by L. C.
Yesterday, Dharun Ravi was http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/04/20/2011-04-20_dharun_ravi_indicted_on_15_counts_tied_to_spying_on_suicide_of_rutgers_roommate_.html.
Imagine being one of Tyler’s parents, sitting there in the courtroom, hearing the details of how your child’s roommate, Ravi, engaged in a prolonged, personal campaign of intentional, targeted acts of humiliation against your son, and doing so because he knew he would be intimidated and not fight back. You have only to look at the faces of the fresh-faced violin prodigy in Clementi’s photos, and compare them to the more athletic and obviously socially confident faces of Ravi and Wei, to get an idea of the high school dynamics of popularity, social status, and differentiating class and ethnicity that underplay this drama. Tyler may have been vulnerable because of his sexuality, and how he perceived others perceived that, but it would be a shame to bury this tragedy in a radical liberal agenda that oversimplifies it as a case of homosexual targeting. Ravi and, to a lesser extent, Wei, were two bullies who found in Tyler an easy target. Tyler’s vulnerability that attracted Ravi and Wei may have been tied to his sexual orientation, but his case is, unfortunately, only one in a trend of cyberbullying tragedies. This trend makes it clear how vulnerable some of our teens are, especially in an age that overstates the importance of technological socialization, and how we need to make certain they have real friends, a healthy sense of personal esteem, and a healthy sense of real world teen community. Glowing soccer athlete Alexis Pilkington, 17, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/29/earlyshow/main6343077.shtml after being the victim of a campaign of vicious taunts on social networking sites.
The story of Lori Drew targeting 13-year-old Megan Meier made prime time news. When Drew learned that Meier and her tween daughter had had a falling out, she created a fake MySpace account to pose as a teenage boy to befriend and then betray Meier. Knowing Meier was troubled, having been under the care of a psychiatrist since the third grade, Drew knew she was dealing with a vulnerable and disadvantaged child who would suffer from the effect of her actions. http://meganmeierfoundation.cwsit.org/megansStory.php in her bedroom closet, destitute, 20 minutes after her online crush dumped her, after leading her on in her isolated world, telling her what kind of horrible person he really thought she was after all.
Her story is heart-breaking, and echoes much of the social isolation and awkwardness Tyler must have also shared from being in the throes of teenage hormones, change, tendency toward depression, with self-esteem vulnerabilities only made worse from the isolation of being different. Most victims of cyberbullies are targeted because they are different. Their attackers know they http://ridgefield.patch.com/articles/cyberbullying-a-fatal-reality-in-schools-and-homes because of their lack of self-esteem stemming from those differences, which make them stand out socially.
One of the most infamous cases involved a dispute when 33-year-old Ann Arbor woman Jennifer Petkov had a falling out with her neighbor, Rebecca Rose. When Rose apparently did not respond soon enough to a text message from Petkov asking if her children could come play when Rose’s granddaughter was having a birthday party, Petkov began a http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1319276/Couple-taunt-Huntingtons-disease-sufferer-Kathleen-Edwards-7-Facebook.html.
However, most victims are not so fortunate. Fresh-faced 15-year old Irish immigrant http://www.truecrimereport.com/2010/01/phoebe_prince_15_commits_suici.php. His learning disorder had left him depressed and battling issues with self-esteem, leaving him vulnerable to bullying-induced suicide.
The commonalities of these stories should be apparent — the kids are white, mostly middle class, and all but Clementi were heterosexual. They were all in the vulnerable tween to teen age, dealing with their sexuality, and vulnerable because of it. With Halligan and Clementi, their masculinity was repeatedly targeted with sustained hounding. In the cases of the young girls, it was also sexuality — their budding interest in and first contact with boys, and their self-image about how their peers viewed their bodies and attractiveness. Tyler may have been 18, but he fit the profile perfectly: the geeky, white, middle-classed misfit with self-esteem issues about his attractiveness, social status among his peers, and sexuality. Instead of liberals making this a gay hate crime issue, we ought to all rally around Tyler’s parents and back them in bringing to light — and justice — what this really is: a vulnerable teen issue. Parent’s need to be aware their child’s differences may make him or her a target of deadly harassment.
The evidence that we need to do much more to bolster the self-esteem and socialization of our teenagers during their socially awkward and vulnerable developmental years is staggering — http://www.cyberbullying.us/ are cropping up to deal with the growing issue of cyberbullying.
The importance of a teen’s peers during this time cannot be ignored, and the insidious nature of technology and its false sense of instant intimacy and acceptance can lure an insecure loner into dangerous relationships. More than ever, parents must be aware and make certain the Internet does not define their teenager’s social world — that he or she has healthy, supportive friends, and community support they can trust, in addition to involved and supportive parents. Those of you who remember your teenage years will recall that teens cannot always confide in their parents without consequences — it is important that they have other reliable support members available for those times when they cannot or will not talk things out with mom or dad.
When you look at the story of what http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1374476/Facebook-bullying-alert-developed- concerned-father.html invented to help protect children from cyber bullying, it’s telling. The words "fat" and "gay" strike directly to the heart of any young teenage girl or boy’s self-esteem, regardless of their orientation. A young woman’s sexual identity and status is based on her figure and attractiveness, and a young boy’s is based on his perceived masculinity. You don’t have to be the parent of a gay child for Tyler ‘s pain to be palpable — most of us have been the equivalent of the awkward, sensitive boy in this specialized and sustained game of sexual "kick the geek".
That’s why our hearts reach out to Mr. and Mrs. Clementi, Tyler ‘s parents. Imagine listening in that courtroom to the details of a story where your sensitive, vulnerable, talented son was systematically harrassed to death by someone — someone who exploited those insecurities to use them to bolster his own online peer status and masculinity by competition. Listening to someone to whom your son was a target of convenience, not even consequential enough to be an object of personal hate, but a prop to be tortured for peer approval. And to know — knowing your son well — how much each incident hurt and have a good idea of how he suffered internally, and to only know after the fact, unable to protect him.
Understandably, Tyler’s parents are holding Rutgers accountable for failing to take steps in response to their son’s complaints concerning Ravi’s actions before his suicide. Certainly, liberal Rutgers did not abandon Tyler because he was gay, but because he was yet another insignificant, white, middle-classed, geek underclassman being hazed. Or maybe, ironically, it had to do with superceding liberal policies concerning Ravi ‘s and Wei’s ethnicities — getting involved in an issue involving talented Indian and Asian students. Information concerning Rutgers’ demographics and Affirmative Action policies, and how much these might be under scrutiny, is not covered in the news, nor is the financial aid status of Ravi and Wei. But one does wonder, as the parent or potential parent of a vulnerable middle class teen, the extent to which cultural and racial undertones fueled Tyler ‘s targeting. Would Ravi have been so merciless to him had Tyler shared his race? I don’t think so. I tend to think superceding cultural commonalities would have tempered that, although I think foreign cultural views on homosexuality may have also played a part in this interpersonal drama.
Please take a few minutes reach out to Tyler’s parents. Please support them in their crusade against the school and lend them your support. While you are at it, remind them that Tyler was, in a sense, everybody’s child, in light of the cyberbullying stories. And ask them to please not let their tragedy become a football for liberal agenda and hate legislation — it may very well have been the results of political correctness that kept officials from acting on Tyler’s complaints. Maybe fear of litigation hindered them from moving forward to protect him as they should have. It would be a shame if the Clementi’s unwittingly perpetuated that kind of climate, instead of fighting it to get the justice Tyler deserves — and the protection for others that he was denied.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-01/clementi-family-releases-statement/#
http://www.facebook.com/pages/In-Honor-of-Tyler-Clementi/153517964681258?sk=info