By Nick Ubels (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 14, 2012
Students at UFV’s Trades and Technology Centre (TTC) are fed up with the uninvited guests invading some of their classrooms.
The second floor of the original CEP building has been suffering from a fly problem since at least 2007, but students are saying little is being done to find a permanent solution.
Dead flies used to accumulate in the casing around fluorescent lighting fixtures, but facilities has since replaced these with metal grates to avoid such build up. Instead, hospitality student Jarin McSween says, the insects now drop directly onto students when they die.
“I was doing an accounting midterm and one landed on my ear,” he says.
Evidence of the flies can be found on desks each morning and in untouched corners of the classrooms where the insect carcasses continue to pile up. McSween has collected a number of the dead flies in a plastic cup to demonstrate to staff the severity of the problem.
“That was over the course of an hour of my time,” he says, referring to the container, “and that was how many flies I caught, so it’s crazy.”
Fellow hospitality student Anastasia Barkman says that the fly problem affected only classrooms on the southern side of the building originally, but the insects have been steadily migrating northward each year.
“It wasn’t so much of a problem in this class,” she says, “but now it’s progressively traveling; you can see them traveling through the lights.”
The problem flares up during the warmer months and dies out when the flies freeze during the winter. That means that the problem is starting to subside, but it’s a yearly cycle and has returned every spring without fail since the building was opened.
Students say that since this problem disappears for the cold season, it has never been fully addressed; as soon as complaints reach fever pitch, the flies subside only to re-emerge when the weather warms up again.
According to one electronics student, the flies are already starting to slow down as December approaches.
“It seems to be better the last week,” he says, “but it was real bad for a long time.”
He went on to explain that the flies are more of a nuisance than a health concern.
“You constantly have to wipe your bench off,” he says. “It’s just bad.”
Hospitality students, who call one of the afflicted classrooms their home for their full-time studies, finally decided enough was enough and contacted the SUS board to see if they could push the university to find a solution.
“We all emailed the SUS president and he returned every one of our emails,” Barkman says.
SUS president Shane Potter has since delegated the issue to new Chilliwack representative Annika Geurtsen. McSween and Barkman say they have yet to hear from Geurtsen, though she has been in contact with facilities to try to find a solution to the infestation.
There is widespread speculation that the fly problem is caused by eagles depositing fish carcasses on the roof of the building after hunting in the nearby Vedder River. According to this theory, maggots form on the decomposing fish and then enter the building as flies.
“Flies are gross,” McSween says, “but it’s also gross to know they’re coming from dead fish guts.”
The Cascade was unable to gain rooftop access before going to print.
With files from Dessa Bayrock.
