Rutgers student’s suicide is a wake-up call

For the second straight week, I must postpone my annual anniversary column. As I’ve noted many times before, I have my columns mapped out for months ahead, but when a critical education topic pops up in the news, the schedule falls by the wayside.

Media outlets have played up the fact that Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, who killed himself recently after he was secretly videotaped in a sexual encounter that was broadcast over the Internet, was a talented, even brilliant violinist. Clementi was more than that. He was a human being, entitled to his privacy and his dignity. He was denied both by his college roommate and another student.

Candle-lit processions, vigils, black arm bands and symbolic empty chairs are all significant ways for the Rutgers campus to deal with what happened. But they are not nearly enough. Reports of similar tragedies continue to be posted. How are we going to end this latest epidemic?

The Internet has tremendous potential. But we’re also observing its destructive side. I heard one commentator draw a perceptive conclusion: The younger generation has lost sight of the boundary between public and private — and this blurring of the two has become increasingly dangerous.

Tyler’s death raises four issues. To begin, we have to confront the matter of privacy. Minicams, webcams, cell-phone cameras and other such devices make it easy to turn what should be private into something very public. But the crime that his two fellow students allegedly committed goes beyond an invasion of privacy. The secret broadcasting of a sexual encounter amps it up a notch.

My Hofstra students pointed out that what was done is reminiscent of the keyhole spying on sports reporter Erin Andrews. It’s also worth nothing that in many gym locker rooms, signs are now posted, “No Cell Phones Allowed.” Still, I know guys who are leery of using the showers for fear of turning up on the Internet.