AITAH for thinking someone was wrong for asking me to donate money to their dead dad
Okay so I’m a directing student at University and we recently started a politics module. The first task of this module was for everyone to bring in £10 and you had to pay in to decide what happened with the money (going off the idea of if you don’t vote, you don’t get a say). Obviously as more people begin to participate, the stakes are raised and you can do more with the money. However, everyone who has paid in MUST agree completely with what happens to the money at the end of the hour otherwise you all just take the £10 back and nothing happens with it.
So we started to do this and things were fine at first, starting out with £30 in and going upwards. That was until about 10 minutes until the end of the exercise when a girl (we’ll call her Becca) stood up and placed her. money into the centre. She then said something along the lines of “as you all know, my dad died in November and I think we should put the money towards the British heart foundation as heart disease is what killed him.” She then went on to say that she and most of her family will probably die of heart disease and got into a very personal conversation about her late father. Immediately you could feel the whole vibe of the room shift and become very uncomfortable.
Now my issue isn’t with what she wanted us to donate the money too, I believe it to be a very good cause in fact, however my issues are with how she went around it especially since just a week after her father had passed, I also had a family member pass due to dementia. I have not been extremely vocal about this unlike she has as I know myself and I don’t like the idea of parading my grief in front of people when it isn’t any of their business. But I immediately started to tear up, obviously missing my family member and also shocked about how suddenly the exercise turned. Whilst everyone else in the room was listening to her talk about why she thought she should get the money, I was trying to stop myself from having a panic attack but eventually I had to remove myself from the room and the moment I did, I could barely breathe and was sobbing so loudly hat people down the other end of the corridor could hear me and came to check on me.
After about 5 minutes of me being outside of the class, one of my friends came out to check on me and said that my lecturer wanted me to come back in as we needed to make the decision. I told my friend why I had left and she opened up to me too about how she had been through my exact situation the year prior and agreed with me when I said that the way Becca had gone about asking us for this money had been unfair on us all, but I felt like I couldn’t say no because then I would be the bad person who denied a grieving girl money. I also said that I could have easily countered her in there and asked them to actually donate to the Alzheimer’s Society as my family member had died from that and my dad is currently showing signs of early on-set too which means that I also most likely will have the disease. But again, this would not have been fair of me to do and also would then place us both in a situation that would feel very like we had to compete to see whose grief was worse which I was not going to do out of pure respect for both Becca and also others in the class.
Eventually my friend and I went back in and sat down in the circle again to make the decision. This is where I found out that the group had no decided they were going to not only donate the money (about £160) but also take a trip to Becca’s dad’s old work place and meet his coworkers and also her family. This was something I found strange because the coworkers and her family are people we have never met, and will never meet again, and the whole thing felt very performative in the end. So when it came to making the decision, my friend said no and we ended up just all taking our money back. As this happened Becca, who was sat next to me, scoffed loudly and I saw her roll her eyes.
I ended up fully removing myself from the lesson as our lecturer wanted us to then discuss the exercise and I knew myself well enough to know that had I stayed, I would have said stuff that I never would have been able to take back. I later messaged my friend and thanked her for doing the thing that I wasn’t able to do and she said ‘I know what you’re like and knew you didn’t feel comfortable and would say yes anyway so I did it for you’.
The next day I went in and started to talk to my other friend about the situation and I found out that when they had been sent of a break, Becca had pulled out her phone and started calling her nan and telling her that the exercise didn’t work out and people said no to them getting the money. This changed everything because it shows to me that the whole thing had been planned and that she knew that by bringing her dead dad up in the situation would make us all feel like we couldn’t say no. Also, I then spoke to one of Becca’s friends and just asked if she was okay after the lesson to which they said ‘no, she’s pissed that she didn’t get the money’.
However, when I bring this up to other people I feel like I’m genuinely going crazy and that I’m one of the only people in the class who thinks that the way Becca went around it was not an okay thing to do and that her actions following made it feel incredibly calculated rather than a grieving daughter who was asking us out of genuine respect and the more I’ve thought about this, the more I’ve started to realise that she isn’t a very good person overall.
Obviously I know that everyone grieves differently and like I said, I supported the cause and what she wanted us to donate to but I just think that the way she went about it feels wrong and calculated, especially with her actions following it.
So AITAH because I’m genuinely starting to think that I am and it’s making me think I’m just crazy
