Rutgers Freshman Commits Suicide After Classmates Webcast His Sexual Activities

RU might want to expel them before they go to jail.

My heart goes out to Mr. Clementi’s family. My deepest sympathy to them.

Folks: as a father of two boys (one of whom was a Rutgers College student), I am deeply saddened and angered by these tragic events. Roomates can be so cruel sometimes, but we should remember that the culprits are children too, and children are sometimes thoughtless. No doubt they thought it a prank, and are now appalled and shocked that their prank caused such irreparable harm. If they have any conscience, and I am sure they do, they will never go a day without shame and rue that a friend and fellow student is gone forever. That is my saddness. My anger is the loss of a young man of promise. And surely some blame must go to the ease with which anyone’s thoughtless or malicious posting on the Web can tarnish a life, a media outlet whose bloggers are often devoid of self-discipline and the most basic civility. All best, Peter

I second the comment by mcperk. Enough with phony collegiate due process procedures. The punishment is a matter for police officials and the DA. In the meantime, suspend the accused students pending the outcome of the investigation.To anyone who would suggest that the perpetrators are children, I say phooey. 18 years don’t get a pass for harrassing peers.

In my opinion, the young man wouldn’t have committed suicide if the majority of Americans didn’t condemn homosexuality. Because of the inhuman way American culture treats GLBTs, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often. I feel badly for the family.

What will be the reaction of the student’s peers as distinct from our reactions as older persons? Even a cursory survey of videos publically available on the Internet, sometimes made with hidden cams but often with the apparent permission (and even prompting) of the participants, demonstrates that the idea of privacy has changed drastically since we were of college age. The evidence suggests that for many in their teens and twenties the concept of privacy is not only little valued, it hardly exists. This is not to rationalize the behavior of these two young men. But it will be interesting to see whether for other children of the Age of Sharing Everything About Ourselves With as Many “Friends” as Possible this suicide is a teachable moment or a dismissable one.

This is appalling. What is wrong with people that can be so cruel to others? I also do not buy the children will be children argument. Do you excuse cruelty in children because they are young? In college aged adults because they are college aged? Where does accountability begin? When actions are cruel, they are cruel, and the actors must be held accountable.

Re washingtonwarrior’s remark “Because of the inhuman way American culture treats GLBTs, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often”: Inhuman? In a country where a former conservative president agrees with ss civil unions? I totally agree that ssm should be a federal right, and it’s deplorable that gay Americans have had to wait so long for what WILL be a federal right in a few years (with the opinion written by Justice Kennedy), and of course legal, institutional, and personal homophobia continues to exist despite great strides of the past few years. But if you want “inhuman” go to Angola or Saudi Arabia or Iran–no, wait–Ahmadinejad said there are no gay people in Iran…and mentioning Angola and Saudi Arabia is racist and Islamophobic, so forget what i said…sorry…

@badger74 – agreed, but I think they like all students should be allowed to participate in both the institutional and civil legal processes.@pomlois – Its so refreshing to see someone’s bigotry aired publicly. Not only are you uninformed as to the factual events which transpired, but you are purposefully callous and insensitive to the plight of sexual minorities everywhere. I echo ceebs description of your interpretation of “intolerable behavior”. Clearly your homophobia has blinded you to the common decency that people in civil society should exhibit towards their peers, and especially to sexual minorities in this Nation, who are especially vulnerable to discriminatory conduct and exploitation as seen in this example. That the victim in this case ended their life, does not in anyway absolve the perpetrators acts which inevitably created the circumstances which lead to his death. You’re inept application of “guilt” should be directed to the roommates who I would have prosecuted.@pchoffer – It would appear that you are hopelessly naive and out of touch about today’s youth if you truly think that the allegations mentioned here were (1)conceptually initiated as an inherently harmless “prank”, (2) that the perpetrators both possess an un(der)deveoloped morality due to their youth, and thus (3) their culplability is minimized due to that fact and the inevitable emotional turmoil that their “conscience” (which you are apparently certain they possess) inflicts upon them. 18 is the age of legal maturity in most jurisdictions, they should be held accountable appropriately. The fact that the victim in this case committed suicide (due to their status as a sexual minority) certainly calls into question where contributory culpability falls.

Children my eye!!!Old enough to join the military and go to war…old enough to vote….and old enough to be held responsible.pchoffer is living in a dream world if he thinks that these miscreants have any conscience at all!!!

A university judicial process IS NOT lieu of legal repercussions. They are two completely different and essentially unconnected processes (or should be, and are at most institutions). Even though their processes might look similar to a lay person, they have fundamentally different philosophies, rules, and outcomes. The university will be completing a process to determine whether the two students are enough of a danger to the academic community to removed from it, and, to try to help them to learn about the nature of their decision-making. The state court system will be determining whether they broke laws, and punishing them accordingly per the standards of society, which might include incarceration or monetary restitution. Although they might borrow each other’ information in coming to their separate conclusions, they have very different purposes and very different standards of evidence because the potential outcomes are very different. The standard for a university judicial system is “more likely than not” rather than something more rigorous because the potential most-serious outcome of having to leave college is just not as significant as prison.As for whether they are children… they are not. Not legally, not morally. Certainly, individuals younger than they are have been tried as adults. If their parents, or other parents, consider adults of that age to be children, then it suggests that they might have been sheltered (by parents or others in society) from the sort of adult shaping, consequences, and moral exercises that are necessary in the early and mid teen years to develop responsible adult behaviors essential to functioning as a free person in society. If so, that does not remove the responsibility from these two individuals, but it should give pause to parents and schools as to the potential ramifications of child-raising systems that do not gradually prepare children for adult responsibilities by shaping their perception of themselves as grown-ups, and rather shelter them until 18 or 19 or 22 and then throw them into the deep end of freedom.

Catkelley: You got it right. This is not an issue about wheather the individuals were homosexual or hetrosexual. The issue would be equally wrong for either situation. This is an invasion of privacy and willful intent on the part of two students to harass and embarrass a fellow student. You may recall not so many years ago a young highschool student who took her own life as a result of online harassment of her classmates or in the past year of a peeping tom who drilled a hole in a wall adjacent to the room of a female newscaster to video tape her disrobing. Sure students especially in residential college and universities play pranks but broadcasting what students do in the privacy of their dorm rooms is over the line irrespective of sexual orientation. What Ravi and Wei did was cruel and inhuman. The civil authrities will levey justice and RU will need to meet out their side of the discipline that matches the crime.

Did I miss the comments about how the activity–and I am not referring to choice of sexuality–should not have been occurring? [sound of crickets....]No, I didn’t think so. That moral discussion is not apt to come up here, or on many campuses. Children? No. Young adults? Yes. And making choices that have consequences. No, I don’t mean the young men should have known the agreed upon privacy would be violated. I do mean that the concept that consenting sexual relations is fine, that college roommates should follow a time honored pattern of using an academic dorm for a new acquaintance to have sex, should be questioned. The farce of moral standards trotted out here is really sad. Commentators readily jump on the safe bandwagons of ‘gay rights’, ‘free sexuality’, etc, but little is heard about taking responsibility for behaviors that led to the incident.Perhaps colleges should cater to this dorm tradition by having scheduled sex rooms? Or create student accounts for paying local hourly hotel rates? But, no, that would be really admitting and accepting what is already admitted and accepted.Pathetic.

Whatever the hell happens to Ravi and Wei, I hope to heaven it’s webcast in excruciating detail, and I hope everyone they know has to watch.

To mcperk: My institution has regulations prohibiting harrassment that creates a hostile environment. I would think this was fairly standard by now.

These are not children! As one writer so aptly pointed out, 18-year old men and women serve their country as soldiers. This thinking is part of our problem. When will stop excusing bad behavior? These two should be expelled immediately, at the very least. Let them go elsewhere for their education. And, why should we stand behing “regulations prohibiting harrassment”? We shouldn’t need “regulations” when it comes to common courtesy. Please.

@ olmsted – I don’t get your point? Are you actually suggesting that students at this age should not be having sex and that the dormitory’s are not appropriate places for sexual activity? If so, you obvious are living in the Middle Ages and out of touch with today’s youth. They are having sex. It is a fact. And they are doing so with increasing regularity and have every right to do so in the privacy of what ostensibly becomes their home for the duration of their residency on campus. Then you state that “little is heard about taking responsibility for behaviors that led to the incident”, to what are you referring? You aren’t actually suggesting that the “behaviors” would be the sexual intimacy that two people are entitled to have in the privacy of a campus dorm room, are you?? What IS pathetic is the moral superiority that you seem to exude by suggesting that these young adults should resort to using hotels in order to live sexually fulfilling lives. What alternatives would you suggest beyond the facetiously shallow hypotheticals that you offer? Students of all sexual identities have been having sex in dorm rooms since at least the 1970s. Have you been living under a rock?

A question: I haven’t yet read anywhere, in either articles or comments, how the actions of Ravi and Wei constitute an invasion of privacy. Does anyone know the legal aspect to this? If I live with someone who takes a picture of me or films me without my consent, is that always and necessarily an invasion of privacy? Does it matter at all if the person lives or does not live with the other person? Does it matter if it is on a college campus, as opposed to someone’s private property? Is it the nudity or partial nudity which makes a key distinction in the evaluation of whether an act constitutes an invasion of privacy? if two people make out in a dorm room where they are unknowingly filmed, but they reamin clothed, would that be a breach of privacy?I’m kind of surprised that these legal definitions, despite all the other debates, haven’t been precisely stated as far as I can tell. But they would prove helpful in setting the paramaters of those same debates.

I am a photographer and artist. This is what I have been told by lawyers, officers and reading the law. If you record (visual or audio) without the person’s consent, you have violated their privacy. There are exceptions to the rule. If the person is already a public figure, then you do not need their consent (morality aside). If you are in a public space, it gets more complicated. In public spaces laws vary by state. Generally, if the person has resonable knowledge that you are recording, and they can avoid your recording with little interruption, then is is considered acceptable. For example on the streets of NYC, if I hold up a camera and you make no effort to move or avoid my lens, then you are “fair game.” However, on the Subway in NYC it is not reasonable to ask a person to get out of the picture, so recording is not acceptable.

Thanks Johnart, I was curious if the fact that this all took place in a dorm room, where there seems to be litle privacy at all for many students, made a legal difference. I read elsewhere that in New Jersey any filming or taking of pictures of nudity, without the consent of the individual, constitutes an invasion of privacy. I still wonder if there might be exceptions, as when the two individuals are related by marriage or family, or if they live together. It’s hard for me to imagine that I could bring charges against my girlfriend with whom I live for taking a naked picture of me without my consent, but I suppose it’s possible as I’m ignorant of the finer nuances of the law.

Look, anyone who spends a fair amount of time with first-year students knows that their ability to see the long-term consequences of their choices runs the gamut from excellent to non-existent. On Monday, I’ll be talking to my freshman seminar about this incident to try to raise some kind of awareness. I’d also like to see if they care about this situation, and who they think is to blame. I’d like to get inside their heads, and I find that harder to do in the last few years.

It is a tragedy that this young man chose to terminate his own life. But an even greater tragedy is looming and that is the possibility that two other fine young people may have their lives destroyed, and needlessly. There is no way in HELL that the death of this one person can be the responsibility of the two who’ve been accused. Maybe the gay fella jumped as a result of being distraught about the affair itself. Maybe he was contemplating suicide all along. If he committed suicide as a result of being exposed for his homosexuality, obviously he felt very ashamed of his lifestyle and the conduct that he was engaged in. Think about it, if he was a regular guy and was interacting with a female and this was streamed, he would probably be poking his chest out – “Yeah, Yeah!!!” If the roommate and the beautiful Asian-American female student are convicted and or jailed, the morals and the laws of this country are certainly in a downward spiral on steroids.Furthermore, is sexual activity of any kind being promoted or protected on the campus of this university. If I here Hate Crime one more time, I’m going to go nuts. I’m a Black adult male and I hate thatb term so much that it sickens me. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are the true villains when it comes to Black-White relationships. They have helped birth a crime that is discriminatory in and of itself. Let’s drop that dumb-ass term and even dumber law. Puinish bad actors all the same. Blacks who attack/kill/murder other blacks should be charged with ‘hate crimes’, too, should we keep up this madness. Disagreeing with someone for any reason does not mean that you hate the individual. If it did then we are all haters and bigots because we disagree everyday with either a spouse, parent, sibling, co-worker, etc. One can disagree with homosexuality and not hate the person engaged in the act. One can have a family member hooked on drugs and hate the habit, but love the person.I am an adult male. I am not a homosexual nor a heterosexual. I have made a conscious decision that I will have sex only with adult and consenting females – one at a time. I would not turn into a frog if I chose to sexually interact with a male. I was raised to believe that males show that type of affection to females. I believed my mother when she advised me of this matter when I was a small boy. Because I trusted her instructions, I never considered that there was an alternative for me even though there were some in the community who chose to do otherwise.Everything is a choice!!!! If not a choice, then it should be classified as instinct. If instinct, then the human species is no different than any other species on the planet. Other species have figured out the male-female interaction without reading any studies on sexual behavior. Makes one wonder which species is truly lower.