Berry Nice | Think before you tweet

On Sept. 22, Rutgers freshman Dharun Ravi tweeted, “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.”

Seventeen hours later Tyler Clementi, Ravi’s roommate, used his phone to update his Facebook status: “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.” Clementi’s body was found floating in the Hudson River. His wallet and phone were discovered on the bridge’s ledge.

Eighteen-year-old Tyler Clementi committed suicide after a live video of him hooking up with another man was posted on his roommate’s Twitter account.

Type, type, double click … How could something as casual as a tweet have such grave consequences? How could such a tragedy occur?

In the days following Clementi’s death, the media framed the incident as mainly a case of anti-gay bullying. While the homophobic undertones of Ravi’s actions are beyond disturbing, what troubles me most about this case is the fact that Ravi’s lapse in judgment is one most college students make everyday — we forget that what is tweeted, posted or tagged is therefore said, published … official.

After posting his infamous tweets only weeks ago, Ravi is now learning the hard way that “the internet isn’t written in pencil. It’s written in ink,” as the new movie The Social Network puts it. Ravi is now facing up to five years in prison. If the invasion of privacy charge is ruled to be a hate crime as well, his sentence could be as long as 10 years. Regardless of whether Ravi is found to have committed a crime, hopefully the grave social consequences Ravi has already faced will serve as a wake-up call for others.

The Clementi family issued a statement just days after their loss: “Our hope is that our family’s personal tragedy will serve as a call for compassion, empathy and human dignity.”

In the wake of Clementi’s death, it’s time a certain social taboo is faced — we as college students need to re-evaluate what is and is not tolerable to publish on the internet.

Clementi’s death was not an isolated incident. According to CNN, cyberbullying led to at least 12 suicides before Clementi’s. How many more suicides will it take to convince us to be civil? Rants, net threats, cyberbullying … whatever you choose to call them, the heinous personal insults that litter gossip sites like CollegeACB are a disaster waiting to happen. The Mean Girls “Burn Book” has gone virtual and has gone public.

Why does no one ever stop to think before they post “huge slut” on ACB? That girl’s little sister could stumble upon your offhanded-yet-damaging comment. Or, your outlandish accusations made anonymously could cost someone a job offer down the road. Pointed comments can snowball into libel, invasion of privacy and downright disregard for human dignity with the simple click of a mouse. But they don’t have to.

We as college students can answer the Clementi family’s “call to compassion” and can begin respecting human dignity online. I propose we as students pledge to do three things:

First: We should never use Facebook, Twitter or CollegeACB as our “Burn Book” by posting degrading comments just for sport.

Second: We should refuse to use anonymity as an excuse to publish heinous comments about a particular person — out of respect for both human dignity and the legitimacy of the web.

And last: We should pledge to report potentially demeaning material on sites like Twitter, CollegeACB and Facebook. As the 18th-century political philosopher Edmund Burke once said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

The solution is a simple one: Apply the values and the rules of civility that we learned in the olden days to our cyber-lives and Clementi’s tragic death will not have been in vain.

Kensey Berry is a College sophomore from Little Rock, Ark. Her e-mail address is berry@theDP.com. Berry Nice appears on Tuesdays.

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