Dharun Ravi was found guilty of tampering with evidence and invasion of privacy. He faces 10 years in prison. He waved two plea deals that would have let him off without any jail time.
My Facebook friends are gleeful over the verdict. I admit to feeling a little sorry for Davi. He's definitely an asshole, but I'm not sure that he commited a crime worthy of 10 years in prison.
A dorm room isn't a private place. If you have sex in a dorm room, pretty much everyone knows about it, even without a computer camera. If public mockery over sex in a dorm room is a crime, then they really need to build bigger prisons for all the guilty parties. Jail sentence and deportation may be too strong a sentence for Davi.
Apt. 11d 
I disagree. A dorm room is a private place. If you are alone in your dorm room, you have a legitimate expectation of privacy there.
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Whoa whoa whoa.
Firstly, I think there’s a big difference between people knowing you’re having sex in your dorm room and having someone film you doing it, without your knowledge or consent. A huge difference. I don’t care if people know I have sex or don’t have sex, but I certainly don’t want someone to film me having sex without my consent! That would cross all sorts of boundaries. A dorm doesn’t technically belong to the person who lives there, but they do have a right to some form of privacy. People do not have a right to have and watch video of someone having sex, even if they live in a dorm room or they know they’re having sex.
Secondly, this guy is part of the reason someone committed suicide. You don’t think that deserves something? Even if Ravi isn’t homophobic (which I doubt) or didn’t mean for this to happen, he still did something wrong. Really wrong. Something has to happen. Also, again, this isn’t just “public mockery over sex in a dorm room” (which still isn’t okay, by the way), this could be public mockery over the fact that two men were having sex, which is shaming two gay people, one of which was so humiliated he killed himself. Even if Ravi wasn’t as despicable or terrible as other criminals, he has to do the time. It’s not okay to just let that go.
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The links really do not indicate whether the potential pleas (especially the second one) where misdemeanors or not. If he could have obtained a misdemeanor, then he took a huge roll of the dice in going to trial. Right now, that roll is not looking too good.
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Yes, what Ravi did was “not okay.” Totally agree with you, Katie. But was it a crime? Maybe it was. Not sure.
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Laura, could you please explain how filming someone without their consent, not to mention filming someone having sex without their consent, and directing other people to watch said footage is not a crime? Especially if such footage causes someone to commit suicide. I just really want to understand your argument here, and I’m really struggling.
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A lot of the stuff that people think they know about the case is incorrect because early accounts contained false information. There wasn’t any filming and there wasn’t any broadcasting and Ravi and Wei didn’t see much of anything. This is a very good piece that covers the sequence of events pretty exhaustively:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/02/06/120206fa_fact_parker
It’s been a while since I read the article, but here are a few ideas from what I recall:
1. Parker doesn’t say it openly, but there’s definitely the implication that Ravi may have been somewhat sexually confused. His desire to spy on his roommate and the roommates gentleman caller may have been caused not by homophobia, but by exactly the opposite kind of impulse.
2. Ravi was actually rather pleased when he thought he was going to get a cool gay roommate. Clementi, however, was not that person. You can make the argument that Ravi’s treatment of Clementi was more due to anti-dork animus than anti-gay animus.
3. Clementi turned down the opportunity to switch roommates because he thought that he had just as good a chance of winding up with a worse roommate. To me, that sort of unwillingness to improve your situation in obvious ways is consistent with depression.
4. Lastly, I think there is a moral hazard here. We do not want to create a situation where every sensitive soul knows that they have a chance to punish a persecutor by killing themselves. That’s too much temptation.
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We do not want to create a situation where every sensitive soul knows that they have a chance to punish a persecutor by killing themselves.
That doesn’t seem likely outside of Japanese movies, but I’d hate to have a more general movement to look at the friends and relations of people who killed themselves to look for where to pile blame.
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Yes, filming someone without their consent is a crime, but in no state does it lead to a ten year prison sentence. A dorm room that you share, often with someone that a computer randomly assigned you with, is really a questionable private zone. As a rent payer in that dorm room, Ravi has certain rights, too.
Ravi also has the right to be an asshole. If being an asshole is a crime, then we have to put people like Rush in jail. Which may not be a bad thing.
Earlier in the week, I defended a clueless banker’s wife just to play devil’s advocate. Today, I’m defending this dude. Why am I doing this to myself?
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Amy P, I’m not really buying most of your story. I’ve read the BBC’s article on this story and it came out just today. It says half a dozen people saw the video. And even if they hadn’t or the two people who were watching “didn’t see much of anything”, that still totally ignores that they set up a webcam to spy on someone.
Anti-dork, anti-gay, it’s still anti-something, isn’t it? And it made someone feel uncomfortable and unsafe enough to take their life. Not acceptable.
Why should blame be put on Clementi for not switching roommates just because he thought the situation would get worse? If you fear you’re going to be bullied further by changing your circumstances, that is not your fault. That is the fault of the people around you.
People don’t kill themselves because they want to get back at other people or to punish people. They kill people because they have problems with themselves, and it certainly doesn’t help when you can’t trust someone in your circle of friends. Having someone watching you violates that trust.
Even if Ravi wasn’t homophobic, again, he still filmed his roommate, and that’s wrong. Not only that, it’s most certainly a crime.
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“That doesn’t seem likely outside of Japanese movies, but I’d hate to have a more general movement to look at the friends and relations of people who killed themselves to look for where to pile blame.”
If that’s the Japanese attitude, that may have something to do with Japan’s high suicide rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan
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While I agree that the sentence is too harsh, I disagree that this wasn’t a big deal because “when you have sex in a dorm everyone knows about it”.
Recording someone having sex without their knowledge and consent is a form of sexual assault.
The public mockery was motivated by homophobia. Our culture is one that encourages gay people to hate themselves and other people to hurt them. This was more than slut-shaming, deplorable as that would be.
I don’t want people to be in jail or deported, but I do want them to be held accountable for their actions. These are very serious, deplorable actions.
There is space to argue that such actions do not demand special legal categories and punishments, but it should be based in critique of the prison industrial complex. The work of USeattle Law professor Dean Spade http://www.deanspade.net is a great place to start.
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“People don’t kill themselves because they want to get back at other people or to punish people.”
Haven’t you ever in a dark time thought to yourself, if I kill myself, they’ll be sorry?
I think that is a very normal thought process.
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“Recording someone having sex without their knowledge and consent is a form of sexual assault.”
That didn’t happen.
I read the BBC story, and there’s only mention of kissing.
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Again, Laura with the big “L,” no question that what this guy did was “not okay,” rude, tasteless, and horrible, but was it a crime? Maybe recording was an act of sexual assault, but that wasn’t one of the findings of the court. I don’t think that rape even brings a ten year sentence.
Maybe dorm life is different from dorm life in the 1980s, but if you had sex in a dorm room at my college, everyone knew about it and publicly teased you about it later. It didn’t stop anybody of course, but it wasn’t terribly secret.
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Yeah, I live in a dorm now and that doesn’t happen.
Plus even if it did, replace “everyone knew about it” with “there is webcam-ing of the incident” and “teased you about it” with “shamed you and made you feel bad about your sexual orientation”. The boy who died felt like he was being shamed for his private life, shame brought on by homophobia (or at the very least, perceived homophobia).
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But this is a lot more than public teasing. Teasing to me is someone making some wisecrack to.my.face about something that I did. It’s in the moment, whether tasteful or not.
This involves premeditation designed to humiliate someone in their most private and intimate moments. Getting the camera, setting it up, figuring out how to do it secretly. Then uploading it and sharing it with friends.
The ten year sentence is probably severe but it certainly, in my mind, is more than just some teasing. It’s a level of nastiness and lack of judgement that goes beyond teasing.
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Just so I’m clear, here, you’re essentially making a “boys will be boys” argument to excuse this? Honestly?
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Just read Ian Parker’s story in the New Yorker about this. Really excellent article about a very complex story.
OK, maybe my perspective on this story is colored by my memories of people listening at the dorm doors. Also, I remember lots of scarves on door handles that both signaled to roommates to not come in and also announced to everyone what was going on.
That’s not to excuse Ravi. Ravi should have been kicked out of school at the very least. But jail time is crazy. I don’t even think that drug dealers should be in prison.
Gay-shaming, slut-shaming, and all that are nasty business. But do we put all homophobes and women-haters in jail?
I come in contact with assholes all the time. Now that I have kids, people have shamed me for working at some times, and at other times, people have told me that I’m lazy because I wasn’t working for money. Do you know how many people have made assholic comments about my son with a disability? Some people have even blamed me for his condition, which is a double whammy of shame and blame. What do we do with all those people?
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no jackie. I said repeated that Ravi was an asshole. I was just questioning a jail sentence for his crime.
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Recording someone having sex/naked/in a private space without their permission and sharing that private behavior should be a crime (and I think it is) and a sentence of 10 years is not an unreasonable one for doing so. And, making that perfectly clear to everyone now is especially important because of how easy it is to violate people’s privacy in this way (i.e. cell phone cameras in locker rooms, bathrooms, web-based broadcasting). Actually, I have a ikon camera in my office I should probably put up a sign so that no one takes their clothes off in the room.
All the rest of the discussion is fluff as far as I’m concerned. This should still be a crime if it was an ex-boyfriend filming his girlfriend or if the girlfriend didn’t commit suicide afterwards.
I agree with MH that Davi can’t be blamed for Clementi’s suicide because I believe firmly that suicide is the result of mental illness and proximal causes are only proximal (with the possible exception of planned suicide for end of life decisions when near death or in extreme pain).
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I know somebody who killed a guy with a gun and did less than ten years. It’s too much time, at least for a first offense.
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“Just read Ian Parker’s story in the New Yorker about this. Really excellent article about a very complex story.”
I’ve read it, and came away convinced the prosecution’s best case was on the charge of criminal evidence tampering.
From page 11 of the Parker article: “That night, Ravi deleted the “yay” tweet and replaced Tuesday’s “dare you to chat me” tweet with one that said, “Roommate asked for room again. Its happening again. People with ichat don’t you dare video chat me from 930 to 12.” And then he wrote, “Everyone ignore that last tweet. Stupid drafts.” Ravi claimed that he had accidentally published a stored draft. If so, it’s not clear why he didn’t delete it. It seems more likely that he was being evasive. He knew that a less incriminating version of his tweet would have a Wednesday time stamp. The “draft” tweet would help to explain Wednesday’s delivery of a Tuesday tweet. The deletion of the two earlier tweets, along with text-message conversations that Ravi had with [Ravi’s friend at another college, Michelle] Huang and [co-defendent who agreed to a plea bargain in exchange for her testimony, Molly] Wei, form part of the indictment against him.”
And from page 12 –
“That afternoon, [Molly] Wei was being interviewed by Rutgers police. During a break in questioning, she received a text from Ravi:
RAVI: Did you tell them we did it on purpose?
WEI: Yeah . . well that we didn’t know
what we were gonna see
Where is tyler . .
RAVI: Because I said we were just messing around with the camera. He told me he wanted to have a friend over and I didn’t realize they wanted to be all private.
WEI: Omg dharun why didnt u talk to me first i told them everything
He asked, “Did you say anything about tuesday because I turned off my computer that day.” Wei asked what had happened on Tuesday. “Nothing,” Ravi replied. This exchange, too, is included in the indictment, as an alleged act of witness tampering.”
I remain convinced Ravi in fact committed a crime, though what I suspect folks here aren’t entirely comfortable with is the notion that somehow Ravi is being punished as a pretext – because there is and was such public outrage about his perceived bad acts; and the outrage is based in large part on some real misinformation, as the Parker article points out.
Ravi never put the video on the internet, and was probably not a true homophobe who hated all gays. His real “crime” was an un-prosecutable moral offense, not an actual criminal offense. Hence why the prosecution went after him, successfully, for the evidence tampering etc. Sucks for Ravi that he’s only a permanent resident, which is why he could not accept either plea deal.
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I’m basically convinced by Katie F on this. Thanks, Katie.
With one rider. I think one reason that laura thinks that a prison sentence is excessive is that most American prisons are just awful places to be in; much, much worse than is the norm in other rich countries (possible exception, my native UK), and much much worse than many of the people in them deserve. The recidivism rate of US ex-cons is high relative to other countries, despite the fact that Americans who can’t afford to buy their way out of things get imprisoned for crimes that would not get you a prison sentence in most places. I realise this is partly because of the lack of a post-prison infrastructure to reduce recidivism, but it is partly due to the inhumanity of American prisons (and anyway, the lack of a post-prison infrastructure is part of the sentence, effectively). So, a non-trivial prison sentence in a humane prison seems merited to me (tampering with evidence should be a pretty serious crime); 10 years in an American prison seems like a lot (for any crime other than seriously violent crimes, or major fraud, frankly).
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When I was an undergraduate, urban legend had it that if your roommate committed suicide, you’d get an automatic 4.0.
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My most-arrested roommate used to ask for volunteers so he could improve his GPA.
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harry b,
Are prisons really so nice in most developed countries? I know the Scandinavians build prisons that are positively resort-like, but aren’t French prisons famously awful? (I know they’ve been trying to improve them.)
http://www.economist.com/node/13653923
http://www.scotsman.com/news/international/rat_infested_french_jails_likened_to_dungeons_in_middle_ages_1_1101293#
Italian prisons aren’t a picnic either.
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laura I completely agree that the sentence is outrageous. I’m a prison abolitionist. I absolutely agree that people should not be in jail, that putting Ravi in jail is not the solution.
But I think that we can say what Ravi did was deplorable *and* say that he shouldn’t be in jail for it at the same time. I think trying to excuse it with “everyone in a dorm knows when someone else is having sex” is unnecessary and confuses the issue.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to hold perpetrators of assault accountable without state or institutional intervention lately. “The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities” is an excellent resource for people and communities to start thinking and talking about how to do this.
book: http://www.southendpress.org/2010/items/87941
free zine: http://www.incite-national.org/media/docs/0985_revolution-starts-at-home.pdf
This is a really complicated situation where a lot of oppressions are overlapping with really tragic consequences for people’s lives. It’s fucked up that queer folks commit suicide because they feel so much hatred within and without. It’s fucked up that we put people in prison instead of dealing with their actions. It’s fucked up that those people are most likely poor and of colour and wouldn’t be in prison if they were wealthy and/or white. It’s fucked up that we deport people across imaginary lines with real implications.
There is so much to be drawn out and examined here. It’s really disappointing to see it dismissed as silly college hijinks and see an opportunity missed to talk about these larger issues.
No, he shouldn’t be in jail. But the reasons for that are much more complex than the reasons presented.
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It’s pretty clear to me that Ravi’s convictions were legit. If you look at the count by count list it is obvious that he went down for the things he did and skated on the things he didn’t.
Is 10 years too much? Probably, but he won’t serve that. I’d put the over/under at about 18 months, myself.
Followed, hopefully, by deportation. Ravi’s a guest in my (our) house and I don’t have to tolerate my guests being assholes. The social compact says I have to put up with it from my fellow citizens, but not from him. Let the f****r go be an asshole in India and have him be their problem rather than mine. He’s not worth the trouble to me to properly socialize when there is an entire other country that should take responsibility for him.
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Because I really liked Ian Parker’s essay, hush’s comment is right on the money.
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Amy — there is a lot of variability within each country, and certainly you’d rather be imprisoned in northern than southern europe. Many european prisons are pretty bad. But American prisoons (again there is variability) are just awful, dsepite being populated with people who have committed on average less serious crimes. Imprisonment is a much harsher penalty here than in most rich countries. Its not fun anywhere (including in Scandanavia)
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Looks like the convictions are all for destruction of evidence and witness tampering. That’s serious stuff, worthy of jail time.
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“But American prisoons (again there is variability) are just awful, dsepite being populated with people who have committed on average less serious crimes.”
Eh, isn’t most of the punishment in a US prison the people you have to do time with? Which suggests that maybe the average prisoners really aren’t such innocent lambs.
(I expect it’s quite different in a US women’s prison. In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn said that women prisoners seemed to fluorish in prison. I suppose it’s rather unfair that we could both commit identical heinous crimes, you going to a men’s prison and me going to a women’s prison, and having totally different experiences.)
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Here’s a photo gallery of a high security Norwegian prison:
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1989083,00.html
I don’t think any of my college dorms were quite that nice (you get your own bath and mini-fridge and flat screen TV).
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With regard to the sentence given, Ravi is guilty of a bunch of stuff, but given the misinformation about the case that circulated widely (and that a number of people here apparently still believe) there is a strong flavor of “sentence first, verdict afterwards.” He may do very well on appeal.
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The quality of the prison governors and guards (and facilities) have a lot to do with it too.
Its true that Norwegian prisons look nicer than American high schools. Maybe that helps explain why such a high proportion of the American population is jail.
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“Maybe that helps explain why such a high proportion of the American population is jail.”
My kids’ private school (at least the part that is rented and has mildew-smelling carpet) isn’t nearly as nice as the Norwegian prison. Only a tiny minority of those kids (from medical and legal and academic families) are ever going to do hard time–it’s not the building.
I was reflecting on the fact that rather a lot of people in my or my family’s circle of acquaintances have gone to jail or prison. 1. My old cleaning lady for threatening with a weapon (jail). 2. My friend’s contractor (violent felon). 3. The ex-con turned painter who eventually went back to drugs and lost a number of my relatives quite a lot of money (his original sentence had been for robbing hospital pharmacies with a BB gun–he’s the closest to a drug war casualty in my list). 4. The kid who practically lived with my dad and aunt and uncle, grew up to be a gold broker, and then embezzled his clients’ physical gold (not sure I ever met him, but his family was very close to ours–I regret to report that he’s back in the gold business). 5. A young relative’s former boyfriend who kidnapped, tortured and killed a police informant (that was over a prescription drug deal–I haven’t ever met him and I want to keep it that way). That’s all I can recall at the moment, but there are probably some high school classmates I’m not recollecting. Now, if we had drug legalization and narcotics were dirt cheap, #2 might live quietly and eventually OD, but as long as drugs aren’t practically free, he’s going to be a menace. #4 is probably a lifelong menace because he has a winning personality and a talent for getting his hands on other people’s money. #5 is quite possibly the most evil person I have ever been two degrees of separation from, and I hope he never sees the light of day. Except for #5 (and maybe #4), the general public is pretty safe having these people walk the streets, but I don’t know anybody who did time “just” for drug possession.
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There’s some useful commentary from George Washington University law professor Dan Solove here: http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2012/03/ravi-trial-verdict-for-invading-the-privacy-of-clementi.html
He’s an expert on privacy law, especially on the internet. Most of the commentary is in the links found in that post.
As to the sentence, it’s worth keeping in mind that the US has harsher sentences for nearly every crime than most “western” countries. Punishment is given to a greater degree, to a larger number of people (in absolute and percentage terms) in the US than any comparable country. This is a really harsh penalty, but it’s not obviously out of line with the other really harsh penalties we give. We should “do less” here.
As to the immigration issues, it’s worth noting that this also isn’t exceptional. For a really huge range of crimes, including some that are not even felonies (thanks to some clever interpretation by Scalia) a non-citizen who is convicted may be deported. How long you’ve been here and when you came is of no relevance in itself. It’s an unreasonable situation that leads to cases as bad or much worse than this every day.
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I both behaved in the scarf-tying manner in university and experienced sexual assault of the more traditional kind.
Dorms to me are starting to feel a bit antiquated in terms of the roommate deal. Kids used to share rooms and now they don’t and I wonder if dorm design just hasn’t caught up to that reality and that’s kind of the source of some of the problem – each kid perceives it as his space an doesn’t know how to provide privacy appropriately. I think I’m suddenly glad we live in a modest home.
I read the New Yorker piece first and I feel horrendous for Clementi and still somewhat sympathetic to Ravi. I think when you are a kid at university and going through coming out and all that life-altering stuff, having a dorm room where you feel violated and mocked is a terrible thing. Really awful.
And yet at the same time I think Ravi got trapped in a bullying narrative that didn’t quite match what he was actually doing; he was being a grade-A jerk but had Clementi not committed suicide I think this would have been mostly a non-issue, not because people should not behave better — they should — but because the original 5-second look and several tweets were over. Clementi had turned the camera off in the second case and was in the process of changing roomates and the dorm system was doing whatever it does. There was no recording posted on the Internet, etc.
I can imagine – although we are a LGBT-friendly home with a strong anti-bullying bent – either child as my own, which is a little terrifying.
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“Dorms to me are starting to feel a bit antiquated in terms of the roommate deal. Kids used to share rooms and now they don’t and I wonder if dorm design just hasn’t caught up to that reality and that’s kind of the source of some of the problem – each kid perceives it as his space an doesn’t know how to provide privacy appropriately. I think I’m suddenly glad we live in a modest home.”
Yeah, that occurred to me to. Outside of prison, the military, and college dorms, there aren’t too many times that adults are expected to share a room with people they aren’t romantically involved with.
Even in the good old days 20 years ago, the roommate situation could be a real pressure cooker. I’ve seen or lived through that a dozen or so times–people just go nuts living at close quarters. The dorm set-up is like Das Boot. (Of course, with single rooms, there’s always the chance that somebody’s been dead in their for days–I think that happened once when I was an undergraduate.)
Sexuality aside, Ravi and Clementi were totally incompatible people and should never have been assigned to live with each other.
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My roommate in college flunked out and became an exterminator. I know this because my parent had a carpenter ant infestation and he recognized me from my wedding pictures on the wall.
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Also, now that I think of it, suicides and suicide attempts are pretty par for the course on campus. It’s a very psychologically vulnerable time of life.
Here’s an old article talking about how colleges deal with suicidal students:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2006/05/stopping_suicide_101.html
This even older article on Elizabeth Shin, an MIT student who set herself on fire a decade ago, is long (haven’t read the whole thing), but looks interesting.
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It’s still mostly older men who complete suicides.
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Sharing a room might produce all the rroommate stresses, but single rooms have their risks, too. In November, an MIT student killed himself in his single dorm room and wasn’t found for days. (a dark irony was that his father is a noted professor at MIT. Suicidal people need to have other people around them , though clearly insensitive bullies aren’t the right kind of people to have around.
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I haven’t been following the story close enough to have an opinion on the sentence but with dorm rooms…Maybe the moral of the story is sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t and it’s hard to make categorical statements one way or the other?
I shared a room as a kid with my siblings, and had a positive roommate experience in college with a roommates who had previous sibling room-sharing experiences (not that the two are necessarily related). The worst room sharing I’ve ever experienced was with my ex-husband, who had siblings but never had shared a room in his memorable life (i.e. after toddlerhood). He was from a country where people live at home during college, and his family was very wealthy so they had a large house, and he basically couldn’t comprehend that living with someone else meant compromising or relinquishing 100% control over your environment (relatedly, he also couldn’t deal with living in an apartment with creaky floorboards and noisy neighbors, etc.) Of course, on the flip side, 5 of my 6 easiest roommates (inc. a new romantic partner) have been only children, including, most notably, the son of a very wealthy Chinese official who in China had 3 personal apartments, maids, cooks, a car and driver, etc, yet while living with me kept the apartment clean, cooked dinner, and was in general a laid back, low key, and conscientious roommate (though he did say he sent a photo of his bedroom to his dad and his dad started crying at the rundown accommodations). 3 of 6 of my easiest roommates have been Chinese, so maybe there’s something to be said for coming from a highly populous country.
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For another perspective on the case from someone who works in the area of teens/young people and bullying: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2012/03/19/dharun-ravi-guilty.html
And to add another Laura to the voices. 🙂
I have to admit that I was a little put off by the semi-light handling of suicide here. It is a complex issue and a serious one. Certainly being bullied doesn’t necessarily “cause” one to commit suicide, but an environment where one does not feel accepted or supported certainly doesn’t help. The whole thing, both from the perpetrator and the victim’s standpoint, shows how much mental health care is lacking on college campuses. And others here have mentioned other incidents that point to the same thing.
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A couple days ago, I overheard one of the student baristas at Starbucks complaining about somebody (presumably a roommate). Here’s a rough paraphrase: I’m at my desk, my books are open, I’ve got on my headphones, I’m working, I’m in the zone. He comes up to me and says, “Did you know that the US has one of the world’s shortest constitutions?”
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I had a roommate who played the Doors every day after class. Same one who was most-arrested. I’m assuming a causal link.
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