Jeremy Stafford: Generalizations surfacing after Virginia slaying

By Jeremy Stafford - jstafford@nvdaily.com

Listen: Do you hear them? The wrathful cries? The scathing calls? The demands for justice?

You don't. They're inaudible, muffled by the burning screen of a computer monitor.

On Monday afternoon, newspaper websites across the nation glowed similarly sneering stories concerning two lacrosse players at the University of Virginia: George Huguely, a senior on the Cavaliers' men's team, was charged with the slaying of Yeardley Love, a senior on the women's team.

Both were scheduled to graduate this spring.

According to The Washington Post, Charlottesville police responded to a phone call at 2:15 a.m. on Monday, entered Love's off-campus apartment believing she'd consumed too much alcohol. When a lifeless Love showed signs of physical trauma, the emergency response became a homicide investigation.

By 6 a.m., Huguely was found in his apartment, questioned, arrested.

The murder is appalling. Never mind my own outrage that the sport of lacrosse has been spat on for the second time since 2006; never mind that, not coincidentally, this is also the second time since 2006 that the sport has made national headlines.

But the appalling degree of this story runs far deeper than the news story itself.

Take the time, after reading the Washington Post story, to scroll further down the screen, past the story, past the sponsored links, to the readers' comments.

The cries, the calls, the demands, they're loud, and they're thunderous.

Here's the screamingly atrocious, yet quizzically typical post: Huguely is a white male from Chevy Chase, Md., and because of what is deemed a privileged status, he will be relieved of all charges, dusted clean of all blame, and will graduate on time.

One comment in particular, with no intent to hide its seething sarcasm, claimed that no white jock from Maryland suburbia could possibly harm another person, much less murder one.

Here's another laughably ludicrous non sequitur to munch on: Huguely plays lacrosse, must be a drunken frat boy fool, must have acted in typical lacrosse player fashion.

If Huguely were an African-American player, the comments go on, Charlottesville would be closed off. The home of the Hoos would become a citywide crime scene. Martial law would be declared.

I'm exaggerating a bit, my apologies, but my point remains the same -- somehow, we've missed the point.

We don't see that a young woman, starring on a lacrosse team with national championship aspirations, about to graduate from one of America's most respected universities, is dead. Supposedly murdered.

Somehow we've flipped a tragedy on its head. We've turned a day of mourning into a day of racial unrest.

But where does the racism fit? Racism seems to be that missing piece from an unfinished, long forgotten puzzle. And for some reason, we're still trying to find a place for it.

Sometimes it's warranted; mostly it isn't.

Which brings to mind the first time, at least that I can remember, that lacrosse garnered national media attention.

In 2006, the Duke University men's lacrosse team hired an African-American woman as a stripper at an off-campus party.

Durham, N.C., caught fire that night.

The stripper's claim: She was raped and racially ridiculed by white lacrosse players in a grimy bathroom. The nation's reaction: Lacrosse players are racist drunkards.

The Duke scandal erupted in the middle of my senior lacrosse season at Saint Vincent College. Likely no lacrosse team that spring suffered the way the Blue Devils did -- their season was canceled -- but every team, at least to some degree, felt hurt, betrayed by a nation so quick to judge a sport it doesn't care to understand.

Each Saint Vincent lacrosse practice ended the same: What have you heard? What have you read?

What on earth is happening in Durham?

It was the worst possible way for an unknown sport to become suddenly known.

Something else for munching: Huguely was a captain at Landon, a prep lacrosse powerhouse in Bethesda, Md. The Washington Post currently ranks Landon's boys lacrosse team fifth in the metropolitan area.

Landon is also where five players on Duke's 2006 roster played in high school. Huguely, incidentally, was interviewed by the Washington Post for a story gauging the Bears' reaction to the Duke scandal.

Another sweeping generalization made by the public: Landon breeds white lacrosse players who drink themselves stupid, then romp down south to play lacrosse at prestigious colleges and act on malicious lusts.

But of the three Duke lacrosse players charged with forcible rape and kidnapping -- charges which were eventually dropped, judged to be nothing more than hocus-pocus and false accusations -- none played at Landon.

When the charges were dropped, two of the accused Blue Devils -- Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty -- transferred to Brown University and Loyola University of Maryland, respectively, where they continued their college lacrosse careers. To make amends, the NCAA granted the rest of the 2006 team an extra year of eligibility.

The Washington Post's reaction article mentioned that Huguely's father, George Sr., in the wake of the Duke scandal, advised Huguely, who had just committed to play lacrosse at U.Va., to keep clear of such scandalous situations.

In four years, it seems Huguely has forgotten his father's advice.

But wait for Huguely's trial, for the dooming evidence against him.

It's been just over 24 hours since Huguely's arrest, and he's already a sot and a shameless frat boy, and has provided us with the preposterous prototype of the lacrosse player motive.

Sift through the burnt sands of Durham; the lessons are there for the taking.

But like Huguely, we're not listening.