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Student kills himself after gay sex footage put online

RightinNYC said:
What are you basing this on? From his own words, he says he spoke to the RA between the night of the 21st and the early morning of the 22nd.
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And I quote from his post...

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....

soooo after that.....

I ran to the nearest RA and set this thing in motion.....
we'll see what happens......
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By any indication it seems this happened around 7pm on the 21st. He only posted about it on JUB at 3-4am on the 22nd. Had this happened at my university, being a criminal matter, it would have been reported and the roommates would have immediately been separated to avoid further escalation.

RightinNYC said:
The guy was dead by the night of the 22nd. I think it's unreasonable to assume that the school should have moved him immediately, particularly when the guy himself wasn't even sure if he wanted to move.
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Maybe his attitude was this on the morning of the 21st....

so I decided to fill out the room change request form....its not guaranteed that you get a change...and i don't have to switch if I change my mind or work things out over the next week (they won't start filling requests until next week)...but I figure I might as well as see what they can offer me....
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But after his roommate did it again on the night of the 21st, this is how he felt...

I haven't even seen my roommate since sunday when i was asking for the room the first time...and him doing it again just set me off....so talking to him just didn't seem like an option....
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It's a crime! You don't keep two roommates together when one is committing crimes against the other!
 
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apdst said:
I see. Do these RA's have any real training, or are they just there to keep the kids from getting out of hand?

I reckon if an RA is in charge of a single floor, there is someone in charge of the entire dorm?

Are these folks students, or working professionals?
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Dammit, you edited your post!

The dorm is administered by university staff. The RA's provide cheap labor for large dorms. For instance, I lived my first semester at Kansas in a dorm that housed 750 people on ten floors, with each floor having three wings. It's way too expensive to have full-time staff on each and every wing of each and every floor, so they pay a grad student to do the light administrative work that is needed in each wing.
 
apdst said:
I agree with that 100%, until it comes time to protect them from their own stupidity; which is impossible.
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How can you agree with my post but then make such an asinine comment? You obviously don't even understand what suicide is or what it means.

Boiling suicide down to stupidity just shows complete and utter ignorance on your part. But I know you're not exactly in favour of homosexuality, so I guess you will skew this as much as possible to blame the victim here.
 
Orion said:
How can you agree with my post but then make such an asinine comment? You obviously don't even understand what suicide is or what it means.

Boiling suicide down to stupidity just shows complete and utter ignorance on your part. But I know you're not exactly in favour of homosexuality, so I guess you will skew this as much as possible to blame the victim here.
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I'm ignoring him from now on. Anyone who thinks that hitting another human being out of distress is smart but hurting yourself out of distress is stupid is probably not someone to take seriously.
 
apdst said:
I see. Do these RA's have any real training, or are they just there to keep the kids from getting out of hand?

I reckon if an RA is in charge of a single floor, there is someone in charge of the entire dorm?

Are these folks students, or working professionals?
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I was an RA my last two years of school. You get a few weeks of specialized training, mostly dealing with getting kids to socialize properly and avoiding suicides.

CriticalThought said:
And I quote from his post...

By any indication it seems this happened around 7pm on the 21st. He only posted about it on JUB at 3-4am on the 22nd.
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He said he texted his roommate at 7 and then when he got home, he saw the camera, shut it off, went to the RA, and then had a great time. He doesn't say the order, but either way, the point is that it was brought up to the RA one evening and the guy was dead the next. Not a lot of time to act.

Had this happened at my university, being a criminal matter, it would have been reported and the roommates would have immediately been separated to avoid further escalation.
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Couple problems with this:

First, it's not apparent that it was actually a criminal matter at that point (or ever, for that matter). As he himself said, the webcam watching only occurred once and the camera was positioned in a way that the guy could only see him making out, not actually having sex.

Secondly, we don't know exactly what he told the RA. If he made it out just as "my roommate watched me make out using a webcam and thought it was funny," that sounds like a run of the mill prank. If someone had come to me with that, I don't know that it would have immediately come across as being serious. Nevertheless, this guy said the RA took it seriously, which is good on him.

Third, every school has emergency housing for situations where a person doesn't feel comfortable living with their roommate. In the situations where I had residents use it, it involved people who had been sexually assaulted, people who had tried to kill themselves, or people who had been beaten by boyfriends. Without the benefit of hindsight, this is not in that same class.

Fourth, how do you know that the RA didn't offer him that option? From the guy's language and stated actions, it certainly doesn't sound like he was so distraught that he couldn't stand the thought of spending another night there. It's completely plausible that he was informed of that option but declined to pack everything up to move out immediately.

The point is that we just don't know enough yet, so it's much too early to be blaming the school for this.
 
RightinNYC said:
The point is that we just don't know enough yet, so it's much too early to be blaming the school for this.
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I agree. There are too many blanks. And while I think a 24 hour period is more than enough time to move a student to a new room, I am not going to split hairs before all the facts are out.

What is clear that he was, at least, putting up a front regarding his feelings on this issue. If not, then something significant must have happened on the day he jumped. From reading the news stories, it is not clear whether he was even out to his friends and family about his sexuality. Despite appearing to be very comfortable with it on JUB, he may have been very secretive about it in real life. If that were the case, then it may have been the shame of being outed in such a public manner that drove him to take his own life. If this were the case, then the people who are most at fault were those who violated his privacy and who chose to make fun of him purely for his sexual orientation. If the facts support this hypothesis, then those two individuals are quite worthy of not only the privacy invasion charges, but also additional bias intimidation charges. I would then hope they end up in prison for a long, long time, so that no one will ever try anything like this again.
 
Those close to Clementi knew him as a gifted violinist who had played with the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra in high school and won scholarships and awards for his musical talents. At Rutgers, he was a rarity — a freshman who wasn't majoring in music but who played in a competitive, graduate-level orchestra.

Good article
 
CriticalThought said:
Despite appearing to be very comfortable with it on JUB, he may have been very secretive about it in real life. If that were the case, then it may have been the shame of being outed in such a public manner that drove him to take his own life. If this were the case, then the people who are most at fault were those who violated his privacy and who chose to make fun of him purely for his sexual orientation.
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Am I the only one who feels he would have been seriously upset if he'd been secretly filmed and broadcast with a woman? This isn't something that the whole world is meant to see. Nobody wants to go naked before the world, never mind what was actually happening.

I wonder if his partner would have a civil case in addition to the criminal case being filed. We've heard nothing about the man who was also broadcast.
 
BDBoop said:
Am I the only one who feels he would have been seriously upset if he'd been secretly filmed and broadcast with a woman? This isn't something that the whole world is meant to see. Nobody wants to go naked before the world, never mind what was actually happening.

I wonder if his partner would have a civil case in addition to the criminal case being filed. We've heard nothing about the man who was also broadcast.
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The only thing that was broadcast was some kissing. There was no "gay sex footage," media hysterics notwithstanding.
 
BDBoop said:
I wonder if his partner would have a civil case in addition to the criminal case being filed. We've heard nothing about the man who was also broadcast.
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I think it was just a hook up.

RightinNYC said:
The only thing that was broadcast was some kissing. There was no "gay sex footage," media hysterics notwithstanding.
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That is what I find all the more intriguing about this. There is no way for knowing for sure what was broadcasted.

I doubt the police would have arrested them had it simply been kissing. I don't know the law in New Jersey, but I believe it is only illegal if it is pornographic.
 
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CriticalThought said:
That is what I find all the more intriguing about this. There is no way for knowing for sure what was broadcasted.
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The victim said "he went into somebody else’s room and remotely turned on his webcam and saw me making out with a guy. given the angle of the webcam I can be confident that that was all he could have seen." I'm sure it's possible that the guy was wrong, but that's the best information we have available.

I doubt the police would have arrested them had it simply been kissing. I don't know the law in New Jersey, but I believe it is only illegal if it is pornographic.
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What is actually a crime according to the law and what the police will arrest you for are two very different things. Given the circumstances of this case, they were getting arrested no matter what actually happened. It probably didn't help that the media was blasting "GAY SEX WEBCAM SPYING."
 
RightinNYC said:
The victim said "he went into somebody else’s room and remotely turned on his webcam and saw me making out with a guy. given the angle of the webcam I can be confident that that was all he could have seen." I'm sure it's possible that the guy was wrong, but that's the best information we have available.
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I'm not convinced. I don't think someone would jump off a bridge for simply getting outed for making out with a guy. Also, you seem to really want to give a lot of weight to what he posted on a gay chat site about his situation but the fact of the matter is he ended up dead. There is no reason to believe that he was being entirely honest about how much it bothered him or the precise details of what happened. I certainly front and pretend to be okay online all the time when I am emotionally upset. Most of the time, you would not be able to tell the difference. And I'm not always 100% honest with details when recanting a story if I feel it could end up being tracked back to me. Maybe he didn't want people on the gay site to go looking for any pornographic pictures of him that may have been leaked out onto the internet.

The point is. Neither you nor I know all the details. It is no more fair to say, "it was just kissing" than "it was gay sex" at this point because there is not sufficient evidence to support either of those positions.
 
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CriticalThought said:
I'm not convinced. I don't think someone would jump off a bridge for simply getting outed for making out with a guy.
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Which is why I'm not jumping to conclusions about what happened here. I'm using the only bit of information we actually have, which is what he actually said. That's far more reliable than speculating about what he was actually thinking inside or creating elaborate scenarios about how things might have played out behind the scenes.

Also, you seem to really want to give a lot of weight to what he posted on a gay chat site about his situation but the fact of the matter is he ended up dead. There is no reason to believe that he was being entirely honest about how much it bothered him or the precise details of what happened. I certainly front and pretend to be okay online all the time when I am emotionally upset. Most of the time, you would not be able to tell the difference. And I'm not always 100% honest with details when recanting a story if I feel it could end up being tracked back to me. Maybe he didn't want people on the gay site to go looking for any pornographic pictures of him that may have been leaked out onto the internet.
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And maybe the guy jumped because he was sad about something entirely unrelated. There's no evidence for that either, but evidence doesn't matter if we're just making things up.

The point is. Neither you nor I know all the details. It is no more fair to say, "it was just kissing" than "it was gay sex" at this point because there is not sufficient evidence to support either of those positions.
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Evidence it was just kissing: 1) The victim said it was only kissing, and 2) The roommate said it was only kissing.
Evidence it was gay sex: .....
 
RightinNYC said:
Evidence it was just kissing: 1) The victim said it was only kissing, and 2) The roommate said it was only kissing.
Evidence it was gay sex: .....
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Then say that the victim and roommate indicated it was only kissing. Don't just assert that it was only kissing. For all we know, despite his best efforts to find cameras, his roommate may have succeeded in capturing him on webcam a second time.

Being truly critical means holding yourself to the same standards as you hold others.
 
CriticalThought said:
Then say that the victim and roommate indicated it was only kissing. Don't just assert that it was only kissing.
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The only people who have any way of knowing what happened both indicated that it was only kissing. There is not a shred of evidence to indicate that it was anything other than kissing. I think it's reasonable to assume that it was probably only kissing.

For all we know, despite his best efforts to find cameras, his roommate may have succeeded in capturing him on webcam a second time.
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Where are you getting this stuff from? The story is tragic enough as it is without making up additional facts.
 
apdst said:
Suicide is the most selfish and weak minded reaction there is.
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No it's not. It's your life. Everyone has a different limit on what they can take. There is nothing wrong with commiting suicide when you can't take life anymore.
 
Johnny said:
No it's not. It's your life. Everyone has a different limit on what they can take. There is nothing wrong with commiting suicide when you can't take life anymore.
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Except the pain and grief the dead persons family has to go through, the trauma of guilt some feel, and the fiscal costs of funerals etc. Suicide is inherently selfish, no matter how you paint it.
 
spud_meister said:
Except the pain and grief the dead persons family has to go through, the trauma of guilt some feel, and the fiscal costs of funerals etc. Suicide is inherently selfish, no matter how you paint it.
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It's more selfish to guilt trip someone out of suicide than it is let them them decide. It's more selfish to attempt to force one to live just because you can't come to terms with them being in control of their life to include their death.
 
Aslo, not everyone has loved ones.
 
apdst said:
Darwinism at work.

I don't know how he felt before he jumped off the bridge, but I'll bet he was having some serious second thought after he jumped off the bridge.
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Wow that is really immature and callous statement. :(

Now I know why I rarely agree with your posts.
 
RightinNYC said:
The only people who have any way of knowing what happened both indicated that it was only kissing. There is not a shred of evidence to indicate that it was anything other than kissing. I think it's reasonable to assume that it was probably only kissing.
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You are assuming. That is my point.

Where are you getting this stuff from? The story is tragic enough as it is without making up additional facts.
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Meh, I got my own emotional investment in this issue. I'm a member on JUB. I read his thread before he killed himself. I'm like a lot of people on that forum, just wondering if there was anything that could have been said or done differently.
 
apdst said:
I have zero sympathy for anyone that takes their own life. Suicide is the most selfish and weak minded reaction there is.
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You sound as ignorant as my Catholic church used to be. At least they have grown up a little and realized those that commit suicide are not in their right mind. You obviously have no idea the depths of despair the human mind get attain. I suppose that is fortunate, but on the other hand your lack of empathy for your fellow man is disgustingly repulsive.
 
Frozengale said:
So this doesn't quite scream "Bully the Gay" to me, as some of you are claiming it is. I mean his roommate doesn't seem to have anything against him. If you read his first Twitter comment it says, "Room-mate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly's room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay." Seems to me like he's more excited that his roomy is getting some action.

This is a college. People having sex and roommates pulling pranks on said sex is something that happens regularly. If Tyler was making out with a lady and doing the naughty with her I bet you that his roommates Twitters and reaction would have been the exact same. Was the roommate in the wrong, yeah he was in the wrong for Voyeurism, which is a crime, but he was just pranking his roommate not necessarily bullying him.

If anything it was Tyler who was ashamed about being Gay, not anyone else. Why would he be ashamed? I say look at the family, maybe they didn't accept him for something like that. Also who said it was about being Gay and the Sex Tape anyways? I don't see anything about a suicide note in there. For all we know Tyler was stressed out from any number of things and decided to just end it all. Maybe his significant other dumped him after the video went live and it wasn't because he was ashamed of being gay, it was because he just got his heart broken.

The point is I think everyone here is jumping the gun and assuming one thing when the only evidence we have is speculative. It's sad that he committed suicide, but I don't really see any evidence of bullying and I think everyone is jumping on the bandwagon against his roomies just because this might be a "Gay" issue. If we find evidence to the contrary then I will agree that the roommates should be punished, but until then I think this was just a depressed kid committing suicide and everyone trying to find a scapegoat to blame.
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I personally have no clue on why somone would get off on watching their roomate have sex gay or hetero. I had a few flings in my dorm but sure as hell wasn't interested in watching anyone else.
 
liblady said:
that would be fitting. perhaps jail time would be humiliating.
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Being someone's Bitch in prison would be fitting. No need to film it as they could experience it in the flesh.
 
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CriticalThought said:
You are assuming. That is my point.
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And I don't think I've ever said differently. That being said, there's a difference between making an assumption based on the explicit words of the people involved and making assumptions based on absolutely nothing.

Meh, I got my own emotional investment in this issue. I'm a member on JUB. I read his thread before he killed himself. I'm like a lot of people on that forum, just wondering if there was anything that could have been said or done differently.
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FWIW, the responses prior to him jumping were about as good as anything you could ever find on the internet. Everyone was helpful, offering support, and understanding of his situation. There's not many places on the internet where you'll get a response like that.
 
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