Adele Ferguson: Cyberbully conviction said cheap for loss of life

IT WAS A MIGHTY cheap price paid by the Rutgers college student who drove his roommate to suicide by rigging the computer webcam in their room so it could be turned on remotely for viewing from elsewhere.

What Dhartan Ravi wanted to see and have others see with him was a homosexual encounter between Tyler Clementi and another male. Three days after Clementi found out about it, he jumped off a bridge.

Ravi was called a cyberbully who didn’t like gays.

He was convicted by a jury of anti-gay intimidation, invasion of privacy and several other crimes and was sentenced to 30 days in jail, three years of probation, completion of 300 hours of community service and payment of $10,000 in fines.

What should have been his punishment? He didn’t murder anybody, the defense attorney pointed out, and “he never wanted to hurt Tyler.”

WELL, HE WANTED to shame and humiliate his roommate by exposing his homosexuality to other students who were invited to watch from afar.

Even when the judge pointed out that Ravi had never apologized for what he did, something defense attorneys nearly always point over to their clients is important to judges, he kept his cool. He cried only when his mother wept in pleading that he not be deported back to India, and said he was “living in hell.”

I doubt the hell Ravi is living in is as hellish as the one he inflicted on Clementi.

I said at the time computers began to be the thing that nothing could or would ever be secret again. No password or code or lockout could guarantee that a clever hacker couldn’t get in and see what was there.

We read in the papers periodically about hackers who have caused horrendous problems for business, the military, etc. Remember when information on computers was revealed that scientists who believed most global warming was caused by man were hiding disproving information from the public?

AND EVERY so often some woman comes forward to complain or sue because pictures she allowed taken of herself or with someone in a compromising situation turned up on the computer for all to see. I never had much sympathy for them since they were dumb enough to let it happen.

I had a computer made when I left work at a newspaper office and worked out of my home, but I told the fellow doing it all I wanted was to be able to type my column, get it out on a printer and rely on my fax machine to get it where I wanted it to go.

I resisted all attempts to get me to go on line or whatever, agreeing that I was missing out on availability of information, but I didn’t want to risk hacking or bugs or whatever ails computers. I am not the least bit mechanical, and I too often accidentally hit a key that renders my machine unusable, for me anyway, until I get somebody in to fix it.

When I worked in a newspaper office all I had to do was call the fixer person who would come up and put it straight again. You can’t do that when you’re at home. Some of my columns have been run on national even worldwide computer systems, and I have been the victim of computer bullying. A column I wrote once, which I won’t describe because I don’t want to start the fuss up again, resulted in angry readers printing information about where I lived, which I regarded as a threat.

Oh, before you ask why did Dharun Ravi room with a gay if he was anti-gay? It was because they were randomly matched up, by a computer.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)