Resident director Jacob Krupe said a bat was  flying at 2:30 a.m. Aug. 31 in the Maple Hall living room. 

Other Maple residents said they had no idea  what happened.

“There were only campus police officer Glenn Berkey, who was passing by the hall, and I,”Krupe said.

“We turned on a flashlight to chase it around for about 30 minutes.

“At last it flew out from the front door. It was so funny.”

Housing Director Mark Dougherty said, there is no need to panic. The incident is not a norm on campus.

“It happens occasionally, but has never been a major problem,” he said.

Krupe said he was a freshman resident assistant a year ago and had never seen anything similar.

However, odds are, vermin have appeared in the dorms more frequently since last month.

“(Berkey) told me a few days after that there was another bat in Willow,” said Krupe.

Hickory Hall is another residence hall that has had an unwelcome guest.

“I found a chipmunk running across the hall when I was walking down the hall to my friend’s room,” said freshman Hailey White.

“It freaked me out because I thought it was a mouse until someone told me it was a chipmunk,” she said.

How and where the vermin entered the dorms remained a mystery.

White said a man in the hall told her that someone posted on Yik Yak she or he wanted a chipmunk.

Yik Yak is a social network app that connects people within short distances anonymously.

The man told White someone must have caught it and released it in Hickory.

Regarding the removal of vermin once it was found, Dougherty said whoever found it should report to the resident assistants or directors to call maintenance workers.

“I heard about the bats and chipmunk in those three halls, but I don’t know if the resident assistants are aware of that,” said Dougherty.

White said he was also unsure whether the Hickory resident assistants knew about the chipmunk.

“My friends and I ran all around the building trying to catch it,” said White.

According to Dougherty, the Housing Office staff work with maintenance employees to solve this kind of problem.

“Once we discover its entry point, we will take whatever steps necessary to solve the problem,” Dougherty said.

“If the entry point was a hole on the wall, we would fix the hole; if it was a broken window, we would fix it as well,” he said.

Dougherty said because of the campus surrounding environment, bats and mice have been found throughout the years.

We see groundhogs on campus, but never inside the buildings, he said.