18 Year Old Gay Rutgers Undergraduate Tyler Clementi Commits Suicide After Two Fellow Students Record Him Having Sex In Dorm Room And Broadcasting It Over Internet, Despite Seven Suicides In Lat Year Including Four Gay Students Minnesota School District Refuses To Change Neutrality Policy

1010 WINS New York on 18 year old Tyler Clementi, a gay Rutgers University student who was allegedly secretly taped having sex in his dorm room, and who leapt to his death off the George Washington Bridge last week, his car and wallet found nearby. Two fellow Rutgers undergraduates – Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei – both 18 years old – have been charged with two counts of invasion of privacy after they allegedly placed a camera in Clementi’s room, recording and transmitting a sexual encounter over the internet. Under New Jersey privacy law, it is a crime to transmit or view images that depict nudity or sexual content with an individual without that person’s consent, both of the suspects freed on bail facing a sentence of up to five years in jail. Late Wednesday, an attorney for the Clementi family confirmed that Tyler took his life, his body yet to be found.

Pioneer Press reports on a meeting Monday at the Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota, a district where seven students have committed suicide in the last year, including four reportedly victims of anti-gay discrimination. Justin Anderson, a graduate of Blaine High School in the spring of 2010, told the meeting he considered suicide, a gay man overwhelmed by a hostile environment, told that gays were disgusting, their actions sinful. “I never heard any one teacher or student speak out against it,” Anderson said. “I became depressed ... I would think tonight’s the night I’m going to (commit suicide). Tammy Aaberg attended Monday’s meeting, her 15 year old son Justin killing himself this July after coming out to his parents six months before, after being rushed to the hospital in January, having stabbed himself in the stomach, himself a victim of harassment at Anoka High School, whose authorities and staff did nothing to intervene. Monday, Aaberg and others called on the district to change the policy which suggests that “staff must remain neutral on issues of sexual orientation” and go about create a climate where all students feel safe and supportive. The district reading from a prepared statement said the neutrality policy encourages faculty and staff to intervene when they see students being harassed, and added that the district makes exhaustive efforts to eliminate hostile environments in classrooms, Superintendent Dennis Carlson saying “We are advocates for students when it comes to their learning, safety and well-being.” In the summer of 2009, the Minnesota Human Rights Department ruled that two teachers in the Anoka-Hennepin district made inappropriate remarks that implied a 11th-grade student was gay, the district agreeing to pay the student’s family $25,000 in a settlement, the teachers ordered to undergo sensitivity training and placed in unpaid leave.