This past week, numerous witnesses testified in the first week of the trial of Dharun Ravi, the former Rutgers student accused of spying on his gay roommate's intimate encounters via a webcam. The roommate, Tyler Clementi, killed himself by jumping off the George Washington Bridge, and his death galvanized LGBT activists and prompted national discussion about bullying. Many of the witnesses have been Rutgers students (including his resident advisor), but yesterday, Clementi's guest during the encounters finally came forward to give him version of what happened.
Ravi and Clementi were freshman year roommates in fall of 2010. Clementi found out that Ravi had been repeatedly streaming his private moments in their room and that Ravi even publicized the livestreaming via Twitter (Ravi and a female student, Molly Wei, watched one of the encounters in her room). After Clementi's third meeting with his date in the dorm room on September 21, 2010, Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge on September 22 (here is a timeline of events).
The man, identified as M.B., remained anonymous; the Star-Ledger reports, "Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman has ordered that M.B. is not to be photographed and his testimony cannot be recorded. He is considered a victim." While some friends of Ravi had described him as looking "shady" and "scruffy," the NY Times says, "In court, M. B. had close-cropped hair and a 5 o’clock shadow. He wore a blue and white striped shirt, more casual than the tailored suits of Mr. Ravi and his friends who have testified... Pictures taken by surveillance cameras in the dormitory showed him dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his hair and bearing much the same as they were on Friday. He testified that he had not shaved the evening before he went to the dorm."
The only photograph of M.B. allowed
He did notice the webcam on Ravi's desk: "I just noticed it because I happened to glance over. There was a camera lens glancing directly at me." But he didn't think anything of it, "There was no thoughts that somebody might be watching me. If I saw a light on, maybe I would have brought it up. There was no lights on (the camera)." It was only after Clementi's suicide that M.B. realized why the camera was pointed at him. He added, "I just thought it was kind of strange. Just being in a compromising position and seeing a camera lens — I guess it just stuck out to me that if you were sitting at a desk using the computer, that camera wouldn’t be facing that direction, it would be facing the person at the computer."
Prosecutors have said that Ravi was uncomfortable with the fact that his roommate was gay and the fact that two men were getting intimate motivated his spying; Ravi's defense has been that he's "not a homophobic, not anti-gay. He never harassed his roommate. There was no bullying." Instead, Ravi was more suspicious of an older stranger suddenly in his room. M.B., who said he first met Clementi on an online site for men, said that he left the dorm room at 2 a.m. after their first date because he knew Ravi was coming back at that time, "I just didn’t want his roommate to have trouble with two gay men in the room that he shares. He might be uncomfortable. He might not be uncomfortable. Just basic co-existence. I had no preconceptions there would be a problem. I was just trying to be respectful of his roommate."
When M.B. went to the dorm a second time, the Star-Ledger reports, "Ravi was laying in his bed when M.B. entered. M.B. said he didn’t expect Ravi would be there. Ravi left the room, M.B. said, then returned, “walked to his desk, shuffled around a bit, then walked out,” he said. '“I had just assumed he forgot something,' M.B. said. He acknowledged that he and Clementi 'started to get intimate together within those two seconds of Dharun leaving the room and entering the room.'" And when M.B. left, students were staring at him, "They were looking at me. It seemed kind of unsettling," but added, "I left happy, [Clementi] was happy. We wanted to see each other again."
After the third and final encounter on September 21, M.B. says he intended to see Clementi again, but not at the dorm ever again. He only learned of Clementi's death when he looked at the newspaper, "I didn’t know his last name until I saw it in the newspaper."
M.B.'s lawyer said, "It hurts [M.B.] terribly that this young man is dead. He is a crime victim, and he has asked to be treated with fairness, and compassion, and respect and dignity." The Post's columnist Andrea Peyser calls him "the creepiest star witness in this sad and strange trial" and criticizes him for not taking Clementi out for coffee, (M.B. admitted that his first meeting with Clementi was at the dorm) and for not warning Clementi about the camera. "Come on, people," she writes. "In an era when anyone with a Wi-Fi connection feels the need to tweet, Facebook or text everything they see or do, M.B. should have stopped and smelled the spying. Did he freak? Warn Tyler? Yell at the top of his calm, collected lungs? None of the above."
Ravi faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. He may also be deported because he is not an American citizen.
