Tyler Clementi

It's 2010. But I'm brought back to November 27, 1985. That's when a former student of mine hanged himself from a tree at the University of Delaware. I still remember answering the phone and my colleague Pat asking me if I was sitting down. At the viewing, so many recently graduated classmates of Michael's were there, and they were all searching for reasons why. It wasn't until Alan said he thought Michael was gay that we all stopped in our tracks.

Next month it'll be 25 years since it happened. Has much changed? I'm not so sure. There was a time when I thought we truly turned the corner on how students express their opinions on gay issues in school. Although I still hear the occasional gay slur in school, which is still unacceptable, I thought that many have become genuinely aware that being gay is no different than having blue eyes. Am I naive? Has our effort to bring about awareness simply made people go underground in their sentiment? Are young people (and old) simply being secretly homophobic, and thinking up more creative ways to bully? I don't know what the answers are, but I do know that suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people, and when broken down by sexual orientation, it's triple that number. Maybe I shouldn't look at the teens and ask how could this happen. There are plenty of adults who continue to air their homophobic rants in public--so where do we go from here?