Tyler Clementi Story

1.  Who is responsible for Tyler's Death? Perhaps more than one person is responsible? You may want to place responsibility based on percentage. Some examples of who may hold responsibility are, Tyler himself, Tylers Parents, Dharun Ravi, Molly Wei, or even Rutger's university?

After reading four different sources (including the two sources provided from BB, I would have to say that Tyler was responsible for his own death. I believe there were influential factors such as his mother not initially embracing that her son was gay, and then of course the incident at hand. Tyler's roommate, Dharun Ravi had no intentions of Tyler to cause physical harm or death to himself. Ravi's childish actions perpetuated Tyler's insecurity of being gay, which most likely lead him to jump off the George Washington Bridge.  After the hearing of New Jersey VS Dharun Ravi, Rutgers’s University changed some of their dorm room policies, which made it more comfortable for students to choose roommates.  Having more freedom to choose roommates regardless of the student’s sex, Rutgers believes it’ll help prevent another incident like this from happening again.

2.  Is there something that could have been done to prevent this?  It seems like some people watched the posted video, why didn't anyone step up?

Of course there could have been something that could have prevented this from happening, but just like all other things in life, something tragic needs to happen before policies are changed.  Could a student have spoke up, sure, but would that have prevented Tyler from committing suicide?  I guess we’ll never know.  It’s the classic game of “Could of, would of, and should of”.  I do believe if the video had never been streamed it may have prevented Tyler from jumping off the George Washing, but only Ravi could have prevented that.

3. How do you think that anti-bullying laws will impact cases like this?

I think the same laws under New Jersey Law, the privacy laws, will be upheld with much more significance due to the sensitivity of bullying in modern America.  Unfortunately there have been numerous cyber-bullying incidents that have lead to far too many teen suicides.  I think cyber-bullying laws may help prevent teen suicides, but I honestly believe there just needs to be more awareness of bullying in general.  We see bullying stories every day in the news so I don’t think new laws are working as effectively as legislation thought it would.  You need to address the issue at the core, which is educate the public on what bullying is and the affects it may have on individuals.  

Additional source used to gather info.