Hi Auntie!

I’m a freshman girl in college, and I am loving it. There’s just this one annoying problem that won’t go away: someone keeps writing on our whiteboard outside our room.

This has been happening at least once a week for an entire semester: my roommate or I come home, only to find that our picture, names, or encouraging quote have been scribbled over or altered to include the name (we’ll just say) “John.” It’s always the same name. Neither of us knew anyone named John, except for a few distant acquaintances, so we had no idea what to make of this or why it kept happening.

It has to be someone in our hallway, since at one point we fixed the board, were inside our room for maybe thirty seconds, and then came out and it was Johned again. When it started again this semester, we typed up a (very polite) letter explaining that we liked keeping our board pretty so that we can come home at the end of the day and see something pretty that we created, and that it made us sad and frustrated that they kept writing on it. The graffiti has continued nonetheless. We don’t want to take down our board, since we feel like that would be letting this person win. It just doesn’t seem fair- everyone else’s boards are left alone, since it’s understood that it’s rude to write on other people’s. One of the RAs told me that it technically qualifies as bullying or harassment, if we wanted to take it to the dean of women… we just weren’t sure it was that big of a deal.

Here’s the thing. I think I finally have an idea who it is. There’s this girl who lives right across the hall from me who seems a little bit weird about me. She refers to me as her “best friend” even though we’re not really friends and don’t do anything together, and last semester she was so rude to my (typically stoic) roommate that she made her cry. But she’s always flattering me and giving me compliments and trying to start a conversation with me.

That wouldn’t be enough for me to connect her with this graffiti, but one of the only times I’ve ever had a real conversation with this girl, it was about a boy—whose name was John. And yesterday night we had a tornado warning, and in the middle of it she left the shelter to “get some homework” from her room in our hall. When we came back afterward? Johned again.

I guess what I’m wondering is, do I have a right to feel a little creeped out? I don’t know if she might have a crush on me or something, or just really wants to be my friend, but being rude to my friends and roommate doesn’t seem like the right way to go about that. The graffiti thing, which shouldn’t be a big deal on its own, is getting really annoying in its own right, and if it’s connected with her, it bothers me even more. Should I go to the dean of women? Should I confront her about it? I’m really conflicted about that second one especially, since a) there’s still got to be some chance it isn’t her, and b) I have no idea how she’d react, or if this all would get worse instead of better as a result. I just want to politely ask her to leave me alone, only it seems like every time I pay her attention, whether positive or negative, she just comes back at it (like the poster: incidents of Johning increased after posting). At the same time, ignoring it isn’t making it go away either. I’ll take any advice at this point.

In that case, let’s start here: Maybe this is just because Auntie SparkNotes is a million years old and has a small pile of lint and spiders where her heart is supposed to be, but I can think of few things more cringeworthy than a harassment report wherein the single listed offense is “male-identified name written on dorm room whiteboard.” I know this is irritating, and the persistence is creepy, but irritating and creepy is not a crime—and it’s the kind of thing which you are fully capable of handling on your own without administrative help, at least at this juncture. (I’m also giving some super-serious side-eye to the part where it’s the Dean of Women, specifically, who is supposed to step in on issues like this. Is there by any chance an assumption in play that the guys at your school are capable of dealing with interpersonal conflicts like grownups, while the girls need a babysitter?)

And on that note, I’ll be honest, Sparkler: I do find it a little bit curious that you’re so bugged by this whiteboard thing, rather than shrugging it off as an annoying quirk of dorm life (and perhaps even taking a moment to be grateful that the graffiti artist is only drawing a man’s name, as opposed to a man’s… uh, something else. During Auntie’s own college days, it was de rigueur to wake up at least once a week and find that someone had drawn a big ol’ donger on your door.) But if you really can’t let it go, then for heaven’s sake, do something about it. Setting up a hidden camera opposite your door may not be cheap, but perhaps it’s worth the cost of catching your tormentor in the act, or if you’re not above silly espionage tactics, there’s always the low-budget version where you loudly pretend to be leaving your room for the day, then camp out inside your door or around a corner down the hall to catch the saboteur red-handed.

And of course, if you simply want the Johning to stop, then there’s one very obvious way to do that, which is to remove the John-able object from your door. No, it isn’t fair, but it would certainly be effective, and it’s hardly “letting her win.” (How frustrated do you think she’ll be when she goes to deface your whiteboard, which is her absolute most favoritest thing in the world, and finds that you’ve taken the board away?)

And look: I know this doesn’t change the overall weirdness of your neighbor’s apparent obsession with you (and for what it’s worth, that is weird, and I think you can safely assume that she’s the culprit, although I wouldn’t go accusing her until or unless you have proof). But addressing that part of things means crossing the line between independent action and interpersonal confrontation, which is something it seems you’d rather not do—and depending upon how much satisfaction you get from either a) knowing definitively who’s doing the Johning, or b) putting a stop to it, it may not be something you need to do. Even if you take no action at all, this scenario can only last in its current state until the end of the academic year anyway—and that’s, what, a month away? If you’d rather not risk making things uncomfortable with this girl, you don’t have long to wait. And if she were still doing this stuff next fall when you return for sophomore year, that’s over the line enough that telling her to back off would be a no-brainer (as would be reporting her if she keeps it up; involving the administration shouldn’t be your first step, but it’s a reasonable second step if the harassment escalates after you’ve asked directly that it stop.)

For the record, this would be a different answer if there were anything in your letter to suggest that this girl was a threat to you, as opposed to just a nuisance. But as it stands, what you’re dealing with is part and parcel of being a grownup: to be able to recognize the difference between an uncomfortable situation and a dangerous one, and to develop a thick enough skin to tolerate the former, not because it’s fair, but because it’s necessary. Boundary-challenged creepy people are a fact of life, and learning to deal with them is a vital skill; once you graduate, there won’t be a sympathetic dean available to intervene on your behalf with the pushy weirdos of the world. Again: it sucks. I know. But it’s the best argument there is for learning to deal with this kind of discomfort now, within the safe and controlled environment of your college campus, so that you’ve got some practice for when you’re well and truly on your own.

So, think about it. Think about what you’d like to accomplish here, and what you’re willing to do to achieve it—and maybe think a bit, too, about how you’d like to be able to say you dealt with this when you look back at it in a few years. If nothing else, this whole weird saga is going to make for a pretty great story.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.

Want more info about how this column works? Check out the Auntie SparkNotes FAQ.