Friday, October 1, 2010

Rutgers Freshman Commits Suicide After Sexual Acts Aired on Web

By Morgan Jerkins '14

On September 22, Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi committed suicide by jumping from the George Washington bridge. An accomplished violinist, his peers at Rutgers described him as quiet. Clementi asked his roommate, Dharun Ravi, for the dorm to himself on a Sunday night. Whether accidentally or intentionally, Ravi turned on a webcam in his friend Molly Wei's room and saw Clementi engaged in sexual acts with another man. Twitter was used as a medium for Ravi to vent his disagreements with Clementi’s pastimes, such as “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.” The following day, Clementi made a wall post on his facebook stating, “jumping off the gw bridge sorry.” Ravi and Wei were charged with two counts each of invasion of privacy. Ravi was also charged with two additional counts of invasion of privacy for a failed attempt to tape a second sex scene.

More to come in Monday's paper.

2 comments:

:/ said...

this is such a terrible story. im really surprised there hasn't been more talk of it here on campus... :/

Anonymous said...

This is a poorly written post that does not do justice to this issue whatsoever. The line "An intricate spy sex scandal has surfaced" is particularly egregious: this was not just a 'scandal,' it was a tragedy.

The previous commenter, who noted a lack of discussion about the issue on campus, is undoubtedly unaware of the action the LGBT Center has taken, including an open discussion that happened today as well as organizing students to attend a vigil at Rutgers on Sunday to show our support.

The Prince needs to do quality reporting on this issue, rather than relegating it to an inexperienced freshman blogger.