As the University of Virginia community comes to grips with a violent event between a male and female lacrosse player resulting in her death and his arrest for murder, I am perplexed by some of the conversations I’m hearing. These are conversations you usually hear around race, gender and sexual orientation. The conversations are not about the actions of an individual, but instead have become about the sport of lacrosse. It has boiled down to a simple “if” “then” statement. If you play lacrosse then you are bad. This is a lazy way of trying to understand an unfortunate event. What happened between these two young people was horrific. What is sadder is this type of behavior happens in households around the country every minute of every day. Let’s not stereotype, profile or finger point. Let’s take the time to reflect on the incident and not make blanket statements about people or sports as this just adds insult to injury.
By Wendy Huber
Associate Director of Admissions
University of Virginia
Darden School of Business
HuberW@darden.virginia.edu
