The deans of Washington-area private schools are planning to meet in the fall to crack down on relationship violence in response to the brutal slaying of University of Virginia lacrosse player Yeardley Love.
Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School will host deans from local high schools in October to discuss a proper response to Love’s death, said Eve Grimaldi, Visitation’s dean of Students.
Police found the 22-year-old Love beaten to death in her Charlottesville apartment May 3 and charged her former boyfriend, fellow U.Va. lacrosse player George Huguely V, with first-degree murder.
The murder shocked the tight-knit community of local prep schools, of which Love and Huguely were members. Love attended Baltimore’s Notre Dame Preparatory School and Huguely attended Bethesda’s Landon School. Both students graduated in 2006 before enrolling at the University of Virginia.
“This is the kind of situation, undoubtedly, that the school will have an ongoing response to, both in talks from outside speakers and in our counseling program,” said Fred Haller, Visitation’s assistant dean of students.
Haller said Visitation’s freshmen and sophomores are required to participate in group counseling sessions and Love’s reportedly tumultuous relationship with Huguely will be a focus on those sessions this fall.
“Particularly because we’re an all-girls school,” he added.
In the aftermath of Love’s death, friends of Love and Huguely came forward with stories of abuse and violence dating to the beginning of their roughly two-year relationship. Huguely’s arrest record also surfaced, which revealed two alcohol-related charges — including a 2008 arrest in which he threatened to kill a female police officer.
U.Va. students are taking the lead against relationship violence in Charlottesville this fall with a new group called the Get Grounded Coalition.
In the next month, the coalition will train the school’s largest student-run organizations to counter “bystander behavior” — a term coalition member Will Bane says is a tendency to remain passive in dangerous situations, including alcohol abuse and domestic violence.
