Dear Prudence,
I am a first-year college student who lives in a dorm. I’ve mostly been enjoying my time in the dorm; I’ve met a few new people in my hall who I consider friends. However, I’ve also been having issues with neighbors; specifically the boys, “Eric” and “Sean” who live in the room below me. Eric and Sean love video games. They seem to play them literally 24/7. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but they also make very loud noises while playing. They scream and make cackle-like laughs and often bring friends over to have full-scale gaming parties. I happen to be very sensitive to sound, but I know I live in a dorm and that dorms are loud, so while it’s annoying, I usually just let them be.
However, last night I heard something that made me wonder if it might be time to stop letting them be. Eric and Sean were engaging in their usual loud gaming ways when I heard one of them (I’m not sure who) say what sounded quite a lot like the n-word. Both Eric and Sean are white. I’m sure they used it to get a rise out of others, as I unfortunately grew up with a lot of non-Black kids who used the n-word for this reason. That, of course, doesn’t mean that it’s right. Sean and Eric shouldn’t be using that word, and it made me very uncomfortable to hear them use it (I am also white).
My questions concern how I should proceed (this was also why I didn’t report it when it happened—I wasn’t quite sure what I should do). I am hesitant to speak to my RA about it, as she is Black, and I worry that my expressing these concerns might harm her mental well-being more than anything. She also has no jurisdiction over the floor below ours, so I’m not sure she would even be able to really address the issue. I don’t know who the RA for the floor below me is, so that is probably out of the question. That leaves our dorm’s community director, who probably would be able to take action against these boys for their atrocious behavior. However, I also wonder if I should just leave it alone. I’m not 100 percent sure that they did use the n-word, as it sounded a lot like it, but also felt like the pronunciation was “off” somehow, to the point where it’s possible that it may have instead been a word or combination of words in another language. Additionally, it was a private conversation that I overheard, so that may also be inappropriate to report based on the fact that I technically shouldn’t have heard them (even though the walls are pretty thin in this dorm).
To me, none of that should matter—using a racial slur is wrong no matter where you use it, and any time you hear it, it should be reported. I also figure that it’s better to accidentally report something that one thinks is offensive but isn’t than give a racist the benefit of the doubt. But I have no evidence (recording someone without their consent is illegal where I go to school, and I’d rather not go to an authority figure with illegally-collected evidence). That being said, do you think I should go to my RA, or would it be best to go to the community director? Do you think I should report Eric and Sean even without evidence?
— Eavesdropper with Ethics