But Is It Justice?

Society is upset and mystified about the prevalence of suicides among the young. Those who commit suicide run the gamut, from young people who have received every benefit available in a wealthy society and from loving parents, to young people living on aboriginal reserves in squalid poverty and unrelieved boredom, finding no value in their lives.

They are represented among those who are alter-gendered from what is considered the norm, confused and angry about themselves and society. They are young people who have been savagely molested by their elders, young people who find no meaning in life and decide it has no value for them, and who find it difficult to communicate their emotions and their hopelessness to others.

A multitude of reasons for misery and dissatisfaction and embitterment with life, enough to decide to end it all. Sometimes they leave pensive notes behind, sometimes brief and bitter indications of the hell they have experienced, and sometimes no indication at all. Perhaps because they are incapable of themselves understanding what drives them.

For the most part, after a young person has committed to taking their own life and leaving behind those who love them - and will never be able to adjust to the fact that they could have done nothing to save that precious life, mostly because they had no idea that life that was so precious to them, was a travesty and a burden to the youngster- there is no closure possible.

For those who cannot begin to contemplate such a step of desperation, there are no answers.

No one knows quite what it takes to push someone to the edge of existence, and then finally, beyond. But the grieving family would like to have a target for their anger over their loss. And if they are able to pinpoint an issue or another individual whom they can post blame on for their dreadful loss, perhaps it has the effect of easing their pain. That extends to society itself.

Which, if that is so, makes another young man, who behaved in a malicious and childish manner in videoing his roommate in a sex act and then posting it on the Internet, a target. He was targeted as a potential cause of causing such great embarrassment and anguish to his college room mate by posting his findings and Twitter comments, that he drove Tyler Clementi to his death.

"Jumping off the gw bridge sorry", was the message that Tyler Clementi left for those who loved him. Period, and that's final. Take from it what you will, he is dead and will never explain. Perhaps there is no explanation. He performed a final act because something within him urged him to. Something that might have had nothing whatever to do with Dharun Ravi's stupid acts.

Everyone takes their own meaning and messages from events experienced or witnessed. They are as individual as people are themselves individual and different from one another. The verdict reached, that Dharun Ravi's homophobic actions against his room mate constituted guilt, leading to his conviction of the charge of invasion of privacy, bias intimidation, witness and evidence tampering, is seen as due justice.

It could be overkill, on the other hand. It may bring 'closure' to those most intimately involved with the life and death of Tyler Clementi, but it may also be victimizing a young man whose behaviour while deplorable, did not necessarily send Tyler Clementi to his death.