Colleges should adopt a code of conduct that prohibits bullying and harassment in the wake of the suicide of a Rutgers University student whose gay sexual encounter in his dorm room was streamed online, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg said at a town meeting on campus.
Lautenberg, D-N.J., told the crowd gathered Wednesday night in memory of 18-year-old freshman Tyler Clementi that he would introduce such legislation. Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River on Sept. 22 after the intimate images of him with another man were broadcast. His body was identified days later.
Clementi's roommate, Dharun Ravi, and another Rutgers freshman, Molly Wei, both 18, have been charged with invasion of privacy, and authorities are weighing whether bias crime charges should be added.
The death of Clementi, a promising violinist, has prompted a national discussion on the plight of young gay people and bullying, along with technology's role in it. Clementi typed his intention on the Internet, leaving a note on his Facebook page reading, "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry."
A new survey has found that while technology has become so entwined with college students' often frantic lives, being perpetually connected comes at a cost.
Read the rest of the Associated Press article.
Comment: As sad as this story is, and those like it, bullying is an unfortunate fact of life, but in the end laws such as the one Lautenburg is pushing will be used by the government to further control our all of our lives.
1 comment:
Just to be clear, the kid that committed suicide was openly gay and wasn't bothered by people knowing about it. He was a little ticked off by the invasion of his privacy, but there's absolutely no evidence that the invasion of his privacy was the motivating factor for his suicide. It seems that the privacy invasion was merely coincidental, and that his suicide was motivated by something else altogether. I'm bothered by the fact that there's been so little investigation into what was really motivating this kid. The media has settled on the most sensationalist storyline, even though it's not supported by the evidence. People are really bothered by this story, and it's a shame that there's so little understanding involving something people seem to care so much about. This seems to me like another media failure, compounding the tragedy already in place by distorting what really happened for the sake of attention-grabbing headlines.
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