Rodemeyer Case Highlights Complexities Surrounding Bullying, Teen Suicide

The AP (9/29) reports on the recent suicide of Buffalo, New York, high school student Jamey Rodemeyer, who in the weeks before his death "posted increasingly desperate notes ruminating on suicide, bullying, homophobia and pop singer Lady Gaga." After his death, "activists, journalists and Gaga herself seized on the suicide, decrying the loss of another promising life to bullying." However, "what the incomplete and conflicting portrait of Rodemeyer's life did not convey were the complexities of the teenage mind and the reality that bullying is rarely the sole factor at work. It also highlighted the risk of creating an icon at the price of glamorizing suicide as an option for other bullied or attention-seeking teens." The AP (9/29) runs a sidebar detailing anti-bullying legislation in seven states in the wake of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi's suicide last year.