Just a prank, or something more sinister?

Randi Kreiss

All the time, teenagers prove how irresponsible they can be, driving and texting, drinking and driving, acting on impulse and without thought to the consequences.

For every well-adjusted 17-year-old honor student who volunteers at a soup kitchen in his spare time, there is another teen having unprotected sex. After all, what could happen?

It isn’t surprising that researchers have found that part of the human brain does not develop fully until people reach their 20s.

Still, the recent suicide of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers college student, takes our breath away. Apparently, Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, and another friend, Molly Wei, set up a webcam and filmed Tyler having a sexual encounter with another young man.

Do we know what was in their minds? Was this a prank? Meant to be funny? A cruel bit of gay outing? An attack on a sensitive kid by bullies? Were they thinking at all past the “gotcha” moment?

The perpetrators have been charged with invasion of privacy, and face a maximum prison sentence of five years. Prosecutors are considering bias charges as well.

Some will argue that their actions led directly to Clementi’s suicide; others will say that his death was an extreme and unfortunate result of a stupid but not criminal prank. Surely if the legal case gets legs, there will be some blaming of the victim.

Let’s set that all aside for a moment and consider how such a senseless death can occur. There is plenty of blame to go around. We live in a culture where privacy is compromised, for all of us, all the time, no matter how discrete we think we are.

More than that, we live in a society where aggressive media personalities and “undercover” investigators are constantly digging for private and potentially embarrassing details about the private lives of stars and celebrities and politicians.

Kids grow up in this milieu and it becomes the norm. The “gotcha” mentality seems OK; why else would everyone be doing it?

Eventually, kids, teens and adults as well become desensitized to others’ feelings. We watch TV to see people humiliated on reality shows. How is a young person supposed to learn when that’s OK and when it’s not?