Mice find way into PSA commissaries

Although the problem is nothing new, it may pose a health risk to students. They're furry, small and sneaky -- and they find their late-night snacks in the same place students do. Mice have been frequently spotted scurrying around the floors and shelves of the Penn Student Agencies' residential commissaries in recent weeks. Student managers and employees claim they've been taking the same preventative measures for years now -- without reducing the number of mice in the facilities. Mice and rats are responsible for the spread of a large number of diseases, which can be transmitted through food that comes into contact with a mouse's saliva, urine or feces. An effort four years ago by the Physical Plant Department -- now called Facilities Services -- successfully rid the Quadrangle commissary of its mouse population. Since then, mice have returned to the four PSA mini-grocery stores in the Quad and the high rises. Quad Commissary Manager Chris Tenggardjaja, a College freshman, confirmed that there are mice in his store right now. "As long as I've been a manager of the Quad [store], there's always been mice here," said Tenggardjaja, who has led the store all year. College senior John Lee, a cashier at the High Rise South commissary, said he has seen mice "running by really quickly" in his store. "They're always eating the chips and coming into the candy box," Lee said. "Maybe they like Caramellos. They seem to really like that one for some reason or another." According to PSA Food Services Director Adrienne Kardosh, a Wharton junior, the four commissaries take measures to prevent any customer from purchasing a product that has been eaten by a mouse. "We have professional exterminators that come in," Kardosh said. "We have traps that, although they should not be seen by customers, are in the stores. And any product that looks like it may have been touched by a mouse is immediately removed from the store." Kardosh added that the mice do not pose "a huge infestation problem," noting that there is no new "mouse issue." "It's definitely not an increasing problem, and it's definitely not plateaued," she said. "In the time that I've been a student here at Penn, I've known that the trend has basically gone downward, that the stores are getting cleaner, that there are fewer problems." Tenggardjaja confirmed that there are traps set in his commissary, though only in the back room of the store. Food that appears to have been tampered with is thrown away and the store undergoes a daily sweeping and mopping, he added. "All managers are told to take the same stand against it," he said. "We call the exterminator as often as needed, put out traps and clean the store." Al Zuino, associate director of operations in residential maintenance, said the exterminators under his supervision use glue traps in the commissaries rather than chemical treatments, explaining that the latter would be unsafe in an environment where students spend so much time. He added that his maintenance records indicate that there were two requests for an exterminator for the Quad commissary in 1997 and two so far in 1998. Zuino did not immediately have numbers available for requests from the high rise stores. Zuino also stressed that the commissaries need to store their packaged goods in a way that keeps "stock off the floor, is not so cluttered" and allows traps to be "placed properly." He said that his office will be contacting PSA in the coming days about "preventative measures." In 1994, an infestation of mice in the Quad commissary was successfully eliminated in just three weeks by Physical Plant workers who responded to student concerns. Workers installed a new locking device on the front door, removed old supplies and filled holes in the walls that could have allowed mice inside. Kardosh said the presence of mice is "all due to locations." All stores are located in their buildings' basements -- and the high rise commissaries are bordered by trash rooms. Noting that since the commissaries in the high rises are not completely surrounded by four walls, she said mice from the trash room next door "can conceivably crawl through the gate and get in." Employees of both the Pit at Hill College House and the Oasis at King's Court/English House -- mini grocery stores that are not run by PSA -- said they are not aware of a mouse population and do not lay traps in their stores. The Pit is located deep in Hill's basement, and the Oasis is on KC/EH's ground floor. Kardosh said the only long-term means of eliminating mice from the stores that she can think of is changing the location of the stores. But she added that the University -- which has been "very supportive of the commissaries" -- is "constrained" by its limited amount of available space.

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