This is the case where a Rutgers student set up a Web cam to spy on his roommate have sex with another guy and then blurted it out to the world on Twitter.
I'm conflicted about this one. Not about whether he should get jail time, he should. But how much time, and whether he should be deported.
Look, kids do dumb things in college - and they don't think of the consequences. Having said that, in this case the consequences were a young man's suicide. That's no small matter.
I'm not sure the roommate should do time, I do think that if he doesn't do significant time, he should be deported. A young kid is dead because of his insensitivity, stupidity, and from all appearances, mean-spiritedness. He has to pay some price for that.
A few key grafs in the story. This from the judge:
"I heard this jury say, 'guilty' 288 times--24 questions, 12 jurors. That's the multiplication," Berman said. "I haven't heard you apologize once."No apology?
And if this is true, Ravi, the roommate, sounds like a bit of a dick, and much more than simply a kid who goofed up.
Tyler Clementi's mother Jane Clementi recalled the day she helped her "excited" son move into his Rutgers dorm room and the coldness Ravi showed by not getting up from his computer to say hello.If that's true, then I much less sympathetic to the guy. He sounds like a jerk. I can have some sympathy for an otherwise nice guy who played a prank that went too far. I have much less sympathy for the "you don't exist" crowd. We all have to deal with them every day of our lives. And it's their overall contempt for people around them that leads to results just like this.
"He never even paused to acknowledge that Tyler was in the room," she said. "He never stopped what he was doing, no greeting, no smile, no recognition, no nothing."
Apparently, some gays don't think Ravi should be punished at all because it won't serve as a deterrent to others, they argue. Really? I'll bet you a lot of colleges out there are a heck of a lot more careful about dealing with gay students after this case. And you'd better believe that the more these kind of cases happen, and are prosecuted, the stronger the message will be sent through the culture at large that you mess with gay kids, you pay a price. Don't tell me that the students at Rutgers, at the very least, haven't been somewhat educated about anti-gay bullying throughout this whole experience.
I do, however, agree with Dan Savage's criticism, which is different:
Dan Savage, a gay columnist whose video campaign, “It Gets Better,” began in response to other suicides of gay teenagers just before Mr. Clementi, 18, jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge, argued that simply locking up Mr. Ravi was a lost opportunity to talk about the other institutions and people “complicit” in Mr. Clementi’s death.As usual, not much to add to Dan's words, other than an ironic "amen."
“What was he told about being gay growing up, by his faith leaders, by the media, by the culture?” Mr. Savage said. “Ravi may have been the last person who made him feel unsafe and abused and worthless, but he couldn’t have been the first.
“The rush to pin all the responsibility on Ravi and then wash our hands and walk away means we’re not going to learn the lessons of these kids.”
