Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Logo of The Spectrum
Friday, March 29, 2024
The independent student publication of The University at Buffalo, since 1950

Nightmare On Dorm Street

Idealistic freshmen enter the UB dorms expecting to make new friends, break a few rules, and go on countless late-night adventures. For the unlucky few, though, these aspects of the college experience can be ruined by the sexilers, weirdos, and hyperactive hotdog-eaters cruel chance saw fit to match them with.

Rusty Donlon, a senior mechanical engineering major, recalls his experiences with Peter, one such horrific roommate, during his freshman year of school.

"He was a short little ginger, about 5'5, and I'd say about 120 pounds," Donlon said. During their first encounter in Spaulding 7 floor 7, Donlon saw Peter as a regular college kid. But after the first weekend, warning signs began to spoil that vision.

"We went to the first football game and he ate, like, five hotdogs. It was after this night that I realized when he eats a lot; he is uncontrollably hyper beyond all reason.

"Everywhere we went he brought his computer and he would sit there [and play Dynasty Warriors] and just smash it when he was losing or something. He would get really pissed off and he started beating his computer. And we were like, ‘Dude that's your computer,'" Donlon said.

But abusing his laptop was just the beginning of strange behavior for Peter. One evening, Donlon had two lady friends over in his room and Peter blatantly downloaded porn while muttering inappropriate slurs. He would openly talk about spending time with ‘Jill,' the name of his friendly right hand, and spending many nights with her. One night, Donlon walked in his room to find Peter's legs wrapped around his chair shouting, ‘I love computer science!'

The strangest experience with Peter occurred after an evening of partying on South Campus. Donlon and his friends went out with Peter and helped him into the dorm room when they returned to Spaulding.

"I open up the door and I can't open it because he's in the way. I look in and he has his pants down… and the mattress is way off the bed. I don't know how he got the mattress off cause those are heavy mattresses, but it was off the bed and half of it was on top of him and he was just passed out," Donlon said.

While Peter was obnoxious for his behavior, James Wright, senior electrical engineering major, had a serious stench issue with his freshman year fellow.

"He really didn't shower at all. And I think his bad diet also helped, and how hot it is in the dorms, especially during most of the first semester," Wright said. "At a certain point I started buying Febreeze and when he would leave, I would spray down the room because I couldn't be in it."

Wright explained that his roommate, Kyle, only showered about once a week and never went to class. In Spaulding 7 floor 4, Wright shared a double with Kyle in a split-triple.

"One day, I got back from class and I walked into the common room between the two rooms and I opened the door to my room and I almost threw up. I have a pretty strong sense of smell but I don't think I've ever actually almost threw up from a smell. He was laying on his bed in nothing but his boxers, sleeping at two in the afternoon, not going to classes, and it smelled so bad," Wright said. "He ate a lot of easy mac. So if we took bad eggs, easy mac, dog [feces], and tuna and we put them all in a pot and cooked it, and with body odor in there, I feel like that's what it smelled like."

Ryan Adams, senior aerospace engineer major, is a close friend of James and recalls Kyle's distinct aroma three years later.

"It was horrendous. One time I actually walked in, said ‘hi,' and I just kind of stopped where I was… and I left. I just left. It was horrible," Adams said.

Both Wright and Donlon's roommates left UB after their first semester. But *Kathy, a senior engineering major who wishes to remain anonymous, is still friends with her freshman year roomie even after her strange experience.

"One time I was on prescription meds because I had hurt my back. I was taking codeine, and so I took them, I passed out. I wake up, I leave the room, and I'm greeted by, like, seven people staring at me. So I'm like, ‘What,' and they asked, ‘were you just in there,'" Kathy said.

She later found out that while she was asleep, her roommate, *Ashley, went into their room with her boyfriend. Ashley and her boyfriend were so loud that the people outside of the room could hear them having sex. Ashley never told Kathy about the incident, and Kathy never asked.

But being a bad roommate also has its share of consequences.

*Dave, a junior biomedical sciences major who wishes to remain anonymous, expressed his gratitude to a nasty roommate through nature's way of marking one's territory. The mighty stream.

Dave's freshman dorming experience was in Spaulding 3 in a triple. He recalls his roommates being nice, but one of them was particularly difficult to handle.

"[My roommate] had gone away back home for the summer and I had just gotten back from a [crew] race in Philadelphia, and one of my friends had a post-race party in his apartment," Dave said.

Dave and a friend went back to his dorm to sleep for the night and woke up the next morning to drop his friend off at the airport. When Dave returned to his room, he noticed something was odd.

"I look at [my roommate's] bed and I'm like, ‘It's all wet,' and I don't know what's going on. So I call up my friend and I was like, ‘Dude, did you take a piss on that kid's bed?' and he's like, ‘No, you don't remember…you got up at like four in the morning and just walked over there, dropped trousers and just went to town on that thing and you were just mumbling sh** the entire time,'" Dave said. "I'm guessing it was just all my pent-up anger released in a drunken form."

Dave's subconscious reaction was a deed most people with roommate issues would only dream of doing. A year of disagreements and opposing points of view pushed him over patience edge and into a puddle of pee. Luckily, no one was splashed during this vengeful event.

The names in this article have been changed to protect victims of bad roommates, as well as the culprits themselves.

Email: features@ubspectrum.com


Comments


Popular









Powered by SNworks Solutions by The State News
All Content © 2024 The Spectrum