I'm concerned about yesterday's decision in the Rutgers dorm case. Having just read several articles on the trial, it seems to me there was plenty of evidence of cyberbullying on phones, Twitter and Facebook. As a former high school teacher, I can tell you that I've seen bullying and it makes my blood boil. Kids can be cruel, but kids should be taught that it's wrong. To feel what another is feeling is called empathy and it should start to develop in children by about age two or three. Why it doesn't sometimes, why it may be missing when the child reaches his teens, I don't know. I suspect there's more than one reason. But it's still wrong. That's not what's bothering me.
What's bothering me is that the main issue both inside and outside the courtroom became, what Mr. Ravi and Mr. Clementi were thinking. Why does that matter? This is beginning to sound scarily like the "thoughtcrimes" in Orwell's 1984. Or am I so behind the times I don't realize we've passed that year and moved on into the Brave New World where you can go to jail for what you're thinking.
Brain scans can now reveal whether you are thinking or not, but they still can't reveal what you're thinking. If we still have freedom of speech, am I wrong to assume we also have freedom of thought? That our thoughts are our own and no one else has the right to intrude on them or tell us what they should consist of?
That being said, it does seem as if Rutgers could have moved these two young men to different rooms.
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