Originally published on Dec. 1

More than 20 sealed plastic bags filled with notebooks, textbooks and linens sat outside two quarantined East Florence Moore doubles last night; their four occupants had been sent to live in other dormitories around campus after University officials discovered their rooms had been infested by bedbugs earlier this week.

One exiled student agreed to speak with The Daily but asked to remain anonymous, fearing that people would mistakenly think she was contagious.

"At first, everyone was really scared about it," she said. "People were afraid to touch us. When we were leaving they were like, 'air hug.'"

Bedbugs are five to seven-millimeter-long insects that suck blood out of humans, usually at night. They are not contagious, though they lay eggs in clothes, making infestations transmittable if dormmates borrow one another's apparel.

An infestation that occurred in Lagunita was detected earlier this year, but the exiled student said something has been amiss in EastFlo since September.

"I started getting bites two weeks ago," she said. "But the room next to mine got it from the beginning."

Her neighbors, finding mosquito bite-like marks on their body, became concerned and went to Vaden, where they were told nothing was wrong. The problem only came to light later, when one neighbor awoke in the middle of the night to find bedbugs crawling up his arm.

Though the residents were medically sound, the infestation forced them to leave their rooms last Sunday. Because of the quarantine, they could not take any of their belongings to their new residences across campus.

"In the beginning, it was absolutely terrible, I'm not going to lie," the EastFlo resident said. "But what made it easier to adjust to this new life was the way Housing reacted. It felt like they understood what you were going through."

She said that having all of her books and notes unavailable complicated her studies.

"It's been okay being secluded, but [the situation] does affect me academically," she said. "But my professors are really nice."

The quarantine process will end six weeks after it began last Sunday. The rooms will be torn apart, with the carpets ripped out, furniture removed and walls repainted.

"We're doing the entire process that needs to take place to make sure that the bedbugs are gone," said Assistant Director for Housing Operations Imogen Hinds. "It's a more costly operation, but it's one we feel needs to be done in order to ensure that the bedbugs don't return."

Despite an exhaustive effort by Stanford Housing to exterminate the unwelcome pests, the bedbugs resurfaced in FloMo in January.