And we know that two other students at the New Brunswick campus have since been charged with violating Tyler's privacy.
It's tempting (let's make that: I'm tempted) to be outraged by charges that seem a tad . . . tepid, given that an 18-year-old is dead. But privacy, not sexual orientation or cyberbullying, is the core of this tragedy.
Before we go any further, though, fasten your seat belt for a little trip in my way-back machine.
Zap! It's the '70s, and this columnist and about a zillion other baby boomers are in college or otherwise free at last of our so-square parents.
There are no webcams or smart phones or online hookup sites, but there is plenty of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, as well as horrendous hair (check) and even worse clothes (double check).
Imagine how you might have felt, back then, if a deeply private moment, perhaps involving nudity, intoxication, crying, or all three (check), somehow ended up on every TV network. During prime time.
(Or imagine that a mean-spirited, but surely not intentionally homicidal, practical joke went horribly wrong, and that your mug shot was on the 6 o'clock news worldwide. It's worth remembering the two students charged are also 18.)
Fortunately, except for a few Polaroids and a ticket stub proving I once saw the Clash for $7.50, little evidence of my freshman frivolities has survived.
The sexual, pharmacological, and musical experiments of us '70s kids are pretty much tucked away in our personal histories.
Unless we opt for disclosure. Which, by the way, I don't.
Yet my peers and I are now part of an experiment far freakier than any of the crazy stuff we got into 30-plus years ago.
We're eager participants in the great pandemic of social networking/digital exhibitionism, which is transforming personal lives into reality shows - available 24/7 to whomever we're texting, tweeting, blogging, YouTubing, or Facebooking.
