Tyler Clementi’s mom spoke at Gonzaga University last night (Monday). Tyler was a gay Rutgers University student who committed suicide in 2010. He had discovered his roommate had set up a webcam in their room to broadcast a date between Tyler and a friend.
After his passing, Jane Clementi created a foundation in her son’s name to fight bullying, especially against people in the LGBTQ community.
Tyler Clementi’s passing shook his mom out of what she calls her “little bubble of bliss.”
“I have changed and transformed greatly, I think. I was living in this little bubble until it shattered and I never saw the inequalities. I never really saw the harms from the teachings. I needed my eyes opened,” Jane Clementi said.
And now, as co-founder of the Tyler Clementi Foundation, she is working to fight bigotry and inequality in a number of places. In the nation’s capital, the foundation supports the Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act. One of its co-sponsors is Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray.
But she also wants to convince churches to play a more prominent role.
“Especially trying to get faith communities to revisit and re-look at and reexamine scripture with eyes from the 21st century, because we know, medically, that with research, the great harms in teaching someone that they’re broken or less then or separated from God because of who God created them to be. And I think that we really need to focus on the love. God is so much bigger than the little box that we men try to put him in," Clementi said.
The Clementi Foundation encourages people to go to its website and take what it calls the “Upstander Pledge”, to stand up and speak out whenever they see bullying.