Columbia has long had a penchant for the hazardous.

Shopping carts, to your hands. Just by touching them, you risk diarrhea and worse.

Sleep deprivation, to your heart. Nearly everyone with a college degree will probably have a heart attack 50 years after graduation.

Cancer drugs, to your fetuses. But now, the miraculous techniques of freezing means you can prevent the first and save the latter.

Vermin, to your asthma. Oh, and also to your general sanity.

Rocks, to carbon dioxide. Nothing says "run away" like the word "sequestration."

A Barnard source just confirmed the troubling lice epidemic currently plaguing the 8th floor of Sulzberger hall in the Barnard Quad. Apparently, one first-year had lice and the little bugs quickly migrated into the heads of several other first-year students. Says Steve Tollman, associate director of Res Life at BC:

"Recently, there have been several cases of students with head lice
within the Quad. It's important to use caution when sharing
clothing, brushes and bedding like pillows and sheets, as this is the
most common way that head lice is spread. Please know that this is
easily treatable. Any student that believes she has head lice or has
been exposed to head lice is encouraged to visit Health Services for
evaluation and treatment."

Ew, gross me out royal.

- JNW

Word has it that Schapiro 12 has been infested with bed bugs since the start of the school year. Students report that they often wake up with bites all over them and some have even discovered the nasty little creatures in their books. Unfortunately, Housing's been extremely unresponsive to this issue.

There has been an exterminator on the floor every week putting traps randomly on the carpet, even though the word bedbugs suggests that the traps would be better placed on the bed. Students actually moved the traps to their beds to capture the bedbugs. Then, the exterminator either pointed out "empty" traps or claimed that the bugs in the trap were just "carpet mites."

Now that a few students have been bitten severely, Housing has finally admitted that there are bedbugs. Two rooms have been fumigated, one of them twice. Unfortunately, Housing still refuses to clean the hallway and carpet even though bedbugs can easily travel from one room to another. Housing, you've really let yourself go on this one...

Or so we can assume from this ominous and somewhat vague sign. More mysterious than which plague-carriers the "other vermin" part of this sign could refer to is who the hell (other than Bwog) still uses the word "vermin." "Varmints" is the preferred nomenclature these days.

Well, friends, it seems that John Jay is infested with much larger, much blacker, much furrier pests than those of yesteryear—those being the famed bedbugs. Bwog recently received several pictures of pestilence countermeasures deployed throughout John Jay and the cafeteria's back room.

Bwog also speaks to its janitors on occasion. Last time, Bwog asked what the evil smell emanating from behind Bwog's broken stove was; the janitor suggested that there was perhaps a dead rat back behind there, in the electronics—yes, a dead, stinking rat which had wriggled its way into a cozy nest of wires and nearly gutted the whole suite with cleansing gas-fueled fire. Supposedly, this isn't something to raise eyebrows over, these days. Bwog knows its janitor wasn't raising his.

In other housing news, the 12^th floor of EC should be ashamed of itself. Housing and Dining reports that fourth incident of 'careless cooking' has been declared by the FDNY, which, in Bwog's opinion, is probably beginning to think Columbia students are conspiring against it. At least, this time, they haven't published the suite number. Bwog speculates that this this omission is intended to slow the formation of a fifth column of anar-cookery specialists.

Thanks to tipster Yadira Alvarez for having her camera phone ready.

About 1/2 hour ago, Leora Kelman, Sam Cohen, and I sighted a cockroach in Hewitt Dining Hall. It was about 1.5 inches long, probably of the German variety. After three failed attempts at trapping the blattodea, a Barnard girl helped us out, catching the insect under an opaque Hewitt cup. We left the trapped roach on the floor near the salad bar.

"It was horrible," Bettelheim said. "They would bite me and then I would get huge rashes. It looked like a miniature tumor. I still have scars on my stomach."