On September 22, Tyler Clementi, a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey, committed suicide after his roommate posted a video online of him having sexual encounters with another man. Besides the news media closely following the incident, popular culture broadcasts have been raising their voice as well regarding the situation. MTV News and Ellen DeGeneres both put together informative pieces dealing with violence and oppression of gay individuals, especially through digital media. Tragedies similar to Clementi’s are not unusual, and discrimination towards homosexual individuals has made its way into the UVA community as well. Last year, there were a couple incidents in which students were beaten up on the basis of their sexual orientation and appearance. One of the violent incidents that Dean Groves informed the student body of last week involved a UVA student being punched in the neck on Chancellor Street on the night of September 18th. It is believed that the victim was attacked due to his sexual orientation. Obviously these attacks and assaults are not rare and affect our university directly. As young students, we are here to learn not just about our majors, but about ourselves and each other. This means accepting differences whether they are on the basis of political opinions, race, gender, sexual orientation, abilities etc. Hearing about the Rutgers and UVA occurrences alike is deeply disturbing to me. I would hate to think that this type of outward hatred and oppression towards our peers is present here. But apparently it is. We are not at this place for four years just to regress in terms of acceptance for others. Our social awareness needs a great amount of work as a whole if something of this sort just happened last week near Grounds.
Sydney
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