Kelly Ebbels

Tragic end for a true talent *– 1 October 2010 –

*Winner of 2nd place for NJPA Robert P. Kelly Award

The tragic details of the death of 18-year old Tyler Clementi, a graduate of Ridgewood High School (RHS) and a student at Rutgers University, unraveled this week on an international stage. At home, the story is all too raw.

Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge (GWB) to his death on Wednesday, Sept. 22, just days after Rutgers students Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei allegedly taped him in a sexual act with another man. His family confirmed the suicide on Wednesday afternoon.

“Tyler was a fine young man, and a distinguished musician. The family is heartbroken beyond words,” the family’s attorney said in a statement.

Prosecutors in Middlesex County have charged Ravi and Wei, both 18, with two counts each of invasion of privacy for allegedly using a webcam to view and transmit a live image of Clementi on Sept. 19. Ravi, Clemente’s roommate, was also charged with two additional counts of invasion of privacy for attempting a similar live feed on Sept. 21, according to published reports. Collecting or viewing sexual images without consent is a fourth-degree crime. Transmitting them is a third-degree crime with a maximum prison term of five years.

A body had been recovered from the Hudson River north of the GWB on Wednesday afternoon; authorities had not identified it at press time.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the family,” said Ridgewood Schools Superintendent Daniel Fishbein.

The family had released a message last Friday that Clementi was missing; that afternoon RHS Principal Jack Lorenz sent a message to parents offering counseling assistance through the weekend.

Throughout this week, crisis intervention counselors as well as the school’s guidance counselors and administrators, were made available to students, Lorenz said.

“We’re dealing with the needs of our students and our faculty,” Fishbein said.

‘Devastated’

Clementi was an accomplished violinist. Members of the musical communities he had traveled in said they were overcome by the news.

“We’re devastated in the music department and as a musical community, and we feel the world has lost a great human being,” said Jeffrey Haas, the director of bands at RHS.

Clementi had performed in the pit orchestra of several musicals at the high school; he also made trips to the elementary schools to demonstrate the violin. Haas recalled that, after playing a virtuosic passage, kids smiled and clapped for him, but Clementi remained humble.

“Tyler, in his Tyler way, gave a little smirky smile, a little head bow, and then sat down,” Haas recalled. “He was not an applause person. He did it because he loved it. It was how he shared himself.”

“A lot of kids around town started playing violin because they heard Tyler play,” Haas added.

Clementi had studied privately for the past five years with Khullip Jeung of Fort Lee; Jeung had begun to hear rumors of Clementi’s disappearance last Friday, and he struggled with what to do with the news.

“I was in shock; I couldn’t believe my ears,” Jeung said.

“He had a lot of life and soul in his playing. Everything he did was so magical and touching,” Jeung said. “His playing was just so natural, without force. It was very genuine. That’s a word I think everybody’s using to describe him.”

Clementi was a longtime member of the Bergen Youth Orchestra (BYO), where he had been concertmaster, as well as the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra. Eugene Minor, musical director of the BYO for 42 years, said that Clementi was “one of the strongest violinists we’ve ever had in the program.

“He was an aggressive player, and very accurate. When he was presented with any kind of a challenge, he’d be up to that challenge by the next rehearsal,” Minor said.

Ryan Pifher, owner of Porch Light Productions, said that Clementi performed last February in a production of “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” – which has just piano and violin in the pit. Pifher recalled Clementi as a professional and talented performer.

“He handled the music beautifully,” Pihfer said. “And he was great to have around.”

Courtney Ayukawa, a 2010 graduate of RHS who has known Clementi for 13 years, recalled a solo he performed with the Benjamin Franklin Middle School orchestra. “For those few minutes, it was as if anything outside the auditorium no longer existed,” she wrote in an e-mail.

“I hope we all remember Tyler for who he was, not for what the media has made him. Personally I will always see and celebrate Tyler to be a kind, talented violinist who was quirky and fun enough to ride a unicycle,” Ayukawa wrote.

A community left grieving

Clementi’s death has made national and international news. A Facebook page, “In Honor of Tyler Clementi,” was created Wednesday afternoon and had 25,000 members at press time.

Some RHS students participated Thursday in a grassroots Day of Silence in honor of Clementi; the effort had begun via a Facebook event that was later taken down.

Katie Ortiz, a 2010 RHS graduate and a classmate of Clementi who participated in the Day of Silence, said the effort was a way to “silently speak out about equality, and gay rights, and the torture that a lot of LSBG (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) students endure at school every day and in their lives.”

Ortiz said it was especially meaningful, because Clementi’s death is the fourth suicide in the past three weeks across the country related to homophobic bullying.

“He was kind of a shy guy. It must have been overwhelming,” she said.

Lorenz, the RHS principal, said that many students and faculty at the school were distraught by the news of the events. This is the third death of a Ridgewood High School student or recent graduate in the past nine months.

Ideas about how to move forward were already emerging.

Students were planning to initiate a campaign called Stop the Silence, which would encourage people to speak up if they know if someone is in trouble and in need of assistance.

Longer term, Lorenz said the school planned to create a website resource for parents and students that will provide information about suicide, how to intervene, and how to speak to a student about it.

“These are the kinds of conversations we’re having now,” Lorenz said. “Do we need to have a stronger sense of community? Do we need to bring back a homeroom? As corny as that sounds, would that connect kids better?”

He added that RHS as a “very, very comfortable environment for kids that are gay.”

“This is not a gay-bashing learning community,” Lorenz said. “Even the faculty begins to struggle with questions of, ‘Why is this happening? Are we responsible?’ Everyone begins to over-examine themselves, and it takes its toll emotionally and psychologically.”

Haas confirmed that it was difficult to continue teaching under the circumstances.

“I’m angry also. But I have to be there, teaching music,” he said. “The biggest tragedy, when someone commits suicide, is when people are left behind.

“But the legacy he left us is as our graduate, not as our victim,” Haas added.

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Popular bar night draws large crowd* – 3 December 2010

*Winner of 2nd place for NJPA Robert P. Kelly Award

More than two dozen police officers from 11 neighboring towns showed up to disperse a crowd of bar patrons on Ridgewood‘s Chestnut Street on Thanksgiving Eve, one of the busiest nights of the year for bars.

The crowd assembled on the street after last call around 1:30 a.m., and the police department was called at 1:42 a.m., according to Detective Chris McDowell, who obtained his information from the Ridgewood Police Department report on the incident. Soon after, a call for mutual aid was put out.

While there was a report of an altercation, details were fuzzy.

“We have a victim, but not an actor,” McDowell said.

No arrests were made, but several individuals were asked into the station for questioning, police said.

Ridgewood‘s police department had about 10 officers on duty that night, including four working overtime at a driving while intoxicated (DWI) checkpoint with Bergen County and Wyckoff police on Goffle Road; several officers were busy processing two drivers under arrest for DWI infractions. Ridgewood police requested backup to disperse the crowd, estimated at between 400 and 450.

Officers from Wyckoff, Glen Rock, Fair Lawn, Paramus, Waldwick, Allendale, Westwood, Hillsdale, Mahwah, Ramsey and New Milford all responded, as well as the Bergen County Police Department, McDowell said.

According to Jeff Chan, a patron at The Office that night, Ridgewood officers and those from other towns began lining up on Chestnut Street and focused on Blend. As he and his friend moved toward their car on Franklin Avenue, a “steady stream of fast-moving cop cars” rushed past, he said.

“There wasn’t a moment when there wasn’t a car speeding down the street toward Chestnut,” Chan said. “They were going 50 or 60 miles per hour, burning down the street, on full blare with all their sirens and lights. There was nothing subtle about it at all.”

The officers were focused on dispersing the crowd rather than ensuring that patrons got home safely, Chan said.

“They were just bossing people around, standing on the corners telling people where to go, like it was a crime scene, instead of making sure people weren’t drunk-driving,” he said.Ward and McDowell said the threat of violence or riot was high with a youthful and intoxicated crowd.

“Especially with alcohol and large crowds, you have concerns for vandalism and fights,” Ward said.

“You have a very large crowd that could turn into a riot, with everybody drinking, and the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving is the biggest drinking night in bars,” McDowell said. “So you have a lot of people suddenly coming out. With alcohol, people do stupid things. For so many people to come out all at once like that, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.”

He added that local police departments do not control how many towns might respond to a call for mutual aid. A report of the radio call for mutual aid was not immediately available.

“Surrounding towns will send assistance, and you get what you get,” McDowell said.

The department had not expected the crowds that night to refuse to leave, Ward said.

“We had no prior indication that this was going to happen. They were supposedly a little bit unruly, and were refusing to vacate the streets. There was sporadic pushing and shoving,” Ward said, adding that there were reports of some individuals “inciting” the crowd, apparently “chanting a few things, saying they didn’t have to go or weren’t going to go,” he said.

There was also a report of criminal mischief later that night at It’s Greek To Me restaurant on East Ridgewood Avenue, where a planter was overturned and damage to a window was sustained. Ward could not confirm whether the incident was related to the crowd on Chestnut Street.

Chan, the witness, could not confirm any pushing or chanting.

“The crowd in front of Blend seemed very condensed – they didn’t seem in any hurry to disperse,” he said.

Other witnesses who had left earlier said that patrons had been peaceful and non-disruptive.

“Everyone was outside having a good time and reminiscing,” said Luke Suriano, who had been at Blend that night.

Maggie Criqui, another bar patron, said the crowd was tame.

“It wasn’t crazy or anything. It was just a lot of people,” she said.

The rumor of a fight likely seemed “blown out of proportion,” Suriano said.

Ward said that backup was important to protect the safety of both officers and civilians.

“It’s not necessarily the best thing to be outnumbered like that,” Ward said. “It was handled appropriately, and other towns properly responded. Once we had enough people there, they started dissipating.”

The crowd was dispersed just after 2 a.m. early Thursday morning, McDowell said.

Bar managers at The Office and Blend, as well as at Smith Brothers on nearby South Broad Street, reported normal evenings.

“We ended the night beautifully. Everybody behaved, everybody was good. It was a normal night,” said Zvia Barlev, co-owner of Blend.

A spokesperson for the company that owns The Office reported a smooth night on Thanksgiving Eve as well, and had no further comment.

Continued presence

Ridgewood‘s police stepped up enforcement and presence through the weekend in the wake of Wednesday night’s incident, Ward said.

Officers entered all Ridgewood bars on Friday night to check out the validity of bartending licenses and to search for underage drinkers. Barlev noted the restaurant was busier on Friday night than on Wednesday night.

Officers were also put on overtime duty through the weekend to man DWI checkpoints. McDowell said that, on Thanksgiving eve, the Goffle Road checkpoint yielded six arrests.

Ward said he met with Barlev and the manager of The Office on Monday to discuss how to prevent such large crowds from entering the street at the same time.

“They will voluntarily rotate releasing people a little earlier than the other,” Ward said.

The chief and a sergeant from the Bergen County Police Department did not return requests for comment by press time.

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Ridgewood High School student testifies about alleged bullying incidents – 17 Nov. 2011

The Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act cleared the state’s joint House and Assembly education committees on Monday as details emerged of one student’s struggle with bullying from his peers and alleged mistreatment from his teachers at Ridgewood High School (RHS). …

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Student charged in connection with fire at Ridgewood High School — 6 January 2011

A 16-year-old Ridgewood High School (RHS) student was arrested Wednesday and charged with two counts of arson in connection with a fire Tuesday afternoon in the boys bathroom of the school’s north science wing, according to a spokesperson with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office. …