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Wow. It’s hard to fathom that Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi’s tragic death means so little when you hear this verdict. Dharun Ravi, who used a remote webcam in the dorm room he shared with Clementi to capture Tyler’s sexual encounter with another man, has been sentenced to a mere 30 days in jail. You’ll recall that just days after Clementi learned of the video, the 18-year-old killed himself, jumping off the George Washington Bridge. NJ Star Ledger:
Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman, before imposing sentence, sternly addressed Ravi after the young man from Plainsboro unexpectedly chose not to address the court.
“I heard this jury say guilty 288 times, and I haven’t heard you apologize once,” said Berman.
Still, he found that Ravi acted not out of hate, but of “colossal insensitivity.”
“This individual was not convicted of a hate crime. He was convicted of a bias crime and there’s a difference. I do not believe he hated Tyler Clementi. He had no reason to. But I do believe that he acted out of colossal insensitivity,” said the judge during the televised hearing.
The judge imposed a sentence of 30 days, along with three years probation. Ravi was also given 300 hours of community service and told to contribute $10,000 to a state licensed community based organization dedicated to assisting victims of bias crimes.
The prosecutor also charged that Ravi deleted a Twitter post alerting others to a September 21 encounter between the two gay men, replacing it “with a false post on Twitter intended to mislead the investigation.” Evidence was presented showing that the defendant provided false information to investigators and attempted to persuade witnesses not to testify against him.
Molly Wei, also a former Rutgers student who admitted to having joined Ravi in viewing Clementi and M.B. remotely via the webcam stream, struck a plea deal last year in which she agreed to testify against Ravi, perform community service, and complete a cyber-bullying education program.
Garden State Equality Chair Steven Goldstein shares his reaction to what feels to many like a wrist-slap:
Moments ago, Judge Berman decided to sentence Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail. We have been public in taking a position of balance: We opposed throwing the book at Dharun Ravi. We have spoken out against giving him the maximum sentence of 10 years in jail and against deporting him. That would have been vengeance beyond punishment and beyond sending a message to the rest of society.
But we have similarly rejected the other extreme that Ravi should have gotten no jail time at all, and today’s sentencing is closer to that extreme than the other. This was not merely a childhood prank gone awry. This was not a crime without bias.
Remember that Ravi had messaged his motivation in violating Tyler’s privacy: “I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.” Remember that before Tyler took his life, Ravi messaged a friend: ”Keep the gays away.” And remember that because Ravi had tampered with evidence, his post-facto messages to Tyler that he, Ravi, had no problem with gay people understandably lost their credibility to the jury.
Dharun Ravi wasn’t convicted of a bias crime unfairly. Dharun Ravi was convicted of a bias crime because his own words broadcast anti-gay animus to Tyler Clementi and the world.
Since the verdict, Dharun Ravi’s extraordinary lawyers and their media operation have deemphasized these facts, stunningly able to recast Ravi in the role of victim, scapegoat and even folk hero. But we remember the trial itself – a long and painstaking trial where Ravi had the best team possible, unlike many other defendants charged with serious crimes.
None of us not directly affected by this tragedy has reason to be happy. Tyler Clementi is no longer with us. Another man – M.B. – has seen this tragedy wreak havoc on his own life. The life of a third man, Dharun Ravi, will never be the same again. And Tyler’s family will forever have to live with the loss of their son, brother, nephew and cousin. May the family receive strength from their loving memories.
Those who have oppose giving Dharun Ravi jail time have asked, hasn’t he suffered enough? But we believe there’s another question: Has Dharun Ravi done enough? Has he done enough to use his place in history to speak out against student bullying and to make a positive impact on millions of lives across our state and nation?
Thus far, no.
Though Tyler Clementi has left us, the rest of Dharun Ravi’s life will help tell his life story. Ravi’s own lawyer portrayed him as a young man who engaged merely in jerky behavior. Ravi can stay that course, or he can do some good with his life by making amends and fighting for the justice and dignity of every individual, including people who are LGBT. That much is up to Ravi.
As for all of us, we must continue our focus on building a better world, one free of bullying of every student, so that a tragedy like this never happens again. That’s what New Jersey’s Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights, the country’s strongest anti-bullying law, is ultimately about.
Our thoughts and prayers are with all whose lives have been changed by this tragedy.
Campus Pride notes this case provides an opportunity for reflection and proves the need for proactive approach to campus and community safety and inclusion.
All colleges, their faculty, staff and students, and all communities everywhere, can heed the lessons Rutgers officials were forced to learn as tragic events unfolded on their campus. Several individuals, including campus housing staff and Ravi’s and Clementi’s hallmates, noted during the trial that they knew of the harassment faced by Clementi, but no one ever firmly stood up against it. Bystanders to bullying and harassment cannot be tolerated; we must all be up-standers as individuals and join with others to create communities of respect and civility.
“Every person has a responsibility to stand up for those who experience bullying and harassment – tragedies can be averted anytime even a single voice speaks out for the voiceless,” said Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride. “Bystanders – those who witness bullying or harassment and do nothing to stop it – can plead neither ignorance nor innocence. Active silence can be as damaging as active bullying and result in tragedies like Clementi’s death.”
Simple and commonsense steps could have prevented Clementi’s suicide. Since his death, Rutgers University has made several steps in bridging the gap between their LGBT students’ needs and the campus’ offered services, but too many colleges refuse to see the consequences of inaction and remain unsafe for LGBT students.
Of more than 4,000 colleges and universities across the U.S., less than 10 percent have opted to voluntarily assess their campus’ policies and practices using the Campus Pride LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index (www.campusprideindex.org). Less than seven percent of schools offer institutional support to LGBT students, such as an LGBT student center or programs director. Only 13 percent offer non-discrimination protections on the basis of sexual orientation and just six percent protect students on the basis of gender identity. Only one school, Illinois’ Elmhurst College, asks students demographic questions about sexual orientation and gender identity on its admissions application.
Campus Pride calls on all colleges and universities to take steps now to fully include LGBT students on their campuses and to create safer, more welcoming environments where LGBT students can grow in their academic careers. Programs and policy implementation – such as anti-discrimination policies, safe and inclusive student conduct codes, gender-neutral housing, LGBT living-learning communities, hate-crime and bias-motivated incident response and LGBT-inclusive healthcare – are not optional.
9 Comments
Campus Pride left out the most important part. If you’re an on-campus crime victim, go to the police, not to the school authorities first.
Shred a life, render someone hopeless, helpless, tornemted within and without til they kill themselves and face 30 days in jail…provided the victim is an LGBT. American Justice.
I’m honestly beside myself right now. If vicious crimes can be committed against us and the perpetrators get off with no better than a wrist slap, there can be no equality for GLBT people.
They could have at least have had the decency to deport this sociopathic thug. Imagine all the thousands of gay spouses in America who face deportation every year, just because they’re gay — and the judge couldn’t even ship a bigot out to seas.
You know, we just locked up a non-violent grandma with a life sentence because she was tangentially involved in the sale of drugs (she didn’t do it, but she owned a bus where ‘too many people got caught with drugs’), in what way does it make sense to only lock up a Dharin Ravi for 30 days… when he actually committed acts of mental violence that caused someone to kill themselves, and showed no remorse at any point whatsoever?
I’ll probably get flamed for this, but…
Do I think this sentence was too light? Yes, it was a conviction that deserved a bit more jail time (perhaps 6mos to a year), but this is more that slap on the wrist as some seem to think. 300 hours community service, the fine and three years probation wont’ be quite the cake-walk some people seem to think… there will be many eyes on Ravi waiting for the slightest deviation or infraction. Something a simple as a traffic stop will land him back in court.
And I know that this may be an unpopular view, but to heap all the responsibility for Tyler Clementi’s death upon one person is far to simplistic a view of this tragedy. Clearly, there was much more going on within Clementi’s poor psyche — a trail of torment — that led him to commit suicide. Ravi’s actions may have been the final straw, but what about everything (and everyone) else that led Clementi to the breaking point?
Maybe it’s because I’m also trying to come at this from a perspective of forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting or letting someone off the hook, but finding a place where those that do us harm can do no more — or worse, make us so fixated on revenge and anger that it consumes and blinds us to the possibilities of something better.
Mike,
No one is heaping any additional responsibility on Ravi than what he himself committed. He wasn’t convicted of murder or any kind of homicide charge. In fact, he wasn’t even convicted of the full-scale hate crimes law, just the lesser charge of bias intimidation.
He attempted to tamper with evidence and intimidated witnesses to give a favorable testimony and never showed any remorse for what he did do, never mind the role it played in what he didn’t.
No, Dharin Ravi never pushed Clementi off the bridge. But he tortured the kid. In the 48 hours before Clementi’s death, Clementi was fixated on the tweets that Ravi posted, opening them up on his computer over a dozen times — to say nothing of how long he agonized over them each and every time.
There has to be a punishment for what Ravi did, a real punishment. Community service, probation and 30 days in a jail — not prison — doesn’t come anywhere close to it. This wasn’t a “lock him up and throw away the key” moment, but he certainly should have been in prison for the 5 or so years that seemed likely after the conviction by a jury of his peers.
The whole point is that it shouldn’t take a suicide for people who commit these crimes to be arrested, tried and convicted of them. And wanting a strong deterrent penalty has nothing to do with “revenge;” it is sensible towards actually achieving a deterrent effect with criminal sentences.
30 days, for destroying a life? Judge must be smoking crack cocaine or hooked on Oxycontin?. Judge’s reasoning must be, in a country where the right to privacy was obliterated by the tele-com in conjunction with the government, 30 days for destroying and eviscerating personal privacy is acceptable? What a fucking joke, but it is not. The punishment is in no way proportionate to the crime. The judge is a coward……..
What about all the other charges he was found guilty of ?
I’d argue that if you or I were charged and convicted of any one of the crimes Ravi is guilty of, we’d get a lot more than 30 days.
Which brings me to another related issue. MANY gay media people, like Sullivan and Savage, to name just two, have called for sympathy for Ravi, ignoring that he was charged with multiple crimes ranging from destroying evidence to lying to the cops and conspiring to do so.
Yet nobody is scrutinizing our self appointed media whores.
And lets not forget that Ravi has never shown any remorse nor apologized for anything.
We need to hold everyone accountable; Ravi isn’t the only one that should be apologizing. Savage should show a little integrity, for starters. but he wont. He’s always been a piece of dogshit.
This verdict is encouraging people to commit anti-Gay violence.