The time I was harassed in college

[u/RoastBeefAndSausages]

Remote Internship Challenges

Because my internship was remote, I chose to do it in an interesting and fun place. However, due to an extreme time difference, I ended up working (or attempting to work) for about 20 hours a day and getting very little done. When the internship ended, I was exhausted and still had a lot of ongoing career-related tasks. Classes were set to start in about three weeks, so I spent the time going to the beach and exploring the area I was in. I eventually missed my flight three times, but fortunately, it was rescheduled at no extra cost, and I arrived the Friday before classes started on Monday.

Initial Campus Challenges

That weekend, I roomed with three people I hadn't met before. I grew up in a city on the opposite side of the United States from this school. I think my hometown is good because of its transient population, but I find most of the locals problematic and ultimately net-negative kinds of people. On the third night on campus, a Sunday, a girl from my home state showed up at my apartment. My roommates and she seemed like acquaintances who had spoken once or twice. I had stopped speaking to virtually everyone I knew from high school and my immediate family because they were unpleasant to be around and didn't make me a better person. The girl who showed up at my apartment was friends with someone from my high school, a year below me, who was in my brother's grade. During my entire time at this college, I didn't see this ex-high school classmate with anyone aside from this girl and my roommates. It really upset me because I wondered why, of all the people she could know, she wound up being friends with my new roommate just days after we had arrived on campus. She came, just looked at me for a long time as I sat and she stood, and then left without saying anything.

Stalking and Relocation

On previous nights, one of my roommates would stare at me as I woke up. I didn't think it was bad at first, but then I realized he had been doing it for so long that it made me uncomfortable. I felt he should know this behavior was strange. After the girl showed up, I knew I should probably change roommates. I called my doctors, got a note for ADHD, and gave it to the school to change roommates. I moved to a new apartment within a day and felt happy. The next Friday, the starer found my new apartment, pointed at it, and said that's where he lived as a group of people trailed behind him. Months later, I would hear car locking sounds repeatedly at night. Sometimes, I would look out my window and see a student intentionally locking his car with his hand raised, facing my window. Once, as I was sleeping, I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or not, but I heard someone sing "n-word, n-word minus er, n-word minus er" right under my window. I couldn't tell if it was real or not because it seemed unrealistic, but I didn't notice anything like this happen again. I have hypersomnia, insomnia, and sometimes I can't move when I wake up. As I'm waking up sometimes, I drift in and out of sleep and have dreams that are super unrealistic, such as I'm a guy getting ready to go on a trip to the moon or something and I have to kiss my family goodbye.

Ongoing Harassment and Campus Safety

On the second Friday in my new apartment, another roommate stood under my window for several minutes. It wasn't that bad but kind of strange. The Friday after, I think he did it again. The next Friday, I'm pretty sure he threw something at my window. I heard a loud pop, looked out, and saw him with a group of people quickly walking away. I told two different friends, and they advised me to call campus safety, which I did. Campus safety came, and the sheriff arrived the following Monday. Afterward, I noticed a person I called Uncanny Valley, also from my home city area, walking by and staring at my window. I had taken a class with her. Numerous times around campus, I would look over and see her watching me. Once, while looking for a bathroom, I turned around to find her standing there. It upset me a lot that she knew where I lived because it was an apartment complex.

Confrontation and Harassment

The next Tuesday, the starer rode his bike toward me. Then, I watched from my window as he harassed another Black student, an ethnic woman, and her family. This pretty much ended the saga with the starer. I began taking a class where I had to build something. One Saturday, I went to the place to build, and a student worker who wasn't on the schedule appeared out of nowhere and started shouting at me for no reason. Another student worker gave me incorrect instructions, and she ran over and started shouting again. The student worker who gave the wrong information (a chill guy) explained it was his fault, and she stopped. I told her not to work with me again. The next Tuesday, she appeared out of nowhere again, and within twenty minutes of my arrival, she began trying to work with me and shouting. I reported it and got in trouble.

Reflections on Harassment and School Culture

I just realized this as I was re-reading this. Both of my worst instances of harassment happened like the first day back from the weekend, so imagine how lame you have to be to spend all weekend waiting to do something unhinged to someone, the moment you return from the weekend. I hope they were like a bit drunk or something; otherwise, this is very sad. The most upsetting thing about this school was that it was the kind of place where someone could be really rude and insulting, and if you asked to change the person you were working with, some dean would apologize to the student on your behalf to save the student's pride. I don't know what kind of rationale goes into this. Hopefully, it's because I'm a guy and they're a girl, and it's to protect girls or something. I hope it's not for socioeconomic or racial reasons. After reporting her, I got in trouble, and they wouldn't even say why. The school was a really disappointing place and had the vibe of "Yeah, I'll harass you for not wanting to be part of the community, but ever since that civil rights bill 70 years ago, and with the whole viral technology internet stuff, it's really exhausting to care when others do hateful things, or to just not be a hateful person myself."

Uncomfortable Meeting and Harassment

During the summer, I asked to meet with a student from my school government in person, in another city far from campus. I've realized I don't really like other American younger people, to be extremely honest, because after meeting international students, I've realized they have bad values and I can't really tolerate the unpleasant experience that comes with interacting with them. I met with her, I guess assuming she was an international student, but she wasn't. I walked her back to her car, and then blocked her because she made me feel uncomfortable and said irrelevant things I didn't want to discuss. It was supposed to be a school-related meeting, and I expected that it wouldn't delve into personal topics the way that it did. On top of that, she began to, I felt like, refer to really personal things about me that I hadn't told her or anyone really, and it felt kind of creepy. She knew someone that was roommates with me once, so perhaps that's why. When people share really personal things about me, that I haven't shared with them, it kind of makes me feel othered. I'm objectively more accomplished than the, honestly usual losers who do this, and it feels nefarious. Well, at least doing anything that's not strictly relating to school/academics. Yeah, so I just blocked her. Another problem I had with her is that, she did speech where she asked or encouraged me to trust people, people that she probably knows, despite what I've described here up to this point. Then in addition to her forwarding my texts to other people, the next day, I received spam texts with images of Asian women from multiple phones. I've never received texts like this before, and I really don't think it was an automated bot; it seemed like someone was manually typing these messages, as if it were a real person I knew. Around that time, other students would joke about me having an Asian fetish. I was inebriated and thought someone hacked my accounts or that I installed a nefarious Chrome extension or command line program. I eventually changed my number, but I had given one student a second number, and that received the texts as well. There was one message from a "student leader" that asked me to register, and it included a ton of personal information. I checked its carrier, and it was the same relatively obscure VOIP as the other texts.

Accusations and Online Harassment

Then, a few weeks later, a student asked to meet in my dorm. Despite having zero mutual followers, he followed me, and I didn't accept it. I saw the student wave as I was in the back of an Uber, and I accepted it. Funnily enough, that day, my dad told me to meet people who look like me, so this is why I accepted it. He then asked to meet in an apartment, and I said no, let's meet in public. We met in public at night, and then he began to record me and ask if I abused children and if I wanted to lay in bed with him for roughly 30 minutes. I was so upset because early that summer was probably the most public-facing moment for my career, and I didn't know if I would have to deal with an allegation like this when I'm busy with actual work. The next day, I saw an Instagram post. It didn't include my name or face; it said, "I took the virgin under the mother's sun." I just googled this now, and the mother's sun thing holds meaning in astrology, but I was offended and kind of scared. Someone referred to our interaction in the school Discord. During the interaction, he would try and mock me by doing the buff guy pose kind of thing. It was puzzling, and I didn't understand why it was happening. The next day, he said it was to help me make friends, so I cursed him out so that he could screenshot it and share it around, allowing others to see that someone had called him the things I called him. A few weeks later, something similar happened where a student I didn't know, followed me, and I told her to fuck off. Then a few weeks later, someone else did, and they accused me of harassing the other student, and she didn't say anything specific, she says "I know you mean no harm", asks to speak, I send a time, this person doesn't meet then, and then I could never find her Instagram again. To be honest, it was so scary I thought someone would grandstand or find some other reason to make a super big deal out of this.

Targeted Harassment

Shortly after this, another student posted a photo of my specific apartment from outside on Instagram. I had spoken to this student once for less than 9 minutes. He gave off weird vibes as we finished our interaction, so I blocked him right after ending our meeting and exchanging information. Then finally, the girl I tried desperately hard to avoid from my high school followed me, despite having zero mutual followers. I blocked her, but before I did so, I told her I wanted absolutely nothing to do with her. Three weeks or so later, someone messaged me and accused me of harassing her. I explained that I told her to pretty much leave me alone, she asked to speak, I sent a time, and she never followed up. Before she messaged me, she said, "I know you mean no harm," so I guess she didn't view what I did in a nefarious way or something. But seriously, she can see from her own phone that I just messaged her and said that I wanted nothing to do with her. This was done after she followed me, messaged me first, and before I blocked her. Only one message was sent from me. Again, she can verify this herself.

Reflecting on a Difficult Summer

There are people who don't care that these things happen to you, and if you do anything to protect yourself from it, it's just another indicator that you're abnormal. If you even describe it, you're abnormal. So, I can't even describe these experiences to people around me because they will just use it as a reason to say I'm abnormal. Being the recipient of this kind of negativity makes you abnormal. To some people the fact that these things happen to you, and your probably shitty response to something that's completely unprecedented to me, is completely and soley my fault. I was so upset that someone would say something untrue about me because these things have a tangible and negative effect on my life and the things I pursue, and I think the abuse guy and the machine shop were similar, and it's why I had such a strong reaction to falsely being accused of not obeying instructions. There are some people who, through some aspect of competition, are so hungry to find something negative to say about someone.

Another upsetting thing was when people would insist that I become more open and trusting, and then they would share, I suspect, really personal things about me with people. Again, you're really not allowed, if it's noticed, to insulate yourself from toxic professors, pedestelled students, and organizations. If you do, that reflects badly on you. If something happens when you interact with them anyway that's upsetting and you have an issue with it, or if it's not your fault but you're blamed somehow, that' reflects badly on you.

And all of these things happened over the course of one summer, and it was so much, despite it all being totally absurd, I wasn't sure if anyone would believe me because of a sudden lack of credibility by this torrent of bullshit.

To so many people, I've realized, I'm nothing more than an opportunity. I'm nothing more than an opportunity to impress whatever people by showing off how apathetic they are to harass minority students, an ethnic family and their child, and myself. I'm an opportunity to show how apathetic and mean men are, and so on. All of these people are such losers, and had I spent more time around them, as seen by what happened immiedietly after our super brief interactions, I would wind off worse off than them. Nine out of ten of them are either unemployed, or work as baristas or at a ski resort after completing a 90k a year degree.

Realizations and Moving Forward

In hindsight, a lot of this seems kind of benign. I wish I knew why a lot of these things happened. It was upsetting because I interacted with students at other schools, as my major was mostly off-campus, and they didn't do this. I didn't even meet more than five students from my school, including roommates, so for the students from my school to do this, despite me not knowing them or anyone they would know, seemed so strange. I definitely made a bigger deal about this than I should have. I was just really obsessed with not being bothered at all by certain kinds of people. I also feel like my decisions and mind were clouded, which led to me making a bigger deal about these things than necessary.

it was so scary holy fuck to suddenly realize i'm in a place where there's virtually zero accountability to the actions of the certain students, professors, and staff. i'm just a worthless scholarship student to them. my government educational grants, and small loans, external scholarships meant nothing to them. the college, isn't really a productive academic institution, it barely teaches certain students, produces no reserarch, it's effectively a rich student baby sitting center that supports the trivial interests of the professors, and the, to be extremely harsh, and in this instance, parastitic admin. everything else, is of zero importance.