RUTGERS STUDENT COMMITS SUICIDE AFTER BEING OUTED BY ROOMATE VIDEOTAPING HIM HAVING SEX

Rutgers University has given us a lot of good people as well as a lot of bad. A few Rutgers alumni are among the founders of One People’s Project, and on the other end of that spectrum we had Class of 2006’s James O’Keefe. And although the university and the City of New Brunswick, NJ overall has been particularly gay-friendly, homophobia still rears it’s head from time to time. Oct. 27 will be a year since the homophobic attention-seekers of the Westboro Baptist Church headed up by the Phelps Family came to harrass the students of New Brunswick High School and Rutgers University, and Rev. Barbara Heck of Rutgers Protestant Campus Ministries noted how the massive counterdemo to the Phelps family “brought the campus together in a beautiful way.” They now have another challenge: An 18-year-old student named Tyler Clementi, left, was illegally taped having sex with another man by his roomate Dharun Ravi, center, and Ravi’s friend Molly Wei, right, and ended up jumping off the George Washington Bridge to his death. Ravi and Wei are both charged with invading Tyler’s privacy and may face hate crime charges. Now we are sure that someone is going to try and say that the two charged were not homophobic or what have you, but we are not saying that they had made some declaration that they hated gay people or joined some political group. They simply believed that Tyler and his friend were not worth respecting because they considered them an oddity, that’s all it takes and for that we hope they get what’s coming to them. Twice. Rutgers University has seen university presidents who suggested racial inferiority, Don Imus’ BS remark about their women’s basketball team, James O’Keefe’s exploits, the Phelps Family and countless other trials and tribulations. They will be fine, but know that this hurts. Our hearts and prayers go out to the Clementi family and also to the Rutgers community, without whom we could never have been the organization we have become.

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The suicide of a university student — after a recording of him having a sexual encounter with a man was broadcast online — has stirred outrage and remorse on campus from classmates.

“Had he been in bed with a woman, this would not have happened,” said Rutgers University student Lauren Felton, 21. “He wouldn’t have been outed via an online broadcast and his privacy would have been respected and he might still have his life.”

Gay rights groups say Tyler Clementi’s suicide make him a national example of a problem they are working to combat: Young people who kill themselves after being tormented over their sexuality.

A lawyer for Clementi’s family confirmed Wednesday that he had jumped off the George Washington Bridge last week .

Police recovered a man’s body Wednesday afternoon in the Hudson River just north of the bridge, which connects New York and New Jersey, and authorities were trying to determine if it was Clementi’s.

Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, and fellow Rutgers student Molly Wei, both 18, have been charged with invading Clementi’s privacy.

Middlesex County prosecutors say the pair used a webcam to surreptitiously transmit a live image of Clementi having sex on Sept. 19 and that Ravi tried to webcast a second encounter on Sept. 21, the day before Clementi’s suicide.

Collecting or viewing sexual images without consent is a fourth-degree crime. Transmitting them is a third-degree crime with a maximum prison term of five years.

Ravi wrote Sept. 19 on what is believed to be his Twitter page, which has since been deleted, but is still accessible though Google’s cache system: “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.”

Two days later, Ravi apparently posted another entry referring to iChat, an internet messaging service with a live video feed.

“Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes it’s happening again,” Ravi wrote in the Sept. 21 post.

Clementi’s last cry for help?
The website Gawker reported that a user called cit2mo who posted messages on a website called JustUsBoys may have been Clementi.

In a thread called “college roommate spying,” the post from cit2mo on Sept. 21 at 7:22 a.m. said: “so the other night i had a guy over. I had talked to my roommate that afternoon and he had said it would be fine w/him. I checked his twitter today. he tweeted that I was using the room (which is obnoxious enough), AND that he went into somebody else’s room and remotely turned on his webcam and saw me making out with a guy. given the angle of the webcam I can be confident that that was all he could have seen,” cit2mo wrote.

“I’m kinda pissed at him (rightfully so I think, no?) … I feel like the only thing the school might do is find me another roommate, probably with me moving out … and i’d probably just end up with somebody worse than him … I mean aside from being an asshole from time to time, he’s a pretty decent roommate,” he added.

He added at 9:28 a.m. that day, that “I feel like it was ‘look at what a fag my roommate is’ … and the fact that the people he was with saw my making out with a guy as a scandal whereas i mean come on … he was SPYING ON ME … do they see nothing wrong with this? unsettling to say the least.

ABC News and The Star-Ledger of Newark reported that on Sept. 22 Clementi left a note on his Facebook page that read: “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.” On Wednesday, his Facebook page was accessible only to friends.

Even if the young violinist was not well known at his new school, his death stirred outrage.

“The notion that video of Tyler doing what he was doing can be considered a spectacle is just heinous,” said Jordan Gochman, 19, who didn’t know Clementi. “It’s intolerant, it’s upsetting, it makes it seem that being gay is something that is wrong and can be considered laughable.”

Other students who did know Clementi were upset that they didn’t do more to help him. “I wish I could have been more of an ally,” said Georges Richa.

About 100 people gathered Wednesday night for a vigil on campus. They lay on the ground and chanted slogans such as, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re not going home.”

Several gay rights groups linked Clementi’s death to the troubling phenomenon of young people committing suicide after being harassed over their sexuality.

On Tuesday, a 13-year-old California boy died nine days after classmates found him hanging from a tree. Authorities say other teens had taunted the boy, Seth Walsh of Tehachapi, for being gay.

‘Heartbroken’
Steven Goldstein, chairman of New Jersey-based Garden State Equality, said in a statement that his group considers Clementi’s death a hate crime.

“We are heartbroken over the tragic loss of a young man who, by all accounts, was brilliant, talented and kind,” Goldstein said. “And we are sickened that anyone in our society, such as the students allegedly
responsible for making the surreptitious video, might consider destroying others’ lives as a sport.”

Rutgers University President Richard McCormick wrote in a letter to the campus.

“If the charges are true, these actions gravely violate the university’s standards of decency and humanity,” he said.

Coincidentally, the university on Wednesday was launching a new two-year Project Civility, designed to get students thinking about how they treat others.

A lawyer for Ravi did not immediately return a message seeking comment. It was unclear whether Wei had retained a lawyer.