TANNER BUTLER

Symbols of filth are something that you do not want to live with, yet we live and study with cockroaches surrounding us at the UNK. There is an infestation on our campus that has been going on for years. 

The signs are most apparent in the scattered carcasses on the floors of campus building basements, though I have still found them crawling around outside of our dorms, in our bathrooms and even in our kitchens. 

It is bad enough that the university allows us to live with these cockroaches, but they also mandate it. These conditions are so horrendous that spelling out why is not required. 

The atrocious infestation is exacerbated when we consider what we pay to live with roaches. 

In the most expensive city in the world, New York City, the average price per month per square foot is $4.98. UNK charges $7.56 for me to live in Men’s Hall, where we pay 1.52 times more than the average rent in the most expensive city in the world. 

The situation only gets worse when compared locally with the average in Nebraska, it only gets worse. Here the average is $0.94, or we pay a simple 8.04 times the mean. We are paying substantially more than Nebraska and the most expensive city in the world’s average for roach-infested dorms, which is simply outrageous.

In all of this, I am most disappointed in how the administration has, or more accurately has not, responded to the infestation. 

The first place I’ve seen this is with UNK Facilities. 

Students, including myself, have been filing work orders for years, asking the university to remove all the cockroaches. To fix the problem, Facilities sprayed, but this solution has not fixed the problem, since the roaches are still here. 

I found out why Facilities has not fixed the problem only after Gilbert Hinga, the dean of the Division of Student Affairs, got them to respond. Yet, they only gave excuses that are simply idiotic and then wrongly playing the blame game. 

Their resistance to fixing the issue shows how little they care about us, students. I am even more disgusted with how Facilities lied to students about the full scope of the problem when they said a sighting was an isolated incident and there is no infestation. 

I bring these up, since it shows a more systematic issue with their incompetence and apathy. I write because these issues need to be overcome for a more permanent solution and not just filing more work-orders that do not work. 

Residence Life has also not done anything to appear concerned about housing us in roach-infested dorms. We see extreme apathy toward the conditions of the students under their care, which is unacceptable. They should be solving the infestation, instead of running a student through red tape. 

For the sake of brevity, I have left most details out, and what more is going on that leads to the judgment on administration. The university must take bold action now to solve the infestation permanently.