Tyler Clementi

As we reported yesterday, Tyler Clementi, a first-year student at Rutgers, is believed to have killed himself last week.

Authorities allege that Clementi’s roommate Dharum Ravi used a webcam to secretly record Clementi in a sexual encounter with a man in their dorm room and broadcast the footage on the internet.

New developments overnight in the case:

  • Students at Rutgers staged a die-in last night, calling for the creation of safe spaces for LGBT students on campus. They say they have asked the university to create such designated spaces in the past, but have been rebuffed.
  • Clementi reportedly left a message on Facebook the day he died that read, “jumping off the gw bridge sorry.”
  • A body found in the Hudson river yesterday is thought to be Clementi’s. His family will meet with authorities this morning to attempt to make a positive identification.
  • The website Gawker has uncovered posts to a gay community message board that may have come from Clementi. In the posts, user “cit2mo” describes a dorm room webcam spying incident and asks for advice on how to proceed.
  • Students interviewed in the Rutgers Daily Targum this morning suggest that Dharum Ravi “had no intention to violate Tyler in any way” and that he only watched the webcam for a moment. Their accounts of the incident do not appear to square with Ravi’s own comments on Twitter, where he announced his plans to spy on Clementi a second time via video chat and “dared” his 148 followers to join him in doing so.