by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. Tyler Clementi was a young violinist who with
his obliging instrument produced sounds that touched the heart. Given
world enough and time who knows where this undeniable talent, showcased
in the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra and Bergen Youth Orchestra, would
have taken him? But because he was attracted to men rather than to
women, he was never to know. And so today, I sit here in Cambridge
starring at a photograph of a dead boy we cannot afford to forget, for
to forget would be the real crime…
… but memory is sharp, hard, remorseless, exquisitely painful…
And so we must have Mozart. Mozart who so well understood life… and who with such grandeur enables us to cope with death…
Thus, as the occasional music to this tale I give you the Master’s
Requiem Mass in D Minor (K. 626), composed in Vienna (1791) available in
any search engine… Focusing on his life, whilst never forgetting his
death and uneasy spirit…
The thousands of pages dedicated to the matter of Tyler Clementi
focus on when he died, how he died, why he died, and, above all, who is
responsible that he died… and I shall also deal with these crucial
questions. But, first and foremost, we must never lose sight of the boy
at the center of this matter… for this is above all his story…
Tyler was born in 1991 in Buffalo, New York and raised in Ridgewood,
New Jersey. He was a good student and like so many other aspiring
musicians found life, beauty, meaning and sustenance in the celestial
purity of sound, often so intense as to produce exaltation, apotheosis,
catharsis, ecstasy. Tyler was one of the gifted who took mere notes on a
page and produced beauty… and whenever he picked up his violin that
beauty was his to command…. and to give…
… and he gave freely, liberally, with the exuberance and trust of
youth and a heart that sought love and meant no harm to anyone…
And so Tyler Clementi went to Rutgers, to test himself against the
best of his peers… He was just 18 years old… with a mere handful of days
to live. What happened next is now a matter of detailed record… why it
happened will always require the judgement of Solomon and perhaps more…
for the person we long to ask — Tyler himself — cannot tell us.
Dramatis personnae.
Now come the principal actors…
Tyler, his roommate Dharun Ravi, fellow hallmate Molly Wei… and the
gaping worldwide community found on the Internet and without which there
would have been no story, no tragedy, and a happier life for all.
Here is what happened….
On the nights of September 19 and 22, 2010 Clementi texted Ravi about
using their room for the evening, a thing college students have been
asking their roommates forever. On the first occasion Ravi met
Clementi’s friend, an older man whom Ravi did not like. Nothing so far
meant very much; surely no one thought that Tyler would be soon dead.
But the mad chemistry of tragedy had started… and it fermented in the
brain of Dharun Ravi.
Ravi now says, as well he might, that he wasn’t the agent
provocateur for what happened, but as he stands convicted before the
world, this is not surprising.
Fact: He thought it fitting and proper to use a webcam to view a
portion of Clementi’s dorm-room liaison with another man… and
immediately tweeted it to his list of 150 people, thus beginning its
viral dissemination.
Fact: Ravi posted text messages saying “Yeah, keep the gays away” and
“People are having a viewing party with a bottle of Bacardi and beer in
this kid’s room for my roommate”, along with directions on how to view
it remotely.
Fact: Ravi set up his webcam and pointed it toward’s Clementi’s bed, where it was found by police, still so pointed.
All this Tyler learned… and acted responsibly, complaining to his
resident assistant and two other college officials. He also wrote in
detail about these events on the “Just Us Boys” message board and the
Yahoo message board. He asked for a new room, a new roommate, and for
help. He was doing what he had to do and he was doing it responsibly.
But here is where things went so very wrong…
“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.” (Hamlet)
But something gnawed at Clementi and so 38 times following his first
webcam viewing he returned… returned… and returned again and again to
that bit of video that he became convinced had destroyed his life, his
future, his peace of mind. He was wrong, so very wrong, but he was
young, inexperienced, and, he thought alone. And that is the real
tragedy…
Thus did his dark purpose commence.
8:42 PM September 22.
The cast of characters was growing now. College administrators were
now involved.. Ravi was back peddling as quick as he could, minimizing
what he did, why he did it, stating over and over again that he meant
nothing by it, didn’t mean it, apologized for it.
But already Tyler had his foot upon a very different path… He was Hamlet now, without even knowing it:
“To be, or not to be: that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in
the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or take
arms against a sea of troubles.”
He had solved this conundrum…. tragically, finally, unnecessarily… an
act of passion from a mind in turmoil. “The George Washington Bridge
over the Hudson is the most beautiful bridge in the world.” Le
Corbusier
And it was here Tyler Clementi came to die, that is to say to do the
extremest thing in his power… to embrace oblivion. What made him do this
deed of rashness, to end everything and remove the future and every joy
to come? We can never know, for his final words, sent on his cell phone
from the great marvel towering above him, picked out in the brightest
of lights, was brief, inadequate, far too little for such an epochal
event:
“Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.”
And so he jumped, alive for seconds still… already gone from the
living, en route to eternity, the last things he saw, the dark waters of
the Hudson, the explosion of light that was Manhattan. Then nothing… a
dead boy of enigmas and secrets which I so long to know but never shall.
Envoi.
On March 16, 2012 now 20 year old Dharun Ravi was convicted of
invasion of privacy and bias intimidation, a hate crime. Wherever he
goes in life, however long he lives, every day he will think on young
Tyler Clementi, whose vivid memory and restive spirit will be ever
present… “To die, to sleep/No more… Be all my sins remember’d.”
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