Two thoughts on Clementi

October 2, 2010 in history and current events | by Neddy Merrill

Some musings on Tyler Clementi’s suicide.

First, this justusboys thread is worth reading. In it, Clementi complains about his roommate’s actions and wonders what to do.

I could just be more careful next time…make sure to turn the cam away…
buttt…
I’m kinda pissed at him (rightfully so I think, no?)
and idk…if I could…it would be nice to get him in trouble
but idk if I have enough to get him in trouble, i mean…he never saw anything pornographic…he never recorded anything…

I feel like the only thing the school might do is find me another roommate, probably with me moving out…and i’d probably just end up with somebody worse than him….I mean aside from being an asshole from time to time, he’s a pretty decent roommate…

Days later:

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…

soooo after that…..

I ran to the nearest RA and set this thing in motion…..
we’ll see what happens……

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….

meanwhile I turned off and unplugged his computer, went crazy looking for other hidden cams….and then had a great time.

He would be dead less than 24 hours later. Tone is hard to tell from internet postings but to me he sounds completely in control, angry but not raging. All things considered he seems to be handling it well. So what happened?

Second. I like Tim Burke but this post disturbs me. What should happen to the two students who streamed the webcam feed?

What I’d like is that the two Rutgers students spend the rest of their lives talking in public about what they did, and how what they did touches on all of our lives, and maybe implicates more of us than we’d like to admit. I watched and chortled at the Star Wars Kid: I bet you did too. Didn’t we help to make a world where it’s slightly more permissible to think of humiliating someone with a viral video?

What I’d like is that the two Rutgers students have to work in everything they do for a more humane culture, for a wiser use of communicative media. I’d like them to have a special charge to live and teach the Golden Rule to their children, their friends, their neighbors, their co-workers, their communities, to any stranger who will listen and maybe even those who’d rather not.

I want this for everyone who causes this kind of pain to the world. I want state officials and policemen who prosecuted innocent men on flimsy evidence that is exposed later by genetic testing to have to spend the rest of their lives trying to make it right for the justice system, to dedicate themselves to fixing the problem. You can’t apologize for stealing someone’s life, and no payment can really compensate. Make it better, make it never happen.

For my part, I find the thought of a world with endless atoning but no atonement to be horrifying: Sisyphus giving community-service lectures. Even worse if this life is forced on the offenders. The coercion renders their actions as meaningless and repulsive as the vapid lawyerly apologies Burke decries earlier in his post.

…

It’s hard to say what “should” happen to Ravi and Wei, either from a legal/political viewpoint or a moral one. Forgiveness is hard to understand in easy cases, even more so when the wronged person no longer exists. I wonder if sheer self-preservation will make it difficult for them to come to terms with what they’ve done, since fully appreciating it might destroy them. (I’m not sure I could continue living, if I were in their position.)

On the other hand, it’s worth remembering that Ravi and Wei are teenagers. They are newly-minted responsible agents who pulled a prank that turned tragic; they didn’t deliberately bring about this outcome. (There but for fortune, for many of us.) More accurately, they didn’t bring it about themselves; it took another agent’s decision to create the horrible result.

As with so many cases of suicide, I feel empathy at the pain that pushed Clementi to this decision and– forgive me for admitting this– frustration at his choice. His postings are poignant in hindsight because they suggest that he was close to living out a much different story: he complaints, the two are disciplined, he gets a new room. In time he laughs about it. “You think you had a bad coming out experience?!” That was within his reach. Heartbreaking.

16 comments

October 2, 2010 at 9:30 pm

Vance Maverick

Burke’s fantasy of their being punished forever like Prometheus is indeed over the top. No punishment could fit this crime — better for them to make a limited penance and try to move on if they can. (But then, I’m not much of a believer in punishment that “fits the crime” in the sense of either retribution or atonement.)

The case, while peculiarly horrible, resembles, I think, the problem of responsibility for death in a car crash. A moment’s misjudgment (or an evening’s in the case of drunkenness, or a couple evenings’ in this case), and you have to live the rest of your life with the responsibility for another’s death. Perhaps naively, I think that the guilty driver is responsible, as it were, for a fraction of the death — that the action taken was not directed toward murder, nor 100% certain to result in death. There will be no forgiveness in the sense of making things OK, but life should go on.

October 3, 2010 at 1:09 am

J B

While I agree that punishment for life is extreme, I also think anyone committing cyberbullying knowing that in other cases it has lead to suicide has committed a form of manslaughter. Given the number of recent cases of cyberbullying leading to suicide, people should know what the possible consequences are.

October 3, 2010 at 5:19 am

dave

There’s not enough active atonement in our current notions of criminal justice. Though it is true that there is something horrifying about the prospect of perpetual acting-out of institutionalised remorse, there is something not a lot less horrifying about the notion that one can cause another’s death and [sooner or later] just ‘move on’.

October 3, 2010 at 5:50 am

politicalfootball

So what happened?

I don’t think this question has been answered, and people seem to be making a lot of assumptions that aren’t supported by the facts.

Contra Burke, there doesn’t seem to have been a recording. It seems pretty clear the victim wasn’t outed via this video. From what I’ve seen, it’s not clear that this was a hate crime. (Clementi himself made a clear distinction between his feelings about the incident and its actual motivation.)

And (from what I’ve heard) the exact nature of the video hasn’t been ascertained. There’s a key distinction (in my mind at least) between being caught on camera kissing, say, and being videoed performing fellatio.

Even in the most forgiving scenario, the perps were real assholes, especially the roommate, and probably need to be suspended or expelled. And it’s not hard to see how this incident could have led to suicide – especially depending on what the actual details were.

But we don’t know the actual details.

October 3, 2010 at 6:03 am

dana

there is something not a lot less horrifying about the notion that one can cause another’s death and [sooner or later] just ‘move on’.

That’s true of any finite system of punishment, whether they perform the penitent in Burke’s play or whether they spend five years in prison.

October 3, 2010 at 8:38 am

Stillonmt

I think the word “musing” has inappropriate connotations here.

October 3, 2010 at 9:18 am

Vance Maverick

That’s true of any finite system of punishment, whether they perform the penitent in Burke’s play or whether they spend five years in prison.

Exactly. If we’re going to get angry at the thought of criminals finishing their sentences, that means we’re committed to life or death sentences in all cases.

October 3, 2010 at 9:28 am

Vance Maverick

Also, remember that the public punishment and the private atonement for a deed are not the same — one can end while the other goes on.

October 3, 2010 at 10:49 am

dave

All true. We do hope, mostly, that prison, for example, rehabilitates [though we know all too often it does not]. I would hope that successful rehabilitation would include a move in the direction of moral responsibility by the prisoner. We might then hope to see a private atonement continuing, which presumably would have some outward signs. This is all unresolvable moral calculus, of course, akin to a post-Tridentine Catholic worrying about whether penitence comes from contrition or merely attrition – but that itself is a ‘metaphysicalisation’ of a very real human problem.

October 3, 2010 at 1:45 pm

Andy Vance

newly-minted responsible agents who pulled a prank that turned tragic

I’m not exactly sure why, but “prank” seems to miss the mark wildly. In large part because it seems clearly intended to shame Clementi for his sexual preference. But also because the Internet is a weapon of potential mass and permanent humiliation. It’s not at all like passing polaroids around the dorm.

October 4, 2010 at 11:26 am

matt w

the Internet is a weapon of potential mass and permanent humiliation. It’s not at all like passing polaroids around the dorm.

And it’s worth pointing out that things were pretty horrible for the Star Wars Kid.

October 4, 2010 at 3:23 pm

But then they got better for the star wars kid.

October 4, 2010 at 3:59 pm

Anderson

I think the max NJ sentence for invasion of privacy is said to be 5 years, which sounds about right.

October 4, 2010 at 5:50 pm

matt w

But then they got better for the star wars kid.