Christopher Williams (’25), Staff Writer
When I found my suitemate sitting in my doorway one night, it was pretty weird. At the same time, his room is next to mine.
Maybe he got locked out. My room is the closest to the bathroom too. Maybe he was just waiting!
When he decided to “wait” in the bathroom the next week with his feet under the stall I was in, I started getting angry. Why was he there whenever I turned around? As adults, however, I thought we could talk it out.
Once he began sharing his own struggles with mental health, I knew I had to do something. I reported him to Carolina Housing, but I didn’t know it would lead me to a report and response coordinator from UNC-Chapel Hill’s Equal Opportunity and Compliance Office. I definitely didn’t consider myself a victim of stalking either. Even after my resident adviser told me their 30-minute conversation about his mental well-being revolved almost entirely around me, I was still hesitant to report him for invading my space.
Today, I’m glad she went ahead and made the report without asking me. It was easy for me to brush his stalking off as a series of weird coincidences. But it’s even easier to rationalize harming and harassing someone after you’ve become attached to them, losing control of your actions.
I thought I was immune to stalking as a man. But as a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey points out, as many as one out of every six men and one out of every three women experience it at some point in their lives. I failed to realize how common this issue was, as well as how serious or dangerous these obsessive actions could become. I thought my family was overreacting when I first told them, but thankfully, they pushed me to report his behavior just like my RA.
My stalker never physically threatened me. He did, however, express concerns about his own mental health, usually after conflicts with me in our shared living space. This is exactly what happened after he put his feet under my bathroom stall. A few days later, he came up to me in the gym. He implied that I had made him distraught when I expressed my uncomfortability.
I directed him to our RA when he said he was feeling down again a few weeks later. I even agreed to bring him to a party, hoping some socialization would get him out of his funk. He was like my shadow the entire night, following me as I talked and danced with plenty of other people. Still, I figured he was lonely, and he just needed time to get out of his comfort zone.
By the time I caught him stealing my soap, I’d had enough. I confronted him after seeing it in his open door and asked him why he did it. He said I was overreacting, claiming he often accidentally grabs things because he doesn’t pay attention to his surroundings. I told him his excuse was unacceptable, and that I would “make sure he never got the chance to steal from me again.” I cleared my things out of the bathroom, and hid everything valuable in my room out of plain sight.
A few days after this interaction, he asked me to help him through yet another emotionally draining situation. I told him I would get our RA, and calmly explained that I could no longer care for him emotionally. I also told him I felt manipulated because he only asked for this help once I was already mad.
I thought he’d understand. I thought he’d stop putting so much pressure on me. I was wrong.
This is where it gets real.
The next week he kept texting me, asking if I’m still mad. It’s crazy when another grown man asks on Instagram “how do you feel about me?” I just ignored it, along with the three follow-up messages begging for a response. I thought he would maybe get the hint when he read the word “seen.”
So imagine my surprise when I caught him watching me from behind a bush the next day. Fed up, I asked him about the emotional attachment our RA described when I got home that night. I was speechless when he burst into tears while we sat alone in his room.
At this point, I was terrified. I realized that every interaction with him drained me so much. It got so stressful that it started affecting my coursework. Finally, I accepted that everyone else was right. I booked an appointment with the reporting resource my RA provided the next week.
The story is so bizarre that the r coordinator laughed as she documented everything that happened. Through our conversation, she helped me come to understand that I deserved to feel safe at home. I realized I wasn’t just being dramatic when I brought up legitimate concerns about my safety.
He disappeared for a few days after I reported the problem. Where to? I don’t know. I asked, but the report and response coordinator wasn’t allowed to share this information under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, also known as FERPA. To this day, I’m not sure whether the University’s actions or pure luck made him finally leave me alone.
Once he came back, we agreed to minimize any non-essential contact outside of the suite. He has only popped up on me one time since then, albeit at night. Regardless, I finally feel safe at home again.
Despite all this emotional turmoil, I consider myself so lucky that he never physically harmed me. I don’t understand why he did what he did, but I also don’t have to. He was wrong either way.
I know now that I should’ve taken it more seriously when it first happened. What if everyone else wasn’t looking out for me? He was clearly attached and struggling mentally. I hated the idea of potentially involving police or mental health specialists, but I had no idea what he was planning while watching my every move.
With geotags, location-specific Instagram posts, and FindMy ready to track down an iPhone, it’s easier than ever to find other people. If you feel like someone is too close to you too often, take it seriously and report it. If someone wants to brush it off when you tell them they may be a target, be like my friends and family: file that report yourself. Nobody wants to find out what someone’s capable of when it’s too late.
