www.thecourieronline.co.uk Monday 24 March 2014 Issue 1290 Free
The Independent Voice of Newcastle Students
HAZE OF THUNDER Rap’s foremost enigma Angel Haze
on sexuality, rivalry and frontin’ p.28
COSTA DEL MARS p.32
Est 1948
COME WITH ME p.22
Cockroach catastrophe
THE FILTH AND THE FURY: Several cockroach traps laid in Bowsden Court filled up quickly as students battled the famously nuclear resistant critters. Image: Katherine Jones By Emily Keen Deputy News Editor Residents of university accommodation at Bowsden Court have been battling a cockroach infestation since September. Speaking to The Courier, students of the accommodation block criticised the University for the way they have handled the situation over the last six months. The pests were identified as German cockroaches, a small but tenacious species, that can survive for up to five days without food. Most commonly active at night, the roach is know to emit an unpleasant odour when excited or frightened. Paul Bandeen, University Flats Manager at Newcastle University, said: “Our staff were notified of a problem with cockroaches at a flat in Bowsden Court on 9 December 2013 and we arranged for our pest control officer to address the issue the next day and visited the property on a number of occasions.” However, first year student Katherine
Jones from flat 14B, told The Courier that the pests were present in September when freshers moved in but that she’d “never seen many cockroaches before so wasn’t exactly sure what the pests were”. She says “a cleaner first identified them as cockroaches in October”. Traps were then set up in December throughout the “The worst block. The morning thing was after the traps had when two been set up Kathercrawled out ine said: “I thought I was going to throw of the up, it was disgustmicrowave” ing, the traps were all full.” Katherine and her flatmates complained about the state of the traps and lack of action taken by the University to continually tackle the problem. They were told that over the Christmas holidays the whole block would be sprayed by pest control and that more traps would be set. By January, although the rest of the block appeared to be free of cockroach-
es, ground floor flats remained infested. Katherine described how they returned at the beginning of the month after the break to find dead and pregnant cockroaches in the traps and others still running around the kitchen. “They kept coming out of my food cupboard, the worst thing was when two crawled out of the microwave!” Some traps were placed on work tops in the kitchen that “were right next to where we were cooking and next to the oven so we were making food surrounded by dead and squirming cockroaches”. Bandeen acknowledged that “when the students came back to the flat after the Christmas break they found that the pest control action had not resolved the problem, the University offered to move all residents to alternative accommodation while we rectified the issue” and that this didn’t happen until “midJanuary”. Flat 14 say they spent the January exam period addressing the issue of cockroaches in their flat rather than revising. Katherine told The Courier that
their repeated complaints were often met with dissatisfactory replies of “I’ll let some one know” and “we’ll see what we can do”. Andrew Crawford, a first year History student and resident of the infested block, told The Courier how, even though his flat was clean by January, he felt sorry for fellow residents. “I wouldn’t have liked to have lived fearing
into Leazes using the metro and paid for multiple taxis. Katherine said: “For the five weeks in Leazes we were stuck between two places. I didn’t really feel like I had a home and the University were keeping us in the dark, they didn’t keep us updated with the Bowsden situation.” With little warning, the uprooted residents were told in mid-February they had to leave Leazes within a sin-
that a cockroach could come crawling out of a cereal box in the morning, plus they didn’t get help with the problem for a long time, which was unfair,” he said. Three of the five residents of Flat 14B moved into temporary accommodation after the exam period in Castle Leazes. Although they were offered a van to help them move, it turned out to be an empty promise. The students moved
gle weekend and move back to Bowsden. They were welcomed back by the sight of dead cockroaches on the floor. This story prints just days after an NUS report into student accommodation called ‘Homes Fit for Study’. Widely picked up by the media, it reveals that over three quarters of students have Continued on page 4
Traps were laid right next to the oven so we were cooking and making food surrounded by dead and squirming cockroaches