Reply to Anyone else read recent New Yorker article about gay Rutgers freshman who jumped off GW bridge?

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[quote=Anonymous]What I got from reading the piece was just a lot of confusion.

I didn't pay much attention to the story when it first came out.   I was under the impression that Clementi was gay, but not out; and that his roommate had taped him having sex with another male student; and replayed it or posted it on the web or Facebook or wherever; and that Clementi killed himself because he was outed, being bullied and tormented by his roommate, and was very embarassed and distraught at having something so private taped and and shared with the world.

So I was really surprised to see that he was already out to his parents; and even to his friends from high school I think.   And that the person he brought back to his room was some 25 year old from the community and a near stranger.   I am NOT condoning what his roommate did in spying on Clementi BUT I can really empathize with beeing pissed off (a) at beaing sexiled from your own room and (b) having some 25 year old stranger in your room.   I can empathize with him telling his friend "Oh no, it's happening again!"   That's not necessarily homophobia or gay bashing.  I did the same thing when my freshman roommate brought her boyfriend with her from another state and practically had him move in with us the first week of school.  I was annoyed and ticked off!   No, I didn't set up a webcam or spy on them; but I did talk about them to others with annoyance.

I was also surprised to see that the roommate Dharun,  didn't tape the encounter.  he set up his webcam to see what was going on.   And then the next time he was horrible in telling everyone it was happening again and inviting them to look in.   But I thought it was all about gay bashing and I really didn't get the sense that he was doing that at all -- he was just pissed at his roomate.   he's a jerk, no doubt about it.   He should have told his roommate to knock it off, stop bringing strangers home to a shared bedroom.   The webcam was juvenile and a violatino of privacy BUT I don't know how much privacy you have a right to expect when you tell your roommate to leave your shared bedroom so you can have sex in college.

Finally, I thought Clementi was absolutely devastaed and distraught when he learned that he had been spied on -- but at least from the magazine article, that didn't really seem to be the case.   It seemed more like he was upset about whatever was going on with the 25 year old.

Clementi knew that Dharun had a webcam set up for the second "date" with the older man, because he read his twitter account saying that it was set up again.   Nevertheless he went ahead with the "date".

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