I always remember the scene from Sex, Lies and Videotape when Andy MacDowell is talking to her therapist about how hard it is to live her daily life when she reads about so much pain and suffering in the Newspaper everyday.
That’s how I feel after reading about Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, 18, a freshman at Rutgers University, who committed suicide after his roommate Dharun Ravi and fellow freshman Molly Wei secretly filmed a sexual encounter between Clementi and another man in his dorm room and broadcast it across the Internet.
Raise your hand if you are gay, but didn’t come out until college.
College is a time of incredible growth and discovery about yourself as an individual. For many it’s the first time you are on your own. It’s a time of incredible vulnerability, but also a chance to embrace or claim your true identity.
Bias is thinking that someone else’s customs are less than your own.
Bias is believing–consciously or unconsciously– that because a person’s lifestyle doesn’t match the majority norm it’s okay to ridicule.
Well, it’s not.
Currently Ravi and Wei are being charged with invasion of privacy. If you ask me, it’s a hate crime (Bias-crime charges are being weighed in the case.)
Or, if you look at the case of Phoebe Prince, a recent immigrant from Ireland who hanged herself in response to cyber-bullying, perhaps murder is the better charge.
My deepest sympathies go out to Clementi’s family.
