Lacrosse ugliness at U.Va.

Not in the DVDs I keep under the bed.

 

I just vomited.

 

This, I agree with.

But the scariest thing is that we most probably are not thinking of the same people.

 

hahaha

 

If anyone was going to take a "big picture" view of this tragedy, I'd think the place to start is examining how colleges address incidents of domestic violence on their campuses.

For young women like Yeardley Love, being unable to get away from an abusive boyfriend goes beyond simply lacking the self-worth to know she doesn't deserve such treatment.

Unless she was willing to leave her lacrosse team and friends and transfer out of U.Va., she wasn't going to be able to completely get out of Huguely's orbit until graduation. This was especially true since they played the same sport and frequently bumped into each other at parties, etc.

Love's self-esteem obviously was strong enough that she basically said, "Fuck that shit, I'm not leaving this school no matter how big an asshole that guy is."

And without the ability to see into the future, there's no way to know whether or not Huguely would've killed her even if she had left Charlottesville and finished her education at another school far away. He certainly wouldn't have been the first domestic abuser who went out of his way to finish what he started.

In short, I think colleges obviously need to be more proactive in dealing with guys like Huguely, who was (is) an alcoholic with anger issues in his past and in retrospect was simply a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. Create an environment where female undergrads know their schools will take decisive action and promptly assign severe punishments for proven incidents of domestic violence, and maybe more young women will feel comfortable coming forward with formal accusations.

At the same time, it's a difficult deal for college administrators to have too much input into their students' personal and romantic relationships without creating a host of big-time privacy issues -- especially when the students in question are each legally adults.

Of course, I'm not ruling out that it's all Whitney Houston's fault, either.

 

I couldn't agree more. But I'm afraid colleges are a ways off from disposing with the "boys will be boys" mentality when dealing with jocks.

 

You know its hard to stop the high speed rail train after two hundred miles at full speed.

Look at the enabling that happens when they're 8 or 10, when the train leaves the station.