<p>“Every parent has a stake in this regardless of whether they have kids at UVA” </p>
<p>Totally agree cartera45. Especially parents of prospective students. This murder has been an awful thing for UVA, but hopefully the lessons learned from it will cause the school to make changes and make the university better. As a parent of a son at VT, who has seen its share of tragedies lately, I know that the microscope will be on UVA for a long time. </p>
<p>AVA most of us on here aren’t necessarily inquiring/speculating about what caused the crime to transpire because of jealousy, a hidden agenda or just being vindictive. Yes, some of the dialogue here has been just pure “table talk” or speculation- I thought that was permissable in an online chat room. But there are some hard issues that have come about from this, too, and need to be brought into the open. It will be a huge mistake if the people at UVA don’t address these tough, yet important issues because they don’t want to taint their image. </p>
<p>I personally have a high school daughter (athlete), who is interested in UVA. This tragic story really upset her and I know she and most likely other high schoolers are going to be paying attention close attention. As a parent, I want to know the truth about the history of violence against women (or anyone for that matter) by males there. I want to know if the Honor Code that is so cherished is just “talk”. (The statement by vistany regarding the UVA athletes paying for their work to be done by PhD’s kind of leads me to believe so, unfortunately). I want to know if there are areas in Cville that she should stay away from if she were to matriculate there. I know all of the answers can’t be gotten from just reading an online forum, but it is possible that to gain bits of information from the dialogue and then investigate its validity on your own.</p>
Maybe, maybe not. I did try to research different policies, but couldn’t find what I was looking for. I simply thought that students (having agreed to various codes and policies to be UVA students) might know more. </p>
<p>At least there are some sites where UVA students are more forthcoming!</p>
<p>This hits at the broader issues of safety on college campuses, both from within the university and from external sources. I keep an eye on the local newspapers and forward articles on issues in their city. Our daughter went through a stalking incident last year and I kept up communication asking about what happened during the day and if she ran into him. I gave her advice on what to do if she had a problem on campus and offered to intervene if she felt like she needed it.</p>
<p>So I read threads like the current one to see what is happening on campuses between young men and women and make sure that my kids know about the kinds of things that can happen and the known set of risks out there. In this particular case, there were many signs of problems but few did anything about them. I try to teach my kids to watch out for things that lead to problems; sometimes when the problem arrives, it’s too late.</p>
<p>BCEagle- I also keep track of these types of stories and have discussions with my D about them. I also include her boyfriend and all of her other friends when I have the opportunity.</p>
<p>Casteen is retiring which I see as a positive. He has been criticized, from almost the time he started as President, that he has not taken a strong enough stand on sexual assaults that have occurred at the school. I hope Theresa Sullivan will address these issues out of the box. Of course, a good hard look at the Board of Visitors is in order too.</p>
<p>There have been some questions about the Honor Code at UVA. It’s basically a student-run academic honor code dealing with plagiarism; it also deals with some other kinds of behavioral infractions, e.g. deliberately writing bad checks. (Merchants all over Charlottesville will happily accept checks from undergraduates because they know they will clear, or else.) Honor offenses are supposed to be “non-trivial” violations of a community of trust, though truth be told they are pretty small beer compared to what we’re talking about in this case. Somebody convicted of an honor offense is forced to withdraw from UVA permanently.</p>
<p>Interestingly, there was a debate a number of years ago about whether lying about one’s age in order to obtain alcohol was an honor offense. The students decided it was not. I wondered cynically at the time whether that was because if it were, most of the Honor Committee would have to expel itself. Possibly this issue will be revisited in light of the Love murder, although if the policy is too punitive, people who need help might refuse to seek it. It’s already true that the higher drinking age has apparently led to more secretive and grossly excessive drinking than in the days when colleges and universities could oversee some of the partying. I don’t know what the answer is here. Certainly excessive alcohol consumption is behind not only this case but a lot of the brawls and sexual assaults that occur on college campuses all over the US. UVA has implemented an anti-drinking program and also a program about domestic/partner abuse (there are required seminars during first-year orientation, and flyers posted in every stall of every ladies’ room on campus). Clearly they didn’t “take” in this case.</p>
<p>I found this on the UVA Police Department website:</p>
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</p>
<p>Casteen didn’t know that monitoring incidents in other jurisdictions was already a policy?
Right away, Casteen blamed the Lexington Police Department. But did they even know he was a UVA student? And do all the police departments in the state know that they are supposed to be reporting to UVA all the arrests of their students?</p>
<p>I wonder if Huguely’s arrest would have gone unnoticed by UVA because he was a Sports Star.</p>
<p>I’ve been reading some interesting things about how UVA and the Charlottesville Police Department hush things up. There was even criticism leveled at the Charlottesville Medical Examiner’s office.</p>
<p>I just don’t see the UVa president as an enabler here. or the Board of Visitors.</p>
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<p>An arguably more useful approach than looking for root causes or institutional failings.</p>
<p>Of course, the biggest problem is that, as young people, our kids are inexperienced at identifying true jerks, and mentally ill people. A lot of the insights (and hindsights) by our posters are born out of 40+ years of experience on this earth. The young people involved didn’t have that.</p>
Surely you realize you are making this up. None of the above is true at all.
In any case, it doesn’t prevent a student from being arrested up in Maryland or in NC and the college not finding out.</p>
<p>I am not going to go back and quote from already-mentioned articles in previous posts, but your statement that I was “making this up” is incorrect. </p>
<p>You are correct in that even if Casteen succeeds in getting legislation enacted that makes it mandatory for police departments in Virginia to report all convictions to Virginia colleges/universities, that’s not going to affect the out-of-state incidents. About 1/3 of UVA students are out of staters (and nearly all of the lacrosse team is from out of state).</p>
<p>(Huguely was supposed to report his Lexington conviction to the coach.)</p>
<p>Here is an article about today’s meeting. Casteen’s quote ““Information of that kind would have lit up our system,” Casteen said. “Students who do those sorts of things would find themselves suspended immediately”… </p>
<p>Well, maybe Casteen didn’t know about the Lexington taser incident, but Dom Starsia knew about GH’s other fight. If a kid goes into a sleeping teammate’s room and beats the crap out of him, the coach’s system should have been “lit up” and Huguely should have been suspended from that team.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see what comes out of their “internal inquiry”.</p>
<p>I have said before that if the lacrosse coach didn’t know, it was because he had his hands over his ears and was humming “la la la la la.” Lacrosse coaches know everything. What to choose to tell the administration or what the administration wants to hear are two entirely different things. The most important job of the president is raising money. That job puts them in a conflict of interest when it comes to exposure of problems in the system. Dirty laundry and raising big bucks do not go well together.</p>
<p>Huguely’s mother has sent an email to the Washington Post. I think it’s about a good a statement as anyone could make in these horrific circumstances. </p>
<p>Ms. Murphy is most eloquent. Or should I say her lawyer is. My Mom would have kicked my butt years ago if I pulled a fraction of the stuff George did. Does my Mom love me? Absolutely. Would she have made excuses for me all of these years? Absolutely not. It would have been seriously ugly for me.</p>
<p>IMO Yeardley’s blood is on their hands too. That article is meaningless spin. If she really meant those words they would have been sent to Mrs. Love privately. She is just setting the stage for her kid to get off…again.</p>
<p>vistany, you are absolutely entitled to your opinion, but I disagree with it completely. I find it to be most unfair to George’s parents and I don’t know the first thing about how George was raised (other than their decision to send him to Landon, have him play LAX, and send him to UVA). There are many really awful parents in this world, and children that grow up without parents altogether. They do not all grow up and murder people. I have a relative who grew up in an orphanage. He had a very unhappy childhood, yet he grew up to be a kind, gentle, loving person.</p>
<p>What an awful situation. To know someone personally whose daughter has been killed by your own son’s bare hands. I just can’t fathom it. But I also can’t fathom writing an email to a national newspaper trying to express my feelings or be coaxed to do so with constraints or wording put forth by my son’s defense team. </p>
<p>“My Mom would have kicked my butt years ago if I pulled a fraction of the stuff George did. Does my Mom love me? Absolutely. Would she have made excuses for me all of these years? Absolutely not. It would have been seriously ugly for me…” vistany, you could have been my kid.</p>