Murder at UVA

May 9, 2010 8:37 AM

Murder At UVA: George Huguely, Yeardley Love, And Lacrosse's Worst An Andrew Sharpe column with some personal analysis. Food for thought.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies (30 comments total)

This wasn't about lacrosse. This was textbook domestic violence. Which many people that age think only happens to middle aged, possibly lower income, married ladies.
posted by availablelight at 8:42 AM on May 9, 2010 [8 favorites]

Ugh. That was some bad writing.
posted by stratastar at 9:21 AM on May 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

I learned a new word: lacrosstitute.
posted by grounded at 9:23 AM on May 9, 2010

I work for one of Charlottesville's newspapers and, while I appreciate the personal take (I too know people who befriended Ms. Love and Mr. Huguely), this article seems to be grasping at straws, some of which stick. It's understandable; there is a lot to comprehend: rich white kids, frat-house lifestyle, competitive sports, a high-profile university. But, Huguely waived his Miranda rights and admitted, via his lawyer, that it was "an accident". In other words, the author of the article is correct in saying that star athletes exist in a protected bubble where their faults in behaviour are OK as long as the university is cashing in on their fame. My own take on this, having taught at the university level, is that college athletics are the untouchable cash-cow that has ruined higher education. Huguely lived within this bubble and thought that he could beat his girlfriend up with impunity. He admits it. The "murder" part was accidental. By-the-books domestic abuse filed under privilege.
posted by MrChowWow at 9:40 AM on May 9, 2010 [12 favorites]

availablelight is correct. The subtext of the article is that Our Type Should Be Above All That. There's not a real concern about domestic violence here, it's about not letting the side down.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:47 AM on May 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

My own take on this, having taught at the university level, is that college athletics are the untouchable cash-cow that has ruined higher education. Huguely lived within this bubble and thought that he could beat his girlfriend up with impunity.

Well, without having RTFA, I think there may be another element as well. I keep hearing reference to his parents' million-dollar estate. I don't know much about those, but I would imagine they generally cost about a million dollars, right? I'm not saying all rich kids are assholes or anything, but I am saying that rich kids who are assholes may be less likely to experience the full consequences that, say, a poor black kid who became a college athlete and did the same shit might experience. (And by the "same shit" I mean Huguely's now-evident pre-murdering reign of jackassery...antagonizing cops and the like.) But I don't know that there's a larger lesson to be learned here, really -- this person would appear to be a psychotic. He may have been spoiled or unfairly protected from his own actions, and those may be things that are bad and should never happen. But I don't think most people, however free they may feel to show their ass, are likely to beat their loved ones to death.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:58 AM on May 9, 2010

I dunno...I saw it as "people of a certain protected class-rich white jocks-are a protected species." When I was in college(NCSU) back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I certainly saw it, particularly with the football and basketball teams. (Ironically, my school's lacrosse field was right behind my dormitory and my dorm window overlooked it. )
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 9:59 AM on May 9, 2010

college athletics are the untouchable cash-cow that has ruined higher education

Well, except for the part where big-time sports programs, with a few exceptions at a few schools, cost more money than they make. I don't think lacrosse is one of the exceptions.
posted by escabeche at 10:00 AM on May 9, 2010

I don't like this article. It doesn't examine how the majority of athletes and over-privileged assholes don't beat their girlfriends to death and then steal their computers and put the corpse back in the bed and then go home so someone else can find the body. It doesn't go deeply into his problem of never having to learn how to manage his anger. There's no, "That guy has issues that make him a dangerous person" that his parents should have gotten him intensive therapy for (maybe they did, who knows) especially after his dad filed a domestic abuse complaint against him in 2008 in Florida.

so-called "lacrosstitutes," groupies entranced by the glamor of it all.

I don't get why these would be real or a large group. I can understand being a groupie for a basketball team, but for lacrosse specifically? Don't these lacrosse guys just end up turning into pasty doughy guys who work for their father's investment bank or real estate firm? I'm sure they're probably just girls who like rich guy athletes.
posted by anniecat at 10:00 AM on May 9, 2010

Somewhere on line I saw an article where his own father called in a domestic violence call on him....iirc they were on the family yacht and Huguely leaped overboard and started swimming to shore...some helpful boater did pick him up. There were few details. But I surmise we will see a broader picture in future of a young man who needed real help and or real consequences and did not get it-at least early enough to save this young woman's life.

We had a murder/suicide last year in our community where a well respected and well loved (and rich) individual started suffering mental issues, and wound up slaying his wife and two children before turning the gun on himself. Again, a certain class of folk seem to think that some things are better hushed up and covered up rather than fixed, and a whole family paid the price for the miscalculation.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 10:04 AM on May 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Not wanting to fan the flames of sensationalism, just curious: is this the same team that was involved in the accusations of gang-rape - later retracted - a few years ago?
posted by Flashman at 10:04 AM on May 9, 2010

No, that was Duke.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 10:05 AM on May 9, 2010

So, assholes are now a unique culture? Is that it?
posted by dortmunder at 10:37 AM on May 9, 2010

Next up: videogaming was involved. AMIRITE?
posted by ericb at 11:08 AM on May 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

George Huguely did, however, play high school lacrosse for the same DC-area prep school, Landon, as one of the accused in the Duke case. Seems a bit churlish to draw too many comparisons, though, as the Duke players were completely exonerated, while Huguely has pretty much confessed.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 11:16 AM on May 9, 2010

I grew up in that culture, and participated in it far more than I'd ever care to admit.
Yeah, right. That's why he keeps mentioning it every paragraph, huh? A woman was violently killed by her boyfriend and all he can comment on is his oh-so-wonderful knowledge of prep school lacrosse culture. Give me a break.

Domestic violence affects every socioeconomic class. Congratulations to the author for being familiar with one of those classes.
posted by Neekee at 12:30 PM on May 9, 2010

Hmm I thought that was interesting and if not exactly Pulitzer winning prose it was sure well written enough. Thanks for the link.
posted by vito90 at 1:09 PM on May 9, 2010

The subtext of the article is that Our Type Should Be Above All That.

The only part of his class subtext that really comes through is that nobody believes it could happen, even when it's happening right before their eyes. This is more about denial than privilege.
posted by dhartung at 2:06 PM on May 9, 2010

This wasn't about lacrosse. This was textbook domestic violence.

Yes, thank you availablelight. I came here to say that exactly. This whole situation (and this article) makes me so angry I can hardly see, let alone compose intelligent commentary, so I'll be brief. To talk about this in the context of something like entitlement or class or for God's sake "the lacrosse social scene" is missing the point by a very wide mile. The words domestic violence or domestic abuse don't occur even once in this piece. How terribly self-centered to think that people of your class, your culture get to be special snowflakes with special motivations or circumstances when they do something like this.

The truth of it is, a lot of men believe they're allowed to hit a woman when they decide she's their property. A lot of people tacitly condone this belief by not acting when they see the signs of violence and control.

From what I've read, George Huguely was a messed up, violent guy with a history that suggested this could happen. The warning signs were there and the people who saw them didn't take them seriously. Every person who saw his behavior and ignored it for any reason (because he was a good kid with a promising future, because it was just youthful and impulsive, because he really loved her, because she was asking for it...) is in some way complicit in her death.

I'll never understand why people will be silent when a man hurts and controls his wife or girlfriend. And I'll never understand why this writer could look at this situation and write a piece that refers to "of my sympathies for some of the people that'll be unfairly labeled as a result." Honestly, this just makes me sick.
posted by mostlymartha at 3:13 PM on May 9, 2010 [5 favorites]

I goofed on the URL: it's www.c-ville.com. You'd think, after typing it dozens of times a day, I'd get it right.
posted by MrChowWow at 6:33 PM on May 9, 2010

Lots of DC-area prep schools churn out assholish jocks, but many of them also maintain high quality standards when it comes to education. You can't coast academically at the best lacrosse schools as you might at a top-tier football or basketball program.

Then there's Landon.
posted by bardic at 6:47 PM on May 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

bardic,

As a Landon graduate (albeit from more than a decade ago)l unless you have direct experience as a student at Landon, I would say you have fuck-all knowledge about the rigor of the curriculum at the school. Granted, since my graduation the school has been wracked by more than a few scandals academically; but honestly, shove off.
posted by stratastar at 8:30 PM on May 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

Deep breath: I know George Huguely. I don't know him well at all, but I know him, because I'm from a family filled with Landon grads, some of whom played lacrosse (and many of whom are wonderful men with feminist principles). This doesn't make me more right than anyone else here, but I grew up in George's tiny slice of the world and so his culture is largely mine. I've been distraught all week, half-hoping this would get posted and half-hoping it wouldn't because I wouldn't be able not to say something. It's not because I think I'm a special snowflake, and it's not because I think I deserve congratulations, and it's not because I think my privilege protects me from domestic violence.

Yes, I absolutely realize that at base this is domestic violence, and I also realize that domestic violence is tied very closely to silence, and that prevents millions of women and men from receiving the help they need to escape violence they have never and will never deserve. There are a lot of layers surrounding the domestic violence. This horrible, brutal murder is not the result of any one thing. Life is never that simple. It's not only the substance abuse, or lacrosse culture, or spoiled rich kid syndrome, or the way our culture treats a woman as less of a person than an athletically skilled good looking white man (or a man at all, really). It's all of these and more, and all week I've been thinking about the same thing St. Alia said: a certain class of folk seem to think that some things are better hushed up and covered up rather than fixed.

George grew up with every privilege, and that includes a great education (yes, stratastar is right that Landon provides its students with an excellent education), one that included repeated and serious teaching that violence against women is wrong, teaching conducted by well-trained and -payed teachers and counselors, some of the best in the business. Why is George's privileged background important, when at heart this is a domestic violence issue? I think because we assume that early and continuing education against domestic violence and for the proposition that women are people just as deserving of respect as men is the kind of exposure that is key to solving the problem, to breaking the cycle. At least I know I've always hoped that this was true. This is what George got, this message as clear as a bell, along with a close family, and yet with his own two hands he murdered a woman he supposedly "loved" when she tried to assert her free will.

In my heart, I truly believe a major reason the message didn't work was because Landon (and not just Landon but prep schools like it and many of the families, including mine, that send their children to these schools, and also the colleges the graduates of these schools go on to, like UVA) sends another message--one of brotherhood/sisterhood and familial loyalty above all, above everything else. Whether it's the consistent quoting of the St. Crispin's Day speech--"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers" is always in the Landon yearbook in multiple places, although I've never seen the more chilling lines that follow, "For he today that sheds his blood with me/Shall be my brother"--or more simply "Bros before 'hos," it's there. Problems are dealt with inside the family. Close ranks and let the school take care of it. To publicize or call outside attention is to betray the family. At Landon athletic games there are painted orange-and-brown signs that literally just say PRIDE on them. I believe this acted like a blanket that further insulated George's problems.

I don't know why this is, and I have a very hard time explaining how this contributed, but I know in my heart that it did. Maybe it was that George could never hit rock bottom, no matter how bad his anger and substance abuse problems got, because more people were willing to make excuses and keep his failings private than were willing to let him fall on his face in public. Yeardley, like many, many victims of domestic violence (which at this point she appears to have been even before she was murdered), needed the help of other people around her. Maybe this "brotherhood above all" meant that the people who had knowledge of the problem, whether they be teammates or other friends, were resistant to notify outside authorities, because they had always been taught that was verboten, and because, in the days before Yeardley's death, they figured it was almost graduation, that they'd be able to keep him in control, that it'd be a betrayal to make his threats public. People knew that he was violent; they were almost certainly in denial that he could ever be this violent, but they knew something, and despite their long exposure to the message that domestic violence kills, no one acted except George. It's worth wondering why that is, and whether it's a cultural issue.

I'm sorry if this comes off as self-aggrandizing. I swear it's not intended that way.

For Yeardley, who was a person with a person's right to end a relationship and live through it:
.
posted by sallybrown at 8:53 PM on May 9, 2010 [11 favorites]

"As a Landon graduate (albeit from more than a decade ago)l unless you have direct experience as a student at Landon"

I have had direct experience with Landon students and faculty.

So get bent. Your school's dodgy reputation will continue to speak for itself, now more than ever.
posted by bardic at 1:04 AM on May 10, 2010

The most upsetting thing about the Duke Lacrosse incident was just how believable it was.

The culture needs to change, and it needs to change now.
posted by schmod at 8:34 AM on May 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

I have had direct experience with Landon students and faculty. So get bent. Your school's dodgy reputation will continue to speak for itself, now more than ever.


Oh, right. So you've met a handful of people involved in this school and extrapolate that the school has low quality standards? I'd wager that that says more about the people you're associating with than the school itself. People like you, who in a thread about the murder of a young person post about the quality of education at the perpetrator's high school, are what contribute to that ignorant stereotype more so than the school itself. Stop being an asshole.
posted by emilyd22222 at 10:36 AM on May 10, 2010

As a useless data point to add to the derail, I'm neighbors with a Landon grad who got out of jail a little while ago for armed robbery/attempted murder; Bullis and Georgetown Prep may be pricks of the highest magnitude but at least they haven't crossed that line AFAIK.
posted by Challahtronix at 10:45 AM on May 10, 2010

Until one of you can show me crime data that suggests that Landon truly does produce more criminals than another school, you need to knock it the fuck off with the anecdotals and stop dragging this school's reputation through the mud. It's insulting to all of the smart, law-abiding, good people who graduated from there.
posted by emilyd22222 at 10:54 AM on May 10, 2010

I keep hearing reference to his parents' million-dollar estate. I don't know much about those, but I would imagine they generally cost about a million dollars, right?

He's from Chevy Chase, MD. Million-dollar homes there aren't mansions. (Assuming "million-dollar estate" doesn't mean "multi-million.")
posted by kirkaracha at 11:15 AM on May 10, 2010

You guys are being oversensitive about what is really just another stupid private high school in the DC area. It's obvious that the school isn't responsible for influencing boys into becoming sociopaths and killers.


you need to knock it the fuck off with the anecdotals and stop dragging this school's reputation through the mud.

I'm not sure their reputation could get any worse than it already is. I'm not sure any private high school that costs as much as a private college could really be though of as more than a playground for rich kids. And really, who cares? 99% of the world doesn't know Landon the DC-area private school from Landon High School in Duluth or Texarkana, so you're safe.
posted by anniecat at 7:08 PM on May 10, 2010