “Programs like nursing, home economics, and education were often the ones that females at the University of Iowa studied. Since that time, those divisions thankfully no longer exist.”
Beldon Scott said the UI administration called the Olmsted Brothers, an American landscape architectural firm, to create a centralized medical campus on the west side of the UI in 1905.
“The Olmsted Brothers are the ones who recommended developing that area, and how it might be accomplished,” he said.
RELATED: Demolished Seashore Hall to be new green space by September
Westlawn, the building for the former UI Children’s Hospital, and a psychiatric ward, which is now the Medical Education Building, were all built in 1919. All three buildings were the first examples of the “revival architecture” style at the UI with red brick façades, Lehnertz said.
“The university began to expand to the west across the river because it was landlocked on the east side of the river,” Lehnertz said.
Lehnertz said the UI’s master architecture plan, which looks 15 to 50 years ahead, has suggested the reorganization or removal of Westlawn for years.
“There have been more and more traditional challenges with the building, chasing after repeated issues with the shell of the building and the roofing, the windows, and the brick faces of the building leaking,” he said.
For now, the UI has not decided what will replace Westlawn. Lehnertz said it takes several years of planning and reorganizing to enable the building to become less populated.
“We’re always planning and trying to make sure that we’re enabling flexibility for the future,” Lehnertz said.

 
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I admire people who do those jobs so a shout out to your daughter. I worked at UIHC once where my job involved hosing gurneys, in which dead people were transported. Back then, it was in the basement and they'd line em up in the tunnel. Now it's fancay and they call it the "decedent center." Haha. Sofas, free coffee and 2 autopsy areas.
We went out to dinner tonight. She's cleaning dorms throughout the school year, and saw the biggest roach she's ever seen in Currier. Two weekends in a row she's cleaned up s*** in a men's bathroom. She thinks it's the same guy who's fallen down drunk in his own s*** somehow because there are s*** handprints on the walls like he fell, then staggered back up to his feet and left the prints. Lots of vomit in the women's bathroom. She doesn't mind it, she knew what she was getting into. What made her mad today was her supervisor told her no earbuds in while working. Listening to music while cleaning up s*** and puke surrounded by roaches is a violation of some university rule.
 
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We went out to dinner tonight. She's cleaning dorms throughout the school year, and saw the biggest roach she's ever seen in Currier. Two weekends in a row she's cleaned up s*** in a men's bathroom. She thinks it's the same guy who's fallen down drunk in his own s*** somehow because there are s*** handprints on the walls like he fell, then staggered back up to his feet and left the prints. Lots of vomit in the women's bathroom. She doesn't mind it, she knew what she was getting into. What made her mad today was her supervisor told her no earbuds in while working. Listening to music while cleaning up s*** and puke surrounded by roaches is a violation of some university rule.
She's got more moxy than me. I have seen a few autopsies and always got queasy when the stomach and guts got involved. More power to your daughter but I wish she would get a better job. Hardworking people like her deserve better.
 
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