The beginning of the year filled each student and office staff member with some disappointment and fright, starting with coming to school and finding the old administration building still standing and ending with the addition of ants on campus.
In case students have not seen them yet, the campus now has new visitors: an infestation of ants. Not only does this gross students and staff out, but the ants have also been eating students’ lunches…as well as power cords.
“I think it’s [expletive],” junior Kevin Klein states about using the boys’ bathroom. “I’m trying to pee, and there are ants crawling all over me.”
At the front of the school, in the administration building, they seem to have the worst of the infestation problem.
“It’s horrendous!” attendance secretary Ann Berry says. “They impeded the copier from working. They have shorted out the wires.”
Dealing with ant infestations is never a fun thing to do. However, in most places, you can put ant traps down and spray ant pesticides around the infested building.
That is not the case here. At CHS, the school is not allowed to spray anything around campus due to the large number of kids.
“I’m not sure what the plan is going to be to deal with ants,” assistant principal Martin Enriquez says. “I have them all over myself and my desk. Although I’d rather have ants than cockroaches or rats. Imagine an infestation of cockroaches. That would be worse.”
In case this infestation doesn’t bother you, you are not alone: campus supervisor Don Perry is in the same boat.
“I think ants have a right to life too,” Perry says with a serious face. “They’re part of nature and I think all of nature’s creatures have a part in this world. If we want to fix the ant problem, we should educate them on birth control.”
And there are some people that are completely oblivious to this infestation problem. They do not have ants in their classes nor do they see them around campus.
“What infestation problem?” English teacher Hans Schmidt asks. “I think we have a bigger problem. The bigger problem is time-trackers.”
Senior Trevor Arbab agrees that the ants are not the worst problem here at school, compared to other things.
“I don’t really see it as that big of a deal,” Arbab says.
Whether the ant infestation affects students or staff members, many think that it is a problem that needs to be fixed.
-Kim Burns
