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Bullying: It doesn't end when college begins
by Katie Luscombe During her freshman year, an MSU student, let's call her Laura, signed a housing contract with her then-roommate and good friend, let's call her Sarah. Both planned to live together in the dorms again the following fall. However, during the spring semester, their friendship began to take a turn for the worse, mainly over a few petty issues. Two weeks before the end of the spring semester, everything finally snapped. Laura, who is normally not confrontational, stood up to Sarah and told her what she thought. They got into a huge yelling fight, resulting in multiple slammed doors and dirty looks. Sarah spent most of the next two weeks at her boyfriend's. The two did not speak to each other again until that summer, when a group of friends from the dorm took a weekend trip. Time seemed to have solved the problems. Upon returning to school, everything appeared normal. But it didn't take long for problems to emerge when Sarah began to act like a bully. She would have her boyfriend over almost every day. They would blast the TV or lay in bed giggling when she was in the room, so Laura couldn't study or even relax. On one occasion, Laura had her own boyfriend come visit for the weekend. They came back one night after hanging out with friends, only to find Sarah and her boyfriend had taken over Laura's futon. Laura asked her roommate politely to let her have her futon, but Sarah threw a fit. She announced that Laura could never use any of her items ever again - not the TV, not the micorwave, nothing. She also told Laura to move all of her things immediately. Another student overheard Sarah on the phone, saying she would make Laura's life "a living hell." The harassment that followed was usually in such small doses that no one event ever seemed worth making a fuss about. Sarah would leave hateful "away messages" on her instant messenger and leave threatening Post-It notes around the room telling her to stay away from her things. She accused Laura of taking her money. She took back the Ethernet cord she lent Laura at the beginning of the year and unplugged all of her electronics, including her computer and refrigerator. She would purposefully bump into Laura as she left the room. Once Laura thought that the concert tickets she ordered had been lost in the mail. When she arrived at the concert and verified her purchase with her credit card, she saw Sarah sitting in her seats. Another day, the roommate left for the weekend and her parents drove her back to school. Sarah even enlisted her father to come yell at Laura, tracking her down to a room down the hall and entering without permission. Attempts to enlist help from the RA went nowhere. For fear of what would happen in a confrontation, the girl never fought back and avoided her dorm room as much as possible. Laura spent the remaining weeks of the semester on a friend's couch, until she could move. |
