As a mom, this touches my heart, and I could not be quiet about it any longer...

Teen suicide is something that is serious, it is devastating, and it is preventable. Sadly, their have been several cases recently that have gotten a lot of attention, and many of them are a result of cyber-bullying. 

Sadly, Rutgers University Student Tyler Clementi was one of these kids, an eighteen year old freshman living in the dorm with a new roommate and adjusting to college life. This is supposed to be an amazing, scary, tumultuous, but happy time in one's life. I remember this as a time I was forging friendships and yeah, I did engage in the occasional teasing. My friend's roommate was a miserable jerk to us, talked down to us, and always tagged along with us. So I picked on him, trying to get him to move out. Now that I'm an adult, No, I'm not proud of the teasing I did as a child. But I still feel guilty about this boy, about *Brendon* (not his real name) from my ninth grade class, who it turns out was "weird" as a victim of physical and sexual abuse and no, of course he didn't talk about that, so how was I supposed to know? I wasn't, but I should have known better.

And Ms. Wei and Mr. Ravi: I hope you realize, you will never live this down. If you have an inkling of a conscience, you will see the smiling face looking into that webcam for the rest of your life. The word "webcam" or "Twitter" will come up, and you will think of Tyler. Instead of making a friend and accepting someone who might be geekier, skinnier, not as popular, or gayer-- you did have a hand in his death. And we forget that the internet can have that sort of effect on someone. But now you sure have learned that lesson the hard way.

Now, as a parent-- I feel a compulsion to help this poor boy. As a friend to other gay men, as a family member and a church member to other gay people, and a sympathetic person and a mother, I want to help this young adult to be part of a world that loves him for who he is. But the only way we can help now is to talk about it. Tyler is gone-- who's next? We need to do what we can to help them, for Tyler's sake.

Parents can talk about bullying with their kids. Teens only see the internet as a place of immediate attention and quick fixes. They can put something up, they can take it down. Tell a kid, "Your Facebook page is cached" and their eyes glaze. Nothing is permanent to a teen, so place limits on them. Monitor their behavior. And even as little babies, preach a value system that accepts everyone as a human being no matter their race, sex, religion, lifestyle, appearance... everyone is a whole person, and never ever take that away from them.

Every generation things like this come up that make us open our minds a little more. We are less narrow-minded than the ones who came before us, and they were less so than their parents. We accept bi-racial couples and single parents, and our parents were accepting of African-Americans and some of their parents even were accepting of Jewish people before that. As twenty-first century citizens it seems odd to think of these people as different but not so long ago mingling with those groups may have been taboo. But now that we do have a melting pot in our society-- or maybe more of a mixed salad, as many people like to see it-- we have to make sure that any prejudices earlier generations had do not get passed down. Because I'm betting Ravi's parents didn't go to sleep at night, thinking: "Gee, we have done a great job teaching our kids to see everyone as a separate soul with feelings and belief and things to give to the world. We've done a great job teaching him to love his neighbor as himself!" Now most parents can't say that, because we are not that selfless. But why can't we at least try?

And as a mother, my heart aches for the mother of this young man. I could never fathom the pain of losing a child. I just hope my child never makes the wrong decision that leads to another child's death. That may almost be worse. All I can do, though, is to make sure my child is raised with most open-minded and caring parents we can be, and never accepts "bullying" as a fair way to treat another person.