What a piece of nastiness!
IMAGINE, YOU send your good good girl pickney to university, and her roommate tries to slow poison her for weeks and secretly rubs her spit and menses all over your daughter’s things. Sounds like the plot of the world’s nastiest horror story? Well, it isn’t. It happened just like that, in real life, at University of Hartford.
Second-generation Jamaican Chenelle ‘Jazzy’ Rowe is a freshman at Hartford University. Her 18-yearold roommate, Brianna Brochu, did the lowest, nastiest things behind her back, and then bragged about them on the Internet.
The truncated version of the story: Jazzy was feeling progressively ill and had no idea why. She had a debilitating throat pain. And after several visits to several health facilities, countless sick days, a battery of tests, and a course of antibiotics, the best the doctors could come up with was that she had a mysterious bacteria in her.
INSTAGRAM CONFESSION
The mystery got solved with an Instagram post from Jazzy’s roommate. It read:
“Finally did it. Yo girl got rid of her roommate!! After 1 1/2 month of spitting in her coconut oil, putting moldy clam dip in her lotions, rubbing used tampons on her backpack, putting her toothbrush places where the sun doesn’t shine, and so much more I can finally say goodbye Jamaican Barbie.”
That post landed Brianna’s nasty behind in jail. She later admitted to a judge that she had also licked all of Jazzy’s utensils.
Who thinks up, let alone does that nastiness?
She better be thankful not every Jamaican has a visa, ’cause she woulda know which God she serve. The Internet is dealing with her case good and proper in our stead. #JusticeForJazzy has been trending, and even celebrities like Shonda Rhimes have come to Jazzy’s defence on Twitter.
Brianna, in her declaration in court, pretty much said she did it because Jazzy made fun of the way she snored. I kid you not. How does first-year teasing turn into ‘taste my period blood and die’? Just nastiness!
I shudder at the realisation that the only reason we know about this is because Brianna felt invincible enough to brag about the nastiness she had done online. Had she not possessed the trinity of nasty, brazen and dumb, we would never have known. Jazzy would never have confirmation of the lows that her roommate would stoop to as payback for her bruised ego.
Don’t think Brianna is singular in her nastiness. There are others like her who have carried out similar acts who just haven’t been caught – chuckling in silence because only they, and perhaps their equally nasty friends, know what they have done. And there are very many others who have fantasised about doing things equally as deplorable. The vile, disgusting things people can think up, prompted by just about nothing, are frightening.
RACIST BULLY
Not only is Little Miss Nasty a bully, she’s a racist bully. And that’s the worst kind. It’s an ever-present reality that the world is grappling with. It’s a hatred I will never understand. Her “Jamaica Barbie” comment is laced with the weight of insecurity and prejudice.
Some voices were loud in protest against Brianna’s bullying, but there were others that were eerily quiet. Others who had stood high on soapboxes all across America and rebuked bullying only months prior. Where are they now? I guess things get complicated when the bully is a white girl and the person being bullied has presumably immigrant parents.
It just isn’t right. Me and my utopia. I wish for a world where civility and plain common decency reign. Where people are tolerant and perhaps even appreciative of each others’ differences. Where people stick up for others when they see injustice. Where skin colour and place of birth matter less than intellect and character, and where we all just give a damn. One day, one day.