I write about the Rutgers case today:
Dharun Ravi is the Rutgers student who used a webcam to spy on his gay roommate, Tyler Clementi. When Clementi committed suicide by throwing himself off the George Washington Bridge, the tragedy became a morality play. It was widely reported that Ravi had posted a video of the closeted Clementi having sex, and thus outed him and drove him to take his own life. Shy and a talented violinist, Clementi became a national symbol of anti-gay bullying. “Something must be done,” declared Ellen DeGeneres.
The prosecutors have duly done something: After he refused to admit guilt in a plea deal, they have thrown the book at Ravi, who could face ten years in prison if convicted in a trial that has just begun. They are pursuing Ravi to the utmost despite the unraveling of the tidy black-and-white story that rightly outraged people at the time of Clementi’s death. In a long, nuanced account of the case in The New Yorker, Ian Parker reports that the initial narrative about the tragedy was entirely erroneous: “There was no posting, no observed sex, and no closet.”
I take a dimmer view of Dharun Ravi than Derb does, but I agree with him that this case is a travesty. For a counter view, see Peter Hansen in the comments and in this long, thoughtful blog post.
Imagine someone secretly plants a camera in your daughter's dorm room and broadcasts on the internet a video of her and her boyfriend alone in the room. Should that be legal?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYo, Jason!
Do you ever actually bother to read the articles you criticize?
The whole point of the article is that there WAS NO POSTING!
“There was no posting, no observed sex, and no closet.”
Are you being paid to troll here, or do you come by this ignorance naturally?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, of course it should be "legal".
At most it should be treated by the college authorities as an infraction of whatever dormitory code applies, if they even have such a code.
By the way, I notice you fail to mention that that "someone" also lives in that same dorm room. Have you ever heard the expression "hey, get a room!"? Implicit in the commonly understood meaning of that phrase is "hey, get a PRIVATE room!"
You seem awfully quick and willing to play fast and loose with the Constitution.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat part of the constitution do you think I'm playing fast and loose with? Is there a new amendment that goes "Congress shall make no law regarding secretly recording your roommate hooking up?"
I'm suggesting that from the accounts I've read, Ravi's actions seem criminal under New Jersey law. And the state of New Jersey agrees because they charged him. And his attorneys don't seem to be arguing that the charge or the law is unconstitutional.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut your question was whether what happened "should" be illegal. I have no objection to privacy statutes, but if the one in New Jersey covers what happened here, it is too broad.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf you guys believe there's a constitutional argument that gets Ravi off the hook, you might want to tell his defense lawyers immediately, because they're not making such an argument. Are they just not good at their jobs? Do they not care if their client goes to jail?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI didn't say anything about the Constitution. You asked if such behavior "should" be illegal. I say that if the statute covers what Ravi did in its entirely, then no, the behavior shouldn't be illegal. It should be an internal college matter, and Clementi should have been the one in trouble, with Ravi perhaps warned not to do what he did under different circumstances.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse*in its entirety
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo one is claiming it should be.
We find it a stretch to prosecute that perpetrator for the murder of the daughter if she should take her own life.
You know, there are about 1,000 miles of space between thinking such intrusiveness should be legal, and thinking it should lead to a murder prosecution.
There already are laws for prosecuting wanton violations of people's privacy without stretching the murder statutes to points of absurdity.
And if such laws on breaking and entering, snooping, and the like, don't exist in NJ, then I'm sure Chris Christie will be sympathetic to lead the charge to enact them after Ravi is acquitted of killing Clementi.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat murder prosecution? There is no murder prosecution here.
"stretching the murder statutes to points of absurdity" Ravi isn't charged with murder or any form of homicide. You don't know what you're talking about.
"acquitted of killing?" Ravi isn't charged with killing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe're not talking about "someone" here. We are talking about the co-resident of the dorm room activating his computer video camera. When you share a room with someone, you have no reasonable right to privacy from the co-resident.
Would you have the same wrong opinion if one room mate had been violating campus policy by dealing drugs out of that dorm room while his room mate was away, and the absent co-resident filmed the drug deals on his personal computer?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFirst off, it wasn't secretly planted.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTwo, if it was the room mate who didn't secretly plant a camera, it shouldn't be illegal.
Imagine someone secretly plants a camera in your daughter's dorm room and broadcasts on the internet a video of her and her boyfriend alone in the room.
Your purpose may be to remove the homosexual aspect of the saga, but you have also removed the part about the sex partner's being a total stranger procured over the Internet, an older man who was not a student. Plus, in the actual case, nothing was broadcast over the Internet.
Whether or not any of that affects or should affect the legality of what happened, it certainly puts Rutgers and Clementi himself in a bad light.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI agree this puts Rutgers in a bad light. Dorm rooms are on-campus. Are Rutgers students during orientation not given guide lines about what can happen on campus and what conduct is unacceptable? Does Rutgers simply allow students to use their dorm rooms as Hook-up Hotel?
Clementi overstepped his bounds by conducting himself in a manner that would/could have embarrassed his room mate. If he wanted to hook-up with someone, he should have gotten them to pop for a hotel room, not using his dorm room on university property. We are so concerned with the rights of "gay" students that we are ignoring that no student has the right to put another student in an embarassing position due to their actions, like having sex in a dorm room. Was Clementi expecting that his room mate, who was also paying for that room, should have to knock before entering? Will the next case be in a divorce where the cheating husband/wife's attorney claims the spouse should have knocked before entering the house, catching their other half in a compromising position?
Parents send their kids to universities, and house them in university dorms, with the expectation that the university will have conduct guidelines. Obviously, that expectation has gone out the window.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGoing by the tenor of your post, I'm guessing that your screen name refers to the fact that you retired in 2005 and that you are in your 70s. I'm not sure how anyone under that age would be surprised by college students having sex. College students have been having sex in dorm rooms since before I was born, and I'm not that young.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow terrible for an older person (if you're even right about that) to have an opinion. Perhaps he or she is foresighted rather than behind the times.
Whatever college students have or have not been doing since before you were born, it is wrong for Rutgers to not only allow one roommate to commandeer a common room for sex -- with an older stranger from off-campus, no less -- but even to punish *only* the ousted roommate after the events came to light. Rutgers is shameful, and it is amazing that any parent would pay dearly for the privilege of placing his child in such an absurd situation. Yes, most colleges are probably just like Rutgers in this regard, but then most college administrators have lost their minds.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe sort of people who use their dorm rooms the way Clementi used his - kicking his roommate out and treating it as if it were his own personal turf - are reviled on campus.
It's rude, it's greedy, and the same "code" that says it's "fair game" to do it, also says it's "fair game" if the kicked-out roommate refuses to stay kicked.
You can't use that "code" to defend Clementi without also exonerating his roommate. It's tantamount to saying that it's okay to hit someone (because only whiners mind being hit) but it's obviously bullying if the victim hits back.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWherever you purchased the crystal ball that allows you to gleen anything about an anonymous poster from their moniker, return it. You didn't get your money's worth.
Also, I find you comment to be full of age discrimination (you know, the stupid old person is just sooooooo out of touch with modern day behavior).
Just because kids have sex in dorm rooms doesn't mean that universities should not make every effort to prevent that type of behavior. For one, it is unfair to the room mate of a shared dorm room who has to work around another person's sexual escapades. If I am sharing the expenses of a dorm room, I darn sure don't want to have to accomodate my room mate's love life.
And if I am a parent paying (according to the Rutgers website) $24,017/yr for tuition, fee and a shared dorm room, and my kid's room mate is using it for Hook-up Hotel, I am raising more cain than any university administrator wants to listen to. I am not picking up the tab for over $25K/yr just so my kid can be locked out of their dorm room while his room mate majors in sex.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDarn, I paid good money for that crystal ball. Oh well, at least the eye of newt and toadstool seem to be fresh. Maybe I'm wrong about other posters as well. I assume that Madisonian is either a fan of James Madison or the University of Wisconsin and that Order 66 is a Star Wars geek, but maybe not.
As for universities trying to prevent consenting adults from having sex in dorm rooms, they might as well try to get the sun to rise in the west. How exactly would they do that? You are also assuming most room mates have a problem with it - from my experience in college both as a room mate and as a resident advisor, it almost never happens. It isn't that hard to give the other person some privacy, and most people anticipate needing some privacy of their own at a future time.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow defeatist of you on behalf of the sun, Clareita. Actually, I'm not that old, either, and I lived in a single-sex dorm with no visitation -- at a state school, no less. There remain colleges with that set-up. Granted, that is not what these students bargained for; at the same time, I doubt they or their parents figured the college would require them to accommodate their roommates' homosexual trysts with strangers from off-campus. If they did figure that, they are fools to pay for living under such appalling conditions.
In any case, of course universities can set their rules and enforce them.
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