Military discipline required
Unwinding after midterms
The Blue Devils will host Army Saturday with a rough forecast expected | Sports Page 6
New massage chairs in Wannamaker and Bell Tower help students relax | Page 3
The Chronicle T H E I N D E P E N D E N T D A I LY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2016
WWW.DUKECHRONICLE.COM
ONE HUNDRED AND TWELFTH YEAR, ISSUE 21
Duke vs. the crawlies: A battle in Epworth Researchers’ app helps determine risk for autism Sam Turken The Chronicle
Sujal Manohar and Adam Beyer | The Chronicle Epworth residence hall will be closed during Fall Break for insect extermination, which first-years living there said is much needed.
Tyler Lian The Chronicle First-year Jasmine Alexander-Greene woke with a start one morning when she felt a large cockroach crawling across her face, causing her to fall out of bed. In Epworth, cockroaches are the roommates that no one wanted—and now Duke is fighting back. During Fall Break, the dorm—which is the smallest residence hall on East Campus and houses approximately 50 first-years—will undergo extermination and “extensive preventative treatment,” said Rick Johnson, associate vice president of student affairs for Housing, Dining and Residence Life. Residents staying on campus will spend Sunday night in the Marriott Residence Inn Durham and will be able to return to their rooms as soon as noon the next day.
“I don’t think I’ve gone a day without seeing at least one roach in the building somewhere,” said Alexander-Greene, who is affectionately known as the dorm’s “roach sniper.” The students are looking forward to no longer encountering the cockroaches—which first-year Arin Chapman described as fat and the “length of a pinky finger”—though many have said the pests are so prevalent that they have gotten used to them. Since the start of school, some students have taken matters into their own hands. Several residents purchased chemical sprays to kill the cockroaches that crawl all over the the kitchen, common rooms, bathrooms and dorm rooms as well as the porch and balcony outside. “We’re pretty sure they live in the walls,” Chapman said. “We’re all afraid to hit the walls because we’re going to piss them off, and they’re just going to come up and swarm us.”
Opened in 1894, Epworth is the oldest residence hall on East Campus. Age, however, is not the only factor that makes the dorm so vulnerable to insects. “Epworth is in a fairly secluded, wooded area and is easier [for cockroaches] to get into than the buildings on the main quad which are solid brick,” wrote LB Bergene, associate dean for East Campus, in an email. Pest control technicians will be using a gel-based chemical made by DuPont, rather than gaseous fumigation, to treat indoor areas where bugs can infiltrate, such as the seam where the floor meets the wall or window and door cases. Two other insecticides—one spray and one powder-based—will be used for the exterior and basement. HDRL previously attempted to capture cockroaches in the dorm with limited See CRAWLIES on Page 5
Dr. Richard Bloomfield knows the experience all too well. Aside from being an assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at Duke, Bloomfield has a daughter with autism. And, like many other parents, Bloomfield initially struggled to make sense of his daughter’s behavior. Although she began to have challenges understanding social cues and interpreting others’ emotions at age four, she did not receive a diagnosis until she was six years old. “As a first parent—we had twin daughters—your initial gut reaction is to assume that you’re doing something wrong or there’s something that you just don’t yet understand about your child,” said See AUTISM on Page 5
Courtesy of Autism and Beyond The app analyzes children’s emotional reactions in response to video clips.
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