Gay College Student Suicide Rocks U.S

Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, 18, took his own life Sept. 22 after his roommates posted video of him online engaging in a sexual encounter with another man. His roommate, Dharun Ravi, secretly filmed Clementi with his webcam and watched him with fellow student Molly Wei. Both have now been arrested and charged with invasion of privacy, with more charges likely for Ravi. Clementi's suicide is one of five gay teen suicides in five weeks, unnerving the country and leaving many to call for action against bullying and prejudice.

Suicides are unfortunately not uncommon, especially lately. Clementi's death was soon followed by the death of openly gay college student Raymond Chase, who hung himself in his dorm room at Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island. In India, a third-year B.E. student at the Sinhgad College of Engineering, Shashank G. Sinha, was found dead in his dorm room, reportedly after being scolded for poor attendance. Another college student, Jacob Miller at Fordham University in Manhattan, killed himself as well. All of these suicides occurred during the end of September 2010, with the deaths of Sinha and Miller appearing to have occurred on the same day.

College suicides are unfortunately not uncommon, and more needs to be done to try to prevent them. There's a lot of pressure to succeed, and, in today's economy, a lot of uncertainty. College is supposed to be a new beginning, and that can be very intimidating. For those dealing with defending their sexuality, it's even harder. Hopefully the added media scrutiny can shed light on the increasingly added pressures of college life, and lead to more societal outreach. There have been so many publicized college suicides as of late, and every one that makes the news means one less person got the help he needed.

Whether or not Clementi's death helps curb college suicides is up in the air. The fact that his suicide was around such a public invasion of privacy means more will probably be done about cyber-bullying. The fact that he was gay means that many will come out to help gay teens especially, but college students need more attention as a whole. It's a weird flux, going from the constant scrutiny of high school to feeling completely on your own in college. You want the freshmen to learn about independent living, but you want to take care of them as well. There simply needs to be a more aggressive effort to show the students that they have someone to talk to. When that happens, hopefully the suicide rate goes down.

Unfortunately, you can't expect it go down overnight, and there's so many factors involved. The most people can hope for is the chance to show they're ready to help, and sometimes that itself can be help enough. No one can expect everyone to look for help, or to accept it, but it still has to be offered. One's emotional well-being is too out of our hands to expect to have complete control over, so it's not worth it to assume you can help everybody. However, the least you can do is try.

Sources
Judy Peet, "Rutgers student Tyler Clementi's suicide spurs action across U.S.", the Star Ledger
News Staff, "Yet another gay suicide= this time in R.I.", Windy City Times
Jaya Saxena, "Fordam Student Found Dead in Dorm Room From Apparent Suicide", the Gothamist
Mihir Tanksale, Vishwas Kothari, "College principal, HoD booked for abetting student's suicide", the Times of India