I have always held the torch so high for my alma mater UVA (University of Virginia) that I was pretty much blind to any criticism about the University: Perfect UVA in perfect little Charlottesville where perfect students study. Needless to say that when I read about the murder of Lacrosse player Yeardley Love allegedly by her ex-boyfriend George Huguely, I was stunned. How could such a brutal murder happen in Jefferson's Academical Village?
However, the more I thought about it and the more I read about it, my sentiments began to match many of those who asked, "why should we be shocked?" The Justice Department reports that eighty-five percent of intimate partner violence is committed against women, the majority of whom are between the ages of 20 and 24.
University of Virginia student Yeardley Love who was found dead Monday. Image Credit: AOL News
UVA graduate Mary Beth Lineberry writes that in the past decade, over 100 cases of dating abuse have been reported at the University, and that "Love's death exposes an unfortunate reality of college life that's often obscured or silenced in communities."
This fact is true not only at UVA but on campuses across the country and even beyond college life. Talking about sexual violence and more specifically intimate partner violence is not only discouraged, but the general attitude across the board is to keep it to yourself, close your eyes and act like it never happened. The culture of silence around domestic violence is institutionalized because we allow it to be.
What I find appalling is that the University of Virginia in the year 2010 in the aftermath of one its students being found face down in a pool of her own blood after having her head banged against the wall by her ex-boyfriend, is not taking the opportunity it has right now to shatter the silence that surrounds this violence loudly and clearly.
Students held a vigil last night in honor of Love in the University's Amphitheater. Image Credit: Huffington Post
Many former and current UVA students are pointing out that the University is not only not taking the necessary steps to protect their students, it appears they are still skirting around the issue of domestic violence instead of confronting it.
This post by Amanda Hess in the Washington City Paper rightfully blasts the email sent around by Chief of University of Virginia's Police, Mike Gibson that encourages students in the aftermath of this murder to "work with your neighbors and fellow community members to ensure a safe environment."
Hess rightfully asks that if "police believe that Love was killed by a more likely suspect—a man she knew...why hasn’t UVA included any information here about domestic violence?"
Hess points out that despite Love being found dead in her apartment just this week, students are not being given adequate information on how they can identify that they're in an abusive relationship, about the resources available to them at the University, or even how to help friends in abusive relationships. She quotes one of her peers who asks "why can’t we speak honestly about violence? Locking your doors isn’t going to keep your boyfriend from hitting you.”
The University of Virginia has always been held in such a high esteem, consistently ranking amongst the best academic institutions in the world. But it risks to lose the respect and honor bestowed upon it by its peers, students, faculty and alums if it fails to confront the violence it has been confronted with.
The murder of Yeardley Love must not become just another statistic. It is a reminder and warning to us of what happens when we perpetuate the myth that domestic violence should remain a "hush hush" issue that belongs under the rug.
One of the best advantages academic institutions have is that they can always take a situation and turn it into an educational opportunity. Right now, UVA has a chance to educate its student body and its community about intimate partner violence. Creating awareness around an issue is often the best way to eliminate it.
The way to ensure that a death like Love's does not happen again at UVA, or any other University for that matter, is to bring the issue of domestic violence out in the open, and break the culture of silence instead of perpetuating it. Otherwise this murder in Jefferson's village, will not be the last.
Cross-posted from "Anushay's Point."
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This case is a domestic violence case. Alcohol may have exacerbated it, but it did not cause it. @Maureenow, tell your daughters, If a guy you date seems overly attentive (which can be flattering at first, but watch it.), wants to know where you are all the time, wants to take the relationship too fast, is "possessive"-- these are all classic symptoms of a high potential for abuse.
Above all, trust your gut. Anything that makes you feel funny inside in the beginning, is right on & will only get worse.
Blessings to all-
Just have the female students watch the Lifetime channel. It strikes me as silly to think that it is the role of a University to tell students how to determine if they are in an abusive relationship.
If this is meant seriously, then shouldn't we just go back to having single sex dorms and house mothers?
A point of information that may seem minor but is not. Whoever did this terrible act has yet to be tried and convicted of any crime. There may be larger societal issues reflected here, but it's a fact that under our system of laws whoever committed the act is considered innocent until proven guilty.
And I suspect that this woman knew the warning signs too. I haven't read all of the news on this, but hadn't she broken up with him? As much as we don't want to believe it, it's possible that in some cases the woman can do the "right" thing by breaking up with a guy once he abuses her - and yet still end up a victim. My guess is that her mistake was underestimating what this guy was capable of and what he would do.
"No" to evil and injustice is where G-d's grace is: Annuit Coeptis.
Mr. Jefferson and the whig Founders said "No" to caesaropapism, the Roman Anti-Christ's Old Sectarian Order, Ancien Regime of king and pope: hence The New Secular Order, "Novus Ordo Seclorem" of Our Creed.
Once The University of America's Author, Founder, and Prophet, Thomas Jefferson, UVa has been defiled by the "Fifth Column," fascist plutocracy of the Roman Anti-Christ, like the Supreme Court, Congress, and other "elite" institutions.
Who at the U. didn't know that 15% of George Allen's vocabulary was the "n" word? Yet the C'Ville community climbed on board, with all the Big Money in Albermarle County, to send him to the House, Governor's Mansion, and Senate.
President Castini/Casteen has continued to treasonously squander Mr. Jefferson's inheritance by employing Philip Zelikow, a key player in the 9/11 cover-up of Bush's and Cheney's heretofore successful "Reichstag Fire Redux."
Lauded and enabled by UVa, George Huguely V murdered one innocent.
Zelikow helped the Roman Anti-Christ, which lately gave us Hitler and the Holocaust through Rockefeller and Prescott Bush's finance, and the assassinations of John and Martin to send us to die shedding innocent blood for the pope in Rome's latifundial estate of Vietnam, to kill 3,000 on 9/11. And how many more of our troops and innocents ("collateral damage") in false war, to say nothing of the re-birth of the Afghan heroin trade?
The Creator, G-d of the universe is where Mr. Jefferson's, and America's, ideals are.
The University has slid far from Grace under the guidance of John Castini, false Virginian.
Can Castini's replacment as president of the U. be much more than a witting or unwitting "undercover nun?"
UVa enabled Yeardley Love to be murdered as a slave of Roman oppressor George Huguely.
UVa has enabled the Roman Anti-Christ to transparently usurp Our Nation. Are they just stupid and ambitious, or traitors?
Read Jefferson. Establish righteousness in Our Land. If the Unversity of Virginia isn't doing that, it is failing its charter, at best.
Moreover, even though many times the abuse is triggered only by alcohol or drugs, we must also recognize the sociopaths. Sociopaths are extremely deceptive and can play the role of a "normal" person for years, if necessary, in order to gain a woman's trust. And so many young women mistake the desire for a man to always want to be around or to quickly make the relationship exclusive for abiding love.
Education about the warning signs of negative relationships and how to leave them safely must come long before college and even before high school. And it must be repeated constantly. College is much too late to learn this.
A guest expert on television cited as a common denominator in the murder and the J. Taylor assault "entitlement." I couldn't disagree more strongly. I think rage and a history of serious psychological problems were a common denominator. And why do guests and commentators so often avoid discussing the near universal use of steroids by athletes of all ages, often after their playing days have ended? Add that to any emotional disorders and these unimaginable crimes result.
I recently came across an excerpt from Jane Pauley's book describing her twelve-year struggle with bi-polar disorder which appears to have been precipitated by a lengthy treatment of hives with steroids. Pauley's dedicated herself to speak out about mental illness from medical and other causes and has contributed to a partially gratis mental/physical/dental health center outside her hometown of Indianapolis.
The medical use of steroids may be unavoidable, but we need to do a better job of preventing and educating about the use of steroids by athletes and others--both male and female. They are the often undiscussed cause of so many apparently inexplicable extreme assaults. We don't know the circumstances of the two recent attacks, but their nature certainly raises suspician that drugs leading to aggression may have been involved.
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I feel like we've been fighting this battle for a million years and it has improved and it improves when men stand up and are equally vocal about how a man 'behaves'.
"steroids are the cause of so many apparently inexplicable extreme assaults."
With all due respect b.h., i am confident there is not a single reputed study or statistic that you can site to substantiate that preposterous claim.
On the other hand, according to the most respected studies available, nothing foments violent behavior more effectively than ethyl alcohol(C2H5OH).
Acetylaldehyde, a metabolic byproduct of assimilating alcohol, is a nerve irritant that effects the pre-frontal cortex, the area of the brain that controls aggression. For many people, this can create an explosive mood.
The young man in question has a history of problems with alcohol. Perhaps it would make more sense to focus on the facts rather than injecting baseless rumors and chit chat.
And why not? Why is such violence reported so nonchalantly? If women committed a quarter of the violence and perversion, what would the reaction be? Something along the lines of "those hormonally unstable witches are a menace to society!!" Right? And if I were an alien who suddenly landed in this country, I would soon learn that "boys will be boys" whereas women, on the other hand, are the reason for ALL problems.
Christianity, mainly the Catholic Church, along with Islam, made women into blame targets centuries ago! Women cause earthquakes in Iran because they don't wear head scarves. Pat Robertson, the senile nut case who speaks for God on TV, blames all our nation's problems on Ellen DeGeneres, on and on. And even though most men aren't violent toward women, do we ever hear them speaking out against this constant, daily, heinous problem of violent and sexually perverted men?!! No! Never!! Even prominent men with a platform such as Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Derek Jeter, Lebron James, on and on, NEVER say any such thing as "Male violence is a serious problem on this planet, and we have to deal with it and stop it!"
As long as the planet is controlled by men (and haven't they done a great job, by the way?!!) and women put up with the violence and being blame targets and victims, then nothing will change. Women enjoy the rights they do only because the women before them fought for those rights. Men, too many of whom are perverts and potentially violent, dominate the planet because women allow it! Meanwhile, women are the "unstable" ones!! HA!!!
And there is another little thing about this item--the thing about such crimes almost always having a young woman as the victim. Perhaps this warrants a bit more exploration than simply the insinuation that "men do it". What is it about 20-24 year-old women that makes them such victims of violence? This is NOT to suggest that they deserve to be beaten and/or killed. But there is likely something about the things that young women say or do to their boyfriends that raises the temperature level.
We already know about the behavior of girls in junior high & high school, the social sniping, gossip-mongering, emotional bullying, and even the girl-against-girl violence that often dominates the social scenes in schools.
There may be a connection that carries into college & a bit beyond--immaturity on the part of young women as they recognize their controlling role in sex while they and their male friends are at the peak of hormone-driven mating behaviors and lust.
And one other thing about these terrible cases: we don't know what the victim said or did, we don't know the full circumstances, we don't know the social & emotional atmosphere which these people had created between themselves.
This is not to suggest that the young women deserve to die or that their killers should be treated lightly. What is true, however, is that these incidents are NOT random as to their cause; they didn't 'just happen' because a couple of planets were in alignment, or because of the waxing moon. Or because a university didn't think to hold a seminar.
What if, as is carved above one or more entryways at the U., they "followed Truth wherever it may lead" and taught The Founder's revealed prophetic wisdom? Maybe the Spirit of Righteousness would descend upon the community, leading to the healing of the corrupt souls of interloping molested psychopaths like George Huguely?
As it is the false Virginian and anti-Jefferson president Castini/Casteen has provided safe harbor for one of the Roman Anti-Christ's key players in the cover-up of Bush's and Cheney's 9/11 treason: Philip Zelikow.
Think richboy Huguely didn't know Bush committed 9/11? Out-of-staters need to be pretty "smart" to gain entry to The U..
Bush and Cheney got away with murder. Guess he thinks he can, too.
I'd add the instances of older men and women. The wrestler who killed his entire family and himself. Claims that O.J. Simpson was taking steroids at the time his wife and her friend were slashed to death. Speculation about continuing incidents in the life of a former female would-be olympic ice skating champion, one involving a baseball bat.
The increasing use of steroids and designer faux steroids by ordinary people in a declining economy could be considered a public health hazard. As I indicated earlier, this is not necessarily related to the young alcohol abuser who killed his athlete girlfriend, but does no one wonder, considering the near-universal use of steroids by athletes, often beginning in high school? Just sayin'.