Intent

By Trevor (Age 14, Hong Kong International School)

What does it mean to do something on purpose? What about by impulse? On September 22, Tyler Clementi committed suicide after a series of actions by two bullies. Three days earlier, Dharun and Molly uploaded a video of the boy making out with a guy on Youtube. One may ask, "What led to this?" but the more important question is "What was the intent?"

Almost for sure, Ravi had a suspicion that his roommate was homosexual. Not only did he suspect, but he thought about it, and decided that he was going to spy on his roommate through a webcam. Did he accidentally turn on the webcam or was it part of 'the plan'? Most likely, Ravi turned it on manually because Tyler himself would not risk his being exposed if he had asked for the dorm for three hours in the first place. Dharun had to have intended on somehow figuring out if his roommate matched his suspicions. The next step however was the most crucial determining factor of his sentence: was he an on-purpose exposer? Or was it a click in the head saying 'I'm just gonna do this.'?

In one perspective, one could say that it was all because the immature student felt that it was funny. However, looking at the case from the opposite perspective, would it not have all been planned if Ravi had turned on the webcam in the first place? Information on health.spreadit.org showed that this was not the first video to be captured. Both Ravi and Molly had planned to post their next video before Clementi had asked for the room. With this proof, it is affirmed that they had intended to rebroadcast such a video instead of getting a good laugh at it. Premeditation was a factor in this crime because without it, the video would never have been posted. As an addition to backup this statement, he had tweeted "Roommate asked for the room... went into molly's room and turned on my web-cam... making out with a dude. Yay." Notice the word "Yay" had strong emphasis to it because it was used as an effective short sentence. Inferring from the text, these three simple letters held the meaning of how Ravi had felt successful by accomplishing his goal. Without this word in the context, this would be a whole different story because it would not have shown accomplishment in Dharun's voice over Twitter.

It is extremely possible that the two of them would not have done so if they knew of the full consequence of Tyler jumping off the bridge. It is true that Tyler must have acted on the impulse of committing suicide before he thought about what he could have done to recover from this incident. Nevertheless, this does not change the fact that they did so. What is done is done. No matter how good the track records of Dharun and Molly are, it does not change the fact that they did something horrible to a person that they only knew for about a week. There is a great chance that Tyler would not have done so if were heterosexual because he would not be as afraid of being exposed to be dragged "out of the closet" by others.

More time to rationalize meant that they had more responsibility over the situation; more time to reflect meant less impulse - or even none - which shows that it was done based on premeditation and thoughts about consequences. Therefore, as a final statement, both Ravi and Wei should be sentenced to imprisonment because they had more than enough time to think before they had acted. Wei, though possibly not the main "brains", still participated and supported this idea, thereby saying, should be equal responsible as Ravi. It is only fair for them to learn a lesson of how powerful a small prank can be on to others. Not everyone views things with the same pair of eyes.