On Twitter soon afterward, Clementi learned that Ravi and others had viewed a live feed of his encounter with a twenty-something guy he had met a week earlier on a gay hookup site.
The 18-year-old freshman from Ridgewood spoke to a resident adviser about getting a new roommate, but he also invited his acquaintance to visit again on Sept. 21. The following day - after another alleged voyeurism attempt by Ravi - Clementi jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge.
Officially, that tragedy is unrelated to the 15 charges of bias intimidation, invasion of privacy, and evidence tampering against Ravi, who has pleaded not guilty and is free on $25,000 bail. He left Rutgers last fall.
But Clementi's suicide was a presence in the courtroom, where his parents, Joseph and Jane, showed little emotion. The couple also remained stoic as their son's private acts were repeatedly alluded to, however obliquely.
Berman, defense attorney Steve Altman, and Middlesex County First Assistant Prosecutor Julia L. McClure were exquisitely careful.
During a 90-minute hearing about the high-tech exposure of a young man's physical intimacy with another male, the word homosexuality came up once - and then only in connection with how the public might view the matter.
For gay men of my generation, the walking on eggshells was reminiscent of a time when being out could land a guy on unemployment rather than on TV.
Glee, gay marriage, and a younger generation's supposedly easier acceptance of nontraditional families notwithstanding, same-sex intimacy - in other words, sex - still makes plenty of people uncomfortable.
How uncomfortable an issue it was for Ravi, and for Clementi, is central to the case.
