https://repository.upenn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/6907f0b8-fd01-4525-9bbe-20f6cfc7cd7f/content
Andrea, 25, was harassed by another female student since her freshmen year in college because of her relationship with a male classmate. By Andrea’s junior year she had endured multiple episodes of relational aggression and two verbal altercations with the female student.
While the situation was the typical girlfriend/boyfriend drama, Andrea did not want to fight the female student but got tired of the harassment and decided to fight as she felt she had no other choice. Because the incident was premeditated, the consequence Andrea received was expulsion from the university. Here is a segment of the events that led to the altercation:
…So this was September of my junior year, it was around my birthday weekend, it was my birthday weekend. I had friends come up from Delaware, around this time at the school, it wasn’t a pep rally we had some type of function. I can’t remember exactly what it was but a lot of people were there so you could have your off campus people come in or whatever the case may be.
As I’m walking, after the party is over, as I’m walking back to one of my friends’ dorm rooms, she’s walking behind me like, swinging behind my head as if she’s going to hit me. What she didn’t know was I had two of my friends behind her, and they didn’t say anything because they wanted to see what exactly it was she was going to do.
So that was my breaking point at that time because now, I don’t know what you’re thinking and in my mind I’m thinking eventually you’re going to get me, so before you get me, now I’m saying to myself I have to get you first. So we actually were on our way to get something to eat and one of her friends said oh is the party going to be in room 207, so I said okay great, I think that’s where she lives at.
Mind you by this point in time, I’m not living on campus I’m commuting back and forth between Lincoln University and Delaware. So I said when we come back, I got something for her. We came back from getting something to eat, changed my clothes and everything and this was where I got myself in trouble because by this time everything that I’m doing is premeditated, changed my clothes and everything.
I say I’m going to go to room 207 and I’m going to see if she’s there, knock on the door, she opened it, my friend hit her first, and we just started fighting and that’s how the fight happened…With that I ended up getting assault charges, battery charges, so I ended up with one count of misdemeanor for assault, they tried to add on some robbing, some robbing, I had to ask my friends, did y’all steal something?
Because I didn’t understand you see, that’s the thing, not being knowledgeable I didn’t know that it was going to be to that magnitude of us getting in trouble, but because we entered into their room they automatically put that down…
…I actually did talk to one of the administrative officers, somebody that my mom knew and he told me Andrea, he was like, I wish you would have come to me at the beginning when this first was an issue so then that way we could have been able to resolve [this]. Because now you are telling me all these things she’s done to you from your freshmen year until now, it’s not going to matter because you look like the bad guy because you approached her.
You went to her dorm room…and it didn’t help that all my friends were there, not to jump her, they were there to celebrate my birthday but because they were there, it looked like I called them up to say hey listen, we need to go jump this girl and it wasn’t worth it, I ended up getting kicked out of school…
