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Friday, October 01, 2010

This could be your child


This is Tyler Clementi, a talented and gifted young man. He's dead now having jumped from the George Washington Bridge in New York City. In August his parents who loved and nurtured him for 18 years said good bye and sent him off to his freshman year at Rutgers University.


It was there where he met his roommate ,Dharun Ravi. For some sick reason Mr. Ravi hooked up a webcam to spy on Clementi. On Sept. 19 he got what he was looking for. Tyler was in his room kissing a man. Ravi twittered to his friends to watch stating that Tyler was "making out with a dude." September 21 he found the webcam aimed at his bed. Despondent, humiliated and possibly shamed Tyler jumped to his death.
Molly Wei and Ravi are childhood friends and were in the same dorm together at Rutgers. He involved her in this but of course it was of her own free will and she did nothing to stop it.

This story deeply saddens and angers me. I don't understand how people can treat others this way just because they're different from themselves. Your sexual orientation is no one's business. Some people so close minded or self righteous that it makes me sick. Did Mr. Ravi have a problem with gay people or did he think playing with Tyler was funny. I've got to believe that he never thought this would happen but I do believe he should be punished. How, I don't know. Is this a hate crime? I don't know. What I do know is that Tyler Clementi was a young man but really still a boy, just 18. He had his whole life ahead of him. His parents will never know what their son will have achieved in his life, what contributions he would have made to society. That potential is gone. People need to wake up and be tolerant of each other. This could be your child.
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Joe and Jane Clementi issued this statement, "regardless of legal outcomes, our hope is that our family's personal tragedy will serve as a call for compassion, empathy and human dignity."
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This could be your child.


1 comments:

Gman said...

Regardless of what we may think of others lifestyles or orientation, we must learn to exhibit tolerance and show compassion for those around us. As one who had had to learn restraint on such matters, I was deeply saddened by this story. This was a senseless tragedy that never should have happened...