She And Her Best Friend Finally Asked Their Roommate To Shower On A Marine Biology Trip Because The Stench Of Body Odor Got So Bad, But Their Roommate Just Accused Them Of Bullying To Their University
This 23-year-old woman and her best friend, Holly, 21, understand that some people who struggle with sensory issues have a difficult time taking showers regularly.
According to Chloe, 21, who is in their Marine Biology class, she experiences this. As part of their class, they were given six months prior notice about an upcoming week-long trip.
During their trip, they would be rooming with two other students. Before the trip, she, Holly, and Chloe were close.
Normally, Chloe takes a bath every 10 days, and because of her sensory issues, her boyfriend assists in bathing her.
She and Holly hadn’t been aware of this before they roomed with Chloe for their trip.
“Nor did we receive a warning that she would not be planning to shower or brush her teeth for the duration of the trip. Marine biology is quite labor intensive and, of course, involves standing on the beach and literally in the ocean. This trip also involved mile-long walks every day to get to the beaches,” she said.
In her view, if Chloe had at least cleaned herself off with a baby wipe at the end of each day of their trip, the smell wouldn’t have been as intense.
“It was straight-up onions, vinegar, and BO. I threw up twice because of it. Actually, it’s the worst smell from something living I’ve ever smelt. At this point (four days of walking and climbing rock pools), we could no longer deal with the smell at all. Even our other peers who would WALK PAST the room would gag. I really am not being dramatic,” she explained.
Rather than applying deodorant or antiperspirant, Chloe would habitually spray perfume on her armpits and feet, which would only intensify the bad odor even further.
Yakobchuk Olena – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual people
Then, the class discovered that while they’d been out and about doing research for their trip, there had been a bacterial meningitis outbreak.
This was when she and Holly finally requested that Chloe take a shower. They explained that they wanted to take as many precautions as possible so that they could hopefully avoid the outbreak spreading further.
At this point, they didn’t have enough information about where the outbreak started and how it spread, so she and Holly wanted to do their due diligence to keep their health in check. She felt like because of everyone’s experiences through the pandemic, they treated this outbreak in the same way, making sure to do what they could to stay safe after realizing they’d been physically close to tons of other students for the day.
As kindly as she and Holly could, they mentioned that the room smelled, and they thought that if all of them took showers, it could help eliminate the smell and make things better for them. They tried to be careful not to single Chloe out and spoke about the room, in general, smelling bad and stated that all of them should shower, not just Chloe.
Also, they framed this all as a means of preventing them from getting sick because of the meningitis outbreak.
After their conversation, Holly took a shower, and then she did. However, Chloe walked out of the room to hang out with some of her friends, which left them extremely confused.
She and Holly still didn’t know about Chloe’s sensory issues.
“The next day, we asked less nicely. It was RIPE. She walks out of the room and returns five minutes later with one of our university lecturers. She had spoken to the university lecturer and accused us of bullying her. She has also made an anonymous submission to our university’s drama Facebook page,” she shared.
In Chloe’s Facebook post, she advised anyone considering going on this trip for the Marine Biology class not to go.
She then claimed that she was bullied so horribly that she sobbed each night of the trip while the professors and other advisors didn’t take any action to resolve the issue.
Chloe wrote that she knew she and Holly would eventually see this post, and she wrote a message directed to them.
She told them that she and her family are upset, adding that she and her family are planning to file a police report against them for bullying her, as well as file a report against the university for “non-academic misconduct.”
From there, Chloe ended her post by saying that she thought college students would have learned by now to behave like adults, but she said that it’s clear this isn’t the case. She added that bullying should be taken seriously.
She and Holly were stunned by this post because, throughout the trip, they didn’t see or hear Chloe sobbing at night. In her opinion, she doesn’t know what they said that would have made Chloe cry in the first place.
They later discussed the situation with some of their friends, and the only thing they could all think of that Chloe was upset about was that she and Holly mentioned the bad smell in the room and asked her to take a shower.
Now, she and Holly are sad that the situation negatively affected Chloe so deeply, but from their perspective, she should have given them a heads up that for the entire week, she wasn’t going to be bathing.
She mentioned that cleaning up with baby wipes could have worked as well, which Chloe indicated that she would have been comfortable doing.
Looking back, if she and Holly had known ahead of time that Chloe wasn’t hygienic and wouldn’t take showers, they wouldn’t have roomed with her on the trip at all.
During the trip, they didn’t exclude Chloe. They invited her to go to a pub with them, and they all sat at the same table, and they invited her to other things they did throughout the trip.
She clarified that they never made gagging noises or gestures in response to Chloe smelling bad. Other students, none of whom the three of them were friends with, were the ones who did this as they walked by.
The entire time, they did their best to include Holly because they wanted to stay friends with her.
Besides carefully addressing the smell of the room and discussing how all three of them should shower, she and Holly had no clue how to resolve the situation.
Finally, the trip ended, and she and Holly returned to their nice-smelling rooms. She added that they both showered immediately after returning from their trip.
Later, Holly chimed in with her view on the ordeal, expressing that while she knows that sensory issues are valid and a struggle to cope with, Chloe still should have been taking showers since she was sharing a room with two other people for a week.
Holly wished that Chloe had informed the two of them in advance because she thought they deserved to know prior to agreeing to room with her.
Eventually, Chloe learned that she had been sharing the story with others, and Chloe messaged her to say that she was lying about the way everything happened.
Chloe added that now there would be more consequences for her and Holly because she doesn’t believe that the situation is being portrayed honestly.
In response, she asked Chloe to point out what she lied about so that she could go forward accordingly with the most honest framing, but Chloe never wrote back to her.
She saw that Chloe had read her message, and eventually, Chloe blocked her. After these developments, she and Holly are concerned for their academic futures if Chloe does follow through with taking action against them and the university, and she believes this is unjust.
For several years, she was bullied and dealt with the horrible experience of her peers thinking that she was strange.
“Chloe owns and brings in reborn dolls to our university, and for the first year, Holly and I were the only two people to defend her. Everyone else looked at the girl like she was crazy,” she continued.
Because of the fact that she and Holly witnessed Chloe being judged and bullied early on in their college years, they decided to room with her and were hoping that it could create a stronger bond among the three of them.
Clearly, this sadly didn’t happen. Upon reflection, she wonders if she is “too nice,” and she acknowledged that others have told her that she doesn’t stand up for herself enough.
Finally, she and Holly had a meeting with the lecturer who put the trip together.
Their lecturer told them that she hadn’t heard any updates from Chloe, and she agreed with them that Chloe had taken the situation way too far, adding that Chloe didn’t have a sound legal argument for the police reports she’d threatened to file.
During this meeting, they all came to the conclusion that Chloe had been making “empty threats.” The lecturer informed her and Holly that before they agreed to room with Chloe on the trip, Chloe had the opportunity to have a room to herself, but she rejected the idea.
She told the lecturer that she had been sharing her side of the situation and let her know about Chloe’s public post on Facebook.
Going forward, the lecturer who’d been in charge during their trip will be having a discussion with a lecturer who apparently told Chloe she had to take a shower.
What would you have done if you had been in her shoes?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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