1985_02 The Daily Collegian February 1985

              4 The Daily Collegian
News
Campuses declare war on pigeons
(CPS) —One cold nighrduring the next
few weeks, "before spring temperatures
start rising above 50 degrees," a small
cropdusting plane will buzz the Ohio
State University campus, drenching selec¬
ted areas with a detergent-laced water
solution.
As the sun rises the next morning — if
the plan works — university workers will
begin picking up the frozen carcasses of
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dead
pigeons and starlings.
They'll have frozen to death because
their natural water-resistant coating was
wrecked by the detergent solution.
"It's the simplest, most humane method
weVe been able to come up with," ex¬
plained Ed Lavere, OSU's director of
environmental health and safety. "As the
birds are nesting in the trees at night, well
spray them with the detergent and water
and they'll slowly freeze to death."
Awful &s it may sound, the tactic is only
the most recent in an unofficial, declared
national campus war against pigeons.
Dozens of campuses oyer the last ten
years have adopted tactics that would
make some war criminals blush in trying
to stampede, kill and otherwise remove
the birds.
OSU's bird^oblem is so bad "people
either have to leave campus by 4 p.m. or
wait until dark because of the number of
birds roosting overhead," Lavere lamen¬
ted "We have to do something."
Arizona tried to scare its pigeons away
with metal owls. Maryland used "elect¬
ronic clickers" to discomfort them. Yale
installed $15,000 worth of screens. Ken¬
tucky put up "mesh hardware cloth" to
keep them off certain buildings.
Others have fed the pigeons drugs, left
plastic snakes in their roosts, soaked them
with hoses, and trapped them in cages and
dropped them off in rural areas.
They almost always return to campus.
"I n the war against the birds," observed
OSU zoologist Sheldon Kustick, "the birds
are winning."
"The usual Greek Revival architecture
you find on campus" is the culprit,
theorized Paul Knapp, head of the As¬
sociation of Physical Plant Administrators
of Universities and Colleges.
"The pigeons love to roost and rest
there," he pointed out. "They even color
the buildings to suit themselves."
Failing to convince them to move
voluntarily, Illinois, UCLA. Berkeley and
Maryland administrators — among many
others — try to kill them.
While OSU's spraying method is likely
to draw criticism, "we hope it will be less
controversial" than the tactic the school
has used in the past.
Until this year, OSU officials would
select one Sunday every January to round
up the local bird population and systema¬
tically blast them with shotguns.
Last year the mass shootings drew
unusually harsh criticism, and the Ohio
Humane Society even stepped in- to
condemn the slaughter.
"Poisoning or killing the birds is aes¬
thetically unacceptable and of question¬
able value," said Paul Steward of the
American Humane Society.
Two months before OSU's Black Sun¬
day, theChampaign(lll.)County Humane
Society chastised the University of Illinois'
"relocation program," which consisted of
stuffing campus pigeons into burlap sacks
and, as administrator Edward Cousins
puts it, having them "put to sleep."
OSU'sspray-and-freeze method also"is
totally unacceptable," argued Dennis
White, director of the Humane Society's
animal protection division.
"The detergent spraying method has
been used many places before, much to
the ire of the animal protection com¬
munity," he said. "We define a humane
death as one that is quick and painless,
and the spraying method is neither."
"The plant administrators are the
Rodney Danger-fields of the campus,"
Knapp says. "They're caught in a Catch-
22 situation. They can't ignore the birds.
They'll be blamed when students get sick
or a faculty member is bombed and his
clothes are ruined."
The birds are also health hazards.
Depending on the health expert, officials
say bird droppings can transmit dangerous
diseases like cryptomococcosis — which is
similar to cerebral meningitis — ornithosis
and histoplasmosis.
"Histo leaves spots like cancer on the
lungs," Lustick said. "Sometimes lungs
have been removed because of tail."
"Students don't accept that they are
nuisance animals," Knapp complained.
"Birds have a license no other nuisance
can have. They are as dirty as cock-
Cleaning up after them can be expensive.
Ohio State spends up'to $3000 each
time it has a commercial firm clean the
campus, estimates Dean Ramsey, OSU's
landscape architect.
The University of Texas at El Paso pays
workers $5 per hour for three or four
hours a week, and buys them protective
clothingand breathingappliances.toclcan
up the mess, said UTEP's Stan Brown.
Alternatively, in  1982  UTEP spent
$3500 to feed campus pigeons corn kernalj
laced with a drug called Avitrol.
A vitro!, said John Kummings of the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "affects
the birds nervous system. He flies errati.
cally, and scares the other birds." The ploy
didnt work at UTEP.
White, of the Humane Society, said
colleges can succeed "by changing the
campus environment — like screening off
nesting areas and cutting down trees —
not by killing the birds and any other
wildlife that feed on them." ijj
No one, however, can think of a reason
to keep the pigeons around. A 1981
University of Pittsburgh study did contend
they may be good at predicting earth¬
quakes, but experts otherwise are hard
pressed to figure out just what ecological
function the creatures perform.
"They are scavangers," Steward said.
"They eat grain spillings lhat, if left,
would attract rodents. And people take
great pleasure inpigeon antics. They serve
as entertainment for a large segment of the
population."  •
'Good' collegeteachers on decline
CSUF Today
CSEA Chapter 309 mcetingfor UnitsZ,
5, 7 and 9. The agenda includes the 1981
budget and nominations for chapter offie-"
crs. Non-members and newly hired emr
ployees are invited to attend this meeting
in the Main Cafeteria room 202 at noon;-
The Associated Student Senate meets
today in College Union room 312 at 3 p.rtt
mentaredriving Ph. D.saway from college
fields, a current study shows, and the
trend could mean there'll be fewer talented
professors in classes in the next decade.
In a survey of 38 colleges. Howard R.
Bowen and Jack Schuster, education pro¬
fessors at California's Claremont Gradu¬
ate School, found the deteriorating aca¬
demic climate is persuading top professors
and graduate students to abandon higher
The result, they said, may be a shortage
of good oaflege teachers.
"The nagging worries and decreased job
eper-
seek employment in other fields," Bowen
told participants at the recent joint con¬
vention of the American Council on Edu¬
cation and the National Association of
State Universities and Land Grant Col¬
leges in Denver.
While current faculties are "the best
equipped for the job we've ever had,"
Bowen noted, "the flight of current people
in higher education and of young people
choosing careers will mean more educa¬
tion openings than can be filled."
There will be as many as 500,000 college
teaching positions open in the next 25
years, Bowen said. "And the numbers
could be even greater in the next 15 years
"The academic community must begin
now to compete," he adds. "Recruitment
of new faculty is the most important task
of higher education."
To entice top quality Ph.D.s into higher
education, colleges need to offer competi¬
tive salaries, incentives and working con¬
ditions, Bowen said in a recent telephone
But slipping enrollment could Wreck
those offers.
"Faculty salaries are controlled by pol¬
itical and economic factors," he said.
"Private schools depend on enrollment.
So do public schools, but they need their
legislatures to offset losses."
The Associated Students Programmin|
Committee will show two "classic" movies.
At 6 p.m.. Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoff-
man and Katherine Ross star in Ths
Graduate." At 8 p.m., James Dean, Natalit;
Wood, Sal Mineo and Jim Backus
"Rebel Without a Cause." Both films wfflj
be shown without charge in the Satellite
College Union. Faculty, staff and studenljj
are invited.
The Bulldog baseball team he
Poly,-San Luis Obispo at Pete Beide»i
Field for a single game starting at 7 p.
Wednesday
Feb. 13
7:30 p.m.
$1.50 Student
$2.50 General
Test yourself.
Which early pregnancy test is as
easy to read as red, no-white, yes?
Which is a simple one-step test?
Which has a dramatic color change
to make the results unmistakable?
Which is 98% accurate, as accurate
as many hospital and lab tests?
Which is portable for convenience
and privacy?
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Sports
February 12,1985 5
Bulldog defense burns Irvine, 52-40
Some things just never change.
The Fresno State Bulldogs, led by senior
center Scott Barnes, shook off a lackluster
first-half performance to overcome the
surprising Anteaters of UC Irvine 52-40,
last night at Sclland Arena.
The UC Irvine loss marked only the
first time this season that the Anteaters
have been held to under 50 points. The last
team to hold Irvine under 40 points was
CSU Long Beach in 1980 when the 49'ers
held the Anteaters to 26 points.
"The only regret I had about tonights
game was coming into town," moauied
Irvine coach Billy Mulligan after the game.
"We can't win here, we have an awful'
time. 1 thought if we ever were gonna get
them (Fresno), then tonight was the night
to do it." y
Once again it was Scott Barnes providing
the leadership in last nights contest. The
Bulldog senior poured in 20 points and
grabbed 10 rebounds to lead the Bulldogs
to their tenth Pacific Coast Athletic
Association victory against only two losses.
"We had an awful time with Barnes,"
Mulligan continued. "Everytime we play
against Barnes he's magnificent."
I n five games since the UC Santa Barbara
win three weeks ago Barnes has caught
fire for the Bulldogs, scoring 84 points and
pulling down 47 rebounds. He has also
been high scorer and rebounder for Fresno
State in that five game period.
"The key thing there (hi? improvement)
is playing defense and rebounding the
ball, and letting the offense take care of.
itself," Barnes said. "If 1 can continue to
do that then everything will be fine."
Everything did not start fine for Barnes
and the rest of the Bulldogs at the start of
the game however, as they played
sluggishly in the first half. Emotionally,
Fresno State looked dead in the first half,
perhaps showing a bit of a letdown from
the UNLV win Saturday afternoon.
But a different Bulldog team came out
at the start of tbe second half, completely
shutting down the Anteater offense for the
rest of the game.
The UC Irvine game plan consisted
mainly of the three point shot. Mulligan
explained after the game that he was
trying to loosen up the Fresno zone defense
with the outside shooting of forwards
Troy Cannon and Tod Murphy, and then.
hopefully, try to get the ball inside to
center Johnny Rogers for the layup.
The strategy failed miserably as the
Bulldogs continually harassed both Car-
mon and Murphy into bad shots. The end
result: Irvine made only four of 20 attemp¬
ted three point shots, and tbe two Anteater
forwards combined for just 15 points.
"I think it was the combination of
Fresno's defense and our very inept offen¬
sive attack (that led to the loss)," Mulligan
said." We have guys that are great shooters
that didnt shoot at all tonight. Those guys
have shot so well, that to come out and see
them not hit really hurt."
It was another team defensive effort for
Fresno State as they forced 15- Irvirie
turnovers, blocked six shots and out-
rebounded the.Anteaters 36-33, Irvine
was also held to their .lowest shooting .
percentage of the year-29 percent-by the
Bulldog defense, making only 17 of 58
Una Tumar/Tr. Daia, Colastan
Mitch Arnold harasses Anteater Wayne EogaMaftfor a loose a«n al arid-eo«rt last
—   s' 52-4* victory over UC Irvine.
Ron Strain blow* nsM Aatftttar faard
Strain flnksbed with Bre points In FSUt