Rutgers University Student Commits Suicide after Roommate Allegedly Webcasts Him Having Sex

Here's the NYT Article:

Private Moment Made Public, Then a Fatal Jump

First, I'm absolutely appalled by this, especially this being my alma mater. Just feel so terrible that a college freshman was so taken advantage of, especially in such a vulnerable time.

Second, does anyone see this as being a potentially big case in the world of cyber-bullying?

oh god this story is so fucking awful

college freshmen are so vulnerable, they're right at the hinge of their old highschool self-censorship and trying new stuff out, and to have that exposed in this way is excruciating. you just wish the right friend had been there to stop his roommates, and to stop him. It's a sickening story.

jesus. awful.

The bullying continues even after his death, as one of Tucker Carlon's Special Education and Discount Conservatorium crew at "The Daily Caller" shits out an op-ed.

I won't even both to link to the execrable v0x d4y, but as Roy Edroso says about him, "Is someone holding a World's Biggest Asshole contest with a huge cash prize?"

omg. any chance we can fling alex knepper in jail too? that is vile.

wow really glad someone posted alex knepper's reaction to this event itt

really worthwhile opinion that we needed to be alerted to

can anyone point me towards some sweet anonymous comments on the websites of local newspapers?

j0rdan otm

Yeah, really vile.

What kills me about this whole thing, and Knepper hits on it a couple of times, is that in situations like these, its all "Hey! Gays shouldn't expect to be treated any differently than anyone else!" So, its "people have sex tapes distributed all the damn time about them. Man up! Its no big deal!"

But when it comes time for marriage, etc., "Oh NO! GAYS AREN'T LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!!!!"

Its a particularly vulnerable time when ANYONE begins to explore their own sexuality away from home, and particularly so when that sexuality is still regarded as abnormal or aberrant by a majority of people. So, yeah - the fact that he was gay or at least trying out a gay sex life at such a young age, made it that much more fraught with emotions.

I have been talking (re: ranting and ranting) to max about this and how many things about it are so deeply upsetting to me as a gay man

hope these fuckers go to jail

hopefully where someone can upload webcam footage of their anal rape

tbh, even with a corrupt/fallible court system, I don't see how they can possibly avoid going to jail

jesus shakey

xp: uh thanks for that, Shakey; if there's one thing this situation needs it's more brutalization and degradation

eh I'm in a bad mood today

I understand, bad moods make me wish anal rape on everyone around me

wait, no they don't

I'd really like to be as optimistic about their chances of doing time, but I don't know.

xps eh in that case no prob dude!

But sheesh, this kids twitter feed where he's all OMG MY ROOMMATES MAKIN OUT WITH A DUDE, like the fact that people still feel this sick repulsion to something that is, to me, so commonplace and not-exceptional and just not even notable. SO WHAT? And then let's exploit this situation and show everyone else and laugh about it

I understand, bad moods make me wish anal rape on everyone around me

afaik everyone around me is not videotaping other people's sex acts in an attempt to humiliate them but thx for strawmanning

Like, Rutgers has SO MUCH pro-queer positivity that it crushes me to see that this happened before he was able to find some support

Unless the kid's family pleads for leniency, they pretty much unambiguously committed a crime with a minimum 5-year jail term, regardless of whether you consider it a hate crime or not. I don't see any justification (outside of plea-bargaining, which would suck, but then again what exactly would be their leverage for bargaining? "We promise not to broadcast any more video of people unknowingly having sex on camera to our friends, plus we'll do PSAs to troubled teens who might do this"?) for them not doing some amount of jail time.

xp: are you sure "strawman" is the accurate term there? last time I checked, intentional hyperbole wasn't the same thing as strawmanning someone

Like, Rutgers has SO MUCH pro-queer positivity that it crushes me to see that this happened before he was able to find some support

Dude, I know. It was that way when I was there 15 years ago, and I can only imagine its gotten stronger and better established since then.

So fucking pissed about this. Kid never got a chance to be a person on his own terms before his douche roommate ridiculed him and made him feel even more awkward than an 18 year old trying things out for the first time does.

They'll have to register as sex offenders probably.

xp: are you sure "strawman" is the accurate term there? last time I checked, intentional hyperbole wasn't the same thing as strawmanning someone

here at the EC Comics School of Ironic Punishment we have no time for semantics

bad moods
read that as "bad mods"

anyone read max's tumblr post on this? he might be tired of discussing it, idk, but I thought it was interesting

Can you post it here?

it's really kind of incidental to the actual event

What makes me the most upset is the attitudes with which these actions were committed. It wasn't even malice, it was this stupid novel amusement! I want to scream at these kids SO FUCKING MUCH that you haven't the slightest clue what it's like to be a gay teen, to be called a fucking faggot, to be the school weirdo, to have your parents not accept it, etc etc. Being a gay teen is an entirely different animal, and you are stupid and naive, and you destroyed a life. It's too late. The end.

X-post - its impossible for a person whose being fits within the norm to understand what its like to be outside the norm. A joke to some - and yeah, sexuality can and probably should be joked about in a healthy way - is not one to others, especially when you're coming from such a different experience.

It's like kissing a dude gets thrown down to the level of picking your nose or something, like it's this huge lolworthy faux pas

this is horrifying. tbh the biggest thing im feeling about it (other than great sympathy for the victim) is the depressing reminder that people are tremendously callous and ignorant about how they affect others. i am not howling for the blood of the perpetrators, but mostly because they are symbolic terrifying examples of how detatched and unfeeling we can be as a species.

DAMNIT I AM SO FUCKING ANGRY RIGHT NOW, FUCK

The thing that pisses me off is that both of the perpetrators are minorities; they should know how shit like this can hurt someone.

A lot of us are. There's been a lot of alumni traffic this morning. Rutgers Pres. McCormick needs to do something more than issue a bs politically correct letter. Step the fuck up. Some messed up shit went down on YOUR watch, dude. DO SOMETHING. ANYTHING. Just SOMETHING.

The thing that pisses me off is that both of the perpetrators are minorities; they should know how shit like this can hurt someone.

Well, there's no predicting who poorly people can behave when given an easy target.

HOW poorly

god help us if we really need a rolling gay teen violence thread...

http://feministing.com/2010/09/30/youth-suicides-andrew-shirvell-and-americas-tolerance-of-anti-lgbt-hate/

but this is not the only one of these incidents within the past couple weeks (alfred brought this up yesterday)

I cannot believe that Shirvell fuck still has a job after that story broke. Thirteen year olds. jesus christ.

that alex knepper article is shameful. there may be an argument about whether bullying of this sort constitutes a hate-crime, but knepper's article doesn't make that argument -- or at least doesn't make it well.

i've been thinking about what this young man's parents are going through now.

every parent involved here is in hell right now

one set lost their child, the other two sets have just discovered they raised amoral monsters

there's a huge problem of authority figures at school not wanting to deal with gay bullying, and i think most of them find it easy to pretend that shit like this doesn't happen because it's easy to ignore things that happen in hallways in between classes and at the bust stops & shit -- and of course a principal or assistant principal is gonna sit there and go "well, i have bigger things to deal with than bullying. bullying happens in schools." but i'm not sure how many instances of gay teens -- or teens that are mocked for being "gay" even if they aren't -- killing themselves it's gonna take for this to be a crisis that is systematically addressed

there may be an argument about whether bullying of this sort constitutes a hate-crime, but knepper's article doesn't make that argument -- or at least doesn't make it well.

i mean its more disgusting that something like this happens and someone's first thought is "how DARE they call this a hate crime! what an injustice! i must write about this"

exactly

& i think something as simple as schools being really diligent about eradicating gay slurs ("fag" being the predominant one of course) and punishing kids that don't follow those rules would be a big first step towards getting this fixed

i find it really hard to blame 13 or 14 year olds -- it's so easy to fall into the mob mentality at that age -- i never would've bullied a gay kid (thankfully our community was liberal enough where this didn't happen) but i used "fag" often as a casual insult & i'm not sure i would've been the one to stand up and stop a bullying if it did happen

xp
i work for a book publisher that publishes a fairly well-known anti-gun control book. every time there's a media-reported shooting, at a school or college especially, sales tick up dramatically.

one set lost their child, the other two sets have just discovered they raised amoral monsters

I dunno, obviously this is horrific and the people involved in this are arseholes of the highest order but the assumption that they aren't tearing themselves up with guilt about this is a bit weird. It doesn't really seem to take into account the psychologies of bullying - "it was a joke, I didn't realise he'd take it like THAT". Bullies playing to a crowd often only think about the crowd reaction.

yeah, the victim is just the means to an end for someone in that situation. but what a fucked up thing to think was amusing, i wasn't an angel at school to a lot of others, but how does something lke that cross your mind as an amusement?

being IN COLLEGE and thinking that this is in anyway acceptable is unfathomable

My response to this story has inspired a lot of deliberation (crosspost to the gay thread).

this has to be doubly bad for the parents whose kids hadn't come out to them yet

i haven't seen anything about whether clementi was out or not tho

what puppy isnt

All I know about Clementi's state of mind was from that New Yorker piece, which did not depict him as depressed, or closeted, or, for that matter, particularly upset about what Ravi did. Though he did make a note of the irony of an Indian guy getting accused of a hate crime against a white kid, iirc. Point being, I have no idea what Clementi reveals or does not reveal in his three suicide notes. Maybe they mention Ravi. Maybe they don't mention Ravi. Maybe they say specifically why he killed himself. Maybe they exculpate Ravi. I have no idea. I was just wondering why something that seems so major got left off the table/out of the story, especially given how personal every other aspect of the case was. I don't know.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_JRkgseRT7NY/S9xuYgVUThI/AAAAAAAABwY/tFXGQ7MedbU/s400/gay+puppy+mike+huckabee+adopt+puppies+pink+doggy+bunny+slippers+gay+civil+rights+discrimination+do+gay+dogs+go+to+heaven.jpg

All I know about Clementi's state of mind was from that New Yorker piece, which did not depict him as depressed, or closeted, or, for that matter, particularly upset about what Ravi did.

This is what has made Derb white-hot with rage. He accuses The Media of turning him into a victim.

All I know about Clementi's state of mind was from that New Yorker piece, which did not depict him as depressed, or closeted, or, for that matter, particularly upset about what Ravi did. Though he did make a note of the irony of an Indian guy getting accused of a hate crime against a white kid, iirc. Point being, I have no idea what Clementi reveals or does not reveal in his three suicide notes. Maybe they mention Ravi. Maybe they don't mention Ravi. Maybe they say specifically why he killed himself. Maybe they exculpate Ravi. I have no idea. I was just wondering why something that seems so major got left off the table/out of the story, especially given how personal every other aspect of the case was. I don't know.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, March 16, 2012 5:13 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But none of this matters to whether Ravi did or did not invade Clementi's privacy by filming him having sex and/or whether there was bias intimidation in that act.

I mean unless they say "my plan with Ravi to get that 32-year-old guy on film having sex worked perfectly, now I'm going to go kill myself"

But you have to remember, it's not like those notes never saw the light of day, they were just not admissible at trial. That means, presumably, that a judge looked at them and made a decision.

gay+puppy+mike+huckabee+adopt+puppies+pink+doggy+bunny+slippers+gay+civil+rights+discrimination+do+gay+dogs+go+to+heaven.jpg

man see u

which did not depict him as depressed, or closeted, or, for that matter, particularly upset about what Ravi did.

I got the impression that Tyler was pretending he was more OK with it than he actually was.

idk about US law but is there a "reasonable person" element à la UK law? ie it's not about whether TC was "ok with it", but whether a reasonable person would be ok with it?

the persnickety, pedantic way in which human emotions are made to fit the loopholes of the legal system is so weird. i'm torn b/w thinking ravi is losing a lot more than he deserves to lose, and thinking fuck him, if he didn't want to bring prison and deportation on himself maybe he shouldn;t have been an insensitive prick

i'm kinda fine that "merely" being an insensitive prick reaps these consequences though. don't be an insensitive prick! it's not hard, thousands of people manage it every day

Is it wrong to ascribe this across the board mess partly to the impetuousness, impulsiveness of social media: twitter, IM, webcams, etc? It's so easy to fuck up, to make the wrong decision, while simultaneously preserving a record of one's mistakes. No one is injured; everyone gets hurt. Personally, I don't think being an insensitive prick justifies prison. I've got several years of ILX that would put away most of you (and me) on that count, several times over.

Also, going back to the threat of deportation, which seems the primary impetus for Ravi going to trial, I keep seeing it reported - misreported - that he was given assurances he would not be deported. But this is not right, is it? I was under the impression he was told they'd (they?) help out the best they could to help him fight deportation, should it come to that. Not sure how much I'd take the word of prosecutors trying to get a guilty plea out of you that they'd help you bear the brunt of the judgement they've pressured you to accept. Like I said, one way or the other, Ravi was fucked.

Is it wrong to ascribe this across the board mess partly to the impetuousness, impulsiveness of social media: twitter, IM, webcams, etc?

While I like to think that douchebaggery is universal and that you know what's right from wrong in any age, at the same time we're enduring this convulsive shift in what constitutes acceptable behavior vis a vis social media.

The jurors speak.

What really cooked his goose wasn't the first incident, Ravi and the girl peeking, supposedly getting scared, logging off--but telling everybody, then setting up a second session, posting an announcement, and daring whomever not to watch--then deleting that, tampering with evidence, trying to get the girl to say--something--that would help...Not just the equivalent of an impulsive post, or an afternoon' burst of same, but a whole series of events, with some evidence of malicious intent as well as whatever degree of confusion, basic insensitivity (if Tyler had been with a girl, same would have been true), even aside from homophobic element. But Clementi's parents have prev indicated they are or were hoping more for conviction than severe sentencing.

The compassion of John Derbyshire: being nice to the pets

"homosexulaity"

pretty funny typo if you think about it

I should know better than to read any of these links

I hope he dies horribly

in fact, someone send him to Florida

do you hate me too

no I but I really really hate most of your Corner links (which is why I shouldn't read them but the hilarious ones are REALLY hilarious)

Being born in the world’s richest big country? With free schooling, free health care, and, if the family is poor, free food?

hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

*cries*

Derbyshire expresses some extremely unChristian sentiments, to put it mildly

No one has pointed to Derb that a few minutes before a Corner-ite gleefully posted the video of Romney making fun of the girl who demanded "free" birth control.

he's not Christian! He's a proud atheist.

didn't know those were allowed in the GOP

sounds like some kind of "special pet group" tbh

christianity has a few things to say in favor of charity and universal compassion, so, on the trash heap it goes

Derbs belongs to the Iingsley Amis wing of Grouchy Libertarians.

Because of past “oppression” and “discrimination,”

I don't feel this way about many people, but given the opportunity, I might very likely beat Derbyshire to death with my bare hands.

Anybody read this?

With Mr. Ravi scheduled to be sentenced on Monday, many of them have argued against the prison term prosecutors have recommended. They say that Mr. Ravi is being punished for the suicide of his roommate, Tyler Clementi, although he was not charged in it, and that pinning blame on him ignores the complicated social pressures that drive gay teenagers to kill themselves.

As repugnant as his behavior was, they say, it was not the blatantly bigoted or threatening actions that typically define hate crimes. Some fear that a sentence that overreaches might provide tinder to antigay sentiment — a New Jersey talk-radio host complained soon after the verdict of the “gay lobby” railroading Mr. Ravi.

While Mr. Clementi’s suicide in September 2010 galvanized public attention on the struggles of gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers, the question of how to punish Mr. Ravi has revealed the deep discomfort that many gay people feel about using the case as a crucible. “You’re making an example of Ravi in order to send a message to other people who might be bullying, to schools and parents and to prosecutors who have not considered this a crime before,” said Marc Poirier, a law professor at Seton Hall University who is gay and has written about hate-crimes legislation. “That’s a function of criminal law, to condemn as general deterrence. But I think this is a fairly shaky set of facts on which to do it.”

In an op-ed article in The Star-Ledger of Newark this month, Jim McGreevey, who resigned as New Jersey’s governor after declaring himself “a gay American,” argued that Mr. Ravi’s conviction “showed how far we have traveled from the hateful, homophobic past.”

“The criminal justice system worked, this time for a gay victim,” Mr. McGreevey wrote. “But there was something disquieting about the prospect of retributive punishment being meted out on behalf of a gay young man.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/nyregion/Some-Gay-Rights-Advocates-Question-Rutgers-Sentencing.html?hp

i agree with this.

I think I do too

The prison term of what?

from the article alfred linked, i gather that the prosecutor is asking for 5-10 years

Actually, looks like things turned out better than expected on that front:

30-day jail term, probation ordered in Rutgers webcam spy case

plus a $11k fine and 300h comm service and also probation. But yeah, I'm not quite sure how I feel about this.

For the reasons outlined in the above link and elsewhere, it actually seems to, however imperfectly, thread a needle as opposed to being either an exoneration or a crushing sentence. Also, isn't this not too far off from the sentence he might have received anyway if he'd just settled at the start?

will he still be deported?

nope

I kind of wish they'd given him that sentence and the deported him

I kind of wish they could give society in general that sentence and deport it

there was no good to come of this in any case; glad the kid didn't get pilloried.

i guess this is fine

a pity that the reactions on both sides seem to have tipped into hysteria

I feel pretty good about the outcome

yeah. Clementi's parents had pleaded for leniency too

I'm super, duper happy. Most of the reactions I've read elsewhere have omitted the $11k fine and community service.

this seems pretty ok

yeah

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/nyregion/after-tyler-clementis-suicide-his-parents-make-painful-changes-in-the-search-for-why.html