Jessica Milford
Submitted Article
This year the Gender Resource Center is working with the Green Dot organization to complete bystander intervention trainings on the ISU campus.
The leadership program Green Dot is a six-hour training that teaches trainees how to be active bystanders. Green Dot gives trainees ideas on how to safely and effectively intervene in situations such as street harassment, bullying, assault or other potentially harmful situations.
By using experiential learning activities and open discussions, Green Dot gives trainees an experience that many similar programs do not. The idea of Green Dot is that in any given community there are ‘red dots’ happening. Red dots are any negative situations, such as domestic violence, cyber bulling, harassment, etc.
In the training, the problem is illustrated by showing a map of the U.S. filling up with red dots all over, but then the trainers go on to explain that once we learn how to effectively intervene, these bad, red dots, can be outnumbered by green dots. A green dot is any action, words or choice that shows intolerance to violence and actively contributes to a safer community.
Recent “Nicole’s Niche” articles highlighted just two red dot instances here on campus; unfortunately, I am sure that many more occur, but we as students can do something to help.
We can learn to intervene and replace these red dots with green ones. Our actions can be as simple as calling Public Safety when we see a situation that makes us uncomfortable or after we’ve analyzed our safety in a situation we could directly intervene by asking if the people involved are okay.
I would like to challenge my peers at ISU to learn about all the ways to detect and intervene in these red dot situations by attending a Green Dot training.
The next trainings are Thursday, Oct. 3, and Friday, Oct. 4, from 9 a.m. to noon in the Bear River Room of the Student Union Building.
To learn more about Green Dot please feel free to check out the Gender Resource Center’s Facebook page, contact the Assistant Director Aasa Burlin at (208) 282-6061, or stop by the Center in Graveley Hall North.
