In memory of Tyler Clementi, a student and scholar whose life story can be found in parts of all of us, the column Edicts this year will be dedicated to making our school a better place to live.
Thank you Tyler and your family.
Your life will continue to make our virtual world a safer place to be.
When I learned that Tyler Clementi’s mom was coming to visit our school in October, I only had a vague idea of who he was. Tyler is remembered as a victim of horrid bullying in his first and only fall semester as a Rutgers freshman in September of 2010. Tyler basically was under assault daily for who he was because his roommate Dharun Ravi thought it was funny to make fun of him using social media as his weapon of choice. The end of this story results in Tyler’s suicide. Tyler, an 18 year old talented violinist, beloved son and friend to all, died facing some of the most brutal cyber-bullying no one should ever have to deal with. It was so awful that the court system deemed it criminal, and the perpetrator went to jail for what he did.
Before I tell you more about Tyler and his story, I’d like to explain what cyberbullying looks like. Let me paint the picture for you with you in it.
Imagine yourself excited and nervous to go to college for the first time. You walk down an unfamiliar hallway that will be your new home with someone whom you have never met before. Your gaze follows the room numbers on the wooden doors until they tick down to the one with your number on it. At first, you reach for the handle, but then you hear a girl’s high pitched giggle on the other side. Ironically, considering it is your new home, you knock. It’s instinct to be polite. That’s how you were raised.
The laughter stops to silence, a moment pulses by, and the door swings wide. You are greeted with a fellow about your height with dark hair and eyes, and a wide grin flashing both rows of his teeth. People who smile like that always make you a little nervous. Your hands sweat against the handles of your suitcases, and you grip them a little tighter.
“Hey,” the dark haired guy says to you, swinging the door wide, and filling the entryway as he leans heavily against the door jam, effectively blocking your way in. “You must be the roommate!”
“I think that’s me,” you reply, nodding once, still waiting at the door, a little uncertain. “I think I’m your roommate.”
“Well, come on in! Don’t just stand there!” Your roommate steps aside so that you can enter, and you see a thin, black haired girl in jeans and a white tank-top sitting on the only unoccupied space in the room. That’s supposed to be your bed. Your mind fills with a buzz that makes hearing more difficult, but you somehow decipher their names.
Your gaze falls to the girl sitting on your sheetless bed. Bare walls stare back at you. “Um…I think this is my bed.”
The girl laughs and bounces up to stand. “Oh, right, sorry! I have to get moving anyway. See you around!”
“Yes,” you reply, your bags still in your hand. The pain in your fingers from carrying the weight all the way from the car vaguely registers at this point. Why haven’t you put them down yet? Oh that’s right. You don’t really see where you fit in this pseudo-home that feels more like a hamster cage.
The girl giggles as you watch her glance toward your roommate, but then she finally moves out of your space. Her feet lightly pat the floor as she twirls toward the wooden door you just entered. “I’m in here all the time, but I better let you settle in! Bye!”
You take a deep breath, and try to smile at her but it feels all wrong anyway. “Nice to meet you.”
You set your bags down on the bare bed. You turn, and your eyes scan the posters your roommate has already put up, the neatly organized desk, and the unmade bed of your new ‘friend.’ The part of the story you don’t know is that you’ve not just met your roommate and his good friend.
You’ve met your tormentors.
You’ve also just met the people who will make you not want to live anymore.
The date for your death has already been set, but you don’t know it: September 22, 2010. You did not know when you walked through the dorm room door that you would not be in college as a freshman very long at all. The suitcases you held would be the same ones your mother would use to unpack your things as she can’t stop crying because she misses you so badly. But before that happens, you’re going to be filmed without your knowledge and humiliated on the World Wide Web in front of all your new friends. It’s so awful to be the center of that attention that you are going to throw yourself off the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey. You won’t get to make this decision twice. It’s okay though, you think, in the moment before you jump. Your heart was already broken before you hit the water. You can’t live without your heart.
And this is where I stop painting.
Let’s be clear right here: it didn’t have to be this way.
Some might say, and Dharun Ravi certainly did in court, that bullying with words or actions can’t kill someone. But the truth is, they can. Words hurt just as badly as a whip, and maybe worse. Ridicule is painful and it cuts across a person’s emotional makeup very deeply. It makes you question everything about yourself, and then for some of us it means we heap salt on the wounds because no one could beat us up better than ourselves. As teens, some of us hit ourselves harder with unspoken words than anyone else ever could with their insensitivity. The bruises run deep though you hide them and try hard to never let even those closest to you see them.
Cyber bullying is a crime in the state of New Jersey where Tyler was targeted. The charges against Dharun Ravi included “bias intimidation, invasion of privacy, hindering apprehension and tampering with evidence after the death of Tyler Clementi just three weeks into their first semester of college” (TIME). Ravi could have gone to jail for ten years, but after a three week trial by jury the judge decided that Ravi didn’t hate Clementi because he had no reason to. Therefore, Ravi served only 20 days of a 30 day sentence.
According to TIME magazine, “Ravi will be on probation for three years, must serve 300 hours of community service and attend a cyberbullying counseling program, and has to pay a $10,000 recessment to the New Jersey probation department, which will go toward programs that help people who are victims of bias crimes.” Ravi also faced deportation to his native India, but authorities decided against it.
Tyler’s story relates to all of us. At one point or another, all of us have been the butt of a joke, the crux of an embarrassment, or even the seemingly harmless center of attention. The takeaway from our own stories as we engage with others online is simple. Would you want what you are about to put online said to you or about you? Let’s make the world a better place, think twice about it before we type, and then type on. What you say or do today will change a life forever. Why not make it for the better?
SOURCES AND FOR MORE ON TYLER’S STORY:
"Dharun Ravi: Tyler Clementi’s Roommate Sentenced to 30 Days in Jail | TIME.com." NewsFeed
Dharun Ravi Tyler Clementis Roommate Sentenced to 30 Days in Jail Comments. N.p., n.d.
Web. 19 Sept. 2015.
Desk, Star-Ledger Continuous News. "Dharun Ravi Sentencing, Count by Count." N.p., n.d. Web. 19
Sept. 2015.
