Accidentally on Purpose?

Making Ravi the bad guy: The media has indeed inflated Ravi’s role in Tyler Clementi’s suicide.  In the article, they reference instant messages between Ravi and his friends.  In many of these messages, Ravi is rather vulgar and showed much disdain about having a gay roommate.   Ravi went out of his way to find out what kind of a roommate Tyler would be.   Ravi made a lot of ignorant comments about Tyler based off of his web searches.  For instance, Ravi complained to his friends via instant messaging that Tyler was poor, not technologically saavy, etc. But, when he found out Tyler was gay, he definitely had much more to say.  Ravi totally went on Twitter to complain about how weird his roommate was, and how he doesn’t like him whatsoever.  Knowing that Twitter can be viewed by anybody, Ravi should have known better than to post his disdain for Tyler so publically.  The prosecutors have a very good case on their hands: it was reported that Ravi purposely wanted to use his webcam to record Tyler’s private actions.  On top of that, Ravi even created a viewing party to display Tyler’s private acts to the whole world. This right here is a good argument for purposeful harrassment and invasion of privacy.  

Making Ravi the guy at the wrong place at the wrong time: From this standpoint, he wanted to seem cool, and he probably thought that by exposing Tyler as a joke would make him more popular/likable.  I think that Ravi is the type of person who finds enjoyment in joking about others, so he doesn’t think about what he says/does before he does it.  In the article, Ravi was quoted in saying that he felt bad for Tyler, and even went so far to tell the police that he felt guilty about the viewing party he had set up, and cancelled it immediately. Ravi is very much naïve, and doesn’t think about his actions. 

In my interpretation of this story, I feel that Ravi should definitely be punished on the grounds of invasion of privacy and harassment.  However, I don’t think his intention was to make Tyler commit suicide.  Rather, I think he just wanted to play a practical joke.  I do not condone the extreme level practical joking that Ravi took however.  I hope that Tyler’s suicide remains a reminder as to Ravi as to why you  must always treat others with dignity and respect, whether you agree with their lifestyle or not.