Blattodea. It sounds like a plague or a never-before seen microbial illness, and in its basest form it could be considered an affliction. Unfortunately, Blattodea isn’t our next superflu; it’s the latin name for a common cockroach. I wish I wasn’t writing this article right now, but we unfortunately have  a cockroach infestation at Wilcox. I should have known this was an issue last year at Float Night. When I turned on my phone flashlight to find a charger, I saw at least fifty cockroaches swarming the holes in the concrete for the skinny trees placed in the quad to give some type of “natural” look to our campus.

That first shock alerted me to the presence of the cockroaches on campus, but I never realized just how many cockroaches there are. They’re on the floor of the R building, pretending to be dead until you get closer than a few feet. They’re hiding on the floor of the quad, squirming around in all their disgusting, twitching glory. They’re definitely in the bathrooms, lying belly-up on the tiled floor next to the trash can. Essentially, I can boil it down to one sentence- You won’t go a day without seeing at least one cockroach on the Wilcox campus. 

Does the administration think this is a bad thing? I asked our resident security guard, Tim.  He said, “It’s definitely an issue. I see them every day,” shaking his head at the thought of the creepy crawlies hiding underneath the trash cans in the quad. 

After I got an adult’s take, I asked my fellow peers what they thought of the roaches crawling their way through our campus. “The roaches are everywhere,”  exclaimed Surendra Jammishetti, who believes that the administration should do something about these small yet menacing creatures. “There are so many of them,” stated senior Vista Mehrshahi. The real question is whether or not there’s a solution to this problem. Would liberal amounts of Raid help the issue? Or would it be too weak for the cockroaches, who seem to have a will to live that overpowers any attempts to poison them? I asked Tim, who said that the custodial team can’t use Raid or any type of poison because there are regulations regarding the use of pesticides and harmful chemicals at schools around students. That means we’ve got to get creative with our solutions. 

I personally think that we should implement a roach capture-reward system. If a student brings a cockroach (dead or alive) to the office or a designated place, they get a $5 gift card (limits apply). That way, students would be incentivized to see, report, and remove any stray cockroaches hanging out in the halls. Once the roaches realize that their comrades are going missing, they’ll stay in their designated places and won’t come out and terrorize us with their arthropodic misbehavior. This means that Wilcox might still have a roach problem, but at least the students won’t be visually assaulted by the cockroaches each morning. 

In conclusion, I’m sick and tired of seeing cockroaches. Every time I see them, I think about that one time a cockroach crawled up my friend’s pajama pants at a sleepover. It evokes feelings of extreme discomfort. I beg the administrators to please get a handle on the roaches because we cannot escape them. Also, while we’re on the subject of campus beautification, maybe we should look into planting more trees in the quad. Personally, I think it’ll add a little spice and maybe make the concrete look better. Either way, though, trees or no trees, we need to get rid of the roaches.