Classic Rant #344 (September 30, 2010): How Can People Be So Cruel?

Yes, I know Tony Curtis passed away. Being in "Some Like It Hot" made him a superstar in my book.

But I wanted to talk about something else today, a story that I heard about that really, really rubbed me the wrong way.

It seems that two Rutgers University students illegally taped one of their male schoolmates having a sexual encounter with another man and broadcast the images via an Internet chat program. The schoolmate became distraught, and allegedly committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

In this almost eerily modern retelling of Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe," the dead student, prior to his death leap, left a message on his Facebook page that read, "Jumping off the gw bridge, sorry."

The two perpetrators, one who was the now dead student's roommate and one who is a female, both 18 years of age, have been charged, and could be looking at five years in prison for their actions.

What motivates supposedly civilized human beings to craft and then carry out such a heinous act?

I wish I knew, but I don't.

The deceased student was a musician, and by all accounts, he was a good student and a fine human being.

But even if he wasn't, why would fellow students--his own peers--even think of committing such an atrocity?

Did his homosexuality bother them? Did his skill as a musician threaten them? Was he somebody that everyone picked on?

Who knows, but it is incredible in this day and age, where political correctness often overshadows right and wrong, that an incident like this could actually happen--and on a college campus yet.

At this juncture, the authorities are still trying to determine whether the body they found is actually the student, and a lot of the information about the case is pretty sketchy.

But if everything ties in together, then you really have to ask how something like this could happen.

Ironically, the campus was in the process of holding seminars related to behavior on campus that are open to students, faculty and employees of the school.

How I wish these two alleged tapers had gone to the seminars. Maybe they would have changed their ways.

But who knows--all we know is that a young man is gone, and simply because two people decided that his privacy was not enough reason to leave him be.

It just does not make any sense at all, does it?