Over the Labor Day weekend, Public Safety received two student reports of mice in McMahon Hall, according to Director of Public Safety Robert Dineen.

Maria Acosta, Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) ’23, came home late Saturday, Sept. 5. When she turned on the lights in her McMahon apartment, she said she saw a mouse run out of the kitchen.

After contacting Public Safety and the Resident Director (RD), she was told that an exterminator wouldn’t be able to come until Tuesday due to the Labor Day long weekend.

“We just felt that they did not provide us with any immediate solutions or make us feel a little more comfortable,” Acosta said. 

The following day, Acosta and her roommate were offered housing in another apartment until the exterminator could come, but they declined. “At this point, we had already slept in our dorm with our mouse friend lurking so we were like, we can suck it up another day,” she said. “We set some traps in the meanwhile but no sign of the mouse so we are still kinda disgusted/scared.”   

Cam Dasher, FCLC ’22, saw two mice in her McMahon apartment. After reporting the sightings to the Residential Assistant on duty on the night of Sunday, Sept. 6, she and her roommate chose to move into a temporary space.

“The students were moved to a temporary apartment so our exterminator could conduct a thorough inspection of the apartment and take necessary action to remediate any issues,” Dineen said.

“Considering the health crisis right now, I definitely feel like Fordham should be paying more attention to this and preventing their residents from any risk possible,” Dasher said. Recent studies show that specific breeds of mice — such as deer mice — can catch and spread the coronavirus.

They said that they were not supplied with mouse traps and that they “heard about a couple of other people” with rodent problems.

“I really feel like because Fordham has dealt with this before IN McMahon, they should have the facilities for students to put in their apartments (rat traps, rat boxes, etc.) but they didn’t and gave us little support besides temporarily relocating us and having an exterminator come in in two days,” Dasher said.

According to Dineen, the university has a contract with an exterminator service that conducts regular inspections of all the buildings on the Lincoln Center campus.

When the exterminator came on Tuesday, Acosta said, “They really worked fast and attended us really well.”

Dasher said that maintenance has been coming in and out of her room since Tuesday, Sept. 8, cleaning out the AC units and installing traps.