'AITA for 'stalking' a classmate when I thought we were just friends?'
"AITA for 'stalking' a classmate when I thought we were just friends?"
I (27F) am a PhD student, and I’m honestly still trying to wrap my head around this situation. I have a friend in my program (38M). Over the spring semester and summer, we were very friendly, exchanging TikToks, dumb memes, and chatting regularly.
We would occasionally grab lunch together in the nearby dining hall. At one point, we even talked about hanging out outside of school once his friend (who was temporarily living with him) moved out.
I ended up taking a class with him this past fall. About halfway through the semester, he suddenly started ignoring me completely. He began sitting far away from me in class with zero explanation.
I was confused and hurt, so I tried a few times to catch him after class or during breaks just to say hi or check in to see if everything was ok, but my professor would intervene and shut it down each time.
Then, in the second-to-last class of the semester, she assigned our whole class seats and put me at the very front with him in the very back, which made me feel like something weird was happening behind the scenes.
Fast forward to this week: I received a Title IX notification saying he had placed a no-contact order against me and that I was being investigated for “stalking” him. I met with the investigator, who showed me the report my professor submitted. It was completely unhinged and extremely inflammatory toward me.
She described the above behavior and also claimed I was “always staring at him” during class (our desks were arranged in a U-shape, so we were all facing each other). She also accused me of following him at a departmental luncheon that was open to everyone in the building.
At that lunch, I got food, talked to other friends, said hi to the professor herself, and left. I never interacted with him at all. In the report, she wrote that my actions made \*her\* uncomfortable, that my showing up to the lunch was “untenable and unacceptable,” and that he had to move seats simply because he saw me there.
Title IX offered me a “restorative resolution” instead of a formal investigation, basically taking some responsibility, apologizing, and doing a training, with no touching of my record, which I agreed to because I’m terrified of the consequences.
She also told me the department chair was notified, and km worried she had been slandering me to the other faculty over this. I’m a graduate TA and I’m also afraid I could lose my funding or positive reputation over this.
From my perspective, I thought I was interacting with a friend and then trying (maybe awkwardly) to understand why I was suddenly being iced out. I never followed him, contacted him excessively, or tried to interact after I realized he wanted distance. I simply took the hint and left him alone. AITA for my actions here, or am I being unfairly labeled as a stalker?
Here’s what people had to say to OP:
I am a little confused by the situation because your professor seems extremely motivated and this means either you underplayed your behaviours in this story or she is a bad faith actor.
In the case of the second, you were coerced by your superior, and these accusations are never truly scrubbed your from record. You have no idea how it will influence your grade in this course, recommendations, or how your departmental head will perceive you.
Speak to legal council and your graduate union before you sign any documentation where you admit to stalking. If it’s the first case and you were too aggressive then still need to speak to council, and regardless you should save all correspondence between yourself, the other student and your professor to substantiate your claim.
The third scenario is he is married or entangled and he got caught trying to be fresh with his younger colleague, then made up an excuse to have an out.
Unless OP is straight not including something, there is no excuse for acting like he's harassing the friend when they weren't communicated with. I think the professor was lied to about the friend going no contact and that OP was trying to be pushy and disrespectful. I'm not sure why no one else seems to be considering this, all the friend had to do to get the professor to act like that is lie.
Really hard to say here, there are two sides to every story and it sounds like he has a very different idea of how things played out...
Three sides here because it has been filtered through the professor’s interpretation as well. On the one hand, I can see how one person’s wanting to communicate to resolve an issue could be another’s not respecting no contact and there might be a misunderstanding but on the other hand it does sound like the professor missed an opportunity to be a neutral third party and boundaries weren’t necessarily communicated clearly.
Like if the luncheon was open to everyone and OP wasn’t told not to attend, then the professor’s reaction to her doing so seems excessive. Of course, we don’t know what the professor has heard from OP‘s former friend, but she doesn’t seem able to be impartial and that could be exacerbating the situation.
ESH. One of the best pieces of advice I received as a PhD student is, "Remember, everyone in academia has a personality disorder." Maybe you're bad at reading signals, maybe he is, maybe the prof is crazy. But it sucks that nobody managed to just talk about the situation without escalating.
Is the "friend" that's temporarily living with him actually his wife or something? Maybe she found out about your friendship so he pretended he was being stalked. The professor could be this guy's/couple's friend also. In any case, this isn't your environment and you need to move on and be around people who support you.