Friends of Trash at Rutgers who secretly taped Tyler Defend Them

this is sickening. i don't think the article means to do this but it almost makes these 2 pieces of trash out to be some victims. like who gives a shit about how popular they were, how they did on a test etc. what they did to Tyler was inexcusable. they should be ashamed along with their family. the article also refers to what they did as a "prank" .

hopefully the rest of their life is ruined.


<Now, just weeks into their freshman year at Rutgers, Ravi and Wei not only are confronting the law, but global opprobrium.

The story of the webcam and Clementi’s suicide has been reported in at least five Australian newspapers, as well as the Irish Examiner, Coventry Evening Telegraph in England and the Evening Times in Glasgow, Scotland.

On the internet, news accounts can be found in Vietnamese and French, Greek and Turkish, Danish, Portuguese and Javanese.

Facebook pages also have been created — for the victim ("In Honor of Tyler Clementi") and both in support of the accused ("Molly Wei is innocent") and against them ("Manslaughter Charges for Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei").

Most of the internet musings run from "Guilty!" to "Here’s hoping they both go to jail for a long time," to "Two pieces of scum."

Few of the postings reflect the picture friends paint of Ravi and Wei: smart, well-liked, on the threshold of promising futures.>


i guess based on what they did their friends didn't know them well or are just like them.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/10/friends_of_dharun_ravi_molly_w.html

IF they did this as it is claimed, then they should rightly pay a social price .... I dont know the law, but I am guessing there is no law against this specifically ....

You Tube has lots of stuff which I doubt is completely authorized.

I will take your word on it though

"The Middlesex County prosecutor’s office said Mr. Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, 18, of Plainsboro, N.J., and another classmate, Molly Wei, 18, of Princeton Junction, N.J., had each been charged with two counts of invasion of privacy for using “the camera to view and transmit a live image” of Mr. Clementi. The most serious charges carry a maximum sentence of five years.

"Mr. Ravi was charged with two additional counts of invasion of privacy for trying a similar live feed on the Internet on Sept. 21, the day before the suicide. A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, James O’Neill, said the investigation was continuing, but he declined to “speculate on additional charges.”

"Steven Goldstein, chairman of the gay rights group Garden State Equality, said Wednesday that he considered the death a hate crime. “We are sickened that anyone in our society, such as the students allegedly responsible for making the surreptitious video, might consider destroying others’ lives as a sport,” he said in a statement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/nyregion/30suicide.html

But, good ...

That covers stuff like this. My state does.

But there are some big differences here. First of all, most people will not tag the victims name to those postings, which is why they do not know. Secondly, the poster of the video will not invite people who know the parties involved to watch it. Using this as a method to out a gay person is especially cruel considering how much hate being openly gay can bring in some places. Finally, it appears as though this contributed to a death.

Without even considering how all these points work out in our legal system, I certainly feel a desire to beat the shit out of those other two kids.

You are guessing wrong.

But if I did something that lethally stupid, I'd hope their support would be more of the silent friend type. Think the first few chapters of Job, and how it all went to hell as soon as his pals opened their big yaps.

May you never have a friend or family member do something stupid, shocking, or even downright evil. Denial/defense is a difficult emotion to overcome.

We, the public, still don't even know what really happened and won't until the prosecutors come forth with their case and these people quoted probably don't either. All they know is their friends are in huge ass trouble and they're trying to wrap their minds around it.

you think this is the first time these 2 made fun of gays. i'm sure the ones quoted laughed along with them.

as for what we know/don't know. i'm going by what we have learned so far as we always do.

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and there are many good people who would look like what you consider to be "neo redneck".

bigots , scumbags, shitty people don't "look" a certain way.

as for those defending them, i bet they joined in their anti gay bashing.

and i'm not convicting anyone. i never said they shouldn't have a trial. i'm spekaing of what i know so far .

that specifically pertains to her, especially with regard to the planning of this little "prank." Maybe the roommate just went into her room, opened up his laptop or asked to borrow hers, and then showed her the video. Would that make her culpable? Why would she be any more guilty than anyone else who observed -- but didn't set up -- the video?

So he asks to borrow her computer to look at a web address. Is that the basis for criminal charges? If Molly Wei is charged, shouldn't every student be charged who also looked at that address? Do we even know what the roommate said to them? For example, "Hey, look at this page. You gotta see this!" Should every student who then looked be charged?

would be if Tyler was under 18. In which case it would be child porn, and thus people who viewed it could potentially face charges. Since he was 18 that's not going to happen.

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and class bigotry is just as ugly and wrong as any other kind of bigotry.

Because they said things like "she was a really happy person" when a reporter asked them about these people that they knew in high school? I don't think that assumption is justified.

Fuck them.

Longer than ten seconds? A day? A week? Would you wait for them to explain to your face what happened?

'Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into Molly's room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay,'

Two days later he posted another entry directing his 150 Twitter followers to iChat, an internet messaging service which carries live video feed.

'Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes it's happening again,' he wrote on September 21.

"there is a viciousness to many young people today that is scary -- meaning I just wonder where and how they got it and what kind of adults they will grow into. A lot of kids just love to tear down other people and hurt them. It is 100x worse than when I was in school and 10x worse than it was when I started teaching. And they have no remorse and just don't care if they hurt someone. Many of them don't care at all. It is as if they have no hearts, no souls. There are many good kids, but the heartless kids are also many, and they will do anything to hurt someone and think nothing of it."

http://education-portal.com/articles/Generation_Me_Study_Finds_College_Students_Lack_Empathy.html

A study presented at the recent meeting of the Association for Psychological Science found that, compared with individuals their age 20 or 30 years ago, today's college students are lacking in empathy. Researchers look at exposure to video games and social media as a possible cause for the rise in narcissism and students' ability to 'tune out' the emotions of others.

*

Konrath et al's literature review found that similar studies conducted over the past decade have indicated that, over time, college students show rising rates of individualism, self-esteem, narcissism and positive self-views. Hypothesizing that increased levels of self-centeredness would correlate with a drop in students' ability to relate to others, the researchers predicted that IRI scores have decreased over time for college-age individuals.

After reviewing data from all 72 IRI studies, the researchers found that their supposition was correct. Overall, today's college kids are 40% lower in empathy than their peers of 20 or 30 years ago, with the biggest drop occurring after the year 2000. Modern students are significantly less likely to agree with statements like 'I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me' or 'I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective.'

What is it about modern society that has created a generation of young adults severely lacking in empathy? Although 'why' was outside the purview of this study, both Konrath and O'Brien have suggested several potential reasons that they hope to investigate in future research.

Number one reason, I believe , is that the parents don't teach empathy. The home is the first place where this trait is modeled. If no one is empathetic in the home....

Also, emotional neglect often leads to narcissism. Humans whose needs are not met learn to meet their own needs - often in a self-serving, myopic and hurtful-to-others manner. This is because of lack of trust. if you can't trust the people caring for you, you learn to trust and believe in only yourself, and this is where narcissism often develops.

think of all the kids in this generation who were warehoused in substandard daycare, their first primary caregivers underpaid, overworked child care workers with no emotional or nurturing connection to the infants in their charge...

Add to that the 30% of Americans who think they are god's gift to the planet, who believe that anything goes to get ahead or get a job, that anyone darker or gayer or whatever difference they have is worthy of contempt and oppression, who teach this philosophy to their children.

It's not surprising that many young people are scum-sucking pigs.

But most young people are not this way, in my opinion. The ones who ARE make the world a living hell for the rest of the kids though....

we use in this house exactly as lessons in empathy. have since day one. looking at others perspective is a foundation in our unit. to deny that HUGE role in our childrens life is disappointing in the onclusions of the article.

i agree

I was amazed when I first saw conservative politicians mocking and decrying the very notion of "empathy" in public. The very idea that you would put yourself "in the shoes" of the Enemy. Uh, you mean, like Jesus said?

They started mocking the "bleeding hearts" of liberals and went from there. "Entitlements" and "welfare" are now dirty, shameful words. They're working on "sympathy" and "empathy." Apparently the goal is to get to make Every Man for Himself the national motto.

it and the repercussion of having that attitude, using this very attitude in a lesson of empathy for the kids from different angels and respect...

An unfortunate side effect of the civil rights movement was the creation of the gang culture. During the movement, with police too often acting against the citizens they were supposed to protect, people had to take efforts to defend themselves and their community. There were a lot of people in the African-American community shouting how they would defend themselves if anybody tried hurting them.

For the past couple decades, the NRA has been pushing the concealed carry laws using the two justifications: (1) be afraid, be very afraid! and (2) "anyone attacks me, I'm going to kill him."

In both cases adults understood there were limits. They only meant they were going to kill if they honestly felt their own lives were in jeapordy. You don't have to give a lengthy disclaimer every time you are spouting off angrily because everybody already understands this.

Except ... there were a lot of little ears hearing this too. And they didn't know the unstated disclaimer. And so, they grew up hearing their parents say it was perfectly acceptable to kill other human beings when they piss you off.

The cities saw a huge uptick in violent crimes after the civil rights movement. The country has seen a huge uptick in violent crimes after the concealed carry movement. There are people right here on DU who have argued that they would shoot someone who did nothing more than punch them in the mouth. Everytime I enter one of those discussions, I do so assuming it is hyperbole. But after a few back-and-forth posts, with some DUers you come to realize that they are deadly serious. They honestly believe that killing is justified for incredibly minor offenses.

that I have not procreated. :-(

I blame a lot of the media aimed at kids these days, starting with Nickelodan with shows like Hanna Montana, up to the current craze of Jersey Shore.

For years preteens and teen have been watching this bad behavior and laughing at it. Sure once in a while especially on the Nick shows, the good usually works out and lessons are learned, but the bad behavior is in every show. Boys teasing girls with snarky remarks, plenty of mean girl behavior, plotting and manipulating.

I'm no fan of the Disney Channel (I think Nickelodeon is a million times better) but smart-ass kids/dopey parents is a time-honored formula.

My daughter and her friends love the Kardashians (who make me feel just a little bit physically ill when I hear their whiny self-important voices. But anyway...). I'd assumed that anything on TV during the day had to meet minimum standards of propriety, but in one episode one sister gives another a bikini wax, which burns her, and then we have to hear all about the physical/marital repercussions of that.... :puke: That whole show is quite disgusting, and I'm no prude. I just think that some things don't belong in front of an audience of millions. (If I ever watched "Jersey Shore" I'd probably faint dead away.)

But still--that boy knew perfectly well that he was doing something cruel to Tyler. That's why he thought it was funny.

learned about media conditioning, being respectful, empathy...

they would often comment on the bad lessons in those shows and how it effected their friends.

given the foundations, the kids themselves make the right choices.

and until something horrible happens as a result, no one bats an eye. :shrug:


That being said, I"m not sure it would constitute manslaughter as some posters suggested.

When I was in College, I lacked empathy. I realized this and made myself LEARN empathy.

that brought death.

family member or friend would be a huge ass.... wtf and who the hell do you think you are. thought you were better than that.

one can love someone and know the wrong the person committed.

i do it ALL the time in parenting

.....would you believe them?

no. i wouldnt believe him. i wouldnt not believe him

As the old Japanese proverb goes...."every man has three hearts, one known to all, one known only to his close friends, and the heart of hearts known only to himself"

...The friends might have known only what those two wanted them to know. thus they might honestly believe that these two are really good kids.

but on the other hand..there is also the possibility that these two are nothing but pranksters and were not anti gay.
I say this on the general belief that kids nowadays, especially those who are not very religious/from conservative states, tend to not homophobic

would you describe the guy who taped Erin ANdrews in her room as pulling a prank ?

They might have thought that they were doing something "real smart/funny" when they invaded his privacy and taped him.

I've known some pretty stupid people whose definition of a prank is something that would land them in jail. Sometimes we might be underestimating the level of human stupidity possible.

Anyone with an iota of common sense would not have done what they did...given that any possible outcome of their actions would have had grave consequences...


btw I'm not trying to defend them, just wondering if they really had an anti gay agenda or were simply plain stupid. I probably have to wait for more information to come to light before making any statement with confidence regarding this issue,

....you don't think there are people doing this to their roommates all the time except maybe not making it as public? Gay or straight, I have a feeling this is a bigger epidemic than anyone thinks.

not condoning it, but I'm not so far out of college to recognize that if we'd had always-on internet and webcams the same might have happened to or been perpetrated by several people I knew then.

I doubt these people (freshmen in the first weeks of college) ever thought the consequences of their actions would be so severe. They probably were just thinking how much popularity or notoriety (in real life on the internet this type of thing would bring). They were self-absorbed and shortsighted. The victim and his family deserves sympathy, but the kids who did this don't deserve to be stoned for being immature assholes.

.....was the intent to actually watch or just to say "Hey check this out!" just to get the five seconds of shock value they shut it off? Why would anyone repulsed by homosexuality want to actually watch it? I'm not repulsed by homosexuality and still wouldn't want to watch.

I just don't get it.

My thought, and I obviously only know what I've read about the case, is that on sites like ICAM and stickam you can get paid by how popular your cam is. If you're the top cam for a set amount of time you get paid.

Or, on sites like 4chan this type of thing brings a certain type of fame. Cache with other geeks. Just the idea of illicitly camming your roommate is enough to bring ups from other lonely internet fucks.

No one. By using that hyperbolic dismissal, you seem to be suggesting that they get no punishment at all. You are defending vile people, attempting to mitigate what they did using all the old lines' kids will be kids, others do it, they were not thinking.
They should go to prison.

Maybe stoning was hyperbole but judging a person's guilt by one or two newspaper articles is a worse offense. And I believe that if stoning were a legitimate form of punishment in America then there would be some on this board, in this thread, who would be calling for it. And that's not hyperbole.

Innocent till proven guilty still applies no matter how sure you are that they did it.

n/t

Should be treated exactly the same, obviously.

If I had read the newspaper, not knowing his name, I would have said "String him up by his balls" as I've done with dozens of dozens of similar stories.

As it turned out, the initial public account of what he did was skewed to make it seem unprovoked when it wasn't, but ultimately he deserved the time he got in jail for it for what he did do.

But that doesn't matter....it still took me weeks to actually figure out how on God's green earth he could have done what he did and saying to myself "It's not possible, he's not that kind of guy.....". It's not as much a defense of them as a questioning of our own instincts.

Sometimes it takes us a long time to come to terms with reality...especially when its something which is the direct opposite of what we have always thought to be true

What exactly do we know that Molly Wei did? Allow the roommate to sit in her room and open up his laptop? Do we know that she "conspired" with him to set the whole thing up?

Don't slam me, please, I'm just asking.

Which, again, brings up the question of what she knew and when she knew it.

Does that make you responsible for whatever he does with it? Not really.

I agree with you that we don't yet know what her actual involvement was.

I can't believe this place some days.

Since you seem to know.

Other than the fact that a friend walked into her room and said "can I borrow your computer? I wanna show you something."

I haven't seen any evidence that Wei was involved in planning and carrying out the prank, but if you have, please let me know.

then there would be total unanimity on how lowdown they are, but since they are scrubbed college kiddies from good schools, we will make all kinds of excuses for them.

Remember how Lynndie England was treated as the mastermind behind Abu Graibh?

as to what Molly Wei, as opposed to the roommate, did.

The roommate clearly bugged the room, and then showed the video to other people, including Molly Wei. I haven't seen any evidence that Molly Wei planned the prank or participated other than as one of the MANY people who viewed the video. Should it matter which computer a person viewed the video on? Should she be prosecuted if all she did was say "yes" when a friend asked to borrow her computer?

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/01/new.jersey.suicide.legal/

What is alleged is that on the evening of September 19, Ravi sent a message by Twitter about his roommate, Clementi.
"Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly's room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay."
Ravi tried to use the webcam again two days later, on September 21, according to the Middlesex County prosecutor's office.
"Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes it's happening again," Ravi is believed to have tweeted.

I've said before that I don't think the potential sentence (up to 5 years) is enough for him.

I'm saying we don't know what Molly Wei did.

Or do you have some inside information?

I'm very glad we don't have courts of law dominated by internet commentary...

after all, it can't hurt, it would just be in fun .

said perfectly....

n/t

It's the movement of the bullying hive onto the internet which has given certain kids more "power" which goes straight to their head.

and the endless voyeurism the internet has engendered. :shrug:

that "they didn't mean for THAT to happen!" What kind of sick fuck videotapes his ROOMMATE in the first place, AND live streams it?

really repulsed by the chorus of apologists for these two assholes who decided to videotape, stream and celebrate the poor kid who had a sexual encounter with another male. I'm sure that all they need is a good stern talking to and then they'll say that they're really really sorry and promise never to do it again. Balls.

Look at youtube...


I think some (maybe a lot) of younger people do not think about the consequences of their internet actions...

I have no pity for them. May they suffer.

TOUGH SHIT! What they did was reprehensible and they deserve to be prosecuted.

I don't care about their SAT scores or their majors...they have no common sense.

Prosecute.

...they may be cute and popular ~~ but they are also fucking evil and malicious.

And those things are out of character. I don't have a hard time believing that they were good kids that screwed up. You don't get into Rutgers if you're not smart.

n/t

given that they are facing criminal charges.

In attempting to win this battle, they may end up actually losing the war.

Mainly, what exactly do YOU have to do with this?

I'm sure once their lawyer knows that closeupready demands an explaination, they'll be on CNN tonight. Heck, maybe they call directly.

:wtf: :eyes:

Some people on this board... :mad:

Trials. I mean, why bother? You've got it all figured out.

Just curious. :sarcasm:

....and saw the ridiculous amount of evidence against him. What a disgraceful thing to do.

He's scum and I'll have no problem calling these two obviously stupid, immature kids the same when I see all the evidence.

you think we shouldn't say anything negative about Bush and the crimes he committed unless he gets a Trial ?

....then why should anyone bother? I mean, there actually might be a judge and a jury in this case who doesn't convict these two in thirty seconds. Will they be a disgrace for not returning a guilty verdict during opening arguments?

While we're at it, let's enter that evidence that all the friends quoted in the article are gay-bashers too. Seeing as you've gathered that too.

But I'll be sure to keep an eye out for any post you make about someone accused of a crime that you type anything other than "Lock them up and throw the key away".

why couldn't Tyler just accept me having fun at his expense..............

It's not necessary to insist the perpetrators here are sociopaths who maim kittens in their spare time in order to recognize the how monstrous the impact of their behavior was.

The fact is that this behavior was not that far out of current normal behavior. We can say how "shocked" we are that a couple of college smartasses wouldn't grasp that making a secret sex tape of a shy gay student is on an entirely different level of viciousness, than, say "Guy Falls Down, Hurts Groin Blahaha," but no one should believe us. They likely just thought they'd be recognized for being clever and funny. There are "hits" to be scored with a truly humiliating Internet video, aren't there? We have entire television shows devoted to this.

This to me looks like casual, banal human cruelty, and I think the far bigger problem than how bad these particular apples are is that if we don't recognize just how normal and UN-exceptional this type of behavior is, it will still be here long after these kids have been punished and left the public consciousness.

and certainly not defending their actions. The people quoted in the article are simply sharing what they know about the two students accused. We have no way of knowing what else they said in those interviews or in what context they said things like "She was a very happy person," or "She was a very bright student ... Very friendly, very sweet, easy to be friends with." But I don't see statements like that (and most of the statements in the article are similar) as really defending them in this context.

i think its extremely convenient and easy to blame two kids for the suicide of another, its much harder to have a real conversation about how much homophobia we tolerate as a society, that makes a guy think its better to jump off the GWB instead of being ok with people knowing he was gay.

of broadcasting the boy's sexual encounter on the internet without his consent?
Most people who are o'key with their sexual orientation would still not want their sexual encounters be broadcast without their consent, I presume.

were they wrong to broadcast his sexual counter, ofcourse. should they be penalized, absolutely.

is that the soul reason one kills themselves, hardly. (if you dont believe me, look around for the gazillion celebs etc whose private sex tapes have appeared in the marketplace. have they jumped off bridges?)

after her naked photos were circulated around. It'd appear to me public humiliation/invasion of privacy can push someone to suicide and it's not at all necessary for the victim to be gay.

out with another dude. "YAY" .

it's people like this guy who are the problem by treating gays as something less.

i am not saying this kid wasnt an asshole, but he is a convenient asshole. we want someone to blame for this. however, he is not the whole problem in any sense. the amount of homophobia we allow and tolerate in society makes us in degrees culpable for this. where a kid thinks its better to jump off a bridge than have people know he is gay.

he sent the nude picture out to friends, kids in other schools. she was taunted horribly and eventually killed herself.

i think thi is beyond gay. not to lessen the experience because he is gay, or because the ugliness is his being gay. that is there too. and yes to all you say.

but it is an issue beyond sexual preference.

Ellen DeGeneres calls it like it is.


http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=592846987806&ref=mf

I've read several comments asking why was she charged, that Ravi may have used her computer and she wasn't aware of what was happenning.

Maybe she's charged because he used her computer TWICE. Perhaps is easier to believe she was an innocent bystander once, but the second time...doubtful

you think he didn't tell a friend he knew from high school what he was going to do .

a full participant. I was just speculating about some posters above who think she may not have any blame on this