Friday, May 05, 2006

In the past couple of weeks, there has been some drama in my student residence (Netherhall), concerning this guy whom we'll call 'B'.

B in the same department and same year as I am (he does physics, but we only share a couple of classes), and he's been slightly antisocial and weird since I first known him, but his behaviour has been deteriorating in recent weeks. B has shown signs of jealousy of me in the past, e.g. by telling people that I get good grades only because I take easy courses, and I haven't been very compromising with him either whenever he tries to show off by babbling random pseudo-physics nonsense to try and impress people.

But recently he has been become increasingly weirder...since I'm not on good terms with him, I have had little direct contact with him. I've heard from many different people about his antics, but here are a few choice ones:

1. The first sign of his decline was a couple of weeks ago, when he told a friend of mine during dinner that 'Princeton is shit'. It's one thing to be jealous of me getting to study there, but he has to be near the edge to make such a ludicrous statement.

2. My Spanish friend Pedro was once on the Underground with his girlfriend when B happened to be on the same train and spotted them. He went over to them and sat next to them without saying anything, and he was staring at them for the entire journey. When Pedro said 'Hi B', he didn't respond. Later that day, when Pedro came into our library downstairs, B was there. B saw him and started chanting under his breath 'Fucking Spanish, fucking Spanish, fucking Spanish...'

3. B is half-German, and last week he started telling my Nigerian friend, Chema, about how blacks were inferior and Aryans are the superior race. Chema was surprised and retorted that as a 'mongrel' race B would have been one of the first to be sent to the concentration camps. Naturally, this didn't sit too well with B and he stormed off.

4. Amer is one of my best friends here, and we've both been familiar with B's antics for some time. A couple of days ago Amer was chatting with another friend, Reuven, about girls when B came along and sat near them. Amer felt uncomfortable and left shortly afterwards, after which B started asking Reuven detailed questions about the girls from the prior conversation which obviosly irritated Reuven. Suddenly B changed tack and asked Reuven: 'What has Amer been saying about me behind my back?' (B has never spoken to Reuven before this). Reuven was shocked and said (truthfully) that they never talk about B He refused to believed this and kept insisting, and Reuven just said they don't talk about him. B then said 'You're lying' and walked away.

All this happened within 2 weeks ago. I suspect that he is cracking under the pressure of exam pressure and his deep jealousy of me, but he's really started to act completely weird. To make things more interesting, someone spotted him walking around at night carrying a knife. Maybe he was just going to cut some food, but at night....?

Some days ago, he moved out of Netherhall. Apparently he told the director that some of us were bullying him (including the chaplain !), and he was afraid that someone might try to rape him!

I don't know where he is living now, but he seems like he's losing it (assuming he hasn't lost it already). Many of us have tried to help him, but when he doesn't want to accept our efforts, there's nothing more we can do.