If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
An entire dormitory full of students plus an online circle of acquaintances were made aware of the bullying that my brother endured. Not one person got involved, informed an authority figure, told the bully that he was in the wrong, or checked on Tyler to see if he was OK.
Ravi's Twitter posts, webcam spying, and homophobic attitude were stigmatizing, and it is possible that these pushed Clementi to a tipping point. But Clementi's suicide did not happen in a bubble with only him and Ravi; it took place in a society in which homophobia is still rampant.
So how do I keep my son from becoming another statistic, another young person pushed to deadly means to end torment by those who think his existence is a sin, ugly, and wrong? Well, there is no guarantee that I can, but I can sure as hell try.
Dharun Ravi finally wept. But it had nothing to do with Tyler Clementi, his former roommate who jumped off the George Washington Bridge.
While Ravi must take responsibility for his actions, we are all accountable, not just him. Punishing one dumb kid for failing to rein in his dark side primarily serves to make us feel better when it shouldn't, to shift the burden of responsibility to anyone but ourselves.
No jail term, community service or public outrage will ever rid the world of bullying and homophobia -- only you can.
Central to the Clementi tragedy is the encounter between a straight immigrant student and a gay American, abandoned to the perils of freshman coexistence without proper preparation for either of them.
Dharun does not deserve to be sentenced so harshly... We have lost one child, Clementi, let us not lose another, Dharun.
The sad account of Tyler Clementi's short time at Rutgers exposes a deficit that feels like a missed opportunity: direct conversation. To me there seemed to be an alarming lack of simple human interaction around him in his final days.
It was about mocking Tyler for being gay. That is bias, and it's part of the hate we all grow up with in a society that hates gays. The crime Ravi committed should not be punished severely or with deportation, but any way you slice it, it was motivated by that bias we all share.
No jury that thought long and hard about the case could have returned with any other verdict. It is not the jury's job to think about sentencing or punishment. It is it's job to follow the law.
With the jury's guilty verdict in the so-called Rutgers University webcam spying case, Ravi, it appears, has been turned into the proverbial sacrificial lamb for society's collective guilt about its own bias intimidation against homosexuals.
Maybe it helps to make sense of Clementi's death by creating a narrative, a cause and effect. Maybe it helps to make sense of Clementi's death by fabricating a villian. But incarcerating and/or deporting Ravi only compounds this tragedy.
Just yesterday, a New Jersey jury found the spying by Dharun Ravi of Tyler Clementi a hate crime. Many feel this will be a message to youth about how ...
What a sad tragedy when hate blackens love and destroys young lives. What a horrible act it is to have one's love and affection for another used to ostracize and expel a young man from an academic community engineered to expand and promote diversity.
Instead of having Tyler Clementi and Dharun Ravi as contributing members of our society, Tyler is dead, and Ravi is likely headed to prison for years, or deported to India. And for what? Surely not a discussion of bias crimes, anti-bullying laws, and gay panic defense.
