UVA was a very conservative place during the time Allen and Sabato would have been there. I entered in 1972 and I was in the first class that allowed women in without a quota. A state school! Some of my classmates reported that professors would say in class that women had no place there in their classes and then would say in a bit more detail where they did belong. But it never happened to me. There were very few Blacks, although my Resident Advisor in 1972 was a Black woman. There was an effort to recruit them by the time I left in the mid to late 70's. Some had a hard time adjusting to an almost all-white campus, others didn't.
I am from Virginia--more rural Virginia--and even there so many ages ago, we knew better than to say the "N" word. I grew up knowing that it was a very derisive racial slur and it was never, ever in my vocabulary. That was not the case with my parent's generation. And I just can't imagine someone finding a deer's head like this without reporting it to the authorities.