NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — On Sept. 29, the day police recovered the body of a Rutgers University freshman who jumped off the George Washington Bridge after fellow students allegedly used a webcam to spy on him in a gay encounter, the school initiated a major dialogue on civility.
That night, Rutgers hosted the first of many events as part of its Project Civility, a public discussion led by P.M. Forni, author of Choosing Civility: The Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct and director of the Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Dr. Kathleen Hull, director of the Byrne Family First-Year Seminar Program at Rutgers, and Mark Schuster, senior dean of students, conceived Project Civility months earlier. Days before news of the suicide broke, they announced a two-year initiative to engage the campus of about 40,000 students in a discussion intended “to cultivate an environment of courtesy and compassion through thoughtful communication and interaction.” The Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Education and the Office of the Dean of Students co-sponsor the program.
The news that Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old violinist from Ridgewood, N.J., might have been driven to his death by the embarrassment he suffered from cyberbullying thrust the issue of civility into national headlines. Two of Clementi’s dormmates reportedly used a hidden camera to record him with a male companion in his room, outed him on the Internet, tweeted about it, bragged of plans to cybercast his next intimate encounter and invited others in cyberspace to watch it.
The Middlesex County prosecutor’s office has charged two students, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, with invasion of privacy and transmitting a sexual encounter over the Internet. Their lawyers have announced that the two have since withdrawn from the university. A Rutgers spokeswoman would not confirm whether disciplinary actions were pending, citing federal privacy laws.
Hull, the project co-director who taught a popular elective course on civility last year to first-year students, says Clementi’s suicide came up in the Project Civility sessions.
“It is not far from people’s minds,” she says. “Even if people aren’t talking about it, it’s right there.”
