At the end of November, residents on the third floor of Cleveland Hall spotted a mouse. Since then sightings have been reported in the pit and on the first and second floors. For weeks, residents complained about the mice but to no effect as communication problems stymied efforts to resolve the problem. Since then, lines of communication of opened up and there have been no new reports of mice sightings in the hall.

After numerous sightings, Cleveland residents sent e-mails to Dean of Student Life Jennifer Krohn and Facilities Management. Margie Scribner '10, an SA in Cleveland (also an editor for the S&B), sent two e-mails to Krohn regarding the mouse infestation. Mice sightings persisted, and student frustration began to mount.

At the end of February, after four separate mice sightings in one night, Scribner sent another e-mail to Krohn. "After two months with mice," Scribner said, "I was concerned that the college wasn't responding to our problem." Scribner said she was then redirected to FM, which provided mousetraps to students that had sent complaint emails to their SAs or Krohn.

On February 26, there was a Cleveland Hall meeting addressing the issue and Jan Koszewski '08, Vice President of Student Affairs, and Jamaland Senator Harsha Sekar '09 met with Cleveland students on Mar. 3. Krohn has arranged for an extermination company to regularly be in the dorms on the third Wednesday of each month.

Jones and Scribner also learned that Housing had actually contacted an exterminator who set up 50 traps in the kitchen and halls of Cleveland. The traps were checked over the course of three days, but no mice were caught. FM has continued to check the traps. FM and the extermination company could not utilize any poison because of safety concerns.

Katherine Jones '10, SA for Cleveland second and third, said that while she was the relieved by recent administration action, the period of inaction was very frustrating. "Now that I know what Jen Krohn and Housing have done, I'm less angry, but you have to realize that feeling like we were being ignored and that nothing was being done for months doesn't just go away, especially for the students who almost on a daily basis had to live with mice," said Jones.

For some students this frustration became too much to bear. On February 25th, Krohn received a dead mouse in a heart-shaped box signed by the "students of Cleveland Hall." Not all residents of Cleveland thought the box was appropriate though.

"I don't know who did it, and I agree that it was not the most mature or productive response," Jones said. "However, I can understand, if you were living in an environment where you see the mice crawl out of your heater vents, eat you food, defecate in your bed and dishes, and are possibly in your bed while you're sleeping, why someone might be so inclined to respond in such a way."

What seems like a simple case of rodent infestation was indicative of a deeper problem concerning the communication between students and the administration. One problem Krohn cited was the lack of specificity in student complaints. "People would send e-mails that said, 'there's a mouse here' without giving any specific information on where in the dorm. And that they had trouble dealing with [the mouse]," said Krohn.

Sometimes the lines of communication broke down completely. "We found out that students have been using the FM website but it hasn't been working," said Les Ollinger, associate director of Facilities Management. "We're hoping that if students have problems, they call FM office instead and we'll take care of it."

ITS has fixed the e-mail link and FM now is receiving emails from their website, according to Krohn. She also said that no action against the mice took place over spring break and unless they get any more reports about mice, they will assume that the mice are no longer a problem in Cleveland.