Chapter 26

The summer break wafted through Charlottesville like a lazy afternoon, and by Saturday, August 21, thousands of students crowded the streets as they moved into their homes away from home both on and off campus. While orientation wasn’t required, it was offered from Saturday through Monday, with courses beginning that Tuesday. The town’s temporary serenity gave way to the all-too-familiar horn-honking SUVs and parking-garage nightmares of another academic year.

Huguely’s constantly changing court date loomed overhead, and though the summer had offered a reprieve, the case cast an ominous shadow across the again-bustling campus. Students filled the bookstores stocking up on academic supplies—notebooks, textbooks, and, of course, UVA sweatshirts and hoodies. Parents helped their youngsters move in to residence halls and apartments during the day, then flooded the city’s family-friendly restaurants at night. Some young adults dragged their folks to the bars, bracing for their months-long separation over some beers.

The university had scheduled a weekend’s worth of orientation events, including a so-called “move-in day ‘oasis’ fair” at the Aquatic & Fitness Center. Complimentary drinks were served while parents and students toured the recreational facilities and programs, enjoying some air-conditioned relief from the ninety-degree scorcher outside. Inside O-Hill Dining Hall, it seemed easy to pick out the fresh faces from the returning students—one group looking wide-eyed and slightly lost, the other a bit more comfortable with the routine—as hundreds flocked to have their photographs taken for their all-important student identification cards. Minority students were invited to a bevy of events, from ethnic-targeted meet-and-greets to a gathering for lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender students. One evening wrapped up with a Welcome Back Concert at John Paul Jones Arena.

Teresa Sullivan, UVA’s newly minted president, welcomed the students in an hour-long speech. Though Sullivan had just three weeks prior moved into her new home at Carr’s Hill—which had housed every UVA president since its completion in 1909—she already had made plans to address Yeardley’s death in what she dubbed a “Day of Dialogue” on September 24.

In public speeches, Sullivan addressed Yeardley’s death, even if she didn’t always mention the young woman by name. In one speech to the Student Council on the first day of classes, she tasked the student representatives with empowering their classmates.

“You will help change the patterns of bystander behavior,” Sullivan said. “Of course, we are each responsible for our own actions, but as members of this community, we also have responsibilities for one another. We are responsible for being aware, for recognizing threatening situations and behaviors, for reacting appropriately, and for respecting each other.”

Mostly, however, Yeardley wasn’t mentioned at all that first weekend back on campus.

“We really haven’t heard anything,” said the mother of one Baltimore-born first-year student. “It’s the elephant in the room. Everyone is thinking about it, but no one is saying anything.”

They weren’t yet, anyway.

Sullivan had left her job as a provost at the University of Michigan to become UVA’s first woman president. Round and cheerful, she came to campus with her husband, Douglas Laycock, and brought a different vibe to the post than the men who preceded her. It was no doubt a daunting legacy to continue. Casteen had the helm for two decades, and despite the many successes he boasted, his last year without question was shadowed by sorrow. Sullivan’s efforts to bring people together to talk about the previous year’s tragedies were applauded by some who had worried the administration had so far fumbled the human side of the tragedies.

Sullivan touted her Day of Dialogue as a “first step in building the caring community we all want to have.” She began the day with a speech, taking the stage after the Virginia Belles and Virginia Gentlemen student groups sang the same songs they had performed at Yeardley’s vigil more than four months earlier.

“In a very real sense, we are picking up from where we left off last May,” Sullivan said.

The university and its community were different now than they had been the previous May, she told the crowd. The fourth-year students had moved on, and 25 percent of the undergraduate student body—the incoming first-year class—was new. Some faculty hadn’t been there the spring before, and neither had Sullivan, she acknowledged.

“Some faculty weren’t here last spring; I was not here last spring,” Sullivan said. “Those of us who weren’t in Charlottesville last May experienced Yeardley’s death from a distance. Even from a distance, it was heartbreaking,” Sullivan said.

But this day was to be about more than Yeardley, she added. The year prior was unusually tragic, marked by the deaths of seven students, as well as the slaying of Morgan Harrington. While some of the deaths happened elsewhere and seemed unpreventable, others haunted the university grounds.

“We are left to wonder if we might have done something differently to change what happened,” Sullivan told the somber crowd. The question was especially impossible to ignore in Yeardley’s case, when a young life was, by police accounts, ended by repeated and vicious blows to the head. Sullivan said that those who knew Yeardley even peripherally had to be wondering if they could have done or said something to change the trajectory of tragedy. To save a life.

Not everyone wanted Sullivan to go through with her planned day of discussion. The new president’s staff had fielded angry phone calls from concerned parents who wanted her to call it off.

“Some expressed the opinion that we should not talk about these issues, that these issues are depressing or upsetting, and that young people should not have to consider things that are depressing or upsetting,” Sullivan said. She understood the hesitancy. They were difficult matters to discuss and ponder, and she was as uncomfortable as anyone having to talk about them in her first weeks as university president. It would be easier to ignore the subjects, and certainly more palatable for parents sending their beloved children away from home to think they’d be inherently safe.

The Victorians, Sullivan said, had no qualms talking about death, but they wouldn’t dare to talk about sex. Though the word “sex” triggered laughter in the crowd and allowed Sullivan a brief moment of levity, her point was this: “In our society, we talk constantly about sex but don’t dare talk about death.”

People have unique perspectives on violence and death, their standpoints painted by life experiences. Some in the crowd had experienced abuse only from a distance, Sullivan said. Some had never experienced death. Others had witnessed both first-hand, and perhaps even been the victims of violence or abuse themselves.

“We need to understand and respect reality, that these are intensely personal matters for some of us,” she said.

Unlike Yeardley, whose face and story were splashed across newspaper and magazine covers, most victims suffer in silence and anonymity, Sullivan added.

“We gather today for those people, too,” she said. “Although we have seen horrible events right here in Charlottesville, we acknowledge that violence, bias and abuse are national and global problems. All over the world, victims of hate and abuse are suffering, many of them with no recourse for help or even for making their suffering known.”

She encouraged those who gathered to speak openly with each other about Yeardley’s and Morgan’s deaths, as well as Huguely’s arrest. With Sullivan’s arrival came a new student-led program called the Let’s Get Grounded Coalition that focused on so-called bystander behavior. The group united representatives from thirty-five student organizations across the campus to work with the university administration on creating a safer community. Will Bane, a University Judiciary Committee member and member of Let’s Get Grounded, told the Cavalier Daily that the initiative encourages students to seek help when needed.

Let’s Get Grounded played a big role in Sullivan’s Day of Dialogue, during which faculty members led small group discussions in rooms across campus. The talks had lofty titles like “Am I my sister’s/brother’s keeper?” and “Are we a caring community?” Student groups such as the Minority Rights Coalition set up booths on the campus grounds and chatted with passersby. Fewer students showed up for the discussions than expected, and male students were particularly underrepresented, according to reports, but organizers considered the event a success.

“It’s not so much a day for solutions as a day for questions to keep the conversation going,” Sullivan had said. “The solutions will come later. Today is the first step in building the caring community we all want to have.”

Sullivan promised to follow up the daylong discussions so that the ideas and concerns presented wouldn’t end up as wasted words. Let’s Get Grounded went a step further and began developing training programs to combat the so-called bystander effect. As of late September 2010, more than 500 students and faculty members had been trained, and the group was creating pledge cards to pass out to students who promised to “recognize, react and respect” problems that they might otherwise have seen and ignored.

 

The same day as Sullivan’s dialogue, Judge Downer decided to again postpone Huguely’s court date. Instead of appearing in October, Huguely was to have his preliminary hearing January 21, 2011. Again, there was no explanation for the decision, though it wasn’t a particularly surprising one. No one in the Huguely camp appeared to be in a rush. Even if Huguely ultimately was convicted of a lesser crime than first-degree murder, as his lawyers clearly wanted, he still could face a hefty amount of time behind bars, and he would be credited for time he had already served. It was more important that his lawyers be completely prepared rather than rush to trial. And at this point, Huguely remained in solitary confinement, apparently safely removed from other prisoners who might want to make a name for themselves by harming the high-profile suspect.

Downer made it clear, however, that despite the intense media scrutiny of the case, there would be no cameras allowed inside the courtroom once the preliminary hearing got underway. Ric Barrick, the police spokesman, said reporters would be given room to write and record their stories in a space near the Charlottesville General District Courthouse.

To John Zwerling, the Charlottesville-area defense lawyer, this was good news. Downer had made it clear he would ban the gavel-to-gavel coverage that some news outlets undoubtedly had requested.

“Putting a trial on television changes the dynamics,” said Zwerling, whose firm handled the CourtTV extravaganza that was the Lorena Bobbitt trial. (“That put CourtTV on the map for a while,” the lawyer mused.)

“First of all, the judge becomes extremely cautious and puts his or her instincts away, which is usually bad,” he said. It’s tough on attorneys, too, he added, because even the best, most experienced lawyers can start doubting themselves when they know people will be commenting every day on every little thing that occurred in the courtroom.

And, with an audience watching, sometimes lawyers feel pressured to perform—even when the best move for their client is to sit down and shut up.

“Some of the best cross-examinations are ‘No questions, your honor,’” he said. “I’ve seen famous lawyers destroy a witness who had actually helped them. They destroyed the value of all the good stuff they gave. The lawyers may want to shine and sometimes that’s consistent with effectiveness, but sometimes it is not. It makes you shake your head.”

Even the jury feels pressured with cameras in the courtroom, Zwerling said. People outside of the trial pass judgment on the verdicts handed out inside because they feel they have real insight into the case thanks to the TV coverage. In reality, however, TV viewers of a trial are able to see and hear arguments for which the jury isn’t present.

Despite the repeated delays in the preliminary hearing, the case itself still appeared before Downer for occasional motions. It was during one such motion in December 2010 that Huguely’s lawyers dropped a bombshell—one that cast aside the “tragic accident” defense and instead attempted to exonerate Huguely altogether.