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Tyler Clementi Suicide Prompts Gender-Neutral Dorms at Rutgers

By DNAinfo Staff on March 2, 2011 7:26am

Tyler Clementi committed suicide after his same sex encounter was broadcast on the internet.
Tyler Clementi committed suicide after his same sex encounter was broadcast on the internet.
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By Gabriela Resto-Montero

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS — Rutgers University has introduced a new, gender-neutral housing policy after a gay student took his own life in the wake of a homophobic act by his roommate.

Tyler Clementi, 18, sent the campus and the city into mourning when he jumped off the George Washington Bridge last year after finding out that his roomate, Dharun Ravi, had secretly taped and broadcast Clementi's sexual experience with another man inside his dorm room.

In response to Clementi's death, the university announced that incoming freshmen will be able to choose roomates of the opposite sex who support their sexual identity, parents will not be allowed to veto their decision and students will not be asked if they are gay, the New Jersey Star Ledger reported.

"In the aftermath of the Clementi tragedy, members of the university's LGBTQ community told the administration that gender neutral housing would help create an even more inclusive environment," a Rutgers spokesperson said in a statement.

Ravi now faces criminal charges of invasion of privacy, along with another student, Molly Wei, for allegedly using a webcam to tape and broadcast Clementi's sexual encounter.

Prosecutors on the case were investigating whether Clementi had requested a dorm room change from Rutgers before his suicide, because he had discovered that Ravi had videotaped and broadcast an earlier homosexual encounter, the network reported. Clementi had complained on a gay message board on Yahoo that he was asking the university for a transfer following the first taping incident.

Clementi's parents filed a notice of claim against Rutgers in December, giving them up to a year to file a lawsuit against the school. The parents have argued that the school did not enforce existing safety rules that could have saved their son's life.

Clementi's suicide was one of the troubling number of suicides mentioned in the nationwide "It Gets Better" campaign, in which celebrities, musicians and artists, as well as their supporters, reach out to gay teens in hopes of tamping down the higher-than-usual sucide rate among the adolescent gay population.