We’ve all been there: the noisy hallmate, the rude hallmate, the one that leaves the bathroom messy or is playing loud music during exam week. But this past year all the forces of evil converged on one hall and ended up giving me the truly infernal hallmate experience. Read on, and pray you never have as bad luck as I did!

Things didn’t seem to be getting off on a good foot when I discovered myself and my boyfriend, also on the same hall, were completely surrounded by freshmen. We were juniors, with a buttload of junior independent work to get done in the course of the year, and we didn’t have as much patience for freshmen shenanigans as in the past. But still, we vowed to be good sports. The freshmen started things off with a bang by constantly converging in the hall right in front of my door to chatter loudly about inane subjects. On weekend nights, the music coming out of their rooms shook the floors, no matter how many times we asked them to turn it down.

The girls decided to label me as a spoil-sport because of this polite request, and insisted on giving me dirty looks in the bathroom. They continually stole the chalk from my chalkboard, left dirty dishes in the sink of the kitchen, and had atrocious hygiene when it came to disposing of sanitary items. That, however, was only the beginning.

The girls were all members of the same sorority and talked constantly about how to rise through the ranks and how drunk they would have to get to fit in. Their talk was not only rudely loud but made me grit my teeth as a feminist, particularly how they would loudly call each other sluts and bitches. On Halloween, they were all dressing up as bowling pins for a frat party. As I passed by one open door where they were all dressing I remember hearing one girl ask timidly, “I have white leggings, which would go better. Should I wear those?” Another girl, the ringleader of the group, immediately snapped back, “NO! We’re going for conformity, we must conform.” It sounded like something out of a horrible mean-girls-ish movie, but she meant it seriously.

As the weekends of the semester went on and the parties got wilder, the freshmen decided loudly dancing in the hallway wasn’t enough to get on people’s nerves. They began drawing obscene images on the boards of the people they decided weren’t cool enough. Again and again I left my room in the morning to find cartoons on my board. I rolled my eyes, but didn’t say anything; it was just some chalk drawings, after all. However, the freshmen were only getting started.

I had almost never spoken to any of them directly and had never done anything to offend, but they decided I was the girl they were going to ostracize, to punish. They began drawing obscene images exclusively on my board, then, finally, the images were accompanied by truly offensive words, f****t and c**t. I couldn’t believe it. Weren’t these intelligent, thinking human beings? Hadn’t they had to pass rigorous tests to get into Princeton? How could they be so thoughtless, so causelessly cruel?

In part II of the harrowing saga, I strike back, but so do they…