A student at the University of Virginia faces automatic expulsion if he lies, cheats or steals in violation of the school’s vaunted honor system — but not if he beats another student.
Violence is not included in U.Va.’s centuries-old honor code but instead is handled in its code of conduct — which concerns physical or sexual assaults, making threats, defacing school property, and other behaviors the school deems deserving of discipline.
No violation of the code of conduct carries an automatic punishment like that of cheating, lying or stealing at the University of Virginia. The conduct code does not require students, faculty or staff to report others’ bad behavior — which the honor system strongly recommends in the case of honor code offenses.
» Code of conduct
Prohibited behavior includes, but is not limited to, physical or sexual assault, making threats, unauthorized entry into school facilities, disorderly conduct, damage to property owned by the university, Charlottesville or another student and violations of federal, state or local law.
» Honor code
” I will not lie, I will not cheat and I will not steal. I will hold others to the same standards.”
On tests and take-home assignments, the pledge reads, “On my honor, I pledge that I have neither given nor received help on this assignment.”
U.Va. lacrosse player George Huguely V stumbled into that loophole last year when he attacked a fellow teammate and never faced disciplinary charges from the school.
Huguely entered his sleeping teammate’sroom and physically beat him because he believed the player had kissed his former girlfriend, Yeardley Love. Huguely and his bruised, beaten teammate confessed the altercation to men’s lacrosse coach Dom Starsia. Starsia did not inform school officials of the incident, according to university spokeswoman Carol Wood.
Huguely is now facing first-degree murder charges in the beating death of Love.
But Starsia did not violate school policy by not reporting the altercation.
“There is no requirement compelling anyone to report a violation,” said Will Bane, chairman of the university’s Judiciary Committee.
U.Va. officials said they also were in the dark on Huguely’s arrest record, and university President John Casteen is now pushing for a new law that would require state and local police agencies to report student arrests to the university.
U.Va., for starters, should start requiring faculty and staff to report others’ conduct violations, said Diane Auer Jones, former assistant secretary of higher education for the U.S. Department of Education.
“Clearly, the [team] was headed to a championship and apparently Huguely was a very good player,” she said. “The coach is not in the best position to be judge and jury in this.”
She said Starsia’s silence could be compared with instances of teachers inflating athletes’ grades to keep them on the field. It’s nearly impossible to establish rules that would prevent every tragedy at a college, she said, but “for violence, there can be no gray area. Physically violating another human being would seem to be a more punishable offense than cheating on a test.”
Starsia did not return phone calls.
