...and a $10,000 fine...
...which seems trivial given the media attention to the story.
According to this article:
A former Rutgers University student who used a webcam to spy on his gay roommate was sentenced Monday to just 30 days in jail — a punishment that disappointed some activists but came as a relief to others who feared he would be made a scapegoat for his fellow freshman's suicide.
Dharun Ravi, 20, could have gotten 10 years behind bars for his part in a case that burst onto front pages when Tyler Clementi threw himself to his death off the George Washington Bridge.
Instead, Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman gave Ravi a month in jail, placed him on three years' probation and ordered him to get counseling and pay $10,000 toward a program to help victims of hate crimes.
"Our society has every right to expect zero tolerance for intolerance," Berman said.
Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan said he will appeal the sentence, calling it insufficient.
Several points.
First, it sounds like the original media narrative was jammed into the homophobe narrative from the beginning and, in a word, was largely B.S. The "revisionist" position - there was no broadcast, the gay student wasn't "outed"; he was already "out" - seems to have been vindicated.
Chalk this up as a reason to take anything the media tells you with a grain of salt.
Second, there really is a problem with privacy protection. It's too easy to have one's conduct observed, permanently recorded and broadly disseminated. I'm not sure what the defendant really did in that regard, or the extent of his culpability, but that is a problem and deserves legal sanction, whether a person is a politically favored minority or not.
Third, what's with the judge's comment that ""Our society has every right to expect zero tolerance for intolerance"?
What happened to "the right of one man to his own opinion"? Or the right to swing one's arm ends at another person's nose?
Does our society really have a right to expect that every member will entertain no "intolerant" thoughts? Or is it that our society has a right to expect that no one will engage in actions that injure another person for malicious reasons, whether the motive is intolerance, personal gain or sheer immature meanness?
I thought it was always the latter. If Dahrun Ravi injured Clementi out of malice, then 30 days would seem not to be enough, given the fact that Clementi killed himself. On the other hand, if Ravi is being punished for his thoughts or attitudes, then 30 days is way too much.
Finally, what struck me most about the story was the ugliness of all involved. Clementi kicked Ravi out of his room for his gay trysts. How is that respectful of Ravi's right to use his room. Ravi intercepts Clementi's sexual activities and then broadcasts the fact about what was going on like a fishwife gossip. How does that respect Clementi's privacy? There seems to be a whole lot of selfishness and narcissism defining these privileged students at a top-ranked university.
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I seriously doubt anyone would have shown any interest in Ravi or in Clementi's "invasion of privacy" had his sexual activities involved a girlfriend rather than another man.
I don't know. The sense I get is that there is a high level of crassness among a generation fed on the pop celebrity of Youtube. What seems to be missing is the overall sense that "since I wouldn't want to be treated that way, I won't treat someone else that way."
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