US Student Jumps To Death - two undergraduates at a US university have been arrested after a fellow student they allegedly filmed and broadcast over the Internet during a gay encounter leapt to his death from a New York bridge.
The tragedy appeared to be the latest in a growing trend of sophisticated technology and social networking sites being used to give old-fashioned bullying, especially of homosexual youngsters,a vicious new twist.
First-year student Tyler Clementi, 18, at Rutgers University in New Jersey, killed himself shortly after being spied on and having footage of himself streamed online.+
Bullying and harassment of young gays and lesbians, and the suicides they have caused, have long been a major topic in gay publications and among activists. But celebrities and others have seized on Tyler Clementi's shocking suicide to call attention to the issue.
Clementi's death was part of a string of suicides last month involving youngsters who were believed to have been victims of anti-gay bullying. Fifteen-year-old Billy Lucas hanged himself in a barn in Greensburg, Ind. Asher Brown, 13, shot himself in the head in Houston. And 13-year-old Seth Walsh of Tehachapi, Calif., hanged himself from a tree in his backyard.
