Rutgers suicide lesson

By Katherine Tolentino

When I first read about Tyler Clementi's suicide, I was filled with overwhelming hatred for Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, the two hallmates who filmed Clementi having sex with his boyfriend and live-streamed it to friends online.

It makes me sick to think that these students - freshmen in college - saw it as a 'good joke,' not only to invade, cruelly and illegally, a fellow student's privacy, but worse, to draw in other friends for the sole purpose of ridiculing Tyler Clementi for his sexuality.

And of course, I'm not the only one who feels sick. Already, almost 40,000 people have joined Facebook groups in Clementi's honor. I think all of us are struggling to grasp the fact that hate crimes like this can still happen, even in a country where so many of us are finally coming to understand and accept homosexuality and the need for gay rights.

While I empathize with the common sentiment to see Ravi and Wei brutally punished for their immaturity and ignorance, we are at risk of building more hatred and division within our community by responding to their actions in similarly immature, thoughtless and hateful ways.

Two brand new groups on Facebook containing graphic and offensive language are already bursting with frighteningly hate-filled and racist attacks directed at the two 18-year-olds. Multiple people have posted racist comments with derogatory slurs.

I'm not going to go into how heartbreaking it is to see people responding in this way. But I will say that we all need to step back and look at this situation with a critical eye instead of wagging our fingers.

This tragedy was by no means a simple case of two "gay-haters" punishing their hall mate for his "abnormalities." Consider what other factors could have played into the situation:

What if Clementi had been having sex with his girlfriend? Is it possible that Dharun and Molly would have done the same thing? And what would the community's reaction have been? Could there have been other circumstances that led to Clementi's suicide? How would you have responded if your roommate did the same to you?

It's pointless and irresponsible to keep dwelling on Ravi and Wei's lapses in judgment, no matter how colossal they were.

Based on what we know, we really can't determine how much their actions actually affected Clementi's decision to take his life. I'm not saying they should be given our ultimate pardon - what they did was clearly wrong.

There's a much bigger problem that needs to be addressed beyond the immaturity of these young people.

The real tragedy of this situation is that Clementi felt so helpless and hopeless after being betrayed by his roommate and so alone in his community that he turned to suicide.

He was not able to seek the support he could have - and almost definitely would have gotten - from friends, classmates, family or university support services to voice his story.

He could have seen Ravi and Wei punished for their actions and moved on with his life, putting a disastrous first-roommate experience behind him.

I only hope that in the future, we can achieve a level of acceptance and openness, both in our local communities and on college campuses nationwide, to allow young people in such traumatizing situations to seek the support they deserve.

Originally posted on the TSC blog: thesantaclara.blogspot.com. Katherine Tolentino is TSC's online editor and a senior English major.