Gay College Freshman Outed on Internet, Commits Suicide

Tyler Clementi, an 18 year-old student at Rutgers University, was just beginning his college career as a freshman. He was there for less than a month before jumping off the George Washington Bridge and committing suicide on September 22, 2010.

His roommate, Dharun Ravi, was charged with two accounts of invasion of privacy for recording, via webcam, Clementi having a gay sexual encounter with another man.

Ravi even Tweeted about it the first time it happened on September 19: "Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with another dude. Yay."

Supposedly Clementi found out about the Tweet and searched for help in the online community. On the website justusboys.com, a user "cit2mo" who is believed to be Clementi, wrote this message: "So the other night I had a guy over. I had talked to my roommate that afternoon and he had said it would be fine w/him. I checked his twitter today. He tweeted that I was using the room ... and that he went into somebody else's room and remotely turned on his webcam and saw me making out with a guy. So my question is what next? I could just be more careful next time. ... [But] I'm [kind of] p----- at him. ... It would be nice to get him in trouble but [I don't know if] I have enough to get him in trouble"

On September 21, Ravi was at it again with yet another Tweet: "Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes, it’s happening again."

That same day, cit2mo posted another message online: "So I wanted to have the guy over again. I texted roomie around 7 asking for the room later tonight and he said it was fine. When I got back to the room I instantly noticed he had turned the webcam toward my bed. And he had posted online again saying 'anyone want a free show just video chat me tonight' or something similar to that."

Clementi reported the incident to the resident assistant (RA) and then wrote on justusboys.com that he also filed a written statement with college officials. Not long after that post was made, Clementi veered to Facebook and posted his very last status update:

"Jumping off the gw bridge sorry."

Clementi was described by his friends as a very talented musician who won many awards and scholarships for his skills with the violin. His family is "heartbroken beyond words."

Ravi and a friend Molly Wei (the girl mentioned in the first Tweet) are both free on bail and waiting for a court appearance. If charged, they can each spend up to five years in prison for destroying another person's life.

Michael Zhuang, a neighbor and friend of Ravi's stated: "I think he's [Ravi's] a good person. I don't think he's a homophobe. It would've been no different if it was a girl in the room[/i]."

Ravi later claimed that his webcam was on "accidentally" and that once he saw Clementi with another man, he shut it off. This is obviously inconsistent with the fact that he streamed the encounter over the Internet and invaded Clementi's privacy not once, but twice, and bragged via Tweets about doing so.

The chairman of Garden State Equality, Steve Goldstein, said in a statement that his group considers Clementi's death a blatant hate crime: "We are heartbroken over the tragic loss of a young man who, by all accounts, was brilliant, talented and kind. And we are sickened that anyone in our society, such as the students allegedly responsible for making the surreptitious video, might consider destroying others' lives as a sport."