Tyler Clementi’s Roommate, Tormentor Sentenced to Only 30 Days in Jail

Tyler had complained about being harassed to the school which did nothing. The roommate was an ass, but really the crime is that his harassment was ENABLED by the school which did nothing to stop it and yet knew about it and thereby CONDONED the harassment.

It’s wrong to place all the blame on Ravi,and 30 days in jail is mild, but much worse would be  unreasonable. People in College are entering adult hood for the first time and need guidance and boundaries, the school failed, and the administrator that had Tyler’s complains and never acted on them -HE SHOULD GET TEN YEARS!

I heard Dan Savage speak at Rutgers University, where he chose to start start a tour speaking of his “It Gets Better,” project.  He couldn’t help but mention Ravi, since Rutgers was where it all happened; but I was surprised to find that his view so clearly echoed my own beliefs because it was hard to find someone else who felt the same way, especially someone whose opinions I had come to value.
I’ve spent years now being around kids that age, between my nieces and nephew and their friends, and my son and his friends, and I can say that none of them is the least bit bigoted, or homophobic or cruel.  What they were, or are, is 18, with all the stupid conversation and thoughtless actions that if held up to scrutiny such as this was, might have had the world looking at them in the same way.  The spy cam and the texts have introduced new elements that had never before been a part of any trial.  There were also texts from Tyler commenting about his roommate’s ethnicity, and using the stereotypical generalization of Ravi’s parents probably owning a Dunkin’ Donuts.  I’m sure Tyler wasn’t bigoted either. Probably few people among us aren’t guilty of making comments of which we wouldn’t be proud later on.  Those of us who are older certainly never had the kind of technology that this involved, but might we have have looked at a letter, or a picture, or someone’s computer screen that hadn’t been password protected?  And is it possible what we saw might have made the rounds, in gossip, if not in tangible form? This was a hard case to separate out the intention from the result.  It was a delight for people like the Governor, who could comfortably condemn the actions of the students involved, without compromising his stand that gay people don’t deserve equal rights under the law.  In February of this year, the the printer ink was hardly dry on the marriage equality bill passed by the state legislature before he vetoed it. It took him a lot longer to sign the anti-bullying bill that was drafted after Tyler’s suicide.  People insist that marriage equality is a matter of opinion, and that one thing has nothing to do with another; but it isn’t just about marriage.  It’s about riding in the back of the bus, and “separate but equal” that doesn’t work now any better than in did in the 1950′s when school segregation was ruled unconstitutional. I recently asked a group of young gay men, close to the age of Tyler and Ravi, if they saw it as a bias incident, and they all said no, they felt it was just bad judgement and one stupid action that led to a tragedy.  I remembered how right after it had happened, my son’s comment,  ”I can’t imagine killing myself over something like that.  I could see being embarrassed, but not so that I would kill myself.I snorted about the embarrassment claim.  ”You have to be kidding.  You would probably have been outside signing autographs.”  He actually considered that scenario and agreed that perhaps he would “show them how things should be done.”   The spying didn’t have to be about gay:  A socially awkward, inexperienced kid who didn’t quite relate to his peers might invite curiosity anyway.  But the difference is that if it had been a girl in the room, probably none of this would have happened.  We don’t raise young men with the feeling that they should be embarrassed about being heterosexual. And Ravi hadn’t known Tyler long enough to have instilled the feeling of discomfort in him; the world around had already taken care of that.  I can’t claim to know what was inside anyone’s mind; although I have my own opinion.  But I feel that regardless of the sentence for Ravi, it doesn’t solve anything when, as a country, we are still tolerating hateful rhetoric from clergy and politicians that lead up to things like this.  I guess I’m imagining a courtroom scene where someone from the other side gets up and says that there’s no points in prosecuting one person, because the guilt is pervasive.  We support politicians and churches who speak against gays, and even if we don’t support them, we don’t actively challenge them.  And we don’t speak out about school officials who make arbitrary rules that don’t specifically mention any one group, but who are clearly targeting gays.  So maybe this needs to be less making a scapegoat out of one kid, and more about holding a lot more people accountable. But that’s wishful thinking.Even if it’s only for 30 days, there still aren’t enough jails..